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Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush
To paraphrase Al Pacino in "Godfather III," just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can't. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration's high ambitions.
That's why the president's flip-flop on the release of detainee abuse photos - whatever his motivation - is a fool's errand. The pictures will eventually emerge anyway, either because of leaks (if they haven't started already) or because the federal appeals court decision upholding their release remains in force. And here's a bet: These images will not prove the most shocking evidence of Bush administration sins still to come.
There are many dots yet to be connected, and not just on torture. This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld's corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of "Dead Certain," the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more than a dozen high-level Bush loyalists.
Draper reports that Rumsfeld's monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America's most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper's biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.
Take the one dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.)
What's up with that? As Draper writes, Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary's actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world's apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout "would be as bad as Abu Ghraib."
The GQ article isn't the only revelation of previously unknown Bush Defense Department misbehavior to emerge this month. Just two weeks ago, the Obama Pentagon revealed that a major cover-up of corruption had taken place at the Bush Pentagon on Jan. 14 of this year - just six days before Bush left office. This strange incident - reported in The Times but largely ignored by Washington correspondents preparing for their annual dinner - deserves far more attention and follow-up.
What happened on Jan. 14 was the release of a report from the Pentagon's internal watchdog, the inspector general. It had been ordered up in response to a scandal uncovered last year by David Barstow, an investigative reporter for The Times. Barstow had found that the Bush Pentagon fielded a clandestine network of retired military officers and defense officials to spread administration talking points on television, radio and in print while posing as objective "military analysts." Many of these propagandists worked for military contractors with billions of dollars of business at stake in Pentagon procurement. Many were recipients of junkets and high-level special briefings unavailable to the legitimate press. Yet the public was never told of these conflicts of interest when these "analysts" appeared on the evening news to provide rosy assessments of what they tended to call "the real situation on the ground in Iraq."
When Barstow's story broke, more than 45 members of Congress demanded an inquiry. The Pentagon's inspector general went to work, and its Jan. 14 report was the result. It found no wrongdoing by the Pentagon. Indeed, when Barstow won the Pulitzer Prize last month, Rumsfeld's current spokesman cited the inspector general's "exoneration" to attack the Times articles as fiction.
But the Pentagon took another look at this exoneration, and announced on May 5 that the inspector general's report, not The Times's reporting, was fiction. The report, it turns out, was riddled with factual errors and included little actual investigation of Barstow's charges. The inspector general's office had barely glanced at the 8,000 pages of e-mail that Barstow had used as evidence, and interviewed only seven of the 70 disputed analysts. In other words, the report was a whitewash. The Obama Pentagon officially rescinded it - an almost unprecedented step - and even removed it from its Web site.
Network news operations ignored the unmasking of this last-minute Bush Pentagon cover-up, as they had the original Barstow articles - surely not because they had been patsies for the Bush P.R. machine. But the story is actually far larger than this one particular incident. If the Pentagon inspector general's office could whitewash this scandal, what else did it whitewash?
In 2005, to take just one example, the same office released a report on how Boeing colluded with low-level Pentagon bad apples on an inflated (and ultimately canceled) $30 billion air-tanker deal. At the time, even John Warner, then the go-to Republican senator on military affairs, didn't buy the heavily redacted report's claim that Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, were ignorant of what Warner called "the most significant defense procurement mismanagement in contemporary history." The Pentagon inspector general who presided over that exoneration soon fled to become an executive at the parent company of another Pentagon contractor, Blackwater.
But the new administration doesn't want to revisit this history any more than it wants to dwell on torture. Once the inspector general's report on the military analysts was rescinded, the Obama Pentagon declared the matter closed. The White House seems to be taking its cues from the Reagan-Bush 41 speechwriter Peggy Noonan. "Sometimes I think just keep walking," she said on ABC's "This Week" as the torture memos surfaced. "Some of life has to be mysterious." Imagine if she'd been at Nuremberg!
The administration can't "just keep walking" because it is losing control of the story. The Beltway punditocracy keeps repeating the cliché that only the A.C.L.U. and the president's "left-wing base" want accountability, but that's not the case. Americans know that the Iraq war is not over. A key revelation in last month's Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees - that torture was used to try to coerce prisoners into "confirming" a bogus Al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein link to sell that war - is finally attracting attention. The more we learn piecemeal of this history, the more bipartisan and voluble the call for full transparency has become.
And I do mean bipartisan. Both Dick Cheney, hoping to prove that torture "worked," and Nancy Pelosi, fending off accusations of hypocrisy on torture, have now asked for classified C.I.A. documents to be made public. When a duo this unlikely, however inadvertently, is on the same side of an issue, the wave is rising too fast for any White House to control. Court cases, including appeals by the "bad apples" made scapegoats for Abu Ghraib, will yank more secrets into the daylight and enlist more anxious past and present officials into the Cheney-Pelosi demands for disclosure.
It will soon be every man for himself. "Did President Bush know everything you knew?" Bob Schieffer asked Cheney on "Face the Nation" last Sunday. The former vice president's uncharacteristically stumbling and qualified answer - "I certainly, yeah, have every reason to believe he knew..." - suggests that the Bush White House's once-united front is starting to crack under pressure.
