Well, I think Digby also said that if Frank Rich, along with the rest of his little world, hadn’t personally made it his business to ensure that the guy who was running against Bush didn’t get into the White House none of this would have happened.

So he has a certain vested interest in the damage being limited and - all the more reason to call these people on it - a real vested interest in making everything Obama’s fault as soon as possible.

I think there was a better America once. After WWII, we were a nation whose faults could be explained as the evolution of our history, and which allowed change, if grudgingly and half-heartedly. The lives of women, minorities and gays are better because of those changes.

It gives me hope that we are on the long road back to a proper understanding of our role as citizens.

I meant to say that all of our lives, not just the lives of women, minorities and gays are better.

The biggest problem with blaming Bush/Cheney for everything that has happened is that it is not true. The GOP has been laying the groundwork for a ‘coup’ like this for probably ever since FDR. Their ownership of most of the MSM is a tribute to this long-range planning. Just because Bush/Cheney are out of office, the rest of the right-wing infrastructure is still in place.

Although it is nice to blame Congress - don’t forget that it has been run by the same right-wing for the last 14 years as well. (Although nominal control passed to the Dems in 2006 - effective control of the Senate remained in Rethug hands due to the 60-vote cloture rule). SO, while there is lots of blame to go around - and there are a lot of Dems who went along too, there is a grander strategy at work here.

Anyone who makes the mistake of thinking that because Bush/Cheney are out of office that the long nightmare is over are guilty of wishful thinking. The GOP, unlike the Dems, funds and plans long-term, through their think-tanks, media control, and a wide variety of other ways. Until the Dems step up and really work hard to convince the people of the bankruptcy of teh GOP ideology, they will be back. And sooner rather than later. They are nothing if not persistent.

If we look in that bloody mirror millions of Iraqi people are dead, injured, displaced, torture. One destructive disaster after another. While we point the finger at the lying, murderous thugs in the Bush administration who are responsible for this death and destruction… many American people are terrified to look at the blood, bones and destruction we are all responsible for

I saw Rich’s article and my reaction was well that’s nice but it could have been written years ago. Bush and Cheney were able to do what they did not because they perverted the system. Rather they exploited and deepened the rot that was already there. Almost everything they did had its origins in a previous Administration going back probably at least to Kennedy, certainly Johnson. A lot of it came out of Nixon and Reagan but proximately the Clinton Administration’s focus on deregulation, rendition, and free trade set up the conditions for the extreme excesses of the Bush years.

And as I wrote in a comment in another oxdown diary today, media consolidation took a press that was already mostly in the bag for its corporate benefactors and turned it into one that completely was. It flayed Clinton alive over trivial incidents and gave Bush a pass on massive negligence, felonies, and war crimes.

The signal accomplishment of Democrats during this whole time was their incredible ability to keep their powder dry. They now have the driest powder in the universe because the next battle that they were really, really going to use it on was always the one after whatever the current one was.

As for us the American people, maybe it was the bread and circuses of reality TV or maybe it was bone-assed laziness but most of us just stood by while all this happened and didn’t do a thing.

I agree that we can trace the adverse trends much further back — that makes it even harder to identify exactly what it was that made the last 8 years so bad.

I picture it like the many curves we see of economic factors — Things go along and either increase or decrease slowly, then in the last few years, we see the curves move up/down at an accelerating pace. The underlying trend may have been there before, but it was less noticeable - but now it’s obvious and we’ve run out of excuses.

As for us the American people, maybe it was the bread and circuses of reality TV or maybe it was bone-assed laziness but most of us just stood by while all this happened and didn’t do a thing.

don’t think my situation is that unusual - i didn’t know. although i can’t argue if you say i should have. maybe if i’d had a clue how much i didn’t know (and probably still don’t) i would have had some motivation to find out. but it was worse than that - even though i listened to npr news, frequently read at least the sunday newspaper (hell, i started reading the daily nyt in 5th grade) - it’s embarrassing now to realize not only how uninformed i was, but how misinformed.

i suspect that, even prior to the bush era, most of the so-called news was more about manipulation than informing because almost every time i’ve gone back to take a second look at some event, i’ve discovered that it was nothing like what i thought at the time. a good example is of this are the lies we (and congress) were told in the run up to our first war with iraq.

now i think it’s both better and worse. better because we have the internet and that gives us access to source material and to each other. it’s worse because the propaganda is more centralized and professional and our culture is more dependent on tv.

oh well, better late than never to figure out how easily i’ve been deceived. don’t plan on standing by again.

American legacy under/bush started from massacre Iraqis and finished with Palestinians

Awesome graphic.

Correction:

the pervasive catastrophe the Bush/Cheney regime left us

should be

the pervasive catastrophe the Cheney/Bush regime left us

(see Barton Gellman’s Angler)

Exactly.

The press corps never ever ever looks at their role in controlling the discourse, much less how they’ve been bought off by things such as corporate tax cuts, the gutting of the FCC’s regulatory powers, and the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine.

