tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15216381.post231179444532173771..comments2024-01-19T07:30:41.591-08:00Comments on An Average American Patriot: The Bush Bubbles: War Bubble, Housing Bubble, oil bubble, energy bubble, economic bubble survival bubble, who needs a terrorist attack? Bush!jmsjoinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17631105639275375922noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15216381.post-49738907505362796022008-06-08T13:51:00.000-07:002008-06-08T13:51:00.000-07:00Linda Ann Thank you! I am afraid the chief idiot...Linda Ann<BR/> Thank you! I am afraid the chief idiot and his cronies will continue to get away with murder under the lie that it is for peace and security. How many more will he kill and displace in the name of peace and Democracy? I will sign these petitions if I can because I have signed so many. Thanks and take care!jmsjoinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17631105639275375922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15216381.post-74344627514722542042008-06-08T13:07:00.000-07:002008-06-08T13:07:00.000-07:00Well done, average patriot.It is time we stood up ...Well done, average patriot.<BR/>It is time we stood up and let our voices ring loud and clear: Hold George Bush accountable for all of his high crimes while in office, notably, murder. If you would like to see justice served, please add your name to this petition at: http://www.petitiontoprosecutegwb.blogspot.com<BR/>Also, http://www.democrats.com has a petition.<BR/>Stand up and get heard, save a democracy, demand justice.Linda Ann Alvarezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17221323588200131049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15216381.post-2188672431300350482008-06-08T07:41:00.000-07:002008-06-08T07:41:00.000-07:00amphibious! Son of a gun I was just thinking abo...amphibious!<BR/> Son of a gun I was just thinking about you. How are things? How is your situation? As for Hillary there was a little booing but not as much as I expected. I think she did a pretty good job. I hope to see her and Bill get out there and do what they can if anything to get Dems back in the White House. <BR/> We, all of us are in serious trouble and soon. I don't know if you have read recent posts or comments buy this entire mess here and around the world is just staring and will be stopped by no one!jmsjoinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17631105639275375922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15216381.post-12063245756745614592008-06-08T06:55:00.000-07:002008-06-08T06:55:00.000-07:00What a pity that Hillary couldn't have spoken as w...What a pity that Hillary couldn't have spoken as well and as reasonably as she did today's concession. What I found worrying was the amount of booing in the audience whenever she repeated "we must help elect BO".<BR/>Not like she's angling for Veep or anything.amphibioushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07995479651276290906noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15216381.post-48056391546495133072008-06-08T05:56:00.000-07:002008-06-08T05:56:00.000-07:00distributorcap Yes we are in trouble! This is ju...distributorcap<BR/> Yes we are in trouble! This is just beginning. While Bush goes around Europe on his victory get riddance tour the country is failing rapidly and I will guarantee you I have not been wrong yet and I will not be. He has yet to do his worst!jmsjoinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17631105639275375922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15216381.post-67799645472772883482008-06-08T05:53:00.000-07:002008-06-08T05:53:00.000-07:00Larry Thanks for sending this! All the big shoes...Larry<BR/> Thanks for sending this! All the big shoes haven't dropped and people can not be forgiven for thinking so. This is just beginning. just wait! I have said it too many times and no one is listening because they all want to sing KumBaya and hope everything works out. Forget it! As I keep saying and no one wants to hear it, Be Prepared!jmsjoinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17631105639275375922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15216381.post-48031202999794668232008-06-08T03:10:00.000-07:002008-06-08T03:10:00.000-07:00boy are we in trouble... and bush will go down to ...boy are we in trouble... and bush will go down to his last day (if he has one....) taking the country down the path of destruction he set in motion on 1/21<BR/><BR/>the real bubble is the media and there continued ignoring of how bad the bush administration has made it -- in a way - who cares what scotty said -- we need to get them NOW for all the shit and lies they continue to dump on the american people.<BR/><BR/>i am still not convinced he is leavingDistributorcaphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10149154929149577121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15216381.post-9808512073708036082008-06-07T18:13:00.000-07:002008-06-07T18:13:00.000-07:00Worse than Hitler Jim:The Empire -- A Status Repor...Worse than Hitler Jim:<BR/><BR/>The Empire -- A Status Report<BR/>By William Blum<BR/><BR/>There are a number of expressions and slogans associated with the Nazi regime in Germany which have become commonly known in English. <BR/><BR/> "Sieg Heil!" -- Victory Hail!