View to a Kill 3

(This is becoming a veritable franchise!)

Obama promised us a picture of the bullet riddled head of Osama bin Landen.  Did he think such a picture would be proof of the death of bin Laden?  Hard to say.  Obama rescinded the offer almost immediately after he made it.  Obama may be the smartest guy in the White House since Richard Nixxon.

However, for the rest of us (of ordinary endowments) living in the age of Photoshop, a picture is no proof of anything.  The same, of course, goes for sound recordings, film, video, and any other medium of communication.  As far as testimonials go, they’ve been known to be completely worthless ever since people became aware of how the repetition of a story by different story tellers becomes ever more altered on each telling.

If Obama threw Osama into the sea, then the least ‘fakeable’ artifact, that could have been used to prove that the SEAL mission took place in the (ever changing) way the official narrative describes, has been lost. 

That being the case:  nobody’s description of events is any more credible than anybody else’s!  (Don’t ask me to trust you, I don’t even know you.)

Further, explanations coming from the military and the intelligence communities are the LEAST credible as these communities are trained, sworn, and very well paid to cover up the ‘reality’ of all sorts of events and situations and things.  Their very raison d’être rules out their ever giving a complete and truthful account of any efforts they undertake.  Then, there’s the matter of ‘psychological warfare’ or ‘psyops’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_warfare).  And last, but not least, information in the intel communities is ‘compartmented’ (on a ‘need to know’ basis) so that nobody but a handful of ‘people’ at the tops of the various agencies and contracting corporations know ‘the whole story’ (so that they may be able to manipulate—for a time—our general understanding history).  I almost wrote, “our common understanding of history”, until I realized (a second later) that the mil-intel-corporate community’s understanding of history is replete with testimonials of their efforts and actions (including ‘counter-intelligence’ and 'psyops') while the history known to those outside of that community has those testimonials redacted!

So, here we all are.  All of us, freed from the truth by the secrecy and lies of our, so called, leaders! 

(Oh, by the way, never let anyone in the mil-intel-police-corporate community put you ‘on the line’ to ‘tell the truth’.  What could that even mean in their world where they manufacture ‘the truth’ as part of their secret business!  Compelling us to ‘tell the truth’ is just a form of intimidation or ‘sick kicks’!  Just remember:  whatever you think ‘the truth’ is, it is probably something else and the mil-intel-police-corporate community can make anything they want out of what you think!  The police and the courts do it to ‘inner city youth’ on a routine basis with barely a whimper from the press or ‘the general public’-- http://www.ehow.com/info_8400307_reid-american-criminal-investigation-process.html.)

So, let me proffer a conjecture.

I find it absolutely non-credible that the CIA, NSA, and Mil Intel would go to all the trouble and effort they assert they put into finding Osama (including moving in next door) just to kill Osama! 

Could the president and the mil-intel ‘leadership’ be so STUPID as to ORDER a kill for the one guy who could:   (a) explain what Al-Qaeda is currently ‘cooking up’, (b) describe Al-Qaeda’s whole communications network, (c) describe all of the ‘up and coming’ talent that’s been recruited over that last few years, (d) explain how he and his associates pulled off 911, and LAST BUT NOT LEAST:  (e) explain the relationship between Al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s ISI (especially since we seem to be itching to go to war with Pakistan over this question)?

Now, let’s say the president and the mil-intel ‘leadership’ weren’t so stupid and ordered the CIA/SEAL team to capture Osama.  Then the question becomes:  was Team 6 (or whoever) so incompetent that they FUBAR’d the mission and killed Osama (and the wife he threw at them)?  And, if the CIA/SEAL team FUBAR’d the mission, wouldn’t they cover it up?  And even if they didn’t, wouldn’t the so called, leaders, cover it up?

So, PrezO, which is it?  You or Team whoever?  Or both?  Is it stupidity or just incompetence requiring a cover up?

Or…are you lying??? 

It would be contradictory to ask you to ‘tell the truth’, given what I wrote above.  So, I’ll just leave things at this question.

However, guess what:

I DON’T BELIEVE ANYONE FUBAR’d! 

Osama simply got tired of being sidelined and imprisoned by his associates, who had turned against him, and rejected his suggestions for future operations.  He used his couriers to make an arrangement with the CIA to ‘spring’ him and cover up the fact.  His family will probably get some of that $25M bounty.  (We’ll have to keep an eye on how well they live in the future.)

