Year Of Fundamentalism, Village O'Nazis, Darrell Issa Wants A Show Like Glenn Beck

EJ Dionne Jr

Zbigniew Brzezinski
Paul Krugman

"Welcome to the Republicans who take over the House of Representatives this week. Since it is a new year, let us be optimistic about what this development means for our nation." - EJ Dionne Jr

"I worry that policy makers will look at a few favorable economic indicators, decide that they no longer need to promote recovery, and take steps that send us sliding right back to the bottom." - Paul Krugman

"The United States’ need for comprehensive domestic renewal, for instance, is in many respects the price of having shouldered the burdens of waging the 40-year cold war, and it is in part the price of having neglected for the last 20 years mounting evidence of its own domestic obsolescence. Our weakening infrastructure is merely a symptom of the country’s slide backward into the 20th century." - Zbigniew Brzezinski

2011 is jumping right out with fangs and claws, and maybe known as The Year of Fundamentalism, a variation of my year living dangerously... Christian communities are being attacked in the Middle East, recently it was in Iraq, and on New Year's a bombing attack on a Coptic church, killing 21 people and maiming 96. It was quickly blamed on "outside forces," which refused to explain why the bombing was carried out by locals. The Coptics have lived throughout the Middle East and Africa for around a thousand years, and they are just now pissing off their Muslim neighbors? In Egypt, the last wave of violence against this splinter Christian group was in the 1990's, also directed at all tourists, government officials, and ex-pats living in the area. Hmmm, a wave of violence every ten years directed at the 10% minority of the population, sounds more like a kind of initiation ritual aimed at each new generation of members. To make your bones in the new al Qaeda or Muslim Brotherhood, you must kill some Christians... Suicide bombings are the new gangbanging drive-byes. Maybe we are going about this war on terror all wrong, and need to fight thugs with thugs. Get rid of the soldiers and send in the Crips, the Bloods, and all the other newer gangs that have formed in the US ghettos. Get their leaders out of prisons and send them to fight in the urban areas. Pimped out their Humvees, put in a new sound system, let them declare the slums of Baghdad, Cairo, and Karachi are their turf now, wherever Snoop Dog and Kanye West are needed...

So far, the attacks on Christians, also in Nigeria, have been the worst. In Europe, the situation is reversed, and Christians attack and beat up immigrants. This originated in the old eastern communist countries and the discrimination of Muslims spread across Europe, until even liberal Switzerland won't allow the construction of anymore new mosques, and France has banned women from wearing the burqa in public.

In Germany, the neo-Nazis have taken over the eastern town of Jemel, now known as the Village O'Nazis: "Jamel has become a right-wing pilgrimage site -- they come from all over Europe to see the village where neo-Nazis call the shots. They celebrated Krüger's wedding until late in the night, with nationalist rock music and fireworks... Mayor Uwe Wandel is helpless in the face of the right-wing movement in his community. He sounds bitter when he talks about Jamel. "The police, the authorities, no one dares to intervene," he says. "The Nazis are laughing in our faces." Wandel says he has repeatedly asked the state government for help. The interior minister and a parliamentary delegation came by one time, he adds. "They stayed for 20 minutes, expressed concern -- then they left again." Of course, Europe has always had their skinheads and other similar movements, but this is the first time a whole town resembles the backwoods of Montana...

Here in the US, fundamentalists have put down their Bibles and picked up the Constitution, in an effort to bully their way into Congress.: "Republicans in the House plan to make good on a campaign promise that helped vault many new members to victory: voting to repeal President Obama’s health care overhaul. The vote, which Republican leaders pledged would occur before the president’s State of the Union address later this month, is intended both to appeal to the Tea Party-influenced factions of the House Republican base and to emphasize the muscle of the new party in power. But it could also produce an unintended consequence: a chance for Democrats once again to try their case in support of the health care overhaul before the American public." This should prove entertaining viewing, watching the debates on CSPAN, though I doubt they will be televised at night... I think this might prove to be a rude awakening to our tea party fundamentalists, when they realize that they are really a small part of our population, and the only reason they have gotten press coverage is because they have been so damned loud and obnoxious. I live in the heart of conservative America, our town is surrounded by two Air Force bases, one Army, we have NORAD based here, and the Air Force Academy, which truly sucks at sports. Instead of electing an overwhelming majority of tea folks, we elected a Democratic Senator and a Democratic Governor, and so far seem happy with our choice. In truth, health care reform and financial reforms were sorely needed, especially when our unemployment rate is hovering just below 10%. I haven't talked to anyone my age who feels repealing Obama's legislation is a smart thing to do, then I haven't sat down for coffee with Haley and Newt yet...

Hoping to stir the pot further, Representative Darrel Issa plans to spend all of his time over the next two years having investigations into the Obama administration, hoping to prove just how corrupt it is. This is payback for the investigations that Henry Waxman did on the Bush administration. I don't think we'll find missing piles of cash outside of the military, or revelations like the use of waterboarding, but Darrel is coming out with both barrels blasting: "Rep. Darrell Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high-profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress.


According to an outline of hearing topics obtained by POLITICO, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is also planning to investigate how regulation affects job creation, the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis, recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown." Mr Issa is hoping to make a name for himself as a crusader, but it is all bullshit postering. He will soon be revealed to have no clothes, all aggression and no substance. Then, he maybe looking farther, past the next couple of years, hoping that Fox will be so impressed with him that they will offer him a show to air after Glenn Beck... I wonder if a Sunday talk show panel with Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin would be entertaining, or would their massive egos bring it down as a crashing bore? Of course, it would need Dick Cheney to lift it up...

I think that the US's fundamentalists have been distracted by their new role in politics, there-bye they are contributing to the social dialogue. Even the ignorant, red-neck pastor whose claim to fame was that he was going to burn a Koran backed down. Within our shores, we value living peacefully, and seek to do just that. Too bad our foreign policy can't match our ideals we set for ourselves. Because the wars we have in Iraq and Afghanistan have done more to foment hatred on both sides, Christian towards Muslims, and Muslim towards Christians in the world than any other recent event. They have brought these feelings to the front so that we can examine them, and hopefully, have the dialogue to be able to

get past it. I just wish that we didn't have to waste human life in the process...