Let’s Hear It For The New Yorker!

Three cheers for The New Yorker for having the courage to call out the far-right nutcases who refuse to look at facts and choose to think with their asses. This week’s issue of The New Yorker features a cover illustration of Barack and Michelle Obama standing in the Oval Office, he in Muslim attire, she with a sixties Angela Davis Afro, wearing combat garb, and toting an automatic weapon. They are, of course, giving the terrorist “fist-bump” while a picture of Osama bin Laden looks down from above a fireplace in which the American flag is burning. 

Of course, in today’s hypersensitive climate, the left is having a hissy-fit because they say it is disrespectful and the right is pandering by claiming to be offended when the picture represents every stereotype they, through their media outlet Fox News, have been propagating. What the left fails to understand in their typical rush to be offended is that The New Yorker is satirizing all the prejudices and misconceptions and outright lies that Fox News, the RNC, and John McCain’s surrogates have been vomiting up over the last year. 

First, there was Fox “News” claiming that Obama was raised a Muslim. He wasn’t; his father had been a Muslim for a brief period and then abandoned it just before he abandoned his family. Obama is a Christian.

Then, Fox “News” claimed Obama attended a madrass in Djakarta. He didn’t. It was a secular school that catered to a variety of faiths, as has been shown by numerous LEGITIMATE news organizations. Fox has never retracted this story.

Then Fox “News” claimed that Obama took the oath of office in Congress on a Koran. No, he didn’t. That was Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, who has received many death threats, undoubtedly from people who watch Fox “News.”

Then, there are the many commentators on Fox “News” who continue to refer to Senator Obama with his middle name, “Hussein,” and who claim disingenuously that they are only being respectful, when it is patently obvious to any fool that they are simply trying to perpetuate the falsehood that he is Muslim. HE ISN”T. Did these people ever discuss Ronald “WIlson” Reagan, or William “Jefferson” Clinton? No.

Then, there was the claim by a Fox “News” bimbo that the fist bump between Barack and his wife was a terrorist greeting, a fist bump that has been in American culture for two or more decades, long before the Islamic murderers attacked America on 9/11.

Or, what about the repeated “errors” in Fox “News” graphics when they misspell “Obama” as “Osama?” Once is a mistake. Twice is incompetence. Three times is deliberate.

Or what about the Fox “News” graphics over the picture of Michelle referring to her as “Obama’s Baby-Mama.” They say they reprimanded the graphics editor responsible for that. But, if the atmosphere in which something like that could happen didn’t exist, it is unlikely the editor would have put that up.

This cover art on The New Yorker is intended to satirize the many troglodytes in this country who choose to get their “news” from Fox and who believe the unconscionable stereotypes the excrement at Fox “News” perpetuate. I wish the Left and the Obama campaign had the courage to stand up for it and applaud it for what it is, a strong condemnation of prejudice and bigotry. 

Barack Obama deserves to be the next President. I only hope the troglodytes don’t convince the country that he is something he isn’t.

The War with Iran

I wonder if anyone foresaw in June 1914 the calamity that was about to befall the world? Or in October 1929? Or August 1939? I wonder if there is anyone in power in the United States who understands just how precarious this country’s situation is right now?

It is almost certain, according to many analysts, that Israel will attack Iran before the American election. It will certainly not be a severe enough attack to completely destroy the country’s nuclear infrastructure and it will certainly guarantee that Iran will resume the nuclear research program that all American intelligence agencies have agreed they ended several years ago. It will also guarantee a massive Iranian response in the form of missile attacks on Israel, which may include “dirty” bombs that could be radiological in nature. It will include a massive increase in terrorist attacks by Iran’s proxies- Hamas, Hezbullah, and probably Al Qaeda. And, it will certainly see Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz (unlike Fox News, the Iranian military knows that the Strait of Hormuz is located between Iran and Oman, not off the shores of Kuwait, as Fox News repeatedly shows on their pathetic graphics). Forty percent of the world’s oil moves through the strait and cutting off that supply of oil will devastate the world’s economy.

Does Israel care about this? Does Dick Cheney? Since the United States has moved an aircraft carrier OUT of the Persian Gulf, can we guarantee the safety of tanker traffic? Can we insure the flow of oil?

No. In the next few months, we will see the results of the insanity of the Bush-Cheney regime and the government of Israel. I strongly support Israel and their continued existence in the face of the insanity of the Palestinian terrorists. However, they must understand that their actions have consequences that reach far beyond their own region. And, Vice-President Cheney, the real power in this country, surely must understand the fragility of the American economy right now, with oil nearing $150 a barrel and with major financial institutions of the verge of failure. Any disruption in the supply of oil at this point will result in massive economic disruptions across the world and, particularly, in the United States, where we already have a massive Federal debt paid for primarily by the Saudis and the Chinese. Is this what Dick Cheney wants?

Is Dick Cheney insane?

