FOOL DU JOUR     Oct. 2009
   SC's Fool Du Jour,
Dean Allen announced his candidacy for the office of
SC Adjutant General.
   He kicked off his campaign by giving away AK-47 assault rifles & other 'gun nut' items.
   Candidate Dean, looking foolish in this undated photo with Newt Gingrich, calls himself a 'double-dipped Republican.' 
   'The Newt', one may recall, was earlier awarded our 'Fool Du Millennium' award for his numerous 'grotesqueries.'
The Atty General is in charge of the state’s National Guard. South Carolina is the only state in the union that elects this position.     More to come . . .
                ___________________________

FOOL DU JOUR     SEPTEMBER 2009
 
Comment:

The foolish man pictured at left, says he grew-up
in Charleston. 

Clearly he has not 'grown-up.'  And, he hasn't lived here in decades.  For that, at least, we are appreciative.

You can look it up!    ...Mazie
(Photo Getty Images)

JOE WILSON (R-SC) shouts "You Lie" as U.S. President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress..   WASH, DC  9/9/09:      
 

Commentary:
 

I'd like to see an honest (without political intent), analysis of the elements common to both socialism & modern capitalism. Television's blatherers seem to worship one & viscerally hate the other, without enlightening on either.       Notably, the emotional condemnation of the Obama administration's efforts to re-energize the economy & to re-work health care, etc., are fumed at as Obama's 'Socialist agenda.'      The cry 'Socialist,' is revived by the political 'outs' with zeal not seen since cold-war days.  It is becoming a favorite buzz-word used to denigrate any and all acts by the present Congress. It is the language of 'them,' of  'those people,' the ones taking away 'our America.'   Phrases tactically employed to inflame the right-of-center base of the Republican Party - a group which seems infused with anger and distrust to begin with.  .      So, just for conversation, what is 'Socialism' in the USA these days? How are we endangered, or helped, by its tenets?  Is the massive frontal assault by 'conservative' politicians & commentators just more political theater designed to recapture political advantage?  Or, should we be 'very afraid,' as appears to be the operative expression of Fox News commentators.      Established programs as Social Security, Medicare, the  Veterans Administration as well as other programs providing assistance to children & indigents, are accurately described as 'Socialist' programs.  They are all government run.  Imagining the country without any of them is not easily done.  One makes his own decision as to their value or danger to modern society.       It might be worthy of note and to historical perspective, that the GOP's most conservative members aggressively campaigned against all of the above programs when they were being debated in Congress.  An earlier generation of 'conservatives' fought the original legislation to establish income tax, originally conceived as a means to support the military and build highways.  Is their theory of unbridled free-market capitalism a danger, or the salvation of, modern society.      This 'Socialism' & its dissenters have a long history, but economic theory is not really the issue.  Political use, or misuse, of cold-war, McArthy era 'buzz words' still brilliantly inflame those who identify themselves as 'conservative.'  These terms mean to accuse  opponents of being  'unAmerican, Godless,' them-against-us,' 'those people.'       One wonders if all those drawing Social Security, or surviving with Medicare health benefits are really un-American socialist.      Our federal & state funded highway infrastructure is certainly a socialist idea because tax dollars build and maintain the roads, bridges, etc., (instead of privately owned roads with tolls for profit of the owners).  Every level of government manages these affairs for the society at large -socialism. Free market capitalism has a recurrent history of excess & corruption in many areas where there is no authority to maintain guidelines.       Still, many have made successful political careers by railing against government 'by & for the people.'  'Government is the problem,' they like to quote. SC politicians are more likely than not at the head of the pack in defaming all things governmental.      Actually, they are just as likely to damn their opponents for being Nazis, fascists, Islamists, baby killers . . . you can pick a theme, SC's politicians will blanket you with a label.  Probably a literacy issue at base, perhaps a function of too many chitlins - hard to say.      Our airports & their employees - in the flight towers and behind the security machines - everything but the ownership airplanes & crews are similar social programs.  Licensing and operational regulations are prime governmental functions which we employ to protect ourselves as a society. Our education system is almost entirely a social-government system.  Only the children of the wealthy get a proper educations otherwise - the way it was before 'universal' education came to pass.  Clearly 'Socialism.'       All these things paid for by society 'communally' with our taxes. Our banking & securities system is also a socialist idea  - excepting where our 'free market' entrepreneurs were/are exempted from oversight by 'anti-socialist' ideology & less than enthusiastic oversight by officials who share the ideology of those who appointed them.       We are a greedy lot.  It is argued that the dismantling of the 'socialist' safeguards by the party in power in Washington for the last decade or so (the GOP's neo-conservatives), permitted the excesses that has laid us low.       So, what actions, other than the short list of socialist activities above, have been condemned and campaigned against by politicians on the outside who employ the fear of dreaded socialism to regain political power?     The creation of the US Department of Education & later the Department of Environmental Control were the object of cries of  'more socialism,' by conservative GOP politicians.  They have several times launched efforts to disband these departments, as 'socialist intrusions in American lives.'      The various Civil-Rights era laws and court rulings were viciously attacked by conservative members of the GOP as '...socialist, communist and against the laws of GOD,'  Strom Thurmond, on the floor of the US Senate.     Recently, Republican conservatives attacked with vitriol the idea that tobacco companies were liable for the affects of their products on the health of individuals and on the cost to society for their health care.  Even the present GOP minority-leader, in the US House of Representatives, David Bonier, was censured  for passing our tobacco company 'campaign contributions' on the floor of the House during the debate.  'Creeping socialism' he was quoted as saying while slamming the efforts by supporters.  Today he is leads the pack with cries of 'Obama's socialist agenda....'   (In South Carolina, then Attorney General, Charles Condon stated that he would not let the state join the lawsuits which eventually forced the companies to change their practices, & to pay their costs to individuals and to society forced to pay the medical bills it caused).  Eventually he was forced to relent and to accept the states' share of the fund established by the courts & and by the US Congress.  Even so, he condemned the actions as a 'socialist plot.'      You name it, conservatives politicians seem always to have the same name for it if they oppose it - socialism.  CONTRIBUTED AS A LETTER TO THE EDITOR BY: MARION W. DODGE,  CHARLESTON, SC