While the SEALS’ mouths are sealed and the CIA is ‘completely innocent always’ and NSA has ‘no such awareness’, Obama knows (something), and it’s eating at his ‘liberal soul, brother’ to tell the truth!  (Wait a minute…that again!  Why does this keep coming up??)  On second thought, given PrezO’s success record at keeping his campaign promises…maybe not so much.

Whatever…the easiest conjecture is that this lie will eat at the heart of the next Obama administration, just as the Kennedy assassination did Johnson’s and Watergate did Nixon’s.  And, roughly around the same time that historians find out that Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy (by himself, at least), they’ll find that Osama bin Laden died an older man under WITSEC somewhere in the Nevada desert and got a proper burial for his part in bringing down Al-Qaeda.

View To A Kill 2

Oh, here we go (again)!  

< http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54162.html > 

So now we’re told an unarmed bin Laden was killed while ‘resist’n’.  I’ve heard that one before. (When did Osama become a black man?)  Oh, well.  Let’s see, Carney also said there’re no pictures of the burial at sea we can see.  They’ve given us a lot of information in haste.  (Which means the story will change again…and again…and again…). 

A reporter asked how bin Laden resisted? 

I’d sure like to have seen an unarmed old man with kidney problems 

<http://www.medcitynews.com/2011/05/bin-laden-didnt-have-kidney-disease-morning-read/>

resisting a CIA/SEAL team, 

hand to hand, so effectively that they got scared and had to blow him away!  Osama must have really kicked some butt!

Quite obviously, they’d have kept him around to find out who in the ISI was ‘putting him up’ so ‘large’.  Gentle reader, this story is 100% U.S. BS (just like the beef).  Speaking of which:  ‘Where’s the beef?’

Where’s my head????????? 

Prez O promised me a head!!!!!!!!  I want my head!!  I don’t care how grizzly it is (I’ve gotten use to the grizzly moma).  Oh, I know what happened to that head!  

Who does O think he is, Sam Peckinpah?

Bring me my damn head!   Bring me the head of Alfredo bin Laden! 

A View To A Kill

Obama:  five. 

Osama:  3,000. 

FIVE wins!

But wait!  Where’s the proof of this ‘view to a kill’?

What about those of us without a TS/SCI full field CIA/NSA POLY and program read-on?  What do we get to see?  Any digital video?  (Not that this is proof, as it could easily be faked.)  How about some blurry ‘point and shoot’ digital photographs?  (Again, not proof for the above reason.)  Sound samples?  Anything?

Is Prez O asking us to simply believe we grabbed Osama and dumped his body in the sea?  Who does O think he is?  Dexter?

How do we know for sure that the SEALs didn’t just deliver flowers and candy and escort Osama back to Saudi Arabia?  (Like the shrub did for the Osama’s relatives the day after 911. < http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/200806412758358 >)  How do we know Osama didn’t single handedly shoot down that helicopter, kill the whole CIA/SEAL team,  and then ride off on a horse as he did from Afghanistan?  < http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382011/Bin-Ladens-great-escape-How-worlds-wanted-man-fools-elite-troops-whod-trapped-mountain-lair.html >

What sort of ‘dog-and-pony show’ are we going to get?  It had better be as good as the Stanley Kubrick Apollo Moonwalk movies!

< http://news.discovery.com/space/faked-moon-landings-and-kubricks-the-shining.html >

My military source, Major Max Overkill, tells me that there’s no way ‘we’ would have just busted down the hideout and killed Osama.  We would have grabbed him and made him participate in some recreational water boarding.  (No worse than a good hazing, after all.)  He would have then happily volunteered the locations of all of the rest of his lieutenants. Max also explains that even if he was killed, the agency would have (at least) kept a small souvenir for its collection (just like our troops do < http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370758/Shocking-video-shows-U-S-troops-cheering-airstrike-blows-Afghan-civilians.html >).  More likely, they would have put him on ice in the basement of the CIA (if there was enough left).

I don’t know what O’s up to (well…besides getting reelected), but I would beseech him to please stop with this tired old trope of asking us to just believe whatever some GovCorp official says.  If GovCorp can't trust US, why should we trust them?  Let’s establish a new policy:  if GovCorp can’t PROVE what it has to say, don’t even bother us with it!  Historians can dig the truth out of whatever records are left behind after we’ve gotten whatever we’ve got coming, if and when, al-Qaida decides to pull off some operation and succeeds at it (with or without Osama and Obama).

