After Some Future Crawford Sojourn ...

Port Fury: Which Is It?

So.

This is what Vice President Cheney said about the relationship between Iraq and the War on Terror, on Meet the Press, on September 14, 2003:

"If we're successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it's not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it's not a safe haven for terrorists, then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

Whether or not you think that this statement was part of a coordinated effort to indirectly and subtly conflate Iraq with the 9/11 terrorists, what this statement certainly does, without qualification, is pinpoint the greater Arab-Muslim world as "the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

So, it is a bit curious to see President Bush scratching his head today, wondering why Congress and the mayors of major target cities and governors of major target states are so upset at the idea that the Administration signed off on a deal giving control of a few U.S. ports to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates.

I guess, in 2003, painting Arab Muslims generally as the enemy in the Terror War was okay. It was patriotic. And, hell -- it helped win elections.

But in 2006, thinking that turning over port security to an Arab Muslim nation, ally or not (Saudi Arabia is an "ally", you may recall, and they supplied most of the 9/11 hijackers, as well as some of the funding) is maybe not such a good idea -- well, say Bush Administration officials, that's racism.

Maybe that famous sequence in Fahrenheit 9/11, of the Bushes dancing the waltz with the Saudis, has finally stuck in people's heads. As in "who are these people working for, anyway?"

I can see the Administration's point -- why treat an Arab nation differently from China or Britain?

In fact, I don't really think ANY foreign nation should be running American ports (except maybe Israel, because they know how to do security.)

But that this is totally shocking and stunning to the Administration that said we have to retaliate for 9/11 by hitting an Arab country -- any Arab country, oh, let's say Iraq -- is itself astounding.

Are these people lacking shame? Or altogether brains?

Do they even remember what they told the American people three years ago?

The Law of Relative Truth

For every fact, there is an opposite and equally valid Republican version.

Cheney shot a guy? Arrogant liberal media.
Wiretaps in violation of FISA? Treasonous leak.
Faulty case for war? CIA Nepotism.
Separation of Church and State? A myth.
Global warming? Political scientists.
Environmentalism? Communists seeking to destroy the economy.
Coequal branches of government? Unitary executive.
Judicial branch? Activist courts.
Corruption? Money is speech.
Terrorist attack? Marketing opportunity.
National unity? Permanent Republican Majority.
War? Peace.
Fact? Bias.


Henry Wallace warned that "American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery."

Here is what Pratkanis and Aronson, in Age of Propaganda (Revised Ed., Owl Books, 2001), have to say about how the Germans treated the press:

"In the United States, Hitler and Goebbels hired public relations firms in an attempt to secure favorable press coverage of the regime. In Germany, the Nazis controlled journalists and filmmakers through a mixture of punishments and rewards ... The Nazi regime made certain that it was the primary source of news and easily accessible to certain journalists. This treatment was extended to include foreign correspondents, thus putting U.S. reporters in a quandary: Report news unfavorable to Nazi Germany (such as the treatment of the Jews) and be expelled or sanitize the news and be able to continue reporting." (319)

"A common tactic was to attack the press (especially the foreign press) as liars and atrocity-mongers, thus leading German citizens tobelieve that any report unfavorable to the regime was biased." (p. 320)

Truth relativity is very, very dangerous.

And it is now the operating principle behind the single Party that is governing the United States of America.

Cheney Leaks Plame Leak Defense

Here it is, folks, tacked on to the tail end of the Brit Hume Softball Propaganda show.

Libby says he was under orders. This indemnifies him from prosecution -- a la Oliver North.

The higher-ups told him to leak this classified info.

The only person who is allowed to declassify classified information is the President.

So the revelation last week of Libby's admission (from the Fitzgerald Plame Leak investigation) that he had leaked information from classified National Intelligence Estimate briefs to the press at the behest of his higher-ups looked like he was fingering Cheney, as unlikely as it seemed.

Now Cheney tells Brit Hume, in the softest softball interview I've heard of -- I mean, it seems like they're both reading the same script -- that "there is an executive order" that allows the Vice President to declassify information.

This is news, folks.

And it sure looks like Hume knew to ask that question, doesn't it?

Watch this:

Hume: "Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a Vice President has the authority to declassify information?"

Cheney: "There is an executive order to that effect."

Out of the blue.

Why would he ask this unless he was prepped to?

