For All You Bush Lovers, Here's a Handy Visual Aid It must be hard to admit that the economic theories that you've had most of your life aren't just wrong, they're dangerously wrong. After all, if you've spent most of your adult life trying to tell people that cutting taxes leads to trickle down effects that include jobs, higher wages, and better benefits for those in the middle and the bottom, then any facts that are contrary to that handy fiction are best left unmentioned, or, better yet, attacked.

Well, get out your big guns, boys, because here's a fact that proves that the only thing that trickles down is the shit down your legs.

Labels: economics, job losses, jobs, rate of job loss, trickle down, trickle down economics, unemployment

  ¶ 5:59 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Racist Jesus   ¶ 2:08 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Too Big to Fail   ¶ 3:08 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Compare and Contrast: GWB v BHO Everybody's talking about the enormous amount of time Obama spent communicating with people during his first year and the worst depression since the last one, as compared to the much lesser amount of time that, say, W spent on TV.

See, when you're in charge of a White House where Obama is the President, during a national disaster that was the rubble left after 8 years of W, the first thing you want to do is get him out there talking. If you're in charge of the George Dumbya Bush White House, not so much.

Then there is, of course, the matter of total debt added under your watch. Over 8 years for W, it's 5 trillion. Despite Karl Rove's complete and utter I-dare-you-to-look-it-up declaration that Obama has already added more to the debt in one year than Bush did in 8, the debt has gone up 1.693 trillion in Obama's first year. So, yeah, fuck you Karl, you lying scum.

To me the telling stat in Bush vs. Obama is the vacation time, which I cover in this Side-wiki post on Obama's first year numbers.

Labels: Bush, Obama, presidential stats

  ¶ 2:03 PM 0 comments links to this post

  It's bad enough you gave us Bush...   ¶ 1:45 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Lying Bigots Can't Even Get the Names Straight   ¶ 11:36 AM 0 comments links to this post

  "...comfort to our enemies..."   ¶ 11:22 AM 0 comments links to this post

  What I Miss About Television Anything we miss from the highly over-priced cable TV we're not getting anymore, we can make up for by having friends tape stuff, watching Daily KOS TV, or with Netflix. The following is a Rachel Maddow highlight. And I do mean highlight. Because this goes way beyond telling Dick Cheney to shove his bullshit up his own ass with a shotgun. This is about telling the truth, and how the Republican party just doesn't give a shit about The Truth. Or the country for that matter. They put their party Uber Alles, and Rachel intelligently and comprehensively puts them in their place. Watch the whole thing for a nice bonus dig on the idiots who call themselves the media who perpetuate the lies.

Labels: Dick Cheney, Rachel Maddow, terrorism

  ¶ 1:53 PM 0 comments links to this post

  We Were Just Out of Schlitz   ¶ 7:53 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Aid and Comfort to the Enemy Via the New York Times, yet another report confirms the thesis of this blog: that the Bush Administration committed treason, the definition of which, is in Article Three of the US Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

From the above linked NYT story, a new Senate report adds more proof to the case against the Bush Administration, especially Donald Rumsfeld. They let Bin Laden go when they had him cornered in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in December, 2001.

The report, based in part on a little-noticed 2007 history of the Tora Bora episode by the military’s Special Operations Command, asserts that the consequences of not sending American troops in 2001 to block Mr. bin Laden’s escape into Pakistan are still being felt.

The report blames the lapse for “laying the foundation for today’s protracted Afghan insurgency and inflaming the internal strife now endangering Pakistan.”

George Bush stood on top of the rubble of the WTC and said we'd get those guys, but when it came time to actually get them, the order came down, from the Administration, to let our enemies get away. The Whitehouse ordered US troops not to finish the job.

I can think of many ways to aid our enemies. Short of actually plotting an attack with them, letting them get away with it, especially when you actually have them cornered and then let them go, is nothing short of treason. It would be hard to aid and comfort an enemy more than letting them walk away from justice.

In legal terms, this is known as accessory after the fact. Helping a mass murderer escape prosecution is, at the very least, a felony, and, without much effort at all, easy to define as treason.

