Friday, November 07, 2008

The 'Conspiracy of Rich Men' Who Pulled Off 911 and Other GOP Atrocities

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

That the Bush administration would conspire with 'rich men' in order to perpetrate the capital crime of aggressive war and mass murder is nothing new. Rome attacked and invaded Dacia for its gold. The 'empire' itself was sold by the Praetorian Guard to the Patrician Didius Julianus for Greek Drachmas --not worthless Roman sesterces. Is it so unusual that a bankrupt American empire would attack and invade Iraq for its oil? Simply --that is what happened!
'Rich men' have always conspired to acquire and maintain their estates by all means legal and 'ill'. Iraq was attacked because it had oil and Bush's co-conspirators wanted it. In the second week of Bush's illegal occupancy of the White House, Dick Cheney's 'Energy Task Force' met to carve up the oil fields of Iraq. The stated objective was to "develop a national energy policy designed to help the private sector, state and local governments, promote dependable, affordable, and environmentally sound production and distribution of energy for the future." Fancy words for 'oil theft' on a scale not imagined since Rome and, later, the Third Reich.
Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, obtained a batch of task force-related Commerce Department papers that included a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, terminals and pipelines as well as a list entitled "Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts."
The papers also included a detailed map of oil fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emirates and a list of oil and gas development projects in those two countries.
The papers were dated early March 2001, about two months before the Cheney energy task force completed and announced its report on the administration's energy needs and future energy agenda.
Judicial Watch obtained the papers as part of a lawsuit by it and the Sierra Club to open to the public information used by the task force in developing President Bush's energy plan.
Tom Fitton, the group's president, said he had no way to guess what interest the task force had in the information, but "it shows why it is important that we learn what was going on in the task force."
Opponents of the war are going to point to the documents as evidence that oil was on the minds of the Bush administration in the run-up to the war in Iraq," said Fitton. "Supporters will say they were only evaluating oil reserves in the Mideast, and the likelihood of future oil production."
The task force report was released in May 2001. In it, a chapter titled "Strengthening Global Alliances" calls the Middle East "central to world oil security" and urges support for initiatives by the region's oil producers to open their energy sectors to foreign investment. The chapter does not mention Iraq, which has the world's second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.
-- H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press, Cheney Task Force Eyed on Iraq Oil
The 'oil fields' of Iraq were 'carved up' long before Bush would have the 'pretext' needed to attack, invade, and divide the spoils of war. I propose that Bush be allowed to refute that charge at a trial in which he is charged with numerous crimes including mass murder, high treason, aggressive war and common theft! The 'official conspiracy theory of 911' does not help his case. Nothing Bush has said about 911 is true and he has actively sought to block every effort to learn the truth. None of the so-called 19 'Arabs' could pilot aircraft of any type. None of them could have pulled off the crime of 911. 911 was an inside job, Bush's 'Reichstag Fire'.

The Nazis had gone back to the well.

The FBI has stated that there is no hard evidence to connect Bin Laden with 911. The 'official' conspiracy theory of 911 is an absurd and ridiculous fabrication believed only by idiots. It is a bullshit cover story designed to shock, awe and confuse with its sheer audacity and vainglorious hubris. Why are we surprised? Every criminal lies about his crime. Every criminal thinks he will get away with it. Every criminal hides the truth.

