"The Endlessness Justifies the Meaninglessness" - Free Speech Leads to Arrests

Over 200 people were arrested across America in protests against the war in Iraq. Is this Naomi Wolf's predicted scenario where ordinary citizens are criminalized for voicing their free speech rights against the Executive Powers? Well, not quite, but...

In San Francisco, for example, according to this Reuters report:

Sgt. Steve Maninna said officers had arrested 143 people on charges including trespassing, resisting arrest and obstructing traffic. Four women were also detained for hanging a large banner off the city's famous Golden Gate Bridge and
then released, said bridge spokeswoman Mary Currie.
On Washington's National Mall, about 100 protesters carried signs that read: "The Endlessness Justifies the Meaninglessness" and waved upside-down U.S. flags, a
traditional sign of distress.
"Bush and Cheney, leaders failed, Bush and Cheney belong in jail," they chanted, referring to U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

More power to them.

Most Americans Figured It Out: Why Can't the Politicians...?

...get out of Iraq, that is.

Why are we in a recession? It's the war, stupid.

It's perhaps one of the main reasons Obama is riveting more than solid "party" and "experienced" Hillary & McCain - those two supported this catastrophic, ill-begotten war that has basically gutted the U.S. economy, its moral fiber, its stance as "leader of the world". Obama did not. And he's not on the extremes like Ron Paul, another rare "no" vote for the war in Iraq.

So the polls have it.

The way to get the country out of recession - and most people think we're
in one - is to get the country out of Iraq, according to an Associated
Press-Ipsos poll.
Pulling out of the war ranked first among proposed remedies in the survey, followed by spending more on domestic programs, cutting taxes and, at the bottom end, giving rebates to poor people in hopes they'll spend the economy into recovery.

Too bad we can't govern by referendum. If only they'd listen to the polls when it comes to policy, instead of only when they run for office.

Forty-eight percent said a pullout would help fix the country's economic
problems "a great deal," and an additional 20 percent said it would help at
least somewhat.
... 65 percent of Democrats think it would help the economy a lot,
but only 18 percent of Republicans think so.

Talk about groupthink. Republicans believe what Daddy W sez, and he sez we pay you money, and everything will be all right. What they don't seem to grasp is that Daddy doesn't have any money, yet he's planning to spend 11 billion a month until sometime, maybe 3:30 pm, on the afternoon of Eternity. Or when America bleeds to death, one devalued dollar at a time. Let's get a Democrat in there, before it does.

Worried about the Economy? $11 Billion a Month of Your Tax Dollars Goes for War

Republicans always talk about "fiscal responsibility." They blame Dems for "government spending". Never mind that historically, in the last century or so, Republicans are always gutting the economy and wasting money on profligate wars. Now they've saddled us with a war that is essentially a farce and a lie - written in blood and bleeding dollars - I mean, hemorrhaging dollars - by the hour. Here's a little news to chew on:

The Iraq war may not dominate U.S. news reports as the carnage drops, but a new report underscores the financial burden of persistent combat that is helping run up the government's credit card.

"Funding for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other activities in the war on terrorism expanded significantly in 2007," the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released on Wednesday.

War funding, which averaged about $93 billion a year from 2003 through 2005, rose to $120 billion in 2006 and $171 billion in 2007 and President George W. Bush has asked for $193 billion in 2008, the nonpartisan office wrote.

"It keeps going up, up and away," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said of the money spent in Iraq since U.S. troops invaded in 2003.

"We're seeing the war costs continue to spiral upward. It is the additional troops plus additional costs per troop plus the over-reliance on private contractors, which also explodes the costs," said Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who opposed the war.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Congress has written checks for $691 billion to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and such related activities as Iraq reconstruction, the CBO said.

There are around 158,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 27,000 in Afghanistan.

$11 Billion a Month

Of the total, the CBO estimated that $440 billion had been spent on fighting in Iraq launched with the goal of ousting President Saddam Hussein from power and securing weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

All of the Iraq and Afghanistan war money - about $11 billion a month - is effectively being put on a government credit card at a time when U.S. government debt has skyrocketed to more than $9 trillion, up from around $5.6 trillion when Bush took office in January 2001.

They say they'll "cut taxes". Does this mean "borrow the money from China instead"?And does anyone give a damn what those taxes are being spent on? On "security" and "anti-terror" done by creating killing fields overseas that will blowback some time soon ... maybe December 21, 2012 or so...

