What happened to us once we grew up?

As I look around on a regular basis I generally find contempt for much of the world around me. It's not because I choose to be a particularly unhappy person or that I just want to be angry but rather it's because I look at a lot of things through the basic moral lenses I was issued as a child and wonder, where did we go wrong?

I honestly have had so many things just since the start of the Obama Administration bother me that I could be on here every day and it would definitely feel that this blog could become a regular soliloquy where I just rant to myself for the need to get it off my chest. Many of the topics would probably be incredibly justifiable as well.

Between the bank bailouts and the basic middle finger to LGBT groups (aside from this token Don't Ask, Don't Tell thing which is honestly the least that Obama could do) to the Arizona Legalized Racism Law to this total fucking mess known as the BP disaster, I could be here all day, every day complaining forever.

Usually, I use my Facebook to post links these days and complain about what punches into my soul. It's a much shorter version of this blog and to be honest, to write here I feel I want well thought out observations with source references on most days to make sure I am reaching the right notes. On FB, I can use all emotion (although I almost always source my work with links there as well) which is so much easier to do. Hell it's what conservatives live on. Facts require a lot of work and effort sometimes. Not to mention facts contradict their every single myopic belief.

But with all of these problems there is an overarching theme I believe. What were we taught as children about right and wrong?

We were taught to share. We were taught to be nice to others and to accept them if they were different. We were taught to not lie or cheat or steal. We were taught hurting people or threatening them was wrong. We were taught that everything good comes from hard work and perseverance. You were taught to respect your elders.

What the hell happened to us?

Could you imagine if we applied those principles to society today? You know what you would have? Socialism. Or at least a peaceful society that cares for those around us.

I think of this often when a new Robin Hood movie comes out or A Christmas Carol comes out. Teabaggers should rail against both of them.

"Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor. That's WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION! The Poor are too LAZY to work!"

"Scrooge worked hard for his money. Being forced to give it away is SOCIALISM. If poor people want a handout they should go to work for it!"

What in the hell?

The reason those two stories are so beloved is because they are two of the greatest stories in which the plight of the poor is championed and where giving them a leg up is shown in a positive light. It's pure fantasy but we teach children with these stories and Oliver Twist and the sort that caring for those less fortunate is not shameful but rather a rewarding virtue and something that shapes your character here and in the afterlife, should there exist one.

Jesus Christ himself championed such beliefs. I suppose he too would be a pariah with this gang of unruly Capitalists that make up a large majority of our population.

Going back to what we taught our kids. Imagine how the issues of today relates to the lessons of our youth...


We were taught to share.
To put this in context a little bit, imagine that you had four Kindergarten classrooms of 25 kids each and 1 kid took 90% of the toys from ALL of the classes for themselves and basically told the rest of you to make due with what was left over. That you weren't good enough to play with these toys and that kid rigged the system so that every day when they got into class they had access to get to the toys and any more toys that they wanted out of that box before you even got into the classroom. Pretty unfair right?

Well congratulations because in America, that's what we see on an everyday basis. The top 1% control our entire economic wealth and the rest of the World's right along with it and they use every cheating advantage they can to make sure that the American Dream stays just that. A never ending dream from which you will never awake.


We were taught to be nice to others and to accept them if they were different.

This one was a big deal. First, your parents didn't want you getting into fights at school because many times your mouth would try to cash checks your ass couldn't cash. But also they wanted you to make as many friends as possible. You see making friends makes school and life way less stressful and a lot more fun. You don't have to be best friends with everyone in your class but if you at least try to get along with them and understand their differences, it makes the time when you have to stand in line by each other on the playground for any length of time far less awkward. Have to sit on the school bus for a long field trip ride? Well guess what, we can talk and get along!

But today and obviously as we used to do in the past we have not always followed the same guidance we shared with our children. As adults we have tended to move to locations to shelter ourselves from different people. Despite the racial desegregation that helps to alter the demographics of the classroom and provides diversity, as adults we re-segregate ourselves into communities where we shelter ourselves from the every day realities of those different than us. In cities you will find African-American neighborhoods, Asian neighborhoods, Latino neighborhoods and in many suburbs or rural areas that's where you find most white people living. It's this distance from one another that tends to make us not understand each other fully.

Inside the urban areas where most minorities live though there is a far greater understanding of each others' daily struggles and needs. They tend to see the same economic struggle because they share the same job market. They see the difficulty in their schools because they share the same school districts. White people in surburbia and rural areas don't see the same things. They forget that their grandparents and maybe even parents populated those places in the city a generation before and they too may have had an impact on the deterioration of the community. We all do our share at some point or another.

Yet from their safe distance many people tend to point fingers at one another. To hate another race of people. After the Civil War most had hoped that things would be settled once and for all on this issue. Another 100 years later and we were still working to pass a Civil Rights Act. Now we've decided to use an economic downturn and massive job losses as a reason to pass xenophobic laws that legalize racial profiling against Hispanics in Arizona and have tried to roadblock Homosexuals in every attempt to have the same legal rights as their heterosexual brethren.

In the annals of history the side that has discriminated has always come off looking as the most evil assholes of all time. Aside from White Supremicists, nobody has a very fond memory of the Strom Thurmonds or George Wallaces of the world. And the right wingers that constantly work against the equal rights and basic fairness of others, 20-30-50 years from now... will be in the same conversation as those well noted racists or hate mongers.

I'll come back to the main solution for the Arizona problem in a second.


We were taught to not lie or cheat or steal.

Basic rules to follow right? Except that our President got busted 7 years ago lying to our faces on national television to twist our arms into letting him play war for fun and there was no consequences. This after he and his brother and their henchwoman Katherine Harris cheated and stole the election down in Florida in 2000 and then were able to repeat the feat in 2004 with Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio.

I suppose the basic rules of conduct go out the window when the leader of your country broke every one of them while in power. However we know this isn't the case for low level thieves. Police investigate the small guys and they go into jail.

The problem is that it's not proportionate in how these crimes are addressed. There are probably a million political operatives and elected officials breaking the law every day in terms of how they fatten their wallets while in power and what laws they can break to continue to seize the levers of power from the American people in favor of their corporate benefactors. However we know damn well they are not ever going to see a criminal charge for a single one of those offenses.

Instead they get off Scot free while the guy that robs a liquor store gets 15 years in prison.

"Well the liquor store guy used a gun! His was putting lives in danger and there was force involved!"

Sure. Except that when you're raiding the treasury for your rich pals to get government bailouts or contracts at the expense of the social safety net (Unemployment Insurance, etc) then you really are putting lives in danger. People losing their homes and living on the streets because a company was told by our government that outsourcing is a good thing and so they laid you off, all the while you had been duped by a junk mortgage with an ever raising interest rate that you now all of a sudden couldn't afford and the only net you had was unemployment while you struggle to find work during a supposed economic recovery that is not creating many real jobs... well you just put these people in serious danger. Sure they could hope to find a place to live in a shelter.. if the shelters in their areas have room for them.. many do not.

I'd argue that in most cases the guy robbing the liquor store is at the end of his rope and doing it out of necessity. While Congress and CEOs are doing this with already overloaded and incredibly fat wallets. That to me, makes their act even more callous.

We were taught hurting people or threatening them was wrong.

