Quote of the Day!

Frank J. Ranelli

"Hope is the crucial message that America must begin to hear and believe in again. For hope is the mortal enemy of fear; and fear cannot succeed in the solidarity of inspired hope."

Bush one point away from tying worst-ever approval rating for a president

BY FRANK J. RANELLI


76-percent of Americans now believe President Bush to be irrelevant and deem we should “throw the bums out" this next election cycle!


According to the latest Reuters/Zogby poll, President Bush’s approval rating now stands at a near historic low of 24-percent. Only Richard Nixon – shortly before he resigned in disgrace over Watergate in August of 1974 – had a more dismal approval rating of 23-percent.

Furthermore, 66-percent of this nation thinks we are heading in the wrong direction as a country and say the mood of the nation is “bleak.”

The survey of 991 adults included a strong indication of just how dismayed Americans are with the current government. Would-be-voters described their attitude towards Bush and Congress as simply “throw the bums out” and that Bush is now entirely “irrelevant.”

America’s acrid taste for its government was further illustrated by marks given on the Bush administration’s foreign policy stance, of which, only 18-percent approve of and gave it high marks. Adding, “Americans are giving up on this government."

Longtime pollster John Zogby summed up American’s soured outlook for their government by stating, "They tell us (Zogby) they want action on health care, education, the war and immigration, but they don't believe they are going to get it."

Bush administration was either incompetent or is guilty of malfeasance

Frank J. Ranelli


George Bush has been likely caught in another lie, another cover up, and another scandal. One that may debunk his entire justifications for violating FISA, or worse yet, show that the 9/11 attacks were not prevented due to gross incompetence!

Bush simply can't have it both ways.

Impeachment, not immunity, or blank war checks,without aggressive congressional checks and balances, is more warranted than ever now. As first reported on Daily Kos, and summarized by Bob Fertik on Democrats.com, the Bush administration has been pursuing dragnet data mining operations well in advance of September 11, 2001. Of course, once again, Bush has been mendacious and totally erroneous about when the illegal warrantless wiretapping began and for what purpose.

Quoting Mr. Fertik,

“This week Joseph Nacchio, the former CEO of Qwest, revealed the Bush Administration started muscling telephone companies to wiretap American citizens without a warrant on Feb. 27, 2001. When Qwest refused, they were cut out of government contracts and Nacchio was prosecuted for insider trading.

So we now know Bush began violating FISA and the 4th Amendment just 1 month after stealing the White House. And since the 9/11 attack was 7 months later, Bush has lied about 9/11 being the justification for warrantless wiretapping for the past two years.”

Therefore, Bush either lied about the program’s intended purpose or the program failed to prevent the 9/11 attacks! At this point, Joseph Nacchio’s revelation strongly suggests that the Bush administration was either grossly incompetent on September 11, 2001, which negates any and all claims that the warrantless wiretapping has, or continues to, prevent any terrorists attacks at all. Otherwise, it has been involved in a Watergate-like abuse of power for nefarious reasons over the past six-plus years.

Impeachment, not future elections, is the only way to halt this runaway exploitation of claimed plenary power by President Bush.

Quote of the Day!

Frank J. Ranelli


"When we as a nation presumably allow war and degenerate crimes against humanity to be prioritized and sanctioned over the health or our posterity, then we as a nation have not only lost our footing, but have slipped beneath the very foundation of what this nation once emblemized."

Al Gore Awarded Nobel Peace Prize!

PRESS RELEASE

THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE FOR 2007

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.

Former Vice President Al Gore Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today, along with a United Nations panel that monitors climate change, for their work educating the world about global warming and advocating for political action to control it.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee characterized Gore as "the single individual who has done the most" to convince world governments and leaders that climate change is real, is caused by human activity, and poses a grave threat.

By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.

-Oslo, 12 October 2007

Time Magazine reports:

"An overwhelming majority of Americans - 90% of Democrats, 80% of independents, 60% of Republicans - now say they favor "immediate action" to confront the climate crisis." (That's an average of 84-percent of Americans who now believe global warming is real, anthropogenic in cause and requires our "immediate attention.")

The White House Response:

"Bush has no plans to call Gore."

Bush and the modern GOP: Same party, same problems

Frank J Ranelli


A number of articles recently portray President Bush as someone who strayed from the path of true conservatism. On the contrary, he’s the very model of a modern movement conservative. Cutting taxes while waging wars, fiscal irresponsibility, general incompetence, disenfranchising minority groups, and disdain for the rule of law. Paul Krugman shows - citing contemporary history examples - that the GOP is the “same old party.”