Here's the rest of the section, again, tacked onto the Collateral Damage fluff
job: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/15/AR2006021502005.html

Q On another subject, court filings have indicated that Scooter Libby has suggested that his superiors -- unidentified -- authorized the release of some classified information. What do you know about that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's nothing I can talk about, Brit. This is an issue that's been under investigation for a couple of years. I've cooperated fully, including being interviewed, as well, by a special prosecutor. All of it is now going to trial. Scooter is entitled to the presumption of innocence. He's a great guy. I've worked with him for a long time, have enormous regard for him. I may well be called as a witness at some point in the case and it's, therefore, inappropriate for me to comment on any facet of the case.

Q Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a Vice President has the authority to declassify information?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: There is an executive order to that effect.

Q There is.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q Have you done it?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions. The executive order --

Q You ever done it unilaterally?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to get into that. There is an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously focuses first and foremost on the President, but also includes the Vice President.

Q There have been two leaks, one that pertained to possible facilities in Europe; and another that pertained to this NSA matter. There are officials who have had various characterizations of the degree of damage done by those. How would you characterize the damage done by those two reports?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: There clearly has been damage done.

Q Which has been the more harmful, in your view?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to get into just sort of ranking them, then you get into why is one more damaging than the other. One of the problems we have as a government is our inability to keep secrets. And it costs us, in terms of our relationship with other governments, in terms of the willingness of other intelligence services to work with us, in terms of revealing sources and methods. And all of those elements enter into some of these leaks.



[SCORP10N BOWL POSTING CORRECTED AND RE-POSTED AT 12:38 am Eastern, 2.15.06]

Collateral Damage

The hoohah over the Vice President Cheney's shooting of fellow hunter Harry Whittington is much less important than the previous day's news that Scooter Libby was ordered by his superiors -- that would be Cheney and Bush -- to leak classified National Intelligence Estimate information to the press. (That would be a felony.)

It is also less important than the Administration's maneuvering to emasculate the other two branches of the Federal Government with its legal defense in the NSA wiretapping case. (That would be dictatorship.)

But it sure is an effective distraction.

It's hard to ignore, in all this hullabaloo, that Cheney was the very guy who introduced the euphemism "collateral damage" into the common vernacular during the first Gulf War. Cheney also shares both initials with that unfortunate phrase, which describes all-too-well what happened on the Armstrong Ranch in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Saturday. The term refers to innocent bystanders killed in the process of accomplishing a larger goal.

This incident has what the late media guru Neil Postman would call resonance.

It has quickly become an all-too-easy metaphor for how the Bush White House, very much under Cheney's influence, has done its business for the last five years.

Aim at one thing (al Qaeda), hit quite another (Iraq).
When the real law shows up (local sheriff, Patrick Fitzgerald), use government employees (Secret Service, Scooter Libby) to obstruct justice.
Buy time (lose the emails, sober up, get the stories straight.)
Hide the facts.
Refuse accountability.
Blame the victim.
Operate under one's own set of rules, not the law.
Maintain that one standard of law exists for common people, and a lower standard for Administration officials.
Ignore the national press.
Talk through surrogates to a favorable local news outlet with no tradition in opposition journalism at the national level.
Grant an interview to a favored fellow traveler (right-wing commentator/ FoxNewsman Brit Hume).
Offer rosy scenarios when the truth is grimmer than it appears.
Make jokes when they are inappropriate.
Lie and dissemble.

Here's Cheney from tonight's Fox interview, from foxnews.com:

"Katharine [Amrstrong] suggested, and I agreed, that she would go make the announcement. ... First of all, she was an eyewitness, she'd seen the whole thing. Secondly, she'd grown up on the ranch, she'd hunted there all of her life. Third, she was the immediate past head of the [Texas Parks and Wildlife Department], the game control commission in the state of Texas."

But Armstrong told the Associated Press that when she saw the Secret Service agents running toward the scene, "The first thing that crossed my mind was he had a heart problem."

Is she saying that the first thing that crossed her mind, was that Cheney had had a heart attack because he had just shot Whittington?

Or is she saying that the first thing she saw was the SS running toward the scene, and -- not realizing Whittington had been shot -- she thought Whittington had had a heart attack?

Or is she saying she thought Cheney had a heart attack?

Because unless she is suggesting that her first thought after watching Cheney shoot Whittington was that Cheney had had a heart attack, she did not, as Cheney told Brit Hume a few hours ago, see the whole thing.

There are two possible explanations for the discrepancies in this story:
1. These people are so accustomed to lying, they don't remember how to tell the truth
2. There's something to hide.