I'm not a fan of Washington's blue-ribbon commissions, where political compromises can trump the truth. But the 9/11 investigation did illuminate how, a month after Bush received an intelligence brief titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," 3,000 Americans were slaughtered on his and Cheney's watch. If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried.
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44 Comments so far
Show AllFrank Rich is an idealist. Did we remember that Colin Powell got his first boost COVERING UP the massacres in Viet Nam? Did anything happen to him?
" If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried."
A little light showing through the cracks. And the cracks hopefully will become wide-open spaces ... and all the "bodies" will be exposed.
One of the best and most thorough Search Lights to expose the "Bodies": Take the time to read: Collateral Damage, Part I
and Collateral Damage, Part II.
www.scribd.com/people/documents/2169400-ep-heidner
The answers and the names of people involved will blow your mind.
onward & peace, cm
I didn't get past page 3. I stopped when they asserted that Vulcan was the Roman god of war. He wasn't. Mars was. Vulcan was the god of fire (including, of course, Volcanoes). If the writers couldn't get a simple and well-known fact right, why should I trust them on one of a whole bunch of conspiracy theories?
Rainborowe
This would make a great movie.
WWII, Nazi, Japanese, gold, world banking, CIA, Vietnam, Central America, Europe, 911.
This would be a great movie, indeed.
Sioux Rose
So Rumsfeld used lines from the Bible.
Tommy Frank rallied his troops with "I knew my god was bigger than his god."
Bush referred to Iraq initially as a crusade.
There have been important articles on the evangelizing of the U.S. Air Force.
Southern Baptist churches encouraged their flocks (many part of the 50 million who purchased Tim Le Haye's, "Left Behind" series which sees in modern day events a fulfillment of the highly destructive prophecy of "End Times") to vote for Bush, as a 'man of god' in the White House.
All this false witness conceiving in abject brutality a plan from heaven, or the will of the great father-god is in truth clandestine homage to Mars: god of war.
This explains why religion IS being used as a smoke screen to "justify" war, and how the original taunt that the "Islamo fascists" intend to disrupt our privileged way of life, is rendered a self-fulfilling prophecy. Given the incredibly senseless loss of life (over a million) in Iraq and into Afghanistan, perhaps soon Pakistan, why would the Islamic world NOT want to counter these injustices?
Until human beings learn that it is NEVER God's will that they destroy eachother, for what Creator would see in the destruction of Creation homage to its ideals? These behaviors serve the god of war, Mars, and steal the fruit of our labors to build abhorrent weaponry that would far better go to the ways and means for making ours a peaceful world, one in which tolerance for differences are taught. Instead, religions have been USED to foment hatred and to falsely animate animosity where there ought to be none.
It was stated in prophecy that the dark side would use its most potent weapon, deception... and that the wolf would come in sheep's clothing. The wolf, that which PROMOTES terrorism, indeed disguises itself to render the sheep its faithful followers in a path of absolute destruction. It is time to deconstruct this nightmare scenario by exposing its fundamental flaw. The astrologer, understanding the 12 principles that form the blueprint of the firmament, are best positioned to ask, "Exactly in what God's name do you arrogantly assert the right to make war? None of this behavior is remotely what Jesus taught or would execute.
Do the stars indicate a shift away from Mars anytime soon? I sure am tired of this model.
Mainstream religion seems just as locked into doublespeak as the gov't. Onward christian soldiers!
Sioux Rose
ELAINE: The Mars model is failing everywhere... animals cramped threaten us with mega pandemics, nature is dying in so many places, the INANITY and OBSCENITY of a gigantic war budget while many go homeless and hungry? What will shift it are several things. First, the US economy will not be able to prop up the 700 plus bases. If they up the ante on carnage in those regions where the bases are situated (in order to control resources to fund these cancers on the body of the Earth Mother) then having sold weapons to so many once-allies, there will be blowback that makes these zones vulnerable. Second, lots of people are waking up, and as more persons embody Venus through kindness, working with gardens, caring for others, creating art & beauty & culture, and working towards peaceful solutions, energy is EXTRACTED from Mars. Third, climate change. And there are likely other factors, but these 3 in my mind represent the quintessence of what will disempower Mars. Can't wait to see him personally castrated. I hope I have a front row seat! Then may the bonfires begin burning all the videos that turn women into disgusting orifices that simulate biological garbage containers. I am tired of hearing the widows' cries in the nights and orphan childrens' screams. Tired of the sinister trails left behind like toxic snails for anywhere and everywhere the military has gone. Tired of those who lie and grant these enterprises false cover through their professional studies of PR and how to twist human psychology on a massive scale. Yeah, maybe there is a little revenge in my blood at the moment, or else I am still reverberating from last week's full SCORPIO moon. There must be death before rebirth, so the process of transformation is not aot to be kind or gentle. My best friend Leslie says, "Most of life is pain and growth." She's probably right, now amplify that to the 6 billionth power!
But I believe there is also Grace.
Uranus, planet of unexpected change, will be in Aries, sign ruled by Mars, God of War, from late May of 2010 until 2018. Both are unruly planets. We can pray for peace, demonstrate, do the right thing, but if the planets have their way with us, as they always do, we are in for a bumpy ride. I'm trying to figure out a positive spin on this upcoming alignment, but it hasn't yet materialized.