Every criminal has a cover story. 911 is Bush's. There is historical precedent for Dick Cheney's meeting with Bush's financial support. A good description of that precedent is found in the work of St. Thomas More who wrote of what he called a 'conspiracy of rich men'. More's description of a 'conspiracy of rich men' presages Hitler's infamous meeting in which he 'closed' a deal with I.G. Farben, Thyssen, Krupp et al. Hitler would wage wars from which his sponsors would benefit if they would 'pony up', if they would finance and support his rise to dictatorship.
For the first time—in the last relatively free election Germany was to have—the Nazi Party now could employ all the vast resources of the government to win votes. Goebbels was jubilant. "Now it will be easy," he wrote in his diary on February 3, "to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State.
Radio and press are at our disposal.
We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda.
[note: this is clearly a reference to a 'planned' Reichstag Fire, Hitlers' 911!]
And this time, naturally, there is no lack of money."(2)
The big businessmen, pleased with the new government that was going to put the organized workers in their place and leave management to run its business as it wished, were asked to cough up. This they agreed to do at a meeting on February 20 at Goering's Reichstag President's Palace, at which Dr. Schacht acted as host and Goering and Hitler laid down the line to a couple of dozen of Germany's leading magnates, including Krupp von Bohlen, who had become an enthusiastic Nazi overnight, Bosch and Schnitzler of I. G. Farben, and Voegler, head of the United Steel Works. The record of this secret meeting has been preserved.
Hitler began a long speech with a sop to the industrialists. "Private enterprise," he said, "cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality ... All the worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the chosen . . . We must not forget that all the benefits of culture must be introduced more or less with an iron fist." He promised the businessmen that he would "eliminate" the Marxists and restore the Wehrmacht (the latter was of special interest to such industries as Krupp, United Steel and I. G. Farben, which stood to gain the most from rearmament).
"Now we stand before the last election," Hitler concluded, and he promised his listeners that "regardless of the outcome, there will be no retreat." If he did not win, he would stay in power "by other means . . . with other weapons." Goering, talking more to the immediate point, stressed the necessity of "financial sacrifices" which "surely would be much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March fifth will surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years."
All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament. Krupp, the munitions king, who, according to Thyssen, had urged Hindenburg on January 29 not to appoint Hitler, jumped up and expressed to the Chancellor the "gratitude" of the businessmen "for having given us such a clear picture." Dr. Schacht then passed the hat. "I collected three million marks," he recalled at Nuremberg.(3)
--William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Nazification of Germany: 1933–34
Hitler may have begun his war on the cheap. Nazis are said to have paid 'subsistence wages' for big projects --the autobahn, new public buildings, the grand visions of Albert Speer, most which were never realized. Much is made of the money borrowed from Swiss banking houses. It is said that the Wehrmacht was but a shell despite its reputation. Panzer divisions were mechanized, the infantry walked. But, if we are to believe the memoirs of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's money problems had been solved by his industrial and American financiers.

It was Krupp who told the meeting: "Pony up!", pledging himself a million marks to prime the pump. American industrialists --led by Henry Ford --did their part for the Nazi cause. [See: Henry Ford and the Nazis; Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler; Hitler and the rise of the Nazis] By July 1942 'incriminating information' had filtered back to Washington from Ford of France; it was all about Ford's active and financial support for Herr Hitler's war of aggression against the nations of Europe.

Not surprisingly, the information was buried, as Fox et al bury anti-Bush information today.
It is only those who benefit most from 'conspiracies' who have an inherent bias against them. Those who benefit from 'conspiracy' have vested interests in discounting them. 'Conspiracies' are how important crimes are committed. No one acting alone is capable of achieving much --certainly one person cannot wage 'aggressive war' or even significant acts of terrorism.

Certainly --the crimes of 911 were the work of a conspiracy whether the conspiracy was conceived and directed by Bushco or other terrorists. Acts which enrich a group are called 'free enterprise' if legal, 'conspiracies' if illegal. If 'conspiracies' did not exist, then why has the US Supreme Court handed down so many cases defining them and applying to them the laws of these United States? And why are there so many US laws having to do with 'conspiracies' if 'conspiracies' did not exist?
I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.
They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely, without fear of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices, when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed for the commonwealth’s sake, that is to say for the wealth also of the poor people, then they be made laws.
But these most wicked and vicious men, when they have by their insatiable covetousness divided among themselves all those things, which would have sufficed all men, yet how far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth? Out of the which, in that all the desire of money with the use of thereof is utterly secluded and banished, how great a heap of cares is cut away! How great an occasion of wickedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots!
--Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia
The fascist domination of American life and debate is possible because people have 'bought into' the pernicious notion of 'corporate personhood'. This notion facilitates More's 'conspiracy of rich men'. Mere legal abstractions are absurdly accorded rights that, by right, belong only to real, living, flesh and blood people. Corporations are given license to lie about misdeeds, incompetence and corporate criminality, literally, a 'conspiracy of rich men!

I submit that with the full knowledge and consent of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney met and conspired with GOP financial backers in the oil industry just as Hitler conspired with Krupp, Thyssen and I.G. Farben. It was at that meeting that the oil fields of Iraq were carved up like 'booty'. Just as Hitler made promises to Thyssen, Krupp and I.G. Farben, the Bush/Cheney cabal of traitors and mass murderers made promises to Exxon-Mobil et al.

There is sufficient probable cause to convene a federal grand jury to investigate charges that Bush and Cheney conspired with their corporate backers to commit the crimes of mass murder, aggressive war, torture and the grand theft of the natural resources of a sovereign nation.
Many of these crimes are punishable by death under US law.
(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title 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.
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441
§ 2441. War crimes
George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice wore out the phrase: "No one could have foreseen (fill in your favorite atrocity here!)! For Bush and Condo it was the cop out, a cover up of crimes about which the pair of them not only foresaw but planned and hoped to get away with.

As a result of their conspiracies of and for 'rich men', the US is plunged into a new dark age which few foresaw just eight years ago when Bill Clinton left to his GOP successors and criminals the longest-ever period of sustained growth of the

American economy, one of the highest employment rates in the 20th century, a balanced budget, a federal surplus and improving educational opportunities.

