Billions, trillions, soon you're talking about real money. Just not enough for children to be insured.

Helliburton in Burma, or wherever the pipelines go, you get repression

For days I've been away from the computer and depending on the television for my news. Gawd. Watching minute clips of monks protesting somethin-or-other in Myanmar. But listening to the MSM, do you think they'd actually EXPLAIN what's going on? (no)
I was wondering if we weren't just watching pretty color film at 11 about another color-coded so-called "revolution" (I hate quotation marks too but I just am inexplicably compelled to use them, ignore and read on, please.)

So today, I get mail:

Dear Activist,

Stand against oppression

I've watched in horror all week.
In Burma, Buddhist monks, marching against tyranny, are reported to have been disrobed and shackled. Many detained, many killed. They marched against injustice and oppression, and their actions were met with a cruel and ruthless crackdown.

You can take a stand against the oppression of these peaceful monks. Take action today.
The death counts vary wildly. But you can be sure that the military junta has brutally beaten and possibly murdered many more than we'll ever be able to confirm.

Please take action today for the people of Burma.
As you know, Amnesty International has been working for decades to protect human rights in Burma (Myanmar) and to support the pro-democracy forces' right to peaceful dissent. When the people of Burma last staged mass pro-democracy protests back in 1988, the military junta murdered thousands. But history does not have to repeat itself."

.... and so on, from Amnesty USA, via Bob Fertig who wrote...

It's been 17 tragic years since Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was elected prime minister of Burma - only to have the military junta nullify the election and place her under house arrest ever since.
In August, the junta doubled fuel prices and created enormous hardships. The Burmese people have taken to the streets for peaceful protests, but the junta has responded with naked brutality.
Please join me in urging the United Nations Security Council to immediately send a mission to Burma.
Bob Fertik

Then I read this and put 2 + 2 together, it's just like the phony 'war on terror', it's all about them oil pipelines... and Dirty Dick Cheney's Helliburton who always makes a buck dealing with criminal governments, and making business opportunities for the security industry.

Okay, that said, how much of the background story have you heard on the mainstream media? Zip.

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.

September 11, time to buy new school clothes and books and roll out a new campaign to sell the same old product

This is the day that commemorates the venality and criminality of politicians and religious leaders, made manifest.
Wake up. Six years later, wake up.

Or, better yet, lighten up, America.

Dwelling on your injuries make you sound all whiny and maudlin, and you ruin the party! Your makeup starts running with all those tears! You're ruining your botox treatment! Here's an idea from a great leader... Go SHOPPING!

Be your selfish self and get on with it.
You've had electricity and clean water for the past six years, right?
Have you been tortured or ethnically cleansed?
Are the kids insurgents, yet?
Grow up, America.

The boogey men, OBL and Dubya are two peas from the same pod. Front men for the perpetual war machine, propagandists, chosen by the real movers for their supposed religiosity and their stage presence. Both of them are rich sons of richie riches, playing with blocks and dress up costumes like they were buildings and uniforms. What do they know of anything?

But they scared you out of your wits, didn't they.
They're pretty certain of themselves, aren't they.
Their product has been tested on focus groups.

But I think they are both losing their appeal, and I think their planners are thinking of retiring their dog and pony shows to move on to bigger and brighter shiny new products...
like Iran, and then on to the Road to Damascus.
Fall is the time to roll out the new shows, Andy!

Isn't it interesting how predictably Madison Avenue their productions have become?
It's like watching the summer reruns, only they're 6 years along now. More like watching Gilligan's Island reruns.

Dubya's speeches are worse than bad. He can barely deliver them. (or more correctly, catapult them.) And OBL has lost all credibility, showing up in a funny beard and asking us to embrace Islam, indeed. He really doesn't know us, does he.

Both of them need another speech writer, another makeup man, stand-ins, props and better costumes.
Another terrorist attack, another election, and the seasons, they go round and round and the painted ponies go up and down...

Lucky for their sponsors, they have Congress to pick our pockets and post date their checks...

alarm clock

Dear Senator McCain,

If, as you suggested to Jon Stewart, when we pull out of Iraq the enemy will follow our troops home to attack us here... then won't our high tech Homeland Security watchdogs stop them in their tracks? Maybe we can shoot them with one of those $8 Million dollar per unit armed glider Reapers that hover over our borders sensing warm bodies to shoot just like in video games.
Or we can use that $20 Billion V22 Osprey, when and if ever it finally works.
(Ah, nothing like the military-industrial-complex to keep the economy humming.)

Bringing the rodents out of the swamp will prove that all the taxpayer money you spent on our brand new shiny Office of Homeland Security was justified! After all, if you store the cake under the sink, that's where the rats go, or whatever William Krystol said, and we sure did put a lot of "cake under the sink" (we "lost" about $8 Billion in cash) in Iraq.
And think of the great Stories of Heroism our Office of Civilian Propaganda could craft if we lured the enemy here! It would rouse the citizenry like a good story of a Hometown Football Hero soldier getting killed by enemy fire or a naive blond Little Gal recruit being rescued by our big strong Marines, whatever.
And that would justify all the money Dubya spent on civilian propaganda, too!
See, things do work out in the end for you rich guys, you just have to suffer a little while, while your bank accounts multiply like fishes.

Oh yes... and John, the IED joke wasn't any funnier than the Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran song, or the Springtime Carpet Deals in the Baghdad Market! shtick.

Senator McCain, you are whistling in a graveyard on the bones of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims of an invasion based on lies. You sound like an ass.