(Note: Authoritarian is used throughout this blog in the context of a personality type — not in the sense of a figure of authority such as a policeman, boss or Army general.)

Back in 2006, John Dean completed Conservatives Without Conscience and he detailed the transformation of the Republican Party and the affinity of the authoritarian personality for that party. In the preface to his book, Dean quoted Barry Goldwater’s concern about some of these authoritarians and their determination:

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.

Later in Dean’s book, he describes authoritarians this way:

Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result. … And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.

Here are some recent examples of what these authoritarians might do and the tools they will use to get their way.

Bill Kristol, the son of Irving Kristol, is a good place to start. Both he and his father are follower’s of Leo Strauss’ neocon philosophies, which includes Noble Lies and preemptive strikes to prevent any imagined holocaust. Bill made the following statement on Fox Noise one Sunday:

But how would that happen? What tactic would the authoritarians use to get the rest of us to follow? Steve Weber wrote in The Sleep of Monsters Produces Reason about the authoritarian’s favorite tool for getting what they want — fear mongering.

… we must nonetheless be aware of the opposing forces who peer jealously across the widening breach, who are becoming even more embittered, even more determined to prevent this movement [away from authoritarians] from succeeding. Starting from its warped, hardened kernel of an ideology, the Bush/Neo-Con jihad on democracy has been nothing less than catastrophic, a global socio/geopolitical plague. And it’s not just the obvious villains we have to be concerned about. There are the appeasers in our midst, the DINO’s who continue to reward Bush’s treachery with unimpeded funding for the disgrace of Iraq and immunity for his flouting of the law. And there is our own knee-jerk cowering in the face of an enemy openly courted, recklessly wielded and described as impregnable by Bush et al.: Fear. Knowing we would forever shudder and weep at the images branded into our brains, Fear is probably the most brutally effective weapon BushCo had — has — in its arsenal and is used with the same alacrity with which Saddam used poison gas on the Kurds.

Adding to that, Robert Creamer wrote about the use of fear mongering by the right in McCain Advisor’s Terrorism Comment Highlights the Right’s Historic Use of Fear: …:

Many in the press and the public have been repulsed by the notion that McCain’s inner circle would even speculate on how they could politically benefit by another 9/11. But we shouldn’t let our revulsion obscure the underlying truth that throughout history the Right has always used fear as its weapon of choice.

Fundamentally, the centuries-long battle between Progressives and the right wing has been a struggle between empowerment and domination.

At its core, right wing ideology has historically functioned to legitimate the domination of the many by the few — whether a king, a chief, an aristocracy, or the wealthy. Its job is to protect the prerogatives and power of the elite: to protect the status quo.

In modern America its role has been to defend those at the top of the socio-economic order. Its job is to convince us that the “survival of the fittest” is the “natural” organizing principle for society, and that those who achieve ascendancy deserve their positions of dominance and power.

The Right has always used fear as a centerpiece in its strategy to assure compliance and domination. Fear is a tool of distraction and social control. At different times, it has used the fear of social chaos, the fear of foreign enemies, or the fear of racial and religious minorities. Historically fear has been an incredibly powerful tool. Fear of minorities was used for decades to divide everyday white people from everyday black people and thereby assure the continued preeminence of an elite.

Of course, fear has always been used to distract everyday people from domestic injustice by creating an overwhelming focus on the “outside enemy.” For decades the Right used fear of the Soviet Union and “global communism.” After the collapse of the Soviet Union it used the fear of crime, the fear of minorities and “War on Drugs.” The 9/11 attacks gave the Right a whole new way to capitalize on fear — the War on Terror and Jihadist Islam.

But most importantly, the emotion of fear immobilizes. Fear does not make men and women rise to challenge. It makes them cower. Fear is the mortal enemy of empowerment, and the Right knows it. That’s why its leaders secretly hope that a new terrorist attack will terrify Americans, and deflate the massive energy for change that has infected the electorate and threatens to sweep the Right from power.

As for secretly hoping for a terrorist attack, we have John McCain’s chief strategist and former lobbyist Charlie Black trying to scare us by saying that another terrorist attack on the United States would greatly improve the odds of Republican victory in November.

