Forget famous surrenders of the past and ready yourself…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:41 PM Permalink
…for the most shameful surrender in American history, a surrender I do not believe will leave the nation intact.
Congress, both bodies, have so humbled, abased, embarrassed, and taunted each other to the point that compromise is no longer possible. It's like when a younger sibling knows secret(s) about his elders that even the youngster recognizes that were he or she were to reveal those secrets, it would be so great a breach of trust that the family dynamics would change forever, it might take decades to be forgiven (if at all), and the youngster could face complete exile from the family. Most people will innately understand this.
But, in American politics, which USED to be a family united against the world for the good of all its citizens, there is no more family extant. Now it's republicans, who care for only money and power; democrats that try to do what's best for America but are so inept, inane, and such fools that they would ask an anaconda swallowing them whole it they could negotiate to keep their finger- and toenail clippings or, in other words, democrats are so fucking stupid they would rather sacrifice their children to gain the most minute and inconsequential advantage. Independents that caucus with democrats must bear witness to the slow, agonizing death of America. And teabagging-gop-ers would rather just ostracize or execute democrats and independents.
All these political parties have abandoned rank-and-file American citizens and seeks nothing other than complete domination of the country. Each of them have violated their oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic and each seeks nothing for Americans but a rough time and a hard row to hoe.
None of these parties has done anything to uplift the lives of the ill, the poor, the unemployed, the hungary, and those who must choose between a fresh can of cat food for dinner or a half tablet of vitally needed medicine.
They all posture, preen for the cameras (I can already see Beohner, speaker elect, licking his palms and smoothing back his hair so he looks good on the TV), try to come up with the most clever or outright vicious comment to make about those of a different party as they step over one of the two or three hundred thousand homeless veterans, most of whom are suffering a myriad of illnesses from repeated tours of duty in an illegal war entered to feed the ego of whom? gwb and the lying ass republicans who aided and assisted in getting us into both illegal wars.
And don't give me any horse excrement about Afghanistan being a "good" and "just" war. It cannot be just to kill and maim thousands in an attack on a nation that just happened to have a terrorist residing there. If that were so America needs to surrender to itself as all nineteen terrorists were last known to be on American soil.
It's over, folks. We had a good run right up until republicans elected a deity, Ronnie Raygun, former actor, former governor, and trader of arms to terrorists to obtain release of the hostages in Iran. And don't write me any crap about, "Reagan never did that!" It's hard to deny the crime when its perpetrator confessed on national television, isn't it?
The history of American Presidents over the last 60 years:
34th President, Republican Dwight David Eisenhower, served 1953-1961, best remembered by me for America's formerly greatest interstate highway system and infrastructure ever seen in the world and warning about the 'military-industrial complex' danger facing America.
35th President, Democratic John Kennedy, War Hero, inspired a nation and paid for it with his life, Nov. 22, 1963. I was on the third grade flag team; I cried the entire time I lowered, then raised to the top and lowered the flag to half-staff when he was murdered.
36th President, Democrat, Lyndon Baines Johnson, sacrificed any future political activities after assuming the office of the murdered Pres. Kennedy in order to get the Civil Rights Act passed. "If nominated I will not accept, if elected I will not serve."
37th President, Republican Richard Milhouse Nixon, the most famous crook ever elected, brought immeasurable shame to America with the Watergate Scandal, his plumber squad, his illegal taping, and his real feelings that, "If the president does it it's not illegal."
38th President, Gerald Ford, typical republican, pardoned almost all of the crooks in the Nixon presidency.
39th President, Jimmy Carter, worst complaint, "He's so boring!" Kept the nation at peace and living within its means, left office with $600,000.00 cash in the treasury.
40th President, Ronald Wilson Reagan, bargainer with terrorists, armed Iran against Hussein's Iraq, sent aid, weapons and training to Osama bin Laden to help fight against the Russians in Afghanistan.
41st President, George Herbert Walker Bush, family made millions partnering up with the Senior bin Laden, Osama's Dad, but was too bland to re-elect.
42nd President, William Jefferson Clinton, besides his legendary predilection for illicit sex it at least kept him too busy to spend money, left office with hugh surpluses - just like the last democratic president. Strange, huh?
43rd President, George Walker Bush, Nixon on steroids, a crook, a liar, a usurper of the Constitution, warmonger, would be dictator, bankrupted the country. Did I forget anything?
44th President, Barack Hussein Obama, political coward with just enough charisma to get elected, but lacking the guts to stand up for America and Americans, backs down from every fight, and has the smallest cojones I've ever heard of for a Harvard educated attorney. He is the only democrat on this list with no major accomplishments (other than getting elected), he is surrendering democratic American dominance in politics to men far less intelligent than he, AND IT SUCKS A BIG ROOT!
And finally, please note that with the exceptions of Eisenhower and too-bland-to-be-real Bush the Elder,
every other republican president has engaged in blatantly illegal acts in contravention of American Law and Treaties, while every democrat serving over the last 60 years may have been boring, may have had dalliances they shouldn't, but they knew how to govern for all, even the least of us, they were not war criminals, looters of weaker nations, they didn't deplete and almost destroy our armed forces.
AND PEOPLE DON'T SEE THIS? FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE!
Labels: Barack Obama, Bush, bush hypocrisy, bush war doctrine, democratic party, destroyers of dreams, disinformation, rant, republican hypocrisy
Why the hell do these dumbass republicans think they are going…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 3:29 PM Permalink
…to do so well in the next elections? It's certainly not because they have done anything of merit. When Obama was elected president the republican party, top to bottom and back to the top again, swore an oath to become the party of "NO" and openly prayed for Obama to fail as president (IMO this had more to do with the color of his skin and not that he was a Democrat), and, then, ignoring the oaths of office they had taken they fought tooth-and-nail to try and insure that his administration did fail.
They have completely forgotten about their constituents. Democrats have dragged them kicking and screaming all the way to get what good legislation the Democrats proposed passed and now they are being so ignorant, asinine, utterly ridiculous and so obviously willing to put their personal agendas ahead of the needs, desires, and the very purpose for which they were elected - proposing and helping to get enacted legislation that isn't designed to be for "Rich People Only."
Country not in enough trouble financially? TAX BREAKS FOR THE RICH! That's the ticket! The same policies pursued by gwb and we all know how well that worked out!
Still insufficient medical care? Americans still suffering earlier deaths than the next 49 industrialized countries (You know, countries like Costa Rica), lower birth weight, higher infant mortality, more than 30% of our citizens growing morbidly obese, more citizens than ever homeless, and veterans returning from war with many, many different maladies? PROMISE TO REVOKE THE NEW HEALTH CARE LEGISLATION! CHANGE THE DEFINITIONS OF THINGS LIKE PTSD SO FEWER PEOPLE QUALIFY FOR TREATMENT! IGNORE HOMELESS VETERANS, THEY DON'T VOTE BECAUSE OF RESIDENCY REQUIREMENTS!