Who Are the Insurgents?

Dahr Jamail reviews "Meeting Resistance"

"Suppose Iraq invaded America. And an Iraqi soldier was on a tank passing through an American street, waving his gun at the people, threatening them, raiding and trashing houses. Would you accept that? This is why no Iraqi can accept occupation, and don’t be surprised by their reactions," says "The Imam," a young man from a mixed Sunni-Shia family, as he explains the genesis of the insurgency in Iraq and its exponential growth.

He is one of the protagonists that Meeting Resistance presents as unmistakable evidence that the root cause of the conflict in Iraq is the occupation itself. The film has resistance fighters themselves tell their story.

Journalists-turned-filmmakers Molly Bingham and Steve Connors were compelled to film this documentary during their early reporting of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. They used the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to explore and depict an insurgency that has been caricatured by the Bush Administration.

Bingham, who has reported previously from Rwanda, the Gaza Strip, and Iran, was the official photographer to the Office of the Vice President of the United States from 1998 to 2001. She believes that it is imperative to understand the people within the resistance if the United States is to find a solution to the Iraq quagmire.
...

The eighty-five-minute groundbreaking film focuses on ten members of the Iraqi resistance. Interspersed with stunning footage of the aftermath of car bomb attacks, of frightened soldiers aiming their weapons at crowds of Iraqis, and of burning remains of destroyed military vehicles, the meat of the film is the words of the fighters themselves.

"I felt a fire in my heart," one of them recounts. "When they occupied Iraq, they subjugated me, subjugated my sister, subjugated my mother, subjugated my honor, my homeland. Every time I saw them I felt pain. They pissed me off, so I started working [in the resistance]."

The complex nature of their lives speaks to the intricacies of the Iraqi resistance.

...
"To place an opponent like the Iraqi resistance in the human space of ordinary people defending their right to self-determination is to challenge our view of ourselves as liberators," says Connors.
While laying bare the motivations of the resistance, the film also does a forceful job of dispelling other myths.
One of the interviewed, referred to as "The Republican Guard" since he was a career officer in Saddam Hussein's military, is a Sunni married to a Shia woman. "The Sunni and Shia are bound together by blood and family ties," he explains. "I am married to a Shia, my sister is married to a Shia. I can’t kill my own children's uncles or kill my wife, the mother of my children."
One scene includes a butcher hacking away at a side of beef. "Iraq is our homeland, it's our Iraq," he says. "If you don't defend your land, you will not defend your honor."
The film recognizes that the resistance has the tacit support of a large percentage of the population, even though the Bush Administration doesn't acknowledge this.

"The Administration chooses to portray people who oppose their will in Iraq as terrorists or extremists who live on the fringes of Iraqi society, isolated from their own countrymen," says Bingham. "Without doubt some individuals involved in attacking U.S. troops are 'extreme' in their beliefs, and they are relentless fighters in the pursuit of their goals, but they are very human and very much part of the social structure of Iraqi society, and move within it. If we removed the context of occupation—in all its forms—from Iraq, most of them would stand down and return to their lives."
...
Bingham feels that the film represented a radically different perspective to the military personnel who viewed it.
"The bulk of the people were taking on new information that was a dramatic paradigm shift for them," she says. "To see their enemy as largely fighting for their homeland because of nationalism and religion, rather than being terrorists, is a big deal."

Dahr Jamail is the author of the recently released book "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq." Jamail spent eight months reporting from Iraq, and has been covering the Middle East for over four years for the Inter Press Service, The Sunday Herald, Foreign Policy in Focus, andThe Independent, among others.

Island America Meets the Killing Fields

Bridgethought of the Day: Hell on earth has a life of its own, like cancer, impervious to the needs or nature of its unwilling host. Welcome to the consequences of invasion. We are building a killing field.

Dahr Jamail, the great reporter on Iraq, has written an article describing the current situation in Iraq as having created schizophrenia - social schizophrenia - from living in two diametrically opposite worlds: the killing fields in Iraq, which have gone from horrors-come-true to gruesome constant survival failures; and the "Disneyland" bubble-world of the United States, or what I call "Island America". Here, as he so eloquently put it, we can simply mouseclick to another web page, essentially "eliminating" the "disturbance" of what really is going on in Iraq, and go back to our creature comforts and entertainment, distanced by this huge moat.

