Nixon: not just for breakfast anymore; Gore praises his environmentalism

note: foot over the line

Nixon was not all bad. He was a friend of my father’s, and I actually met him once in the White House. Al Gore gives him his due on environmentalism and he deserves it. We will try to forget about the rest, at least for the rest of the week. okay the day.
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Gore disclosed his reverence for Nixon to Tricia Nixon Cox at the funeral for Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, at the National Cathedral. “All sorts of people were coming up to her,” said one witness. “Gore made a bee-line for her and hugged her and said her father was a pioneering visionary on environmental issues.” Gore – who promised to send Tricia a copy of his global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” – cited Nixon’s creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Contrast Nixon with Bush’s dismantling of EPA rules and libraries.

The basic Bush lie: 9/11 was because “they hate our freedom.”

This is the root of all of the deception. Bush told the American people that a particular religion was out to get us because they “hate our freedom.” The facts are these, and they are not in dispute: 9/11 was carried out by a group of Saudis who belonged to a organization called al-Qaeda, led by Osama Bin Laden. al Qaeda had been formed years earlier to eject the Soviets from Afghanistan, through guerilla warfare. Since that time, al Qaeda had been attempting through terrorism to eject the US and other “non-believers” from their military presence on the Arabian peninsula.

It was necessary for Bush to invent this lie, in order to fool the American people into believing that there was nothing we could do to prevent further attacks on the US but engage in a permanent worldwide military fight to the death with terrorists.

All sorts of other lies have followed from this: “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here,” etc. By and large, they don’t hate us “over here.” They hate us when we are “over there.”

The fact is that the more we attempt to militarily occupy the Middle East, the more they hate us. Bush has done an immense of amount of this. The more we invade and kill and destroy, the more people hate us. And not just al-Qaeda any more. This is common sense. And we can’t kill them all…that is totally irrational. It is just a vicious circle: kill hate kill hate, and the occupation that started the whole thing just becomes more extensive.

Bush’s use of the expression “War on Terror” is another part of the same lie. “Terror” is not an enemy. He uses that expression to keep us thinking about HOW we were attacked on 9/11, rather than thinking about why and by whom we were attacked on 9/11.

Very soon after 9/11 he decided that as long as he obscured the who and why of 9/11, he could make it seem as if Saddam Hussein was the culprit, and use that as an excuse to attack iraq. Another huge lie.

The consequences are evident.

What is to be done about this massive and continuing dishonesty?

Ramen inventor dies after eating Chicken Ramen

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Momofuku Ando, the Japanese inventor of instant noodles — a dish that has sustained American college students for decades — has died. He was 96….

Born in Taiwan, Ando founded his company in 1948 from a humble family operation. Faced with food shortages in post-World War II Japan, Ando thought a quality, convenient noodle product would help feed the masses.

In 1958, his “Chicken Ramen” — the first instant noodle — was introduced after many trials. Following its success, the company added other products, such as the “Cup Noodle” in 1971.
…
Ando gave a speech at the company’s New Year ceremony and enjoyed Chicken Ramen for lunch with Nissin employees on Thursday before falling ill….

I’m sure there was no cause and effect there….though as I recall there was about an ounce of MSG in every cup…am I wrong?

Those of you in a nostalgic mood can go to the “Official Ramen Homepage” for your fix.

Dubya’s Dopey Decision: Door-to-Door Disaster (and paint the schools again?)

The Guardian is reporting details of Bush’s escalation, to be announced next week. [UPDATE: Washington Post has more details, see below] He’s gonna send 30,000 people into the meat grinder:

the deployment of five extra US brigades – between 10,000 and 30,000 soldiers – made available by extending tours of duty and accelerating the rotation of fresh troops into the country. An increase of 30,000 would bring the number of US troops in Iraq to 170,000. In addition, the US would pour new resources into a job creation programme – involving painting schools and cleaning streets – that could cost up to $1bn.

Some things I can say pretty much for sure are gonna happen if Bush is allowed to go through with this:

1) according to Laura Bush, we have painting schools for 3 years now. If they aren’t all painted yet, somebody has been lying to us.
2) anytime somebody starts carrying bags of money around in Iraq, most if not all of it is gonna go to some contractor, general or bad guy.
3) a lot of GI’s are gonna get shot, blown up and booby trapped with this scheme
4) the streets are gonna need a lot of cleaning after this.
5) do we think we are gonna be buying off death squads with chump change?
6) what do we think is gonna happen to those guys who are out there painting schools?
7) a lot of GI’s and families are gonna suffer from the extra tours
8) no matter what happens, Bush is gonna say we are winning but it’s gonna take, oh, about two years to be sure.

This plan is tragic idiocy. How can we allow this to happen to our kids? Bush has to be stopped.

According to the Guardian, this stuff is gonna kick off with some kind of assault by Iraqi forces; anybody who doubts this is a civil war should be convinced by this:

In the strongest indication of Bush’s preferred strategy, Iraq’s Shia Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki pre-empted Bush’s statement by announcing that Iraqi security forces, backed by Americans, were about to implement a major crackdown on illegal armed groups from all sectarian factions in Baghdad. Maliki’s speech was a US condition for deploying extra troops, insisted on by Bush in a two-hour teleconference with Maliki last Thursday.

Iraqi forces will begin a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood assault on militants over the next few days, as a first step in the new White House strategy to contain Sunni insurgents and Shia death squads, advisers to Maliki said….According to Maliki, military commanders in each area of Baghdad would have full powers to implement the scheme as they saw fit.

UPDATE: The WaPo has more details:

The centerpiece of the political plan is the creation of a national reconciliation government… bring together the two main Shiite parties with the two largest Kurdish parties and the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party… The goal is to marginalize Moqtada al-Sadr, …[note: my understanding is that this effort already failed]

To ensure participation of Sunni moderates, the Bush administration is pressing the Maliki government to …: Amend the constitution to address Sunni concerns, pass a law on the distribution of Iraq’s oil revenue and change the ruling that forbids the participation of former Baath Party officials.[I didn't see anything on the Saddam video to make me think that this is gonna happen]

The three major economic options on the table would revive dormant state-owned industries, launch a micro-finance program to give small loans to generate new businesses and expand a …USAID program. [oh, sure, the free trade/privitizer sharks are gonna give up something; this is the most unlikely of all, it seems to me, at best it would an "economic hitman" deal]

A fourth option…a short-term work program to hire Iraqis to clean up trash or do repairs after U.S. and Iraqi troops secure neighborhoods…. to lure unemployed men who had joined militias back into the mainstream economy, at least briefly, with the U.S. intention that Iraq would eventually spend its own money to create permanent jobs. [one of the most bizarre make-work programs I have ever heard of, but I'm only a Democrat.]