Krugman, of the NY Times, compares numerous similarities within the GOP - that he terms the “modern movement conservative” - over the last fifty years and how Bush is only the latest heir to this odious and democracy destabilizing form of political governing.

Read Paul Krugman's full expose´ detailing why we should not be shocked by the Bush administration’s authoritarianism and why naïve republican voters may need to ask, “My God, what have we done?”

The Fading of America: Failing our children, funding a president's war

By FRANK J. RANELLI


George W. Bush, just days after heretically eulogizing Monday as "Child Health Day", turned around silently and glibly vetoed a bill to aid millions of children through subsidized healthcare. The insincerity is more than real; it is now potentially lethal to millions of vulnerable children.

Part V of the "American Democracy in Crisis" series.


Is anyone else feeling the intense hypocrisy, the thick, cold heartlessness of denying the cries of powerless and defenseless children? George W. Bush, just days after heretically eulogizing Monday, October 1, 2007, as "Child Health Day", turned around quietly and glibly vetoed a bill to aid millions of low-income children through subsidized healthcare. No cameras or media were present for this brutal act of callous cruelty that was carried out like a stealthy thief under the cover of night. The insincerity is more than real; it is now potentially lethal to millions of vulnerable children and their struggling families.

The nauseating duplicity does not sufficiently affix what has been perpetrated by Bush in vetoing this bill. The outright gall to offer empty, rank rhetoric and then fiendishly denying healthcare for millions of low-income children falls beyond deceit and lands on the edge of treachery.

This "President in perfidy" is a lifeless sociopath who posses the audacity to veto a bill -- one in support of expanding an essential program to aid millions of children -- yet will look Congress dead in the eye and demand $190 billion more to fund endless aggression, death, mayhem and global hegemony. All of this madness is at the cost of the American taxpayer's wallet to fund continually senseless war, and the cost of so many children losing their healthcare is the loss of our collective conscience to demand morally what is principled and right.

Reciting dismal polls, writing scathing articles, acts of civil disobedience, demonstrations for redresses, outrage, disgust, contempt, disdain, and letters to Congress are simply no longer enough. America, as a unified whole, must set forth and take swift action to end the reign of a tyrannical presidency gone dreadfully awry.

When we as a nation presumably allow war and degenerate crimes against humanity to be prioritized and sanctioned over the health or our posterity, then we as a nation have not only lost our footing, but have slipped beneath the very foundation of what this nation once emblemized. No longer are we the nation that claims to ask the world, "Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free." We have become the nation of the "coalition of cowards" and the "coterie of complicit" that finds rejecting over 4 million children access to healthcare as "politics as usual." All it takes, as it has been said, for evil to take root, is for good and decent men and woman to stand by and do nothing. Right now, at this very moment, we are doing just that -- nothing.

We are a nation of 303 million people now. Yet, somehow, we have allowed 536 diminutive-minded, self-centered, grotesquely egotistic individuals to commandeer our values, our principles, and now our nerve to stand and fight for the wellbeing of helpless kids. We huddle in angst; we sigh in antipathy, and then quietly permit 535 subversive members of our very own Congress -- and one demonic, inhumane megalomaniacal maniac -- to brush our booming voices aside with the single, sickening sweep of a pen.

Saying, "enough!" is simply no longer enough. Massive malfeasance must be fought with radical new measures to combat and strike at the heart of the malignancy that has inflicted the entire body of our democracy now. If we as a nation are to exist beyond the ephemeral moment in time, then the time has arisen to take a stand, and to stand against the Bush doctrine and its merciless machinery of cold-blooded coronation of a tyrant!

At the behest of all that is sane, reasoned, and vital to fight for the survival of our sovereign nation and its future, we must demand, be forever resolute, and ensure that George W. Bush is forced to resign immediately. Forget the idea of impeachment. Anything short of George Bush immediately resigning will codify into law and write his reprehensible deeds into the historical annuls of precedence for all future Presidents to prey upon.

If we are to survive as a nation, and to resemble again anything close to that which the founders of this country envisioned, then we must accept America is in grave peril. And this time the casualties are not only unwitting soldiers unjustly caught in a deadly game of Risk, but that which we cherish and have fought for the most for over 200 years in existence. Children, above all, are the hopes, dreams, and future of our nation. If we cannot muster a modicum of decency, without bitter, partisan divisiveness, then hope will certainly fade for countless children, as it will fade for America, too.

Congressman Duncan Hunter’s Message to Universities, “Be Patriotic, or Else!”

