15 permanent bases (and an embassy city) are reality, the rest is talk...

That's in Iraq. We couldn't get the hospitals, electricity or water plants working, but we have an Imperial Stormtrooper Star Wars Garrison in the center of the oil puddle of the world.

We have 737(publicly known) military bases in other countries. What for? To make trade free? To spread democracy? To make the world love us?

Chalmers Johnson has said we cannot live as a domestic democracy and an imperial empire at the same time.
Senator Hagel said it... "for What?" ...every death in Iraq from this day forward is "for What?"

During his campaign Dubya wanted us to wait 6 months until the (Consigliere) Baker Commission came up with a plan for Iraq. Then he ignored it.

Then Dubya asked us to wait 6 more months to see if his Surge (Trademark) worked and General Betrayus could recommend a plan.

Dubya is playing out he clock, and meanwhile Congress keeps draining the treasury for him, and China keeps loaning us money for our grandchildren to repay.
Hope you don't think the dollar is going to keep it's value forever.
How's your home's value going? Can you sell it? Do you have a defined benefit pension any more? Our longevity is 41st in the world, our rate of infant mortality is atrocious, and we pay twice as much for medical insurance to cover only half our population.

This is the meaning of the Federalist Society who want to erase the Constitution, the Chicago School of Trickle Down Economics, the National Guard replaced by Blackwater 'Security', and the curse of Grover Norquist. Privatize everything, and shear the sheep at gunpoint. Bread and circuses will entertain the taxpayers while Rome burns.
Cameras and propaganda pointed at our own people.
Democracy or Empire. Too late.

remember when oil was 20 dollars a barrrel?

And Bush's war only cost We the People (the American taxpayers) a billion a week?
Good thing we have soma (24-7 television coverage of a rock concert for dead Diana, and Paris-and-Brittany's latest doin's) to paralyze our brain cells... otherwise... We'd be ticked.

Report: Wars Cost US $12 Billion a Month
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.

All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.

The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.

For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006.

The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates.

The $12 billion a month "burn rate" includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That's higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion.

Among the reasons for the higher costs is the cost of repairing and replacing equipment worn out in harsh conditions or destroyed in combat.

But the estimates call into question the Pentagon's estimate that the increase in troop strength and intensifying pace of operations in Baghdad and Anbar province would cost only $5.6 billion through the end of September.

If Congress approves President Bush's pending request for another $147 billion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, the total bill for the war on terror since Sept. 11 would reach more than three-fourths of a trillion dollars, with appropriations for Iraq reaching $567 billion.

Also, if the increase in war tempo continues beyond September, the Pentagon's request "would presumably be inadequate," CRS said.

The latest estimates come as support for the war in Iraq among Bush's GOP allies in Congress is beginning to erode. Senior Republicans such as Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Richard Lugar of Indiana have called for a shift in strategy in Iraq and a battle over funding the war will resume in September, when Democrats in Congress begin work on a funding bill for the war.

Congress approved $99 billion in war funding in May after a protracted battle and a Bush veto of an earlier measure over Democrats' attempt to set a timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

The report faults the Pentagon for using the Iraq war as a pretext for boosting the Pentagon's non-war budget by costs such as procurement, increasing the size of the military and procurement of replacement aircraft as war-related items.

The new estimate comes as the White House and Democrats are fighting over spending bills for next year. That battle is over about $22 billion _ almost the cost of two months' fighting in Iraq.

"Think about what $10 billion a month would mean to protecting Americans from terrorism, improving security at our ports and airports, and increasing border security," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

the man who was damn RIGHT, ALL ALONG and who is still damn right

Scott Ritter, video by the Traprock Peace Center

The 14 NO votes

The 14 N0 votes:
These are the only loyal opposition left.
The rest have essentially voted for Emperor Bush to do as he pleases, and he pleases to invade Iran and rob the American taxpayer's treasury.
DemocRATs, you will be blamed in years to come for your spinelessness.
Fill your pockets now, boys, then go home and stay there.
Senator Levin, where were you?
Is your loyalty to Israeli lobbyists trumping you oath to the American Constitution?