                  Archives

Arthur Ravenel, Jr., photographed below while speaking at a confederate flag rally in 1999, is the namesake of the new bridge over Charleston Harbor.  Arthur is the father of Thomas Ravenel, who recently resigned his post as SC State Treasurer.  
  The younger Ravenel was also Rudy Giuliani's campaign manager for the state until his indictment for cocaine distribution and related drug charges in June 2007.  He has, in the modus of all recent celebrities being brought to justice, lawyered-up, enrolled in a rehab clinic & gone underground.
  
   The joke making the rounds in Charleston is that while the Republican legislative majority named the bridge after their colleague Arthur Ravenel, the white lines on the road bed are named after son Thomas. 
   The younger Ravenel's indictment revealed that he was under investigation before & during his election campaign for the Treasurer's post in 2006.  Thomas Ravenel has hired lawyers Gedney Howe and Bart Daniels to represent him.  Daniels is a former Assistant Attorney General for SC, and US Attorney, appointed by President George Bush (senior), in 1989. 
   Arthur, referred to as 'Cousin Arthur' by many locals, is known for his caustic, racially antagonistic remarks and rabid support of all things Confederate. 
   During a contentious effort to remove the Confederate flag from atop the State's Capitol building seven years ago, Arthur referred to the NAACP as the National Association of Retarded Persons.  He refused to apologize to the NAACP, saying only that he apologized to retarded persons for the reference.  He has held several political jobs including member of the US House and SC State Senate. 


Democracy coming to Iraq:
Office of Homeland Nation-Building has a Plan
   Anticipating the eventual creation of a new nation in the middle-east, President Bush announced the formation of the "Office of Homeland Nation-Building" which will be tasked with creating "a peace-loving democracy from the ashes of Saddam Hussein’s evil dictatorship."
   Several referenda are being considered for the Iraqi public as part of a plan being designed by the U.S. and its "coalition partners"  Pago-Pago, Wazzitland and the Fugu Republic. 

         Among the possible selections are:
1.   “I would like for the Iraq to become a fully owned  
       franchise of the FOX news channel,”
2.  “I would like a faith-based conservative Christian
      group to assist me in becoming more Bush-like,”
3.  “I would like to change the name of “Iraq” to:
       a. “Haliburton,"  b. Dick Cheney,  c. Texaco
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     Nixon's missteps instructive to Bush...
The Bush-Cheney presidency may have answered one of  history's lingering questions. 

The question, left to us by the Nixon administration is 
what if Nixon had simply burned those incriminating tapes which established that he was indeed 'a crook,  would he have survived?

Bush & Cheney have surely 'burned the tapes' by commuting the sentence of their foil "Scooter" Libby.

The Scooter, of course, was found guilty of lying under oath to a Grand Jury, perjury, & for obstruction of justice in his role in 'outing' a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame.   His sentence was two & a half years.

The 'Decider' has shielded for now his administrations' apparent crookedness, with scant regard to the honor of the office by removing the convicted White House insider's prison sentence.

Conservatives are usually painted with the same brush as Republicans.  But, these are not conservatives, these neo-Republicans are political hacks of a lesser order.

