- Signs of the Times for Wed, 01 Mar 2006 -

"I just had the worst nightmare!" said a friend.

My friend looked wild-eyed and ghastly. "Take a deep breath, calm down and spill."

"I was in this taxi and we were driving up this really steep hill and then suddenly the car began rolling backwards and I looked over at the driver and he was ASLEEP!" So. What did you do? "I grabbed the wheel and jammed my foot on the brake petal but the brakes didn't work!"

I've had those kinds of dreams before. They are terrifying. But what do they mean? Was something in my friend's life spinning out of control? "Now if it was ME having that dream," I said, "I would know exactly what it meant. This is the perfect analogy for what is going on in Washington DC these days." My friend shrugged. I had just hijacked his dream. Humph.

"Now if it was me having that nightmare," I lectured, "that steep hill would represent mankind's uphill battle to evolve into the type of human being that Jesus, Mohammad, Abraham and Buddha would be proud of. The taxi would represent our government -- the vehicle we use to get us to this urgently critical destination on time. And the cabbie would represent our leaders, the ones we hire to safely and efficiently drive this vehicle -- and to get us there in one piece and on time." My friend started to look interested. I added, "Here. Have some hot tea."

"Then who would the passenger person represent?" he asked.

"That's easy. That passenger would represent all us poor smucks who trust government leaders to get us safely to our destination -- and of course the ones who are paying the fare."

Right now, today, at this very minute, our country is like that taxi -- out of control, blindly racing backwards, careening wildly downhill to sure destruction. And our leaders are asleep at the wheel.

When my friend flagged him down, his dream-cabbie appeared to be a competent driver. He was not. He was a fraud who hadn't even passed his road test! And like that fraudulent cabbie, we Americans have been stuck with the wrong men and women to drive our vehicle of state.

These people became our leaders, according to Rob Kall, solely because of their ability to pay for the most TV advertisements -- or, according to the GAO, because they were good at stealing elections. That is no criteria for selecting a driver. None. these people have NO LEADERSHIP SKILLS. And there are no excuses for us either. We should have taken a closer look at their badges.

But do excuses really matter when the car we are riding in is out of control and madly rushing downward toward certain death?

What must we do to stop this nightmare? "What did you do in your dream?" I asked my friend.

"I pushed the stupid incompetent driver out of the way and took over myself. Then I brought the taxi under control." We need to do that too.

We need to put people in the White House, the Supreme Court and Congress who actually know HOW to stay awake and to get us to where we need to go. We need to control election spending. We need to count the votes ourselves. We need to elect people with NO ties to the weapons industry. We need to put limits on television advertising. We need to take back our airwaves. And we need to start placing (legal) wiretaps on all the White House phones and start reading THEIR e-mails.

We need to hire leaders who represent US!

And if our drivers fall asleep at the wheel and cannot get us to where WE want to go -- safely and on time -- then we need to drive our own car.

PS: I just listened to "Democracy Now" on KPFA, where investigative reporters described American black ops torture techniques in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Morocco and Poland. American military personnel -- not just a few bad apples -- torture captives in ways that you don't even want to know about. Broomsticks up the rectum? Months in freezing temperatures in unlighted cells with screeching noises blasting at them 24/7 while they hang by ropes until they confess to crimes that only fools believe had actually been committed? And the American troops who perform these unspeakable acts learn how to do it by reading these worst-than-medieval torture instructions from out of Pentagon-produced books!

"And then they came for me and by that time there was nobody to speak up for me," Pastor Niemoller said about the Nazis. If we don't get our American democratic vehicle back under control, the 600 new concentration camps that Halliburton has just been commissioned to build here in America may be used to house US. And then it could be you and me -- us Democrats and bloggers -- who are being rammed with a broom.

PPS: Okay. So our federal vehicle is being driven by a scurvy group of blood-curdling torturers -- sort of like our own personal Freddie Kruegers. But can they steer America through the economic nightmare that awaits us if something isn't done really soon about our out-of-control financial deficits? Or will we just get another sequel to "Nightmare on Wall Street"?

To quote Joseph Stiglitz, "If America were not the economic powerhouse that it is, the day of reckoning would have already come. The only questions that the world faces today are how long it will persist, how it will be tamed and how much damage -- to America and the world -- will be done in the interim. And how hard will the landing be?"

http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com

Stillwater is a freelance writer who hates injustice and corruption in any form but especially injustice and corruption paid for by American taxpayers.

