Monday, July 28, 2008

Some friendly philosophy


some thoughts from my buddy Amos

The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts life.
Life is not lost by dying, life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it
The best way to stop smoking is to carry wet matches
When i was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant. I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when i got to 21, i was astonished a how much the old man had learned in 7 years
The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts life.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Senator Hollings Is Right It's all about Israel

By Justin Raimondo


Isn't it funny how politicians have to wait until just before going into retirement to say what they really think about Israel and its influence over Washington policymakers?

Congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Indiana), formerly the senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, waited until after announcing his departure from Congress to attend a symposium on the Middle East where he noted that his congressional colleagues are "not even-handed" when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "for political reasons." Rep. Hamilton went on to say:

"Israeli leaders understand our system very, very well [and] because they understand our system they can exploit it."

Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-Alabama) earned the ire of Tel Aviv's lobby by opposing "emergency aid" to Israel. In a speech on the House floor, a clearly angered Callahan lashed out at the Amen Corner:

"I am going to offer amendments as we go through the bill to strike all of the aid to Israel that was included here without any request from Israel, without any request from the administration, without any requests from anybody. But someone within this beltway decided since we were going to have a supplemental bill, they were going to get some pork in it for Israel."

Please note that Callahan did this only after announcing his retirement plans. Now Senator Ernest Hollings, whose legendary disdain for political correctness has gotten him in trouble before, has joined the ranks of the belatedly honest, and said what a few others – such as Michael Kinsley, Pat Buchanan, and myself – have said all along. In an op-ed piece first published in the Charleston Post and Courier, the senator, having just announced his retirement, took up the question of why are we in Iraq, and came up with this answer:

"Now everyone knows what was not the cause. Even President Bush acknowledges that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Listing the 45 countries where al-Qaida was operating on September 11 (70 cells in the U.S.), the State Department did not list Iraq. Richard Clarke, in Against All Enemies, tells how the United States had not received any threat of terrorism for 10 years from Saddam at the time of our invasion. … Of course there were no weapons of mass destruction. Israel's intelligence, Mossad, knows what's going on in Iraq. They are the best. They have to know. Israel's survival depends on knowing. Israel long since would have taken us to the weapons of mass destruction if there were any or if they had been removed. With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush's policy to secure Israel."

Hollings goes on to identify "a domino school of thought that the way to guarantee Israel's security is to spread democracy in the area," naming deputy Defense Secretary and chickenhawk-in-chief Paul Wolfowitz, neoconservative hardliner and Francophile Richard Perle, and former psychiatrist and deranged warmonger Charles Krauthammer. He furthermore goes on to savage George W. Bush, whose sole thought since taking office, according to Hollings, has been reelection, with a radical tilt toward Israel by U.S. policymakers a key part of the game plan:

"Spreading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats. You don't come to town and announce your Israel policy is to invade Iraq. But George W. Bush, as stated by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and others, started laying the groundwork to invade Iraq days after inauguration. And, without any Iraq connection to 9/11, within weeks he had the Pentagon outlining a plan to invade Iraq. He was determined."

Hollings has been roundly denounced and his remarks attributed to "anti-Semitism" by Israel's amen corner in the U.S. But there is nothing secret about the open effort by the Republican party to capture the Jewish vote. The whole idea of politics, after all, is mobilizing various interest groups around a particular candidate and building a majority coalition. Pandering to ethnic blocs is a grand American political tradition: it comes with being a nation of immigrants, which is something we're all supposed to glory in. Every ethnic group of any numerical significance is pandered to, in some way, and politicians are always making ethnic-based appeals. The Republican party's outreach to the Hispanic community is pursued to the point where our President often bursts into long stretches of Spanish (perhaps because it makes him sound less inarticulate, at least to those who have no idea what he's saying). Why shouldn't he reach out to Jewish voters, too?

By calling attention to the obvious, Senator Hollings stands condemned as an "anti-Semite."

I'll tell you what else is obvious: the benefits accrued to Israel on account of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The annexation of significant portions of the West Bank, and now the attack on Gaza, have both received what amounts to the imprimatur of an American President. While Israeli "advisors" teach their American pupils the basics of running an occupation, the next target on Ariel Sharon's wish list, Syria, is hit with sanctions, and accusations that Damascus is aiding the Iraqi insurgency.

Hollings is absolutely on the mark about the real reasons for this war, even if his speculation about a GOP effort to go after the Jewish vote misses the real point. What Bush is after isn't primarily the Jewish voter, but holding onto and expanding the much larger "born again" Christian fundamentalist bloc, a significant proportion of which is fanatically devoted to Israel – even over and above American interests – for wacky theological reasons. When Hollings called Prime Minister Sharon "the Bull Connor of Israel," it wasn't the Jewish vote Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) was after when he demanded that Hollings apologize. South Carolina is Pat Robertson country, where the dispensationalist Christian heresy has deep roots – and even deeper political implications when it comes to this administration's foreign policy.

