The Phenotypical George Will*

(The Washington Post  Column herewith criticized, captioned “How Congress Trumps Darwin” [by George Will]  trails this piece by DI Editor, Dusty Schoch; immediately following are anchoring comments by DI Senior Associate Editor, Dr. Leonard Carrier)

February 8, 2009

I read George Will’s columns for the same reason my wife does crossword puzzles – to exercise the brain as a hedge against Alzheimers’ onset.  Plus–I can add to my vocabulary because he inevitably tosses in a word he knows most will have to retrieve from the dictionary because his context doesn’t give a clue.

There’s so much (deserved) reverence for Will’s work out there that I think he likely receives too little negative feedback. He’s so patently smart few will question whether there is even the crudest correspondence between his captions and thesis sentences and the body of his stream-of-intellect compositions. The plaintive cry that “The Emperor has no clothes” comes to mind.

Today (Feb. 8, 09) for example, his column’s caption is “How Congress Trumps Darwin”, but instead of learning his opinion of whether our government has any chance of remediating global warming (presumably his central theme if not focus), we learn the vast amount of philosophical trivia Wills has mastered (or through Google mustered) and can cram into one intellectual exhibition. I never know if the joke is on him or us. All his analogies are apt, while most of his assertions (always more insinuations than clear declaratives, as George, argumentatively is a Will of the wisp…never leading with a limb that could be pinned to canvas) elude.    But the verbal meanderings, as masturbatory as they are , are still fascinating—not because they enlighten, or in any way support their promise (thesis sentence or essay caption) but because they invariably challenge, provoke and … entertain. They make us stretch…and grow. But so do crossword puzzles.   Even when the emperor has no clothes, it’s great fun to ponder what he thinks he’s wearing and why he’s strutting. Same with Will’s intellectual and philosophical meanderings.

But today, I really was hoping I’d get an idea of what this great intellect thinks about our chances of survival, either by way of Darwinian science, or legislative fiat. Instead, Will drags out the ironies of ancient history and the macro ironies of how that history is or isn’t reflected in man’s follies of today.

Let me quote from the center of his thesis today: “After Copernicus dislodged humanity from the center of the universe, Marx asserted that false consciousness—we do not really ‘make up our minds’—blinds us to the fact that we are in the grip of an implacable dialectic of impersonal forces. Darwin placed humanity in a continuum of all protoplasm.”

This paragraph is, as informative art, full of sound and fury and signifying (clearly) nothing, because it is so much disjointed…stuff–mostly intellectual preening by Will who’s demonstrated in the paragraph that  his giant cortex can relate the mental machinations and memes (I’m Willing Will a bit here, aren’t I) of  Marx, Copernicus, Darwin and us in a single sentence. But the sentence—at the end of our day– is a dog that just didn’t hunt. So, for the most part is the greater part of what Will writes these days. One wonders: What was it about Will’s personal origins and passage through his career and society’s milieu that evolved his writing bent from empirical to lyrical?  Is his present writing style  his adaptive mechanism of journalistic “survival”?  Or is it an errant and potentially malignant mutation we aught to help him excise  in the bud (or publishing polyp)?

He could, and I contend should, do so much better. I was about to say “more” but it’s exactly the opposite: Will should write, create, analogize, allude, allege, insinuate less. What he should (and I say could) do more for us is…simplify…clarify…exemplify. 

What “good” was accomplished—what lesson instructed– in Will’s pointing out the (obvious) irony that in a single democracy (ours) a state judiciary tried a teacher for teaching Darwinian evolution and a hundred years later (through the federal government) legislated a law designed to alter natural evolution?   We are facing now the threat of global extinction through mankind’s over-burning of fossil fuel causing CO-2 blanketing. And Will is glibly concerning us with the ironies inherent in our history of human folly and environmental management. What a waste of brain matter (Will’s).

I know the ignorance and narcissistic nature of the average statesman is appalling to Will and perhaps all thinking people. But George Will occupies a powerful podium in the television and print media, and he’s wasting it with prosaic and polemic preening…mental masturbation.  If he wants to teach philosophy, let him head a class at Harvard. But as a columnist with his (well-earned) wealth of readership among our country’s intellectuals (which are the movers and shakers), he should be offering more in return for the trees being sacrificed to disseminate his sagacities.  We don’t need any more glib court jesters; 8 years of Bush and Cheney provide fodder enough for the comedians  of the next millennium. . What we need from our intellectuals—and Wills qualifies here in spades—is constructive  ideas. Artful ideas always wind up saving mankind from its self-constructed catastrophes.

And, by the way, George (in case you’re reading this) – you missed the important boat in your historic sketching of Darwin. You want the TRUE irony existing today between the evangelical fundies, creationists and their collective  pariah –empirical Darwinians?  Here it is: Although you were “right” in saying Darwin rejected a “creator god”, he clearly embraced all versions of creator gods in his writings post “Origins of the Species”.  When castigated by his religious colleagues for indirectly slighting the sacred cows of creator gods across the board, he sincerely and clearly endorsed the social currency (value) of all religions.  He explained that the axioms of his “Origins” (survival of the fittest) applied as certainly in social as in individual man. First, he taught, species survive and evolve because of individual (genotypical) and social (phenotypical) adaptations.  Churches and religions, he explained, are socially-evolved methods (adaptations) for group survival, as the majority of humans in any group or clan is (without religion) unreasonably and dysfunctionally obsessed with individual mortality and the like, and that, without the morality and ethicalities (and mythologies) adopted and promulgated by religious authorities, social progress (evolution) would have been very unlikely.

So, Darwin saw more than simply “beauty” in natural evolution…he saw social pragmatism.

But, I have (perhaps appropriately in the case of criticizing Will with the same intended tone Oscar Wilde crafted his “Critic as the Artist”) diverted from my intended plan and path. My intent was to encourage our brilliant commentator and columnist to keep on trucking through the courts of kings and idiots like Bush, but with (as he might put it) less Falstaffian aloofness and more Darwinian directness. Will has far too much brains and talent to induct himself to public service as passively-aggressive court jester. Will needs to fall out of  his forensic addiction to turning a philosophic phrase and into a habit of using his inordinate verbal and intellectual armament to muckrake mistakes and propose solutions to our culture’s many many dire challenges, from the fiscal to the environmental.  I perhaps used the wrong parable when I echoed the proverbial cry,  “The Emperor Has No Clothes.”  I think the words a man uses are, functionally, his intellectual “clothes”. In this sense, Will needs to heed the words of Polonius. The apparel does often “proclaim the man”, but before that, he told his son – “But not express’d in fancy;  rich, not gaudy”.

That other Will (Shakespeare) also instructed us all, even as he was admonishing this same overly-effusive  father (Polonius)…. Please… “More matter and less art!”

Please, Will, give us more matter and less art. I know you can do it.

Your still fond fan,

Robert R. Schoch

Robert R. (Dusty) Schoch is an attorney, inventor (author of Milton Bradley’s “Crack the Case”; most recent environmental patent http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6048407.html; designer (United Features Syndicate-licensed “Snoopy’s Dream Machines”) and manufacturer (D.C.S. International, Inc.), Inventor’s representative and broker of novel inventions (President and C.E.O. of I.D.E.A.S. , “Invention Design Enhancement And Sales”)  and writer (novels, essays, screenplays) living in High Point, N.C.    BA (English) degree, UNC Chapel Hill,  JD (law) U. of Ala., Tuscaloosa.  Dusty is founder and scribe of the B.E.A. (“Barristers et al”) a N.C.-based, politically-independent foreign policy think tank. He is also co-editor (foreign policy) of DeclaringIndependents.com, through the contact link of which readers are invited to correspond with him. His soon-to-be published novel and soon thereafter to be released movie, “Ex Machina”  are the story of an environmental hero who succeeds in saving the world from …us.

HOW CONGRESS TRUMPS DARWIN

By George F. Will

Sunday, February 8, 2009; Page B07

“Descended from the apes!” exclaimed the wife of the bishop of Worcester. “Let us hope that it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known.”

An American majority resists such an annoying notion, endorsing the proposition that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.” Still, evolution is a fact, and its mechanism is natural selection: Creatures with variations especially suited to their environmental situation have more descendants than do less well-adapted creatures.

This Thursday, the 200th anniversary of the births of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, remember that Lincoln mattered more. Without Darwin, other scientists would have discerned natural selection. Indeed, Darwin’s friend Alfred Wallace already had. Without Lincoln, the United States probably would have been sundered into at least two nations. Probably into more: Southerners, a fractious tribe, would not have played nicely together in the Confederacy for very long.

Unlike Lincoln, Darwin still disturbs humanity’s peace of mind. Some people flinch from the idea of natural selection, a.k.a. “survival of the fittest,” because it suggests Lord Tennyson’s “nature, red in tooth and claw.” But Darwin, in the last paragraph of “The Origin of Species,” saw beauty:

“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Walt Whitman, seared by Lincoln’s war to guarantee the nation’s survival, adopted a materialist’s mysticism about the slaughter: Human immortality is in earth’s transformation of bodies into an “unseen essence and odor of surface and grass, centuries hence.”

After Copernicus dislodged humanity from the center of the universe, Marx asserted that false consciousness — we do not really “make up our minds” — blinds us to the fact that we are in the grip of an implacable dialectic of impersonal forces. Darwin placed humanity in a continuum of all protoplasm. Then Freud declared that the individual’s “self” or personhood is actually a sort of unruly committee. All this dented humanity’s self-esteem.

Still, many people of faith find Darwinism compatible with theism: God, they say, initiated and directs the dynamic that Darwin described.

In the end, Darwin, in spite of perfunctory rhetorical references to “the Creator,” disagreed. As a scientist dealing with probabilities, and with a profoundly materialist theory, he had no intellectual room for a directing deity that wills a special destination for our species.

Darwin’s rejection of premeditated design helped to validate an analogous political philosophy. The fact of order in nature does not require us to postulate a divine Orderer, and the social order does not presuppose an order-giving state. As a practical matter, we cannot expel government from our understanding of society as Darwin expelled God from the understanding of nature. But Darwinism opens the mind to the fecundity of undirected, spontaneous, organic social arrangements — to Edmund Burke and Friedrich Hayek.

Speaking of government, in 1973, Congress passed the Endangered Species Act. It said that when identifying an “endangered” or “threatened” species, the government should assess not only disease, predation and threats to its habitat but also “other natural . . . factors affecting its continued existence.” Natural factors?