Now that we know how the Bush administration worked, taking the politics of everything into account, is it such a leap to conclude that the Karl Rove mentality of making everything political, played a part in the decision to let our enemies walk away from Tora Bora? When people in top positions at the White House make decisions to let our enemies simply pack up and walk off through the mountains, doesn't that at least deserve investigation? Doesn't that at least deserve outrage from those who supposedly cherish our National Security above all else?

I can't wait to see the drivel from these Bush cheerleaders dismissing this story as politically motivated Bush bashing from the deranged left. It will be just another example of how these hacks put the well-being of the Republican party above the safety of US citizens, and above the ideal of justice for mass murderers.

Labels: 9-11, afghanistan, Bush Administration, Bush Administration Treason, Osama bin Laden, Rumsfeld, Tora Bora

  ¶ 10:44 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Message to Republicans: Please Nominate Cheney! The one thing I was worried about for 2012?

Dick Cheney for President.

Brought to you by people who should be shot in the face with bird shot.

Labels: 2012, Dick Cheney, President

  ¶ 11:10 AM 0 comments links to this post

  On the Definition of Treason I sometimes cross post what I write here at the Daily Kos, where I'm sure to get a few comments anytime I bring up the T word. I enjoy the smart comments there, as the dKos readers are some of the smartest on the net. It's why I'm a longtime member there.

Regarding my last post about why I call it Bush Treason, I got a response that laments the dilution of the term.

Because the Constitution, which I remember even if Dick Cheney tried to shred it, actually defines treason:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

That is a high standard to attain.

Did the Bush administration actually invade the United States? No. Did they actually help the terrorists in their plot? No.

No treason. There are a variety of reasons to consider the Bush administration the worst ever, but debasing the word treason does not help.

My response:

Did they actually help the terrorists with their plot? Well, could the plot have been carried out if they had done their job? Would the plot have been carried out if Bush had read the PDB and done something about it? Would the plot have been carried out if Ashcroft hadn't told people to stop telling him about terrorism?

...adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Is it that much of a stretch to say that we created Osama, and that the neo-cons (especially Cheney) funded him, supported him, and basically created him? Same with Saddam... These people were not exactly friendly to the US, but in the neo-con zeal to fight the USSR, Cheney et al certainly gave Aid and Comfort to future enemies.

But, say, OK, but they weren't our enemies at the time. Well, then when they got reports about imminent terror attacks and chose to ignore them, isn't that aid and comfort? When Ashcroft said he didn't want to hear anymore about terror, that's willful ignorance which led to our enemies operating without any kind of Justice Department effort to stop them.

But, again, I'll go with you and say, no, ignoring a threat is not the same as helping someone attack us. Even then, when you come out after the attack and lie about what you did to stop it... When you lie to make yourself look more heroic, when you cover up what went wrong, when you attack someone who had nothing to do with it thereby sucking resources away from the good fight, are you not helping the enemy get away with it? When you have the guy who did it cornered in Tora Bora and you let him get away, isn't that being an accessory after the fact?

I could go on and on. To me, I am not debasing the word treason because I don't limit it's definition. I'm trying to say that there's a whole series of actions by Dick Cheney et al which actually did give aid and comfort to our enemies. Just because Dick wasn't on a plane with a box cutter doesn't mean that he didn't do his damndest to make sure we got ourselves a Pearl Harbor Type Event. All he had to do was not do his job.

Further, I haven't even delved into a possible alternative explanation of the definition of enemies. Since the P and VP are sworn to protect and defend the constitution, and by extension US Law, then by torturing, wiretapping, and who knows what all, they actually became the enemy!

I do see your point, but I don't understand why sticking to such a narrow definition of treason is so important. By sending this country into an illegal war based on bullshit and lies, they essentially declared war on the US. They helped those who are truly our enemies with recruiting, with milking us dry economically (think the trillion dollars we will spend on Iraq is going to help us economically?), and by taking our focus away from the people who really attacked us. To me, that's treason.

Labels: 9-11, Bush, Cheney, treason, US constitution

  ¶ 11:34 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Why Do I Call It Bush Treason?

