Posts Tagged ‘Thievery’

Taking a cue from so many conversations going on across the blogosphere, I am discussing the prosecution of George Bush. 

The world knows what he did.  The American people know what he did.  We have a choice.  We can demand justice.  We can defend ourselves from enemies to The Constitution, both foreign and domestic.  It will not happen if we do not.  The overwhelming call to action at change.gov was for the prosecution of criminal behaviour from the White House. 

George Bush is what we got for pardoning Nixon.  Nixon was a megalomaniac whose paranoia was his undoing.  Bush is much worse: a mouthpiece for the corruption of power amassed in Oil & Defense industry executive suites.  But, the motivations for breaking the law of the land from the highest office are not important.  What is of utmost importance is this: precedent.  In this specific instance, the precedent of breaking the law of the land from the highest office.  It is the path to dictatorship. 

I read Bob Burnett’s excellent and timely post yesterday over at HuffPo, entitled "Bush’s Day of Reckoning."  I recommend reading it in its entirety.  The topic is whether or not to proceed with criminal investigations of Bush, Cheney & their ilk over torture and any other violations of the Constitution.  Bob does point out that incompetence is not a crime and focuses on things like ordering torture or illegal spying on Americans, which are crimes.

Is the United States of America is the world’s largest dealer of illegal drugs?  What about the world’s largest gun runner?  For years our government has used the CIA, NSA & other super-secret ‘intelligence’ agencies to cultivate drug harvest and distribution in SE Asia and Afghanistan.  We offer ‘aid’ and ‘trade’ to countries in the forms of weapons and ammunition.  The drugs come home to the US to poison and kill our own population.  The weapons we sell are used either against us directly by people to kill others, who then seek to kill Americans.  Did the founding fathers envision a country that would become the world’s largest debtor and blood merchant?

This is one of those "little threads" that run through many of the crises facing our world today.  Like the Feds always say when tracking mobsters…"follow the money".  The money itself, in this case the Swiss banking industry is the story.  As you may remember, Bank Julius Baer managed to be in the middle of several BushCo scandals at once.  Namely:

con⋅serv⋅a⋅tive
/kənˈsɜrvətɪv/ [kuhn-sur-vuh-tiv]
–adjective
1. disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.
2. cautiously moderate or purposefully low: a conservative estimate.
3. traditional in style or manner; avoiding novelty or showiness: conservative suit.
–noun
1. a person who is conservative in principles, actions, habits, etc.
2. a supporter of conservative political policies.
3. a preservative.

The dictionary definition above does not make it sound so bad. I mean, it sounds like part of a spreadsheet on a CPA’s laptop or maybe something out of home economics class. How can anyone have any objection to conservative thinking if it’s this benign? Well the problem for me has always been the wide chasm of disparity between their simple sounding identity and the racism, corruption, bloodlust and tyranny that they promote.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="350" caption="Image courtesy of Remembering Rosewood"][/caption]

I almost pity poor John McCain. Almost. How did he end up with this ‘crap job’? It has fallen upon him to fight the last battle of slaveholders and plantation owners. I expect this bile from Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney and any of the rest that fall into the ‘angry white patriarch’ model that is interchangeable with KKK grand wizard or plantation owner.

The thinly veiled race baiting of the GOP that has been in force since Richard Nixon’s ‘Southern strategy’ is no longer thinly veiled at all. For a generation, the GOP was able to reliably manipulate themselves into power by scaring white voters about the danger to them from ‘the other’. They have expanded the cast of dangerous people to include gays, Latinos, (always) women and Muslims.