Arkansas Blog

Lordy! There is enough material here to write a book. The problems of the world today can be put squarely on the shoulders of humans. Yeah, Katrina was a bitch, but it was humans who built in a place that should have been left alone.

My point is that while we all hate Karl Rove, we are responsible for Rove's success. It's our combination of loving a winner, admiring success, our own greed and predjudice and our ability to forget the details. The whole world loves Sam Walton, but very few bother to know that Sam was as cold blooded in business as they come. He gained success by paying his bills at the very last minute and usually after he managed to squeeze out some kind of concession that was good for him and bad for the person he owed money to. Wal-Mart continues this tradition by forcing their ways on venders who must sell their products in Wal-Mart or die. Some of them have died trying to jump thru every Wal-Mart required hoop then being dropped for products made in China.

The great Donald W. Reynolds cheated his employees for 60 years to amass his billion(s). His blood money intended to wash away his sins is plastering his name on dozens if not hundreds of buildings across the south and west. Good works that might pay back the children and grandchildren of those he cheated, but will never make up for the pain and misery he caused generations of his employees. Someday in the future will come a generation who will think Don Reynolds must have been a great man. Hopefully there will always be some old dinosaurs left to set the record straight.

So here comes Karl Rove....a machine more than a man. He figures every angle to the benefit of Bush and the RNC in such a fine, detailed way that Sam and Don would be jealous if they were alive today. I grew up admiring Henry Ford because he never missed a beat. He figured a way to use the packing crates Ford parts came in as floorboards in his model Ts.....using everything to his advantage. It made a great car that sold for nearly nothing. Allowing even the poorest American to ride instead of walk.

But like a hammer is no good cleaning a picture window, Rove's deployment of Sam and Don and Henry's methods in politics have been a disaster for our government, our country and the world. Something about setting up all things to benefit one group has allowed America to lose its soul. For centuries we were guided by right and wrong. Now we operate on what is best for us, screw the others, screw the country, screw the world. This mentality has made America an attack country. Has made us think we own the world and can steal what we need. Its made us think the only way is the American way. We ignore poverty, misery, boundary lines, the traditions of others, the rights of others in our quest to make it all hunky dory for America.

And by America I am not really talking about you and me....I'm talking about the rich white owners of America. The ones Beebe can't stand up to. The ones feeding Mark Pryor. The ones moving their headquarters to Dubai and their factories to Mexico. The ones chewing up your kids for oil. The ones willing to forget right and wrong and throw in with people like Rove and Cheney for a buck. The ones firing the inspectors who used to keep our food safe and our toys free from lead. The ones not happy with just 1 billion.

The ones so worried about their property values that they invent Yard Nazis to tow away your cars from your driveway, tell you when to paint your house and ban old black ladies from catching cooler air from the couch on their front porch. The spirit of Karl Rove is alive in every city in America. We can't pretend that the amassing of all power happens only in DC. The local control freaks picked right up on it and now except for those living in gated communities, none of the rest of us are safe. Boss Womack in Rogers is an excellent example. It's not good enough to suck up all the cheap labor, he and his followers have to give them a good smack and make them live in the woods so as not to offend the blue eyes happy to have them gut their chickens, but not walk down their streets. Politicizing Rogers, Arkansas is great....unless you're a Mexican.

Buying everything from Wal-Mart is great too because it's so damn cheap. But 20 years from now we're going to be hiding in the basement as Chinese troops storm our streets. They'll be well fed and we'll be hungry because all our jobs will be in other lands. The Rove People will be fine because they'll take their billions and move off....Dubai is lovely this time of year ya know....all that indoor downhill skiing is fabulous!

If we are to belief the myth of America, we'd have to say that in all good things there was a consideration of what was fair. Fairness started dying when Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine in the 80s. Karl Rove murdered fairness in 1999 for the sake of one George W. Bush. Fairness allowed there to be a rich side of town and a poor side of town. But how can the rich enjoy being rich if they have to view the sometimes ugly poor side. So while being poor wasn't punishment enough the Rove People of our towns decided to assemble an army in City trucks to further terrorize the poor, they must think the poor will go away if enough hot coals are poured on their heads. Sorta the same way American bombs will someday make the Iraq people not give a damn and love their invaders.

