Libby- On A Roll

Au Printemps

No Winston Churchill He

Bush supporters like to compare Bush to Winston Churchill. When you've recovered from your laughter at this, we'll look at what the real Winston Churchill said.

In 1943, when Home Secretary Morrison decided to release the British fascist Moselys, Churchill, in a memo to the Home Secretary, supported this decision with these words: "The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgement by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments...It is only when extreme danger to the state can be pleaded that this power may be temporarily assumed by the Executive, and even so its working must be interpreted with the utmost vigilance by a Free Parliament....As the danger passes, persons so imprisoned... should be released...Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilisation." (Appendix F of Volume V of Winston S Churchill's The Second World War)

That's the real Winston Churchill- not a man determined to seize all power by the issuing of secret ultimatums suspending habeus corpus on the flimsiest of pretexts, but a man determined that any power granted by a Free Parliament (his emphasis) for irregular detention should be always monitored by that Free Parliament, and repealed, not when all danger had passed, but when the extreme danger had passed.

Winston Churchill- a man for the ages. George Bush- not so much.

Enough Already

The P-I today has another article saying we shouldn't turn to the proven advantages of socialized medicine, we should trust in innovation, competition, and the American Way- the same blather we've been listening to in every sphere for forty years.

Let's be perfectly clear- this doesn't work. Our lifespan is falling, gas prices are rising, the economy is failing, even the end of the world is on the horizon of our American Way.

Enough already. Stop with the cleverness. I don't even want to hear it. There are parts of the world where they're getting it right, and that's who we need to copy. What we've been doing isn't just failing a few people, it's a juggernaut of self-satisfaction on a collision course with reality. When you hear the bell, it means one thing, and one thing only- ALL ASTERN, FULL REVERSE.

Well, what we're hearing now is the bell.

The Crisis

Recent American history has certainly looked a lot like Nazi Germany. When you add to the concentration camps, domestic spying, torture, and naked aggression on flimsy pretexts, the actual familial linkage of George Bush to the Hitler regime, it's tempting to think in that wise.

But lately I've been seeing more pre-war Japan. Pre-war Japan was driven by a mix of the desire to preside over a Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, a need for the markets of China, and a sort of societal psychosis channeled over decades by the influence and example of foreign powers into the Army and Navy.

The crisis, however, came with the Oil Embargo of 1941, when the British, Dutch, and Americans shut off Japan's oil supplies. Japan began using her strategic reserves and in the pressure of events became totally unhinged and attacked the US.

Maybe now you can see the similarities too.

Sick Humour

You know you're in mighty sick territory when George Bush welcomes global warming, because it makes it possible to drill for oil in areas that once were covered by the Arctic ice.

Psychiatrists should probably be adding new chapters to the DSMs to describe the insanity of Bush and his enablers. The old categories of "florid psychosis" hardly seem adequate to the end of the world as we know it.

Tempus Puget

In All Probability...

...any history of the world, written in the late twenty-first century, by one of the few survivors of global warming, and intended to be enshrined in a time capsule for whoever comes in the future to read, will begin:

"When, after the 'election' of George Bush in the US in the year 2000, it became evident that the US would not participate to limit global warming, China also turned away from Kyoto Treaty goals, and carbon emissions shot upwards..."

If It's Friday...

They Lived In The Past

The "plan", as Bush and Cheney saw it, was simple- invade Iraq, install a gangster as a dictator, sign some sweetheart oil contracts, and pump oil happily ever after. Wasn't that the way the US had always done things?

That's right, these morons are so stupid that they don't even realize that's not the way the US has always done things- and I'm not being an idealist here, just observing that installing a dictator to sign sweetheart contracts has always been more complicated than the circle jerk of Bush and friends realized.

Yes, these "leaders" are so lazy, self-centered, spoiled, arrogant, nasty, greedy- and that's not all- that they just didn't realize how much work was done by the little people they despise to install and maintain oligarchs like the Shah of Iran, Pinochet, etc.

They couldn't have done it without boobus Americanus, the big-bellied breed leaning forward to swill up the propaganda blaring from the "news channel", and feeling they were doing their part when they slapped a magnetic ribbon on their Fartmobile, tied a flag to the antenna, and headed for the mall, shouting patriotic responses to the drivel of Limbaugh on their radio.

It is of them we sing, as we celebrate this day the biggest policy mistake, made by the worst president, for the basest of motives, using the most criminal of techniques, in the history of the US.