B’Man: I’m glad I am a salesman by trade. Getting signatures in my neck of the woods for Nader takes every sales skill I have. I am doing the round-up in my neighborhood and heading back to the massive flea market in Crump (it is a beautiful day).
Limited posting today, but I thought I’d add a funny video about salesmen and the difficulty in getting certain things ok’d. Wonder if Nader would pay for my lap dances?
B’Man: And that’s why I call it bullshit. IF the story is true, then it is true for all. Otherwise, it is all bullshit. According to mainstream Christianity, their view of ‘grace’ is precisely what you see in that bogus video. ‘Grace’ only comes to those who decide for themselves that grace is theirs. What hypocritical, insane bullshit is that?
When Jesus tells the parable of the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to go get the rogue single sheep and would not return until it was done, what does that tell you?
B’Man: From Gorilla’s Guides, we have an editorial that expresses (from an Iraqi perspective) the rationale for our invasion and continued occupation of Iraq (and the intense possibility of going into Iran). Although I disagree with the final association with “Americans” and what we can do to change what is happening to them, I cannot disagree with the rationale assessment for “why” we are doing it.
I do have an alternative solution, but it means ridding ourselves of the dependence on oil (which means Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al) will fight my solution with every fiber of their body.
Our country has been hijacked and in many ways, Americans don’t “seem” to care. This is where I believe the editors get the overall thing incorrect. Americans, by and large, disagree with what is happening. It is only a very select few who speak for us (and I want to take them out for what they say does not represent my feelings and desires).
Have you noticed that the US anti-war debate has begun to resemble Congress’s attitude to Iraq and Iran? There’s mild criticism of the Bush administration’s devastation of Iraq but the president does whatever he wants in Iraq and makes absurd accusations against Iran unchallenged. Debate concentrates on mistakes made rather than asking why such immense costs are being expended in the first instance. More than most Americans, the anti-war movement examines the Iraq war in detail and it is realizing consciously what the US political class already know. There are no mistakes. The US is staring over a cliff and is going to go over. It cannot leave Iraq. If he can find a plausible reason, President Bush will be allowed to invade Iran as well. Everyone will then pretend that it’s all another tragic mistake.
Two factors make up the cliff that America nears:
Simple supply and demand: the depletion of oil reserves, the necessity for the oil producers to conserve supplies and the inevitable effects of oil price rises on the world’s most intensive oil user (see What the US Congress knows about Iraq and Iran).
The US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. This requires some explanation.
A reserve currency is one that all countries will accept for trade purposes. It is really a substitute for gold because there is not enough gold to underpin the world’s currencies. It is particularly useful for trading oil, which is normally priced in dollars. Most countries also hold much of their foreign currency reserves in dollars both for this purpose and because the US has been regarded as a politically and financially stable country.
Unhappily, the US is running a trade and current account deficit, that is, it pays other countries more dollars in trade and services than it receives. The US is essentially a business running at a loss. You might wonder where it gets the dollars to pay for the difference between cash received and cash paid. Firstly, it uses the capital inflows from foreign investors. This is like spending borrowed money because investors are entitled to take their money back. Secondly, it can print money. That’s right. To get a billion dollars cash, the government simply prints the banknotes or interest bearing treasury notes for any amount it needs. These are purchased both within the US and by foreign investors and governments who can use them for trade generally, not necessarily with the US.
Now, it is not always a bad thing to print money; indeed, in an expanding economy it is essential to increase the “money supply”. Unfortunately, the US economy is not expanding. The money supply increase is to support increased borrowing, both domestic and foreign. It is of concern to many that in March 2006 the US Federal Reserve Bank ceased publishing M3 data, which is the broad measure of money supply. The fear is that this was to hide an inflationary borrowing.
Inflation in a reserve currency is a bad thing. Other governments’ reserves are devalued – they need more dollars to buy the same amount of oil and anything else priced in dollars. They might think it better to keep their foreign exchange reserves in euros, yen or a basket that corresponds more to their trade pattern. Investors don’t like inflation because both their capital investment and earnings are worth less. They will look for a more stable home for their investments.