Or so I thought. My son's elementary schools constantly teach about the negative effect of bullying. As adults we seem to forget that the bullying in real life has a different name. These are the people that abuse - emotionally and physically - people around them. Have you ever seen an abused spouse? Many times they allow themselves to be trapped into the routine. They have legitimate fear of leaving the situation because it could get worse if they try to go. They hold on to whatever few good times they had even when there are almost none currently nor have there been in a very long time because holding onto hope is less scary than running away and starting over... or trying to get away and being abused further if they can't leave.

I think of this pattern and see America. We remember our country's heartwarming tales. The absolute courage of the Colonists that risked their lives against a military empire just to fight for the very concept of freedom. The stories of the Underground Railroad. The Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights marches. So many of the moments we canonize as this concept of America revolve around the indelible mark the founding fathers had on us when it came to what the term 'freedom' means as a nation.

And then 9/11 comes along and we toss all of that aside for safety and protection from an enemy that does not have the ability to strike at will and planned the 9/11 major attack for years and years before finally getting lucky enough to pull it off. And this isn't even counting the fact that if Bush had cared at all to read his August 6th, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing and act upon it, we likely wouldn't have had an attack at all.

A big event happens and we, the emotionally abused victims, lied to and cheated on over other military issues in the past (Vietnam specifically), clung to our abuser even though we should have known that he was completely untrustworthy. The abuser took more liberty to take our liberties. Illegally wiretapping ALL of us (not some of us or even just suspected victims). Eliminating Habeas Corpus. Detaining American Citizens as well as regular muslim men with no association with al-Qaeda together in a place where they had no right to have a fair trial, make a really proper defense in their case or worse yet, they can be held indefinitely without even being charged with anything. It's a crime to humanity and it would make our forefathers vomit violently in their graves.

This was, of course, proceeded by the Patriot Act which helped strip our rights as Americans away.

But this is just the freedom and civil liberty thing. If you really want to see how we act like abused spouses, take a look at how moronically we cling to capitalism even when we have proof that the concept of profit over all (the very basis of capitalistic thought) means purposely destroying moral boundaries and wrecking the lives of millions. Congress plays along. They deregulate everything to help grease the skids. They pass laws making it easier for these companies to create junk products to sell people and eventually collapse the system under. They do this neatly while basically being on the payroll for these people come election time.

They have Americans so brainwashed into believing that despite the meltdowns that cost you your car, house, job and possibly family... that any other economic system, namely socialism, is Nazi Germany or Communist Russia.

Even though they totally distort the values of another economic system because they want to confuse you with examples of evil violent authoritarian governments, they do it because they know you're still confused into buying into the "American Dream".


We were taught that everything good comes from hard work and perseverance.

Ahh and here's where that American Dream comes in. It's the core basis of Reaganomics isn't it? Work incredibly hard and great things will happen to you! You may never be rich but if you go to work every day you might own a house and a car and make a decent wage and live comfortably for the rest of your life.

Of course that sort of has been the mirage the rich have been using since the beginning of time right? Spruced up just enough to keep modern and relevant to your current belief system.

Reaganomics believed that if you target everything for the rich, most notably major tax cuts, that they will take that money, reinvest some of it into their business and the crumbs that fall off their lavish dinner table might just reach you in terms of potential new jobs...

Except that the top-down economic philosophy is just a consistent failure. What we've learned is those rich guys up top they pocket that tax cut. If they hire anyone at all it's overseas for pennies on the dollar thanks to outsourcing. And in fact this new found money might allow them to expand operations in China or India or whatever and that tends to mean more factory closings state-side. The companies then report record financial numbers. The assholes that could afford large amounts of stock love this. It's an economic upturn for them. For the average guy who was working hard and living for the American Dream, they just had the dream turn into a Freddy Krueger style nightmare and they're sort of hoping they lose in the dream just so they don't have to wake up to the hell that awaits them financially.

Corporations have unprecedented access these days to Congress. It's so blatant that even the Democrats, once considered the party of the people while Republicans held the banner of the Corporate Elite above their heads proudly, turned into the same greedy, CEO-beholden group of politicians as their opposition. Corporatists like the DLC got one of their biggest players in Rahm Emanuel helping to control Obama's agenda and from there it's been a windfall for them.

The Banks and specifically Goldman Sachs got bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. HMOs and Pharmaceuticals got everything they could have wished for in a Health Care bill that forces every American to buy coverage from them and provides no price controls to prevent them from continuing to scalp consumers. And BP, when they, Transocean and Halliburton (of course) create possibly the largest environmental disaster ever does anyone force them out or do something to penalize them? Not a chance.

Oh and hey getting back to that Arizona thing like I promised... while crazed xenophobic people look at illegal immigrants as the reason they are losing jobs, I think it's time to point the finger at the people that are keeping Americans out of work. It's clearly corporations that are hiring illegal immigrants and specifically recruiting them to come here. The penalties they pay (if any regulatory agency even does anything at all about it) is usually less than the actual immigrant themselves faces. It all adds up to a cost effective solution to avoid paying the American worker even the minimum wage they deserve.

Let's not kid ourselves people. Most of these jobs are farming jobs or jobs that require the person to be on-site in the specific geographic region in which they are hired. If they could outsource this they would but they cannot due to the necessity of the job being done where the immigrants are hired.

They recruit these people for the same reason they outsource. Because they could care less about America, the community or people around them and because their CEOs want to make ungodly profits. And hey, you people can be angry and forcibly toss as many of these workers out of the country as you want, they're not getting penalized so they'll just find more. So much for your brilliant strategy now suckers...

Create a forceful regulatory agency that regularly goes through the books of these companies and double checks social security number duplication to sort out fraud and penalize these companies at $1,000,000 per offense, per worker.

Stop the recruitment and watch the immigration numbers fall sharply.

You were taught to respect your elders.

Sometimes as a kid I hated this. Parents... Grandparents... man they can be assholes. However you still had to respect them because, well, it was the rule.

I don't necessarily think you have to listen to them as if they're always right. I mean being generations older usually puts you on the wrong side of a lot of issues that have long been settled amongst younger people (racism, homophobia, etc). However it is good to at least respect our elders enough to take care of them when they get older. Such respect is hard to find when Congress aims specifically to make cuts to Medicare or wants to turn Social Security into a similar stock boondoggle that 401Ks have proven to be (biggest ponzi scheme ever?).

I think the belief in Washington is that, "well the elderly never really know what's going on anyway, let's buy off AARP and we can confuse them into whatever we want to do."

They certainly did this with the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug plan. Guys like Rep. Tom Petri who has over a $1 million in Walgreens stock were able to sponsor and pass a law that made most seniors pay even more for their prescription drug plans and prevented Medicare from doing what the VA does and group negotiate for lower drug prices. What a pile of shit.

Every time we turn around corporations are eliminating pensions leaving seniors with no retirement money and then you get Bush, the Republicans and now even Obama saying they want to "fix Social Security" which only means, "privatize it and make it a giveaway to Wall Street"... you know the guys that fuck everything up for a profit.

There is no respect for elders or for that matter other people anymore.

When I see America, I see a country that is at each others' throats. Blaming one another for the problems we see today. Victims in a misinformation campaign that has managed to create an illusion that there is no class war by the rich onto the poor and middle class but rather it's just the lazy, uninitiated poor that want to take the last of what the ever shrinking middle class has left.

That's just not true.

But you know, if we even remotely followed the rules and tenets of our childhood lessons, we might start to see the forest for the trees. We'd begin to understand that America as currently constructed is a failed state in which unless real change occurs, (not the false hope campaign sloganeering of a corporate protectionist) the concept in which our forefathers most notably Jefferson envisioned for us, will die a cruel humiliating death.

