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The Super Bowl advertising extravaganza is over for the year. The Steelers will be immortalized and the Seahawks Fans' arguments about the refereeing will subside off by June. Based on the 2006 Budget, the War in Iraq is expected to cost $439,000,000,000 by year end -- that doesn't count another $10 to $15 billion that's off the budget radar. It's about $100,000 a minute for the war. With the national debt at $8 trillion and growing daily, a trade deficit of more than $700 billion, Bush takes $40 million from programs for the poor and gives the rich a $70-million tax cut to keep the '06 deficit manageable at $380,000,000,000.
Over the weekend, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff at State, said of Powell's presentation at the UN during the run up to the war, "It makes me feel terrible. I've said in other places that it was-- constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. My participation in that presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing."
Homeland Security has awarded a sole-bidder, $385 million contract to Halliburton for the construction of temporary detention centers, read that jails, to house "illegal immigrants". Attorney General Gonzales has just testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the President's secret authorization of domestic spying on American citizens' phone calls and emails "is legal". Newsweek has initiated a debate about whether or not the President may legally order the killing of a "terrorist suspect" on U.S. soil as a Justice Department official contended before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week.
Against this backdrop, there's a wardrum beating louder each day for an invasion of Iran.
Echoes of yesteryear, play in my ear…
"…I was almost to the door when the biggest one
Said, "You tip your hat to this lady, son!"
And when I did, all that hair fell out from underneath
"They all started laughin and I felt kinda sick
And I knew I better think of something pretty quick
So I just reached out and kicked old green teeth right in the knee
"Now he let out a yell that'd curl yer hair
But before he could move I grabbed me a chair
And said "Now watch him Folks cause he's a fairly dangerous man!"
"You may not know it but this man is a spy.
He's a undercover agent for the FBI
And he's been sent down here to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan!"
"He was still bent over holdin on to his knee
But everybody else was looking and listening to me
And I laid it on thicker hand heavier as I went
"He's a friend of them long haired, hippy-type, pinko fags!
I betchya he's even got a commie flag
tacked up on the wall inside of his garage."
"He's a snake in the grass, I tell ya guys.
He may look dumb but that's just a disguise,
He's a mastermind in the ways of espionage"
"Would you believe this man has gone as far
As tearing Wallace stickers off the bumpers of cars.
And he voted for George McGovern for President."
"They started lookin real suspicious at him
He jumped up and said "Now just wait a minute Jim!
You know he's lying I been living here all of my life!"
"I'm a faithful follower of Brother John Birch
And I belong to the Antioch Baptist Church.
And I ain't even got a garage, you can call home and ask my wife!"
---apologies to Charlie Daniels, a man who understands that ya gotta git along just to get along sometimes.
In reference to your first paragraph, Give them bread and circuses. http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2003/02-10-2003/vo19no03_bread.htm
"Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights."
Julius Caesar, 1. 2
I have feared for 5 years that Sparus Dubyius Ingnoramus and his shrewd minions, in conjunction with a bad case of consumeritis that has been insidiously inculcated in the fattened new Roman population, conspire to repeat history 2000 years later.
As to your second point, poor Colin Powell. He has joined the ranks of Rommel and other great military officers that took the soldier’s creed beyond honor in the service of his Fuehrer. I do empathize with him as he mourns his loss. But, his tactical mistake to support a dishonorable war of aggression has permanently clouded a strategic life of honor and accomplishment. If only he had stood with the American people …
Rommel and others made the supreme sacrifice, however, to reclaim some vestige of their honor once it dawned on them that they were in the service of the damned.
Remember Alvin Toffler? He wrote "Future Shock", "The Third Wave", and I was surprised to find out, "Powershift" and "War and Antiwar". I read the first two, and he was remarkably prescient. It turns out he is still writing, and has another book due out in late April. It’s called “Revolutionary Wealth”.
In an article in the 'Managing for Success' section of the Investor’s Business Daily based on an interview with him, the article’s author advises us that “We should realize that traditional institutions are falling apart. This includes schools, government agencies and health care. Nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) will replace them to help society function.” (Getting Ready for Future Shocks, by Doug Tsuruoka, IBD, February 6, 2006)
While there are other talking points, all pretty much aimed as one would expect at business management interests, the article elaborated later just a bit on NGOs.
“One example might be AARP, which was once called the American Association of Retired persons. AARP is offering more services as the number of baby boomers swells.”
Keep in mind that AARP was instrumental in allowing Congress to pass Bush's prescription drug can-of-worms pharmaceutical industry windfall profits gift legislation to confuse and indenture the Average American with its smoke screen of choices which is bearing the easily predictable fruits of chaos, pain and suffering. Whew!
Another example of an NGO, the Red Cross, was presented in juxtaposition with FEMA, which was held up as a prime example of a “traditional institution”. By all accounts, the Red Cross was much more effective in the Gulf Coast relief effort than was FEMA.
This is a looooong winded way of asking if the sovereign corporate nation of Halliburton qualifies as one of them there NGOs?
"Toffler says business managers should start looking at NGOs as potential allies and partners."
This has dire ramifications, and a legitimate question arises in this context concerning Bush’s faith based initiatives. Are he and his minions positioning the NGOs of the religious right to partake of Toffler’s prediction for our future?
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