An Open Letter to George W. Bush and the People of the United States

It was Tom Paine who began Common Sense with a simple proclamation that “These are the times which try mens souls.” Such could not be more true now than when Mr. Paine of blessed memory wrote them over 200 years previous. Our souls are sorely tried, sir, by the current stream of thought and action coming from your White House (the author is loathe to call the building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, our White House).

Sir, your administration is an utter failure. You sought revanche against a small band of religious fanatics and have instead of delivering them to the hands of justice, wrought havok upon the nation which harbored them and upon another independent republic which you and your administration used as a pretext to destroy. You and you alone played guitar and ate birthday cake while your own ministers worried about how far to roll up their sleeves or else ignored pleas while a city drowned. Any man with a sense of honor should have offered his resignation to the Congress over a year ago. You have not. Instead of the proverbial roses and candies being tossed to our troops in Baghdad, we find them cannon fodder for a warped neo-conservative worldview.

You place untold men and youths into a foreign detention center out of communication with their families, legal representation or even a mechanism for trying them for their alleged crimes. Your Department of Justice kidnapped a citizen of a close ally of the United States while en route to his home from a family vacation to a third country where he was tortured and offer no explaination for this act. In former times, this ally might consider it an act bordering upon an undeclared act of war.

Your administration is attempting to weasel its way through the Constitution, basic human rights under the UN Universal Declaration, and the common sense of decency as understood by most people in the world by finding an apology for torture — agressive interrogation — non-fatal physical discomfort — or whatever you may call it. The world thought that the last public outrage over legal torture had ended before Voltaire drew his last breath, but such is not the case.

Your Secretary of Defense, one Donald Rumsfeld, is obviously incompotent in directing a war of any magnitude. The BBC reported the following this very evening, the 24th of September, 2006 regarding the “leak” of a classified document that surmised that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was in fact, abetting the “terrorism” which you so loudly decry:

Last Updated: Sunday, 24 September 2006, 17:19 GMT 18:19 UK

The BBC’s defence correspondent Rob Watson says this is not the first time the US intelligence community has said that the war in Iraq has made the problem of Islamist extremism worse.

Indeed it had warned that might happen even before the US-led invasion in 2003.

Pakistan man waving Osama Bin Laden poster
Many have been inspired by al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden
But, our correspondent says, this latest finding, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, is the most comprehensive report yet, based on the considered analysis of all 16 of the US intelligence agencies.

According to the New York Times, which has spoken to officials who have either read it, or been involved in drafting it, the report says the invasion and occupation of Iraq has spawned a new generation of Islamic radicalism that has spread across the globe.

[snip]

It reportedly concludes that, while al-Qaeda may have been weakened since the 11 September 2001 attacks, the radical Islamic movement worldwide has strengthened with the formation of new groups and cells who are inspired by Osama Bin Laden, but not under his direct control….

This is the same SecDef who has been quoted in the press as saying that the next person who brought up the “reconstruction” of Iraq to him during the hot war there “will be fired.” He is your minister, Mr. Bush. He is hand in glove with your and your collective obviously erroneous assessment of “staying the course.” The morgues in Baghdad continue to be the most popular place for impromptu get togethers in the city as the last two months saw over 2000 persons murdered in the area, many with signs of torture and still bound…

Your Vice President, Richard Cheney, is not fit to preside over a school board meeting, much less the Senate of the United States of America. His corporate ties are not hidden to anyone; one wonders where his allegiance lies: to the country or his oil corporation cronies?

Your Attorney General, is a talking perversion of our ancient Anglo-Saxon tradition within the Common Law as well as our current statutes. His inverted sense of justice is an outrage. His refusal to hold timely trials or to even establish a system of holding them in accordance of anything resembling a legitimate court of justice — of advocating the basic near-universal rights of a defendent to have access to all evidence both potentially exculpatory and incriminating under the veil of “state secret” is dispicable. He does not deserve to be a member of any bar, much less the AG of the USA.

Mr. Bush, you have ignored pleas for peace and an open administration, driven us into national penury and yet found time for vacation upon vacation. One wonders who actually governs? This writer has little faith in our present Congress, and none at all in your administration. None. For the sake of the country and what dignity we have left, please resign and take Messrs. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales with you.