Four years later, the act held up construction of a Tennessee dam deemed menacing to the snail-darter minnow. Ed Yoder, a learned and sometimes whimsical columnist, noted that it was under Tennessee’s “monkey law” that John Scopes was tried in 1925 for teaching biology in a way considered incompatible with Genesis. While not equating Tennessee’s law with “a measure so enlightened” as the 1973 act, Yoder noted:

“Both measures involve legislative interposition in the realm of biological change; and which will have involved the greater hubris is yet to be seen. Tennessee’s ambitions were comparatively modest. It sought only to conceal the disturbing evidence of natural selection from impressionable school children. The Congress of the United States, one is intrigued to learn, intends to stop the nasty business in its tracks.”

With that accomplished, it should be child’s play for Congress to make the climate behave. Pick your own meaning of “child’s play.”

Len Carrier’s* Anchoring Remarks

Dusty,

Thanks for letting me see your commentary on Wills’ piece.  I agree with your critique–just a lot of mental gymnastics on Will’s part.  But I’d offer a harsher criticism.  I think Will is a phony.  His father, Frederick Will, was a philosopher and a true intellect.  George doesn’t measure up, intellectually or morally, so he tries to hide his inadequacies through sheer linguistic legerdemain.  Here’s what I mean regarding his latest piece.  He cites Darwin’s theory of natural selection as opening the mind to Edmund Burke and Friedrich Hayek.  Why Burke and Hayek?  Why not Keynes and Krugman?  Will is slyly insinuating that there’s some connection between evolution and conservative political thinkers, whereas there’s no connection at all.  Darwin’s theory was value free.  What natural selection has wrought is not “better”; it is simply that which has adapted best to its environment.

Quoting Yoder’s comments with apparent approval with regard to the Endangered Species Act is a prime example of Will’s dishonest argumentation.  Are we supposed to believe that the Tennessee Dam is simply a case of natural selection’s getting rid of the snail darter, and that we shouldn’t get in the way of evolution?  This is outrageous. First, constructing dams involves conscious choice, not blind evolutionary drift. Second, if we think that certain species such as the snail darter are important to us, then, by all means, we should protect them. If we follow Will’s logic, then we shouldn’t try to prevent diseases because that would get in the way of evolution by natural selection. Will’s conclusion seems to be that we can’t do anything about global warming (a typical right-wing stand)–but to use Darwin’s theory to bolster this head-in-the-sand attitude is blatantly fallacious.

I noticed a couple of typos in your comments, which I’ve highlighted in red.  I don’t see anything wrong with the substance of your remarks, aside from their giving Will too much credit.

Best,

Len

GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS:

Confronting and Dealing with the

Dying Beast…

The Mythical Monster of “Free Market Capitalism”

EDITORIAL NOTE:  The present article is in four parts, consisting of:

1. (1) Dr. Leonard Carrier’s forthcoming  presentation at the University of Miami’s Philosophy Colloquium Series on February 27, 2009 of his essay captioned:

The Myth of Free-Market Capitalism”

2. (2) DI Editor, Dusty Schoch’s reactions to Carrier’s thesis, extending the subject matter from exposition to revolutionary remediation
3. (3) Tom Friedman‘s (NY Times columnist) very comprehensive and thought-provoking commentary on the pro’s and cons of how our new (Obama’s) administration is and/or should be dealing with the myriad maladies being precipitated by an economic system which may have functionally and/or morally become irreparably obsolete

and finally…

4. (4) Dusty’s rant entitled “The Rand Syndrome” where occasion is taken to slam dunk the notion that Ayn Rand’s recently disinterred  version of neo-conservative capitalism “enlightened selfishness” (a precursor to Reaganomics) offers any chance of deliverance in the case of America’s fall from fiscal grace…

ONE  FREE VOICE
AT A TIME …

The Coastal Post Story 

By  DI  Editor, Dusty Schoch 

The Neo-Con Zionists are at it again…The neo-conservative fundamentalist Christian and Jewish Zionist Right who covertly seized control of America through a quiet coup of a clueless president’s Pentagon are now—thanks to Obama’s victory–swept effectively out of power, but they have retreated back from where they came– into America’s fecund theocratic grassroots where they are still—fervently– at work to convert America into a fascistic armed force to execute Jewish and Christian Zionist plans of Middle Eastern and/or world domination, a.k.a. Christian “Rapture” and Judeo-Christian “Armageddon”. 

The case here in point is the effort on part of fundamentalist Jews in California to destroy—literally– a small and independent Morin County newspaper (The Coastal Post)  for daring to oppose Israel’s militant policies in Gaza and Palestine.

Here’s what I propose we all do: (1) Read the story of the Jewish assault on American free press as it is written in the victim newspaper (with whose editor, Dan Deane, I just spoke, confirming the details and direness of the situation).  Story gist: Newspapers are being literally stolen from racks and Coastal Post advertisers are being warned and intimidated by pro-Israel Zionist Jews to pull their advertisements from the paper.   (2) Go on line and read the on-line Coastal Post and see what a wonderfully informative, independent and free-thinking publication it is, and then (3) reflect on what you can do to help this brave vestige of free American Media survive the dreadful juggernaut combine of (a) corporate-controlled media and (b) the continuing rise of fascistic Jewish/Christian fundamentalism in America which is still working subversively to ordain Christian and Jewish prophesies of Rapture and Zionist Armageddon in the Middle East and around the globe according to the plan already made the subject of this website’s “Free Book” entitled “American Fascism” , linked here and on our DI “Current Issues” pages.

Immediately trailing the Coastal Post’s own accounting of their struggle with fascistic American Zionists, is a sampling of their journalistic excellence written by Dr. Edward W. Miller,  entitled  “More Worms In The Capitalist Apple”. When you read it, you’ll realize that this is an exceptionally independent and excellent analysis of the on-going economic collapse of American-evolved capitalism which we are all contending with in one form and another.  You will not have read it in one of your corporate conglomerate-owned newspapers. This form of truly independent and (if you will) “maverick” journalism is for the most part found only in the independent press, so well represented by and embodied in “The Coastal Post”. 

For my part, I intend to link “The Coastal Post” to DI, and their editor assures me they will in turn link us to their on-line edition. The link between us is the spirit and cause of democratic (little-D) Independence that characterizes DI’s mission statement.  I for one, as an individual, plan to both send them money and subscribe to their on-line news service (http://www.coastalpost.com/08/12/01a.html).  As I said in the caption to this prefatory piece, it’s high time for all of us to do all we can to prevent another coup of America’s freedoms, especially our freedoms of speech and of the press.

THE ZIONIST ASSAULT ON “THE COASTAL POST”

AS REPORTED IN THE COASTAL POST:

MARIN COUNTY’S NEWS MONTHLY – FREE PRESS
(415)868-1600 – (415)868-0502(fax) – P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924

Readers Rally, Coastal Post Prints,

Infusion of financial support from Coastal Post readers in November made December’s print edition happen and killed last month’s prediction that the paper might not print in December.
There has been a steady decline in advertising income over the last two years due to concerted efforts by a small group of individuals with strong Israeli sympathies who object to the paper’s coverage of Palestinian issues. They have contracted advertisers and distribution locations claiming the newspaper is anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli and a Jew bashing publication.

“We’re dealing with people who don’t want what we’re saying read. The Palestinian tragedy in Gaza, is the largest human rights travesty in our time.” publisher-editor Don Deane said as the Coastal Post went to press Dec. 1.

Thousands of papers have been stolen from newsstands over the last year. The Coastal Post’s critics claim the publication should not be allowed to distribute or advertise in Marin. CP critics have reportedly spoken before the city counsels, and the Marin County Board of Supervisors asking papers not be available in government buildings.

The Coastal Post, published since 1975, has lost one-third of its advertising revenues and 10 percent of distribution locations since the campaign began to disrupt and interfere with publication, distribution and advertising.

It would appear that letters have been sent to most all advertisers saying, “It would be no exaggeration to say that the Coastal Post is a viciously anti-Semitic organ that publishes articles about Jews and about Israel in virtually every issue…”

“Your advertising in this vile paper might lead your friends, patrons and customers to assume that you share its malicious and hateful views and those of its owner/publisher Don Deane, who, I understand, is also the owner of a place called Smiley’s in Bolinas. Please let me respectfully suggest that you withdraw your advertising from this despicable anti-Semitic publication…”

Now read a typical Coastal Post Column (in conjunction with DI’s own article’s on the same subject…The Economic Collapse of America; see titles in DI archives page) . . . 

More Worms In The Capitalist Apple
By Edward W. Miller, MD

http://www.coastalpost.com/08/12/27.html

“Thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion, and thou hast forgotten me saith the Lord.-Ezekiel 22:12 (King James Version)”
“Let us Prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly. – Theodore Roosevelt”
With the Dow dropping over 499 points in two consecutive days and resting around 7500, the value of 401Ks dropping sharply, and over 27,000 Americans applying for unemployment insurance this week (added to the 514,000 already enrolled), the 1.2 million jobs lost in 2008 come better into focus.
The atmosphere in Washington today is much more tense than during that second weekend in September when Wall Street jolted an already anxious public with news that a failing Merrill-Lynch was being purchased by the Bank of America, that America’s largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, was declaring bankruptcy after the Feds had refused to bail them out, and that AIG, our largest insurance group, had reported $60 billion in bad debts, its stocks losing 65% in value.

The Dow on that frantic Tuesday had dropped some 504 points. In October, following a week’s precipitous fall of the Dow and after Congress had modified and passed Bush Jr.’s “buy-out” plan, prominent Wall Street financier, Warren Buffett remarked, “It’s an economic Pearl Harbor.”

On Columbus Day financial bigwigs from Europe met with Bush and his business advisors in Washington. No detailed plan to meet the international crisis resulted, but the British decided to nationalize three major banks, the Germans promised almost half a trillion to bolster their entire banking system, while the EU president with his colleagues agreed on what is a partial nationalization of European bank, including a guarantee that covered the savings account of every citizen of the EU countries’.

Our man Paulson, joining the gang, said he “would take $250 billion from his $700 billion bailout money for a so-called “Voluntary Equity Purchase Program” wherein Washington gets to buy out preferred bank stocks while CEO’s golden parachutes were supposedly limited.

“This is an investment, not an expenditure, and there is no reason to expect this program will cost taxpayers anything,” Paulson said in a statement.

Aside from the nine large banks originally signed up for the program, the Treasury attracted the interest “from a broad group of banks of all sizes,” Paulson added.