I still can’t believe 43% of the population voted Republican. But I’m happy that all the Repubs I personally know voted for Obama. (Or so they say…they are notoriously bad losers)

Dugg

America apparently does not believe in legal accountability, and it does not believe that the rule of law applies equally to all.

scarecrow - i was thinking more about this, and i think it’s true. but it was true before bush. if we believed in legal accountabilty, clinton would have been tried as a war criminal. and before that iran/contra would have required a real investigation and trials, not pardons and help from clinton in covering it up.

we gave up on legal accountability first. bush came second

oops. that was not meant to be in reply to andre.

who was it that said that we get the government we deserve?

We haven’t had an opposition party in decades. The dems of today are only nominally so. The fact that the country wanted to elect Pres. kumbaya speaks volumes to it’s inability to face what we have become and it’s total desire to do nothing about rectifying the situation and actually caring about the rule of law.

I wish I share the enthusiasm of so many people who think we’re in for a new era come Jan. 20. Yes, it will not be the total incompetence of chimpy, but there will not be a real movement towards peace, justice and wholeness. Not in my lifetime, alas.

BushCo did it because we allowed them to get away with it. And by not prosecuting them for their crimes we’re completing the process.

Well put Hugh.

The corporate machine’s party is the republicans and these guys bought them all the elective offices and press “passes” read “control” of the media.

Our government has been moving in the direction of: for, by and OF the wealthy people since the guilded age with some corrections to fight a war and get people to work instead of rioting in the last depression.

In the class war the rich have won every battle so far, but they destroyed the goose that laid the golden egg.

Gov is tossing cash at the rich - stewards of the economy to kink start the merry go round. They are pocketing it and securing their moats and walls for the coming onslaught.

The beginning of the end was Kennedy’s assassination. No one believed the single bullet theory. The facts suggest a conspiracy at the highest levels of government. It turns out J Edgar Hoover, Mr Clean of the FBI, had Mafia connections. Bye, bye Miss America pie.

Kennedy’s assassination morphed into 9/11 whose serious questions remain unanswered. The suspicions again implicate high government officials to the point where 9/11 could well have been an inside job. Now we have bank bailouts where the blatent theft of public monies and the incredible stupidity of 100% sub prime mortgages should persuade the most patriotic, that the powers that be don’t have the community’s interest at heart.

Then there are representatives who represent no one but themselves and their campaign contributors, yet we remain opposed to exploring means to change the situation. There aren’t many choices-either we leave it to our representatives and feel betrayed when they betray us-how many times does that happen before we get the message or we can try to organize in a way that impresses the powers that be as well as ourselves. The choice is hierarchy or equality. Take your pick.

I do love the graphic above. Shades of Dorian Gray.

Worst idea ever!

http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....president/

I suspect that the internets are the scary thing to the oligarchs because people can be connected and avoid their media lies and they ARE.

Regardless of how “progressive” Obi is what we / they learned beginning with Howard Dean is that the net is an organizing force to be reckoned with. So at first they laughed at it, but when the black man used it to win even the rigged elections they are getting the message.

The internet could blink out folks.

i agree with this, reluctantly and with sadness…..after reading a series of wonderful depressing books this last few years (Nemesis, The Shock Doctrine, The Limits of Power, Broken Government, Blackwater, etc etc) it’s clear that Bush was just the natural result of the rot which has infected the republic.
For a clear, concise and beautifully written expose of America’s current situation and how we got here get Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power. (Even better, get the audiobook on iTunes, truly stunning reading)

I read an article prior to the Bush’s initial inauguration which made the argument that it wasn’t so much a matter of the person elected President, but the 1500 or so (See the “Plum Book”) appointive positions, that they have the opportunity to fill that really matter. In W’s case we know what type of people he filled those slots with, people who were the antithesis of the ideal for the position, those who were diametrically opposed to the mission of the organization they were supposed to lead. Now eight years later, we reap the results of that philosophy…

One of the first comments I ever left at FDL recalled that during Watergate, the country was relieved that the Constitutional system seemed to hold; it did it’s job. And I wondered in 2005-06 whether it would hold this time, against an unrelenting assault of lawlessness. I’ve reluctantly concluded that it didn’t, and we’re left with a very weakened, perhaps irreparably damaged Constitution. And I’m not sure what we do to fix it. It’s weaknesses were always there, but tradition, luck and a few brave souls held it together back then, but not this time. We needed the likes of Rodino, Barbara Jordan and Archie Cox and instead we got Pelosi and Gonzales’ minions.

We had Bacevich and Limits of Power on Book Salon a while ago.

http://firedoglake.com/2008/11.....-of-power/

Yes. twolf = master

Whether one believs 9/11 was an inside job or not we can all agree that the “official” story (the quintessential conspiracy theory) is not the truth.
I read the Commission report when first released and didn’t buy it then. I re-read it this year and it’s even more off the mark.
And when you’re speaking to skeptics, who haven’t read the report (or anything else) and can’t believe their government would like to them, just ask them:
Do you really believe your local Target has more surveillance cameras than the Pentagon?

There is no doubt that the internet shall be subject to ever stricter control in the future. There will be filters to control content, this Country designed and sold the filtering equipment used by China to control what their citizens may read, so we already have that capability. It is inevitable that internet sales will very soon be taxed, too much revenue is being lost and too many venues are cash starved.

