Standing at the edge of a precipice

This editorial in today's New York Times is a must-read.

Rushing Off a Cliff

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism....

Here's the rest. As I said above, it's a must-read. Stop what you're doing right now, and follow that link. Read the editorial. Ask yourself how we the people can look the other way while this bill is rushed through Congress.

Our democracy is being taken away from us, folks. Republican, Democrat, Independent -- do you really think it's appropriate that the president -- any president -- should be able to have people locked up for life without trial and not have to justify his actions?

Honestly, is that something you can abide?

The terrorists have won, my fellow citizens. They've won because we're now being ruled by fear. We're setting aside centuries of legal precedent because there are some bad guys out there who wish to do us harm. We're letting slip away the very things that make our country great.

Boy, did FDR get it right: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. It's eroding our democracy from within. It's not the terrorists who are doing this to us, my fellow citizens -- we are doing it to ourselves.

Something less -- and something more -- than we bargained for

This cheery news greeted me this morning:

Cost of Iraq war nearly $2b a week
By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff | September 28, 2006

WASHINGTON -- A new congressional analysis shows the Iraq war is now costing taxpayers almost $2 billion a week -- nearly twice as much as in the first year of the conflict three years ago and 20 percent more than last year -- as the Pentagon spends more on establishing regional bases to support the extended deployment and scrambles to fix or replace equipment damaged in combat....

Here's the rest.

That's right, we're laying out $2,000,000,000 a week, and what are getting for our money? According to a National Intelligence Estimate that Bush Inc. tried to keep us from seeing, we're creating more and more terrorists with each passing day.

I could be wrong -- Lord knows Bush Inc.'s floated so many justifications for the invasion and occupation of Iraq over the past three years that it's hard to keep them all straight -- but I'm pretty sure that further inflaming the jihadist movement for the purpose of creating a new and ever increasing crop of anti-US terrorists has not been floated as one of our primary goals (if I'm wrong about that, I'm sure someone will correct me).

But that's what we're getting, of course. That's the plain and simple truth. Which is, of course, why Dubya got mad when the NIE was leaked. The inept and corrupt administration has no greater enemy than the plain and simple truth, and they seek to stifle it at every opportunity.

A Murrow in our midst?

Those of us who have been hoping and praying for a courageous, reasoned voice of sanity in the mainstream media -- an Edward R. Murrow for the 21st century -- may have finally had our prayers answered, as Keith Olbermann, who has been speaking truth to corrupt power for some months now on his television show on MSNBC, has really hit his stride in the aftermath of Bill Clinton's righteous evisceration of Chris Wallace and Fox News.

Olbermann's recent commentary, streaming live at CrooksandLiars.com, is an absolute must-view for any and all who have experienced nothing but despair in these nightmarish years of the Bush administration.

And it's even more of a must-view for those unfortunates who have fallen for the lies, the propaganda, the prevarications, the fear-mongering of this bunch of thugs and war profiteers.

Watch the video, and then send it to a clueless friend or loved one, so that the scales may finally fall from their eyes, so that they might again -- or perhaps for the first time -- begin to understand what this country is truly about, what we as a people deserve and must demand from our leaders.

I found the video a bit a slow to load, but just wait. Your patience will be richly rewarded.

Ooh, snap!

If you haven't already seen it, you must take a moment (actually, about 16 minutes) and watch Bill Clinton smack down Fox News' Chris Wallace and the propaganda peddlers he works for.

It's absolutely thrilling to see someone as sharp, smart, and knowledgable as Clinton take these punks on. And a whole bunch of current Dems could learn a great deal from watching this interview.

It's streaming at CrooksandLiars.com.