Paulson’s plan, a partial Nationalization of the banks (Some Republican critics called it “Socialism”, was similar in many respects to Roosevelt’s 1933-5 RFC which, after a proclaimed “Bank Holiday” injected capital into some 6000 failing banks. Washington announced it had hired global giant Bank of New York Mellon as the lead agency to help manage the spending, lending and accounting of the 700 billion.

The precipitous market fallout, plus our obvious economic slowdown, which Bush and his Wall Street financial advisors now admit ” is a real depression” didn’t just sprout up over night like a mushroom on the lawn, but has been quietly spreading like a mold within our financial structure for years.

Last summer’s stock market bubble and shaky recovery which, as it burst toward the end of August 2007, had cost investors over $6 trillion in US dollars, and was echoed in England where thousands of Brits stood in line to demand their money back from one of their country’s largest banks. Responding to this precarious August weekend, Asian stocks dropped in value, Japan’s Nikkei Index fell more than 4% and the dollar was down sharply against the Yuan, yen and Euro. This international fallout pales in contrast to our present slump.

As the March 17th 2007 Washington Post had reported: The Feds, promised some $200 Billion as a “lender of last resort” for 20 major Wall Street firms, a role it had played since its founding in 1913, but only for commercial banks. In 1902 and again in 1909, J.P. Morgan personally set aside funds to bail out potential failing banks.

This $200 billion offer of ultra-safe Treasury securities to our nation’s banks and major brokerage firms, was in exchange for a variety of collateral options –including the very mortgage-backed securities that had created the financial crisis. Banks quickly unloaded some of their not so secure assets, freeing up money, as Wall Street noted: “to keep the nation’s economic bloodstream flowing.” This bailout by the Feds, however, did little to stem the oncoming financial storm.

The 9 July SF Chronicle reported Levi Strauss and Co. profit in the second quarter plunged 98% to $701,000 compared to $45.7 million the year before. General Motors was closing four US plants and laying off 20,000 workers, while asking management-level employees to accept early retirement. The SF Chronicle also reported that by June, the US workforce had lost 709,000 jobs in 2008, that STARBUCKS was closing 600 stores and laying off 12,000 workers, and, as THE PROGRESSIVE (May, 2008) noted: The SHARPER IMAGE declared bankruptcy, closing ninety-six US stores. As the downturn continued, on September 16 Hewlett-Packard announced a lay-off some 24,000 jobs over the next three years, and in October American Express laid off 7000. With stocks loosing 65% in value. The Dow on that frantic Tuesday had dropped some 504 points In October, following a week’s precipitous fall of the Dow and after Congress had modified and passed Bush Jr.’s “buy-out” plan, prominent Wall Street financier, Warren Buffett remarked “It’s an economic Pearl Harbor.”

Fuelled by a virtual deregulation of financial capital markets, beginning in the1990′s…widespread corruption and fraud was producing a housing bubble of epic proportions. Mortgage borrowing rose more than $4 trillion between 2003 and 2006 with $2 trillion issued in sub prime mode. “Sub prime” is “nonspeak” for inadequately-funded or often, criminally-structured mortgages, some actually programmed to fail and often sold to trusting but ignorant buyers, blacks or Spanish-speaking immigrant families, completely unaware of what they were signing at the bank.

As the Stock market continued to tumble, First on the list, the Feds gave JP Morgan Chase, $236.2 million, to buy out the 85 year-old Bear Sterns investment firm, at a price representing only 1% of what Bear Stearns had been worth only ten days before. Fallout from the Bear Stearns collapse and buyout was not hidden from an anxious public. KPFA’s financial reporter noted that California Teachers Retirement Plan, investment in Bear Stearns, “had just lost $85 million.” Meanwhile mortgage foreclosures by the tens of thousands were presenting themselves across the country. The HOPE NOW data program reported back in April, 2008: “More than 2 million loans were at least 60 days delinquent”

While the big boys in Wall Street were enjoying the Fed’s bounty, a considerably smaller largess was directed at the American Taxpayer from Bush and Congress: On January 24th, 2008 Bush and leaders of the House provided almost $100 billion in tax rebates to 117 million taxpayers and another $40 billion in tax reductions for businesses ” in a bid to avert a recession.”

Like all of these “bail-out” deals, the Fed’s promised, the money will eventually come out of the taxpayer’s pocket. Printing extra money simply dilutes out the basic value of the US dollar on the world market, making everything we buy more expensive, while threatening the economy of other countries.

On 16 July, frightened by the INDYMAC collapse, the government announced a “massive aid package” to the two shareholder owned companies: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to a Reuters dispatch, that plan, which won approval from a frightened Congress, was designed to “head off a potential meltdown in financial markets.”

Both Fannie and Freddie had been buying mortgages from banks and other lenders and either kept them or repackaged them into securities sold to investors as hedge funds, derivatives, etc. According to the SF Chron 25 June, 2008: “Three months after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won the freedom to step up home-loan purchases, these government-chartered finance companies were doing what critics of the Federal Reserve and Congress had predicted: Instead of using powers granted by Congress to buy jumbo loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were purchasing their own mortgage-backed securities, to reduce losses and protect their stockholders… Since the rule-change took effect, in March, Fannie Mae had repackaged $24 million in jumbo loans into securities, while Freddie Mac added $220 million. In April these two spent more than $ 32.4 billion buying their own instruments. ” Doing it unto others” again, in typical Wall Street fashion.

In contrast, Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, while urging nations to “tackle economy together,” in bailing out Britain’s largest banks specified that the bailout money be spent on loans to business rather than buyouts and stock dividends to the bank’s investors.

The fact that the majority of the our “buyouts” were directed at Wall Street favorites didn’t puzzle those Americans who understand that the Federal Reserve

System (FRS) is not Federal, but a privately owned and controlled coalition of banks. The Fed has no reserves except the paper it prints at will and the zeros it adds into its coffers via computers… The system has always been a scam. The real purpose of the Fed is to transfer wealth, such as real property, and other assets into the hands of the Fed’s owners with printed paper. It is the evil product of a conspiracy of bankers and tycoons who secretly met on Jekyl Island on Christmas Eve 1913.

As Globalresearch.ca (25 July, 2008) notes: “To get their bill passed… the Wall Street faction changed the bull’s name to the Federal Reserve Act and brought it three days before Christmas when Congress was preoccupied with departure for the holidays. The Bill was so obscurely written that no one really understood its provisions.

The national money supply would be printed by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing but it would be issued as an obligation or debt of the government to a private central bank. The Federal Reserve was wholly owned by a consortium of private banks; it is controlled by bankers and it protects their interests. It issues Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) for the cost of printing them or, more often for the cost of entering numbers on a computer screen.) This privately issued money is then lent to the government and is owed back to the private Federal Reserve with interest. The interest is eventually refunded to the government, but only after the Fed deducts its operating expenses and a 6% guaranteed return for its bank stockholders. Congress and the President have some input in appointing the Federal Reserve Board, but the Board works behind closed doors with regional bankers, without congressional oversight or control. Bank CEOs actually sit on the Boards of the Fed’s twelve branches. The banking lobby is powerful because private bankers, not the government, create our money and control who gets it.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was a major coup for the international bankers. They had battled for more than a century to establish a private central bank in the United States with the exclusive right to “monetize ” the government’s debt, i.e. to print their own money and exchange it for government securities or I.O.U.s

The Federal Reserve Act authorized a private central bank to create money out of nothing, lend it to the government at interest, and control the national money supply, expanding it or contracting it at will. Representative Charles Lindbergh, Sr. (father of America’s flying hero) said: “This Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs the Bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalized… The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill.”

In March, 2008, on the Charlie Rose Show former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said the Fed’s decision to lend money to Bear Stearns to keep it from collapsing “is unprecedented and raises some real questions” about whether that’s the appropriate role for the Fed… Again, on the Charlie Rose Show on October 9th, Volker said: “Our financial markets have become a Potemkin village.” While on the same show Dominique Straus Kahn, present head of the IMF and France’s former finance minister said that: “Financial markets cannot work alone and cannot regulate themselves.” Although no one has the figures, economic experts estimate that the international derivatives markets account for around $55 trillion dollars, an example of exponential usury.

The U.S. government put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under federal control, “the largest financial bailout in the nation’s history.” The two government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) presently own or guarantee almost half of the country’s $12 trillion in outstanding home mortgage debt.

The ongoing failure of millions of “sub-prime” mortgages with foreclosures across the country, the increasing reported lack of “affordable housing”, along with a consumer debt of $2.52 trillion, despite assurances by Wall Street, our president and big money that ” the economy is basically strong”, comes as no surprise to those who have watched Congress, again and again surrender to Wall Street lobbying over the past half century.

Back on June 23rd, 1947 a newly elected Republican Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over president Truman’s veto. The results of this assault on American labor made its appearance gradually over the years as American dads, who for decades had fed and clothed their families paid their mortgages, educated their kids and provided a safe retirement, found their paychecks no longer covered all the bills, and began to accept 50 or 60 hour weeks, or found a second job. A few years later mother joined the workforce to bring home needed cash.

The present huge pyramid of debt, both public and private was made possible by thirty years of Congress’ relentless deregulation of our financial markets, culminating, during the Clinton Administration, in the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which Act had prohibited banks from dealing in high-risk securities. In effect, Washington supposed regulators had become passive enablers to Wall Street’s financial binge drinkers.

As columnist Robert Scheer pointed out (March 12th SF Chronicle): “The Clinton-backed Gramm-Leach-Baily Act of 1999 called the “Financial Services Modernization Act,” permitted banks, stock brokers, and insurance companies to merge and was exacerbated by Bush’s appointment of rapacious Corporate foxes to watch the corporate hen house.” They will take care of their own… Their action was made possible only by the federal government’s using your tax dollars to pick up the bad debt of the banks.” This act Clinton signed overturned the Glass-Steagall Act, a major regulatory achievement of the New Deal.

As Alex Cockburn, noted in THE NATION, (Oct. 13,2008), a yea after The Clinton-backed Gramm-Leach-Baily Act was signed into law: “Gramm, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, attached a 262-page amendment to an omnibus appropriations bill right before Senate recess. Gramm’s amendment became the Commodity Futures Modernization Act which ok’d deregulation of investment banks, exempting most over-the-counter derivatives, credit derivatives, hedge funds and credit default swaps from regulatory scrutiny.”

Congress’ attempt to rein-in Wall Street’s reckless pursuit of sub prime money with the 1994 HOME OWNERSHIP AND EQUITY PROTECTION ACT, meant to police high-interest loans, proved ineffective.