Boxer (D-CA)
Burr (R-NC)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coburn (R-OK)
Dodd (D-CT)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Obama (D-IL)
Sanders (I-VT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

no meter on the oil pumps

Refresh my memory... do you recall on the evening of "Shock and Awe" when Dubya got on television before the world to talk to the people of soon to be occupied Iraq, and all he said to them was to not disturb the oil?

And after the preemptive invasion, when the museums and government offices were being looted ("stuff happens"), the Ministry of Oil was the only building in Iraq being protected by American troops?

Remember the insider joke ... "Operation Iraqi Liberation"?

Remember the mainstream media echo chamber trumpeting the "oil for food scandal"? At least the children of Iraq were obese under Saddam. Today with the "oil for chaos" scandal that is not being mentioned in the American Idol obsessed press, Iraqi children are facing water borne parasitic disease, dissappeared medical service, and malnutrition.
Mission Accomplished.

Tell me, how much more looting do Bush's and Cheney's cronies deserve? Will they ever have enough? Fu*%ing insatiable wolves, indeed, that's what they are.

Tell me, how much more chaos would there be if American troops left right now? Will the twit Neocons EVER spill enough blood and shoot enough guns to prop up their manhood?

Sounds like PLENTY of chaos right now.
But, refresh my memory... didn't the NeoCon ideologist Michael Ledeen say that chaos was their goal?
Yes he did.

Dear Senator Levin, I heard today that your biggest financial support comes from AIPAC.
How does the Israeli lobby serve the citizens of the state of Michigan?
Is that why you are the flip side of the same coin? Heads we get crony capitalism and corporate welfare and a fascist military industrial economy, tails we get the same thing.
Why DO you rubber stamp the worst administration in history?


How Much Iraqi Crude Oil is Being Stolen? Mystery of the Missing Meters
By Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch
Posted on April 30, 2007(link)The line of ships at the Al Basra Oil Terminal (ABOT) stretches south to the horizon, patiently waiting in the searing heat of the Northern Arabian Gulf as four giant supertankers load up. Close by, two more tankers fill up at the smaller Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT). Guarding both terminals are dozens of heavily-armed U.S. Navy troops and Iraqi Marines who live on the platforms.

These two offshore terminals, a maze of pipes and precarious metal walkways, deliver some 1.6 million barrels of crude oil, at least 85 percent of Iraq's output, to buyers from all over the world. If the southern oil fields are the heart of Iraq's economy, its main arteries are three 40-plus inch pipelines that stretch some 52 miles from Iraq's wells to the ports.

Heavily armed soldiers spend their days at the oil terminals scanning the horizon looking for suicide bombers and stray fishing dhows (boats). Meanwhile, right under their noses, smugglers are suspected to be diverting an estimated billions of dollars worth of crude onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of ABOT and KAAOT -- has not worked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Officials blame the four-year delay in repairing the relatively simple system on "security problems." Others point to the failed efforts of the two U.S. companies hired to repair the southern oil fields, fix the two terminals, and the meters: Halliburton of Houston, Texas, and Parsons of Pasadena, California.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) is scheduled to publish a report this spring that is expected criticize the companies' failure to complete the work.

Rumors are rife among suspicious Iraqis about the failure to measure the oil flow. "Iraq is the victim of the biggest robbery of its oil production in modern history," blazed a March 2006 headline in Azzaman, Iraq's most widely read newspaper. A May 2006 study of oil production and export figures by Platt's Oilgram News, an industry magazine, showed that up to $3 billion a year is unaccounted for.

"Iraqi oil is regularly smuggled out of the country in many different ways," an oil merchant in Amman told the Nation (U.S.) magazine last month. "Emir al-Hakim [the head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq] is spending all his time in Basra selling oil as if it were his own. People there call him Uday al-Hakim, meaning he is behaving the same way Uday Saddam Hussein was acting. Other merchants like myself have to work through him with the big deals or smuggle small quantities on our own. The petroleum is now divided among political parties in power."

The resource curse

The smuggling and black market operations bear striking parallels to Saddam Hussein's tactics for circumventing the UN embargo. Saddam was accused of selling some $5.7 billion worth of petroleum products on the black market over the six years of the Oil-for-Food program while United Nations inspectors turned a blind eye. Today, his successors stand accused of similar abuses.

