Government Dirt

Washington Nationals Park--With the economy crashing, and American Empire going with it, it must be truly terrifying to know that you've been crucial in accelerating it with your incompetence, ignorance, and amorality. You would have to be heavily medicated to withstand the nearly ubiquitous hatred the president is enduring, almost Nixonian in its brilliance and intensity. They say Nixon drank and popped pills, a well-established GOP tradition going back to the years of Coolidge and Harding. Anyway, it's a new $600 million stadium. Rah.

What he knows that we don't--if he knows anything at all--is that the dislike of him is going to get cranked-up significantly higher once the economic reality sinks-in, and that time is coming before January 21, 2009. This wasn't supposed to happen, but that's life. The best made plans of mice and men...you know.

But watch CNN, Fox News, or just about any major American news outlet, and you'll find that the audio from the president's pitch is gone and that's there's nary-a-mention that it happened at all. One would have expected this from the state-controlled television in the former Soviet Union. This isn't anything new with our dubious mainstream press in any respect. They rarely lie: they simply don't tell us what we need to know. AP's Ben Feller is a prime example (or was it his editor? ownership?). His article not only contains no mention of the "boos," it goes as far as the lie and obfuscation:

Bush also threw out the first pitch at the Nationals' first home game in 2005, when baseball returned to the city after more than three decades. He was mostly cheered [Ed.-And?] that day at RFK Stadium when he threw a pitch that sailed in a bit high to the catcher.

Vice President Dick Cheney, who threw the first pitch the next year, had it a bit rougher. He was greeted by boos, and his ball landed in the dirt. ("Bush Gets First Pitch, First Look," AP, 03.30.2008)

It took Michael C. Moynihan (who's he?) just four-months to discover my article "English Accents and American Advertising," a piece primarily about the proliferation of the UK-accent in American advertising, and my take on why it's occurring (Americans don't sounds as intelligent when they speak, and we lie too much). But instead, to Moynihan, it's about "how enraged" I am about my "intellectual isolation," and how Brits are invading the United States to buy things and misbehave...or something along-those-lines. Maybe. Thanks, Mike, you read my mind, and you know everything about my life and Indiana. Thanks.

Moynihan either forgot or willfully misrepresented the real message--the subtext--of my original article: that Americans have allowed themselves to be dumbed down, and that even our politicians sound stupid when they talk. For that matter, listen to almost any current incumbent holding office in these here U-ni-ted States attempting speech. To Michael Moynihan, the run-up to the war in Iraq never happened, and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld never called the EU "Old Europe," or that most of our diplomats have such bad diction that they're unable to effectively form the right words required to negotiate with their peers from other nations. And Wall Street and the White House haven't wrecked the economy either.

"For Ronald Reagan, the world of legend and myth is a real world. He visits it regularly, and he's a happy man there." --Pat Buchanan

The Campaign Trail of Tears--Why is anyone surprised by the fact that Hillary lied about sleeping with Sinbad? You have no idea how funny this is, he's from Benton Harbor, Michigan, a town close to my own home. I know--sex with Sinbad--but it'll at least squelch all those rumors...the kind that are orbiting furiously around Lynne Cheney.

Both Sinbad and Hillary flew to Bosnia, and weren't shot at by Serbian snipers. That part about the snipers was also bullshit. Does that mean she isn't going to fix our health care system and get us out of the Middle East? You think?

She [mis]spoke, for example, of how a welcoming ceremony had to be abandoned as sniper fire forced members of her official party to run for their lives.

"I remember landing under sniper fire," she said.

"There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.

"But it was a moment of great pride for me."

Except...

Unfortunately for Senator Clinton plenty of television footage has survived, showing the actual circumstances of her arrival, which were very different. ("Clinton's thrilling tale falls flat," BBC, 03.26.2008)

Washington D.C. (and its environs)--You have to hand it to Louisiana's Fourth Estate, they're rising to the challenge in exposing the obvious double-standard in the treatment of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and current Louisiana Senator (and escort service client) David Vitter.

Even prominent Republicans in the Southern state have been calling for a serious investigation, if not his immediate resignation, so it appears to be "on" down there.

If you've been following the ongoing legal saga in the case of Deborah Jeane Palfrey (dubbed the "DC Madam" by the national press), you know that the charges are money laundering and racketeering, stemming from the Travel Act. Is it likely that Vitter--who wasn't a Senator at the time of his calls to Pamela Martin & Associates from 1999-2001--crossed state lines to do his "sinning"? That's not even at issue, says Christopher Tidmore of the Bayou Buzz:

Since Palfrey was based in California, prosecutors say, every phone call and payment from clients violated the law.Vitter, by telephoning Palfrey over state lines could also be prosecuted under the Travel Act, according to legal experts that Bayoubuzz.com has consulted, putting the Senator in a similar legal position as the resigned former Governor, and potentially silencing critics who have said there were no parallels between the cases. The statute of limitations is 10 years for violating the Travel Act, leaving Vitter open to prosecution even today. ("Can Louisiana Sen Vitter Be Prosecuted Under the Travel Act?" BayouBuzz.com, 03.24.2008)

Canadian Tories Under Harper Attempting to Impose Film Censorship Through New Tax Credit Clause

"It means the minister of heritage will have unprecedented powers. Public policy--what is that? It's anything she decides it is. ...The platform they're suggesting is akin to a Communist Chinese panel of unknown people, who, behind closed doors, will make a second ruling after bodies like Telefilm Canada have already invested.''--Canadian movie director, David Cronenberg.