"In January 2004, I traveled through villages and cities south of Baghdad investigating the Bechtel Corporation's performance in fulfilling contractual obligations to restore the water supply in the region. In one village outside of Najaf, I looked on in disbelief as women and children collected water from the bottom of a dirt hole. I was told that, during the daily two-hour period when the power supply was on, a broken pipe at the bottom of the hole brought in "water." This was, in fact, the primary water source for the whole village. Eight village children, I learned, had died trying to cross a nearby highway to obtain potable water from a local factory.
In Iraq things have grown exponentially worse since then. Recently, the World Health Organization announced that 70% of Iraqis do not have access to clean water and 80% "lack effective sanitation." This from Mr. Jamail's own experience. But you can sense more from an excerpt from an email sent to a friend of his from her friend in Iraq:

"I called my cousin in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to check if they are still alive. She is in her sixties and her husband is about seventy. She burst into tears, begging me to pray to God to take their lives away soon so they don't have to go through all this agony. She told me that, with no electricity, it is impossible to go to sleep when it is 40 degrees Celsius unless they get really tired after midnight. Her husband leaves the doors open because they are afraid that the American and Iraqi troops will bomb the doors if they don't respond from first door knock during searching raids. Leaving the doors open is another terror story after the attack of the troops' vicious dogs on a ten-month old baby, tearing him apart and eating him in the same neighborhood just a few days ago. The troops let the dogs attack civilians. The dogs bite them and terrify the kids with their angry red eyes in the middle of the night. So, as you can see my dear Gerri, we don't have only one Abu Ghraib with torturing dogs, we have thousands of Abu Ghraibs all over Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. "

This insightful article is prefaced by Tom Englehardt's reference to a breaking story in The Nation on how American soldiers in Iraq are both traumatized by the situation there and at the same time some of them are committing atrocities against civilians. You need to read it to really grasp all the consequences of our unnecessary and horrific decision to invade Iraq to "liberate" and "democratize" them against their will. Do we blame the soldiers or first blame the criminals in office who sent them there and then botched their mission by typical bureaucratic mismanagement and political lie-mongering?

Everything else I was thinking about came to a standstill when I read these articles. We are sitting here in comfort while on the other side of the world is hell on earth - made in the USA, planned and executed from the remote control comfort of America - Island America - nole mi tangere.

War against Journalism: Truth vs. Consequences

Bridgethought of the Day: If you want to know what really is going on with any particular issue, never believe the first thing that hits you - it's probably a lie. Keep looking for what destabilizes you most, if you are living a predictable life, or what hits you in the gut as most obviously true, if your life is a struggle, as it should be.

Truth is out there. You just gotta use your brain to find it.

An excerpt from tomdispatch.com on Iraq, and what true journalism should - and DID - report, way back from Day One. Journalism in the person of Patrick Cockburn. Something the American public knows nothing about.

Patrick Cockburn has been hailed by Sidney Blumenthal in Salon as "one of the
most accurate and intrepid journalists in Iraq." And that's hardly praise
enough, given what the man has done. The Middle Eastern correspondent for the
British newspaper The Independent, he's been on the spot from the moment when,
in February 2003, he secretly crossed the Tigris River into Iraq just before the
Bush administration launched its invasion.
Here, for instance, is a typical striking
passage of his, written in May 2003, just weeks after Baghdad fell. If you read
it then, you hardly needed the massive retrospective volumes like Thomas Rick's
Fiasco that took years to come out:
"[T]he civilian leadership of the
Pentagon… are uniquely reckless, arrogant and ill informed about Iraq. At the
end of last year [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz was happily saying
that he thought the Iraqi reaction to the capture of Baghdad would be much like
the entry of the U.S. Army into Paris in 1944. He also apparently believed that
Ahmed Chalabi…, then as now one of the most unpopular men in Iraq, would be the
Iraqi Charles de Gaulle.
"These past mistakes matter because the situation
in Iraq could easily become much worse. Iraqis realize that Saddam may have gone
but that the United States does not have real control of the country. Last week,
just as a[n] emissary [from head of the U.S. occupation Paul Bremer] was telling
academics at Mustansiriyah, the ancient university in the heart of Baghdad, who
should be purged from their staff, several gunmen, never identified, drove up
and calmly shot dead the deputy dean."
How much worse it's become can be measured by the two suicide bombs that went off at the same university a month apart early in 2007, killing not a single deputy dean but more than 100 (mostly female) students.
Or it can be measured by this telling little tidbit written in October 2003: "The most amazing achievement of six months of American occupation has been that it has even provoked nostalgia in parts of Iraq for Saddam. In Baiji, protesters wereholding up his picture and chanting: ‘With our blood and with our spirit we will die for you Saddam.' Who would have believed this when his statue was toppled just six months ago?"
Or by this description, written in the same month, which offers a vivid sense of why an insurgency really took off in that country:

