"There's no end to the rascality of these flinty-hearted bastards..."~~Sen John Dingle (D.Mich) speaking of Republicans, quoted on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, Nov. 11, 2003
By Sheila Samples
Embedded links*@ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7054.htm 10/12/04 "ICH" -- What is the matter with the Republican Party? As one born within a tiny, tree-shaded Republican enclave in Missouri, raised by compassionate family-values-oriented Christian conservatives, and whose entire family remains staunchly, even militantly conservative, I think I have earned the right to ask that question.
So--what the hell is wrong with you guys?
History bumps along from dateline to dateline with no regard for party affiliation. That's why last week during the second presidential debate, when President George Bush slid off his stool, assumed his arms-akimbo "Super Hero" stance and childishly blurted out, "You can run, butcha can't hide," I was jerked into the realization that it's not possible for such a horrid, vacuous little creature to be the cause of the rampant madness zigzagging throughout our society today. Bush is the effect of it -- the natural result of a cruel, thoughtless and destructive movement within the Republican Party that had lain dormant from its inception, but like Stephen King's evil "Christine," shivered into life on November 22, 1963.
Both parties have been running and hiding ever since.
This is not a treatise on the assassination of a popular American President, nor of the massive manipulations of an investigative commision to cover it up. That tragic November day marks the "bump" in our history that began the evolutionary implosion of the Republican Party into neoconservatism and the sheer, bleak cruelty of a loveless Christianity.
Before that fateful 1963 bump, New York Govenor Nelson Rockefeller was truly the face of a kinder, gentler Republican Party. Rich, philanthrophic, and middle-of-the-road, as Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America in the 1940's, Rockefeller was responsible for the success of FDR's "Good Neighbor" policy. During his four terms as governor, Rockefeller began large-scale welfare and drug-rehabilitation programs, reorganized the New York transportation system and built major public works projects.
At the 1964 convention, Rockefeller pleaded with a booing crowd to "keep the Republican party the party of all the people." He warned them of the danger of allowing extremists to gain influence, and of the threat they posed, not only to the party but to the entire nation. "These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror," he said. "They have no program for America and the Republican Party."
Rockefeller sounded the alarm that hateful neoconservatism would only get stronger and more destructive. "They operate from dark shadows of secrecy," he said, and his warning that "extremist groups" would ultimately subvert the values and morality of the Grand Old Party were lost in a wave of jeers -- "We want Barry! We want Barry!
Rockefeller, in what was considered possibly his finest moment, lost the ideological battle for the Party to Arizona's "Mr. Conservative," Barry Goldwater. The miracle it would take for either man to win the presidency didn't happen, of course, but the ideology embraced by the conservative wing of the party would result in a Nixon, a Reagan, and two Bushes -- all swept along under the evangelical influence of a Pat Robertson and the warmongering cabal of New World Order neoconservatives.
If ever there was a "flinty-hearted bastard," it was Barry Goldwater. In his acceptance speech for the nomination, he brazenly admonished his followers, "...Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice...and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue." Although Goldwater lost in a landslide to Johnson in 1964, he succeeded in putting a new face on the Republican Party. He achieved his goal of shifting control from the "liberal" Eastern wing to the radical extremists.
"First let's take over the party," Goldwater told his aides. "Then we'll go from there."
That's exactly what they did. And, they're still going -- still imploding, still evolving. The faces change...yet remain the same. They do not intend for their "forward movement" to be halted and, as the election date looms, they're increasingly desperate. Frantic. Shrieking. Lying. Totally out of control.
And that's just Rush Limbaugh. The self-proclaimed Most Dangerous Man in America.
If Limbaugh -- Rush...El Rushbo...Rusty -- is not the "face" of the Republican Party, he is its heart and soul -- and its mouth. He's the coward who crouches behind the "golden microphone" at the Exellence in Broadcasting (EIB) AM Radio Network and spews hate and filth 15 hours a week, wallowing ecstatically in his own vomit. He's the guy -- married three times, divorced three times -- who brags that he's a shining example for the "yoots" of America.
He's the guy who accused the President of the United States of murder, the First Lady of resembling a grotesque Pontiac hood ornament; the guy who referred to the First Daughter as the "White House dog." He's the guy who recently called John Kerry, a respected US Senator and Democratic presidential candidate, a "stupid SOB..."
Limbaugh's the guy addicted to Hillbilly Heroin (OxyContin) now facing ten felony drug counts who once declared that "too many whites are getting away with drug use. The answer," he said, "is to find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river..." For once, as he so often reminds us, Rush is right. A trip up the river for Limbaugh just might heal some of the wounds he continues to inflict upon this nation's once proud Republican Party...