How to Reduce the U.S. Budget Deficit After The Economy Has Been Sacked By Texas Oilmen and Wall Street Bankers

One way to get out of a mortgage that’s ‘underwater’ is to burn the mortgaged house to the ground.  However, even if you don’t end up in jail, you end up with nowhere to live and you run the risk of burning out your neighbors as well.  On top of that, you’ll still end up owing the money because a mortgage is a contract with a bank, not a house.  Burning your house to the ground is exactly what trying to balance the national deficit by cuts alone is!  (Maybe a better metaphor is:  taking an axe to a great sequoia tree.)  Trying to balance the national budget deficit < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit > by cutting without raising revenue is a fool’s errand because there’s not enough to cut without creating an army of very poor very sick and homeless people without a future!  It is quite likely such cuts could cause an immediate ‘double dip recession’ like that when FDR was cowed into cutting spending < http://open.salon.com/blog/steve_klingaman/2010/03/03/double_dip_will_we_repeat_1937 >. 

The way to reduce (or even eliminate) the deficit is ‘balance’!  Let me show you how.

The ‘balance’ which I’m suggesting, involves balancing cuts with revenue raising.   There are four parts.

First, the cost of everything thing the federal government spends our taxes on must be laid out in plain sight.  Where these things involve activities the government just can’t stand to show the world, these costs can be itemized under code names.  However, if the government cannot be honest about how much it actually spends on secret endeavors, then the whole effort fails at the start and the economy is simply on its way to collapse.

Second, every field of economic activity in our society must be scrutinized to see where revenue can be raised without hurting the general public or economy.  This scrutiny should result in a range of quantitative models which can be simulated to show various cuts balanced with new taxation would affect the economy.

Third, cutting by the rounds:  For a number of rounds, a cut amount is decided and applied to every activity and expenditure currently performed by the government.  No program is exempt and every program takes the same ‘hit’!  (This eliminates the politicking and posturing.)   Again, if this can’t be done honestly and forthrightly, then the whole effort fails.

Fourth, for each round, after cutting all government projects by a chosen amount, a tax equal to the amount of the cut is applied to a range of economic activities or transactions. Let’s say we decide to cut a $1 million from every program or agency in the government at round 1.  Then a $1 million tax increase is distributed over everything from payrolls to stock market transactions to estate taxes to executive pay and bonuses and tax loopholes and corporate taxes.  No income generator is spared.  (After a certain number of rounds, tax loopholes simply evaporate.)

Fifth, repeat First-Fourth until the deficit reduction target is obtained.

This is balanced deficit reduction!   Cuts across all government programs are balanced against each other so that no part of the government is favored.  And then the cuts are balanced with increases in revenue so that neither cuts nor increases in revenue are favored. 

This approach provides two engines working in parallel to perturb the economic dynamical system.  The goal is to alter the trajectory the system is on until it wanders into a volume of phase space where it can orbit in a sustainable way that benefits the whole American population rather than a few against many as plans, such as the Paul Ryan economic plan <http://open.salon.com/blog/paul_j_orourke/2011/04/08/paul_ryan_young_gun_--_same_old_bullets , http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/04/americas_budget> does by reducing the deficit by cutting only those things that poor and working class Americans (i.e., the politically powerless) depend upon.  

This balanced approach will also quickly put the brakes on all the reckless arbitrariness in cutting as some project or program ‘dear and near’ to everyone will be cut on each round of cuts.    

I hope President Obama reads this (or hears about it from one of his aids) and requires a rigorous technical implementation of this plan.  What has been missing from the budgetary process, so far, has been technical rigor.  Where are the computer simulations, mathematical proofs, and round table discussions between the best and brightest mathematical economists in the country, if not the world?  This effort should be like our space program of the 1960s, a serious scientific and engineering undertaking.

That’s it for tonight, and a good night to you all and all our ships at sea.

Another Brutal Dictator, Another Amerikan Ally

It is February 3^rd.  I am watching the Rachel Maddow Show live at 0300.  It is bloody violent on the street.  We have now seen what Hosni Mubarak really is!  A bloody brutal fascist dictator!  Another Amerikan crony-ally in our wars against the poor, the homeless, labor, the non-white, the non-rich, and people who don’t buy the Amerikan lie...i.e., the oppressed! 

