Happy Halloween

Or happy autumnal equinox, one of four points in the calendar year that is central to primitive religion. It's the source not only of hundreds of thousands of humans sacrificed to non-existent gods but also of Bible stories such as Jericho (the sun "stood still") and Easter (when winter's over and everything is green again--and the godman Jesus ascends to the "Father," or in this case the sun). Funny how a gruesome, childish practice over the centuries mutates into a benign celestial allegory and kids trick-or-treating in cute costumes. Better than the reverse, I guess.

In celebration of Halloween (or Samhain), here are too unwelcome articles, one on the provision Bush™ recently snuck through Congress that gives the Boy King the authority to seize control of the National Guard anywhere, anytime, without informing or asking permission of any state's governor. And if that news wasn't good enough for you, the dollar is looking pretty precarious right now. What should you care? two words: Howard Beale. The US dollar is the default currency of the world, against which all other currencies are measured. Heretofore it's been stable and so half of Asia has been buying up dollars and loaning them to us to pay for massive tax cuts for the rich, earmark giveaways, war profiteering and bloody, out-of-control wars in the Middle East.

So here we have a president illegally overriding Congress and state governors and a currency that's rolling down hill pretty fast until it reaches bottom and collapses.

What I've worried about vis a vis this election is the nexus of several disturbing, dictatorial trends, namely:

1. The rapid construction of prison camps throughout the country which could eventually hold up to 400, 000 people. This is being done under the cover of "immigration reform."
2. At the very least the last two elections were stolen outright, and there's all the documentary evidence you could ever want to back it up. And the GOP is busy stealing this one too.
   
3. Cheney's order not long ago that the Pentagon draw up detailed plans for responding to another 9/11, despite the fact that the Administration is allegedly "keeping us safe" and we have no idea how to respond to an attack that has not occurred by people from a country we don't know.
4. The building of superhighways for transporting things from Canada to Mexico and back. This is the flipside of a North American "security zone" that's in the works. Essentially, we'd cede our national sovereignty in exchange for a continent-wide shared security apparatus.
5. The death of Habeas Corpus.
6. Illegal wiretapping of the entire population.
7. Using signing statements unconventionally to undermine legislation
8. Ceding federal authority to industry insiders who join government and write legislation on behalf of said industry.
9. Gearing up for war with Iran. Right now, most of our military hardware, most of it Naval, is in the Persian Gulf doing exercises with Israel and NATO (I think). Russia, China and most Caspian countries performed exercises as well, as did Iran. Add to that our cooptation of the exiled Iranian terrorist group the MEK to carry out acts of terror in Iran itself. There's good reason to believe that at least two planes full of top brass were crashed by the MEK. The war on Lebanon was a test case and was a smashing success. At least it was according to the Israelis. That's because the war had little to do with Hizbollah and everything to do with undermining Russia, China and Iran so Israel and Turkey could build their Ceyhan to Ashkalon oil, gas and water pipelines along the coast.

This is not good, people.