The most intriguing story I've seen today is, of course, the most salacious take:

"Cheney and Whittington went hunting with two women (not their wives), there was some drinking, and Whittington wound up shot. Armstrong didn't see the incident but claimed she had, Cheney refused to be questioned by the Sheriff until the next morning, and a born-again evangelical physician has been downplaying Whittington's injuries since they occurrred."

This is from Huffington Post -- not a credible news source, but an aggregate of blogs. The writer does seem to be adding up facts.

This account would also explain why, as I heard last night, Mr. Whittington was (at first) taken to a farther away, smaller hospital -- and not to the closer Corpus Christi hospital, where he is now.

I'd love to see the man's blood tests.

Because Cheney sure didn't get one.

It would be quite ironic if, after all these years of misdeeds by the Bush Administration, the thing that finally snagged Dick Cheney was booze, guns, and sex.

Whether or not this is about booze, guns, and extramarital hunting trips (and I don't want to suggest that two men and two women hunting together necessarily connotes sexual relations), it does show that the American people have a hard time getting their heads around the complexities and ambiguities of modern politics -- until there's booze, guns, and sex involved.

Wiretapping? Case for war? Abu Ghraib? Secret prisons? Torture? Well, shoot, for every fact, there is an opposite and equally valid Republican version of events.

But there is no opposite and equally valid Republican take on "he shot the man."

Unless, of course, it depends on what the meaning of "shot" is.

Which is why they're saying Whittington was "sprayed" or "peppered".

But Americans -- and especially Bush supporters -- know from shotguns.

And they know that this man was shot.

They also know you don't get birdshot lodged in your heart from a 28-gauge shotgun at 90 feet.

So what's really going on here?



[POST CORRECTED AN RE-POSTED 12:46 am Eastern]

FISA Judges Fret, Bush Administration Sweats

The word "impeachment" has made it to the cable news networks.

The Bush Administration is clearly sweating. They are now agreeing to brief Congress on the NSA wiretapping program. Just a few days ago, they asserted that they had already sufficiently briefed Congress, and had no need to do so any further.

Today, the President is speaking publicly about a plot to crash planes into LA, hatched by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with Malaysian operatives. The fear tactic again.

The connection Americans are supposed to make is that this attack was thwarted because of the secret NSA wiretaps. Not stated, just implied -- like "Saddam was responsible for September 11".

In fact, if you read the 9/11 Commission Report, you know that this was likely a relic of "the planes operation", of which the 9/11 attacks were a part. Hardly top-secret information there.

Karl Rove is threatening to cut off Republican Senators who vote against the Administration's position (that the taps were legal) from funding and support in the November elections.

You know things have changed when the only lever Karl Rove has to save his client is to threaten to throw Republican Senate seats to the Democrats.

The flip side is that Rove is clearly offering campaign cash in direct exchange for the votes of Senators on a matter of Constitutional Law. I think this is probably illegal. What do you think, lawyers and judges?

This article from today's Washington Post is pretty thick with legal procedure.The gist seems to be that the top FISA judges were warned about the NSA operation, and that they sought assurances that no evidence that came to the FISA court would be tainted by illegal wiretapping.

At the end, the writer tells us that on September 12, 2001, FBI director Robert Muller went to the FISA court to request wiretap permission, and the court acted that very day:

"The requirement for detailed paperwork was greatly eased, allowing the NSA to begin eavesdropping the next day on anyone suspected of a link to al Qaeda, every person who had ever been a member or supporter of militant Islamic groups, and everyone ever linked to a terrorist watch list in the United States or abroad ... "

This is a refutation of the charge that FISA was not nimble enough to be an effective tool against al Qaeda -- and the article is largely a factual refutation of many of the Administration's claims.

It sure looks like the Administration had complete authority under FISA to listen in on al Qaeda conversations, even if they were calling you, on September 12, 2001. And it was working.

So why did they need the "extra-legal" authority?

Rove Threatens GOP Senators Over Wiretap Investigation

Full Circle:

1971: Nixon uses electronic surveillance against domestic political opponents on his "enemies list."
1974: Nixon resigns to avoid impeachment.
1978: Congress passes Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as a check on Executive Power -- a direct response to Nixon's abuses of the nation's intelligence apparatus.
2002: Bush institutes secret wiretapping program in violation of FISA.
2006: GOP-controlled Congress begins hearings into legality of Bush wiretapping program.
2006: Bush advisor Karl Rove threatens GOP Senators who pursue the investigation with "black list."

