Dakota Today

**Gore Vidal on Articles of Impeachment..more on lies about lying

Below is a link to Truthdig with a comment by Gore Vidal on the Articles of Impeachment introduced by Dennis Kucinich. I wonder if the impeachment efforts would be languishing in Congress if Kucinich looked like Paul Newman did 20 years or so ago.
 Gore Vidal on Impeachment at TruthDig

**Stay tuned even if Gore Vidal can write a hell of lot better than I can-- Doug Wiken

**Is Bush actually right about something? Ethanol?

President Bush mentioned Ethanol in his press conference. The Farm Journal ever searching for good news about Republicans has the report below.

Bush: Ethanol Not To Blame for Food Prices 4/30/2008 By Jeanne Bernick, Farm Journal Crops and Issues Editor

While some antihunger activists point to the biofuels industry as exacerbating world hunger by diverting crop needs, President Bush said Tuesday he believes corn-based ethanol is responsible for only a small part of rising food prices. Weather, increased food demand and energy prices are the key drivers of current global food inflation, according to President Bush’s remarks during a press conference in the White House Rose Garden.

“And the truth of the matter is, it's in our national interests that our farmers grow energy, as opposed to us purchasing energy from parts of the world that are unstable or may not like us,” President Bush told reporters.

Bush said high crop prices should not slow biofuel efforts and that the high price of gasoline is going to spur more investment in ethanol as an alternative to gasoline.

More at the LINK below:
NWLINK Farm Journal Crop News

This is important to corn farmers, but the information needs to also get to food consumers who are getting a figurative line of bologna from food corporations. Bush like a stopped clock with eight years on the dial is actually right about once.

The whole thing is however besides the real point. Bush War, Inc. in Iraq has squandered thousands of lives and enough of the taxpayers, past, present, and future, money to convert about a third of all the US energy used to wind energy sources. That needs to be the "moon project" and the sooner the better. The quicker the US is separated from the lunatic religious fanatics of the mideast, the better.

To paraphrase a Bible saying, "What do we profit if we gain all the oil from the terrorists and lose the whole world to global boiling."

**Rev. Wright does a pretty good job

I have been reading a lot of froth about the Rev. Wright who happens to be ..wink, wink, nod..Barrack Obama's local minister. So far not much of what I have seen him say that is in the context of more of what he says has been particularly terrible unless Democrats are deeply worried about losing Dick Cheney's vote in the general election.

The controversialists in the press are wringing their hands about the Rev. Wright's terrible impact on the Obama campaign. The "ain't it awful" crowd is just too concerned and upset about this to take it seriously. The Rev. Wright pretty well summed up a lot of my white guy's bitterness about Bush, Inc.

And, while we are talking about strange things said by ministers that we could just get oh so terribly upset about, perhaps we should remember what Jerry Falwell said about 9-11 and then apologized for ..of course, it might not be nice to kick a man of the clothe around now that he has croaked, but take a look at the link below:
Jerry Falwell Apologizes for his 9-11 comments I suspect other rightwing ministers white or otherwise have said equally stupid things about 9-11, etc.

Of course, the Rev. Wright controversy pales into insignificance compared to the horror that are photos of Miley Vanilla..er Cyrus, otherwise known as Hannah Montana...never to be confused with Patsy Montana...that apparently grace the pages of Vanity Fair which might better be called Vanity Fare.

Oh, and apparently Ken Blanchard wants to know how many of the angels dancing on the head of a pin are blessed or damned and what monumental difference that makes in the world of partisan sniping.

***Stay tuned..maybe John Edwards can be the compromise candidate-- Doug Wiken

**4000 US lives wasted in Iraq, Trillions squandered, What's $30 Billion?

Isn't this all just too special. The Bush administration doesn't want to create a welfare state for homeowners boxed in on mortgages, but is willing to pony up $30 Billion to bailout big banks, brokers and mortgage finaglers. Of course that amount is a pittance compared to what has already been squandered in Iraq.

Republican "responsibility" starts and ends with "Borrow and Squander". Incidentally, the $30 Billion Bush, Inc. is willing to dump into failing big business is about $100 per man, woman, and child in the US. Would the US economy be better off with dumping $100 per person into the economy instead of into bailing out overpaid executives and stockholders riding on a wave of speculative optimism? [A Paul Krugman article indicates the bailout may be as large as $400 Billion and even that may not be sufficient without other changes]

A few posts ago, the money dumped into Bear Stearns was previously noted by Greg Palast as he suggested that the Eliot Spitzer "affair" was more a diversion from the real economic problems than anything else. That huge money dump has now been followed up with JP Morgan bank buying up Bear Stearns for $2 per share..shares which were selling for $150 just a few months ago. Even associating a high-priced whore with Eliot Spitzer was not however enough to divert the opinion of every American.

This forced merger generates an even more huge concentration of wealth and economic power in the hands of even fewer people. It may be time to start thinking about the logic of collective wisdom and knowledge. Even the logic of crowds may be better than ever more concentration of power and wealth in the hands of an ever smaller "crowd".

