Contempt? Or fear?

Some have suggested that the Iranian leadership have shown contempt for the truth.

I would submit that they have shown contempt for their people and contempt for many of the principles of good leadership and responsibility found in the Koran.

But I would say they regard the truth with fear.

Why does anyone fear the truth? Why do tyrants and criminals work so hard to keep people ignorant and weak?

Because they are afraid of the consequences of the discovery of their own sins and crimes.

Iran elections: Regime cracks down on opposition as further unrest looms | World news | guardian.co.uk

Iran elections: Regime cracks down on opposition as further unrest looms | World news | guardian.co.uk: "There were also unconfirmed reports that Mohammad Asgari, who was responsible for the security of the IT network in Iran's interior ministry, was killed yesterday in a suspicious car accident in Tehran. Asgari had reportedly leaked evidence that the elections were rigged to alter the votes from the provinces. Asgari was said to have leaked information that showed Mousavi had won almost 19m votes, and should therefore be president."

It's always the IT guy who gets the blame...

Our hats are off to the Iranian hero, Mohammad Asgari, and hope that rumors of his assassination by forces loyal to Ahmadinejad are untrue.

Man's inhumanity to man, part 9 million something...

Well... the facts are trickling in on the horrific wedding feast massacre in Turkey Monday evening.

When I read the initial headlines, the first thing I thought was an internecine war between religious groups that consider each other infidels (as is the sad, time-honored custom even within religions in that bitterly divided part of the world). Or perhaps it was an ethnic feud between Kurds and Turks.

But... no.

It turns out this was a feud within a single releigion, within a single ethnic group, within -- in fact -- the same family.

According to Reuters, the feud had been brewing for so long it appeared people were unclear about just why the rival members of this family hated each other so much.

The suspected gunmen and many of the victims bore the same family name, Interior Minister Besir Atalay said.

The Celebi family had been at odds over land, membership of state-sponsored village guards, and more recently over the bride, local residents said. The attack was sparked by revenge from one part of the Celebi family unhappy a relative had been passed over for a groom from another family in Diyarbakir.

Bodies started arriving late Tuesday for burial in mass graves dug by machine diggers. They had been taken temporarily to nearby morgues as the local one did not have enough space.

A imam, or a Muslim cleric, was among the dead.

"I am ashamed to be from here, this is brutality, it is like a natural disaster, an earthquake," Mahmut Yildiz, 43, told Reuters. Pointing to the freshly dug graves, he said: "I don't know how we will be able to live in peace."

Frankly, I'm starting to wonder if folks in that part of the world are even capable of it... they have so poisoned their own cultures and hearts that they have become twisted, soulless dolls in the hands of demonic fates so powerful that they brush aside the the religious platitudes and hypocrisies that jump to the lips of the powerful in that region so quickly that they are forgotten before they are even uttered.

GOP "National Council for a New America" only reminds Americans who broke the 'old one'

It's hollow laugh time scanning the headlines this a.m.

The Republican Party is apparently slowly waking to the fact that something like 70% to 80% of US citizens see them as a BIG part of the problem and not much of any solution at all. (I say this as someone who was a Republican, himself, only about a year ago -- although it had been a number of years since I'd actually voted with my party in national elections.)

Of course, it doesn't take a long memory or a deep analysis to see that it was, indeed, the GOP who delivered the US to the doorstep of economic collapse.

Yet, somehow, the base -- the core Republicans who some wags and cynics have begun to dismiss as "the crazy quarter" of the population (more like a fifth at this point, though) -- continue to buy into the nutty fantasy that the GOP is capable of running America "like a business." (Ever seen how many failed businessmen are in the ranks of GOP pols? It's a lot.)

The base somehow manages, year after year, to find ways of avoiding looking at the economic facts with regard to US debt: every since the mid-70s, it has been the policies and budgets of Republican presidents which have primarily resulted in the huge growth of American debt which has delivered us to the sorry state we're in now -- requiring even more borrowing just to keep the economy from seizing up like an old truck engine someone forgot to keep oil in...

Through the looking glass...

Gee... how did we get in the mess we're in?

Oh, yeah.

8 years of the GOP calling the shots.

I was a Republican for a decade... but it's neither the party of Teddy Roosevelt or Abe Lincoln any more. By a long shot.

Not only have they proven themselves to be incompetent and unqualified "to run government like a business" -- I'm convinced that they put their own advantage above the welfare of the nation.

Of course -- why shouldn't they?

Short-sighted selfishness and expedience are at the core of the political and economic philosophies that currently dominate the party.

Like any good fiscal conservative -- I'm scared crazy by the amount of deb the US has undertaken.

They GOP had their shot and they took a robust economy running in the black and they plunged it into a crazy spiral of unguarded, reckless speculation and debt.

We are already through the looking glass here.

Limbaugh... Is his star sunk?

Reading this article, Rush Limbaugh challenges President Obama to a debate, I was struck by one, really interesting tidbit:

Only 11% of those under 40 have a favorable view of the talk show host who now claims the mantle of de facto head of the Republican party, according to polling taken last fall.

And that does not bode well for the silver haired, recovering drug addict (still under court control after his arrest for illegally obtaining Oxycontin) and right wing demagogue.

The party of Lincoln

I was thinking about this blog article in the Christian Science Monitor: Limbaugh rips into GOP chair... which got me to thinking about this whole notion that radio commentator Rush Limbaugh is, effectively, the true leader of the GOP.

The central analogy of Limbaugh’s explanation for why he wants Obama to fail in the attempt to salvage the U.S. economy says it all, I should think, the former drug addict (under court control following his arrest for illegally obtaining prescription medicine) going on at length about how his desire for Obama’s recovery plan’s failure is no different than wanting the football team opposing his own favorite team to fail.

The fact that someone who sees the future of the United States in terms of an us-against-them football game is cast as the de facto fead of the Republican Party should be more than a little frightening, it seems to me.

I was a Republican for about a decade, seeking, fancifully, I suppose, to try to reconnect with the spirit of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt that had been so central to the GOP when I was growing up.

That’s gone. The buffoons, simpletons, and street thug kingpins are running the show, now.

Maybe I AM in “the party of Lincoln” now — now that I’m a Democrat.