Stop the President from Attacking Iran!

Stop the President
from Attacking Iran!

ATTENTION ALL DI READERS:

Dear DI readers and democratic friends everywhere: 

Let’s make sure we keep that old aphorism (the one Bush continues to mutter but always mangles it) in mind— “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me three times, shame on ….US!”

We let ourselves and our Congressmen get sucked into wars we’re now clearly losing both in Afghanistan and Iraq because we fell asleep at the switch and didn’t bother to question what the Neo-cons were telling us to make us think this “war on terror” was a “mission possible” in terms of waging pre-emptive war against sovereign Islamic nations, when terror is a tactic and not a corporeal enemy, much less an enemy state.

We can hear the sabers rattling more menacingly every day, and the fascist neo-cons are carefully constructing more mythology to justify yet another invasion in the Middle East. This time, let’s urge our Congressmen to nip it before it buds. If we don’t, it will certainly be primarily our fault.

Senator James Webb and Rep. Mark Udall have introduced a bill, S. 759 / H.R. 3119, to prevent President Bush from attacking Iran without Congressional authorization.

You can use the tool (web link) below—quite easily–to ask your Senators and Representative to support this legislation.

Also, please ask your Senators and Representative to oppose over $90 million for rapid development and deployment of a 30,000-lb “bunker buster” (called the Massive Ordinance Penetrator) that many fear the administration might want to use against Iran.

HERE IS THE WEB LINK TO USE:

DI Editors wish to thank Leonard Carrier for the preceding link….along with all DI staff, editors, contributors and readers…for immediately using it.

Best,

Dusty

11 13 07

Is “Islamofascism” an Oxymoron?…

Or is the Oxymoron really

“Preemptive Defense of Democracy”?

An Analysis of American foreign policy as
Imperialism by Dr. Leonard Carrier, DI In-House
Historian and Philosopher
11 5 07

Ever since the end of World War II, we have needed an enemy to confront. First it was communism, and the red scare took us through two wars and numerous meddling in the affairs of other nations on the pretext that we were holding the line against the socialistic menace. Our toppling of the democratically-elected regime of Iran’s Mossadeq in 1953, and our subsequent support of the tyrant shah Pahlavi (and his notorious SAVAK) was just one example of such meddling, as was our toppling of the Allende regime in Chile.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, we invented a new enemy–one with no real borders–labeled “Islamofascism,” an oxymoron if ever there was one. Our invasion of Iraq was about control of their oil, not the trumped-up charge of Saddam’s having “weapons of mass destruction” and his cooperating with Al Qaeda.

Iran was supposed to be the next nation to fall into line, but Iraq didn’t turn out to be the “cake walk” the Bush Administration expected. Yet now we get the same, tired rhetoric about Iran’s nuclear threat, and how we have to do anything–including the use of tactical nuclear weapons–to prevent Iran’s potential for atomic weapons. This, of course, is dangerous nonsense because it might completely destabilize the Middle East. Far better to negotiate with Iran, using other nations as go-betweens as we used China to negotiate with North Korea.

What our government needs to realize–and it doesn’t make much difference whether it’s Democrat or Republican–is that the old way of making the world safe for capitalism (which was the real reason behind our meddling) doesn’t work anymore. If you really are committed to a global economy, then you can’t assume a purely nationalistic political stance. If the United States continues to behave like an empire, using any means at its disposal to feather its own nest while fouling the nests of other nations, then it will suffer the fate of other empires–such as the Roman Empire–with all taxpayer money going to fund far-flung military adventures, while the rot eats its way through the social fabric at home.

Reviving a Dead Horse

By: DW Foreign-Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch

PREFACE:  On October 5, 2007, High Point Enterprise editors published a column written by Neocon-artist, Bill Steigenwald again, with stagnant relevance, attacking NASA’s James Hansen for criticizing the Bush administration’s vacillating propaganda on global warming.  This columnist actually accused Hansen of “raving” against what happened in the White House with regard to the alteration of Hansen’s 2005 report on the ominous progress of global warming and the “tipping point” now less than a decade down the road after which it may be too late to do anything to save our polar ice caps and myriad species of life on earth (including us) .  It was nearly impossible for this writer to believe that a newspaper would again print such a rant against Hansen now that the whole world knows that he was telling us the absolute and terrifying truth and that Bush and his petroleum bully boys were lying to us and criminally altering scientific reports in the process. What follows here is a letter (now an open letter) to our local newspaper regarding their editors’ decision to publish this neo-concerted effort to sell the American public—again—the “big lies” that Orwell warned us would come in 1984…missing it only by about two decades.

We should all pause to ponder the likeness of what Adolph Hitler did in 1933 and what Bush is doing while I write. Hitler was taking aim at the intellectuals of his day when he orchestrated that symbolic burning of the books of all those thinkers of his days he labeled “leftist liberals and dangerous intellectuals”. This was fascism in its most insidious stage…IN THE BEGINNING.  When we failed to indict, prosecute and impeach for treason our President for the part he played in the criminally-corrupt plan to falsify a federal agent’s reporting of scientific evidence of global warming—a process that threatens our lives and all life on earth—we were witnessing the BEGINNING OF FASCISM’S REIGN IN AMERICA.  For the whole frightening story, hit the link to the “Free Book” on the homepage of this website—“American Fascism…”  click here—

DEAR HP ENTERPRISE EDITORS….

I’m “reluctantly” submitting a counter-point article on the Bill Steigenwald column you posted today (9/5/07)…primarily because it’s a dead horse issue. Steigerwald in the article is actually accusing NASA’s James Hansen of deceit in criticizing Bush for his now established act of changing the science on global warming.  Even Bush has retracted his statements denying global warming—the ones he made at the time of the Hansen/Cooney issue about which Bill S presently writes.  This guy (Steigenwald) is a neo-conservative satirist  at most, and his rant against Hansen is—again—beating a dead horse, and the dead horse is the treacherous collaboration of Cooney and Bush to falsify scientific reporting.

Hansen raised Cain in the media when his Goddard Institute report (with which no scientist with credentials on earth now disagrees) was gutted…that is edited by a White House Lawyer before it was published.

Cooney (the lawyer who altered NASA’s [Goddard) report] is a petroleum industry puppet (a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute in fact before becoming a White House lawyer), and Bush’s either permitting or ordering Cooney to change the reported science was  an act as fascistic as any U.S. President has ever committed. Hitler at least had the integrity to openly burn books containing truths he wished to bury….Bush had his bully boys  edit out the truth and substitute Exxon-Mobilized lies and greasy glossings-over behind closed doors. Hansen bravely outed them from their criminally-collaborating closets.

After changing the “10-year MUST reduce CO2 or destroy earth”  story to “uncertainty”, Cooney concocted (as LAWYER re-writing a  NASA Science report) a statement that NASA reported “the uncertainties so great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision  making.” A total lie and fabrication. Hansen reported the myriad alterations made by Cooney to Hansen’s scientific text.  The proof of black-penned editing on Cooney’s part is ubiquitous, and no-one now disputes it.  Google it if you have any doubts (just type in “Cooney Hansen Goddard Report Lies” and you will eventually find photographs of the alterations in Cooney’s broad and brazen hand).

Your publishing this, in effect, “revisionist” account of Cooney’s treacherous “re-writing” of a scientific report–now that the world (including Bush) agrees with it–gives the appearance of either not being aware of  current scientific consensus or of knowingly contributing to the petroleum corporations’ chanting of the biggest lies in Orwellian-Big-Brother history.

Bill S in the column characterizes as “ravings” what is clearly happening. Arctic sea ice is melting at a rate now that will turn the poles into urban-inundating drinking water within a scientifically-predictable time. CO2 emissions are clearly the cause.