There are particular concerns in the case of the USA:
The level of government debt is now 9.5 trillion dollars with interest payable of about 450 billion dollars per year. This can only come from taxation (depressing the economy) or printing more money (fuelling inflation).
The US economy is arguably contracting. Figures for jobs and GNP do not necessarily provide an accurate picture. The types of jobs and distribution of income, for example, need to be taken into account.
Much US manufacturing has shifted off-shore or closed down. The industrial base is weak; industry is increasingly uncompetitive against China, India and other Asian countries. US financial and other services are highly vulnerable to European and Asian competition.
The recent sub-prime mortgage problems, crash in house prices and massive increase in liquidity in response from the Federal Reserve bring into question the Federal Reserve’s monetary competence (money supply and interest rate policy).
Government borrowing against present and future expenditure commitments is unsustainable. The USA is living beyond its means, according to David Walker, recently retired US Comptroller-General who is the government’s top accountant (see video at the end of this article). This calls into question the US government’s fiscal competence (taxation and government spending policy).
Due to increasing competition for a diminishing supply, oil is being bartered or direct access agreements are being made between states. This undermines the petrodollar (dollars reserved for or involved in oil transactions).
Oil is being priced in currencies other than the US dollar and large-scale oil barter schemes are being established between Venezuela-South America and Iran-China/Japan, also undermining the petrodollar.
There is plenty here to worry international investors and holders of dollar reserves – and they are worried. The change in the dollar’s value demonstrates this:
1 April 2002: = 1.14 euro
1 April 2008: = 0.64 euro
Over this period, foreign governments and international investors have seen their dollar reserves, US investments and earnings lose 43 per cent against the euro, 33 per cent against the yen and 18 per cent against the rupee. This means that a manufacturer holding euros at present has an oil-buying advantage of 43 per cent over an American manufacturer, compared with their positions in 2002. The same is true of other commodities priced in dollars. This is why some governments are selling their dollar reserves.
If oil ceases to be traded in dollars, an important reason for the dollar’s reserve currency status will have disappeared and if it should lose reserve status, the US will find few foreign buyers for its paper debt. If foreign investors disinvest in the US as well, its economy could well collapse.
It does not increase international confidence in the US government’s financial policies and regulatory systems that the US has in the last few years exported to other countries many billions of dollars in worthless sub-prime mortgage “securities”. Nor does it help that debt supports its high profile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the threatened war against Iran.
Here we come to the imperative for the US to seize the Iraqi and Iranian oilfields. With its own oil nearing exhaustion, it cannot in future afford to purchase the enormous proportion of the world’s oil production on which its living standards are based. Its industrial production is uncompetitive, currency depreciating, finances supported by debt and, recently, its banks and investment houses have been supported by printed money in defiance of its much vaunted free market principles. The US needs an alternative philosophy and finds that it does not have one. It needs to change but cannot bring itself to change.
If the US fails to put its economy and finances into a fit state for world competition it could be paying 500 dollars per barrel, perhaps 1,000 dollars per barrel for oil in five or 10 years time. This is why it cannot leave Iraq and why direct control of the Iranian oilfields are also desirable. Of course its actions in Iraq are themselves creating instability.
I have previously suggested from circumstantial evidence that the US is stealing Iraqi oil and falsifying the statistics. In fact, no statistics for the past five years of US occupation exist. The Iraqi oil fields and export terminals have been unmetered for this period. (See the 2007 report of the International and Advisory Monitoring Board (IAMB) on Iraq, operating under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483. The published production and export statistics have no validity whatever. One may reasonably conjecture that the trading records are of similar quality. The IAMB also reports that barter agreements for oil are not accounted for by the Development Fund for Iraq as required by UN Security Council Resolution 1483. In terms of even the most basic standards of accounting and accountability this can only be called scandalous and criminal. It makes a mockery of the US government’s claims to be developing Iraq and reveals the simple truth behind the invasion of Iraq. The invasion was a strategic plan to seize oil supplies that the US government will soon be in no position to purchase.
We have tended to think that the American people have been deceived by the Bush administration’s lies. It appears that, although initially this was the case, America has realized the truth but cannot admit its complicity. It cares about its high living standards and American deaths, not Iraqi or Afghan poverty and deaths. The American people do not recognize themselves in the mirror. They evidently see only fantasy images, unrelated to reality, derived from films. The reality that others see is horrific. If President Bush can engineer an excuse and a plan involving low American casualties, America will permit him to invade Iran as well – and pretend that it did not know the truth.