Iraq sits on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the third largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia and Canada). From a society that once used its oil revenue to create a social welfare state that provided education, health care and social services, the country has plummeted into the ranks of the poorest countries of the world.

Economists call this the "resource curse." Those blessed with non-renewable resources often benefit the least, because a few wealthy people control the resources, or war prevents almost anyone from the benefiting.

Iraq's main revenue source - earnings from the export sales of petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas - is currently managed by the Development Fund for Iraq. DFI's May 21, 2003 document, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483, assigns this money to benefit the Iraqi people. The resolution replaces the previous United Nations-run Oil-for-Food scheme that lasted from 1997 until the March 2003 invasion.

Almost four years after the DFI was created, officially logged crude sales have generated more than $80 billion. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) managed the DFI from the immediate aftermath of Saddam's removal until June 28, 2004, when the CPA was disbanded. During those 14 months, the CPA spent $19.6 billion of Iraq's DFI funds. The three succeeding governments have been officially in charge of the DFI revenues, although the influence of the U.S. military and political advisors has remained significant throughout. In the 32 months after the CPA left, the three governments spent $47 billion more.

Halliburton & Parsons

U.S. contractors have played a key role in the repair and upgrading of Iraq's oil infrastructure and expected the industry to pay for reconstruction. In January 2004, under project Restore Iraqi Oil II (RIO II), the Bush administration contracted with Halliburton to fix southern Iraq's oil fields and with Parsons to handle the northern fields. The two companies were supposed to be supervised by yet another contractor, New Jersey-based Foster Wheeler. (The first RIO contract was the infamous, secret no-bid contract issued to Halliburton before the invasion of Iraq. Although RIO II was competitively bid, Sheryl Tappan, a former Bechtel employee wrote a book criticizing the award as unfair.)

Halliburton and Parsons have long histories in Iraq, going back more than 40 years. Brown & Root, which is now part of Halliburton , began work in Iraq in 1961, while Parsons dipped into Iraq's oil sector in the 1950s. Foster Wheeler dates its work in Iraq to the 1930s.

These companies have a lot of experience at the terminals where the black market now thrives. Indeed, Halliburton built the ABOT terminal, then known as Mina al-Bakr, in the early1970s. After it was damaged during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Halliburton repaired the terminal, before it was bombed yet again during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The Khor al-Amaya oil terminal also saw a similar cycle of destruction and rebuilding. Built with Halliburton 's help in 1973, it was heavily damaged by Iranian commandos during the Iran-Iraq war, then again during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and most recently in May 2006 by a major fire that destroyed 70 percent of its facilities. During the sanctions, Ingersoll Dresser Pump Company, a Halliburton subsidiary, had a secret contract to sell Iraq spare parts, compressors, and firefighting equipment for the refurbishment.

( Halliburton also a long history near the Turkish port of Ceyhan, from where Iraq sells oil produced at Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Halliburton runs the nearby U.S. military base at Incirlik, which was the staging ground for Operation Northern Watch that provided air protection for the Kurds during the 1990s.)

Measuring the oil

With billions of dollars to spend and extensive experience with oil infrastructure and Iraqi ports, Haliburton and Parsons seem unable to deal with the routine problem of broken meters at the Southern Iraq terminals.

The kinds of meters they were supposed to repair or replace at ABOT are commonly found at hundreds of similar sites around the world. Because they are custom-built, shipped, then assembled and calibrated on site, the process can take up to a year. But the probelm has persisted for four years.

After the 2003 invasion, the meters appear to have been turned off and there have since been no reliable estimates of how much crude has been shipped from the southern oil fields. (The northern oil fields in Kirkuk, which supply the Beiji refinery in Iraq and export crude to the Turkish port of Adana, has reliable metering but little oil to measure since insurgent attacks largely shut down the facility.)

Lieutenant Aaron Bergman, the U.S. Navy officer in charge of Mobile Security Squadron 7 at ABOT, says export authorities have "guesstimated" how much is being sold, with a back-of-the-envelope formula: Every centimeter a tanker lowers into the water equals 6,000 barrels of oil cargo.

