Truth and Reason Will Not Be Tolerated

Ron Paul was booed at the Hispanic debate for suggesting that U.S. policies create negative situations in countries like Venezuela and Cuba, and for suggesting that even though Hugo Chavez is a difficult man to deal with, it is incumbent upon us to attempt to have friendly relations and a diplomatic dialogue with him anyway.

It Gets Worse

Continuing its recent spree of criminality in the alleged pursuit of law enforcement, the Bush Justice Department formally advised a British Court last week that it is fully entitled to kidnap foreigners (i.e., Britons) off the street around the world and carry them off to secret prisons. The claim was formerly thought to relate to terrorists. But no longer. Now the Bush Justice Department asserts the right to kidnap anyone it suspects of a crime.

  Harpers

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

No Clearer Metaphor

If you haven't yet found a story that depicts exactly what is wrong with the U.S. - nay, human - approach to human relations or how to change the world, I point you to W3IAI's Hiding in the Easter Basket.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Welcome to Sydney, Mr. Bush

Segregation

At Forward Operating Base Warhorse in Iraq, It's 1960.

Here at this searing, dusty U.S. military base about four miles west of Baqouba, Iraqis — including interpreters who walk the same foot patrols and sleep in the same tents as U.S. troops — must use segregated bathrooms.

Another sign, in a dining hall, warns Iraqis and "third-country nationals" that they have just one hour for breakfast, lunch or dinner. American troops get three hours. Iraqis say they sometimes wait as long as 45 minutes in hot lines to get inside the chow hall, leaving just 15 minutes to get their food and eat it.

  McClatchy

Tell me again...why do they hate us?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

George and Gordon, Sitting in a Tree....

...K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

And the man I listened to shares that same sense of morality, and that same sense of obligation -- not to free others, but to create the conditions so others can realize the blessings of freedom. We can't impose freedom, but we can eliminate roadblocks to freedom, and to allow free societies to develop. And it's really hard work, you know? There's a lot of cynics saying, how dare they; how dare they impose U.S. or Great British values. And what I found was a man who understands that these aren't Great British and U.S. values, these are universal values.

  WH Press Release

Obviously not, George.

Everything is really hard work for George. He wants you to know he's working hard. And here, imagine all the pictures you've seen of him goofing around, and generally acting a fool, and recall all the times you've read about how he takes more vacations that just about anybody in the whole wide universe.

I'm not feeling very confident about Gordon Brown, either.

Adam, you asked about the single-most important bilateral relationship for Britain, and I think President Bush has answered that, that that is the view of the United States, as well. Call it the special relationship; call it, as Churchill did, the joint inheritance; call it when we meet as a form of homecoming, as President Reagan did -- then you see the strength of this relationship, as I've said, is not just built on the shared problems that we have to deal with together, or on the shared history that is built, as President Bush has just said, on shared values. And these are values that he rightly says are universal. They're the belief in the dignity of the individual, the freedom and liberty that we can bring to the world, and a belief that everyone -- everyone -- should have the chance of opportunity.

That's pretty big hurdle there - not even an opportunity, just the chance of opportunity.

The "special relationship" continues. We are, after all, the one colony that continued Great Britain's imperial dreams.

India + Nuclear Weapons, AOK

Washington has negotiated that nuclear deal with India.

The pact, approved by India's cabinet on Wednesday, would allow India access to U.S. nuclear fuel and equipment for the first time in 30 years, even though New Delhi refused to join non-proliferation pacts and tested nuclear weapons.

[...]

[T]he United States has agreed to help ensure continued delivery of nuclear fuel to India even if Washington halts cooperation, as required by law, if New Delhi tests another nuclear weapon -- something Indian and U.S. officials say is very likely.

[...]

According to congressional sources and experts, the United States agreed to give India advance, long-term permission to reprocess U.S. origin nuclear material once New Delhi builds a new reprocessing facility that would only use such material.

This is being done despite the fact that Bush in a major speech in February 2004 stated that "enrichment and reprocessing are not necessary for nations seeking to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."

[...]

Unlike India, Iran is a member of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, yet the United States has led an international effort to force Tehran to abandon its enrichment program.

Hmmmm. I wonder why that would be.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

What We Need Is...

...new propaganda to catapult.