Fear mongering and hoping for some terrorist action are then added to by playing the race card. Grover Norquist dropped by the LA Times Washington bureau and referred to Senator Obama as “John Kerry with a tan.” In other words, the senator is not like ‘them’ in two ways. He’s both a Democrat and an African American.

But Norguist’s fatuous comment on Senator Obama’s skin color isn’t as bad as Karl Rove’s comments about the Senator. John Ridley wrote When Rove Calls Obama Arrogant, He Means “Uppity” Karl said this week on Fox News, “I will say yes, I do think Barack Obama is arrogant.” Mr. Ridley described Karl’s comment in this way

Karl Rove says Barack Obama is arrogant.

We’ve heard that; we’ve heard the pejorative “arrogant” before. When I say “we” I mean those of us who are “others” in America; people of color. Minorities. Women. We hear the word all the time from a select section of privileged white guys; the codifying they use when they fear the silver spoons are about to be snatched from their lily palaces: “Those people… How dare they think they can work jobs like ours or live in neighborhoods like ours or send their children to school with ours? Those people are just so damn arrogant.”

Arrogant, of course, is a euphemism. In the monochromatic bunkers from which old-schoolers cling to power the true word they use is “uppity” when hurled at blacks. …

So, what might happen if all this fear mongering, hoping for terrorists to come to their aid and racial labeling fails to work? What else might they try as the election draws near in order to maintain their domination and protect the status quo?

Here’s one very desperate option of last resort.

On June 15, 2008, Steve Rosenbaum, predicted the following option:

McCain won’t be the [Republican] nominee.

By August, they’ll have done something to try and pick away at Obama’s popularity. They’ll emphasize race, or whatever they can to get him to appear less than perfect. Then, they’ll bring out of the woodwork a surprise [Republican] candidate who can shift the story fast. With just two months before the election — the new candidate will have little time to be ‘vetted’ but will be shiny and new, and will get a lot of media attention as Obama’s newness will have become — by then — tarnished or at least no longer the surprise that it has been as he unseated Hillary.

Government Seizing Laptops and Cameras at Airports Without Cause – Returning from a brief vacation to Germany in February, Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. Agents searched Hogan’s luggage and then popped an unexpected question: Was he carrying any digital media cards or drives in his pockets? “Then they told me that they were impounding my laptop,” says Hogan, a freelance investigative reporter whose recent stories have ranged from the origins of the Iraq war to the impact of money in presidential politics.

Shaken by the encounter, Hogan says he left the airport and examined his bags, finding that the agents had also removed and inspected the memory card from his digital camera. “It was fortunate that I didn’t use that machine for work or I would have had to call up all my sources and tell them that the government had just seized their information,” he said. When customs offered to return the machine nearly two weeks later, Hogan told them to ship it to his lawyer.

The extent of the program to confiscate electronics at customs points is unclear. A hearing Wednesday before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution hopes to learn more about the extent of the program and safeguards to traveler’s privacy.

Government Grabs Man’s Savings at Airport – Pedro Zapeta was returning home to Guatemala with $59,000 he had saved working illegally as a dishwasher over 11 years. Zapeta had saved the money to build a house for himself and his family in his home village in the Guatemalan mountains. Federal law requires that anyone leaving or entering the country with $10,000 or more must declare it. Because Zapeta had not done so, he was detained, and his money was seized. Zapeta, who does not speak English, was not trying to conceal the money but did not know the law. He had paid taxes on the earnings, and under legal guidelines should be fined at most $5,000 for failing to report that he was traveling with the cash. A court has now corrected the matter.

Justice Department Turned into Goon Squad for the Republican Party According to Constitutional Law Professor – A new Justice Department audit has revealed that under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, highly qualified applicants for jobs or summer internships who had liberal leanings were passed over in favor of conservatives, in violation of the supposedly non-partisan spirit of those programs. For example, in 2006, 82% of summer internship applicants with liberal affiliations were rejected, but only 13% of those with conservative affiliations.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann invited constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley to discuss these findings, which he described as “the Bush administration’s attempt to make the Justice Department into kind of a goon squad for the Republican Party.”

Turley noted with a smile that “it’s ironic. … The Bush administration has lost so many terrorism cases — maybe this is the reason. You don’t get a very good government when you have political commissars selecting people not because they’ve achieved something, but because they toe a party line.”