I have wondered how any humans can be so incredibly intelligent and wise that they can handle the full demands of huge operations like the US Government and businesses that have control of huge markets. I think we will be seeing more evidence that mere mortals are mere mortals no matter how many million they may be paid by other mere mortals deciding they too are minor gods and godesses of the government and economy.

Wall Street, we have a problem. How many more businesses have stock prices inflated beyond any reason or logic and which will come tumbling down from $150 to $2 in a matter of months?

Let's remember that all the cheap easy to exploit resources of the US have pretty much been converted into scarce or expensive resources. There are no longer resources that can be pissed away on mindless wars without huge consequences for the "General Welfare" of the United States.

The conspiracy between Bush,Inc and big business shares much in common with the failed fascism and corporatism of wartime Italy.

Perhaps what is really needed is a cascading collapse of the huge corporations with the debris ending up in a crowd of wisdom.
[On edit later, a link predicting a mess: NWLINK to Truthout on Walker

**Stay tuned even if your retirement disappeared with Bear Stearns transfer to JP Morgan--- Doug Wiken

**Sen. McGovern says Bush-Cheney should be impeached

Sen. George McGovern finally makes the connections and decides Bush and Cheney should be impeached and that it is even more correct to impeach them than it was to impeach Nixon.

And, McGovern does not say what some forum posters suggest. If Clinton should have been impeached for sexually-challenged ethics, Bush and Cheney should be executed for what they did by comparison.

I have felt that Bush and Cheney should both be impeached for years. Good to see McGovern has caught up.
You can read the whole op ed perspective of McGovern at the link below:
NewWindow LINK to WashPost Mcgovern calls for Impeachment

I will copy the comments into the continuation as well.

As McGovern apparently indicated by his comments today on NPR, Bush-Cheney should be impeached to send a message to all future presidents.

**Stay tuned and consider that the McGovern Center got about 4000 e-mails with over 90% in support of his call for impeachment-- Doug Wiken

**Free Lunch for the rich discussed at Madville Times blog

As I mentioned in a previous post, I heard a review of Free Lunch book by Johnston on public broadcasting's Fresh Air radio show. MadvilleTimes blog has the relevant information with the author's correct name and some details from the book not just something like my recollections of the show. Take a look. I think it is a book Democrats and Democratic candidates need to know more about. Those in local and regional governments thinking about bequeathing TIF benefits on rich corporations in the interests of community recreation and resale, etc. need to read this book. So Take a look. The rich may have the final victory in the class war if something is not done soon to undue this very special FREE LUNCH for the richest.
New Window LINK to Madville Times on book FREE LUNCH

Whew. Somebody else did the work on that one. Tough job, but some blogger has gotta do it.

**Stay tuned and remember Jimmy Durante singing about reading a book---Doug Wiken

**The AWOL from TANG man lectures Congress

The Texas drawler with the Connecticut family connections spent some time in his 40th press propaganda session lecturing Congress Critters on their "duty". Mostly it was a lecture to support the troops in the Bush,Inc. war for oil, but it seemed uniquely hollow and hypocritical to me since it was coming from a guy who got a soft spot in the Texas Air National Guard compliments of his father's presidential connections and then did not even fulfill his duty to that soft escape from Vietnam.

The Bush Baby went AWOL from TANG. What is this arrogant, smirking privileged SOB doing lecturing Congress on their "Duty"?

Bush appears to believe his own and his administration propaganda for the Unitary presidency where the president is .. well, the Chief Executive, but also, The Commander in Chief, The Legislator in Chief, and The Jurist in Chief who can destroy any government institutions, traditions, and constitutional balances and separations of power, snoop and intrude on all kinds of privacy, lie and deceive by sheer will and tantrums.

I can fully understand why the Vietnam War was just not where Bush the Lessor wanted to go. I used every opportunity I had to escape going their myself, but I not do that by camouflaging what I was doing or for years hypocritically covering up the fact. I listened to ROTC officers doing their best to recruit while they themselves dreaded going to Vietnam and some coming back recognizing it was a fraud and failure. Bush papers have mysteriously disappeared or been secreted away in Papa Bush's Library sealed under the orders of the Unitary President. The Iraq war is the latest "quagmire" entered on the basis of lies and fraud.

I expect we will learn sometime later that the recent fire in Cheney's office was smothered by tossing on layers of records from the secret Cheney meetings with the energy monopolists and lobbyists and all his communication with Rumsfeld, Condoleeza, and the neocons when he ramrodded decisions meaning a hundred thousand or more Iraqis deserved to die because Bush and Cheney wanted them dead. [Note: this last paragraph is satire for the terminally humor-impaired Bush supporters. My guess is all the incriminating paper was destroyed long ago. No real need for a fire for that purpose].

**Stay tuned, but don't hold your breath waiting for the deserved Bush-Cheny impeachment. Congress is filled with Congressional cowards no more cognizant of of their real duty than is Bush--- Doug Wiken

**Who lied in the Bush Administration? Remember PlameGate?

Richard Armitage took the fall. Novak sneaked out the back door. Now Scott McClellan joins other former Bush officials who tell us the emperor really is naked as a jaybird. Bush and associated criminal conspirators should be impeaced. It is something Congress owes us for their own ignorance and expediency in supporting the Bush War powers and the associated collection of lies.