Sioux Rose
AZIMAT: Alas, another who speaketh the language of the cosmos! It's been lonely in this forum sharing the star cast! By the way, did you catch that Jupiter and Uranus practically both enter holding hands? Normally you may notice Jupiter changes signs most years in January, and indeed it enters Pisces on schedule in January 2010, but it cuts its time short to enter Aries to accompany Uranus, so that the two will be in the fiery realm of violent potentials in June 2010. I have mentioned this date in this forum, even said that if NOTHING notable happens, I'll try to NOT post astrological data.
You are no doubt also aware that Aries (war) naturally opposes Libra (law) and that Saturn will enter Libra this year on Halloween to energetically oppose Uranus-Jupiter. (It's not an exact opposition, off by a few degrees). Yet given the fact Pluto intercepts the axis from Capricorn to square both cardinal signs, THE season change signs on the great cosmic dial, as far as I see it, that cosmic cross is LIT for most of 2010 even if Uranus and Jupiter take a reprieve and retrograde back to 28 Pisces. And notice, too, that when Saturn hit 18-20 Virgo to oppose Uranus at 18-20 Pisces last year, that's when the stock market started tanking. The pair continue to oppose this year and even into 2011. So we are FAR from clear fiscal sailing. And how about Saturn to square Pluto beginning in late October? Every time that duo gets into a hard angle there are MAJOR worldwide financial reverberations. A lot of nations we "do business with" are also cardinal signs, as are major American cities. The rumbling has not yet begun!
I tell people in this forum to scale down, work on balance on the inside, and get ready to rock and roll. Any further suggestions fellow star seer?
Azimat and Sioux Rose, Thank you both for your answers, both good in different ways.
So are we talking about stocking up on a few more canned goods or building a 3000 sq. ft self-contained bomb shelter?
And if you could, please keep the astrological data coming. Anything that adds to our understanding of life is welcome. If there's some extra stuff or something I don't understand, that's better than having nothing at all. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
I wish we could wake up a lot faster. Do we always have to hit absolute bottom before we sober up?
Interesting that culture, beauty, peace and nature are being aggressively destroyed by our cult of fear and terror. I hope there is some of the "antidote" of love left when these vultures are finished.
(What's a Scorpio moon? I am a Scorpio, 11/15, but I think you already guessed that. My husband was born exactly half a year earlier 5/15, and just had his big 50. Does that have anything to do with the Scorpio moon?)
Sioux Rose
Hi, you two are perfect opposites, hopefully operating like the symbol that represents Yin and Yang. That's INTENSE chemistry, but sometimes the inevitable "lock horns" because you do approach life from literally opposite perspectives. (My first husband was an Aquarian and I'm a Leo, that was the opposition, too, and produced two children.)
Go to the website (they are wonderful! Do free chart casting which helped me immeasurably when I toured Asia a few years ago and was CLUELESS to the time changes in places like Sri Lanka): www. Astro.com and log in your birth data. It will reveal not only your moon sign, but ALL positions, even compare charts, etc. Computers have helped the calculations of modern astrologers profoundly!
I just went to the first "free horoscope" site I saw called astrolabe. (I was so excited about the idea that I didn't notice that you had provided a link.)
What a gas! I read some of the things they said about me and just kept saying, Oh my god Oh my god, where's their camera?
The word "willful" kept coming up, which was exactly how my Dad described me as a BABY.
Here are some more excerpts: "...honest and forthright, but a bit offbeat and eccentric, practical and thrifty [a nicer way of saying cheap], A good organizer...
...Once you have decided on a course of action, you are unstoppable. Your emotional actions tend to be extreme, although you try to keep them muted. You are not quick to anger, you do slow burns. And you tend to release your anger as sarcasm or irony. Beware of your tendency to hold grudges and to be vengeful. When you do fight, or release your internal tensions, you do so body and soul -- you become totally passionate and your outbursts are awesome to behold." [I thought my bedroom was private!?!]
But here's where I knew they had a camera somewhere:
"You will explore and idealize the benefits that can accrue from the study of the occult, healing and psychology. You are willing to experiment with substances like drugs in order to push your understanding of your inner being to the extreme."
Wow.
I liked that they just don't kiss your @$$, but tell you some of the negative aspects of your character as well. I do desire self-improvement.
I like any and all input that will help me to understand myself, my place and my possibilities in the world. I would characterize myself as an "introspective extrovert".
My husband and I do butt heads occasionally but it's minimal now after 25+ years of marriage. Some of the stuff in the beginning we only got through because both of us were too stubborn to give up. He's a mechanic, I'm into art and antiques. So I dream big dreams and he brings them to reality. Lucky me! (lucky us)
Thanks so much for recommending this. Fascinating.
Jesus who?
thong-girl
thanks for the laugh, good one.
"I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." (Oct, 2003 -Retired LT GEN William Boykin)
not Tommy Gunn... apologies for the nitpick
quick link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_G._Boykin#Religious_views_and_comments
Sioux Rose
CHUK: You're right! I stand corrected. I'll call upon the "retrograde Mercury" defense as usually my memory has its facts intact.
Retrograde Mercury Defense works for me!
I won't have made the point if I wasn't so wigged out by Boykin. Tommy Frank, he just pisses me off like most hard-ass tough guys will do, but Boykin, as a character, I end up taking a second glance at the shadows after reading up on him.