The Value of Life

I guess it came as no surprise to me this past week when I found out that not only was our government calculating the dollar amount each of our lives were worth but also that since Bush took office our lives lost nearly $1 million in said value.

After all I can’t think of very many Americans outside of well connected rich people (see: Oil company executives) and the Bushies themselves who haven’t felt that we just lost close to a decade of our lives (or set our children back 20-30 years in progress and debt).

What a wasted opportunity after all. We ended the year 2000 with a budget surplus, gas prices were still fairly low, we hadn’t started a war of choice with an enemy that had nothing to do with an attack on us and FEMA still existed as a way to help citizens rather than to murder them and steal their property.

Our environment wasn’t exactly on a full path to green energy but we might have President Gore there to make that a reality.

Instead we have had eight years of the biggest disaster ever to hit America. Sure, 9/11 was bad, Katrina was horrible but none of them top the totality of Dubya.

After all had he not been President there is certainly a case to be made that 9/11 might never have happened because we are fairly certain President Gore wouldn’t have ignored that August 6, 2001 PDB nor would he have told the agents that briefed him that they had “covered their ass” in attempts to shoo them away out of annoyance.

Katrina would have still happened. It was an act of nature after all. But President Gore was far more likely to approve the funding needed to repair those levies. And even if that had not happened he sure as hell wouldn’t have left them to die in the Superdome, cutting residents off from any form of escape and then after waiting days to do nothing offered short term trailers that poisoned the people that stayed in there. Not even to mention, his FEMA would not have allowed these trailers to be used since the agency knew they were poisoned.

Of course the woulda, coulda, shouldas count for nothing at this point.

However you have to wonder, since they’re putting a price tag on us, how much are Iraqi lives worth?

You could try to count the deaths (suppressed or uncounted by our Defense Department) and take our current spending on the war and divide it up but that brings up two issues.

1. Since the death count is going up daily and we aren’t given legitimate numbers how do we even know these numbers are legitimate? Oh yeah and we’re still not done throwing money at this war so those numbers will change too.

2. That money is going to Halliburton, GE, Blackwater, etc. Not to Iraqi people. We’re paying them regardless of whether or not they fulfill the contract. This money has no relation to the Iraqi citizens. In fact if it were not the Iraq War, Bush would most certainly find another way to launder this money to them. See the $2-3 trillion that is missing from the Pentagon. No accountability = theft of your tax dollars.

So when I try to put in context how much the Iraqi life is worth I think the foremost expert of life worth evaluation, Babs herself said it best.

''Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen?'' Mrs. Bush declared. ''It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?''

And why should she? Her beautiful mind sees the biggest fucking lemons you have ever seen and she makes lemonade with it!

When speaking about Hurricane refugees that were staying at the Astrodome in Houston she said:

''What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

I know Barbara Bush doesn’t make policy but her equally uncaring son does. We now have proof that Bush was going into Iraq no matter what evidence steered them away from 9/11 wrongdoing.

Bush didn't care who died. He wanted his War glory and he wanted Saddam as his trophy. When you consider that and how those contracts would have been given to those companies, if not for Iraq then for something else, the answer is clear. Iraqi lives are worth zero (well at least according to our current Government). If they're not worth being counted correctly or worth protecting by not invading nor pulling out then Bush obviously sees these people as expendable.

And if Iraqi lives are worth zero while being set up as a corporate power grab for his buddies, Afghanistani people must be worth even less than that. Especially when you consider that we invaded there to capture Bin Laden and then let him go and just stopped caring or thinking about him at all. They died for nothing and weren’t even worth the corporate hullabaloo that Iraq was.

And hey you can make conflicting cases for the value of American lives either going up or down.

On one hand the value of the dollar is less thanks to Bush tanking our economy with deregulation of housing and energy markets so it’s only natural our lives would be worth less with that devaluation.

On the other there are more of us dead thanks to two wars, 9/11, countless disasters where the government didn’t care about acting and a completely broken health care system that only rewards drug and insurance companies. So by that theory there should be more American money to spread to fewer people right?

Oh wait, Bush has sold America to Chinese debt basically so there actually is less value to each of us… well at least in American Dollars.

The point of this that through the past eight years we have seen the value of human life actually be defined. Although it’s not in dollars as the EPA’s report says.

Human life is something you put a price tag on when you are evaluating whether or not to protect people through regulatory laws (aka how does protecting people hurt my rich corporate friends?)
And Human life is also a valuable political football… red meat to throw at the Christian Right when you play the abortion card. Of course nobody mentions that the GOP and Bush owned Congress for 6 years and they could have passed something to end Roe v. Wade or seriously restrict or possibly even end legalized abortion. They know better. They don’t really care about it until it’s campaign time when they can sucker you in with all of those extreme photos of “botched abortions” and all the dead fetuses (which again are incredibly dishonest since most abortions look nothing like this and occur well before the baby has developed into anything even close to that large).

Once these mothers to be give birth though, Republicans again don’t care about life. They cut programs like Food Stamps, Medical Assistance, Energy Assistance, WIC, AFDC, School Lunch Programs, public education funding, etc. They make it impossible to get help in raising the baby they insist you have.

The combination of that complete lack of caring about young children. Their usual eagerness to support torture and the death penalty. Their incredibly stupid plans for perpetual war. Their aggressive attempts to build more nukes to destroy the world. Their smash and grab style of theft to people who suffer through natural disasters as their Government leaves them to die. Their attempts to edit, censor and re-write EPA reports that prove that our planet is in peril thanks to our energy habits. Their lack of willingness to take care of 9/11 first responders or to veterans returning from these wars.

Forget that EPA report. You, just like the Iraqis are worth nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada.

It’s their world. Only the ultra rich are worth anything and they use lobbyists, their owned media outlets and basic propaganda to keep you blaming yourself.

It’s the stupid people who lived in New Orleans that didn’t leave that deserved to die. Not the Government who forced many to stay.

It’s the lazy people that don’t work that abuse welfare and steal your hard earned tax dollars but it’s not the corporations fault if they require billions more than social welfare could ever cost you in corporate welfare to make sure they make bigger profits and those CEOs can make $20-200 million.

It’s the idiots that didn’t understand home loans and took ones they couldn’t afford that made the housing market bust, not the mortgage lenders who purposely schemed to rip these people off with conveniently confusing loans that changed terms easily.

Blame the victim. And why not? They’re worthless anyway.

Oil Prices: How Drilling Offshore will do nothing to lower prices and how we got where we are today

Wow it didn't take long for Republicans to find a cheap ploy to use politically in their favor did it? And a lot of Americans seem to be buying it hook, line and sinker.

McCain and Bush went out of their way to push for offshore drilling making the argument that if there was more oil out there that prices would drop. There's two major flaws in that argument. But before we move forward, let's review how we got here and why prices are actually inflated:



Okay so now we see that the Enron Loophole create deregulation that basically allowed Energy Companies and Banks to own the market. They could use their influence in a corrupt way to fuel a speculation bubble and essentially they could buy the market into a higher profit zone. Great for them, horrible for us.

Luckily help is on the way. The Farm Bill that Keith references, McCain voted against and Bush vetoed, was passed thanks to a veto override in Congress. That means on September 30, 2009 the loophole closes and economists predict that gas/oil prices could be lowered as much as 25-50% overnight.