"So you can imagine," he said earlier this month to Stars & Stripes, a newspaper serving the U.S. military, the numbers could be off, "A couple of inches could equal 180,000 barrels of fuel."

"I would say probably between 200,000 and 500,000 barrels a day is probably unaccounted for in Iraq," Mikel Morris, who worked for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Organization (IRMO) at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, told KTVT, a Texas television station.

Neither US officials nor contractors have provided good reasons why, four years into the US occupation, the meters have not been calibrated, repaired, or replaced. One excuse is that the job of calibration requires special devices to assess the current meters and security issues make importing these devises problematic. Yet that and other security-related explanations fall apart given that the oil terminals are under 24 hour high security guard, lie more than 50 miles off-shore, and are accessible only by helicopter or ship.

There are two possible explanations: that the project has been delayed by bureaucracy or that vested interests benefiting from the lack of oil metering (such as smugglers or corrupt officials) have prevented the project from moving forward.

Skyrocketing Costs

The RIO II project, which includes the meter repair work, has come under much criticism, although specific details are scarce.

For example, the Bush administration issued Halliburton the RIO II order in January 2004 and gave detailed task orders in June. But despite not starting work until November 2004, the company charged the government millions of dollars for engineers who sat idle. Halliburton 's $296 million bill included at least 55 percent overhead. (In an estimate due later this month, SIGIR may predicts even higher overhead costs.)

A Parsons joint venture (with Worley of Australia), was also issued a contract in January 2004, given detailed task orders in June, and started work in July 2004. It has also been accused of charging high overhead costs while idle, although not as much as Halliburton . SIGIR estimate pegs its overhead at 43 percent.

In addition, in a series of scathing internal reports uncovered by Congressman Henry Waxman, supervisors Foster Wheeler criticized Halliburton 's cost. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a "cure" notice on January 29, 2005, ordering Halliburton to do a better job or else. After Halliburton did improve its cost controls, the military turned over the southern oil work to Parsons in mid 2005.

When Parsons took over the contracts, two years after the invasion, it hired a Saudi Arabian sub-contractor, Alaa for Industry, to help repair or replace the meters.

The turbine meters were shipped to Kuwait for repairs but do not appear to have been fixed in a timely manner, although some have been fixed and re-installed earlier this year. Unofficial sources suggest that the Kuwaiti bureaucracy delayed the repair work: "The real reason for the hindrance to work at the ABOT is because Kuwait has a vested interest in minimizing Iraqi oil exports," an anonymous source who worked on the project said. His claim could not be verified.

In mid-September 2006, the Iraqi oil ministry abruptly announced that it would pull the plug on the oil metering project, making future monitoring even less certain.

Asim Jihad, the oil ministry spokesman, told Al Hayat: "The American company had failed in keeping its promise to finish installing these meters; also, refusing to reveal the exact cost, except for saying that it is executing it within the American grant to Iraq and the sum of that grant is unknown to us too. This relieves the ministry from its obligation to it. Besides, many international companies presented good offers to implement the project in a record time due to its importance."

The oil ministry then invited British Petroleum and Shell to plan a comprehensive national metering project that would cover not only the oil terminals, but also the productions wells and the even the refineries.

A SIGIR team traveled to ABOT in November 2006 to check on progress. Its unpublished report suggests that the work was less than half complete.

Suddenly, in December 2006, a high-level U.S. team traveled out to ABOT to inspect the meters. In a little-noticed announcement issued on a Saturday just before Christmas, John Sickman, the resident oil expert at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said the meters had been fixed and were working fine.

"The measurement using the existing turbine meters and displacement meters at the offshore terminal at ABOT is transparent and the measurement devices are more than adequate," Sickman was quoted in the press release. "Furthermore, the crude oil vessels have measurement and quality samplers."

Indeed this is how the Dutch company Saybolt measured oil export under the United Nations Oil for Food program. The problem even today, according to experts consulted for this report, is that the meters have yet to be calibrated, so the data are basically useless.

Even if the meters are working properly, smuggling could still occur. "It's easy to steal crude if you knew what you were doing," Don Deaver, a petroleum metering expert who worked for Exxon for 33 years, said. "If you meaure too low or too high, someone will lose and some will one gain. It's why you need professionals who understand how the meters work to make sure that nothing is being lost or stolen."