Like in the Viet Nam War, kill a commie for Christ!
Many years ago, one of my relatives inherited her mother's house in a rural area of far Western Okla. The house was a beautiful piece of fairly well preserved, late 19th century, "Gingerbread" design with hand made details and trim that turned out to be worth more when it was dismantled, than the entire house was appraised at. The reason the house was not 'saved' was simple. The foundation was defective, and had been from the beginning, and had deteriorated over the century to the point that the only thing worth saving was the trim, and fixtures, and the old hand hewn timbers that made up the foundation and frame.
America is the same way. The Bush "era" was simply a reflection of the past, not only the other Bush 'social parasites" (his G-Father a Senator had been censured by the Senate for his dealings with the early Nazis ---and his G-Son --"G.W.Bush" admitted that "G-dad" had robbed Geronimo's grave, for the skull and long bones to be delivered to the Skull and Bones club of Yale)---------And these sleazy chumps were/are the 'best America can offer' for leadership?
The USA is corrupt, and has been from the beginning, in fact when the "founding fathers" (they didn't have any "founding mothers" which may be one of the many problems they have) 'wrote"----"all men are created equal" they were not speaking of "all men" they were referencing the King of England, and their belief that 'they' were 'created equal' to the king---and not those Negros out in the slave quarters who did all the work, while many of those "equal guys" were "knocking off a little brown sugar during the day"--- and by the way, it was common practice to "castrate" the male house slaves (called "house niggers") so that they would find it difficult to "dally" with the "unequal, founding mothers"---now that is planning ahead. And as often is the case, the children who were born from all that "knocking off of brown sugar"----were most often sold as "yellow niggers" which often brought better prices on the "auction block"----what a wonderful world that must have been for Michele Obama's ancestors.
It looks now that much has changed with a "black man" in the "white house'---but he is really ----half black----in reality--the power structure has changed the "color" of the occupants---the Presidency is still simply the highest position----any 'hired hand' can attain. The power people are still the same ones in power as they were then. America enjoys tremendous material wealth, most of which was 'stolen' when they abrogated the many treaties they had signed with the western tribes when they could not beat them at war---they decided to cheat them with the 'words'; and make "Red Niggers"* out of them.
America has such a deeply seated Plutocratic Oligarchy that no manner of degradation in that "ruling elite" will keep them from gaining office in high places----and as with the present ----screwing everything else up for everyone but them. That is exactly the definition of "social parasite"---and America loves their social parasites more than they do their "movie stars'---'sports stars' and 'war heroes' all rolled into one-----------just recently the 'bankers' who created most of the financial problems were given some huge bonus packages--billions---while the Auto Makers were 'allowed to file bankruptcy'----now that is what Americans call 'fare trade'---"you just gotta love it".
So, using the comparative study in the opening of this posting---
America---your foundation is seriously flawed and unless you make the effort and go to the vast expense of correcting it----your "house will sell for scrap"------------
and you will live in a "tent city" of other fallen empires.
Good Luck America, you really need it.
* "Red Nigger" is a term I grew up hearing to describe my people and introduced by "White Okies" after the "land rush" who were mostly displaced " confederate losers" from the south---who these days still take pride in being called "sooners"---the ones who 'cheated' the land rush rules and got there "sooner"
In fact "Hollywood" gave Audie Murphy the term "Red Niggers" in a line, to describe the Plaines Tribes in the Movie---"The Unforgiven"---don't take my word for it---look it up. But "if Oklahoma didn't 'suck', Texas would be an island". Ha Ha Ha Ha
>>America enjoys tremendous material wealth, most of which was 'stolen' when they abrogated the many treaties they had signed with the western tribes when they could not beat them at war---they decided to cheat them with the 'words'; and make "Red Niggers"* out of them.
Cheat them with "words" about sums it up. I tend to think that in the Native American tradition ones "word" was very important as it was the basis of all communications. There was no "written word".
Once the Lawyers got hold of the "word" on paper , then they could bastardize and twist and shape its meaning so that it became something it was not.
You see this today in Courts where an entire case is built around what a "Word" on paper really MEANT when it was written 400 years ago. It my belief that the "Oral tradition" is truer when it comes to what a given word really meant or was intended to mean.
In Canada the Supreme Court actually considered this and ruled that it was the duty of the crown NOT to refer simply to the "word" on a piece of paper to determine the lagality of a case. They ruled that the Oral Tradition of the Natives was equally valid and that the crown had a duty to ensure any reading of the law was favorable to the other party.
This change treaty law significantly in favor of our Aboriginal populations. We still have a ways to go here in Canada but I am hopeful we will see justice done.
NativeSon, what a heartbreaking story. I live in an old house with gingerbread. The foundation is old and battered but will still hold us and our loved ones like a favorite moth-eaten blanket. We think it's worth saving but we know it will take a great deal of hard work and probably the rest of our lives to fix it.
I guess that's how I feel about the Constitution. Whatever the intent of the racist misogynist framers, they still said the right words. If we threw out the extraneous bullshit that has grown up around it, the framework would still be solid. Not perfect, but worth working hard to fix.
I didn't know that a Bush ancestor had stolen Geronimo's real bones. ACK. My thought when Bush ran against Kerry was "300 million citizens and our choice comes down to two guys from the same effing fraternity". I didn't realize how it got its name.