Finally a light at the end of the tunnel.

What about offshore drilling? Could that also help?

From The Seminal's Jason Rosenbaum:

Reason #1: Offshore Drilling Won't Increase Oil Supplies For 7-10 Years

That's right, even if we repeal all bans on drilling anywhere in the U.S., we won't see the benefits for almost a decade:

That's the estimate from the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry trade group. Major environmental groups think the increased supply would be at least that distant before arrival, and say it mostly would benefit Big Oil.

"It would take a decade to bring new leases into production, and then they would only line the coffers of the oil industry," said Carl Pope, the Sierra Club's executive director.

Reason #2: Offshore Drilling Only Makes Financial Sense When Oil Prices Are High

Offshore drilling is expensive:

However, analysts on all sides agree that drilling faces political, regulatory and economic hurdles. Individual states could forbid it. If exploration were allowed, permits would have to be granted, and before that environmental concerns must be addressed. Drilling also would have to make economic sense: Offshore drilling is expensive, and the more remote the site, the more costly it is.

Therefore, offshore drilling would only make economic sense if the oil tapped could be sold at a high price. Once the price of oil drops (which it is unlikely to do, but let's think hypothetically), offshore drills lose money, they get shut down, and prices go up again. Offshore drilling will not solve our gas price problem.

Reason #3: There's Probably Not A Lot Of Oil Out There

Bush and McCain tout drilling as a way towards energy independence. It's not; it's only a very short-term fix. Once we get the drilling going (remember, 7-10 years), there isn't much oil to drill:

The Interior Department offered a wide range of estimates of how much oil might be within reach of U.S. offshore drilling in a 2006 report. It estimated that the Outer Continental Shelf could hold 115.4 billion barrels. However, it also estimated that recoverable reserves off U.S. coasts in areas now banned from production probably hold only about 19 billion barrels.

…

The world consumes about 86 million barrels a day. The U.S. share of that is about 20.6 million barrels, 60 percent of them from foreign sources.

One thousand million barrels equals 1 billion, so if there are 19 billion barrels in the areas McCain would open to drilling, that's enough to provide about 920 days, or about 2.5 years, of current U.S. consumption.

That's right. Drill in all the places you can't drill now and you get (gong!) a whopping 2.5 years worth of oil. And that's assuming consumption levels stay static, which they have never done.

Reason #4: Oh, And There Are No Ships To Carry That Oil

Even if you did build the wells (7-10 years), make it economically feasable to keep them open (that means high oil prices), and tap all that oil (only 2.5 years worth), you wouldn't be able to find a ship to drill the oil and ship it back to shore for use:

In recent years, this global shortage of drill-ships has created a critical bottleneck, frustrating energy company executives and constraining their ability to exploit known reserves or find new ones. Slow growth in oil supplies, at a time of soaring demand, has been a major factor in the spike of oil and gasoline prices.

Mr. Bush called on Congress Wednesday to end a longstanding federal ban on offshore drilling and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, arguing that the steps were needed to lower gasoline prices and bolster national security. But even as oil trades at more than $135 a barrel — up from $68 a year ago — the world’s existing drill-ships are booked solid for the next five years. Some oil companies have been forced to postpone exploration while waiting for a drilling rig, executives and analysts said.

You can even explore for new oil fields for 5 years due to lack of ships!

Jason's first four points are incredibly valid ones (his fifth point, that speculation is not making oil prices rise is a bit off although in fairness it's deregulation coupled with the speculation that these energy companies and banks are orchestrating in concert that has created this problem so to blame it solely on market speculators would be leaving a lot of this story out). As he mentioned drilling oil might be impossible because of the shortage of drilling ships.

There is no immediate gain to be had from drilling now.

In fact McCain's own advisor admitted as much:

But McCain’s message was contradicted yesterday by his top economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who told reporters that new offshore drilling wouldn’t help lower current gas prices:

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior advisor to McCain’s campaign, acknowledged in a conference call to reporters that new offshore drilling would have no immediate effect on supplies or prices.

The Energy Information Administration says that new offshore drilling wouldn’t have “a significant impact” on gas prices until 2030.

By 2030 shouldn't we be well on our way to alternative energy? There's pretty much no excuse if by that time we're not using solar and wind energy pretty close to exclusively.

Rp

Hmmm. Hillary = Bush?

Not that much of a difference is there?



-Rp

Oops

From The NY Times:

Finally, Mrs. Clinton’s aides hope that disclosures about Mr. Obama’s past like the one involving Mr. Wright could give superdelegates’ pause. Mr. Devine said he thought that at least in terms of Democratic primary voters Mr. Obama had turned the furor to his advantage with his speech on race.

“Obama, confronted by an issue that was boiling, seemed to wade into it with a speech that was in many ways profound,” Mr. Devine said. “As a result, now these people who were so interested and awakened by his candidacy are back with him again. Instead of this being a setback, it becomes an opportunity.”

But the audience now is as much the Democratic superdelegates, who are especially attuned to politics and questions of electability in the fall, as it is rank-and-file voters.

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they had spent recent days making the case to wavering superdelegates that Mr. Obama’s association with Mr. Wright would doom their party in the general election.

That argument could be Mrs. Clinton’s last hope for winning this contest.

Kind of hard to pin this on Obama if Bill has been in Wright's company as well... well actually just being in his company would be downplaying it....

Wright is the recipient of numerous awards, including three honorary doctorates and three presidential commendations. An accomplished musician and author, Wright has written four books, numerous articles and countless sermons and was named one of Ebony's top fifteen preachers. In addition to national and international ministry, Wright serves on several boards of directors and committees. Married to the Reverend Ramah Reed Wright, Wright has five children and three grandchildren.

All this does is point out the dirty, ridiculous tactics that the Clinton Campaign have been involved in.

Of course then you have the late breaking news tonight that Obama's passport security had been breached three times in Bush's State Dept. and that one of the three people involved was a former Bush and oh yeah Clinton connected appointee, Maura Harty.

Whether or not she devulged info to them or did it under direct orders is still not known but it is ridiculously suspicious and there is a tight relationship between the Bushes and Clintons. Obama is the outsider and common enemy here.



Just sickening.

-Rp

Hillary = Bush/Cheney/McCain

Well Hillary did it again today. Touting how McCain is Presidential material and Obama is not. It's rather sickening that Democrats who hate George W. Bush and his military policy can even contemplate Hillary Clinton as a serious Democratic choice.

She echoes Bush on everything. It's just ridiculous.

See for yourself what she said today and has said on other military issues in which she practically plagiarizes Bush and Cheney.

h/t to The Jed Report for creating this great video.



-Rp

Cowards and "Ass Kissing Chickenshits".

I know I haven't written in awhile, but let's start off with the biggest issue out there.

The Petraeus lie session is over.

I warned everyone for months exactly what was coming. It was Petraeus, doing his best acting work ever in playing Gen. William Westmoreland during Vietnam and reading exactly what the White House wrote for him.

Bravo! It takes a lot of balls to be a Yes Man in the military. Well I suppose it's all you are allowed to be thanks to the pesky rules against free speech they have.

Those of us who were wise to the con (apparently everybody minus the morons in Congress) knew what was coming, saw through it and wanted a rebuke of Bush for putting a uniformed man out there to make his pitch for him.