Publishing this idiot’s 2007 attempt to revise 2005 history when the world has discovered and now agrees Hansen was right on the money is (my opinion) difficult to understand from the editorial standpoint, and impossible to accept.

Dusty Schoch

9 5 07

* The “Fourth Horse” referred to  in the John’s prophetic Book of Revelations was “death”.

What is in Fact Coming…

WHAT IS, IN FACT…

COMING TO AMERICA?

IS IT ANOTHER CRASH AND DEPRESSION?

THE ANSWERS….THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

Preface: On Sept. 20, DI Foreign Policy editor, Dusty Schoch posted on this site an article asking…and answering the question: “Is a Depression and Collapse of America in our Offing? You can bet Barbie’s Butt  it is.” That article is linked here: 

In this two-part follow-up article, by Leonard Carrier (DI In-house Historian and Philosopher), Len shares with us his short “pessimistic take on the New World Order” by commenting on the (much) longer article by Scott Thill (AlterNet writer) which trails.

In his “short take”, Len advises us to heed the warnings and prepare for the worst. In his “long take”, Thill explains the complex and convoluted corporate and stock corruptions which  are heading us to a repeat of America’s Stock Market Crash of 1929, making apt comparisons of our stock market’s machinations to  Las Vegas crap tables.

For all of you who’ve still got stock in
American corporations, this is a must-read.

For those of you who own no stock in
American corporations, this is a must-read.

LEN’S VIEW OF “WHAT TO DO”

We could all see this coming.

We all know that “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” But for the past seven years we have been behaving as if we do. As soon as the Bush Administration started giving away our budget surplus so that multi-millionaires could enjoy tax cuts, and as soon as we increased our billions-of-dollars borrowing from China and Japan to fund an oil war in Iraq, we knew we were in trouble. Yet what did we do about it? We re-elected the Shrub so he could keep doing what he was doing.

Pre-Bush one could go to Paris and enjoy getting a euro for 94 U.S. cents. Now it’s $1.43 for a single euro, and about $9 for a bottle of Coca Cola. That’s the real measure of how our dollar has eroded, not the phony statistics the government puts out. Look at the price of gasoline, the price of milk, the price of housing–despite the credit crunch. The day of reckoning is coming when, instead of pulling up the rest of the world to our living standard, we will be pulled down to the average–just another nation trying to get by selling weapons to other countries so they can make war against one another, trying to keep cool as the planet gets hotter.

What’s the solution to living in such a dreary, globalized world? Get yourself a secluded house in the mountains, dig a well, and plant a vegetable garden. Ride out the storm by bartering with the gold and jewelry you’ve traded your ever-devaluing dollars for. And stock your cellar with lots of fine wines. You’ll have plenty to drink about in the new world that’s coming.

THILL’S SHRILL WARNING

The Crash of 1929: Are We on the Verge of a Repeat?

By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted July 26, 2007. http://www.alternet.org/story/56443/?page=4

Hedge funds have helped create a counterfeit economy that some experts say could lead to another full-blown economic depression.

[A senior adviser to President Bush] said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” — Ron Suskind, “Without a Doubt,” New York Times

The hypermarket beckons

News flash: The American economy is a hyperreality engineered by Ph.D.s working hand-in-hand with colluding media multinationals, political officials and some of the biggest names in business — and the banks that invest in them. In other news, greed is still good.

Of course, the idea that Wall Street is corrupt is as old as Wall Street itself. After all, the immortal “Greed is good” aphorism was muttered by a white-collar criminal in the 1987 movie named after Wall Street, which was directed by a guy, Oliver Stone, who made his name in postmodern cinema and political agitation. In fact, a film of the same name came out in 1929, the year of the stock market crash. And so the narrative replicates.

Speaking of replicants, Oliver Stone is a man who tackled not only labyrinthine presidential conspiracies in the 1991 film JFK but also the numb pathos of 9/11 in last year’s World Trade Center. Indeed, Wall Street indirectly tackled the junk bond and insider trading economic screw-jobs that riddled the ’80s like so many overpriced, overly puffy hairdos. Stone envisioned the film as Crime and Punishment on Wall Street, which was only partially fitting for the time because there was a ton of crime and very little punishment.

And the more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same. Indeed, only the nomenclature has been altered. Instead of junk bonds and insider trading, we have hedge funds and private equity takeovers. And instead of Gordon Gekko and Wall Street, we have Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch and, soon, the Wall Street Journal.

In the 1980s, guys like Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky — who anticipated the “Greed is good” phrase with a 1986 commencement speech at Berkeley in which he stated, “Greed is all right. … I think greed is healthy” — were riding high on schemes that failed. Both served as inspirations for Stone’s Wall Street scumbag Gordon Gekko, but both got off with a few years in prison and a few hundred million dollars lost. Milken shaved a 10-year sentence down to two, and in 2007, still had a net worth of about $2 billion. Roll the happy ending.

But the hyperreality does not end there, and by hyperreality I mean simply a reality that exists outside the one you live in, whoever you are. It can come in many forms. Film is one such simulation, network and cable news is another, and our two-party political machine, as Ron Suskind explains in the quote at the top of this article, is a finer-tuned one still. But they all collide and collude in the social space of Wall Street and its various markets, on the internet and on the trading floors of the New York Stock Exchange and onward.

Take Milken’s favored high-yield junk bonds, for example, which are basically bonds that are rated below investment grade by ratings organizations like Standard and Poor’s or Moody’s and therefore subject to not only a much higher risk of default or other cash-sucking crashes but also higher paydays if you can make them work. To do that, you need a little help from your friends and unsuspecting investors, which is why Boesky and Milken went to jail for suckering friends and strangers into dense schemes that went nowhere.

And if that whole scam sounds familiar, that is because, as is always the case with hyperreality, it is happening again. Yet this time, it is happening in an information age in which 97 percent of stock transactions are conducted electronically. And this time it is not because of junk bonds, but because of hedge funds, mortgage-backed securities, subprime loans and a bizarro virtual scheme known as naked shorting, which has been around as long as — and played a role in — the 1929 crash, and according to some, could trigger the next one any day now.

“We’ve divorced the system from paper,” explained Overstock.com CEO and hedge fund activist Patrick Byrne to me by phone, “and since then it’s become easier to divorce it from reality. But the problem is that so much has been drained out of the system using these tools that the money is not there. If this gets exposed, the money is not there. It’s been turned into Ferraris and mansions in the Hamptons. It can’t be paid back. The system is going to vapor lock.”

Nailing subprime’s number

The recent implosion of the subprime housing market — in which people with little or no significant savings of their own are offered huge loans for little or no money down for houses often but not always located in fast-track developments — shares similarities with the junk bond burnout of the 1980s.

Indeed, the subprime loans that carved America’s cash cow for the last few years were rated just as poorly as Milken’s junk bonds and ended up pretty much the same way: with the scattering of investors and players from a hailstorm of collapsed debts, besmirched reputations and impending government oversight. While Milken’s house of cards was built on leveraged buyouts (LBOs), where an acquirer issued a bond to pay for an acquisition that he would pay back with funds yet to be earned, the engine that made subprime’s train roll off the tracks are collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which are intricately structured and packaged strategies pooled together to decrease the risk generated by the fact that they are usually home equity, car and credit loans so poorly rated that they promise only collapse for those who get them and seized assets for those who offer them.

Like I said, same scam, different name.

But this time the outlook is worse. For one, the subprime housing implosion has been a disaster for the market as a whole. Consider the case of Bear Stearns: Their hilarious hedge holes — the CDO-heavy High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund and its sister, High-Grade Structured Credit Fund — cratered in early June, going from about $10 billion to a few hundred million in assets within a matter of months, even though the hedge fund itself had been barely up and running for more than 10 months.