Yes, and thank you for the link!
He has a fantastic grasp of the English language, particularly poignant given the subject matter.
I’d love to see him become an advisor to Obama….

And I’m not sure what we do to fix it.

i’m not sure either, but i’ve thought for some time that one necessary thing is that we Democrats must learn to hold our own politicians accountable for their crimes. if we can’t do that, we have no business complaining that the Republicans don’t hold theirs accountable.

yes, bush is the worst president, by far, of my lifetime. but i’m a Democrat, so i can’t start accountability with his crimes. i have to start in my own house - and that’s the Democrat’s house.

The signal accomplishment of Democrats during this whole time was their incredible ability to keep their powder dry. They now have the driest powder in the universe because the next battle that they were really, really going to use it on was always the one after whatever the current one was.

Ain’t it so, brother. Amen and amen.

Sincerely,
One of the lazy-assed

I agree 100% americans are responsible as well
if bush is a mirror so we’re all look like a bush by looking in that mirror

I agree that the Dems are only a nominal opposition party, but honestly, don’t you think we’d have fared better under the “leadership” of someone other than Pelosi and Reid? I get that we’re not supposed to worry our pretty little heads about gummint bidness, but turns out my pretty little head is mighty worried.

That is, of course, one of the problems. The government (presumably the Pentagon is a branch of the government and responds to its command) has not released the surveillance tapes from 9/11. This failure leads one to the conclusion the tapes do not support the official version. Our representatives should not sit still for this, but they do as do we all.

Appropos of that, we somehow have to get around the feeling of helplessness and provide an alternative to the way things are. As a lawyer I closed my share of sub prime mortgage loans. The attorney, as well as the broker and the bank, were in for substantial fees. I suggested to the mortgagor they were biting off quite a bit, but they saw it as a chance to own a house and who was I to say property values wouldn’t continue their upward climb. I didn’t think so, but I’ve been predicting economic catastrophe for twenty years. We get along, by going along. In this I’m the same as everyone. We all have to change more or less at the same time, a pretty neat trick.

And no, I don’t think my local Target has more surveillance cameras than the Pentagon

yes indeed, they have the long term in mind. never forget that.

I think that the one hopeful part to come out of This American Nightmare is exactlynwhat Rich calls the shear “grandeur of the failure.”. It was so awesome, so monumental and so spectacular that even
many of the usual rank and file apologists out there in the voting public cannot deny that it happened or reinterpret it in a way that is complimentary. The government has been visibly transformed into a passable facsimile of the X-Files Shadowy Conspiracy (the inept conspirators of which wound up wiping themselves out as well as jeopardizing the planet) and the country now resembles a bad day out of the classic movie Brazil. People can see this, and they can’t really stick their heads into the sand and ignore it altogether (whatever their pundits and propagadists will say).

I spent the holiday with my hardcore rethug parents. Yeah, they still view Mitt as their great white Hope and they’re sad that
their war hero McCain won’t get his due, and yes they still despise Obama, Hillary, unions, minorities, immigrants, liberals, gays, etc etc, but NONE of them had anything nice to say about shrub or shrubco. Not a word in his defense. Just utter scorn, and even the barest glimmer of questioning about whether their boy king’s utter failure
might just be connected to a fatal flaw of some type, as yet unrevealed but very much suspected, at the heart of rethug doctrine and party structure.

We could have fared better in the House with Kucinich as Speaker. I don’t know about the Senate. Even those we consider somewhat progressive are heavily influenced by outside entities.

Do you really believe your local Target has more surveillance cameras than the Pentagon?

Well, actually, yes. Nothing to do with 9/11 or who did it, but rather to do with the hubris of the Pentagon.

Best book I read/listened to in 2008 is House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power by James Carroll, 22 audio discs; a fascinating book, combination of U.S. foreign policy history, esp wrt nuclear bomb, a memoir wrt his father’s role in the story.

Relation to your comment is the constant drumbeat of hubris, not by the author but by what he observes in the Pentatgon.

How do “we” hold Ds accountable?

i think pelosi was particularly damaging because she fooled us by being the liberal packaging that was used to sell us an incompetent and reactionary government. if we’re going to get hoyer-type goverment, i’d rather have it come in a hoyer-type package. that way we know what we’re getting.

Hmmm. Maybe we the people need to elect House and Senate speakers. (Ducks to avoid flying shoes.)

it’s the communication age. ideas will out.

Bwahahahahahahaha. Dya think in the info age, amateurs such as us can best professionals?

i used to believe the const. would be clear to decide most every dispute. now it’s crap thanks to the shrub. we are in deep trouble without education of the masses.

yes, ma’am. although we might not see it.

The Bu$hCo years have made it apparent to me that, present company excepted, we live in a naive and gullible country that can be duped into anything.

that’s part of what i don’t know. *g*

but certainly shouldn’t part of it be to stop making excuses for them? the first real diary i ever wrote was about how the protect america act was passed in the house in aug 2007 because i was frustrated about being expected to swallow talking points instead of what my own eyes and ears had seen and heard.

and now i see the same thing happening with obama.

argh.