Ma would say we're too smart for our own good or too big for our britches. I'd say we're all too Rovian these days. Cause every time you do something or make a deal that is good for you and bad for someone else......you are Karl Rove. Every time you take something that doesn't belong to you, you're Karl Rove. Every time you see someone and wish they'd disappear into thin air, you're Karl Rove.

Karl Rove will be all around in the dark. He'll be ever'-where - wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat and they're beaten to a pulp, Karl will be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a skateboarder in Hot Springs, Karl will be there. Rove will be in the way guys yell when they're mad at Yard Nazis-he'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know they'll have to sell their bodies to the US for 20k and risk dying in Iraq to have a chance at a good life. An' when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise, and livin' in the houses they build out of cardboard and car hoods in the woods after the melt down - Rove will be there, too.

We made Karl Rove, we are him.

Great round-up Max. I thought this little snip was another jewel...
<<<<<
Frank Rich slams it out of the park today:

Last weekend's Iowa straw poll was a more somber but equally anachronistic spectacle. Again, it's a young conservative commentator, Ryan Sager, writing in The New York Sun, who put it best: "The face of the Republican Party in Iowa is the face of a losing party, full of hatred toward immigrants, lust for government subsidies, and the demand that any Republican seeking the office of the presidency acknowledge that he's little more than Jesus Christ's running mate."

That face, at once contemptuous and greedy and self-righteous, is Karl Rove's face. Unless someone in his party rolls out a revolutionary new product, it is indelible enough to serve as the Republican brand for a generation.
<<<<<<<

ARK. BLOG: Yes, Rich was good as ever. But he's behind the subscription wall. I should look up that free site.

My brother is in the 82nd currently in Iraq and he describes a totally different Iraq than the one you see on T.V. and the one this article describes.

With the news more and more positive about Iraq including your beloved New York Times I can see where you are easily drawn to the negative view of things there. Especially since all the democratic candidates have officially bet their candidacy on a failed Iraq.

Iraq is not a quagmire, and even the democrats are going to have to make changes on how the deal with Iraq. Good news in Iraq = Bad news for democrats.

Max, Here is a friendly..

http://mgpaquin.wordpress.com/

FYI, Live Jamaican radio.. as Hurricane Dean (no relation to Howard) passes over.. at my name.. P.S. they talk funny.

CJ, for once I hope you're right and I'm wrong. Time will tell. But we can't give a Cheney forever. He has to steal all the oil and stop the war someday or we'll be out of kids and your brother will be too old to pull the trigger.

I personally think we've been losing the war since the first bomb dropped. It is an unjust war fought for all the wrong reasons. 2% of the people saying we're doing jim dandy in Iraq vs 98% who say we're having our ass handed to us....I think I'll have to go with the 98%. Time will tell. Good luck to your brother and I sincerely mean it.

"But 20 years from now we're going to be hiding in the basement as Chinese troops storm our streets. They'll be well fed and we'll be hungry because all our jobs will be in other lands." - posted by DBI

Don't scoff at this statement, folks. The wife and I spent 10 days in Beijing and Shanghai last month. Much change since our last visit 15 years ago. Since then, about 275 million people from rural areas have moved into the urban centers and hundreds of millions more will do so in the next couple of decades.

These hundreds of millions must have work, and that's why manufacturing (at 65-cents an hour) is booming there and will continue to do so. We greedy Americans are addicted to China's cheap prices, and are apparently willing to continue feeding their economy and their huge military buildup. (They and we are the only countries still spending megabucks on the military.)

The booming economy over there calls for more oil and lots of it. Billions of barrels that would have made their way here or elsewhere are already going there. Soon, like us, China will have its Navy "protecting" the sea lanes in the Persian Gulf. Count on it. Lots of potential for eventual conflict there, don't you think?

And then there's that little placed called Taiwan that we've vowed to protect from a takeover by China. What are we going to do one day when Beijing decides to take it? Go to war with them? Will we be prepared to do that? If we back down, will any treaty we have with anybody anywhere in the world be worth a damn?

Unlike much of the world, China is NOT experiencing a population decline. At least, not for males. The Chinese prefer boys, and with technology that now tells parents-to-be the gender of their expected offspring, many families are aborting the girls. Somewhere I read that in China there are already 70 million boys growing up who will never have wives. Talk about a testosterone-soaked, overloaded military of the future.

