There Has to Be a Public Option

Why the Critics of a Public Option for Health Care Are Wrong

6/4 + Charter 08

6/4 + Charter 08

镇压! 惨杀!

The Other Shoe!

Here comes the collapse of the commercial property market--just when you were thinking things were looking a little bit better!

The New York Times

The Once unassailable NY Times--"All the News that's fit to print"-- is leaning more to the Right than Pisa's tower!

How the mighty fall!

Smell the mendacity as she reaches the tipping point and goes over.

Obama following Dubya's Blunders?

"You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia!"

Iraq? Afghanistan?

Time to Get Back in the Pool?

Buy low! Sell high! Buy now? Might be a good time to screw your courage to the sticking place; jump back in the pool; and make some of your money back.

Can You Name this Future Strongman?

If you had a choice of daycare run by . . .

If you had a choice of daycare run by

a) Rush Limbaugh

b) John Bolton

c) Alan Keyes

d) Dick Cheney

which one would most scare the crap out of you as a parent?

Dump Daschle; Appoint Dean

Dr. Dean Delivered on Health Care for Vermont! USA next!

Health care reform needs a champion as pure as Galahad, not a tax evader!

I Vas Only Followink Orders!

Alberto Gonzales

Dr Strangelove

Blagojevich = Delay = Abramoff?

K Street Project, Delay's "Pay to Play," Abramoff's influence peddling machine, Cheney's no-bid contracts for Halliburton (KBR), and most recently Rod Blagojevich's dreams of lucre and/or influence from naming a successor to Obama's Senate seat, are all part of the disgusting, but pervasive culture of money and influence in American politics (of all stripes) and indicative of the unease that Obama's fund-raising methods may have engendered in the traditional influence-peddling/lobbyist-buying circles in DC.

See Brad Carson's note on his experiences in Congress.

It's Official! I was right on the money.

On December 1, 2007, I wrote about how we were in RECESSION and how the Republicans were in denial! Now the government, exactly one year later, has admitted, I was right!

Where's the Verdammte Oversight?

$290 billion of an authorized $700 billion bailout spent without a Verdammte single step to put the required oversight into place. Paulson, furthermore, is not using the money as billed!

Reportedly Bernanke, moreover, has loaned out $2,000,000,000,000.00 through the offices of the Fed, not only without oversight, but has refused even to disclose to whom the money went. Where is Congress?

Help, Police, ROBBERY!

Greenspan: Imaginationless Little Tin God

The Emperor Greenspan, the little tin god with feet of clay, whose Congressional testimony was cited by Think Progress today, claimed he was “shocked” because his model “was working exceptionally well” for 40 years, adding that the crisis is “broader than anything I could have imagined”

The imaginationless Greenspan sold his soul, lock, stock, and barrel, to George Bush for reappointment to his post as Fed Chair and embraced Dubya's budget busting tax cuts for the rich while casting his silent, asssenting grace upon Dubya's "ownership society" that hurtled the economy down the slippery subprime slope. He helped, through his lack of vision, to strangle the Dot.com revolution by choking off the money supply imagining that there might be inflation around the corner without a thought to the consequences.

The Republican party lies en thrall of a band of small-minded, imaginationless, visionless leadership characterized by Dubya, McCain, Palin, Norquist, Wolfowitz, and many more who can imagine nothing but their rights to riches and power by dint of their birth and unschooled ignorance.

Back to the Future with Bush-Cheney-McCain-Palin

Homeless with a Few Possessions Loaded on Your Car

Living in Hoovervilles-->Bushvilles

Foreclosures & Evacuation Sales

Former Professional Men Selling Apples on the Street for Nickles

"Drill, Drill, Drill!"

"Drill, Drill, Drill!" Has been the Republican mantra as gasoline and oil prices skyrocketed. The Republicans ridiculed the Democrats who asserted that a major factor in the rise of oil prices, cheap money, was the culprit.

As the current financial crisis has unfolded, easily borrowed money has disappeared from the market place and oil prices have plummeted. The Republican have delivered some additional drilling grounds to their backers, BIG OIL, but B.O. is not satisfied with what it's gotten. Nevertheless, the market crisis has clearly demonstrated that most of the force of the price rise has been unbridled, UNREGULATED speculation!

Credit Default Swaps--UNREGULATED

Credit Default Swaps! The trillion dollar shell game! They are secret, of unknown magnitude, and do not require any reserves to back them up! Totally unregulated because, we were told, because the huge financial institutions that would swap them and sell them and make huge profits off of them had brilliant people who wouldn't let anything bad happen.

