Military Moderation v Ubermodernizing

The two articles on this blog, Sotomayer case on coups and GOP infiltration & coup, point out that immoderate forces have performed coups in our nation.

It has happened in the U.S. military, a political party, and then in the federal government, which then led to the ill fated Bush II years we still suffer from.

But the good news is that moderates have now gained the upper hand once again, in the military and in the federal government, even as the struggle still continues in the GOP.

This is good news current progressives tend to forget, because they have developed McPolitics, which does not see things through long enough or deep enough in too many cases; due in part to a youthful lack of patience and vision.

Don't forget that Secretary Gates has pointed out and publicly stated that preparing for fighting a war 50 years from now, by trying to build super-dooper futuristic weaponry now, is ill advised.

His meaning is that the neoCon vision there in the military has been wrong.

Which means, since he can state it publicly, that the moderates are growing stronger within the military and also in the federal government.

In conclusion, these developments present a better vision, and these are developments which we in the majority can all believe in.

Coup In Military Molded neoCon Dogma

Baghdad Bob

Some closely watched the first gulf war during Bush I, and they have compared that mission to the Iraq invasion and endless occupation of Bush II's loose canon years.

Some of those watchers note a distinct change of mind, soul, and spirit in the way the two operations were conducted.

They conclude that something changed U.S. troops from performers in a compassionate coalition during the Bush I war, to the different, torturing, and primarily destructive forces we have seen during Bush II.

My theory is that there was a coup within the U.S. military where neoCon elements gained control over traditional military ideology.

The old doctrine was that the military kept afar from, but subject to, the civilian realm.

That old doctrine was overthrown, and the propaganda ideology reminiscent of despotic regimes we traditionally hold in contempt took over in the old docrtrine's place and stead.

That old traditional military doctrine prefers and relies primarily on convincing a target population through psychological operations, thereby avoiding armed conflict where ever possible.

In the civilian realm that same technique is called diplomacy and mutual cooperation; such as what the United Nations was designed to do.

The coup changed all that for various reasons, and the military took on a renegade spirit, producing what I call the neoCon dogma.

That dogma then infected the republican party with operatives, as it got in bed with or embedded the press.

Operatives were specifically used to interface with and to infiltrate and indoctrinate the party and the press, which ultimately established and promulgated a new public rhetoric and dialogue.

The republican party had been correctly seen as the party which was more susceptible to an overthrow of its moderates, and to a takeover by its extremist elements to replace those moderate elements.

One could say that in some ways the coup was "brilliant" and it worked.

But now with the value of hindsight, we see that the neoCon element has destroyed the U.S. economy, the Iraqi economy, and even the republican party; in the sense that none of them are the same or as healthy as they were before that neoCon dogma came into power.

In hindsight it can be clearly seen that the traditional military doctrine worked better, so now the moderates within the republican party are wondering exactly what happened, and how to fix it.

That is a titanic struggle which is sure to continue for several years, and it should be noted that the neoCons will not go down easily.

Republicans Mike Murphy and Joe Scarborough were talking with Democrat John Dean on Morning Joe (MSNBC), today, about this very issue, which is the focus of a book by Scarborough.

They all agreed that the republican party needs to reject the neoCon dogma and ideology, or it will never be the controlling party again.

But take heed, the republicans will never completely reach that goal until they first realize the source of their party's illness, and then treat it at the source.

The democrats are the ones who need to beware now, because the neoCon elements have set their sights on them, discarding the republicans as the party of their attention.

Note that my use of the term "military" in this post applies not only to those in uniform, but also to those controlled by those in uniform.

In a book review over at Lew Rockwell's website, in the section "The Straussian Love Affair with War", it is pointed out that warmongering is a trait of the Straussian neoCon elements who infiltrated the republican party.

The counter to that Straussian ideology, American tradition, is contrasted in the post The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?

The definition of the word "coup", as I use it in this post, and as the context suggests, is "a highly successful, unexpected stroke, act, or move; a clever action or accomplishment".

The associated extreme edge phrase "coup d'etat" was not intended nor used because that connotes an illegal change, and since we know hard liners can legally take leadership or lose leadership over the military, a political party, or the federal government, the word "coup" was adequate.

The next post in this series is here.

A Sotomayor Case On Military Coups

I want you ... or ... I want you?

The nomination of Federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court has many all "aTwitter".

Readers may wonder why I have not discussed the Sotomayor matter here yet; it is because I thought I would wait for a convergence of several issues, and then discuss the matter in a relevant and challenging context.

This idea of a military coup in the title ought not be considered so far fetched; I was involved in a lawsuit in the early 80's in which a naval officer testified that they, the US military, practice invasions of the United States all the time.