You paint a bleak (but accurate) picture of the colonial household, and I'm sure you noticed that even among blacks of today the "high yellow" color is still preferred. I have previously noted that if Obama was the color of his father he would not be sitting where he is. Also it's been my experience that when raised by whites one thinks white. It's very hard to talk about race without sounding like a racist. But to the extent that it is relevant to our understanding of a person or situation, I believe we should lay it out clearly. I certainly will accept a polite correction if I have misunderstood.
Once I said something like "I haven't seen you in a coon's age" within hearing of one of my son's black friends. He piped right up and said "that's racist!". Nuh-uh, I said, I'm talking about Raccoons. But he insisted, and I certainly wouldn't want to hurt this fine young man's feelings, which he knew, and I resolved not to use that term again. Now if you look up the phrase, it apparently does have to do with raccoons. BUT - he was offended. We take so many things for granted.
I'm not trying to excuse the behavior of the people who called you a red nigger. I'm sure that those words were meant to hurt you. I can't say I have experienced that kind of generalized hatred towards a whole group of people focused on me as an individual. Except for being a girl, that is. Maybe that's pretty close.
I don't know how much it will mean to you coming from a complete stranger, but I am deeply sorry that you had to grow up in this atmosphere. It sounds to me like you have grown into a fine man despite or because of it.
I'm afraid our house has aready been sold for scrap to millions of Chinese peasants. My niece is learning Chinese in High school, the better to understand her creditors, no doubt.
"E Pluribus Unum" now translates to "I've got mine, sucks to be you". We've got to turn that thinking back around.
Thanks for the luck, we need it.
Sioux Rose
ELAINE: I like how you write. For a long time I drove an old Toyota, seats were crackling, windshield had a tiny crack, radio didn't work, had more miles than plenty of space shuttles, but it was MY energy I believe that held it together. And it's that way with houses, too. If a place likes you, if it FEELS the love inside, that energy will help things hold together. Love is the force that coheres.
Years ago I lived with an Aries guy who was very much the epitome of Mars, except although we had our personal wars I was not about to let him rule MY household. I tend to buy clothing at thrift/consignment shops and in those days I hosted a live TV show and liked to dress for it. As a result in the master bedroom, my clothes took up one full closet and half of his. During one of our inflamed periods I went to get a dress only to find an ARMY of red fire ants marching. And they were literally amassed right at the "line" where his clothing met mine. In my worldview that is NOT an accident or coincidence, and I have seen insects do things like this. The guy I date locally has 3 planets in Virgo and he's so meticulous you can eat off his floors. In my children's book that links the signs with insects I chose the industrious black ant for Virgo, and indeed this guy is absolutely HAUNTED by black ants. I told him that he attracts them due to his fastidious compulsiveness. I don't have any black ants. And as for roaches, they always find their ways into the most expensive homes (and that's why I consigned them to signify Cancer, the sign of old money and domestic lifestyles). We humans like to think we're the only species with a mind that can reason, but intelligence is everywhere, the entire universe vibrates with it, for all matter is an extension of Divine Intelligence.
Hi, Sioux Rose. I'm a Virgo too. We have quite a few small, medium, and large black ants that find there way in our house, but that's likely not too strange for an older home. I thought I'd share one thing that I've always thought was a wee bit unusual. When I was younger, I had a girlfriend of several years who was a Pisces. When that fell apart my next lady for a couple years was also Pisces. So, anyway, a year later I met my future wife, also a Pisces. Ok, opposites attract, but still, I've always thought this was a bit more than coincidence. This is one of several reasons why I would never totally dismiss astrology, although as I once mentioned, I'm more scientifically grounded.
Sioux Rose
GREG: UP until about 50 years ago women did not for the most part work outside the home, so the MOON was said to rule women, and men, whose "light" shined in the world, were linked to the sun. Many men still do not OWN the moon, and by that I mean, do not outwardly process emotions, they remain in their MINDS/intellects.
Carl Jung did studies wherein he was able to predict with more than an 80% accuracy rating (I can't find my notes on this) who was married to whom in a pool of about 300 persons. It was based on sun-moon connections. Like Venus and Mars, the love stars, Sun and moon are the cosmic "parent" principles, and their UNION suggests actual chemistry. Years ago I co-authored the book, STARMATES in which I analyze all 144 possible interactions between Venus & Mars. My two daughters who frequently serve as my worst critics both would consult this "oracle" and say, "Mom, it's so right!" It is very plausible that YOUR moon is in Pisces, hence the link to Pisces women.
One of the loves of my life was a Leo with Moon Pisces, and his first wife was a Pisces. The woman who acts as my promoter in the Florida Keys, as it turned out one night as we compared stories of our romantic pasts, was married to a Leo man with Moon Pisces and she, too, is a Pisces. Thus the MOON in a man's chart, as disowned feelings (this comes from Jung) projects quite magnetically upon that female who can act as projection screen for those "lost" feelings. She in other words emotes for him in a way that creates a sense of oneness.
I've charted every intimate relationship I've ever had and studied the common denominators. Apart from comparing planets chart to chart, there is another very powerful tool for compatibility analysis. It's a mathematical means for creating a composite, the energetic entity composed of where each person's planets meet the other's in time and space. Every one of mine (about 7 over the course of the past 30 years) has 2-4 planets in the 7th house of marriage (or union); and when I look at those ties that did not get sexually consummated, always the planets are in other zones. The 5th house also shows up as it's the zone for romantic love. There are 2 men important to me with whom I have sustained long bonds and in both instances, dominant planets occupy the 11th house of friendship.