But here’s the thing about hedge funds that makes them so lucrative: You can play both sides against the middle — the middle class, come to think of it — and still win. Huge. So it was no surprise when the Wall Street investment titan decided to bail out its own hedge fund, to which it had committed only around $35 million, with over $3 billion and counting. As Bear Stearns Chief Financial Officer Sam Molinaro explained in a conference call, “There continues to be significant value in it.”

For those who work there, maybe. Meanwhile, those who invested in Bear Stearns’ hedge funds are out of money, and those crushed beneath their so-called high-grade structures are out of their homes and cars, which are in turn seized and put back into the asset pool. Not a bad business if you can get it.

And while Molinaro’s estimation of Bear Stearns hedge fund may sound rosy, the hemorrhaging of the housing market is anything but. Open up any newspaper to the business section and look for any headlines involving plummeting home sales or declining property values, and you’ll taste the bitter pills, because Bear Stearns is by no means alone. Swiss wealth management powerhouse UBS shuttered its Dillon Read Capital Management hedge fund after losing over $120 million invested in the subprime Kool-Aid. Then there was Amaranth Advisors, which pulled off the biggest hedge fund collapse in history when it blew almost $6 billion of its $9 billion in assets in a mere week after a highly leveraged bet, although it threw its chips down on the price of natural gas

That’s not the housing market, you say? Good point. In fact, the point altogether. As we shall see, hedge funds spread their bets across the entire economic table, and they are armed with that most virtual of investment strategies. It is called the naked short.

Getting naked with shorts

For those who don’t know how hedge funds work, consider the casino table favorite known as craps. And for those who make their living or leisure playing it, forgive this short introduction.

Craps is a game that’s been with us, to get hyperreal about it, since the Crusades, which itself was a series of highly risky but also highly lucrative takeovers. It is played on a table littered with numbers and any number of betting strategies, but rolls are governed by what is called the point, which is decided by the first roll of the session known as the come-out and is usually 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 or 10. These are the numbers the dice have the greatest chance of repeating on subsequent rolls, although the one they can hit the most is 7, given all the possible combinations. For this reason, if you roll a 7 when the point is any of the aforementioned numbers, the session is ended and the casino takes all the money off the table, pockets it and then hands the dice off to the next roller. Sucker.

If you want to join a craps game, you have to put your money down on the Pass Line, which is governed by the point. If the point is 8, and the roller hits it again, everyone wins and all the bets on the table are paid out. In other words, when you play craps, you are usually betting that you will hit another number besides 7 and make a ton of dough before you eventually do in fact hit it. That is called Pass Line play.

But there is another way to play craps, and that is to play the Don’t Pass Line, which is basically a bet on 7. So there you are, throwing down your money and hoping that everyone at the table rolls a 7 while they’re hoping to roll anything but. If they lose, you win. Not very popular, but since you’re betting with the house, and the house always win, not a bad betting strategy.

But there’s an even better one and that’s playing both lines at the same time, which was frowned upon the last time I did it in Vegas, but was nevertheless legal. By playing the Pass and Don’t Pass Line off of each other, you let your place bets make all your money for you, and let the line bets offset each other. If you live long enough in the game, you can make buckets of cash in advance of the end that always comes.

Hedge funds are pretty much the same thing. They play both sides of the market, going long on stocks they feel will pay off in the end, and going short on those they don’t. Except for one glaring difference, according to Overstock.com CEO and hedge fund activist Patrick Byrne.

“Craps is a good analogy,” he told me via email. Except that hedge funders “are also the croupier and own the casino management and the gaming regulators.”

Byrne isn’t the only activist convinced of the analogy. Engineer, investor advocate and InvestigatetheSEC.com webmaster David Patch took it much further in an email exchange. “Hedge funds are more and more becoming a craps game,” he assented via email, “but the problem is more than just those sitting at the tables become the losers. The industry pools their bets in such concentrated levels that the funds begin to drive the markets to levels beyond the values that would normally be dictated by the fundamentals.”

But according to Robert J. Shapiro, Clinton undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs and senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council’s Progressive Policy Institute, it’s not the hedge funds or more particularly their both-sides-against-the-middle strategies that are the problem per se. “The ability to hedge investments encourages investment,” he told me by phone. “You get more of it because you can hedge it. It reduces the likelihood that financial institutions are going to find themselves in trouble if the markets go against them, if they guess wrong.”

What brings Shapiro, Byrne, Patch and a growing legion of investors, scholars and politicians together is the hyperreal practice known as naked shorting. Recall craps and the Don’t Pass Line: In it, you are betting on failure, or as the stock market would term it, devaluation. Well, Wall Street has a Don’t Pass Line of its own, and it’s called shorting. Just as the Don’t Pass player is waiting for a 7 roll and the house to clean you out, short investors are literally banking on the collapse of some stocks. As Shapiro explained it, it’s a perfectly legal — if not, as in craps, uncool — way of preying on those companies living on borrowed time.

“Short sells are fine because just as you buy a share on the belief that the stock is going up, you short a company on the belief that the price is going down,” Shapiro said. “In both cases, you inject information into the market. Short sales are a way of injecting negative information into the market. There’s nothing wrong with them; they’ve been around for a long, long time.”

Forget for a moment that we are talking about injecting information, rather than actual money, into the market. Information, as anyone born in the era of the personal computer or Internet understands all too well, is easily manipulated. But if Shapiro’s first proposition rings a bit hollow, at least the second one is true. In fact, as Shapiro clarified, it was massive if unregulated short sales, known as naked shorts, that gave the infamous 1929 crash (which in turn spawned the Great Depression, its long, long legs).

“There were a lot of unregulated short sales in the stock market crash; that’s true,” Shapiro confirmed. “And regulating short sales were part of the initial regulation from the SEC in 1936.”

Byrne is a bit more colorful on the subject. “I do think it played a role. Hedge funds were called pools back then. Rich guys got together, pooled their capital and manipulated the stock market. And, in fact, newspapers covered the pools like they would cover sports teams; it was public entertainment. It wasn’t too dissimilar from the way the New York Times is trying to make rock stars out of hedge funders today.”

In other words, naked shorts are a final confirmation that hyperreality has been with us as long as the Bible. They are virtual transactions, ones that never actually occur.

“In short sales,” Shapiro explained, “you don’t own the share you sell; instead you borrow it. Then you replace it when you cover the short. If you’re right and the price has gone down, you replace it at a lower price, and the difference between what you sold it for and what price you replaced it at is your profit. The problem with a naked short is that you don’t borrow the share you sell. You sell it without ever borrowing it. In effect, you invent a share.”

If this is beginning to sound like a game of Monopoly built on fake money, that’s because it is. By injecting so many invented shares into the market using naked shorting, hedge funds have not only created an economy in which they can manipulate the stocks of companies smaller than Microsoft and Wal-Mart, but they have also created a market in which there are more shares than actual stocks. And that’s about as hyperreal as an economy can get.

“It’s essentially counterfeiting,” Byrne added. “You’re creating counterfeit shares in the system. It works like this. In a normal stock transaction, you give me money and I give you stock. And not paper stock anymore. It turns out that there is a loophole in the system: When I come to give you the stock that you bought, if I don’t actually have any stock, I can give what is effectively an IOU. Now you never know about this unless you know the right question to ask your broker, but it’s possible that all you really have in your account is an IOU from your brokerage account from a different broker working with a hedge fund.”

It is precisely this imbalance between real and invented shares that Byrne and others argue is primed to explode the subprime collapse into a full-blown economic depression.

“There are a lot of us who think we are living on the edge of 1929,” Byrne continued. “When you consider what’s happened with mortgage-backed securities, you get the feeling these might be the first rumblings. There may be more IOUs in the system than there is liquidity, in which case the entire thing is going to vapor lock as soon as it is exposed. One of the healthiest indications of the vibrancy of an economy is capital formation. Seven years ago, America was responsible for 57 percent of IPO capital raised around the world. Now it’s down to 16 percent. A national disaster.”

