26 posts tagged “bush”

When someone leaves, it's only polite to say good-bye.

So...
Georgie Boy,

Right back at 'cha, bitch

The end of an error is here.

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood

Rashid Khalidi

There has been little coverage of certain types of Middle Eastern news in the United States.  This virtual blackout has largely been a function of American media self-censorship.  Especially on television, where most Americans get their news, there has been little detailed reportage on conditions in the Israeli-occupied territories (indeed of the very fact that there is an Israeli occupation, maintained by violence), and there has been little coverage of routine domestic repression, violations of human rights, and restrictions on democracy and freedom of expression in America's Arab allies and client states.  Such reports are common in the media of Europe and the rest of the world, and even in Israel.  Only since unrealistic war aims of the Bush administration in Iraq have produced chaos in that country has a willingness to critique some aspects of U.S. Middle East policy crept into American public discourse.
Nevertheless, it is an undeniable fact that many of those who planned and carried out the attacks of September 11, or those who guided, led, taught, and supported them, were not so very long ago the welcome allies of the United States and various Middle Eastern regimes to which it is closely linked.  This is true whether these individuals belonged to one of the radical offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian Islamist political party founded in 1928, or adhered to some extremist version of the Wahhabi doctrine, which represents religious orthodoxy in Saudi Arabia, or aided the Afghan mujahideen during the war against the Soviet occupation during the 1980s.  Specifically, the masterminds of 9/11, and their intellectual forebears and spiritual guides, were frequently the ardent and devoted foot-soldiers of the United States and its allies in the murky covert struggles against the Soviet Union and other opponents in the Middle East from the mid-1950s until the early 1990s.  American and allied policymakers supported them against such identified enemy forces as Arab nationalism, Pan-Arabism, local communist parties, radical regimes, Palestinian nationalism, and later the Soviets in Afghanistan.
All of this exceedingly germane history, some of it quite recent, has been obliterated or forgotten.  Over the past few years, the intellectual progeny of these U.S. clients, their successors, and in a few cases, the very same individuals (figures such as Shaykh 'Umar' Abd al-Rahman, convicted in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the late Shaykh Ahmad Yasin, founder of Hamas, Salman al-'Awda and Safar al-Hawla, both Saudi clerics, and the two top leader of al-Qa'ida, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Usama Bin Laden) who once were allies, fellow travelers, or salaried agents of the United States and the Middle Eastern governments it supports, came to regard the United States and its allies in the region as their enemies.  Another example would be the transformation of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offspring, Hamas, from the proteges of the Israeli occupation into Israel's fierce enemy.  One hears little about this history in the United States today, perhaps out of defence to the individuals and institutions that directed and executed American policy during the Cold War.

January 15th primary stands, according to Granholm.  So what exactly happen here? Well, the folks in Lansing have taken away the oppurtunity for the registered voters of Michigan to hear what the candidates have to say in person instead of some MSM propaganda-spreading, biased journalists' point of view. And why would they do something as stupid as that? Well, that's simple. Because they make a shitload more money than most of us do. So the disasters we call the economy, the job market, housing market, educational system, (lack of) health care, and of course the war in Iraq don't really matter as much to them. Sure, they may say it matters and give us all the same campaign bs promises they have no intention on keeping. But they do that and get away with it because not enough people put their damn foot down and call them out when they flat out fuck up. Nobody likes to ruffle feathers. Why not?

Let me just go off on a little rant here because I do it so well.

What's the whole point of having and protecting freedom of speech if we don't use it? Every once in a great while some incident comes along that catches a little attention and a few people holler and scream about protecting our freedom. And then the attention fades and it's back to the distraction of reality TV. Folks will raise bloody hell if their order gets screwed up at McDs drive-thru but barely make a wimper when it comes to mouthing off to any level of government. Why is that? Some of the sorry ass excuses I've heard are because it's too complicated. It ain't frickin rocket science! Or it's boring. Good to know you think the kind of country you're leaving your kids and grandkids is too boring to care about. Or my all-time favorite, it doesn't make a difference. (Ever get the urge to just smack someone?) Hmm, I do believe that mind set is part of what got us into the current mess we're in, eh? How a man who was never actually elected is calling the shots, perhaps?

So this is my thinking. I could be totally off base here, but go ahead and ask me if I care.