Mubarak warned yesterday of what would happen today when he said he would die on Egyptian land.  What he meant was that he will fight to hold on to nothing.  He will destroy his country to stay in power.  His brutal stupidity will bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power as the only alternative!  Egypt is no longer a functioning country.  Egypt is at war!

With this, we have now seen the success of Amerikan ‘Middle East’ policy:  A BIG FAT FAILURE! 

Now, we’ll see what Obama really is!  Biden has already put his big foot in his big mouth (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/biden-egypt-mubarak-dictator-resig/)   trying to walk the ‘middle ground’.  Looking at the live footage, it is plain to see that Obama really has nothing to say.  His administration no longer has any credibility in ME affairs.  They couldn’t control the Israelis and they can’t win in Afghanistan.  Hillary Clinton’s Middle East policy has failed worse than that of Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice.

Mubarak unleashed criminals and undercover police to crush an essentially peaceful revolt.  His supporters charged into the protesters on horse and camel back wielding whips, clubs, and machetes.  Journalists have been targeted and swarmed, stabbed, and detained.  Mubarak’s first impulse was, of course, to cut off internet communications in and out of the country. 

If there is any justice, this Amerikan dictator will go down.  Go down HARD with a rope around his neck!

Yesterday, Amerikan right-wing republican tea bagger radio was expressing sympathy toward Mubarak.  We’ll see what the RATs have to say today.

Twilight Of A Presidency

Once we had hope for a change.  For once, we on the left, had someone to vote for, rather than a field of cabbages to vote against. For a moment, we had hope.  For a moment…it seemed that we could…have rational and fair domestic governance and a balanced approach to international affairs.  I thought one man would usher in a new age of science and reason and compassion.  I (in my secret heart of hearts) hoped that we might have had, at least, one last chance to pull back from the abyss that is the legacy of Nixon-Reagan-Bush (and, of lesser consideration, Clinton).  

 I (we) put all our hope for this change on one person:  Barack Hussein Obama II.  But we were to be brutalized and raped (yet again) like some virgin whore, pimped out to every two faced pol pulling up in a big black Cadillac looking for that sweet sweet candy lick.  Oh yeah, Obama (now prez0) told us one thing, but if you looked carefully at who he brought to the party, you could have known what was going to happen next.  Yeah, it was 'the best and the brightest' (again):  Tax dodging Timmy, Larry (the hitman) Summers, Benny Bernanke, and some goddamed republican:  Gates!  WTF??????????

Yesterday marked the end of a historic presidency of waffling, groveling, shuffling miscommunication, bafflement, befuddlement, and reneging.  So, let us now remember the immortal lyrics of the old Cream song ‘Politician’ by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown:

Hey, hey now baby, get into my big black car.
Hey now baby, get into my big black car.
I wanna just show you what my politics are.

I’m a political man and I practice what I preach.
I’m a political man and I practice what I preach.
So don’t deny me baby, not while you’re in my reach.

<<hmm…sounds like what prez0’s bag man, Billbo Clinton, would say!>>>

I support the left, tho' I'm leanin', leanin’ to the right.
I support the left, tho' I'm leanin' to the right.
But I'm just not there when, when it's coming to a fight.

<<oh yeah, we know that now!  so…>>

Hey now baby, get into my big black car.
Hey now baby, get into my big black car
I wanna just show you what my politics are.

Hey, hey, hey
I wanna just show you what my politics are.

Can you feel it?  Can YOU   FEEL   IT!  Oh yes.  Oh yes.  Yes I can.  YES I CAN!  I  CAN  FEEEEEL IT!

wait... for it

prez0 has caved on everything he said he stood for in his campaign!  He’s now given these stinking republican billionaires a tax cut on their Bush Billionaire Bailout Bonuses!!  So…what can you say to all of this?

The Oil Malaise

obama’s speech tonight was the very definition of: insipid.

there was no grand plan for an energy future. no mention of the science to come out of this. no mention of the sickening gases now coming out of the mix of chemicals introduced into the gulf. no fire. no guts. no gore. not even a little ‘kickass’?

no...just like jimmy carter: we’re suffering from a malaise…an oil malaise…

let me put it another way:

i am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody tuesday.

i'm crying.

yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead bird's eye.
crabalocker fishwife, oily muddy french fry.

i am the eggman, you are the eggmen.
i am the walrus, goo goo g'joob.

i'm crying, i'm crying.

j. lennon

(if you don’t know who the walrus was, listen to the oil pigs’ testimony on cspan today. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/294062-1)