Greed is God

So what is the remedy for this historical collusion among money, markets and the managed realities of naked shorting and hedge fund buyouts? A political solution may be on the way, according to Shapiro.

“The SEC has just very recently finally agreed that this is a very serious problem that is destroying some companies and undermining the integrity of the markets,” he explained. “They came out with regulations in 2005, which we criticized for having huge loopholes. But this year, the SEC finally said their attempts to address the problem have failed, so they are seriously tightening the regulations. Now we’ll see if they enforce them.”

But history, as always, likely will teach a different lesson. Consider two events in that regard. The first happened after — and because of — the 1929 Crash: The Glass Steagall Act of 1933 mandated the separation of bank types according to their business, after the Senate-led Pecora Commission investigation of the crash found that collusion between commercial and investment banks played a major role in it. That act stood for 66 years, until none other than Bill Clinton repealed it in 1999, and here we are again.

Here’s the other lesson: According to a recent Financial Times story, “Barack Obama received more donations from employees of investment banks and hedge funds than from any other sector, with Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase among his biggest sources of support.” While Obama has already promised to increase regulation on hedge funds and the tax burden on private equity groups (or today’s “pools,” as Byrne explained them), if he becomes president, one can imagine he’ll be singing quite a different tune if he becomes the first black man in history to run the White House.

Throw in the fact that Rupert Murdoch is set to take over the Wall Street Journal, the paper of record for these subjects and scams, and you have more of the same reality programming.

Murdoch’s holdings would probably give the Pecora Commission fits: Not only does he own Fox News and now the Wall Street Journal, to go along with the New York Post, MySpace, DirecTV, HarperCollins, the Sunday Times, TV Guide, the Weekly Standard, 20th Century Fox … Stop me if you’ve had enough, but he’s also slated to unveil Fox Business Network on Oct. 15, which no doubt will team up with all of his other assets to turn Murdoch into something else besides a propaganda arm of the Bush administration or, in fact, the puppeteer who pulls its strings.

And for those of you who think that may be too broad a generalization, consider this: As the Huffington Post explained, “By taking advantage of a provision in the law that allows expanding companies like Mr. Murdoch’s to defer taxes to future years, the News Corp. paid no federal taxes in two of the last four years, and in the other two, it paid only a fraction of what it otherwise would have owed. During that time, Securities and Exchange Commission records show that the News Corp.’s domestic pretax profits topped $9.4 billion.”

Can you say free ride?

For those who argue that Murdoch and hedge funds are miles apart, consider this: He knows how to hedge just fine, thanks. After all, it was none other than current Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Guiliani who in 1996 threatened to run Fox News commercial-free on a city-run access channel if Time Warner Cable didn’t end its 11-month battle to keep Murdoch out of New York households. It’s also important to note, especially if you are Murdoch, that it was Guiliani who implemented RICO statutes to nail Michael Milken with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. But Murdoch is an old hand at hedging: He’s so far funneled $40,000 into Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Whoever loses, he wins.

Like I said, nice business if you can get it.

For the Truth on Global Warming

For the Truth on Global Warming…

Follow the Money

(DI’s In-House Historian and Philosopher, Dr. Leonard Carrier, here comments on Paul Brown’s recent piece, “Ice caps melting fast:  say goodbye to the Big Apple.” )

Who is it that benefits most by (1) denying that global warming is occurring, and (2) if it is occurring, we can’t do anything to stop it? That’s right, those big fossil-fuel companies, and all the other companies that depend on fossil fuel for their wealth. They don’t want to change anything, because they’ve got too much invested in the status quo.

Consider this from a report sponsored by the right-wing John Locke Foundation and written by Joseph Schwartz in July 2007: “The restrictions they [environmentalists] seek to force on the world would require us to relinquish the energy consumption that undergirds the extraordinary prosperity, health, and comfort of life in the U.S., the nations of Europe, and other wealthy countries. At the same time, those restrictions would prevent individuals in the world’s poorest nations from aspiring to the rich world’s quality of life, consigning them instead to continued poverty an hardship.”

Now, doesn’t that sound like one rich person telling other rich people not to give up their creature comforts just to save something meaningless like the environment? And doesn’t it also tell poor people that if they want some trickle-down effects from the very rich, they ought to sacrifice their environment as well? Why don’t we call them what they are: “selfish bastards.” They pay off researchers to gather evidence for the view that will keep the wealth flowing into their coffers. If that means that the environment suffers, so be it. They don’t want to pay more taxes to clean up what they’ve damaged, and they want their fossil-fuel gravy train to keep on running. After all, what’s the destruction of the environment compared to a good magnum of Dom Perignon.

Len Carrier

Big Al’s Nobel Triumph

War in Iraq: America Loses

War in Iraq:

America Loses

Corporations Win

By DW Foreign-policy Editor, Dusty Schoch

It’s all over – all except for 16 more months of “face saving” inevitably to flow from Bush, using his military patsy (Petreus) to betray us into believing it’s not all over.

The saving “surge” is clearly a failure. More Americans and Iraqi’s are dying on all fronts. So how can I contend the corporations are “winning”?  Just look at the numbers—that is the dollars and sense:

Ever asked yourself why there is virtually no news coverage on the issue of Iraq’s only source of revenue…oil?  Regardless of the question, the answer is NOBODY KNOWS…for sure. For everybody’s information, although Bush promised us that laws would be enacted in Iraq whereby oil revenues would be shared by all citizens of Iraq, this has not happened and is never likely to ever happen. The question is…what has been happening for the 6 years we have occupied Iraq? Where have the billions in oil revenues gone and where will they go in the future?

The only SURE thing is that as America’s armed forces and so-called “insurgents”  continue to die as the war continues to wind down,  we all know it’s just a matter of time before American troops are withdrawn, and hell will break loose in this land of warring Islamic tribes.

And in the meantime, American dollars (ours) will continue to flow into Iraq, where the only ones profiting from our presence there are the American and British oil companies (and Halliburton-type “reconstruction” enterprises, and “Blackwater USA-type paramilitary corporations…all on our taxpayer payrolls.)

How big are those numbers?  You might think we’re paying just for the 170,000 military troops we presently have over there. But we’re really paying for nearly twice that. There are now 137,000 “contractors” (Blackwater type paramilitary) we’re also paying….such that our  total military occupation (civil and military) numbers 307,000…and that, my friends is one out of every thousand Americans.  Do the math. One out of every thousand of us are now in Iraq, making war.

What is that war costing us on a per-capita basis? Well, figuring only what Bush has just asked Congress for the next year ($190 Billion of our money)  it amounts to $633 from every American for next year alone. Money we’re spending on a war we’re losing.

But not the Corporations. Halliburton and Blackwater are still raking it in, and will continue raking it in until the bitter end of our inevitable withdrawal, upon which Bush will certainly declare that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but are “stabbed in the back by the peacemakers back home, yadayadaydada”  echoing the same lame lines the politicians handed us when we withdrew from our equally ill-advised war in Viet Nam.

But, as much as the Corporations are successfully war-bucking in Iraq, we can also look to their cash flow for the very signs that, while they are “winning” the dollars, we are losing the war. Most salient in the “dollar signs” out there is the story of Hunt Oil.

Ray L. Hunt, C.E.O. and President of Hunt Oil Company (of Dallas Texas…surprise, surprise!!), just last month (August, 2007) signed an oil-sharing production deal with Kurdistan.  Think about what that means.  Do you think maybe Hunt Oil has some “inside intel”…and that maybe that “inside intel” is that there will be no Iraq Government, per se, when we leave…and we are certainly in the process of leaving. Even Bush is comparing Iraq to Viet Nam now, though he scoffed at such parallels for each of the first 5 years we were at war in Iraq.