<BR/> "Arbeit macht frei" -- Work will make you free. <BR/> "Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland und morgen die ganze Welt" -- Today Germany, tomorrow the world<BR/> But none perhaps is better known than "Deutschland über alles" -- Germany above all. <BR/><BR/>Thus I was taken aback when I happened to come across the website of the United States Air Force -- www.airforce.com/ -- and saw on its first page a heading "Above all". Lest you think that this refers simply and innocently to planes high up in the air, this page links to another -- www.airforce.com/achangingworld/ -- where "Above all" is repeated even more prominently, with links to sites for "Air Dominance", "Space Dominance", and "Cyber Dominance", each of which in turn repeats "Above all". These guys don't kid around. They're not your father's imperialist war mongers. If they're planning on a new "thousand-year Reich", let's hope that their fate is no better than the original, which lasted 12 years. <BR/><BR/>The events of recent years indicate that the world is wising up to and becoming less intimidated by Washington's overarching ambition for world dominance. Latin America is increasingly attempting to escape the empire's clutches. Leaders keenly aware of how US imperialism works and determined to keep it out of their own country are in power in Venezuela, Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and perhaps the latest addition, Paraguay. <BR/><BR/>And now Africa has turned down Washington's offer to be part of the imperial family. African governments have refused to host Africom, the US Africa Command. The Washington Post reported that "worry swept the continent that the United States planned major new military installations in Africa", and despite the promise of new development and security partnerships, many Africans concluded that Africom was primarily an extension of US counterterrorism policy, intended to keep an eye on Africa's large Muslim population. The United States "equates terrorism with Islam," said a senior Kenyan diplomat, and few African governments wanted to be seen as inviting US surveillance on their own people. [note from your editor: It would be more instructive to equate anti-American terrorism with American foreign policy, including building military bases in other people's countries.] <BR/><BR/>When Bush visited Africa in February, he was told by the Ghanian president: "You're not going to build any bases in Ghana." US-funded aid groups protested plans to expand the American military's role in economic development in Africa, sharply objecting to working alongside US troops. Said an Africom officer: "[Africom] was seen as a massive infusion of military might onto a continent that was quite proud of having removed foreign powers from its soil."[1] <BR/><BR/>There's also the oil factor. The US imports more oil from African nations than from Saudi Arabia, and the continent has huge unexplored areas. This undoubtedly is a major motivation behind Washington's desire for an expanded military presence in the region. The United States is not about to take Africa's rejection of Africom as the last word; indeed, some of the tough rhetoric by African officials may be for public consumption, for the US already has somewhat of a military presence on the continent. It will be interesting to observe the ongoing tug of war between Washington and African nationalists/anti-imperialists over expansion of the American presence. <BR/><BR/><BR/>Democracy American Style. You gotta problem wit dat?<BR/><BR/>Here's White House spokeswoman Dana Perino at a recent press briefing: <BR/> Reporter: The American people are being asked to die and pay for this, and you're saying that they have no say in this war?<BR/> Perino: I didn't say that ... this President was elected -- <BR/> Reporter: Well, what it amounts to is you saying we have no input at all. <BR/> Perino: You had input. The American people have input every four years, and that's the way our system is set up.[2] <BR/><BR/> In 1941, Edward Dowling, editor and priest, commented: "The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it." <BR/><BR/> Can we look forward to Perino's memoir after she leaves the White House in which, like her predecessor Scott McClellan recently, she confesses that she was part of a "permanent campaign" mode to deceive the American public? I'm prepared to welcome her into the fold as I have McClellan. I have a soft spot in my heart for political late bloomers. I used to work for the State Department when I was a good, loyal anti-communist. <BR/><BR/><BR/>Washington's grand and noble new ally in the Free World<BR/><BR/>Scott McClellan has been criticized for not expressing his reservations about Bush administration policies while still at the White House. This would have indeed taken a measure of courage few people have, and likely meant his job and career committing suicide. I'm reminded of Carla Del Ponte, the Swiss diplomat who in 1999 became Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, located in The Hague, Netherlands. In accordance with her official duties, she looked into possible war crimes of all the participants in the conflicts of the 1990s surrounding the breakup of Yugoslavia and the NATO (read the United States) 78-day bombing of Serbia and its province of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians were trying to secede. In late December 1999, in an interview with The Observer of London, Del Ponte was asked if she was prepared to press criminal charges against NATO personnel (and not just against the former Yugoslav republics). She replied: "If I am not willing to do that, I am not in the right place. I must give up my mission." <BR/><BR/>The Tribunal then announced that it had completed a study of possible NATO crimes, declaring: "It is very important for this tribunal to assert its authority over any and all authorities to the armed conflict within the former Yugoslavia." <BR/><BR/>Was this a sign from heaven that the new millennium (2000 was but a week away) was going to be one of more equal international justice? Could this really be? <BR/><BR/>No, it couldn't. From official quarters, military and civilian, of the United States and Canada, came disbelief, shock, anger, denials ... "appalling" ... "unjustified". Del Ponte got the message. Her office quickly issued a statement: "NATO is not under investigation by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. There is no formal inquiry into the actions of NATO during the conflict in Kosovo."