Friday, September 30, 2005

"ROVING" AIR AMERICA RADIO...

Anybody notice that people are calling Air America Radio hosts every day, every show, plaintively complaining -- "We are losing Air America in this area"..."They're taking Air America off next week"... "Why did my radio station cut Air America?"

Anybody consider that these "fans" of progressive radio are right-wing plants? The smear campaigns of the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh were monumental failures, resulting only in increased numbers of people checking out what has these two insane, neocon mongrels so upset. Pay attention. Worried callers are hitting every Air America Radio show every day with multiple complaints that the "voice of the left" is disappearing from the scene. And the calls are getting more frequent -- as many as two calls per three-hour show.

It's ingenious. What better way to get people's attention, especially prospective advertisers, than to pose as a worried progressive? People don't believe O'Reilly or Limbaugh, but why should they question the motives of some little ol' lady who in essence is telling people not to listen to Air America Radio because it's going off the air anyway...

Air America is being "Roved," or at least "swift-boated." If they can force people like station CEO Danny Goldberg to defend against a relentless, orchestrated attack that Air America is in dire financial shape; if they can compel on-air personnel to spend time denying rumors that stations across nation are kicking them off the airwaves, that is valuable time spent NOT exposing the stench of Stinky and the Vulcans...

Goldberg notes a series of blatant lies by John Mainelli, who wrote in a recent New York Post piece, "Air America is in ... bad financial shape." Mainelli cites Bill O'Reilly on Fox News which, like the New York Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, who said that Air America "could be on its last legs."

Speaking of O'Reilly, he is getting ever more frantic because Air America is busting his ass in the ratings game. O'Reilly must buy into the adage that if you repeat a lie often enough, loudly enough, people will believe it. On August 17, O'Reilly claimed, "Air America -- nobody is listening to it." After the ratings in New York City had Air America on top of O'Reilly's show, he brayed nervously, "The Air America radio network continues to fail with catastrophic ratings here in New York City."

Air America Radio personalities should refuse to be drawn into time-consuming discussions with adoring "fans" who want to discuss the demise of the station. They should tell them to hit the road -- and don't look back, because something is gaining on them...

Friday, September 23, 2005

U.S. TO FISK -- WE DON'T NEED YOUR STEENKIN' TRUTH!

On September 23, the venerable Z-Mag published a startling bit of news by reporter and media critic Doug Ireland -- news that should be on the front pages of every U.S. newspaper and "breaking news" on network and cable TV -- U.S. immigration officials have denied Robert Fisk entry into the United States!

Ireland, who originally posted the article on his website, DIRELAND, says, "The internationally renowned correspodent for The Independent -- the great British journalist Robert Fisk -- has been banned from entering the United States. Fisk has been covering war zones for decades, but is above all known for his incisive reporting from the Middle East for more than 20 years. His critical coverage of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, and the continuing occupation that has followed it, has repeatedly exposed U.S. and British government disinformation campaigns. He also has exposed how the bulk of the press reports from Iraq have been "hotel journalism" -- a phrase Fisk coined."

When it comes to journalism -- real journalism whose goal is truth -- Robert Fisk quite simply has no peer. If we have allowed those in control of our government to travel so far down the fascist pike that an act of this shuddering magnitude either is not reported or, if it is, evokes little more than a yawn and a shrug, we're in for some rough times ahead.

I have heard many frustrated reporters explode with, "Americans just can't handle the truth! They refuse to face facts!" Actually, there's a bloody spot on my office wall where I go regularly to beat my head and scream the same thing. However, the Bush administration goes to such lengths to hide, skew, and even destroy the truth that few Americans even know what's going in this country, let alone in Iraq.

Fisk has changed his mind about American journalists practicing "hotel journalism." Last month, Fisk says he went to the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad to visit a friend from one of the largest Western news agencies. After being searched, vetted and glared at, after coming up against two vast steel walls, Fisk finally gains entry through an iron door to a room where "reporters sit in a fuggy room with a small window from which they can see the Tigris river."

Fisk's friend showed him a news release which the Coalition press office handed out to journalists to expand for U.S. consumption -- "Comics Bring Barrels of Laughs to Task Force Baghdad..." According to Fisk, he was wrong. "This is not hotel journalism, as I once described it," Fisk said. "This is prison journalism."

Fisk, in Toronto, was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance in the Lannan Foundation's readings-and-conversations series. According to Christie Mazuera Davis, a Lannan program officer, Fisk was told that his papers were not in order. Now, Fisk is a world traveler; has been to the United States many times, and of one thing you can be sure -- his papers were in meticulous order.

