I offer more wage suppression, with employers gouging more unions and driving down wages in this country.

For more than two months, 3,600 United Auto Workers (UAW) members have walked picket lines in Detroit, Three Rivers, Mich., and upstate New York. The strike at American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM), a major supplier of truck and sport-utility axles for General Motors (GM), is shaping up as a line-in-the-sand campaign for the embattled union.

Not to mention Bush, Cornyn, Gonzo/Goodling/Taylor, Bloomberg, and tyrants and authoritarians in general, as seen in a NY Times article today, in a way that is not at all comforting, and which alarmingly parallels our own political situation at present.

I assume that everyone's heard about Pakistani General Pervez Musharraf's recent declaration of martial law, suspension of Pakistan's constitution and arrest of hundreds of political opponents, activists, judges, lawyers, journalists and others who are or are seen as a threat to his rule, under the excuse of maintaining order after a series of terrorist attacks and mounting political tension in Pakistan.

Well, Musharraf's defending this action by invoking, of all people, Abraham Lincoln and his suspension of Habeas Corpus during the Civil War. When in reality he is clearly invoking entirely other people of a decidely less prudent and more tyrannical sort. Read on for the details and decide for yourselves.

So the subject of torture has come up again.  Not so much the fact that is up but it is alleged that we as a country are engaging in it.  This is a subject that I feel has very clear boundaries, yet somehow it is still wrestled and debated back and forth as if we have all the time in the world to resolve it.  Being someone who is concerned about why we would need to even consider it I pay attention when this debate comes up.  I have a decent ability to see the other side of most arguments and I have listened respectfully to the other side of this for what I have determined to be long enough.

crossposted at The Dream Antilles

A real, nonfictional dictator (Stroessner)

This very brief diary is a short reading list of Latin American novels (translated into English) that focus on dictators.  They are essential reads.

Why am I suggesting reading these books that virtually no one here has never heard of, let alone read?  What's their relevance?  Why are they essential?

Join me across the border.

I want to throw-up. I mean I feel really, really ill. There's simply so much bullshit flying around about what the Dems are going to do, what they're not going to do and why Bush is the problem.

Bush should be impeached. But he's not the problem.

The problem is the bullshit. And the bullshit I find most offensive right now is the notion that under a Dem President, the US is going to leave Iraq.

The US under a Dem President will keep American troops in Iraq for decades. For at least for the next fifty years, if the current occupations of Germany, Japan and Korea are any indication.

More un-palatable bad news below the fold:

UPDATE: Seems like Atrios is similarly annoyed.

Cross-Posted at Democrashield

Kos, Digby and Crooks and Liars picked up on this, but I thought it warranted a closer look.

A right-wing organization called Family Security Matters published the article below on their website; the site has since been scrubbed and the article removed.  Find the entire article and analysis after the jump...

Since Monday night’s Democratic debate political pundits have completely allowed themselves to be taken in by the spin zones of the Hilary/Obama campaigns. In an endless back and forth as intellectually stimulating as Bill O’Reilly showing "awful stuff" from DailyKos on his show to shock the nation, the two Democratic frontrunners seem not to get tired of portraying each other as either callow or "Bush/Cheney lite".

All the kerfuffle aside, no one yet has come up with the question I keep wondering at since watching Obama’s "I would"-response when asked about whether being willed to meet dictators during his first year in office: What about the dictators? Are they actually interested in meeting either Hilary or Obama? No one bothered to put themselves in their shoes. Them avidly thirsting for a shake-hands in the Rose Garden or impatiently roaming their mansions like a caged tiger waiting for a call from Washington – in Fidel Castro’s case for over forty years – apparently was taken for granted. To believe this requires an abundance of hubris that – I’m afraid to say this even on this site – is almost French.

First off, I'll admit it -- I'm starting to fear for this site.

Yes, there is a lot - a whole metric fuckton of a lot - going on to cause frustration, anger, and alarm. We have an outlaw, rogue administration, breathtaking in its brazen disregard for the laws and the very foundations of our country, dragging our troops into bloody wars purely out of profit motivation while working both openly and covertly and with corporate and social-movement co-conspirators to erode our protections and dampen our voices. For this, they should be impeached, tried, convicted, and removed from office - freakin' yesterday.

