Why doesn’t someone ask Sarah Palin why it took five or six years and five universities to get a four year degree? She sites her ‘executive resume’ as though it were a kind of impenetrable shield, so let’s see what’s in it. Virtually all executives at minimum have an impressive undergraduate record. Most have an advanced degree in at least phys-ed or something as well. I for one, would pay money to have a peek at her college transcript.

Too many asinine Americans still seem to want a candidate that they could have a drink with and not feel intimidated by. This country’s decade long slide toward mediocrity has hit bottom in the frozen tundra of a state populated by more than a few ‘salt of the earth’ intellectual cretins. I once thought with a high degree of confidence that the bar was so lowered by George Bush that not even a Bahamian limbo-king could wriggle beneath it. Then along came Sarah, able to not only slither under it, but to do so with a rifle in one hand and ‘Bowie knife’ in the other. Since President Bush, we’ve never achieved so little in so much time.

How did John McCain, who also wields a kind of war hero amulet that 'backs-down' most reporters, ever become an aircraft carrier pilot? Aren’t carrier pilots supposed to be ‘the best and the brightest’ when compared to all other pilots? The Discovery Channel which I admittedly watch perhaps too much of, did a show detailing the intensive nature of a carrier pilots’ training. Mathematics, engineering, and aeronautics are just some of the classes in which one must excel. Competition is said to be fierce, and only the top students are taken. So how did a guy that graduated 89^th out of 94 get to be a pilot? John McCain obviously received help from his dad the Admiral. Why does this story of string-pulling by a powerful father on behalf of a ‘dullard’ son sound familiar? The Republican Presidential ticket has shaved thirty points off our nations’ collective IQ.

When did we as a nation become so enamored of under-achievement that we champion as leaders, people that do not have passports, can’t send an email, and think Magna Cum Laude is the hot new hand gun on the market? We once talked tough about bombing Al Qaeda back into the Stone Age. At the current rate of our financial collapse, we’re likely to get there before Bin Laden. The Stone Age-now that's an environment in which McCain-Palin just might work.

Copyright & copy; 2007, Tnasiti Speaks. All rights reserved.

When will the Democrats get it? Nothing is off-limits in the gutter-level, back-alley world of post Carl Rove pit-bull politics. If I were a woman I’d be insulted by the kid-glove treatment afforded Sarah Palin thus far. Further, the assumption that women voters vote as a block solely dependent upon the gender of the candidate is dismissive and condescending.

Woe to this country if women in America cannot evaluate a politician’s experience, values, temperament, and demeanor. The Republican Party is betting that America won’t see through their shallow, sexist attempt to once again drive a wedge between Americans.

Sarah Palin is slicker than the crude pumped out of the Alaskan tundra, and her soul is just as dark. Many who knew her as a council member, Mayor, and Governor, describe her as mercenary, self-promoting, devious, and able to switch sides on an issue quicker than a North Shore summer. This woman can site an Elk or Moose, and coldly shoot the life right out of it. She is no less brutal when dealing with her human adversaries. Sarah Palin has all the partisan, amoral characteristics of Roberto Gonzales, Carl Rove, and Dick Cheney.

Sarah Palin has conversations with God just like George Bush. God apparently told her that he wanted us to invade Iraq and fight until victorious. No matter that Muslims have fought over the region and it's resources for 15 centuries. But she is ‘pro-life’ which seems to be the single trait conservative Republicans are looking for. Wasn’t there a movie-‘Juno’ I believe, about a spunky, independent, kid that gets knocked-up in some northern climate? Palin’s kid went one better, and parlayed a ‘romp with a redneck’ into photo-ops with the Republican elite.

To Palin’s credit, she can be a reformer when it no longer serves her interests to be otherwise, or if there is some benefit to be taken from being so. Palin’s legislative record alone, should provide Democrats with a plethora of in-roads for attack. It is time for the Democratic Party to load up, vest down, and take no prisoners.

Copyright & copy; 2007, Tnasiti Speaks. All rights reserved.

.

The chess match leading to the selection of our next President has begun. I shall let others more eloquent than I, dissect Barak Obama’s historic speech. My personal reaction was visceral, deep, and profound. I responded as though my favorite team just won the Super Bowl, fist repeatedly pumping the air in exhilaration. At other times I sat quietly, introspectively, my head hung low, slowly shaking, as though a spiritual scripture just found its home in me. I felt, exulted, invigorated, and hopeful. We truly are living a moment unique in the history of our country, and the world.

There will be no other moment like this, and no other man for this moment. Whatever the outcome, the universe has ordained the cosmic forces to align in such a fashion as to make the impossible possible. Now we must do our part to facilitate the birth of something new to mankind-a man of brown skin commanding the most powerful country on the planet.

