When you have a fire do you:

a) try to extinguish it?

b) watch it burn from a safe distance?

c) pour gasoline on it?

If you’re Condoleezza Rice, you’d probably choose “c”.

On a recent trip to Baghdad’s “Green Zone”, Rice decided to ramp up the rhetoric against radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and, by extension, his militia by, more or less, calling him a coward.

Really, how does this help?

“I know he’s sitting in Iran,” Rice said dismissively, when asked about al-Sadr’s latest threat to lift a self-imposed cease-fire with government and U.S. forces. “I guess it’s all-out war for anybody but him,” Rice said. “I guess that’s the message; his followers can go too their deaths and he’s in Iran.”

So, you have the American Secretary of State calling out a militia leader in Iraq, basically challenging his manhood.  Also, and I apologize if this sounds sexist but, the fact that she is a woman challenging Muslim men is also not to be overlooked (this is just my observation).

Regardless of the gender aspect, it is clear that she and the Bush administration have called out al-Sadr and this can’t be good news for those who could be caught in the crossfire (both figuratively and literally).

In fact, VoteVets has expressed such a concern:

Again, we have yet another member of the Bush administration who–in a ham-handed effort to help our “allies”–is actually placing our own troops in more danger.  I don’t think there’s any question that this echoes George W. Bush’s provocative invitation for terrorists around the world to descend on Iraq when he declared, “Bring’em on” in July 2003.  And we all know how that worked out.

But it’s not just about Rice’s dismissive, provocative tone, either.  It’s also this continuing, obnoxious Bush-brand of hypocrisy that the whole world sees: If Sadr had said the same thing of Rice–that she’s a Washington, D.C. bureaucrat who sends others to fight her own battles–the Bush administration would freak out.  And that fact isn’t lost on Iraqis.

As Rice is one who will not have to stay and fight the Mahdi Army side-by-side with our troops, I suggest that she keep her mouth shut if she’s not going to say anything helpful.  Because statements like these are certainly not.

This is a group representing Iraq and Afghanistan vets expressing these concerns, not just me.  At the end of the day, people’s lives are at stake.  You would think that the country’s leading diplomat would be…well…more “diplomatic” in her use of words.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Okay, if this wasn’t such a big deal, I would laugh. It’s amazing to me how some people’s egos force them to deny reality. We have oil topping $100 per barrel, with no sign of going down, at least significantly (the price of oil has more than tripled in the past 5 years). You have two wars that continue to drain resources from the economy (by some estimates, it’s costing us about $275 million per day). On top of that, you have a housing market where the bottom has fallen out, causing major devastation to many American families.

But, according to George Bush, the economy’s only experiencing a “slowdown”.

So, Bush is out there pushing the whole “economic stimulus package”. You know, the Congress-approved band-aid-on-a-bullet-wound measure to help get the economy on track. We are expected to believe that if some single Americans are given $600 and some married couples are given $1200 (plus, a little extra if you have kids), the economy will be jump-started. This goes to show you just how naive some people are.

The belief that people will go out, spend this money and boost the economy makes a lot of assumptions. First of all, you assume that everyone will be able to treat this as disposable income. You have a lot of people who are behind on their bills and will use this money to catch up on mortgages, utility bills, car payments, etc. I’m sure that it would be welcomed for these families but, this will not help kick start the economy again. Secondly, you have people who have dipped into savings just to keep things afloat so, I suspect that, for a lot of folks, this money will be put into savings. Again, it’s needed but, not going to boost the economy. Finally, you have to realize that, for a economy to flourish, that money needs to circulate among various individuals or businesses in a population. Think about it this way — say you go out an buy a TV with your rebate. Who gets paid? Maybe the corporation that runs the store and a few employees. But, with so little manufacturing going on in the U.S., the money goes offshore to pay suppliers in foreign countries, leaving American workers out of the picture. This means that you end up with fewer middle-class folks who buy the houses, cars, etc. that keep the economy afloat.

I am saying two things:

1) We are dealing with more than a slowdown and
2) We need better ideas than this to get us out of this mess.

