- A group of Republican legislators proposes to rescind
the 22ndAmendment to the American Constitution. This is the Amendment,
passed after four terms of Franklin Roosevelt scared the bejesus out of
Republicans, limiting a President to two terms in office. The legislators
apparently believe that with continued Republican gains in Congress, they
may be in a position to change the Constitution by 2006, in time to extend
Bush's benevolent work.
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- Of course, Bush must actually be re-elected in 2008,
but that represents a mere technicality. Bush was appointed in 2000 by
a Supreme Court whose capacity for critical thinking already resembled
that of senior judges in the early Reich. By 2008, Bush will have loaded
the Court with creatures who might have made splendid careers in the Holy
Inquisition under Torquemada.
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- The Republican fallback plan for 2008 is to repeat the
election of 2004, in which heavy vote fraud in places like Ohio gave Republicans
their revenge for Democrats' vote fraud in 1960. Republicans used to be
more straitlaced about things like vote fraud. It was only the old Democratic
political machines of the nation's cities that supposedly practiced it
with any regularity. But with the rise in political influence of America's
fundamentalists and neo-cons, Republicans have embraced vote fraud wholeheartedly.
Fundamentalist pitchmen provided the party a splendid example of the advantages
of fleecing their flocks. America's neo-cons have decades of experience
posing as disinterested academics advocating human slaughter as policy.
If you really think about it, the plan seems sound, and the timing seems
right. Its prospects look quite good.
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- It has my full support, simply because I believe America
needs a belly full of Bush before the world can expect any relief from
the country's lunatic course. I know through long experience that what
happens to the rest of the world carries little weight with most Americans.
Since 9/11, America has been turning itself into a gated community, bristling
with ferocious weapons, vis-à-vis the rest of the world, and the
truth is we don't hear much outrage about it from America herself.
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- Americans are stubborn people, convinced of the virtue
of whatever they do - even today you'd be hard put to convince many that
cremating, poisoning, and blowing apart three million Vietnamese was anything
other than heroic self-sacrifice in the name of freedom - so it takes a
long time to alter course in America. Steering one of those gigantic super-tankers
where you have to anticipate your turn miles ahead is almost child's play
by comparison.
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- Lies have always been used to promote wars, and America's
wars, despite the nation's ongoing flirtation with democracy, have been
absolutely no different in character to those of despots over the centuries.
We could say that it will be the test of democratic maturity when the American
people are consulted and told honestly why they are being asked to start
a war, but that seems unlikely to happen in our lifetime.
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- Apart from the ugly lies before wars, remember that America's
most weighty contribution to world culture is exceedingly refined techniques
of marketing, a smarmy art developed in the course of the nation's historic,
headlong rush to get rich. So many things in American life - goods, services,
religion, and even elections - have more marketing in them than content.
Much of American life has about it the quality of "Have a nice day!"
from a computerized phone system.
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- So I don't understand why any Americans are surprised
at Bush's shameless lies. He's almost turned lying into a form of stand-up
comedy. As soon as one lie's usefulness is ended, he smirkingly substitutes
another, without pausing to consider any need for continuity between the
two. It is hilarious to watch the leader of a great nation doing this,
at least so long as you are not one of his victims.
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- The real puzzle is why Americans keep buying tickets
to his act. Perhaps, with American media always larded with subtle to blatant
lies for commercial marketing and politics, responses to other, greater
lies are numbed. Perhaps, America really just doesn't much care.
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- Orwell was wrong in 1984 putting forward the idea of
the Party's gradually eliminating words to control people's ability to
think and speak critically. He was of course parodying the Soviet Union
which to some extent did follow the practice. But the repressive old Soviet
Union is gone while America thrives, constantly inventing new words - marketing
gibberish, psycho-babble, political rubbish, science-fiction religion -
which strives to puff up nothing into something. In America, you can literally
fill a small library with books and magazines on any number of subjects
from education to health that contain nothing genuinely furthering human
understanding.
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- Marketing turns out to work better than repression over
the long term, although the forces of repression are always there in America
to offer assistance in dark corners. Hitler himself could not have asked
for a set of laws more devious than the Patriot Act. Its continued existence
stands as a monument to American political dull-wittedness. Just as bestial
torture cages abroad demonstrate the nation's lack of interest in anything
thought not to affect America.
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- But as the best evidence of America's unhealthy condition,
I give you People's Exhibit Number One, the fact that Bush is in office
and his polls are still not as low as the nation's ever-hopeful, hopeless
liberals would like to believe. After all, vote fraud doesn't work where
the vote wasn't already close.
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- Comment
- From Hiro
- 6-17-5
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- Although I do not approve of the way the present adminstration
is leading this country by any means, I just had to write you to correct
a line in your article All Bush, All the time - for the rest of your life
http://www.rense.com/general66/allt.htm
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- It says a group of Republicans introduced the bill. However,
if you look at the sponsors and co-sponsors, of the total 5 names on the
bill, 4 are actually Democrats and only 1 is a Republican:
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- Mr. HOYER (for himself, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. SENSENBRENNER,
Mr. SABO, and Mr. PALLONE) introduced the following joint resolution; which
was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
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- Also, as you probably know, Mr. Hoyer, who introduced
the bill. is the House Democratic Whip.
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- Thank you and keep up the good work.
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- Sincerely,
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- H.T.
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