Obviously Bush knew that everybody at this point is aware that he is a compulsive liar. So he threw the pristine image of a good, honest soldier in front of Congress. Hiding like a coward behind Petraeus' medals.

The thing is Petraeus' military service was only good enough to talk up as a point of thwarting attacks on the credibility of a scam artist report.

Who really thinks Bush gives a fuck about the US Military or any of the soldiers anyway?

He had a respected General in Colin Powell debase himself in front of the United Nations (supposedly after he tried to talk the Neo-Cons out of war) and tell Bush's blatant lies about Iraq WMDs to get us into this war.

He had the gall to send our troops into battle in two different countries without any real plans and worse without the Humvee and body armor they deserved (or prohibiting them from wearing the best armor available thanks to alliances to certain corporations!).

He keeps them there on stop loss measures and doesn't allow them to leave the military when their time is up.

He uses them as political hostages when he throws a tantrum about time lines and says he will hang the troops out to dry and veto their funding if he doesn't get his wish for perpetual Iraq War.

He employs mercenaries through his right wing financial connections (Blackwater) and allows them to freely kill however many civilians they want. They operate under no laws, are paid ten times as much as the military soldiers and oh yeah their reckless actions are helping to get our soldiers shot and killed by angry Iraqis who can't tell one from another. So much for the goodwill our soldiers are trying to create. And here's the kicker... they've actually killed our own troops themselves!

He opposes military pay raises and veteran health care increases.

But hey, hey can fly out under the cloak of darkness and have a photo shoot with them!

What a great fucking guy!

Petraeus, in his role as the General in charge of the Iraq War is supposed to be fighting in the best interests of America and the citizens here that the military is suppose to serve. The President is Commander in Chief but the General's main responsibility is not to him but to us and his soldiers.

That's why many Americans who see this was for what it is, felt betrayed by him deciding to be Bush's puppet. Make no mistake about it, that's what he was. From the RW talk shows to the RW blogs, they sent him out on a propaganda campaign to speak to Bush's base.

So MoveOn.org ran an ad calling a spade a spade. "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?"

Wow did the Right blow up.

It was hilarious. Fox News was leading the charge and just like election night in 2000 when they pulled bullshit and called the election for Bush despite proof to the contrary, the rest of the Mainstream Media fell right in line. Hell even half of the Democrats in the Senate fell in line when they voted to condemn the ad.

Of course this vote came right after another one that got less press. See Senator Jim Webb, a former military man himself (and Reagan appointee) is no liberal. He even voted to condemn the MoveOn ad. But being a former military man with a son serving in Iraq he can see the forest through the trees so to speak.

He tried to push a bill in which he constantly gave the Republicans what they wanted to try to pass it, that would allow soldiers time home after their tour in Iraq, equal to the tour they just served. Figuring these soldiers who have been stretched thin already could use the mental, emotional and physical break as well as the time home they deserved.

Strangely though after the whole Petraeus farce, Bush gave a speech in which he tried to connect 30,000 troops coming home mid to late next year as a troop reduction based on the success of the surge.

The funniest part was everyone knew that was a red herring (I called the whole thing right here on this blog). We've mentioned it here that the surge could not be maintained. That troop rotations dictated that some troops had to come home regardless of the success of the surge next year. It was Bush pulling more lies out of his ass.

But where you find a lie, you find a gullible stupid Senator not far behind. Enter outgoing Virgina Coward, John Warner.

Warner, like Voinovich, like Dominieci are willing to talk the talk but walking the walk is a totally different beast on Iraq. He had said he would vote for the bill but once he heard the artificial "30,000" withdrawal number he fell for it hook, line and sinker, apparently believing Bush wanted to actually withdraw troops on his own or something. So as usual the cowardly Republicans voted against the bill and Bush wins again.

Republicans and Bush rule the day once more and punish our troops for not being rich enough or well connected enough to never have to serve in a military where they may be trapped forever in perpetual war.

So the MSM goes after MoveOn.org about an ad that rightfully questions the integrity of a man who uses his uniform to spread propaganda but doesn't attack the Right Wing Cowards who never send their sons and daughters, let alone hardly ever served in the military themselves off to their wars of choice?

The priorities of this country's media are wrongheaded and very Pravda like. Except the Russians knew Pravda was propaganda and Americans foolishly believe that we have a choice in media and that even though a mass majority of the talking heads on radio and TV are spouting the same White House-approved talking points, that somehow the media is liberally biased and they are getting a real selection of views.

The problem with this whole deal is this:

Attacking MoveOn.org's calling BULLSHIT on what was without question, bullshit, is saying they don't have a right to free speech.

The Right Wing smear machine, whom whined like babies over this, have been behind more attacks on military men than anyone.

They had no problem taking an honorable soldier like Max Cleland and trying to push him as friendly to Osama Bin Laden.

They had no problem taking an honorable soldier like John Kerry and swiftboating him with lies and trying to dishonor his service (all while their Commander was AWOL from Guard Duty).

The right wingers in CBS' news department (see the Dan Rather lawsuit for more on how that organization works now) fired General John Batiste when he spoke out in an ad against the Iraq War.

They go after the former General in charge of Iraq, Gen. Abizaid for saying America could deal with a nuclear Iran because we handled the Soviets when they had nukes and were a far greater threat.

They call the death of soldiers, "a small price to pay".

Not to mention Senator Chuck Hagel who happened to be the only Senator from the GOP with any integrity on this war, was labeled "SENATOR BETRAYUS" by Rush Limbaugh.

I guess only THEY can slam the military or use "Betrayus" right?

The sad part is that nothing is being done to stop the Iraq War. There is no end in sight unless you set January 2009 when a new President takes office as your timetable.

It's sickening that the pathetic lapdog media would go after MoveOn.org for telling the truth.

Why they have never picked up on this plan for American empire that they clearly outlined in the PNAC strategy, that Wolfowitz was in charge of and was leaked to the NY Times back in 1992 and that Wes Clark has warned he was informed of right after 9/11, is beyond me. It's blatantly obvious that they wanted war with Iraq and want war with Iran.

It's also becoming more evident that they don't want to stop there.

To call Petraeus out for lying for his boss to keep this war going is an honorable thing to do. Our troops deserve a commander who recognizes the harm his soldiers face by continuing these neo-con policies.

If they get their way, the soldiers will never come home.

Maybe the best voice on this is Admiral William Fallon, Petraeus' superior who attempted to develop plans for a draw down and said the following about Petraeus:

In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus’s superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be “an ass-kissing little chickenshit” and added, “I hate people like that”, the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

If only he were speaking to the gullible fools in Congress...

Thank you Admiral Fallon. You are a good and loyal American.

-Rp

Lie or Die?

Just a quick, yet fun (well in my opinion) note for today...

Hidden in today's Washington Post article by Michael Abramowitz about Rove's super partisan hack replacement (to no one's surprise), was this terrific gem about Torie Clark who was Donald Rumsfeld's professional liar, er, "Press Secretary".

Draper also writes that Bolten first approached Donald Rumsfeld's old press secretary Torie Clarke about becoming White House press secretary after Scott McClellan quit in 2006. Clarke purportedly told Bolten she would rather commit suicide. The chief of staff then turned to Snow.

Snow, by the way, mangled several run-throughs -- failing to recite the White House talking points on Iraq -- but was given the job anyway, according to Draper.

Now, aside from the fact that it's funny that a RW Bush Administration shill from FOX NEWS couldn't get the White House Iraq talking points straight, I found the Torie Clark line hilarious.