"US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from
loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and
lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of
farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops… Asked
how much his lost orchard was worth, Nusayef Jassim said in a distraught voice:
'It is as if someone cut off my hands and you asked me how much my hands were
worth.'"

Or by this singular detail from June 2004 that caught the essence of the lawlessness the U.S. occupation let loose: "Kidnap is now so common [that] new words have been added to Iraqi thieves' slang. A kidnap victim is called al-tali or the sheep." Or this summary of the situation in May 2004, one year after Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech:
"Saddam should not have been a hard act to follow. After 30 years of disastrous
wars, Iraqis wanted a quiet life. All the Americans really needed to do was to
get the relatively efficient Iraqi administration up and running again. Instead,
they let the government dissolve, and have never successfully resurrected it. It
has been one of the most extraordinary failures in history."

Don't Worry: It's Just Armageddon

Bridgethought of the Day: When lies are your opium, truth is your enemy.

So we've reached the point where the "leadership" tells us we're much safer, freer, and more democracy-loving when we march and chant "On to Armageddon!" First, we're numbed into thinking half the world are our enemies, planted in unknown "cells" all over the planet, and only much-more-sophisticated-than-us "agents" of the Hometown-Barbeque-lovin' U S of A are gonna save us from them by using draconian techniques and gittin' them and puttin' them away so they won't come-n-git us. Second, we're numbed into thinking they are not people, but enemies who must be gotten rid of, killed off, whatever it takes, to make the world safe for us. Third, it's the same logic of the war on cancer: zap the bad cells, save the good cells. Both wars ignore the fact that what kills the bad cells, kills the good cells, and that interferes with, sometimes even prevents, recovery. We say there might be a better way, but we don't have it. This is all we have.

So Armageddon is just radiation therapy for bad terrorist cells. Call it radiation, call it chemo, it's what we call "zap 'em for democracy." So Bush comes to us and tells us we've got to "surge" (read "zap" as in "war on terror/cancer") or "they" will come and "get" us. And we will be destroyed and overrun by "them". Anyone who says otherwise is "sick". "Dangerous". He's leaving us open to this cancer, see? He's a wimp, he's a liberal, and we're going to be "taken over" if we don't "march on."

But we're losing the war on cancer, and we're losing the war on terror. In fact, we're making the world far more dangerous for us, and far more prone to terrorism. I know of a cancer victim in another country where there's no law against overkill. Radiation therapy increased his cancer, right off the charts. They figured if radiation killed cancer, right? it must mean that more is better, right? The concept of balance, of complexity, of human life and life-systems, that's all beyond them. It's just a matter, to them, of finding who's the culprit, what will get rid of, i.e., zap, that culprit, and sic 'em. If guns fight terrorism, we need more. Lots more. So what if we don't even know what the hell terrorism is? Do we even know what cancer is? We want easy, fast keywords, not knowledge. We want to know: terrorism, Islam, Arabs, comin' to git us. We don't want to know: oppression, justice, chaos, balance of power, abject poverty, abuse of wealth and power, consequences. We don't want to use our minds. We don't want to use diplomacy. We want someone else to zap the enemy and we can be number one. Couch potatoes rule.

Let Bush explain why an innocent man in the street now can be dragged away and tortured without recourse, without rule of law. Let him explain why mere suspicion is enough to detain someone, regardless of his age, regardless of the consequences to his family. Let him explain why freedom of religion does not extend to those who practice Islam. Let him explain why pornographers have freedom of speech but dissenters do not. Let him explain why innocent people can be dragged away and deprived of their freedom, their livelihood, and their families, for nothing more than a keyword, or a color. A color? Yeah, try being someone with a Muslim name when the terror level goes red, if you really wanna know...

