Friday Cat Blogging!

This is Cynthia's cat, Simon.


Photo by Cynthia Burgess

The true moral failing

Barbara Santee, head of Tulsa Interfaith Alliance, writes the following:

Some people of faith are viewing this catastrophe as being caused by a moral failing by the people of New Orleans. It is a moral failing, but not on the part of the people of that devastated city. It is the moral failure of an impersonal government that did not heed warnings, that put valuable resources in what many people believe to be an immoral war, and cut budgets critical to protecting our citizens from this kind of overwhelming catastrophe. This is not a partisan issue. There is enough blame to go around for Democrats and Republicans. This is an issue of not caring enough about our fellow human beings to invest in protecting them. We have spent billions on so-called "home-land security" at the airports looking for nail clippers carried by 80-year-old women, and neglected to set up the minimal communication system for a disaster like this. I know many people on this list will not agree with me, may even get angry at me, but this is too enormous to let it pass and ignore the root causes. That's tantamount to pretending it's not happening. People of faith have and will rally to help in every way possible. The blame-making can wait. We need to help our fellow human beings in this time of dire need. I hope every church, synagogue and mosque attendee on this list will suggest to their house of faith that the collections this week go to disaster relief for these people.

--Barbara Santee, Moderator

A Can't-Do Government

Paul Krugman has written a column in the New York Times that perfectly expresses, in my opinion, entirely appropriate outrage at the incompetence of our government regarding the Katrina disaster. It's entitled, "A Can't-Do Government" and I really recommend that you click through and read the whole thing but I'll give you a sample here:

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.
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Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."

In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.

Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.
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At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

I just keep thinking about what the rest of the world is thinking about us right now. Our response has been shameful, just shameful. And the suffering involved is beyond horrible. The Bush administration has a lot to answer for. The question before us is this: Will the press and the Democratic Party hold them accountable? When will the people as a body rise up and say, "no more free passes"? I sincerely hope that is what we see next.

Unprepared: It's an outrage

Read the article I'm linking for you and tell me if you're not outraged. The lack of preparedness and the fact that funds were cut to maintian the levees is simply beyond outrageous. The Knight-Ridder article is by Seth Borenstein and is entitled, "Bush bungles it again: Federal government wasn't ready for Katrina, disaster experts say". Here are some excerpts:

WASHINGTON - The federal government so far has bungled the job of quickly helping the multitudes of hungry, thirsty and desperate victims of Hurricane Katrina, former top federal, state and local disaster chiefs said Wednesday.

The experts, including a former Bush administration disaster response manager, told Knight Ridder that the government wasn't prepared, scrimped on storm spending and shifted its attention from dealing with natural disasters to fighting the global war on terrorism.

The disaster preparedness agency at the center of the relief effort is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which was enveloped by the new Department of Homeland Security with a new mission aimed at responding to the attacks of al-Qaida.

"What you're seeing is revealing weaknesses in the state, local and federal levels," said Eric Tolbert, who until February was FEMA's disaster response chief. "All three levels have been weakened. They've been weakened by diversion into terrorism."

In interviews on Wednesday, several men and women who've led relief efforts for dozens of killer hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes over the years chastised current disaster leaders for forgetting the simple Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared.
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"We're not getting any help yet," said Biloxi Fire Department Battalion Chief Joe Boney. "We need water. We need ice. I've been told it's coming, but we've got people in shelters who haven't had a drink since the storm."

It's the budget cuts that just boggle my mind:

Last year, FEMA spent $250,000 to conduct an eight-day hurricane drill for a mock killer storm hitting New Orleans. Some 250 emergency officials attended. Many of the scenarios now playing out, including a helicopter evacuation of the Superdome, were discussed in that drill for a fictional storm named Pam.

This year, the group was to design a plan to fix such unresolved problems as evacuating sick and injured people from the Superdome and housing tens of thousands of stranded citizens.

Funding for that planning was cut, said Tolbert, the former FEMA disaster response director.

Well sure, funding was cut. After all, we have to have tax cuts for the rich now, don't we?

Federal flood control spending for southeastern Louisiana has been chopped from $69 million in 2001 to $36.5 million in 2005, according to budget documents. Federal hurricane protection for the Lake Pontchartrain vicinity in the Army Corps of Engineers' budget dropped from $14.25 million in 2002 to $5.7 million this year. Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu requested $27 million this year.

Both the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper and a local business magazine reported that the effects of the budget cuts at the Army Corps of Engineers were severe.

In 2004, the Corps essentially stopped major work on the now-breached levee system that had protected New Orleans from flooding. It was the first such stoppage in 37 years, the Times-Picayune reported.