Evidently, the Administration is afraid of IMPEACHMENT.

From Insight, the magazine of the right wing Washington Times:

Rove counting heads on the Senate Judiciary Committee

"The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.

"Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.

"'It's hardball all the way,' a senior GOP congressional aide said.

"The sources said the administration has been alarmed over the damage that could result from the Senate hearings, which began on Monday, Feb. 6. They said the defection of even a handful of Republican committee members could result in a determination that the president violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such a determination could lead to impeachment proceedings.

"Over the last few weeks, Mr. Rove has been calling in virtually every Republican on the Senate committee as well as the leadership in Congress. The sources said Mr. Rove's message has been that a vote against Mr. Bush would destroy GOP prospects in congressional elections.

"'He's [Rove] lining them up one by one,' another congressional source said.

"Mr. Rove is leading the White House campaign to help the GOP in November's congressional elections. The sources said the White House has offered to help loyalists with money and free publicity, such as appearances and photo-ops with the president.

"Those deemed disloyal to Mr. Rove would appear on his blacklist. The sources said dozens of GOP members in the House and Senate are on that list.

"So far, only a handful of GOP senators have questioned Mr. Rove's tactics.

"Some have raised doubts about Mr. Rove's strategy of painting the Democrats, who have opposed unwarranted surveillance, as being dismissive of the threat posed by al Qaeda terrorists.

"'Well, I didn't like what Mr. Rove said, because it frames terrorism and the issue of terrorism and everything that goes with it, whether it's the renewal of the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping, in a political context,' said Sen. Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Republican."


Karl Rove demanding the loyalty of elected officials? Who elected Karl Rove?

This is the President's aide, ordering members of Congress to vote as the Administration says it must vote.

Ordering Senators that their fealty must be to Karl Rove, the President, and The Party -- and not to the law, the Constitution, or the American people.

Come to think of it, Rove is clearly offering money to Senators in exchange for their votes.

Isn't that also illegal?

Through The Looking Glass, Darkly

Richard B. Simon
February 5, 2006



So, we were walking across San Francisco yesterday morning, and I noticed a yellowed, old-looking page of newspaper on the sidewalk.

I picked it up, and -- you may not believe this -- but it turned out to be the book review and editorial page of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, from Saturday, April 8, 1938.

I have had a sense that things that are unfolding now are a re-play of the events of the 1930s -- particularly the struggle among communism, socialism, liberal democracy and fascism.

The current Cold Civil War in the United States is an echo down the ages of the wrestle between socialist-leaning and fascist-leaning versions of capitalism.There is a clear sense that those who back George W. Bush seek not only to unravel 60 years of post-New Deal American policy -- but that they are also seeking to re-manufacture America under their own version of the New Deal, a Conservative New Deal that seems to be unfolding very much like the very American fascism that Roosevelt and his Vice President Henry Wallace warned us about.

In any event, when I picked up this newspaper, it was one of those moments when you get the distinct feeling that time-travelers have placed something in your path for you to find at exactly the right moment, to help guide you. Does it not also give you the chills?

Note the Professor going after "business" with an executive power bat carved by the left-leaning FDR.

This is the mirror-image of today, when the cartoon would be identical ... except FDR would be GWB, and you might see an oil executive (Dick Cheney, perhaps) chasing after the "liberal college professor" who is purposefully demonized today by the right wing elements that control the federal government in its entirety.

The flip-side message may be that George W. Bush, like FDR, is legitimately gathering power to himself to fight what his Administration is now calling "The Long War."

But you have to ask yourself whether you trust GWB and the people who back him -- largely the oil, energy, and weapons industries -- to be in complete control of this country for the foreseeable future.

That could mean a generation of war, catastrophic climate change, and further accumulation of power and wealth at the highest levels of American society.

Roosevelt first waged war against American "economic royalists." Below is the heart of his speech at the 1936 Democratic Convention:

"In 1776 we sought freedom from the tyranny of a political autocracy-from the eighteenth century royalists who held special privileges from the crown. It was to perpetuate their privilege that they governed without the consent of the governed; that they denied the right of free assembly and free speech; that they restricted the worship of God; that they put the average man's property and the average man's life in pawn to the mercenaries of dynastic power; that they regimented the people.

"And so it was to win freedom from the tyranny of political autocracy that the American Revolution was fought. That victory gave the business of governing into the hands of the average man, who won the right with his neighbors to make and order his own destiny through his own Government. Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

"Since that struggle, however, man's inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people.. The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution-all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a new problem for those who sought to remain free.

