Astounding! Sunday Morning Honesty

Thomas Friedman has been a loyal water carrier for the Cheney-Bush Gang. Things have now become so bad even Friedman is speaking out. Friedman pulled only a few punches on Meet The Press. Friedman made clear the foreign policy decisions of Team Bush have landed the USA squarely in the hole, powerless, influence-less, and more hated and reviled than even imaginable just six years ago. Friedman pointed the finger squarely at Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, and Rice and blamed them fully for the destruction happening in Iraq and Lebanon. The wrongheaded policy of ignoring Syria, ignoring Iran, and insulting the regional powers that has helped create the terrible fiasco the world now faces.

On This Week, Fareed Zakaria sure pulled no punch declaring Rumsfeld lives in an alternate universe and is probably a bit deranged as well. Notice no one disagreed!! Even George Will has become sick of the gang infesting 1600 Penn.

But it was not all Truth and Honesty Day. Tw0 of the three so-called Major Networks carried Bush water by announcing Sec Condi Rice had postponed her return to Beirut when the truth of the matter was, following the massacre of civilians, the Lebanese government wanted nothing to do with her and nothing to do with Israel's biggest supporter and weapons supplier, the USA.
Only CBS phrased it more accurately; that Rice was "Disinvited". ABC and NBC both carried Bush water, as usual.

Newt Gingrick Bush Bashing Racist

It is indeed somewhat satisfying to see Newt jaunting about bashing the bejeebers out of Bush and his schoolmarm-SecState Rice over their foreign policy blunders, mis-calculations, inactions, delayed actions, and general screw-ups. If Newt could just stop there he'd be on to something. But Newt, being Newt, doesn't stop there. Newt has an agenda. A very bloody Neocon agenda.
(Aren't they all.)

Newt's New (Born-again?) NeoCon agenda is full of dark warnings. America is surrounded by lying murders worldwide. They are out to get us. They lie, therefore diplomacy is useless. Newt's solution is ultimatums. Let's face it, Americans love ultimatums. Giving, that is, not receiving. Newt loves to boil things down to this: You do it our way, you do it right now, and you don't complain. Or else.......when pressed on the "Or else" Newt gives a little grimace, cocks his head to one side, and leaves no doubt "Or else" translates to "Or we annihilate you".

Who is the "You" one might ask. The "You" is Muslims. Newt lumps all Muslims together with the few fanatics who actually pose a danger. "You" is also North Koreans. In Newt World "You" is any group not towing Newt's line.

Newt's line is easy to summarize; Anglo Saxons must reign supreme, no matter what, and might makes right. Newt's New NeoCons, much like Cheney and Pearle's Old NeoCons, still hang on to the belief military might can produce favorable changes. They believed sending US military might into Iraq would topple Saddam and, one-two-three create a new, democratic MiddleEast.
And they continue to ferverently believe the use of force or the threat of force will bend the will of nations to "Tow the line". Or else. And time is running out. Our military might is beginning to dwindle. The BushWar, aka: War In Iraq, has cost our military might dearly and has caused many Americans to re-think the policy-by-force premise so many usually accept as okay.

Newt and the New NeoCons have to move fast. First they must convince editorial writers, TV news pundits, and radio talk show hosts America is already in World War Three. (The last group should be easy.) Then they can stir-up public opinion World War Three is upon us and run for elections on saving America from the Muslim hordes. Newt and the New NeoCons will make it perfectly clear their mission is to save the Anglo Saxons and the Anglo Saxon way of life from those folks not towing the line. The brown and yellow ones. Racism will remain, sadly, the undercurrent of another Republican campaign strategy.

A Thought To Remember

Borrowed from the pages of Harpers Magazine, a truly fine publication. I hope they don't mind.

This sums up well the tangled mess we find ourselves in where our people have been taught down is up, and wrong is right:

Joseph Goebbels aboard the Death Star that was Nazi Germany taught the same lesson in what we’ve since come to know and love under the headings of aggressive marketing and corporate knowledge management. The propaganda minister understood that arguments must me crude and emotional, instinctual rather than intellectual, endlessly repeated. The electronic media do the work on their own strategic initiative, and without the guidance and supervision once provided by the Gestapo our written language over the last thirty-odd years has been made to fill the available time slots and fit the preferred camera angles-downsized and prioritized (also attrited, deconflicted, embedded, and lifestyled) in accordance with the key performance indicators that validate delivery strategies responsive to customer needs for enjoyable and educational experiences. Refreshingly meaningless, the phrases might as well be made of asparagus or ravioli, served by the assistant food and beverage directors of the national media to discriminating diners who prefer spectacle to politics. The language facilitates the transformation of a democratic republic into a military empire, moving on from a world in which words once were held accountable for their meanings, to a land of make-believe, securely defended, as is customary with empires, by “the conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power.”