Guest Blogged by Jill C. of Brilliant at Breakfast
Sometimes a Firesign Theatre reference is necessary just to get through the day.
Funny how the black helicopter crowd (which is sure to crawl back out from the rocks under which they’ve been hiding during the entire time George W. Bush has eviscerated the Constitution), never mind the “less government” pseudo-libertarian crowd, is utterly silent about this alarming report…
The long-planned shift in the Defense Department’s role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.
There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military’s role in domestic law enforcement.
But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response — a nearly sevenfold increase in five years — “would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable,” Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted “a fundamental change in military culture,” he said.
Funny how civilian authorities in New York weren’t overwhelmed during the catastrophe that precipitated moves like this. Authorities in New Orleans were overwhelmed, but I can’t imagine that this plan is designed to eliminate Blackwater goons from filling a law enforcement role in another attack the way they were sent to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. In fact, I can imagine a disaster response in which people die because civilian and military authorities are playing “Mine’s Bigger” over who exactly is running things.
Isn’t the National Guard designed to help out during disasters? Perhaps if George W. Bush hadn’t decimated the Guard by sending it to combat in Iraq — a role the Guard was never designed to play — this would all be moot. This domestic troop deployment looks at best to be part of the Bush Administration’s last-minute plans to leave its fascist mark on this country in perpetuity before leaving. At worst it’s a sign that the current Administration may have no intention of leaving at all.
(cross-posted at Brilliant at Breakfast.)
Whatever happens, they’ve learned they can rely on little more than hot air from the disgruntled citizenry, and whenever we truly seem to be getting steamed, they hold another hearing or take another vote with some cosmetic changes and everything’s jake.
I do think they’re going to leave, though, because there seem to be perfectly competent, and much better actors, fascists ready to step in. * needs a rest really badly and there’s only so long they can keep Fudd upright….
So the emperor brings back his legions fearing civil unrest while the change from the republic to empire takes place.
What’s with the “possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act”??? It’s been done for over 2 years now. Look it up. October 17th 2006, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act.
http://www.sott.net/signs/edito...MartialLaw.php
I’m not sure where Jill has been getting her information, but had she actually known anyone in the black helicopter/tin foil hat crowd, she would know that this subject has been on the front burner for at least four years, if not more. Just because she is just now waking up to it herself does not mean she should belittle the people who have been fighting it long before her.
But at least she’s waking up…
OT, Take a little water and sodium or whatever and poof! an energy source.
Things you’re not supposed to know says big energy
Not that it really matters but..
In late July on a nice day, on a nice mountain drive, my wife and I witnessed something very strange. At the train tunnel pass called Moffett Tunnel, which essentially connects Denver to the winter park area accross the continental divide, we saw a train going west bound into the mountains. What struck us as odd was a few minutes before we saw the train the local sheriff was speeding like a bat out of hell towards the tunnel. Mind you this is in a 25mph zone around 9-10,000ft on a dirt mountain road.
The train as it approached had several, at least 10, flat open cars that held numerous small tanks. Or atleast they looked like tanks, they had tread but they were small, the size of a compact car. From looking them up latter they turned out to be some of those unmanned remote control tanks. You know the kind for urban warfare. I assumed they were for the dnc in denver but you never know. At the very least these tanks are probably still positioned just outside of denver, hidden in the mountains.
Main thing to remember is that we were NOT “attacked by terrorist” on 9/11.
We were attacked by a small faction of the US government consisting of many members of the PNAC, Black water and a few other rotten eggs scattered throughout the Government.
This administration has basically been using Hitlers playbook page by page.
9/11 was our Reichstag, the Patriot act was our Enabling act and so on.
Until a minimum of 75% of this country wake up and demand that 9/11 be investigated and that the results of that investigation are talked about endlessly until everybody in this country finally understands what really happened then NOTHING is ever going to change.
9/11 is the key.
and BTW when the so called “black helicopter & tin foil hat crowd” are ultimately found out to be absolutely correct then its really those that have denied and chastised them endlessly that are the ones wearing the tin foil hats for flatly denying and refusing to listening to what 9/11 truth people have been shouting from the rooftops for at least 7+ years now.
Hey FUCK THAT SHIT, its my 50th and I’m meditating on HEALTH, HAPPINESS, and PEACE!
I call it peace day.
Two fingers ya know.
Yer only 50, and callin’ yerseff “Ancient”? Pfeh! 😛
Oh yeah and Kieffy, guess who owns amway (your advertiser)…the prince family…blackwater anyone?
Hey 99, old before my time.
Oh yeah and since its my birthday, FUCK THAT GEORGA COUNT WITH THEIR UNVERIFIABLE MACHINES!
I voted for Cynthia, thank you very much,
…I noticed my punc tuation was wrong, so here….
The Cosmic Calendar of Political Time seems to have slowed to a crawl, as we await this historic transfer of power.
What a remarkable place we now stand upon in the timeline of history, this long moment of suspended time between shifting powers.
It could seem a bit grim to some of us. George W. Frodo stands staring into the burning abyss, holding the unilateral ring of power that was forged by those no-bid, book-cooking neocon military/industrial/congressional CEO’s all around him who stole him the throne.
Will he drop it once and for all into the memory-challenging magma of history? Or will he grasp it greedily, in a desperate ploy to hold on just that much longer?
How else are we to read the signs like this troop deployment we see?
But then, the power of so few (20,000) against so many,(300 million) gives pause to ponder if we aren’t over-speculating.
Just how do they intend to pry us up from our weekend lazy-boys, away from our big-screens and uplinks, and compel us into forced labor?
Doing what? Making beer for the ones who don’t get arrested? Who’s going to be left to watch Monday Night Football?
Seriously, I think the billionaires recently learned that it’s not nice to mess with the middle class. Watch, wait a bit, and you’ll see, the wages and liesure time of the most prolific consumer class in history are about to increase.
It is the new law of international commerce, the American middle class must be enabled, to fuel a growth economy, which Wall Street requires for it’s own erratic perpetuity.
But their old economic models don’t fit, the pendulum has swung to demand-side commerce. That will prove to be the power behind free-enterprise, competition-based commerce, creating an economy with an awareness of environmental effects that corporate monopolists have ignored.
JEP – how did the billionaires learn that its not nice to mess with the middle class? They will be taking us, not for $700 billion, but rather for $7.7 trillion
So I think there was a lesson to be learned, but its the “bend over and grab your ankles” lesson that the middle class has been learning since Reagan was elected in 1980.
I am not holding my breath either, to see if in the next four years the roles are reversed and student finally gets a chance to be the headmaster.