Is it just a “coincidence” that this same owner of Hunt Oil in Texas is a member of Bush’s  “Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board” (and therefore, clearly a friend and crony, because everyone knows Bush hires only cronies)?

The fact that Bush cronies are now transacting oil business with provisional governments in Iraq OTHER THAN THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT WE ESTABLISHED, clearly shows the war to establish and empower that “democratic regime” is LOST.

But not “lost” in terms of corporate profits and ultimate bottom-line “out-come”. 

At this moment (2:20 PM, Sept. 27, 2007), Halliburton, Blackwater and Hunt Oil are raking in huge profits…in the billions, while you and I are paying billions ($633 apiece for the coming year alone) to enable these war criminals to continue their blood-for-oil profiteering.

Before writing this piece, I looked and looked for more exact information on who’s been making money from Iraq oil since the American armed forces seized possession of it and the Islamic country in which it is located.  For those interested in digging further into this slimy corporate oil trade…for those of you who remember, as I do, that Halliburton was still doing business with Iran long after Bush declared it part of the “Axis of Evil”, you can look at a few sources of information that corroborate what I’m here contending.  Click here.

This is an article written by one Sarah Meyer entitled “Iraq Oil Reality vs the NY Times”.  Sarah Meyer is a researcher living in the UK. She is on the BRussels Tribunal Advisory Committee. This article can also be read on the BRussels Tribunal

I have no prediction to make regarding the future “success” of the corporate quest for oil and other war profits in Iraq when we finally withdraw American troops.  One thing to consider is that if 170,000 of our military troops were withdrawn today, 130,000 American paramilitary troops would remain. Wouldn’t this be sufficient to secure Hunt Oil’s oil deal with Kurdistan?  At present, neither President Bush nor General Petreus have any control over what the paramilitaries do, although they claim they are “working on it”, since recently reported cases show that wholesale murder is part and parcel of their general corporate modus operandum in Iraq.

There’s little doubt that Bush and the corporate-driven Neo-cons planned to enter Iraq and commandeer their oil in perpetuity. The diplomatic conclave American Forces constructed in Iraq is the largest and most secure of its kind in the world.  It was not built at the war’s inception because Bush was that determined to democratize Iraq and save its abused women and poor from a tyrant.

Let’s celebrate what Hunt Oil has shown us has occurred in Iraq: The war to establish a democratic government is lost.  Let’s celebrate the loss because it means there will soon be an end to American occupation of a foreign country, invaded on false pretenses and with fascistic brutality, a war killing over 4,000 American soldiers and over 600,000 non-militant Iraqi’s.

While we celebrate, lets mourn,  and then condemn the corporations who are still, even as I write….winning.

Dusty

9 27 07

Childhood

C h I l d h o o d

A Viet Nam Warrior’s Ruminations on the

Paradise of Childhood…Lost in a Perceived

Eternity of war

By: Michael K. Murphy*

          They used to say when you turned seven you’d reached the age of reason.  Now, some people will argue with that proposition.  Some will say that today’s kids reach that watershed event earlier, much earlier than that, maybe as early as six.  Others will argue that in our culture of much delayed and indulgent adolescence that “can” gets kicked down the road to eight or so.  No matter.  Seven is close enough.

          On September 11, 2008 — only about a year from now — children born on the same day that terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center will reach that magic adolescent milestone.   All of their brief lives into the threshold of “reason” they will have known only war.

          On September, 11, 2001, those kids who turned seven that day as they sat transfixed in front of their parents’ TV sets (or a parent’s TV sets in this most fractured society we have created for ourselves) when those terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center are now thirteen, old enough to have their reason formed by war and threats of war and their judgment tempered by war, only war;  “war” — actual, metaphysical, it makes no difference — war has become their primary emotional and intellectual frame of reference for themselves and to place others in the community of man.

          I remember the documentary films of WWII and the faces of those children of Europe.  They would, undoubtedly, be marked by that war all of their lives.  But Hitler committed suicide. The War ended.  And Europe got on with re-building itself.  But despite the positive end to that war those children had their childhood marked by war permanently and they would not forget it.  Never.

          Our children may be very different from the European children of WWII.  Worse off.  Much worse off.  Our children may be born, reach the age of reason, and grow to maturity and settled judgment — all with war as a constant presence in their lives.

          Many things will transform people from one thing to another,  poverty, great and sudden wealth, persistent discrimination – racial and otherwise — to name a few of the more obvious but I think all of those things will pale in comparison to spending one’s whole life in a state of war.

          It may not be the great debate of our times but what is to become of the millions of American children who are now becoming not only children “of” war but “war children” — and soon “war adults” — young boys and girls who will in their immaturity and under social pressure choose up sides early and hold those choosings fast ‘til death?  Will we become a modern “Sparta” or modern “Athens” or neither?  Whatever they become, though, not only will today’s “jihadist” children will carry the marks of a warrior into the next generation; our children will be there too.  And if our children come to match them tit for tat then strive as they must, as all children do, to best them from where will come the wisdom to put a stop to it all?

          I have a persistent and depressing image of a young and perfectly normal American warrior a decade from now using computer gaming skills she’s learning today to pilot an unmanned aerial vehicle over some Middle Eastern desert simply looking to kill someone.  And if you are not terrified by that image you are already there and have chosen sides.

Mike

*Mr. Michael Kevin Murphy is an attorney in Virginia, and a B.E.A. correspondent  of long standing. Mike served with the U.S. Army in Viet Nam during the period which straddled the 1968 Tet Offensive. He was commanding officer of an infantry rifle company in the Mecong River delta and  his badges and decorations  include the U. S. Parachutist Badge, the U.S. Combat Infantryman’s Badge, the Vietnam Ranger Badge (Biet Dong Quan), the U.S. Bronze Star Medal, thirteen Air Medals, and the Vietnam Gallantry Cross.             

Where Do We Go From Here?

 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

By: Joseph Cione *

      Last March 27, I celebrated the 60th anniversary of my arrival in the United States, and on the 31st of the same month I was delighted to celebrate my 55th year as citizen. Today, as it was then, I can say proudly and loudly that I am privileged to be a citizen of this generous, noble and marvelous land, where  people from every part of the world have continually come in search of a better life.

      In the last 60 years I have seen many elected presidents come and go. Some were great; most of them were good and a few turned out to be unworthy of the  honor or plain incompetent. Presently, the United States of America is under the spell of its 41st president : George W. Bush, who has been occupying the White House for the last six years, going on seven. During this time, Mr. Bush has chosen to carry out his many duties and  responsibilities tightly wrapped within a thick cloud of partisan secrecy and a stubborn attachment to personal beliefs often expressed with a tinge of Texan sarcasm and a conspicuous disdain for the rules of the English grammar.

      But that’s the least of  Mr. Bush’s problems. His main problem is the quality of his character. So far, he has shown to be a bullheaded individual who does not seem to have any difficulty manipulating the truth to his advantage. He also seems to believe that the meaning of justice is totally dependent on a particular success that one wishes to achieve. In other words, if it works, the aim must be “just”. For Mr. Bush, justice has a physical, palpable component that has very little to do with moral consciousness.  Perhaps, the facts listed below will describe Mr. Bush’s character traits more clearly than I could:   

    1. The number of dead American soldiers in Iraq is increasing each month. They’ll be 4,000 by the end of the year. The wounded soldiers are over 20,000, half of whom are permanently disabled. The casualties among the people of Iraq are said to be over 50,000 dead and many more wounded. This number includes innocent men, women and children.  Iraq’s infrastructure has been severely damaged, and the life of its citizens adversely affected.   