[3] <BR/><BR/>Del Ponte remained in her position until the end of 2007, leaving to become the Swiss ambassador to Argentina; at the same time writing a book about her time with the Tribunal -- "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals", published two months ago but available at the moment only in Italian. It hasn't been much reported yet what del Ponte has said about NATO, but the book has already created a scandal in Europe, for in it she reveals how the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) abducted hundreds of Serbs in 1999, and took them to Kosovo's fellow Muslims in Albania where they were killed, their kidneys and other body parts then removed and sold for transplant in other countries. <BR/><BR/>The KLA for years has been engaging in other equally charming activities, such as heavy trafficking in drugs, trafficking in women, various acts of terrorism, and carrying out ethnic cleansing of Serbs who have had the bad fortune to be in Kosovo because it's long been their home. Between 1998 and 2002, the KLA appeared at times on the State Department terrorism list; at first because of its tactic of targeting innocent Serb civilians in order to provoke retaliation from Serbian troops; later because Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries, including some tied to al Qaeda, were fighting alongside the KLA, as they were in Bosnia with the Bosnian Muslims during the 1990s Yugoslav civil wars.[4] The KLA remained on the terrorist list until the US decided to make them an ally, in some measure due to the existence of a major American military base in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel. (It's remarkable, is it not, how these bases pop up all around the world?) In November 2005, following a visit there, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described the camp as a "smaller version of Guantanamo", referring to the detainees there at the time from Washington's various wars, including the so-called War on Terror.[5] <BR/><BR/>On February 17 of this year, in a move of highly questionable international legality, the KLA declared the independence of Kosovo from Serbia. The next day the United States recognized this new "nation", thus affirming the unilateral declaration of independence of a part of another country's territory. The new country has as its prime minister a gentleman named Hashim Thaci, described in Del Ponte's book as the brain behind the abductions of Serbs and the sale of their organs. The new gangster state of Kosovo is supported by Washington and other Western powers who can't forgive Serbia-Yugoslavia-Milosevic -- "the last communists of Europe" -- for not wanting to wholeheartedly embrace the NATO/US/European Union triumvirate, which recognizes no higher power, United Nations or other. The independent state of Kosovo is regarded as reliably pro-west, a state that will serve as a militarized outpost for the triumvirate, which is intent on further encircling Russia and pushing it out of Europe. <BR/><BR/>In her book, Del Ponte asserts that there was sufficient evidence for prosecution of Kosovo Albanians involved in war crimes, but the investigation "was nipped in the bud", focusing instead on "the crimes committed by Serbia." She claims that she could do nothing because it was next to impossible to collect evidence in Kosovo, which was swarming with criminals, in and out of the government. Witnesses were intimidated, and even judges in The Hague were afraid of the Kosovo Albanians. <BR/><BR/>In April, the Swiss Foreign Department issued a statement that Del Ponte's book "contains statements which are impermissible for a representative of the government of Switzerland", ordered her to return to her ambassadorial post in Argentina, and prohibited any further appearances promoting her book. The Swiss have officially recognized the independence of Kosovo and established an embassy in the country. Kosovo appears likely to remain a highly controversial issue in Europe and Washington for some time to come.[6] <BR/><BR/>Reason number 3,468 to yearn for the lifting of the capitalist weight from our souls<BR/><BR/>My phone company, Verizon, recently raised the monthly charge for my international call plan by 30 percent. I phoned them to find out the reason for this and was told that their competitors had raised their charge for the international plan and so Verizon was doing the same. "To stay competitive", the earnest young man told me. I thought I must be misunderstanding him. We've all been raised to believe that one of the beauties of capitalism is that it provides a competitive environment which induces businesses to lower their rates so as to lure away customers from their competitors. In the end, the consumer benefits from lower prices. And this makes sense, at least within the capitalist framework. (Although there have of course been numerous cases of large companies lowering prices to force a small company -- which initiated the price cuts -- out of business, after which the large companies raise their prices back up.) But now? Now we're told that competition leads to price increases. What, pray tell, is there left of the system for us to believe in? <BR/><BR/>Supply and demand? Like in Burma, following the recent devastating cyclone? Prices