A RETROSPECTIVE ON AN 'UN-AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE' FED UP WITH THE ILLUSION OF DEMOCRACY

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

A RETROSPECTIVE ON AN 'UN-AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE'

FED UP WITH THE ILLUSION OF DEMOCRACY

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There are many in the mainstream media who don’t take writers and journalists outside the mainstream, and corporately controlled, media seriously. In fact, they consider us presumptuous to even have the audacity to offer a considered opinion.  A few years back, Chris Matthews made the remark on his show, Hardball, that "I don't consider them [progressive bloggers] Democrats. I consider them Netroots. And if I see they vote in every election, or most elections, then I'll be worried. But I'm not sure they're regular, grown-up Democrats. I think a lot of these people are troublemakers who love to sit in the back seat and complain. They're not interested in governing this country. They never ran for office, they're not interested in working for someone in public office. They get their giggles out of sitting in the back seat and bitching."
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In response, Markos Moulitsas, founder and spiritual leader of the very popular website, Daily Kos, set that loudmouth gasbag straight, very effectively, and in no uncertain terms. He pointed out the following:
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"In 2003, when Bush landed his plane in the aircraft carrier, and spoke in front of the banner that said, 'Mission Accomplished,' Chris Matthews had an entire show based on that event, and he said everybody knows that we won the war, except a few critics. Well, I was one of those few critics. People like me in the Netroots were some of those critics. And it turns out that we were right and the Beltway conventional wisdom was wrong. And once again, we're in a situation where people like Chris Matthews don't learn from these mistakes. They're trapped in this bubble and they think that they know better."
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And he handled Tom Tancredo several weeks earlier with the very same finesse. He literally ran Tancredo off the Ed Show, and again, without busting so much as a sweat bubble. The reason he doesn't have to raise his voice, is because he's confronting Washington hypocrisy with facts and courage - something that the mainstream media seems to have lost. The mainstream media has degenerated into cheerleaders with an unspoken agreement not to step outside the approved parameters of the status quo. Then Moulitsas is that guy who shows up at the dinner party with a crude but unyielding truth: "No, that's not a bad egg - somebody farted." That's who bloggers are, and that's exactly what America needs.
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When I started writing over two decades ago, a serious journalist could pick and choose what publications he or she wanted to contribute to, but many of those resources have dried up as the corporate media has consumed and sucked all of the air out of the free press in order to dumb down America and propagate their conservative, self-serving, and narrow point of view. That’s why you’ll find some of the oldest and most prestigious publications in America begging for donations over the internet just to stay afloat.
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So serious, objective, and conscientious bloggers represent the new face of the American press. We’re what mainstream reporters and columnists USED to be - remember those old-school reporters of the 30's and 40's in the rumpled suits, a crumpled hat, and a pencil behind their ear? Those are who serious bloggers are today. Those bigshots who sit on plush sets in flawlessly tailored suits, and who never ask the hard questions or follow up, they're not journalists, they're corporate hacks.
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So we’ve got to learn to listen to one another, do our own research for the facts, and most important of all, learn to think for ourselves. We've got to redefine journalism in this country. So seek out those bloggers that you find to be trustworthy and credible, and then support their blogs. That way, YOU choose who you want to place your trust in, not some executive directed by Wall Street. 

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If we fail to do those things we’re lost, because there’s a new paradigm at work in this country today that many of us haven’t caught on to yet. We’re used to a situation where it’s Blacks against Whites, Jews against Gentiles, gays against straights, and so on. But in today’s world there’s only two factions, at least to the ruling class - the 1%ers against the working class. And as I write this, only five (5) corporations control 90% of all of the information that we consume, so we’re being drenched in corporate propaganda. They’re telling us what is acceptable, what’s not acceptable, who to like, and who not to like - and they have absolutely no compunction against sending your children off to die in order to fatten their bank accounts. They’ve already done it in Iraq. So we should keep these facts in mind - especially Black people when they sit their children in front of the sillyvision to be mesmerized.  The mass media is teaching Black children that it is their role in life to be criminals, drug addicts, and at the very bottom of society. 

WOULD BUSH'S SABER RATTLE AS LOUDLY AGAINST CHINA?

On September 15, 2002 - six months and four days prior to the Iraqi invasion - I published an article entitled "Would Bush's Saber Rattle as Loudly Against China?" in the Portland Independent Media Center (no one else would publish it at the time) that said the following:

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Now that we've reached the anniversary of 9-11, I am consumed by one thought - in light of what I've seen over the past year I find myself much more afraid of Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft than I am the Al Qaeda. While I understand that terrorists strike without warning to destroy life and property to promote their own agenda, it has become increasingly clear that Bush and his cohorts threaten to be even more destructive by attacking life, liberty, and the very foundation of this nation in the promotion of theirs.
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Over the past year these conservative war mongers have been playing the American people like a fiddle. Now they want to sacrifice American lives for nothing more than their own political advantage. Just ask yourself, what does Saddam Hussain have to do with 9-11? Absolutely nothing. Evidence of that can be found in the fact that if Saddam had been involved in 9-11 the administration would have gone after him initially. So why is it suddenly so imperative that we invade Iraq now? I'll tell you why. Since Bush was unable to produce the head of Osama Bin Laden, he now needs another villain to take Bin Laden's place in order to keep his numbers up in the polls - and if that means having to sacrifice a few American lives and ignite even more terrorist activity on American soil in the process, so be it.
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It is a well known political fact that the American people tend to rally around the president when the country's at war. That's why the Bush Administration fell all over themselves after 9-11 to declare "a war against terrorism." And the American people reacted just as planed - Bush's numbers immediately went up in the polls. But now with the mystery surrounding the fate of Osama Bin Laden, the administration has found itself without a war to sustain those numbers, so now they have to create one.
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While I'm not prepared to say that the Bush Administration allowed 9-11 to take place, it is clear that the timing of the 9-11 tragedy was without a doubt the best thing that could ever happened to Bush's presidency. Bush was a lame duck the minute he was sworn in. It seems that as soon as Bush entered The Oval Office the stock market began to falter and the economy started to weaken. And whenever he spoke, the next day's news was not so much what he said, but whether or not he got through the speech without falling on his face. In addition, his big tax cut that was touted as the key to boosting the economy turned out to be a bust, and he was so inept in dealing with congress that a Republican senator changed parties costing Bush control of the senate. As a result, when 9-11 took place, it was embraced by conservatives more like it was a football rally than the sober occasion that it was - thus, all the flag waving, ceremonies, and strutting about.
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But where was all that bluster prior to 9-11? ABC News reported on May 16th of this year that the Bush Administration acknowledged that U.S. Intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before 9-11 that Osama Bin Laden's terrorists might try to hijack a plane. It was also reported that Bush privately alerted transportation officials and security agencies, but other than that, he simply sat on the information. The administration claims that the information they received was non-specific, but one would think that even if they couldn't determine exactly when and where the attack was going to take place, at the very least they could have warned the American people. If they had, maybe some of the people who died would have chosen not to fly - or possibly, chosen to leave their children behind. But no, this president who now claims to be so concerned with protecting our welfare that he feels compelled to launch an unprovoked attack against Iraq, was at that time more interested in the impact that warning us would have on the airline industry.
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What the American people needs to understand is that the power elite in this country doesn't view the United States in the same way as its citizens. They see the United States as a huge corporation, with its various industries as its subsidiaries. They see American citizens, particularly the lower and middle class, as simply pawns to be cajoled and manipulated in whatever way is necessary to meet the goals of the corporation. Therefore, they didn't view the tragedy of 9-11 in the same patriotic way as the average American citizen. After the initial shock, they saw 9-11 in terms of dollars and cents. Ultimately, it was viewed as an assault on their corporate superstructure. Later they recognized that the incident could be used as a distraction for the American people, and still later, an opportunity to move on Middle Eastern oil interests.
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So let there be no doubt, all of the flag waving, ceremonies, and patriotic speeches have nothing to do with 9-11; they are designed to whip the American people into such a frenzy that they're blinded to Bush's actual agenda. And that agenda includes the following.
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1).Committing America (and American lives) to a war in order to get himself reelected.
2).Taking control of Iraqi oil fields to benefit his friends in big business.
3).Keeping the American voter distracted from considering the ramifications of the recent corporate scandals.
4).Keeping the American people from recognizing how inept he is as president.
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The rest of the world sees Bush's agenda for what it is, and the American people would too if they'd stop waving their flags long enough to consider the flag's true meaning. The American flag represents freedom and justice, not trying to dictate who should lead other countries. It represents the open debate of issues, not intolerance to any and everyone who disagrees with your point of view. It represents the guarantee of personal freedom, not the suspension of the Bill of Rights. If the American people would just stop to consider these facts, it would become clear that even while Bush and his conservative cohorts are frantically waving our flag, they are simultaneously waging war against the very values that the flag and this great country represents.
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These issues can, and will, be debated ad nauseam, but the American people need only ask themselves two questions to put all of the administration's nonsense into perspective. First, would the administration be so anxious to go to war if we were talking about China as opposed to Iraq? And secondly, do we think that invading Iraq will make us more, or less safe from terrorist attacks? If we answer those questions honestly, it becomes clear that the administration is being disingenuous at best.

