POSTCARDS FROM THE BUNKER Thanksgiving Edition; Give thanks today for the Turkeys in your life!
A CONSERVATIVE --FAMILY VALUES-- NEWSLETTER, FOR CONSERVATIVES ONLY, About Conservatives, ....By Conservatives.
With your Host / editor HERB KISSELL - saluditorian of my prison GED class!
Hustlin' Corn Nuts for Jesus
The Conservatives motto : "There is always something you should fear, and we
are the only ones that can keep you safe."
"Anything less than the entire truth is just a lie."
Mission : The mission of Postcards from the Bunker is to inform and educate
certain misguided individuals (and you know who you are) regarding:
a.. Defending The Constitution
the key insight that liberation begins in the individual's own mind, and
that techniques of propaganda, persuasion, and brainwashing program individuals
to create prisons for themselves in dutiful submission to their political,
economic, and religious overlords.
Leadership quote : "Thank you all for coming". Ronald Reagan -our Leader-
And now, Todays top news from the Conservative Bunker
- Dec 29, 2009
A CONSERVATIVE --FAMILY VALUES-- NEWSLETTER, FOR CONSERVATIVES ONLY, About Conservatives, ....By Conservatives.
With your Host / editor HERB KISSELL - saluditorian of my prison GED class!
Hustlin' Corn Nuts for Jesus
The Conservatives motto : "There is always something you should fear, and we
are the only ones that can keep you safe."
"Anything less than the entire truth is just a lie."
Mission : The mission of Postcards from the Bunker is to inform and educate
certain misguided individuals (and you know who you are) regarding:
a.. Defending The Constitution
the key insight that liberation begins in the individual's own mind, and
that techniques of propaganda, persuasion, and brainwashing program individuals
to create prisons for themselves in dutiful submission to their political,
economic, and religious overlords.
Leadership quote : "Thank you all for coming". Ronald Reagan -our Leader-
And now, Todays top news from the Conservative Bunker
BREAKING NEWS: Non-Violent Pacifist Rooster "Kenny" still in coma - fighting for life- after being torn to shreds at cockfight. Still on Life Support machines.... Blood Donors needed. Family called to bedside, priest gives last rites. Organizers form "Hands across Rhode Island" -- Legislature pauses for Minute of silence and prayer -- Governor calls for state minute of silence.... "For Kenny" .
Springsteen concert dedicates "Born in the USA" to Kenny. Unauthorized Biography rushed to print. Production begins on made-for-tv movie "Kenny's Song"
Tribute to Kenny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc31gmjG-Rg&feature=related
Church delegation does "Laying on of Hands" prayer while Joan Baez sings "The Night they drove ol' Kenny Down" at United Roosters Union Rally themed "No more Kennys".
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HEADLINES . . . . Obama to 'finish the job' begun by Alexander the Great
Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, & Festivus
Middle Class Losing Health
InsuranceBut problem is temporary – middle class rapidly vanishing.
InsuranceBut problem is temporary – middle class rapidly vanishing.
Rich Say They Need Bush Tax CutPoint to high price of diamonds, yachts, caviar.
Analysis: Bush Tax Cuts
Don't Only Benefit RichAlso benefit super-rich, ultra-rich, filthy rich.
Don't Only Benefit RichAlso benefit super-rich, ultra-rich, filthy rich.
Dick Cheney is still hiding out. I wonder if Scooter Libby and he are still close?
Here is my secret...what is essential is invisible to the naked eye"--The Little Prince
Exposed: Huge Soccer
Game-Fixing ScandalHundreds of players paid to run up and down field, hardly ever scoring.
Game-Fixing ScandalHundreds of players paid to run up and down field, hardly ever scoring.
"Everybody's talking about President Obama's speech last night. He's sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Right now, in Scandinavia, the Nobel Committee is really rethinking the whole peace prize." –Craig Ferguson
“As the World Turns” CancelledLast viewer dies.
Close out the Decade: Thank you, George Bush. Was Katrina, Iraq or the financial mess the most damaging thing you left us in the end?