There are many frightening things about Limbaugh, but none more so than the influence he exerts upon his millions of robotic "Dittohead" listeners, many of whom I suspect would do anything he asked them to. He launched them into a scary crusade against the music group, The Dixie Chicks, one of whom dared to criticize George Bush. Think how easily they accepted his explanation of the torture, abuse and even murder of Iraqi citizens held captive at the now infamous Bahgdad Abu Ghraib prison.
When a caller suggested in early May that the helpless pile of naked bodies -- the hooded, electrically wired figure forced to stand on a box -- were nothing but "fraternity pranks," Rush shrieked, "Exactly! Exactly my point! ... This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?"
If that's not enough to make the few Republicans who still have the ability to think for themselves remove their partisan earphones, carefully back away from AM radio, and race out to make an honest effort to retreive their party from the edge of the abyss, maybe they should consider that Bush 41 routinely calls Limbaugh during campaigns -- that Vice President Dick Cheney is a regular caller to the "Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies."
I would like to think there are some Republicans who would even agree with those of us who think it a bit strange that three of the most powerful men in the world, when faced with a critical necessity to address all the citizens of the United States would choose to dial up a foul-mouthed, lying egomaniacal college drop-out and stroke a bunch of Dittoheads.
Republicans don't seem to realize that they are no longer individual members of a coherent "party," but are merely part of a mean-spirited and dangerous movement that is theatening to sweep away democracy as we know it. For example, on C-Span's July 31 Washington Journal show, Kellyanne Conway, CEO and president of the Polling Company, angrily demanded -- "Where does the middle class get the idea they're entitled to a big house, foreign cars and tuition for all their kids? We got off track in the mid and late 90s -- we need an administration that will get people back to the reality..."
Reality? Well, according to George Bush's little brother and Florida governor Jeb Bush, some people just can't handle the truth. Jeb once told retired Naval Intelligence Officer Al Martin (cited in Bushwhacked, Sept. 2002, by Uri Dowbenko)...
"The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in a bank. You can't buy groceries with the truth. You can't pay rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross -- all the way to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another think coming. Because the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have any money."
Each generation of Republicans appears to get a little more malicious, more dangerous to the common good -- more, well --flinty-hearted. Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe, who is no less than God's spokesman here on earth, was recently outraged at the release of photos of the Abu Ghraib inhumanity. "These prisoners wake up every morning thanking Allah that we are torturing them instead of Saddam." Inhofe snarled self-righteously during a nationally televised Senate hearing on the abuse.
Where have all the good guys gone? Where are the "Rockefeller Republicans?" Do they all buy into the "new" conservative ideology espoused by ultra right-winger Adam Yoshida in Insight Magazine, that social programs shouldn't be viewed as an effort to "help" anyone because those who depend upon the government are "beyond help" anyway?
Yoshida does not advocate cutting off benefits, because he warns doing that "will simply rouse them from their stupor and get more of them to the polls on Election Day. Rather," Yoshida continues, "we should consider maintaining (or even increasing) their benefits while, at the exact same time, making it harder for them to vote."
This compassionate conservative admits that it "might cost the government some extra money in the short-term to keep the dregs relatively happy and silent but, in the long term, it will be a great investment, as fewer of them vote and therefore allow us to make up for the money spent by electing wiser governments which will allow for faster economic growth."
Yoshida says keeping the "dregs" poor but happy is "a necessary amputation. We will discard a diseased limb to save the whole..."
Americans -- both Republicans and Democrats -- must face the reality that, since November 1963, we have evolved from a government of all the people to pacification and amputation of the most vulnerable and needy among us. Think about it.
Americans are on this trip together, and together we must work to change direction. We can no longer run and hide. Because we are hurtling headlong into a deadly fascist wall. And that final bump will be fatal.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma based freelance writer and a former US Army Public Information Officer. She will accept praise and atta-boys at: rsamples@sirinet.net. Complaints and death threats should be directed to her cousin, Junior Samples, at BR-549.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
Barbara McMahon in Rome and Paul Brown Saturday April 23, 2005 The Guardian
An Italian expedition to the Antarctic has taken a sample of ice which is more than 900,000 years old and could give scientists evidence of past climate changes which would discredit global warming doubters.
The ice core, which is double the age of previous samples, will show how much carbon dioxide there was in the atmosphere during previous warm and cold phases in the climate and whether the current concentrations caused by burning fossil fuels are likely the lead to catastrophic global warming later this century.