Population growing too obese to join the military? AUTOMATE WAR WITH DRONES AND BETTER MISSILES SO THERE IS NO NEED FOR MORE SOLDIERS!
Too many people slipping into poverty 'cause they can't find work and their benefits are expiring? LET THE BENEFITS EXPIRE SO THE LAZY BUMS GO FIND A JOB 'STEAD O' LIVING FABULOUSLY ON A GOVERNMENT CHECK!
A raped woman suffering horrible health risks if she carries full term? CHAIN THAT WOMAN TO A BED AND MAKE HER HAVE THAT BABY ANYWAY (TO INSURE THOSE RAPISTS GENES REMAIN IN THE GENE POOL)! (Oh, they want this one BADLY!)
The elderly finding it harder and harder not to slip into poverty? RAISE THE RETIREMENT AGE FOR SOCIAL SECURITY SO MORE OF THEM WILL DIE BEFORE COLLECTING BENEFITS!
And I could go on and on
ad infinitum, but pretty much everyone knows the dark, evil, inner spirit that seems to motivate the GOP, neocons, republicans, teabaggers, conservatives, sick sycophants and/or any other appellation they choose.
They all stand for the same thing: TAKING AMERICA EVER DOWNWARD AND DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR ANYONE BUT THE ALREADY RICH.
Labels: bigotry run amok, bush hypocrisy, christian hypocrisy, class warfare, Conservatives, GOP, mickey rourke, neocons, republican party, republicans, snark, tea baggers, utter contempt
Who ya gonna call - Joe Sestak! A Virginia Senate seat aspirant…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 3:34 PM Permalink
…who, in an interview on MSNBC, told it like it is: even though we have won a superficial victory in Iraq and have, supposedly, withdrawn the last of our combat troops, the cost of this war, estimated to be between $900,000,000 to $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars) does not yet include the massive health dollars that will be needed to provide even adequate, not great, medical care for the soldiers returning from this illegal war with Iraq. He estimates that it will require ANOTHER trillion dollars or so to provide that care as 25% of combat soldiers returning are suffering from PTSD, traumatic brain damage, and various maladies America is not yet prepared to treat.
I believe that this statement (loosely rewritten, but, I believe, substantially accurate) made by the Democratic candidate for the Virginia Senate Seat was also very bold in pointing out that Iraq was not a war of necessity and has caused a depletion of forces now and in the future, whom will need to be trained and equipped to handle any new threat that arises. He correctly notes that the Afghanistan War was necessary but that bush dropped the ball entirely when he diverted our limited resources to Iraq for a mythical weapons of mass destruction hunt (Old Boy Scouts will remember going out on 'snipe hunts' every bit as real as the search for WMDs.
Of course then the newsreader had to go to Douglas Feith, one of the lead former White House sycophants that broke every record, official or not, for blowing smoke up bush's ass with his entire head up there as well. This is not as easy as it sounds so I do wish to give him credit for performance of such an unsavory act eight years running.
And, just as expected, Feith defended bush with one of those tired, exhausted, dead-by-the-side-of-the-road-and-half-eaten-by-vultures-such-as-dick-cheney arguments that the pResident had weighed the possibility of Saddam having nuclear weapons, Saddam's propensity for attacking his neighbors (with weapons made by or in America' name and freely supplied to him, or supplied free to him, I can never keep that straight in my mind), read all the 'almost unanimous' intelligence reports, and decided that the middle east was a much more dangerous place than it would be without Saddam, thereby making it a matter of vital national security for America to attack Iraq. (My hands hurt too much today to spend much time researching and finding it again, but I have read credible reports that Saddam wrote bush a letter saying that for $1,000,000,000 [a billion bucks] and allowing Saddam to exit Iraq to a country from which he and his family could not be extradited, he would leave voluntarily. So for a paltry billions dollars we could have taken over Iraq in a bloodless coup, had control of all that oil, which was why we went there to begin with, and done it without the loss of a single life on either side, without utterly destroying the country, without creating one of the greatest displacements of a civilization ever, and without creating human suffering on such a grand scale: millions dead, millions more driven from their ancestral lands. All so mas macho bush could kill the guy who tried to kill his daddy, president during the first Gulf War.
Doesn't anyone besides me find this to be reprehensible and the ultimate in vile, evil, conduct?
Anywho, the people of Virginia would be well-served by having Joe Sestak as their Senator, a retired three star general and a man who knows whereof he speaks when it comes to war; that's my opinion and I'm stickin' to it.
It also reaffirmed, to me anyway, that everyone who sycophantically sucked ass in the bush maladministration are sill too embarrassed, or stupid, to recognize what a waste of skin they are. Unbelievable jerkoffs and the remnants of the most corrupt and lawbreaking administration the world has ever seen.
We could have made it just fine without them, thank you very much.
Ciao, bella ami.
Labels: Afghanistan war, bush hypocrisy, bush war doctrine, cheney, GOP, hypocrisy, Iraq war, Iraq war crimes, Oil, politics, snark.
Boy, after 40 years or so, excepting a brief period of unbridled prosperity…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:48 PM Permalink
…while Bill Clinton survived the slings and arrows and the bull and horse pucky flung at him by every Neanderthal in the Republican Party with one hand tied behind his back and while thusly fending off the shit he still brought about an eight year period of growth and prosperity, but we all knew there had to come a time of reckoning brought upon us all by the few in power that cared for nothing else than being in power.
I know all Republicans would gladly blow a statue of Reagan peeing in the fountain like those in Belgium with the boy peeing that are so popular in Europe, but too obscene to even look at, much less respect the views of others and discuss it here in America. You'll find many an American, staunch free speech defender, calling for these statues to be gotten rid of. Or made into images of a very young Ronnie Raygun. (Google this, you'll find plenty)
When Reagan was elected it seemed that the country began going to hell faster than a bobsled with lightening shooting up from the turns and complete with crowds such as at the old former Roman-style games cheering for the lions to win. It still amazes me that after publicly admitting that the U.S. was selling arms to "terrorists groups," there are still millions of people that will swear otherwise and pronounce Ronnie the party Saint. The party members completely bought into Reagan's image of the "welfare queens" collecting millions from hardworking taxpayers while they drove their Cadillacs to the Post Office to collect the millions in tax money. People actually bought into this! As a bail agent/bounty hunter for fifteen years I can tell you from my personal experience that the only such people making money were the pimps and dope dealers who beat it out of one to several women.
But hey! Then the fun continued with GWHB, former CIA head and vice president. I remembering laughing so hard that election night when Mila asked me what was wrong, all I could do was laugh even harder and tell her that any country that elects its former head spy for president would surly get what it deserves.