Republican State Senator Kim Brimer Bilks Supporters for Personal Gain … Again – Campaign finance records show that Republican State Senator Kim Brimer (SD10 – Fort Worth) has again used campaign contributor funds for personal gain. A complete review of Kim Brimer’s campaign finance forms from 1987 to the present shows that Brimer skimmed at least $37,953 from his campaign account for his personal use. The Lone Star Project discovery of Brimer’s improper, and possibly illegal, repayments resulted from an earlier investigation into the Republican Senator’s improper use of campaign cash to purchase a luxury condominium in Austin.

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Could Permanently Hide Evidence of Impeachable Offenses – The “farce” of a surveillance law deal heralded by House Democratic leaders last week could permanently hide evidence of an “impeachable offense” on the part of President Bush, Sen. Russ Feingold, said Monday. The Senate is expected to approve an administration backed gambit to essentially legalize Bush’s warrantless surveillance program while at the same time letting off the hook phone companies that critics say facilitated the contravention of current law. “I do think this is a total farce with regard to the immunity [for telecommunications companies]. It basically guarantees the immunity,” Feingold said. “It doesn’t simply have the impact of potentially allowing telephone companies to break the law. It may prevent us from ever getting to the core issue … which is the president ran an illegal program that could’ve been an impeachable offense.” Senator Chris Dodd said, “We’re closing the door, never to know why this happened, who ordered it, why did they avoid [the courts], what was behind their thinking. And that is a dangerous step for us.”

Illegal, Barbaric, Who Cares? – John Yoo, a former deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, gives us insight into the administration’s belief that anything the president or his designates do – no matter how illegal, barbaric or un-American – is justifiable in the name of national self-defense.

Cassel: “If the president deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?”
Yoo: “No treaty.”
Cassel: “Also no law by Congress – that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo…”
Yoo: “I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.”

Regards,

Jim

U.S. Government Funding Arabic News Channel That Makes Payments to Bush Administration Officials and Airs Anti-American Viewpoints – Alhurra, the U.S. government-funded Arabic news channel, paid former Bush and Clinton administration officials, lobbyists and high-profile Washington journalists tens of thousands of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money to appear on the network as commentators, according to interviews and a review of company records. Alhurra, a 24-hour satellite station, was founded by the Bush administration four years ago to project a positive image of the United States to Middle East viewers. The network and its sister radio station, Sawa, have aired anti-American and anti-Israeli viewpoints, have showcased pro-Iranian policies and recently gave air time to a militant who called for the death of American soldiers in Iraq.

Justice Department Rejected Liberal-Leaning Job Applicants – Ivy Leaguers and other top law students were rejected for plum Justice Department jobs two years ago because of their liberal leanings or objections to Bush administration politics, a government report concluded Tuesday. Even senior Justice Department officials flinched at what appeared to be hiring decisions based – improperly and illegally – on politics, according to the internal report. “Individuals at the department were rejecting any of our candidates who could be construed as left-wing or who were perceived, based on their appearances and resumes and so forth, as being more liberal,” Kevin Ohlson, deputy director of the department’s executive office of immigration review, complained to Justice investigators.

Those Who Want to Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or Offshore Are Not Telling the Truth – Even in the best case, the price impact of drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would amount to about 1 percent of current market prices. If work started today, production would peak in 2027 — when increased production would have the biggest impact on prices. According to Department of Energy projections, that impact would cut the prices of light sweet crude (in 2006 dollars) by 41 cents per barrel in 2026 for the low estimate, 75 cents per barrel in 2025 for the mean oil resource case, and $1.44 per barrel in 2027 for the high estimate. That would affect the price of gas by pennies, if at all. Offshore is even worse than that.

White House Refused to Open E-Mail on Pollutants From EPA – The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week. Remember, if you don’t read a policy paper, it’s just like it never existed!

Regards,

Jim

48 Things That John McCain Is Not Sure About – (Just Tell ‘Em What They Want to Hear, or Maybe … Just Say What the NeoCons Tell You to Say)

* McCain supported the drilling moratorium; now he’s against it.
* McCain strongly opposes a windfall-tax on oil company profits. Three weeks earlier, he was perfectly comfortable with the idea.

* McCain thought Bush’s warrantless-wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.
* McCain defended “privatizing” Social Security. Now he says he’s against privatization (though he actually still supports it.)

* McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn’t.

* McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite.
* He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

* McCain said he would “not impose a litmus test on any nominee.” He used to promise the opposite.
* McCain believes the telecoms should be forced to explain their role in the administration’s warrantless surveillance program as a condition for retroactive immunity. He used to believe the opposite.

* McCain supported storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain supported moving “towards normalization of relations” with Cuba. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Hamas. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Syria. Now he believes the opposite.
* He argued the NRA should not have a role in the Republican Party’s policy making. Now he believes the opposite.
* McCain supported his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997. Now he doesn’t.
* He wanted political support from radical televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Now he doesn’t.
* McCain supported the Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming. Now he doesn’t.
* McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain was asked if he is a “‘read my lips’ candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?” referring to George H.W. Bush’s 1988 pledge. “No new taxes,” McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said, “I’m not making a ‘read my lips’ statement, in that I will not raise taxes.”

* McCain is both for and against a “rogue state rollback” as a focus of his foreign policy vision.
* McCain says he considered and did not consider joining John Kerry’s Democratic ticket in 2004.
* In 1998, he championed raising cigarette taxes to fund programs to cut underage smoking, insisting that it would prevent illnesses and provide resources for public health programs. Now, McCain opposes a $0.61-per-pack tax increase, won’t commit to supporting a regulation bill he’s co-sponsoring, and has hired Philip Morris’ former lobbyist as his senior campaign adviser.

* McCain has changed his economic worldview on multiple occasions.
* McCain has changed his mind about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq on multiple occasions.
* McCain is both for and against attacking Barack Obama over his former pastor at his former church.
* McCain believes Americans are both better and worse off than they were before Bush took office.
* McCain is both for and against earmarks for Arizona.
* McCain believes his endorsement from radical televangelist John Hagee was both a good and bad idea.
* McCain’s first mortgage plan was premised on the notion that homeowners facing foreclosure shouldn’t be “rewarded” for acting “irresponsibly.” His second mortgage plan took largely the opposite position.

* McCain vowed, if elected, to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. Soon after, he decided he would no longer even try to reach that goal.

* In February 2008, McCain reversed course on prohibiting waterboarding.
* McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty’s behalf before a Senate committee. Now he opposes it.

* McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants’ kids who graduate from high school. Now he’s against it.

* On immigration policy in general, McCain announced in February 2008 that he would vote against his own legislation.
* In 2006, McCain sponsored legislation to require grassroots lobbying coalitions to reveal their financial donors. In 2007, after receiving “feedback” on the proposal, McCain told far-right activist groups that he opposes his own measure.

* McCain said before the war in Iraq, “We will win this conflict. We will win it easily.” Four years later, McCain said he knew all along that the war in Iraq war was “probably going to be long and hard and tough.”

* McCain said he was the “greatest critic” of Rumsfeld’s failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as “a mission accomplished.” In March 2004, he said, “I’m confident we’re on the right course.” In December 2005, he said, “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”

* McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite.
* McCain went from saying gay marriage should be allowed, to saying gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed.
* McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but then decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks.

* McCain used to oppose Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy, but he reversed course in February.
* On a related note, he said 2005 that he opposed the tax cuts because they were “too tilted to the wealthy.” By 2007, he denied ever having said this, and insisted he opposed the cuts because of increased government spending.

* In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.

* McCain supported a major campaign-finance reform measure that bore his name. In June 2007, he abandoned his own legislation.

* McCain opposed a holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., before he supported it.
* McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.
* McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he’s pro-ethanol.
* McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.
* McCain decided in 2000 that he didn’t want anything to do with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believing he “would taint the image of the ‘Straight Talk Express.’” Kissinger is now the Honorary Co-Chair for his presidential campaign in New York.

Regards,

Jim

President Bush Uses Executive Privilege To Block Subpoena Of EPA Documents – With a contempt of Congress vote looming by Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-CA) House Oversight Committee, President Bush asserted executive privilege this morning to block the committee’s subpoenas for documents relating to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to reject California’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to override scientific recommendations on ozone standards.

Waxman’s committee had scheduled the 10 am business meeting to hold contempt votes for EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and White House Office of Management and Budget regulatory administrator Susan Dudley. On May 20, Johnson appeared before the committee, without the subpoenaed documents and evading questions about Bush’s involvement.

