AMERICANS ARE REGAINING THEIR EYESIGHT AND IQs!!

Bush hits a new low in polls for job approval

Keep going, we gotta get to ZERO.

BUSH LYING IS NO LONGER NEWS

SORRY, BUT WE LOVE BEING SCAMMED

"This worst, most corrupt, most totalitarian, most dishonest administration in American history commits crime after crime against the nation and Constitution. The neo-fascists in the Senate prepare a coup that will allow a slim majority achieve total control, and silence the other 48%. And the media doesn’t care. Hunter Thompson may be right. We are doomed, unless we are willing to do what it takes to stop these criminals."

Mike hammer, via Bartcop

JESUS.

Dubya and DeLay both out of the same state? This is the best Texas can do? They think this is good? What a pus-hole. Let's give Texas back to Mexico, and these two losers with it.

THE USE OF COMPLACENCY

You know how it is. You lie well, you get elected, you lie even better, you get programs passed that enrich your friends and yourself (and your descendants, so you get a dynasty of inbred liars who herd the flock forever), but not overtly, because the one fixed rule about using complacency is that you don’t go around explaining reality; you don’t give actual wolf stats to the sheep. Everything must always appear as though nothing has really changed. Constitution, rule of law, banks like churches, churches like banks, piety everywhere, love of sheep, “We Love Sheep” posters and campaigns, brotherhood with lots and lots of cheap feed, miles of acreage, slaughter out of sight, status quo, nothing new, no surprises, good eating. But you do need a wolf once in a while - one at a time is fine - to show the sheep not only that you’re essential to their well-being, but that you’re doing your job: big approval rating, they love you, they need you, you are their leader, then you get the wool plus the meat, money in the bank and fine dining, while the sheep go right along with it all, never suspecting a thing, filing right into the corral, walking right up to the gun, trusting all the way. Complacency is the essential tool in any shepherd’s toolbox.

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE TODAY...

Photographer for White House child sex ring arrested after Thompson suicide

IDIOCY KNOWS NO BOUNDS

Schmuck's on a roll:

Senate votes to open Arctic Refuge to drilling

Bush's choice of Wolfowitz for World Bank risks outcry

Bush uses rule book to roll back protections
Easing hand of government -- or a payoff to corporations?

U.S. troops will return when Iraqi can defend itself, Bush says

US current account deficit breaks new records

Hell, you can fool all the people all the time, what was Abe thinking? Maybe people were smarter before tv...

ABOUT THESE BUSH ECONOMY MINI-RALLIES...

"This circus event is a pretense of fabulous new employment but in reality is an apparition. It is only a disguise or semblance of a false show. This is the grand fog, the smoke-and-mirrors ceremony, a prelude to the shearing of the Sheeple by the hedge funds enabling them to exit with profits while wooly little lambs stand crying in the rain with their bombed out stock accounts, not having a clue as to what just hit them. For the big boys [read Bush Buddies] to get out you need a rally. If you do not have one, you make one. That is what today is all about."

Better not count on a pension, either...

Essay

NOW THAT BUSH AND HIS CRONIES HAVE YOUR BACK TO THE WALL OF DEBT

Soon you'll have no way out but to pay it all back, for the rest of your natural life if necessary. Wait till your job is gone and your mortgage payments triple! And if you voted for this ripoff, you deserve every minute of what's coming!

"The Republican-controlled Senate cleared the way for a final vote as soon as today on an industry-backed bill to make it harder for consumers to wipe out debt through bankruptcy."

Welcome to the good times...

Attribution

And as to that, read this and weep...

"Today the Senate is expected to vote to limit debate on a bill that toughens the existing bankruptcy law, probably ensuring the bill's passage. A solid bloc of Republican senators, assisted by some Democrats, has already voted down a series of amendments that would either have closed loopholes for the rich or provided protection for some poor and middle-class families."

From The Debt-Peonage Society by Paul Krugman

Here's One for the AARP!