Bush would be well-advised to leave the White House quietly at midnight unannounced. If God did not damn America, Bush worked mightily to destroy it. It must be hoped that Barack Obama can salvage what little is left of civility and hope.
Addendum: Following is a comment that was posted on my preceding article:
See where the Halliburton connection comes into play as payola to the Bush overlords for Cheney taking one for the team...namely acquiring Dresser Industries and its asbestos liabilities - the biggest of which were the Twin Towers. Halliburton received the no-bid Iraq contracts as quid-pro-quo for taking the asbestos liability hit.
Read all about it here:
Karl Rove is the single most destructive force in the US Government...the enabler of the entire evil scheme...

THE ARCHITECT.


The scheme includes 9/11 as the essential pretext. "9/11" ... how clever, Karl! Only someone with American sensibilities would select the number we have all memorized to call in the event of life threatening emergency as the date for this evil....

KARL ROVE.

The war plan to invade Iraq was written BEFORE 9/11. The Secret Energy Task Force meetings that Cheney had with Ken Lay and the other OIL HOGS during which they all decided how to divide up the oil fields of the Middle East...all of that was BEFORE 9/11.

Now you see why Cheney insisted the substance of those talks remain SECRET.

All of their schemes and conspiracies REQUIRED 9/11 as the essential trigger.

Cheney outsourced the implementation of the FALSE FLAG OPERATION to Mossad...the FALSE FLAG experts. This explains why over 200 Mossad agents were operating in the United States prior to 9/11. This explains why five of them were arrested, having been observed filming the planes hitting the towers and their subsequent collapse - celebrating our worst nightmare.

9/11 was not a bad day for those involved in the Conspiracy. It was their shining moment...their PRETEXT.

One of them washed out...couldn't cope with the guilt. Ari Fleisher had to be replaced, and disappeared. Not dead, but out of sight.

The outing of Plame was designed to destroy the best WMD intelligence the US had at its disposal regarding Iraq. Plame knew for a FACT that Iraq had no WMD. It was HER JOB to know. Therefore Rove perceived Plame (the truth) as his WORST ENEMY, and conceived of a plan to silence her. Rove is the individual who insisted that Wilson be sent to Niger.
Karl Rove is not even a good little Nazi. A GOOD Nazi would have already done the honorable thing! A 'good' Nazi would have already shot himself!

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Thursday, November 06, 2008

Can We Please Impeach George W. Bush for Mass Murder and High Treason Now?

Failing to impeach George W. Bush and his gang of crooks, mass murderers, torturers and 40 thieves is the moral equivalent of dismissing charges against Hermann Goring, Rudolf Hess, Alfred Jodl and other Nazis most of whom hanged following justice at Nuremberg.

The election is over. There is no political downside to impeaching Bush and bringing charges against the entire cabal of traitors and cut throats.

To Nancy Pelosi I say: Bush is worth nothing else BUT impeachment! He is certainly not worth 'not impeaching'; he is not worth keeping! He is of no worth to the government, the nation, the world!

Impeaching this sorry waste of human DNA is, rather, a moral imperative if the rule of law is to mean anything in a post-Bush world. The 'Judgment at Nuremberg' should have been the lasting legacy that might without right is wrong and that the rule of law applies as well to those those who make the laws! Impeachment is, therefore, essential if the US is to maintain or re-establish whatever moral authority it may have exerted in the world.

Impeachment is not merely the airing of Bush's dirty laundry in the media. It will identify the many subversions of 'law' that must be identified before they can righted and prevented.

Impeachment might prevent the psychos in the White House from starting WWIII in Bush's final twelve weeks in the White House! The world would have been been better off if Hitler had been similarly distracted before escaping to the bunker. Today --the world will be better and American credibility will be enhanced when it is demonstrated that, in America, there are no exceptions of privilege.

I believe George W. Bush to be a hardened war criminal, mass murderer, torturer, usurper, and liar, but let that fact be demonstrated legally in a courtroom authorized to pass the appropriate sentences. I might opine that the evidence is overwhelming but what matters is getting that evidence before a court or the Senate sitting as judge and jury. What matter is a bona fide verdict from a court in which has been made the voluminous case against him.

Co-defendants must include Dick 'shoot yer friend in the face' Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who gave the game away by referring to the 'missile that hit this [Pentagon] Building.' Who could have mistaken a 757 for a missile? It must be remembered that criminals --especially those approaching senility --often tell the truth inadvertently. In fact --the destruction of the Pentagon by 'missile' is entirely consistent with the known facts of the case. NTSB data has proven conclusively that Flight 77 could not have struck the Pentagon that fateful day.