Executive Privilege is not intended to protect the Executive branch, or its friends and allies from prosecution for illegal activities. Chairman Waxman is a true patriot, but now it’s time for the rest of our representatives on both sides of the aisle to step up and protect our constitution and country.

Bush Officials Committed War Crimes According to Investigating General – The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

Taguba declared that there was no longer any doubt whatsoever that President George W. Bush and others in the White House had committed war crimes “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account,” Taguba wrote. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture.”

Following the boss’ orders, lawyers in the White House Counsel’s office and in the badly named Department of Justice twisted and turned the words and the very meaning of those words in international treaties, in the Constitution, in the federal statutes and the military regulations so that interrogators in brightly lit prison rooms in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo as well as those secret CIA prisons hidden all around would be free to use the waterboard, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation, and all the other dirty little ways you can make a man scream and talk.

To date, seven long years after we scooped up our first detainees in Afghanistan, not a single one of them has faced evidence, his accusers, or anything remotely resembling a legal court hearing on his guilt or innocence.

McCain Wants to Give $300 Million to ExxonMobil – McCain is proposing a $300 million government prize to whomever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. First off, every energy and car company on the planet knows they’ll get rich by improving batteries. The world is probably already spending $1 billion a year to improve batteries. This $300 million prize is a pointless gimmick. But ExxonMobil says they have already made a real breakthrough in lithium-ion batteries that solves the problem. So wouldn’t they get the $300 million? But the many other companies that are also working on improved batteries will probably also announce breakthroughs. Who wins then? Who decides?

Justice for Sale: How Big Tobacco and the GOP teamed up to crush Democrats in the South – People Sue Big Tobacco for damages; lawyer makes big money when case against tobacco is won; tobacco funds “tort reform” to limit lawsuits; tobacco money goes to Republicans; Republican appointed US Attorneys target Democrats and those that contribute to them; odd, repeated trials are held until a conviction is eventually obtained. This is complex, but you need to read the whole thing. This is not how the justice system is supposed to work in America.

Republicans Scream About Legality Of New Obama Logo…Yet They Already Use Three Similar Logos For Fundraising – The conservative Weekly Standard posted a rant is that Obama is breaking federal law by using the likeness of the presidential seal in his new seal. But, John McCain’s (R) own caucus — the National Republican Senatorial Committee — uses three different likenesses of the official seal…for fundraising purposes.

Technology Company Eavesdrops on Internet Users – An online advertising firm called NebuAd that pays ISPs to let it eavesdrop on web users doesn’t just passively record traffic, but actively injects fake packets into responses from other websites in order to deliver cookies to users, according to a technical report released by the advocacy groups Free Press and Public Knowledge.

Regards,
Jim

With the help of Congress.org, I sent the following to GWB and others:

I oppose:

• The unitary presidency and its absurd abuse of power through signing statements and fear mongering,
• A Congress that is scared into ignoring this abuse of power,
• The redacting of the constitution to lower our higher standards to the level of the small minded terrorists that we can’t even catch,
• Hiding behind a Justice Department that enforces “conservatives without conscience” policy and ignores the law of the land, and
• A Congress that doesn’t have the backbone to investigate possible high crimes of the Administration and is also willing to grant unconditional immunity to possible witnesses of these high crimes.

The damage done by this Administration and Congressional leaders since 1994 is an absolute disgrace and has significantly weakened the power of we the people.

The abuse of power and dereliction of duty by our elected officials must stop and preventing telecom immunity is a good place to start. Granting the immunity as defined in this current update to FISA only lets Congress of the hook and the real criminals free.

The only immunity AT&T and other telecoms should get is if they agree to testify to Congress as to other higher crimes.

Energy Speculators Trading on “Dark Markets” – One of the biggest factors in high oil prices, according to many experts, is that investors, such as hedge funds and investment bankers, can use loopholes in commodities law to manipulate the market and drive crude oil, heating oil, gasoline and diesel fuel prices to new heights. Loopholes exist that allow energy trading on completely “dark” exchanges. For example, the “Foreign Markets Loophole” allows American energy commodities to be traded overseas – exempt from U.S. oversight. These so-called “Dark Markets” – commodities markets that are not policed by U.S. authorities provide for an open the door to manipulation, even outright control of the markets.