This is confirmed in a decision of the 2nd Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in which Judge Sotomayor partook:

The Second Circuit case arose when, in October 1999, Michael Zieper put a short film on the Internet that was entitled "Military Takeover of New York City." In the film, an unseen narrator -- with shots of Times Square in the background -- discusses plans for the takeover to occur on New Year's Eve 1999, claims the tape came from his brother in the army, and reports that his brother said copies were "floating around the base." However, the narrator also directly raises an issue about whether the tape is real or fake.

Initially, the FBI simply asked Zieper to remove the film -- apparently cognizant that it would be barred by the First Amendment from ordering him to do so. Zieper's attorneys also stressed this point to them later.

However, eventually, FBI agent Joseph Metzinger and Assistant United States Attorney Lisa Korologos got more aggressive. Metzinger sent an FBI agent and several police officers to Zieper's house. Nevertheless, Zieper held his ground.

(Findlaw, emphasis added). The case the researcher / journalist is talking about is Zieper v. Metzinger, Case #055250, Second Circuit, decided 1/19/2007.

It was a case where the court, Sotomayor agreeing, said that FBI agents were immune from liability even though they harassed a film-maker who did a fictional film about the military taking over New York.

The fact is that the military plans many "very bad things" against the United States, as a part of their every day planning, for various reasons.

And lest we forget that the military has also planned actual terrorism against citizens within the United States too. Note:

These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington, including sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated, faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a Remember the Maine incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.

(National Archives Documents, emphasis added). Clearly what the F.B.I. was doing against an artist exercising First Amendment rights, well before 9/11, was wrong and they should have been held accountable.

Judge Sotomayor was wrong in 2007 to uphold fascist tendencies within the United States Government without at least a dissent.

Instead the court panel should have held that government officials that forget our traditions and law should be held liable, or guilty, as the case may be.

Terrorism We Can Believe In?

What would you think and feel if you were told that an organized group within the United States killed 424,000 Americans each year, and maimed millions more?

Is it al Queda, Inc. or Taliban LLC, or Right Wing Hate, Corp. we are talking about here?

The real haters of America would jump and shout for "joy" to be able to kill 424,000 of their enemy would they not?

A Dredd Blog article several months ago reported this shocking detail:

The article points out that deaths due to "iatrogenic causes" during hospital care results in 225,000 deaths per year in the United States.

The outpatient care which follows that hospitalization results in an additional 199,000 deaths due to those "iatrogenic causes".

The not so grand total is 424,000 deaths per year that were due to negligence, accidents, or incompetence.

An "iatrogenic cause" is defined as:

i·at·ro·gen·ic: Induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially of an infection or other complication of treatment.

(Dictionary). What this boils down to is that, in the health care system discussed, the treatment is sometimes worse than the disease.

(Dredd on JAMA, cf. Med. Detective). In plain english, iatrogenic means "doctors bury their mistakes" which number into the hundreds of thousands, while we spend trillions of dollars chasing people who only kill a tiny number by comparison.

The Pay As You Go Illusion

Neither congress nor the president realize that the propaganda that United States government can manage a budget, at this time, is seen as a fairy tale and a joke by the bulk of the population of the country.

Those who care enough to look into it a bit know that "pay as you go" is a bumper sticker to paste over the last bumper sticker that meant just as much.

In terms of economy, the government of the past decade is little more than the worst thing that could have happened to the nation.

The millions of people of the country are responsible for producing thousands of goods and services, and making wonderful things for the good life of past generations.

The government has been the problem for too long, because they enable a vast criminal mentality to flourish, and the people are fed up with that.

It is not small government or large government that is the problem, it is bad government that is the problem.

What "pay as you go" must mean, if this empire is to last, is "accountability".

Those who take a seat in government must be held accountable for their civil wrongs and for their crimes and pay as they go.

The motto must become "if you do wrong while in the public trust you will pay and you will go"; that is pay go we can believe in.

Cornservatives Embrace Conservation

The Conservative In Chief is what Bush II was called by neoCons until everything he did ended up back in the garbage where it came from.

The mourning Joe program "Morning Joe" on MSNBC has been mourning the decisive defeat of what the republicans call "conservatism" in the last two U.S. elections.

The people of the United States sent a clear message that Joe Scarborough does get.

He does not like it, but he does get the fact that they went down and that they went down for not only what they said but for what they did to the nation.

He also gets why, in terms of economics, "conservative economics" leaves a bad taste in the nation's mouth.

He says over and over that the Bush II regime, alongwith its republican rubber stamp congress, spent what the nation did not have, and spent us into great debt.