He's just so... Presidential, so... Christian, so... representative of the real America now...

About Social Security...

"When Enron crashed they were ridiculed for cooking their books. Several laws were passed that said that clear bookkeeping was required or else. Of course like everything else that did not apply to the federal government who operate on a cash basis instead of an accrual system. Under an accrual system the cost of retirement is added yearly as the liability accumulates. Private retirement systems must contribute yearly to make sure they are fully funded to cover their future expenses. In 2003 our unfunded retirement liability including social security and medicare amounted to $45 trillion dollars. That works out to $158,000 for every man woman and child living in the US today. Our official public debt is only $4 trillion dollars. Our national net worth (all private property owned by US citizens) only amounts to $42 trillion dollars. The way the federal government keeps books, however, this outstanding liability never shows up anywhere. Technically on an accrual system we are bankrupt. Any CFO in private industry would go to prison for such accounting gymnastics."

From: RUNAWAY TRAIN
by Larry LaBorde

A NEW KIND OF CRIME

"You know, Bush, he’s really the evil one in here. Well, more than just him. We're the Nazis in this game, and I don't like it. I'm embarrassed and I'm pissed off. Yeah. I mean to say something and I think a lot of people in this country agree with me. A lot more never say anything. We'll see what happens to me if I get my head cut off in the next week by -- it's always unknown Bush [inaudible] strangers who commit suicide right afterward. No witnesses. They have a new kind of crime."

Hunter S. Thompson

The Clear View of the Outsider

"Dear Condi, I'm glad you've decided to get over your fit of pique and venture north to visit your closest neighbour. It's a chance to learn a thing or two. Maybe more.

I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile-defence system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results.

But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can't quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game.

As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we've had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we're going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence.

Sure, that doesn't match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a "liberation war" in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children.

Just chalk that up to a different sense of priorities about what a national government's role should be when there isn't a prevailing mood of manifest destiny.

Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such a missile defence can be made openly.

You might also notice that it's a system in which the governing party's caucus members are not afraid to tell their leader that their constituents don't want to follow the ideological, perhaps teleological, fantasies of Canada's continental co-inhabitant. And that this leader actually listens to such representations.

Your boss did not avail himself of a similar opportunity to visit our House of Commons during his visit, fearing, it seems, that there might be some signs of dissent. He preferred to issue his diktat on missile defence in front of a highly controlled, pre-selected audience.

Such control-freak antics may work in the virtual one-party state that now prevails in Washington. But in Canada we have a residual belief that politicians should be subject to a few checks and balances, an idea that your country once espoused before the days of empire."

Excerpt of letter to Condi by Lloyd Axworthy, former Foreign Minister of Canada

via Daily Kos

The Facts About Those 207,000 Jobs...

"The over-bloated service sector added another 207,000 jobs, with construction, no doubt mostly residential, adding 30,000. The beleaguered manufacturing sector did manage to add 20,000 jobs for a change, though half of that gain resulted from temporarily laid off auto workers returning to their job. In other words, the wealth producing sector of the economy added few workers, while the wealth consuming sector provided over 80% of new jobs.
As crazy as this may sound, not all employment is good employment. Today's labor department release of a larger than expected 262,000 increase in February non-farm payrolls, heralded by Wall Street as evidence of a vibrant U.S. economy, actually confirms the reverse: a dangerously imbalanced economy moving further off kilter.

The over-bloated service sector added another 207,000 jobs, with construction, no doubt mostly residential, adding 30,000. The beleaguered manufacturing sector did manage to add 20,000 jobs for a change, though half of that gain resulted from temporarily laid off auto workers returning to their job. In other words, the wealth producing sector of the economy added few workers, while the wealth consuming sector provided over 80% of new jobs.