Texas Republicans Try to Sell Dumb Ideas at Closed Store – Michael Burgess (R-TX 26), Joe Barton (R-TX 6), Kay Granger (R-TX 12), and Pete Sessions (R-TX 32) showed up at a closed Tom Thumb grocery store in Arlington to demagogue to the media about their sophomoric ideas about economics. According to them, all we have to do is “start drilling” and prices will “drop overnight”. These “representatives” hide from their constituents and conduct this dog and pony show in a closed grocery store where the public can’t get in there and ask about things like:

• The Enron Loophole causing massive unregulated speculation and inflating prices.
• Speculators paying a lower tax rate than people who work for a living.
• $14,000,000,000 (14 billion) in Republican corporate welfare and tax breaks to Big Oil that haven’t gotten us anywhere.
• Record low values of the dollar due to a $9,000,000,000,000 national debt and record budget deficits and trade deficits run up during the Bush administration.

Lie by Lie: The Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline – This interactive timeline covers 8/1/90 through 2/14/08. We need to learn from our mistakes. What did our leaders know and when did they know it? What red flags did we miss, and how could we have missed them?

Finding of Climate Scientists Were Meddled With by Political Appointees – At NASA, administration-appointed public relations officers “reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science,” a recent agency investigation stated. Climate scientists were not allowed to conduct media interviews without prior approval. NASA Scientist James Hansen had to remove the 2005 temperature data from NASA’s website. Even Hansen’s daily schedule suddenly required prior consent.

US Embassy Tried to Cover-up Illegal Chinese Ammunition – The US Embassy in Albania approved an effort to conceal the illegal Chinese origin of ammunition provided to troops in Afghanistan under a Pentagon contract by a just-indicted 22-year-old Florida man, according to an investigation by the House Oversight Committee. “The Oversight Committee has received information that the U.S. Ambassador to Albania held a late-night meeting with the Albanian Defense Minister at which the Ambassador approved removing evidence of the illegal Chinese origins of ammunition being shipped from Albania to Afghanistan by a U.S. contractor,” Waxman wrote. “The Committee has also received information that State Department officials. tried to conceal this information from the Committee.”

Neocons Ever-Present and powerful in McCain’s Inner Circle – Neoconservatives, whose thinking has directed Bush’s foreign policy following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, are ever-present and powerful in McCain’s inner circle.

Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s chief foreign policy spokesman, in 2002 founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which agitated for the US invasion that was launched in 2003. Scheunemann and Robert Kagan, another McCain advisor, head the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, which takes a hawkish line on foreign policy issues.

The range of his advisors’ views on the economy was startling enough to conservative writer Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard that he wrote: “Those people aren’t like each other at all. A couple of them, if you put them in the same room, would set off an intergalactic explosion like the collision of matter and antimatter,” he added

More on McCain and His Neocons

McCain and Conservatives Spread Lies About Oil Spills – In the process of spewing talking points on behalf of his show’s sponsor (“The People of America’s Oil and Natural Gas Industry”) , Fox News’ Chris Wallace joins the growing list of conservative dittoheads in the media who have been repeating this same false claim made by McCain last Tuesday about oil spills and Hurricane Katrina:

Obama talks about environmental damage from drilling offshore, but the fact is the moratorium was put into effect in 1981. There’s been a lot of technological advances since then. We had Hurricane Katrina go through the heart of the Gulf of Mexico and ravage these oil rigs and there were almost no oil spills, so what’s he talking about?

As ThinkProgress points out, that’s not true at all.

The truth is that Hurricane Katrina caused oil spillage so significant it was clearly visible from space. It also wreaked environmental havoc near the scale of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.

Regards,

Jim

FISA Bill Destroys the Fourth Amendment – Urgent Action Needed Now to Protect and Defend Our Constitution – Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley sees a “very frightening bill” in a “compromise,” just passed by the House, that would update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to effectively grant immunity from civil lawsuits to telecommunications companies that agreed to spy on their customers as part of the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, starting shortly before the World Trade Center attacks in 2001. If the White House asked a phone company to spy with its assurance that it was legal, the measure says, that’s enough to dismiss a case.