David Walker, recently-retired US Comptroller-General, totalled up the US government’s income, liabilities and future obligations. He concluded the numbers don’t add up. Courtesy: CBS, 8 July 2007
Bruce Mirken at AlterNet provides some detail into the Drug War that is a dismal failure, espcially when comparing to the rogue “drug countries” such as Holland. Is it any wonder that Big Money is involved and that even this war is one that is based off of profit and no clear rationale for victory?
Just like our other policies in the world stage, we are full of shit when it comes to rationale and the numbers can’t lie. Only the idiots running this country are lying:
The United States has some of the world’s most punitive drug policies and has led the cheering section for tough “war on drugs” policies worldwide, but a new international study suggests that those policies have been a crashing failure. A World Health Organization survey of 17 countries, conducted by some of the world’s leading substance abuse researchers, found that we have the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use.
The numbers are startling. In the United States, 42.4 percent admitted having used marijuana. The only other nation that came close was New Zealand, another bastion of get-tough policies, at 41.9 percent. No one else was even close. The results for cocaine use were similar, with the United States leading the world by a large margin.
This study is important because it’s the first time a respected international group has surveyed drug use around the world, using the same questions and procedure everywhere. While many countries have their own drug use surveys, the questions and methodology vary, and comparisons between countries are difficult. This new study eliminates that problem.
Some of the most striking numbers are from the Netherlands, where adults are permitted to possess a small of marijuana and purchase it from regulated businesses. Some U.S. officials have claimed that these Dutch policies have created some sort of decadent cesspool of drug abuse, but the new study demolishes such assertions: In the Netherlands, only 19.8 percent have used marijuana, less than half the U.S. figure.
Even more striking is what the researchers found when they asked young adults when they had started using marijuana. Again, the United States led the world, with 20.2 percent trying marijuana by age 15. No other country was even close, and in the Netherlands, just 7 percent used marijuana by 15 — roughly one-third of the U.S. figure.
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy tried to dismiss the study, Bloomberg News reported:
Trying to find a link between drug use and drug enforcement doesn’t make sense, said Tom Riley, spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington. “The U.S. has high crime rates but we spend a lot on law enforcement and prison,” Riley said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Should we spend less? We’re just a different kind of country. We have higher drug use rates, a higher crime rate, many things that go with a highly free and mobile society.”
Funny, ONDCP takes precisely the opposite line whenever a state considers liberalizing its marijuana laws. In a March press release, deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns railed against a New Hampshire proposal to decriminalize marijuana, saying such a move “sends the wrong message to New Hampshire’s youth, students, parents, public health officials and the law enforcement community,” and would lead to “more drugs, drug users and drug dealers on their streets and communities.”
Back in 2002, denouncing a proposed marijuana law reform in Nevada, ONDCP distributed a list of talking points to prosecutors specifically slamming the “extremely dubious” Dutch system of regulated sales, saying, “Increased availability of marijuana leads to increased use of marijuana and other drugs.”
In fact, ONCDP’s latest excuse for the failure of U.S. drug policies — that enforcement and penalties don’t really have much effect on rates of use — is probably just about right. But it also dynamites any justification for our current marijuana laws. The WHO researchers put it this way:
“The U.S., which has been driving much of the world’s drug research and drug policy agenda, stands out with higher levels of use of alcohol, cocaine, and cannabis, despite punitive illegal drug policies. … The Netherlands, with a less criminally punitive approach to cannabis use than the US, has experienced lower levels of use, particularly among younger adults. Clearly, by itself, a punitive policy towards possession and use accounts for limited variation in nation level rates of illegal drug use.”
For this we arrest 830,000 Americans a year on marijuana charges?
OLBERMANN: Time now to call in George Washington University law professor and constitutional law expert: Jonathan Turley.
Good evening, Jon.
JONATHAN TURLEY, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW EXPERT: Hi, Keith.
