The local midday DJ for my radio station (93.5 The Beach) is more or less a complete moron. Every day between 10am to 3pm, "Matt" taps his inner Rush Limbaugh/Bill O'Reilly and goes on a 5 hour rant against the government and Democrats in tirades that are typically hypocritical. A few examples of this is when he labeled the Supreme Court a group of traitors who should be hung because they upheld the Constitution but when they ruled on the 2nd Amendment he was singing their praises. And just the other day someone called up and basically told him to put his money where his mouth is for all his hate speech and warmongering but he pulled the 1st Amendment and tried to defend his idiocy with it, but when rumors came up that George Clooney was going to make a movie about bin Laden's driver he said that he was a terrorist and shouldn't be allowed to make the movie. Just typical talk radio hypocrisy.

This is my first diary ever on DailyKos. I was inspired to write about the book/cultural zeitgeist "The Secret" because I realized it has unsettling parallels to the Republican style of control of the collective unconscious. I realize I jump from topic to topic quite a bit, but these are just some musings I'm having this Thursday evening with a quantity of red wine, and I'd love to hear some other Kossack opinions.

Tucker Carlson had some very strong words for the neo-conservatives and the Bush White House this morning. He maintains that John McCain's argument that Saddam Hussein was a bad man who meant us harm so therefore we must strike him pre-emptively is "reasonable". However, he said that if Scott McClellan's new book is accurate and the White House wanted to take us to war not by virtue of any threat but because of ideological and theoretical reasons (democracy, stabilizing the region etc.) that the argument for war then becomes "very, very hard to defend" and in fact "borderline ludicrous"

Although Tucker Carlson hasn't been the biggest supporter of the war since it became clear that it was an unmitigated disaster... its still surprising to see him using such strong language to call a spade a spade.

This whole situation seems slightly surreal. If you had told me back in 2003/2004 that Scott McClellan would end up becoming a scathing Bush administration critic and Tucker Carlson would be on television calling the real rationale for war "borderline ludicrous" I would have never believed you.

Watch the clip:

One of the greatest fears people have about the last year of a Bush presidency is that military action will be taken against Iran. We know that the neo-conservatives want it and we know that Bush is even talking about how he signs vetoes to "stay relevant".

The prospect is a frightening one but it has been on the back burner now for some time. The 2008 election has diverted our attention to white grandmothers, pastors and poll results. But when the issue re-surfaces as it has over the past few days I can't help but get a chill up my spine that the propaganda campaign may once again be in full swing.

Calls have gotten louder amongst hawks calling for the U.S. to do something about the Quds forces in Iran. Just today Joe Lieberman was on TV talking about the "real possibility" of a bombing campaign against the Iranians and John Bolton has been calling for a bombing campaign consistently these days.

With a President who has nothing to lose (in his mind) and a GOP nominee who signs about bombing Iran to the tune of the beach boys... is it time to start freaking out about the Kyle-Lieberman amendment and the possibility of war? Remember, the Republican Guard are all "terrorists" now thanks to Senators like Hillary Clinton.

Is anyone else tired of the praise that Senator Clinton  has been amassing from right wing pundits? When the Kristols, Krauthammers, Novacks, Brooks, et al. of the world go out of their way to make it known what a great candidate she is; how much better a choice she should obviously be for the democratic party, does it really take tremendous amount of insight to draw the implication that that they are acting with ulterior motives?

[Llewellyn] Werner, chairman of C3, a Los Angeles-based holding company for private equity firms, is pouring millions of dollars into developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum. It is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland. "The people need this kind of positive influence. It’s going to have a huge psychological impact," Mr Werner said.

(more after the fold.)

I just want to post a list of those who have tried to warn us about Bushco's desire to start a war with Iran before the clock runs out:

1. Senator Christopher Dodd

2. The British Government

3. Zbigniew Brzezinski

4. U.S. News and World Report - 6 Signs the U.S. May be Headed for War in Iran.

5. William K. Polk, at Juan Cole's site.

6. The Arab press, (and the German press, to be fair) warning us that Saudi Arabia, after Dick Cheney's recent meeting, is making preparations to deal with fallout from attack on Iran's nuclear sites.

7.  Gary Hart

And today, the Wall Street Journal is giving us a heads-up.  

What will you be doing when the U.S. strikes Iran?  Maybe writing, or reading, yet another "How Hillary Can't Win" diary?  Well, good for you.  Bushco sure ain't interested in who the candidate is, because they have the "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" song on their playlist for their "October Surprise".  Links and more over the bump.  But only if you're interested in this sort of thing.  

Two days ago DHinMI posted on why people join the military with "They Become Soldiers Because They Can't Afford to Become Students, Homeowners and Parents."  I am not disputing DHinMI’s diary but I am offering an alternate view based on my experience.  This is mine alone and should not be taken as what everyone who joins does.  Call it an "alternate view."

The best thing to do is to weaken the tenuous marriage of the power-hungry and money-hungry neo-cons with the religious right.

