take back America from the jerks

...the jerks include bankers.

This is a really entertaining and informative animated film about where money comes from.

Banks conjure money. The only thing that they have of actual value is your signed promise to pay a loan back with interest. that document can be traded like money. So debt creates wealth. Banks are allowed to create as much money as is borrowed from them.

from a friend:

V.I.? Why, victory in Iraq, of course. It was four years ago today that our glorious and divinely anointed president landed on the deck of a U.S. Aircraft carrier, decked out in his finest Jet Fighter Pilot costu…er…uniform and proclaimed these immortal words under a “Mission Accomplished!” banner

“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.”

Pretty stirring stuff, I think you’ll agree. Why was it only a quick 1461 days ago that the war in Iraq ended. And of course since then, our troops have been showered with flowers and greeted as liberators as President Bush’s neo-conservative oracles had foretold. It would really be a mess if 3,300 Americans and no one really knows how many Iraqis had been killed in a pointless and illegal war. Why, you might even read about that in the paper.

But let us not dwell on unpleasant what-if’s. Let’s just fire up the grills, open up a a case of Bud Light, read some scripture and thank Jesus for this great and not-at-all messy or quagmire like victory for us, God’s favorite country.

Mission Accomplished, everybody

The failure of neocon policy was not due to flaws in neocon policy. It was White House incompetence in the execution. Say the Neocons.

‘Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.” Now he says, “I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.”’

There are many excuses, and one of the most bizarre for the royal f#ckup in Iraq (no mention of the one in Afghanistan? or is that not yet admitted?) comes from a Michael Ledeen of the American Enterpise Institute, who blames the “women who love the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes.”

Its interesting that most of the poeple interviewed pushed the blame onto the core of the Bush Admin. It was the unfathomable incompetance of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, who failed to keep with the program. They mouthed the rhetoric, but they didnt believe it. Despite many of the interviewed neocons knowing the players before, working with them before, and holding senior positions in the Bush administration, they cant accept blame.

Riiiight. Nothing to do with you and your other PNAC cronies. nothing to do with a flawed ideology that you authored or supported. Nothing to do with a flawed premise for war. Nothing to do with any of it. Not your fault. huh.

Bastards. Its nice to hear some little scraps of remorse, though, even if off focus. The embarassment should be their arrogant, dangerous, xenophobic, naive belief in America’s global superiority in all things (moral, cultural, economic, as well as military spending). Not simply overestimating Bush.

Try again, guys. The Hatter, at least, says “We’re all mad here”.

vote on November 7th.

The “commander in chief” is actually not above the law.

By declaring Bush’s position unconstitutional, the court in effect judged his concept of his presidency and his methods in his “global war on terror” illegitimate. In his majority opinion, Justice John Paul Steven’s strategic capitalization emphasized the larger point: “The Executive,” he wrote, “is bound to comply with the Rule of Law.”

On war crimes in the LA Times

Common Article 3 forbids “cruel treatment and torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” The provision’s language is sweeping enough to prohibit many of the interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration.
[snip]
Under federal criminal law, anyone who “commits a war crime … shall be fined … or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.” And a war crime is defined as “any conduct … which constitutes a violation of Common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva.” In other words, with the Hamdan decision, U.S. officials found to be responsible for subjecting war on terror detainees to torture, cruel treatment or other “outrages upon personal dignity” could face prison or even the death penalty.

Of course, it would be nice if we could have genuine investigations with genuinely concerned legal officials with genuine concern for justice the placation of the corporatist powers.

Here’s to hope.

Under the Clinton Administration, “The most dramatic outcome was the reversal of the Reagan-era Supply Side deficits. Clinton’s Demand Side policies not only paid down the Reagan/Bush deficits, they produced the first budgetary surpluses since 1969. By the time Clinton left office, the government was running surpluses of almost $140 billion per year. This is what he turned over to George W. Bush in January of 2001.”

“Bush, of course, returned to the Supply Side policies of Reagan and his father. He lowered taxes on the very rich — his “base” as he calls them. His $1.6 trillion in tax cuts give 45% of the benefits to the top 1% of the population. It is classic Supply Side economics. What happened?”

find out »

“There is something absurd and inherently false about one country trying to impose its system of government or its economic institutions on another. Such an enterprise amounts to a dictionary definition of imperialism. When what’s at issue is “democracy,” you have the fallacy of using the end to justify the means (making war on those to be democratized), and in the process the leaders of the missionary country are invariably infected with the sins of hubris, racism, and arrogance.”

read more »

“Have you noticed that the majority doesn’t rule anymore? No generation of Americans has been as thoroughly polled as this one, yet our government frequently ignores the will of the people and pursues some other agenda instead.”

