Government Dirt

"A seller-sovereign economy includes sellers who are monopolistic or oligopolistic without being confronted by the ultimate consumers who are organized in monopsonistic (a single buyer) or ologopsonistic (a few buyers) modes. It is an economy where enormous skill, artifice, and resources are used in getting consumers to buy what the sellers want to sell, notwithstanding the availability of more efficient, safe, economical, durable and effective alternatives, including that of buying nothing at all. ...Ours is a system of corporate socialism." --Ralph Nader

The American Mind--Is there an American mind? Like Neil Young, I'm still looking for it. I'm not understanding this incredible hatred from those of us on the so-called left (everyone's pissed, it's not a "left" or a "right" thing to think this country is in-trouble), but then I keep forgetting that I couldn't disagree more with their viewpoint that Ralph Nader almost solely facilitated the Bush campaign's road to the White House. Considering how few people voted in 2000, and even today, it's not a stretch to say that many Americans failed themselves and Nader in 2000.

Washington D.C.--While you're at it, you might investigate former attorney general Alberto Gonzales (remember him?), a little bird called the media told me several months ago that he lied under oath to the Senate. You listening Senator Leahy? Representative Conyers, what are you sitting on impeachment for? Get on it, NOW. The Democrats are getting good practice for being in-the-minority these days, and it's their own fault.

In the midst of their lowest approval ratings in the history of the Republic, the Senate decides that THIS, that drugs in sports is somehow a national priority. Rather than investigate the most obviously criminal (my mom knows about it) presidential administration in American history, we need to know if baseball players took steroids or not. What better example of a broken political process does one need?

BUT, there were some stirrings of credibility, much like a flickering flame in the eye of a hurricane. House majority speaker (whose time is ticking-away fast) Nancy Pelosi finally made a demand for the Department of Justice to investigate former Bush counsel Harriet Miers and former chief of staff Joshua Bolten for not appearing before Congress to give testimony, a misdemeanor.

She [Pelosi] added: "Short of a formal assertion of executive privilege, which cannot be made in this case, there is no authority that permits a president to advise anyone to ignore a duly issued congressional subpoena for documents."Pelosi sent an additional letter to U.S. Attorney Jeff[rey] Taylor, the chief federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, whose office would oversee the grand jury. The letters point to sections of federal law that require the Justice Department to bring the House contempt citations before a grand jury to investigate. ("Pelosi wants Bush aides investigated," AP, 02.28.2008)

George W. Bush...Revolutionary?

Washington D.C./Crawford, Texas--Just as Hitler was one of the few artists to use the world as his canvas (think of WWII as a Futurist form of performance art), Bush has taken America down a road that only a genuine product of America could conceive or imagine. Bush isn't from Russia, or Indonesia--he's ours. We made him. The crucial-step was allowing him to cross the American Rubicon, and stealing the elections in 2000 and 2004. Where was the opposition? It wasn't coming from the Democrats, and it still isn't in any substantial sense.

Remember January 20, 2001? There was a riot at the inaugural ceremonies (something that didn't even happen at Lincoln's second inauguration during the American Civil War). Most Americans never even heard of this riot until the summer of 2003 when Michael Moore included footage of it in "Fahrenheit 9/11."

When things like that happen, you know that there's been a takeover of some kind. From the first-days when the Bush-Cheney administration classified their energy policy meetings, to the lies in the run-up to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, the lies about WMDs in Iraq, the U.S. Attorney firings, the pathetic response to Katrina that continues into today, the favoring of oil interests over national interests, the shielding of Saudi Arabia from serious 9/11 investigations, the coddling of other supporters of terrorism like the regime in Pakistan, misuse of public funds for political allies, unwarranted classification of the internal record, the war-profiteering in Iraq, rigged-elections, violent ejections of activists from speaking engagements by shadowy "security" posing as Secret Service agents--it all has the ring of a putsch to it.

"1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that—

(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at—

(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section [Author-my emphasis.] 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or

(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title;

(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party; and..." (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/50/usc_sec_50_00001802----000-.html)

--The actual language of the Foreign Intelligence Act of 1978, federal and binding law at the time of the illegal NSA surveillance program conducted by the Bush administration beginning in 2002.

Washington D.C.--Representative Reyes might want to confer with his constituents in El Paso as well as the American public on the final version of the amendment to FISA, the one that is likely to cave-in to the whims of the president, the GOP, and the telecommunications companies again. It appears that Rep. Reyes doesn't read the papers very much, having serious gaps in what we already know about the illegal NSA surveillance program initiated by the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.