Much of the devastation experienced by New Orleans could have been prevented if the levees had just been maintained.

We really ought to be taking to the streets over this. Aside from the untold human suffering involved, this is a national security issue. New Orleans is one of our major ports. The local oil refineries supply a significant percentage of our fuel. The effects of this disaster are already being felt all over the nation.

Is anybody going to hold the Bush administration accountable??? Is the mainstream news media going to emphasize this information so that the people are informed about the poor planning and the budget cuts? Or will they give Bush a free pass on this too?

New Orleans and the president's response

The first article I want to share with you today is from the Guardian and is entitled, "I'm just glad I saw it". It is subtitled thus:

New Orleans was the city of jazz, Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, the place where the US Bible Belt came unbuckled. Former New York Times editor Howell Raines laments the destruction of the Big Easy, and asks: why did President Bush do so little in response?

After a song of praise to the New Orleans that was, Raines blasts the president:

Every great disaster - the Blitz, 9/11, the tsunami - has a political dimension. The performance of George Bush during this past week has been outrageous. Almost as unbelievable as Katrina itself is the fact that the leader of the free world has been outshone by the elected leaders of a region renowned for governmental ineptitude. Louisiana's anguished governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, climbed into a helicopter at the first possible moment to survey what may become the worst weather-related disaster in American history. She might even have been able to stop the looting in New Orleans if the 141st Field Artillery of the Louisiana Army National Guard had not been in Iraq for the past 11 months. They are among thousands of Southern guardsmen who could have been federalised by the stroke of a pen had they not been deployed in a phony war. Even Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a tiresome blowhard as chairman of the Republican National Committee, has shone a throat-catching public sorrow and sleepless diligence that puts Bush to shame.

This president, who flew away on Monday to fundraisers in the west while the hurricane blew away entire towns in coastal Mississippi, is very much his father's son when it comes to the kinds of emergencies that used to call forth immediate White House action before its Bushite captivity. When he was president, his father did not visit Miami after Hurricane Andrew, nor for that matter, did he mind being photographed tooling his golf cart around Kennebunkport while American troops died in the first Iraq war. Now the younger Bush seems determined to show his successors how to holiday through an apocalypse.
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Meanwhile, in Baton Rouge, an army colonel seemed to be the most senior federal official at a televised news conference called to announce a Corps of Engineers plan to drop sand bags into the raceway of the broken levee. The proposed drop did not take place because the shortage of helicopters was such that the aircraft had to be diverted to rescue work. Twenty-four hours later, on Wednesday, as Bush met by intercom with his emergency team and considered a return to Washington, as Pentagon and Homeland Security promised relief by the weekend, intensive care patients were dying at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. They had languished for two full days because the overworked coast guard helicopter crews available in New Orleans did not have time to reach them. As for the Superdome refugees, it finally fell to the governor of Texas to announce that they could come to Houston's Astrodome. What other American president, one wonders, would fail to house these people in the decent barracks available at the closed and active military bases scattered throughout the South? The plain fact is that Jimmy Carter did a better job of housing the Mariel refugees from Cuba than Bush has done with the citizens of New Orleans.

This article merely touches on the outrageous behavior of this president. Be assured I'll bring you more information as the day progresses.

Destroying FEMA

I just read an article in the Washington Post that made me sick. It's by Eric Holdeman and is entitled, "Destroying FEMA". If Katrina hasn't demonstrated why we need FEMA, I don't know what will. Here are some passages from the article:

SEATTLE -- In the days to come, as the nation and the people along the Gulf Coast work to cope with the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we will be reminded anew, how important it is to have a federal agency capable of dealing with natural catastrophes of this sort. This is an immense human tragedy, one that will work hardship on millions of people. It is beyond the capabilities of state and local government to deal with. It requires a national response.

Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country's premier agency for dealing with such events -- FEMA -- is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security.

Apparently homeland security now consists almost entirely of protection against terrorist acts. How else to explain why the Federal Emergency Management Agency will no longer be responsible for disaster preparedness? Given our country's long record of natural disasters, how much sense does this make?
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FEMA was born in 1979, the offspring of a number of federal agencies that had been functioning in an independent and uncoordinated manner to protect the country against natural disasters and nuclear holocaust. In its early years FEMA grew and matured, with formal programs being developed to respond to large-scale disasters and with extensive planning for what is called "continuity of government."
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Indeed, the advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed [former director, James Lee] Witt. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the "homeland security borg."