A few things made me giggle at this. First she's been all over TV spouting that piece of crap book (shown above), "Lipstick on a Pig". We'll refrain from making comments about who that title could refer to.

Secondly, she lied for Rumsfeld who was almost as nuts and lost from reality as Bush is.

But ultimately she knew how often Bush lies and how hard it is to keep them straight (see: Tony Snow - Iraq talking points above) and how impossible it is to keep serious press from asking hard questions because you can only answer with complete bullshit so often.

That one would consider suicide over having to professionaly speak for this Administration, speaks volumes about the lies they are telling and how difficult a job it must be to go out and keep a straight face with the press daily when feeding them this garbage.

Of course for right wing ideologues, they think that if they spin the lie long enough it becomes the truth irregardless of facts so maybe that's how Fleischer, McClellan, Snow and now Dana Perino sleep at night.

These people have no conscience to say the things they do on behalf of Bush.

Of course Bush and Cheney have even less conscience which is why they are so dangerous to begin with.

-Rp

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Resigns

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally resigned today. The NY Times, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo News are already reporting it and floating that the Bush Administration's first choice to replace him is "Gut Feeling of a Terrorist Attack" Michael Chertoff.

Yep, the hack in charge of the Department of Homeland Security who hasn't really done a very good job. DHS jobs remain unfilled and DHS employees rank the department as the very worst to work for. Just what we need after how the Department of Justice under Gonzales treated career prosecutors who worked hard for their country but weren't blind Bush loyalists.

It's one Bush crony after another in this Administration.

According to Yahoo, the interim replacement will be another Bush Appointee, Solicitor General Paul Clement. The sad thing there is, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a request to Clement to charge Gonzales with perjury for the lies he told on Capitol Hill under oath. Clement didn't bother to respond.

Gonzales and Bush seemed to not care about the heat from Congress, media and the public before. Why resign now? What changed?

Good question. One can only guess but I doubt it's a fit of conscience. They don't have those.

Let's just hope that the Chertoff speculation is just that. We can all recall his crisis experience with Katrina. He'll be just another Bushbot who will follow the Bush/Cheney doctrine of fucking the Constitution and rule of law at every turn. And remember the AG just got the rights to oversee the wiretapping program.

They want nothing but complete and utter elimination of the Constitution and other branches of government and will not stop until Bush is the unitary executive with full control of everything. Anything less is treason to them. All hail the new Hitler.

-Rp

Sunday Morning Toonage

So much for Turdblossom's Legacy

When Karl Rove resigned last week, the media went back into full Bush ass kissing mode and made the guy out to be some sort of incredible genius. A martyr for the cause. They practically anointed the guy a Saint. It was rather nauseating to watch.

But finally after the Right Wing tidal wave of lies about Rove, people are starting to get to the truth. Who knows if there will be enough of these truth telling articles to overcome the Neo-Con Media Manipulation. Once they decide to deify a Right Wing God, they seem to pretty much get away with all of their spin.

Look at Ronald Reagan. His economic policies set us on a course for immense debt and deep recession. He had very little to do with the fall of Communism, or at least certainly less than the softening of Communist policies by Mikhail Gorbachev and the introduction of American commercialism did but he gets credit almost singlehandedly for the fall of the Soviet Union.

After his death many Americans were treated to a funeral that was presented as the passing of one of the greatest Presidents ever. If this was not a complete stretch of the truth, there never has been one.

Still the media has been an absolute tool for Bush in getting through just about every failed policy he has attempted to launch so when some outlets actually buck up and challenge the Administration, it is noteworthy.

So I wanted to include snippets of an article from the Washington Post and a great commentary by one of our few bastions of honest journalism that remains in our propagandizing media, Bill Moyers. Enjoy.

From WaPo's "Permanent Republican Majority? Think Again." column:

Karl Rove dreamed of creating a "permanent Republican majority." But as President Bush's longtime adviser exits the Washington scene, the political landscape he helped chart is already shifting beneath his feet: The era of conservative values -- a tight-fisted approach toward government aid to the poor, traditional positions on social issues and a belief in a muscular foreign policy -- that emerged in the 1990s is coming to a close.

Disenchanted by the failures of the Bush administration, the public is moving away from its policies, values and ideology. This shift is an echo of the late 1960s, when weariness with the Vietnam War and discord at home resulted in a backlash against Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society, and the late 1970s, when growing discontent over the stumbling performance of Jimmy Carter's administration opened the door to the Reagan revolution.

This time, though, it appears to be the Democrats' turn to reap the benefits.

-snip-

Leading this nationwide left turn are independents, who've always been the pivotal voting bloc. Rove largely de-emphasized those voters while concentrating on the care and feeding of the GOP base.

Didn't work.

Today, independents are much more in sync with Democrats than with Republicans on both domestic and international issues. One example: We see a striking increase in independents' support for more government help for the needy, even if it means going deeper into debt. Fully 57 percent of independents endorse this idea today; in 1994, just 39 percent did.

And Bill Moyers' commentary is below:



More fun:

-"If he's so smart, why did you lose Congress?" - CBS Reporter Bill Plante to Rove at his resignation announcement.

-"Demythologizing Karl Rove" by The DCeiver

-"Post-Rovian Thinking" by Dan Froomkin of The Washington Post

All fun reads and a nice way to finally cut through the media's orgasm over the greatness of Karl Rove.

My final thought on Karl is this. What Karl did best was politicize everything and divide everybody. He appealed to bigots in attacking John McCain in 2000. Appealed to Christians to abandon actual Christian principles and attack gays and liberals. Used Terrorism as a wedge. Helped steal two Presidential elections thanks to faulty machines set up in his favor and electronic ballot machine makers being politically connected to him. He used every office of Government as tools for the Republican party and conceived much of the President's policies in which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were nothing more than 225 year old toilet paper. He leaked a CIA operative's name to Time's Matt Cooper for political revenge.

Most of all because of his election thefts for his guy, our country has never been less respected worldwide, never been in deeper debt, never seen a larger disparity between the rich and the poor, never had more outsourcing of jobs, never seen the housing market collapse this badly, never had less health care and never been less secure. After all we're in a quagmire over there and Bush has had several chances to get Osama Bin Laden and passed.

To say Rove, Bush and Cheney have been an unmitigated disaster the likes our country has never seen before would be a drastic understatement. And yet here we are. With the media in full compliance with the White House spin on a criminal.

Shame on anyone who doesn't think the only place this man should be retiring to should be a prison cell.

-Rp

Miserable Failure: Exhibit B - Rampant Cronyism

The second exhibit in my two part series of why Bush has helped ruin America is his rampant cronyism.

Oh by now, everybody remembers "heckuva job" Mike Brown from the whole Katrina disaster debacle at FEMA.

As it turns out actually this was the tip of the iceberg. Time Magazine reported a fairly extensive list of inexperienced cronies being appointed for political reasons over experience that is beneficial to the post they ended up in. In fact it seems most either had the wrong experience or the worst possible experience for the position they were taking. In other words many worked for the industry giants that these positions were supposed to provide oversight for.

The cronies were part of the Karl Rove political plan to turn every department into another political arm for the GOP and Bush Administration. Every decision was made in a way that would benefit Bushco and their benefactors and the good of the country was never taken into account.