But, my god, folks -- this chicken little, "Welcome to the Dictatorship of America" hand wringing that's become so popular here is making this site seem almost as wing-nutty the righty loonjobs are trying to portray it as being.

Hold off on your flames and follow me below the fold, if you will...

Okay, is it just me or is there no difference between the "Decider" in the White House and a common dictator in any other country?

Let's look at the cold, hard facts on the ground:

A dictator makes all the decisions and refuses to listen to anyone who doesn't agree with those decisions.  Check.

A dictator starts wars against sovereign nations with no provocation.  Check.

(Please follow beneath the fold.)

    I have long been stymied at family, friends, & strangers apathy or indifference to politics & their typical response when I tried to break through to them. The common excuse is "there's nothing we can do," or "they're all crooked." As Elie Wiesel said "the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference." I believe that until we can show people how politics affects their lives directly, we will continue to bang our heads on the walls of apathy & willful ignorance. I remember a quote from H.G. Wells that warned us "It's becoming more and more of a race between education & catastrophe." It seems the majority of the Left or progressives focus almost all their attention on spreading the alternative media. While I agree that spreading the word is vital, I believe our top priority should be developing our critical and analytical thinking skills. We have to always bear in mind that the Left, as well as the Right, is capable of deceiving us. This essay is just a simplistic thought that came to me in my personal struggle to reach my apathetic friends.

This is a piece I wrote a few years back to my son. I just poured out every possible reason I could think of to hopefully dissuade him from ever considering joining the military. It was a passionate outpouring over a two day period and I didn't worry about logical organization, grammar, etc.

    I wove throughout the piece, my personal experiences & what I have learned over the past 30 years or so about the hidden history of America. I am scared to death that the Draft will be reinstated because the war mongers have obviously over-extended our military and won't be able to continue with their agenda of death and destruction without more cannon fodder.

    I have tried to provide as many reasons and as much evidence as possible to convince anyone considering enlisting in the military that it would be a horrible mistake for not only their own physical, emotional, & mental well-being but also on moral and financial grounds.

When history books are written 100-200 years from now, the name George W Bush will end up on a list that includes Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Attila The Hun, Chiang Kai Shek, and Pol Pot.

Of course history has had millions of evil people like Osama Bin Laden, Tim McVeigh, Ted Bundy, Pinochet, Mussolini, Napoleon, Tojo Hideki, Lenin, Ceausescu, and others including the GOP's own Richard Milhous Nixon and Mr. 666, Ronald Wilson Reagan who share blame for millions of deaths of innocent people.

I was just watching the Star Wars special on the History Channel.  And it had Newt Gingrich missing most of the whole point of the story, and Nancy Pelosi touching on only a few superficial themes ... and a lot of interesting literary analysis of why Lucas tapped into the mythic tradition and how he did so.

But when discussing the politics of the prequel trilogy, the History Channel finally came forward and obliquely stated what no other TV show has yet done.
They linked Palpatine and Vader to Bush.

We're "in bed" with these other lovely friends of ours ...

(see table over the fold)

Taken on its own, the phrase "toppling dictators" sounds like a children's game, or a new television game show. In the world, it's a fool's errand. I have been accused of being a fool, so I am thinking about getting into the Toppling Dictators business. Who wants to join me?

A list of my favorite quotes.

I can't believe no one is writing about the untimely death of Saparmurat Niyazov, father of all Turkmen, aka the Turkmenbashi.  

Before we start the 100 days of official mourning and writing about what this means for U.S.-Russian jockeying for power over Turkmenistan's gas reserves, let us bow our heads and remember some of his golden words...

Farmers, agricultural scientists, agricultural workers and the people of independent neutral Turkmenistan... I would like to whole-heartedly congratulate you on the remarkable national holiday – Turkmen Melon Day. I would like to wish each of you good health, long and wonderful like Turkmen melons life.  Turkmen melon – a pure streamlet flowing out of the Turkmen source of profusion, Turkmen melon – the fruit whose flavour is compared with nothing else in the world as it absorbed the warmth of our generous land, it is painted by the golden rays of the Turkmen sun, it matured under the clear Turkmen sky and is imbued with the pure air of the Turkmen desert. That is why it so juicy, so sweet, so incomparably delicious and flavoured!

I can't go on.  

Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces of kings.

-- Horace
"Odes"

The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.

-- Lois McMaster Bujold
"Diplomatic Immunity"