President George Bush: what a crock

I'm listening to President Bush's press conference of April 29, 2008 on National Public Radio.

It's  apparent that this man is unfit to be the President. He's clearly not engaged with reality. And I suspect he is on drugs of some kind. He loses his "train of thought" and under his breath suspects a reporter of deliberately derailing him. At one point, he really didn't have an answer for the reporter's question, and you could hear as he stammered, waiting for the teleprompter to come up with some words to put in his mouth. What a joke.

Bush doesn't  know much about anything, so the best he can do is parrot the  soundbite-friendly snippets coming from his teleprompter. You can hear it in his voice -— he stalls, then switches the topic to some plug for his policies, or an attack on the Democrats. It's completely false. This is really a crime against the American people, who are essentially denied a competent national leader. We practically have an idiot for a President, and I keep wondering — how did things get this bad? (Oh yeah, I remember now:  The illogical opinion of the Supreme Court regarding the 2000 presidential election, one of the worst and ill-reasoned opinions in US history.)

A reporter asks him a question about terrorism, and he puts in a bald-faced plug for John McCain. Is that what we have these press conferences for — not to answer important questions from the public (represented here by the press), but to slide in useless political endorsements?

And the way he jokes with reporters — this used to annoy me, but now I realize that it makes sense since the whole process is a joke, from Bush's perspective. This is nothing but the theater of the absurd. We have a baldly disfunctional man for a president, we're stuck with him despite repeated calls for impeachement, and we're all just riding it out.

My eggs are in the Obama basket now, that's for sure. Clinton has been showing some of the same shallow style that Bush mastered, which has turned me off. Obama is by far the most "thinking" person among the candidates, and that's who we need in the oval office. An exceptional nation like America need a national leader of exceptional character, not another "regular" folk.

Impeach Cheney: sign the petition from Congressman Wexler

Today, January 16, 2008, is a national call-in day. Call Congress, connect to your representatives, and demand that the vice president and president be held accountable for the disaster they have brought upon America:

Congressional switchboard phone: 202-224-3121

From After Downing Street:

What are the charges against Vice President Cheney? Here they are.

What can you do?

1. Email Congress, send a letter, send a postcard, lobby in person, honk to impeach, sit in.

2. Sign Congressman Wexler's petition.  And spread the word with this flyer.

3. Help lobby members of the House Judiciary Committee and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Contact contributors to House Judiciary Committee members.

4. Contact the media.

5. Contact the pollsters.

Impeach Cheney: sign the petition from Congressman Wexler…

From Brad Newsham:

“BACKGROUND (if you're not familiar): On April 24, 2007, Representative Dennis Kucinich filed articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney (HR 333). During the last eight months, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers have twisted themselves into pretzels in order to keep the bill bottled up -- no discussion, no hearings, no vote. Poll after poll after poll show that a majority of all Americans want Cheney impeached, but the mainstream media has demonstrated an allergic reaction to reporting impeachment news. Nonetheless, activists around the country have succeeded in passing impeachment resolutions in nearly 100 cities; members of Congress are deluged with impeachment demands. Perhaps this move by Wexler, Gutierrez, and Baldwin will prove to be the straw that undoes the camel. Let's support it! Note: In the time it took me to write and edit this paragraph, 300 more people signed the petition: http://www.wexlerwantshearings.com”

Technorati Tags: GeorgeWBush, DickCheney, impeach, politics, Iraq

Why weren't YOU at the Iraq war protest on October 27, 2007 in San Francisco?

Here's what our disaster in Iraq has brought: 3,800+ Americans dead; 785,000 civilians dead. America is less safe; you are less safe.

Stop going along with the war. Demand an end to Bush's ongoing disaster. Demand that your government extend diplomacy to the world.

Contact your Senator and demand an end to the war.

Hold your elected officials accountable. Vote for peace. Demonstrate against war.

Contact Congressman Dave Obey and demand that Congress stop funding the war!

WAR IS OVER (if you want it).

