Vietnamization?

So, it seems that the Bush Administration has harkened back to the Nixon Administration for advice on what to do when you find yourself in an unwinnable guerilla/civil war in a land far from the U.S.. No, it's not just that Henry Kissinger has been resurrected by the media to tell us what to do, it's the eerie echoes of failed policies in Bush's latest "strategy."

Pacification. Kill lots more people indiscriminately. Maybe, begin mass-murdering, call a temporary halt, if the people left are on your side, too terrified to fight back, or simply of numbers so small that a police force can handle them, then stop, else resume slaughtering.

Widen the war. Blame neighbors and begin bombing them. Laos and Cambodia are now Syria and Iran.

These people must be stopped!

Have the Criminals Won?

In a piece published on Huffington Post yesterday, Gary Hart says, justice for Bush and his criminal accomplices in the Congress will be left to histories written by U.S. Constitutional scholars. If that is true, then those scholars will be like scholars of Plato and Aristotle: scholars of antiquities. For surely, if we cannot try these people for the crimes they have committed under our current constitutional system, then the criminals have won, for the U. S. Constitutional system is no longer capable of fulfilling it's promise to provide a framework for a system of democracy and justice. Americans will live in a tyranny, then, as we do today, while Bush remains in office violating the Constitution he swore to protect and defend with the compliance of a criminally negligent Republican- and now Democratically-controlled Congress.

And just as other societies have succumbed to authoritarian personalities such as Stalin, Hussein, Hitler, et. al., so has the United States of America.

Want to Go to MIT? Free?

Okay, you don't really go to MIT and you don't have access to their faculty, or get a degree or certificate, but a vast array of MIT course materials is available free online that will enable you to pursue independent studies in most any field you wish.

ExxonMobil Pays for Lies About Global Warming

The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report yesterday showing how ExxonMobil has been paying to support groups and individuals who deny global warming in order to stir up confusion so that humanity will delay making changes which would improve its and other species' chances for survival.

U.S. citizens could be really angry that their government gives tax breaks to these slugs who are willing to harm all life on earth for their short-term profits.

Justice Delayed or No Justice Period?

After listening to Nancy Pelosi carefully, I am beginning to think that nothing is about to change in Washington except the record that says: now, there has been a female Speaker of the House. I am deeply troubled at her pronouncement, "impeachment is off the table." So, George W. Bush is above the law per Nancy Pelosi? Americans will have seen their civil liberties, international law and the U.S. Constitution violated with impunity by Bush, Cheney, et. al., and now the party elected to power to bring them to justice will not? Because Nancy Pelosi says so?

Rule changes to improve ethics? The House already has plenty of rules which they ignore. What Pelosi is about to give us is more rules that she knows will be ignored while blatantly refusing to pursue the serious violations of our laws that she is charged to enforce.

Are we to trade our country's reputation, Constitution, and international law for the long overdue and just raising of the minimum wage? Too steep the price. Pelosi should not be allowed to condone the Bush Administration's criminal behavior. I suggest we give her 100 hours to begin the impeachment process or lobby to have her removed from her Speakership and investigated for possible charges of obstruction of justice.

Definitely Too Serious a Matter

From The Portable Hannah Arendt:

"Now, the existence of a nation is definitely too serious a matter to leave to wealthy men."

Make that wealthy people and you've got it.

Similarities

At Huffington Post, Bill Katovsky wrote:

"It's just that dictators like Saddam Hussein believe that they live and breathe as demi-gods who will never expire, immune to the laws of mortality and morality. They rule as arbitrary dispensers of who gets to live and who gets to die. "

Couldn't something similar have been written about George W. Bush? Something like:

It's just that tyrants like George W. Bush believe that they live and breathe as instruments of God's Will, will be celebrated throughout eternity, immune to the laws of the land, beloved by God. They rule to dispense this God's arbitrary desires for who gets to live and who gets to die.

What remains nauseating to me is that more than 30% of Americans still support this evil slug and whatever atrocities he wishes to commit, but it is a lesson explaining Germany in the first half of the 20th century.