Republicans: No Reason to Probe Bush Administration Use of TortureThere was no oral sex involved.
"The governor is hiking the Appalachian Trail." Spokesman for South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford regarding Sanford's disappearance on June 22.
Top 10 Republican sex scandals of the decade
"Former President Bush is writing his memoirs and he says they will focus on 12 major decisions he made in his life. The weird thing is, 11 of them were made by Dick Cheney." –Conan O'Brien
Leo Jul 23 - Aug 22
Don't neglect the spiritual side of your life. Find the best person you know, nail him to a cross, and worship him.
"But the White House announced that Guantanamo Bay's detainees will be sent to a prison in Illinois. There's like 500 terrorists and suspected terrorists and alleged terrorists down there in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. And they'll be moved now to a prison in Illinois. And I was thinking, well, this really should make up for Chicago not getting the Olympics." –David Letterman
U.S. Wants to Dump 77,000
Pounds of Nuclear Waste 90
Miles from Las VegasMany argue that's not close enough.
Pounds of Nuclear Waste 90
Miles from Las VegasMany argue that's not close enough.
Four-Page 1787 Letter Written
By George Washington to His
Nephew Sells for $3.2 MillionSupports Constitution, warns on Afghanistan.
By George Washington to His
Nephew Sells for $3.2 MillionSupports Constitution, warns on Afghanistan.
"A group has now filed papers to nominate Dick Cheney to run for president of the United States in 2012. You may have heard of the group, Halliburton." –Jay Leno
Pay Czar Exempts 300 at Citigroup, AIG, GM, GMAC From Salary LimitsWorried same execs who ran companies into ground would leave.
Grandma Concerned About Dinner Roll Count
Design for Bush Library UnveiledWill include animatronic Bush reading My Pet Goat.
Taurus Apr 20 - May 20
Everyone doubted you when you said you were going to bike across the country last summer. Make them feel bad by telling them it's their fault you didn't.
Swiss Vote to Ban MinaretsApprove golden arches.
"New reports on Sarah Palin's 'Going Rogue' bus tour. They say she's been traveling on private planes to various stops and then just hops in the bus at the local town. So, let's see what you got. You have Sarah Palin, who's no longer governor, who's promoting a book she didn't actually write by going on a bus tour which is not really a bus. Her big complaint? Politicians who aren't real." –Jay Leno
Lou Dobbs Hints at Presidential Run in 2012Could draw considerable number of birthers away from Palin.
Virgo Aug 23 - Sep 22
Admit it: Things just haven't been the same for you since you gave in and started wearing pants again.
| Bills Advancing in the House, Current Session | ||
 | Love of Country Bill | |
| Repeals habeas corpus. | ||
| Healthy Oceans Act | |
| Cancels limits on overfishing. | ||
| No Child Left Behind II | |
| Moves all education funds to Defense Dept. | ||
| Low Income Families Rescue Bill | |
| Provides tax relief for billionaires. | ||
| Homeland Protection and Safety Act | |
| Adds offshore tax dodges for Halliburton. | ||
| Fiscal Responsibility Act | |
| Imposes "birth fee" starting in 2024 | ||
"Well, did you hear about this? According to TMZ, you know, Congress was supposed to award Tiger Woods the Congressional Gold Medal, our highest civilian honor, then had to withdraw it, because of the scandal, which seems odd to me. I mean, what's it up to now? Fifteen mistresses? That sounds like something Congress would give you a medal for, doesn't it?" –Jay Leno
Dubai May Have to Sell Some AssetsLike slave laborers.
OSLO, NORWAY (The Borowitz Report) - Responding to criticism about his receiving this year's Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama today sent an unmanned predator drone to Norway to pick up the prize for him.
Mr. Obama's decision to have an unmanned bomber plane accept the Peace Prize raised eyebrows in diplomatic circles, as well as concerns about whether the plane was accurate enough for such a delicate mission.
"We know there's a possibility that the predator drone might miss Norway altogether and instead hit Finland," said White House press spokesman Robert Gibbs. "Having said that, an unmanned plane is still more accurate than one manned by a couple of Northwest pilots."