"Certainly, discussing and questioning policy is the right and duty of all responsible leaders. But when the debate veers into anti-Jewish stereotyping, it is tantamount to scapegoating and an appeal to ethnic hatred," says Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.

But why shouldn't America's satellites avidly seek to manipulate and even control the Imperial Hegemon? After all, we hold their fate in our hands. That's what being an Empire is all about. Without American military and economic support, Israel could not and would not exist: one false move on the part of Washington, and the Jewish state would flounder and fall on the rocks of demographic reality and rising Arab nationalism.

Special interest groups of all ethnic and religious persuasions do their best to decisively influence U.S. foreign policy: why should Jews (and their "born again" Christian allies) be any different?

"This is reminiscent," raves Foxman, "of age-old, anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government." If one so much as looks cross-eyed at Ariel Sharon, Abe Foxman is reminded of Kristallnacht, but the point is that, if I were Foxman I wouldn't pull this "age-old canard" business too often. Instead of fighting anti-Semitism, Foxman's weird insistence on re-imagining half-forgotten anti-Jewish caricatures can only encourage it. But, then again, if anti-Semitism went out of business, so would Foxman's organization. It's funny how that works….

Jonah Goldberg, who is obviously engaged in some kind of contest with Foxman to see who can do the best Al Sharpton imitation, notes the names Wolfowitz, Perle, and Krauthammer, and whines:

"Funny how the only names are Jewish. What? Jeanne Kirkpatrick doesn't count? Jack Kemp? Bill Bennett? I wonder why."

Perhaps because Kirkpatrick is a figure from another era, and only played a supporting role in the propaganda campaign that lied us into war. Jack Kemp was never a major figure, and his views on Iraq seem decidedly ambivalent, at best. As for Blackjack Bill, his reputation would certainly not have encouraged Americans to take his advice and gamble on committing our troops to a risky occupation, and so, understandably, he didn't take center stage in the prewar debate.

Wolfowitz, on the other hand, is not only a high government official but also the intellectual author of this administration's policy of preemptive global hegemony. As Richard Clarke and Bob Woodward reveal, the Deputy Secretary of Defense was the earliest and most persistent advocate of war with Iraq: Wolfowitz wanted to take Baghdad before bothering with Kabul.

As for the legendary Richard Perle, the neocon "Prince of Darkness," his style – and the numerous scandals in which he's been embroiled, all of them very high profile and exceptionally smarmy – ensures his prominence. A spotlight seems to follow him about, like a shadow.

Is it really necessary to point out the reasons for Krauthammer's prominence? Surely his was one of the loudest and most militant voices raised in support of this war, and certainly his position on the op-ed page of the Washington Post automatically lends his words a certain weight. In concert with Bill Safire and David Brooks over at the New York Times, Krauthammer constitutes a crucially important link in the neocon Iron Triangle of the American punditocracy.

If all these names are Jewish, then so what? Just as many Jews, if not more, figure prominently in the antiwar camp. Goldberg, being a clever chap, realizes this, and so falls back on trying to switch the blame from the War Party to the Bushies:

"Fritz Hollings is defending himself saying that he can provide quotes from Jews in America and Israel to support his position. I'm sure he can to some extent. But so what? His charge isn't that Jews support democracy in the Middle East to secure Israel's security (and because they support democracy). His charge is that Bush went to war to placate those Jews. The quotes he needs to prove his point aren't from Jews in Tel Aviv, they're from White House officials in Washington."

If the idea is to prove Washington's willingness to go along with Ariel Sharon in spite of American interests, how about quotes from the President of the United States and U.S. government officials in response to Israel's outright annexation of parts of the West Bank, and the IDF's current rampage through Gaza? Having endorsed the Israeli Lebensraum (marketed to world opinion as a "withdrawal," albeit a partial one), our President couldn't bring himself to condemn an Israeli attack on a peaceful Palestinian demonstration that killed 10 children and wounded 50, aside from urging "restraint." Bush has consistently referred to Israel's "right of self-defense" to excuse each and every bloody incursion into Palestinian territory, no matter how brutal – and no matter how much it ratcheted up tensions between the American army of occupation and its sullen Iraqi charges.

As Israel rampages through the Holy Land with unholy determination to dominate and drive out any who stand in her way, and the promise of a pipeline from Iraq's oil fields in Mosul to Haifa comes closer to reality, the key question, cui bono? – who benefits? – demands an answer. Last year, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, now Finance Minister, told a group of British investors:

"It won't be long when you will see Iraqi oil flowing to Haifa. It is just a matter of time until the pipeline is reconstituted and Iraqi oil will flow to the Mediterranean."