People say I arrive at my belief in astrology through superstition and have no idea how much time/resources/reading/counseling/trials are involved!
The book sounds like a winner, especially among the 9 year old boy set, as is my grandson. He is fascinated by things that are gross in nature. Bugs are way up there. Blood, guts and death occupy his thoughts a good deal. I try to indulge him by talking about all that in a rather clinical manner, explaining that you don't always die if your arm gets ripped off, that sort of thing. I think kids are naturally interested in death, not in a totally morbid way but in a naturally curious way. Anyway, talking about bugs while teaching astrology is a pretty good idea!
Last winter I was driving to work on a rural, wooded route. It was snowing pretty hard when I left, but as I entered the snow belt it got really serious. I was ascending a long, gradual hill and out of the trees on my left at the top of the hill a buck emerged, and just stood there in the middle of the road looking at me approach him through the super-sized snowflakes. He seemed to be saying "turn around you foolish human, you shouldn't be out here". So I did! I figured if I was wrong, I only missed a day of work. If I was right, who knows what trouble would have been ahead.
One of the first things I said to my husband when we moved here was "this house likes us". It had sat empty for over two years. Within that time, we decided to sell our old house, so we fixed it up and put it on the market. It took a while to sell, during which time we had made another offer on another farm, which fell through. We found this house on a "scenic route" type of drive on the way to look at some other property. Both of our heads whipped aroiund in unison when we whizzed by this house, and we immediately pulled in and looked around. It was freezing cold and all we could do was peep in the windows, but I was hooked. Like a fish. All the while I was floundering about, the house was just waiting for us to get close enough to reel us in. We never would have seen it if it hadn't been winter and the leaves off the trees, which had grown up like a jungle.
I may sound like a nutjob, but it is in these moments that I do truly feel like I am vibrating in tune with the universe.
Sioux Rose
ELAINE: One is enriched by responding to the sign language all around us. So glad that you do! I drove to New York (from Florida) about 15 years ago with both daughters, and there was a place we were passing through on a scenic route in the mountains. We were on our way to Virginia Beach to stay with one of my friends. All of a sudden the most AMAZING feeling came over all three of us, and it was so strong that the next day, while sitting in Virginia Beach at the home of an author who had purchased THE house Edgar Cayce lived in (I was planning to visit the "Association of Research and Enlightenment," a small library that holds ALL of the readings conducted by Edgar Cayce and run by his heirs) I mentioned the sensation that came over my daughters and I. He told me there was an ashram in the mountains and my passing through at sunset had probably coincided with their collective evening prayers.
I also wanted to say to GREG R that Pisces, in my children's book (where insects depict the 12 original paths/Zodiac signs) is the praying mantis. At my Step-Mother's funeral I read a passage from the book. Before my father passed over, a year before my Step-Mom, I was working on this book, and I told my father, a Libra, that the BUTTERFLY would represent his sign. I said I saw a pair dancing up and down the flowers like Ginger Rodgers and Fred Astaire. My father facetiously told me to name the butterflies Bernice and Abe (their names), and I did so. That was the passage I read at the ceremony. The Rabbi was interested in the book and he told me he was a Pisces. He was quite gratified to learn that I had assigned the PRAYING mantis to his sign, as keeper of the Holy writ (and for me that indicates the HOLY man/woman of EVERY religious sect).
As an added prize, or what I term "omen of agreement," when my Step-Mother's casket was lowered into the ground, just then came two dancing butterflies right over the hole... it was PERFECT synchronicity. Made me cry, but I also understood the message.
People have been taught that seeing these unusual associations are just coincidences, which is a way of robbing the Spiritual (and awareness thereof) from everyday events. If we open our minds, we can see that everything around us is speaking to us. Magic lives.
Look on the bright side. When America fails, the native people get their land back.
Good luck.
The Glue That Holds Chaos Together
There is plenty of hippocrisy in the Obama administration, as well as there was in the Bush administration. Obama won the Presidency based on many factors...
1. His ambition and need to serve the greater good of the public.
2. The ambitions of the Democratic Party, and their need for a fresh face.
3. Obamas P.R. machine and their ability to raise money.
4. His mixed race and his ability to appeal to rightwingers as well as moderate progressives.
5. The Bush administration was a criminal enterprize, and their abuses against the poor, the working middle class, and non-caucasoid races...at home and abroad, made Obama seem more accessible to the public.
...keeping all of that in mind, we must remember that Obama is a shrewd politician and a very skilled "chess player". He is a patient man who is cool under pressure while continuing to push his own objectives.
He won't get everything right, but certain situations have improved for some people who were previously unrepresented by our government.
Having stated all of that, Obama has shown that he is a consequentialist who will sacrifice the rights of minorities to benefit the greater number of citizens. His stance on gay rights is ambiguous, and his decision to embrace Rick Warren is appalling. Protecting illegal wiretaps is criminal, and Obama should be outed for that alone. Hiring tax evaders in his cabinet is disgusting.
