Thursday, November 16, 2006

Community Service?

A snip from Juan Cole yesterday which paints the ugly reality of life in Baghdad with a few brush strokes:
The facades of a normal society are gradually dropping in Iraq. It isn't a place where you can go to the book bazaar and buy a book anymore. It isn't a place where you can go to college like a normal student or professor. It is a dark, despairing, violent arena. People go about their lives, of course. But they never know when, abruptly, the Grim Reaper will grasp them as they shop for eggplants or fill up their tanks with gasoline or drop the kids off at school...
I intended to level off a bit on the political comments and leave it to folks who have more info and better insight than I (you can see a few in the links to the right). I wanted to concentrate on things closer to my heart. I've found that it was easier said than done. When I read the bit from Cole quoted above, the smoldering anger and shame burst into flame.

Bush, his crew, the screaming coterie of chicken-hawk pundits with their blather about mushroom clouds, cakewalks, showers of flowers -- they are directly responsible for opening this particular gate to hell.

As an American citizen, I to am, to some degree, also responsible.

I suppose that's why recent posts here have mentioned impeachment, first that we ought to go for it and then that we ought to go for investigations as a first priority.

My reasoning is that Congressional committees, armed with the crowbar of subpoena, could pry the lids off a few cans and get them worms out in the open. Hopefully, they can make headlines primed to slime the Repubs which, in turn, should help in 2008 and lay groundwork for actual trials where some of the crooks can get a chance of drawing a "Go straight to Jail and don't collect $200" card.

I received some Casual comments to these posts (the comments weren't casual -- the commenter is Casual) with cogent arguments that impeachment should be the priority. Casual is in high hopes of organizing a letter storm to Pelosi to that effect. More power to him/her/they. You can read the comments here and here and get more info here. The picture up above is from their web-site.

If I had my druthers though, I leave out both impeachment and jail time for the SOB (son of a bush) if he could just be sentenced to community service like he did back when his daddy got him off that drug charge.

How about, say, 3000 hours of community service?
Give him a wheelbarrow, a shovel, a mop and a bucket and send him to Iraq to clean up the mess he made there!
Some will say it ought to be 600,000 hours, one for each Iraqi life shortened in blood and I can see some justice in that. However, we should time-share some those hours to the neo-cons who arranged the war.

The plague of pundits who were so much in favor of war and cakewalk and who now tell us that it was Rummy's fault, the generals' fault, even the Iraqi's fault -- they should also have their chance and not be denied the honor of doing service most of them never had time for when there was a real war on.

I'm not being snide about them saying the (obvious) failure in Iraq being the fault of the Iraqi's! Robert Fisk has a nice rundown on pundit spin that it all is the fault of Arab character in general and the Iraqi's in particular. They are not fit for freedom, not civilized enough, simply too damn bloody a people to ever have a decent free democratic society.

That may sound close to racism but it is what they are saying and it is as close to calling them a bunch of rag heads and sand niggers as you can get with actually saying it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Waz it – All – About

The justification for paying USD80.00 a month for cable and DSL really comes down to, how badly do you need the pundits of the FCC’s total control? P&G ( Power and Greed)… that is the trade off between Corporations and Government. I have found the reasoning / justification for the cable service is to provide the DSl for my business along with the 3-4 other resources that help”Keep Hope Alive”. C-Span ( American Journal) C-Span 2 ( Books and Hearings) The weather Channel ( Getting to commercial ) The History Channel. All of these channels mentioned, can be accessed by the net, which is a good back up source whenever the cable goes down. Or, you see the video however, the audio is not being transmitted. ( Internal wars between sponsors and distributors) . Point being, you can look between the lines and see where many personalities are trying to reach out to the “Lemmings In Lockstep” and raise their level of awareness, to see through the P&G while achieving the American Dream, as a perk.
1. C-Span allows international calls live, starting at 7AM and the ones who are waiting online to access this daily event, may very well be up at 2AM their time, to voice their views and opinions. (i.e. Caller on 13Nov06 from Seattle Washington, stated, All politicians are simply the paid prostitutes of America’s Corporations… While Mike Wallace was on MSNBC, Imus in the Morning program, actually echoing a similar theme by stating, “No one, can see their congressman or senator , unless they have a check in hand.. These things are nice to hear, however, most citizens are at work and only have the closest thing to a “current thought issue”, which happens to be, whatever the verbiage Bill O’Rielly on the Fox network, may have spewed out in his parting comments.
2. The History Channel, is a two edged sword. One side of the sword showing our atrocities over time, while the other side of the sword throws off the FCC with the propaganda from WWII rhetoric. Even that is easily spotted, however the time slots to show the negativity are not when most of us are generally awake.
3. TBS . Ted Turner is way ahead of the curve. Or, maybe his employees have to take the credit. The saving of the American films is also saving what the past is about. America’s Political Machine, is in the process of rewriting history. To eliminate the negative about our society, is a step in that direction. TBS is not only is saving decaying footage, but restoring for future generations, these classics. (i.e. The Al Jolsen Story ) TBS still has a way to go. Try finding,” And Johnny Got His Gun”, “Song of the South”, just to name a couple. On that same note, try to find the cartoon character “ Hambone”, which was a weekly posting in the Florida Times Union along with 73 other national news papers, of the 50’s and early 60’s. There are no records of this bigoted cartoon left anywhere, accept in the archives of the Unv. Of Tenn in Knoxville and the Library of Congress. All of this simply means we are free to “think” and “they” are free to direct your thinking.

Thanks for allowing me to share a few points that sparked these ramblings of a Baby Boomer stiil angry from the 60’s . I wish you continued success and will continue to be a supporter of “The Crazy Bird”
Nuke Watcher
Baltimore, MD.

Anonymous said...

Bush has already suffered the unkindest cut of all.. Daddy bailing him out again; dude you can't get any lower than that. At least impeachment would keep him in the news cycle. Where he's headed is media irrelevancy, along with his neocon posse. He'll be dead of liver failure in five years. Drinkin', you know.

Chuck Cliff said...

Nukie, there are two things here.

The one is what you get if you eat just the mashed potato mix of the MSM. The other is what you get if you look.

Example, I know a guy who complained that he can't find "Song of the South", the Disney movie on the Uncle Remus stories. His perception is that you can't get the movie because it is not PC. The fact is that a quick search will get it for you -- but it costs $199!!!

There's a line in Revelations which can be paraphrased to, "Those who do not love the truth will be given strong illusion..." This is obviously true.

The basis of democracy rests on a well and fairly informed public.

On the other hand the public did vote the assholes out a few days ago -- maybe Joe Sixpack ain't as stupid as they give him/her credit for...

Chuck Cliff said...

"...dead of liver failure" nasty nasty James, shame on you!

But I'll raise you, how about "nosebleed from coke"... (snark snark)