What President Obama Should Say About the BP Oil Catastrophe Tonight

This oil spill is a greed made catastrophe due to one corporation cutting corners and costs to make the biggest profit they could out of an experimental drilling effort. This along with the complete corruption of the MMS under the Republicans produced a perfect storm of ignorance and stupidity on the part of all voting Americans that put two Texas cowboy oilmen into the White House for eight years! There is pretty much nothing anybody can do about this now because it involves forces beyond our capabilities to handle at the moment. The president must show that new science is coming out of this and that new engineering will follow the science. Here’s what he should propose as actions to take:

(1) Maintain the moratorium of deep ocean drilling until the U.S. puts in place an agency that can inspect and direct the operations of all oil companies working in U.S. waters at all times. Further, this agency must generate and maintain a technical team to operate and evolve technologies to control spills.

(2) The U.S. must go solar in a major way and to do this we should (a) place a major tax on oil use and production and profits, (b) cover every mall parking lot and every mall roof in this country with solar cells which will produce shade for mall patrons at the same time it produces power for use, (c) build a national government controlled solar power grid to replace the early 20th century power grid that companies like Enron use as their private piggy banks, and (d) force the auto industry into making the most efficient hybrids possible with today’s technology.

(3) Completely bar any possibility of drilling in the arctic wildlife refuges forever.

(4) Maintain a moratorium on all nuclear power activities until the U.S. has an agency that can inspect and direct the operations of all nuclear power companies working in U.S. at all times. Further, this agency must generate and maintain a technical team to operate and evolve technologies to nuclear waste spills.

This will be a good start to move us into a rational energy use culture for the future.

On the Precipice of War

And so, we stand on the precipice yet again. It seems that no Democratic president can resist the bait of republicans to shed the blood of American citizens for some lost cause. Obama’s presidency will be effectively over with the committal of 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan because these troops will be quickly neutralized and some American general will call for more. Obama will not be able to resist the logic of ‘we’ve already sent in so many, that if we pull out now, all will be in vain’. Like Johnson, Obama will fear being the first president to lose a war to an ideology and like Johnson, he will find that ‘guns and butter’ don’t mix.

Obama may think that sending more troops to Afghanistan will placate the republicans, but it won’t. The minute anything goes wrong with McChrystal’s plan, the republicans will howl for Obama’s blood. And to stop them, he’ll send in more troops. History will write that Obama, as was Johnson, was once a chance for America to have advanced both domestically and in foreign policy; but he was no student of history and lost his country to a part of the world, well schooled in taking down civilizations, that had nothing to lose in spreading the fight all over the world.

So, with Israel and Iran also on the precipice of war, I welcome you to World War IV.

Top ten (pretty good) reasons for President Obama to win The Nobel Peace Prize:

10. Searching for a way to slow nuclear proliferation in Asia.

9. Working with the rest of the world to address Global Warming.

8. Deploying a fairly first rate Secretary of State.

7. Trying to restart the failed Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

6. Starting the stand down in Iraq. (Better late than never.)

5. Clamping down, a teeny-weenie, on the unconstitutional wire-tapping of the American public of the Bush administration.

4. Shutting down the CIA's international rendition-torture-prison program.

3. Attempting to close Guantanamo Bay which is stain upon the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

2. Upholding the sanctions against torture in our various codes of conduct.

1. Showing unbelievable forbearance and tolerance and adherence to the American principles of freedom of speech and assembly in not lashing out at the American right wing KKK and smashing them into dust with all the powers an American president can bring to bear against treason in a time of war!


Bravo, Mr. President!

Israel vs. Palestine

This post has an odd title because Israel is a part of Palestine: a (so called) 'jewish state' carved out of the land of the Palestinians by the big-three and the UN. The odd case of Israel is that it is a part fighting against the whole of which it is a part. Can a part ever prevail over a whole? my guess is: not unless the part gobbles up the whole! And this is what i see the Israelis (isies) doing: gobbling up all of the Palestinian land (worth having) and slowly positioning the Palestinians (pals).

OK, this has been done lots of times in history where a stronger group takes the land of a weaker group (e.g., euros vs. native amers). And, if you don't stop it while it's happening, who's to say, a hundred years later, who was right and who was wrong. But...wait! It is now, and this is happening now. So, who's trying to stop it? amers, euros, chines, nips, Eskimos? Nope. not a one of them. (Well, maybe Jimmy Carter.) Anyone calling for a gasoline embargo against the isies?

