by David Burn | Jun 29, 2006 | Media, Politics
When you publish a small town newspaper in a conservative, faith-based community, it takes “stones” to run a weekly column from John David Rose, especially when the man is in top form, as he was in yesterday’s piece.
Freedom-hating Christian fanatics seek to write their peculiar, strained interpretations of “holy writ” into our body of law, democracy be damned.
The threat is not overblown, it’s real.
A secretive theo-political movement set out a decade ago with the goal of imposing Old Testament law upon the United States. Now working under a number of guises, their enemy is democracy, their objective theocracy.
One of the “25 articles” of a coalition of Christian fundamentalist leaders declares: “We deny that anyone, Jew or Gentile, believer or unbeliever, private person or public official, is exempt from the moral and judicial obligation before God to submit to Christ’s lordship over every aspect of life, thought, word and deed.” The coalition’s “biblical blueprint” for the United States advocates the death penalty, preferably by stoning, for homosexuals, adulterers, blasphemers, astrologers, witches, teachers of false doctrine and incorrigible children.
Fundamentalist leaders like James Dobson (Focus on the Family) and Robertson (Christian Broadcasting Net work) and others of their ilk, Christo fascists in clerical disguise, use the tithes of bedazzled followers to enrich themselves and intimidate media, mainline churches and those who dare oppose them in what they characterize as the struggle between good and evil, God and Satan.
The editors and publisher of Bluffton Today deserve some kind of award for bravery, and for their faith in the U.S. Constitution, which protects the rights of a free press. Maybe the Pulitzer crew could create a new category for just this type of thing.
by David Burn | Jun 27, 2006 | Media, Politics
According to Associated Press reporter, Terrence Hunt, President Bush today sharply condemned the disclosure of a program to secretly monitor the financial transactions of suspected terrorists. “The disclosure of this program is disgraceful,” he said.
“For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America,” Bush said, jabbing his finger for emphasis.
No.
An administration actively dismantling The Bill of Rights does great harm to this nation. An administration willing to lie and manipulate meaning does great harm to this nation. An administration that takes us to war under false pretenses does great harm to this nation. An administration that blows a CIA operative’s cover for political leverage does great harm to this nation. An administration with a blind eye to torture does great harm to this nation.
I keep thinking there’s hope. That the people will come to their senses and ride these clowns out of town. But that will never happen when the only source of truth–a free media–is under constant attack.
Is it not obvious how important discrediting the media is to the right? They have their own TV network (run by the same man who put the first King George in office) which spews propaganda 24/7. That ought to give us a pretty good clue how important media manipulation is to their strategy.
Karl Rove has memorized Joseph Goebbels’ playbook. And we are all worse off for his mastery.
by David Burn | May 10, 2006 | Politics
According to the BBC, German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, asked President Bush what his best moment in office has been.
“I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5lb perch in my lake,” President Bush said.
Was he joking? I’m inclined to think so, yet fisherman are a breed apart. It’s entirely possible this was W’s biggest thrill of the past five years. 7.5 pounds is a big perch.
by David Burn | Apr 11, 2006 | Politics
Al Franken recently shared the stage at Judaism University with Ann Coulter, a.k.a. Thin White Puke. Midwest Values Pac has Franken’s opening statement. There’s a lot of great stuff in it, but I’ll narrow in on one small segment for our purposes here.
In her book Slander, Ann tells her readers that Al Gore had a leg up on George W. Bush when applying to their respective colleges. Harvard and Yale. Ann writes:
Oddly, it was Bush who was routinely accused of having sailed through life on his father’s name. But the truth was the reverse. The media was manipulating the fact that many years later Bush’s father became president. When Bush was admitted to Yale, his father was a little-known congressman on the verge of losing his first Senate race. His father was a Yale alumnus, but so were a lot of other boys’ parents. It was Gore, not Bush, who had a famous father likely to impress college admissions committees.
What does Ann omit? Well, that Bush’s grandfather Prescott Bush was also a Yale alum and had been Senator from Connecticut, the home state of Yale University. That Prescott Bush had been a trustee of Yale. That Prescott Bush had been the first chair of Yale’s Development Board — the folks who raise the money. That Prescott Bush sat on the Yale Corporation for twelve years. That Prescott Bush, like George W. Bush’s father, George H. W, Bush, had been a member of Skull and Bones. That the first Bush to go to Yale was Bush’s great great grandfather James Bush, who graduated in 1844. That in addition to his father, grandfather, and greatgreatgrandfather, Bush was the legacy of no less than twenty-seven other relatives who preceded him at Yale, including five great great uncles. Seven great uncles. Five uncles, and a number of first cousins.