BY FRANK J. RANELLI


Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter brazenly attacks the world of academia, insistent on legislating an Orwellian doctrine and desires to return McCarthyism and blind nationalism to governing by censoring the thoughts of the American people.


Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a textbook authoritarian and uncritical sycophant for the Bush administration, has been consistently aiding rabid Republicans in reaching new party nadirs. Now we can add xenophobic, blind nationalist, and adversary to dissent to his growing and disturbing resume of Orwellian penchants.

Hunter has torn a page out of Orwell’s, 1984, and Bradbury’s, Fahrenheit 451, and pasted them neatly and expediently together. The Congressman has introduced legislation, H.R. 3675, with the expressed stated purpose to, “prohibit Federal grants to or contracts with Columbia University.” Mr. Hunter believes quite vehemently, by virtue of his pending bill, that by cutting off all federal funding to Columbia University will, “restore patriotism to university campuses.”

The motivation behind this brazen act of McCarthyism is self-evident. Congressman Duncan Hunter disagrees with Columbia University’s invitation that allowed the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to speak to its students. The implications behind such an anti-democratic proposed law -- that we should deny disparate views from being heard, by way of banning unfettered access to those a few may disagree with -- are preposterous and lethal to independent thought. Such a bill is also purely antithetical to the very foundations of the free and open society we rightly enjoy.

Moreover, Hunter’s overt attempt at stemming dissent, using euphemistic vernacular such as “restore patriotism” more than tidily falls under the umbrella of fascist ideologies that aim to suppress academia and critical-thought. Independent judgment, as evident by Mr. Hunter’s proposed edict, is independent of, and irreconcilable with, a person or establishment’s patriotism. Hunter’s delusional and quite obtuse observation is that one’s love of their country must include the love of their government and its current policies.

This is more than repudiation by Congressman Hunter of the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; this is an assault on all dissension by proxy of right-wing, American chauvinism. Hunter’s deceptive and veiled syntax -- which feebly attempts to hide the insidious nature of such a proposal -- fails to prevent the obvious conclusion that this is an effort at unadulterated censorship via threats of cutting off subsidy to schools.

The paranoia in Hunter’s bill is palpable. The Orwellian overtones are conspicuous. There is more than a minor allusion to Bradbury’s book-burning society that believes ignorance and compliance are compulsory to stability. Nuances are to be shunned, vagaries are shirked, and violators of American reverence are to be punished.

Hunter’s perverse veneration -- that by law only people and ideas by which the U.S. government consents is acceptable -- is a twisted, conflated effort of draconian law and totalitarian governing. Using dissembling language that cloaks the true intent, Hunter ineptly tries to define “patriotism” as utter loyalty to a Big Brother government.

Wholly advocating derailment of enlightenment through diverse educational experiences, the Congressman from California, in an act of sad irony, invokes the USA Patriot Act to make his case for denying universities federal funding. Under Section 3(a) of his Restore Patriotism to University Campuses Act, Hunter draws together in a loose, but covert fashion that by allowing Ahmadinejad to speak to college students is, “Permitting State Terrorist Access to Campuses.”

This type of legislative, theatrical dogma plays on the “giving aid and comfort to the enemy” Bush theme. One could logically conclude that Hunter’s next legislative act includes a draft to name all those present during Ahmadinejad’s speech are to be labeled as “enemy combatants.”

This is more than a disingenuous and dangerous attempt to monopolize the truth and to sequester informed debate. Hunter’s unscrupulous act of accusing anyone who does not agree with the Congressman as disloyal is blatant censorship. The bill Hunter is proposing more than smacks of the “Red Scare”, Joe McCarthy era. Instead, Hunter has reawakened McCarthyism and has simply replaced the fear of Communism with Terrorism as the scapegoat enemy of consternation.

In Duncan Hunter’s illusionary view, touchstones of American democracy, such as freedom of speech, the right to assemble, and even liberty itself, must take a back seat to unwavering obedience to the state and marshal in hyper-nationalism. Anyone who dares to fall out of line, ceases to goose-step, or questions Big Brother are undesirable seditious contemptibles, who must suffer the wrath of an autocratic and unforgiving government.

Fortunately, the House referred this loathsome bill to the Committee on Education and Labor, where it will likely die an ignoble death. Mr. Hunter has every right to his opinion, and every American has the right to dissent from that opinion. However, Congressman Hunter, in his single quest for a complacent and Orwellian society, would be wise to ponder the notion that no entity or person has a patent on patriotism.


Correspondent Lindsay D. Riggs contributed to this article.

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Source: H.R. 3675: To prohibit Federal grants to or contracts with Columbia University, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-3675