Pelosi may protest that there is insufficient evidence against Bush with regard to 911! I disagree! There is enough probable in the public record to convene a federal grand jury with the power to subpoena anyone in Bush's gang. An investigation begun upon that 'probable cause' will yield a case at least as voluminous as the case made against Nazis at Nuremberg. To paraphrase the war criminal Don Rumsfeld: "you go to impeachment with the case you've got, not the case you would like to get!" It will fall to a 'special prosecutor' and his/her team to make 'the case you've got' the one needed to ensure that justice will be served.

That case is this:
  1. Bush lied to the people of the US in order to launch an illegal, pre-emptive, aggressive attack and invasion of a sovereign nation: Iraq. This act of naked aggression violate US Codes and numerous international laws, principles and/or conventions to which the US is bound by treaty and US criminal codes which specifity the death penalty for those crimes that result in death. [See: US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441].
  2. This administration's deliberate exposure of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative.[See: Scott McClellan Dismantles Cheney’s Plame Firewall]
  3. A program in which citizens of the US were --without warrants or valid court orders --spied upon and in numerous other ways deprived and denied their rights of privacy and Due Process of Law!
  4. The illegal detention of Prisoners Of War without due process, in direct violation of international law. The condoning of torture, in direct violation of international law. [See: Extraordinary Rendition: International Law and the Prohibition of Torture] These are crimes to which Bush confessed publically!
Impeachment may be 'off the table' but not because there is no evidence! There is evidence not just against Bush but against the board chairs and high execs of some of the nation's biggest corporations --Unocal, Enron, Halliburton, Bechtel and several others. These people have the money power it takes to shut down investigations before they morph into criminal indictments and eventually guilty verdicts with noose potential.

The power forces conspired with 'Dark Side' Dick Cheney who most probably promised them a 'little war' which facilitate the CENTGAS pipeline across Afhanistan to the gulf. [See: Meeting of Energy Task Force; US says Halliburton Deal Includes Operating Iraq Oil Fields; ] That was in March of 2001. The meeting of this 'energy task force' included the maps of Iraq 'oil fields' that would be seized. The probable cause to begin the investigation, to convene the federal grand jury, to issue the subponas is there in spades. It is time to depose these criminals before the federal grand jury that will return indictments against the guilty CEOs, Cheney and George W. Bush. This is not mere bribery, fraud and/or collusion. This is nothing less than a conspiracy of 'rich men' to commit mass murder, mass murder itself and high treason!
...when I consider and weigh in my mind all these commonwealths, which nowadays anywhere do flourish, so God help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.
They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely, without fear of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices, when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed for the commonwealth’s sake, that is to say for the wealth also of the poor people, then they be made laws.

But these most wicked and vicious men, when they have by their insatiable covetousness divided among themselves all those things, which would have sufficed all men, yet how far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth? Out of the which, in that all the desire of money with the use of thereof is utterly secluded and banished, how great a heap of cares is cut away! How great an occasion of wickedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots!

--Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia

There is no lack of evidence; every lie to the grand jury is, itself, prosecutable.

It is too bad that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama took 'impeachment' off the table. When a federal grand jury returns such indictments, it will be very difficult to avoid an impeachment after the subpoenas are served or before the indictments are returned. It is possible, however, to sentence a sitting President for the capital crimes of high treason, mass murder, and those war crimes expressly prohibited by US Codes.
Cleveland Democratic rep Dennis Kucinich brought a 35 count impeachment to the House floor and thus far has been ignored. His cries of truth and justice are a wail in the wind with no ears to hear it - no eyes to witness the charges that are overwhelmingly acute.

Kucinich claimed Bush "fraudulently" justified the war on Iraq and misled "the American people and members of Congress to believe Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction so as to manufacture a false case for war."

Kucinich announced in January 08 that he planned to launch an impeachment effort against Bush, yet stalled his effort after meeting with members of the House Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee hasn't acted on a bid Kucinich launched last year to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. And the wheels of justice grind to a screeching halt every time someone confronts the Neo Con criminals.

Trials for treason and at the least impeachment should be considered yet we are frozen in inaction. Economic woes and deep debt have been incurred - Katrina is now almost ignored and other great failures abound, but still they are not brought to justice. America continues to suffer further under the NeoCons' crimes and incompetence.

--None Dare Call it Treason
I have celebrated Obama's victory --but not for its symbolic significance. The time has come to turn victory speeches into real actions that will change this nation. Obama must step up to the plate and begin to right the wrongs that have been done our Constitution, our way of life and what this nation has stood for in spirit if not always in fact! We do not ask too much of our country that it live up to it's expectations. No one then living forgets the words of John F. Kennedy.
Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country!
I say that our 'government' is not our 'country'. Bush proved that beyond any reasonable doubt. Too much has been done for our 'government' and too little for our 'country '.