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Could Obama Fall Victim to a Change We Can't Believe in?

At this point Obama's presidency could go either way - he can either become one of the greatest presidents this country has ever known, or go down as an exciting experiment that went bad. It's all up to how he handles the expectations of Independents.

The biggest problem that Obama currently faces is becoming a victim of his own effectiveness. During the campaign he raised the nation's expectation so high that just being a good president won't do. He promised a change that we can believe in, which led many of us to believe that he intended to trash the way business is done in Washington, but that promise seems to be totally inconsistent with what seems to be his irrepressible desire to hold hands and sing Kumbaya with the very Republican leaders from which we wanted a change.

This has fueled the growing suspicion by many that both parties are beholding to the same cabal of power, and only feign having differing philosophies toward governance. That suspicion lies very close to the surface for many Independents - after all, that's why they're Independents in the first place.

And President Obama hasn't helped himself in that regard. For a man who is ordinarily so politically astute, even before he became president he did a curious flip-flop on the FISA issue. According to Greenchange.org, on October 24, 2007, Bill Burton of the Obama campaign indicated, "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." But by June 20, 2008, Obama issued a statement reversing his position, indicating that our national security needs were more important than his objections.

That deeply disappointed many Independents, since a citizen's right to sue a telecommunications company for invading his or her privacy in violation of the law has nothing to do with national security. Those are the very constitutional rights that we're trying to keep secure. But while many Independents have kept that in mind, at least Obama had the integrity to take that stand prior to our making the decision on whether or not to vote for him.

But then once he was elected President, Obama made another curious statement with regard to the criminal activities and alleged war crimes committed by the Bush administration. In spite of the fact that there are strong allegations and prima facie evidence of torture, and some of the most unconscionable violations of the Geneva Convention since the Nuremberg trials, President Obama stated that he wanted to move the nation forward, and not look back.

Many Independents have two problems with that. First of all, President Obama seems much too willing to move forward with regard to the fat cats, while lower-ranking personnel are rotting in prison. That's in direct conflict with the American ideal of equal justice under the law. And secondly, since most of these atrocities were committed against the citizens of other nations, it is the height of arrogance for us to be "the deciders" of whether or not those responsible should be held accountable. That also runs contrary to American ideals, and the concept of "a shining city on the hill."

And now we're talking about sending thousands of more troops to Afghanistan. The question is, why? The nation has yet to be provided with a reasonable explanation of why we should be meddling, once again, in another country's internal affairs. One would think we would have learned something about the futility of that by now. It's a recipe for disaster.

There's only two legitimate reasons to have our troops in that part of the world. The first is obvious - to make damn sure the nuclear missiles in Pakistan don't fall into the hands of Al Qaeda. The second reason is to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice. So why can't we simply pull out of Afghanistan and deploy enough troops in Pakistan to protect the missiles, then let the CIA and law enforcement deal with Osama? That way we save both treasure and lives, and we're not creating more enemies for the United States by killing innocent people.

But many Independents suspect that there's another agenda afoot. Actually, Cheney's giving it away. Independents recognize that Dick Cheney has absolutely no integrity, so when he gets passionate over an issue we know to follow either the money or power. Thus, many Independents suspect that what's actually behind Cheney's insistence that we go recklessly rushing into Afghanistan has much more to do with Halliburton's bottom line than it does America's best interest. And while Obama has shown himself to be an excellent president in many ways, his one shortcoming - and a shortcoming that may very well bring him down in the end - is his tendency to try to appease the stupidity and greed of the GOP.

The President needs to recognize that there is nothing he can do that's going to make him acceptable to the GOP - that is, unless he agrees to appoint a Republican vice president, then resign. By now it should be clear that even while he's asleep, the GOP is trying to hatch plans to destroy him. So by spending more time thinking about them than he is his base, he's playing right into their hands.

I mentioned power as one of the reasons that Cheney's trying to rush the president into Afghanistan. I wonder if the president has considered the fact that Cheney just might be trying to get him to make the same kind of mistake in Afghanistan that the Bush Administration made in Iraq in order to take the Iraq issue off the table for the 2012 election? If during the 2012 campaign America is bogged down in Afghanistan with the useless death of thousands of U.S. troops, all of a sudden, Bush, Cheney, and the GOP won't look all that bad. The president should think about that possibility, since the machinations of Dick Cheney makes Machiavelli look like a trainee.

On the other hand, if the president would have the CIA go after Osama Bin Laden (through the use of intelligence, instead of blindly shooting at rocks), then pull out of Afghanistan, and make an agreement with the government of Pakistan to help them protect their nuclear arsenal, he'll be looking pretty good in 2012, and he won't have the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops to have to justify.

And he'd look even better if he allowed Attorney General Holder to do his job with respect to the Bush administration's war crimes. First, he'd firm up his base by restoring their confidence that he stands for the rule of law, and he would also allay the fear that he might be a puppet, controlled by some powerful cabal.

Another upside to that is that once Holder begins his investigation into the Bush administration, there's absolutely no doubt that he's going to find criminality, cronyism, and corruption seeping so deep within the GOP that Republicans will be so busy snitching on one another, and covering their own asses, that they won't have the time to plot against either him, or the American people.