In closing sir, your administration currently jangles sabres at the state of the Islamic Republic of Iran. What Iran is doing is what multiple states, even those in this hemisphere is doing, and that is enrich Uranium for the use of power reactors. The very program in which Iran is currently engaged is one begun by President Eisenhower! It lay in stasis for many years, but began again after the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution which ousted the tryant Reza Pahlavi, the soi-disant “Shah.” Those close to your administration claim that Iran is developing enrichment technology in order to produce a nuclear bomb. Reputable researchers from around the world disclaim their ability to assemble any such weapon at their current rate of development for perhaps ten years. The consequences of a war with Iran would be utter disaster for the United States, the neighbors of Iran and the country of Iran. Every analysist knows this. You know this. Why let the sabre-rattling continue? To make us live in fear? To make us into two camps, one that is “terrorist-enabling” (the current opposition party) and one of “patriots and terrorist slayers” (the other major political party)?

No, Mr. Bush, we aren’t afraid. We know your game and it disgusts us. It is time for you to return to Texas. I call upon you to resign or else for the House of Representatives to impeach and the Senate to try you for high crimes and misdomenors. I call for the same actions towards your VP and the cabinet officers identified above.

Mr. Bush and fellow citizens, the government is ours, not Mr. Bush’s and Mr. Cheney’s. The House and Senate represent us and have the power of the purse and oversight and to declare war, not the President. Allow us to close with a reflection on the words of James Madison:

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes…known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

Iran, the Next Iraq?

Representative Dennis Kuninich yesterday sent an urgent email to his supporters warning us of the gathering war clouds in DC gathering towards the East. The text is as follows:

Urgent Letter from Dennis Kucinich
about Bush Administration Plans for a US War vs. Iran

Dear Friends,

The Bush Administration is preparing for war against Iran, using an almost identical drumbeat of weapons of mass destruction, imminent threat, alleged links to Al Queda, and even linking Iran with a future 911.

In the past few months reports have been published in Newsweek, ABC News and GQ Magazine that indicate the US is recruiting members of paramilitary groups to destabilize Iran through violence. The New Yorker magazine and the Guardian have written that US has already deployed military inside Iran. The latest issue of Time writes of plans for a naval blockade of Iran at the Port of Hormuz, through which 40% of the world’s oil supply passes. Other news reports have claimed that an air strike, using a variety of bombs including bunker busters to be dropped on over 1,000 targets, including nuclear facilities. This could obviously result in a great long term humanitarian and environmental disaster.

Earlier this year, I demanded congressional hearings on Iran and was able to secure the promise of a classified briefing from the Department of Defense, the State Department and the CIA. When the briefing was held, the Department of Defense and the State Department refused to show and are continuing to block any congressional inquiry into plans to attack Iran.

Just this past week, the International Atomic Energy Agency called “erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated” statements relating to Iran’s nuclear program which came from a staff report of the House Intelligence committee. Other intelligence officials have claimed over a dozen distortions in the report which, among other things, said Iran is producing weapons grade uranium. The Washington Post wrote: “The IAEA called that ‘incorrect’ noting that weapons grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5% under IAEA monitoring.”

I have demanded that the Government Oversight subcommittee on National Security and International Relations, of which I am the ranking Democrat, hold hearings to determine how in the world the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, viewed the report without correcting the obvious inaccuracies before it was published. Once again a case for war is being built on lies.

You will recall that four and a half years ago I warned this nation about the deception behind the build up to war against Iraq. Everything I said then turned out to be 100% right. I led 125 Democrats in opposing the Iraq war resolution in March of 2003. The very same people who brought us Iraq in 2003 are getting ready to bring us a war against Iran.

With your help, I will lead the way to challenge the Bush Administration’s march to war against Iran. Please support my campaign for re-election with a generous donation to help continue my work in the Congress. The plan to attack Iran, on its face, threatens the safety of every US soldier serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the countless Iranian lives at risk and the threat to world peace and environmental catastrophes.

With your support, I intend to continue to insist upon:

(1) Direct negotiations with Iran.

(2) The US must guarantee Iran and the world community that it will not attack Iran.

(3) Iran must open once again to international inspections of its nuclear program.

(4) Iran must agree not to build nuclear weapons.