Certainly --our government has done too much TO us! Because Bush lied through his teeth, we have died --not for country --but for the seven members of Dark Dick's 'Energy Task Force', the polite name given the 'conspiracy of rich men', the oil companies who bought themselves a nation!

Some will say that now is a time for 'healing'. How often have those words justified 'cover ups' and denials'?

There may have been political reasons to delay impeachment or begin the criminal investigations of mass murder and high treason. Those 'reasons' no longer apply. Justice delayed is another blow dealt to our Constitution. Justice delayed is justice denied. Those who carried out grand theft, mass murder, high treason and various war crimes must held accountable for their crimes if this nation is to survive.

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Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Dispatch from Grant Park: 'Change has come to America'

Grant Park was the site of 'Police Riots' back in 1968 --salvos that began a 'cultural war' not addressed but merely glossed over by Ronald Reagan's slick, smarmy appeals to bigoted-elitism on the one hand and US imperialism on the other. Barack Obama's acceptance speech is an invitation to begin the long process of healing.

'Grant Park' is a large public space between the Loop and lakeshore Drive. In 1979, it was the site of a papal visit and, in 1991, a Chicago Bulls NBA championship 'blow out'!

More famous than the open-air concerts and sporting events, however, is the symbolic role Grant Park played during the Democratic Convention of 1968! It has been written that the '...violence between police and anti-Vietnam war protesters ... gave the city a black-eye from which it has yet to completely recover.' Worse --Grant Park came to symbolize our lost hopes for peace in Viet Nam.

As his campaign progressed, Obama grew stronger from sources almost forgotten. America began to hope again. Grant Park may now be remembered for having played mid-wife to the re-birth of the American dreams of freedom, equality and peace.

Additional resource: Brief History Of Chicago's 1968 Democratic Convention

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Obama Must Restore the 'Rule of Law'

Few Presidents-elect face challenges equal to those that await Barack Obama, who will now preside over a nation best described as 'GOP occupied territory'. Bush presumed to rule as 'imperator', by decree, far beyond the President's 'job description' as it was written by our founders. Bush borrowed from Nixon phrases like 'executive privilege' to rationalize abuses of power and rule by decree. Bush assigned to John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales the tasks of making legal --after the fact --the seemingly innumerable crimes he had committed against the US Constitution and the sovereign people of the US, in other words, all the crimes American colonists had charged to George III.
"He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation."

--Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, the Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, July 4, 1776.
By 'rule of law' I mean the very source of our sovereignty: the US Constitution, called a 'goddamned piece of paper' by Bush. I mean the laws and, as well, the veneration accorded them by the citizens of these United States. I use the phrase the 'rule of law' to mean the culture from which our Bill of Rights derived and is sustained. I cite these principles because they are and should be inseparable from our national identity, because they are what it means to be 'American'.

It now falls to Barack Obama to restore America's reputation all over the world and to undo at home the harm that has been done our republic, our culture, and our national identity. It falls to Barack Obama to make right the wrongs, to steer the ship of state. At this link Bush administration vs. the US Constitution, you will find an extensively documented survey of Bush's seemingly innumerable assaults upon the rule of law in America.


No one can restore the 'rule of law' without addressing first the source of its demise. In America, the 'rule of law' fell to an 'authoritarian', top-down mentality which seeks out and exploits its complementary mindset --the throng of submissive GOP followers. It is a dysfunctional, destructive mindset which, if allowed to fester, will eventually dry rot the foundations of our republic.
Authoritarian conservatives are primarily anti-government, except where they believe the government can be useful to impose moral or social order (for example, with respect to matters like abortion, prayer in schools, or prohibiting sexually-explicit information from public view). Similarly, Republicans' limited-government attitude does not apply regarding national security, where they feel there can never be too much government activity - nor are the rights and liberties of individuals respected when national security is involved. Authoritarian Republicans do oppose the government interfering with markets and the economy, however - and generally oppose the government's doing anything to help anyone they feel should be able to help themselves.

In my book Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches, I set forth the facts regarding the consequences of the Republicans' controlling government for too many years. No Republican - nor anyone else, for that matter - has refuted these facts, and for good reason: They are irrefutable.

--John Dean, The Evidence Establishes, without Question, that Republican Rule Is Dangerous, Findlaw

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Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Obama: "...this is your victory"!

Americans living abroad awoke this morning to images of their countrymen celebrating in the streets, images as hopeful, as optimistic as the 'velvet revolution'. The entire world heard collective sighs of relief --no stolen election, no riots, no bloodshed. The words of Lincoln are required to describe it: '...a new birth of freedom'!