Now, THAT, would be a change that we could believe in.

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George W. Bush and Dick Cheney squandered over $3 trillion of taxpayer funds "chasing" Osama Bin Laden. President Obama brought him down with 2 helicopters and 2 detachments of Navy Seals. If Bush had done that he'd be on Mt. Rushmore today, but the mainstream media all but ignored what Obama had accomplished.
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An Open Response to Halliburton's
Demand That I make A retraction

Ms. Gabriel,

I’m writing in response to your June 23rd request for an immediate correction to a statement made regarding the Halliburton Corp. in my June 20th article, Healthcare: Why Can't We Get the Congressional Option? Your communication reads as follows:

FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION

The article, “Healthcare: Why Can't We Get the Congressional Option?” posted Saturday, June 20, on The Wattree Chronicle contains information about Halliburton that is completely misleading and incorrect.

Halliburton is not a military contractor. Halliburton is one of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the energy industry, and serves the upstream oil and gas industry throughout the lifecycle of the reservoir – from locating hydrocarbons and managing geological data, to drilling and formation evaluation, well construction and completion, and optimizing production through the life of the field.

You will note that all of the government services and engineering and construction businesses have been and remain with KBR. To confirm, KBR and Halliburton are completely separate and independent of each other. Halliburton separated KBR from the company in April 2007 (http://www.halliburton.com/public/news/pubsdata/press_release/2007/corpnws_040507a.html.

We respectfully request you make this correction immediately.
Kind regards,

Diana Gabriel
Senior Manager, Public Relations
Halliburton
diana.gabriel@halliburton.com
Office: 713.759.2608
Cell: [Redacted]
Fax: [Redacted]

While I am always careful to obtain multiple sources for any assertions that I make in my articles, nevertheless, I went back to objectively revisit the facts just in case it was necessary to accommodate your request. Halliburton is only mentioned one time in the entire article, and the paragraph reads as follows:

“And there's a very logical reason for that. Business, by it's very nature, is designed to generate profit, not to provide services - there was ample evidence of that during the Bush administration. Prior to the military turning over many of its support services to Halliburton, for example, we never heard about our troops being given contaminated water or being electrocuted in the shower. The reason for that is our military's top priority was maintaining the troops, while Halliburton's top priority is maximizing its profits. The very same dynamic is at work when it comes to insuring our citizens - and the politicians know it, but they don't care, because again, for them, it's about me first, and only then, the public good. I mean, am I the only one sick of these people dictating what is on and off the table? I don't think so.”

Try as I might, Ms. Gabriel, I can’t find anything inaccurate about that statement. While you pointed out that “Halliburton separated KBR from the company in April 2007," testimony before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee indicates that KBR was providing our military with substandard services long before then - and then, being rewarded for it.

On May 20, 2009 Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, opened the hearings on “Rewarding Failure: Contractor Bonuses for Faulty Work in Iraq,” with the following statement, which reads in part:

“Today’s hearing is a result of this Committee’s continuing investigation into the deaths of over a dozen U.S. soldiers by electrocution in Iraq. That investigation has led us to internal Pentagon documents showing that in 2007 and 2008, contractor KBR received bonuses of $83.4 million for work that, according to the Pentagon’s own investigation, led to the electrocution
deaths of U.S. troops.”

That doesn’t mean that the work was performed in 2007 and 2008 - that’s when they received the bonuses.

The committee’s third witness was Mr. Charles Smith. Mr Smith was the former Chief of HQ, Army Field Support Command, Field Support Contracting Division. According to Sen. Dorgan’s opening statement, “In that capacity, he [Mr. Smith] managed the massive LOGCAP contract that the Pentagon awarded to KBR, until he was forced out of his job in 2004 when he refused to approve paying KBR more than $1billion in questionable charges." He went on to say, "I should note that Mr. Smith was removed from his job despite the fact that in November 2004 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld awarded him the Department of Defense’s Medal for Distinguished Civilian Service.”

Mr. Smith’s testimony includes the following:

“In August 2004, the Army’s approach to KBR underwent a complete change. The goal of award fee boards became one of making KBR financially sound, even if it was not performing in accordance with the contract. This was consistent with actions to rescind the 15% withhold definitize contract cost estimates well above the DCAA recommended amounts, and remove me from my position. The Army’s stated reason is that it was afraid KBR would cease performance or allow their subcontractors to cease performance. I did not think this was a credible threat, as KBR would have lost its military business entirely by this action. I do not believe the Army has
stated the real reason for its change in approach to KBR.”

So frankly, Ms. Gabriel, I don’t see where I was inaccurate at all. In fact, Halliburton’s position seems to be completely analogous to a man who gets his hand shot off while committing a robbery, then pleads not guilty on the grounds that he’s no longer associated with the hand that held the gun.

Thus, with all due respect, I think I’ll let the article stand as is. I don’t see where it is the least bit misleading. In fact, upon review, I don’t think I went far enough - but I fully intend to remedy that situation in the very near future.

ADDENDUM

So what I'd like to know is this - if a shade tree journalist sitting up in his den in the heart of a Los Angeles ghetto could see what was going on in these instances, why couldn't the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, CNN and all of the other media networks; why couldn't Harvard, Yale, and all of the various and sundry Ph.D.s from America's great institutions of learning; and why couldn't the nation's so called "think tanks," all of the nation's political scientists, and the United States Congress figure it out?
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The answer is, they had, but they simply turned their backs and allowed young patriotic Americans to march off to their deaths, because that was more profitable. The most irrefutable evidence of that? None of their children died. 
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Now, the Mainstream Media - and the New Democratic Party, of all things - is doing the EXACT same thing to this nation, and on behalf of the EXACT same people (the 1%ers) by turning their backs once again on the law, democracy, and common sense:
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The Clintons acted with great enthusiasm when it came to the mass incarceration of Black people, but what about when they break the law? Massachusetts law is clear and unequivocal:
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"Within 150 feet of a polling place…no person shall solicit votes for or against, or otherwise promote or oppose, any person or political party or position on a ballot question, to be voted on at the current election. No campaign material intended to influence the vote of a voter in the ongoing election, including campaign literature, buttons, signs, and ballot stickers, may be posted, exhibited, circulated, or distributed in the polling place, in the building where it is located, on the building walls, on the premises where the building stands, or within 150 feet of an entrance door to the building. ( 950 CMR 53.03(18); 54.04.22),)"  
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But in spite of that law - THE PEOPLE'S LAW - Bill Clinton feels so entitled and thinks the people are so stupid, that we can't recognize that he constitutes a walking 'Bill'-board for Hillary Clinton. He also retards the vote by creating a distraction, his presidential entourage prevents people from getting into the polls, and it extends the time that voters have to wait in line - time that many voters don't have.  Didn't Bill Clinton know this,?  If he didn't, he has very poor judgment, If he did, what was his motive?  He wasn't voting, so why did he have to enter the polling site in the first place?  The answer is clear - to cheat, to circumvent the law, and to do whatever he had to do to get what he wanted. Haven't we had enough to these dishonest slicksters in office?  Aren't these exactly the kind of people we're trying to get OUT of office? Can you even imagine Barack Obama doing something like that?  Could you imagine Bernie Sanders doing something like that?  Absolutely not! And that's exactly why this nation can't be trusted in the hands of people like the Clintons. They lack character, they feel entitled, and they think that their interests - and the interests of their rich Wall St. cronies -  should be given priority over the interest of the average American.
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The DailyKos reported, ". . . the most serious charge leveled at Clinton’s March 1st Super-Tuesday antics is that he was blocking poor people from voting, in one of Massachusetts most distressed communities, where the median family income is $49,000, [which is] $110,000 less than the Massachusetts town where presidential candidate Hillary Clinton went to college, Wellesley.  Although electioneering within a polling place is a misdemeanor, interfering with voting rights is a state and federal civil rights violation and felony."