These insane instruments allow many people, not directly involved, to buy and sell insurance all riding on whether or not some huge financial giant will default. It took a trillion dollars in liabilities and had them insured for nearly 60 trillion dollars. So when the first domino (default) happened, when a money market broke the buck, trillions came due and nobody could pay up and the dominoes all fell.

Now one of the engineers of this situation, Paulson, snookers us into an emergency bailout of $700 billion to help shield some of these speculators from the bitter fruit of their greed! And our idiot representatives in Congress with a few exceptions voted for this shell game bail out WHICH WILL NOT WORK!

The Economy is Fundamentally Sound

Here's an interesting retrospective by Jim Horning:

click me

The Incredible HOLC to the Rescue?

???

Time to bring back the HOLC [Home Owners' Loan Corporation]?????

Better than $700 billion for the greedy crooks of Wall Street!

Rumpelstiltscain--What's My Name?

Will Rumplestiltscain stomp and disappear into the earth if, come January 2009, we do not pronounce his name "Mr. President"?

Winning

John McCain harps on "winning" and "victory" in Iraq. He says we ought not to withdraw from Iraq until these are achieved. He never, however, defines what "winning" or "victory" in Iraq are. The irony is that the excuse to launch Bush's war of aggression against Iraq was WMD--they're not there! Victory?

One of Bush's real goals was the death of Saddam for trying to kill Bush I. Saddam is dead. Bush wins? Let's go home?

No, the next excuse was nation-building and democracy-building which Bush previously on the campain trail had wont to ridicule regularly before he invaded Iraq.

But the real reason is oil--Bush-Cheney and their oil partners want to take it from Iraq at fire sale prices. Oil greed is the cause of untold deaths and horrendous maimings of Americans, allies, Iraqis, and others. When we will win? When will there be victory?

After his retirement, Medal of Honor winner and former Commandant of the Marine Corps, General David Shoup a native son of Battleground, Indiana, stated the following in regards to the American misadventure in Southeast Asia: "I believe if we had, and would, keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. That they design and want. That they fight and work for...and not the American style, which they don't want. Not one crammed down their throats by the Americans."

I think we could have profitably added Southwest Asia to that observation. I'd add the old line revived in the "Princess Bride": "Never get involved in a ground war in Asia!"

Another Grandstand?

Let me preface my remarks with the disclaimer that I am and have been against a bailout of Wall Street--more trickle down economics.

Nevertheless, how suspicious that there is a bipartisan agreement coming out of the Banking Committees and the White House, but when the players get to the White House, the House Republicans blow it up? Suspicious, because Straight Talkin', white knight, Senator John McCon gallops into DC and goes straight to a meeting with House Republicans! Then they go to the Republican-held White House and blow the deal up! Is this a set up to raise McCon's slipping brand by having him put Humpty Dumpty together again?

Skanderbeg & McCain

When I was studying Russian at Rutgers in 1959 we had to attend a Russian language film series which included a film titled "Skanderbeg, Hero of Albania." It was about the battles of Skanderbeg who held the Ottoman Turks out of Albania for over 20 years in the 15th century.

Today John McCain rushed to Washington to bask in the glory of a compromise victory on financial bailout legislation that he made no contribution to and almost jeopardized in hope of lionizing himself. This was a repeat performance of his grandstanding in May, 2007, at the last minute of sensitive immigration legislation negotiations which led to a shouting McCain cursing John Cornyn (R-TX).

At the end of the Russian movie, in a scene after the victorious battles led by Skanderbeg against the Turks, Skanderbeg overhears a warrior who played some minor role in a battle, bragging about how heroic he was and Skanderbeg says of him, "He is like the mouse who pissed in the ocean and then roared he helped to make it."

I wonder what he might have said today about McCain in an interview on, say, "The Daily Show" tonight if he'd seen McCon's latest grandstanding?

The grandstanding was for naught, though, as McCain's party killed the agreement because they want welfare for the Wall Street tycoons, but no help for those losing their homes.

Unanticipated Consequences III

The Congressional Budget Office sounded a claxon horn warning today cautioning that the bailout rather than helping could exacerbate the current crisis, forcing a series of additional collapses in the financial markets as inflated values carried on the books had to be clarified and shown for their real value (or lack thereof).

The Bush team failed to clean things up when Enron, et al., went under and have continued with their trickle down, unregulated Reagonomics. Their proposed bailout is the hugest trickle down ploy yet.

Vote "NO" on bailout!!

Vote "Yes" for mortgage relief and trickle up!
----------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Many economists warn against rush to bail!

Is China Poisoning the World? Is Bush helping?