We all know that Bush could never have even pretended to be elected without the support of the religious right.  The neo-cons adopt the rhetoric of family values and righteousness, then turn around and screw EVERYBODY except their wealthy buddies.

In other words, the wealthy few are relying on the (often poor and unemployed) religious many to keep them in power. Driving a wedge between those groups is the most important thing we can do.

In the paradigm that most the religious folks are in, authority = righteousness. The authority figures like Bush / McCain are cast in the role of the father who gets to make the rules.  These folks (and the wealthy too) must all deserve their position or God would not have let them achieve it.

To us that may look like self-referential or paradoxical logic, but most of their voters are operating on a gut-level with this as truth.  We have to alter their gut-level relationship to the shifty, self-serving neo-cons and it WILL NOT HAPPEN WITH LIBERAL LOGIC.

The Fallen Ones
You know the story of God's favorite angel who got too proud and too enamored of power?

I always read the Sunday NY Times Week in Review, in particular the Op-Ed page (now expanded to four pages!).  This week, there were two egregious features on Iraq:  An amazingly patronizing and blame-shifting piece by reporter John Burns and a purported symposium of views on Iraq on the occasion of the invasion's fifth anniversary. Anticipating the latter, I looked forward to a diversity of views reflecting on the past five years. Instead, there was an array of apologies, recriminations, excuses, and half-truths by neo-cons like Richard Perle, Danielle Pletka and Fred Kagan, a bizarre piece by Paul Bremer, a sorta mea culpa, but stay-the-course piece by Kenneth Pollack.

This presentation is brilliantly eviscerated by David Bromwich in a must-read entry in the current Huffington Post:  

This was a headline loaded with pain: "Democrats torn between party, GOP allegiances." Page 1 of Sunday’s Miami Herald.  I already knew about this, but seeing it there made me sick. Now is the time to look at this deep problem we have in South Florida, and see if we can fix it – well before we have to vote in November.

http://www.miamiherald.com/...

(Why aren't links loading???)

In a nutshell, as I see it: We have two Democratic members of the House of Representatives who will not do anything to help three fine Democrats run against the three Republicans who misrepresent about 1.5 million people in Miami-Dade, Monroe, Collier and Broward counties. Their two seats are so safe that Republicans run no one against them, yet they will not venture out to help fellow Democrats.

How wrong can things get?

MORE below

During work today I caught the following on NPR's Here and Now which comes out of Boston, and while it was a real nice, and comfortable, bright sunny day, My Freaking Rage Level Hit Sky High!!!

IRAQI WAR CONTRACTORS:

The Boston Globe reports today that the largest war contractor in Iraq is skirting hundreds of millions of dollars in US taxes by setting up shell companies in the Cayman Islands. The Globe found that Texas-based Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) may have avoided half a billion dollars in payroll taxes by hiring employees through foreign subsidiaries. But those subsidiaries are nothing more than an address, with no phone, fax or offices. The Boston Globe's Foreign Affairs correspondent, Farrah Stockman, went to the Cayman Islands to investigate.

Dear Americans,

You deserve much better from your northern neighbor. Please accept my sincere apology for my stupid government (I've taken to calling them the SSHITs). As the Globe & Mail has very recently made clear, our Prime Minister's Chief of Staff can't be trusted not to blab confidential information to the media from our allies - or at least the Democratic ones.

I don't blame you if you are upset. If the tables were turned, surely Canadians would be up in arms at any whiff of American influence on our political process.

Of course, it doesn't help when our idiot newsroom at CTV can't keep the facts straight:

It's really kind of nice, in a way, to have a drug-addicted dunderhead for a President.  He manages to let slip a few truisms now and then.  

Here's what he said regarding the FISA battle:

And these telephone companies…. Are afraid they’re going to be sued.

That's the bottom line, folks, and we all know it, but it's nice to hear it from the Corporatist-In-Chief.

Apprently like old soldiers old neo-cons never die. Here is the gripping tale of the fate of one unlamented Paul Wolfowitz former neo-con whiz kid.

Dear Friends and fellow Kossacks.  I wish to call attention to Meteor Blades front paged posting about the PNAC, and the fine job he did.  Also I would like to answer Kossack JLFinch for his reply about the PNAC neos and fellow travelers being "traitors," and "insidious" ones at that.

But, any discussion of the neo-conservatives and PNAC or any updated version of the same goes nowhere without a basic understanding of one, Leo Strauss.

Strauss was a philosopher and is clearly very deep down in the second string of 20th century philosophical names.  But his impact has been profound, especially in the United States.  Let's make the jump.

So much, while the Country isn't asked to Sacrifice a Damn Thing?

Today the puppeteers pulled the puppets strings and the puppet says it will veto the Defense Department bill passed by the House and Senate containing

The bill is important to members of the military and their families, since it provides for a 3.5 percent pay raise for the troops and contains measures intended to improve the much-criticized health-care system for veterans.

Apparently conservatives are energized by the Benazir Bhutto assassination because they think it proves how much America needs an aggressive foreign policy in a dangerous world.