Ayn Rand and Chicken Hawks. Cowards and hypocrites.

Hardly surprising that invoking Ayn Rand is avoided by conservatives - her non-credibility as the promoter of the hard-assed "rugged individual" has been firmly established. Rand was a fervent skeptic of welfare for the poor and the elderly. However, when it came to walking the walk, she was not that great at it... she gladly accepted government provided welfare while castigating others who did.

Ayn Rand's terminal duplicity is reminiscent of the Chicken Hawk brigade: those privileged, well connected cowards who advocate sending others to war, while demonstrating their own yellow-livered hypocrisy by deliberately avoiding military service, or dodging the draft. In their mindset, its right and proper to order others to front line, as long as their own butts are not on the line. 

Oddly, the majority of blatant chickenhawks are those who pretend to be so "pro national security". Indeed, the list in the ChickenHawk Hall of Shame covers most of the Bush Administration's Iraq and Afghanistan neoconservative war hawks... Many in the war-hungry corporate media and even some the "entertainment" (?!) industry also qualify. Recipients of the "Distinguished Fleeing Cross" include such folks as... here's a random list:

Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Pat Robertson, Doug Feith, David Koch, Roger Ailes (Fox News), Ted Olson, Michael Ledeen, Trent Lott, Joe Lieberman, Richard Perle, Newt Gingrich, Wolf Blitzer, Andy Card, Elliott Abrams, Clarence Thomas, John Bolton, Frank Gaffney, William Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, Ted Nugent, Britney Spears, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Brit Hume, Antonin Scalia, Gary Bauer and Rudy Giuliani....   and Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Skeletons rattle the closet, and the public remain selectively deaf. Ayn Rand is a liability is any argument posed by conservatives in this area.

The real terrorists...

Here we go again. Killer Fungus is going to get us all! It doesn't take just bombs and bullets to terrorize the masses ... which in the USA is extraordinarily rare; the chances of dying via a terrorist's bomb in the USA is 150 times less likely than being struck by lightning... and on that occasion, it would most likely be courtesy of some domestic crazy, invariably a white man who wears the "Christian" religious label.

It is the corporate media that are doing most of the fearmongering, using the more subtle but equally effective approach by telling the people that we are all in grave danger from fungus, avian flu, Africanized killer bees, swine flu, Muslims or Martians. What's next? Crows? Godzilla?

Then there's the banks and credit agencies.... but that's not a "short" or "aside".

WikiLeaks: Serving freedom and the people.

From Michael Collins: U.S. Army Counterterrorism issued a report that said WikiLeaks is a threat to U.S. security, particularly in Afghanistan. The report says that the organization should be destroyed and offered a plan. Does the government really think it can destroy WikiLeaks or is the leaked report part of a plan to smear the organization so badly, it will lose supporters and money?

If Wikileaks has garnered such a paranoid and over-the-top reaction from the evildoers, THEN THEY MUST BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT. Without a shadow of doubt, Wikileaks is not an enemy of this country... that title should be reserved for those who insist that "Wikileaks should be destroyed".

There are very few areas of life which are best kept secret,... obvious examples being nuclear weapons technology,or troops deployment on the battlefield (referring to war in the *genuine defense* of the United States, of course). Virtually ALL secrecy is used as an mechanism to protect powerful people from the law, and to permit the continuation of their exercise of power.

It is blindingly obvious that nothing of what Wikileaks has published has any bearing on the *national* security of the United States, but rather the job and financial security of well-placed individuals within the US Government, corporate, and military who are, and have been involved in serial criminal activity.