Report: Blackwater Carried
Out CIA, Military MissionsA spokesperson for the company, now known as Xe Services, says she “never heard of” Blackwater.
Out CIA, Military MissionsA spokesperson for the company, now known as Xe Services, says she “never heard of” Blackwater.
Thanks Onion
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt
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 | Bush: Iraq a Lesson to U.S. Foes If you attack us, we will strike back at somebody else with overwhelming force |
2009 was predictable only in the way in which time passed. From January through April, a slow crawl. From May to September, a brisk trot. From then on, a full gallop to the finish line. Otherwise it was a wild zigzag of ups (Whatsizname's inauguration, SCHIP renewal, Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act), downs (the jobs hemorrhage, Wall Street as usual) and WTFs (health care reform). Oh, and Obama is not acting the way I pre-programmed him to. How rude.
Then there's the Republicans. A pack of sore losers who suddenly woke up after their '08 thumpin' and decided to release their inner constitutional scholars. One little problem: they chose Glenn Beck as their headmaster. And now they're runnin' around as a clueless gaggle, looking for communist symbols in our New Deal-era architecture and comparing anyone with a "D" after their name to Hitler. Their motto: "No!" Their notion of a fresh idea: a 19-page budget proposal with no numbers in it.
Oh, and to the traditional media that suddenly found their will to hound, badger and investigate the executive branch this year: welcome back from your eight-year sabbatical, kids.
C&J kept tabs on all this hoo-ha, and below the fold is the first of our four-part series we're calling, 2009: A Light at the End of the Sphincter? Please: hold your applause 'til it's all over. 2009, I mean.
Cheers and Jeers looks back in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] Right now! [GONG!!]
McCain Cites His Experience
Over Obama'sSays opponent's never napalmed a village, married a beer heiress or been caught up in a savings and loan scandal.
Over Obama'sSays opponent's never napalmed a village, married a beer heiress or been caught up in a savings and loan scandal.
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Bob Herbert points out that:
The idea that fewer than 1 percent of Americans are being called on to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq and that we’re sending them into combat again and again and again — for three tours, four tours, five tours, six tours — is obscene. All decent people should object. [...]The air is filled with obsessive self-satisfied rhetoric about supporting the troops, giving them everything they need and not letting them down. But that rhetoric is as hollow as a jazzman’s drum because the overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire at all to share in the sacrifices that the service members and their families are making. Most Americans do no want to serve in the wars, do not want to give up their precious time to do volunteer work that would aid the nation’s warriors and their families, do not even want to fork over the taxes that are needed to pay for the wars.To say that this is a national disgrace is to wallow in the shallowest understatement. The nation will always give lip-service to support for the troops, but for the most part Americans do not really care about the men and women we so blithely ship off to war, and the families they leave behind.
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The Big Zero By PAUL KRUGMAN
We had ZERO job creation in 10 years.
We had ZERO stock market advance in 10 years.
We had ZERO gains for Home owners in 10 years.
We had ZERO gains in retirement accounts in 10 years.
And while we suffered, Wall Street and our Bankers took the money we tax payers gave them to give themselves billions in salaries and bonuses. Outrage? Sure there was, gangs of white-wing festivals screeching about socialism and having to pay taxes (of any kind in any amount). Tea Baggers who the media treats not as the radical wingnuts they are but as their best customers.
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?Can this moron get Anything correct? dept:
Which brings us back to how Beck used Cembalest's data. We'll acknowledge that rating someone's degree of private-sector experience is an inexact science, and it's true that Beck accurately relayed the information contained in Cembalest's chart. But at PolitiFact we hold people accountable for their own words. So we rate Beck's claim False.
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You're either part of the Solution,.. or you're part of the Problem dept:
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So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.
There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number
**
All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.
When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.
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Matt on Colbert http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/258163/december-09-2009/matt-taibbi
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Welfare recipients dept: ?Guess who gets most?