The melamine poisoned milk scandal in the Peoples Republic of China is only the latest in a long series of food exports from China to other parts of the world that are having negative health impacts and causing economic and diplomatic problems across the globe. We are learning that the milk problems have been known since 2007, but were covered up to keep out of the Beijing Olympics picture. Not only were babies and adults inChina harmed, but in Taiwan as well where PRC milk products are used in a variety of products such as baked goods, ice cream, etc.

Remember the serious problems with dog foods poisoned with melamine popping up all over Canada and the United States with a number of pets being killed or seriously disabled and huge veterinary expenses incurred?

This past February China-produced and exported frozen dumplings (potstickers) to Japan that were contaminated with two different nasty organophosphate pesticides, dichlorvos and methamphidos. Specialist determined that eating as few as two of the dumplings could result in negative health results.

In October, 2005 China-produced kimchi was found to be contaminated with parasitic round worm eggs. When the Republic of Korea halted imports of the contaminated product China threatened trade retaliation!

Counterfeited brands of toxic toothpaste spiked with diethylene glycol found its way from China to Panama and the US in May 2007.

Fish from China contaminated with the carcinogen malachite green was found in fish exported to the Republic of Korea.

In April 2005 of the 107 Chinese exports to the US which inspectors stopped at US ports there were included frozen catfish banned antibiotics, scallops and sardines with putrefying bacteria, mushrooms tainted with illegal pesticides, frozen breaded shrimp coated with the carcinogen nutrafura as an anti-bacterial. There have been toxic cosmetics, counterfeit Chinese herbs. The list goes on and on.

Yet, the Cheney-Bush administration has resisted all calls for tightening restrictions on Chinese imports. US businesses have become addicted to cheap Chinese products. For example, China now produces 80% of the world's ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and sells it cheaper than we can produce it for (dumping). Although relevant government agencies have propsed hundreds of regulations aimed at improving product safety for imports, almost all of these have been killed by the administration either at agency level or when the proposed rules come to the OMB.

Face it--they don't care about our health and well-being, just business--unregulated. Now has that caused problems elsewhere in our economy, too?

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered in Wasilla

In a 2005 video, Palin's Pastor and congregation in Wasilla pray to protect her from witches.

Is this why the McCain campaign is now hiding Palin and trying to dump the VP debate? Wanting to avoid this issue getting play on a national media platform?

Does Palin have pastor problems, too?

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Bus

Now the other shoe: McCain wants to scratch the VP debate, scared to death that Biden will wipe up the floor with Palin?? To quote Letterman, on McCain's skipping his show to run to Couric for softballs, "This doesn't smell right." Is it the stench of fear? Or just the reek of rampant mendacity? Or maybe a lot of both? What a pantload!

Bush in a Nutshell

President Bush tells us that the current economic problems developed over a long time. That these dire economic problems we are experiencing stem from huge foreign investments in our economy making cheap credit available.

The Bush solution, in a nutshell: borrow $700,000,000,000 from foreigners and inject it in our markets. [That will give him just about enough time to pack his carpet bag and catch a jet to a South American refuge from extradition.] Are we supposed to buy this?

Sarah Palin: Anne Kilkenny's Note, etc

A note to all by Anne Kilkenny [proof Anne Kilkenny is a real person]

Dear friends,

So many people have asked me about what I know about Sarah Palin
in the last 2 days that I decided to write something up . . .

Basically, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have only 2 things in
common: their gender and their good looks. :)

You have my permission to forward this to your friends/email contacts
with my name and email address attached, but please do not post it on
any websites, as there are too many kooks out there . . .

[ This was already posted on Washington Independent comments area,
with a controllable hotmail account, and was obviously meant by the
author to be read. ]

Thanks,
Anne


ABOUT SARAH PALIN

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992.
Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a
first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her
father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a
first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more
City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the
residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular
girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and
won't vote for her can't quit smiling when talking about her because
she is a "babe".

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She
kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents
for seven months.

She is "pro-life". She recently gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby.
There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just "puts things out
there" and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a
champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin’s kind of job is highly
sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his
work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or
so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their
major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything
like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She's smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running
this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been
pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had
gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had
given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her 6
years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over
33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the
City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation
(1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a
regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she
promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they
benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration
weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed
money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it
with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage
the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said
she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a
new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a
multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece
of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was
still in litigation 7 yrs later--to the delight of the lawyers
involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the
community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it
would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that
could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office
redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus
in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will
make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she
proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she
recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while
she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today's
surplus, borrow for needs.