I think so, too (re Pelosi). Bait and switch. I have no idea who she is. Ditto Reid. And like you, for me it has been an immense epiphany to discover how little I knew/know, even as a so-called activist. Something happens to the people we elect once they enter the hallowed halls of the Capitol. There have been exceptions, but they’re few and far between, IMO.

Every now and then a statement or event occurs that years later seems pregnant with import. I recall former Sec of State George Schultz telling reporters that he, Condeleeza Rice, “and some others” from the Hoover institute were looking for someone to back for the 2000 election. They were looking, he said, for someone like Reagan, with a conservative orientation and a popular charm. They thought G W Bush looked attractive and invited him to meet with a group in Palo Alto. The rest is history.

Bush was from the beginning a face for the voters, he read the speeches written for him, and “AW shucks”ed his way through press conferences. Others plotted political, economic, and foriegn policy. I’m sure he participated in discussions, but Bush was never even close to being the decider. He, then, should not be held as the responsible scapegoat for what has happened. I don’t even think the entire GOP should be branded with the blame, even though they, like the legislative Democrats, were awfully accommodating. A small group, I guess the neocons, are to blame. They were a force before 2000, and are still with us, albeit underground, for now.

It’s the whole Republican Party, half the Democratic Party, the majority of the media, a large number of people in high finance and business, and a big segment of the military-intelligence-foreign-policy establishment who are to blame.

Along with a substantial number of ordinary Americans, but not necessarily a majority. The energy and initiative didn’t come from the unwashed masses, it came from the elites.

Evidence?

rh, we are to blame not the neocons. we let them take it without a fight.

The energy and initiative didn’t come from the unwashed masses, it came from the elites.

amen.

now we’ve got to match their energy and initiative.

barbara’s naive question of the day hour:

What do the neocons want? What would be the condition of this country, of the global community and the individuals therein if they arrived at a perfect place per their vision? A snapshot . . .

except i would have said more than half the Democrats.

Vid taken last night by, I think, a member of the Uhuru Movement.

Well, you & I & Hugh try to hold Ds to standards, but it doesn’t seem to have much influence.

Always helps to profide the link.

the neocon refrain is supported with gusto in the bible south and in the farm land. it’s a fact.

I really don’t believe the Democratic party serves the interests of the American people any better than the Republicans do. We get some lip service at election time, then it’s back to serving their corporate masters. Bottom line, the the only real difference between the major parties is in their respective marketing strategies.

My Q was what evidence is there in the info age that we are having any influence. We are being bested at every turn by the organized propogandized media.

The worst part of the legacy is what they’ve done to us, as citizens, and to our concept of what America stands for, of what self governance means.

Yes and no.
Back in 2000, after basically 20 years of Republican and RepublicanLite governance, Al Gore ran and its a safe bet that he didn’t believe he could raise climate change as an issue. I recall him trying to point out that sprawl is a serious environmental problem, and The Dean (David Broder) just acted soooooo bored and huffy, as if Al Gore was some kind of hyperventilating opportunist.

Even back in 2000, it was obvious to many people that sprawl was a very, very serious problem.
But Al Gore had to communicate in 30-second sound bites.
And now anyone who’s seen “Inconvient Truth” knows he can master sound bites, he’s witty as hell, and he knows what he’s talking about.

The problem is that ‘entertainment’ took over news.
It was all about ratings.
Reports about serious topics, like nuclear weapons, and ’sprawl’ cannot be explained in 30 seconds.
They just can’t.

What we now have, thanks to GWBush and his criminal conspiracy, are people who actually understand that maybe government matters.

Look at the rise of the Web; look at a Rachel Maddow clip and note the caliber of some of her guests — she had Micheal Lewis (”Liar’s Poker”) on recently and he was terrific — but you could watch that on the Web or on cable. Not on the network teevee, where there’s no way that Maddow and Lewis would have been allowed to have time for that interview.

Maddow’s had Richard Engle on (NBC Foreign Corr) recently, and again the fact that they have more than 30 seconds or 2 minutes, plus they have interactive maps and enough time to finish a sentence, really makes a difference.

We also have online C-SPAN.
And Larry Lessig is helping lead a huge new movement to deal with political corruption via the campaign finance regs.

I’m angry at what’s happened, but I also believe that the upside is the fact that people who said back in 2000 that ‘elections don’t matter’, and that ‘Gore and Bush are just two sides of the same coin’ know now that elections DO matter, and they’re paying attention.

I don’t like the way that it happened, but it’s progress.

Soylent Green

Are you saying that none of the rest of us have any standards?

Heh. Raising the age old Q of whether lip service is better than no service at all.