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Americans are currently living under the illusion of democracy. In a REAL democracy, Bill and Hillary wouldn't be celebrating a victory in the primaries, and in a REAL democracy, the people wouldn't be cheering them on and the Mainstream Media would be as silent as a church mouse. In a REAL democracy both Bill, and Hillary, would be out on bail and facing felony charges. So at the rate we're sliding downhill, this nation - at least as we've known it - can't possibly last.
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God help us.

Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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THE MODERN REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS MORPHED INTO THE DOMESTIC ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

 THE MODERN REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS MORPHED INTO THE DOMESTIC ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES

For the past thirty-five years the Corporate-GOP Alliance has been engaged in a brutal assault on the American people. They've sent our jobs out of the country, while at the same time, the Republican congress has blocked any funding for the government to create jobs by repairing the nation's badly deteriorating infrastructure, which was a highly successful tactic used to rescue the nation from the Great Depression. These actions have subjected the American people to needless suffering while corporations are enjoying record profits.

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At the same time, they abolished the "Fairness Doctrine," which forced broadcasters to give equal time to opposing views, and then they completely took over the mainstream media, which allowed them to lie with impunity. Thereafter, they began to subject the American people to an intense campaign of corporate brainwashing and disinformation over the cause of their suffering, and they mounted a vicious attack on our educational system. Teachers are being demonized, elementary, middle, and senior high schools are being defunded, and the cost of college has been placed beyond the reach of the Average American without going deeply in debt. Then, to ensure these policies remained in place, the Republican led Supreme Court ruling on "Citizens United" gave a foreign CEO based in Singapore more control over the American political system than an American citizen.
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All of this wasn't done without reason, and that reason is clear. The corporate establishment in this country is trying to create a permanent underclass that will be completely dependent upon their every whim.  By the time they're done, the options of the average working-class American will be few - they can either work for slave wages, or they can go into the military and lay their lives on the line in an endless string of wars to pad the pockets of a growing number of war profiteers. So they are forcing the poor and middle class to pay for the wars, and then fight the wars - because the children of the rich are no longer even expected to die for this country; that's the job of the 'little people'. Thereafter, while the war profiteers are raking in all the profits from poor and middle-class death and misery, when the veterans come home wounded or completely disabled, they call them deadbeats and cut their benefits. Those are not the actions of American patriots.

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"In Congress, Republicans in both chambers have launched sweeping attacks on long-held centrist priorities and have renewed threats to block Obamacare. These attacks are seen in House bills slashing spending in almost every federal program except for the military [they didn't cut the military budget because that money is funneled back into the pocket of war profiteers] and domestic policing for the federal fiscal year starting October 1. Anti-poverty, education, human services, environmental protection, energy, labor, Wall St. oversight-all face cuts averaging 20 percent, although some areas face cuts by a third or more.
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"Rabid Republicans are also acting with renewed zeal to roll back voting rights in key Southern states. In North Carolina and Texas, GOP-led legislatures are resurrecting a catalogue of Jim Crow-era barriers to minority voting, in response to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning of the 1965 Voting Right Act's toughest enforcement provision. In North Carolina, the GOP wants to repeal 20 years of best practices that made North Carolina a model of fair and accessible elections. In Texas, the GOP wants to revise political districts to dilute minority representation and pass tougher voter ID laws."
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/18636-six-ways-rabid-republicans-are-declaring-war-on-america
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Nevertheless, most Republicans tend to wrap themselves in the American flag and walk around with flag pins in their lapels, but their unconscionable assault on the American people is anything but patriotic. Their purposeful undermining and exploitation of the American people could only be perpetrated by a greedy, power-hungry, and self-serving domestic enemy of this nation. But due to the affects of corporate brainwashing, they have the American people divided and at one another's throat instead of seeing reality for what it is.
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Americans aren't suffering because of their fellow citizens; they’re suffering because they’re being robbed blind by the Corporate-Republican Alliance. Undocumented workers aren’t taking their jobs; their jobs are being sent out of the country in order to make the American middle class more accepting of a lower standard of living. And labor unions are not what’s destroying jobs; jobs are being outsourced to destroy labor unions. Yet, corporate conservatives have a shrinking middle class railing against the poor, Blacks against undocumented workers, and Christians against any, and everyone, who doesn't look, think, and act like themselves. Thus, the most lethal weapons against American democracy - hatred, suffering, ignorance, and division - is being used against us, and the Corporate-Republican Alliance are using those weapons quite effectively in reverting a previously thriving American democracy into what is beginning to look ominously close to a third-world nation.

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So it is essential that the American people open their eyes and take this threat to our democracy seriously, because this nation is sliding downhill, and very fast. Who would ever have thought that they would live to see a vice president of the United States outing an American CIA agent, or 47 American senators sending a treasonous letter to a foreign head of state in an attempt to undermine American diplomacy on behalf of a second foreign power. And who would have thought that we'd ever see in our lifetime a governor of a state knowingly exposing a city of 100,000 people to led poisoning, which will retard the intellectual growth of children and have a negative impact on their health for the rest of their lives? And considering the fact that the city is predominantly Black, and the minority of White people there are poor, it's Hitlerian in its ramifications. So Rick Snyder should not only be forced to resign, but he should be charged, at the very least, with criminal negligence, because every time we allow the Republicans to get away with something like this, they take it one step further. That's why the nation is sliding downhill so fast.
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And again, the assaults being perpetrated against America listed above would have been unheard of in the United States just a short time ago, and it's all being done by greedy and self-serving Republican politicians who are completely disinterested in the interest of the American people. Their interest lie in America remaining miserable, angry, and divided, and they're doing everything in their power to keep us that way.
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So these are not traditional American politicians that we're dealing with here. We're now in a class war, and these Republican politicians are the enemy's assault troops.  So regardless to your race, creed, or color, if you don't have a few million dollars stashed away somewhere, you're their enemy. These are the very "domestic enemies" of the United States that we were warned about in our founding documents.
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And these people didn't just pop up out of nowhere. They've been around as "sleeper cells" since the very founding of this nation; they've just had to keep a low profile to carry out their agenda. Because many fiscal conservatives are not just racist, they're also class bigots. One of the founding fathers of conservative thought was Alexander Hamilton. He was an aristocrat who advocated that poor and middle-class Americans should be relegated to second-class citizenship, and the GOP has fully embraced his agenda. Hamilton said the following:
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AND THESE ARE NOT JUST THE BENEFITS

OF MINORITIES OR

LIBERALS THEY'RE GOING AFTER

"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government." Debates of the Federalist Convention (May 14-September 17, 1787).
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While Hamilton’s position was resoundingly rejected by the vast majority of the founding fathers - whose primary reason for coming to America in the first place was to get away from the European class system - there were many of Hamilton’s ilk who chose not to recognize the American ideal that "All men [and women] are created equal." Then they were later joined by Southern Dixiecrats, or social bigots, who also rejected the ideal of human equality.
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But what social conservatives fail to realize is that the corporate conservative's rejection of human equality includes them. Corporate conservatives don't care any more about them than they do any minority.  They're just being used to keep America divided, but once the corporatists seize firm control over the government, and social bigots are no longer needed, they're going to be thrown onto a virtual plantation right along with everyone else. The attempt to hide that fact is what accounts for the corporate conservative's intense distaste for public education.