With nothing but wars we can not seem to end, Katrina destruction, and a long line of deficits in the future for our children and grandchildren, in the wake of "conservative" government, there is little wonder the nation has had it with "conservatives".

To be sure Joe is a Cornservative at heart, because his ideas come from the corn belt and the deep south.

He wants to brand that cornservative sentiment as conservatism, but the Buckley clan would not go down that road, because it is a false front. For heaven sake Buckley voted for Obama!

Joe is talking environmentalism by calling it conservation, then saying "conservative" means conservation. Yeah Joe, the conservative republicans invented the environmental movement. Who put the Joe in Joke!

That dog won't hunt Joe, that is a joke.

The nation knows that conservatives are anti-environment and that they think the notion of global warming is a devil inspired idea; the nation knows that conservatives are blind warmongers that think you kill something when there is a problem.

They are now killing themselves because they have a problem - themselves.

The Right Is Wrong

The U.S. Supreme Court held to common sense, and used the smell test to decide that it is not constitutional to have a judge with an apparent bias sit on a case being heard in an appeals court.

Most people on the street would say DUH!, but the right wing of the Supreme Court filed dissents.

Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, Justice Alito, and Justice Thomas, predictably ganged up to say it is constitutional for a judge to decide a case involving that judge's number one political campaign contributor.

The right wing of the court just did not get the notion that due process of law requires an impartial judge, and that impartiality must appear to be there and must actually be there.

In this case a jury rendered a $50 million dollar verdict in the trial court against a company that contributed to the election campaign of a judge on the court of appeals to which the jury verdict was appealed.

The judge who received the monetary benefit from one of the litigants did not recuse himself from that case, but heard it over protestations.

Professor Turley puts it this way:

A divided court voted 5-4 in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal, et al. (08-22) that West Virginia Justice Brent D. Benjmain violated the constitution by sitting on a case involving the major donor in his campaign, A.T. Massey’s chief executive, Don Blankenship.

This is an enormously important decision in establishing constitutional protections for litigants from judicial bias and abuse. Justice Anthony Kennedy again played his swing vote role.

(Jonathan Turley). Why does a political party, which espouses a certain political persuasion, call themselves "right" when they are increasingly "wrong"?

Hopefully the moderates, like Justice Kennedy who voted with the 5 Justice majority, will hold back the unbalanced federal judiciary which is more to the right than it has been in 7 or 8 decades.

This case is another indicator of the distastefulness of members of the judiciary running for election like politicians.

The federal judiciary has been purged of that problem.

We decried the "politicization" of the U.S. Department of Justice because it is a known moral hazard to politicize the practice of the law.

So what are the states waiting for? Those states that don't already need to have their governors nominate judges, and then have state senates approve or disapprove of those nominees.

Institutionalization Of Waste

Another story about the institutionalization of waste, reminiscent of the banking and housing excesses, appears on the media radar:

U.S. reliance on contractors has grown to "unprecedented proportions," says the bipartisan commission, established by Congress last year. More than 240,000 private sector employees are supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands more work for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development.

But the government has no central data base of who all these contractors are, what services they provide, and how much they're paid. The Pentagon has failed to provide enough trained staff to watch over them, creating conditions for waste and corruption, the commission says.

(Yahoo News, Wapo, emphasis added). This story has many facets and has spread around the globe.

We have now institutionalized deceit, waste, corruption, torture, and then doing nothing about it.

We are in the age of plunder these days.

Minnesota Election Law Is That Bad?

Most legal experts come down on the side of the argument that the Coleman lawsuit in Minnesota that has kept the U.S. Senate diminished was based on no substantial facts:

Guy-Uriel Charles, a Duke University professor who specializes in election law, said that he had not talked to any colleagues in the legal community who had made a convincing argument that Coleman could win his appeal.

“It’s not that Coleman hasn’t raised important questions,” Charles said. “If it is true that counties are interpreting the absentee ballot rules differently because of differential resources, that’s a question the legislature should address, but I do not think that’s a question the courts could address after the fact.”

(Politico, emphasis added). Some courts call this type of scenario a non-justiciable remedy, meaning it is a problem legislatures need to remedy.

Which means that the law is defective in some way that needs repair, which a court cannot repair, because it is not the court's duty nor jurisdiction to do so.

Some blogs that claim to be election integrity leaders originally extolled the virtues of Minnesota Election Law, while Dredd Blog pointed out the flaws in that law from day one.

If all states mimicked Minnesota law the Senate, and therefore the country's government, could be shut down by a large number of close elections for senators.

We were correct from day one that such blogs should acknowledge the error of their rhetoric and the short sightedness of their advocacy.