I will once again donate what I can from the limited budget of a non-traditional full-time student. Hopefully, I shall also find a way to shoe-horn some time to volunteer into my schedule. If those of you reading this can manage to do the same, our collective future could be brighter than ever.

Copyright & copy; 2007, Tnasiti Speaks. All rights reserved.

If hubris could pay off our national debt and power our automobiles, the US would be the most prolific nation in the history of the planet. I am awestruck by the recent statements made by John McCain, George Bush, and Condoleezza Rice regarding the military action between Russia and Georgia. The utter gull of these people to vilify Russia over responding to an aggressive act by one of its neighbors propels hypocrisy to an unforeseen high. There must be a secret class Republicans are required to complete-Bull Shit 101 perhaps, that allows them to stand before cameras condemning others for taking less severe actions than those taken by this government on numerous occasions in the past.

Russia is dealing with regional political challenges not unlike the US claimed to be doing when invading Panama, Cuba, and Grenada. Russia asserts its right to protect its citizens and their interests as we did the medical students in Grenada. In the case of Panama and Cuba, the US could hardly make such a claim. Our reason for taking such egregious action was regime change, as it was in respect to our Iraq debacle. Russia’s response to our ‘cowboy’ approach to regional diplomacy (Cuba notwithstanding) was muted in part due to Russia’s respect for the regional nature of the disputes.

John McCain’s recent comments regarding the unrest in Georgia must be troubling to world leaders in this post-Bush impotent era. Is there any other inference possible, besides McCain's being a VSOP (very-special-old-pale) version of George Bush? John McCain’s assertions that he has the leadership chops to run a country based on his military service and years in the Senate, to my mind, ring hollow. If McCain's belligerent posturing and bellicose statements are an example of the importance of a candidates’ having lengthy diplomatic experience, then Barak Obama becomes our planet’s best hope for positive political change. It is time we got our democracy back. The adroit choice of a weighty and seasoned politician with foreign relations distinction like Joe Biden brings us closer still, to that goal.

Copyright & copy; 2007, Tnasiti Speaks. All rights reserved.

Copyright & copy; 2007, Tnasiti Speaks. All rights reserved.

Mention anything positive about the United States in a multi-national social setting and you are likely to get an acrimonious response, once their eyes return from a roll around their heads that is. The principals we once stood for-equal justice under the law, fair play, rooting for the underdog-have been upended by the current administration. There were problems and inequities before the cheat ‘em and beat ‘em boys came to town, but there was at least an attempt at living up to our national ideals.

Every war since our last declared war (World War II) has been an exercise in futility. Of the non-shooting wars-the war on crime, the war on drugs, and the war on poverty, the opposite of the intent became the reality. The war on crime succeeded only in cramming our prisons full with minor criminals themselves victims of the failed wars on poverty and drugs. In each case a financial windfall went to private prison operators and their suppliers, or managers and contractors of programs ostensibly for the poor. The winners of this dubious bizarro-world cast of nefarious characters were the drug cartels that influence sovereign governments (including our own), and murder or maim bystanders, while amassing billions of dollars to support an extravagant, hedonistic lifestyle.

In America the larger the theft amount, the smaller the judicial sanction. Corrupt CEO’s and other corporate con-artists steal millions of dollars from average Americans but often receive short Country Club sentences. These thieves are even allowed to keep a portion of the tainted proceeds. White-collar criminals are then allowed months to set their affairs in order before reporting to prison. Contrast this with the guy convicted of shoplifting to support a drug habit (courtesy of the cartels and open borders). This guy is likely to receive more time than the embezzler of millions, and will have to arrange his affairs from cell block D. He can expect to be ushered to the jail bus before the sound of the gavel finishes echoing off the courtroom walls.

One could argue that the shoplifter is a career criminal and thus deserves a harsher sentence. But I would counter that the embezzler has made a career of preparing for his breech of trust and theft of millions. It is the out-of-whack matter of scale that is completely anachronistic to the equal justice we as a nation espouse. Another example of this bizarro world scale of justice are the laws governing crack and powdered cocaine. The typical white defendent possessing five times the amount of powdered cocaine can expect to do only one fifth the time in prison versus the typically black defendent caught with crack. Same drug, different demographic. This sentencing disparity is currently being addressed but it is unclear how any changes will affect the skewed sentences of the past.

Copyright & copy; 2007, Tnasiti Speaks. All rights reserved.

What Should Happen? A Truth Commission for Bush

By Mark Green

Scott McClellan's book What Happened has been a feast for cable talk shows. ANewYork Times columnist Bob Herbert, who wrote that the issue is not the author but a "scandal and a crime" called Iraq. So since it's not flake McClellan but commander-in-chief Bush with the power of war and peace, life and death over Americans and the world, let's now focus on George, not Scott.