To my surprise, however, Bush ended his political career by raising the taxes he had sworn he never would, and S.O.B., he did because he could see the train wreck coming if he didn't, so in a fit of altruism, hitherto unknown since to exist within the GOP, GHWB raised taxes that, along with the tax raises later to come under Bill Clinton, doubled the value of the stock market and issued in an almost unprecedented period of prosperity and the creation of 22-million new jobs.
I really don't think any correctly thinking citizen would even begin to allege in their wildest dreams that gwb, a terrorist, torturer, sadist, war criminal, squanderer of America's treasury and reservoir, and the most mendacious and ignorant world leader ever was good for America or the world So obviously I am not referring to America's religious-radical, right-wing, mouth-breathing, keep-the-dead-alive (think Terry Schiavo, proclaimed healthy enough to continue treatments by a Doctor Lott of the U.S. Senate despite the fact she was soon thereafter found to be brain dead beyond any hope of revival by her regular doctors), force-women-to bear-a-child-they--do-not-want-and-not -even-from-rape-or-incest, and the many other things gwb and the Big Dick managed to do this country in such a short time with the aid of rich corporations, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and all the other "big somethings".
And what short memories diseased minds retain, attempting to put 40, almost fifty years, of blame on President Obama for the malfeasance, recklessness, illegal, unconstitutional, and secretive little plans to attack Iraq to steal their oil.
It has been an amazing display of dexterity, skill, planning, bold initiatives and remarkable genius! Clearly Obama is the Boris Badenov of this generation, plotting since he was a child to bring about the ruination of America.
As a boy he planned:
global warming and pollution.
Watergate.
The Iran Costa Scandal.
Pimped off Monica Lewinski and almost brought down a presidency!
Single-handedly got gwb the lesser elected president, not just once, but twice!
He was the secret planner of dick cheney for the Oil War, torture, and Gitmo.
He planned and executed the spending of unimaginable sums of money for war and deposing other world leaders.
And you must remember that Obama engineered most of these disasters from his home country when he was just a child.
The mans talents, planning, and ability to execute plans such as these will someday be immortalized in the Presidential Library of every GOP President, all of whom will claim to have alone, by themselves, with no help at all, in a single heroic effort stopped Obama.
The only way any rethuglican will ever give Obama credit for anything after this Gulf Oil Spill is if Obama dons waders and personally undertakes to scoop every last drop of rethuglican-spilled oil from oil rigs from which it is impossible to spill oil.
But the rethuglicans forget: look at all the mayhem wrought single-handledly and tremble in fear at the things to come.
Me? I've got other things on my mind:
Ciao, bella âmi.
Labels: Barrack Obama, big brother, big medicine, big oil, bigotry run amok, bush hypocrisy, bush war doctrine, snark.
Do you reckon that eventually the citizens of the world…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:39 PM Permalink
…will ever figure out that all of their great ideas have come to naught, that as long as the world depends on oil we will be eternally at war with all the other citizens also trying to squeeze the last drop of oil from the planet and that, when that last drop has been squeezed and the oil has run dry, our lack of planning for alternative means of renewable clean energy will take us right on back to the dark ages of large sailing ships or coal or wood-burning steamships once again leading to exponential increases in pollution and the inevitable declines in the general welfare and health of us all.
When will the governments of the world, the U.S. the chief example usually cited, figure out that nothing is gained by warfare or the development of ever more powerful weapons can only lead to "bigger and better wars" where we can have our troops sitting in comfortable chairs and using drone-type weaponry to launch lethal attacks against large groups of people in the hopes of killing one or two "persons of value?"
When are the people running our government going to realize that our bringing back of torture as a legitimate part of warfare, after centuries spent trying to rid ourselves of this abominable practice, only brings evil and men who practice evil back into society with patina of righteousness.
When will people learn that so-called churches that preach goodness, kindness, and generosity to all have no intention whatever in acting in a manner that is good, kind, or generous. Churches that will "cover-up" the degeneration of priests most foul, not by punishing them for their acts of child molestation, but will quietly transfer them to a different parish without a word of admonition or even warning to the new parish.
It has long been one of my sore spots that tax exempt churches owning billions of dollars in property preach piety and helping the least among us while they dress in their silken robes, eat from real silver plates using what would be some of the worlds most expensive silverware, drinking from real jewel encrusted golden chalices, and then strolling through their very own 104 acre private country and gaze upon some of the world's most beautiful and expensive artwork, sculptors, and a King Midas-like fortune of gold stolen from the new world in the name of the church by any means, fair or foul, including some of the earliest examples of chemical warfare, sending the disease infested blankets of sailors whom had died of smallpox as gifts to the local populations with no immunity from European diseases, killing millions.
I just can't understand why people don't look back, learn from history. and realize that after centuries of hard fought changes to the betterment of man that we are now sliding backwards ever faster into a dark ages that will make the first Dark Ages look like a grade-school picnic.
Devising evermore efficient ways to kill other people to steal their resources, take their land, and trying to seize the remaining supplies of oil left to the world has set us well on the way to becoming to mot despised country in the world.
The Big Dick Cheney claims to have thwarted one terrorist plot after another, yet cannot cite one single example of any such successes.
gwb - the burning bush - makes wild claims, too, that the actions he took, especially Gitmo, the legal abomination of all time, have kept Americans safe when in reality his policies made it impossible to prosecute any of these "terrorists," and, furthermore, elicited such worthless information as to set us back years in our efforts to do so.
Our relentless and desperate search for oil is now leading to the death of the Gulf of Mexico. an ecological disaster of unequaled proportions, entirely man made, and made in the futile hope that when the wells do finally go dry we might have an almost one year supply of oil. A year! Boy, now that's gonna keep everything going alright.
And the solution is so simple. Something as simple a building code change, mandating that every new buildings rooftop have solar panels built into them and hooked up to a central grid could alone provide electricity enough to convert every car into a plug in electric car, with electrical supplies so plentiful it would cost pennies a mile to drive them.
The same with wind power. Build 'em! Hook 'em into a nationwide grid system. Geothermal, using earth's "hot spots" to provide the steam to drive hugh generators. Tidal generators to take advantage of our on-going tides
There is just so much we could and should be doing that we aren't even trying that it staggers my mind. But it the rate of society's degeneration after having fought for thousands of years to overcome so much senseless brutality and cruelty of men that really blows my mind.
It's time for a return to the sixties and the Summer of Love and, more importantly, it's rapidly approaching the time for us to hand the reigns over to our newest generation and pray that they screw it up as badly as our generation has.
Labels: big oil, bush hypocrisy, cheney secrecy, civil liberties, criminal justice system, disinformation, oilcano, preemptive war
I see the bad moon arising, I feel trouble on the way…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 10:51 AM Permalink
…I see earth quakes and lightnin'.