    2. As far as the military victory that Mr. Bush has been stubbornly adamant about and still is, no one believes it anymore. The lies that Mr. Bush and his friends have continually disseminated during the last several years have seemingly begun to come home to roost. A number of Mr. Bush’s staunch friends and allies have moved away from their servile allegiance to their leader and have begun to adopt a more independent posture on the subject of the Iraq war. Some of them who aspire to the 2008 presidential election have begun to criticize publicly Mr. Bush’s stubborn stance and illogical points of view.

    3. Mr. Bush after the “victory” of the year 2000 presidential election declared that he would use all his energy to unite the country. ”I would be a ‘uniter’”- he said. He proceeded  to achieve  the opposite. Our country, in fact, has never been more disunited than it is today. Since when have we had a Red America and a Blue America? I don’t recall any other president who has had the gall to say publicly: “If you are not with me you are against me?” I remember very vividly, during my life in Italy, that Benito Mussolini used  the same expression to remind us of his dictatorial rights. What’s Bush’s excuse? Is it possible that in the  midst of his mental confusion, Mr. Bush has completely forgotten that we are a free and democratic country?

    4.Those in the Federal Bureaus who are responsible for the health of the United States’ economy, are presently saying that the economy is in good shape, the inflation is  minimal and the number of those out of work is manageable. Meanwhile the U.S foreign rate deficit has reached billions of dollars as thousands of jobs are being  out-sourced regularly. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. In fact, Mr. Bush, as soon as he became president, got hold of the billions in surplus money he had received from the outgoing Clinton administration, and without hesitation, he distributed, as a tax deduction, 80% of it to 15% of the population–those who earned more than $ 200,000 a year, the billionaires, the steady contributors and the generous friends. The 85% of the  population, on the other hand, had to be satisfied with the remaining 20% of the surplus. Meanwhile, in the Congress, the Republican members made sure that the minimum hourly wage of $ 5.25 would never be increased. Thanks to the Democrats’ majority in Congress, the minimum hourly wage was recently increased to $ 7.25.

       The National Debt has risen to approximately eight trillions. The Consumer Debt (credit cards and car loans) has hit a record $ 2.6 trillion. A gallon of gasoline costs  now more that $ 3.00. Mr. Bush does not seem to worry about it. He and his friends are getting richer by the hour. Ask the EXXON’s CEO about the company’s profits. It couldn’t be any better. 

    5. Ever since Mr. Bush, with the blessings of his cronies, Cheney and Rumfeld, decided to thumb his nose at the United Nations organization and all its members,  the word “arrogant” became a label that the rest of the world loved to staple on the forehead of Mr. Bush and the country that he represents. Mr. Bush told the whole world that he decided to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein had WMDs and was ready to use them against the U.S.. As we all know today, Bush had lied through his teeth. Then, when it became evident to him that the WMD fable was no longer believable and acceptable as a valid  excuse for the invasion, Mr. Bush and his cronies changed the tune. The invasion was necessary, they began to blare away for all to hear, because Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator who had abused his own people, and therefore he deserved to be taken out by force.

That part of the world, Mr Bush figured, needed to change its way of life, century- old traditions, culture, laws and, perhaps, even the dress code. Why not? A reasonable dose of our present  a-la-Bush- kind of freedom and democracy could give the Iraqi’s all they need to succeed in the modern world.  Let’s face it, we, the United States of America, have lost face, lots of face, not only with the world in general but even with our friends!

Then came Guantanamo, where the word “torture” started to surface at home as well as overseas. Americans engage in torture? Then came the case of the notorious Iraqi prison Abu Graib, with plenty of photos to boot. “Yes, the Americans are torturers!” shouted all those who saw them.  Mr. Bush, however, and the rest of his  comrades did not seem to be too affected by the avalanche of negative comments received. Yes, America and all the Americans came out of that barbarous mess diminished, severely diminished. To all those who cared, it was like watching the fathers and mothers of all the tortured men throw stones into the Articles of our Constitution. Perhaps, the Statue of Liberty in the New York bay might have felt ashamed and its light might have dimmed a bit when the news of the tortures became known. It might be dimmed still.

    6. It is a widely perceived fact that Mr. Bush is a devout, practicing Christian. He has publicly declared that he is a “born-again Christian”. His favorite role model is Jesus Christ. He prays every day. The famous journalist Bob Woodward, who wrote Mr. Bush’s biography,  writes that before the invasion took place, he (Woodward) asked Mr. Bush if he had asked his father for some advice about the imminent invasion of Iraq. The answer he received was something like this: ” I don’t ask my earthly father for any advice on the matter. I only take the advice of my Heavenly Father. He has already informed me that I am doing the  right thing.”

It must be assumed that Mr. Bush reads the Bible, particularly The New Testament, and most of all what Jesus preached before his death on the cross. I repeat, Jesus Christ was and presumably still is Mr. Bush’s role model of all that is righteous, honorable and moral. Let us not mince words at this point. Mr. Bush’s use of violence against another nation, his addiction to lying, his stubborn attitude over personally-held  convictions, his lack of understanding of what is the true meaning of truth and justice and his lack of compassion for those who suffer make of him an enemy of Jesus Christ, a hypocrite, a Pharisee, one of those who two thousand years ago betrayed Jesus, a God/Man whose life was dedicated to the daily practice of brotherly love, truth and justice. 

So, really, where do we go from here?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE:

*Joseph Cione is an educator and author and this is his first—hopefully of many—contributions to Democratswrite.com.  

Born in Sicily, Joseph grew up during Fascism’s “golden era” and lived in Palermo Sicily during World War II. Together with his mother and 100 other emigrants, he arrived at New York Harbor on March 27, 1947. He became an American citizen in 1953.

Mr. Cione received his Masters Degree (in French Language and Literature) from Hunter College in New York and was bestowed a minor degree in Spanish  at NYU.   Joseph taught Italian, French and Spanish for 27 years in New York between 1962 and 1983. In 1968 he was the only teacher from NY State chosen to attend the intense course of studies hosted by the renown Institut National des Sciences Appliquees in France.

In 1983, Joseph  retired from teaching and began his career as a writer. Since then,

he has authored four books: SICILY ON MY MIND, (Subtitled: “Echoes of Fascism and World War II”) , YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE, GRAINS OF SANDS AND MURMURS OF THE SEA ( Poems and Essays) and RICORDI DI SICILIA (Translation into Italian of Sicily on My Mind), most of which are available through Amazon.com and other on-line sources.

Joseph presently lives in Apex, North Carolina with his wife of 57 years (Sara) and of all his “accomplishments” in his adoptive country, he values most his family, which in addition to Sara includes six thriving children and 18 grand-children.

It is an honor for me (because Joe is a personal friend) , on behalf of DW to thank Joseph Cione for this wonderful expression of intelligent circumspection and insight and to extend to him our sincere invitation and request to grace us in the future with more of the same, as we struggle along with him to “go on from here’.

Presidential Pretentions…

 PRESIDENTIAL PRETENTIONS…

NEO-CONTENTIONS VI:

A point-counterpoint debate between a neo-conservative and

A Democratic liberal on the topic of whether Bush’s General 

Petreus has Betrayed us, and regardless of that—

Which, in times of war, have told the people more lies…

Republican or Democratic Presidents ?

DW Intro:  I have two friends who are constantly debating between themselves issues of today’s politics, especially those involving President Bush and the war in Iraq. During a recent exchange, my neo-conservative friend, Dan Schwalbe sent my liberal friend, Alan Mackeraghan an article denouncing as traitorous Move-on.org’s recent skewering General Petreus for generally betraying us. With no further prologue, I will here share with you that invigorating (and enlightening) exchange.

Enjoy it!  