A collaborating step down in the economic slide has been the not-too-subtle onslaught by the Credit-Card industry which began mailing their plastic cards out by the millions to unwary shoppers who, lacking enough cash at the Safeway checkout, found it increasingly easy to run that pretty piece of plastic through the machine. “In 2006 banks sent out 8 billion credit card applications, a 30% increase since 2005. Credit card companies now spend an average of $56 to sign up a new customer, and since 1996 when the Supreme Court struck down limits on credit card fees, the average late penalty has jumped 102% and the average fee for exceeding credit card limits rose 138%. Before long Americans found themselves with billions in credit-card debt (Mother Jones Sept 2007).

The acceptance by banks of sub-prime mortgages had begun over ten years ago as deregulation led to corporate theft in both Republican and Democratic administrations. In the past, mortgage holders who faced economic problems might go to their banker and negotiate changes in term limits or interest rates. Today their banker, who has bundled that mortgage along with a thousand others and is gambling with it on the international roulette wheel of “derivatives ” and “hedge funds, may say: “Sorry I just can’t lay my hands on your mortgage papers.”

Corporate corruption is present at the highest level. On April 1st, 2008 (Reuters) – An internal JP Morgan Chase (JPM) memo titled “Zippy Cheats & Tricks” offered a peek into those dubious lending tactics underpinning the housing market’s downward spiral. This A J.P. Morgan Chase internal memo titled: “Zippy Cheating Tricks”, sneaked to the press by an employee (who has since been fired), says it all: The piece was originally obtained by reporters at THE PORTLAND Oregonian newspaper who printed it on March 27th, 2008. The sneaked memo outlined in step-by-step instructions just how to beef up mortgage applicants’ statement s in order to qualify them for home loans they otherwise could not afford:

The instructions read as follows:
1. Make sure your assets input all income in base income. DO NOT break it down by overtime, commissions or bonus.

2. If your borrower is getting a gift, add it to a bank account along with the rest of the assets. Be sure to remove any mention of gift funds.

3. If you do not get (the desired results), try resubmitting with slightly higher income. Inch it up 500 to see if you can get the findings you want. Do the same for assets. Usury at its worse.

After Obama has closed Guantanamo and erased Bush’s “signing statements,” he still has a steep climb ahead. Will he be able to get a new Congress to intelligently weather the depression, our two wars, and return this country to the people? Not one of our politicians campaigning for the 2009 election, except Ralph Nader, mentioned that repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act should be on Congress’s agenda, and that a sales tax on “derivatives” would be a good idea. The restoration of Congressional monitoring of business, weakened by the Glas-Steagall Act’s has scarcely been mentioned. Cynthia Ann McKinney a former United States Representative and the 2008 Green Party nominee for President of the United States wants to abolish “derivatives”

Unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt, who faced the 1930s depression with a well-funded US treasury, Obama will be faced with a government trillions in debt while losing two wars. Congress must also halt the hemorrhaging of tax revenue by closing overseas tax shelters, revoke the Bush Jr. tax loopholes for the rich, and take the cap off Social Security contributions, forcing the wealthy to shoulder their fair share of our nation’s financial support. We need to collect a tariff on all goods manufactured abroad regardless of their corporate ownership. Today EU countries charge either a VAT (value-added tax) or tariff on imports from the US and other non-EU countries.

President Obama will face a Herculean task with reluctant Republicans and some Democratic leaders who are Republicans in drag. Wish him well!

IN CONCLUSION….(Dusty)

Now, I hope you will all click on Coastal Post’s homepage http://www.coastalpost.com/ and sample more of their ultra-independent periodic (monthly) offerings both in their printed and on-line versions. By contributing to their cause or subscribing to their on-line service (their commercial and advertising links are great), you’ll be exercising your own pro-American, anti-fascist privilege of free speech and defending theirs, which is currently under very unfriendly fire, right here in the good-ol U.S. of A…and in California of all states!

The Editors, writers and contributors of DeclaringIndependents.com herewith commend and laud Don Deane and his stalwart staff for hanging in there and telling the truth about America’s under-cover fascism. When it got to the point that opposing Bush’s illegal pre-emptive invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq was equated with “treason” and hailed as “un patriotic”, we knew we were in trouble.  Even though Obama has successfully ousted this particular cabal of Judeo-Christian-Zionist fascists, the Zionist forces that took control of the Bush Pentagon in 2001 in the wake of 9/11 are still out there regrouping and waiting for the next chink in democracy’s armor that will enable them to unearth once again their insidious arc of Zionist covenant to control and re-structure the Middle East along Biblically-prophesied parameters. Anyone who questions Israel’s mission or its military machinations in Gaza and Palestine runs the risk of inciting the wrath of America’s grass-rooted constituency of Biblically-literal Zionists who will cite chapter and verse of said theocratic text to lay legal (not merely mythical) claim to all the real estate (including oil) situated between the Nile and Euphrates rivers in the “Holy Land”. 

The mainstream American media is clearly hesitant to mention—much less criticize—Zionist Israeli military machinations in Gaza and Palestine, because, well, collective Gentile guilt regarding the Holocaust still renders the cow of Israel sacred and all political proddings in its direction….taboo.  Well, to the direct contrary, the U.S. Constitution makes it every man’s privilege—and every educated man’s duty when morally required– to dissent publically when it comes to the majority view of …anything , including the sacred cows  of Israeli Statehood and Zionist policy. DI (and its precursor think tank, the B.E.A., “Barristers et al”) have from the first championed those who on 9/11/01 began suggesting to Americans that they should accept some responsibility for the Twin Towers’ toppling on the basis of America’s military alliance with the State of Israel—and against all its many enemies- since 1948.

In reporting the “other side of the story” of what is presently occurring in Gaza and Palestine (see Coastal Post articles at the following links) http://www.coastalpost.com/08/12/11_N.html

http://www.coastalpost.com/08/12/05.html

http://www.coastalpost.com/08/12/11_N.html ) , the Coastal Post is being accused of being “anti-Semitic” and being judged and condemned as if the accusations were both tried and true. Opposing Israel’s military conduct in Gaza and Palestine is no more “anti-Semitic” than opposing Bush war policy in Iraq was “treason”. 

Let’s forget about sacred cows and come to the aid of all good people who come to the aid of their country, as has the brave news paper in California called “The Coastal Post”.

War is still our only enemy.

Dusty

December 11, 2008

Should we—who fought so passionately for Obama against the desperate ones who, in the final days before the election seemed willing to do ANYTHING to win—play the roles of  “gracious” victors…? Forgive all the lies that were told about Obama’s being a “terrorist” (like Kay Hagan was “godless”) and–as Obama himself–“rise above it all” and simply be “happy” it’s over and celebrate the opportunity we now have to  repair the havoc the Republicans have reeked during the past decade?…. Or should we take this occasion to uncork the champagne, dance, shoot off fireworks and otherwise go deliriously  nuts with the absolute and utter joy of it all? …

Or maybe both?  Enjoy our own editorial staff—aided by other writers—wrestling  with the urge to “be nice” to our ousted and slam-dunked GOP losers and at the same time contend with the irresistible impulse to strut like victorious warriors and dance with delight on the dashed hopes and aborted plans of those losers who demonstrated–until the very moment they knew the contest was over–that they would do and say literally anything it took to con voters into giving them 4 more years to destroy what’s left of America. 

By: Dusty Schoch, DI Editor  Nov. 5, 2008

Accompanied by…

Collateral reactions from:

Leonard Carrier (DI Senior Associate Editor), Letters exchanged between DI contributor Michael Murphy and West Pointer, Michael Ellerbe; a beautifully complex reaction by Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist, entitled “Yes We Did” (forwarded by N.C. Artist, Alan Mackeraghan) and finally, letters exchanged by

Marissa Murphy and Cathy Beasley—the wife of a U.S. Diplomat living in Ghana.

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Marisa Murphy replies to Cathy Beasley:

Regardless of political affiliation this is a great day for all Americans. It is an affirmation of the ideals that made this nation great. It is a significant step towards unifying a divided nation. It is a calling for every American to stand together to overcome the daunting challenges this nation faces. It is an example of the extraordinary nature of the American people. It is a validation of American Democracy. It is the nation we love and would lay down our lives for. When I think of the significance of this day, my eyes well with tears. I have never been prouder of this nation. I have never been prouder of being an American.

War is Still our Only Enemy  11 10 08

THE DEATH OF SCANDAL
IN AMERICA

…….. 

HAS IT BEEN….EXAGGERATED? 

Bush Lied and People Died… 

McCain and Palin are Lying and

Nobody’s crying. 

HAS AMERICA  LOST ITS SENSE OF SHAME?

IF SO, DOES THAT MEAN
AMERICA IS …. LOST?

This DI “Current Issues” includes
sub-sections entitled:

“THE NEW NORMAL”

By Leonard Pitts

“PORNOGRAPHIC PROOF OF  ‘THE SURGE IS WORKING’  LIE” .  . .

And

“THE LIE OF “GUILT BY ASSOCIATION”

(THE LEGACY OF LIES IS PASSED…

FROM NEO-CON KING GEORGE INTO

PALIN’S AND McCAIN’S COWARDLY  HANDS)

And

NEW NEO-CON “WMDs” . . . 

(“Whoppers of Mass Deception”) =

The Lie of:  “GUILT BY ASSOCIATION”

By  Dusty Schoch

And

LEN’S REJOINDER:

“THE LIES AREN’T JUST THOSE OF THE POLITICIANS…

I AGREE ABOUT THE WMD’S, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE

“M & M’s”…     

(“Media Mendacity”)

… AND (Maybe)  A RAY OF HOPE”

And… 

A trailing comment by writer,

Sally Doud

By: DI Editors, Dusty Schoch, Leonard Carrier, with Leonard Pitts “in the middle” and Sally Doud at anchor.

October 20, 2008

DUSTY

Well, maybe I wish it were otherwise, but I personally still have a sense of shame; I still think I KNOW scandal when I see it, but the thing that scares hell out of me is the scandal most current in America ,  which is the scariest scandal in American history…the death of scandal in America.