OLBERMANN: I’ve often argued here that even if you think the words aren’t going to lead to any action, say the words anyway, simply to get them on the record for history, and simply because nothing has ever changed from bad to good in this country without somebody first saying—this is bad. Assess the importance of what Dennis Kucinich did last night.
TURLEY: You know, it is very important. The fact is that this is not supposed to happen the way it happened in the last seven years. The framers, I think, would have been astonished by the absolute passivity if not collusion of the Democrats in protecting President Bush from impeachment. I mean, they created a system that was essentially idiot-proof and God knows we put that to a test in the past years.
But, I don’t think they ever anticipated that so many members of the opposition would stand quietly in the face of clear presidential crimes. It has many of us who study the Constitution quite worried that we have a real crisis here. This is not something that really was supposed to happen. It was not something that one would predict.
OLBERMANN: This is the list that he presented last night—a remarkably lengthy and thorough record of the high crimes and misdemeanors. It’s just a cascade really. Did Kucinich successfully make his case?
TURLEY: I think he’s made his case. I mean, frankly, some of these claims are not really impeachable offenses. Like for example, it’s not impeachable to be negligent. If that was the case, we’d lose half that people that sat in the Oval Office. But there are plenty of crimes there. This is a target-rich environment.
What’s really disturbing for many of us is that it takes a real effort for Democrats to walk from the floor to their offices and not trip over crimes. I mean, they are all over the record, from destruction of evidence, to illegal surveillance, to unlawful torture programs. They’re all over the place.
And what’s amazing is that the president is hiding in plain view. He hasn’t really denied the elements of these offenses. So, all that is lacking is political will.
But that doesn’t mean that suddenly the Democrats are going to get principled and say—my God, we took an oath, and we need to fulfill it regardless of the outcome. But it does mean one member, and they’re actually more than one, are really calling their colleagues to the floor and saying—it’s time to pony up. It’s time to answer the public of whether you stand for the Constitution and against its abridgement.
Happy Independence Day - Let’s put the
Constitution back on the table!
“As we once again celebrate our Independence as a nation, let us celebrate freedom from fear and pledge that government ‘of the people’ will survive in this land that we love.”
- Congressman Dennis Kucinich
Some Democratic Leaders say Impeachment is off the table.
So, let’s set a new table for our nation, upon which we place the Constitution and where we demand that all those who have taken an oath to defend it … keep their promise and protect our nation from the threat within.
Please go to kucinich.us now and sign the petition, which calls for impeachment. This is the one petition that will make a difference because I will be personally delivering it to your member of congress. Please circulate word of this petition far and wide, to all your friends and family. This is the one opportunity that we have right now to actually change events in this country.
Two hundred and thirty-two years ago, our nation was conceived in liberty. We have once again reached a moment of truth, one that Lincoln recognized at Gettysburg as to whether “this nation or any nation so conceived or so dedicated can long endure.”
Through the ashes of the civil war, Lincoln prayed that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom … and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
This Fourth of July, 2008, we face a different kind of war; one which is trying our souls … a war based on lies. But with the power of truth and the power of the people we can achieve a new birth of freedom, standing up for what is good in America, insisting on the rule of law, demanding adherence to the Constitution, and supporting the impeachment of a President who lied to take us into a war against Iraq.
Be the answer to Lincoln’s Prayer. Please pledge your support now to restoring the rule of law in America. As we once again celebrate Independence Day, let us celebrate freedom from fear and pledge that this government of the people will survive in this land that we love.
B’Man: Rednecks, if there was ever the time for you to put up or shut up, it is now. Sign the damn petition. Let them know you are tired of the bullshit.
When given a choice about how government should address the numerous economic difficulties facing today’s consumer, Americans overwhelmingly?by 84% to 13%?prefer that the government focus on improving overall economic conditions and the jobs situation in the United States as opposed to taking steps to distribute wealth more evenly among Americans. … [F]ree-market advocates can take considerable solace in Americans’ overwhelming belief that the government should not focus on redistributing income and wealth, but on improving the overall economy.