No...my guess is: the whole world is going to sit back and watch the Israelis take all of the west bank, take back the beach front, and then shove the pals into a 'homeland' along the Jordanian border in the 'stinkingest' part of the desert they have. (probably downwind of the Israeli nuclear bomb reactors.)

Let's face it, the 'two state solution' was bogus from the start. We can all easily understand that the isies were never going to allow the pals to have a full-up sovereign state (which means loading up on all the weapons they can buy)! The isies will probably wall-off the pals in whatever homeland they give them, so they have no freedom of movement (which means loading up on all the weapons they can buy). Now, the isies might be 'white about it' and allow a full 'right of return' for the pals...to their new homeland!

So, since we all know this, why is Obama wasting his time with these clowns?



Could he have possibly missed the simple to understand point above? Does he know something we don't? I doubt it. The plain and simple fact is that the isies want as much of Palestine as they can get away with grabbing, just like the whites did in the Americas.

We can all understand that, so that's that. Nothing more to be said. Obama should simply walk away from the whole problem. (The Israelis--Netanyouwho--aren't listening to him anyway.) Let the isies work it out with their neighbors. They're smart guys. I'm sure they can handle the problem. Plus, they've got a fine military, great Intel organizations, and NUKES! What more could they want?

The isies don't need us and they certainly don't need our money. The pals and the isie Arabs are tough and have a great birth rate. So, let the 'love' competition begin. We'll see who gets the land in the end (by shear weight of numbers)!

photo-torture

so…here we go again! more bush-cheney war crime details:

http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSLS172193

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE54S01W20090529

this time, it's electricity and hetero and homosexual rape! (oh…just like a fraternity party?)

of couse, u.s. admin says no:

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE54R50K20090528

but, my friends…i suspect this is just one more disclosure and what remains hidden, for the moment: mutilation and murder.

but, obama…obama, with the power of your office…why are you trying to cover up the atrocious nature of the bush-cheney war crimes?

don’t you realize, that in doing this, you make these crimes yours?

the bush-cheney-obama war crimes

don’t you realize that the only way to keep your reputation intact is to let it all out, now?

how can you be such a fool, after the major political victory you pulled off in getting to the white house?

don’t you realize that you will fracture the democratic party?

no one who holds dear, the constitution and the highest of american ideals, should stay in the democratic party with its current leadership. i consider my vote to have been wasted, yet again. there seem to be no dem leaders with enough courage to make a clean break with the bush policies.

so, i will soon leave the democratic party for the green party.

that way, even if my vote never counts for anything ever again, i will feel good about myself (even when i have to hold my nose to vote for dems to keep the repubs out).

but, right now, i feel like i’ve been ravaged, in the unmentionable depths of the posterior abyss.


let us remember the principle war criminals of the iraq-afgahn-pakistan wars:

bush
cheney
rumsfeld
rice
tenet
powell
gonzales
ashcroft
addington
yoo
feith
haynes
bybee

where does it stop???

well...another day in 'bailout america' and it looks like the geith is at it again (http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE54749X20090508):

'After "stress tests" were performed on the 19 largest U.S. banks, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve concluded that 10 of them need to raise a combined $74.6 billion to build a capital buffer to ensure they could keep lending...'

say wha? when did the banks start lending? who're they lending to? each other? don't see too many underwater home owners getting bailed. why is the geith bailing GM/GMAC? GM is a complete loser corp? it's been making crap for years. now, GMAC (the lender of a loser) wants to buyout the other auto making loser:

"GMAC spokeswoman Toni Simonetti said the company was expecting the government to provide new capital soon to allow it to take on the Chrysler business, and said this was separate from any capital-raising it would need to do to raise the $11.5 billion in capital regulators have told it to raise.

Geithner made clear the government was willing to put a large amount of capital on the line."

oh great, geith...why don't you pay your taxes (on time), then we'll spend some of your money on these losers! he's just pouring our tax dollars into a corporate rat hole.

but, obama seems to be surrounded by rat holes: iraq, afghanistan, pakistan, american corporations, the military, the intel community, the banks, the states, swine flu...

god, where does it stop?

i'll tell you where it (the buck) stops. it stops before it gets to the common guy, the common working man, the guy who get's his taxes taken before he get's his check!

'"Financing is critical to this (restructuring) process, and that requires that GMAC have the ability to provide loans that Americans need to buy cars," Geithner said.'

what's this guy on? who can get a loan for a car? i know i can't! you have to have a perfect credit score.