Fortunately, Davis made arrangements for Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio's daily news show, Democracy Now!, to interview Fisk via satellite from a television station in Toronto... A recording of this satellite interview will soon be available on the Lannan Foundation's website.

Such a brazen attempt to intimidate, or silence, a reporter of the stature of Fisk is a big mistake on the part of an administration whose own media scampers after it seeking approval and acceptance and is willing to ignore, even cover-up lies, deceit, treason, destruction -- death -- in exchange for access to the murderous tyrants it adores. Not a single one of them would dare to walk the streets of death, and emerge to tell the truth. While they are regaling us with news of comics bringing barrels of laughs to Iraqis, Fisk is reporting:

"There are now two Baghdads. One is the Green Zone, where U.S. and Iraqi officials live in a protected realm; the other is the danger zone, where everyone else lives."

"The smell of the dead pours into the street through the air-conditioning ducts. Hot, sweet, overwhelming. Inside the Baghdad morgue, there are so many corpses that the fridges are overflowing. The dead are on the floor. Dozens of them. . ."

"People torn to pieces, relatives scream -- another week in the theme park of death..."

Robert Fisk has spent the last 28 years living in, and reporting on, the Middle East. He has thrust truth in the face of power; has been relentless in exposing Bush's "war on civilization" for what it really is. Paper? Fisk has written reams upon reams of paper -- and every single sheet is in order.

And that's the truth.



Wednesday, September 21, 2005

I'M JUST SAYIN'.....

You know, I just got to thinking...these greedy power-mad criminals have no intention of leaving in 2008. Think about it. If we do have an election, it will be because the neo-conservatives in control have confidence that the electronic voting machines will elect Jeb.

If we don't have an election -- and I believe they will attempt a coup before 2008 -- then they will bring Jeb into the administration. Jeb is co-author of Bill Kristol's New World Order plan and is the one they groomed to be the president in 2000, but his thieving wife and his drug-addicted daughter and whoremongering sons forced them to go with his big stupid brother instead...

The problem then, is, as I see it -- how to get rid of the bumbling Bush and put the smart one in? If they achieve a dictatorship, Stinky W. might stomp his feet and demand that they let him be the dictator. In that event, do they continue to cover his totally mad and incompetent ass? Does the lust for power overcome blood? Does a bear shit in the woods? Yeah, if its name is Bush...

So, it looks to me like whether their plans work or not, the most vulnerable man in the government right now is Stinky W. If he breaks out of the bubble, the worthless rabble will overtake him. He can't leave the country because every living soul in every other country hates his guts. If he stays where he is, they're gonna get him.

A fitting trifecta, wouldn't you say? Serves the murderous little bastard right...

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

BUSH -- THE MAN WITH A SNAFU PLAN

It's a good thing President George Bush doesn't read newspapers or watch TV. If he did, even he could see that people from one end of this nation to the other are rapidly reaching zero tolerance with his bumbling ineptitude each time he is faced with a crisis. Those who watched in amazement as Bush sat paralyzed in a Florida elementary school on the morning of September 11, 2001 as planes were ramming into the World Trade Center and Pentagon -- who watched in dismay as he zigzagged across the country from one hidey hole to another throughout the day -- were not surprised that he dropped the ball when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast on August 29.

Bush has dropped every ball thrown to him throughout his life. But he's a hell of a cheerleader. It's almost like being back in college. In an instant, Bush can whip a crowd into a frenzy, armed with nothing but a bullhorn and a shell-shocked firefighter. He can divert the attention of an entire nation from what is happening on the field by locking it into one massive, cheering "wave." Life is a game. Go Team.

However, Operation Hurricane Katrina is vastly different from Bush's "freedom is on the march" game that continues to wreak chaos, death and destruction throughout the Arab world. In the aftermath of Katrina, the homeless, bewildered, abandoned and starving citizens may be poverty-striken, they may be dark-skinned, but they are Americans. And, because they are Americans, the cheering has stopped. The media, led by the shaking outrage of CNN's Anderson Cooper and right-leaning curmudgeon Jack Cafferty, followed by the networks and, finally, by the wonderous on-air meltdown of Fox News' Shepard Smith, at long last is doing its job. For a time, however fleeting, the media has been shocked into telling the truth, asking the right questions and holding the administration's feet to the fire.

Thanks to the media, Bush is out there without a bullhorn -- and without a game plan.