It looks to rational citizens of other countries that Americans are ready to kill and torture people they irrationally do not like only to make the world comfortable for couch potatoes. This may not seem reasonable to those who never walked on the other side, who feel more threatened by a weird-lookin' Mideastern guy who doesn't drink beer than by a computer system that records their every move. People who "fit in" don't have to worry like people who "stand out". They don't need diplomacy. They need a comfort zone. But those outside the comfort zone, those who, try as they might, just can't get there, see that they are under siege. They need a voice of reason. They need a bridge between their hunger, their desperation, and your comfort zone. If all voices of reason, all diplomatic infrastructure, all peaceful response and all hope for economic and political justice are eliminated, bombed, or silenced, what kind of bridge do you think they'll build? They must tell the world their story. They might just tell it the way you tell yours. With violence.

So the war on terror begets more warfare. And more warfare begets more instability. And more instability begets more hostility, more warfare, etc., etc., and we've got full-fledged malignancy. It's out-of-control, unregulated war growth. It thrives on darkness and lack of oxygen. There's no justice, no democracy, no liberty, no freedom in a war zone. We're not fighting terrorism, we're creating it. We're not zapping the enemy. We're zapping our remaining healthy cells. The "terrorists" weren't really after democracy, in spite of all the rhetoric. They were just after getting across a message that they don't like our being bully to the world. It's in a way a macho thing. But if they were against democracy, we have joined them in the fight, and the way our rights are being zapped, the war against democracy might be a winning deal in all this - but it's being won by us, abusing power to erode our own democracy and freedom.

But don't feel bad, feel good - it's Armageddon, and it's good for you.

Let's Play Hangman! And Wrestle with the Issues

It Isn't Force-Fed, Either.

Where were the bumper stickers when Pol Pot was around?

"Give me liberty, or give me death."

"I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

Tell me, who does THAT any more??

Bodyguards of America, donate some time to this lady, PLEASE!

OK, so freedom really ISN'T free...

But, "Invade for Democracy"??

An Oxymoron

The strategy isn't working.

Send in Monty Hall.

You stop fighting us, and we milk your cash cow!

An offer you can't refuse!

We need a better sales pitch, Dick.

Where's that guy, Ron Popeil, when we really need him?

Set it, and Forget it!

"Dear Ron, please invent for us a new Middle East Policy for couch potatoes. Maybe we can work it out in the comfort of Air Force One."

War for Sale

How many Americans can see now that they are the number One consumers targeted by a hot-n-heavy ad campaign selling war with Iran?

Shouldn't it be a hard sell, after Iraq? Apparently not. An LA Times/Bloomberg poll recently shows that 57% of Americans favor military intervention in Iran. The late H.L. Mencken once said "Nobody ever lost money overestimating the stupidity of the American public." Apparently, the Administration applies this dim view to selling wars, too - and the ad campaign has succeeded. Which is not to say the war or military effort looming grimly over Iran - and to hell with justice, what the hell do we care about justice anyway? - will succeed. Not a chance in hell. No matter how it's sold, how much they tout their loot or power, it is doomed, absolutely doomed, to fail.

Why? Because the perpetrators of this idea failed to account to one slim bit of data that throws off their wildly illogical equations. Because "no man is an island." Because "Island America" doesn't really exist. Because we're fighting for fiction. We die for lies. We kill for a story line. We ignore the species thing. Oh, right, they're homo sapiens. So what if they're living on the same planet? So what if we're the same species? So what if we all need the same thing - duh, H2O? - and maybe some minerals, proteins, radiation-free vitamins, etc. ...? "For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction." Did it dawn on anyone that there are consequences to what you do??? Look at Iraq, and wait. The worst is yet to come. And I don't have the slightest idea exactly where or how, but it's just a law of physics. You do this, you get slapped with that. Call it divine justice, call it Newton's or Murphy's law, it happens.