The basic problem with service sector jobs is that they produce few tradable goods. As a result, the added incomes associated with such jobs create upward pressure on our nation's trade deficit, as service sector workers use their additional incomes to buy more imported products. In addition, such jobs provide more workers with the means to qualify for home mortgages, which require additional borrowing from abroad, and provide the basis for future cash-out refinancing, requiring still more foreign financing and resulting in additional purchases of imported products.

In other words, the last thing the U.S. economy needs is more non-productive service sector jobs, which only lead to higher trade deficits as Americans import more goods that service sector workers do not produce, and larger current account deficits, as greater interest payments become necessary to service growing external liabilities.

While this reality may have been lost among U.S. investors, who reacted foolishly by buying stocks, it was not the case among currency traders, who despite their initial, almost reflexive action to buy dollars on apparent 'good' economic news, quickly re-evaluated the data and sold, sending the buck sharply lower against all the world's major currencies, and to a new twenty-three year low against the New Zealand dollar. Is this simply a case of buying the rumor and selling the fact, or is it an actual epiphany on the part of currency traders with respect to their understanding of the true nature of the fundamentally flawed American economy? If it is indeed the latter, our bubble economy may have finally found its pin."

Source

BUSH IS SO DUMB

HE'S MAKING US SMART FOLKS RICH.

THE WAR FOR RESOURCES AND THE ECONOMIC SURVIVAL OF THE UNITED STATES AS A GLOBAL POWER

"The hegemony of the United States Dollar as a global reserve currency, in which the world's commodities are traded, is fundamental to this story. Given the massive indebtedness of the US at every conceivable level, this currency is under huge potential threat, with massive Asian influence in the form of dollar surpluses held as US T bonds. If the dollar fails, so too will the United States, with all that this means. Right at the root of the US's survival strategy is control of the world's oil reserves. Without this, the dollar and the US are assuredly in serious decline. No price, however vast in terms of blood and treasure, is too high in this game of truly gigantic stakes. Because of its failure to: adapt and reduce the massive over-consumption of and dependence upon resources; develop its rail and alternative infrastructure to roads; and the lopsided structure of its car and truck driven economy, the US has quite literally no other option. Sadly, to achieve its objectives, it has lost the moral high ground and mortgaged the real meaning of Democracy, with unforeseen consequences for the world and its own citizens...

In the world of junk finance, junk food, junk beverages, junk rap music, where junk status stocks are OK, we now had junk mortgages. Junk, Junk, Junk, Junk and more Junk, in the land where accountability and financial prudence no longer exists. Clearly, the Government of the US is so corrupt and venal that no one cares a damn any more. Certainly protecting the rights and assets of one's citizens is an idea that died with the Founding Fathers."

---Nigel Maund

Full article

Vermont Votes No to War

"Congress may not be prepared to hold an honest debate on when and how the United States should exit the Iraq imbroglio, but the town meetings of rural Vermont are not so constrained. Declaring that 'The War in Iraq is a Local Issue,' citizens in communities across the state voted of Tuesday for resolutions urging President Bush and Congress to take steps to withdraw American troops from Iraq and calling on their state legislature to investigate the use and abuse of the Vermont National Guard in the conflict.

Spearheaded by the Vermont Network on Iraq War Resolutions, Green Mountain Veterans for Peace and the Vermont Chapter of Military Families Speak Out, the campaign to get antiwar resolutions on town meeting agendas succeeded in more than 50 communities statewide. That meant that the issue was raised in more than one fifth of the 251 Vermont towns where the annual celebrations of grassroots democracy take place. Forty-nine towns voted for the resolutions. Only three voted 'no,' while one saw a tie vote. In the state's largest city, Burlington, the antiwar initiative received the support of 65 percent of electors.

'Many have wondered how a town meeting could direct something on a national scale,' admitted Middlebury Town Manager Bill Finger. 'But it does send a message that hopefully people are listening to.'"

Here's hopin'.

Full story

BTK a Bush supporter

The BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill) serial killer in Kansas is
a registered Republican and president of his church council.

Via Bartcop