I remember reading an article in the NY Times entitled “The Death of Scandal” and I remembered how shocked I was to read—and agree with it. The muckraking writer at the time was  writing how appalled he was back in 1990-something at Congress’ voting itself a 20-percent pay raise during the worst recession since the “Great Depression.” He dubbed this the “death of scandal” because none of his fellow writers or talking TV heads were raising hell about the shameful event. And it was shameful. And they (Congressmen) got away with it.  Why do I say that?  (1) Because they weren’t impeached… any more than we’ll impeach our nominal “representatives” for (in addition to doing the same thing this past year)  the recent bailout which was a case of grand larceny, treason, compounded by the pork barrel aggravation of the primary felony, and (more importantly) (2) because you (reader) very likely don’t recall the event (the pay raise). 

Today two things made me feel that scandal in America is not only dead, but quite possibly (and according to Pulitzer Prize columnist Leonard Pitts—see below) buried for good.  Today I received in the mail a piece of McCain propaganda claiming Obama was in conspiracy with Ayers’ bombing our nation’s capitol.  I won’t debate that claim and  thereby lend it any dignity. It is an outright lie.  Lies told by politicians are under American law “privileged” – Obama is a public figure and therefore cannot sue McCain for publishing falsehoods unless he can prove actual malice. I think he could, but the lies McCain is pouring on Obama through malicious campaign managers are like rapid fire from a Bonsai machine-gun nest on Iwo Jima.

The second thing I encounter as a clear and certain nail in scandal’s coffin is Leonard Pitt’s article saying precisely that. His subject is not one lie in particular that our governing  administration has launched, but rather a listing of the lies that inductively establishes that the Bush administration and his corporate commanders do little else but lie to us…to the paralyzing point that we are, as a people, now insensitive to the fact that LIES HAVE BECOME… “NORMAL” NOW IN AMERICA.

Before I resume my lament for the demise of truth and scandal in America, I give you the eulogy of Leonard Pitts, hopefully to be followed (after my amens) by the further lamentations of our own resident Historian and Philosopher, Leonard Carrier.

LEONARD PITTS’ LAMENT:

“THE NEW NORMAL”

Leonard Pitts Jr.: The new normal

We are numb to the values we’ve lost since 9/11

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Meanwhile, back at the War on Terror …

You remember the War on Terror, don’t you? It was in all the papers. Back before presidential politics sucked the air from the room and your 401(k) shrank till it was worth maybe dinner and a movie, it was considered quite the important news story. Abu Ghraib? Extraordinary renditions? Fight ‘em over there so we don’t have to fight ‘em over here? Surely you recall.

I only ask because of a news story that broke last week to a yawn of media disinterest. The Washington Post reported on two secret White House memos explicitly endorsing the use of waterboarding – simulated drowning — on so-called high-value terrorism suspects. This is, says The Post, the first time the still-classified memos have been disclosed. They were written in response to requests from then-CIA Director George Tenet, who worried his agents might be hung out to dry if the practice were discovered and the people or their representatives demanded someone’s head.

According to The Post, the White House issued written authorizations in 2003 and 2004. Yet in 2006, President Bush told the nation, “The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it — and I will not authorize it.”

Which was, of course, a lie.

You’d think the latest proof of that lie — yet another smoking gun to stack with all the others — would merit attention. But a computer search on Thursday turned up only seven newspaper stories mentioning the memos. Searches of the CNN and FOX news Web sites also came up dry, though the story did appear on MSNBC’s site.

If you think my point is that the media missed an important story, it isn’t. No, the point is that normal is not where we thought it would be.

You remember how it was just after Sept. 11, 2001, right? Some of us vowed we would never enter a skyscraper again. Some of us didn’t want to leave our houses again. The minutiae of popular culture became staggeringly unimportant. Humorists like David Letterman and my colleague, Dave Barry, wondered if they could ever return to the business of laughter.

We were scared dry. And some of us said: Get used to it. This was the new normal.

But skyscrapers did not close from lack of use. We did not become a nation of agoraphobics. We did not lose our interest in singers and movie stars. Messrs. Letterman and Barry went back to work.

Fear, which had cut through us like a hot poker, became instead a low-grade fever, ambient noise, wallpaper, something you feel without feeling, hear without hearing, see without seeing.

Then you look up one day and realize how profoundly that fear has changed your world. People are imprisoned without charges or access to attorneys and it’s routine. People are surveilled, their reading habits studied, their telephone usage logged and it’s commonplace. People, including children, end up on a secret list of those who are not allowed to fly, nobody will tell you why, there is no appeal and it’s ordinary. We swallow lies like candy, nod sagely at babblespeak and it’s unexceptional.

Torture is inflicted with White House approval, the president lies about it and it’s just another Tuesday.

Once upon a time, Americans were fond of looking upon backward nations, upon places where law was whatever the king said it was, and noting with pride that we do things differently in our country. But that was a day long ago and a country long gone.

If we miss the one or mourn the other, you’d never know it to look at us. We live through what feels evermore like a Joe McCarthy fever dream. We feel without feeling, hear without hearing, see without seeing and do not protest what we have become.

Because this is normal now.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald).

First published on October 21, 2008 at 12:00 am

Dusty again….

Leonard’s (Pitts) thesis is on the money, but his list of major lies is a minor league  tallying of the neo-con Bush administration scoreboard of lies.  I can’t wait for Len’s list to supplement mine, but when I’m composing the  list that make America today the ordainment of Orwell’s prophesies in “1984” they go something like this:

[Note:  I’m putting them in no particular order because there is no way to quantify them by any measure of ethical “evil”…they are all simply and purely lies, with differing degrees and venues of disastrous effect: I’ll list the lies therefore in random order and briefly note a damage assessment: ]

LIES AND EFFECTS:

LIE —-There are WMD’s and Al Qaeda connections in Iraq — 

“Iraq was involved in the 9/11/01 attack on America.” 

Bush in fact stated:

 “I have also determined that the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. United States objectives also support a transition to democracy in Iraq, as contemplated by the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 “ (Public Law 105-338).

EFFECT: 680,000 deaths and 7 years of trillion-dollar war and national bankruptcy; thousands of US military deaths.

We now have proof that Bush knew these were lies before Colin Powel made his speech to the UN. We now have abundant proof of that treason.

LIE: “We have found  the weapons of mass destruction.”(late May, 2003).

Bush—it turns out– was referring to two tractor-trailers obtained by U.S. forces in Iraq. The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded these vehicles were mobile bio-weapons plants. Yet they had found not a trace of biological agents on either.  No one has been charged for these lies on the basis of which war  was waged and continues to be waged, and no one has been fired, much less impeached for this treason.  Well, Colin Powel, sick of his complicity in the lies did in fact quit…which I say is the clearest ever case of “too little and too late” and that any self-respecting national warrior would have fallen on his own sword for the lies he spoke as America’s representative in the United Nations’ Security Council on the eve of war.

EFFECT: (SEE ABOVE)

(Bush said this; Cheney said this; Colin Powell said this; Condi Rice said this; John Bolton said this; Paul Wolfowitz said this…all numerous times. )

LIE:  “Global Warming is a Doubtful Theory, not a Reality.   James Hansen’s NASA report on Global Warming makes it clear that global warming is an unconfirmed theory based on questionable models.”

 Hansen didn’t report that; Bush’s lawyer did; we now have the proof of that treason. This was an instance of our political leaders’ literally

re-writing reported science to suit themselves, and lying to us in the process.

EFFECT: As a result, America stayed out of Kyoto Accord conferences and the ecological demise of the world is rendered far more a likely (if unthinkable) event. Global warming continues because we are doing nothing officially about it.   When Adolph Hitler established his openly-fascistic and totalitarian regime he publicly burned the books of the “leftist liberals” opposing him.  Bush criminally revised the scientific books of the time (our time).   We have the proof of that fascistic treachery and  treason.

LIE: Bush:  “I will pull U.S. Troops out of Iraq if asked by the new Iraq government .”  “This is a sovereign nation; they are on their feet”.  

When that sovereign country voted, it was overwhelmingly in favor of U.S. departure (reported by the French Associated Press June 19, 2005). The French Press wrote: Eighty two Iraqi lawmakers from across the political spectrum have pressed for the withdrawal of the US-led occupation troops from their country. Speaker Hajem Al-Hassani, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP): “We have asked in several sessions for occupation troops to withdraw. Our request was ignored,” read the latter, made public on Sunday, June 19.

EFFECT:  War continues. See above.

Here’s my question (Dusty’s):  Why are we reading about these lies our president is telling us…in a French Newspaper??

As a result, the war continues 3+ more years, thousands more die, billions per week spent. Halliburton and Blackwater thrive; America dies–a little more each day–in a pool of lies.

LIE: “The U.S. government does not wire tap without a warrant” . (Bush campaign speech, 2004.) What he said was:

“Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”  See video at http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2182

At the very moment Bush was telling this lie, he had given the NSA power to tap our phones and get a court order (warrant) 3 days later.

EFFECT:  You and I and America have lost our Constitutional guarantees of privacy and freedom from unlawful search and seizure. Since then, King George has installed a Standing Army on U.S. soil, in further violation of the U.S. Constitution and no one is making any noise about it. No one is crying.

This is now known and undisputed matter. Bush is still uncharged with treason. Bush has not been impeached.

LIE:     “THE SURGE IS WORKING!!!” 

EFFECT: We are conned into supporting the mythological war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq that has killed over a half million people over the past 7 years, increased terrorism globally and locally (in the two countries the U.S. preemptively invaded) and has created the trillion-dollar drain on the U.S. economy which has bankrupted America and brought us to the brink of a global economic collapse and depression.

This was a lie almost as big as “WMD’s and Al Qaeda Connections” and twice as skillful. There is magician’s legerdemain in this lie…classic “misdirection” and professional con-artistry.  In claiming “success” in the final chapter of a war which has failed from its inception because it was launched on false pretenses on an innocent country, you can validly claim a relative “improvement” in an absolutely bad thing. But your argument is unsound and fatally flawed and logically absurd…but no one seems to get the joke…so I’ll tell it in a simpler (if slightly ribald) way:

PORNOGRAPHIC PROOF OF SURGE LIE . . .