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?How does your Net Worth stack up dept?:
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There's a great quote at the start of the third chapter of Going Rogue which Sarah Palin has attributed to 99-year-old basketball legend John Wooden: "Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it - with their lives."
Just one problem. According to the Huffington Post:
And we've just heard from Guinness that Going Rogue now holds the world record for "Least Accurate Book Ever Written."
Just one problem. According to the Huffington Post:
... the quote wasn't by John Wooden. It was written by a Native American activist named John Wooden Legs in an essay entitled "Back on the War Ponies," which appeared in a left-wing anthology, We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History, edited by Nathaniel May, Clint Willis, and James W. Loewen.
And we've just heard from Guinness that Going Rogue now holds the world record for "Least Accurate Book Ever Written."
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WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - President Barack Obama said today that in an effort to clinch a second Nobel Peace Prize he was ordering an invasion of Iran.
Announcing the invasion in a televised address, the president told the nation, "Now comes the hard part: writing my acceptance speech."
Mr. Obama said that if his quest for a second Nobel is successful, he would bomb North Korea.
"I have just one word for you," he said. "Three-peat."
Elsewhere, singing sensation Susan Boyle stunned the world by revealing that she had a steamy affair with Tiger Woods.
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Required reading dept:
The constitutional rights stolen by the previous administration are still missing in action with no real effort underway to restore them. The Patriot Act is alive and well. The feds can still tap your phone and email. They can get at any of your financial data they want and it's all done in secret. But we still haven't had a real investigation of 911.
Congress is about to consider an international treaty of copyright that will turn anyone with a public blog or web site into a cop required to enforce the new laws or face prosecution.
Throughout it all, not one member of Congress or the financial elite will miss a meal, worry about their health care, lose their house, or ever face prosecution for destroying the economy of the United States.
Their Ponzi scheme is literally too big to fail. If there were ever the least bit of concentrated scrutiny on the various wars and financial rip offs over just the past decade, it would be the end of all of them.
But The Money Party is a permanent fixture in our lives. It dominates politics, the media, and the economy. It's a self fulfilling prophecy that is always accurate. Rig the game so only those with money can run for office. Hold elections with invisible ballots on electronic voting machines that nobody really understands. Allow all sorts of legal bribes for legislators. And never allow the term election fraud to be mentioned anywhere but on a few internet web sites.
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At least the raccoons were safe.
Paddle faster.I hear banjo music. dept:
Paddle faster.I hear banjo music. dept:
North Alabama man and son charged in shooting at raccoon hunt
By The Birmingham News
November 25, 2009, 8:01AM
A North Alabama man and his son have been charged in connection with the shooting of a man and a juvenile at a raccoon hunt earlier this year, The Gadsden Times reports.
Lefelle Thompson, 50, of Flat Rock, faces attempted murder charges and his son, William Joshua Thompson, 20, faces two counts of second-degree assault, the newspaper reports. The incident happened in March in DeKalb County and the two men were recently indicted by a grand jury on charges
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Ann dept:
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Iraq war statistics dept:
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Rudyard dept:
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
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| ''And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."'' |
| Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), British author, poet. The Naulahka, heading of ch. 5 (1892). |
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Zoltan GrossmanAfghanistan: the Roach Motel of Empires
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Big Brother dept:
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"Just one more Surge" dept:
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Pre-Christmas Thoughts
My grandparents are long gone, so I've adopted octogenarian bloggers Margaret and Helen as my new ones. (Forgive me Nana, Bapa, Grams and Gramps—you'll always be my original Fab Four.) Helen, who lives in Texas, has a dozen pre-holiday suggestions for her family, and some of 'em seem to have a certain universality about them. Like...
- Cloe. I am begging you honey. None of that Jello crap. No one eats it and the garbage stinks for a week after I throw it out. You and Jello are like Palin and McCain. How many times before you learn no one wants seconds much less firsts.
- Jennifer. Your children are cute. We all can agree on that. Your husband’s video camera capturing every runny nose and bowel movement---not so much. Keep this up honey and you’ll have one posing for Playgirl before you know it. It’s just not natural to be that comfortable in front of a camera. Ten minutes of video when you first arrive and then the camera goes back into the camera bag. [...]