She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas
or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by
her or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the
basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected
City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from
the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents
rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin's
attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the “old boy’s club” when she first ran for
Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys". Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people,
creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally
grateful and fiercely loyal--loyal to the point of abusing their power
to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the
case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he “intimidated”
her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska's top
cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure
and she had every legal right to fire him, but it's pretty clear that
an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn't
fire her sister's ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation
for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen
contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she
later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to
replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded
for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew
her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in
help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town
introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council
became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She
abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn’t
like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything
publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got
the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one
of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no
background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great
job which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the
high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the
structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this
Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party)
engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some
undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all
her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and
garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a
gutsy fighter against the “old boys’ club” when she dramatically quit,
exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from
Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel
politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the “bridge to
nowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget
guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing
projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative
action restored most of these projects--which had been vetoed simply
because she was not aware of their importance--but with the unobservant
she had gained a reputation as “anti-pork”.

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party
leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated
them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a
fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah.
They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and
predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly
stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made
point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah's
mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and
experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package
of legislation known as “AGIA” that forced the oil companies to march
to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to
global warming. She campaigned “as a private citizen” against a state initiaitive that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State’s lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more
knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there’s a lot of people who have underestimated her and are
regretting it.


CLAIM VS FACT
•“Hockey mom”: true for a few years
•“PTA mom”: true years ago when her first-born was in elementary
school, not since
•“NRA supporter”: absolutely true
•social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill
that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships
(said she did this because it was unconsitutional).
•pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to
promote it.
•“Pro-life”: mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby
BUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life
legislation
•“Experienced”: Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has
residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska.
No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on
supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city
administrator to run town of about 5,000.
•political maverick: not at all
•gutsy: absolutely!
•open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at
explaining actions.
•has a developed philosophy of public policy: no
•”a Greenie”: no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores
and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.
•fiscal conservative: not by my definition!
•pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city
without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built
streets to early 20th century standards.
•pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on
residents
•pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city
government in Wasilla’s history.
•pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union
doesn’t make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim
that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed
voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting
programs in the schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny +
Alaska), you will find references to my participation in local
government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I've always operated in the belief that "Bad things happen
when good people stay silent". Few people know as much as I do because
few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don't have a job she can bump me out
of. I don't belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no
fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will
cost me somehow in the future: that’s life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100
or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah's
attempt at censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to
say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

CAVEATS
I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in
spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor)
from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of
Wasilla, and I can't recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust
for inflation? for population increases? Right now, it is impossible
for a private person to get any info out of City Hall--they are
swamped. So I can't verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the
population of Wasilla, ranging from my "about 5,000", up to 9,000. The
day Palin’s selection was announced a city official told me that the
current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was
5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to
2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90’s.

Anne Kilkenny
August 31, 2008

=======

Did Cheney Sacrifice Georgia for McCain?

Did Cheney egg Saakashvili on to send troops into South Ossetia in order to elicit the Russian response which he anticipated in order to provide a distraction from the badly bungled economy and US military adventures? Has Georgia been sacrificed to make McCain seem a better choice for president in the new Cold War?

The Merchant of Menace

John McCain, following in the Cheney-Bush-Rove footsteps, has adopted the lowest road strategy to try to get your votes. He's trying to sell you that the scary black man with the scary
name, if elected would cause a THIRD IRAQ WAR!


The second Iraq war was an invasion, based on lies, twisted intelligence, lies, and more lies in order to achieve a goal established before Bush was ever elected--secure Iraq's oil for Chevron and other big oil companies in preferential contracts. And McCain loves Bush, Bush's plans, Bush's BS, and Bush's BO.

Oil Pressure

There is a full court press by the energy barons--oil and nuclear power
barons--in concert with the robber baron princes Bush, Cheney, and
their coterie of criminals who meet in government buildings, but in secret, behind closed doors, to rob the U.S. Treasury and America's wage earners with equal disregard, to make one last drive to cross the the goal lines and score 1) drilling in the protected northern lands, 2) drilling off America's coasts, and 3) less supervised and more irresponsible nuclear power.

You've Got to Be Carefully Taught--Texas 2-Step Style

Texas Republican Convention Campaign Button

You've Got to Be Carefully Taught

You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught before it's too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught
You've got to be carefully taught

Rodgers and Hammerstein, South Pacific

McCain: I Was for Hagee before I was Against Him!