Right now, George Bush is much like the kid who cleans up a mess by stuffing everything into a closet, hoping that no one opens it, at least until he’s in the clear. Therefore, I think it’s time to be serious and say that, as a country, we should chalk up the last seven years and the year to come as a loss and gird ourselves to be ready to see just how big this mess is, once the truth is allowed to come out. I have a feeling that, once the next administration starts turning over the rocks, we’ll see just how much truth was hidden from us.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Question: What do these two statements have in common?

On Iraq:
“Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” (George W. Bush, Oct 7, 2002)

On Iran:
“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” (George W. Bush, Oct 17, 2007)

Answer: After yesterday, we know that these are, at best, trumped-up charges and, at worst, flat-out lies meant to get us into military conflict with countries that pose(d) no immediate threat to us.

As you are likely aware, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) came out yesterday and had some very telling things to say that stand in stark contrast to Bush Administration’s allegations on Iran.

The NIE is the compilation of the combined views of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies regarding the security issues affecting the U.S. and, like I stated, its findings on Iran were very telling.

According to the NIE, Iran actually halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and, furthermore, states that due to significant technical issues, Iran probably is another 3-8 years away from having enough enriched uranium for a bomb.

However, the most interesting part of the report coming out is its back story. It is believed that the administration, particularly the office of Vice-president Dick Cheney, held up the release of this report for over a year, try to twist arms of intelligence analysts to get them to change the report to match the administration’s rhetoric.

So, in other words, as in Iraq, they went around the world citing Iran as an immediate threat when they clearly knew otherwise.

Of course, the chickenhawk spin-doctors are at work and trying to wipe egg off their faces on this and Republican candidates, no doubt, are going to have to get new material for their stump speeches, as this country has no desire to repeat the Iraq debacle.

We’ll have to see how this all shakes out but, one this is clear. We are certainly being lied to by this administration on Iran.

Popularity: 36% [?]

If a law called the “Clear Skies Act” actually results in more pollution and a Department of Homeland Security actually does little to protect America, it’s probably not a stretch to see the United States Commission on Civil Rights actually undermining civil rights.

In the land of Bush, everything is for sale and every function of government must be done based on partisan ideology instead of being based on competency and on what the mission of a particular entity is supposed to be.

This is why we now see the Civil Rights Commission actually rolling back the gains minorities have made under a system that was supposed to insure against their rights being trampled.

How did this happen? Bush violated the spirit of the charter of the Commission. The Commission’s panel was supposed to have no more than 4 members, of its 8-member panel, be of one political party. The panel already had 4 Republicans. So, he appointed another 2 Republicans who, upon receiving their appointments, re-registered as Independents, skirting the charter.

So, what did this mean? Well, since this majority has been in place, the following have taken place:

Before the changes, the agency had planned to evaluate a White House budget request for civil rights enforcement, the adequacy of college financial aid for minorities, and whether the US Census Bureau undercounts minorities, keeping nonwhite areas from their fair share of political apportionment and spending. After the appointments, the commission canceled the projects.

Instead, the commission has put out a series of reports concluding that there is little educational benefit to integrating elementary and secondary schools, calling for closer scrutiny of programs that help minorities gain admission to top law schools, and urging the government to look for ways to replace policies that help minority-owned businesses win contracts with race-neutral alternatives.

The conservative bloc has also pushed through retroactive term limits for several of its state advisory committees. As a result, some longtime traditional civil rights activists have had to leave the advisory panels, and the commission replaced several of them with conservative activists.

The commission has also stopped issuing subpoenas and going on the road to hold lengthy fact-finding hearings, as it previously did about once a year. The commission had three planned hearings in the works when the conservative bloc took over and canceled them. Instead, the panel has held only shorter briefings, all but one of which was in Washington, from invited specialists.

What this means is that civil rights enforcement has been totally gutted, much to the delight of the more racist elements of the Republican party.

In Bush-speak, this would be called “leveling the playing field”. However, in this case, leveling does not mean making things even. In this case, leveling would be its more destructive meaning, as in leveling a long-standing structure that brought some level of assurance to minority Americans that the government had their best interests in mind, as well.

So, as the t-shirt says, “Kanye was right.”