I hope Blanche, Mark, Marion, Vic, John, and Mike are watching all of this. I would sleep so much better tonight knowing that they are.

"Iraq is not a quagmire..."
CJ

Hey C J, do you know who was the very FIRST U.S. politician to refer to Iraq as "QUAGMIRE"?

Clik on bluename then go to the Youtube screen.

Durangokid and DBI, you are both right about China.

When the Chinese have highjacked most of our jobs, middle- and lower-class Americans will have lost the ability to make a living and will have no ability to purchase all those Chinese trinkets, Chinese food and medicine. Our budget deficits will be owned and controlled by Chinese officials who will be able to dictate their own terms and policies to the US government and corporate lackeys.

By that time, our high-tech research, development, and health fields will be owned and controlled by Chinese. The net effect is that the Chinese will eventually own our government and whatever remains of our corporate marketplace. China will be the world's wealthiest capitalist state.

US workers will be as desperate for jobs as Mexican workers are today.

Under the thumb of wealthy Chinese capitalist despots and faced with growing environmental pressures doesn't sound like a rosy future.

I'm reminded of the day when Kruschchev pounded the table with his shoe and said "We will BURY you."

But the Chinese have re-worded Khrushchev's prediction and are showing us how "We will BUY you."

Our motto: "Make a quick buck today. Ain't no tomorrow."

Yes, CJ.

Everyday in every way things are getting better and better in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . translated, we are one more day closer to someone competent taking over to deal with Mr. Bush's middle-east disasters, while the Ineptocrat-in-Chief goes home to Crawford to await the historical justification that he was right all along and the trilllions of debt and suppression of the Constitution of the Bill of Rights were just a Democrat Media conspiracy. George Bush, the spiritual inherior of everything Harry Truman, except "The Buck Stops, Here!"

Here's a good example of Bush policies at work filtering down into the military, but don't worry the assessment were done by the Army's own Web Risk Assessment Cell, obviously a "left-wing media conspirator dedicated to embarassing Bush and the U.S. Army, huh?

http://tinyurl.com/29xqmr

" . . . For years, the military has been warning that soldiers' blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post material far more potentially harmful than anything found on a individual's blog.
The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period.

The results were obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, after the digital rights group filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.
"It's clear that official Army websites are the real security problem, not blogs," said EFF staff attorney Marcia Hofmann. "Bloggers, on the whole, have been very careful and conscientious. It's a pretty major disparity."

The findings stand in stark contrast to Army statements about the risks that blogs pose.
"Some soldiers continue to post sensitive information to internet websites and blogs," then-Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker wrote in a 2005 memo. "Such OPSEC (operational security) violations needlessly place lives at risk." That same year, commanders in Iraq ordered (.pdf) troops to register their blogs "with the unit chain of command." . . ."

Shut-up and soldier, Soldier! George Bush has put the best of the best in charge, just like the administration. They know what they're doing politically and militarily, so shut-up, soldier on and vote Republican.

Nothing like a neo-reactionary rant to prevent commentary by citing security. Too bad the neo-reactionaries are about as secure as Bush and Cheney were dedicated to serving their country during the 'Nam.

US workers will be as desperate for jobs as Mexican workers are today."
Ecce

We won't be the first major nation in history who was stupid enough to export
their industry. Spain did it after conquering the MesoAmericans and looting their
gold, hauling it back to the Queens and Kings. England too tried breaking the backs
of labor and exporting their manufacturing needs. It's a mess over there.
Bushco and the DLC exported our manufacturing by way of printing up near worthless
money, issuing boatloads of IOUs which our grandchildren must suffer in the future.
They call it globalism which is another way of saying "imperialism." England knew it well
and their merchant class exploited it well.

Lwood, as you suggested, it gets messy and complicated.

A little bit of study on the subject of a society working against its own interests introduces surprising new relationships -- one topic after another in an endless procession.

The typical political method of confronting these complex relationships is to simplify. Ignore details, relationships, and consequences. Boil it down to a slogan. Repeat the slogan until it's accepted by the clueless. The sloganeering process will be further corrupted and referred to as "commonsense" (but, of course, it's not). After that, anyone who questions the sloganeered version can be dismissed as a kooky elite liberal -- or worse -- who lacks the commonsense of normal people.

I enjoyed reading Jared Diamond's _Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed_. It describes environmential issues and other societies.