According to Rhonda Vincent:

There are many people
who will say they're Christians
and they live like Christians on the Sabbath day

But come Monday morning, til the coming Sunday
They will fight their neighbor all along the way


Oh you don't love God, if you don't love your neighbor
if you gossip about him, if you never have mercy
if he gets into trouble, and you don't try to help him
then you don't love your neighbor, and you don't love God

In the Holy Bible, in the Book of Matthew
Read the 18th chapter in the 21st verse
Jesus plainly tells us that we must have mercy
There's a special warning in the 35th verse

Oh you don't love God, if you don't love your neighbor
if you gossip about him, if you never have mercy
if he gets into trouble, and you don't try to help him
then you don't love your neighbor, and you don't love God

There's a God almighty, and you've got to love him
if you want salvation and a home on high

If you say you love him while you hate your neighbor
then you don't have religion, you just told a lie

Oh you don't love God, if you don't love your neighbor
if you gossip about him, if you never have mercy
if he gets into trouble, and you don't try to help him
then you don't love your neighbor, and you don't love God

Oh you don't love God, if you don't love your neighbor
if you gossip about him, if you never have mercy
if he gets into trouble, and you don't try to help him
then you don't love your neighbor, and you don't love God

then you don't love your neighbor, and you don't love God

May Day! May Day! May Day!

May Day! May Day! May Day!

We're going into the sixth year since "Mission Accomplished" and our economy is crashing!

Bring the boys home and our money, too!

Words' Worth

Chaplain's message is as fresh today as it ever was!

Read Kaddish Over Colin Powell

ABC reports that the "principals" of the Cheney-Bush administration approved torture in a series of "Principals' Meetings" at the White House.

The principals allegedly discussed and approved exact, detailed torture scenarios.

They are all disgusting war criminals (under Article 4 of the torture convention) and should be wary of traveling abroad.

Colin Powell, however, is the most appalling--how the mighty have fallen!

Stick a fork in him, he's done!

Condi & the Goon Show

Why has our most ineffectual Secretary of State ever allowed the Peoples Republic of China to bring in a flying goon squad of PRC internal security police to beat up protesters? Can't our police break heads well enough?

Is Hu on first with our erstwhile VP candidate?

Keep out the foreign goons and dump Condi, too.

Deregualtion by Regulation Alert

WARNING, Will Robinson! WARNING!

Treasury Secretary Paulson proposes new Federal "controls" on financial institutions including taking over regulation of the insurance industry's financials.

In an administration that has never seen a regulation it wouldn't look the other way on when controls on even the most predatory business practices are required, one MUST suspect that Federalizing oversight has the hidden agenda of watering down stricter controls and protections that some of the more enlightened states (such as NY, MA, and CA) may have (just as we saw the Cheney-Bush EPA move against California's air quality control attempts).

DANGER, Will Robinson! DANGER!

Unanticipated Consequences II

The Cheney-Bush Administration has consistently failed to reign in businesses whether it be on product safety standards, food purity inspections, market manipulation, or, notably, predatory lending practices. So we have seen lead-contaminated toys, ethylene glycol-contaminated toothpaste, downer cow school lunches, Enron's manipulation of energy markets, and, most recently, the sub-prime mortgage debacle.

The impact on businesses, on tax revenues, on jobs, and on the lives of Americans has been incalculable, but devastating.

Similarly, the resistance against any form of attempt to rein in the profligate use of energy, particularly gasoline, has seen steady growth in our carbon footprint, increasing pollution, the outflow of petro dollars, and a concomitant inflationary impact across all sectors of the economy--this at a time of economic exigency with the economy in recession and heading for a depression?

The Fed and its Chairman Ben Bernanke have attempted to ameliorate the smothering impact of the subprime debacle by cutting interest rates in hopes of kicking the flywheel of the economy back into motion even at the risk of adding inflationary pressure. This despite the ubiquitous inflationary pressure of oil prices in every sector of the economy.

It seems that one (possibly) unanticipated consequence of this monetarist attempt to rescue the economy from the quick sand by a series of rate cuts is that these rate cuts have become the whiphand of stagflation by providing cheap capital for oil speculators who are driving up the price of a barrel of oil inexorably day by day.

One of the real basics of the problem is that workers' wages have lagged further and further behind (unlike those of senior managers) and our consumer econmy is grinding to a halt as more and more discretionary spending is diverted to energy costs causing slow downs and job losses across all consumption sectors leading to a downward spiral.

The administration's Iraq misadventure continues to gobble up unimaginable amounts of Federal income (and borrowing which leads to increasing debt service and decreasing government discretionary spending--the beast being deliberately starved according to the Neocon design to kill spending for social issues). This leaves the Federal government and the next administration little leeway to resolve these problems and now the US is is even suffering a technology trade deficit!

That is why I foresee a Depression in the offing.

Unanticipated Consequences

Is the current chronic pollution of the Yangtze River (揚子江 or 長江="Long River") in the People's Republic of China an unanticipated consequence of building the humongous Three Gorges Dam?