"For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital-all undreamed of by the fathers-the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

"There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

"It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

"The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor-these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small business man, the investments set aside for old age-other people's money-these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.

"Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities.

"Throughout the Nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.

"An old English judge once said: 'Necessitous men are not free men.' Liberty requires opportunity to make a living-a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

"For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor-other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

"Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the
people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

"The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the Government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the Government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

"Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is
guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

"These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike."

Now do you see why the dynastic presidency of George W. Bush (son of President George H.W. Bush, grandson of Senator Prescott Bush, a banker who did business with Nazi Germany) is working to undo the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- and replace it with a mirror-image version that benefits those industrialists and corporatists who dwell at the very pinnacle of American society?

The people in charge of the country today are the very people -- both the descendants of the same men and those who occupy the same position in society today -- whose power Roosevelt reshaped the country to keep in check.

They want to reshape the country back.

And they are succeeding.

Hypocrisy Tells The Truth

Richard B. Simon
February 2, 2006

The wife of Republican Florida Congressman Bill Young and the aggrieved Iraq War mother Cindy Sheehan and were both arrested and removed from The People's House Tuesday night, for wearing t-shirts with slogans on them to the president's State of the Union address -- one opposing the war and one supporting the war.

You know, I don't really disagree that t-shirts with slogans have no place in Congress during a formal address. Both ladies could have been politely asked to cover the t-shirts for the sake of decorum.

But that's no longer the point.

Lawyers for both parties are on the move. As for Congressman Young, he is downright angry.

It would have been nice to see such bipartisan outrage over the year or two during which people wearing sloganed t-shirts were removed from every presidential appearance -- even those that were publicly funded (or haven't you heard of the Colorado Three?) Of course, only people with John Kerry or pro-Democrat or anti-war or anti-Bush t-shirts have been turned away from presidential speeches ... until now.

Congressman Young is furious that his wife was "insulted." As for the equal and opposite treatment of CIndy Sheehan ... "Young said he wouldn't be so mad if it were just Sheehan. 'I totally disagree with everything she stands for,' he said. But by removing his wife, Gainer's officers clearly 'acted precipitously,' Young said."

And to whom did Congressman Young look for redress of his grievances? The Capitol police? No. He went to Karl Rove -- as if. As if he thinks that Karl Rove is in charge of who gets to stay and who is arrested for wearing t-shirts at presidential appearances ...I wonder why he would think such a thing.

The Republicans don't know it, the conservatives don't know it, because they implicitly trust George W. Bush. He is carrying their water and their banner. Moreover, they have never been on the receiving end of this treatment -- until now. And what happens when they get the brunt of the abuse of democracy? Well, they decry, it's okay if you do it to Democrats and liberals like Cindy Sheehan. After all, as the good Congressman said, "I totally disagree with everything she stands for" -- and that's certainly grounds for removal from a public event.

At least grounds for a removal from a public address by the President of the Republican States of America.

Congressman Young believes it is just fine to humiliate or mishandle an ordinary American citizen -- but how dare you Insult the Wife of a Republican Congressman with the same treatment?

It is fairly clear -- and has been for some time. But those who have not been watching do not see. Because their interests are being served, those whose party is in complete control of the government -- like the Sunni Baathists under Saddam Hussein -- cannot comprehend that anything is wrong in the social order, with the very fabric of this nation.

On the other hand, if you're not a Republican, the State of Our Union is clear to see.

It is a fascist dictatorship.


Here is what Vice President Henry Wallace wrote in the New York Times on April 9, 1944:

"The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power ...

"Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. They are doing this even in those cases where they hope to have profitable connections with German chemical firms after the war ends. They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

"American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery."

This is where the Republican steps in and says : well, of course, that was a liberal Democrat speaking in the liberal-biased New York Times.

And when the Republican says this, he underscores Wallace's very point: the well of information has been poisoned ... by the Bush Administration as it vilifies the free press; by right-wing propaganda outlets like Fox News, which slyly calls itself "fair and balanced", but which sells disinformation and misinformation and is run by a fellow named Roger Ailes, whose previous job was as top Republican Media Strategist for Presidents Reagan and Bush I; and by corporate-controlled media bosses whose loyalties are now divided between making profit and reporting news -- and which toe the Administration's line to receive favorable treatment from the FCC.


Guess what?

It has happened here.