This is not just Obama's victory. This win belongs to the people of the US and the world, even those poor misguided folk who had often voted GOP even when it was against their own interests to do so. Unless they had been among the nations one percent elite, it was always against their interests.

This victory belongs as well to the world, millions who often suffered, as Americans might not have, the harmful effects of Bush's vainglorious vision of empire.
The world breathed a huge sigh of relief and is now celebrating for America!

It is not going to be an easy road for President Obama, and from now until January 20, I hope his security team has been doubled, these will be the most perilous two and a half months of his life thus far.

President Obama will have to make some tough decision which might greatly disappoint a great many people, especially among his supporters, but his assignment is probably the toughest ever.

At any rate, congratulations to America!

--Vierotchka
And from our friends at Les Enrages.
Looks like another GOP disaster has been avoided in high style. A decisive victory, that should allow us to say, "see that, Georgie boy? THAT is what REAL political capital looks like."

The long national nightmare is not yet over, but the end is in sight. I predict that Bush/Cheney will spend their remaining time in power absolutely screwing the country, trying to extract every last dime to distribute to themselves and their cronies. Not much of a prediction really, since that's what they're already doing, and have been since elected.

It would be a HUGE mistake for Obama to try to paper over the crimes committed by Bu$hCo. If the investigations aren't wide, deep and transparent the poison that is still in the blood of the American body politic could still kill the patient. You don't cure cancer without removing some corrupt flesh.

--Sadbuttrue, Les Enrages
The US may emerge from a period of great division, an era in which a demagogue exploited the issues that divide us. Eight years of George W. Bush were truly a second Civil War, pitting Americans against one another in ways at least as harmful as military conflicts at Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. An historic task awaits Barack Obama, a task as significant and as crucial as that awaiting Lincoln in the wake of Gettysburg.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

--Abraham Lincoln

Obama's words recall not only Lincoln.
"And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! "

---Martin Luther King, "I've Been to the Mountaintop", April 3, 1968
"We will get there! We --as a people --will get there!"

--Barack Obama, World to America: Congratulations!


Monday, November 03, 2008

Hoping to Avoid Another GOP Disaster

If you believe that Sarah Palin is an exemplary product of what can be achieved with the GOP in charge of the nation's education, then --by all means --vote for McCain/Palin.

Considering Sarah Palin's educational achievements. Should she influence the progress of education in this country, your own daughter might come to believe that human beings walked beside dinosaurs only six thousand years ago.

It was on this day four years ago that George W. Bush 'won' a second term with a promise to help the 'democracies' of Afghanistan and Iraq 'grow in strength and freedom'. Only the gullible believed it then. How many believe it now?

He said that 'tax reform, social security and education would be priorities'. Now, on the eve of his departure, a consummation devoutly to be wished, the world wonders what, if anything other than needless death and destruction will be the legacy of the very worst 'President in US history.

2004: George W Bush wins second term

George W Bush has won a second term as president of the United States, beating his Democratic rival, John Kerry, by a comfortable margin.

Mr Bush won about 51% of the vote and at least 274 electoral college votes against John Kerry's 48% and 252 votes.

Results are still awaited in New Mexico and Iowa but they cannot affect the outcome.


Mr Bush's victory was announced after Mr Kerry phoned him at the White House to admit defeat.

In a four-minute conversation, Mr Kerry congratulated the president, while Mr Bush called the Democrat "an admirable, worthy opponent".

Strong mandate

In his victory speech, Mr Bush said, "I am proud to lead such an amazing country and I am proud to lead it forward."

He said tax reform, social security and education would be priorities for his second four-year term.

He also said the US would "help the emerging democracies of Afghanistan and Iraq to grow in strength and freedom". ...

--BBC
What 'tax reforms' but tax breaks for rich folk were achieved by Bush and his endemically crooked GOP? Please tell me how anyone but his shrinking base of elites benefited?Since when are transfers of wealth to the wealthy considered to be 'reform'?
And I think if history is our guide, we've had stronger economies, more wealth creation, under Democratic presidents than we have under Republican presidents. So I don't understand why all my capitalist friends aren't Democrats.

--Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, The Female Joe Lieberman
What did Bush do for 'Social Security' but threaten to put an end to the government's ONLY success story, the ONLY government program to run a surplus, the ONLY government program that works! Significantly, Social Security is the lasting legacy of a democrat --Franklin D. Roosevelt!

I am at a loss to name a single GOP program, a single GOP policy that has ever worked in any way at any time. I can think of NO GOP program that has ever stood the test of time.