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Corporate conservatives want to restore control over the American worker that they had during the Great Depression, and if you take a close look at the Republican platform it is clear that they're on a single-minded mission to do just that.  During the Great Depression there was no such thing as Social Security, so when a person became too old or weak to work, they had no income so they had to depend on their children for support. That meant instead of a husband and wife only having to support themselves and their children, which was tough enough during those times, they also had to support their parents as well. So there was often three generations of a family in one household – and in many cases, the parents of both the husband, and wife, lived with the family.
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As a result, in some cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery – the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.
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In addition, there was no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid, so when one of the grandparents became ill the medical costs would devastate the entire family. These conditions kept lower and middle-class families in such dire need of funds that they had to accept whatever crumbs the business community chose to throw at them – and remember, at that time there was no Fair Labor Standards Act or unions to protect a worker’s rights or a minimum wage, so businesses could treat the worker anyway they wanted, and pay them whatever they wanted.

They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and no paid vacation. In addition, since there was no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family – sick grandparents and all – would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance.
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Thus, corporate conservatives depend on a poorly educated public for their very survival, because even a rudimentary familiarity with history would reveal both their background, and agenda. They don't want you to know that the people who lived through the Great Depression and fought WWII, the people who we refer to as "The Greatest Generation," wouldn't let a Republican anywhere near the White House.
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Our grandparents elected Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt into office an unprecedented four terms, from 1932 until he died in office in 1945. Thereafter, Republican nominee, Thomas E. Dewey, had to push for the Twenty-Second Amendment creating presidential term limits for a Republican to even get a whiff of the White House, and even then, a Republican wasn’t elected until Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 – and he was only elected because he was the allied commander credited with winning WWII, and he was a Republican in name only.  He signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, and sent troops into Little Rock Arkansas to integrate the schools.
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In addition, as President Eisenhower’s very last act of office he warned the American people of the military/industrial complex, or people like Dick Cheney and the kind of Republicans we have in office today. He had no use for them. Ike would have summarily shot Dick Cheney had he been in office when Cheney allegedly outed CIA operative, Valarie Plame.
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So the “Greatest Generation” understood what we’re only now finding out the hard way about the Republican Party due to the GOP’s systematic dismantling of our information and educational systems – their pronounced greed and lust for power has rendered them prone to being reckless, irresponsible, without limits, and a danger to our democracy. That's why they Hate Donald Trump, because he's making all of their shortcomings and hidden agenda glaringly clear to the public.
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DONALD TRUMP IS A CAPITIALIST AND A BAD JOKE, BUT HE SERVES A USEFUL PURPOSE - HE REVEALS HOW CONSERVATIVES REALLY THINK.

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Donald Trump is an ignorant, mean-spirited, xenophobic, and self-serving racist who's willing to tell any lie he can conjure up to promote his own interest. That makes him the quintessential Republican, and that's exactly why he's leading in the Republican polls. But the Trump phenomenon says it all. While the GOP establishment is distancing themselves from Trump, it's not because they disagree with what he's saying, it's because he's either too dumb, or too self-serving to realize that he's not suppose to be saying what conservatives truly believe out loud.  While the Republican establishment has been saying the exact same things as Trump for years, they’ve been saying it in political code, and with a wink.
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So the Republican establishment is afraid that this Trump episode will openly reveal their unspoken assault on the American people for decades, and the facts are simple - while the Corporate-Republican Alliance are all wearing American flag pins in their lapels and constantly paying lip-service to wanting to bring prosperity to the average American, an unequivocal historic record clearly demonstrates that this has never been the case, and not only that, it has never even been a part of the GOP's agenda.
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So in the 2016 election the American people are going to be given a choice to come clean. Do they really want the kind of America that they're always bragging about and profess to believe in, or do they actually want a fascist nation that subjugates the working class, demonizes minorities, and supports a Gestapo-like police forces that kill innocent Black children on the street with impunity? For those rabid conservatives who feel like they could live with the latter, they should think long and hard, because as their current living conditions suggest, this time it's not about simply establishing an Aryan nation, it's about establishing a corporate feudalist oligarchy where poor and working-class White people and their families are just as meaningless as any minority. Think about it - did they only send Black jobs out of the country? I don't think so. Are they now, even as I write, trying to take away the Social Security and Veterans benefits of only minorities?  No they aren't. And did Gov. Rick Snyder only expose Black people to lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan? Not really. So the facts are clear.  If you’re a poor or middle-class White person who don't have millions of dollars stashed away in a foreign account somewhere, they intend to make you the new 'coon,' just like they did during the Great Depression.

A SOCIAL BIGOT

As a final comment to social bigots, while I would hate to see America come crashing down as a result of our own stupidity, if worse comes to worst, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I wouldn't get a certain measure of satisfaction out of watching bigots get just what they deserve. You see, Black people are accustomed to dealing with the kind of adversity that would befall this nation. During the Great Depression while White folks were jumping off buildings, Black people were partying through the Harlem Renaissance and enjoying one of the most productive and creative periods in our history. So the irony is, in many respects the Great Depression worked to the advantage of Black people, because it leveled the playing field. During the depression White people were force to live under the very same conditions that Black people have been forced to deal with all of their lives - both then, and now. But due to the affirmative action program that White folks have benefited from in this society over the years, they just aren't equipped to deal with adversity. If you're already out to sea, you don't even feel a tsunami beneath you, it is only those who are living warm and comfortable on land who experience the devastation of its impact. That explains why my grandfather never even mentioned the Great Depression to me, because for him, it was just business as usual.

A BLACK WOMAN 'STRUGGLING' THROUGH

THE GREAT DEPRESSION 

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Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com

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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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An Indictment against the Mainstream Media (Reprise)

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

An Indictment against the Mainstream Media (Reprise)

On September 15, 2002 - six months and four days prior to the Iraqi invasion - I published an article entitled "Would Bush's Saber Rattle as Loudly Against China?" in the Portland Independent Media Center (no one else would publish it at the time) that said the following:

Now that we've reached the anniversary of 9-11, I am consumed by one thought - in light of what I've seen over the past year I find myself much more afraid of Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft than I am the Al Qaeda. While I understand that terrorists strike without warning to destroy life and property to promote their own agenda, it has become increasingly clear that Bush and his cohorts threaten to be even more destructive by attacking life, liberty, and the very foundation of this nation in the promotion of theirs.