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, now a partner in Cannistraro Associates, writes in the current issue of The American Conservative that "There are rumors that the deservedly moribund pipeline project to send Iraqi oil to Haifa may again be on the table."

But the oil is just the gravy on the meatloaf, or perhaps the dessert that comes after the main course, which is Israel's improved geopolitical position as a result of the Iraq war. Syria is outflanked, and now under U.S. sanctions, while the rest of the Arab world is psychologically demoralized, politically destabilized, and militarily defeated. Bush and Sharon – or, from the Arab viewpoint, Sharon and Bush – are masters of all they survey. Arab democrats, secular nationalists, and moderates in the region are more isolated, and even more powerless, than ever: only Osama bin Laden's followers are overjoyed to see that their leader's warning of an invasion of "Crusaders and Zionists" has proved prescient.

What irks American patriots, not a few conservatives among them, is that Sharon and the Israelis have shown no restraint: they are utterly heedless of the effect of their policies on the ground in Iraq. We undertook a vast project of social and political engineering in Iraq largely on Israel's behalf, only to see that they don't feel the least bit obligated to spare us the consequences of their actions. Surely such ingratitude contributes to rising resentment against the catalytic role of Israel's supporters – both in and out of government – in dragging us into Iraq.

Senator Hollings is right: this war was, and still is, all about protecting Israel's security and plans for expansion – at our expense. Not surprisingly, the catcalls are coming from the same people who say any reference to "neoconservatives" – up until recently a word that had entered the American political lexicon (sometime in the 1970s) without a hint of ethnic overtones – is really a "code word" for Jews. What they hope to accomplish is to close down all debate on a question the War Party would just as soon not see raised. But that question – why are we in Iraq? – is one that urgently requires explaining. Jonah Goldberg may persist in applying rules of political correctness that he would never otherwise invoke, but I would urge critics of Israel to take some solace in the words of John Derbyshire, Goldberg's colleague at National Review, who invokes what he calls:

"Derbyshire's First Law": Anything – anything whatsoever – that a Gentile says about Jews or Israel will be taken as rabidly antisemitic by somebody, somewhere."

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

Speaking of neocons trying to shut down all debate: I see that Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and formerly of the Office of Special Plans, is attributing rising resentment against the neocons for pushing us into this war to a grand conspiracy involving The Nation, Lyndon LaRouche, Louis Farrakhan, and – me. He writes:

"Louis Farrakhan subsequently adopted the theme. 'All of the agenda of the neo-conservatives was to bring President Bush in line with Israel and use the power of the American military to destroy the real and perceived enemies of Israel,' said Farrakhan on May 3, 2004. Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimondo have pursued the theme in the pages of The American Conservative."

So, let's see if I get this straight: Karen is a LaRouchie, I'm a follower of Farrakhan (hey, that's a sun-tan!), and so is Pat Buchanan. What's next? I can hardly wait for the revelation that Ernest Hollings is really a former prison guard at Treblinka, or, more likely, Martin Bormann himself.

What drugs were they doing in the Office of Special Plans, anyway? Put down the crack pipe, Rubin, and check yourself into a rehab program.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

China Earthquake caused by HAARP weapon 引发地震的证据

Prove of HAARP was used to cause the big earthquake in China.
World War III is coming... borealis

A comment from a Japanese, id named fonett:
"why sichuan? cause theres china's largest natural gas field, SARS was a biological weapon by these same people.
why they do it? start ww3 essence is to kill off most of the human race, manage less people in the new world order plan. it's all starting right now with basic food shortages, spreading disease, and war. to present day there are still groups of white men believe racial superiority, they are the true criminals, they are crazy; believe it's destiny and god's will to do this.
olympics must be hold, wish china have successful olympics. i am japanese, sincerely support... go china!"
and i have to add sichuan is china's most populous province, and where china's nuclear research center and site are.
Prove of HAARP was used to cause the big earthquake in China.

HAARP info

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ecLwVgvvTvU


Monday, July 07, 2008

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney
________________________________________

I've Had Enough

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."
Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?
I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.
My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to—as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.
Who Are These Guys, Anyway?
Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them—or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.
And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.
Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?
The Test of a Leader
I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points—not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.
So, here's my C list:
A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.
If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.
A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President—the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't.
Leadership is all about managing change—whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.
A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.
A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths—for what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.
A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.
If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.
To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION—a fire in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President—four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.
It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.
A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.
A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.
You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know—Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush.
Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world—and I like it here."
I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.
The Biggest C is Crisis
Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.
On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day—and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.
That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq—a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.
A Hell of a Mess
So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.
But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.
Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.
Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.
Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen—and more important, what are we going to do about it?
Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.
I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?
Had Enough?
Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises—the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.

Saturday, July 05, 2008

George Galloway On Iran

Telling it like it is. This man is simply awesome.