Karl Rove went on Fox to say that McClellan "sounds like a liberal blogger." Well...yes! In fact the liberal community -- Air America, MoveOn, the Nation, the Huffington Post and scores of others -- has been completely vindicated on Iraq and Rove et. al. completely discredited.

And on the question of Bush’s veracity generally, again we need only stipulate what scores of books, articles and probes have shown. As Lincoln once said of a rival, "he has such a high regard for the truth he uses it sparingly."

It's not only McClellan but also a slew of books on Iraq (Fiasco, Hubris) and other administration memoirs and articles (Tenet, O'Neill, Clarke, Dowd)) which confirm that Team Bush misled the press and public by using propaganda to stampede America into a war that's spurred more terrorism and led to hundreds of thousands of lost lives and limbs. This is now the majority view. And if some 25% of Americans disagree, it's probably the same quarter that believe that NASA staged the moon landing. The verdict is in.

But now what? How can we hold Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Woo and all of them accountable? For what we have here is not just a normal failed administration or even one Nixonian Watergate but a systematically corrupt group of people who shamelessly and serially lied and violated the law.

America needs to make sure that some future administration doesn't assume that they too can dissemble and cheat since W got away with doing it for two terms and retired to a life of relaxing at the ranch and being feted by AEI and the Petroleum Club of Houston.

*Vote Big. Americans have to use the franchise to reject Bushism by significantly increasing the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and electing a Democratic President with a big mandate. That's a recipe that the Republican Right will understand.

*Shame 'em. The mainstream media has to stop coddling this group and not allow them to escape scrutiny with a smile and a spin

*Sue. While legal rules about "standing" have so far made it hard to legally uncover all the illegalities of this regime, the Federal False Claims Act allows individual citizens to sue (it's called "Qui Tam"). If the government spent money fraudulently (Haliburton), claimants could get a percentage of any recovery. Indeed, I'd guess that a private for-profit group could raise funds to create a law firm with the sole purpose of bringing False Claims Acts against federal agencies and complicit individuals.

*Create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). This worked in a very different historical situation of South Africa and can work here as well. There, South Africans who engaged in murder and violence were given amnesty if they confessed under oath to their crimes and knowledge...but would be prosecuted if they didn't. Of some 7110 seeking amnesty, 849 were granted it for "politically motivated" crimes...which in turn provided evidence to pressure and prosecute others. The largely successful effort led to both truth and reconciliation.


In 2009 a new President could choose a new Attorney General who similarly announces that s/he will prosecute past officials for unlawful acts unless they first come forward and testify under oath. Because Bushies took literally their oaths to "faithfully execute the laws," their record amounts to a near executive coup d'etat (see Charles Savage's Takeover and my Losing our Democracy, chapters 2 & 3). Such examples include:

• condoning torture;
• ignoring the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act;
• assigning officials to politically campaign in open violation of the Hatch Act;
• spending money for propaganda as the Pentagon did in gathering former brass to hit the airwaves;
• violating contracting rules by giving lucrative contracts to favored firms,
• engaging in cronyism and coercion to influence prosecutions in the U.S. Attorneys.

Based upon past illegalities, imagine how much more may come out when a new administration turns over 43's (Bush) rock of corruption?

A TRC for the Bush-Cheney administration would be unprecedented for the U.S. But so is a government of crooks and liars who misled us into a calamitous war and openly violated the U.S. Constitution. Or is it only consensual sexual misconduct by a president that warrants the attention of investigators? The way to deter the "culture of deception" in McClellan's subtitle is a combination of voters, lawyers, prosecutors and a Truth Commission -- to vote against it, sue it, prosecute it, or expose it. Do we believe in the Rule of Law or only the 'Law' of Rule?

HEATHER MALLICK

Ignoring the lessons of history

Author argues 'wild finance' is taking down the U.S. economy

May 26, 2008

We are living in black swan times. This is an elegant way of describing a deeply frightening phase of economic change as the U.S. begins its economic slide, with power shifting to other blocs and world populations going into convulsions of change.

Nevertheless, it is happening. There are five reasons, as the American commentator and historian Kevin Phillips tells us in his latest book, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism. They are the "financialization" of the U.S. economy, the private debt bubble, peak oil and the domestic and international politics surrounding it, military imperialism and a political failure to plan ahead.

He is an interesting man, his intellectual restraint appearing startlingly novel when he was recently interviewed on The Colbert Report, a show designed as a backhanded tribute to stupidity. Phillips, 68, was a devoted Republican who helped devise the polarizing Southern strategy that brought Nixon into office in 1968. Appalled by what he helped inspire politically, he has since turned on the Republicans and to a lesser extent the Democrats, most recently writing a trilogy of books - American Dynasty on the dangers of inherited power, the second, American Theocracy, on the triple threat of radical religion, oil reliance and debt and this, the third, on how wild finance, a.k.a. bad money, has become the biggest - and least-known - sector of the U.S. economy.