- Mary. Your kid’s dirty shoes and my clean sofa have never met. Let’s keep it that way. [...]
- Jonathan. How a Republican ended up in this family is beyond me, but we love you all the same. That said, Reagan is dead darling. Get over it. [...]
- Honestly, if you insist on bringing anything, bring some butter. I go through about 20 sticks to get this meal on the table and I might as well start stocking up for Christmas now.
- Marshall. I am sure you believe that your children sing beautifully. Don’t put me in a situation where I have to make you question your beliefs.
To all my new friends out there, I say this. Life is short. Don’t squabble over the little things like Jello and Sarah Palin. If we are going to fight, let’s fight about the things that matter like world peace and apple pie.
Damn right.
In case you won’t be around on the intertubes tomorrow: Safe travels and happy stuffing.
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Moki Dugway
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| Conservatives Issue 10-Point Checklist for All GOP Candidates Any prospective Republican running for office must oppose: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Paul Fitzgerald / Elizabeth GouldWhat are We Fighting for in Afghanistan?
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The most famous myth about welfare may be the one begun by Ronald Reagan
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45-minute WMD claim used by Blair to justify war with Iraq came from an Iraqi taxi driver. To be fair to the taxi driver, he likely knows more about Iraq than either Frederick Kagan or Richard Perle but his "intelligence" is just as shabby as that of the neocons.
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Moron dept: Reading this review is actualy entertaining
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Sen. Hatch seems to have forgotten that the GOP controlled the House, Senate and White House from January 2003 to January 2007, so let's remind him of a few of the great legislative accomplishments his party gave us during those years.
Oh, but if only the Republicans had 60 seats in the Senate. Then they could get this country under control.
- The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act was rammed through the House after Speaker Dennis Hastert held the vote open for hours. This act gave us the "donut hole" and added $1.2 trillion to the deficit. David Walker, a former U.S. Comptroller General, called it "probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s."
- The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act added $340 billion to the deficit by 2008, and increased the gap between the super-rich and everyone else.
- Theresa Marie Schiavo's Law unconstitutionally inserted the government into a single family's private matter, violated the separation of powers, and was voted on in the Senate by only three senators (all Republicans), therefore failing to achieve a quorum. Bush signed it anyway.
- The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, also known as "The Nursing Home Bankruptcy Act of 2005," may not even be legal, as the House and Senate voted on different bills thanks to a clerical error.
- The Military Commissions Act violates the Constitution and human rights principles in a variety of ways, including allowing the government to detain people without trial.
Federal spending is outstripping economic growth at a rate unseen in more than half a century, provoking some conservatives to complain that government under Republican control has gotten too big.
The federal government is currently spending 20.8 cents of every $1 the economy generates, up from 18.5 cents in 2001, White House budget documents show. That's the most rapid growth during one administration since Franklin Roosevelt.
There are no signs that the trend is about to turn around. The House Budget Committee last week rejected a proposal that would require spending hikes to be offset by cuts in other spending or by tax increases.
The federal government is currently spending 20.8 cents of every $1 the economy generates, up from 18.5 cents in 2001, White House budget documents show. That's the most rapid growth during one administration since Franklin Roosevelt.
There are no signs that the trend is about to turn around. The House Budget Committee last week rejected a proposal that would require spending hikes to be offset by cuts in other spending or by tax increases.
Oh, but if only the Republicans had 60 seats in the Senate. Then they could get this country under control.
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Realistic people on the left have long known that the last act of American strong-arm capitalism would be a massive gunpoint redistribution of wealth from the public to the owning class through the private financial sector -- which the owning class happens to own. But few would have expected it to be executed under a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate. Or under a Democratic administration honchoed by the first black president. One liberal blogger wondered aloud, "Imagine what the Republicans would have done had John McCain been elected?"
The same thing, brother. The same thing. Only with a different cover story. Both parties exist at the pleasure of the same crime syndicates.