In case you’re still wondering where W gets his sense of entitlement, his right to lie for the nation’s own good, reread that last paragraph. Bush and cronies like to paint a picture of a bumbling, God-fearing everyman, but W is worlds apart from that fictional creation. The truth is he was groomed from day one to be where he is today, to say what he says and to do what he does.
by David Burn | Mar 23, 2006 | Politics
From IndyBay:
When South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed HB 1215 into law it effectively banned all abortions in the state with the exception that it did allow saving the mother’s life. There were, however, no exceptions for victims of rape or incest.
The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.
“To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,” she said to me last week. “I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”
by David Burn | Mar 10, 2006 | Politics
Photo by Larry Downing of Reuters
by David Burn | Mar 1, 2006 | Politics
John David Rose examines the Bush budget and what it means for middle class Americans. Bottom line, it means those calling the shots in our executive branch firmly believe you’re way too busy trying to make ends meet to question, much less challenge, their arrogant and reckless ways.
Republicans brag that the president increased veterans’ medical care budget $1.9 billion in 2007. Well, there are lies, damned lies and Republican budgets.
What they don’t tell you is that, in order to save tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, veterans’ programs will be cut by $10.3 billion over the next five years.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (who provided the figures for Rose’s editorial), “Given the rising cost of medical care — and especially the large number of wounded servicemen returning from Iraq and Afghanistan — the reductions after 2007 are almost certainly not tenable.”
The disdain for the disempowered in our culture that daily emanates from Pennsylvania Avenue can no longer be tolerated. We can either get together and eradicate this elitist manipulation, or we can continue to suffer the consequences well in to the next decade and beyond.
by David Burn | Feb 28, 2006 | Politics
As Iraq teters on the verge of Civil War–a condition, we can be certain, the Bush team never planned for–a principal architect of the adminisration’s foreign policy has come out (in a book) against the very ideas he once championed.
From Scotsman.com:
Neoconservativism has failed the United States and needs to be replaced by a more realistic foreign policy agenda, according to one of its prime architects.
Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has “evolved into something I can no longer support”. He says it should be discarded on to history’s pile of discredited ideologies.
In an extract from his forthcoming book, America at the Crossroads, Mr Fukuyama declares that the doctrine “is now in shambles” and that its failure has demonstrated “the danger of good intentions carried to extremes”.
In its narrowest form, neoconservatism advocates the use of military force, unilaterally if necessary, to replace autocratic regimes with democratic ones.
A former State Deparment official, Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on democratization and international political economy.
by David Burn | Feb 26, 2006 | Politics
Time reports that U.S. families in search of affordable heating oil are finding it in the strangest of places–a program run by Citgo that makes 40% discounts available to low-income Americans. Citgo is owned by PDV America, Inc., an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., the national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Congressional conservatives feel U.S. cities should not be helping improve the image of Chavez, one of President Bush’s most strident critics. But U.S. Representative, Chaka Fattah of Philadelphia, says, “The U.S. buys 1.5 million barrels of oil from Venezuela each day at full price, so why would anyone complain about getting some at almost half price?”
Philadelphia, Boston, the Bronx and cities in Maine, Vermont and Rhode Island have received a total of 45 million gallons of the subsidized Citgo fuel, and other cities are slated for another 5 million soon. That’s a small percentage of the heating oil Venezuela exports to the U.S. each year, but Citgo says it has set aside about 10% of its refined petroleum products for the program. Says Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, D.C., “Unfortunately for the Bush Administration, Chavez is proving to be a more inventive thinker in terms of hemispheric politics.”
Critics suggest Chavez’s oil diplomacy is simply a ploy to take consumers’ minds off of record high oil prices, which are partly a result of his efforts to rebuild the power of OPEC, of which Venezuela is a founding member.
Venezuela’s Ambassador to the U.S., Bernardo Alvarez, one of the program’s architects says the Citgo program does give Chavez a chance to showcase “one of our revolution’s most important principles: the redistribution of oil revenues, especially for the poor.”
Alvarez, also says the Citgo program is proof that Chavez’s revolution is still fond of Americans, if not their government.
by David Burn | Feb 22, 2006 | Politics
Merrill Markoe of the Huffington Post discusses the sad fact that many of our nation’s leaders are really just figure heads for consortiums of international corporations.
When one of them gives an impassioned speech about the first amendment, are they really just a mouthpiece for ClearChannel? When they support the invasion of a struggling impoverished country in the name of freedom everywhere is it because they are seeking real estate to build a Home Depot? Understanding this stuff is like watching a foreign movie without subtitles.
Usually it isn’t my job to propose solutions to these kinds of problems, but I think I have a way to try and minimize the confusion we are all having trying differentiate truth from lies. Maybe it would make everything clearer if we just let the corporations run for office.
Okay, I know it isn’t a perfect system, but it makes as much sense as what goes on now. And at least it’s completely up front. If the current administration had simply run as the Pennzoil/ Halliburton ticket, no one would have had the slightest doubt about what was going to happen to the country in the next eight years.