I was wondering the same thing! *g*

Scarecrow, I have thought long and hard for years about the question you raise. My very first and very timid post on a political blog (Brad De Long’s) back in 2003 asked whether democracy was possible in the United States, given what we had just experienced. After that I re-read Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, which seemed to offer some answers, though not all. I also read a book by Friedrich Meinecke, written immediately after the war to explain to himself what had gone so disastrously wrong in his own country. From them we see part of the answer: mass culture, the breaking down of mediating entities between the individual and the state; new media of communication that privilege emotional over intellectual response; passing of public politics from an educated elite to mass manipulators (behind whom stand an economic and social elite). These are common elements. Another common element is the element of force, so present in both nation’s nineteenth and early twentieth-century histories.

But there is something else at work. I look at my generation (graduated Antioch College, 1964), and I think we failed to live up to our responsibilities, once the Civil Rights Movement had come and gone. We were caught up in our careers. The amazing upward social mobility of mygeneration (my father was an electrician who worked on the ships) may have something to do with it as well. We left politics to other people. It was only in the second Clinton administration that I realized what had happened.

There is a lot of rot in our community. It will take a generation at least to eliminate it.

Mmm mm good!

Not at all. Just pointing out the ones I’ve notices who usually try to poke holes in conventional wisdom. No offense intended to others.

Point well taken! But if so, by design :) Plausible deniability, no?

i think we all try to. it’s just that we keep getting punked.

ah, sorry. matter of time hence the result not in our lifetime. :)

This ‘legacy’ is not one of Bush, his administration or even his family’s history.

It’s one of condensed political power, condensed military power and condensed wealth and control over the masses by the few.

It’s been going on LONG before Bush stole ‘00 and ‘04.

We Boomer DFH’s knew this shit back in the mid 60’s when we were in our early to late teens.

It’s time to stop blaming our elected officials or the right or the left.

And put the blame where it lies. Identify the holders of the 1% of our money and property and that’s where the blame begins. And yes, you’ll find the Bush Family in that 1%, as well as many others we all know and have heard and read about.

Whether it’s fear, ignorance or just plaine naivetee I’m always amazed that the simple facts of condensed power and wealth do not dominate the discourse of who’s to blame. Hell, the simple facts don’t even get mentioned.

The bottom line? Major change at the top of the 1% pyramid. Only, they own the politics, politicians, and the military. Full sweep.

Ergo, same conclusion . . . we will get more of the same. But it’s not because of the Bush Legacy. Not hardly.

Depends on whether one is the lipper or the lippee. Certainly serves the pols’ interests if it can GOTV.

maybe you but i have none. that way i am always pleased.

i don’t understand what vid?

Sorry, but I’m not particularly interested in results not in my lifetime.

Ford lied about where the bullet entered JFK and that allowed Specter and his magic bullet theory to be presented. Ford confessed to altering the report; Specter is still silent to this day. I wonder if he has documents safely hidden that will be released after he dies? Anything is possible if he has one cell in his body that isn’t corrupt.

http://jfklancer.com/medical.html
http://jfklancer.com/SBT.html

The assassination was a big turning point in the misinformation that was fed to the American people. The presidents that followed after him, each and every one of them has been a war criminal. That label can rightly be attached to some before him as well.

There never was a good America. From the Spanish War to 2008, America has been behind every war. Either making it happen, or letting it happen. The truth does come out eventually, but many multi millions die in the meantime.

The illusion was there for all to consume. It was all an illusion of America the good. The illusion was fed to the public since 1948 with Operation Mockingbird. MSM is a lying bunch of MIC controlled outlets. You were warned by Eisenhower; beware the military industrial complex.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
http://www.famous-speeches-and.....ddress.htm

seems i am coming around to that conclusion. just not quite there.

Good point. Personally, I subscribe to the myth of unlimited potential.

Siun has a Gaza update here:

http://firedoglake.com/2009/01.....they-seem/

you have a short attention span.

But no one wins in that scenario, right? I’ll just munch my little green wafer while awaiting your response.

you are a free thinker.

I think the loss of the intermediaries between government and individuals is a very significant factor. Look at selise’ comment at 8. Now she is an active and skilled participant here, and is one of the people who can act as intermediary for her friends and her kin and people in general, by providing understanding and links to things many of us couldn’t have found by ourselves. This is another reason for hope, the internet and blog communities form a new group of intermediaries.

The one that kinda sneaked down to 60.

brilliant! thank you !

This is proof that non professionals are gaining on MSM. A Pulitzer for online news is a giant step forward.

http://www.pulitzer.org/new_eligibility_rules

Looks like a good turnout.

One of the best books I have read on Bush (which helped enrich the disappointing memories of the movie “W”) is The Bush Tragedy by Jacob Weinberg. He speaks of Bush’s Oedipal complex (within the least introspective dysfunctional family line in America… that is saying a lot) and how Rove and Cheney played his daddy issues over and over. Pushed that button. “Mr. President… two choices ahead of us… now this one your daddy would choose…this one Ronald Reagan would have gone with. So which do you choose?” No thinking required by W. Was it truly what his father would have done? Probably not. But when you are ill-informed and incurious and over your head by miles … he went for the bait. Adn Condi was there to justify his decisions most every time… not to inform him… but to “enable” him.

My favorite phrase from Frank Rich’s column: THE AUDACITY OF HYPE!