I believe in standing up for what’s right, for American security, and for justice in the world. But, we are involved in a quagmire in Iraq, we have ignored the REAL war in Afghanistan, and we have allowed huge portions of our economy to fall under the control of this country’s greatest enemy, China. Is this the time to go to war with Iran?

No.

Here We Go Again

There were reports in 2002 and 2003 that numerous intelligence advisors to the President and Vice President were transfered or reassigned when they gave opinions and analyses that contradicted the official party line that Iraq was about to nuke New York. Now, in the run up to the next war, its happening again.

After all seventeen American intelligence agencies agreed that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and after President Bush and Vice President Cheney publicly rejected the intelligence of all seventeen American intelligence agencies, it has been reported on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC that an ex-CIA agent, ordered to remain anonymous because of his previous covert responsibilities, (perhaps we can learn his name from Scooter Libby or Karl Rove), is now suing the CIA to publicly release documents proving his claim that on five occasions, he was ordered to falsify evidence of WMD research or delete altogether evidence contradicting the Administration’s official line. The agent was a twenty-two year veteran of the CIA, fluent in Farsi and Persian and stationed in the Middle East.

This is how Cheney was able to finesse or falsify the evidence before the Iraq invasion. Remember Colin Powell quoted in Newsweek as describing as “bullshit” the evidence he was forced to present to the UN Security Council? If only Powell had found the courage and backbone to publicly disavow what the Administration was doing, more than four thousand courageous American heroes would be alive, tens of thousands of courageous American heroes would not be maimed, and more than a hundred thousand innocent Iraqi civilians would still be alive. It is reported that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is skeptical of the upcoming war with Iran. We can hope that he will have the courage in 2008 that Colin Powell lacked in 2003 and can stop the insanity of Bush and Cheney before its too late.

The U.S. Will Go to War with Iran before the Election or the End of Bush’s Term

If there was any doubt that President Bush (oops, I mean Dick Cheney), intends to go to war with Iran before the end of his term, the article by Seymour Hersch in the latest New Yorker should dispel it. Hersch details the covert operations in which the United States military and intelligence agencies are involved in Iran for both destabilizing the Iranian regime and “preparing the battlefield” in much the same way they did in Iraq. Of course, anyone watching the Administration for the past several years can see Bush and Cheney doing exactly the same things they did in the run up to the Iraq war. The primary difference, however, between then and now is the absence of the memo from Karl Rove describing how a war with Iran would guarantee a permanent Republican majority as we had in 2002 prior to the war with Iraq.

Only months after the Pentagon assessment of pre-war intelligence revealed that there was never any evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the invasion or that there was no evidence of collusion between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, and after repeated revelations that Cheney demanded that intelligence agencies present only evidence bolstering the conclusions of the war party within the Administration, despite the tremendous reservations and opposition of the intelligence community, we can see President Bush and Vice President Cheney now following the same steps they took in 2002 as they prepare the American people for the next war. EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY has declared that Iran halted work on its nuclear weapons programs years ago. EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY. But, just as Vice President Cheney, the gatekeeper of what intelligence goes to the President and what doesn’t, rejected any intelligence in 2002 that did not conform to the official party line, that Iraq had WMD and was aiding Al-Qaeda, so too now have Bush and Cheney publicly declared that they don’t accept the declarations of any of their intelligence agencies. Never before in the history of the United States has a President (or the puller of his strings) so publicly and flagrantly ignored the advice of his government, of those who know far more about the reality of the situation that he. Never.

Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines “faith” as the “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” Apparently, Bush and Cheney are running a “faith-based” foreign policy.

Iran has promised that if attacked, it would shut down transport of oil through the Persian Gulf. If the economy of the world is reeling now from the tripling of oil prices in the last two years, what will happen when Iran shuts down the Persian Gulf? Has Bush thought of this? What will Bush do when oil reaches $200 or $250 or $300 a barrel? Or, is this what his only remaining supporters beyond what’s left of the neo-cons, the oil companies, want? Can the world economy stand a shut down of Middle Eastern oil production? Or does the President not care, believing that its better to start the conflagration before he leaves office and leave solving the problem to Barack Obama?

In every Presidential election campaign, the talking heads ponder whether we will see an “October Surprise” before the election. Don’t be surprised this year if we do. I suspect that if Obama is still leading McCain in October, Bush will attack before the election, because we know that Charlie Black, McCain’s campaign manager, believes something like this can only help the Republicans. If McCain is leading, however, Bush will have more time and, perhaps, will allow McCain to start the war, instead.

Either way, George W. Bush’s legacy will be not only the destruction of a thousand years of the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition of respect for civil liberties and the destruction of American credibility and respect abroad, but the destruction of the American economy with three disastrous wars (only one of which- Afghanistan- should have been waged).

I was a Republican until George W. Bush defiled the White House and destroyed my hope for the future of my country.