Rove got into some hot water when it was revealed he and Lurita Doan, the head of the General Services Administration, were giving powerpoint presentations to employees on how they could help the GOP politically in 2008. The presentations, illegal to give directly to non-partisan Government employees, detailed targeted races of 2008 and where they would need the most help. He had done so apparently in 2003 right before the Presidential election as well.

The Time link above shows cronyism at some of the most critical positions in government. Sure the positions are not as sexy as Senator or President but they have as much or more impact on our daily lives and someone with high integrity and concern for the public well being needs to be in those positions. High level positions at the Food and Drug Administration, FEMA, Homeland Security, Inspectors General and more were affected.

A new one came to light though. With the Utah mine collapse (and after the West Virginia mine collapse last year) the media seems to have very slowly started to latch onto the real issue here, Mine Safety.

It shows how pathetic the media is that it took this long for this to be the focus of the issue but it finally has.

Kudos must go out to Crooks & Liars, whom I think has taken the lead on covering how this has played out and the ridiculous comments made by an owner of the mine, Robert Murray of Murray Electric Co.

Murray attacked Congress for possible Global Warming legislation somehow hindering his company. Sounds like a brilliant gameplan to me. Miners get trapped, people are incredibly worried about them. Let's talk about Global Warming Legislation is the reason why they are trapped there. Or something of that sort. WTF?!?!

Anyway the big issue is Mine Safety. After the West Virginia mine collapse, Bush sent a nomination to Congress for a new head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Even with GOP control, they sent the nomination back to Bush rejected twice.

So what did Bush do? What he usually does. Sidesteps the process and goes around Congress for a Recess Appointment.

Congress was quite unhappy about this. Some of Bush's most ardent, lap dog supporters like Rick Santorum expressed public disappointment with the move.

Why was Congress so upset about this Crony appointment?

Meet Richard Stickler, new head of MSHA and former longtime Coal executive.

Just like every other appointment Bush makes, he puts industry insiders in charge of oversight.

This administration is Corporate rule run amok. They are proof of the worst cases of Capitalism gone bad. While nobody thinks Communism is a better alternative (especially any government made of authoritarian rule), and Socialism needs a lot of work, these people are proof of the pitfalls of the form of financial system we have become too reliant on to police itself.

Corporations should not be trusted with policing themselves and CEOs should not be trusted to do what's best for anyone but themselves.

Maybe that's the problem with Bush and his friends. They are all former CEOs who don't care about the health of the country as much as they really didn't give a shit about the health of the companies they ran. They cared about short term profitability so they could take home gigantic salaries and bonuses. When the company was on the verge of collapse, they cash in their chips and get out leaving the workers and common investors to die a financial death.

That seems to be what they are doing with America. They put themselves in positions of power where their private investments can increase exponentially in value. Then as they have milked the US Budget and every available means to fatten their personal portfolio's worth, they bail on the country leaving Democrats and any other sucker who really cares about the country to clean up the mess.

When it comes to any form of safety nets for workers, seniors, the poor, the middle class, residents of places hit by natural disasters, veterans, tax payers, etc. they don't care about anything other than how they can profit. Profit by dismantling those safety nets. Profit off how they can screw those people over.

Then they have the gall to turn around, cut taxes for the rich and propose even deeper corporate tax rate cuts.

They profit while we suffer. What wonderful people they are.

-Rp

Miserable Failure: Exhibit A - The Economy/Housing Market Collapse

I could come up with more exhibits than the alphabet but I figure two will be good enough for the weekend. So Exhibit A will revolve around the housing market bubble bursting causing the economy to hint towards a collapse...

In fact you can easily provide proof enough to blame him for ignoring prominent investment firm heads and with a few links, as we will provide here, their credibility in the whole, "Nobody ever saw it coming" defense that they used after 9/11, their claims of WMDs in Iraq and the levees collapsing during Katrina all exploded in their face.

Truth was they were warned on each if those impending disasters and just like in every one of those other cases they chose to ignore critics of their economic policies because after all they knew better didn't they?

So way back in 2004 when the head of Morgan Stanley and Fidelity Stephen Roach came out and said we have a "one-in-10 chance of avoiding economic Armageddon", that should have sounded an alarm. He later wrote what would need to happen to avoid such an economic collapse in the NY Times but it was clear that we were on the verge of a major economy crash if no changes were made. Of course with this 'stay the course' administration, none were.

The above information was discussed in an interesting take by Patrick Doherty on TomPaine.com from April 19, 2004:

In the 1980s, Reagan’s chief budget adviser, David Stockman, admitted that it was White House policy to expand the federal deficits in order to squeeze out social entitlement spending. The Bush administration has taken that tactic one step further, explained by the pre-eminent Republican operative Grover Norquist’s famous goal, “to get government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

And they have already declared their intentions to do just that. The Bush administration has identified its top three legislative priorities in the next term, and none of them involves reducing American consumption and increasing American savings. Instead, their priorities represent the final operations of the battle started in 1964: tort reform, Social Security reform and tax reform. Tort reform to curtail consumer protections. Social Security reform to force every working American to buy risk-filled investment accounts. Tax reform to make taxation fully regressive, placing the highest burden on the lowest earners through either a flat tax or a value-added tax.

Given our severe account imbalances, this second-term agenda of the Bush administration will signal to our global creditors that we are not serious about our debts. That will make dollar-denominated securities worthless and the dollar will cease to be the global currency, as America will no longer be the mass market of last resort. At some point, OPEC will have to switch to a new currency—probably Euros—and the price of oil for Americans will rise significantly as the dollar continues to fall. As Roach’s collapsing stock market ushers in a recession, the inevitable job losses will pop the housing bubble across the country. Americans, with trillions of dollars of consumer debt leveraged on the value of their homes, will find that their futures will have disappeared. Hard-earned home equity will be gutted and stock values will have crashed. Unemployment will be widespread.

Sound familiar? The warning signs were out there at least that far back but there was no correction made by the White House, no change once soever. They plowed forward with their agenda.

Many felt that the 2004 election was won, in part, due to the false sense of security many Americans felt with the economy. An economy built around the housing market. While people were losing their manufacturing jobs but getting back lesser paying substitute jobs through temp agencies/staffing companies, the Bush Administration was trying to tout how their economy actually created jobs. The lesser paying jobs meant a shrinking middle class.

Americans now were relying on credit more than ever before and doing so they were buying homes based on creative mortgage arrangements, mostly gimmicked loans with adjustable mortgage rates. Those mortgage rates were tied to the federal interest rates which were very low during the early part of the decade. People overspent their means, hoping that the rates would remain low as this economy stayed strong, or so the Bush Administration kept telling them.

I did discuss this before but I want to point it out again because our economy is on the verge of tanking and when Democrats were decrying the policies of this Administration before the 2004 election, they were ignored and dismissed. The economy seemed to upturn before the election, or at least unemployment rates did. This made the election hedge on the Iraq War, which already a quagmire, was still early enough for many to want to give Bush another chance at correction.

Certainly there is a ton of blame to go around. Blame the lenders who irresponsibly pushed loans that had "default" written all over them. Blame the Media for not covering the issue truthfully or the Chairmen at the Fed for not acknowledging the certain collapse responsibly.

I blame Bush. The saying goes, the buck stops here. Even with every warning in the world, he has never foreseen anything correctly. I don't expect the President to be a psychic but they need to at least have some idea of what is coming on something. This guy was wrong by ignoring 9/11 intelligence, wrong on the consequences of invading Iraq, wrong on how to deal with Katrina and now he was warned and is very wrong on the economy.

