Goodbye and Good Riddance

Olbermann: Bush Presidency in retrospect - Finally!

"Fake" Christians?

From newsvine.com:

What is killing the Republican Party? Well, for one thing, Pretend Christians

The Accused:

Supreme Conservative Republican Evangelical American Moralizers -- S.C.R.E.A.M.

The "Christian" War President

"God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

"This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while."

--George W. Bush

(read full article)

And what about "real" Christians? Where are they in all this?

Bush Administration Tries to Redefine Contraception as Abortion

From The Gavel:

The New York Times reports that the Bush Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services is drafting a rule that would place new restrictions on domestic family planning programs. While current law allows health care providers and professionals to refuse to provide abortions based on their religious beliefs, this provision would threaten the funding of organizations and health facilities if they do not hire people who would refuse to provide birth control and defines abortion so broadly that it would include many types of birth control, including oral contraception.

Speaker Pelosi released the following statement on the Administration’s draft proposal:

If the Administration goes through with this draft proposal, it will launch a dangerous assault on women’s health.

The majority of Americans oppose this out of touch position that redefines contraception as abortion and represents a sustained pattern of the Bush Administration to reject medical and sound science in favor of a misguided ideology that has no place in our government.

I urge the President to reject this policy and join with Democrats to focus on preventing unintended pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion through increasing access to family planning services and access to affordable birth control.

From Congresswoman Lois Capps, Chair of the Democratic Women’s Working Group:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today Congresswoman Lois Capps called on the Bush Administration to stop its misguided effort to restrict access to basic family planning services. According to press reports, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is drafting new rules that would severely restrict women’s health care options while undermining the ability of health care providers to secure funding and provide essential services. It would require all recipients of federal health care funding to sign a written certification that they will not “discriminate” against health care entities who refuse to provide patients with abortions or even birth control.

“Once again, the Bush Administration is carelessly playing partisan politics with women’s health care,” said Capps, a nurse and Vice-Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health. “Time and again this Administration has jeopardized women’s access to essential family planning services for purely ideological reasons. Sound science and responsible public health practices should never be trumped by political ideology. This proposal is unnecessary and would be harmful to women’s health.”

Federal law already protects individuals who prefer to not participate in abortion services and many states have refusal clauses for either individuals or institutions that object to providing or participating in abortions. The Bush Administration proposal goes far beyond those measures and attempts to define abortion services so broadly that it would include many types of birth control, including oral contraception and emergency contraception. Capps and several of her House colleagues will be sending a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services objecting to the draft rule and urging the Administration to reconsider its position.

Capps has worked in the past to stop other efforts by the Bush Administration to restrict access to family planning services and contraception. She was part of the successful efforts to allow over-the-counter sales of Plan B emergency contraception and also to prevent attempts to restrict funding from certain health providers who provide comprehensive family planning services.

Once again the Bush Administration panders to the Christian "right" at the expense of freedom in America. This is truly obscene.

Gorge Bush's Fascist States of America

So after watching Olbermann's latest eloquent rant in which he calls Bush to task for being a fascist, I got to thinking - obviously he's not the first to consider this idea - let's see what other material has been written on the subject. A quick search of the internet turned up a number of sites presenting different views on the subject. I've provided links to some below.

The search also turned up a few feeble attempts to attack Olbermann, but these looked more like preaching to the Bush choir, singing the familiar refrains of their usual hymns, than any substantive argument. As such, I didn't bother to include them here.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to confess I only skimmed these postings - didn't have time to read them in full - but they seemed to be of possible interest. As is typical of internet sites, their quality runs the gamut but they have much to say.

• Old American Century: 14 Points of Fascism
• Old American Century: An Examination of Bush Fascism
  
• bushflash.com: 14 Points
• BushWatch: Bush Fascist Index
• NewPolitics: Is the Bush Administration Fascist?
• SocialistWorker.org: Is George Bush a Fascist?
• EarthSide.com: FISA Reauthorization Reenforces Bush Fascism
  

For further reading, I encourage you to do your own search usng your favorite search engine/s. There're lots more out there than the few I posted here.

Olbermann on FISA & Lessig on Barack vs. Hillary

While not specifically atheistic, two videos worth watching here: one, Keith Olbermann's latest eloquent rant against our erstwhile fascist in chief; the other a reasoned presentation by Lawrence Lessig on the important differences between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

A veto of the FISA bill endangers Americans
Olbermann: The president is demanding immunity for the telecoms yet, he can’t confirm they did anything for which they need to be cleared

Olbermann Special Comment

Lessig on Obama & Clinton

George W. Bush: The Frank Burns of Modern Politics

I came across this little tidbit while searching for something else (of course) but one line from it caught my attention:

"George W. Bush is the Frank Burns of modern politics."

This analogy is right on target and the post, though a few years old now, is still worth a quick read.

Straight Talk from Bill Maher on Conan

"You can't be a rational person six days a week…and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you're drinking the blood of a two thousand year old space god."