Many of you joined me three years ago as I ran for President to challenge the deliberate lies about WMDs, Iraq and 911, Iraq and Al Queda and the Niger “yellowcake” claims which put us onto the path of an unnecessary, illegal, costly war in Iraq. The Iraq war has caused greater instability and violence in the world community. In the meantime, our government has used the oxymoronic war on terror to trample our Constitution, rip up the Bill of Rights and rule by fear.

Please join with me as we continue our efforts for the end of fear and the beginning of hope, for international dialogue, for cooperation and for peace.

Thank you,

Dennis

Luckily, Ignacio Ramonet of Le Monde Diplomatique, see things differently. His editorial “Iran Atomique” of July 2006 declares that the US has had a “volte face” in light of the Iraqi debacle currently underway, the Big 5 of the Security Council and Sino-Russian negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ramonet concludes with the observation that :

Ont sans doute pesé également d’autres considérations. Par exemple, l’échec de l’occupation de l’Irak, où les chiites pro-iraniens sont, paradoxalement, les meilleurs alliés de Washington ; la menace iranienne de miner, en cas d’attaque, le détroit d’Ormuz, par où transitent 20 % de la production mondiale de brut ; l’intention de l’Iran d’exiger le paiement des exportations de pétrole et de gaz en monnaie européenne, après avoir déjà converti en euros la majeure partie de ses réserves en devises, Téhéran n’ignorant pas que, en ce moment, le dollar est le talon d’Achille des Etats-Unis…

Une escalade demeure bien entendu possible, mais les deux parties ont intérêt à chercher un compromis.

We hope that LMD is correct, and that the dollar is indeed the Achilles Heel of the USA’s war aims, and that a compromise can be reached as Dennis Kucinich so hopes.

The New C-word, or an open letter to the working people of the USA

The True C-Word

The actual “C word” which cannot be uttered on the radio, on the television, or appear in print has five, not four letters. It is, of course, class. We hem and haw at the concept of the United States even having classes, much less dare attempt to make political appeals to any save a tremendous mythic “middle class.” By contemporary standards, everyone who can make carfare to get to work and not sleep in the street is “middle class,” save a few “rich” and the “poor.” For some odd reason people who work for others see themselves as “middle class.” That is for two reasons: the first is based on our rejection of the titled Europeans as our “betters,” and the other is the fact that economically, most working people were once at a standard of living that rivalled the European middle class and the people were truly mobile, that is, a man who worked hard as a laborer could, indeed, see his children become middle management and his grandchildren become professionals. That day is over. There might still linger a Duke of Devonshire in England, but there is just as surely a Marquis of Microsoft, not merely in the United States, but with title good throughout the world: Forbes magazine is the new Almanach de Gotha.

And as for the “American Dream,” based on the proposition that hard work resulted in decent benefits as well as good pay, and thus upward mobility (if not for the workers, then at least for their children), it seems that we, the American worker, whether at the counting house or on the assembly line, are rapidly becoming “expendable.” The economy is booming! The numbers do not lie. Unfortunately, it is booming based on the sale of electronic trinkets sold here but made in Asia and clothing made of cotton grown here but spun into thread, woven into cloth and cut and sewn in Asian sweatshops instead of here. Our cars from Detroit are now compressed and placed onto cargo ships where the steel is melted down and turned into Asian models.

The vast majority of people in the United States and Canada are paid wages for work performed or else are pensioned. We do not live off rents received from property we own or dividends on investments while producing nothing but carbon dioxide. We do not practice one of the free professions. We get paid by an individual or a company or a corportion either for our time or by our commissions: we are the working people, but seem ashamed to call ourselves what we are.

It is time for that to change.

We must become what Jefferson, Roosevelt, Truman and Jackson, great Democrats, dreampt: a nation of the common folk, capable of governing ourselves and independent from the restraints of decaying European social systems. We however have reached an industrial base which Jackson and Jefferson never imagined — not that we do not still produce a tremendous amount of agricultural produce. In fact, we feed a large portion of the world. We now have new feudal masters, as surely as Pre-Revolutionary France. The new “betters” are the Lords of the Universe, the unholy alliance of big business and big capital. Our government revolves around their axes.