While Obama is not the progressive that he claims to be, he is certainly better than Bush...but he has many serious faults, all the same.
Until the public demands that we have true progressives, like Kucinich, I fear that we are stuck with real politicians.
The Abu Ghraib pictures will indeed be released...with or without Obama's blessings, and perhaps this will lead to more information on 911...the question is: will we get the information in time to punish the real "evildoers"?
Sioux
NATIVE SON: Accurate post and deeply felt and received (as thus). They now refer to the Iraqis as "Sand Niggers," so the word is still used to denigrate "other."
That's why the president's flip-flop on the release of detainee abuse photos - whatever his motivation - is a fool's errand.
Does Bric-a-Brac Obysmal not feel stupid, does he not feel like a toad and a coward for these constant flip-flops, this constant caving-in to George Wanker Bushism? Or has he bought a long cigarette holder and stands in front of the mirror, head lifted jauntily like FDR in the famous photo and still think of himself as The Man? He will tell you you do not understand how the world works; you are not privy to the reports from the military and intelligence bureaucracies that state clearly and succinctly that the space under your bed where the communists used to hide has now been taken over by terrorists. They do not sleep; they do not eat; they do not go to the bathroom . . . they just lie there under your bed, waiting to kill you in the dead of night. You do not understand this.
Yes Mordechai, your caustic, pointed question is revealing.
Far too often the excuses made by pundits regarding Obama’s flip-flop on policies are reinforcement of the prejudices used to get Obama elected. And Obama doesn’t miss a beat.
Obama and shills prattle: “The world is a complicated, nuanced multi hydrant of uncertainties. But you are too simple to understand, child.”
The appeal of the “Educated, elite, intelligent, thoughtful, cool under pressure….”candidate backfires against the very left and educated elite who championed Milquetoast, XLIV. The left-wing’s Achilles heel was exposed by Obama’s rise and now we should all mock ourselves for believing we are just too sophisticated, too complicated, too understanding of all the pressures, and that it is much too much to ask of the commoners to understand. This mindset is now used against us all. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall….”
…The brow beating of the “ignorant, redneck” continues but now, soon, hopefully, the beating will extend to left wing intellectuals and Academics who’s very idealism are being put to the test. Will we come to terms with reality?
That is to say, let’s all take one across the knuckles rather than be sucked into the following mentality.
so speak the shills “… If they just believe in us and themselves, then they will soon be brought up to our level of comprehension. For we are the light of hope in the sky, the beacon on the hill and they are still too under-educated to understand our benevolent Leaders decisions are for our national security and for the welfare of humanity itself!”
>>And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can't
What happened to "Yes we Can" ?
It is not that Obama can not turn the page on Bush. It is because he WILL not turn the page.
He is a creature of free WILL and he has decided what he WILL do and that more of the same.
The headline should read "Obama WILL not Turn the page on Bush"
barackstar's shoulders are not near broad enough to carry the load, nor is his spine strong enough to help him find strength to carry the load. he won't make it for four years. again, one must question his thought process, or his quest for "change we can believe in."
Rich spoke:
“Once the inspector general's report on the military analysts was rescinded, the Obama Pentagon declared the matter closed. The White House seems to be taking its cues from the Reagan-Bush 41 speechwriter Peggy Noonan. "Sometimes I think just keep walking," she said on ABC's "This Week" as the torture memos surfaced. "Some of life has to be mysterious." Imagine if she'd been at Nuremberg! (¶13)
----Wait, I’ve got a better analogy! What if Nuremberg never existed and the populace was under the impression if Obama was elected, Nuremberg would become a reality! ---
Second Quote:
“Schieffer asked Cheney on "Face the Nation" last Sunday. The former vice president's uncharacteristically stumbling and qualified answer - "I certainly, yeah, have every reason to believe he knew..." - suggests that the Bush White House's once-united front is starting to crack under pressure.” (¶16)
--What’s Rich’s evidence of cracking under pressure, because Cheney “stumbles”? After spending a portion of his argument explaining the use of multimedia and retired generals as PSYOPS against the general public, one would think Rich would be reserved in “interpreting” Dick Cheney’s performances on TV -–
-
And a tidbit of trivia: When Obama was asked what his favorite movie was by Katie Couric he said, "Godfather". Favorite seen, "I've got an offer you can't refuse.".
Let me say what the writer could have said in much fewer words: There is no difference in democrats and republicans. Obama is Bush in black skin.
On Geronimo's bones.
The day that G W Bush admitted that it was Prescott Bush who had taken a train ride to Fort Sill Okla, with the intent to steal the bones of Geronimo he did so on national TV on one of the morning talk shows which excuses itself as "news programing".
I had grown up with Chiricahua Apaches near and around Ft Sill, and I knew the story well. Geronimo never signed a treaty and died a Prisoner of War, at Ft Sill in 1909. When he died the 'indian agent' insisted that he be buried in the cemetery at Ft Sill. This was directly in opposition to the traditional Apache practice. They would dress the dead in their best (when possible) and leave them to be "taken back" by the Grandmother the Earth. The scavengers, who scattered the bones and consumed the flesh were simply "agents of our Grandmother the Earth".
I spoke with several of those old friends a few days after the 'revelation" by the " then Pres. Bush, social parasite, GW". My friends were still laughing and said to me, "aha, we knew all along the scavengers had his bones, we just didn't know which ones ". So the reality is that America's "ruling elite, social parasites, are also grave robbing scavengers"----no surprise to the Native Americans.