The Democrats, finally in some sort of position to do something about this mess, are trying to present correction options. Bush will have none of that.

From the US News & World Report:

The Washington Post notes that "despite mounting concern over the downturn in the housing market," Bush "dismissed proposals advanced by prominent Democrats to grant government-chartered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac more freedom to buy mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. And he ruled out any taxpayer bailout of lenders threatened by the subprime home-loan crisis." The Wall Street Journal says the President "shrugged off concerns about stock-market turmoil, saying Wall Street is adjusting to a flood of liquidity and is beginning to 'readjust its assessment of risk.'" He also "dismissed recent polls showing that US citizens are feeling sour about the economy. ... He said he understands 'there's disquiet out there' but attributed much of the economic anxiety to concerns about the war in Iraq. '"I happen to believe the war has clouded a lot of peoples' sense of optimism.'"

Yeah your fuckup in Iraq is why people are scared out of their minds about losing their homes and a market collapse. It's all pessimism, see?

Oh wait, the fucking Federal Reserve admitted there is market turmoil. Better give them the memo asshole...

From the Washington Post:

The Federal Reserve cut a key interest rate yesterday, trying to ease a worldwide credit crunch, and said for the first time that it viewed turmoil in financial markets as a major risk to the U.S. economy.

Once again, Bush's policies have screwed things up and he has found yet another way to possibly ruin America. Although that's what they wanted didn't they?

They're not just drowning government in a bathtub, they're drowning the American people with them.

-Rp

The War Time President

Bush has often declared himself a "Wartime President". He seemed to do it with glee in a private interview with Tim Russert for Meet the Press a few years back. As ironic as it is for someone who went AWOL from their National Guard duty to now be Commander in Chief and declaring wars, he seems eager to not only continue his current wars but start new ones before he leaves.

General Petraeus is getting ready to give Congress that September report on Iraq as we have reported here several times. The media is gearing up for it by discussing how it might involve troop withdrawals from Iraq. It will be, as expected, positive media for Bush who will look like he's pulling some troops out and not being the complete stubborn prick he has been otherwise. The problem with this is the media again has no idea what they are talking about as troop rotations would require that some troops be redeployed or withdrawn anyway.

As I have said before, anything Petraeus says should be immediately dismissed. Republicans and Neo-Cons (like the World's Biggest Idiot, William Kristol on this The Daily Show appearance this week) try to play him off as some independent, non-partisan voice. As we know from my previous postings that is simply not true.

Not to mention everyone is waiting on his report to Congress as if whatever he says is what we need to act on. This would be a foolish decision for any Democrat in Congress to make especially now knowing that the White House is actually writing his report.

Yes, they've now admitted what I have been saying all along!

From the LA Times:

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.

Well that pretty much sums up how truthful that report will be. Petraeus himself earlier this year slipped up and said the surge didn't stem the violence in Baghdad. Must have been a fleeting bout of conscience I guess.

As if that were not enough for Mr. Wartime President, his Vice-President Dick Cheney is urging for strikes on Iran. These people are unbelievable.

What I'd like to note here is that their flawed (as usual) premise is that the upswing in violence during the surge is somehow all Iran's fault and that all the Shiites that are fighting US forces in the surge are connected to Iran in some way.

Strange how they were surpressing the actual numbers of casualties by excluding deaths by bombing originally in this surge but are now using those numbers to justify a war with Iran.

The worst part is the lack of logic that goes into this explanation. Our surge, by it's very nature, is meant to induce more violence. We're going in and forcing more conflict with al-Sadr's Shiite sect and thus the violence between US Forces and Shiites has risen. It likely has little to do with Iranian influence as much as it does with Iraqi Shiites just wanting to force us out of their homeland.

From the Asia Times:

When a top US commander in Iraq reported last week that attacks by Shi'ite militias with links to Iran had risen to 73% of all July attacks that had killed or wounded US forces in Baghdad, he claimed it was because of an effort by Iran to oust the United States from Iraq, referring to "intelligence reports" of a "surge" in Iranian assistance.

But the obvious reason for the rise in Shi'ite-related US casualties - ignored in US media coverage of Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno's charge - is that the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr was defending itself against a rising tempo of attacks by US forces at the same time attacks by al-Qaeda forces had fallen.

-snip-

Odierno claimed intelligence reports supported his contention of an Iranian effort to influence public perceptions of the "surge" strategy. "They're sending more money in, they're training more individuals and they're sending more weapons in."

He repeated the charge in an interview with Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times published on its front page on August 8 under the headline "US says Iran-supplied bomb is killing more troops in Iraq". In that interview, he declared of Iran, "I think they want to influence the decision potentially coming up in September."

What Odierno framed in terms of an Iranian policy, however, can be explained much more simply by the fact that the US military mounted more operations on Muqtada's Mahdi Army during the spring and summer.

Sounds like they're framing the Iranians to force a war to me. Not all that differently than how they framed Saddam for 9/11 so they could go to war with Iraq.

What goes through the minds of these people? Our President is supposed to keep us safe no matter what. Peace is always supposed to be the option and war is supposed to be a reluctant, last ditch effort made in self defense. Your job as President is to keep us OUT of wars. In doing so your job REQUIRES you to use diplomacy, even with those who have not traditionally been our allies or that completely agree with us. You use law enforcement here and abroad (with the help of partner countries) to capture terrorist suspects before they strike. You strengthen our own country's security at airports, nuclear facilities and ports. You make tactical strikes where you need to but with the cooperation of leadership in that country to have help in flushing out the enemy. But you DO NOT STRIKE PRE-EMPTIVELY JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT TO. That is NOT the President's job. Afghanistan you can make a strong case for after 9/11 but Iraq is absolutely wrong and Iran would be as well.

Not to mention our military is stretched beyond their limits. It's to the point where they'll accept anybody. They lowered standards and missed recruitment goals in 2005. They lowered them further and barely reached recruitment goals in 2006.

Much of the money we're sending to the Pentagon to handle this war has gone to overpay contractors like Blackwater, whose mercenaries go to Iraq with no United States military jurisdiction and kill at will. It's become a nightmare and they're killing our troops now... while we pay them!

So back to recruiters, they'll accept anybody right? Well almost anybody. Remember that Max Blumenthal video we posted about drafting College Republicans? Well apparently on townhall.com a College Republican wrote an editorial trashing him for it and proved why those cowardly jerks who used every cheap health excuse in the book, REALLY couldn't serve.

At the July 2007 National College Republican Committee Convention, whining wannabe journalist Max Blumenthal asked attendees why they weren’t fighting in Iraq. The college kids in his amateur ambush video fumbled with their words and gave medical excuses like asthma and bad knees. They were young, nervous and in front of a jerk holding a camera. Guilt isn’t necessary. The reality is that most of us wouldn’t make the cut.

There you have it. College Republicans are physically and mentally inferior to high school dropouts, felons, racists, convicts, and illegal immigrants and cannot join the military. They said it, not me.

That being said, if that is the case, none of them should then ever be considered qualified to be elected for a public office. After all they're too dumb to pass the military recruitment exams, do we really want them working on complex budget issues, passing laws, or worse dealing with complicated policy negotiations? Please. Time to treat this bunch of fools worse than drop outs are treated. At least the drop outs have the courage to stand and fight for their country, unlike these chickenshits who just call for war while hiding behind their parents' money.

-Rp