Collision

[Political Waves]

That's what happens when delusion meets reality, and it's armed. I've got a very large view of the events of the past days, and it's almost painful to bring myself down into the details. If you want the chronology of what happened at Fort Hood, go over to Huffy and pick up links here and here. Eric is on top of the astrology, here. My concerns are less about what happened there than the conclusions we'll jump to because we're just So Damned Brainwashed. I could have said Dim, but I'm giving us the benefit of the doubt.

That was yesterdays event, and today it's joined by multiple-murder at the hands of a disgruntled former employee, an engineer, in a high-rise in Orlando -- the details continue to trickle in. FOX News has been screaming that the name of the deranged and conflicted shooter, an Army psychiatrist, at Fort Hood should have been the tip off for all this American murder: Nidal Malik Hasan. It will no doubt change a word or two to spew the same over the Orlando affair and its shooter: Jason Rodriguez.

If we're going to mourn today, let's shed tears for the realization that our nation is steeped in, and promotes, both physical death as in militarism and empirism ... and psychic vampirism, as in corporate control that gives us soul-death by a thousand cuts in advertisement, economic bleeding and political myth. The idiocy is that those who are squealing like stuck pigs that we need to turn the clock back to better times are really asking to go back to ignorance about their own social structure; but there are turning points beyond which you can never return.

Six years ago, I wrote that waking up was hard to do. How much shaking will it take? These people, gone deadly, aren't foreigner's smuggling in covert plans to destroy us nor are they 'impure' American's, minimum-wage earners or low-life's as FOX would have us think -- they're our own. Their unique American experience has brought them to this pass and we diminish that conversation with simple platitudes and fear of 'strangers' at our own peril.

We are a nation wounded, we've done it to ourselves -- and we are colliding with that truth, now, in ways too obvious to cover over by further delusion and hatespeak. Unless we inoculate ourselves against this epidemic of violence by both examining its cause and our infatuation with it, it will only get worse. Any nation that is only concerned that lives blow up 'over there' rather than here, has some serious growth ahead -- and any political party that can't even DISCUSS gun control without spitting pea soup IS the problem rather than merely a part of it. It's time to put the childish away. Can we? We shall see.

I don't believe in coincidence, so whatever happened yesterday and today gives us opportunity to see ourselves differently; it's our ongoing process of awakening but it's painful. It would go faster if we'd cooperate with it; here's my weekly encouragement.

Below, more truth ... the only serum that, given in large enough doses, can clear poisoned minds. And, to lighten the mood, you'll find a bit of it here with Al Gore and Stephen Colbert ... and here with Jon Stewart doing a brilliant riff on the Beckerwood. You'll find a couple of brief reads on the Texas murders below and the rest are political ins/outs of the day.

 

The Bonus is an article by former-Fundy Frank Schaeffer and another by ever-courageous Greg Palast, giving us the truth about Kool Aid, both religious and nationalistic.

Take it easy this weekend; and keep your Wings crossed for the healthcare vote; if you haven't hammered your Congressperson, DO IT NOW! And if you adored ... as I did ... West Wing, you'll love this YouTube.

Think Peace and affirm Clarity for us all,

 
Jude


Pentagon's Hasan Nightmare
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
November 6, 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/pentagons-hasan-nightmare_b_348348.html

The following item that appeared in the April 22, 2009 edition of Army Times was about as routine as can be when it comes to Army business. It read "Orders authorizing May promotions for the following active-component commissioned officers and warrant officers have been issued by Human Resources Command." The name buried among the dozens who got promotions was newly commissioned Major Nidal Malik Hasan. From the promotion, it seemed that Hasan was moving up the army food chain.

So the always tormenting question in the aftermath of a murder rampage is why did the alleged shooter snap? The question is even more tormenting when the alleged shooter is an officer and an educated professional who to all outward purposes seemed to have found a stable home in the army. The one answer so far is that Hasan didn't like American war involvement and was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan.

The war opposition and the prospect of being dumped on a battleground thousands of miles away may well have triggered Hasan's alleged violent, deranged, whacked out moment of mass murder. His alleged mass murder spree is a deadly aberration. The stress that may have ignited it isn't. U.S. Army men and women are killing themselves at a skyrocketing rate.

At Ft. Hood, 75 service persons have killed themselves since the Iraq war began in 2003. This year, nine so far have killed themselves. In 2008, the military suicide numbers went through the roof. More soldiers killed themselves than at any time since the Pentagon began tracking suicide deaths nearly thirty years ago. The twenty-plus suicides of soldiers last January topped the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan that month.

