Smells Like

Smells like...fascism:

The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

They fucking documented their perverse shit. Imagine the evil of being in the moment, pumped up on absolute physical power over another human being, one you had dehumanized, on a righteousness I.V. The psychology of the torturer and the torturers' boss and bosses above them all the way up, and now imagine the cameraman. Was it a boss, another torturer, an analyst, a vidtech who could be trusted?

What's the level of immorality on the videographer(s) of American's Least Constitutional Home Tortures?

Other strands of odor in that evil scent include a President who feels not only does he never has to tell the truth, he never has to acknowledge it. All that matters is his power. Screw all of you:

It was interesting watching George Bush's NIE press conference all the way through...

...The more significant and interesting aspect is when Bush has no choice but to attend to the question. In a face-the-music type of session like this one, we can not only observe the customary squinting, grimacing and laughing, but during the more blunt and direct challenges, we can also witness the less usual swaying; the facial tics (typically consisting of snorting, sniffing and tight pursed lips pulling to one side of the face); and even beyond that, the brief, otherwise nonsensical, somewhat crazed, staring-slightly-into-space looking glance...

...I have no idea how many shots AFP photographer Mandel Ngan had to take to isolate the one above, but it captures Bush exactly in one of those "can't tolerate reality -- especially when it's in my face" kind of moments.

In episodes like these, in spite of his insistence about feeling untroubled, you can see Bush's shield actually gives way for an instant, and there is trouble all over the place.

Trouble all over the place.

Smells like kingly fascism when someone experience good fortune in the political realm, someone pretending to the ultimate political throne -- over the past day Rev. and Former Gov. Mike Huckabee -- confuses it with some sort of Almighty throne:

On the one hand, one could claim that he is pandering to the audience (i.e., Evangelical college students at Liberty University). On the other, the claim essentially amounts to: “God wants me to be President” or it is a manifestation of a political “name it and claim it” theology wherein God is somehow required to answer affirmatively if prayer is sufficiently earnest...

...Huckabee is talking very much like a Southern Baptist minister in this clip, as there is a basic belief in the church that whatever happens, happens because it is God’s will–or, at a minimum, that God directly intervenes in these matters, especially when prayerful consideration is applied...

Back in Medieval Times and almost anywhere that a king has ruled by decree, there's been a fascism blessing by the church or even the king taking over, becoming head of the church (Henry). The underpinning always was that the domination of other humans was, at the top of the power pyramid, ordained personally by God.

It's a traditional kind of might makes religious right. Or today, Religious Right.

Witness Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a practicing Mormon and former bishop and stake president in his church who just made a speech that his partisans (no doubt encouraged by his campaign) are comparing to John F. Kennedy's landmark speech regarding his Catholicism to Houston Baptist ministers in the 1960 election.

Only problem is, JFK's speech was a massive advocacy for America's once staunch and rigid separation of church and state. Romney's speech is a blatant call for religious control of the Presidency, only he's desperately trying to get himself and his church lumped in with mainstream U.S. Christianity. So all those goddamned GOP religious conservatives will vote for him -- and damn the U.S. Constitution:

Mr. Romney tried to cloak himself in the memory of John F. Kennedy, who had to defend his Catholicism in the 1960 campaign. But Mr. Kennedy had the moral courage to do so in front of an audience of Southern Baptist leaders and to declare: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”

Mr. Romney did not even come close to that in his speech, at the George Bush Presidential Library in Texas, before a carefully selected crowd. And in his speech, he courted the most religiously intolerant sector of American political life by buying into the myths at the heart of the “cultural war,” so eagerly embraced by the extreme right.

Mr. Romney filled his speech with the first myth — that the nation’s founders, rather than seeking to protect all faiths, sought to imbue the United States with Christian orthodoxy...

...The founders were indeed religious men, as Mr. Romney said. But they understood the difference between celebrating religious faith as a virtue, and imposing a particular doctrine, or even religion in general, on everyone. As Mr. Meacham put it, they knew that “many if not most believed, yet none must.”...

...That is why they wrote in Article VI that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

And yet, religious testing has gained strength in the last few elections. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, has made it the cornerstone of his campaign. John McCain, another Republican who struggles to win over the religious right, calls America “a Christian nation.”

CNN, shockingly, required the candidates at the recent Republican debate to answer a videotaped question from a voter holding a Christian edition of the Bible, who said: “How you answer this question will tell us everything we need to know about you. Do you believe every word of this book? Specifically, this book that I am holding in my hand, do you believe this book?”

Compare the two Presidential candidates, separated, it's so horrible to see for yourself, by so much more than 48 years.

Romneyvideo, per Crooks and Liars:

...It was a hodgepodge of religious dogma that told the American people nothing about his religion except—you can’t have freedom without religion—or something like that…

As Scarce noted in an email:

The real killer line (and ominous) is his

It’s as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

Christian Conservative red meat.

And Kennedy's landmark, turning point speech, video via Andrew Sullivan and transcript from the JFK Presidential Library and Museum:

"But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured--perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again--not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me--but what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him."

I'm guessing Rep. Ron Paul is the only GOP candidate who might actually say in a speech that no church or church school should be "granted any public funds." That's the cornerstone of the Party and Administration's mob boss strategy.

Oh, that and telling your parishioners how to vote.

Yep, the front-line of the political war in America today isn't between Liberal and Conservative. It's between a traditionally secular or currently Christianist Presidency, one which since January 20, 2001 has smelled like you-know-what.

Because so far all a Christianist Presidency has given us disaster.