Is something happening? After nearly six years of hoping something would happen, I am resisting the temptation to accept that suddenly something really is happening.

But the signs are coming in strong suddenly. It's getting harder for me to deny it. Something is afoot. Something long overdue.

Here are a few recent clues.

Clue #1:

Neocon architect says: 'Pull it down'

NeoConserativism has failed the United States and needs to be replaced by a more realistic foreign policy agenda, according to one of its prime architects....Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has "evolved into something I can no longer support". He says it should be discarded on to history's pile of discredited ideologies.  (Full Story)

Fukuyama goes on to single out Neocon One, George W. Bush, his economic policies and the war in Iraq, for special criticism.

Fukuyama -- who once supported the war in Iraq, now says it's the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time:

"The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism," he argues. "It seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention [in Iraq] itself or the ideas animating it kindly".

Finally there was this jaw-dropping statement from the man who created the Neocon movement :

Fukuyama says the neocon movements' key players in this administration  "are Leninists who believe that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States".

Holy cow.  The Bushies being called pack of Leninists by their own guru. 

Something is happening.

Clue #2:

If you have more than two discretionary nickels to rub together you've heard of PIMCO, the investment firm. PIMCO is hardly a hotbed of socialist thought. The company is one of the largest investment firms in the world, with more than $590 billion in assets under management.

So, when PIMCO's managing director, Bill Gross, talks about money, those with money listen. And Bill did just that this week on PIMCO's own web site.

“A copy of the annual Economic Report of the President arrived at my desk the other day....  It’s not so much that the report was a compilation of untruths or even half-truths. It’s just that it failed to tell the truth, the whole truth, and most definitely nothing but the truth. If there were WMD in our economic future, you’d be hard pressed to find them here. Mild innuendos about global and demographic challenges yes, but nothing that couldn’t or wouldn’t be overcome with good old American ingenuity, hard work, and a fawning foreign investment public nearly trampling each other to get their hands on attractive U.S. "investments."  Nowhere to be found was the catchy phrase à la Tennessee Williams referring to the "kindness of strangers" or a suggestion of "living on borrowed time."

Ah, but that, it seems to me, was the critical rub. Have we, can we, will we use capital to foster future growth or must we earmark it for future liabilities that have been under-reserved? Have we borrowed from the future to pay for today’s party and will our future creditors allow us to pay it back on our own terms with low yields and a strong dollar? While the gang that couldn’t shoot (or talk) straight expressed few doubts, I as you can probably tell, have mine.  (Full Essay Here)
(Audio Version Here)

Well! How about that? A guy who manages over half a trillion bucks of other people's money saying such startling things right out loud!  Normally Wall Street folk avoid saying anything that might spook the sheep. They like to play up the positive and brush aside the negative. It's only when disaster looms too close for comfort that they shout “fire” -- usually over their shoulder after they clear the exit first.

Bill Gross' essay is chilling confirmation that the Bush economy is but a hollow tree. It may look okay on the surface, but one strong storm and it'll come crashing to earth.  I've suspected it was so from the very start. Now it's being said by folks with a vested interest in the tree. Something is happening.

Clue #3

Now the rest of us are finally shouting “foul!”

Here's a clip from a great Web newsletter that tracks the growing American wealth disparity. It's appropriately named, “Too Much!”

New Data on America's Wealth

"Two years ago, the Federal Reserve Board had 4,522 American families interviewed, typically for 80 minutes each, about their personal household finances. Last week, the Fed unveiled a summary of the data from this massive survey effort, and the new numbers tell an old story.

America's economy, the Fed data make clear, is only working for the wealthy. Everyone else is treading water — or even falling behind....The new Fed Survey of Consumer Finances — the latest installment of research the Fed conducts every three years — offers the federal government's best update on income and wealth distribution in the United States. That distribution continues to skew.

Back in 1995, typical families in America's richest 10 percent held 697 times more net worth than typical families in the nation's poorest 25 percent. In 2004, the new Fed data reveal, the net worths of top 10 percent families outpaced the net worths of families in the bottom 25 percent by 841 times."

Yes, something is happening.