I see bad times today.
Don't go 'round tonight
it's bound and take your life,
there's a bad moon on the rise.
I hear hurricanes a-blowing,
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers over flowing.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.
Don't go 'round tonight
it's bound and take your life,
there's a bad moon on the rise.
Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Look's like we're in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye.
Don't go 'round tonight
it's bound and take your life,
there's a bad moon on the rise.
JOHN FOGERTY - Bad Moon RisingAMERICA AS WE KNEW IT HAS ALREADY DISAPPEARED. AMERICA AND THE AMERICAN DREAM WILL BE GRIEVOUSLY WOUNDED BY THE REPUBLICANS/TEA BAGGING PARTY THIS YEAR AND, IF THEY ARE ALLOWED TO WIN, AMERICA WILL DIE FOR GOOD IN 2012 UNLESS GOOD MEN AND WOMEN STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR THE SOUL OF THIS COUNTRY.
I have felt the bad moon arising for quite some time now. All the signs of America's impending death surround us and have grown immensely since the beginning of the end when the vicious, uncaring for anything for power rethuglican party almost succeeded in impeaching Bill Clinton over a sexual peccadillo having absolutely nothing to do with the execution of his duties as president (he never swore an oath to not fool around, after all).
The sanctimonious insults made while ignoring the depravity and criminality within their own party emboldened the re-pub-lie-cans to steal a national election shortly thereafter by so intimidating Al Gore and his supporters, still embarrassed by the national disgrace of Clinton, with outrageous claims and employing thousands of lawyers to fight against an honest recount of the Florida vote and supported by a corrupt ruling of the SCOTUS allowed gwb, the worst world leader in history, to assume the presidency.
As soon as gwb and the big dick were elected they went about systematically destroying the balance of power within our political system and wildly claimed, Nixon-like, that if the president does it, it is not illegal. bush and cohorts sought to further consolidate their power by insuring bush, one way or another, would be a "war president" able to expand his authority exponentially. I believe bush and his administration, half mad with planning for war, ignored everything else that ultimately lead to the terrorist attack of 9/11, but gladly seized the opportunity to declare war against someone, anyone, knowing that he would somehow extend his war of aggression to Iraq, with or without the approval of the American public.
That the wars he declared were illegal wars of aggression cannot be doubted. An entire nation cannot be ascribed the blame and considered to have declared war against another nation based upon the actions of fifty or sixty men whom do not in any way have any involvement whatever in the government of that country. It is ludicrous to even assume so, otherwise the acts of any small groups of men with no official affiliation with the government of a country could commit some small act of terror just to have war declared against a country from which they do not even claim citizenship. Sounds stupid right on the face of it doesn't it? Yet that is precisely what allowed bush to further push America closer to its own destruction.
What has resulted from eight years of rethuglican rule is the hardening of the hearts and minds of the right-wing religious zealots and gun packing NRA members, raised without empathy or the smallest shred of tolerance for those different than they rising ever higher in both elective offices and heightened awareness with a citizenship direly afraid of becoming a minority within the country that they call "theirs." Mean-spirited, hateful people, so steeped in prejudice and hatred of anyone different from themselves that they have devoted themselves to stopping the natural growth of this country at all costs, starting with those most easily identified as what they perceive as a threat to themselves and their base of power: the educated, the elders, the sick, the infirm, the illegal immigrants, those who oppose them politically, and anyone who dares to speak out in behalf of any of these groups.
And it's easy to understand why. The educated too easily sees through the evil espoused by these teabaggers and their ilk, making it more difficult for teabaggers to just overthrow the government. But they also understand that the educated are unwitting allies in that they understand the need for freedom of speech, even hate speech, and thus allow the teabagger-types to continue spouting their hateful rhetoric unabated. This, plus the fact that ever less money is spend to educate the public, works in their favor, helping them revert to the days of women being chattel, forced to carry even a rapists' baby or one born of incestuous relationships. That's why it is so damned important to them to reverse Roe v. Wade, ignoring the historical truth that inbreeding has brought about the destruction of many a tyrannical family.
The elders, the sick, and the infirm are easy groups to control: play ball with us or we teabaggers will simply see that the medicines you need will be sold at a higher premium for profit here in America than anywhere else in the world. This has already been accomplished quite handily by millionaire legislators receiving the world's best health care free of charge. It is also becoming easier and easier to call for the repeal of any health care bills already passed and this is, in fact, going to be one of the main political promises made by the republicans and teabaggers, now indistinguishable from one another.
So all this, being under fairly good control, leaves the xenophobic fear of anyone differing in appearance or speaking a different language from themselves as the main target of their insanity. Arizona is only the beginning, the xenophobic fear growing ever larger and consuming and involving ever larger groups of American citizenry in Texas, California, and even the northern border states which threaten the teabagger's desire for full control of the population by refusing to allow Americans to purchase needed medications in Canada for a half, a third, or one-tenth the price of the same drugs here in America.
It was once said that the greatest trick the devil ever performed was convincing people he didn't exist.
The greatest, and I believe the most pernicious trick attempted by the teabaggers is to destroy American freedoms from within by slowly, inexorably passing one extra-constitutional law after another until our most precious document and one of the greatest documents in history, the U.S. Constitution is reduced to being nothing more than mere suggestions having nothing to do with the realities of society and the wishes of a small, desperate minority desiring to obtain and retain power by literally ridding the country of anyone staunchly defending the constitution and that for which it stands.
The destruction of America is imminent my friends. All it now takes is for men and women of good will do nothing. Just sit at home. Don't register to vote. Don't actually go out and vote. And, thereby, watch as America disintegrates before your very eyes. And it will then be too late to take action. Too late to do anything but lament the destruction of American by a small, but vocal and dedicated, minority that took action while the rest of us slept.
WAKE UP AMERICA! It is now more vital than ever to get off our collectively lazy asses, register, and then actually go to the polls for this years mid-term elections and the elections of 2012. To fail to do this will be tantamount to handing the keys of America to the reckless, drunk with power, prejudiced, hateful people of the teabagging/republican parties (which may claim to be two different parties but are in actuality one and the same. The rethugs just use the teabaggers to spout the most outlandish and hateful things without rebuke, but with plausible deniability.)
Remember, the teabaggers can only win if the good citizens do not take seriously the dire threat to our country that is posed by these asinine haters. They demonstrate their ignorance of what is happening in America by simply failing to note that white women are now a minority group. Or maybe they do see the handwriting on the wall and foresee the day when white men will be in the minority as well, the thought of which would surely drive them mad: mad with hatred, mad with fear, mad at the thought of losing power, mad that their children will inevitably be assimilated into a multi-complex society bearing no physical appearance to the mostly white society in which they grew up.
