Author: Brian

Let’s see now. What is strategy?

Bush cites book after book that influenced his thinking in the White House.

The Bible, for one, and he quotes Lincoln, who called it “the best gift God has given to man.”

After 9/11, he thought of Lincoln’s declaration that the battle between freedom and tyranny was “an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory”—words, he says, that framed his policy toward the war on terror.

Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult:

Both parties are rotten – how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election?

Both parties are captives to corporate loot.

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks.

Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics.

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.

This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

here we go, history on the wall all over again !

ONE day during the 2008 campaign, as Barack Obama read the foreboding news of the mounting economic and military catastrophes that W. was bequeathing his successor, he dryly remarked to aides: “Maybe I should throw the game.”

On the razor’s edge of another recession; blocked at every turn by Republicans determined to slice him up at any cost; starting an unexpectedly daunting re-election bid; and puzzling over how to make a prime-time speech about infrastructure and payroll taxes soar, maybe President Obama is wishing that he had thrown the game.

The leader who was once a luminescent, inspirational force is now just a guy in a really bad spot.

[er, wow, gee, Zo, that’s a bunch of pepper]

It seems to tell a lie may become unconstitutional.

Wake your brain on that !

1) Judge Jay S. Bybee wrote that “false statements of fact . . . generally fall outside First Amendment protection.”

2) False statements of all kinds, he reasoned, are a complete exception to the First Amendment, just like child pornography, fighting words, or soliciting a hitman to kill your spouse.

Do not think I will tell you what I think nor tell you my opinion nor say a word, because…

3) It should be noted that, as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Bybee also gave the green light for government to use waterboarding and other tortures, undoubtedly only to elicit truthful speech.

Now, we don’t know who will win next year’s presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect.

Paul Krugman illustrating Republican candidates:

…those scientists are just in it for the money, “manipulating data” to create a fake threat. In his book “Fed Up” he dismissed climate science as a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart.”

I could point out that Mr. Perry is buying into a truly crazy conspiracy theory, which asserts that thousands of scientists all around the world are on the take, with not one willing to break the code of silence.

I could also point out that multiple investigations into charges of intellectual malpractice on the part of climate scientists have ended up exonerating the accused researchers of all accusations.

But never mind: Mr. Perry and those who think like him know what they want to believe, and their response to anyone who contradicts them is to start a witch hunt.

“It was the path to freedom. We later conducted the first free elections in Russia in 1,000 years.”

Part 1: ‘They Were Truly Idiots’

Gorbachev: The Soviet Communist Party was a huge machine. At some point, it began throwing spokes into the wheels. It was the initiator of perestroika, but then it became its biggest obstacle.

I understood that nothing would work without deep-seated political reforms. After suffering a defeat in the first democratic elections, the establishment joined forces and openly attacked me at a meeting of the party leadership. That was when I announced my resignation and left the plenary chamber.

SPIEGEL: But that was only in April 1991, eight months before the end of the Soviet Union. Besides, you returned. You allowed yourself to be persuaded once again, instead of using the moment to send the old party packing.

Gorbachev: Yes, I came back after three hours. Some 90 comrades had already established a list for a new Gorbachev party, which would have created a schism. I joined the Communist Party at 19, when I was still in school. My father had been on the front and my grandfather was an old communist — and I was supposed to blow the whole thing up? Today I know that I should have done it. But the man sitting in front of you is not a so-called statesman, but a completely normal person. Someone with a conscience, and that conscience tortured me constantly.

Part 2: Yeltsin Was ‘Infatuated with Power, Thirsty for Glory’

Gorbachev: … he was already very, very self-confident. When we wanted to bring him into the national party, many advised us against it. They later elected him as party leader in Moscow. I supported it. He was energetic, and it took a long time for me to recognize my mistake. He was extremely infatuated with power, haughty and thirsting for glory, a domineering person. He always believed that he was being underestimated, and he constantly felt insulted. He should have been shunted out of the way and made an ambassador in a banana republic, where he could have smoked water pipes in peace.

guy spends two years in the Tea Party, discovers books for children…

The Tea Party is no longer about economics, not that it ever solely was. At the larger rallies and for the cameras (CNN or laptop), they hold forth about founding fathers, liberty, spending, deficits, TARP, kicking cans down roads, taxes, living within means and fiscal responsibility. But when the lights are off, it’s all about Jesus, with ‘God’ thrown in, on occasion, for Israel.

What I Learned in Two Years at the Tea Party, by Abe Sauer

If we worry about human suffering, war does not make sense. …every conceivable fear is fear of our invincibility

…our most extraordinary knee deep

… strategic patience

Fear, Optimism, Guilt = War

Saying so little. Let’s get real. There’s nothing in our way. Words. Too few ideas. We like ideas. Darn it. We are starving out here. Something is wrong about shilling. Colonels are a good rank to do it. Billionaires are the best at it. I’m born to worry about both. My mom says I have dead brothers in old wars. When will we ignore? It’s sick. America is what we do. Damn it’s tiring. We won’t make dreams come true.

Rory Stewart, a member of the British Parliament, examines the effects of political and military interventions.

“Lack of attention to details such as a region’s language, culture, and political and social mores can lead to failure.”

…lead to war.

Our world is odd.
It does not make sense.
If we worry about human suffering, war is bad.

WE ARE PEACE

Media is too dumb to say what Amitabh Pal says:

Amitabh Pal looks at the history of nonviolence in Muslim societies around the world and argues that while violent acts by Muslims get covered widely in the media, nonviolent movements exist everywhere and deserve just as much recognition.

duh, why do we war?

Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said in a radio interview that Americans are nervous about the rise of the Soviet Union.

NY Times:

The Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion: among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic.

The Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.

And:

Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics.

And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates.

The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.

This inclination among the Tea Party faithful to mix religion and politics explains their support for Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. Their appeal to Tea Partiers lies less in what they say about the budget or taxes, and more in their overt use of religious language and imagery, including Mrs. Bachmann’s lengthy prayers at campaign stops and Mr. Perry’s prayer rally in Houston.

Yet it is precisely this infusion of religion into politics that most Americans increasingly oppose.