I heard the possibility with all the Michael Connell press that Obama may have won by 7 million votes more than he got because of Rovian shenanigans. Wow. Talk about a heavy thumb of voter fraud on the scales of democracy and justice. And Connell was a techie with genius willing to defraud the citizenry to “save the babies” those evil Dems were willing to destroy. Now Bush wants clerks in pharmacies who want to “save the babies” to have the right not to hand over a prescription. Orwell is beginning to sound tame.

Big legacy of a sociopathic corporate media and an apathetic citizenry that wants titillating “truthiness” (thank you Mr. Colbert for that word)! Reality and facts are sooooo irrelevant to so many!

Depends on your definition of winning. At the end the question is do the people realize what’s going on and act or does the status quo continue. In the former scenario one could argue that they change things for the better, in the latter the rich and powerful continue their lifestyles, ergo they win. We’ve already got huge tracts of farmland controlled by BigAg. We manufacture little that isn’t somehow connected with “security.” We have a public that is saturated with teebee like that presented in Max Headroom, game and reality shows to lull the suckers unwashed masses into complacency. Add a dash of Orwell, voila.

Scarecrow, thanks for this post on such an important subject. There’s so much to discuss. One thing, I don’t think as a country we’ve come to terms with 911. I don’t agree with the response of waging war in Afghanistan as well as Iraq. I don’t know how much of the public is aware of the history of U.S. foreign policy and its effects around the world. I would have liked to have seen a looking inward and a process of self inquiry as to why would people want to attack us instead of what we did. We have been in the grip of archetypal forces that brought up fear and manifests as scapegoating and that was exploited and amplified by our so-called leaders. I’d like to see a truth and reconciliation commission like the one in South Africa. Another thing is a pervasive belief that we are “good,” the “greatest country in the world,” and that coupled with a tendency not to be very reflective or introspective as a society, makes it difficult to see ourselves clearly. We have a lot to answer for. I’m hoping that the hard times will wake us up so we can move forward toward a “more perfect union.”

Good point….your point brings to mind Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point”, and how situations can swing one to another based on the personalities or entities involved. We need more “connectors”. Which is why I was so happy to hear Sarah Palin sneer at “community organizer”.
It’s safe to say she didn’t read The Tipping Point :)

Following is my comment at the DIGG.

pup34: This soul-rending article by scarecrow deserves to be included in all future history text books for American schools, as well as comments to it.

As for the graphic by twolf1: It should be the portrait of Bush which hangs forever in the White House! and a wall-size version should be hung in every courthouse of the land over the caption: The Murder of The Republic of America.

Local NBC affiliate said 100. We say over 200. With the carload of young ones with the flags and the young ones on the line it was electric. Time to trade the cammy top in for a Buddhist shawl.

Jacob Weisberg, not Weinberg. Sorry.

You pose an interesting question, and a difficult one. I generally don’t pretend to have answers, but I’ll take your question as a challege to myself to see if I can present a snapshot, for whatever it’s worth.

They published a “manefesto” callled Project for a New American Century, but it’s glossed to look attractive, and may not provide a clear view. It’s been a long time since I read it, and am having trouble recalling its points. In short, I see them as replications of the National Socialists of Germany in the 1930s. I think they prefer to see a return to feudalism as the natural state of power distribution. The difference being, the European feudalists, used land as the the basis of power, today the basis is more fluid, as in money and credit (as well as employment). The state is a consortium of business interests, not unlike the old East India Trading Co, operating internationally and free of any legal regulation. The role of the government is to police the proles, and keep wages down. Democracy is out of the question; it doesn’t work, and is easily corrupted.

Whew, that’s not pretty. When we answer questions, we find out what we think, along with our audience.

great snapshot….
american hegemony, at all costs
there’s the military class, the working class, the (neocon, as opposed to liberal) intellectual class (aka chicken hawks)

another book recommendation: noam chomsky’s “american hegemony or survival” (see americanempireproject.com for more…)

I take your point; Scarecrow’s premiss is about Bush’s legacy. I only want to point out that Bush was just a face on a policy run by others. As to why “we” allowed this is a much broader question. If someone is to be fought, good to know who it is.

Well, this is sobering, and I wasn’t even drinking. I might now, though. So ultimately, it is ALL about power (and the perqs that come with it). Control. Tops down. Master/slave model (in less graphic terms). Ergo the 99% do the labor, live in a comparatively hopeless situation and like gerbils on a wheel, just keep on keepin’ on? Or something like that? Money and power. Power and money. Penny for your thoughts! And yes, to discovering what we think whilst we ponder out loud.

Thank you Hugh! I’m with you. And thank you for your LIST!

you have to follow the money. failing to do that will stymie your understanding of it all.

oh, and you also have to have an understanding that the institutions of amerikan power are theatrical, in a very real sense.

when you start to unravel the thread of money in amerikan politics, i think you will find it takes you to the rockefellers. the real eminence grises in the usa. throughout the 20th century and onwards.

some will try to assert that no one family exercises that much power. want to bet?

the complete elucidation of the role of the rockefellers probably requires more time and space that i care to spend.

suffice it to say, it is critical to recognize the rockefellers’ role as kingmakers in post ww2 amerikan politics.

no other entity in the usa has so many pocket boroughs. arkansas. west virginia. wyoming. new york. their influence in ohio, illinois, pennsylvania, indiana, california, texas, louisiana, florida is less obvious, but entrenched.

the bush family was created by the rockefellers. they are courtiers.

perhaps the same could be said of al gore’s family.

an arranged contest[sic]? i sure think so.

follow the money. that is where the truth of amerikan politics resides.