I noted in a post long ago that America finally stopped living the lie that if you applied yourself, worked hard, and did well in life, you, too, could be elected president. The election of President Obama broke through what was the great American lie for over two hundred years and I, for one, recognized this and hailed it as perhaps one of our country's greatest achievements. At last the promise of America had been kept and for the first time in our history it was true: anyone could be elected president, without regard to the color of their skin.
That is why I believe that for a few election cycles women were placed on the ballot. Not so they could be elected, as that never even came close to happening, but to perpetuate the charade that they could run. When a person of color actually won the presidency it scared the bejebus out of our white power structure and they realized that they must do anything and everything possible to paint Obama in such a light as to forever stop any future votes for persons of color. Oh, sure, it didn't hurt to have a few token blacks and women in congress or the senate, but the presidency was the exclusive domain of white males for over two hundred years and is now the reason we see this full court press to lash out at immigrants and/or any liberal politicians who might, god forbid, someday elect an Hispanic woman president.
This would never do and for me accounts for the vicious, non-sensical, vehement and hateful reactions on the part of the right-wing zealots making up the rethug/teabag party.
This is just my opinion and I could be wrong. but if I am correct America has precious little time to right itself and live up to the principles we have espoused for over two hundred years.
GET OFF YOUR ASSES AND VOTE AMERICANS OR WATCH YOUR COUNTRY DEVOLVE TO THE DARK AGES.
Labels: bad politicians, bigotry run amok, bush hypocrisy, bush war doctrine, civil liberties, civil rights, class warfare, lazy uncaring legislators, rant, US Constitution
"Terror Suspect Is Charged With Plot to Use Bombs…"
posted by Bill Arnett @ 3:16 PM Permalink
…the
newspaper says and from just a quick reading of the article I noticed some important points we, as Americans, should always remember and never again allow these things to slide from our memories just 'cause our government says we must not only forget, but we must sacrifice the rights that made America great.
Excerpt:
A Denver airport shuttle bus driver who was arrested there last weekend was charged in Brooklyn on Thursday morning with conspiring with others to make and use bombs.
The driver, Najibullah Zazi, 24, had been arrested with his father in Denver and accused of making false statements. But his indictment in Brooklyn on Thursday was far more serious. Mr. Zazi was charged with one count of conspiring with others, who are not named, to use one or more weapons of mass destruction, including bombs or other explosives.
The authorities said Mr. Zazi bought chemicals that could be used to make bombs from Denver-area beauty supply stores and had bomb-making instructions on his laptop computer. They said he had mixed chemicals in a suburban Denver hotel room in the weeks before his arrest. Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement saying that the government believed that “any imminent threat” from the case had “been disrupted.”
“We are investigating a wide range of leads related to this alleged conspiracy,” Mr. Holder said. “We believe any imminent threat arising from this case has been disrupted, but as always, we remind the American public to be vigilant.”
Notice that this announcement comes from the Department of Justice, makes no reference to special agents that arrested, held the subjects incommunicado, tortured them for information, or committed any other illegalities of the Great Liars bush and cheney who falsely asserted that America could not be kept safe unless we sacrificed our rights, our freedoms, and illegally tortured suspects as if we were medieval butchers recruited and trained to be such cruel and capable torturers as to be able to elicit a confession from anyone, innocent or not.
This single bust supports what I have said for years, and confirms the statements of several true statesmen, to include President Obama, that terrorism is, always will be, and alway should be a job for the law enforcement professionals of this country, as in other countries, without any need to foment hate, attack countries without cause, swat flies with 2,000-lb. bombs that kill and injure hundreds of innocents, and commit all the other war crimes that were committed in America's name and to America's eternal shame.
As a lifelong believer and active participant in law enforcement it has always been plain to me that the chickensh*t responses of bush and cheney were based on the guilty knowledge that they knew 911, or something similar, had been reported to them by intelligence agents and the skilled agents of the FBI that filed reports of middle eastern men learning to fly, but not land, large aircraft.
They knew, they did nothing, and they will have to forever live with the shameful knowledge that 9-11 happened on their, the Republican's watch, while w planned to get revenge against Saddam Hussein and stupidly, neglegently, and willingly refused to listen to the very experts to whom he should have been listening and taking heed of all the obvious warning signs reported by intelligence and the FBI.
Damn w and the big dick to that special place in the universe where the suffering of guilty knowledge is exclusive, omniscient, and never ending.
And to all our excellent law enforcement agent involved in this bust the only thing that hurts me is that I am no longer able to be out there side-by-side with you as you protect America.
Great job, guys, and when the names of the agents involved are ultimately released each of you should be personally awarded the Medal of Freedom, so as to restore the honor of the highest civilian award that was itself degraded by w awarding it to all the a$$holes that kept their mouths shut about w's perfidy and personal disgrace.Labels: Barack Obama, bush hypocrisy, bush war doctrine, CIA, disinformation, distractions, FBI, fear mongering, GOP, propaganda, republican hypocrisy, republican lies, republican party
A perfect example of why America will never again be…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:32 PM Permalink
…considered a friend, ally, a country to be respected or emulated, a defender of the oppressed, or a country of compassionate, kind people striving to improve both America and the world.
See this article from the NYT:
Four people, including a wife of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, were killed Wednesday by what local residents said was a missile strike from an American drone.
The missile struck a house in the remote Zanghra village in South Waziristan about 1 a.m. Wednesday. Local residents reached by telephone confirmed that one of the wives of Mr. Mehsud, the leader of Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan, was among those killed. Her name or age could not be confirmed.
Five others, including four children, were reportedly wounded in the missile strike.…
Publicly, Pakistani officials condemn the drone strikes, saying they result in anger and resentment against the United States.
Geez, ya think? Once again, instead of having the military capture or kill the single person whom they are hunting, America has chosen to use the blunt and indiscriminate weapon of a precision guided missile fired from an unmanned aerial drone, which is certain to unleash a justifiable rage and continuing hatred of Americans and the supposedly 'good' intentions of a supposedly honorable country.
To the primitive tribesmen of these desolate areas this simply demonstrates and confirms beyond doubt that America will freely commit war crimes, cross borders at will, and use weapons of mass destruction to slaughter totally innocent women and children while attempting to kill a single man. Oh, what cowards have we become? How can anyone reasonably believe that America is a good nation, composed of people of good will, when America continues to kill and kill and kill anyone who, not guilty of any crime, just happens to suffer the misfortune to be in the area where a suspected terrorist is 'thought' to be?
America, thanks to bush/cheney policies and the continuation of those illegal policies by the Obama administration, demonstrate to any thinking and compassionate person that America is no better, fairer, or concerned with the welfare of its own people than any of the 'evil empires' about which so much has been said. We are becoming a nation of cowards committing one illegal act after another and, morally speaking, no better than the 'terrorists' we claim to be fighting.