In 1950, manufacturing made up 29.3 per cent of the U.S. economy, and finance only 10.9 per cent. In 2004-05, manufacturing was at 12 per cent and finance at 20.4 per cent. Since then-president Clinton deregulated much of the financial system in 1999, the sector has ballooned to popping point. It is the biggest part of the economy, the most badly measured and the least understood.

Here's the short form: As manufacturing died locally, along came the '80s, with mergers, debt-fuelled corporate buyouts, massive layoffs, greenmailing and asset shuffling. This era was marked by government bailouts of financial institutions coated with criminality (remember the S&L scandal). That was the seed. Without the bailouts, Americans might have been reminded of the healthy fear of debt that had gripped them since the Depression, of Richard Nixon's loathing of speculators, of Dwight Eisenhower being perfectly happy with a top income tax rate of 91 per cent.

But if Washington bails you out every time you take a crazy gamble . . .? Times have changed. Rich and middle-class Americans became smug and the investment cowboys looked upon them with a wild surmise.

The race began, a private sector frenzy that took practically anything and re-named, reclustered, repackaged and sold it as a new way to invest in a hugely exciting bull market. For all that the U.S. professes to deplore its massive national debt (federal, state and local debt is almost $11 trillion), Phillips notes with surprise that this crisis is all about private debt (household, financial and non-financial corporate) which hit $36 trillion in 2006. It is secretive unregulated hedge funds, it is emperors without borders getting rich via bagging up lousy mortgages, credit card debt and borrowing on home equity. It is alchemy, making money out of "money-like" debt instruments that are quietly known as "candy floss money." The huge shadow banking sector, which operates like a nation-state but without land, now runs your life.

One bubble follows another, from dot-com to subprime to credit card debt. The problem is the pileup of crises present and to come: oil at $200 a barrel and rising, the moment when OPEC, fed up with the puny dollar, starts selling all its oil for euros.

Phillips doesn't even mention water. The U.S. has been using it up as if it were oil. He doesn't mention food shortages and global warming. On the bright side, Phillips did a sentimental thing and dedicated the book to his new grandson. If little William Russell Phillips has a future, according to his grandfather, then perhaps we do too, even if it takes place in a sod hut in what was once Norway in a hot terrible everlasting darkness in 2092.

For more on this very scary scenario go to: http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_mallick/20080526.html

Pastor Wright’s recent performance at the National Press Club reminded me once again, why I tend to avoid organized religion. I do have a personal relationship with the Creator, but I don’t introduce my belief to people as though they were a kind of merit badge. My view of faith is inclusive, as I am not ‘that guy’ who presumes to know which belief system or religion is God’s preference. I leave those questions to her/him.

My biggest problem with organized religion in America is that it is often more about the pastor or preacher than faith or God. The leaders of many ‘mega’ churches live large on the donations yanked from parishioners, many of whom can ill afford to give. These god-men and women operate gleaming houses of worship that are more testament to ego than God. They are chauffeured about in the confines of luxury automobiles wearing the finest clothing, gold watches and jewelry, to homes large enough to be featured on MTV’s ‘Cribs.’ It is becoming difficult to tell a successful Rapper from a successful Pastor. Ethical and moral guide-posts seem to be missing from their lives, even as they entreat others to live by them.

At the Press Club podium Pastor Wright was combative and condescending, when he wasn’t being a complete ‘smart-ass.’ Admittedly, I have never seen Reverend Wright’s home or church. But I have now seen his ego on display, and it is gargantuan.This man primped and preened, like a cross between a rooster and a peacock. He seemed so enamored by his own performance, that there was a moment when I thought he was going to slide out his tongue and begin to groom himself like a household pet. Pastor Wright has stretched every millisecond of his fifteen minutes of fame. History however, will call his time in the media glare infamy. His message (and I'm not at all sure what that is) appears to be all about self aggrandizement. It had little to do with his Church, or the ‘Black Church,’ and nothing at all to do with God.

Reverend Wright attempted to politically assassinate Barak Obama. His unbridled vanity and narcissism has seriously undermined Obama's campaign. Watching Wright dance and prance for the camera produced more cringes than the Whitney and Bobby reality show at their height-or perhaps I should say highest. Posterity pastors and others like Wright are the reason many people have drifted away from Church. He will not succeed at causing Americans to drift away from participating in politics. The 'Establishment Media' will do what they will, but the Black media and other organizations should refrain from giving this 'lime-light addict' his microphone fix. At least until after the general election.

More on lethal injection: http://lethal-injection-florida.blogspot.com/2007/01/behind-mask-of-mo-execut...