Conservatives often focus on the wrong questions, and this poll, which plays into the caricature of “tax-and-spend” liberalism and the specter of government taking money from hard-working people and giving it to people who are less deserving, is a prime example. Ask people about the direction that progressives actually embrace as opposed to the stereotype presented by conservatives, and they will side with progressives. For example, a February 2008 Associated Press/Ipsos poll found that 70 percent of respondents thought that “increasing spending on domestic programs like health care, education, and housing” would help fix the country’s economic problems. A January 2008 Fortune Magazine poll found that 67 percent would support “increasing government spending on things like public-works projects to help create jobs.” Bush administration economic policies, if anything, have fostered a redistribution of wealth upward, creating an unprecedented economic gap between the very wealthy and the rest of the country. Progressives believe this is wrong, and most of the country agrees.
Many of my fellow rednecks may be outraged by saying such a thing. But do you realize that it was this type of attitude that made America’s founding heroes decide to address the power and control of another empire? To rebel?
When Satullo says we have sinned, there have never been truer words. We have “missed the mark” of what America was founded to be (and what it was surely meant NOT to be). We, Americans (including every redneck alive today) are complicit in this mess.
As much as I love what the flag stood for, it has become a representation of torture and murder. We have allowed them to brainwash us just like the Germans were brainwashed during Nazi days into believing that we are superior, allowing us to do shit we denounced just a few decades ago. Or, perhaps as bad, lulled them (and us) into a complacency of “who gives a damn” and we do the best we can for ourselves.
We have let down our Founding Fathers and the intent they had for a nation that would never become what we rebelled from. We have done just that.
h/t goes to and video comes from jperryam (he recites the Satullo piece below: please visit the site). I still hope that your holiday is happy and enjoyable, but simply for the sake of gathering with friends and family. I can’t see how it could be “glorious” with what has happened to America.
Tuck the soaring speeches in a drawer for another time.
This year, America doesn’t deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement.
For we have sinned.
We have failed to pay attention. We’ve settled for lame excuses. We’ve spit on the memory of those who did that brave, brave thing in Philadelphia 232 years ago.
The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner.
The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing.
The America they founded should never ship prisoners to foreign lands, knowing their new jailers might torture them.
Such abuses once were committed by the arrogant crowns of Europe, spawning rebellion.
Today, our nation does such things in the name of our safety. Petrified, unwilling to take the risks that love of liberty demands, we close our eyes.
We have done such things, on orders from the Oval Office. We have done them, without general outrage or shame.
Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. CIA secret prisons. “Rendition” of prisoners to foreign torture chambers.
It’s not enough that we had good reason to be scared.
The men huddled long ago in Philadelphia had better reason. A British fleet floated off the Jersey coast, full of hands eager to hang them from the nearest lampposts.
Yet they pledged their lives and sacred honor - no idle vow - to defend the “inalienable rights” of men. Inalienable - what does that signify? It means rights that belong to each person, simply by virtue of being human. Rights that can never be taken away, no matter what evil a person might do or might intend.
Surely one of those is the right not to be tortured. Surely that is a piece of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
This is the creed of July 4: No matter what it costs us, no matter how it scares us, no matter how foolish it seems to a cynical world, America should stand up for human rights.
No, not even the brave men who picked up a quill, dipped it in ink and signed the parchment that summer day in Philadelphia lived up perfectly to the creed. But they did something extraordinary, founding a new nation upon a vow to oppose all the evil habits of tyranny.
That is why history still honors them.
But what will history think of us, of how we responded to our great challenge? Sept. 11 was a hideous evil, a grievous wound. Yet, truth told, it has not summoned our better angels as often as our worst.
We have betrayed the July 4 creed. We trample the vows we make, hand to heart.
Don’t imagine that only the torturer’s hand bears the guilt. The guilt reaches deep inside our Capitol, and beyond that - to us.
Our silence is complicit. In our name, innocents were jailed, humans tortured, our Constitution mangled. And we said so little.
We can’t claim not to have known. The best among us raised the alarm. Heroes in uniform, judges in robes, they opposed the perverse logic of an administration drenched in fear, drunk on power.
But did we heed them? Hardly. Barely . . .
We were so busy. Soccer practice at 6. A credit card balance to fret. The final vote on Idol.
We left it to those in power to keep our precious selves from harm. Whatever it took.
We took the coward’s way.
