kuniform

As I said in the previous post, the Brits know how to fight a war on terror. Going at it without torture, going at it within the rule of law, but still coming down on them hard. If Bush had been capable of fighting this kind of war, we’d not have 1,800 dead young men and women on top of our 9/11 casualties.

This is how you fight a war on terror. Way to go Brits. If your enemy is decentralized and relies heavily on communications for coordination, what better way to make them alter their routines than to hit the communications network? Now, I just wonder how they did it.

Check out the very last paragraph in this article on Kennedy’s attacks on Rumsfeld. In a city where the number of lobbyists has doubled in the past four years (the rise of George Bush’s everything for sale gov’t) and taxes have been cut 5 times in the same timeframe, the sudden interest in accountability for the administration’s actions by the Democrats is, well, tepid and somewhat pathetic. See this article in the Washington Post on the depressingly great market for lobbyists in DC today.

If the Dems had any interests other than preserving their own seats in Congress, they would be outraged and would start filing ethics complaints against people like Duke Cunningham. Read more about this complete jackass on Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo.

Final political rant.. I’m watching the Daily Show, and I get to see Duke, James Sensenbrenner (who embarrasses me because he’s from my home state), etc., pass their flag burning amendment finally. How? By consistently invoking September 11th to bludgeon the opposition into a shambles.

Thanks. That really helps with the war on terror, with a strong economy, with small government, with fiscal responsibility, with health care and the environment. These are not the actions of human beings with honor, with dignity, and with respect for others. In the words of the evangelicals, what would Jesus do? I believe he’d be burning a flag and tossing the moneychanging lobbyists out of the temple, if you’ll allow me to stretch a metaphor.

Ah, that felt good.

Every day I hope there is a God. Not necessarily a Christian God, but that there is one out there. I don’t need an afterlife, and I don’t need to continue forever, but I hope there is more to this world than simple, random, thoughtless chance. On reading things like this story about Bush’s ordering an illegal air war in Iraq 6 weeks prior to gaining the consent of Congress, much less the U.N., I hope there’s an afterlife which corresponds to your beliefs.

In such a case, Bush will burn in Hell when his time comes. I hope the souls of those he has ordered needlessly and illegally murdered cloud round his soul like a dark omen, warning away dogs and children. And it pains me to write that, because I don’t want to think that way of another human being. But looking at the utter disregard this man and his neo-con friends have for the dignity of other human beings, I come to the conclusion that 2008 cannot come fast enough to remove this cancer from the American politcal system.

You can call me a conspiracy-minded chap, but I see an unelected despot who shows no regard for the pain he inflicts in the lives of his own citizens or those abroad, but instead kow-twos to a never sated set of corporate and religious concerns whose ideologies are systemetically more related to fascism than to democracy (i.e.—imposition of a set of values and principles upon an unwilling populace).

It makes me sad my country has fallen so far. Hmm. Time to start taking those Chinese lessons, so I can serve when the new regime starts cashing in their markers on all our foreign debt. Hmmm. maybe Joseph Campbell was right: when Jesus preached the gospels, he meant that Heaven and Hell are states of mind and spirit on Earth. Guess which way I think this country’s soul is trending? Dark days ahead, baby. Dark days.

Molinillo: Swollen Fortunes is a great take on the 100 year attitude shift towards the responsibilities of the wealthy from today’s roots as the party of conservative, responsible government and today’s Republican party run by K-street and the rich. For background on the death tax, and its amazing journey from pundits laughing at the Mars fortune’s heirs hiring their lobbyists to today’s repeal of the tax, check out this Wash post story.

The day job is also becoming the night job and the weekend job, and I’m researching alternate interfaces to musical instruments, so my time is becoming quite limited. I named this post, “The End of the Experiment,” because I think we’re there. American democracy has jumped the shark.

The experiment known as American democracy is officially coming to a close, as we codify into law a class-based caste system, in which each class has rules which apply to it based on income level, but in the opposite direction Teddy Roosevelt saw.

Instead of the rich bearing the majority of the tax burden because they derive the most benefit from society (i.e.—security in the fact that the masses don’t rise up and unjustly take everything from the rich), the new Republicans have a better idea: make the poor responsible for their actions (like in this week’s bankruptcy bill) but exempt the rich from the results of theirs. It’s the ultimate rejection of American fairplay and, well, equality for all under the law.

Have a great week.