***
But the truth is that Obama's jobs would have done nothing to help the economy "recover" anyway. There is no economy left to recover. It moved to China and India. Things such as road projects do not generate capital. Under capitalism roads are worthless unless they make money, and they can do no economic good if there is nothing being manufactured to haul on them.
Likewise education that does not contribute the gross national product (otherwise known as corporate interests) by producing higher wages to exponentially pump up American consumer fetishism is considered worthless. And let's face it, higher education has become, for the most part, another racket. The student is saddled with massive loan debt (again, there is the odor of hyena banker spoor in the air) on the promise of eventual higher wages. Or at least that the graduate will work in a nice warm dry video store and never have to ball sod. Unfortunately, the number of jobs that require "college educated" Americans -- quite an oxymoron, given the caliber of U.S. colleges these days -- is shrinking right along with the Empire. All those jobs middle managing the Republic, such as helping us cheat on our taxes, brainwashing the school kids, and devising sales strategies for beer, grow scarcer by the day. Even book editing and reading medical scans are being outsourced to Asia. There's a nasty rumor that American medical scans are being read in India by trained Buddhist temple monkeys to save rupees. The US healthcare industry has been mum on the subject.
***
In the end the campaign rattle and prattle about Obama's recovery plan turned out to be moot anyway. Wall Street moved in and heavied up on the whole damned country, in one of the ballsiest heists in American history. It was a stroke of pure genius as theft goes. Following a meeting of the Five Families, Citicorp, Bank of America, Morgan Chase, Wachovia, Taunus Corp., the financial cartels said, "The rip-off is in. We got it all. Now if you don't hand over all the people's savings and assets so we can loan it back to them, the whole flaming ball of shit you call the services and information economy is gonna come down on everybody's asses like a giant meteor. So you can load three trillion bucks for now into the armored cars lined up out front and nobody will get hurt. Or you can watch the national economy shrivel up until the schmucks out there in the cul de sacs and cardboard condos can't even put together cab fare for their ride to the poor house. It's your call Barack."
There are still a few delusional souls out there who believe Obama is trying to do his honest best to fulfill campaign promises, but just cannot get past the pack of vampire financial corporations and cold blooded Republican lizards. Which is true in a sense. He cannot get past the Wall Street pack because he is running in the middle of it. Obama's nefarious relationship with Wall Street's power players has been ongoing for years. It is no accident that Wall Street got to select the members of the president's financial cabinet. My mutton eating friends, it's a sad and sordid tale, one I have neither the space nor the stomach to cover here. Especially since better journalists such as Matt Taibbi and others have written extensively about it in detail.
***
Last I heard, the banks never un-assed the dough. Never let it circulate in the people's hands or even through business loans. Instead, they declared a profit, divvied it up in bonuses, and congratulated themselves. Indeed, this was the sort of sheer brilliance we have come to expect from the Yale/Harvard MBA crowd. Getting rich by going broke. Then getting even richer by sticking up the US government and the entire American public, and eventually the entire world, leaving 1.5 quadrillion dollar cloud of toxic derivatives girding the world, to hoover up more money for them before imploding like a dark star. And indeed, the derivatives are even astronomical in nature. They represent $180,000 in debt load for every man woman and child on earth (although I cannot understand why, if the money isn't real, why we should consider the debt real). It is impossible to produce our way out of this calamity. There aren't even enough resources left on earth to sustain that scale of production.
For now the financial mobsters have retired to Tuscan villas to savor their haul. The poor schmucks out there in the US heartland are left to devise new ways of hiding the family ride from the repo man. Never once, though, do they doubt capitalism. They figure it is all just a big financial accident. Fate. And that will somehow "work our way out of it," like we always have. These things happen in a dynamic free market economy.
***
George W. Bush left office wearing the same smirk he came in with. Perhaps it's congenital. But if Bush was smirking when he left office, he must now be convulsed in crazed hysterical laughter. His gang not only got away clean, but Obama carries on the dark Bush-Cheney legacy. And, almost as if to top the whole black escapade with a cherry of irony, the most inarticulate president in American history is now on the motivational speaking circuit at $200,000 a pop. Never let it be said that the Devil does not care for his own.
by Joe Bageant
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If you read this.... you will throw up dept: We are lost... We are gone. Get your money out of this country... & you get out too!