Congressional Democrats, Turley went on, knew about surveillance and torture programs, but were politically unable to oppose them at the same time they were touting themselves to the public as defenders of civil liberties. The bill, he said, is part of a campaign of collusion between Congress and the Bush administration, immunizing not only the telecommunications companies, but the administration and any members of Congress, on either side of the aisle, that may have been involved.

“The Democrats never really were engaged in this,” said Turley. “In fact, they repeatedly tried to cave in to the White House, only to be stopped by civil libertarians and bloggers.”

“I think they’re simply waiting to see if the public’s interest will wane,” he went on, referring to repeated attempts to float said legislation past the public. “This bill has quite literally no public value for citizens or civil liberties. It is reverse engineering, though the type of thing the Bush Administration’s famous for, and now the Democrats are doing–that is, to change the law to conform to past conduct.”

“It’s what any criminal would love to do,” Turley continued. “You rob a bank, go to the legislature, and change the law to say that robbing banks is lawful.”

“People need to be very, very much aware of this bill,” he charged. “What you’re seeing in this bill is an evisceration of (remove the guts from) the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. It is something that allows the President and the government to go into law-abiding homes, on their word alone–their suspicion alone–and to engage in warrantless surveillance.

“That’s what the framers who drafted the Fourth Amendment wanted to prevent.”

This bill will be going to the Senate next.

T. Boone Pickens Wants to Make Water the New Oil – T. Boone Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property. In the coming decades, as growing numbers of people live in urban areas and climate change makes some regions much more prone to drought, water—or what many are calling “blue gold”—will become an increasingly scarce resource. By 2030 nearly half of the world’s population will inhabit areas with severe water stress, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development. Pickens understands that. You get thirsty and he gets richer.

Lakes Across Canada Face Being Turned Into Mine Dump Sites – Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly “reclassified” as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland. Environmentalists say the process amounts to a “hidden subsidy” to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat. Under the Fisheries Act, it’s illegal to put harmful substances into fish-bearing waters. But, under a little-known subsection known as Schedule Two of the mining effluent regulations, federal bureaucrats can redefine lakes as “tailings impoundment areas.” That means mining companies don’t need to build containment ponds for toxic mine tailings.

Who Gets Oil Money and Who Supports the Oil Companies – Here’s how much does my Senators get from oil and gas:

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX)
Accepted $1,211,475 from the oil and gas industry since 2000.
Supported the industry in 100% of selected votes.

Senator Kay Hutchison (R-TX)
Accepted $903,989 from the oil and gas industry since 2000.
Supported the industry in 100% of selected votes.
How much does YOUR Senator get from oil and gas?

How Global Warming “Skeptics” Attempt to Deceive – Patrick Michaels, a global warming “skeptic”, testified to Congress that the graph of expected trends as predicted ten years earlier by NASA’s James Hansen, did not agree with the actual temperature rises observed, and therefore Hansen’s work was not to be trusted. The anti-environmentalists have often repeated Michaels argument. However when, Michaels showed Hansen’s graph, he saw fit to erase the two lower lines, B and C, and show the Senators only Line A.

Line A was a temperature trend prediction based on rapid emissions growth and no large volcanic event; it was a steep climb through the year 2000 and beyond.

Line B was based on modest emissions growth and one large volcanic eruption in the mid 1990s.

Line C began along the same trajectory as Line B, and included the same volcanic eruption, but showed reductions in the growth of CO2 emission by the turn of the century — the result of hypothetical government controls.

As it happens, since Hansen’s testimony, emissions have grown at a modest rate and Mt. Pinatubo did in fact erupt, though in the early 1990s, not the middle. In other words, the Line B forcings scenario came remarkably close to predicting what actually came to pass. Not coincidentally, the observed temperature trend has tracked closely with the Line B prediction as well. Hansen was right on the money, and the models he used proved successful.

Here’s a list of over 100 false arguments often used by global warming “skeptics” and the answers to them.

Republican Representative Tells Scott McClellan He Should Have Taken the Truth to His Grave – In the Congressional questioning of Former Press Secretary Scott McClellan today about the wrongdoings of the Bush Administration, Republican Senator Steve King said, “Couldn’t you have taken this to the grave with you and done this country a favor?” You see, in bizarro Republican world, staying silent and allowing your fellow citizens to remain clueless about how their leaders lie to them is the right, patriotic thing to do.