The world sees this, even if we are too dim to grasp it. We’ve lost respect. We’ve shamed the memory of Jefferson, Adams and Franklin.
And all for a scam. The waterboarding, the snarling dogs, the theft of sleep - all the diabolical tricks haven’t made us safer. They may have averted this plot or that. But they’ve spawned new enemies by the thousands, made the jihadist rants ring true to so many ears.
So put out no flags.
Sing no patriotic hymns.
We deserve no Fourth this year.
Let us atone, in quiet and humility. Let us spend the day truly studying the example of our Founders. May we earn a new birth of courage before our nation’s birthday next rolls around.
But what are we independent from? Are we independent from Big Oil and Big Money control? No. Are we independent from a fascist state that cares little for personal freedoms and liberties? No. Are we independent from the fear the neocons have used against an unsuspecting and gullible public? No. Are we independent from the very kind of power structure that we decided to rebel from? No.
We live in a false grandeur… a self-assigned and brainwashed thought that we are morally better than the rest of the world and just because we have been lied to to convince us otherwise (it was easy to do) we forget that and do not want to hold those liars accountable, for we don’t hold our representatives accountable for anything they do, unless it is have a gay person suck them off.
We pretend that we are flag-waving, true patriots, yet we allow our government to attack and ruin other’s lives in search for oil and its control.
How soon we forget what our first true hero and president said about this. How quickly we turn our back on what is important and honorable. How quickly we allow these assholes to lie to us and us believe them. Mr Washington said in his farewell address:
“In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive ofsome partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. …”
We are drowning in the “impostures of pretended patriotism,” used to cover the lies that got us into Iraq, the defense of torture and the violation of our basic liberties. In the name of patriotism, we presume a God-given American right to reorder the world to our liking, masking the vice of unfettered greed as an obligation of national security.
Any doubts as to this later governing impulse of our imperial ambitions were shattered with the recent news that U.S. advisers to our puppet government in the Green Zone of occupied Iraq have worked out agreements for American oil companies to gain control of Iraqi oil fields. But, then again, what did we expect when we elected a Texas oil hustler, and a failed one at that, to be our president?
Only in an America dumbed down by constant propaganda about our innate moral superiority will anyone any longer believe that we didn’t invade Iraq for the oil, even though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to the Bush administration from the board of directors at Chevron, where they named an oil tanker after her. Like Vice President Dick Cheney with those Halliburton contracts, Rice has stayed true to her corporate sponsors. That’s what the U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished; for the first time in more than three decades after Iraq joined a worldwide trend of formerly colonized nations gaining control of their own resources, Big Oil is getting its black gold back. It was always about the oil — that’s why “we” invaded Iraq — only “we” aren’t getting any, at least not at a reasonable price. The oil companies are.
“Yeah, but now that we are there, what are we to do?” Or the even harder idiocy, “We went there to give them freedom, they owe us the oil and we should take it.”
Is there any question in a redneck’s mind that this illegal invasion was anything except a way to get control of the Iraqi oil? How stupid does an American have to be to still believe these THUGS like Cheney and Rice (not to mention Bush and the rest of the thieves and liars) when every issue points to their neocon, oil-driven, world-control agenda? I mean, REALLY.
Are you people still so ignorant and stupid that you still believe them? No matter what the evidence is? To me, that is down-right treasonous. If you still support these maniacs, then you are also a traitor, in my opinion… at the very least, the stupidest of the stupid and should get mental help.
Sorry, but that is the way it is. There is no longer any excuse for you people… you Bushie Fools.
As Robert says, it may be impossible for the oil money soaked congress to get the point, but the Oil Companies and the American public are not the same. When Haliburton can screw Americans by moving off shore, they are no longer American. Period.
As they get richer and richer, we are suffering by paying for their ultra-profits. Now, they have “negotiated” some sort of contract to pull the oil from under the sand for the Iraqi government and will reap 75% of the money, leaving 25% for the Iraqis.
Now think about that for a second. Our “war” was to be paid for by their oil money, but the Oil companies get 75% and we are to be repaid or they will finance the rest of our 100 year war with 25% of the oil proceeds. Does any other redneck think the math is screwed? How many other countries do you think would allow this? Saudi Arabia?