Has the dam slowed the currents of the long river and made it much more difficult for natural processes to cleanse the river?

Memo to "Progressives"

In re Obama:

Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? (Utah? ND? AK?)

What tributaries follow him to DC,

To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels?

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!

O you hard hearts, you cruel men of home,

Knew you not Bill and Hillary?

Many a time and oft

Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements,

To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,

Your infants in your arms, and there have sat

The livelong day, with patient expectation,

To see Bill pass the streets of DC:

And when you saw his chariot but appear,

Have you not made an universal shout,

That Potomac trembled underneath her banks,

To hear the replication of your sounds

Made in her concave shores?

Scare the Hell Out of 'em!!!!!

VOTE!

It's scaring the hell out of those who would empty our treasury into their cronies' pockets and who erode our Democracy into a dictatorship of an unbridled executive.

Obama's Pig in a Poke

Mr. Obama would have us buy his change-policies-pig wrapped in a beautiful rhetorical poke. Mrs. Clinton has laid out chapter and verse on a variety of issues so that as voters we can hold her feet to the fire of her promises.



Mr. Obama is a wonderful rhetorician, but I am not having pig-in-poke, but feel constrained to question, "Where's the beef?"

AAAAARG! Wrong Again!!!!

Will the media stop with these manipulative, inaccurate, perturbing polls already????

Supreme Court Blocks Suits by Defruaded Investors

Parable: Before the Law


Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.”



At the moment the gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try it in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I can’t endure even one glimpse of the third.”



The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate.



There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.”



During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud, later, as he grows old, he still mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas to help him persuade the gatekeeper.



Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know, then?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?”



The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”

Franz Kafka

Abramoff & a National Security Defense

The "accountability" president, who holds teachers accountable for every aspect of the kids they teach, now makes a preposterous assertion that revealing the frequent visits of criminal political- briber and influence-peddler extraordinaire, Jack Abramoff, to his buddies, Cheney-Bush, will reveal "sensitive means and methods for Secret Service protection" of His Shamelessnesses.

Ridiculous, redact the documents under the watchful eye of the court.

This is the continuation of a cover up of the most enormous criminal conspiracy in the long and sometimes embarrassing history of the presidency.

Watch the "liberal" media ignore this one, too.

Taboo

"Recession" has become a taboo word in most of pro-GOP-controlled

media outlets. Bernanke has indicated further rate cuts to avoid the dreaded taboo word! Once again the Fed is as much a part of the problem as the solution.

We are in dire straits due to the Cheney-Bush tax gift to the wealthiest few, the insane Neocon/Cheney-Bush revenge war in the Mideast, the deliberate undercutting of the dollar, globalization pressures, and the obscene waste represented by DoD contracting in Iraq and at home.

Another cut will further exacerbate the situation and will be destructive of start-up operations when the belt is again tightened. Just as Greenspan's fear of inflation and his repeated over-corrections contributed significantly to the DotCom debacle, Bernanke has been helping to burst bubbles caused by lender greed and new financial instruments not understood well either by their creators nor their buyers.

Recession is here and will only deepen.

UPDATE: December 1, 2008 I was right!!!!!!

Blue Water Aspirations

For a nation with blue water navy aspirations, the PRC is playing with fire denying "safe harbor" to others for political reasons.

Bush Nominates Two Donors

Ethics? We don't need no stinkin' ethics! This is an on-going criminal conspiracy, whadda we need ethics for?

And then there was one?

What will FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's rewards be for riding roughshod over the will of the people in corrupt single-minded service of ruthless media-baron and news-manipulator , Australian Rupert Murdoch's , quest to control the hearts, minds, and thoughts of Americans?

Here's a Different Poem for Petraeus

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

by Wilfred Owen
Britain (1893-1918)

Mandrake Gestures Hypnotically

Mandrake to gesture hypnotically to the electorate and the people will all believe that his sending home the surge is a troop reduction.

Murder Board

Petraeus claims his testimony was his own, but, then, whose questions steered his testimony through his pre-testimony murder board???? Ultimately, the type and tenor of the questions at the murder board/rehearsal are shaped to and help shape the underlying policy objectives of the public "performance."

The More You Fight, the More . . .

The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent essay in re Petraeus' testimony, preemptive war, and the Bush choices. Like Mr. Data in "The Last Outpost" Dubya has gotten us stuck in a Chinese finger trap and refuses to stop pulling!

We Are Locutus, Resistance is Futile!

Minneapolis Airport First Class/VIP Lounge

Did anyone stop to think why Senator Craig was using a public restroom at the airport? Surely a VIP like a United States Senator would be welcomed at one of the first class/vip lounges at the airport (see "clubs" in above diagram)? Why would he be out there with the peons unless he were trolling for fish?