U.S. government officials claim that little is being stolen. SGS (a British consultancy) "is providing independent third party loading certifications onsite for the customers. This, coupled with the recent installation of ultrasonic meter provides more than redundant measurement capability," said Sickman in December.

Days after the press release, in early January 2007, Parsons began work on the meters under a $57.8 million U.S. government-funded contract supervised by Major Dale Winger of the Joint Contracting Command in Basra. Almost as soon as work started, Winger was replaced by Lieutenant Commander Brian Schorn. Reached for this article, Schorn said he was not up to speed on what work had been done, and referred questions to his "front-office" in Baghdad at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Parsons Iraq Joint Venture spokesman Don Lassus also refused to comment. The contract with the military does not permit the release of "any unclassified information," he said, without prior approval of the military.

Today no government officials have been able to establish conclusively whether oil is being smuggled or not. Even the future of the oil metering remains unclear. The latest report issued by SIGIR in January 2007 notes that repair and rehabilitation work at ABOT is scheduled to be finished by May 2007, but "it is unclear whether this project will be completed because of de-obligation requirements" that is to say that the funding could be cut.

Pratap Chatterjee is managing editor of CorpWatch and the author of 'Iraq Inc.' (Seven Stories Press, September 2004).

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/51218/

refresh my memory about Tillman and Lynch

I recall reading that Tillman was becoming disillusioned, and the news was that Pat was planning to meet with his Congressman when his tour was over, just before he was 'killed'.
Coincidentally, the War Party needed a big story for Civilian Propaganda to divert attention from the emerging Abu Grahib story (remember, they had plenty of lead time and released the torture pictures on their own schedule.)

Timing is everything.
It was all fishy to me from Day One.

And...
I recall reading that Jessica was portrayed as a naive young "blond" who "took a wrong turn" and ended up in a nest of Iraqis. I wondered why in the hell she didn't follow her GPS as she was trained to do?

Or if... her GPS directed her to make the wrong-way turn, who could have programmed it to do that? Wasn't that convenient, if you needed her character for a "story"?

I remember reading her Iraqi doctor's story and how she wasn't mistreated at all, and that her "rescuers" had to wait a whole day to get the proper press in to film the rescue.
Coincidentally, the War Party needed a romantic war story that would appeal to the young right, for the Office of Civilian Propaganda to divert attention from the Rachael Corry story that was playing in the foreign press and appealing to the young left. Their brave young girl soldier story would suck all of the air out of the brave young girl peace-nic being bulldozed by the Israelis story.

Timing is everything in war. You do bad things, make contracts, tell lies, steal elections, roll over innocents, let others be killed, make more contracts and then you Move On. Apologies? if necessary. No reparations.

the cake under the sink, the rats in the kitchen

While I was reading Commondreams.org today I came across this story about then Defense Secretary, now head of World Bank- Paul Wolfowitz's girlfriend being sent by the World Bank to Iraq in 2003 (link).

What caught my eye was the appearance of SAIC in the scenario. Remember the SAIC - Defense Secretary Robert Gates connection I drew so long ago? and the SAIC - Black Box Voting connection? and the recent Antiwar.com Charles Goyette interview I wrote about concerning SAIC's contracts in the Iraq /Afgan/Mideast Wars?

Some real journalists should be pulling the threads of this story!!!
Thank Vanity Fair and the Government Accountability Project for following the story of how our democracy has been looted by a bunch of NeoCon pirates. You don't see this on television news, now do you.

I remember a famous Neocon once said in a fit of truthiness, "If you don't want rats in the kitchen you don't store a cake under the sink." It was either Krystol or Norquist, can't recall.
I think we stored the bloody cake under the sink and the rats are in the kitchen.

Crafting a new story for the attention deficit nation

Iraq
- q + n= Iran
- n= IRA

The news of the Iranian roadside bombs in Iraq that kill our troops you are being innundated with is just another new BS story.

I predict is another Jessica Lynch- Pat Tillman Potemkin type propaganda story, crafted to rouse the Attention Deficit Nation.
Don't trust anything the War Party says on the War Media.
Don't you remember, the story has been hinted around for months now.
I recall hearing it mentioned briefly by the ABC writer- embedded reporter on Diane Rheme's show last week.

