A super thing to do

When I was young there was no Super Bowl. There was just the NFL Championship game. There were no supergroups. We had Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Sam Cooke. There were no superstars, supermodels, Super Mario, the Superdome, Super Tuesday, or super delegates.

There were no "superpowers" either, though according to legend, the term had been invented in 1944. It wasn't until the 1970s that the two largest nation states became "super," adding some hype to their rivalry. The Cold War between the "U.S." and the "Soviet Union" began at the end of World War II. With the "Axis" powers defeated, these unions of states and countries became the major political and military powers on the planet. After decades of threats, vast spending on military procurement, a nuclear arms race, alliance formations around the planet, and proxy wars, the "Soviet Union" collapsed in 1991, crashing under the weight of its bloated military spending.

Now, supposedly, the "U.S" is the "world's only superpower." This has been the rallying cry of braggarts of the "right wing" and in the news media for the past seventeen years. As with the concept of the "U.S.," we might want to ask just what the term "world's only superpower" means.

As we have learned painfully over the past seven-and-a-half years, the meaning is elusive. January 20, 2001 marked the start of the criminal regime of George W. Bush. His first few months were not of much consequence, noted mainly for his refusal to be a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gases.

Then came September 11, 2001. It was the golden opportunity for the Bush criminal regime. By ignoring urgent warnings that an attack of the sort that took place was imminent, the Bush gang scored the "trifecta," an excuse to not only raid the Federal Treasury, but to enact Draconian laws authorizing expanded police powers to the Federal government, to pre-emptively attack and invade other countries, and to govern by secrecy.

All this has been in the context of the most corrupt, corporate-crony era in "U.S." history. By partnering with coporate accomplices like Ken Lay of Enron, Congressional accomplices like Tom DeLay, and lobbyists like Jack Abramoff, the Bush regime has turned the Federal Government into a pay-for-play criminal operation. This type of operation is known to some as fascism, but I believe the term Mafia is more accurate, though still inadequate. It is likely that after the Bush era has ended, a designation like Bushism or Cheneyism will be the operative appellation (Can I have an Amen for operative appellation?).

Had the Bush regime not been so blatantly criminal, the "superpower" status of the "U.S" might still be intact, or even enhanced. Sadly, or encouragingly, depending on one's point of view, being the world's only superpower no longer has much meaning. With all our superpowerness we are bogged down in piecemeal little occupations in "Iraq" and "Afghanistan," spending billions every month, with our forces being attacked on a daily basis by indigenous guerillas, whom our government and news media refer to as "insurgents."

Part of the meaning of "world's only superpower" is the economic strength and size of the "U.S" productive system. With a Gross National Product of over $14 trillion annualy, it is the largest economy on the planet.

As we have seen in recent months, the strength and size of the "U.S." economy are not as secure or certain as it once was. Given the cumulative effect of environmental carelessness and destruction, along with the likelihood of planetary climate change, the prospects for the "U.S." economy growing indefinitely and being dominant are not good.

That leaves only the "U.S" nuclear arsenal as a qualification for "superpower" status. "We" can threaten the rest of the planet with nuclear annihilation. Hillary Clinton, presidential candidate, has already made such a threat to "Iran."

Some superpower. If all a country can do is threaten nuclear holocaust, it isn't much of a superpower, and has no moral standing among nations. As we have seen with the Bush regime's lawless practices of invasion, kidnapping, torture, domestic spying, show trials, and criminalization of the justice system, the "U.S" doesn't have much moral standing to lose.

As it now stands, the "U.S" is personified by the Bush criminal organization. An organization that is criminal to the extent that is possible, its only tool left to maintain the "U.S" status as a "superpower" is nuclear weaponry.

This is a recipe for disaster of a magnitude the world has never seen. The Bush regime only has a few months left in office, is a gang of unscrupulous criminals, and it faces criminal prosecution domestically and internationally once it is out of power. Desperate to avoid prosecution, to say nothing of its compulsion to cause death and suffering, will this gang resort to the last remaining "superpower" tool to keep itself above the law?

Based on past experience with this criminal organization, the prospects are not encouraging. We have already seen what it has done with the opportunity provided by the September 11, 2001 attacks. Left to itself, the Bush regime is not above any depravity.