Terrorism has won, America has lost sight of every single bit of honor we formerly possessed and we have become no better, and in many ways, worse than those whom we pursue so recklessly and immorally. Indiscriminate killing is murder, and nothing good will ever come from murdering innocent women, children, and the ill and infirm. Especially using a coward's way of killing by using bombs incapable of discerning who is innocent or not.
Labels: Barrack Obama, Bush, bush hypocrisy, cheney, democratic party, GOP, hypocrisy, military industrial complex, neocons, sheer idiocy, utter contempt, war
Headline: Dallas police cut extra protection at George W. Bush's home…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 10:59 AM Permalink
…which leads me to ask, "Why the fook are we paying millions for extra security for multimillionaire former president bush's security? Especially since bush buried this country in debt from unnecessary wars of choice (a universally recognized war crime, making bush a war criminal not yet indicted), insanely reckless borrowing-and-spending, dumping regulations now causing our imminent bankruptcy, expanding the size of government virtually exponentially and who, being a multimillionaire, can afford to pay for his own protection?
See this article wherein it is reported that the city of Dallas is being forced to reduce their end of bushy's security detail for economic reasons:
The Dallas Police Department has cut back on some of the additional protection that the department provided around the Preston Hollow home of former President George W. Bush.
In addition to the usual Secret Service protection, Dallas until last week had stationed one on-duty tactical officer per eight-hour shift on the street outside the president’s home. The estimated cost of that service was $300,000 for about a year, according to police officials who asked that they not be named.
“We just had to cut it,” said one police official, who agreed to speak on the condition on anonymity. “We’re about to layoff people.”
But Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle, who declined to discuss specific changes said, “Our decision on how to deploy people around security issues like this is not dependent on the budget. They’re based on other factors.”…
In early January, police department officials had said that the tab to provide crowd and traffic control at the new Preston Hollow home of former President Bush could reach $1 million a year. The $1 million figure was based on the cost of providing at least two officers per 8-hour shift on a 24-hour basis for one year.
Again I ask, what the hell are we doing paying for the security of millionaires perfectly capable of providing their own security? Hell, I'd even cut off protection by the Secret Service and recommend to bushy that he have Blackwater and others he paid millions in 'no-bid' contracts to take over his security, for free given how many millions they made in Iraq.
It also strikes me as hysterically funny that bush apparently just couldn't wait to abandon his false persona as a 'man of the land, a rancher' and return to being the city slicker he always was. The entire world now knows that bush is afraid of
horses so I speculated all along that it was Laura who enjoyed riding horses around the ranch, dodging the obvious piles of equine excrement left behind by bush.
Labels: Bush, bush hypocrisy, economics, Economy, Fiscal irresponsibility, social commentary
Why don't we all stop talking about America Torturing…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 2:37 PM Permalink
…so many people, some who have done no wrong, and some that clearly should be imprisoned for life if the charges can be brought and a conviction had by court findings that comply with American and foreign laws alike.
There are superior methods of interrogation that are much more effective at obtaining valid information. I fervently hope trials for torture and prosecution of the many war crimes of gwb are in the works.
Even if it does turn out that it is Spain or Italy or Germany that undertakes the formation of a war crimes tribunal, somebody needs to do something about these small, evil men who perpetually violated our values.
America will never again be on a level playing field with the rest of the world as long as any American can escape prosecution for the commission of preemptive wars, holding thousands of prisoners without probable cause, murder by president fiat, the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the displacing five million more by driving them from their own ancestral homes and lands, and the use of cluster bombs where it is known women and children might come across a bomblet and accidentally kill themselves or their children.
Haven't we killed enough? Or is this just another unjustified genocide? Have we become purveyors of evil ourselves?
This is not the America in which I grew up.
Labels: bush as chimp, bush hypocrisy, Torture
That's it, they have gone way to far now…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:13 PM Permalink
…and it's high time they level with the citizens of this country.
I speak, of course, about the Obama administration releasing more of the torture memos that constitutes the greatest shame in American history, courtesy of bushco and cohorts.
I think one of the worst outcomes of this is that for the first time it has been revealed that confining prisoners in cells full of insects was used as a method of torture. Now Obama has directed a stop to this injustice too, but he has increased our unemployment exponentially.
But did he stop and consider all the insects that are now out of work? How will they feed their hundreds of thousands of baby insects? Where in the private sector is there a demand for insects specifically trained to torture illegally held prisoners? Isn't the unemployment rate high enough already?
And just what is going to happen if those insects escape Gitmo, wipe out the Cubans, and then board ships (or say, a piece of wood) headed to America? Do we have a policy in place regarding intercepting insect covered drift wood? Do we have plans in place a plan to deport this obvious threat? To what country would we deport them?
Will they train millions of other insects in the fine art of torturing human beings? Would they use these dark arts to conquer every government and subjugate all the citizens as slaves to serve their needs? When will these insects eventually overthrow our government and seize control of America?
All citizens MUST demand an explanation to include what we will do with these insects.
Sending them all to gw bush and family is the best and most logical thing to do as insects rarely accumulate armies to attack other insects.
But they do love carrion, and I can't think of any American citizen as depraved or more deserving, as gw bush, so let us send them all to him.
Labels: bush hypocrisy, snark, Torture Memos
Right-wing extremists seen as a threat…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 2:04 PM Permalink
…says the report of
Greg Miller of the LAT.
Excerpt:
The economic downturn and the election of the nation's first black president are contributing to a resurgence of right-wing extremist groups, which had been on the wane since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, according to a U.S. intelligence assessment distributed to state and local authorities last week.
The report, produced by the Department of Homeland Security, has triggered a backlash among conservatives because it also raised the specter that disgruntled veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might "boost the capabilities of extremists . . . to carry out violence."
This scenario is not totally implausible considering the military services have been obtaining hundreds, if not thousands, of waivers for felons, people the military used to summarily dismiss, refusing them waivers for their past crimes and enlist.
And they are right to fear right-wing extremist groups and convicted felons that have now received military training that makes the danger of them forming new gangs with military training in the use of heavy duty weapons, training dealing with counterinsurgency methods and techniques, how to shoot straight, how to set up ambushes, and witnessing the terror and havoc that a single dedicated terrorist can cause with proper training. Training I'm sure that they will not hesitate to teach to their felonious gangs.
Monsters, gwb armed and trained monsters in his wildly insane prosecution of an unnecessary war to steal control of Iraqi oil which America could have purchased on the open market for a lesser price than America has paid by trying to obtain control of all that oil.