I have had no word that the "Skull and Bones Club" has the integrity to even admit that they have those bones on display, much less the integrity to do anything to correct what most Americans would consider an atrocity---if it was one of their relatives or heors or 'patriots'. But then, one must consider that this is the contempt America usually shows for those they cannot defeat except by deceit. So from that point of view, the 'scavengers do have his bones'-------
The laugh is on America, and it continues to be on America for most of the Native Americans I know.
Good Luck America, you really need it.
I usually try to take each person on their own merits as individuals, judging them by their words and actions. But I have to admit the moment I laid eyes on George W. Bush, the bile rose in my throat and I had an overwhelming urge to smack that smarmy face. For 8 years I satisfied myself by drawing horns and a forked tongue on any picture of him (or Cheney) that I could find.
I truly believe that his father, GHW Bush, was in on what happened in Dallas in 1963.
How did this slime come to power? I guess addressing the lowest common denominator reaches a lot of people. The fact that he was vacuous, senseless and conscience-less made a lot of people feel good about themselves. I had an otherwise-sensible friend who voted for Bush (which she later sensibly regretted) because he was "cute". No wonder we're screwed.
You say: America's "ruling elite, social parasites, are also grave robbing scavengers"----; and I think: how convenient for them then that they are so adept at creating the need for more graves.
We can't even let our remains decay into the fertilizer we ought to be. Instead we pump the corpse full of poison to keep it from being of any benefit to any other organisms, stingy to the last drop.
Republicanism: Nuke an atheist, commie, gay baby seal for Jesus.
We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
No, no!
I'll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie
Do ya?
There's nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
The Who - won't get fooled again (1971!)
still as true today, 38 years later.
humanity doesmn't learn shit.
I know it's petty, but one of those Vital Intelligence Briefings Blessed by God ignorantly misquotes the Bible it purports to revere: "A King is not saved by a might army..."
Um.... "Mighty army."
Twits.
Lioness
Nanoo
So Obama doesn't want to release photos because he wants to protect the troops. That's right. Protect the troops from the American people is where all this is heading. I'm so fucking sick of "Support the Troops" and honor their sacrifice. Even much anti-war crowd carries the tune. Why? Pity the troops if you must if they be ignornant. Far too many are only looking for self interest and opportunity, bonus money and college funding. Remember there is no draft like Vietnam.
We are not having any success pointing our anger and dissatifaction towards any administration. Perhaps it's time to withhold honor towards the pawns in this game.
What if there was a war and no one came.
Obama can't turn the page -- because he won't turn the page.
Obama won't forswear the exact same ruling-elite 'corporate financial Empire', that controls our country by hiding behind the facade of its two-party, 'Vichy' sham of democracy, which Bush fronted for.
Obama is just a more amicable 'front-man' for precisely the same Empire.
Here's a most cutting analysis from WSWS's Patrick Martin:
The right-wing course of the Obama administration cannot be explained from the standpoint of the personality of the new occupant of the White House—the “pragmatism” now being hailed by the media—any more than the policies of the Bush administration could be explained simply from the ignorance and backwardness of the previous “commander-in-chief.”
The program of the Obama administration reveals the real social and class interests served by the American state. The United States is ruled by an alliance of Wall Street financiers with the military and intelligence apparatus in Washington. The bankers and generals are the real decision makers in America, not the American people who cast their votes in November 2008 seeking a much different domestic and foreign policy.
Obama’s embrace of the foulest aspects of the Bush administration, repudiating his promises of “change” only a few months after taking office, demonstrates the hollow shell that American democracy has become. Elections mean nothing and decide nothing. The real decisions are made behind the scenes and implemented by the ruling elite’s political frontmen in the White House and the Capitol.
The struggle against the war, social reaction and attacks on democratic rights must take as its starting point that the Obama administration is the enemy of working people in the United States and in the entire world, the instrument of the most rapacious and reactionary ruling class on the planet.
The working class must reject the poisonous illusion that Obama represents some sort of “reform” alternative to the program of the ultra-right.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Frank Rich writes, "If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era ...."
Well, that's a conditional statement that the hopeful still posit. People are still confused over it. However, the intentions of the Obama administration, and the Democratic wing of the business-party duopoly, really aren't hard to fathom.
The point of the Democratic Party leadership is that they claim to be better managers than the Republicans. You can argue that point. What can't be argued is the policies. The two parties simply agree to support certain corporate and class interests. They've got the poor and middle class bailing out the banks, funding illegal and unnecessary wars, shuffling cash to insurance companies that limit their healthcare.
As far as Democratic leaders are concerned, it's just a matter of emphasis and PR. There's no page turning. It's plutocracy vs. you.
Sure, there's no snarling Dick Cheney in the Obama administration, but it never was about personality. Look at the policies. Keep your eye on where the money is going.
I'm surprised at how much corruption people can tolerate. I've been waiting for years, but I don't really see a snapping point. The problem may be that people are kept busy and isolated. I just hope that when the bottom falls out, people will understand this total picture, and do what needs to be done. Will we shake off capitalism, corporatism and plutocracy? It's probably going to take a long time, and lots of blood, before we'll get there.
-TIA