By One Means or Another - US Vets Bring Change

Obama Could Issue an Executive Order to End the Wars Tomorrow (Yes, It's That Simple) | War on Iraq | AlterNet

Read every word. There's too much to quote and I don't wish to focus on one issue at the expense of others. Let's just say that it's become obvious that the skills learned in foreign wars translate well to domestic applications - and to discerning where the incoming fire is really coming from.

The average vet with the scratch to buy a used computer or who is able to make it to a public library has intelligence gathering and "command and control assets" undreamed of even in '91 - and has the training, discipline and knowledge (taken as a group) to make devestatingly effective use of it. This is why there's been surprisingly little Vietnam-style protest. There's no need; we have far better tools now.

Governments have simply lost the overwhelming information advantage that has long allowed them to ignore or minimize the concerns of their vets - indeed, all their citizens. And vets, by virtue of training and experience, have the tools to organize and motivate opposition to foolish government efforts - and, again, by virtue of their training, have a particular, pointed impatience with those who take their duties to be optional or merely ceremonial window-dressing.

I understand that the Bushes have bought a large amount of land in Paraguay. Very strategically important, resource-rich land that should raise all kinds of eyebrows. One could look upon it as an attempt to establish a position for strategic relocation; no doubt their documented alliances with the Reverend Moon and the Paraguayan government impart a profound sense of security.

But the web reaches everywhere - connecting literally millions of people with very legitimate claims of harm against these people. Personally, I cannot imagine living with having made so many legitimate enemies for such very poor reasons, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Actually, what I expect is something far less dramatic than people might imagine from my setup. I think that, far from becoming the nucleus for a brave new South-American empire run by brainwashed Moonie slave-labor, it will become a sort of prison. A large, comfortable prison, where everyone is content to allow former Bushites to relocate to - so long as they stay inside and don't try and fuck with the water supply.

That is to say - the land is strategic in terms of resources and location. The question is, then, under what terms will they be permitted to stay. It may well turn out that they require a fallback for their fallback. I understand there's an increasing sense of impatience in Mexico, Central and South America with those who cling to the mythology of the Divine Right of Dons. They, too, are learning that information warfare is the way to go.

Well, George, there's always Dubai. Of course, one DOES wonder how long those artificial islands will remain above sea level.

But, as US Vets and Zapatistas alike are proving, people no longer have a binary choice - accept whatever government they have, or take up arms. Increasingly, it's becoming possible to network around governments, leaving the people who think they control the situation scrambling to accommodate a feisty and frighteningly well-informed public that's capable of dealing with them on uncomfortably equal terms.

And - to wrap this post up in a bow - the public gains the benefit of people trained by the military and made skeptical and oppositional by it's misuse. This reason alone should be a lesson to everyone world-wide that they misuse, abuse and neglect veterans at their peril.

Should be... but then again, it should have been made clear by what happened to Caligula at the hands of the Praetorian Guard.

Oh, and then of course there's a few Biblical proverbs about honor among thieves. One wonders how long it will take for them to sell one another out.

Yellow Elephant, where were you? - Civilian by webcarve
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In case you'd forgotten, the President is a lying' bastard.

Bush admits it right to their faces because he's been rankly lying about anything and everything ever since he ran for president and never, not once, paid a penalty for it. Think about it carefully--for anyone else a public admission of lying would be absolutely devastating on a professional and personal level.

Sorry, dear, I lied about sleeping with that perky admin half your age. No big, right? Yeah, boss, I said I delivered all those parts when I actually drank beer for two hours. So?

But for George Bush implacable rules of life just vanish, so he doesn't care, admit it right out loud on the record, why not? This horrifying national psychosis--words chosen with great attention--was very carefully and deliberately enabled by The Washington Post as they scrubbed their stories to hide the lying.

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Now, it's a Bad Thing to lie to the American People and to Congress. Particularly to members of Congress who's campaigns were damaged with all the "stay the course" rhetoric and public defense of Rummy right up to the "Heave Ho" moment.

But, hey, such trivial considerations of consequence are beneath our "decider." I can't complain about the outcome, of course. I merely point out that trusting a known and famous liar ain't the path of prudence, as many Republicans found to their cost this past election.

And meanwhile, the WaPo is trying to revise history - unaware of the Google Cache and The Memory Hole, apparently. These days, revising web history is merely an amusing spectacle of futility, rather like a cat covering up on linoleum.

I blogged you so!

"The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I'd expected," Rove tells TIME. "Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard [the disgraced evangelical leader] added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass."