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by Mary Shaw | December 21, 2009 - 8:30am | permalink
article tools: email | print | read more Mary Shaw
» article continues...
article tools: email | print | read more Mary Shaw
It's that time of year again. At shopping centers everywhere, representatives from the Salvation Army, dressed in their paramilitary attire, ring their bells and aggressively invite your holiday donations. And I always see people eagerly throwing money into their big red kettles. I suspect that most of these generous individuals aren't aware of what their dollars are actually funding.
Last year I wrote a column titled "The Salvation Army's red kettle of trouble", in which I outlined the Salvation Army's long and disturbing history of religious coercion, abuse, and intolerance. An excerpt:
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For those of you who haven’t yet lost your homes and property, there’s this nostalgic yard sign. Far from being a work of parody or satire, this was actually made by those who are already having withdrawal symptoms after eight years of constant deficits and war, shredded constitutional rights and civil liberties, widespread, illegal domestic spying, invoked executive privilege to dodge personal responsibility, massive job losses, a tsunami of foreclosures and federal bailouts of greedy corporations. Personally, I’m at a loss to explain the sudden wave of nostalgia for George W. Bush because, since he and his corporate hillbillies loped off Capitol Hill, nothing’s changed.
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WOW. So this lady, “Bunny,” is so furious that, uhm, the Senate would pass Health Care Reform on, uhm, a working day/weekday before Christmas, that she just has no idea what to do at all, beyond call C-SPAN. So she took down her Christmas tree, and the wreath, because these are pagan symbols from the Scandanavian barbarians who worship nature and the Viking God Wōden the Senate hates Jesus’ birthday that we in the Western Christian Tradition celebrate somewhat arbitrarily tomorrow, because the Roman calendar was kind of sloppy about getting Winter Solstice right, etc. Also something about “the Germans,” and “genocide.” Fröhliche Weihnachten
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by Bob Burnett |
» article continues...
When historians update the history of the United States, ponder when we lost our way and punted the mantle of global supremacy to China, they'll conclude this past decade was the turning point. From 2000 to 2009, voters made a series of terrible political choices. As a result, for many Americans the US ceased being a land of opportunity and the light of freedom dimmed.
2000 - America chooses mediocrity: The decade opened with a divisive election where George W. Bush - an unsuccessful business executive - defeated Al Gore - a wooden but seasoned political servant - in an election decided by the Electoral College and the US Supreme Court.
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Perhaps most importantly, we will be eternally grateful for Griffith's party switch because it inspired some brilliant writing from "DavidNYC" of Daily Kos.
In a diary titled "AL--05: Parker Griffith Can Lose," "DavidNYC" writes:
In a diary titled "AL--05: Parker Griffith Can Lose," "DavidNYC" writes:
It's important to remember that to remain a member in good standing of the conservative movement, it isn't enough just to vote a certain way. You have to evidence a very particular tribal belonging - you need to hate the right people, be ignorant of the right facts, be fearful of the right bogeymen, and be arrogant about the whole enterprise. If you somehow fail this tribal litmus test, it doesn't matter how right-wing you are.
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"It will "cure all your ills" said the elixer salesman, "It says so right there on the label". --NOT on the label: 80 proof --
"Damn the torpedos men, we're in a plane."
“It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people”
*Trademark Registered
**Disclaimer : This is opinion, plagerism, observations, humor, & satire. Consult your OWN qualified Certified financial planner for your financial planning & demise, and don't forget to take your OWN analLube when you get their advice.
"Damn the torpedos men, we're in a plane."
“It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people”
*Trademark Registered
**Disclaimer : This is opinion, plagerism, observations, humor, & satire. Consult your OWN qualified Certified financial planner for your financial planning & demise, and don't forget to take your OWN analLube when you get their advice.