They have created for us a nation of unhealthy air, nonpotable water, and oil slicks befouling our shores. Mountains of garbage fill plots just beyond our cities, our public transportation remains in danger at a simple majority of elected officials’ whims and continued sufferance, and in many places is either entirely lacking or else nothing more than a vanity vestige of its former glory. The major population centers, of course, are excepted in the area of public transport, the workers simply being utterly dependent upon the trains and buses that enable them to get to and from work. The rest of us outside of Boston, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Los Angeles and a few other places are at the mercy of the automobile. Even rudimentary concessions such as bicycle lanes are missing from our public thoroughfares. We have abandoned our cities for auto-dependent suburbs and exurbs, increasing our pollution and dependence on foreign oil while ignoring all alternative fuels. The globe is warming, the ice caps of the Artic and shelves of the Antartic are melting while glaciers receed in South America, Greenland and Europe. Do we wish half of Florida to be under water in one hundred years or for grain and trees to flourish in Iceland?

This is a global problem, and it is rooted in the mismanagement of the stewartship given us by Nature’s bounty to the people. Yet it is not the people, per se, who have mismanaged the lands and airs and waters. Our individual contributions are small, yet it is our system of large corporations shaping our daily lives that bear the brunt of the fault. It is not a man or a woman or even a family who decided to denude the mountainsides of Appalachia for coal. It is not a single person who decided that a single hull was sufficient to contain a tanker full of crude oil from grounding, but a corporation. It is corporations that have fought tooth and nail in a primal brutish fashion all attempts at making public and universal our most basic necessities: health care and energy production.

Finally, it is corporations who furnish the 24 hours of daily fear and hate that blanket our airwaves. The Republican corporate party appear to answer only to corporations, because that is wherein their campaign funds lie. The tell us that dissent is “treason.” To question the morality of the Iraq war is not to “support the troops” when they send our boys into battle underarmored and bereft of armor; and when we raise the reasoning of American youth ambushed in a war that was based on falsehood in a country in civil war, they tell us “stay the course.” These are the people who blanket our airwaves: shills and pawns of megacorporations. We ask for peace and they give us war. We ask for health care benefits and a decent pension and a just wage and they tell us with rhetoric and sermon that we are ingrates, deserving only what bones are tossed to us and that we are lucky to even have jobs, as we are easily replaced to another continent. The Republican government provides us no relief from “free trade” or “outsourcing” or “drowning the Federal government in a bathtub” — what we get is tax relief for the wealthy and our sons and brothers making a choice between the enlistment lines or unemployment lines and money disappearing faster than it can be printed: record defecits and trade inbalance. The present Republican corporate administration tells us that “unemployment is down” but neglects to mention that one disappears from the unemployment list after six months time and that many of the “new jobs” are nowhere near the benefit and pay level that the newly reemployed once had. The government neglects to inform us of the hardship in Mexico that NAFTA has caused, with native agriculture falling to record low levels as people flock from their self-sufficient farms with corn surplus to the colonias, that delicate word that replaces “open cesspool, no benefits, foul aired urban proletariat border zone to where US manufacturing jobs have disappeared.” Pity the poor Mexicans who have become urban peons, with no insurance, no environmental enforcement, and only more hours of labor the next day for a few pesos as solace. Is this what we wish the United States to become?

There is an alternative: a party that preaches peace and prosperity; real security and not slogans; jobs at a living wage with guaranteed health care for all; freedom for one to worship as one wishes or not at all; a return to the heritage of Jackson and Jefferson, that is to say, to the people. That is the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, the The Progressive Democrats of America the PDA, the wing of the Democratic Party that champions American workers, the party of Representatives Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers.  They believe that government should be as Lincoln described: for, of and by the people.  Corporations are not people.  Do you people who work and produce want a share of political power, to have your voice unmuffled?  If you want peace and not constant threat of war, an American economy centered on American workers and not abstract “corporate bottom lines,” if you want a safe home and a secure United States, then you have a choice: vote Democratic and Progressive Democratic whenever you have the chance.  Be proud of what you are: working men and women, the most noble calling in all of Creation, the first jobs: Adam who delved and Eve who span!