The Bushies got away with a lot of lies over the past five and half years, and for that we must blame not only them, but ourselves for letting it happen, and our media, which failed its own prime directive – to find the truth and report it.

But lies are not enough any longer, because new lies must now compete with the very ugly and obvious physical truths their earlier lies have created:

- Hard working Americans are poorer than they were, and it looks as though they are going to get poorer yet before anyone comes along able to get us back on track.

- Iraq is a mess, always has been, always will be, and they just wasted $600 billion re-learning that.

- Homeland security is another lie. We are not one iota safer today than we were on September 10, 2001. We now know that the entire Homeland security business was just one big, fabulously expensive, bureaucratic Chinese fire drill. A lot of noise and fury, signifying nada. How do we know that now?

- Katrina,
- The moronic port deal,
- The gutting of states National Guard units,
- The Keystone cops panic last week over that non-ricin attack,
- Osama still at large,
- Mullah Omar, still at large,
- Iran perking right along on a nuclear weapons program,
- North Korea is stacking up new nukes like cordwood...
- And this just in:

Veterans May Face Health Care Cuts in 2008
At least tens of thousands of veterans with non-critical medical issues could suffer delayed or even denied care in coming years to enable President Bush to meet his promise of cutting the deficit in half — if the White House is serious about its proposed budget.

 Had enough?

The bottom line --  unless you were in a top tax bracket, owned a defense contracting firm, made pharmaceuticals, or pumped oil, you've lost ground since the Bushies arrived in town.

And – here's the biggest laugh of all – it was those who have suffered most – middle class working, religious conservatives – who put these morons into power, not once, but twice. (So much for intelligent design.)

But the worm is finally turning. Better late than too late.

The November mid-term elections could be Phase I of a two-part house cleaning. Recently I spoke to a former Republican member of the California Assembly who told me, “This November I will vote for any Democrat running against any Republican for the US Congress. It's just gotten too out of hand up there with the GOP running the whole show.”

And that from a life-long Republican politician!

Yes, something IS happening.  And only one thing can screw it up – old-school Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Joey Lieberman, Rahm Emanuel, et al.

And, rest assured,  they are working furiously on doing just that.

The broadcast of new images of torture by the American army at the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 and the publication February 16 of a report by five independent U.N. experts on conditions at the Guantanamo camp have tarnished the West's image a bit more in the Arab world - which was already suffering from the cartoon affair. It has also discredited the United States in matters of democracy.

In effect, the report in question, which is very critical of Washington, was - as expected - denigrated by the American administration, which has no intention of judging the 490 alleged al-Qaeda members held at the base, or of freeing them or even closing Guantanamo, despite numerous repeated appeals made by human rights organizations.

For Washington, the "war on terrorism," undertaken since the September 11, 2001 attacks, remains the top priority; even above the international legal framework.

Since then, the Guantanamo camp has been turned into a veritable bunker, where every kind of abuse has been and continues to be committed. According to the report by the five U.N. experts, "the general conditions at Guantanamo equate the prisoners' health condition to inhuman and violent treatment. In certain cases, the treatment goes so far as to be torture. … Certain interrogation methods are based on religious discrimination and aim to offend the detainees' religious beliefs," the text says.

In the same vein, the scandal of the Abu Ghraib prison, the revelation of which provoked the furor of Arabs in 2004, has surfaced again with the broadcast of new, even crueler images.

The reactions were unanimous that these images diminish the credibility of the campaign to promote democracy in the Middle East that the United States claims to be leading. In fact, they place America in an untenable situation. Would Washington have authorized torture in circumstances that don't concern Iraqis, for example, or Muslims in general?

We are correct to assume that, with what is happening at Guantanamo or what happened at Abu Ghraib, America has never taken into consideration the humanitarian aspect insofar as the tortured prisoners are, according to the United States, presumed terrorists.

"The war against terrorism" being the number one objective, Washington is ready to do anything to keep its program from waning.

Reuters - President George W. Bush, hit by polls showing America's support for the Iraq war at an all-time low, denied on Tuesday Iraq was sliding into civil war, despite the worst sectarian strife since a U.S.-led invasion.