Maybe the better question is why don't more people call it treason. George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and most of the administration ignored warnings about Al Qaeda, were incompetent (My Pet Goat is just the tip of the iceberg) in the response to defend the nation, and then lied about it.

The following is from Jacob Heilbrunn's book review in today's NYT of John Farmer's The Ground Truth:

Preoccupied with building a costly missile defense system to counter a spurious menace from Russia and with maintaining “full spectrum dominance” over the rest of the globe, most Bush administration officials blithely ignored the danger emanating from the caves of Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and his acolytes plotted against America. Confronted by a small group of mostly Saudi nationals armed with box cutters, the central nervous system of the country’s defense agencies went into a state of cataleptic shock. The only decisive action taken on 9/11 came not from the military, but from the courageous passengers who stormed the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93, leading the hijackers to crash the plane over Pennsylvania farmland before it could reach its intended target in Washington.

That's bad enough, of course, but then, like dirty little boys lying to their mother that they hadn't been playing in the mud, they claimed everything was just fine. I'm sure someone idiot will claim this lie was heroic, for stopping the spread of panic over their own incompetence, but to me, it's further evidence of treason. They knew they had fucked up, and they'd never get re-elected if everyone knew it, so they lied about it. Heilbrunn:

[...] Farmer superbly renders the knuckle-biting tension and confusion engendered by the hijackings, and says the leadership of the F.A.A. and the Defense Department “would remain largely irrelevant to the critical decision making and unaware of the evolving situation ‘on the ground’ until the attacks were completed” — thereby making it close to impossible for the military to inter­cept any aircraft.

Yet both Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney, Farmer says, provided palpably false versions that touted the military’s readiness to shoot down United 93 before it could hit Washington. Planes were never in place to intercept it. By the time the Northeast Air Defense Sector had been informed of the hijacking, United 93 had already crashed. Farmer scrutinizes F.A.A. and Norad rec­ords to provide irrefragable evidence that a day after a Sept. 17 White House briefing, both agencies suddenly altered their chronologies to produce a coherent timeline and story that “fit together nicely with the account provided publicly by Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney.”

Farmer further observes that the Bush administration wrongly asserted that the chain of command functioned on 9/11; that President Bush issued an authorization to shoot down hijacked commercial flights; and that top officials at F.A.A. headquarters coordinated their actions with the military. Farmer’s verdict: “History should record that whether through unprecedented administrative incompetence or orchestrated mendacity, the American people were misled about the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks.”

Of course, misleading people after such a shocking event proved easy enough, so they just kept doing it. The lies just kept piling up. Pat Tillman comes to mind. So does Iraq (you know, the place Fox News doesn't seem to remember).

It's just too much. You don't have to be a genius to see why so many conspiracy theories have formed around the attacks. The picture that is becoming more and more clear is that the Bush Administration ignored repeated warnings and signs of attack, told officials to stop telling them about it (Ashcroft), spent all their time on other things (planning to invade Iraq, spend billions of missile defense boondoggles, and suck cash away from the poor with massive tax cuts to the rich while drowning non-rich-corporation-subsidization domestic programs in a bathtub), fucked up their response to the attack, and then lied about it to make themselves seem more heroic.

How can anyone possibly call that anything other than treason?

Labels: 9-11, Bush, Bush Administration Treason, Bush lies, Bush treason, terrorism, treason

  ¶ 11:44 AM 0 comments links to this post

  You Go, Girl! From Wanda Sykes' new show:

I went to sleep, and when I woke up people were mad at Obama. And I thought, 'Did I miss something? Did Obama start an illegal war? Did he fly over a flood zone and just wave? Did he torture detainees in a secret prison? Did he start illegally tapping phones? Did he alienate the world and squander a surplus? Because if he did any of that, we need to impeach that jackass.'

Labels: Bush, Obama, Wanda Sykes

  ¶ 8:10 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Bush Administration Officials Cashing In On Iraq I'm shocked. Shocked to hear that former Bush administration officials are profiteering in Iraq.

In 2008, Tim Shorrock reported for Salon that while “working inside America’s ’shadow’ spy industry, George Tenet, Richard Armitage, Cofer Black and others are cashing in big on Iraq and the war on terror.” Now, the Financial Times reports today that even more Bush administration officials are eyeing profits in Iraq:

[...]