A history of the last four years is one of needless bloodshed, empty GOP rhetoric, death, destruction, aggressive war, war crimes and atrocities. At the same time, American educational standards declined, infrastructure crumbled, the rich still get rich upon the backs of the poor. Iraq is the quagmire of death, destruction, torture and atrocities. There is no end in sight! Many write of the 'end of America'.

Even if Bush/GOP calamities had been in any way desirable, a 'stolen election' is unforgivable. Stolen elections are antithetical to Democracy. Democracy is dead at the very moment an election is stolen. From that act of treason by Bush and his partisans follow every other disaster that has befallen this once great country.

Now --if you truly believe that Iraq was a rousing success, that the world now loves the US for the freedom and democracy that it brought to Iraq, then vote for John McCain.

If you are convinced that the poor have made significant progress toward climbing out of poverty, that the absurd 'third world' income disparities that are characteristic of the US have been adequately addressed, then vote for more of the same. Vote for John McCain.

If you are convinced that education has risen above the level of dead last as, in fact, Bush left it in Texas, then vote for more of the same nationwide. Vote for John McCain!

Education is particularly troublesome for Sarah Palin --an example of what can be achieved with the GOP in charge of the nation's education.

If this is what you think education should be then --by all means --vote for McCain/Palin, knowing that what Sarah Palin achieved educationally, your own daughter might equal as a result of a McCain administration.

Your own daughter might come to believe that not only did human beings walk with dinosaurs, seeing Russia from your porch makes one an expert on foreign affairs. I used to live within view of the mountains in Chihuahua. I was, therefore, an expert on Latin American affairs. Don't vote for more of the same. Vote for even worse. Vote for Sarah Palin.

But, because my readership is highly intelligent, I am quite sure that you have concluded, like me, that the GOP and McCain's campaign in particular consists of lies, empty platitudes and a very real record of utter disaster and failure. You would not patronize a doctor who tells you: just keep on doing whatever makes you terminally ill! Therefore, cast the only rational vote that can be cast!

Published Articles



Sunday, November 02, 2008

How the GOP Enriched the Rich and Made Everyone Else Poor!

If you have experienced a 'decline' in your net worth, you have gotten poorer. Congratulations! You have now joined the MILLIONS whose net worth numbers have declined consistently over a period of 28 years of GOP domination, incompetence and vainglorious imperial designs from which ONLY the Military/Industrial complex has benefited! Enough of this crap is enough. Just tell the GOP to bugger off!

The 'L-curve' helps one imagine the degree to which wealth in the United States is inequitably distributed by policy and by design. The US population is represented 'stretched across a football field in order of income, from poorest, on the left, to richest. Imagine a stack of $100 bills 'representing each person's income.' For example: a stack one inch high represents a stack of one hundred dollars bills, i.e, $25,000. The red line on the graph represents the height of that stack compared to an American football field.

"The red line in the first picture is the beginning of the U. S. income distribution. On the scale of the football field the line slopes gradually from zero on the left to less than 2-inches high at the 50-yard line ($39,000), to about 4-inches high at the 95-yard line ($132,000). On this scale the entire graph is less than one pixel high, up to this point. It is not until you are well past the 99-yard line that you hit the $1 million mark: a stack of $100 bills 40-inches high. There were over 144,000 people who turned in IRS returns in 1997 with adjusted gross incomes of $1 million or more." [See: Houston Independent Media Center, Wealth Distribution in the US http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2003/07/14100.php ]

Although the US economy produces tremendous wealth, it is always accompanied in GOP regimes by tremendous poverty. The US, for example, was most egalitarian in the years immediately following WWII. During GOP regimes, income inequality increased and is, in fact, measured with the GINI index. Higher Ginis indicate greater levels of income inequality. These indices have been significantly greater in every GOP regime since World War II.

Certainly --there is enough wealth to go around. Instead, wealth flows upward ---not down, as the propagandists of 'supply side' i.e. 'trickle down theory' would have you believe. The problem is systemic --the result of identifiable, right wing policies.

The primary culprits are GOP tax cuts by Mssrs Ronald Reagan and Bush; the effect of those cuts have been the deliberate transfer of wealth first to the upper quintile and, most recently, to an increasingly tiny elite of about one percent of the total population [See: Dr. Daniel Weinberger, US Census Bureau Briefings; Also see: The Quarterly Journal of Economics: Income Inequality in the United States at the following URL: http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf]. It's a PDF and cites academic and official, original sources of data.


As wealth is transferred to the very top with tax cuts for only the very, very wealthy and practitioners of 'corporate socialism', the masses are left to fight over the crumbs. There is no poverty in America that could not be addressed by simply addressing GOP tax policies --give aways -- which deliberately make the rich richer, the working class significantly poorer.