This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.
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To be sure, America may well be hit by another major terrorist attack, and we must be prepared for such an event. But I can guarantee you that hurricanes like the one that ripped into Louisiana and Mississippi yesterday, along with tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, windstorms, mudslides, power outages, fires and perhaps a pandemic flu will have to be dealt with on a weekly and daily basis throughout this country. They are coming for sure, sooner or later, even as we are, to an unconscionable degree, weakening our ability to respond to them.

Has Bush never heard the slogan, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" What on earth is he thinking?

Katrina's real name

This morning I want to share an article with you that is biting and incisive. The article is by Ross Gelbspan and is entitled, "Katrina's real name". If ever we needed to wake up to the effects of global warming on our world, that time is now. Here are some excerpts:

The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.

When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming.

When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United Kingdom, the driver was global warming.

More calamities are listed that are, in fact, caused by global warming. Then Gelbspan makes the following point:

As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours, more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.

Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.

The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying.

Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.

I have longed blamed the media for this ignorance and so does Gelbspan:

Against this background, the ignorance of the American public about global warming stands out as an indictment of the US media.

When the US press has bothered to cover the subject of global warming, it has focused almost exclusively on its political and diplomatic aspects and not on what the warming is doing to our agriculture, water supplies, plant and animal life, public health, and weather.

For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations.

Today, with the science having become even more robust -- and the impacts as visible as the megastorm that covered much of the Gulf of Mexico -- the press bears a share of the guilt for our self-induced destruction with the oil and coal industries.

Are we going to wake up any time soon? Will it be too late? I fear it already is.

Disaster relief for animals

I want to tell you about a wonderful organization the provides disaster services for the animals affected by emergency situations. The name of this organization is Noah's Wish. I have been just horrified as news developed regarding Hurricane Katrina and my heart has been especially pained for the animals who have been abandoned to the elements. Here's a statement from the organization's web site:

Noah's Wish is a not-for-profit, animal welfare organization, with a straightforward mission. We exist to keep animals alive during disasters. That's it.

We are not involved in any other animal welfare issues. It's not that we are not concerned about all the ways animals are abused and exploited. Noah's Wish would like nothing more than to see all suffering stop. Fortunately, there are a multitude of national and local animal welfare organizations who are tackling the issues that adversely affect animals. No other organization has made the commitment though to just focus on disaster relief work for animals. That's the void we are filling.

Noah's Wish came into existence in March 2002, not to duplicate existing efforts to help animals during earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes, but rather to expand on what's already in place. Too often, efforts to help animals during these life threatening situations have been gravely inadequate. It would be unacceptable if relief efforts for people were as fragmented.

Noah's Wish recognizes that animals need and deserve an organized, consistent, and professionally managed national disaster relief program. Otherwise, they will continue to pay for human indifference with their lives. What will raise the standards for how animals are managed during disasters is to implement well thought out, field tested, policies and procedures that are practiced in all disasters. Relief efforts for people are managed this way and we feel they should be for animals too.

Noah's Wish wants animals to survive disasters by getting the services they need, therefore, we have taken on the challenge to raise the standards. What we have set out to do, no other organization has successfully done. There have been countless attempts made, but the efforts have not gone far enough. Noah's Wish has a great deal of work ahead of us, but we're confident in our ability and determination to get the job done. What other choice do we have?

Click here to see an impressive list of the services they provide.

No doubt everyone reading this will want to make donations to the relief effort regarding Katrina. I would like to suggest that there will be millions of people giving to the Red Cross and other organizations set up to help human beings. However, very few people will think about the enormous suffering that animals go through in disaster situations. Please consider making a contribution to Noah's Wish (if you scroll down, there is a Pay Pal button as well as a snail mail address). The work they do throughout the world is amazing. And you will know that you have engaged in an act of powerful compassion when you do so.

Why the silence?

Today I want to share with you an article by William E. Connolly entitled, "Why have so many remained silent?" I'm blogging this article partly because of all the comments posted after the reprint in Smirking Chimp. The article clearly touched a nerve in a lot of people. Here's how it gets started:

The protest by Cindy Sheehan in Crawford -- while a wartime president takes a five-week vacation -- posed a difficult question: Why was there a protest movement during that last quagmire in Vietnam, but no equivalent has emerged today? Sheehan clearly touched a nerve.

Nonetheless, why, after thousands of Iraqis and Americans have been killed and maimed, and the increased risk of terrorism that the war has fostered as well as the high probability that a civil war could follow in its wake, do so many Americans remain quiet about this disaster?

I am not speaking about that percentage of the populace who defend the hubris of the Bush administration no matter its cost in lives, safety, money and noble American values. I am talking about people who now see that it was a horrible mistake for which we and others will pay for generations.