Bush's “Patriot Act” is blatantly illegal; throw the bum out!!

From The Canadian Press, Sept. 26, 2007

U.S. judge rules 2 provisions of Patriot Act unconstitutional

PORTLAND, Ore. - Two provisions of the U.S.A. Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without showing probable cause, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, “now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”

“For over 200 years, this nation has adhered to the rule of law - with unparalleled success. A shift to a nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised,” she wrote.

By asking her to dismiss Mayfield's lawsuit, the judge said, the U.S. attorney general's office was “asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights, by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any real meaning. This court declines to do so.”

Finally, some rationality in America. Good democracy prevails!

Technorati Tags: court, judge, PatriotAct, unconstitutional, constitution

The terror threat is negligible; worry about something else

While Americans merrily slaughter themselves with overeating, lack of exercise, smoking, excess drinking, laziness and ignorance, they fail to notice just how completely wrong their government is about the so-called “terror threat.”

...If it is so easy to pull off an attack and if terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it? Why have they not been sniping at people in shopping centers, collapsing tunnels, poisoning the food supply, cutting electrical lines, derailing trains, blowing up oil pipelines, causing massive traffic jams, or exploiting the countless other vulnerabilities that, according to security experts, could so easily be exploited?

One reasonable explanation is that almost no terrorists exist in the United States and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad.

Read all of John Mueller's article, “Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?: The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy.”

Here's his book:


* * *

(photo by flickr user Tal Bright)

Bush and the whole damn military-industrial complex have been pumping up a very low-level threat in order to make themselves rich, plundering the public treasury for bogus “homeland security” projects and the Iraq War. It's called war profiteering and it's happening right now.

9/11 was an isolated incident, folks. Get over it. 

Down with the Republicans, the Neo-cons, and the Bush administration, and most of all, down with the war in Iraq.

And all of you who voted for George W. Bush — please, shut off your televisions and start reading some legitimate news. Pay attention! Get educated! Be peaceful, consume less, live simply, appreciate everything.

• Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler
• MoveOn.org
• Robert Fisk, The Independent
• National Public Radio
• The Nation
• The New Yorker
• New York Times
• Working For Change
• Common Dreams
• Media Matters
• Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
• California Peace Action
• Adbusters
• Arts & Letters Daily
• Salon
• Independent Media Center
• The Sierra Club
• The Guardian U.K.
• Know Your Place! Shut Your Face!
• Robert McChesney
• UNICEF U.S.A.

“No End In Sight” - documentary about the Iraq War

The New York Times Co-Chief Movie Critic A. O. Scott reviews “No End in Sight,”  a documentary movie about the United States' early involvement in Iraq.

Read the full review.

REVIEW SUMMARY FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:

“So far, some of the best documentaries about the war in Iraq — ”Gunner Palace,“ ”The War Tapes“ and ”Iraq in Fragments,“ for example — have concentrated less on politics, policy or military strategy than on individual, in-the-moment experiences. ”No End in Sight,“ Charles Ferguson’s exacting, enraging new film, may signal a shift in emphasis, a move away from the immediacy of cinéma vérité toward overt political argument and historical analysis. Not that these have been scarce over the past few years, as an ever- growing shelf of books can testify. Among Mr. Ferguson’s interview subjects are the authors of some of those books — notably Nir Rosen (”In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq“), James Fallows (”Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq (Vintage)“) and George Packer (”The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq“) — and his film in effect offers a summary of some of their conclusions. If failure, as the saying goes, is an orphan, then ”No End in Sight“ can be thought of as a brief in a paternity suit, offering an emphatic, well- supported answer to a question that has already begun to be mooted on television talk shows and in journals of opinion: Who lost Iraq?” — A. O. Scott, The New York Times

Wake up, America! Contact your Congresspeople and demand the lawful impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and an immediate end to the Iraq War.