The single greatest factor in the mounting self-induced soldier body count is the wars, and the stress of either fighting them, the prospect of fighting them, and the miserable lack of support service personnel often receive before and after their tour of duty. The military brass has only belatedly recognized the problem of stress related violence as a deadly problem that can wreck the morale of fighting men and women and pose a deadly threat to other service personnel. The Army's answer is to shoot or pump the legions of on edge service personnel with pills, shots, scatter shot counseling and therapy, and piece meal officer training. The Army is in the midst of a five year study with the revealing label, Battlemind to identify factors that affect the mental and behavioral well being of soldiers. None of the Pentagon's efforts has stemmed the rising tide of soldiers murdering themselves. And now as Hasan has allegedly shown, an off the edge soldier murdering other American soldiers. The army's main concern as always is to keep the bodies moving as quickly as possible to bases, new assignments, deployments, and, of course, the battlefields. Hasan was one of those bodies.

The most frightening thing about his alleged rampage is that he was not an army enlistee in his late teens or early twenties. He was a trained medical officer, a specialist, and a career officer. He's now a frightening example of the army's miserable failure to get a handle on the nightmare stress related violence that has claimed so many of its own. Add to the lengthening list of casualties the dozen killed and thirty or more wounded at Ft. Hood. ++


Hasan May Have Said ‘Allahu Akbar.’ And?
Spencer Ackerman, Washington Independent
11/6/09
http://washingtonindependent.com/66914/hasan-may-have-said-allahu-akbar-and

Ft. Hood’s commander, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, said today that there are unconfirmed reports that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shouted “God is great” in Arabic before opening fire yesterday at the Army base. Again: we will soon be able to hear Hasan’s motivations in his own words. Even if he shouted such a thing, it would no more reflect on his co-religionists than does the fanatic who murdered Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller and who happened to consider himself a devout Christian does on his co-religionists. It’s worth remembering that nearly all mass shootings in this country are committed by white men. Do we have a white-man problem on our hands?

Again, this is a teachable moment. Already I’m seeing conservative writers on Twitter start to set themselves up as the real victims of PC hysteria for daring to oh-so-bravely point out that Hasan is a Muslim Muslim Muslim. Let’s not let anyone get away with euphemism or prejudice. Those in the media who insist on pointing out that Hasan is a Muslim should have to account for why, exactly, they find that characteristic so significant. Chances are they can’t and won’t — because few people want to face up to their own bigotry, and fewer still will want to do so in public. ++


Ex-Blue Cross spokesman says health insurance ‘worst product in American history’
Raw Story
Friday, November 6th, 2009
http://rawstory.com/2009/11/exblue-cross-spokesman-health-insurance-worst-product-american-history/

Teaming with the liberal Brave New Films, a former Blue Cross pitchman is now pitching against Blue Cross.

Andy Cobb, who once tried to sell Floridians on a Blue Cross health insurance plan, says he's fed up with the industry.

"I was a spokesman for BlueCross and Blueshield of Florida," Cobb says. "Call me a spokesjerk. People who make money for buying things you don't need. And we're telling you lies."

"They, by which I mean I, make money by standing in the way of reform," Cobb says in the ad, which appears as a spoof of something like a freecreditreport.com ad. "It's time for change."

"That's why I'm calling on leaders from the spokesjerk industry," Cobb continues. "The freecreditreport.com guy. The Shamwow dude. And Senator Bill Nelson, recipient of big money from insurance companies -- to lead us. To walk away from their cash cows and tell American people the truth. ++


GOP Senator Tom Coburn using secret hold to block bill on veterans benefits Joe Sudbay, Americablog
11/04/2009
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
http://www.americablog.com/2009/11/gop-senator-tom-coburn-using-secret.html

We always knew "support the troops" didn't really mean anything to Republicans. It was a slogan, nothing more. And, that's being confirmed by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) who is using the anonymous "hold" procedure in the Senate to prevent action on a bill designed to support veterans. Usually, these "holds" are secret, but the veterans have outed Coburn:

Thirteen major military and veterans groups have joined forces to try to force one senator — Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — to release a hold that he has placed on a major veterans benefits bill.

Coburn has been identified by Senate aides as the lawmaker preventing consideration of S 1963, the Veterans’ Caregiver and Omnibus Health Benefits Act of 2009, by using an informal but legal practice of putting a hold on a bill.

Maybe the Democrats should file a cloture motion on S. 1963 to force the GOP caucus to choose between Coburn and the vets. ++


Now Baucus Wants to Mess With the Climate Bill
Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones
Wed October 28, 2009
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/dont-forget-max-factor

With Lindsey Graham offering support for climate legislation and other Republicans making sympathetic noises too, the prospects for a climate bill had been brightening recently. Or at least they were—until Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) made it clear on Tuesday that he won't vote for the Senate proposal in its current form.