The Public Expression of Religion Act, or How the Right wishes to bankrupt the ACLU

 

 

1st Session H. R. 2679

To amend the Revised Statutes of the United States to eliminate the chilling effect on the constitutionally protected expression of religion by State and local officials that results from the threat that potential litigants may seek damages and attorney’s fees.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

May 26, 2005

Mr. HOSTETTLER (for himself, Mr. WAMP, Mr. NORWOOD, Mr. JENKINS, Mr. PAUL, Mr. DOOLITTLE, Mr. SODREL, Mr. WELDON of Florida, Mr. ALEXANDER, Mr. BACHUS, Mr. PITTS, Mr. INGLIS of South Carolina, Mr. OTTER, Mr. DUNCAN, Mr. JONES of North Carolina, Mr. KINGSTON, Mr. SMITH of Texas, Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland, Mr. POE, and Mr. BARRETT of South Carolina) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

---

A BILLTo amend the Revised Statutes of the United States to eliminate the chilling effect on the constitutionally protected expression of religion by State and local officials that results from the threat that potential litigants may seek damages and attorney’s fees.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005′.

SEC. 2. LIMITATIONS ON CERTAIN LAWSUITS AGAINST STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS.

(a) Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights- Section 1979 of the Revised Statutes of the United States (42 U.S.C. 1983) is amended–

• (1) by inserting `(a)’ before the first sentence; and

• (2) by adding at the end the following:

`(b) The remedies with respect to a claim under this section where the deprivation consists of a violation of a prohibition in the Constitution against the establishment of religion shall be limited to injunctive relief.’.

(b) Attorneys Fees- Section 722(b) of the Revised Statutes of the United States (42 U.S.C. 1988(b)) is amended by adding at the end the following: `However, no fees shall be awarded under this subsection with respect to a claim described in subsection (b) of section nineteen hundred and seventy nine.’.

————————————————————————————————

That is the text of the noxious bill which was just approved by the House Judiciary Committee. Under the aegis of “religous freedom,” the Republican Unenlightened House seeks to undermine all acts of relief from abuses resulting from ignoring the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution.

The purpose of this proposed legislation is simple: to bankrupt the ACLU by making an enjoiner of the award of attorneys fees from any damages awarded by a court in an Establishment case. Injunction alone would be the award of any damages. In other words, one may sue over publicly funded prayer, Ten Commandment monuments, etc. as an individual or a group, but any fees from work on the case would not be awarded as part of the adujication. Once again, let us slip out of legalese:

What this basicly means is that a school in Deepest Darkest Wherever can have prayer in a public school, put an icon of Jesus Christ on the wall, and hire a religious teacher for “Biblical Literacy classes” — all out of the public coffers — and a parent or group of parents seeking relief must hire their own lawyers or handle the case themselves, or else hope and pray (no pun intended) that a civil liberties organization will take their case absolutely pro bono or at a diminished fee. “Winning” such a case would be simply a ruling from the presiding officer of “Now cut that out! Bad! Bad! Bad school! Bad! Bad!”

The number of such cases taken on by the ACLU would be absolutely cut into a fraction of the present number. To compound matters, school boards have been largely supportive of actions that breach Mr. Jefferson’s “wall.” Right wing organizations, such as the VFW, the AFA, and others relish the thought that the ACLU might be ultimately silenced effectively by this legislation.

This will make relief a privledge of the wealthy or the well-connected alone. This must be condemned by the House and never allowed to reach the Senate. But will it? One has to wonder if the last desperate gasps of the Talibangelists is not now being heard. Will it become absolutely pitch dark before the dawn breaks in the United States? This HJC vote is getting but small press, the small nonprofit NewStandard, excepted. Michelle Chen of NewStandard reports on 12 September 2006:

Groups like the ACLU, which represents plaintiffs in many church-state cases, say the attorney-fee awards in successful cases are necessary so that lawyers can offer their services to individuals without charge. Jeremy Leaming, with American United for Separation of Church and State, acknowledged that the bill could affect the group financially, since it has received court-ordered compensation in past cases it has litigated. Nonetheless, he pointed out that the bill does not propose comparable restrictions on attorney’s fees for individuals or groups that sue to defend religious exercise in government or public settings. The main problem, he argued to TNS, is that the bill’s supporters “don’t particularly like the way a lot of federal courts have ruled on church-state issues… and their intention is to see church-state lawsuits stop.”

We see it in a similar light. We urge all who love the freedom of religion in this country to join with us to decry the HJC vote and to preserve our heritage of Messrs. Jefferson and Madison. Two tiered justice is no justice at all. It is Unamerican, repugnant to the spirit of the Constitution, if not the Constitution and precedent themselves, and an agenda attempted to be foisted upon the People by a small group to silence dissent.