“Even those we consider somewhat progressive are heavily influenced by outside entities.”
I believe the descriptively correct term is bought and paid for by outside entities.

You provoke me. I’m going to watch a program on PBS now, and can’t write more. Consider Hobbes in a world of shrinking resources, expanding population, and a culture of “to the victor go the spoils” and “buyer beware”. Yeah, sobering. As CArealitycheck would probably say, we need to get educated and organized.

As “Uncle Mike” in San Francisco says, “The one thing rich people really should be worried about is being eaten.

We have a public that is saturated with teebee like that presented in Max Headroom, game and reality shows to lull the suckers unwashed masses into complacency.

It’s far worse! We have a TV line-up filled with shows depicting the unbeatable authority figures. No matter how brilliant the criminal plot, whatever the brilliant crime, the miscreant Shall be discovered and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law without mercy. The number of shows depicting the Law Enforcement and/or the legal profession in the most favorable of lights fill the schedule. Accordingly, the number of violent incidents is also amazing. Entertaining, perhaps, but incredible, nonetheless! Sex is obscene, but killing people is perfectly acceptable fare…

“The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.” - Edward Dowling

The roots of this behavior are much deeper than anyone here realizes, therefore rooting it out is going to be much more arduous. The campaign financing system is crucial to powerful special interests acting as gatekeepers to who gets elected. The pay for play nature of American politics goes back to the corruption that started in the 1870’s, when the system was one of open bribery. The interventionist foreign policy was adopted in 1898 when the US declared war on Spain. Drect military interventions became routine in Latin America shortly after that war. The number of US interventions are numerous. One of the longest occupations was the one of Haiti from 1915 to 1934, when the country was under the direct rule of the US Navy. In 1900, the US was part of the interventionary force in China during the Boxer Rebellion. The limit of where the US could intervene was always limited by the maximum reach of American military power. The gret shift occurred after World War II when the US had military forces all over much of the world, and the US had about a 60% share of the world’s total GDP. The interventions became more profligate from that point forward, with CIA involvement since 1946 (under a different name reorganized in 1947). Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush (the Elder), Clinton, and Bush (the Younger) each had a number of interventions both large and small, that violated ratified treaties, other power’s sovereignty, and the long term interests of the US (think the reimposition of the Shah of Iran in 1953 as a major example).

George Walker Bush carried these policies to an extreme degree, and has essentially bankrupted the US in the process. The ability of the US to continue behaving like this is drawing to a close.

But the institutional damage to the Constitutional system of checks and balances has been done. Neither major party impeded the process of reaching this end point. Both major parties are thoroughly rotten. THe rotteness is best exemplified by the fact that retention rate in Congress approaches that of the old Soviet Union, in that in most elections 98% of all incumbents are retained. Even in the last election, the retention rate of incumbents was well over 90% (especially in the House).

The only way this is going to change is for the public to force it. It will take something that I doubt the American public wishes to do: each citizen must take the duties of citizenship seriously enough to become familiar with all the offices, office holders, candidates, and ballot measures on the citizen’s ballot; end strategic voting by each citizen voting according to his or her beliefs; get out of the two major party paradigm; and lastly push for some major reforms. The reforms must include easing ballot access laws for political parties, remove the advantage of unopposed incumbency and the possibility of having to choose between the lesser of two evils by requiring the ballot to have the option of rejecting all candidates with the requirement that if rejection wins, then a new election round starts with all of the rejected candidates from previous rounds ineligible to run until the office if filled. These new rules should apply to all elected offices at all levels of government.

This is, I think, the most important post I’ve seen on this site in some time. It asks the central questions that we all need to be thinking about; how to truly reestablish rule of law in this country, and make everyone accountable to it. We’re all realizing that there’s a lot of power invested in making sure that doesn’t happen, and it’s making some people very pessimistic about our chances. But I believe it can be done, and in our lifetime too. Nobody thought Nixon would be toppled in 72. I think as large as the challenges and obstacles are ahead of us, there’s also opportunities that we haven’t dreamt of. These people are going to slip up. They already have in so many ways, and it’s bound to get worse, mainly because they don’t really have any solutions to offer. They’re wrong on many different levels. We know what needs to be done, we’re right, and when people stop looking everywhere else for the answers, we’ll have a chance to convince them. All we have to do is stay engaged, stay energized, and keep thinking and looking for solutions. With enough collective will and determination, I think there’s no limit to what we can accomplish. This country can and will be turned around, if we are willing to commit ourselves to the effort. But the first step is believing it’s possible. Like the fella said: Yes We Can.