for food and other essentials have risen significantly since the disaster. As they should, according to the revered and beloved law of supply and demand, inasmuch as things are obviously in short supply in Burma and people's needs are plainly much greater than usual. What could make more sense under circumstances of human desperation than to raise prices? <BR/><BR/>Yet, though questioning the law of supply and demand is normally regarded in the same light as being skeptical of the law of gravity, I have to do so, and refer to things I've expressed before: The price of gasoline in the United States has been increasing on a regular basis for a rather long time now, but there's no shortage of supply. There are no lines of cars waiting hours at gas stations trying to fill up before the pumps run dry. And there's been a considerable fall in demand as less-than-rich drivers cut back on car use. It does not require total cynicism to wonder whether the law of supply and demand has been repealed. Or can it be that what is known as "supply and demand" is not really any kind of immutable "law", but rather (choke, gasp) "corporate policies"? <BR/><BR/>The oil companies are currently spending big bucks to convince the American public that the super-high gasoline prices are not the companies' fault. "The industry," reported the Washington Post, "is trying to convince voters -- who, in turn, will make the case to their members of Congress -- that rising energy prices are not the producers' fault and that government efforts to punish the industry, especially with higher taxes, would only make pricing problems worse."[7] <BR/><BR/>Do the oil companies think they're being misunderstood? The next time you run into a friendly oil company executive ask him this: "If you lowered prices to what they were two years ago, would consumers stage protests outside your headquarters? Would the FBI raid your offices? Would your breathtakingly obscenely high profits drop into the red? Could you still maintain your decadent millionaire lifestyle? The oil companies are perfectly free to very significantly lower prices without anything that you or I would call financial suffering. But they don't do it. So what's being misunderstood by the public which obliges the companies to spend millions on advertisements? Money which could go toward price reductions. <BR/><BR/>Oil company executives at least produce a useful product compared to people in the hedge funds business. What are hedge funds, you ask? They're private, largely unregulated pools of capital whose managers can buy or sell any kind of assets. The income of the fund's executives -- often in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes even a billion -- is taxed as capital gains, a much lower tax rate than if it were taxed as regular earnings. One can say that hedge funds are simply pure speculation carried to absurdity; typical of the new American Dream: getting rich through speculation and inheritance instead of through skill, enterprise, and filling a human social need. <BR/><BR/>Here is Daniel Strachman, a former hedge fund consultant and author of "The Fundamentals of Hedge Fund Management." He's skeptical of raising taxes on hedge fund managers, saying they should be rewarded for taking huge risks. [So do firefighters, police officers, and bank robbers of course.] Most managers have their own money in their funds, he declares, and suffer massive losses when their investments go bad. "It's clear somebody has to win and somebody has to lose", says Strachman. "It's not pretty at all because people say, 'Oh my God. Look how much money these guys are making while people are losing their homes and are complaining about the cost of eggs and sugar.' But so what? We don't live in a society that is pretty all the time. That's why it's capitalism."[8]Larryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05283557503536810926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15216381.post-73634872215679061792008-06-07T18:09:00.000-07:002008-06-07T18:09:00.000-07:00Look whats coming in the Bush economy Jim:Think th...Look whats coming in the Bush economy Jim:<BR/><BR/>Think the Economy Is Bad? Wait Till the States Cut Back <BR/><BR/>By LOUIS UCHITELLE<BR/><BR/>Struggling as we are with the housing bust, the credit crunch, shrinking consumption, rising unemployment and faltering business investment, we can be forgiven for thinking that all the big shoes have dropped. There is another one up there, however, and it is about to come down. <BR/><BR/>State and city governments have yet to shrink the economy; indeed, they have even managed to prop it up. They have quietly maintained their spending at pre-crisis levels even as they warn of numerous cutbacks forced on them by declining tax revenues. The cutbacks, however, are written into budgets for a fiscal year that begins on July 1, a month away. In the meantime the states and cities, often drawing on rainy-day savings, have carried their share of the load for the national economy.<BR/><BR/>That share is gigantic. At $1.8 trillion annually in a $14 trillion economy, the states and municipalities spend almost twice as much as the federal government, including the cost of the Iraq war. When librarians, lifeguards, teachers, transit workers, road repair crews and health care workers disappear, or airport and school construction is halted, the economy trembles. None of that, or very little, has happened so far, not even in California, despite a significant decline in tax revenue. <BR/><BR/>“We are looking at a $4 billion cut to public schools and deep cuts that will result in thousands of Californians losing their health care,” said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, offering a preview of coming hardships. “But the reality is we have not pulled money off the streets yet.”