Science Teacher Who Taught Intelligent Design Burned Cross onto Student’s Arm, According to Parents – The parents of a Mount Vernon boy who says his science teacher branded a cross on his arm have sued the teacher and the school board. In addition to the branding incident, Freshwater is accused of teaching the theory of intelligent design to his eighth-grade science class even though the district ordered him not to in 2003, the lawsuit says.

Karl Rove and the US Attorneys Scandal, Jack Abramoff, the Plame Affair, and Swiftboating – Paul Alexander, whose book, Machiavelli’s Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove, is based on interviews with many sources who have never before gone on the record, told Joe Scarborough that Rove was essentially fired by George W. Bush. “My sources tell me that the president had sort of reached the point where he wasn’t willing to deal with the scandals and the controversies any more,” Alexander stated. “He basically told him to leave.” Alexander explained further that “there were a number of issues that were still potential landmines,” including the US Attorneys scandal, “leftover” Abramoff stuff, and the Plame affair.

Asked by Pat Buchanan whether Rove had “a hand in the Swiftboat thing,” Alexander replied, “Sure, absolutely. He helped arrange the sort of message, arranged the funding. … That was probably the key smear in the 2004 campaign.”

Biofuels: Bad Deed or Good Deed? – The alternative of biofuels raises serious questions deserving more depth. Discussing biofuels is like discussing drugs: society recognizes the difference between aspirin and cocaine and we should also be cognizant of differences in biofuels. Biofuels vary dramatically in their environmental impact and their effects on food prices. For instance, biodiesel from food oils like soybean or palm oil have traditionally created environmental negatives, they are unscalable and likely to be fundamentally uneconomic. On the other hand corn ethanol has served as a useful stepping stone to cellulosic ethanol but has recently come under criticism – some of it fair, some absurd. A preferred alternative, cellulosic ethanol is coming fast, but to be environmentally sound it must not directly (or indirectly) force alternative crop production into environmentally sensitive regions like rain forests.

Much of public opinion is influenced by paid-for campaigns of interested parties. Recently the Grocery Manufacturers Association has started a multi-million dollar campaign against corn ethanol; meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute is far more concerned about food prices than oil prices (which hit $127 today). One hears slogans about how much corn and water are required to produce a gallon of ethanol – a 16-ounce steak takes about the same amount of corn and more water. Are opponents of corn ethanol also calling for a ban on steaks, especially since chicken is a healthier food and takes less corn to produce?

Regards,

Jim

Imagine a group of neocons gathered together brainstorming about our dependency on foreign oil. During this meeting, they write down a set of questions for which they discuss the possible answers. Here is one possible list they might develop and their conclusion:

Which country are we trying to remake in our own image?

Which country has more American military personnel than all of our current 50 states?

Which country is getting more money every month from our federal government than any of the current 50 states?

Which country might end up with more military bases than we have Army and Air Force bases in our current 50 states?

Which country now has all the major oil companies gaining a foothold in it’s oil industry?

Which country could double our national oil reserves and make a truly big dent in our foreign oil dependency — if it became our 51st state?

Iraq: The 51st State Of America

McCain Supports Making Iraq the 51st State

Bush Proposes Iraq As 51st State

Another 51st state

Iraq to Become 51st State in USA

10 Reasons why Iraq should become America’s 51st State.

Rich Hunters Want Polar Bears for Trophies – Just days after polar bears gained new life-saving protections, the powerful Safari Club International sued the federal government. The reason? To once again allow wealthy U.S. hunters to kill struggling polar bears in Canada — and bring their carcasses back as trophies. Polar bears are already on the fast track to extinction. Oil companies are poised to invade their key denning habitat. Rising temperatures are melting sea ice, leading to starvation. Yet the Safari Club wants to ensure that rich hunters can keep polar bears in their gun sights. Help keep the ban on trophy hunting and give some protection to threatened polar bears.

McCain Signed Letter Urging for an Attack on Iraq Years Before 9/11 – In January 1998, John McCain signed the now infamous open letter to President Bill Clinton cooked up by the neo-conservative “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC). The letter urged the president to take unilateral military action against Iraq. McCain and his neo-con brethren were literally cheerleading for the United States to attack and overthrow the government of Iraq with a post 9/11 mindset long before 9/11. Yes, that was 1998.

Regards,

Jim