Senior Bush administration figures including Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Baghdad, and Jay Garner, the retired general who led reconstruction efforts immediately after the war, are leading a new business push into Iraq.

Seth and Amy should have done this, instead of the Goldman Sachs thing. Because rich people getting better health care than the rest of us isn't really that much of a really, but starting a war to make your buddies rich, well, that only happens every now and then in America.

Labels: Bush Administration, Iraq, war profiteering

  ¶ 9:56 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Epic Fail: The Bush [Criminal] Record The reverse Robin Hood crime syndicate known as the Cheney Cabal never hid the fact that they wanted to put more money in the hands of the richest, based on the twisted theory that once they had more, the rich would invest, create jobs, and more money would magically appear everywhere.

Right.

The hopeless idiots who voted for these crooks, meaning all the working class fools who hate hippies from the sixties so much that they still vote for the fascists who will beat them up on the news, are now trying to blame their new President for the full latrine hole in which they now find themselves. They're not going to pay attention to the latest proof that they were used by the cynical politics of KKKarl Rove in order to steal a lot of money, followed by a last minute bail out (Bush's TARP) of all the rich people who were standing around saying "We don't know where all the money went."

Maybe they thought that the war on poverty they inherited meant they were supposed to kill poor people? What other excuse could there be for the draconian policies of tax cuts for the rich, spending cuts for the poor, and bailouts for the ultra-rich? Looking back, they were so successful at screwing poor people that it must've been a plan from the get-go, since the only things these people were successful at were things they had planned from the start, like starting war in Iraq.

Of course, they were good at planning the starts of things. Not so good at the rest. How's that ownership society going now? The ultimate pottery barn rule: Bush broke everything, now we own it, and it's worthless.

If only we were really Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy:

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked.

The one success story? The rich got much, much richer.

Since poverty is the lagging indicator, we're going to be seeing numbers like this go up for a while yet, and we're going to see the treasonous apologists for these war criminals try to blame the new guy, just like they tried to blame Clinton for 9/11, despite the warnings that OBL was determined to strike IN the US.

Thousands died that day because the Bushies were asleep at the National Security wheel. Or drunk. Or choking on pretzels. Or just didn't care, since, as the PNAC (project for a new american century) said late in the Clinton years, they'd need a new Pearl Harbor to really get involved in the Middle East. Now, since they got what they wanted (don't the spoiled frat brats always?), I'm assuming they, at the very least, did nothing to stop what they were hoping for. So, they used the same kind of indifference on programs that actually helped people get out of poverty, or get affordable health insurance, or a mortgage within the means of which they could live.

Say, for example, you want to milk all the money you can out of people at the bottom, and make sure it goes to the top. Obviously, you'd cut taxes on the wealthy and cut programs for the poor. But there's plenty of other things you can do. Ignore hurricanes that hit black people, for example. Make sure you decrease funding into things that might protect black neighborhoods: levees, for one. Or cut superfund sites funding, since a disproportionate share of minorities live near those sites. Or, you could string out a costly racket known as the Iraq war, sucking money up into the military industrial complex, lining Halliburton pockets, while running up a deficit designed to starve "a beast" that you're trying to shrink to a size that you can drown in a bath-tub, although Grover Norquist's bathtub must be a little bigger than most. Or, speaking of water, you could just not prosecute clean water act violations. Millions "saved." Unless by millions, you mean people...

If you really wanted to be a vicious bastard, you could sue states that tried to let people who were suffering die with dignity (no big end-of-life bucks for the HMOs), you could make sure teen pregnancies skyrocket, (don't make me look up the Freakonomics on the chains of poverty in which pregnant teens and their kids get locked), and you could arrest cancer patients for smoking pot (no money for big pharma in an easy-to-grow plant).

All good plans, if you're looking to put money back into the hands of those who need it least. Of course, if you believe the Reagan lie that government is bad, then you probably love what Bush did. It's hard to go to church and explain to people how Jesus would have approved of more people in poverty, more children going to bed hungry, more people dying due to lack of adequate health care... But, fuck that, eh? Just make shit up!

