A Freethinker's Paradise

From Reader csm

The only thing I don't understand is why the beachfront city isn't named?

This sleepy little town is in a fight for its very survival. It was inevitable I suppose. You see this town is smack dab in the middle of three large metropolitan areas, with direct access to a major expressway, railways, and a nearby port. All things that have made this town a magnet for would be developers.

The town has been successful fighting off developments until now. What makes this different is that a powerful developer has been planning a 500-acre transfer station in conjunction with the state, all in secret. The state has said it will use eminent domain to take land that has been in families for generations. Local officials only recently found out about the development because the developer applied for an expansion of the town's wastewater treatment plant.

The wastewater treatment plant has been running at full capacity for a few years and the city has been looking for ways to fund an expansion. The developer and the state are blackmailing the city by pledging to pay for the expansion but only if the city gives its blessing to the development. Local officials have turned the offer down flat.

With the recent ruling by the SCOTUS, allowing broad eminent domain power, the situation looks bleak. Perhaps, the most frustrating thing about this is that state and federal elected officials seem unwilling to help the people who elected them.

Actually, states weren't too happy with the case in question (Kelo vs. New London), and some have passed laws restricting eminent domain.  As to what will happen in this community, it isn't known.  Hopefully during the next election, the dimwits who think its a good idea to sneak around on the people for monetary gain will be thrown to the curb.

Any legal-types (if there are any), care to enlighten us on what the Kelo decision actually means?  I think the secrecy of the government is horrible; it seems obvious that they feel they are in the wrong if they have to sneak around about it.

Olbermann smacks down Rumsfeld and the Administration

The internet connection ate the first attempt at this post.  So this one will be shorter.

Olbermann rips the cover off this administration with these comments about Rumsfeld:

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and

shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

We end the countdown where we began, our #1 story.

with a special comment on

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion

yesterday. It demands the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every

American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or

intelligence - indeed, the loyalty - of the majority of Americans who

oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land;

Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants - our

employees - with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither

common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad,

suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of

human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the

kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still

fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile… it

is right - and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was

adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis.

For, in their time, there was another government faced with true

peril - with a growing evil - powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the

facts. It, too, had the secret information. It alone had the true

picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in

terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s - questioning their intellect and their

morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone to

England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all

treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it had received, which

contradicted it’s own policies, it’s own conclusions - it’s own omniscience - needed to be

dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew

the truth.

Most relevant of all - it "knew" that its staunchest critics

needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost

of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile - at

best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name… was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this

evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way

Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History - and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England

- had taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty - and his own

confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the

man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy

excepting the fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute and exclusive in its knowledge, is not the

modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern

version of the government… of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient Ones.

That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this:

This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such,

all voices count - not just his. Had he or his president perhaps

proven any of their prior claims of omniscience - about Osama Bin

Laden’s plans five years ago - about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago

- about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago - we all might be able to

swallow hard, and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful

recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own

arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or

intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to

Katrina, to flu vaccine shortages, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelope this

nation - he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have - inadvertently

or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up in public, and question the morality and

the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the

Emporer’s New Clothes.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised?

As a child, of whose heroism did he read?

On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day

to fight?

With what country has he confused… the United States of

America?

–

The confusion we - as its citizens - must now address, is

stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when

men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and

obscured our flag. Note - with hope in your heart - that those earlier

Americans always found their way to the light and we can too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and

this Administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the

terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for

which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City,

so valiantly fought.

–

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country

faces a "new type of fascism."

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew

everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he

said that - though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

–

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble

tribute… I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist

Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could

come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of

us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew

everything, and branded those who disagreed, "confused" or "immoral."

Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954.

"We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction

depends upon evidence and due process of law.

We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be

driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history

and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men;

Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to

defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular."

And so, good night, and good luck.

The real issue here is that this Administration believes its own "legend".  This is one of the reasons Lieberman lost the primary in Connecticut: They bought into their own bullshit story about how special they are.  That doesn't play well with 70% of Americans at the least (30% will go with authority almost regardless of who or what it is).

But will these unveilings of the adminstration save American Freedoms?

Did the Lieberman loss mark the end of conservatives power?

By that I mean 'did people finally start realizing that there is a different path than the one we're on?'

Kos seems to think that may be case.  I think so too, since so many congressional races are in play this year.  The '50 state strategy' pushed by the DNC (via Howard Dean), and the fact that the Beltway folk seem to despise it, seem to point to perhaps a bit of a 'rebirth' in American politics.

Or maybe not.  Perhaps those damn Republicans will cheat/scare/lie/Diebold their way to victory once again.  Only time will tell.

More about Vernon Chong

The Vernon Chong 'letter' seems to be a hot topic on the blog, so I suppose I will follow up a bit on it.  I received an email from a reader with some other interesting ideas.  To paraphrase, they are (and I presume the reader meant to talk about the letter written by 'Chong'):

1)  Spain withdrew troops from Iraq, but added some troops to Afghanistan.  I did not know that, but there is some more information here.  This is a good counterpoint.

2)  France is no stranger to terrorists/terrorism.  Very true, now that I ponder that for a second

3)  This isn't a conventional war.  Also, quite true.  Being unconventional is how the U.S. gained its independence, and how the Vietnamese forced the U.S. out of Vietnam.  It looksl like the same thing is happening in Iraq.  If we don't watch it, the total number of wounded will be close to or exceed those killed in Vietnam. 

4)  Not all terrorists are alike.  This is also true.  They very from the OBL types who seem to have an ideological purity in their campaigns, all the way to the Hans Gruber types (from the movie Die Hard) who act like terrorists to simply get money.  So yes, different groups of enemies would seem to demand different strategies.

It simply seems that the deal with the 'Chong' letter was to try and slander the entire percentage (now more than half) who think 'stay and pray' in Iraq is a poor strategy.  Then, after the slander, he tries to pander.  To pander to the 'father protect me from the bad guys' feeling that lurks in all of us, and helps sometimes in true emergencies.

The AFA is upset att colleges

for apparently providing an education:

With memories of high school graduation still fresh on their minds, millions of parents will send their children off to college in the coming weeks. For parents, the time is a bitter-sweet milestone. For students, it marks the beginning of a quest for freedom.

But what students and parents don’t realize is that today’s campuses are functioning as an indoctrination into the realm of liberalism. As early as the 1790s, Yale college students were openly disavowing Christ. Despite periods of revival, the denial of Christian beliefs and the acceptance of secularism have persisted and gained strength through the years.

In April 2000, Tufts University in Massachusetts decertified a Christian student group “for its refusal to allow a lesbian to run for president,” as columnist Matt Kaufman reported on Boundless.org. The decision was later repealed.

Yet, six years later, students at the University of Michigan may sign up for “Lesbian Worlds: Subject, Object and Representation,” “Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender and Queer Studies” and other homosexual-based offerings for the 2006 fall semester.

Ah, its so refreshing at the AFA is quite openly homophobic and anti-gay.  Aw, those mean universities giving an education and opening up a students eyes, giving them the choice to change if they choose to do so.  If you listen to the AFA tell it, colleges do nothing but force students to love gays. 

Actually, that isn't so.  At a place like say, KU, there are dozens of religious-based student organizations (college republicans, etc.) that aren't punished for their moral views.  But the one non-faith based organization constantly gets tarnished (most of the time undeserved) for doing what they believe/feel/know is correct.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the AFA is scared of someone having fun or not feeling guilty about breathing.

The Irate Moderate

Josh Marshall has a good post about how he's finally realized for certain that BushCo is bad for the nations health.  I'm glad to see this happening (ie, Lieberman's flaming crash in Connecticut.)