Compare and contrast

I forgive the folks of Elko and thousands of other deeply conservative towns across the nation for being in a state of shock and denial, for they cannot imagine how anyone who lives by their own virtues could screw up so badly. It is literally inconceivable; it should be a matter of practical impossibility due to bone-deep, value driven integrity that is the soul of small-town conservatism

Well, I'm sad to say this, but folks like George Bush and a thousand others took advantage of your preconceptions of how things ought to be. They said all the right words in public, and you figured that since you have integrity, they did too.

Sorry about that. I feel your pain. You see, I grew up in an area like that, where people had to rely upon one another, expected to be able to, and could. The closet volunteer fire department was a solid 15 miles away, the closet hospital was 45 minutes on dry roads in a fast car - and they were never dry. If you heard three shots in rapid succession, you grabbed a rifle and a first aid kid and ran toward the sound, because there was a broken leg or worse.

And when you grow up in such a place, it's really crushing to find out that people from the big city don't share those essential values. Well, not the rich ones, anyhow.

I'm going to be charging 15% more per post now. Just thought I'd let you know.

It's Lame Duck Season: Fiengold appeals to Huffpo readers for extra shells.

Sen. Fiengold warns:

There are a lot of bad bills that the Republicans may try to ram through, but here's the worst of the worst - a bill to legalize the President's warrantless wiretapping program. The White House is desperate to enact this bill, which allows the government to spy on American citizens, on American soil, without a warrant.

Other measures on the White House wish list that are likely to surface during the lame duck session include a number of unfunded tax cuts and questionable trade measures. Democrats have nothing to gain by allowing these measures to pass in the next few weeks, and everything to lose. Everything should wait until the new Congress, when Democrats will have a lot more say about how bills are put together and what gets passed.

I do wish he'd run in 2008, but you have to admit, it's a hell of a trade-off. There aren't so many working Senators that you can shrug off the loss as insignificant.

One thing I'd like to point out is that the wiretapping bill is retroactive; a pardon for the president on one of the most prosecutable impeachable offenses, and the only one that's completely indisputable.

So, aside from the fact that the law is itself impermissible - a fifth-amendment violation - it is also an attempt to forestall resolution of the Constitutional Crisis created by this Republican Congress and George Bush.

Memo to Pelosi: Fix Consitutional Crisis BEFORE '08

After Downing Street reminds us there are still a lot of issues unresolved.

The Perfect Storm of Citizen Revulsion
...even with the House and Senate in Democratic hands, we need to remember that the immense power of the presidency is still in the hands of Bushistas like Richard Cheney and Karl Rove and George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley and Alberto Gonzales.

Dude, I Tapped Your Mother

They have refashioned the Constitution to make Bush immune from obeying laws he doesn't like; they have invented theories that permit him to round up anyone, American citizen or not, and throw them into a military clink without access to lawyers; they have so bent the definition of "torture" as to make it unrecognizable (it now means that the government can do anything to you short of killing you or doing great injury to your internal organs); the president claims to be able to "pre-emptively" attack any foreign country and power regardless of whether they are an imminent threat to the U.S.; the security forces can now enter your home, search your house, peek into your private email and computer files, without you ever being informed and without you even knowing; the government can now violate the privacy of attorney/client privilege by listening in on all such conversations; the government can declare martial law whenever it so chooses; and on and on.

Let us not forget that the Executive branch still possesses these immense police-state powers, they've used them before against American citizens, and they have made it plain that they are quite prepared to keep using them. Among the issues that must be dealt with by the new Democratic-contolled Congress is to find a way to bring us back to judicial sanity and respect for the rights guaranteed to American citizens under our Constitution.

ADS points out the President still has these powers as the problem. I wish to point out that is not the worst possible case; the worst case would be something I consider fairly likely unless We Do Something Now: Democrats and Republicans together decide that they really kinda like the idea of the Presidency retaining those powers.

There's only one thing that frightens me more than George Bush holding the powers of the Unitary Executive, and that would be a more intelligent and better advised person in the oval office, of either party.

The idea of Al Gore, Hillary Clinton - or frankly, ANYONE, even me, having such power is terrifying. In a sense, the raw stupidity of George Bush and the ideological splits within his administration have been a blessing in disguise. Hes managed to sabotage and expose a 30 year plan to turn the United States into an Empire, with the vast majority of it's citizens made irrelevant to the political process.

An ironic round of applause is due for George and Karl.

But we have an edifice of power to dismantle, lest anyone better qualified to rule scale the heights. That would be pretty much anyone, of any party.

We all need to demand the process go forward. Investigation will officially reveal what is generally already known - and if that investigation does NOT verify and expand upon what is already public knowledge, we will know that the corruption spreads more widely than previously thought.

Remaining members of Congress - and particularly those members who seek re-election in 2008 - had better re-acquaint themselves with their oaths of office and their primary duties.