Freedom is not free. It costs lives. Thousands of lives have been lost to defend the freedoms and rights we have. Huge, unimaginable sacrifices have been made. My great-grandparents came here to have better lives. To give their children better lives. Both my grandfathers and both my parents served this country well in the military. I know my great-grandmother came to this country so life could be easier. I don't imagine she wanted easier in the sense that her descendants could sit on their ass doing nothing while everything around them went to hell in a hand basket. She was a proud, stubborn and vocal woman. Pretty easy to see where I get it from. If all the sacrifices were made for us to have a better life than the one people like my great-grandparents left behind, why just sit back and take advantage by thinking that the country we have today will still be here tomorrow? Because there's a system of laws that says it will? Please! King George doesn't give a damn about those laws. He'd find a way to make himself dictator for life if he could get away with it. How easily it's forgotten that if we hadn't stood up to what was wrong for this country then we would've been just another British colony, am I right? If the reasons for not saying or doing anything are because people don't want to get 'branded' then why do we bother teaching kids about how we won our freedom from the British? What's so wrong in being branded? So what if I voice my opinion and get called a radical or "out there" or, as the Repub likes to say, the dirty S word? I happen to be very proud of my lefty, anti-capitalist and socialist ways and could give a fuck less if I'm surrounded by people who don't agree with me. Yes, I'm an anti-conformist. Blame Mama for raising me that way. So what if there's a file on me somewhere? And no, I don't mean that bs file the FBI has on everyone. Hell, I'd frame a copy of it if I could. I'd be pretty disappointed if there isn't one.

I can say to King George that he's a tyrant, a terrorist, and a brainless asshole who used his daddy's money to hijack democracy.

I can tell Cheney that he certainly lives up to his first name.

And they can't do one damn thing to me. Ha ha! How ya like me now, ya bastards?

Got a little carried away there...

The whole point of having the right to vote is to elect a representative do decide what's best for the people who elected them. And for the people that don't vote, I really don't think too highly of you anyway. Lazy bastards. Sometimes it comes down to choosing the lesser of the two evil politicians. But it's a hell of a lot better than not getting to choose at all. Even much more gooder (yes, I know that's not proper English) is when the politician who wins fucks up and we have every damn right to call them out on it till they get it right or till we can re-elect someone else.

My ancestors came here for a reason. My parents gave 40 years of their lives to the Navy for a reason. I don't see me being much a person, let alone an American, if I just let all their hard work and sacrifice go to waste.

There's no point in letting "politics as usual" be, well...the usual.

Ok, I'm done foaming at the mouth.  As Forrest would say, have a nice day.

Karl Rove, President Bush's close friend and chief political strategist, announced Monday he will leave the White House at the end of August, joining a lengthening line of senior officials heading for the exits in the final 1 1/2 years of the administration.

Can't say I'm sorry to see the bastard go

Bush spent a fair amount of time talking about health care yesterday.

The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America," he said. "After all, you just go to an emergency room.

Ummm, glad that's all cleared up now.  Fuckin' moron.

Bush/Cheney were never actually elected, so why not just evict there sorry asses and save the tax dollars?

Vice President Dick Cheney has regularly claimed that he is above the law, but until recently he has not offered any explanation of why.

He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration.

For Cheney, the Geneva Conventions -- considered among the nation's most important treaties -- are but quaint relics that can be ignored. Thus, he publicly embraced their violation when, on an Idaho talk radio program, he said he was not troubled in the slightest by our forces using "waterboarding" -- the simulated drowning of detainees to force them to talk. There are serious questions as to whether Cheney himself has also conspired to violate the War Crimes Act, which can be a capital crime.

A man who can so easily disregard the War Powers Act, FISA, the Geneva Conventions, and the War Crimes Act is merely flicking fleas when it comes to complying with laws like the Presidential Records Act, which requires him to keep records. Yet as CNN and other news organizations have reported, Cheney ordered the destruction of the visitor logs to his residence. These, of course, are presidential records the law requires him to preserve and protect. (Indeed, neighbors of the Vice President were surprised when, in the past, a truck for a document shredding service would regularly visit the Vice President's residence at the Naval Observatory.)

It has long been apparent that Cheney's genius is that he lets George W. Bush get out of bed every morning actually believing he is the President.

We are so screwed if Georgie chokes on a pretzel again.