July 4, 2007             ~ RSVP
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                   SCROLL

CANADA BUSY SENDING BACK BUSH-DODGERS
The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration.

The re-election of President Bush is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt, pray and agree with Bill O’Reilly.

Canadian border farmers say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

"I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota.

The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. "He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn’t have any, he left. Didn’t even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields.

"Not real effective," he said. "The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn’t give milk."

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves.

"A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though."

When liberals are caught, they’re sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR.

Since Bush's reelection, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers.

"If they can’t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age," an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating and organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies.

"I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can’t support them," an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?"

In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice President Dick Cheney met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals, a source close to Cheney said.

"We’re going to have some Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. And we might put some endangered species on postage stamps. The president is determined to reach out."
By Joe Blundo  The Columbus Dispatch  www.dispatch.com  
 
http://flat-lander.blogspot.com/2004/11/canada-busy-sending-back-bush-dodgers.html
 
 
BOSTON—Addressing guests at a $12,000-a-plate fundraiser, George W. Bush pledged Monday that he and Dick Cheney will "restore honor and dignity to the White House."

"I will "put an end to the current lack of honesty in politics."

"After years of false statements and empty promises, it's time for big changes in Washington," Bush said.
   "It's time to renew the faith the people once had in the White House. We will usher in a new era of integrity inside the Oval Office . . .from the very first hour of the very first day, after being sworn in for my second term."                     
Excerpted from "The Onion"
        __________________________________
 
Cries & Whispers...from the 2004 Election cycle.

    President Bush, Karl Rove & Company, are employing a well tested technique against John F. Kerry.  It was perfected by his father against Michael Dukakis in 1988, though its roots go back at least to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
   Actually, Geo Bush senior had his own dirty trickster and PR "handler" who taught Karl Rove some of his tricks.  Rove studied under him in the first Bush White House, as did young George W. Bush, who was also a political hatchet man in "Poppy's white House. 
     The PR mastermind was, of course, South Carolina's own Lee Atwater, described here in an article excerpted from one published in the State newspaper, Columbia, SC:  "Atwater invented, for a whole generation of politicians and consultants, the art of modern political warfare. First as an aide to Senator Strom Thurmond and later as a consultant to Governor Carroll Campbell, he identified what he called "symbolic platforms"--the flag, family values, taxes--and painted his opponents, regardless of their ideology, as ultraliberals, as outsiders and transgressors of the Southern way of life.  He helped label one congressional candidate a foreign-born Jew and said a Democrat who had suffered shock therapy as a 16-year-old had been 'hooked up to jumper cables.' 'I guarantee you I can get the negatives up on anyone,' Atwater boasted." 
     Atwater was the architect of the "New" Southern Strategy in the eighties - it has become the global strategy of the present political administration.
     It works like this: Bring a charge, however bogus. Make the charge simple: Dukakis "vetoed the Pledge of Allegiance"; Bill Clinton "raised taxes 128 times"; "there are [pick a number] Communists in the State Department." But make sure the supporting details are complicated and blurry enough to prevent easy refutation.
    Then sit back and let the media do your work for you. Journalists have to report the charges, usually feel obliged to report the rebuttal, and often even attempt an analysis or assessment. But the canons of the profession prevent most journalists from saying outright: These charges are false.
    As a result, the voters are left with a general sense that there is some controversy over Dukakis' patriotism or Kerry's service in Vietnam. And they have been distracted from thinking about real issues (like the war going on now, and the misinformation which got us into it), the economy, the by these laboratory PR concoctions.   OP-ED contributor,  David Dodge, Columbia, SC

 
. . . AND THESE DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT.

Julian Bond of the UN and Atlanta liberal "intelligencia," should there be such a thing, wins the best quote award for the Sunday morning talk shows.  He said, referring to the recent elections, that "in a contest between the shameless and the spineless, the shameless always win."  I think the Dems are referred to as the spineless.
                                               Mazie


Rummy Rumsfeld:
“Lack of proof proves we are right”
   Speaking to a stunned audience at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that the inability of the UN inspectors to find any evidence, whatsoever, that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction was "proof positive" that the President had been right all along.  Asked how, given this line of reasoning, anyone could prove their innocence, Rumsfeld replied “That is not my problem, ask the PR people. Carl Rove will issue a policy statement on the subject.”
   Meanwhile North Korean troops have advanced inland as far as Phoenix, and have demanded unconditional surrender of all US forces west of Salt Lake City. A spokesman at the the White House stated that "we are talking to them, but we will not 'negotiate' until they release the states west of the Rockies that voted Republican in the last Presidential Election. 
   Rumsfeld chastised reporters for asking questions about the North Korean incursion, saying that "I will not let you divert America's attention from the evil menace that lurks in Iraq."