The George W. Bush Memorial: A Monument to Ignorance

The George W. Bush Memorial: A Monument to Ignorance

By Mohammed J. Christiansen

WASHINGTON, DC - September 11, 2101

Today we take a moment out of our busy schedules to pause and remember the terrible events that took place on this day in 2001, a century ago. Few are alive today who still remember that day, whether they were in the area of any of the attacks and witnessed them personally, or lost loved ones, or just watched in horror via the various news media.

Today not only marks the anniversary of those tragedies and the tragic loss of life, but the opening salvo in a U.S. Presidency gone terribly wrong. George W. Bush was ushered into office by a Supreme Court decision after an election resulting in a near tie with Democratic candidate Al Gore, amid strong allegations of election tampering in several states and major counting problems in Florida in particular, where Bush’s brother was governor at the time. His presidency began in what appears to have been one of, if not the most corrupted elections in the history of the United States of America. How exactly he was able to remain in office for a second term has been the subject of much conjecture and accusation ever since.

George W. Bush defined himself as a man of Christian “Faith”. True to form, he immediately began working to weaken the separation of church and state, so vital to a strong democratic society. President Bush used his “faith” in lieu of intelligence and reason in making vital decisions that would affect not only the United States but the world at large, thereby dramatically weakening the standing of the United States among other nations, seriously undermining its moral and political leadership. Lacking in basic intelligence and common sense, he surrounded himself with smarter people; yet failed miserably to heed their advice, or worse, pressured them to alter their advice to conform to his “faith-based” agenda. A few who recognized his intellectual frailty, appealed to his “faith” to forward their own pernicious agendas; notably his vice president, the aptly named Dick Cheney.

Mr. Bush was not well read, preferring instead to spend time on his Texas ranch land, “clearing brush”, chain saw in hand. On the international front, his interactions with other world leaders were often juvenile; his ability to distinguish friend from potential foe, dubious at best. Cheney was widely recognized as the intelligence behind his administration; though that intelligence was seldom applied in the best interests of the United States or its people. The incompetence and ineptitude of this administration as a whole is legendary still today.

George W. Bush was often referred to deservedly disrespectfully as “W” (to differentiate him from the prior president and his father, George H. W. Bush), or as “Dubya”, pronouncing the “W” with an imitated Texas accent, or as George Shrub, or George Bush “the lesser”.

Following the events of September 11th, 2001, when it was determined that a radical Islamic group operating under the name Al Qaida was responsible, its leader, Osama bin Laden, once supported by covert US operations in Afghanistan, but since recognized as a terrorist enemy of the west, was identified as the prime target for a response. An Islamic extremist group known as the Taliban was oppressively ruling Afghanistan at the time and, not surprisingly, refused to extradite bin Laden. After token negotiations in the United Nations, a well-intentioned, if largely ineffective international diplomatic organization, the decision was made to declare war on Afghanistan and remove the Taliban from power, paving the way, ostensibly at least, to capturing or killing bin Laden. This initial incursion was carried off relatively smoothly by a “coalition” consisting primarily of US forces but with some token international support. The Taliban was effectively neutralized, and a puppet government installed. Residual Taliban continued to pose a threat, trying to reconstitute their opressive rule. US and multinational forces would remain in theater for years in an effort to combat these extremist forces and maintain some semblance of civil order.

Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding out in rugged territory straddling the border between Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, controlled not by either country, but by tribal forces ensconced there. Bush appealed to the then leader of Pakistan, President, General Pervez Musharraf and hastily forged an alliance in which Pakistani forces were enlisted to try and corral bin Laden and possibly capture him. Pakistan, immersed in a territorial dispute with neighboring India that saw both experimenting with nuclear weapons, now found itself in an important negotiating position with the US and was quick to cooperate or at least present the appearance of cooperation in order that it might gain some leverage. It wasn't until years later, under the administration of Barack Obama, the first US president of African descent, who followed George W. Bush in office, when US forces finally caught up with bin Laden in living in relative comfort inside Pakistan; a confrontation that resulted in his death.

Meanwhile, President George W. Bush, after pressuring the intelligence community to produce what later was exposed as pathetic “evidence” that Saddam Hussein in nearby Iraq had been tangentially involved in the terrorist attacks against the US and was producing so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), ostensibly in preparation for a full-on attack on the United States and/or its interests abroad; the same Saddam Hussein against whom an earlier president, Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush had fought a war and prevailed but failed to “finish the job” and remove him from power, presented that “evidence” to the United Nations through one Colin Powell, who up to that point had been widely viewed as a man of great personal integrity by most of the American public and much of the world for that matter. After deliberations and under great pressure from the Bush administration, the UN eventually issued resolutions making demands of Hussein. Ultimately, this was used as pretext for a war in Iraq, carried off by another “coalition” consisting again predominantly of US forces, with grudging token support from other nations.