In early fall 2003, George W. Bush joined in what appears to have been a criminal cover-up to conceal the role of his White House in exposing the classified identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.

That is the logical conclusion one would draw from a new statement by then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan when it is put into a mosaic with previously known evidence.

McClellan says President Bush was one of five high-ranking officials who caused McClellan to lie to the public in clearing Bush's political adviser Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis Libby of any responsibility for the leak of Plame's employment as an undercover intelligence officer.

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," McClellan said. "So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true.

"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the Vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the President himself."

McClellan's comments were part of a press release from his publisher regarding McClellan's memoir, which is scheduled to reach the book stores next April.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/112007a.html
http://tinyurl.com/32325m

New Window LINK to the rest of the above quote

If you have forgotten the background of above and want to know more about author, check the link.

**Stay tuned even if all the turkeys aren't in a roasting pan with Bush in the White House--- Doug Wiken

**GOP Pols must fear a Democratic takeover..starting the old big government song and dance again.

In the last few days, some of our SD Republican politicians have been dredging up their old mindless refrain about the evil federal government dictating to the poor South Dakota legislature and government. That mindless bullshit kept South Dakota from putting in a mandatory seat belt law until an extra several hundred people died needlessly after the statistical and economic evidence alone should have been sufficient to open the eyes of the most nearly brain-dead, drunkard Republican in the legislature.

Now, Bill Napoli, Republican of Rapid City, is suggesting that the legal drinking age again be returned from age 21 to age 19. His "argument" being partly that it is only because the evil federal government would withhold federal highway money if SD did not have the age 21 minimum and therefore we should reject this federal ntrusion.

An apparently flea-brained Republican recent law school graduate from Flandreau, SD is pushing the return to age 19 minimum for some group as well. The Mitchell Daily Republic mentions the idea that SD legislators view the federal requirement as "Blackmail".

So, I expect we will be getting a barrage of this kind of mind-numbing crap in the coming months since the Goppers apparently believe that instead of the GOP wingnuts in Congress dispensing federal funds and legislation, we will be getting a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President, so they will have to return to their old song and dance smoke and mirrors "Federal government is evil" routine.

This kind of flagrant stupidity is a case of ideological blindness coupled with partisan expedience that can do great damage in South Dakota. Truckloads of valid statistical research indicates the problems with youth drinking and driving. There is also a lot of evidence regarding experienced drivers who drink and drive. Our vehicle insurance is high enough as it is.

The yo-yo brains who disregard public health and highway safety literally have fatality-flawed reasoning. We don't need any more dead teenagers and we don't need any more drunks on the highway claiming they can't be drunk because they are only drinking 3.2 beer.

There just aren't better, cheaper ways of reducing highway fatalities than limiting or preventing drunken driving and mandating seat belt usage on the highways. The same people who bitch about spending by government are unwilling to look at efficient near zero-cost alternatives that save lives at a fraction of the cost of building more four-lane highways.

*** Stay tuned for more reporting on the nonsense from the "government is evil" division of the Rightwing fog machine--Doug Wiken

**Porous Mexican border helps keep drug dogs working

First the really important news. The Rapid City Journal which has not been shrunken into insignificance like the ARGUS has jacked up the newstand price from 53 cents to 79 cents including the sales tax. Today's dead tree version October 2, 2007 has a story about a drug arrest on Interstate 90 near Chamberlain, SD. Photo of story is below. Click image for a larger version.

You will note the story mentions two men from Mexico. The porous border between the US and Mexico allows all kinds of illegal traffic..drugs, aliens, disease, illiteracy, etc. The meth labs in Mexico turn the evil stuff out by the ton if PBS Frontline has their facts right. But, the porous border does help keep some South Dakota dogs in good homes and working for their supper.

When are the liberals who blather about the wonders of diversity going to catch on that enough diversity from Mexico and we will become another third world nation with even more government corruption and unnecessary social expense. When will the conservatives, corporations and all the jerks who hire illegal aliens figure out that as Ambrose Bierce wrote years ago, "Chinese cheap labor is not inexpensive". It is just as true for "Hispanic Cheap labor".

The US has spent billions keeping even one Chinese communist or Russian communist soldier, sailor or airman out of the US, but is unwilling to build even a good fence to prevent an invasion of illegal aliens.
12 or 20 million illegal aliens in the US is a national scandal and a perfect "canary in the mine" to indicate the dreadful incompetence of our government and its failure to control our borders. Sovereignty means nothing without actual borders.

All the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Chertoff, neocan,, Rudy G. blather about "terrorism" means nothing if they aren't will to dumping resources into stopping the illegal alien invasion and getting the illegal aliens out of the country.

***Stay tuned, and don't swallow any diversity crap from somebody exploiting cheap labor for their own benefit or to break US unions---Doug Wiken