It’s like–in the course of a forceful rape–the rapist begins to shout, “This is really going well…She is losing her will and ability to fight me off; You see what I told you when I started this thing!  It was so dark, I thought it was my wife. Then, when I jumped on her, I still thought it was her because of all that shock and awe my wife always puts up when I surprise her like that…with the favor of my affections.  Then, when things got going, I realized it was not my wife, but rather her sister, who came to babysit because my wife was at her mother’s. But BECAUSE as we were already into the thing, and BECAUSE  as I realized that my wife’s sister was frigid and clearly needed to learn the fine art of healthy heterosexuality—which is the kind of sexuality I do so well—I realized that it was in everyone’s best interests that I continue doing what I had started until she learned what she needed to know. I will always maintain that this was not no rape, no how!   She had no right to resist my teaching her what she needed to learn.  And now I can prove I was right.  When I had the courage just now to step up the pace of our carnal….coalition, she clearly  lowered her resistance to me. Her fingernails are no longer digging into my eyes or my neck; the bleeding is almost stopped and she has totally quit that awful screaming.   I have increased my pace and rest my case.  Take this to the jury room with you now… because it’s my last and final Johnny Cochran word on the serious subject of sexual resurgence and surge: “ When there ain’t no squeal, the rape ain’t real.  Yeaaaaaaa….Surge !!! ” [that last triple exclamation point indicates an ejaculatory declaration for those of you numbed and dumbed-down enough to believe the other lies I just told].

The preceding lies (political and pornographic)  listed are to me  simply the ones that come immediately to mind. The Bush administration has been telling lies like this on a daily basis for the past 8 years. What effect has this had on America?…Hearing the lies, having the facts of those lies laid out before them for nearly a decade, during which NO ONE HAS BEEN PUNISHED FOR THOSE LIES except a few isolated murderers and torturers tossed out  of the U.S. Armed Forces by war monger brass as sacrificial pawns in the lying game. Everyone knows that the “go ahead” for torturing prisoners went right up to and into the White House. 

NOW…

THE LEGACY OF LIES IS PASSED…

FROM NEO-CON KING GEORGE INTO

PALIN’S AND McCAIN’S COWARDLY  HANDS

Heading now into a new presidential administration, we find ourselves occupying a nation of not only DUMBED-DOWN, BUT NUMBED-DOWN people… a nation of shorn sheep either incapable of distinguishing  truth from the lies daily told them, or … much worse,  INDIFFERENT to the practice of being lied to by the new aspirant to the post of PREVARICATORS’ COMMANDER IN CHIEF… which would be the duplicitous duo,  John McCain and Sarah Palin.  They are consciously and conspicuously paying other You/tube truth assassins to promulgate known lies to the effect that (1) Obama is “Islamic”, and (2) Obama is a “terrorist” like his friend Ayers, and that (3) Obama is a radical anti-American “racist” like his old friend and preacher, Rev. Wright or “political bully” like his father’s fellow tribesman, Kenya’s Odinga.

NEW NEO-CON “WMD” . . . 

(“whopper of mass deception”) =

THE LIE OF “GUILT BY ASSOCIATION”

The oldest form of lying and character assassination is the gambit of “guilt by association”. It’s illegal under American criminal law—which requires the state to prove that the accused actually “helped” his criminal friend with the criminal enterprise. McCain and Palin make no pretense of claiming Obama encouraged or took part in  any of his friends’ alleged mistakes or transgressions.    They ask you to condemn Obama because he befriended them or “associated” with them. Those claiming to be among the “born-again” Christian “right” are hypocritically not telling us to love our enemies and at the same time, they are telling us that befriending (loving) a criminal makes one a criminal. Christ not only associated with and forgave criminals, he did so in their company on Golgotha and with his last breath.  Who among us has not had one of our friends or associates breach some law or accepted moral code?  But what is illegal in criminal law is the rule in politics: It’s the oldest legal weapon in the coward’s arsenal, and our presidential contenders, McCain and Palin in their desperate and hopefully dying effort to catch up with Obama in the polls are spreading lies just for that reason—They are inveterate cowards.  They are abandoning the battle of  issues and policies and launching a battle of hatred.They are hatefully spreading lies suggesting Obama is guilty because he has associated with allegedly guilty people—not because he aided or participated in any guilty conduct. That is not only a lie, and now only a cowardly lie, it is—quite clearly—anti-American. The question that remains, however is much more daunting – Has America changed its conceptions of “right and wrong” or simply discarded them? Have “lies” told in America about Americans to Americans  become the new “norm” ?  Have we decided as a people that “truth” is just another disposable pawn in the “game” of politics? Have we arrived at Orwell’s point of democracy’s demise – 1984, the year of Big Brother’s dictatorship constructed on the  platform of the Big Lie?

Leonard Pitts thinks America is incurably conned; that we’ve been lied to so much that “lies”  have become perceived by our masses as “normal” instead of “scandal”.

My jury on this question is still out. I’m still holding out  hope (which no longer rises to the dignity of “belief”) that America will wake up, smell the coffee, remember the tea, and ultimately recall what it was like short decades ago when two brave reporters probed and dug in the loam of truth in the Beltway deeply enough to prove that a U.S. President had committed crime and  lied to us about it…and when as a result, there were actual consequences of that scandal…consequences which involved accountability and  a changing of our nation’s leadership.

Nixon’s crimes of petty burglary and cover-up do not compare in degree of criminality to the high crimes and misdemeanors (major international war crimes, crimes against environmental nature, and domestic crimes, compounded by lies to cover up those crimes) committed by our incumbent  President and his administration…so many crimes that Americans seem to be now sufficiently numbed and dumbed down to accept more lies as a “normal” matter of American political course.

Has America become the proverbial “frog in the pot” of tepid water, which when warmed at the deceptively slow rate of one degree per minute, becomes lethally boiling before the frog realizes he has sat  on his haunches so long he has lost the ability to leap for his…life?

Obama is offering us our only chance for change—a CONCEIVABLY LAST CHANCE–to save ourselves from the waters about to boil us into oblivion as a leader among free nations.   Our nation under the leadership of the Republican Neo-Cons has been lied to to the point it is questionable whether “we-the-people”  consider lies anything more than “normal politics”.  If McCain and Palin win, there will be categorical and catastrophic proof that we have been dumbed and numbed down to that languishing level. 

God help us if Leonard Pitts is right.

Dusty

10 21 08

War is still our only enemy, but lies are its arsenal and ignorance  its ally.

LEN’S REJOINDER

THE LIES AREN’T JUST THOSE OF THE POLITICIANS…

I AGREE ABOUT THE WMD’S, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE

“M&M’s”

(“Media Mendacity”)

… AND (Maybe)  A RAY OF HOPE

Indeed, why do foreign news agencies have to tell us what’s going on in our own country?  Just recently the British announced that their economy is in recession; whereas, we keep hearing that “maybe” our own country might be heading there.  What?  With foreclosures mounting, the auto industry languishing, and unemployment at more than 6%, is our government trying to tell us that we’re not in recession when we’ve been in one for months? You would think that U.S. news agencies would be as honest as the ones in the U.K., but that’s not what we get from our mainstream media.  They eagerly publish the lies spewing from our present government, but refuse to refute these lies except maybe on the back pages of subsequent issues of the newspapers.

Is Leonard Pitts correct in saying that lying has become the norm, and that scandal has died in this country?  I prefer to think it’s not so. I think that the majority of people in this country hate what’s been going on for the past eight years and can’t wait to replace the corrupt, lying, utterly contemptible Bush administration with an honest one that ministers to the needs of the American people and not to the greed of the wealthiest among us.  Of course, 24% of our citizens still support the policies of George W. Bush; but that was about the percentage of those who supported the Tories during our American Revolution.  There will always be those who, for one reason or another, just don’t “get it”—the holocaust deniers, the global warming deniers, the Sarah Palin lovers, the Muslim haters, the racists and the fear-mongers who show us daily just what we need to overcome.

In speaking about the “death of scandal,” I was reminded of a bit in the film, “The Duchess,” which portrayed the life of the Duchess of Devonshire in the late 18^th century.  The Duke of Devonshire was one of the most powerful men in England at the time, a philandering plutocrat who could make or break the careers of aspiring politicians in the Whig Party.  Because the Duchess—immensely  popular with the poets, politicians, and playwrights—could not openly criticize the Duke for his adulterous ways, she conspired with the playwright, Richard Sheridan, to have his play, “A School for Scandal,” performed before the Duke and others.  Everyone knew that the play was about the scandalous behavior of the Duke, and that this was the way the Duchess chose to broadcast her complaints to everyone.  What I am suggesting is that our mainstream press has become an exercise in “a school for scandal.”  With the main newspaper and broadcasting outlets being controlled by the wealthiest among us—just as the Duke of Devonshire “controlled” what was said about him—what we have at our disposal are a myriad of “Duchesses” who are forced to get out the facts by other means.  This, of course, is what Leonard Pitts does in his columns; and it is what Dusty Schoch and I do on this site, and it is what Daily Kos, Mother Jones, and Arianna Huffington do on the internet.  The internet can’t be controlled, just as the playwrights and poets can’t be controlled.  That’s why Plato, the consummate elitist, wanted the poets banned from his Utopian Republic.

I say, never ban the poets, never fail to point out that the Emperor wears no clothes. The American public might not look as if it is paying attention, but I am confident that it is.  I see November 5 dawning as a new chapter in our Republic, one in which the old rubbish is swept out, and new policies adopted that will once again show that the United States, after waking from a long nightmare, is ready to fulfill our fondest dreams.

10 22 08

DUSTY PS

Worlds of gratitude to Len for countering my nightmarish worries about another 1984 regime in America on such a promising and positive note!

EARLY COMMENTS FROM DI CORRESPONDENTS

 Very well argued.  I can’t offer any disagreement.

My only question is how one gets this message out to all those Americans who just don’t care.  Francine Prose, in a recent article in Harpers (or maybe New Yorker) took on the huge public outcry when several books purported to be  memoir turned out to be fiction.  A reading public aghast at the lies!  But F. Prose wonders why those lies make more impact than the giant lies of the administration, lies with horrible consequences.  She concludes that the public feels helpless before the powers-that-be, thus turns its frustration and anger at lies on the insignificant fake memoirists.  A scapegoating, I guess.

All well and good to try and educate this tuned-out public to the real LIES, but I think a number of people (all frustrating when I run into them) don’t want to know the truth. Would rather believe than reason out; believe that huge government lies are only truths too complicated for them to understand and that big-kind-daddy-in-charge will make it all right by the end of the day.  That they are free to pursue their daily lives without needing to bother their pretty little heads about “all that “political stuff.”  And that’s why I’m glad we’ve had this Wall Street crash, because it starts to disturb these tuned-out Americans as it impinges on their daily lives. 

I admit that for a long time I’ve had little hope for the human race, for Americans in particular, but I’ve begun to hope (just a little bit) again with all the young people getting involved in this electoral race.  I hope the numbers of involved youth have not been exaggerated by the media, but I guess only the outcome of the election will tell the truth.

Sally Doud,  Richmond Va.  (Writer;  English Instructor, V.C.U.)