MAKE THE REPUBLICANS PAY. Those bastards led us into this insane war; their arrogance  got us into this mess. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz — their foreign policy was dead wrong, and now thousands upon thousands of people are dead, billions of dollars are wasted, a country is in ruins, and goodwill toward America is at an all-time low. Bush has massively fucked up the U.S.A. Don't let the Republicans get away with it!

THE WAR ON TERROR IS A SCAM, folks. It's a way to control us all by generating fear and uncertainty, while lining the pockets of the rich and powerful — war profiteering at its worst. 

• Check out Traveling-Soldier.org
• Iraq Veterans Against the War 
• Veterans Against The Iraq War

Watch the movie Sir, No Sir! Read the New  York Times review. Here's the plot synopsis from AllMovie.com:

"The little-known protest of the Vietnam War staged from within the ranks of the military is explored in director David Zeiger's revealing documentary. Despite the well-documented media coverage of Vietnam War protests that took place on college campuses across the nation, few people but the most ardent history buffs remain aware of the massive protests that flourished in U.S. barracks and military bases at home and abroad. Staged by countless military men disillusioned with the ongoing war, these protests reached from the hallowed halls of West Point to the bullet-riddled rice fields of Vietnam. Though hundreds of soldiers were imprisoned for voicing their controversial views and thousands more sent into exile for their subversive activities, the tireless efforts of the government and media to suppress this remarkable tale would eventually falter as the dissenting voices became too numerous to silence. Thirty years after the last bombs were dropped on Vietnam, the remarkable tale of the soldiers unafraid to stand up for their beliefs comes to the screen in a film that will forever alter the manner in which contemporary audiences view one of the most controversial wars in modern history."

More on Le Blog Exuberance:

• The war on terror brings the terror home
• The cost of war in Iraq
• Send your daughters, President Bush!
• It's not who you know, it's who you blow away
• Jim Webb, the good Senator from Virginia, tells it like it is!
• We don’t like you, President Bush
• “The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth From 9/11 to Katrina,” by Frank Rich
• George Bush Jokes About “Your Performance At The Gridiron” While Thousands Die
• TAX THE RICH!
• Hey, George Bush! You really suck at running my country!

 

Create joy

More on Le Blog Exuberance:

• Antelope Valley
• Anti-war Babes
• Architecture
• Art + Burning Man
• California // Northern
• California // Southern
• City // Los Angeles
• City // New York
• City // San Francisco
• Current Affairs
• Ecology + nature
• Iraq War // 2003-present
• Macintosh OS X
• Modernism + modernity
• Music
• Potrero Hill, S.F.
• Truly random
• Urbanism + suburbs
• Web site + graphic design

The war on terror brings the terror home

Isn't it ironic that the “War on Terror” has resulted in an increase in violence in the U.S.? Ever since we began this false-fronted and hyped-up “war,” the CIA and FBI have been diverted from their traditional role: stopping crime right here in the good ol' U.S.A. Instead of busting up gangs and organized crime, instead of tracking down serial rapists and murderers, instead of rooting out the many manners of gun-wielding maniacs which this wonderful God-fearing country so ably produces, the CIA and FBI and all the other fine government agencies in which we place so much trust (much of it quite deserved) are now working on some sort of cure for some sort of ailment which has been diagnosed readily and soundly by Dr. Bush and Dr. Cheney and the witty professor Rumsfeld. Our protectors are off fighting a guerilla war in the dusty streets of Iraq, and it's not doing us a bit of good.

This is what our advanced civilization has gotten us.

Let's be clear about our recent history: 3,000 people (not all of them Americans) were killed by several dozen terrorists connected to Osama Bin Laden, in September 2001. Then, in March 2003, Bush led the U.S. on an invasion of Iraq — a decision which a whole lot of Americans were not happy about.

Since we went into Iraq, the number of American soldiers killed is well over 3,000, and tens of thousands more have been wounded. The war goes on and in fact is getting bigger, as our President Bush "surges" troops into Iraq. We send in our young to fight like heroes in an epic drama. The trouble is, the drama is Catch 22 and Apocalypse Now, because that's all war can ever be: tragedy, sometimes comic, but mostly not.