But the REAL story is that it is another covert provication to war on Iran.

Dubya is spending millions on propaganda aimed at you and me. Are you awake enough to catch it?

Just Google it for yourself... IRA and IED. These are the same bombs that covert Brit and US spooks taught the IRA to use in their violence, as reported in the Guardian newspaper.

coincidences

first coincidence:
After I posted this Gil Scott Heron rap on the MIC below, someone gave me a relevant DVD to watch. Lord of War is a panned Nick Cage movie that tells the story of the proliferation of weapons after the end of the cold war, historical fact as the basis for a semifictional story supposedly told by a playa in the military-industrial complex, a weapons dealer.
Sure Cage is stone faced throughout, but the story is the star. It's in the video store now, for your edification.

second coincidence:
The television is on in the middle of the night to soothe a guest, and who is on CSPAN2 book notes but Joseph Cirincione, flogging his new book on nuclear proliferation.
This guy is so smart, he is someone who can hold up his history and say, "I was right about Iraq".
I understood from day one that the Bush Administration was lying about Iraq harboring WMDs, and it was because of a few great individuals: Seymour Hersh,
Scott Ritter, Joe Cirincione. And the bloggers who pointed them out to me, especially the writers on Anti-War.com.
You should realize, the same guys who lied about Iraq are lying about Iran. Go back and Google the facts. Who said what.
The same guys who tried to save us before, and are on record as being right, are trying to save us now.
Try to catch him in a rerun, or online.

Antiwar.com has been doing a great favor for us .mp3 listeners, with its interview show, now called (link) AntiWar Radio. Scott Horton and Charles Goyette have been doing some great and important interviews lately, so go, listen.NOTHING will freeze your blood like hearing Helen Caldicott in the middle of the night describe the devistation of a single H-bomb dropped on a city, and what would follow. She is concise...

...and the Imperial Warlord Bush has dropped us out of all those international treaties based on his takeover of of all three branches that once governed our late Republic, including the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Olberman again

Background music

Background on the past five years, that is. Dave Rovic's "Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL)" is a perfect accompaniment to this article by Christian Parenti in the new Nation Magazine, "Who Will Get the OIL?", or this article which reminds us of the secret Cheney Energy taskforce.

Deja vu all over again

a musical interlude

For all my Patrio-Christo-Fascist friends who think there is Somethin' Basically Wrong with Muslims, especially the camel jockey ragheads sittin' on OUR OILfields, and who along the same Reptilian lines think a budget that feeds Lockheed-martin and Caci and Blackwater and Halliburton and Bechtel, but which takes food and medical care out of the hands of children in the State of Michigan is "compassionate" conservatism... this vid is for you.

pretty transparent, National Propaganda Radio

I'm just a f*&ing average midwestern housewife but I was ironically laughing out loud this morning at the transparency of NPR's reportage this morning, detailing the past support for Bush's War by leading (but not all) Democrat__ contenders (did you wonder too why are they contending sooo soon when there is so much more important stuff to do?) who are positioning themselves against Bush's War.
Then they juxtapositioned a short sweet puff piece about the clown Guliani, never mentioning his stand on Iraq (? what is it, nukes, tasers all around?) or how much no bid or otherwise crony money his companies are making off post 9-11 security and war.

Keep warm.

two hundred and fifty billion dollars

Dubya has an extravagant ego.

Choose 25 cities in America. Give them each $10 billion.
or
Choose 50 states in America. Give them each $5 billion.
or
Choose 250 cities in America. Give them each $1 billion.
or
Choose 250 colleges in America. Give them each $1 billion.

Just don't give Dubya $250 billion to spend on death.

Is Captain Brian Freeman the new Jessica Lynch?

I just read the new spin on his story... they are blaming Iran.

Dear Representative Conyers

You have the gavel.
That's what you told us at the Progressive Town Hall two years ago in Flint, Michigan.
We just needed to work for anti-war candidates, and when the Democrats gained power, you'd have the gavel.
It was a nice reassurance: we met, we marched, we volunteered, we hoped.

We were schmucks.

