My last post was another attempt by me to encourage President Obama to do the right thing and allow a full investigation of the Bush administration. I’m not necessarily looking to see President Bush or Dick Cheney (well, not so much for Dick) face criminal charges (although, I understand that it is possible – they’ve admitted to criminal activity right on national TV), what I really want to happen is for the American people to have a full understanding of what was done in their name under Bush/Cheney et al. I believe that there are millions of Americans who have no idea what horrible things were committed under the Bush regime. And, if they are Fox “news” viewers, they are probably still believing that Bush/Cheney actually did “keep us safe” – despite the undeniable evidence that 3000 Americans perished under their watch – and the mounting evidence (the more I read about it from MULTIPLE sources) that they should have prevented 9/11. THEY WERE ESSENTIALLY “SLEEPING AT THE SWITCH!”

As a public school teacher I feel the obligation to REALLY prepare my students to be productive American citizens. I won’t get into my thoughts on what Bush (yes, with Kennedy’s unsuspecting help) has done to public education in this country via “no child left behind,” other than to say trying to accomplish the impossible has raised the stress level with many teachers and consumed their time leading to many being turned off by government (realistically, I’m talking about my small circle of friends). Leave it for tonight that I personally know of several teachers who don’t want to even know what’s REALLY going on in our society. They don’t want to talk about issues like torture, illegal wiretapping, lying us into war, etc. because they are too busy with their careers and THEIR FAMILIES. They have the idealistic view of our government and they just can’t bring themselves to believe, for instance, that our government would commit heinous torture – or, if they did, there must have been a good reason for it – like “they’re keeping us safe.” They have no idea how UNSAFE we’re getting as the result of eight years of authoritarian, mean spirited, selfish, illegal rule by the Bush administration which was condoned TOTALLY by the Republican party. I’m pointing this out because I see teachers (my peer group) as typical members of the middle class who are just trusting that our government will keep “rolling along” as it has for the past 200+ years. Anything but free and fair elections is hard to imagine. Many of us didn’t care for the Republicans under Bush, but we waited patiently for the elections to do something about it.

Well, it’s this same Republican party who are presently in a total state of self-denial, as if what they were doing during the Bush years was in our country’s best interests and that their return to power is more important than anything else going on in the world today. They have publically committed themselves to make sure that President Obama FAILS! – I’ve been paying close attention to American politics for 45 years, I’ve studied American history and the history of American politics, and I can’t remember EVER another time in the history of this great nation where one political party has had the agenda of working for the failure of a sitting President. THINK ABOUT THAT ONE! What kind of person buys into that kind of thinking? The sad reality is that President Obama is working tirelessly (and, believe me, I don’t agree with him even close to 100% – but I DO WANT HIM TO SUCCEED) to undo the HORRIBLE MESS left behind by Bush/Cheney et al. I won’t go into the details of what these Republicans have done to all of us, because, if you’re reading this post you probably are aware of the disaster they left as they “hightailed it” out of Washington on January 20th, but I can say with complete certainty in my heart that the problem Republican leaders have with Obama is the color of his skin!

So far, the only high ranking political leader who has the guts to call it what it is – is Jimmy Carter. The rest of our leaders in Washington (and now I’m speaking about the Democrats) seem to be totally spineless. Believe me, these guys aren’t so stupid that they don’t “get” this. It almost seems to me that the Democrats in Washington are as afraid of Rush Limbaugh as the Republicans. Personally, if I was in that position, I’d cherish the opportunity to call him the racist that he is right to his face. Things have been getting uglier and uglier in Washington, and today it got even worse. I heard reports from three separate sources about an article posted to a website, I believe it’s called “NewsMax.com” which is a subsidiary of the Washingto Times, suggesting that the military overturn our duly elected government with a “bloodless coup.” Now, I was unable to actually read the article because, evidently upon hearing that the true “liberal media” had latched on to it, the website pulled the posting off their site and claimed that the author who has been writing articles for them since 1999 is a non-affiliated “blogger” – ALL OF THESE RIGHT WINGERS ARE TERRIBLE LIARS. However, thanks to the miracle of copying and pasting – at least three news outlets got a copy of this right wing whacko’s seditious thoughts.