The Pentagon has just spent $400,000 of our money to get a marketing report from the RAND corporation on how to better "sell" the war in Iraq. As you well know, these days it's all about marketing the product.

Wasn't that what Romney was wanting to do if he gets elected?

I guess the magazine hasn't gone over so well.

2008

Fred Thompson fired up a convention of Young Republicans, claiming himself the "top target" of Hillary Clinton. (Thompson and Clinton are, I believe, the candidates we'll see on the 2008 ballot. It won't matter to me if I'm wrong, though, because what I'm most sure of at this point is that there won't be anyone worth voting for.)

"I'm getting tired of having to apologize for the United States of America around the world."

Is he getting tired of having to apologize because our current policies are wrong? No.

"I'm tired of other people's perceptions that we need to apologize."

The one issue it seemed he might have had a problem with is that it was recently revealed he'd lobbied Bush 41 on behalf of a pro-abortion group.

The abortion issue is essentially just an emotional smoke screen anyway, since no one with the chance of being president is going to actually make any real moves against it, and Thompson's response was typical GOP: deflection.

"I'd just say the flies get bigger in the summertime. I guess the flies are buzzing," said Thompson [...] He refused comment on whether he recalled doing the work.

[...]

"Whatever choice do we have? Mitt Romney has been on both sides of the issue," said Paul Boyd, 26, of Memphis, Tenn. "Rudy Giuliani is 100 percent pro-choice. John McCain, at least for the first four years of the Bush term, was against whatever the president was for. Everybody has their flaws."

Since this wasn't a Religious Right crowd, I'd say his handlers picked the right spot for his first speech after that information made the news. Get him out there immediately making a big positive splash to counter any negative effect of the pro-abortion revelation.

Kevin Fickert, a 22-year-old college student in Los Angeles who originally is from Massachusetts, said he liked Romney's leadership as governor but thinks Thompson has more appeal. "Thompson has this star power about him that I really like," Fickert said.

In a nutshell.

Twit Romney, in the meantime, thinks we should hire a marketing firm to sell ourselves in the Middle East.

"People will give up half a day's salary to get a Coca-Cola in some parts of the world. We market Coke well. We market McDonald's well. We market our rap music, our movies, our jeans," Romney said. "We market everything America sells brilliantly, but when it comes to marketing ourselves and what we stand for, we don't do a very good job of it."

Maybe we don't do it well enough, but if he thinks we haven't been doing it, he hasn't been paying attention.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Congress rushed to restore State Department public diplomacy funding slashed in the era of Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich. According to a September 2003 General Accounting Office report, public diplomacy monies for the Middle East have increased by 58 percent since 2001. The State Department hired former Madison Avenue executive Charlotte Beers (since departed) to design a comprehensive strategy for marketing the US in the Arab and Islamic worlds, and launched the Arabic-language Radio Sawa and the Farsi-language Radio Farda to beam American pop music and brief newscasts into Middle Eastern households.

According to long-standing theories in the field of public diplomacy, conflicts between the US and foreign countries can be greatly ameliorated if foreign populations can be made to see that Americans are people just like them.

  Middle East Report Online

Now that would be a hard sell even for people who have a clue.

"The Middle East is the Disneyland of sandsurfing."

Hi Magazine, launched by the State Department in 2003.

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet. --Mark Twain

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

The Emperor's New Clothes

In rejecting any emissions standards at all, Bush has been explaining that global warming can be overcome entirely through technological advances, which the United States will be delighted to sell the world. Because nothing says capitalism like first getting rich creating a problem, and then getting rich again trying to fix the problem you created.

Bush has a similar approach to African poverty, as George Monbiot explains in the Guardian. Under the“African Growth and Opportunity Act,” African countries would only get American help if they fully open their markets to American multinational corporations, in return for which they get limited access to the American market, limited, that is, to the shit sectors the multinationals don’t want:

Clothing factories in Africa will be allowed to sell their products to the US as long as they use “fabrics wholly formed and cut in the United States” or if they avoid direct competition with US products. The act, treading carefully around the toes of US manufacturing interests, is comically specific. Garments containing elastic strips, for example, are eligible only if the elastic is “less than 1 inch in width and used in the production of brassieres”. Even so, African countries’ preferential treatment will be terminated if it results in “a surge in imports”.

  WIIIAI article