Read more, if you love America and care about democracy.

This is copied from a list I am on. Just in case you missed out on some of the more subtle sub-texts and clues to the faithful…

Dictionary of Republicanisms:

Bipartisanship,n.
1. When conservative Republicans work with moderate Republicans to pass legislation that Democrats hate.

Compassionate Conservatism,n.
1. Republican pre-election concern for the disadvantaged
2. (a) I got mine; (b) I got yours too
3. Poignant concern for the very wealthy

Democracy,n.
1. A product so extensively exported that the domestic supply is depleted.
2. When they vote for us; see TYRANNY: When they vote for someone else

Ending Tyranny,catchphr.
1. Bombing followed by military occupation

Energy Independence,n.
1. The Yucca Mountain renovation program
2. The Caribou witness relocation program

Freedom,n.
1. God-given right of every American to agree with Bush and his policies
2. What Arabs want but can’t achieve on their own without Western military intervention; it bears a striking resemblance to chaos

Free Markets,n.
Halliburton no-bid contracts at taxpayer expense

Frivolous Lawsuits,n.
Those filed against corporations that donate heavily to the GOP

Growth,n.
1. The justification for tax cuts for the rich.
2. What happens to the national debt when Republicans cut taxes on the rich

Health Savings Accounts,n.
1. Another tax shelter for the healthy and the wealthy
2. Investment capital for banks

Honesty,n.
Lies told in simple declarative sentences—e.g., “Freedom is on the march.”

Job Growth,n.
Increased number of jobs an American has to take after losing earlier high-paying job

Medicare Prescription Drug Bill,n.
No Drug Company Left Behind

No Child Left Behind,riff.
There are always jobs in the military

Nonpartisan,n.
Member of good standing in the Federalist Society

Personal Responsibility,n.
1. Poor people trying to support their families on $5.75 an hour.
2. Rich people changing the tax code so their children never have to work

Reform,v.
To end all entitlements

Staying the Course,v.
Saying and doing the same stupid thing over and over, regardless of the result

Support the Military,v.
To praise Bush when he sends our young men and women off to die for a lie without proper body armor

before its trashed completely!!

Did you know that 1 in 6 American women has so much mercury in her womb that the child she carries is at risk of a whole host of nasty afflictions, including blindness and mental retardation?

Did you know that all fish in 19 states are now unsafe to eat because of mercury contamination and at least some fish in 48 states are unsafe?

Oh, you might say, that has been going on for years. Its the previous generation’s fault. People polluted under Clinton too, you idiot. Well yes. BUT

one of the first things that Bush did when he got into office was dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency’s mercury emissions rules. The shame is that we know how to clean it up, and its not too expensive (considering the cost if we don’t), but private profit from public commons is too tempting for the Bushies and their friends.

A country’s richness is in its environment too, everyone lives in it, and its a complicated system where everything has consequences. wealth should not just measured fiscally. People forget. No, this isn’t just some hippy claptrap.

Thanks to the systematic dismantling of the environmental requlations, Superfund sites do not get cleaned up. SUVs get more inefficient and polluting. More companies can dump their toxic waste into our rivers, the ground and the air with impunity. They are poisoning us, while some b@stards get rich, because they are able to externalize the costs of cleaning up their own mess. And we get to be poisoned for generations. And we are still expected to pay our own medical bills, for illnesses caused by their damn waste.

Uncontrolled “capitalism” do not engender companies to make the best decisions about long term environmental and population health. Corporations do not police themselves for public good. Corporations are incorporated to make money – to look after the interests of the company and the stockholders. The Government is SUPPOSED to provide a balance, making sure that the corporations are chasing the profit responsibly, and don’t f*ck everyone and everything up.

This administration is big, wasteful, destructive, expensive, and has no respect for us, the people.

Just look how long it took to get the president to give even a speech in New Orleans, after one of the biggest natural/unnatural disasters to hit America in recent years (and there was warning).

Yet he cut short a holiday earlier this year to fly across the country in his Air Force 1 jet (costs 1 Million dollars every time it takes off, by the way), to try to keep a clinically brain-dead woman hooked up to a feeding tube.

I am not being partisan here. This is beyond politics. These people are truly malevolent and malicious. They don’t care about life – not yours, nor mine, nor America’s, nor the planet’s.