Several reasons might be expressed for this silence. The first is that many people, who now see how mistaken the invasion was, believe we are trapped in a quagmire with no place to turn.

There is, indeed, no easy way out, which is why it is so important to contemplate the consequences before invading another country.

But the United States could admit its mistake, beg forgiveness from the world, ask the United Nations to create a peacekeeping force and pledge a few hundred billion dollars to help fund that effort. That, it can be argued, would improve upon existing policy. Other alternatives could be considered.

But many people refuse even to entertain such possibilities. Why? Inside the judgment that there is no way out, a second misgiving simmers.

Millions of Americans find it difficult to admit that they participated in the myth of American righteousness and omnipotence peddled by President Bush and neoconservative publicists before the war. (Remember how some people believed Iraqis would be cheering in the streets and the reconstruction would be funded by Iraqi oil revenues?) They register their dismay in impersonal polls but do not translate it into public opposition.

Connolly continues in this vein. I suggest that you click through and read the whole article if you have time and also peruse the comments listed below. Many of them are very interesting.

Opposing reality

Maureen Dowd has written an article about the president's insistence on trying to re-make reality. She also writes about how the mood of the country is shifting. But the part I really want you to see is this:

Eric Lichtblau reported in The Times this week that the administration was dumping the highly respected Lawrence Greenfeld, appointed by President Bush in 2001 to head the Bureau of Justice Statistics, because he refused superiors' orders to delete from a press release an account of how black and Hispanic drivers were treated more aggressively by the police after traffic stops. The Justice Department study showed markedly higher rates of searches and use of force for black and Hispanic drivers, compared with white drivers.

Fearing that the survey would give ammunition to members of Congress who object to using racial and ethnic data in terrorism and law enforcement investigations, Mr. Greenfeld's supervisors buried it online with no press release or briefing for Congress.

Mr. Lichtblau wrote that when Mr. Greenfeld sent the planned press release to the office of his supervisor, Tracy Henke, then an acting assistant attorney general, the section on the treatment of black and Hispanic drivers was crossed out with a notation: "Do we need this?" Ms. Henke herself had added a note: "Make the changes."

Like Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, John Bolton and others who helped spin reality to suit political ends, Ms. Henke was rewarded by the president. She has been nominated for a senior post in the Homeland Security Department.

The name of the article is "Bike-deep in the Big Muddy", by the way. You know, researchers all over the world depend upon the validity of the data coming out of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. This institution is supposed to be impartial and unbiased. The fact that partisan interests are now influencing their reports to the public is very worrying.

Just a reminder

Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation' between Church and State.

--The U.S. Supreme Court, 1947

Polls on the war

The Associated Press has conducted a poll and discovered the following:

* 58 percent disapprove of the way the Bush administration has conducted the war in Iraq.

* 53 percent think the war was a mistake.

Given that the the mainstream news media are definitely slanted to the right, these numbers are astonishing.

Friday Cat Blogging!

This is Ethel, the very feral kitty who hangs around the house and is willing to be fed. She is very skittish and this is the first time I've been able to get a shot of her in a relaxed pose. Yes, I did trap her and get her spayed and immunized so don't worry. But she refuses to be tamed.


Photo by Ellie Finlay

The untreated alcoholic

Here is a brief article by Justin Frank entitled, "Pedaling as fast as he can: George W. Bush's tenuous grasp of reality". If I'm not mistaken, Justin Frank is the psychiatrist who wrote Bush on the Couch. Here is an excerpt from the article:

George W. Bush remains an untreated alcoholic. The untreated alcoholic who has simply stopped drinking treats anxiety as an enemy. Bush's current enemy, the primary cause of his anxiety, is Cindy Sheehan.

Nobody talks about it - the press is afraid of it -- but we are all enabling a man whose grasp of reality is tenuous at best.Anxiety is always challenging; but when an untreated alcoholic's behavior is challenged, his anxiety increases dramatically - and with it, the need to numb its sting.

Anxiety is then a threat to his abstinence. Instead of learning new means to manage feelings, he has to spend energy fighting his fears. In Bush's case, he fiercely rides his mountain bike.

Managing his anxiety is one reason presidential briefings have been so simple. USA Today reports on August 25 that Bush's foreign policy briefings were, until very recently, presented to him with "snappy headlines" and simplistic perspectives leaving "little room for doubt or nuance." No wonder it was so simple to invade Iraq.

I recommend reading the rest of the article. It will only take a minute. Addiction treatment is, indeed, about learning how to manage one's feelings and how to accept "life on life's terms". Both alien concept to our president.