10 23 08 [Emphasis added by DI  to enhance well-told truth]

(Editorial Note: For any of you DI and B.E.A. correspondents who receive our DI Current Issue Previews, please feel free to send in your reactions immediately so they can be posted on line with the current issues just as the preceding comments of Sally Doud.)

TAKE  THE

NY TIMES BIGOTRY TEST . . .

(To see if you suffer from  the

Dreadfully Contagious “Bradley Effect”)***

BEFORE YOU VOTE—TAKE IT

NOTE:             And before you read this article, take note it is a re-print of the final article to post on the formerly Democratic–formerly “liberal”–now closed DEMOCRATSWRITE.COM website. This piece was written by Dusty Schoch, Managing Editor of  DeclaringIndependents.com at a time (August 16, 2008) he was foreign policy editor for Democratswrite.com.  By hitting the link to DI’s “About Us” page, you can read all about the reasons this article is appearing here (on DI) and its writer is no longer there (with DW). As you may have gleaned already, it was all about declaring independence from things like….Well, you read the articles and decide for yourself. The article immediately following is followed immediately by another, which read in combination with the present, will pretty much tell it all.  Let the music of liberty and independence play on…

Now, here’s the article entitled “NY Times Bigotry Test” as it appeared previously on Democratswrite.come…a North Carolina blog, which for reasons which will become apparent, is no longer. The blog was shut down by its owner and founder before the second article (next trailing) was published (i.e., entitled: “Not All White Voters Who Fail to Support Obama Are Racist”, which article was co-written as a point-counterpoint piece  by “Bobby Dees” (lead article writer) and Leonard Carrier and Dusty Schoch (writing counter-points).

***By the way, the “Bradley Effect”  for those who haven’t heard, is the neo-con neology and buzzword for that potentially fatal disease of the human hypocriticus closetus which  Republicans hope will infect  presidential voters everywhere this year…as it did in California in 1982, when voters were polled going into their curtained booths as being 60 percent in favor of a black governor (Tom Bradley), and somehow exited having elected another good ol white boy.

NY TIMES BIGOTRY TEST

Before You Vote,  Take It!

By Dusty Schoch, DW Foreign-policy editor.

August 16, 2008

I just read in the NY Times that a black woman gave birth to a white child. Call Guinness!  That’s amazing!  No, rather, that’s impossible…..Isn’t it? Or is it possibly illegal?

I lied for a reason. There was no NY Times article. But black women have been giving birth to white children in America forever. Just ask Thomas Jefferson.

But before I get to the point, ask yourself another question: If I’d said the Times published a story of a white woman giving birth to a black child, be honest–wouldn’t your reaction have been… “so what’s new?”

Why is it white women can have “black” babies and black women can’t have “white?”   I’ll submit to you it has nothing to do with the pigment mix of the bi-racial baby. It has to do with prejudice, discrimination, bias, bigotry, hypocrisy – YOURS AND MINE.  Yeah, mea culpa. If I didn’t suffer from the same knee-jerk (emphasis on jerk) reaction, I wouldn’t be writing.

The relevance? Couldn’t be more vital to us as Americans. There’s an election coming and there’s no telling how many red state rednecks will vote for a statistically-dead and intellectually-inferior white man just because he’s white. Again–jerk reactions.  In Jefferson’s time there were state  laws (“anti miscegenation”) against whites marrying blacks that persisted until 1967.   This prejudice is culturally hardwired in ALL of us. The NY Times test you just flunked proves it.

My point?  Closeted bigotry is splitting the Democratic Party and dividing America. Obama is not only the better man, he’ll unite our racially-sick country because he’s neither black nor white. He’s both. His parents were color blind and their child was produced by the only power capable of uniting and saving us—love.                 And face it: Anybody Jesse Jackson despises can’t be all bad.

So watch out! – -  Especially you white Southern good ol boys… If you flunked this test (and the majority of you sure as h___ did), you’re most likely infected with the Bradley Effect, that closeted neo-con bug that will creep through the curtain of your voting booth with you—hiding inside of you in  your hypocriticus closetus– and do its utmost to turn every patriotic, pragmatic and independent platelet in your red-blooded American body  WASP  white.

BUT….

       “BOBBY DEES” SAYS:          

Not All White Voters Who Fail to Support Obama Are Racist !

By: Bobby Dees – with serious rebuttals from Leonard Carrier and Dusty Schoch (trailing, in tandem).  Please don’t read one without reading them all.

There have been recent charges by certain political pundits to the effect that, if you are a white American and particularly a white Democrat and do not support Barack Obama, you are probably a racist. (See Democratswrite 8-25-2008) This premise goes against Obama’s campaign assertion that America is not about red states and blue states, but is about the United States of America. Obama advocates that Americans need not be so polarized by political party loyalty. Therefore, it would appear Obama believes it is acceptable to not always vote solely along party lines and all candidates, regardless of their party affiliation, have to earn each individual’s vote.

To recklessly label someone a racist due to his political opinion is ignorant and lazy. After someone is called a racist, that usually ends all political debate.

It may not even be a true statement that Obama does not have the support of White Americans in the Democratic Party. A recent poll showed that almost 80% of Democrats are supporting Obama.

It should be noted that in North Carolina in the 2004 presidential election, white candidate John Kerry only garnered 27% of the white vote in North Carolina. Obviously, the 73% of the white voters who did not vote for Kerry in North Carolina did not vote against him due to the fact he was a white man. In all likelihood, they voted against Kerry because they did not support his policies. Therefore, it is extremely reckless to label someone a racist who does not support Obama. Obama is currently leading in many of the states Democrats have recently been winning in presidential elections and is behind in historically Republican presidential states.

At the risk of being labeled a racist, for historical purposes and for legitimate discussion, I will attempt to articulate what are some of the problems if there are problems with Obama and his candidacy.

The first problem Obama has is that he lacks a substantive message. His political message is of change and hope with his message having no real specifics. The greatest part of Obama’s political message is about fancy words and well delivered political speeches. Watching his campaign it appears we have ventured back to the flair of the disco days of the seventies where the production is more important than the actual message. I would suggest that it would help Obama’s campaign if he would attempt to have a more intimate one on one conversation with voters. There are issues in which the two presidential candidates differ such as the Iraq War, off shore drilling, capital gains tax, employee taxes, and tax cuts. Each voter will have to decide which candidate’s political position he supports.

Many Americans could have a real problem with Obama’s lack of experience. One thing that is quite troublesome is that he began running for president immediately after winning his current Senate seat. Failure to begin or to fulfill his Senate obligation could be interpreted as a lack of loyalty to the voters of Illinois that elected the candidate and suggest out of control ambition on the part of Obama. It should be noted that many North Carolina citizens resented John Edwards not fulfilling his first United States Senate term prior to beginning his run for the Presidency of the United States.

Obama does not have a sterling work history. He was a state legislator for the state of Illinois which is certainly not that impressive. He has been criticized for refusing to vote yes or no on many issues while in the state legislature of Illinois and casting only a present vote refusing to put his political positions on recorded record in order that he could latter be held accountable for his vote. Obama is 47 years old and his lack of a significant work history is troublesome. Unlike the other presidential candidate, he has no military background.

Obama’s former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been widely criticized for the publications and philosophies advocated by the church Obama attended for twenty years in Chicago, Illinois. Many of the church messages from the pulpit have been considered by many to be racist, anti -America and sexist. Obama’s explanation that he was unaware of the controversial preaching’s of his church after attending the church for 20 years has caused him to lose creditability with many voters.

There are other things that have brought scrutiny to Obama such as a questionable land deal with a since convicted felon Tony Rezko from whom Obama purchased the lot adjoining Obama’s current residence and his association with controversial former radical Weatherman activist Bill Ayers.

In discussing what harmed the personal opinion of Obama with certain Democrats, you only need to look to the organization Moveon.org. Moveon is an organization that was design to promote Democratic causes and is an organization that solicits Democrats all over the country for political donations. During the presidential primaries, Moveon announced that it was solely supporting Obama for president over Hillary Clinton and Moveon began promoting Obama’s candidacy over fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton. Moveon used financial resources that it had obtained from Democrats all over the country to defeat and destroy a fellow Democrat without any objection from Obama. Moveon released a valuable 1.7 million Democratic e-mail list to the Obama campaign. These actions violated a sense of fairness and did serious harm to unity of the Democratic Party.

Many voters opinion of Barack Obama has been harmed with the ruthless one sided pro Obama blogs like Daily Kos and the Huffington Post whose primary duties have been to attempt to seek and to destroy Obama’s political opponents. These blogs rendered ruthless daily attacks on fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, causing great resentment within the Democratic Party.

The national media has been pro Obama to a fault. Rightfully or wrongfully, Obama’s popularity may have been hurt by a general feeling of unfairness of the national media in favor of Obama. A recent Rasmussen poll demonstrated that 51% of those polled believe the national media is attempting to have Obama elected president of the United Sates with its biased political coverage. Many of the national media attacks against Hillary Clinton have been considered vicious and sexist by many Democrats.

Many believe Obama’s followers went too far when they accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of being racist and running a racist campaign against Obama. Many Hillary Clinton supporters believe that the Democratic national committee members went out out of their way to assure that Obama was the Democratic nominee.

Again, labeling someone a racist has no benefit. Voters have many issues to shift through prior to deciding who will be their presidential choice in the upcoming election. There are many issues that will decide this presidential contest other than a candidate’s race.

Bobby Dees

COUNTERPOINTS BY LEONARD CARRIER

Bobby Dees makes claims in his article of nonsupport for Barack Obama that either have no basis or are highly prejudicial.  The first of these claims is that certain “political pundits” have charged that if you are white and don’t support Obama you’re probably a racist.  I challenge Bobby Dees to provide the names of such pundits.  I know of no one who has brought forth such charges. Consequently, I think that Dees is guilty of advancing a “straw man” argument, one in which an outrageously false claim is made only to be knocked down.

After presenting his “straw man” argument, Dees articulates what he considers to be some of the “problems” with Obama’s candidacy, the first of which being that he “lacks a substantive message.”  Although Republican strategists have also made this claim, it is blatantly false.  Obama has detailed proposals on ending the Iraq occupation, shoring up Social Security, providing a universal health plan, and improving public education.  Anyone who is not lazy can find these proposals on Obama’s website.  In addition, Obama has asked ordinary voters to submit their ideas for planks in the Democratic National Platform—the first time ordinary voters have been asked for their input in a party platform.  I personally attended one of these neighborhood meetings, and our ideas were submitted to Obama’s campaign.  To accuse someone of not having specific plans solely because he is a fine orator borders on being idiotic.