The parent company of a Dubai-based firm at the center of a political storm in the US over the purchase of American ports participates in the Arab boycott against Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

“The US government is strongly opposed to restrictive trade practices or boycotts targeted at Israel,” said Undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Kenneth Juster.

“The Commerce Department is closely monitoring efforts that appear to be made to reinvigorate the Arab boycott of Israel and will use all of its resources to vigorously enforce US anti-boycott regulations.”

…The Department of Commerce has issued more than $26m in fines and turned down export licenses to those found violating the law.

BUSH: Listen, here\'s the problem that happened in Katrina. There was no situational awareness, and that means that we weren\'t getting good, solid information from people who were on the ground, and we need to do a better job. One reason we weren\'t is because communications systems got wiped out, and in many cases we were relying upon the media, who happened to have better situational awareness than the government.

I thought, for example, the reaction to the 9/11 attack was a remarkable reaction, positively. When the terrorists attacked and destroy two buildings, there were rescue teams rushing in to save lives. There was a response by the city that was a coordinated response.

BUSH: When I saw TV reporters interviewing people who were screaming for help. It looked Â? the scenes looked chaotic and desperate. And I realized that our government was Â? could have done a better job of comforting people.

And as you know, we\'ve reduced troop levels this year, and that\'s because our commanders on the ground have said that the security situation in Iraq is improving because the Iraqis are more capable of taking the fight.

In the March issue of American Family Association Journal, a publication of Donald E. Wildmon\'s right-wing evangelical activist group, the American Family Association (AFA), author Randall Murphree suggested that a Jewish upbringing leads to hatred of Christians, and by extension, a criminal lifestyle.

Scott Lively, California chapter director of the AFA, is co-author of a book titled, The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality and the Nazi Party, in which he claims that “homosexuals [are] the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities.” Lively makes explicit links between his claims about the Nazi party and the modern gay equal rights movement, claiming that “From the ashes of Nazi Germany, the homo-fascist phoenix has arisen again, this time in the United States.”

"The problem we have with Europe is that [it] is infested with the Muslim population. The reason why is because they multiply at a much faster rate than we do," she says. "When we Christians get married, we have two, three, maybe four children -- after they\'re born, we start thinking about what college we\'re going to send them to, what education we\'re going to give them. The Muslims, on the other hand, are allowed to marry up to four wives at a time," she says, noting that terrorist Osama bin Laden had 27 children.

Some time ago, you see, Thacker called AIDS "the gay plague," which everyone knows but no one will admit, particularly homosexuals and their friends in the Bush Administration.

The president of one pro-family group feels the battle in Massachusetts over legalizing homosexual marriage is a clear example of the struggle between good and evil as the end times approach.

Muslim newcomers are engaging in what area realtors call "block busting." In other words, he says, "They came in, paid outrageously high prices for some of our homes that you wouldn\'t give $20,000 for, paying 60 and 70 thousand, which then entrenched a number of [Muslim families] on every block." Golen believes this is part of a "concerted effort" on the part of Muslims to use their financial power take over the city, and he says, "they\'re doing a heck of a job because nobody\'s standing up to them."

"...an immoral, deviant lifestyle."

As a family physician, I’ve seen first-hand the devastation that homosexuality brings into the lives of patients that have chosen to live this way.... To promote homosexuality and even consider the sanctioning of it through “marriage” is irresponsible and is a danger to the public health of the entire country, spiritually and physically.

The AFA Journal has long served as a platform for anti-Semitic theories and innuendo. For instance, Wildmon warned of Jewish control over popular culture, an old anti-Semitic canard, in a January 1989 article, "What Hollywood Believes and Wants." "The television elite are highly secular," Wildmon wrote. "The majority (59 percent) in the Jewish faith." In a separate article in the same issue, titled "Anti-Semitism Called a Serious Problem," Wildmon, a longtime opponent of gay rights, pointedly remarked that "Jews favor homosexual rights more than other Americans."

The House Republicans’ campaign operation is charging that a recently released Democratic report on Republican corruption violated ethics rules.



The 103-page report, “America for Sale: The Cost of Republican Corruption,” was compiled by the Democratic staff of the House Rules Committee and released by the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Louise Slaughter (N.Y.), last week.



The report reiterates repeats many of Democrats’ long-held concerns about Republicans’ actions on healthcare, energy, the environment, homeland security and Hurricane Katrina.