Counter protest

Someone just left a comment on the August 10 posting on this blog. It is addressed to Cindy Sheehan and I reprint it for you here:

Please go home. You are an embarrassment to our nation as you are giving terrorists the impression of weakness and I am sure that they are more than happy with your escapades. My grandson is serving in Iraq for the 3rd time. I am proud of him and would never dishonor him with such a show of anti-American sentiment.

It was signed by Anonymous.

I would simply like to refer Anonymous to the first ammendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the FREEDOM OF SPEECH, or of the press; or the RIGHT OF PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES.

Far from being anti-American, Cindy Sheehan is commiting a profound and focused act of citizenship. May her tribe increase.

Global warming lawsuit

Here's a very interesting article about fighting global warming through the courts. It's by David Kravets and is entitled, "Federal Judge OKs Global Warming Lawsuit". Here's an excerpt:

A federal judge here said environmental groups and four U.S. cities can sue federal development agencies on allegations the overseas projects they financially back contribute to global warming.

The decision Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White is the first to say that groups alleging global warming have a right to sue.

"This is the first decision in the country to say that climate change causes sufficient injury to give a plaintiff standing, to open the courthouse door," said Ronald Shems, a Vermont attorney representing Friends of the Earth.

That group, in addition to Greenpeace and the cities of Boulder, Colo., Santa Monica, Oakland and Arcata, Calif., sued Overseas Private Investment Corp. and the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Those government agencies provide loans and insure billions of dollars of U.S. investors' money for development projects overseas. Many of the projects are power plants that emit greenhouses gases that the groups allege cause global warming.

Wow. This is a strategy for affecting people it hurts - in the pocketbook. Sadly, that makes more sense that appealing to the better angels of their nature. I sure hope it works.

Pat Robertson is not a Christian

That's the title of an article by The Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler. Yes, I know Robertson has apologized. But he has not repented. And there's a big difference. Here are some excerpts from the article that was published by Common Dreams:

Pat Robertson suggested this past Monday that the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, be assassinated by operatives of the United States government! Though his comments are newsworthy because of his following in the 700 Club and his political stature and role in the political religious right, his comments however are out of synch with everything that has been handed down to us from the teachings of Jesus Christ. What I am suggesting here is that Pat Robertson and individuals of his ilk are not practicing or preaching Christ but have become adherents of a political movement in this nation that attempts to use Christianity towards their own narrow political ends. I believe that there is a role for Christianity in the events of the world, but the teachings of Christ leads us to love one another, strain and stretch to understand each other, and dare to know each other enough that we come to an understanding of one another and from that create a world that is not built on might and winning but on understanding and unity. Clearly the comments of Robertson defy the framework we find in the gospels of Jesus Christ.
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What do we find in the Good News of Christ? We find love is expressed continually and unceasingly. The gospels admonish us to do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. We finds words in the gospels that define the mission of Christians as the elevation of the poor, freedom for those who are oppressed, salvation for the lost, and hope for the hopeless. Jesus says come unto me all of you who are weak and heavy laden and I will give you rest. He does not say come to me those who are looking for political expediency and I will show you who to and how to assassinate!
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I am continually amazed at how so many preachers have ceased to preach Christ, or to proclaim him out of the rich simplicity of his teachings and have resorted to a kind of theology that is not gospel based but is based on a narrow point of view that keeps the powerful powerful and the poor poor!

I am too.


Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler is National President, Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice and Senior Minister, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ Washington, D.C.

Media lies

It's a brief little article so click through and read it all. It's by Cenk Uygur and is entitled, "Big media lie: People like George Bush". Here's the critical excerpt:

News Flash - George Bush's approval ratings are at 36%. Those are pre-coup numbers. That's when a politician in a third world country becomes so unpopular that a couple of generals decide to show him the door. Nixon at the height of Watergate was at 39%, three points HIGHER than Bush is right now. And people despised Nixon.

So when are the talking heads going to stop calling him a "popular president"??? It's quite maddening that this claim persists.

Robertson apologizes

Well, he's apologized. After first lying about it and saying he didn't call for assassination. CNN has the breaking story:

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson today apologized for calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. "Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement," he said in a written statement. Earlier -- and despite video evidence to the contrary -- Robertson had insisted he was misquoted claiming "I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out'."

I'm glad our national consciousness is still such that some behavior is simply not acceptable in the public discourse. Hubris was behind the call for assassination. The humbling effects of having to apologize could potentially do Robertson a world of good.

What fascism looks like

Characteristics of Fascism

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14.Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

(From “Free Inquiry Magazine”, Vol. 23, #2)