"It's not my fault they're poor!" How about "The Lord helps those who help themselves"? Maybe "I shouldn't have to pay to help lazy bums or their kids"? That's a great one. Or, how about the biblical version of let them eat cake?

And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man.--Ezekiel 4:12

Never mind Mark 10:25. Everything can be explained away with the ultimate bumper-sticker legacy of the Book of Reagan (1:1):

I got mine, fuck you.

Of course, if you think government is always bad, you're wrong. But, like trying to convince you that the earth is 4 billion years old and we evolved from lower life forms, that our carbon blanket is warming us up, that the earth goes around the sun, that the government's not going to pull the plug on your Grandma, that our president was born in Hawaii, or that Hawaii is a US State, you're not going to believe me. You think what you think, and then there's the truth, and never the twain shall meet.

Good luck with that. And thanks for the shit sandwich.

Labels: Bush, conservatism, conservatives, economic policy, economics, philosophy, politics, poverty, Republicans, truth

  ¶ 3:01 PM 0 comments links to this post

  When Has Dick Cheney Ever Been Right?

Labels: Dick Cheney, torture, truth

  ¶ 2:24 PM 0 comments links to this post

  Rethuglicans Just Makin' Shit Up (as usual) I'm so sick of all this shit from the racist right. Under GW, we were much more fascist, if you actually care to look at the definition of fascism.

...a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

What we have right now is corporatism. It's like fascism, except the corporation, not the state, is really in control of everything. There is no racial or religious (left out of this definition, but most fascist movements come with religious bigotry as well) component (unless you want to make the argument that they worship money)...

We can take little bites out of corporate control here and there, nibble around the edges like rabbits, but the tasty vegies deep in the garden are for the corporate elite. When they're in trouble, we bail them out. When we're in trouble and try to use the democratic tools of our elected government to help us, we're fascists because, well, because they create the connotations and the definitions. We're fascist because they say so. Fuck the facts. Fuck the dictionary. Fuck reality. Just show up and shout over everyone: protect the companies from the fascists in Washington!

By letting our elected representatives craft a bill that keeps insurance companies honest, Obama is a Centralized Autocratic Dictatorial Leader? In what fucked up Universe does that logic work? Oh, right.... Guess that means Kim Jong Il is a socialist? If you say so...

I'm so sick of these idiots that I'm not even going to bother listing the fascist bullshit that GW Bush did to this country. Compare their warrior hero prezteldent with Obama on the fascist scale, and you break the fucking scale.

Labels: Bush, Fascism, Obama

  ¶ 7:55 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Anyone Still A Republican After Today is Officially a Fucking Idiot Sarah Fucking Palin:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

The America I know and love doesn't exist anymore. If it did, lying scumbag idiot torture apologists who promote the agenda of racist violence whores who respond to collateral damage with shrugs and smirks would be rounded up and jailed, when a conviction was achieved from a Jury of their peers (if there is such a thing), and sued for slander when a conviction is not achieved, and laughed out of town in all the other cases. They certainly wouldn't be given a bigger soap box, a following of brainwashed bigots who couldn't find the truth if you rammed it up their collective retentive asses, and a war chest of millions of dollars from the lunatic asylum masquerading as a news organization and a supposedly legitimate political party that now represents the south, the Mormon corridor, and Maine (for some insane reason I have yet to figure out).

But just for a moment, I'm going to stop typing, chase the squirrel away from the bird feeder again, and fantasize about a society in which we all get to vote on Sarah Palin's "level of productivity in society" and, based on our vote, determine that she should have to spend the rest of her years in seclusion, in some sort of God-forsaken hell-hole where news cameras never go, where health care is only for the very rich or very poor or very old or very incarcerated, and where her monthly check from the government is the majority of her income, where she has to live, with her whole damn genetically challenged family and unmarried teenage mother daughter, on $600 in food stamps a month, while borrowing money from friends and family to pay the rent...

Ah, fantasy...

Labels: GOP, Idiots, Republicans, Sarah Palin

  ¶ 9:48 AM 0 comments links to this post

  Where in the World is Fox News?   ¶ 2:51 PM 0 comments links to this post