Suffer the Little Children, Cluster Bombs and the US Senate

On 6 September 2006 the US Senate had a rollcall vote on an amendment on the FY 07 DOD budget, the Feinstein-Leahy Amendment, which would restrict the usage of cluster bombs in civilian areas throughout the world. The amendment failed, the result of the vote was 30 ayes, all by Democrats and one Independent, and 70 nays, including all Republicans and a sizeable number of nominal Democrats.

Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Evan Bayh, supposed potential candidates for the Democratic nomination for President included themselves among the Nays. We must ask why.

Why was this most moral of all recent legislation rejected? Was it because it would have been an ex post facto condmenation of US use of bomblets in Iraq and Israeli use in Lebanon? One cannot imagine that a weaponette that looks amazingly like a toy and is frequently confused by children as a toy would not be condemned, save for that reason — unless the US Senate doesn’t care about Arab children’s lives or else loves war.

From the FAS, the Federation of American Scientists , a detailed illustrated technical synopsis of cluster bombs is available. Please note that the anti-personnel bomblets illustrated below appear to be amazingly similar to a ball — a child’s toy. Please note well Senators Bayh, Biden and Clinton:

We must ask, once again, why? One cannot merely blame the “blank check” given to Israel to destroy Lebanon, as the US use of these are well documented in the press worldwide in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the war against the Serbs. Senator Feinstein did not spare the delicate feelings of the Senate in her floor presentation, showing graphic photos of the damage these bomblets have done to children. Is the Senate too ashamed to face the evidence? I humbly submit to a candid world, yes. The number of supposed duds and pressure activated bomblets is well documented by FAS as well as the emergency wards of Baghdad and Beirut.

Here is the honor roll:

YEAs —30
Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carper (D-DE)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dayton (D-MN)
Dorgan (D-ND)

Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Wyden (D-OR)

All ScreechingRats can do is to urge that everyone remember these names and, more importantly, the names of all those who do not appear.

Cerebus, having lost two of his heads is dying, himself!

Cerebus Eats two of his Heads,

or

How the unholy alliance of Rand’s Ghost Devoured First the Talibangelists, then the Heritage Foundation, Resulting in the Beast’s Death.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, they say, and this current administration in Washington of late definitely proves that old saws are often more than merely passe. Once Reagan entered the White House, the road to perdition was smoothed and freshly paved by three disparate groups, often with conflicting or neutral views towards one another, yet capable to reach agreement on enough to achieve hegemony over the American political scene. The first group is the unabashed rabid capitalism, the apostles of free trade, the lords of the universe, those lubricated with expensive Scotch whisky and nurtured on petroleum, in short: Ayn Rand’s Ghost.

The next, the Talibangelists, who had not a problem one with laissez-faire economics, but enjoyed the challenge of finding “biblical” reasons to discredit such annoying principles as graduated income taxation, employment security and environmental laws – while finding Heather Has Two Mommies an agent of Satan and sodomy a crime against God and society worthy of death.

The last, which this writer hopes does not conclude the reader to find any evidence of anti-Semitic bias in this essay, we may term the Heritage Foundation for shorthand, only, as there are many, many other groups with whom we lump them, such as the PNAC and the AEI. AIPAC certainly has had many apologists for the rabid anti-everything-not -supportive-of-Israel bunch who throw out the “anti-Semite” charge every time anything that doesn’t smack of a planted article written by Ariel Cohen is printed in a paper in Britain or the US. The charge is so distasteful that it makes serious, dispassionate adult analysis and dissemination of the results all but impossible for a writer to bear. These are the “Terror! Terror! Terror!” mantra repeaters. They see Old Sammy under every bed and wish to bug every phone and wreck nation under nation in order to preserve a self-anointed role as “Big Daddy of the Universe,” from whom all must march in step or become a bug under the sole. Why? Why to make us all free, of course. Even if we have to endure semi-tyranny in the process. In short: Israel and the United States of America, good; UK and Canada, almost good; everyone else in Europe, tolerable; and everyone else evil. Especially countries that dare to be vocal about their rejection of US values. But this crowd does not see individuals, only groups; thus, group punishment is meted out for opposition: terror bombing in cities, cutting off of the trade of medical supplies and other vehicles. To cross them runs one in danger of being labeled either an appeaser of terrorists or else accused of hating the Jewish religion and ethnos or both. Their revolution is as eternal as was Lev Trotsky’s. However, at least Trotsky came down from his soapbox and won a civil war, instead of scribble and screech as do Kristol, Norquist, et al., the first head of Cerebus.