Dees next mentions Obama’s purported “lack of experience.”  Again, this is another Republican “talking point,” but it is clearly false.  Both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln had less administrative experience when they were elected than Obama has. Obama had years of experience in the Illinois legislature before becoming a Senator.  To say, as Dees does, that someone presently in office is being “disloyal” to his constituency by running for another office would disqualify everyone seeking a higher position.  Certainly, Alaska Republicans do not feel betrayed because their governor agreed to be McCain’s running mate after serving only eighteen months in office.

Another of Dees’ claims is that Obama lacks a “sterling work history.”  There is again no basis for this claim.  The citizens of the State of Illinois must have appreciated his work in the State legislature, because they elected him to be their senator.  Of course, there is a perception in the South that blacks are lazy, and I hope that Dees has not been influenced by this misperception in making such a claim.  At 47 years old, Obama is older than John F. Kennedy was when he took office.  To reject someone because he has “no military background” would also be to reject Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton.  Dees must also remember that fine military officers make bad presidents, as witness Ulysses S. Grant.

Dees also trots out the canard about Obama’s being a member of Jeremiah Wright’s congregation, smearing both Wright, the former U.S. marine, and Obama at a second remove.  This is “guilt by association,” because Obama has never parroted what Wright said.  Wright also is maligned, because snippets of his sermons were tailored to make him look unpatriotic.  Anyone listening to the whole of Wright’s sermons would not be taken in by this flimsy hatchet job.  More guilt by association charges involve Obama’s supposed dealings with Rezko and Ayers.  Anyone who has played the game, “six degrees of separation” would know that you could connect anyone with anyone else in the world, through intermediaries, despite the fact that the principals have nothing in common.

Dees next blasts the political action organization, MoveOn.org for taking sides in the Democratic primary race, and then criticizes Obama for not objecting to MoveOn’s decision.  This is a stupid objection.  Why should a candidate object to an independent organization’s support over a rival?  If the shoe were on the other foot, and MoveOn had supported Hillary Clinton, should Clinton be blamed if she refused that support?  I don’t think so.  Dees also claims that Daily Kos and the Huffington Post have offended voters by supporting Obama over his rivals.  Again, why should this support in any way be blamed on Obama?  Does Dees expect a candidate to disavow his supporters?  If so, why would he be running for office at all?

Dees next blames the “national media” for being biased in support of Obama.  This is another Republican talking point, but it has no basis in reality.  The Wall Street Journal has been steadfastly conservative in its viewpoint, and even the New York Times has featured conservative columnists such as William Kristol and David Brooks.  Turn on television to Fox News and you will get biased reporting in favor of Republicans. Most of the attacks on Hillary Clinton were made by these conservative journalists.

Finally, Dees says that “many believe Obama’s followers went too far” in accusing the Clintons of running a racist campaign against Obama.  I ask, who are these “many” who believe these things?  And who are these “followers” making such accusations?  And why is all this speculation in any way an objection to Obama’s candidacy?

To sum up, I believe that Bobby Dees has issued a cranky criticism of Obama tricked out as a defense against being called a racist.  I don’t know whether Bobby Dees is a racist or not.  Perhaps he’s just still sore that Hillary didn’t get the Democratic nod. But whatever the reason he’s angry with Obama, he’d better get over it.  Otherwise he’s in for four more years of the policies of George W. Bush.

Len Carrier

ADDENDUM BY DUSTY…

(a.k.a. – the “certain political pundit”)

When I forwarded “Bobby Dees’ ” slam on Obama to Len Carrier, I rather suspected (and forecast to “Dees”) that Len would take him to task on his flimsy, Republican talking- point rant on Obama.  Len went much further, I’d say, and pretty much blew Bobby Dees out of the water on all points.  But I’ve concluded that, in spite of Len’s logical thrashings of Dees, he still needs a more out-right form of literal spanking. I’m honored and pleased to supply it here. He in fact has challenged me to “do my best”.  So here goes:

 I’ll cut to the chase and cover the points underlying the “issues” pointed and counter-pointed by Dees and Carrier, respectively.

First of all, “Bobby Dees” does not exist. “Dees” is a pseudonym behind which our DW founder and editor hides in order to protect himself (for unknown reasons)  in the expression of his political views.  I can’t—and won’t—go farther than that lest I risk revealing Dee’s true identity to the few who haven’t already figured it out. But I will say before closing the issue, that any blogger or publisher who won’t sign his true name to his public expressions of opinion clearly lacks the courage of his convictions.

Having said that, I will add that “Bobby Dees” has blatantly hoisted himself on his own petard.  No one mentioned him in particular in the article I wrote and posted on this site on August 25, 2008, entitled “NY Times Bigotry Test”.  It is evident that Dees took the test, flunked it miserably, and then—recognizing himself in the portrait of bigotry I painted– got defensive enough to write a diatribe against the man towards whom he is in fact racially biased.  If the shoes didn’t fit, why did Bobby Dees put them on and squeal so loudly of the pain (of being  purported accused of racial bigotry).

I’ll tell it like it is. Dees founded the DW site as an open forum for the purported sharing and debating of freely-expressed political thoughts and proposals.  To his close associates, however, Dees has many times informed everyone that he is a big-D Democratic Party member and supporter and that he further intended to maintain the DW site for the pursuit and accomplishment of Democratic (big-D) goals, agenda and political candidates.

Consistent with this end, Dees endorsed Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and pretty much steered away from all comments on Obama until it became a fait accompli that he had his Party’s nomination. At that point, Dees amazingly and (to all the DW Staff writers and contributors with whom I have conversed, saving Bobby Dees himself) began publishing Republican-sponsored talking points slamming Obama. This in spite of purportedly being a staunch Clinton supporter and despite Hillary’s Convention-declared call for her supporters to endorse and support Obama—without question or reservation, because they shared essentially the same values and political platforms.  Hillary and Bill Clinton had buried the hatchets of earlier dissentions with Obama, but somehow, Bobby Dees could not and still can not follow suit. Why not?

None of Dee’s criticisms of Obama are either original or meaningful, and Len Carrier’s dissection of them point for point demonstrate just that.  What conclusion does that leave this writer with?  – With the conclusion that Bobby Dees is in fact the present bane of the southern Democratic (predominantly male) voter. The bane of the Democratic party because, when all the smoke is cleared away from the things he says about Obama (merely warmed-over regurgitations of Republican party talking points), one motive for opposing Obama remains as the likely cause of Dee’s anti-Obama defection from his former big-D status as a pro-active Democratic supporter.  Maybe the motive is subconscious and maybe it is felt and yet intentionally repressed (closeted) by a turn-coat Democrat who doesn’t want to publicly appear to be the bigot he is. Only Dees himself can answer that question. But as an attorney I have been taught that people in public positions of influence and authority are and morally should be judged on the basis of appearance.  One who assigns to himself loyalty to the Democratic party and its policies and ideals and who takes it upon himself to become a public (on the internet) spokesman for that Party should avoid at all costs avoid the appearance of impropriety—in this case– of being a bigot.

I confessed to my own knee-jerk bias in the article I published on August 25^th. In fact, I reflexively (early-on when he declared it) shared with Obama himself the view of him as a “black” man, although he is neither black nor white, but a genetic amalgam of both. I used the example of the NY Times “Bigotry Test”  (which I contrived for the purpose of demonstrating the danger of bias lurking in us all) challenging everyone to consider why they (all of us) are willing to accept the fact that a white woman can give birth (as did Obama’s mother) to a black child, while no one in America would readily accept the reciprocal situation: i.e., that a black woman might give birth to a white child.

What has caused Bobby Dees, Democratic Party zealot (his entire life), to publicly write articles the natural result of which is to turn the opinions of readers everywhere against the now officially-nominated Democratic candidate for president?  I will not here write at length extolling the many virtues of Obama or (because Len Carrier has already done it in spades) compose counter-points for Bobby Dee’s banal Obama bashings, which are clearly now that which I will here denominate them – the APPARENT rantings of an enraged southern bigot, who’d rather America suffer another 8 years of ruinous Republican war-mongering, depression-precipitating rule than elect an African American to the nation’s highest office.

Bobby, if the shoe fits, wear it; own up to it.  But don’t expect those around you to withhold their expressions of disappointment, revulsion and contempt. Your negative rantings on the subject of Obama constitute a turncoat betrayal of your espoused membership in the Democratic Party and create the impression (the appearance as opposed to the certainty , because only you know what truly lurks in your mind and heart) of being the bigot of which I wrote on August 25, 2008.  I concede that it well may be the case that you don’t have a bigoted bone in your abundantly southern body; but I will maintain with the same solemn degree of conviction that you have certainly given the world abundant cause to say you have given the appearance of being among that element that has the greatest potential for dividing the Democratic Party to such an extent that that Party’s candidate might well lose in the November election.  The appearance of the self-righteous, hypocritical and closeted Caucasian southern bigot.

By the way, Bobby Dees, there was one point Len Carrier didn’t make that’s worthy of mention regarding your absurd and impertinent arguments in Obama’s regard. You point to John Kerry’s failure in NC to get the presidential votes, noting that 73% voted against him. From that irrelevant stat,  you extrapolate the most amazing leap over logic I’ve ever tried to decipher: You say the 73 percent who voted against him did not do so based on racial bias. Duhhhhh!  From that you argue that we should not conclude that a registered white Democrat (such as yourself) who intends to vote for McCain (which you obviously do, or you are a certifiable nut case for campaigning against your own candidate) has chosen to do so because of racial bias.  That dog, Bobby, not only don’t hunt – it don’t exist. There is no argument launched…no syllogism…no…anything.  The 73% who voted against Kerry were clearly voting for Bush because they are Republicans, voting for the Republican candidate.  In your case, Bobby, and in the cases of god-only-knows how many others of your recessive ilk,  you are a career card-carrying big-D Democrat who has defected to the Republican side in the most crucial presidential campaign in American history.  Neither with your righteous denials nor your logically-vacuous arguments will you continue to fool anyone about your reasons for slamming Barack Obama.

Don’t you just love freedom of expression, Bobby Dees?  Why don’t you come out of at least one of your closets and admit to the public who in fact you are?  Maybe more of us would listen to (and perhaps be more apt to believe in) you. What are you afraid of, big boy?

Dusty Schoch

September 10, 2008

Our Most Formidable Enemy is War