What we have done is certainly a humongous rip-off of other people’s resources. Period. And we (all of us Americans) have allowed it and actually chide it along because of our “imposture” of pretended patriotism. “Imposture” is the act or practice of deceiving by means of an assumed character or name. We assume a false patriotism, we pretend that this patriotism is honorable and warranted, but it is simply the catalyst that our leaders have used to brainwash us into believing our superiority to the rest of the world, especially a bunch of sand dwelling rag heads.
We have become precisely what our greatest hero warned us of.
So, today, as I gather signatures for Ralph Nader, don’t put your flag pin up in my face, unless you are ready to sign this thing and get rid of these lying SOB’s who are ruining our country.
Robert finishes with this:
So, take that American flag off your lapel and replace it with a button bearing the Exxon or Chevron logo. C’mon, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice, be straight about what it is you are really pushing here. ‘Fess up — it’s not the good old USA as represented by the sucker taxpayers conned by your patriotic blather. No sirree, what you would have Americans paying homage to is the majesty of the big multinational corporations that exploit American military power to rule the world.
But recognize that you have shamed the legacy of our first president. George Washington, who distinguished the promise of the new world from the corruptions of the old by shunning imperial conquest, said: “Our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing.”
If Barack Obama or John McCain was to offer such words of wisdom this Fourth of July, he would be vilified as “weak,” and that is a fit measure of just how far we have descended from the high hopes of our first president.
Tennessee ranks 42nd in the nation in a new state-bystate study on the well-being of America’s children. The 2008 Kids Count Data Book compares states on 10 core indicators of child wellbeing and shows Tennessee improved on six of the 10 measures. “Tennessee has implemented good public policies and strategies to improve outcomes for older children,” said Linda O’Neal, executive director of the state’s Commission on Children and Youth, resulting in more children graduating from high school and fewer adolescents from dying.”
However, she said, the state “must continue and strengthen significant emphasis on improving preconception maternal health to reduce the number of low birthweight babies and infant deaths, efforts that take several years before the outcomes are reflected in data reported in the book.” Among this year’s report highlights, Tennessee’s youth custody rate is lower than the national rate.
In 2006, the state’s rate of youth in secure custody was 91 per 100,000 youth ages 10-15, significantly lower than 125 for the nation. The high school dropout rate in Tennessee has decreased from 11 percent in 2000 to 6 percent in 2006–a 45 percent decline. Nationally, the teen dropout rate improved by 36 percent, from 11 percent to 7 percent during the same period.
The death rate of Tennessee children dropped from 28 deaths per 100,000 children ages 1-14 in 2000 to 24 deaths per 100,000 children in 2005. Also, the Tennessee teen death rate declined from 90 deaths per 100,000 teens age 15-19 in 2000 to 79 deaths per 100,000 teens in 2005.
On the less positive side, Tennessee ranks in the bottom 10 in four of the 10 indicators. Nationally, Tennessee ranked 41st for the percentage of children living in poverty, 43rd for the percentage of low birthweight babies, and 45th for both the infant mortality and teen birth rates.
The Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth is an independent agency created by the Tennessee General Assembly. Its primary mission is to advocate for improvements in the quality of life for Tennessee
children and families.
Brace for things to get much worse, before they get any better:
Unemployment likely to worsen in coming months.
In a front-page story, the New York Times (7/2, A1, Goodman) reports that Tuesday’s automaker sales reports “reinforc[ed] the gloom spreading across the economy, [and] the troubles confronting American workers seemed to intensify.” The numbers mean manufacturers are “more likely to cut production and impose more layoffs. Until recently, the weak labor market has been marked more by the reluctance of employers to create new jobs than by mass layoffs.” Among economists, “the sense is broadening that the troubles dogging the economy will be stubborn, leaving in place an uncomfortable combination of tight credit and scant job opportunities perhaps well into next year.” The Times notes that the “national unemployment rate climbed a full percentage point over the last year to 5.5 percent in May,” and now Goldman Sachs is “forecast[ing] that the unemployment rate will peak at 6.4 percent late in 2009 before the picture improves, meaning that the painful process of shedding jobs may be only half-way complete.”
buelahman
lrose48