Ottowa/Toronto--If Canadians thought they were going to escape the reach of the Bush era, they were reminded of the impossibility this week by Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper's proposed amemendment to Canadian tax credit policy. But did he and his party really author it? No, this is a collective move by both parties and outside elements. Are they the real instigators of this ill-advised legislation? What's the role of Hollywood in all of this?

A 13-word clause buried in a 560-page tax amendment is pitting Canada's film industry against Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The proposal would allow the Canadian government to deny tax breaks to films deemed contrary to "public policy,'' as determined by the Heritage Department, headed by [Harper appointee] Josee Verner. ("Censorship Charges Fly as Canada Moves to Cut Film Tax Credit," Bloomberg, 03.21.2008)

"When this country here was first being founded, there were 13 colonies. The whites were colonized. They were fed up with this taxation without representation. So some of them stood up and said, liberty or death. I went to a white school over here in Mason, Michigan. The white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books. He made the mistake of teaching me that Patrick Henry was a patriot and George Washington—wasn’t nothing non-violent about old Pat or George Washington.

Liberty or death was what brought about the freedom of whites in this country from the English. They didn’t care about the odds. Why, they faced the wrath of the entire British Empire. And in those days, they used to say that the British Empire was so vast and so powerful, the sun would never set on it. This is how big it was, yet these 13 little scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire, liberty or death." --Malcolm X, February 1965.

The Midwest--I've been watching the carefully selected clips on CNN and Fox News going in heavy-rotation (and inverted-ratiocination)--I'm still not finding anything factually incorrect in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons in any respect, they are accurate and truthful. The truth hurts. Readers should note that most of the sermons are being culled from 2003, five-years-ago. Why weren't they important then? We know why, and we know why they're being run constantly: to hurt Obama's chances at victory over Clinton and McCain. The move is a racist one in every respect.

Yes, we could do that--but IT WOULD BE WRONG. ;0)

"Anybody who looks at the two cases will see that there is an enormous difference between the two of them. The people that are trying to draw comparisons to the two cases are people who've never agreed with me on important issues like immigration and other things." --Louisiana Senator David Vitter

New Orleans--You think he should resign? Who doesn't these days? The Republicans have no reason to protect him anymore, he's served his usefulness. Do it now, he's hoping you'll forget again. If Spitzer had to go, so does Senator Vitter, the only difference is the statute of limitations, you cannot nail Vitter on that count. It's great that Republicans in Congress held-up any potential ethics investigations of the Louisiana senator for about nine months, but then, so did Barbara Boxer. You might ask her why sometime. You might also ask the FBI, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, and the Bush administration why they gave Vitter a free-pass back in 2001 when they should have been monitoring the 9/11-hijackers and busting him (and the others whose names were also suppressed).

Sitting-on any inquiries gave the Republicans time to wait-out the outgoing Democratic governor Kathleen Blanco who had been in a great deal of conflict with Vitter's bosses (he was literally the errand-boy for Karl Rove during the aftermath of Katrina) in the White House. It seems she didn't want to be their scapegoat, but she wasn't running around having-sex with prostitutes, and touching escorts:

Chicago--I'm not understanding the reaction to this guy--everything he said was essentially true, but there it is: the truth hurts. If it hadn't been true at all, White Americans could have simply shrugged-it-off and moved-on. As a matter-of-fact, the reaction to his sermon really only confirms what he said. I know-I know: Obama needs to WIN. He wants those straying conservative votes, and the closeted racist pseudo-liberal ones (they're more racist than conservatives, and less honest about it). Watch the fangs come out when the truth hits. Too bad. The ancients noted that ignorance loves to parade itself everywhere it can. American culture embodies this daily.

No, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. was getting the same reaction that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got over forty-years-ago when he came out against the war in Vietnam, and he's being indirectly told, "Shut-up nigger, we do the talking." Time to wake-up White America: you suck, you're racists, and merely voting for a Black man won't free you from that deep-seated guilt you've been feeling. Racists should feel guilty, it's natural. No Black God will forgive you without a change in your hearts. The living won't be so forgiving when the economy crashes. Is this why Congress and the White House want to spy on all of us so badly? Perhaps it's also why Canada and America recently signed an agreement where either nation can send troops into the other's territory to quell domestic uprisings and disorder, and why habeas corpus is still suspended.

Washington D.C./Nazi Germany--It's highly doubtful that Deborah Jeane Palfrey knew anything about the subterranean activities of some of her associates, but could some of them have been agent provocateurs or spies? Or, with the capabilities of current surveillance technology, would it even be necessary? Could elements within the government and the two major political parties run sexual blackmailing operations under the color of legitimate investigations? Could foreign agencies be using escort services for similar ends? There is smoke.

Time and technology have changed the West's social landscape in substantial respects since 1933-1945 , but some things never change. Generally speaking, only the technology changes. This is another age, and some political tactics never die because they're always going to be useful later-on, and sometimes they get results. Instant-communication was once the sole domain of the State, but today, we all have cell phones, pagers, laptop computers, GPS locators, unparalleled surveillance capabilities, and toys like the Blackberry and the new iPhone. Things have changed in the "secret world" as well, though the full-extent of these technological developments are unknown. On Salon Kitty:

Although brothels were officially outlawed by the Third Reich, the elite Nazi SS security police had been authorized by Himmler before the war to engage prostitutes in intelligence gathering. The infamous Salon Kitty in Berlin's Giebachstrasse [11] was the brainchild of the Deputy Reichsfuhrer SS, Reinhard Heydrich. The high-class brothel was set up to increase surveillance of foreign diplomats and visitors as well as to gather dossiers on the sexual indiscretions of Nazi party big-wigs and government guests. ... (pp. 241-242) (heretical.com, "Love, Sex and War," by John Costello From Chapter 12: 'Black Propaganda and Sexpionage')