Catastrophic President. Catastrophic Administration.

[Beam Me Up]

I didn't invent that phrase but picked it up from a post by FightingIrish.

The Ship of State is sailing into the roughest seas ever to confront our nation and at the helm are a pack of absolute fools. They are not only foolish because they are incompetent, for, indeed, much of what has befallen our country so far was no accident for them. Quite the contrary, it was a well maneuvered windfall -- a transfer of wealth like none other in history. What makes them TRUE fools is their inability to fully anticipate the massive ecological, economic and geopolitical storms that are forming at least in part AS A RESULT of their own near-sighted greed and ambition. I'm sure it never occurred to President Bush even once that there would ever be any REAL NEED for a director of FEMA, for example, that might be qualified and know exactly what he was doing. Why should he? He himself is unqualified to be the President of the United States -- by which I mean he hasn't the qualities of genuine moral character necessary to lead a complex society, a potentially GREAT nation, toward its brightest destiny. On the contrary, he is far too busy lining his own pockets and the pockets of those who helped put him in and keep him in Office, DESPITE the wishes of the majority of the people.

Meanwhile all around us loom very real dangers.

I happen to be one of these people who believe that the events of 9/11 were to some extent orchestrated from within the national security infrastructure of our own country. I'm just an artist, I know NOTHING -- have no access to classified information -- but one thing I do know is that who ever controls your perception of reality controls you. I also truly believe that the Intelligence Services and Armed Services of our nation are quite capable of PROTECTING our country -- provided their services are not (as we see w/ Katarina) IMPEDED FROM WITHIN. Everything about 9/11 and the way it has been handled since STINKS to high heaven -- and you don't have to dawn any tin foil to smell that stinch.

The point is, I've always felt that BUSH and his PNAC cronies are a much more genuine threat to our national security than small terrorist cells operating clandestinely in this country. Yes, of course, they should be identified and stopped -- which we are quite capable of doing -- before they do whatever it is they are planning to do. But the Bush Administration can do FAR GREATER HARM, for one thing, by not allowing our already established safe guards to operate as they should. Just as when FEMA hampers the very rescue operations it is supposed to facilitate in the devastated south, so, too when our intelligence agencies are disrupted, the Bush administration becomes a far greater threat than any small group of terrorists ever could be. Some may view that as extreme but Al Gore said it back in early 2004 and ambassador Joseph Wilson said it again earlier this year: The Bush Administration is a threat to our national security.

The people running our government are putting you and I and our whole country in grave danger and they are doing so as a result of their misguided policies. On the completely phoney pretext of increasing our nation's security they have actually eviscerated it and made us far more vulnerable, far less prepared to deal with the catastrophic consequences emerging after a century of US global hegemony and imperalism. We have been lied to and continue to be lied to by our government and the media regarding the severity of THE PERFECT STORM that is brewing on the horizon of our near future. BECAUSE we are being lied to, we, as a nation, are NOT PREPARED to deal with the severity of this storm. We think the government is going to protect us when, in point of fact, they are not only NOT protecting us, they are making us more vulnerable by the minute.

They have RAPED our Constitution and have gotten away with it. They have MURDERED men women and children -- tens of thousands of them, we don't know how many and never will, and they have gotten away with it. They lied to us to get us, unwillingly, to go along with a war they had been planning for a decade. Now that we are in it like a Wolly Mamoth in a tar pit, they lie to us about the severity of the situation. They tell us to 'STAY THE COURSE", tell us that it will be over 'soon', that the enemy is diminishing. The troops on the ground returning from Iraq, however, tell a very different story. Worse, many people around the world and many nations around the world are beginning to see us as a rogue nation that can not be trusted. This perception is creating enemies where we once had friends.

The United States economy is more a figment of our imagination than based on anything "real". After all, THEY DON'T CARE about things like whether or not we ever manage to create an energy independent infrastructure. In fact, they DO NOT WANT any such thing because that would mean their losing control of the hydrocarbon energy market -- their one and only ace in the hole at this point. Oh, I almost forgot. There is ONE OTHER Ace in their "hole" and that is their stock piles of WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRUCTION -- dwarfed only by their Weapons of Mass Distraction which they also have a plenty.

It seems to me that despite all the dissembling, the American people are FINALLY beginning to get it that the stench of death now so prevalent in New Orleans is actually emanating from Washington DC. Beginning to get it that our "fearless leaders" are actually a bunch of lying, thieving, paranoid bastards who are MISUSING the Trust and Faith that WE grant them with their oaths of office. Perhaps beginning to suspect that this is no laughing matter. Those lives we've seen torn apart on TV recently -- they are not the faces and lives of an enemy -- even a false one. They are our own faces, our own lives, and we see that what threatens them and us far and above any act of God is the corruption that now infects THE CORE of our Nation.

It is coming. All of it. Are we ready to CEASE being a subject population, trapped by the lies of a subservient corporate media? Are we ready to see that our existence is NOT independent of the ecological, economic and geo-political world in which we exist? Are we ready to begin to try and find a balanced solution to the innumerable grave crises that lie directly ahead of us? Are we, as a nation, going to come together in a United way -- the way real communities do when facing a catastrophe?

If we do not, we are lost. And who shall lead us? Who will TELL US THE TRUTH so that we CAN prepare ourselves to face these challenges? Who?

edit: typo

[Karenina]

1. Who if not us?

:kick:

[Beam Me Up]

2. We need OUR MILITARY back on our soil NOW!

Edit: I'm not saying that to counter that, indeed, it is UP TO US as you say. Just to add that a large part of the problem here is that our military has been and is being used for purposes other than it was intended.

[Karenina]

3. It's time to dust off

the torches and pitchforks, heat up the tar and pluck the chickenhawks.

[Beam Me Up]

4. Couldn't agree more. We also need to be a whole lot more organized.

I like the idea someone has begun about creating a database for the Neo-Cons. That will be very helpful.

[Beam Me Up]

5. Self bump.

FWIW