Dusty (DW Foreign Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch)

9-24-07

NEO-CON “DAN” TO LIBERAL “ALAN”

Alan,

Would  Moveon.org  call General Jimmy L. Cash a traitor or  does his report just require the willing suspension of disbelief? (Read what General Cash has to say here…)

Dan

LET’S BE SPECIFIC

By Jimmy L. Cash, Brig. Gen., USAF, Ret.
Posted by The Bear under Global War on Terrorism , Politics

Due to the thunderous applause that I received from the far-left over the I Am Tired letter written by one of our troops in Iraq, I thought it prudent to follow up with one last attempt to be very specific about what I have observed and actually personally encountered during my 36 years of service to this Great Country. This will be a one time attempt to reach some of those who are confused by the far-left and their ilk’s unethical rantings and give some insight through my personal experience as a professional military officer over the years. These examples are but a few. In real life there were many more which space and time will not allow.

As a young fighter pilot, flying F-4s in Vietnam, I was stopped in my tracks by the decisions made by Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara. I was young and naive, but even then I knew their daily interference was wrong and would not allow us to win this thing and go home. Decisions like not allowing us to strike enemy aircraft while still on the ground, keeping real targets off the target list, and allowing us to strike only rusted-out trucks made us basically a toothpick factory. However, the big one for me came the day I saw the President Lyndon Johnson on television, forcefully lying to the American people. I’ll never forget the language, I want to assure the American people that the United States of America has never, and will never, bomb or use force inside the borders of Cambodia. On and on he disavowed the reports that this was happening. I was amazed. Guess where I had put several F-4 loads of 750 pound general purpose bombs every day for the past five days. You guessed it, Cambodia!!! So much for Mr. Johnson. The only question in my mind was simply, was it just Johnson or was it the methodology of a particular political party’s I decided to delay answering that question until more experience was gained.

Years passed, and I ignored politics as much as possible, as a good military man should. Then came Jimmy Carter. Our young people don’t remember 18% interest rates and 18% inflation, but I’ll bet someone in your family does. That is one really bad thing Carter did for our country, but it is not the worst. During this period, I was an F-15 Squadron Commander, located at Langley AFB, VA. Jimmy Carter and his democratic party stopped spare parts procurement for almost every weapon system in our military, and diverted the funds to social programs. The F-15 was brand new at the time with leading edge technology designed to provide air superiority anywhere in the world on a moments notice. That was my job. I loved it, but guess what? In a two year period from 1979 to 1981, there was not one day when more that one-third of my assigned aircraft were flyable. It is amazing the lengths we went to in those days, cannibalizing parts, expending twice the time and energy to fix every little item, and still two-thirds of the birds were always broken because of no spare parts. Had this country faced a really serious military threat during that time frame, only Montana Hunters could have saved us. The military had some equipment, but it was all broken. Do you want to know the really bad part for me and the young fighter pilots working for me? Our flying sortie rate was so low that pilot proficiency dropped to dangerous levels. The accident rate tripled. That obviously was totally unacceptable, as we were losing expensive airplanes and highly trained young pilots at a rate comparable to losses seen in actual combat. All of a sudden, even a Texas Aggie like me began to see a trend.

Forward a few years to 1986. I am an F-16 Wing Commander at MacDill AFB, Florida, and Ronald Regan is president. His change in attitude and policy toward the military had time to fix the spare parts problem. We were flying 26,000 flying sorties per year out of MacDill AFB, my aircraft fully mission capable rate (FMC) was above 90%, the aircraft accident rate was below 1.75 per hundred thousand flying hours, fighter pilots were flying and proficiency levels were at an all time high. The United States Air Force was ready to defend this Wonderful Country. Proof of the pudding is simple. Look what the USAF, and the military in general, accomplished in Iraq during Desert Storm. And, they did it in less than 100 hours. Yeah, at this point I was starting to realize there was a difference in mentality between Democrats and Republicans, or should I say the Left and the Right.

Then, came everyone’s favorite – Bill Clinton. If there ever was an individual 180 degrees out of sync with the ideals and the values of the US military, it was Clinton. He was a known draft dodger, military hating, self absorbed, unspeakingly shameless and immoral individual, who the Left managed to elect President of the United States of America. Clinton?s antics in the White House would have brought court martial, conviction, and Dishonorable Discharge had he been a military member. We still suffer oral sex on school buses, because the President told the world it wasn’t real sex, and some of our children believed him. It took a lot of years, but now I became certain. There is a big difference in the right and the left on all fronts, and for the first time I started feeling angry and shamed that the majority of the American people were actually willing to vote for such an individual.

Sometimes, an abstract such as the following tells the story in very simple terms: Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, George Soros, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Nancy Pelosi, Barbra Boxer, John Kerry, Benedict Arnold, and the list goes on. America, wake up. In my opinion, giving in to the likes of these people could allow Abraham Lincoln’s prediction of destruction from within to come true. There is not a country in the world that can be considered a conventional military threat to the United States today. However, this country faces a new kind of threat–one that will not go away. It is a threat even more serious that WWII, because money, industry and technology will not defeat it. It is a threat of defeat from within. It is a threat of a faltering economy because of a lack of resources, or the even the simple threat of such a loss brought on by terrorism. It is a threat created by the American people trusting the inept. It is a threat created by the people wanting change, and perilously believing that the left can successfully deliver that change. Have you seen anything from the left that remotely resembles an answer to the Iraq situation? Have you seen anything more than continued Bush-Bashing? Is that an answer? If there was ever a need for a strong, well trained military, it is now. THE LEFT HAS HISTORICALLY DISMANTLED OUR MILITARY IN THE NAME OF REDISTRUBITION OF WEALTH FAVORING SOCIAL PROGRAMS. We just cannot afford to let that happen now. If we do, the entire country may be bowing to the east several times a day within the next 50 years, maybe sooner.

Now a final thought meant to upset as many as possible on the far-left. As you might guess, I don’t believe in political correctness. So, let’s look at the facts, not far-left rhetoric attempting to empower the democratic party. Initially, I was not a George Bush fan. I am not even a Republican. I normally vote Republican, because of my total despise of Communism, Socialism and the far-left in this country. I am a Conservative. However, during his watch, I feel President Bush just happened to stumble upon the leading edge of the greatest threat this country has ever faced. Mistakes have been made, because of the newness of the threat. Overall, the President has done a superb job dealing the threat, and at the same time held off the constant ranting, raving, deceitful and malicious escapades of the far-left attempting to regain political power. IF THERE WAS EVER A TIME THE COUNTRY NEEDS TO COME TOGETHER AND BACK OUR PRESIDENT, IT IS RIGHT NOW. WITHOUT CONCENSUS WE ARE EMPOWERING THE TERRORIST!!!! I feel the far-left is totally absorbed with a power struggle and regaining control of congress. They could care less about defeating the threat. It literally disgusts me to hear the constant disagreement with everything the President tries to do, all in the name of trying to make him look bad to the voters. Unfortunately, by the time the American people really appreciate how bad the far-left really is, it may too late.

What are the real facts? On the home front this country’s economy is the strongest that it has been in my lifetime. Interest rates are as low as they were when I was in high school forty years ago. Inflation does not exist for all practical purposes. For you youngsters, please remember the Jimmy Carter comments? The Dow is approaching 13,000. Unemployment is nonexistent. Wages are at an all time high. Home ownership is at an all time high. Taxes have been lowered to an almost acceptable level. Because of the surging economy the deficient is under control and projected to go away far ahead of schedule. The far-left is rich beyond its wildest dreams, so Mr. President when are you going to 1Ž2fixŠ all these domestic problems? Give me a break!!!!