<BR/><BR/>Quite the opposite, the states and municipalities have increased their spending in recent quarters, bolstering the nation’s meager economic growth. Over the past year, they have added $40 billion to their outlays, even allowing for scattered spending freezes and a few cutbacks in advance of July 1. Total employment has also risen. But when the current fiscal year ends in 30 days (or in the fall for many municipalities), state and city spending will fall, along with employment — slowly at first and then quite noticeably after the next president takes office. <BR/><BR/>Sometime next year, the decline will reach an annual rate of $50 billion, Goldman Sachs estimates. “It is a big reason to expect a weak economy in 2009,” said Jan Hatzius, chief domestic economist at the firm. <BR/><BR/>The $90 billion swing — from more spending to less — could be enough to push down a weak economy to zero growth or less, because state and city spending has accounted for as much as half of total economic growth since last fall. (A robust economy has a growth rate of 3 percent to 4 percent, compared with the 0.9 percent or less of the last two quarters.) The $90 billion would certainly offset most of the $107 billion stimulus package now going out from the federal government to millions of Americans in the form of tax rebate checks. The hope is they will spend this windfall on consumption and in doing so sustain the economy. That might happen — for a while. But with the cutbacks in state and city outlays canceling out the consumption, the next president, struggling to revive a weak economy, will almost certainly have to consider a second stimulus package.<BR/><BR/>But what should it be? Should it be a reprise of the checks, relying again on private-sector spending for rejuvenation? Or should Washington channel extra federal money to city and state governments so they can sustain their outlays for the numerous programs that otherwise would be shrunk? The answer, even on Wall Street, is often: subsidize the states and cities.<BR/><BR/>“If you want to make sure that federal money gets spent, and jobs are created, you give it to them,” said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at Global Insight, a forecasting firm. <BR/><BR/>Like many others, Mr. Gault contends that more than 50 percent of the $107 billion in stimulus checks now going to households is likely to produce no stimulus at all. Instead, it will be used to pay down debt or buy imported goods and services. Imports bolster production in other countries; not in the United States. <BR/><BR/>Still, rebate checks have been a standard tool for years in efforts to revive the American economy. So have tax cuts and — the most popular tool of all — the Federal Reserve’s lowering of interest rates. Each tool assumes that people will respond to the incentive with more spending and investment, and markets will then work their magic. Not since the 1970s, when politicians still paid attention to the teachings of John Maynard Keynes, has public spending — government spending — surfaced in mainstream political debate as a potentially effective means of counteracting a downturn. <BR/><BR/>Government has to step in, Keynesians argue, when private spending is not enough to lift the economy, despite the nudge from tax cuts or lower interest rates or rebate checks. This downturn might be one of those moments, involving as it does the bursting of a huge housing bubble. That has precipitated sharp declines in various tax revenues on which the states and cities depend, forcing them into extraordinary spending cuts — not yet, of course, but after July 1.<BR/><BR/>The issue barely dents the presidential election campaign. The Republicans in particular are less than enthusiastic about Keynesian economics, with its use of government to rescue markets. They, and many mainstream economists, for that matter, argue that government is inefficient, bureaucratic, wasteful and unable to spend fast enough to counteract a downturn. The two Democratic candidates, in contrast, argue that a second stimulus package, if one is needed, should include federal subsidies to the states and municipalities, not to start new projects but to prevent cutbacks in existing ones.<BR/><BR/>No state seems more vulnerable than Florida, with its plunging home prices and slashed property-tax assessments, not yet on the books but soon to be. In anticipation, the legislature in May approved a $66.5 billion budget for the coming fiscal year, down from $72 billion in the current one.<BR/><BR/>Schools are a target, said Michael Sittig, executive director of the Florida League of Cities, “but none has been hurt yet. Nevertheless, everyone is scared. Everyone is in the mode of trying to figure out how to get through next year” — starting 30 days from now.Larryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05283557503536810926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15216381.post-2206532402366390112008-06-07T10:47:00.000-07:002008-06-07T10:47:00.000-07:00I just listened to Hillary's speech and I thought ...I just listened to Hillary's speech and I thought it was very good. I believe we will unify and not lose Hillary voters.<BR/> I only wish she would have mentioned that McCain is trying to woo her supporters ans that they can not be misled into thinking McCain is their man. The son and grandson of war leaders a war monger himself promises more of Bush's mess and that is all!<BR/> We must unite and if possible avoid the scenario I just painted!jmsjoinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17631105639275375922noreply@blogger.com