Up until now, Baucus has been too preoccupied with health care reform to devote much time to climate issues. But his ability to gum up the works is significant. He's a member of Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works committee, which will mark up the bill and must approve the measure before it can be considered by the wider Senate. As chair of the Finance Committee, Baucus has also indicated that he plans to assert jurisdiction over how the bill allocates emissions permits.

In the health care debate, Baucus delayed the bill in the Finance Committee for months, watering it down in an effort to win the support of the panel's Republicans. In the end  only one (Olympia Snowe) voted for it. Now, he's apparently proposing a similar process for the climate bill. "I support passing common-sense climate legislation that reduces greenhouse gas emissions while protecting our economy. And the key word in that sentence is 'passing,'" said Baucus at the Environment and Public Works Committee's first hearing on the measure. He questioned whether the bill as written "will lead us closer to or further away" from that goal.

Boxer's committee was expected to pass the legislation with relatively little trouble—the panel is much more progressive on environmental matters than Rep. Henry Waxman's Energy and Commerce Committee, which took the lead in the House. But now Baucus is arguing that a significant number of Senate moderates share his views—and wants to cater to their concerns before the bill even comes before other committees like the agriculture panel which are expected to water down its provisions. "We cannot afford a first step that takes us further away from an achievable consensus on common-sense climate change," Baucus said "We could build that consensus here in this committee. If we don't, we risk wasting another month, another year, another Congress, without taking a step forward into our future."

In particular, Baucus listed "serious reservations" about the bill's near-term emissions reduction target, which aims to cut emissions 20 percent by 2020. That's already a lower target than climate scientists say is necessary—and is easily attainable given the fact that emissions have already declined in the recession. Baucus was also displeased that the bill recognizes the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act. And he hinted at more parochial concerns as well, like his home state's agriculture and coal sectors. "Montana, with our resource-based agriculture and tourism economies, cannot afford the unmitigated impacts of climate change," he said. "But we also cannot afford the unmitigated effects of climate-change legislation."

There is one bright spot: Because Democrats on the Environment and Public Works committee have a 12-7 majority, they could move the bill forward without Baucus or his fellow moderate on the panel, Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), who has also expressed reservations. (That still woudn't stop Baucus from holding the bill up in the Finance Committee later, though.) At Tuesday's hearing Boxer indicated that she's in no mood for funny business. When Ohio Republican George Voinovich complained that her bill isn't bipartisan, Boxer rertorted that climate change isn't either. "Global warming isn't waiting for who's a Democrat or who's a Republican," Boxer said. "Either we're going to deal with this problem, or we're not."


bonus


TALIBAN = 9/11?? Afghanistan by Hypnosis
Greg Palast for Zeek.net
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
http://www.gregpalast.com/taliban-911-afghanistan-by-hypnosis/

On September 11, 2001, my office building, the World Trade Center, was attacked by al Qaeda, a murder cult of Saudi Arabians, funded by Saudi Arabians. And so, in response to the Saudis' attack, America invaded ... Afghanistan. Like, HUH?

And here we go again. New York Times headline last Friday: "Pakistani Army, In Its Campaign In Taliban Stronghold, Finds A Hint Of 9/11."

Google it and you'll find the Times report repeated and amplified 5,785 times more.

Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.

Your eyelids are getting heavy. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.

It's the latest hit from the same crew that brought you Saddam = 9/11 and its twin chant, Saddam = WMD, Dick Cheney's chimerical tropes which the New York Times' Judith Miller happily channeled to the paper's front page.

And they're at it again.

Every war begins with a lie. In addition to Saddam = WMD, I'm old enough to remember the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the war in Vietnam, based on a fictional Vietnamese gunboat attack on our Navy. (White House recordings have Lyndon Johnson gloating privately, "Hell, those damn stupid [US] sailors were just shooting at flying fish.")

In the Glorious War against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the lie is thus: al Qaeda is "based" in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. If we don't fight the wily Taliban, as the British once fought the wily Pathan, al Qaeda will attack America again from Talibanistan.

The latest Taliban=9/11 fantasy is a yarn spun wildly outward from the finding of a passport of an al Qaeda flunky who worked with suicide pilot Mohammed Atta in the same mountain area where, years later, a Taliban group operated. It's a stretch, but when you want to sell a war, it will do.

But selling the re-invasion of Afghanistan requires a repetition of Lie #1: that the original attack on the World Trade towers and the Pentagon were planned from Afghanistan's and Pakistan's mountains with the connivance of the Taliban.