Ergo, maybe we shouldn't leave it to itself. If we can take ourselves away from the election hype for a short while, maybe we can influence our representatives in Congress to start impeachment proceedings. It would be a super thing to do.
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Multiply this scene by about three billion.

A tune for the times.

Here's another.

I always liked this song, though it's not one of my all-time favorites.

Here's a great song with a terrible video.

Illusions

There's a bit of clamor on the Web about the Bush criminal regime's impending attack on "Iran." The most recent example I have found is on Smirking Chimp, in which the author says that the attack will come very soon. He refers to an article in The American Conservative, titled War With Iran Might Be Closer Than You Think. Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker revealed The Iran Plans two years ago.

In February of last year I wrote about my friendships with "Iranian" students when I was in graduate school, with a bit of analysis of the Bush criminal regime's scheming and propaganda. I hoped to show that "Iranians" are people just like "Americans," and that the isolation and threats by various "U.S." regimes has its roots in the drive for empire and control of the planet. Our "CIA" helped overthrow the freely elected president of "Iran" in th 1950s, and installed the puppet dictator Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. He ruled with an iron fist, presiding over the imprisonment, torture, and murder of thousands until he was overthrown in 1979. The "U.S." has sought to undermine and subvert the "Iranian" government ever since.

One might ask, were one curious, just who or what the "U.S." is, fomenting so much death, destruction, and misery around the planet. It's not me, it's not you, and it's not anyone else I know. It's not the land, south of "Canada" and north of "Mexico," with a few disconnected properties such as "Hawaii," "Alaska," "Guam," "Samoa," "Puerto Rico," and "The Virgin Islands." And, of course, there is the forced "rental" of "Guantanamo Bay" in "Cuba." The land is neutral, not identifying itself with any human-created impositions. For example, "Pike's Peak" is a mountain in "Colorado," with its own existence, independent of being called "Pike's Peak." It might not even be that for long if our mining companies designate it for mountaintop removal.

If I or anyone else, and the land are not the "U.S.," then who or what is? If the "U.S." is going to bomb "Iran," then there must be a "U.S." to do the bombing.

We can figure that out by asking who it is that is ordering the bombing. It is the Bush criminal regime. A regime which came to office through vote theft, disenfranchisement of voters, deception, and a corrupt "U.S" Supreme Court. By taking advantage of its own negligence (or worse) in allowing the attacks of September 11, 2001, this regime has been able to invade two countries, threaten others, and weaken the country economically and and in its social and physical infrastructure.

If the Bush criminal regime is the "U.S" that will be commanding the attack on "Iran," we might want to further examine what it means. George W. Bush, the "leader" of the "U.S.," is an animal abuser, drug and alcohol addict, a corporate criminal, a gleeful executioner, election thief, war criminal, kidnapper, torturer, murderer, corrupter of our justice system, and ultimately the destroyer of the imagined empire.

The supposed "brain" and "muscle" of the Bush criminal regime is one Richard Bruce Cheney (Wow! I didn't know his middle name is Bruce), a draft avoider during the war against "Vietnam" in the 1960s, an advocate of the "white" supremacist regime in "South Africa," crony of Enron, former "CEO" and current benefactor of Halliburton, head of the Energy Task Force, and the fomenter of the exposure of "CIA" agent Valerie Plame.

Cheney's greatest crime, though, is his behind-the-scenes effort to cook intelligence to justify the invasion of "Iraq." The scheme is known colloquially as "stovepiping." The stovepiping continues in attempts to justify the impending attack(s) on "Iran."

Based on analysis of their personalities, both Bush and Cheney are sociopaths. Cheney may not qualify as having glibness and superficial charm, but in the portals of power his fake tough-guy façade is the kind of persona that is admired and feared. There is nothing in Cheney's past that indicates he is actually a tough guy, but that is the image he projects, the persona he has adopted.

The kings have no clothes. The leaders, the schemers of the Bush criminal organization are nobodies. It's all illusion, fakery, and posturing. Bush deserted the Texas National Guard and Cheney dodged the draft, yet they can order the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the destruction of entire countries.

These people are the "U.S." If such people can personify the country, then the country isn't much of an entity. It's an imaginary construct. As such, it is a house of cards at best. And, as with any house of cards, it is easily blown over. As easily, I might add, as it was for the Bush criminal organization to take it over.
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Here's something worth reading.
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Here's a song to enhance the reading experience. Here's another. And yet another. And even more. Still more. And finally, this.