On the war front this country has not been touched since 2001. I remember being part of a seminar at the USAF War College in 1983 discussing the terrorist threat. There were some good minds at that table and a lot of disagreement. However, one common thought was that the US would be hit within the next five years. Answers to the terrorist threat were just as hard to come by then as they are now. Well, it took a little longer than the projection, but the attack occurred. For an old military guy like me, the main point here is that it has not happened again. We have suckered the bad guys into entering the fight somewhere other than in our country. To hell with political correctness. The President can’t say this, but I sure can. I smile every morning when I get up and realize that one of our great cities has not been blown away. And, there is zero doubt in my mind that if we pull out of Iraq prematurely, that will happen within a short period of time after our departure. I don’t care what you might think of President Bush personally. He has done the best he can with what he has, and this country is not smoking because of it. So, the anti-American, Bush hating far-left should back off. They honestly don’t have a clue about what they are talking about, and they are doing irreparable damage to our country.

I realize there are different points of view on war, and I do not believe the meek will inherit the earth, at least not in the next few hundred years. To those of the far-left, who will undoubtedly respond to this letter, let me say, this is a strong country! It has survived the uneducated thinking of the far-left before, and I’ll just bet it will again. Regardless of who is President, the people will not tolerate mass explosions on a daily basis, as our good friends in Israel have been forced to do. To protect that position of power, even Hillary will be forced to become a true hawk. To guarantee a few more votes Ted Kennedy may be forced to begin supporting a strong military. One more attack on America might even wipe the giddy, ŒI-am-finally-somebody? grin from Nancy Pelosi’s face, and make her realize that is not about votes and personal power. IT IS ABOUT PROTECTING THIS GREAT COUNTRY FROM ALL ENEMIES, BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.

ALAN’S COUNTER-POINTED REPLY TO DAN

Dan,

You  lose all credibility as a participant  in this conversation when you promote such far right-wing demagoguery .  Just the fact he is still invoking the name of Jane Fonda in his diatribe tells me he is not marching to any drummer I hear.  Your article is jam-packed with lies and falsehoods:
 To begin with, it was not Johnson who ordered the illegal bombing of Cambodia, but rather Nixon. Yes–a Republican. Thus, it was Nixon, not Johnson, who lied to the American people. In fact, his administration was taken to court by (drum roll) a Congresswoman and four Air Force officers, represented by the ACLU to halt the illegal bombing. Here is his exact quote:

 ”There are no American combat troops in Cambodia. There are no American combat advisers in Cambodia. There will be no American combat troops or advisers in Cambodia. We will aid Cambodia. Cambodia is the Nixon doctrine in its purest form….” – President Richard M. Nixon, November 1971.

 By the way, we did not use F-4’s to bomb Cambodia; we used B-52’s. Yet another problem with this story.

 Yes, the economy was in crisis while Carter was in office. But it was precipitated by the OPEC oil crisis in 1973 (while Nixon was still in office). Additionally, productivity had stagnated during the 1970s. The Federal deficit had grown, long before Carter took office. Carter inherited a bad economy and did not make it better. I think it was the Japanese kick the ass that got U.S. industry to focus more on quality and customers, as much as presidential leadership, that turned around the U.S. economy in the 80s.

 As for military spending, that increase began two years before Carter left office. I think it is interesting that the General mentions the year 1986, because that is when spending began to taper off again.

 He also fails to mention the largest draw-down post WWII occurred during the Bush I presidency, when Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense.

 Calling Clinton a draw-dodger when the current commander in chief effectively dodged Vietnam service is mystifying. Why do conservatives continue to defend the preferential treatment Bush received to get into the Guard, and then his failure to report for duty for two years? By the way, are you going to call Dick Cheney a draft dodger too? He got five educational deferments. Rumsfeld never served. Wolfowitz never served; both coasted on deferments.

 Here another great lie: 1Ž2THE LEFT HAS HISTORICALLY DISMANTLED OUR MILITARY IN THE NAME OF REDISTRUBITION OF WEALTH FAVORING SOCIAL PROGRAMS.Š

 Really? What programs is this guy talking about? Education. Que Lastima? Surely not Medicare or Medicaid since I bet he receives Medicare. Hopefully not Social Security since he probably gets that too. If he does enjoy his Social Security, Medicare, and public education for his children he should thank a God-less liberal.

 1Ž2On the home front this country’s economy is the strongest that it has been in my lifetime. Interest rates are as low as they were when I was in high school forty years ago. Inflation does not exist for all practical purposes. For you youngster’s, please remember the Jimmy Carter comments? The Dow is approaching 13,000. Unemployment is nonexistent. Wages are at an all time high. Home ownership is at an all time high. Taxes have been lowered to an almost acceptable level. Because of the surging economy the deficient is under control and projected to go away far ahead of schedule.

 During the nineties, when that Democrat Clinton was in office, the economy experienced it fastest post-war expansion ever. Crime rates dropped nationally. Teen pregnancies dropped, DWI’s dropped. Unemployment reached historic lows. Home ownership in America reached historic highs. When Clinton left office there was a budget SURPLUS.

 For the past 7 years Bush has cut taxes while pursuing a ruinous war in the Middle East. Consequently we now have a multi-billion dollar deficit. Crime is once again on the rise. The housing market slowed more than a year ago. There is a record number of foreclosures. Real wages, what the little guys take home, has remained stagnant. The gap between the richest Americans and poorest has not been this large since 1929. The economy barely registered any growth for the first quarter of 2007. This guy is not so big on facts is he? But then, he probably cannot be bothered with the truth either.

    Put that in your war pipe and smoke it!

 Alan

DUSTY’S ADDENDUM

After adding a hearty “Amen” and “You win hands down!” to my friend, Alan, I’d simply add, in closing that when Move-on.org asked me to write my Congressmen on the subject of whether they should endorse the denunciation of them (Move-on) for characterizing Petreus as a betrayer for his parroting the “we’re winning the Surge in Iraq” propaganda, I immediately wrote  a scatter-gun letter that went to all our Senators and  Reps to the effect that if they went along with any resolution condemning Moveon.org for its exercising free speech to criticize General P for parroting  Bush propaganda, I’d vote against them if they ever have the temerity to run again. General P was not acting in a military capacity when he was preaching those phony stats about the success of the surge. Criticism of him was making fair comment on a soap-boxing political act.  I would not fault him in any way for following orders in the theater of war, but when he’s over here blowing Bush’s “success” smoke up Congressional skirts, he needs to be outed for the betrayer he is. Bush had his little military puppet put out that propaganda instead of Bush because Bush is smart enough to know no one’s listening to him any more. Petreus (at least until he assumed the bully pulpit in Washington) at one time had some credibility. That credibility is gone, thanks in large part to the dedication, determination and increasing power of Moveon.org. 

Best,
Dusty

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Writer Claims “Left” Has No Answers for Iraq

By Bobby Dees

            The writer claims the “Left” has no answers for Iraq.  The “Left” has plenty of answers for the current mess in Iraq.  The first answer is don’t attack countries unconnected to 911.  The second answer is if you’re going to attack another country you should have a viable military plan in place prior to the attack.  Thirdly, liberals believe it is not feasible to kill every perceived enemy America may have.   Fourthly, we are pissing away two billion dollars a week while 500,000 people die each year from cancer.  What are you doing about that war on terror tough guy?

            The article has several other misstatements. “Wages are at an all time high.”  This is a totally inaccurate statement.  Wages are in fact stagnant and have been stagnant for 27 out of the last 29 quarters.

             “Home ownership is at an all-time high.”  This is another misstatement.  The real truth is that bankruptcies and foreclosures are at an all time high.

             “The deficit is under control and taxes have been lowered by Bush. ’’ Again this is a laughable statement.  Oil prices are at an all-time high with gas prices at three dollars a gallon.  The tax burden is being transferred to the middle class.  The deficit is at all time high.