Over the past year these conservative war mongers have been playing the American people like a fiddle. Now they want to sacrifice American lives for nothing more than their own political advantage. Just ask yourself, what does Saddam Hussain have to do with 9-11? Absolutely nothing. Evidence of that can be found in the fact that if Saddam had been involved in 9-11 the administration would have gone after him initially. So why is it suddenly so imperative that we invade Iraq now? I'll tell you why. Since Bush was unable to produce the head of Osama Bin Laden, he now needs another villain to take Bin Laden's place in order to keep his numbers up in the polls - and if that means having to sacrifice a few American lives and ignite even more terrorist activity on American soil in the process, so be it.

It is a well known political fact that the American people tend to rally around the president when the country's at war. That's why the Bush Administration fell all over themselves after 9-11 to declare "a war against terrorism." And the American people reacted just as planed - Bush's numbers immediately went up in the polls. But now with the mystery surrounding the fate of Osama Bin Laden, the administration has found itself without a war to sustain those numbers, so now they have to create one.

While I'm not prepared to say that the Bush Administration allowed 9-11 to take place, it is clear that the timing of the 9-11 tragedy was without a doubt the best thing that could ever happened to Bush's presidency. Bush was a lame duck the minute he was sworn in. It seems that as soon as Bush entered The Oval Office the stock market began to falter and the economy started to weaken. And whenever he spoke, the next day's news was not so much what he said, but whether or not he got through the speech without falling on his face. In addition, his big tax cut that was touted as the key to boosting the economy turned out to be a bust, and he was so inept in dealing with congress that a Republican senator changed parties costing Bush control of the senate. As a result, when 9-11 took place, it was embraced by conservatives more like it was a football rally than the sober occasion that it was - thus, all the flag waving, ceremonies, and strutting about.

But where was all that bluster prior to 9-11? ABC News reported on May 16th of this year that the Bush Administration acknowledged that U.S. Intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before 9-11 that Osama Bin Laden's terrorists might try to hijack a plane. It was also reported that Bush privately alerted transportation officials and security agencies, but other than that, he simply sat on the information. The administration claims that the information they received was non-specific, but one would think that even if they couldn't determine exactly when and where the attack was going to take place, at the very least they could have warned the American people. If they had, maybe some of the people who died would have chosen not to fly - or possibly, chosen to leave their children behind. But no, this president who now claims to be so concerned with protecting our welfare that he feels compelled to launch an unprovoked attack against Iraq, was at that time more interested in the impact that warning us would have on the airline industry.

What the American people needs to understand is that the power elite in this country doesn't view the United States in the same way as its citizens. They see the United States as a huge corporation, with its various industries as its subsidiaries. They see American citizens, particularly the lower and middle class, as simply pawns to be cajoled and manipulated in whatever way is necessary to meet the goals of the corporation. Therefore, they didn't view the tragedy of 9-11 in the same patriotic way as the average American citizen. After the initial shock, they saw 9-11 in terms of dollars and cents. Ultimately, it was viewed as an assault on their corporate superstructure. Later they recognized that the incident could be used as a distraction for the American people, and still later, an opportunity to move on Middle Eastern oil interests.

So let there be no doubt, all of the flag waving, ceremonies, and patriotic speeches have nothing to do with 9-11; they are designed to whip the American people into such a frenzy that they're blinded to Bush's actual agenda. And that agenda includes the following.

1).Committing America (and American lives) to a war in order to get himself reelected.
2).Taking control of Iraqi oil fields to benefit his friends in big business.
3).Keeping the American voter distracted from considering the ramifications of the recent corporate scandals.
4).Keeping the American people from recognizing how inept he is as president.

The rest of the world sees Bush's agenda for what it is, and the American people would too if they'd stop waving their flags long enough to consider the flag's true meaning. The American flag represents freedom and justice, not trying to dictate who should lead other countries. It represents the open debate of issues, not intolerance to any and everyone who disagrees with your point of view. It represents the guarantee of personal freedom, not the suspension of the Bill of Rights. If the American people would just stop to consider these facts, it would become clear that even while Bush and his conservative cohorts are frantically waving our flag, they are simultaneously waging war against the very values that the flag and this great country represents.

These issues can, and will, be debated ad nauseam, but the American people need only ask themselves two questions to put all of the administration's nonsense into perspective. First, would the administration be so anxious to go to war if we were talking about China as opposed to Iraq? And secondly, do we think that invading Iraq will make us more, or less safe from terrorist attacks? If we answer those questions honestly, it becomes clear that the administration is being disingenuous at best.***

So what I'd like to know is this - if a shade tree journalist sitting up in his den in the heart of a Los Angeles ghetto could see what was going on, why couldn't the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, CNN and all of the other media networks; why couldn't Harvard, Yale, and all of the various and sundry Ph.D.s from America's great institutions of learning; and why couldn't the nation's so called "think tanks," all of the nation's political scientists, and the United States Congress figure it out?

The answer is, they had, but they simply turned their backs and allowed young patriotic Americans to march off to their deaths. The most irrefutable evidence of that? None of their children died. 

Now, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida, etc., the corporate media, with notable exceptions, is turning a blind eye and allowing the same thing to happen again, but this time, to America as a whole.

God help us.


Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Keep America Informed - Reinstate The Fairness Doctrine

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

This is a revised version of a previous article that made what turned out to be an unwarranted assumption. This version doesn't assume that Americans under thirty are familiar with what The Fairness Doctrine entailed, and thus, what makes its reinstatement particularly important to them, and especially their children. 

Keep America Informed - Reinstate The Fairness Doctrine

The American news media is going to hell in a handbasket. It has become so intertwined with the corporate power structure that the only way one can get an accurate fix on what's going on in the United States is to turn to the BBC or various media outlets from other countries.

What immediately comes to mind is the way the U.S. news media jumped between the sheets with the administration during the invasion of Iraq. Instead of standing back and taking an objective look at the rationale being literally stuffed down our throats, they immediately went into cheerleader mode. They referred to it as being "embedded," when it should have been referred to it as being "in-bed-with."

The revelation of the Downing Street Memo is a case in point. The Downing Street Memo was a Top Secrete document to Tony Blair, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, issued on July 23, 2002. It was written by Matthew Rycroft, a foreign aide to the Prime Minister, after meeting with the Bush Administration. The document pointed out in graphic detail the Bush administration's game plan to deceive the world in order to justify its decision to invade Iraq. It pointed out that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

In short, eight months prior to the invasion of Iraq this official U.K. document indicated that Bush wanted to go after Saddam, but they were going to have to lie to justify it. The memo was leaked by the British press in 2005. But in spite of the senseless deaths of tens of thousands of innocent human beings - including our own American troops - as a direct result of this criminal deception, it's been all but ignored by the American media. They've given more coverage to Tiger Woods' sex life.

The behavior of the mainstream media during that period, and since, clearly demonstrates why it's so incumbent upon us to reinstate The Fairness Doctrine. Most Republicans, and many others in Washington, claim that TFD is an attack on free speech, but it's just the opposite. In fact, it ensures the freedom of speech of those who would indeed keep us informed, but are currently being denied equal access to the airways by media organizations like Fox News and many other news organizations that one wouldn't expect, as a result of Fox's impact on the industry.