Well, we have the three heads of Cerebus, now we also know some of their names. Talibangelist: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, as well as anyone who wears a diamond pinkie ring and snake skin boots while allegedly “preaching” on television while begging for money. Their “theology,” if it
deserves the benefit of a greco-derived nomenclature, is diverse, an odd hodgepodge of “born again” ranting and “feel good” old fashioned revival theatrics, with an occasional “healing” or miracle or wind fall of sudden cash thrown in. But that is just good ole’ flim flam. Hokum. Bunk. What is especially troubling about these true believers, these Jacobins of the Pulpit is the supposedly “moral” code they wish to impose upon an Enlightenment nation – a return Leviticus, if one will. They see the old desert tribal superstitions not quaint nor obsolete, but a perfected method of everyday life. This folks, is the Earth is Six Thousand Years Old Crowd, and lucky for us all, Noah was not inspired by EL to put T. Rex on the Ark, or we’d all be dodging dinosaurs today instead of Old Sammy’s airplanes. These are the “defund public education and libraries” crowd – agents of Satan, one knows. These are the “better a coat hanger and an aspirin than the ‘morning after pill’” crowd. We are all too familiar with them, and they have been tossed a bone or two for delivering enough hate to get the uneducated blind semi-literate non-thinking masses to give them votes. They also love guns, this makes the second head of Cerebus especially dangerous.

And then we have the Ghost of Ayn Rand…as the gin-soaked Chris Hitchens late of London once said, her sole redeeming factor was her stringent atheism: the Rumsfelds and Cheneys and Daddy Bushs that reek of Famous Grouse and crude. They are CEOs, people who set “energy policy” behind closed doors, those for whom a nice little war is certainly worth having in the far west of Asia in order to threaten the rapidly depleting oil reserves, thus driving the price ever higher. Their brothers, the old school capitalists, are living a Dickensian fantasy: not even a goose for Tiny Tim’s Christmas table, as Bob Cratchet has lost his job to an outfit in Mumbai. How are we supposed to buy trinkets made in China and wear clothing made in Bangladesh if we clean floors and groom greens for a living? These men – and there are but a few of them women – are producers of nothing except flatulence of the anal and oral varieties. They bravely cheer on the troops to bombs under the streets of Baghdad while dining at Kennebunkport on fresh Maine lobster. They print their signatures on condolence letters. They are the men who read every word from the Vienna School as if it were holy writ. Then they quote holy writ ignoring the overall message of the revealed religions. They are the third head of Cerebus.

The first and second heads slowly consumed by the first — as Stalin warned once, never be part of a troika, as the first and second members will always ally against the third, leaving only one, with which the first then secretly allies with the third’s replacement– leaving only a shill and the first after the second has a care of the mysterious Russian Flu. Sorry, Pat and Ari, Donnie just ate you. Robertson and Cohen are rapidly being relegated to the Lawn Garden of history, as anachronistic as Freud’s “glove paralysis” cases.

Unfortunately, business must go on, and the Carlisle-Boeing-Exxon Group must have its way, there are enemies awaiting, that is to say, Chinese trinkets to be sold and new generations of missiles to test. We must have the bases in Mesopotamia, the Iraqis be damned, what if they really got angry and the oil didn’t just slow down but abruptly end? What if the Baathist message of secular anti-monarchy got out and spread to Saudi Arabia, that would be a fine
pickle, then, wouldn’t it. No, the farce must continue and the Senate debate trivia such as flag burning and how saving the rich from taxes is good for us all and that in order to be free we must become a security state. The Randistas do not care about security, save the securities of the negotiable type. They do not care who plays house. All they want is your money, and if a few thousand here and there from the US need to die, well, then there are intellectual and religious justifications available from Ariel Cohen and Rev. Pat Robertson. Please, do not let the news get out: free trade is what this is all about, the free trade of oil at the highest possible price, with a few stable suppliers. All else is useful rhetoric to justify this.

However, the stumps of the severed heads are bleeding profusely, and save an October Surprise – Old Sammy, anyone? – a severing of the third head is inevitable come November, courtesy of a newly testosterone drenched Democratic Party. And oh, my, there shall be singing in the street when Johnny comes marching home.