If you are in the middle class now, don't kid yourself. Unless you stand to inherit a fortune of several billions from a rich and long lost Uncle, the chances are almost exponentially high against you. Chances are --you will NOT progress upward in this society. Moreover, this aspect of American society is the work of one party primarily: the GOP! The GOP is the party of a rich elites who have learned how to 'sell' a fairy tale: supply side economics, or, derisively --"trickle down theory". To sum it all up: wealth has never, does not, will not 'trickle down'.
...what does the Wealthy One Percent want? Answer: more wealth. Where will they get it? As with a tube of toothpaste, they're squeezing it from the bottom. Median paychecks have gone down by 5.9% during the current regime, but Americans in the bottom fifth have seen their incomes sliced by 20%.

At the other end, CEO pay at the Fortune 500 has bloated by 51% during the first four years of the Bush regime to an average of $8.1 million per annum.

So who's winning? It's a crude indicator, but let's take a peek at the Class War body count.

When Reagan took power in 1980, the One Percent possessed 33% of America's wealth as measured by capital income. By 2006, the One Percent has swallowed over half of all America's assets, from sea to shining sea. One hundred fifty million Americans altogether own less than 3% of all private assets.

Yes, American middle-class house values are up, but we're blowing that gain to stay alive. Edward Wolff, the New York University expert on income, explained to me that, "The middle class is mortgaging itself to death." As a result of mortgaging our new equity, 60% of all households have seen a decline in net worth.

--Today's Pig is Tomorrow's Bacon
Clearly --the GOP leadership has learned nothing from the Bush debacle. The GOP has learned nothing from the back to back debacles of Reagan and Bush Sr. The GOP is like the idiot doctor who tells his patient: just keep on doing whatever makes you sick!
Nine straight months of job losses, a collapse in consumer spending, growing home foreclosures, and few good signs for the future, all point, economists now say, to the fact that recession has overtaken the economy.

Today, things appeared to get worse. The government released its quarterly GDP estimates showing the economy shrank by 0.3 percent. The collapse was fueled by the sharpest drop in consumer spending in 28 years, economist Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) told reporters on a teleconference after the report was released.

Bivens blamed the the contraction of consumer spending that led to the recession primarily on the collapse of the housing market.

In addition, government data revealed that state and local governments are struggling to make ends meet and dragging down economic growth, and labor income has also fallen over the past three consecutive quarters, Bivens said.

Consumer spending is linked to labor income, Bivens noted. People can only spend in the economy when they have good paychecks or credit. Since both income is falling and debt has many working families unable to continue to spend at the same rates, consumer spending has suffered.

--Recession is On, McCain Offers More Bush Policies
It gets worse. As the utterly failed Bush debacle winds down, the GOP loots the nation, grabbing what has not been nailed down, grabbing whatever has not been already stolen and funneling to banks billions of dollars under the rubric of a bailout that has not bailed out anyone but those who are rich already!

The 'bailout' --we were to suppose --would just 'trickle down'. But like all those other GOP 'trickle down' frauds, this one got hijacked by the privileged elites. I believe the money has been largely pissed away and stolen.

How much of that 700 Billion do you suppose has wound up in Switzerland or Lichenstein?

How much has been squirreled away for Bush's 'get away' to Paraguay?

In the meantime, how much of that money has already been given away to cronies as DIVIDENDS?

There is no rational defense of 'elitism'. GOP elitism is why we are where we are and where we are is NOT where we ought to be!
Half of the bank bailout is being paid out as dividends ! These bastards are shameless!
U.S. banks getting more than $163 billion from the Treasury Department for new lending are on pace to pay more than half of that sum to their shareholders, with government permission, over the next three years.
And in case you missed it two weeks ago: one of every ten dollars of the "bailout" is being used to pay bonuses! That's right - the bastards are getting $70 billion in bonuses for destroying the financial system and wrecking the economy.

Joe Nocera reported in The New York Times on an Oct. 17, internal conference call for senior employees of JPMorgan Chase, in which a Morgan Chase employee had the bad grace to ask,

“Chase recently received $25 billion in federal funding. What effect will that have on the business side and will it change our strategic lending policy?”
That would be a key question, wouldn’t it? Afterall, the whole purpose of the $700 billion bank rescue was to unfreeze the credit markets and get banks lending again.

--Pissing away $700 billion
Get a rope!

Enough of this crap is enough.

Tell the GOP to bugger off!

Tell the GOP that their 'contributions' to the demise of America are no longer welcome.

Tell the GOP that they have worn out their welcome!

Tell the GOP that putting another 'label' on the same old bullshit won't work anymore.

Tell the GOP to get 'outta' town, get lost, shut the fuck up, and don't let the door hit you in your sorry ass on your way out!