The best-laid plans

Of course the neoconservatives who are in control of this country had a plan for Iraq. I've written about it so often I'm almost embarrassed to bring it up again. In 1992, Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz laid out their obsesson for world dominance in
a secret document, Defense Planning Guidance wherein they boldly asserted, "our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region (Middle East and SW Asia) and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."

Although such arrogance caused a furor when released to the media, the war jackals merely retreated into their lair and continued to hone the policy of preemptive war to seize control of the world's resources. That was the plan then, it was the plan in 1997 when they established the warmongering think-tank, Project for a New American Century, it was the plan outlined in the September 2000 Rebuilding America's Defenses, which included another bold assertion -- to achieve their goal they would need "a catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor" -- and it remains the plan today.

It was a stroke of genius in 2000 to rig the election and put George Bush in the Cheerleader in Chief role. Bush is mean-spirited, vindictive, greedy, incapable of feeling empathy, easily manipulated, desperate for attention -- even adulation -- and has no qualms with playing the God card for political gain. Americans are a forgiving people, and most accepted without question this worthless, former booze-and-drug sodden ne'er-do-well's claim that he was born again -- a man of God. They loved him. All Cheney had to do was select himself as Number Two, slip behind the curtain, and the cabal -- as they like to call themselves -- was open for business, and waiting for a new Pearl Harbor.

It was not long in coming. If 9-11 taught us nothing else, we must ultimately concede that George Bush entered office on his way to war with Iraq, and had no qualms about lying repeatedly to the American people and to our allies to get there. Piles of dead bodies, including nearly 2,100 coalition soldiers and marines and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the majority of whom are women and children, are but a minor irritant to Bush. That part of humanity not belonging to the corporate world is invisible to Bush, nothing more than collateral damage, and is not factored into his "war plan."

Long before the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, just as before 9-11, administration officials were warned of impending peril. Although they played out the frightening scenario in rehearsal after rehearsal, when it was "show time" they were nowhere to be found. They knew. And they did nothing. Either by incompetence or design, they failed to act, and the death, crippling despair, disease and sheer hopelessness suffered by Americans in our most romantic city is breathtaking in scope and indefensible on any level.

(...snip...)

The SNAFU plan

It looks to me like everything is going according to plan. Chaos, like everything else, is just a matter of perspective. Few people really know anything about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), except it's a name that's thrown around a lot during times of national disaster. Do not think for one minute that Bush "gutted" FEMA by placing it under the control of Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff. By any other name, FEMA remains this nation's "secret government," with powers to suspend laws, move entire populations, arrest and detain citizens without a warrant, hold citizens without a trial, seize control of all transportation and communication systems and -- suspend the US Constitution.

FEMA was created outside of Constitutional law via a President John Kennedy Executive Order, and is subject to no Congressional oversight. It received a "tune up" under President Jimmy Carter then, like Topsy, "just growed" through presidents Nixon, Reagan, Poppy and Bubba to the present time. Genocide fascists like Henry Kissinger, and greedy patriots like former General Richard Secord and Lt. Col. Oliver North, the architects of both the Iran-Contra scandal and today's FEMA, must be laughing their asses off at the juvenile disinformation bait-and-switch scenario playing itself out in the US media.
(...snip...)

Take a look at these headlines -- FEMA refusing all offered rescue assistance from Amtrack to experienced firefighters, FEMA not delivering on promises, FEMA barring delivery of desperately needed food or water to frightened and bewildered victims of Katrina, FEMA telling First Responders not to "respond" to the disaster. Does anybody but me see a pattern here? Is it possible for an emergency aid organization to show up at the scene only to refuse all offers of aid? Does McDonald's cook up a bunch of hamburgers and then lock its doors to its hungry patrons?

FEMA is the Patriot Act on crack. Once its powers are unleashed, Oliver North's REX 84 "exercise" will become a reality. The Constitution will be suspended and FEMA will have the right to detain or seize the property of anyone even suspected of engaging in, or who might be thinking of conspiring with others to engage in acts of espionage or sabotage. REX 84 also advocated rounding up and transferring to "assembly centers or relocation camps" of at least 21 million American Negroes in the event of massive rioting or disorder, not unlike the rounding up of the Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The actual number of displaced New Orleans residents is unknown. Overnight, they became "refugees," and hundreds of thousands packed into the Super Dome or sat sweltering in the sun on roads and bridges during a nightmarish week of waiting for help that did not come, while political fat cats finger-pointed and accused each other of playing the "blame" game. Finally, their military liberators herded them onto buses and planes -- husbands and wives separated, families split apart -- and disappeared to "assembly centers or location camps" throughout the United States.

