War For Peace; Abolition of Unions to Enhance Worker Benefit(s) (Ad Nauseam, Ad Infinitum)

In Seattle, the Mars Hill Church, one of the fastest-growing evangelical churches in the country, grew to 7,000 members this fall, up 1,000 in a year. At the Life Christian Church in West Orange, N.J., prayer requests have doubled — almost all of them aimed at getting or keeping jobs.

The evangelican churches, and probably most churches in general, are filling up as the job loss/currency devaluation disaster goes worldwide. I flipped past the Franklin Graham TV fraudfest last night as he begged the sinners to repent (like he did?), and not-to-worry their prayers would be answered in kind. Oh, and don't forget the plate when it's passed. Mail-in donations will get special(ly effective?) prayers. The thought that kept running through my mind as I reached for the remote was "How long in advance was this booked? Before October?" But forgive me. I'm a conspiracist: a term meaning one who sees what seem to be obvious meanings in what are becoming everyday events like speeches by the already disinvested politicians who feel free to give history lessons to the largely ignorant (or purposely so) TV mavens. As the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) continue to parade "W" and the Chenegang Master around for your viewing pleasure this week, you won't have to work too hard to remember the words of George Orwell in 1984:

WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

And

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.

On a quick, unannounced trip to Iraq, our boy "W" was wearing his historyness on his sleeve as he

hailed progress in the war that defines his presidency and got a size-10 reminder of his unpopularity when a man hurled two shoes at him during a news conference. "This is the end!" shouted the protester, later identified as Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt. Bush ducked both shoes as they whizzed past his head and landed with a thud against the wall behind him.

Bush joked about it later as he took his undeserved "victory lap," but why shouldn't he? A joke is the closest he has been to any action in Iraq or Afghanistan let alone all the other countries he has had a hand in stealing from since 2000. In 37 days he moves to a formerly real-estate-agreement-enforced all-white suburb of Dallas and begins the full-scale remaking of his glorious revolutionary history.

"The war is not over," Bush said, adding that "it is decisively on it's way to being won." It was at that point the journalist stood up and threw a shoe. Bush ducked, and it narrowly missed his head. The second shoe came quickly, and Bush ducked again while several Iraqis grabbed the man and dragged him to the floor. In Iraqi culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of contempt.

As this trip was planned and "conducted under heavy security and a strict cloak of secrecy," you almost wonder why we're getting the news at all, but there again I'm guessing that some of the people who were sworn to secrecy couldn't have resisted telling the story for very long (38 days). With Congress reneging on their obligation to protect the jobs of over 3 million workers who are endangered by the auto industry's peril, the Rude Pundit tells it like it is. How many Jokers should we continue to hire? And with Marc Dreier joining yesterday's outing of Bernie Madoff (but don't worry, his ripoff millions (380) don't approach the damage of Madoff's billions (50)! - so far) with his scam of selling fake promissory notes, we are now assured this is only the tip of the iceberg. They all want to get out while "W" is still making up the history. Hope the TV audience has a long memory for this series.

“No one is in charge,” Vincent F. Pitta, a lawyer at the firm, complained last week in an affidavit in support of a government request to freeze assets. “The news of Mr. Dreier’s arrest has had a neutron-bomb-like effect on Dreier L.L.P.” Few have fallen as quickly as Mr. Dreier, a Yale graduate and Harvard-educated lawyer who had been a partner at some of New York’s better known firms before opening up a high-profile practice of his own in 1996 that now has offices in five cities. “He promised lavish salaries and lavish compensation and he was attracting the best and the brightest,” said Gerald L. Shargel, Mr. Dreier’s lawyer. Mr. Shargel said Mr. Dreier is cooperating with the receiver now running the firm. The expense of running such an operation does not provide a ready explanation for thefts of such magnitude. Even the cost of sustaining Mr. Dreier’s appetite for luxury does not provide an easy answer for what instilled the desperation that seems to have prompted schemes involved here, schemes that prosecutors said involved Mr. Dreier pretending to be other people.

Suzan ___________________________________