I listened to the article being read three times, so I remember a fair amount of it. The guy was suggesting that the military is getting ready to take over our government to “end Obama’s socialist administration.” They evidently are going to form an interim military regime which will solve all the problems in Iraq and Afganistan that Obama created and presumably save our economy and create all the jobs that George W Bush’s policies lost! IT’S GETTING MORE FAR FETCHED OUT THERE ALL THE TIME! In a bit, I’ll tell you why I’m not so surprised by this, but I have a lot of questions as to what this guy and the “military” he’s talking about would have in mind. The first thing I wondered was “Are they going to take over until the next scheduled election?” If so, what would they do if another of the hated “liberals” was elected again? (I have to tell them, that as far as I’m concerned President Obama is far from a liberal – of course, they wouldn’t notice that because the man is Black) Maybe the plan is to get all those Programmable voting machines they used in 2004 in enough polling places to guarantee that a “liberal” couldn’t win – you know, to insure that we would have someone of the competence level of a GW Bush, or Dick Cheney. Or, are they going to take the same “path” that George W Bush’s buddie Pervez Musharraf took in Pakistan – that is, one of the countries they are now so worried about and don’t want to admit has become EXTREMELY DANGEROUS BECAUSE OF THEM! Well, Musharraf simply ended democracy in Pakistan and declared himself President for whatever term he deemed appropriate. I wonder if the whacko who wrote the article thought that one through all the way. I guess he just figures that all us “liberals” will simply sit, smoke our pot, and keep watching TV and be happy that the military has overthrown the government that we elected – so we can feel safe.

Crap like this is exactly why I’ve been pushing for President Obama to do the right thing and initiate the investigations of the previous President and his associates. It’s more his associates that would not want this to happen because so many of them stepped over the legal line while serving in Bush’s administration. Personally, for starters, I’d like a total accounting of how Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and I believe Douglas Feith each made in excess of 100 million dollars in Iraq while our sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, were giving their lives and limbs to the incompetent prosecution of a dishonest, illegal war and occupation. Additionally, I’d like the rest of the world to know that the United States REALLY DOESN’T TORTURE and that anyone who authorizes it or commits it will face a full investigation and criminal liability where appropriate. I could go on, but here’s what’s happening and why this is so important. The words this guy today posted on the public airwaves (cyberspace) are NOT LEGAL! Guys like him feel that they can do anything. If Bush/Cheney can openly admit to war crinmes without consequences, it shouldn’t surprise anyone guys like this feel there’s no limit on what they can get away with. Suggesting or encouraging the overthrow of our elected government is called sedition – it’s ILLEGAL, it’s TREASONOUS. When are the people who are charged with enforcing our laws, going to ENFORCE OUR LAWS? My thoughts are that if torture is tolerated and our legal system (including the President and Attorney General) “look the other way” because they don’t want to deal with the distraction – WHAT MESSAGE IS BEING SENT? I’ve been saying this for months now – THE DISTRACTION IS NOT GOING AWAY just because we don’t face up to these racist thugs.

In fact, the distraction is going to get larger and larger. These people are like sixth graders who lie about everything and are constantly “pushing boundaries.” They will continue to push boundaries until someone tells them to stop. And, in this instance, they won’t stop until they are legally FORCED TO DO SO! I understand that President Obama would like to just focus on the agenda in Washington as he tries valiantly to reverse the effects of close to 30 years of supply side economics, on top of the most pathetic foreign policy in the history of our country. However, Obama doesn’t need to lead the charge, HE JUST NEEDS TO GET OUT OF THE WAY! The article written today is just the most overt of what has been a progressively seditious theme from the extreme right of the Republican party. Worse than the fact it is the far right is the FACT that the elected leaders of the Republicans ARE NOT REPUDIATING any of the seditious or racist rhetoric that is a daily occurence now in the anti-Obama movement. (in fact, they’re encouraging it)