So what's actually an attack on our freedom of speech are network news organizations using the public airways and conduits to spread lies, disinformation, or engage in omissions, that have a negative impact on society by distorting public policy, then preventing knowledgeable parties access to those same conduits to present the other side of the issue. That's exactly what Fox News specializes in for political purposes, and other media organizations follow, if not with a political motive, as a simple matter of dollars and cents.

An example of just how sucesseful the corporate interests have been in promoting their position against TFD since its demise, I broached this issue on KOS, and was attacked so severely - by liberals! - that I felt like I was addressing a Teabagger's convention. One commenter accused me of simply wanting to throw Rush Limbaugh off the air; another indicated that liberals just had to learn to compete with the conservative media. Then there was one commenter who said, "I don't want the government dictating to me what I have to see or hear." The TFD was not designed to do any of those things - it simply ensured that the American public wasn't deluged with one-sided lies and disinformation.

I saw that experience as directly substantiating my point for the need to reinstate TFD. Many young people under the age of thirty have next to no understanding of what TFD entailed, and I'm certain that's due directly to the brutal attack and near destruction of our educational system. And that's exactly what the Corporatocracy wants, massive hords of undereducated young people who have only two options - to either be forced to accept the chump-change that the corporations decide to throw their way, or have to enlist in an underpaid military to be used as cannon fodder in the corporate exploitation of the world's limited resources.

Thus, the problem with the Fairness Doctrine from the point of view of the corporatocracy are two - it served to contradict their lies, and it educated the public. In fact, it wasn't until it was struck down through Republican fiat, that conservatives ran out, bought control of the nation's media (especially AM radio stations), fired the liberals, and all of this craziness and disinformation started.

During the sixties and seventies there were highly informative, C-Span-like, talk shows all over the radio and television dial. Some were more conservative leaning, and others leaned more to the left - and no, the government wasn't always looking over their shoulder. The broadcasters avoided being challenged as biased by always having one conservative and one liberal on the show together debating the issues. Or if a show had a liberal on one day, they'd have a conservative on the next.

The hosts were perfectly free to be openly liberal or conservative - and they indeed were. Their political orientation would be revealed through how vigorously they interviewed the guests that they interviewed. But on the other hand, a host could be assured that if he claimed that healthcare reform created death panels, he'd be challenged by someone on the opposing side of the issue demanding equal time to present their point of view. The challenger was generally an expert on the issue under discussion, and would explain the rationale that led to the claim of death panels, and why that rationale was in error, or misleading.

The only time the government got involved was if the broadcaster denied the challenger equal time. In which case, the challenger would document his or her case and bring the issue before the Federal Communications Commission. No one had to prove who was right or wrong on the policy issue itself. All the challenger had to prove was that only one side of the issue was presented, and if the broadcaster had continuous problems in this area, various organizations would document the problem and come forward to challenge the broadcaster's license.

The Fairness Doctrine was close to a perfect solution to prevent the nation from being deluged with propaganda. The American people have just as much right to know the facts about what's being fed into the minds of our children as we do what's going into the food that we eat, and TFD ensures just that. It allowed interested parties equal time to correct the record when licensed broadcasters abused the public airways, and other broadcasting conduits, to distort the facts regarding public policy.

The issue has now been further complicated, however, with the advent of new technology such as satellite and cable systems. Now, even with TFD in place, a determined rogue organization can try to circumvent it by beaming into our homes from outside our borders, so in addition to reinstating TFD, new laws need to be put into place to specifically address the issue of intent.

If it is clearly the intent of an organization to beam disinformation into America's homes from outside our borders to circumvent TFD to negatively impact public policy, there should be legal sanctions. If the organization is found to be domestic in origin, severe legal or regulatory action should be taken. If it is a foreign organization that's purposely trying to distort the facts on U.S. domestic policy, it should be given a choice - either adhere to the precepts of TFD, or be deprived access to the American market.

So, should the internet be regulated as well?

In a word, no. The internet falls into an entirely different category than broadcasting. The internet falls into the same category as books, newspapers, and magazines. Essentially, it's an electronic publication. On the internet one has to actively seek out disinformation if one wants it, and that's the user's right. But the broadcasting industry is so powerfully pervasive that the public can be inadvertently subjected to harmful disinformation on public policy.

In addition, since our educational system is under such a brutal attack, responsible broadcasters should be rewarded with generous tax incentives to incorporate entertaining educational content into their schedules. Knowledge, presented in a creative and insightful way can be just as entertaining, in fact, even more entertaining, than violence, corruption, and decadence.

Any good story involves people overcoming adversity. Why does that have to be with a gun? Millions of people across this country show what they're made of by dealing with adversity of every kind on a daily basis, yet, only a small minority of them address those issues with a gun, or violence of any kind. Why can't we show their stories? Why can't we show our young men that it takes more manhood to raise a child than rob a bank?

All one has to do is turn on the television and read the programming descriptions to understand why we're faced with so much turmoil in this country - and I can't help but think it's by design. We need to get a handle on our broadcasting industry, and the very first step in that direction should be to reinstate TFD in order to tear the megaphone from the hands of big business.

The one thing that corporations have a healthy respect for is the dollar. Thus, the very best thing about TFD is it gives the networks an economic incentive to be balanced - or at least, not tell blantant lies. If FOX News had to give equal air time for rebuttal every time Glenn Beck told a lie, it would be cost prohibitive. They wouldn't have any time left for commercials, so they'd be forced to be a responsible broadcaster.

So we need to address this issue immediately, while we still have a country. Because as long as we fail to address this matter, we're giving carte blanche to the most greedy and corrupt among us. We've handed over full control of our news media, and thereby, public policy.


Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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This Bears Repeating

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

An Indictment against the Mainstream Media

I'd like to start by tipping my hat to Markos Moulitsas, founder and spiritual leader of the very popular website, Daily Kos, for setting that gasbag, Chris Matthews, straight. He also put Tom Tancredo in his place several weeks earlier, so I guess he's becoming something of a soft-spoken dragon slayer - What was wrong with pointing out that chicken hawk Tancredo claimed to be "too depressed" to fight for his country in Vietnam?

More recently - last week, in fact - Chris Matthews made the remark on his show, Hardball, that "I don't consider them [progressive bloggers] Democrats. I consider them Netroots. And if I see they vote in every election, or most elections, then I'll be worried. But I'm not sure they're regular, grown-up Democrats. I think a lot of these people are troublemakers who love to sit in the back seat and complain. They're not interested in governing this country. They never ran for office, they're not interested in working for someone in public office. They get their giggles out of sitting in the back seat and bitching."

So let's see, people who have never run for office, or are not interested in working for someone in public office are not grown-up Democrats. They're trouble makers who get their giggles out of sitting in the back seat bitching, and it worries him when he see them vote. What an arrogant and closed-minded, Washington beltway idiot. That pompus idiot casually sat there and wrote off most of America as children who bitch too much.

The irony is, the unmitigated arrogance of that statement is exactly what makes netroots and blogging sites like KOS and TPM so vitally important to America. Due to the many self-centered and closed-minded hacks like himself, the mainstream media has become all but irrelevant, and Moulitsas pointed that out, very adroitly, and much more diplomatically than I ever could have. He's the one who came off looking like an adult, responding to the immature and irresponsible rantings of a child.

