Rolling Stone on Bush the Polluter

I have to say that Rolling Stone has put out some of the best, bravest, and to the point articles criticizing the Bush Administration. My question is, could he and his cronies really be so evil, or is it possible that they just comprise a culture of spoiled brats with too much power who knoweth not what they do? Of course, the theft of our natural resources -- of the very environment that allows us to live and breathe -- for the short-term gain of cronies and contributors, figures prominently. Check out this one, full text at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7605389.
If you happen to be one of those who still sees Bush as some sort of war hero or savior to family values, well, follow the money, baby. The spoiled brat scenario is about the best we can hope for, but with that much power behind his indulgences of his personal friends at the expense of, well, all of humanity and the very environment that supports our existence, sometimes it's hard to believe that Bush isn't the anti-Christ.

A Polluter's Feast

Bush has reversed more environmental progress in the past eight months than Reagan did in a full eight years

By TIM DICKINSON

What can you say about the environmental record of an administration that seeks to test pesticides on poor children and pregnant women? That argues in court that a dam is part of a salmon's natural environment? That places a timber lobbyist in charge of the national forests and an oil lobbyist in charge of government reports on global warming? That cuts clean-air inspections at oil refineries in half, allows Superfund to go bankrupt and permits the mining industry to pump toxic waste directly into a wild Alaskan lake?

Only this: It's about to get even worse.

Read on.

Fractal Love

One thing that's encouraged me to remain interested in spirituality and optimistic about the human condition is the theory of fractals. You know those beautiful, psychedelic looking, brightly colored, swirly patterns generated mathematically from Mandelbrot sets (or something like that)? What got me about fractals was that they were patterns within patterns. When you zoom in on the picture, you see the same picture. And to a certain extent, it appears that these patterns within patterns do well at depicting aspects of physical reality.

So, it occurred to me one day that perhaps if there is a fractal nature to the universe, then patterns of goodness, of morality, of caring, of love, which we do see manifested at the social level, may not only exist in this finite and transient microcosm of earthly life, but may be writ larger in the very nature of existence. The same goes for consciousness -- our little lights of awareness may be part of greater awareness. Of course, the same would then likely be the case for the "negative" aspects of our existence -- or, if we look at things in a somewhat more detached manner, the "yang" to our "yin" -- such as hatred and war. But still, with a grain of hope that our little bit of paradise is not all there is in some vast, cold universe.

Spouting Spirituality, Religious Rambling, Theological Thoughts

Since I've mentioned God a few times, I should probably add, for the curious, that I'm not a "Christian" myself, just what you might call a "fairly spiritual person", who is far from perfect himself but has real values, and that's some of what is driving this blog. I waxed a little "theological" in a previous post, and that's a side of being human that's worth a look every now and then. The reason I don't affiliate with a specific, organized religion is that I personally feel that whatever "God" is, it/he/she is greater and more unfathomable than any codification or understanding created by humans, which I suppose makes me closer to some forms of Buddhism than anything else. One might refer to my ramblings about chaos theory -- as a finite human being, I can barely begin to fathom the physical universe or the workings of the society I live in. How can I fully fathom God, or expect any other human to do it for me? I think many, perhaps all, of the great religious works can point a finger in the right direction, but none is so complete as to preclude learning from the others, and all, if they are not occasionally misleading in themselves, can be misinterpreted and/or used to mislead. Religious wars are the most egregious examples of religion being used to mislead. God didn't create us to all be the same, nor do we need to eliminate conflicting points of view. We're all looking at the same thing, just from different angles. We'll probably get closer to the truth if we take as many angles into account as possible.

Crony Connections

I posted the following, along with signing a petition to protect forest lands, on The Petition Site The particular petition can be found at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/202243741, along with many other petitions posted at thepetitionsite.com. In terms of the contours of Bush's cronyism, I'm not the expert, but I mainly want to point out some sources that are pretty hard to argue with once you've taken a look. To me it was always just kind of obvious; whenever I saw a new Bush initiative, I would just ask myself "What industry benefits from this". The answer was usually Energy (and I'm not talking about solar cell startups) or Defense (let's allow the tactical use of nuclear "bunker busters" and finally retake the lid off of Pandora's Box after 60 years!!). We the People are allowing "W" to sell our country from underneath us.

My impression is that cronyism drives both appointments and policy in the Bush administration. Agency appointments are given to contributors, friends and their lobbyists whose chief interest is to gut the agency they are appointed to in order to maximize profits. Policies and laws are composed by the same people, or with them in mind. See, for example, Jim Hightower's Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush or Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy for numberous examples. This pattern fits the administration's "work" on the environment and on Iraq. Nevertheless, the people must not be "cowed", and must continue to raise their voices, for instance through petitions like this one, if we're ever to slow down or stop this disgusting display of Pigs at the Trough (Arianna Huffington's book on the same subject).

On the redeeming side, the New York Times Magazine, in its cover story, reports that Bono Vox of U2, who is not only a rock star but an activist who manages to run in top government circles around the world, claims to be able to make some headway with "Christian Conservatives" by actually appealing to their Christian sides and quoting the Bible. So it may be worthwhile to find those CC's who are actually sincere about their beliefs and question then a little more closely. Is it possible that George Bush really cares about his professed Christian values, making it somehow possible get past the selfish, lying about his military service, crony-paybacking-at-the-expense-of-all-humanity, spoiled brat to show him the error of his ways? I hope somebody tries. Good luck getting past Karl Rove, his Machiavellian Mephisto. --The Real Raving Moderate

Smoking Guns in Iraq

The thing is, that Downing Street memo is nothing special. It merely states someone's opinion that the Bush Administration was working backwards, twisting the facts to suit the theory rather than other way around, as Sherlock Holmes once observed of an adversary. It's a telling insider observation, but not a smoking gun. Similar observations have been made by Clinton and W's former terrorism czar Richard Clarke in his book Against All Enemies. Again, not quite a smoking gun, but Clarke does point in general terms to earlier "writings and speeches" by the likes of Cheney and Wolfowitz, and also to the fact that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill also thought that these Administration insiders had been planning all along to attack Iraq (p. 264). The "writings and speeches" might provide a bit more of a smoking gun were someone to identify the key passages. Even without that, all the rest of the above, taken together with the cronyism evidenced by Bush's appointments (see my next posting) and by the administration's awarding no-bid contracts, in Iraq and now in Louisiana, to the likes of Halliburton, who apparently overcharges and in many people's opinion does a lousy job but still pays Dick Cheney a $194K annual honorarium, is enough circumstantial evidence to convict any ordinary defendant. And those things are all documented in the media, not speculative rumors. Bush is using his office, sending kids off to war and making a shambles of everything from the environment to foreign policy, for the profit of his inner circle.