The Man in the Mirror

Peacenik talked to several people about the death of Michael Jackson. Both at the pub on Thursday and at a barbecue on Saturday. The reactions were mixed. Some people admitted to liking his music, his old music. Everyone agreed he was weird. But no one suggested he was a symbol of America's decline.

But Kunstler makes a pretty strong case that Jackson's decline...both financially and mentally and morally.....mirrors America's. And the fact that the similarities are so striking is very scary. America has become the nation equivalent of the person Michael Jackson was. What happens when a nation drops dead?

By James Howard Kunstler

As America entered the horse latitudes of summer, befogged in a muffling stillness on deceptively calm seas, we were distracted for a while by visions of a pale death angel moonwalking across the deck of collective consciousness. Eerie parallels resound between the sordid demise of pop singer Michael Jackson and the fate of the nation.

Like the United States, Michael Jackson was spectacularly bankrupt, reportedly in the range of $800-million, which is rather a lot for an individual. Had he lived on a few more years, he might have qualified for his own TARP program -- another piece of expensive dead-weight down in the economy's bilges -- since it is our established policy now to throw immense sums of so-called "money" at gigantic failing enterprises (while millions of ordinary citizens wash overboard, without so much as a life-preserver). Anyway, Michael Jackson was on the receiving end of one huge bank loan after another long after his pattern of profligacy was set and obvious. They threw money at him for the same reason that the federal government throws money at entities like CitiBank: the desperate hope that some miracle will allow debt servicing to resume. Michael could burn through $50-million in half a year. It didn't seem to affect his credibility as a borrower. When his heart stopped last week, he was living in a Hollywood mansion that rented for several hundred thousand dollars a month. You wonder how the landlord cashed those checks.

Read on...

Bush Calls on France for Help

War without end

by Paul Craig Roberts

"We support the troops!" That's the excuse the Democrats have given for continuing to fund Bush's aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan. But, of course, war funding doesn't support the troops. War funding supports an evil machine that chews up and spits out the lives and well-being of the troops, along with that of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan, men, women, and children. War funding supports Bush's aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and his continuing efforts to occupy both countries in order to turn them into puppet states. Polls show that a majority of the troops and their families do not support Bush's aggression. The fact that Ron Paul's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination received the lion's share of contributions from military families also underlines the great divide between the troops and those who would "support" them by keeping them in Iraq and Afghanistan. What all those ribbon decals on the back of SUVs proclaiming "support the troops" really mean is support Bush's wars of aggression against Muslims. According to the Washington Post, Bush's $3.1 trillion federal budget provides no funding for his proposal in his State of the Union address to permit military members to transfer their unused education benefits to family members. Bush got applause for his nationally televised words, but the troops and their families got no money in his budget. Government analysts calculate the education benefits would cost in the range of $1-2 billion annually – the cost of funding the war for two days. The only money that Bush and Congress want to give the troops is what is required to keep them at war. Everyone has read the horror stories of the lack of care for the physically and emotionally wounded troops who have made it back from Iraq. In contrast, to fund Bush's war, Bush and Congress have already spent in out-of-pocket and future costs at least $1,000 billion. Every American can draw up lists of better uses of this immense fortune than blowing up a country's infrastructure and killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens. Nothing good whatsoever has been accomplished by Bush's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. It was obvious to anyone with a lick of sense in 2002, six months prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq on March 18, 2003, that an invasion would be a strategic blunder. William S. Lind, myself, and others made that prediction in October 2002. Three years later, Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, vindicated us by declaring Bush's invasion of Iraq to be "the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history." If the head of the NSA doesn't know a "strategic disaster" when he sees one, who does? Full Article... punditman says...Do read on, dear reader. My favourite line in the Full Article link above: "Bush started a war, and now to avoid losing it Bush pays Iraqis not to attack U.S. troops!" Yep, that's insanity.

Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps - by Naomi Wolf

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.

punditman says:
You may think this headline to be a tad alarmist. That is, until you read the article and reflect on how far down the road to tyranny the Bushies have gone. (NOTE: The above link is an excerpt from a book, so it is a bit long but well worth the read). The trend is not restricted to America because the so-called war on terror is global in scope and timeless in length. This leaves citizens roughly two choices:
1) Continue to live in denial of encroaching fascism.
2) Work together to halt it before it is too late.