Soldiers find that their stints are extended: the Army Reserve keeps their people in Iraq much longer than they had signed up for. This is a new way of using our military — very different from the draft during Vietnam, where soldiers were rotated out regularly. In this new war in Iraq, the military is keeping these young folks in there for months beyond their initially promised commitment. Instead of doing 12 months in Iraq followed by some time off, their stays are being extended to 13 months, 14 months, 15 months. And they're called up not just once, but twice, three times. What does it feel like to be put into battle for three 12-month stints, because the Army can't recruit enough guys to follow you? What does it feel like to have signed up for the Marines because its an honorable thing to do, but then learn that two-thirds of your country — including two thirds of your own family —  think that the President is a jerk and now in retrospect we can see how it was a very bad decision to go into Iraq?

Iraq wasn't involved in the planning or execution of the 9/11 attacks. The attack on Iraq signified a shift in U.S. policy from defensive to "pre-emptive attack." Now we're being slaughtered in our own streets by own own countrymen, and we're being slaughtered (and doing plenty of slaughtering)  in the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan. How is that a good thing?

The extended stays for soldiers in Iraq only concentrates the horror into these people. Imagine being a soldier in the U.S. military and you're in Iraq and you're seeing your pals blown up and you've been shot at dozens of times and you're kicking down doors and scaring the shit out of poor old ladies and your thinking “Holy fucking shit, this could be my fucking Grandma in here, just trying to keep her shit alive and keep her daughter's family alive because her son-in-law was recently killed by a car bomb." A soldier might think "Jesus fucking Christ, this is like Vietnam all over again, this is some crazy guerrilla war played out in Baghdad and American Fucking Idol is number ONE, baby, number fucking ONE, and the iFuckingPhone and the Summer is ON, baby, and Jew-Lie Fourth two days away and Bare-rack yo' momma is Obasama-la-bomba, and man it's hot and this, the other, and whatnot, yo it's fucking HOT, baby, everywhere it's hot and California is burning and we know it but still we go on and on baby!”

You can't even find the truth anymore. On Time.com, the website of Time magazine, when you are viewing a current story about the war in  Iraq, the page has NO LINKS to the “big picture” about what the Iraq war is. So if you're haven't been paying attention (like, say, a 14 year old kid doesn't pay much attention to the top news headlines from the New York Times or Time Magazine), then you wouldn't necessarily “get” what this Iraq War thingy is. Education often fails our kids, and now, FOUR years into the Iraq War, a high school graduate might actually lack the background to put it all together: they're signing up 18 year old kids to go fight this war in Iraq, and the kids aren't getting the message out — and the message is this war is fucked.

We should be marching in the streets, people. End the war on terror.

We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because? It's obscene!

— Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in the 1979 movie “Apocalypse Now.”

      

The cost of war in Iraq

Cost of the War in Iraq

(JavaScript Error)

To see more details, click here.

Impeach Bush! Beach Impeach protest, Sat. Apr 28, San Francisco

UPDATE: May 8, 2007: Sign this online petition to MoveOn.org, asking them to poll its entire membership on impeachment, to release the results, and then act on them.

You have the power, now do the right thing. Call your Congressional Representative and tell them to support IMPEACHMENT. Call +1-202-224-3121 then ask for your member of Congress.

Tell them you want Bush and Cheney IMPEACHED. Tell them to support any and all efforts to investigate their crimes and impeach them.

Saturday April 28, 2007
10:30am–12:00pm
Ocean Beach
1000 Great Highway (in front of the Beach Chalet Restaurant)
San Francisco, CA 94121

Sign up to join the protest with Volunteer for Change, or just show up on April 28! 

Join 2000+ protesters on San Francisco's Ocean Beach for a protest calling for the impeachment of President Bush. The Bush administration has done enough damage to our nation, and now it's time to get him out of office. Join these American patriots in calling for the ousting of Bush.

Check out www.beachimpeach.org and the blog at http://gonebyapril1.blogspot.com.