What's this Wet Stuff in my Crocodile Eyes????

See Firedoglake's sad tale of Tony Snow's penury!!

Old wine in broken bottles

Fred Thompson more of the same conservative crapola! He will not divide us, but bring us together. Sound familiar? "I am a uniter, not a divider." To win, conservatives have to divide us and work the emotions of their base!

"A strong country" equals four more years of no taxes for the rich while we pour untold billions down the Iraq rathole in service of big oil and defense contracting!

We hear all about his caring about Americans like our current "compassionate conservative" who cuts GI benefits while grinding up our youth in his premeptive war while trying to destroy social security, who cuts spending on children's health, who fails to relieve disasters which strike the poor!

But Freddie's (check his birth certificate) real vision is on the conservative legacy to continue to pack the Federal courts and whittle away at American's freedoms. The fifth column is these conservative globalists.

But can he even be the decider? It took him from March until September (six months) to decide he was running. What a maroon!

We don't need another B actor to play our president!!

Advice & Consent: What We Want!!!!!

We want the Senate to extract agreement from the next AG to:

1) Protect and defend the Constitution;
2) Honor and comply with Congressional subpoenas in a timely manner;
3) Completely de-politicize the DoJ;
4) Assure a full and complete investigation of the Duke Cunningham-related cases even into the CIA;
5) Clean out and clean up the the Civil Rights Division;
6) Investigate the possible Hatch Act violations represented by the Rove, et al, presentation at departments and agencies;
7) Set up a task force to investigate Iraq-war related contracting irregularities;
8) Aggressively investigate voter-suppression;
9) Investigate Congressional interference with US Attorney investigation activities;
10) Aggressively investigate allegations of perjury by Alberto Gonzales;
11) Investigate any cover up of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame;
12) Make a full, thorough, and complete investigation of the firings of the eight or more US attorneys!

Note to My Senators: In re--Advice & Consent

The Rise of the Coneheads

Will Chertoff slide into home safely?

Farewell, So Long, Auf Wiedersehen, Good-bye

See ya on the other side, when you have crossed the bar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

再見! 安寧히! 左様なら！And good riddance!

Tongue Suppressors

" McConnell: FISA Debate Will Kill Americans"

" The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say. "

" According to a new survey, hundreds of government scientists say they have perceived or personally experienced pressure from the Bush administration to eliminate phrases such as “climate change” and “global warming” from their reports and public statements. One of those scientists -- NASA climatologist Drew Shindell – testified Tuesday before the Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform. "

" Bush Team Tried to Suppress Pre-9/11 Report Into al-Qa'ida "

" Citing legal documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) showing how “the Bush administration has reversed two decades of precedent and declared that important whistleblower protections in the Clean Water Act do not apply to federal workers,” the science journal Nature called the administration’s action “pernicious.” Nature says scientists could feel the chilling effect particularly strongly, and calls government whistleblowers “a key defence against further erosion of environmental standards.” "

And the beat goes on, the beat goes on . . . . . . . . . . . .

Just Call Me Dubya [Ahab?]

I was looking at some quotes on IMDB from the movie "Moby Dick" and they struck me with their 'universality':

Starbuck: "A captain who, from private motives, employs his vessel [i.e., the military] for another purpose [revenge against Saddam & crony capitalism] from that intended by the owners [we, the people], is answerable to the charge of usurpation, and his crew is morally and legally entitled to employ forceful means in wresting his command from him. "



Ahab: From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale. [i.e., Saddam]

Starbuck: It is our task in life to kill whales, to furnish oil for the lamps of the world. If we perform that task well and faithfully, we do a service to mankind that pleases Almighty God. Ahab would deny all that. He has taken us from the rich harvest we were reaping to satisfy his lust for vengeance [i.e., revenge on Saddam]

Ahab: I don't give reasons. I give orders! [The Decider. not the Divider]

Ishmael [i.e., we, the groundlings]: Ehhhh, you can't fool us; it's the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he's got a great secret in him.

But from "The Madness of King George" came:

Queen Charlotte [i.e., Tom Hicks] : Come on, smile and wave. That's what you get paid for. Smile and wave.

Hello, Fisa

Maybe the Thai's have a good idea! Reid, Pelosi, and any Democrat who voted for the Bush Fisa power grab should have to wear a badge of shame in Congress!

The Ship of Fools

The Cowardly Lion and Dorothy, the captain and first mate, on the Congressional Ship of Fools, caved to the very popular president's every whim selling off our Constitution for a handful of magic beans while quaking in fear--Al Qaeda is coming! Al Qaeda is coming! Throw down your Bills of Rights and surrender to the aediles with their fasces!