It's not true, of course. The September 11 attack was neither organized nor directed from Afghanistan by the Taliban. In fact, as our BBC Report found, it was clear that the attack on my friends and co-workers was planned and carried out by al Qaeda operations in Falls Church, Virginia; Paris, France; Sarasota, Florida; Hamburg, Germany;— and, I repeat, funded and manned from Saudi Arabia. Neither the Sunshine State nor the Aryan namesake of the original beef patty sandwich were, nor are they now, convenient targets for a revenge attack by the 101st Airborne.

And revenge was what it was and remains: on September 11 the skunks hit us and we, goddamnit, were going to HIT BACK. ANYONE. SOMEONE. So we hit the odious, and conveniently weak, Taliban, who'd, undeniably, given refuge to killer Osama bin Laden. Though let us not forget that Osama’s safe passage from the Sudan to Afghanistan was initially encouraged by the US government.

Today, we continue to throw our soldiers' bodies into Afghanistan, and our drones’ rockets into Pakistan, to deny al Qaeda the supposed base from which to strike us again.

The media is eating it up and swallowing it whole. For example, CNN quotes a Pakistani from the Afghan border area, "Probably your next 9/11 is going to be from Swat."

That's not true either, of course: In the extraordinarily unlikely event Osama remains in the "caves of Tora Bora" (not where multi-millionaires with kidney disease tend to linger), any conceivable attack will be planned, funded and organized from comfy hotel rooms in Paris, Germany and Dubai as is the habit of these well-heeled hellions.

The truth is, we're not in Afghanistan to stop al Qaeda's US attackers, because they weren't "based" there in the first place, and their leaders are not there now.

So, why are we now re-invading Afghanistan? Beats me. I just hope our President will give us a hint that doesn’t involve some cockamamie fairytale about 9/11 and al Qaeda.

Now, please don't get me wrong: the Taliban are monsters. If you have any doubt, I suggest you read progressive journalist Michael Griffin's masterful history of the Taliban, Reaping the Whirlwind. (Published in early 2001, Griffin presciently warned against the US policy of placating the Taliban.)

Undeniably, the Taliban gave sanctuary to bin Laden, but that does not make the Taliban guilty of planning and participating in the 9/11 attack. However, the Taliban's innocence in the 9/11 massacre does not wash their hands of the blood of Afghans, particularly Shia and Sufi Muslims, whom the Taliban have tortured, raped and murdered.

I can't say I shed tears for the Taliban when, after my office towers fell, US troops ended their sharia dictatorship. And, honestly, there's a case to be made that rocketing more Taliban, really nasty cutthroats that they are, is a laudable exercise. But let's not pretend it has anything to do with preventing another 9/11.

And that's the danger. As the poet T.S. Eliot warned,

"The last temptation is the greatest treason
To do the right thing for the wrong reason."

Taliban = 9/11? Innocents, by the thousands and thousands, have paid and will pay in blood for this treasonous falsehood. ++


Frank Schaeffer: I'm Now a 'Liberal' Because I'm a Conservative
Frank Schaeffer, BradBlog
11/4/2009
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7499

People ask me why I'm a progressive these days and "changed sides" from being a conservative.  I didn't change sides.

I grew up in a fundamentalist missionary family that in the 1970s and 80s morphed into my father's activity as one of the founders of the Religious Right. We would hobnob with Republican leaders from Ronald Reagan to Gerald Ford and the Bush family, Jack Kemp and many others. One day it dawned on me that the far right of the Republican Party --- in other words its base --- actually hates America.

The Religious Right reveled in rising crime statistics, "family breakdown" statistics, failing public schools and so forth. As I explain in my book Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism), if crime started going down, or public school test results started going up --- without the country "turning back to Jesus" --- then that would prove that somehow "we" were wrong.

We wanted our country to fail because it had "turned away" from what we believed to be true.

Combined with the fact that we began to lose parts of the culture war, when it came to other Americans beginning to recognize gay rights, expanding women's rights, abortion rights and such, the Religious Right and the Republican Party infected gun-toting America with a chip on its shoulder about a mile wide. This led to the myth that "they" (fill in the blank, gays, Jews, blacks, liberals --- whatever) are "taking away our country from 'us'"...

"Conservative" means that you believe it's right to legalize torture, but reject health care for all.

These days to be a conservative means that you hate the United States government elected by the people; believe that if millions of citizens are out of work that it's their own fault and that the rest of the community should not help them by spending tax dollars; think that Sarah-believes-in-casting-out-demons-before-she-ran-for-governorship-Palin speaks for you. To be a conservative means you believe that healthcare reform will lead to "death panels"; that the president of the United States is not a "real American"; that a university education is a dangerous thing; that Americans who live in big cities are less American than those who live in small towns; that brown people, blacks, progressive whites, gays, public school teachers, Hispanics, immigrants, are somehow conspiring to subvert the "real America" with a "gay agenda" or a "Muslim agenda" or at least the browning of "our" white America.