And damned near all the religious right groups have done is to propound hatred towards any person not following their edicts, even if they are American citizens. They openly called for the assassination of an American presidential nominee. These are dangerous people and constitute, IMO, the greatest threat of future domestic terrorism.
Labels: bush hypocrisy, citizenship, Economy, Terrorism
"Stop hoggin ' all the blankets, Madoff!"…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:32 PM Permalink
…are words that may be spoken by many bush cronies (although they would probably be incarcerated in Spain or somethin')
From the
LAT in an editorial:
The Obama administration has deleted the term "global war on terror" from the government lexicon but is finding it more difficult to wipe the slate on some of the dark activities that rhetoric was used to justify. Since his election, President Obama has said he would prefer to look forward instead of backward at charges that the Bush administration used illegal detention and torture to prosecute its campaign against terrorism. That's an understandable political impulse, but it may prove difficult to sustain.
A Spanish court has opened criminal proceedings against six senior Bush administration officials accused of providing the legal framework to allow the torture of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, among them former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, former chief of staff to the vice president David S. Addington and John C. Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer who is now a UC Berkeley law professor. Several factors make this case likely to move forward, including that it is being handled by Judge Baltasar Garzon, a human rights crusader who issued the arrest warrant that led to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's detention in London in 1998. Furthermore, it centers on five citizens or legal residents of Spain, giving that country a specific claim to jurisdiction.…
The Spanish case comes on the heels of a British investigation into whether an MI5 security official colluded with American agents to torture Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held at Guantanamo. The two cases reflect a growing international determination to find outwhether the Bush administration abandoned the rule of law in pursuit of terrorists. We too want to know.
As he meets with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in Madrid on Sunday, Obama might want to point out that this country's legal processes are at work. The Justice Department has launched an inquiry into whether CIA officials committed criminal acts in destroying tapes of the interrogations of two Al Qaeda prisoners. Last month, the Senate Intelligence Committee opened an investigation of CIA detention and interrogation policies under the Bush administration.
Maybe another republican traitor will bake cakes with files inside for these bastids.
Labels: Bush, bush hypocrisy, GOP, liars, Torture, Torture Memos
Hooray! Fewer bush babies has got to be good…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:20 PM Permalink
…for the country. And no, I'm not talking about some animal from Australia, I'm talking about a court throwing out yet another piece of the gw bush f-cked up legacy.
From the
NYT:
A federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration on Monday to make the Plan B morning-after birth control pill available without prescription to women as young as 17.
The judge ruled that the agency had improperly bowed to political pressure from the Bush administration in 2006 when it set 18 as the age limit.…
Some women’s health advocates hailed the decision.
“It is a complete vindication of the argument that reproductive rights advocates have been making for years, that in the Bush administration it was politics, not science, driving decisions around women’s health,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the attorneys for the plaintiff in the suit against the F.D.A.
This is a sound position in my mind and may prevent many unwanted "bush babies," as I refer to them.
Of course there are the usual detractors from anything that makes good sense.
But some conservative groups voiced concern that the ruling could promote sexual promiscuity. “Now some minor girls will be able to obtain this drug without any guidance from a doctor and without any parental supervision,” the Family Research Council said in a statement.…
On Monday, in a decision that criticized former F.D.A. officials, Judge Edward R. Korman of Federal District Court in New York threw out the F.D.A. ruling.
Judge Korman wrote that officials of the agency had repeatedly delayed action on the petition, moving only when members of Congress threatened to hold up confirmation hearings on acting F.D.A. commissioners. Several officials also violated the agency’s own policies, he wrote.
Citing depositions, Judge Korman wrote that agency officials had improperly communicated with White House officials about Plan B. And, he said, F.D.A. employees sought to influence decisions by appointing people with anti-abortion views to an independent panel of experts reviewing Plan B for the agency.
The agency also departed from its normal procedures, the judge wrote, by ignoring favorable conclusions about the drug by an advisory panel as well its own scientists and officials who found that the drug could be safely used by women at least as young as 17.
Such “political considerations, delays and implausible justifications” showed that the F.D.A. had acted without good faith or reasoned decision making, Judge Korman wrote.
W-h-h-a-a-t? Was this judge intimating that the bush maladministration and the F.D.A. were guilty of improprieties? What a shock.
Labels: bush hypocrisy, conspiracy, consumerism, corruption, executive orders
As ye sow, so shall ye reap…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 2:50 PM Permalink
…is, I believe the old expression for what happens when you forget the Golden Rule or even just forget to treat all peoples with respect, don't assume guilt, and seek the benefit of a working and fair system of justice before you put people in prison.
From the
WaPo:
The release of hundreds of prisoners from Camp Bucca, a U.S.-run prison in southern Iraq, has facilitated the revival of Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents in Basra, Baghdad and the borderless expanse here along the Euphrates, according to police chiefs, intelligence officials in the Interior Ministry and residents.…
Their warnings make for an irony at the beginning of the end of the American presence here. As the United States dismantles Bucca, viewed by many as an appalling miscarriage of justice where prisoners were not charged or permitted to see evidence against them, freed detainees may end up swelling the ranks of a subdued insurgency.…
Since leading the invasion of Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein in April 2003, the United States has detained about 100,000 people in the country. At the height of the U.S. troop buildup, or "surge," 26,000 of those prisoners were incarcerated in Bucca, a sprawling camp near the Kuwaiti border in southern Iraq. That number has fallen to 9,600. In all, since Jan. 1, the military has released nearly 2,000 prisoners, and it plans to close the facility by summer.…
I think it would be entirely fair to say that when you treat 100,000 prisoners as we have treated these, you have manufactured 100,000 new enemies, or at least people whom will never tout the benefits of "freedom, American-style."
The bush years were the most shameful years in American history, on a par with slavery and refusing women the vote, and it is a sad commentary for America that none of the uppity-ups of the bush maladministration responsible for this debacle and the others that have beset the country and reduced our country to the status of a banana republic with no bananas.
Labels: bush hypocrisy, bush war doctrine, cheney secrecy, conspiracy, disinformation, executive orders
At least we know how New York will spend its bailout…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 3:03 PM Permalink
…money: rebuilding the World Trade Center which will again rise from 70 feet underground to once again being the highest point in NYC.
It makes me wonder why, in these perilous financial times, a city would devote so much time and money doing something that will probably cost a few billion dollars and provide nothing to us commoners.
They have already begun construction and have ordered over 220,000 lbs. of steel. I'm sure the poor, the ill, infirm, the uneducated child, the jobless, and the homeless will get down on bended knee and praise the Lord that there will be a new shining jewel of a building for them to worship while they suffer interminably.
Something needs to change when the building of a new edifice takes priority over the care of the above-mentioned groups of people. Somebody has failed to think this through. The time to rebuild the WTC was immediately after they were felled and before our former occupant of the White House, and congress, set out on their grand adventure of starting two wars and allowing the banks and insurance companies the privilege of destroying our economy, exacerbating almost every single problem we had and have.