These people are referring to President Obama as a fascist, among other misguided names. I’ve defined fascist on this website enough times in the past that I’m not going to do it again – you can Google it if you’re not familiar with the term – but every time they call Obama a fascist they are showing both their ignorance and their pathological willingness to lie. Again, I’ll let you look it up, but in our political realm the closest people we have to fascists in America are Dick Cheney, Karl Rove (remember the “permanent Republican majority” plan? and the “loyalty pledges” to be part of the justice department?), and I’ll throw in Rush Limbaugh simply because he’s the defacto head of the Republican party and he REALLY FITS THE DEFINITION WELL. It’s beyond absurd to call Obama a fascist (I guess it would be more appropriate to say it’s ignorance to call him that), but this guy today gave the meaning of absurd a boost! Come on, the guy’s going to “save our democracy” by encouraging a military coup de tat!? MAYBE HE WANTS TO RENAME OUR COUNTRY CHILE! This would be good Saturday Night live stuff, if it wasn’t so dangerous, and if there weren’t so many “nut-jobs” running around our country longing for a place in infamy. THAT IS WHY IT’S TIME TO CALL A STOP TO ALL THIS STUFF THROUGH THE AVAILABLE LEGAL CHANNELS!

I’m going to finish my thoughts tonight by reminding you that this isn’t something new. It’s been going on, mostly in a more discreet manner than this guy’s article, since our first Black President stepped into the White House (actually, it was also going on during the Clinton years, it just wasn’t as open – despite Timothy McVeigh). Let me remind you, there is a hired militia roaming this country by the (now) name of XE (Zee), formerly and more famously known as Blackwater. This is a right wing militia which is owned and operated by a former Navy Seal, Eric Prince, who inherited a fortune from his father and has turned it into an army that could probably defeat a majority of countries in this world. The guy is on a crusade to kill Muslims (he was hired for many no-bid contracts in Iraq, Afganistan, and the US – remember Hurrican Katrina? – by GW Bush) and there were reports in the late nineties that he conspired with some of the top “right wing religious leaders” in our country at the time to do exactly what today’s whacko suggested. Then there’s Chuck Norris (of Walker Texas Ranger fame) who’s going around the country suggesting that Texas succeed from the Union and, at one point, I heard him say there were thousands of “cells” in the country waiting for the right “moment” to take over our government – a bit more discreet version of today’s article – with a little less notoriety. I won’t bore you with more details, but if you’ve been paying attention at all, you know what I’m talking about here.

White Supremist organizations have increased 400% since President Obama was elected. The racist rhetoric seems to be flowing freely and our national leadership seems willing to wait until something tragic happens before they do anything about it. NRA members have been stockpiling weapons at an alarming rate – they’ve convinced themselves that President Obama is going to take their guns away. What are these people going to do if there’s a military takeover? Would they celebrate because we no longer have a Black President? or would the fact that our entire Democracy was being threatened from within bother them? Would they actually prefer a military dictatorship to having an intelligent, hardworking, compassionate President who happens to be Black? I know people like Limbaugh, Beck, Boehner, Hannity, O’Reilly, McCain, Palin, McConnell, Cantor – and I could go on – like to claim that they’re not racists. Well, also tonight there was a poll on one of the sites like Facebook or MySpace (I don’t go there) suggesting that President Obama be killed and then listed several different methods and/or reasons. Apparently, the respondents were supposed to select the correct reason – I guess they were trying to figure out the most popular reason why this should happen. GIVE ME A BREAK! When in our history has this kind of stuff been OK? You won’t see any of the aforementioned condemming any of these disgusting examples of hate. These Republicans and their fringe element are showing themselves as seditious, mean spirited, racists – there’s no other explanation! The way to stop this, in my view, starts with the full investigation of the Bush administration which will enlighten the public to the TRUE NATURE of the Republican party and the evidence needs to be followed wherever it leads.