Okay, so I started strong today and have run out of steam. I amended four tax returns (which was very complex) and did a bunch of clean-up and mail-out. I suppose that I could recover myself and get more done, but one of those tasks is going to be copying the materials for tomorrow night’s class and binding them. Urk.
“As the insider Nelson Report pointed out recently: Since 2001, in current dollars, the Pentagon budget has experienced "a 41% increase, exclusive of the supplemental allocations for Iraq, Afghanistan, and the [Global War on Terror].")”
And, just so we keep everyone on the boil:
“Club Homeland Detention: Halliburton, the first corporation into Iraq, contractually speaking, and the biggest financial winner in the "reconstruction" sweepstakes for that deconstructed country, fortuitously also found itself perched right atop the list of post-Katrina New Orleans reconstruction contractors. Now, through its subsidiary KBR, known for building military bases to last, as well as Guantanamo's infamous "cages," Halliburton gets a shot at the real American thing - actual emergency detention centers for "immigrants" - or, hey, in a crisis, for whomever. The Army Corps of Engineers awarded it a contract last month - though the story only oozed out this week - worth up to $385 million (not including the near-obligatory overcharges) for, according to the New York Times, "an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space." It's those "new programs" that give special pause.”
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020606M.shtml
So, back at Shrub’s inauguration, when I was in tears and said (snapped, actually) to the husband of my employer’s general manager that “no one’s going to shove me into an oven” – I may not have been far off the mark?
Private contractors – among the largest corporations in Germany – built the concentration camps and the ovens. And, the German Volk neatly ignored the information – just as we will here.
For six years, people have been telling me that the Holocaust couldn’t happen here. However, I’m seeing the signs – GW in his SotU address had two boogey men – gay marriage and genetically engineering human/animal combinations. So, which do you think the concentration camps are for? As with the Nazis, they’re for:
- The global gay conspiracy (replacing World Jewry)
- Immigrants (replacing Gypsies)
- Liberals (replacing .. well, liberals)
- People who generally get in our way (ibid.)
What if there were no more general elections? If the Bushies can ignore the Constitution vis a vis warrantless searches – why should they concern themselves with elections?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Note that FISA dispenses with this important element of our constitution – the place to be searched and the things to be seized are NOT required for a FISA warrant. Probably cause is also dispensed with – and, yet – the current administration has determined that FISA is too burdensome and that they don’t have to follow it.
Let’s look at another area that the Bushies have abrogated the Constitution without a comment from the peanut gallery:
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power
To declare War
There has been no declaration of war. Congress has given Bush extraordinary emergency powers to fight the “war” against terrorism, and the Bushies are actively and aggressively promoting their expansion of powers and using the language of treason to attack anyone who objects to the “war.” The administration has utilized “war powers” to hold prisoners incognito, to “render” “enemies” – they have circumvented the fifth amendment in any way that they could structure. Yet, those who question this behavior are called out for being unpatriotic. We are distracted with gay marriage and with moral arguments; the fundamentalists beating the drums of dissonance for the administration while they disassemble the Constitution and any rights guaranteed us.
Six years ago, my arch-conservative friends told me that they wouldn’t ever let happen to me what happened to the Jews in Germany.
Three months ago, every single one of them voted in favor of writing discrimination against gays into the Constitution of Texas.
Recently, I watched “Kindertransport,” a movie about the few hundreds of Jewish children who were shipped to England in the year before the attack on Poland. In this movie, one of the most disturbing moments was one woman’s recollection that, the morning after the Anschluss (she lived in Vienna, which was unified into Greater Germany by military threat and manipulated elections on March 12, 1938) ALL of her friends turned on her. Spat on her.
March 11, 1938 – she’s a popular girl in school. March 13, 1938 – she’s reviled like a homeless dog in the street.
So, if in a few months, the Federal government orders that all identifiable gay people have to report to camps – how many of them are going to shrug off and go? How many of the gay people who voted Republican these last six election cycles are going to slink off and obey orders because “they know what they’re doing?”
If the Democrats can’t whip up a decent response to Alito’s nomination, how will they respond if the Federal Government unilaterally siezes all the funds of gay people using electronic means? If they order us to report to camps based on some public health risk? Do you think for a moment that Joseph Liebermann is going to object? Do you think that John Kerry will do anything more than send out a mass email asking for contributions to the Democratic party?
The NSA and the government has ALREADY been demanding the cell phone records and internet access histories for unnamed persons.
What if they just tweaked this campaign slightly, and nailed EVERYONE who visited gay websites? Identified them through the compliant agreement of the major telecomm companies, and then shut down their ability to run or exist?
How much warning will we have that it’s too late? The “liberal bias media” is already wont to leaving out anything that could actually validate the screed that they are, in fact, liberal. None of the information about these camps is being disseminated broadly by the media. They’re not giving out an ongoing critique of the winnowing of our constitutional rights. In fact, aside from reporting things that are so blantant and “in your face” that they cannot be ignored, the mass media is far more concerned with the breakup of hollywood stars and Amber Alerts than they are telling us what our government is doing.
How much attention did my conservative friends and the “liberal bias media” pay to Clinton’s penis as compared to the Bush administrations’ stripping us of our Constitution?
If Clinton’s penile behavior was worth spending some 100 times the money that we spent on investigating the 9/11 terror attacks, what happened to the prosecution? If it was a crime while he was president, then why did it no longer become an offense once he was out of office? Why is it reasonable to have invested so much time, money and energy into Clinton’s blowjob – but, no one can even discuss that we’ve circumvented about 1/3 of the Bill of Rights in five years without being called unpatriotic and, now, treasonous?
I think that in this case, one in my shoes may be much safer observing from within the borders of a country that won’t ever give up its freedoms. This isn’t the place anymore.
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