Once in my life I would like to hear someone say those son of a bitches that took out the world trade center were murders!Terrorist from the middle east who want to destroy us.As President Bush said,”any country that harbors terrorist are just as guilty”!
He took the war to them! He didnt sit on his ass and do nothing!I would rather we kill them over there than over here!!They came into OUR country and MURDERED OUR citizens!!On a beautiful sun filled morning,thousands of mothers,fathers,sons and daughters were murdered!!Payback is sometimes a real bitch!!

For all of you who think Bush is to blame for all of our problems.Take a good long look at Reid,Pelosi, Frank! People who insisted there was nothing wrong with Fannie&Freddie!! Barney Frank the gay Senator who is sleeping with a man who works for Fannie Mae!! These are the fools who we trust our future to?? God help us all!!

As for Mr. Obama. We now have the most inexperienced person in history in the oval office.With our country and the entire world on the brink of total failure and world war we elect a man with NO experience!! WE are in so much trouble!!! You think Bush made things bad!!He did the best he could with the hand he was dealt!! I pray to god that Obama can get a winning hand out of the crappy cards that will be dealt to him.

We have people in this country right now who I believe are waiting for their chance to strike.Bushes policies might seem unfair to some ,but most people dont realize the facts.Not every person who moves to the U.S. is here to make themselves a better life!! think about it!

The media in North America are the biggest problem. There is a lack of any sort of couraqe to dig for the truth. Most of the mainstream media have become corporate lapdogs who sole purpose is to protect and maintain their bottom lines. I see no prospect of the media ever coming around to doing their job properly again, and as such history is doomed to repeat itself in fairly short order.

Are you actually saying that you believe that terrorists sitting in a cave in Afghanistan defeated NORAD?

Read what Senator Bob Graham said very carefully. Foreign governments were involved and the information is sealed from the American people.

GWEN IFILL: Senator Graham, are there elements in this report, which are classified that Americans should know about but can’t?

SEN. BOB GRAHAM: Yes, going back to your question about what was the greatest surprise. I agree with what Senator Shelby said the degree to which agencies were not communicating was certainly a surprise but also I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States.

I am stunned that we have not done a better job of pursuing that to determine if other terrorists received similar support and, even more important, if the infrastructure of a foreign government assisting terrorists still exists for the current generation of terrorists who are here planning the next plots.

To me that is an extremely significant issue and most of that information is classified, I think overly-classified. I believe the American people should know the extent of the challenge that we face in terms of foreign government involvement. That would motivate the government to take action.

GWEN IFILL: Are you suggesting that you are convinced that there was a state sponsor behind 9/11?

SEN. BOB GRAHAM: I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing — although that was part of it — by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down, make the further case, or find the evidence that would indicate that that is not true and we can look for other reasons why the terrorists were able to function so effectively in the United States.

GWEN IFILL: Do you think that will ever become public, which countries you’re talking about?

SEN. BOB GRAHAM: It will become public at some point when it’s turned over to the archives, but that’s 20 or 30 years from now. And, we need to have this information now because it’s relevant to the threat that the people of the United States are facing today.

Forgive me if someone already brought this up, but I’m one-third through Kevin Phillips’ book on the Bush Dynasty (2003).

What I’ve read so far is that the present circumstances have been coming for decades. The Bushes go waaay back with the Rockefellers, Harrimans, the financial world, the defense contractors, etc. beginning with the Walkers.

They believe that they are due the presidency–as Phillips alludes to–they have royal blood in their family tree, and Barbara Bush has said that George deserved to be president.

They also hold grudges and evidence points to getting even for perceived slights. I have this awful feeling that some of what has happened on Wall St. is part of that. There is so much more to this than I think we can even conceive of at this point.

Now I see that George Herbert Walker Bush has planted a seed that Jeb Bush should be next to ascend the presidential throne, as alluded to in this blurb (scroll down):

http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/92140?fp=1

George Sr. stated on Faux news that Jeb should be president.

Yep.

And my first thought is no way.

Then I remember what short attention span people have and once they are out of the financial mess and time has smoothed things over, they will forget how bad things are/were.

And once the Bush propaganda machine kicks in for Jeb, the spinmeisters will once again fool most of the people. I really hope that I’m wrong.

I disagree. A woman (April Gallop) stationed about forty feet from the Pentagon blast brought suit in the Southern District of NY. The complaint can be found at
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/....._1217.html
Sorry I don’t know how to do links. Can’t copy and paste them
The complaint is interesting although not entirely consistent. She claims that although the hijacked plane was headed for Washington and was about 45 minutes away, no one gave the order to evacuate. She also alleges that there was no plane but explosives were apparently planted. She also alleges some 85 video tapes of the incident are being withheld. It’s an interesting complaint

The analogy of Germany in the 30’s occurred to me too. Hitler is sometimes credited with having had a hypnotic power over people, but isn’t it true that this little man was swept into power to the cheers of much of the population who followed him willingly, or at least passively, into disaster? Maybe we can take some solace from the history of Germany since then. They seem to have become one of the most socially progressive and anti-war nations in a relatively short time. Of course that change may have only been possible because they had been reduced to ashes first.