'While steep job losses continued in April, analysts took heart that the number of jobs lost was the fewest since October, and Geithner also said the data offered some hope.

"They're encouraging in some sense because the rate of decline in the economy as a whole is slowing," he said.'

wow...calculus 101! hey geith, where's the inflection point?

i think we all know that the rate of the decline could still be declining when the percentage of u.s. unemployed goes over 10%. will we still be encouraged (in some sense) then?

we may not know where the inflection point is, but we know what the 'bottom line' is:

100% pure U.S. B.S.

ah, enough...more later!

obama at 100...a new day comin?

first, let me put my politics in plain view. i am a late 1960s liberal of the flower power persuasion.

i detested the eisenhower-kennedy-johnson-nixon vietnam war and the racist-sexist-polluter-corporatist (mad men) society of the time.
naturally then, i considered the reagan-gingrich era another era of social, economic, cultural, and environmental destruction.
the last nine years of republican (repub) hegemony were, simply, the collapse of the philosophic foundation of the right-wing military-business class.

i consider the peak of contemporary american culture to have been when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the Moon on 20 July 1969. (for a moment the whole world seemed to stop and we seemed to be all one 'mankind'.) after that, although technology has evolved enormously, its been straight downhill. no moon base. no mars. just war war war and trillions spent on war toys. (just think of where we'd be if that money had gone into manned space...)

no...repubs and mad men have left the 'ordinary guy in the street' (e.g., me) with nothing to look forward to but a generational war with the islamic world and a hollowed out post industrial economy.

let's be honest, the future for the working class or anyone without at least an undergraduate degree is going to be grim without traditional unionized factory work.
infrastructure maintenance, fast foods, security, and enlisted military will be the biggest source of working class jobs in the near future. but there will be no job mobility and no way to advance the next generation on service economy wages.

however, before we go down that road, let's enjoy the moment! for the moment, the repubs are finished!

the repubs have no more ideas and no more ‘leaders’ worth serious consideration!

(the corks pop *!*)

in this interregnum, there is a wonderful opportunity to eliminate the whole scaffolding of the military-capitalist-polluter-theocratic society
and replace it with a rational-scientific-ecological society. by ecological i mean both social and physical ecology.

now, if only...there was a leader...


into this gap comes barack obama...44th president of the u.s. congratulations to those of us who had the presence of mind not to go the other way!
grampy & moose girl would have been a real joke. but, perhaps obama is the answer.

it is obvious that he’s a vast intellectual improvement over bush.
from his rhetoric we can feel the compassion missing with the conservative. and yet, now that the voting is over, what remains seems, somehow...lacking? is it 'morning after' blues?

instead of the bold practitioner of the political arts we find a timid, tentative, and seemingly unsure occupier of the office. this is rather
disturbing, given that the dems, as a whole, are a timid and conflicted party (always running scared of the repubs).

what we need now is a clear, clean, and complete break from the repub policies. i think such a break would start with:

(1) nationalizing the banks and underwriting the ‘underwater mortgages’ of people with single homes, who have no history of flipping homes.
(2) using the u.s.-iraq sofa to accelerate our departure from iraq (like the brits).
(3) realizing that there is no win in the afghani-pakistani talibani wars that bush inflamed and getting out of there as fast as possible.
(4) telling israel that its now a big technological power with a first class military and nukes, so it's on its own! good luck and no more handouts!
(5) telling the american people the truth about the u.s. auto industry (and old fashion industry in general): it's dead. no more mass manufacturing of cars on assembly lines, just boutique custom cars with lots of smarts. maybe segway-coffins.
(6) cleaning out the bush repubs remaining in important government positions from which they can undermine his governace.
(7) prosecuting the people who founded the ‘bush torture policy’ (btp), or at least handing them over to the hague if we are too gutless to do the job!
(8) and (i almost forgot), decriminalizing most drugs for adults so we can save money on policing and jailing and warring (with ourselves) and reap the benefits of taxing the stuff, researching the stuff, and enhancing medical techniques with what comes out of the research.

oh well, in summary, obama may not be 'the one' (given his recent comments and policies on all of the above), but he'd better wake up and set a whole new course. (or the dems in congress better make him) because periods of opportunity for big cultural change come rarely and are fleeting (before the next crisis).

on the other hand, obama gets kudos for his changes in: stem-cell, climate, and basic research funding policy!

more later…