Look at the seed of all Mideast fruits - the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Now look at this excerpt from an article that started on the subject of Iran:

Israel has just “completed a process of sealing off the eastern sector of the West Bank from the remainder of the West Bank. Some 2,000,000 Palestinians, residents of the West Bank, are prohibited from entering the area, which constitutes around one-third of the West Bank, and includes the Jordan Rift, the area of the Dead Sea shoreline and the eastern slopes of the West Bank mountains”, reported the Israeli journalist Amira Hass of Israel’s daily, Ha’aretz. “The prohibition also applies to thousands of residents of towns and villages in the northern West Bank like Tubas and Tamun, most of whose lands are in the Jordan Valley, and some with residents who have been living there for many years’, added Hass.
In addition, Israel has encircled and isolated Jerusalem from the rest of the Occupied Territories, making the creation of a viable Palestinian “state” impossibility. More than 3.5 Palestinians are living in prison under unbearable apartheid system of control, checkpoints, road blocks and walls. And with the elections of Hamas, Israel is increasing the terror against the Palestinians from all sides. Thousands of Palestinian men, women and children are still imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces without charge. Of course, Western governments, the U.S. in particular, provided the financial “aid” and political support for Israel’s terror and violations of international law.

This may sound extreme to mainstream listeners, but it deserves to be looked at, because if it is true, we are missing something incredibly important. That the whole raison d'etre of U.S. foreign policy is based on something verging on the very thing I've always thought as the antithesis of Israel - and that is Nazism. Are the Israelis imitating their old enemy in some weird twist of fate or strange mirror imaging? Are Palestinians the new "Semites"? And Jews the new Aryan race? And is Israel the new Racially Pure State, ethnically cleansed from Arabs and Muslims, ethnically cleansed from goyim? Is that the ideal now in place? And what is America in this scenario? The Great Cash Cow, apparently. Ride 'em, cowboy.

We keep mouthing the word "Islamofascists". But who created them? Are they rather the mirror image of Judeofascists? Are they merely avenging the wrongs and injustices of the occupiers, of the powerful who live in luxury on the plunder and pillaging of others less powerful, others they themselves conspired to disenfranchise? And who gives a damn? We're numbed by videos, media, the frantic/manic Glenn Beck who is in this raging hurry to turn off his thoughts by cleverly posted prankish remarks that run his thinking off like a flushing toilet.

We're numbed by possibilities, by technology, by too much bombardment and too little time to assimilate anything, even food. And we want to "do the right thing" so we listen to whatever pops up on the screen and says "I am the way, the truth & the light", etc. The only ones with the (expletive) gall to say that are charlatans, and oh yes, how many charlatans there are, hustlers for oil and power and money and war. WWIII ho! "In the mighty name of 9-11."

All it needs is one great keyword. Terrorist. And bin Laden fell into the trap like a cement sack, or a very uncunning racoon. Sorry folks. Your great all-American Devil is just another fall guy. Yes, he's bad. Real bad. But if you're waiting for the next 9-11, look elsewhere. The Palestinians were the original "terrorists". It's a little bit harder sell now since their children can't even find a place to eat. No, they're pretty much internalized, you might say. But they're probably slightly better off than Iraqis. Is it a holocaust or not yet? Not yet, of course. Send in another bunch o' guys and make it one, by God! But does anyone have a slight bit of brainpower to deduce that Iraq is going to have fallout? ???? And God only knows what that would be?

If you really love America, you wouldn't buy this war sale, not wholesale or even piecemeal. Boycott war, and tell your elected representatives! Tell them they can't sell you a bill of goods. Tell them there's checks and balances. Tell them we still have a democracy. Tell them we are not yet a dictatorship. Tell them we don't believe in fascism. Tell them we can't afford to attack Iran, and neither can the planet, for God's sake. Tomorrow I hope to print another source about that - the horrible consequences of any military action against Iran. They are NOT the threat. WE ARE. That is, if we just sit back and buy this "superpower to the world" crap.

Tell them we believe in democracy, survival of the human race, and protection of a fragile planet and a little thing called "life" and "human intelligence" that's supposed to be a higher value than "Me First, F--- the Future." Is THAT freedom and democracy? Does anybody still believe in the value of diplomacy - or how about truth???

The Great American Cash Cow Contest

"Bring back John Wayne."

The Neocons

"Bite Me."
The West Coast Independents

Not just a cow... but a bitch
The midwestern/southern right

And the winner of the Talent Contest Is...

The Centrist Right

From the left: "And I can fiddle, too."

And the winner is... the Iraq War Bull

Sorry, cows, there's no place in war for feminine values like nurturing, mothering, caring, beauty, wisdom, diplomacy, etc. But think of it - we have our Bull economy, pictured above.

Milk on, Big Oil, milk on!