In other words to be a conservative today is to be an anti-American, nihilistic libertarian know-nothing who believes in unregulated consumerism and the theology of dominion, and the Rapture that many conservatives also subscribe to along with such 'facts' as that Obama is the - literal! - Antichrist.
In other words to be a conservative today is to be an anti-American, nihilistic libertarian know-nothing who believes in unregulated consumerism and the theology of dominion, and the Rapture that many conservatives also subscribe to along with such "facts" as that Obama is the --- literal! --- Antichrist.

Other than trying to stop women from having abortions and fighting the whole world, our "terrorist enemies", in other words everyone "not like us", conservatism today is nothing more than a pent up reaction against everything "we" don't understand --- like art, literature, government, history, geography, diversity, how people get to be gay, black or female... things like that.

Conservatism today is actually not for anything. It is just against everyone but "us" and a few like us bound together by an alternative reality, otherwise known as Fox/NRA/Beck/Palin/Jesus's Return--"News."

The irony is that conservatives used to wrap themselves in the American flag and belonging to a cause built on higher ideals than pure selfishness and individual choice. Patriotism was based on principle, not fear and anger. Conservatism led by people such as the late William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater and others had its feet firmly planted in what it regarded as the reality-based community as opposed to liberal wishful thinking about progress coming from government, human nature, etc.

The problem for the conservative movement --- hence the Republican Party --- is that the us in "us" was never more narrowly defined.

No one said it openly, in fact it was denied, but it really amounted to we Real Americans boiling down to mostly uneducated white people, dumb enough to believe things such as Sarah Palin's barefaced lies about Obama consorting with terrorists, and/or, post the Obama election, conspiring to unleash "death panels" on unsuspecting elderly and/or handicapped Americans while turning us into a "Communist state" as everyone knows Hitler did to Germany, that other "communist country" famous right up there with Canada and the UK for killing its sick, tired and poor.

What is the conservative movement today, and/or the Republican Party?

It's about as far away from conservatism as it can get. It is a party ready to trash its own country in support of nihilistic, selfish market-driven "values" the very opposite of conservative values of family, community and stability. It is in fact what conservatives of the 60s said the hippies were: selfish brats with no sense of responsibility to anyone. It's also a party of armed revolution not so subtly egging on its lunatic fringe to commit violence. It applauds white rubes who show up at public meetings carrying loaded assault weapons "to make a point" and signs reminiscent of Timothy McVeigh and his famous T-shirt; "the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants" and the like are held up by Murdoch/Beck/Fox and company --- those profiteers off the unregulated market --- as paragons of good sense and free enterprise and gun rights.

To be an actual conservative today is to be a progressive Democrat.

An actual conservative believes in community and accountability to a moral tradition that puts the greater good of others ahead of oneself. Take a look at the way the very conservative communities of New England's Puritan towns were arranged around the village green known as "the commons."

Shared public spaces were owned by the community, for instance grazing land, and town meetinghouses. People were obliged to show up and participate in the fledgling democracy and vote. Taxes were dispensed by committees for charitable purposes. A duty to government and obligations placed on citizens by other citizens --- when it came to putting the life of the community ahead of the self --- were the norm. The free-market and individual enterprise were strictly curtailed based on not just the needs of the community but, when it came to things like banking and lending, the Old Testament teachings that frowned on "usury" --- in other words banks making more money than they should from ordinary people-- were upheld.

President Obama is a conservative. He believes in the brotherhood of all people. He believes in the freedom of the individual to make moral decisions. He believes that sexuality, religion and skin color should not define us but the content of our characters should define us. He believes that we are our brother's keeper. He believes in loyalty to community and country --- in other words patriotism, whether that's the honor of serving in the military or the honor of paying taxes to support not just national defense but how we treat what the Bible calls the least amongst us.

People ask me why I'm a progressive these days and "changed sides" from being a conservative. I didn't change sides.

What changed --- ironically with my father's and my nefarious "help!" --- was a conservative movement that became an enclave for hate-filled ignorance, anti-American sentiment and nihilistic individualism. What changed was my bare faced self deception as I profited from the God business and the far right even though I knew better. Today I am an independent voter, and an Obama supporter, and a progressive because I am a conservative. ++


"I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington ... I'm asking you to believe in yours."
~ Barack Obama

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