Popularity: 24% [?]

Well, you’ve finally done it! You’ve reached a new high in the polls. Of course, it just happens to be the highest disapproval rate the history of the Gallup Poll.

George Bush has just topped Richard Nixon’s disapproval rate. At the height of the Watergate scandal, Nixon’s disapproval was at 48%. In a recent poll, 50% of those polled said they “strongly dissaproved” of the the job Bush is (not) doing.

This poll also continues to reflect the fact that a majority (59%) still don’t think America is making significant progress in Iraq and 60% want a reduction in U.S. forces there.

So, as Congress is poised to grant Bush nearly $200 billion more for Iraq, don’t you think they might actually want to look at the polls?

Popularity: 13% [?]

A few days back, I was watching the Democratic Presidential debates, which happened to fall on the same day that the Senate voted on the Kyl-Liebermann amendment. In a non-binding resolution, the Senate voted in favor of the amendment, which labeled Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. Hillary Clinton voted in favor of this amendment (Obama, somehow, couldn’t make it in to vote that day) and tried to justify her vote by saying that she was not voting in favor of war with Iran but, in favor of pursuing diplomatic measures with Iran. Senate leader Harry Reid also voted in favor of this measure.

Well, guess what, now the White House is dropping concerns about the nuclear ambitions of Iran as a rationale to go after them. You want to guess its rationale, now? Yes, you figured it out — Bush seems intent on marching us into yet another war using the notion that it will need to fight terrorism in Iran so, it will need to target Iran’s Republican Guard. How much would you bet that the Kyl-Liebermann amendment will be used to tell the public that the Congress agrees with this action? Joe Liebermann, as Bush’s Democratic lapdog (he call’s himself an independent, now), has been drooling over the notion of attacking Iran. It appears he will get his wish soon.

Journalist Seymour Hersh has exposed some chilling details on what appears to be in the works. It looks like the march to the war in Iraq all over again.

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002″—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

Here we go again. So, Nancy Pelosi, is impeachment still off the table?

Popularity: 30% [?]

I honestly believe that the tactics once used solely to suppress dissent from people of color are now being utilized on the public at large. As black people, we know of the long history of COINTELPRO and its devastating effects on our forward progress as a people but, I believe that, in addition to it being a program, it was also a grand experiment. America didn’t squeal too loudly when it happened to people who didn’t matter much so, perhaps, it might not squeal much if enacted on America as a whole.

In post-9/11 America, we continue to silently accept the erosion of our rights and “experiments” like these continue to go on using people who still don’t matter much as the test subjects.

I say all that to say this — once again, another program has been uncovered that shows us just how badly we can expect our rights to be trampled. During the last Congress, the Posse Comitatus act of 1878 was abolished. You don’t know what it is, you say? Don’t be ashamed — until last year, I didn’t know either. The act basically said that the U.S. military could not be used against U.S. citizens. Now, some in power recognized that U.S. citizens may not easily accept having the last of their rights stripped from them, should martial law be declared so, they had a brilliant idea — they would train members of the clergy to suppress opposition. These groups, known as “Clergy Response Teams”, are U.S. Government-trained ministers who are deployed into areas under martial law to help quiet things down.

Now, just as I hypothesized, people of color were used as the guinea pigs of this experiment. A “Clergy Response Team” was used in New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina.

Sounds Orwellian, you say? Just check out this excerpt from the piece on them:

Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. “In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they’re helping to diffuse that situation,” assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Yes, you read right — Homeland Security and the clergy working hand-in-hand to “diffuse” these situations.

But, this part is even more chilling:

For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, “because the government’s established by the Lord, you know. And, that’s what we believe in the Christian faith. That’s what’s stated in the scripture.”

A few weeks back, I wrote about how mega-preacher Creflo Dollar had written a letter to his followers admonishing them to be unquestioningly loyal to the guidance of George Bush. Please trust, such calls did not begin or end with Creflo Dollar so, we have to believe that this message was played out in congregations across this country. Now, this program seem to be its next, logical evolutionary step.

Below is the link to the video of KSLA’s story on this program.

See video here

Popularity: 50% [?]