The new core could be enough to discredit the fast diminishing band of climate sceptics, who have the ear of the Bush administration and who say that the climate has always fluctuated and man's destruction of forests and use of oil has nothing to do with the current rising temperatures and increased storminess across the world.
Ice cores contain layer after layer of snow which has fallen over millennia, and provide evidence of past climate in the same way as the growth rings of a tree. Once the tiny air samples trapped in the ice are analysed they will give scientists clear evidence of the volumes of gases and the temperature at the time.
Current scientific belief is that in all that time concentrations of greenhouse gases have not been as high as they are now, but the proof should be in these new ice cores.
President Bush used "uncertainties" in climate science, particularly the volume of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during warm periods, to justify repudiating the Kyoto protocol when he was elected to office for the first time.
He said that cutting fossil fuel use would damage the US economy and that more scientific research was needed. Since then the science has become more certain, but this latest ice core could provide evidence that even hardliners would find hard to ignore.
World temperatures have risen in the past in direct relationship to the amount of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide and methane, in the air, but the new samples will enable scientists to analyse 10 to 12 glacial and interglacial cycles, compared with the four attained with the previous record holder, a 420,000-year-old ice core drilled by Russia's Ice Station Vostok five years ago.
Two chunks of ice were extracted, near the Italian-French ice station at Concordia on Antarctica's Dome C, the thickest ice sheet in the world, and in the Ross Sea. The first is some 900,000 years old.
Scientists now hope to reach the maximum attainable limit, taking samples that have been in existence for 1.5m years. These results of the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (Epica) were made possible by drills able to penetrate some 3,000 metres below the surface of the polar ice cap.
Drilling started in 1996, and operations came to a close in 2004, with a final drill depth of 3,270.2 metres (10,730ft). The last stretch of coring was the hardest, with ice close to melting point.
Ten European nations took part: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Holland, UK, Sweden and Switzerland with national and European financing.
The nine specialists from France and Italy will end their mission next November. To minimise the impact of human presence in the Antarctic a new burning facility has been created. Dioxin and other toxic emissions were eliminated and solid waste can be burnt.
GLACIERS along the Antarctic Peninsula are retreating at an increasingly rapid pace and almost 90 per cent have melted significantly in the past 50 years.
The vanishing glaciers heighten concern about the impact of global warming, a team of US and British scientists claims.
They warn that if the glaciers continue to melt, the rate of rising sea levels will escalate, with dramatic consequences for island nations.
The researchers, with the British Antarctic and US Geological Surveys, conducted the first comprehensive survey of the peninsula's 244 "marine" glaciers, those flowing from the mountains to the sea. They used data covering the past 61 years.
In the journal Science yesterday, the group reported that 87 per cent of the glaciers they studied had retreated an average of 600m.
The retreat began 50 years ago at the warmer northern tip of the peninsula, then moved south as atmospheric temperatures rose by more than 2.5C along the peninsula.
"The widespread retreat of the glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula was largely caused by climate change," said British team member glaciologist David Vaughan.
"Are humans responsible? We can't say for sure, but we're one step closer to answering this important question."
While global warming was critical, the researchers said it was not the only cause of the big melt. The peninsula's glaciers were also affected by factors such as ocean temperature and the movement of ocean currents.
The team leader, Britain's Alison Cook, said that 50 years ago most of the glaciers were slowly growing in length.
"But since then this pattern has reversed," she said. "In the last five years the majority were actually shrinking rapidly."
The fastest shrinker in any five-year interval was Widdowson Glacier on the west coast of the peninsula, close to the Antarctic Circle. It retreated 1.1km a year.
Sjogren Glacier, at the northern tip of the peninsula, has retreated 13km since 1993, more than any other glacier in the study.
Professor Michael Stoddart, the Australian Antarctic Program's chief scientist, said the glacier survey showed that "change is happening" in Antarctica. He said it complemented recent work by AAP scientists in the eastern Antarctic. There they found that sea ice -- ice freezing on the sea surface -- had melted over the past 50 years. The amount was yet to be tallied.
Researchers have also found that warming is affecting sub-Antarctic islands such as Heard and McDonald islands.
Increased temperatures on Heard Island, for example, have triggered glacial retreat, resulting in the formation of lagoons and freshwater lakes that have attracted new plants and animals.
On the peninsula, tufts of hardy grass have spread into lawns, scientists have observed.
To tease out the trends along the peninsula, Dr Cook and her colleagues compiled a record of the behaviour of the marine glaciers over time, based on 2000 aerial photographs, historic records and more than 100 satellite images.
Dr Cook then created three cartographic-quality maps that will soon be available around the world.
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