Instead of indulging in insulting characterizations and name-calling (like I probably would have), Moulitsas, very calmly made his point through example. He pointed out that the following:

"In 2003, when Bush landed his plane in the aircraft carrier, and spoke in front of the banner that said, 'Mission Accomplished,' Chris Matthews had an entire show based on that event, and he said everybody knows that we won the war, except a few critics." Moulitsas went on to say, "Well, I was one of those few critics. People like me in the Netroots were some of those critics. And it turns out that we were right and the Beltway conventional wisdom was wrong. And once again, we're in a situation where people like Chris Matthews don't learn from these mistakes. They're trapped in this bubble and they think that they know better."

Bingo! That said it all, and he didn't raise his voice once. And he handled Tom Tancredo several weeks earlier with the very finesse. He literally ran Tancredo off the Ed Show, and again, without busting so much as a sweat bubble. The reason he doesn't have to raise his voice, is because he's confronting Washington hypocrisy with facts and courage - something that the mainstream media seems to have lost.

They've degenerated into cheerleaders with an unspoken agreement not to step outside the approved parameters of the status quo. Then Moulitsas is that guy who shows up at the dinner party with a crude but unyielding truth: "No, that's not a bad egg - somebody farted." That's who bloggers and are, and that's exactly what America needs.

On September 15, 2002–six months and four days prior to the Iraqi invasion--I published an article entitled "Would Bush's Saber Rattle as Loudly Against China?" in the Portland Independent Media Center (no one else would publish it at the time) that said the following:

"Would Bush's Saber Rattle as Loudly Against China?"

Now that we've reached the anniversary of 9-11, I am consumed by one thought--in light of what I've seen over the past year I find myself much more afraid of Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft than I am the al-Qaeda. While I understand that terrorists strike without warning to destroy life and property to promote their own agenda, it has become increasingly clear that Bush and his cohorts threaten to be even more destructive by attacking life, liberty, and the very foundation of this nation in the promotion of theirs.

Over the past year these conservative war mongers have been playing the American people like a fiddle. Now they want to sacrifice American lives for nothing more than their own political advantage. Just ask yourself, what does Saddam Hussain have to do with 9-11? Absolutely nothing. Evidence of that can be found in the fact that if Saddam had been involved in 9-11 the administration would have gone after him initially. So why is it suddenly so imperative that we invade Iraq now? I'll tell you why. Since Bush was unable to produce the head of Osama Bin Laden, he now needs another villain to take Bin Laden's place in order to keep his numbers up in the polls-- and if that means having to sacrifice a few American lives and ignite even more terrorist activity on American soil in the process, so be it.

It is a well known political fact that the American people tend to rally around the president when the country's at war. That's why the Bush Administration fell all over themselves after 9-11 to declare "a war against terrorism." And the American people reacted just as planed-Bush's numbers immediately went up in the polls. But now with the mystery surrounding the fate of Osama Bin Laden, the administration has found itself without a war to sustain those numbers, so now they have to create one.

While I'm not prepared to say that the Bush Administration allowed 9-11 to take place, it is clear that the timing of the 9-11 tragedy was without a doubt the best thing that could ever happened to Bush's presidency. Bush was a lame duck the minute he was sworn in. It seems that as soon as Bush entered The Oval Office the stock market began to falter and the economy started to weaken. And whenever he spoke, the next day's news was not so much what he said, but whether or not he got through the speech without falling on his face. In addition, his big tax cut that was touted as the key to boosting the economy turned out to be a bust, and he was so inept in dealing with congress that a Republican senator changed parties costing Bush control of the senate. As a result, when 9-11 took place, it was embraced by conservatives more like it was a football rally than the sober occasion that it was--thus, all the flag waving, ceremonies, and strutting about.

But where was all that bluster prior to 9-11? ABC News reported on May 16th of this year that the Bush Administration acknowledged that U.S. Intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before 9-11 that Osama Bin Laden's terrorists might try to hijack a plane. It was also reported that Bush privately alerted transportation officials and security agencies, but other than that, simply sat on the information. The administration claims that the information they received was non-specific, but one would think that even if they couldn't determine exactly when and where the attack was going to take place, at the very least they could have warned the American people. If they had, maybe some of the people who died would have chosen not to fly-or possibly, chosen to leave their children behind. But no, this president who now claims to be so concerned with protecting our welfare that he feels compelled to launch an unprovoked attack against Iraq, was at that time more interested in the impact that warning us would have on the airline industry.

What the American people needs to understand is that the power elite in this country doesn't view the United States in the same way as its citizens. They see the United States as a huge corporation, with its various industries as its subsidiaries. They see American citizens, particularly the lower and middle class, as simply pawns to be cajoled and manipulated in whatever way is necessary to meet the goals of the corporation. Therefore, they didn't view the tragedy of 9-11 in the same patriotic way as the average American citizen. After the initial shock, they saw 9-11 in terms of dollars and cents. Ultimately, it was viewed as an assault on their corporate superstructure. Later they recognized that the incident could be used as a distraction for the American people, and still later, an opportunity to move on Middle Eastern oil interests.

So let there be no doubt, all of the flag waving, ceremonies, and patriotic speeches have nothing to do with 9-11; they are designed to whip the American people into such a frenzy that they're blinded to Bush's actual agenda. And that agenda includes the following.

1).Committing America (and American lives) to a war in order to get himself re-elected.

2).Taking control of Iraqi oil fields to benefit his friends in big business.

3).Keeping the American voter distracted from considering the ramifications of the recent corporate scandals.

4).Keeping the American people from recognizing how inept he is as president.

The rest of the world sees Bush's agenda for what it is, and the American people would too if they'd stop waving their flags long enough to consider the flag's true meaning. The American flag represents freedom and justice, not trying to dictate who should lead other countries. It represents the open debate of issues, not intolerance to any and everyone who disagrees with your point of view. It represents the guarantee of personal freedom, not the suspension of the Bill of Rights. If the American people would just stop to consider these facts, it would become clear that even while Bush and his conservative cohorts are frantically waving our flag, they are simultaneously waging war against the very values that the flag and this great country represents.

These issues can, and will, be debated ad nauseam, but the American people need only ask themselves two questions to put all of the administration's nonsense into perspective. First, would the administration be so anxious to go to war if we were talking about China as opposed to Iraq? And secondly, do we think that invading Iraq will make us more, or less safe from terrorist attacks? If we answer those questions honestly, it becomes clear that the administration is being disingenuous at best.***

Where was the mainstream media?  If a shade tree journalist sitting up in his den in the heart of a Los Angeles ghetto could see what was going on, why couldn't the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, CNN and all of the networks; Harvard, Yale, and all of the various and sundry Ph.D.s from America's great institutions of learning? Why couldn't the nation's think tanks, all of the nation's political scientists, and the United States Congress figure it out? The answer is, they had, then simply turned their backs and allowed our young people to march off to their deaths. The most irrefutable evidence of that? None of their children died.

Eric L. Wattree

wattree.blogspot.com

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everybody who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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