I think all insurance companies should be like Lloyd's of London, the ownership of which is spread among the investors
who cannot file bankruptcy until each and everyone of its owners have sold every last asset, even personal ones, to the point where they themselves are completely destitute; the British are sticklers when it comes to insurance.
People before insurance companies! What a concept!
But I'm growing my beard, weaving my robes, making new sandals, carving a new staff, readying myself for the long trek to NYC, and preparing to abase myself before this new edifice to
god man's folly.
Labels: 9/11, bush hypocrisy, economic disparity, Economy, New York
The Republican Theory and the Sad Truth They Wish to Kill American Government…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:14 PM Permalink
…as succinctly restated by Bob Robinson of the
NYT:
America used to be better than this.
The seeds of today’s disaster were sown some 30 years ago. Looking at income patterns during that period, my former colleague at The Times, David Cay Johnston, noted that from 1980 (the year Ronald Reagan was elected) to 2005, the national economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. (Because of population growth, the actual increase per capita was about 66 percent.)
But the average income for the vast majority of Americans actually declined during those years. The standard of living for the average family improved not because incomes grew but because women entered the workplace in droves.
As hard as it may be to believe, the peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973, when the average income per taxpayer, adjusted for inflation, was $33,000. That was nearly $4,000 higher, Mr. Johnston pointed out, than in 2005.
Men have done particularly poorly. Men who are now in their 30s — the prime age for raising families — earn less money than members of their fathers’ generation did at the same age.
America has not only gotten worse off since Reagan was elected - it damned near died under the GOP and their outrageous "big lie" that small government and low, low, low cut-rate taxes was the best way to run the country.
The right-wingers were crafty: You smother the dream by crippling the programs that support it, by starving the government of money to pay for them, by funneling the government’s revenues to the rich through tax cuts and other benefits, by looting the government the way gangsters loot legitimate businesses and then pleading poverty when it comes time to fund the services required by the people.
The anti-tax fanatic Grover Norquist summed the matter up nicely when he famously said, “Our goal is to shrink the government to the size where you can drown it in a bathtub.” Only they didn’t shrink the government, they enlarged it and turned its bounty over to the rich.
Now, with the economy in free fall and likely to get worse, Americans — despite their suffering — have an opportunity to reshape the society, and then to move it in a fairer, smarter and ultimately more productive direction. That is the only way to revive the dream, but it will take a long time and require great courage and sacrifice.
The right-wingers do not want that to happen, which is why they are rooting so hard for President Obama’s initiatives to fail. They like the direction that the country took over the past 30 years. They’d love to do it all again.
Way to go, GOP! Your hand -sock puppet gw bush almost succeeded, and your current tactic of obstruct, obstruct, and obstruct might still yet.
No shame, no contrition, no love of country exhibited, tell me: Just why in the hell do you hate this country and love the turmoil you have wrought?
My guess is the GOP thinks government is their private, personal ATM machine for the exclusive use of the antiquated party of old rich white men.
Labels: bad laws, banks, bush hypocrisy, GOP
From an excellent opinion piece about "Bush's Big Lies"…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:43 PM Permalink
…in todays
LA Times:
…How did such dangerously bad legal memos ever get taken seriously in the first place?
One answer is suggested by the so-called Big Lie theory of political propaganda, articulated most infamously by Adolf Hitler. Ordinary people "more readily fall victim to the big lie than the small lie," wrote Hitler, "since they themselves often tell small lies ... but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
In other words: Paradoxically, the more outrageous the claim, the more apt we are to assume there must be some truth to it. Just as some banks and insurance companies are apparently "too big to fail," some claims from those with political power seem to strike us as "too big to disbelieve." "That seems so outrageous it must be right," we tell ourselves. "The important people keep saying it -- they must know something I don't know."
That's the only explanation I can come up with for why the 2001-2002 memos stood as Bush administration doctrine for as long as they did. (The Big Lie theory also helps explain why other manifestly false Bush administration claims prevailed in the face of the evidence: Recall, for instance, how we were assured that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that the war would be a
cakewalk?)
Big lies prevail because we can't bring ourselves to believe that our leaders could be so dishonest or deluded. And big lies can do terrible damage, of course. The Bush administration's big legal lies paved the way for some of the most shameful episodes in our history, including the official authorization of torture.
In the end, thankfully, all big lies collapse under their own weight.…
gw bush and Adolf Hitler, soulmates. If there is a Hell I'm sure Adolf has already made a reservation for bush.
Labels: bad laws, bush hypocrisy, corruption, disinformation, lies
Another 651,000 jobs lost, unemployment at 8.1%…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:59 PM Permalink
…but I'd bet you hard money the GOP/Republicans will not only continue to blame the Democratic Party and President Obama, but that they will convince millions of Americans that it is true.
BTW, anybody see george w. bush around lately? Must be busy trying to figure out how he almost singlehandedly destroyed America - or he's now ensconced in the Secret Witness Program.
I vote SWP.
Labels: Barack Obama, bush hypocrisy, Economy, GOP
The GOP is composed of naught but liars, schemers, takers…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:58 PM Permalink
…and generally has become the most evil political party ever seen by Man.
And yes, this may be only my opinion, but what else do you call a party that initiates wars for control of natural resources, the extermination of entire races of people, conducting genocide in the manner of "gentlemen," not down in the mud, blood, guts, and gore that teaches the folly and horror of such ventures, but a party willing to spend billions of dollars every year surveilling innocents, bombing innocent women and children, driving millions from their ancestral homes, and managing to do it from 20-30,000 feet in the air so our pilots could kill freely without fear of injury or repercussions to themselves; those whose families are thousands of miles safely removed from the theater of combat and risk nothing while Republicans spend every red cent that becomes available to America fostering nothing but more greed, avarice, killing sprees, and all the other things the GOP has done since Ronnie Raygun, semi- senile when elected, became the puppet of those who would wield the might of America without prospect of punishment or indeed, any accountability whatever.
The GOP has become the rabid dogs ravaging our planet, killing any who disagree with their stated policies of greed and complete, utter, absolute gridlock of the now rogue government that did so much to aid the world in the past.
Our days of Empire have expired, which will still not impress in the GOP, who would take it all, steal it at the point of a gun or threat of nuclear war, taken at the detriment and to the actual harm of the hapless citizens of the world by a party a willing to leave behind nothing but the smoking embers of a planet gone mad.
May the GOP ultimately be destroyed at the hands of those governed who misplaced their trust so badly.
Labels: Assassination, bad judges, bad laws, bush hypocrisy, bush war doctrine, disinformation, GOP, propaganda, surveillance
