BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 — The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found: Attribution: James Glanz
So there we have it. The first thing I saw when turning on the computer this morning. Just another one of the multiple daily proofs that something's rotten in Denmark. But there's a big ocean and another continent between us and Denmark.
The government's been playing a shell game with our money and hiding it from congress! Well, I don't expect any help from our congresspersons. They're part of the fucking problem.
So is this what it's come down to? As John Farr of FarrFeed remarked recently, why aren't we all out sharpening our pitchforks? Maybe that's because pitchforks are no match for lasers, phasers and tasers and mace wielding jack booted, riot clubbed and helmeted anonymous police behind darkly tinted plexiglass visors carting you off to federal detention centers and prisons if thou "doth protest too much" where there's no due process but plenty of ways to make you say what the governmnet wants to hear from you.
And maybe Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales are helping to remold "democracy" with electronic voting machines, redefining voter eligibility rolls of who can and can't vote as they reinterpret the constitution and other laws of the land to allow such things as torture and presidential signing statements here while abroad out bombs are falling on the heads of thousands of innocent men, women and kids in our unending effort to "liberate" them.
In this morning's Portland Oregonian there's an article in which its author Vid Atiyeh says:
Stop this wholesale death and injury to the citizens of Lebanon.
Stop pretending that every bomb and every rocket and every cannon shell kill only a Hezbollah.
President Bush and Congress, STOP applauding and cheering on the carnage and destruction of a struggling nation.
This is not my America that treasures every human life and honors our international friends.
Well, that's a beautiful, impassioned plea to a compassionate America. But obviously it's falling on deaf ears. And that's because we are not a compassionate nation that "treasures every human life." This is evidenced daily by our actions globally with little or no uproar from the citizenry. Nor are we a nation that "honors our international friends," because to think we have any is delusionary. Our silence is our endorsement of the endless atrocities. It would appear we are a nation of sleeping sheep.
I've just noticed over my shoulder as I look out over the beach, there's a gentle breeze blowing off the sea. Time to hit the sand with my fellow vacationers. It's a great time to go fly a kite!
10 comments:
Pitchfork time indeed, dada. I recently ran across this Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 quote from The Gulag Archipelago which seems particulary apt: "And, how we burned in the camps later, thinking what would things have been like if every Security Operative, when he went out to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? or if, during periods of mass arrest, people had not simply sat in their apts, paling with terror at every step on the staircase. but had understood they had NOTHING left to lose & had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of perhaps half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The cursed machine would have ground to a halt. Did we not love freedom enough? had we no awareness of the real situation? It seems we spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917 and then we HURRIED to submit. Yes, we submitted with pleasure! And we purely & simply deserved everything that happened afterwards."
Hit me like a ton of bricks. Damn the jackboots, Rove, Gonzales, et al, smart bombs, dumb silence ... No surrender. -- D.K.
DK- you and I are on the same page on this..I reread that this summer too..wow..strange...well I ain't submitting to Nothing...and the protests in Mexico this weekend that the asswipes over at CNN kind of forgot to cover about WHAT???-oh, that's right election fraud...to fuckingperfectfortheking ( hhaha NSA try to find that word on your godamnselfservingkissalbertosass "Special"list)...
Thanks for the dose of the Oregon Coast ....sigh...
e, maybe NOT so strange that we find ourselves returning to authors whose works inspired us decades ago. And, what? There was election fraud in Mexico? Oh say it ain't so (in my best scarlett o'hara voice). Yeah, CNN seems to have forgotten that kind of news as well as our little fiasco in iraq, but found time to show a guy almost get blown up at a calif gas station, squeezing it in between condismideasthorseshit (hey, I like your idea of nsaobfuscation)! D.K.
Nice blog Dada!! Keep up the great work.
Glad you guys brought up Mexico -- where people are out en masse because they smell a large rat. I'm trying so hard not to despair that the public of my own country is so cowed by the "terrorist threat" that many believe standing up for their rights is actually treason! Seems like here the only thing that gets folks mildly pissed is the price of gas. It's hard to be proud to be an American when so many are so fricking shallow.
Glad to hear you're having fun out there on the beach, dada; I'm curious - what sort of kite do you fly?
DK--E4E--thanks for the affirmations. The Solozhenitsyn quotes were great DK...very inspirational.
Anyone reading those who don't get that, or are repulsed by that don't get it. I found it quite inspiring.
Enigma, must confess to ignorance of what's happening in Mexico....but look forward to learning more.
Oh, and aren't we on the eve of congress adjourning for the month of August? Woo Hoo!
There's pizza being delivered to our room for the family....if I seem distracted....just finished photographing this evening's sunset. It wasn't the greatest ever, but it was fairly spectacular. (Just in case I seem distracted....)
thanks donnie mc daniel for the nice comment....it's those kinda things that give me strength to blog one more day...
mel: Well, I intended today's "kite flying" comment as metaphor for advice to anyone who "doth protest too much"...but since you asked, I haven't flown in a few years....but it was -- OMG -- I can't remember it's exact name...it was a Chicago Team ... something I used to fly. (Along with Trilbys, fighter kites, etc.) They since evolved into menacing 'musements that can kill you if your adventurous enough, right?
well, thanks for the reminder of why i own a gun..and the bullets to shoot it - i don't plan on going down easy...
hope you enjoyed the pizza and sunsets! thanks for the informative blog!
AZ, in my case, it's my husband who's into guns (and gun safety). They scare me, even though he's taken great care to teach me how to shoot. I still have nightmares about desperately needing to use a gun, but being unable to release the safety catch. Thoughtful Husband solution: he bought me one that doesn't have a safety, which I have yet to try out ... don't worry dada, we're not NRA supporters! D.K.
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