You have the gavel, you are the prosecutor.
We can't do it.
It's why we elected you.
We followed the law and the custom, now you should enforce the Constitution, or else it is all only a puppet show.

I don't care if it is your last political act, if the DLC told you to run out the clock... live to fight another day... keep your powder dry.

George W. Bush is a serial killer.
Stop him before he kills again.

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"Never separate the words you speak from the life you live."
-- Paul Wellstone

"A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought, within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world."
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

average Americans

Thoughts on Ben Bernacke once again attacking our beloved social programs

Remember my Humpty-Dumpty analogy for the Bush Wars? Seems a lot of people started thinking along the same lines lately... and Dubya responded. Did anyone else hear his comment that he "doesn't think of Iraq as a broken egg", he "thinks it's more of a cracked egg"? (Duh? What's the difference, George? Exactly what planet are you from?)
I heard the sound clip one morning on NPR and didn't hear it again all day.
I think it says everything about our nation and what we have become.
You actually voted for this guy TWICE!

Remember when Bush's Invasion of Iraq was a *soldier a day* and a $ billion a week?

You knew it escalated to more blood and carnage a day, but did you know Bush's off-budget carte-blanche war is now costing your tax-sponsored credit card over two billion a week?
Couldn't we better spend that money here? On homeland security and shoring up successful social programs?

What is it about "fighting over there so we don't have to fight them here" that keeps "them" over "there"? Logically, "they" can do two things at the same time. We are not safer by invading other countries. We don't spread democracy, we spread hatred which will encourage someone sometime to act on that thought. Blowback is heck. Expect more blowback, and it will be heck. We are spending our life's blood on militarism for nothing...

Okay, so they have filled The Grover Noquist-described Bathtub to drown our government in.
We have been convinced by free traders and Madison Avenue to sell our birthright to the Godless Communist Chinese for cheaply made Walmart goods...
We have been lyed into spending over half of our wealth on militarism...
We have been sold on ignoring Peak Oil and Global Climate Change in favore of faith based armageddonist SUV driving...
We have been scared by scarey commercials about men in turbans, and wolves in the woods to the reactionary gutting of our Constitutional rights...
So folks, are you going to believe these proven to be lying bastards when they begin to proceed to dismantle your Social Security?
Ben Bernacke and George W. Bush are carrying Great Big Scissors to cut holes in your safety nets!
The Republic is dying okay you don't care about that, but are you going to bring Granny in to sleep in your spare room, or leave her on the side of the road?

----
*The now-shit-canned "An Army of One" advertising campaign took on new meaning with Bush's War, didn't it, when it became the blood price of conquest.
IU've marvelled at how the Righties seem to revel in ironic language... Federalist Society is exquisite, Crusade and Islamo-fascism, the short lived Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) changed to OIF, the code talking to the militant Christian Right, the litany of anti-environmental program names Blue Skies and Healthy Forests Initiatives, the evil No Child Left Behind... Is there a complete list online of this endless Luntz-speak I wonder?

War may come sooner than you think, enjoy your cheap gas

Thom Hartmann said something ironic and chilling on his program a few days ago.
Remember how in the form of gallows humor we used to say, 'well, at least we still have the third amendment, we still are safe from having to keep British soldiers in our homes...'?
Not so funny any more... Dubya's Baghdad Clear and Hold plan involves billeting soldiers in Iraqi homes to facilitate clearing the neighborhoods. No joke.
We continue with the Freedom Agenda.

I think they're setting up the playing pieces. They've moved a third battle group into the theatre, they're building those 14 permanent bases as fast as they can (maybe that 9 billion didn't vanish into thin air?), they're playing word games with Israel like they did with Saddam in 91, they're setting up Iran with provocations like kidnapping their diplomats, drones invading sovereign Iranian airspace, the propaganda about nuclear war is flying fast and furious in the corporate media. When they drop the bunker busters on those undetectible unknown unknowns as a Presidential perogative to preemptive invasions we'll all breathe a sigh of relief that "at least it wasn't radioactive weaponry." I hope. Killing a million people in a week from nuclear fallout is a heavy sin to commit and bear, just because we want our oil.
We've been in Iraq for a few years and it took us that long to kill over 600,000 of their citizens, to spread democracy.