Hussein, while certainly no angel, was not the perpetrator of the September 11th attacks and by all accounts, was not in any way involved in them, directly or indirectly. Though he was removed from power and eventually tried in a hastily reconstituted Iraqi court, ostensibly of, by, and on behalf of Iraqis, convicted, and hanged for his crimes against Iraq, Hussein, through his certainly destructive program of cash “reward” payments made to the families of suicide bombers killing innocent civilians in Israel, was only a relatively minor player in the global terrorism threat on which was founded Bush’s new doctrine of preemptive action. The Iraq war, primarily a realization of the personal agendas of Bush and his Vice President Cheney, was a tremendous drain on the US national budget and cost thousands of American lives – more in fact than the September 11th attack, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, most of whom were probably innocent civilians.

Bush invoked and far exceeded constitutional wartime powers to expand the power of the Executive branch, much to the detriment of the strength of the Constitution and of the United States’ form of constitutional democracy itself. During his tenure, he installed members of the Supreme Court, including a Chief Justice, tipping the balance from a progressive and rationally minded court to one with strong Christian “conservative” leanings. The damage to the American way of life resulting from this change alone is still being tallied. Wherever he had the opportunity, Bush used his religious beliefs as an excuse to undo decades of progress in civil rights and freedoms, medical research, and other areas. The Bush administration regularly interfered with the due course of scientific research, and pressured various governmental agencies to alter their reports away from reality in support of his beliefs. He and his administration effectively vandalized the United States of America, its government and its constitution, undermining the very foundations of what had been the greatest national experiment in the history of human society. The republican party suffered as well, allowing its right-wing religious constituency to influence run amok, fielding more than a few rank idiots as vice presidential and presidential candidates, and generally showing itself to be misaligned with the interests of the nation at large. Not that the democrats had it right either, but they were at least not so inflexible and dogmatic.

It is not, however, merely the ignorance of this failed president that makes his uncharacteristically modest if well maintained memorial a monument to ignorance; nor is it just the crimes and misdoings of his administration. It is the ignorance, intolerance, and bigotry of the religious multitudes, Christian and Muslim in particular, so focused on their myths and dogma. It is the ignorance of a huge portion of the American public, religious and otherwise, so complacent in the supposed checks and balances designed to protect against just such a criminal administration as to somehow overlook the fact that with the republican-dominated congress and hand picked Supreme Court, the administration in its first term had nearly completely dismantled those very safeguards and twisted the knife in the wound during the early part of its second. Only midway through his second term did the American public finally dislodge the republican congressional majority, and then only by the narrowest of margins.

American citizens’ direct and continual involvement in the public discourse, not merely in the electoral process, an essential ingredient of the American System, had been abdicated by the citizenry at large, probably beginning with the growth of the broadcast media into the position of dominant source of public information, effectively turning the great democratic conversation into a one-way presentation, excluding the input of the citizenry at large. Direct citizen involvement, the safeguard of first and last resort, was critical to the healthy pursuit of American Democracy. This involvement had already almost completely evaporated by the time of the George W. Bush Administration; yet this alarming situation was hardly even recognized by the public at large, lured into complacency by a media and political status quo that had by then been reduced to little more than a marketing campaign, selling politicians much the way of any other product: clothing, hygiene products, food.

Ignorant Americans stood by and watched their very way of life systematically undermined by a presidential administration reminiscent of nothing so much as the early days of the Third Reich, but in America, where such things were not supposed to happen. This was the administration that the founding fathers feared. This was the administration against which the various safeguards were installed in the first place, all those many years ago. Yet Ignorant Americans stood by and let it happen.

Ignorant Muslims world wide said nothing when extremists from among their ranks perpetrated horrible crimes against humanity, usually aimed deliberately at innocent civilians including children, under the aegis of the dogma of their supposedly peaceful religion.

Ignorant Christians the world over, but in the United States in particular, reveled in the delusion that events were unfolding that looked eerily similar to events they’d been brainwashed to expect leading up to the “second coming” of their imagined messiah.

None of these prophesied events came to pass of course. After years of brutal and bloody war, reasonable minds began to emerge, publishing in traditional media such as books, and new electronic media such as the Internet, the first global electronic information network, an omnidirectional medium in which everyone could participate worldwide. Eventually, the jumpstarted conversation resumed, this time with input not only from within the United States, but worldwide, from all sides of the issues. Eventually, reason reasserted itself, leading in time to a more rational and more peaceful public discourse and society as a whole began to heal.

On this hundredth anniversary of the tragedy that served as the trigger for this sad chain of events, it is for all the citizens of the Planet Earth to remember and study this and other atrocities throughout our history; to recognize in ourselves the tendency toward, and actively and aggressively work to prevent another one; to combat the forces of dogma wherever they may show their faces; to teach our children the time-tested methods of critical thinking, analysis, and introspection, and the imperative to apply them; to work for the strength of our society for the benefit of all the inhabitants of this tiny blue planet we call home.

Mohammed Judas Christiansen is Managing editor of the Jerusalem Global News System. His commentaries are featured regularly in this forum.