The Similarities Between Ahmadinejad and Bush
It is difficult to ignore the similarities between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and President George W. Bush. There are differences, thank fate, but the similarities far outweigh them. To quote yet another president, this time Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, the Iranian president is “a petty and cruel dictator.” Little George is certainly petty. He obviously wants to be a dictator, given his ransacking of the Bill of Rights and his single-minded. illegal, unethical consolidation of Executive and Presidential powers. I don’t know if he’s cruel or not, but I have no trouble seeing Little George burning the legs off of bugs or small mammals using the sun and a magnifying glass.
We can also compare Ahmadinejad and Bush in terms of dogmatic religious beliefs. The former does not believe in the Holocaust because it puts the largest enemy of Islam in a good light, the second denies the intent of the founding fathers on the matter of separation of Church and State because it wins him the vote of the stuck-in-the-eighth-century American Christian fundamentalists. Bush also says that he takes direction from God’s voice in his head, although this could be construed as being either way too religious or evidence of further mental disorders, or both. George also has serious issues with science, and will not give a clear answer on whether he believes in evolution or a 6,000-year-old Earth.
The War in Iraq
As you may have noticed, I am not in favor. ;o) I do not believe we should be there, I think we are doing the Iraqis much more harm than good, and I believe that we are there at the private behest of Bush and Cheney as vaudeville barkers for the corporate interests that control them. But that is not the worst of it. The worst of it is the injury and death that it causes among American soldiers and the people of Iraq.
Somewhere along the line, we have become so jaded by filthy politics that we are not screaming every time an American life is lost because we are in the wrong place protecting the object of greed of the super-rich. We have begun to think that the sort of small-minded lies and political deceptions that Bush and Cheney used to get us into this farce of a war are just par for the course.
Katrina, Little George, and Global Warming
At this time of year, whenever I look out into the mid-Atlantic or the Gulf, large storms are everywhere. It is difficult not to think of Katrina when I see the big blotches of orange, yellow, and white out over the warm water. It is impossible to think of Katrina without thinking of all the flooding and a devastated New Orleans. And it is impossible to think of the flooding without thinking of the poor, mainly black, people trapped in a deteriorating Superdome.
I don’t really know how to judge the state of rebuilding in New Orleans. Some sources say that when the money is all paid, every citizen in New Orleans will have received over a half million dollars. Some sources show me pictures of poor people (mainly black) standing outside their toxic FEMA trailers, never having gotten the first dollar that it will take them to rebuild their lives. I expect that the truth is somewhere between the two extremes. I further expect that it is closer to the latter situation than the former. Read more
While You were Out
I apologize for two days without posts. My Web host decided to get quite illogical on me, so I have spent the last day and a half moving to a new Web host, and a day before that researching which host was the one for me. I will write a post about that experience in the next few days. For today, I ran across a “funny” while-you-were-out message form in a couple of places on the Web. If you really consider it, it is scary stuff. The form will be visible if you click on the “Read the Rest…” link below.
How did the United States of America get to the point where something like this (see below) can appear on the Web and some of the people commenting on it think that it is real? How have we managed to wind up with a Hitler-substitute in the White house, building his own private Gestapo, slowly repealing the entire Bill of Rights? We need to get that megalomaniac the hell out of office and into the nearest mental institution sometime yesterday. I know that this form is not real. But it is scary as all get-out that some people can look at it and think that it is! Read more
Lying: the New Default Behavior
I am having a very hard time trusting anyone that I do not personally know and can vouch for from direct historical experience. I am sure that not everyone else is lying to us, but it is very hard to tell who is who. This is almost certainly a matter of having been conditioned to expect bullshit from people in the public eye. I’m not just talking about the Liar in Chief pictured at the left and his cronies; it is almost everybody who is a public figure.
Little George may be behind the recent increase in this behavior. After all, if it is all right for the President to lie openly, obviously, and without impunity, I suppose we should expect word to get around that there is no real penalty for not telling the truth. Still, one would hope that someone, somewhere would be able to tell the truth in an interview, or a press conference, or in some public arena. Read more
The Shrub and Spin
I woke up to a headline in our local paper that said. “Bush Puts Positive Spin On Katrina Recovery.” In it, little George said that he thought the efforts at rebuilding New Orleans after their personal hurricane were going pretty well. Just for review, lets note the the Federal Government is still holding back on providing almost all of the funds they promised residents, the most disadvantaged parts of town are being treated much worse than the wealthier parts, the murder rate has skyrocketed, and people are living in FEMA trailers soaked with formaldehyde.
Using the word “spin” to describe his comments is spin incarnate. What little George is doing is flat out lying to us. Some more. Under his administration and tutelage, politicians seem to have become about twice as sanguine about telling bald-faced lies to cameras, reporters, and their electorate than ever before. And why not? George has done little but lie to us, one way or another, since he crapped his pants in an elementary school on the morning September 11, 2001. Read more
Lies, Chapter 1
It will come as no surprise to you that we get lied to hundreds of times every day. Well, I assume that you knew that. If you didn’t, cinch up your seat belt a little. You’re about to go for a ride. Before we really get started, just what is a lie? A lie is:
1. A false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
2. Something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture.
3. An inaccurate or false statement.
Those points make up a fairly basic definition of the noun “lie.” With that in mind, let’s agree to ignore the kind of lie that you tell your Aunt Martha, when you say you like her hat when, in truth, you hate all senior female hats. Although we may come back to it later, that sort of lie doesn’t really do much damage, except a little to your own self-respect. With the possible exception of those tiny ones, designed specifically NOT to hurt, all lies do damage. Read more
The Separation of War and Troops
I am astounded that otherwise intelligent people are unable to separate the Iraq (and Pakistan) war from the people who are fighting that war. The two are not of a piece. The war was started, and is being prosecuted, for political purposes, as are all wars. You may choose to agree with those purposes or not. In either case, the war is being fought by young women and men who are there because it is their duty to be there. They don’t have the option of choosing whether or not to believe in the politics of the war.
For that ever-dwindling minority that believes that the War in Iraq is a good thing, the decision of whether or not to support the troops is an easy one. If you are an American that supports the war itself, you would look a little silly supporting the other side, which is the only other real option. Read more