It's time for a Progressive Party!

Infrastructure Terror!

Q: Where's the money for our infrastructure maintenance? [i.e., estimated 1.6 TRILLION $!]

A: Surging down a rat hole in Iraq!

Crony capitalism: You can't have war profiteering without a war!

The Dark Lord May Run for Pres???????

Think Progress has an article speculating that Black Dick of the Darkside may, having gotten a second taste of life in the cat bird seat, run for the Republican nomination for president in order to have a “defender on the campaign trail” to improve the administration's approval ratings with the voters. Now there's a thought!

I guess he may view himself as the horcrux of the Iraq policy???

Progress Is Our Only Product?

"Progress" is discharging 22,000!!! American fighting men and women who served in Iraq and returned suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder under the pretext of Pre-existing "Personality Disorder" according to ABC News. ABC News explains, “This diagnosis means the personality disorder existed before military service, and therefore medical care and disability payments are not the military’s responsibility.” Even if they had pre-existing personality disorders, it is the responsibility of DoD for taking them into the service and placing them in the pressure cooker of Iraq! Support these troops suffering doubly from their service and maltreatment by their own service and government.

LTG William Odom (US Army, Retired) wrote on 5 Jul 2007:

"No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days in the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods. Moreover, for weeks at a time, large sectors of the front were quiet, giving them time for both physical and psychological rehabilitation. During some periods of the Korean War, units had to fight steadily for fairly long periods but not for a year at a time. In Vietnam, tours were one year in length, and combat was intermittent with significant break periods.

"In Iraq, combat units take over an area of operations and patrol it daily, making soldiers face the prospect of death from an IED or small arms fire or mortar fire several hours each day. Day in and day out for a full year, with only a single two-week break, they confront the prospect of death, losing limbs or eyes, or suffering other serious wounds. Although total losses in Iraq have been relatively small compared to most previous conflicts, the individual soldier is risking death or serious injury day after day for a year. The impact on the psyche accumulates, eventually producing what is now called "post-traumatic stress disorders." "

The DoD is struggling to pay for the bloated contractor overhead of the war (more DoD contractors than troops!) and they are robbing our disabled troops to line the pockets of KBR, Blackwater, and Custer Battles, inter alia.

Get our troops out and take care of their health and well being! Where's Congress when you need it?

The Hippocriff

He's not in the Executive Branch, he's not in the Legislative Branch, he's a hippocriff!

Guess who?

The Bungler

The pre-war intelligence was BUNGLED?

Equipping our troops was irresponsibly BUNGLED?

The planning for the post war occupation was BUNGLED?

The capture of Osama in Tora Bora was BUNGLED?

The outsourcing of US military logistics was egregiously BUNGLED?

The management of prisons in Iraq such as Abu Ghraib was obscenely BUNGLED?

Iraq's reconstruction has been egregiously BUNGLED?

The execution of Saddam was embarassingly BUNGLED?

Foisting Democracy on the Palestinians and forcing elections on them was BUNGLED?

Bush: "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical."

How can a president so concerned about the ethics of preserving human life authorize preemptive war?

How can a president so concerned about the ethics of preserving human life authorize the bombing of a restaurant full of diners based on HUMINT in hopes of possibly killing Saddam Hussein? Are stale, frozen embryos more precious, their lives more sacred than Iraqi diners?

My Man is Such a Handy Man

Dems, Wanna to Get George Outta Baghdad???

STARVE THE BEAST!!! In the next emergency war spending bill roll back ALL the tax cuts for the rich and for favored industries UNTIL the war is FULLY amortized AND . . . THEN apply ALL the new revenue streams to shoring up SOCIAL SECURITY and MEDICARE. The Bush loyals will race to see who can get out fastest!!!!

Read: _A Corpse in the Koryo_ !

Koryohotel
Originally uploaded by pinkie girl.

James Church's (pseud.) new novel is not a whodunnit, but it is compelling portrait of the intricacies of surviving the labyrinth of government work in the most isolated, yet politicized Marxisit-Leninist-socialist paradise on earth. If you are curious about life in the DPRK with its eternal president (still dead), hereditary "democratic" rule, military first ideology (선군사상 / 先軍思想), land of the great Arirang (아리랑) mass gymnastics cum incredible stadium card section, then this book by a former intelligence officer is the book for you!

Underneath the Eldritch Tree

As our ephermeral existance flashes by on the HD screen of life, watching the supporting players peripheral to our shabby lives in the background is like viewing passerby's from the cool beneath an eldritch tree.