Bush, who once asked Sojourners' Reverend Jim Wallis how to talk to poor people because he had never been around one, has once again dropped the ball. Telling Americans whose homes, jobs, loved ones, whose whole lives were washed away in a single night to "hang in there, and don't buy gasoline if you can't afford it," before cutting out to a birthday party in Arizona falls a bit short of his presidential promise to "protect the American people."

It's unfortunate that it took a tragedy like Katrina for middle- and lower-class America to finally come to grips with where they will fit into the capitalist White supremacist New World Disorder. At long last, Americans know that Bush is incapable of leading. They know he's too arrogant and stubborn to follow. They know it's time for him to get out of the way -- before more of us are trampled, displaced, abandoned, and destroyed, not only here but throughout the world.

For entire article, see here.

THEY'RE GONNA GET THEIRS...

I read that thousands of children might have been separated from their
caregivers in the chaos following Katrina. There are lots of sex offenders out there who can get fake ID and leave their pasts behind, becoming new "parents." In any case, they may end up in foster care with abusers of one kind or another who don't have criminal records. Meanwhile, parents grieve.

The human toll this has taken is inconceivable. These callous bastards will burn in hell on this earth for this. At least it's providing cover for the Roberts nomination and the Iraq war and what is really going on in Gaza and Israel. What is really going on here? We done been fucked, and inasmuch as any of the least of these who were exposed to toxic waste and toxic government and heartbreak and loss, the thugs in power will get theirs.

The universe does not allow for things to be so out of balance. There can be inequality, but it has to balance with equality to maintain itself. That's sort of a law of nature or Newtonian physics. These people have manipulated things, but they have done such a job of creating inequality that it will come back on them like a boomerang thrown very hard -- or a rubber band stretched to its limits before it releases. This situation is way too unbalanced. It can't hold. I'm not
guaranteeing that it will equalize in our lifetimes. More likely the reaction will swing the other way and even the rich will be poor and sick -- and dying for a while along with all the rest of us.

BNeal
13 Sep 05

Friday, September 02, 2005

IF ONLY...

If only Louisiana and Mississippi had voted for Al Gore in 2000, it's possible the devastation wrought by Katrina wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't have 1,885 dead soldiers, 30,000 wounded, 100,000 innocet Iraqis dead, our air and water would be clean, our forests not violated, 40 million americans without healthinsurance, nor the shame of army recruiters hounding high school students. George Bush has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars and let Cheney's Halliburton loot our treasury. Our surplus is gone. Best of all, if Al Gore were president, we would have an intelligent, caring, patriotic president instead of a psychotic mental-case criminal.

Don Phelps
West Coast Dem
2 Sep 2005
___________________

DISASTER WALKING...

I'm sure that two weeks ago the New Orleans police chief knew deep in his heart that some black person should be stopped looting a grocery store. Five feet of water in a discarded grocery story couldn't shake that knowledege. Not even if the groceries were going to sit and rot. He had his police officers running around pointing shotguns at people who were hungry. The chief's mind has a lock on it. People who put on uniforms have a lock on their minds. Ninety percent of the people who live in Fresno, California have a lock on their minds. Fifty percent of Americans have a lock on their minds, and the lock has been sitting there since maybe 1950.

The destruction of the city of New Orleans can be laid directly on George Bush's doorstep. Everything Bush looks at, everything he touches, he ruins. Everything that has turned out for us is bad news. Once blessed with clean air and water, we now have pollution. Our forests are being violated, our army decimated and our health is at risk. And, now, thanks to Bush cutting desperately needed Civil Engineering funds for Louisiana in 2003, we have the ruinesss damage of Hurricane Katrina. George Bush is a walking, talking disaster. And our Republican Party is aiding and abetting him every step of the way.

Don Phelps
West Coast Dem
2 Sep 2005
___________________

GOD HAVE MERCY...

I was watching Fahrenheit 9/11, and listening to John Ashcroft sing his song about soaring eagles. It was amazing, and quite obvious the man is out of his mind. Another blank face is owned by George Bush. America couldn't find anyone worse for president, even in the Republican Party, where most of the zanies dwell, and just like the Germans, they gave him four more years. These dumbells run around saying 'God Bless America' -- well it looks like America is last on God's blessing list.

Don Phelps
West Coast Dem
1 Sep 2005