CW57, one of the local DumFox stations, aired an "infomercial" for a seminar, books and training videos on how to take advantage of the housing market crash, telling the Gullible that if they buy the properties ON CREDIT (even though they're targeting people who are already in bankruptcy and facing foreclosure) then sell them to rich real estate developers for tens of times what the houses are currently priced, financed on both transactions with an Adjustable Rate Mortgage by the same investment banks which wrote a blank rubber check for the last time this scam was perpetrated. Now, the paper they hung on us last time, it wasn't the primary cause of the Recession Massive Economic Collapse it was just (normally, as everybody knows, I avoid cliché like the plague, but I'm going out on a limb and doing it anyway) the straw that broke the camel's back. 30 straight years of unfunded Reaganomics, the collapse of the infrastructure, such as levies, bridges, roads, other privately owned public utilities, unfunded war-for-profit where those who made the profit from other people dying paid no taxes on the blood money, destruction of the unions, done at public expense and again for private profiteers, and the legalization of Predatory Capitalism and relaxing every rule set in place to correct These Same Causes during the Great Depression of the 1930s... provided both the rest of the burden that poor camel was carrying AND starved and beat the living Hell out of him so he was incapable of carrying the burden. Fox uses the standard disclaimer that "The views expressed in this broadcast do not reflect those of NewsCorp" what a bunch of lying pukes. Fox News has spent BILLIONS of dollars ranting that this type of unfunded speculative investment could not possibly have harmed the economy. Nor that the Corporations getting welfare subsidies AND huge tax breaks, would increase the budget and double-trouble it by their obscene tax breaks. Instead, they blame the 51% of the people who make less than $22,360 a year for a family of four and thus are at poverty level. Or below. Couldn't possibly be the multi-Trillion Dollar giveaways to the Rich. The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has recently been estimated at 1.5 Terabucks, or, for those who no speak geek, trillion dollars. That would have to ignore the at least 5 Trillion paid out to private corporations to "rebuild" Iraq and completely dismiss all the money spent on Afghanistan. And the fact that before 1991 Iraq had the strongest economy and best infrastructure on the Arabian Peninsula, even more than the Subsidized (by us) Sovereign State of Israel. That they had more female graduates from universities per capita than anybody else on the Peninsula, that their literacy rate even now surpasses that of the United States, More female Doctors. And that they weren't allowed to use what money they had (which was considerable) to rebuild their country for more than a decade, based on the "They're Developing WMDs"
Tag: Halliburton
War costs many times what Pentagon reported, Surprise.
We've been told, you know, that the total spending on the Wars Of Conquest in the Bananastans was "only" a Trillion dollars. For those who don't visualize numbers very well, that's a million times a million. Using the largest standard bill in U.S. Currency, the $100, it would take a suitcase to hold a million dollars, and it would weigh just over 22 pounds, ten kilograms. (Each bill weighs a gram, 10,000 bills... hey, people in the drug trade know that, it's easier to weigh a million dollars than count it. That shit from Scarface where they had a counting machine, pure fiction. Dope dealers use their scales for more than just weighing out the product.) Other estimates are 3.7 trillion. That's substantially more. Then there's more realistic estimates that range from 5 Trillion up to 8 Tera-bux. That would be from estimating the costs + "over-runs" like syphoning off a few million suitcases full of Benjamins, of construction projects given with no-bid contracts to companies like Halliburton, which has a lot of connections to the Bush Family and the former President of Vice, Richard "dickless" Cheney. But they wouldn't rip us off, no, not possible. I could barely type that snark-asm without becoming violently ill. "The debt crisis has been a game changer in terms of defense spending," said Laura Peterson, a national security analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog. "It used to be that asking how much the wars cost was unpatriotic. The attitude going into the war is you spend whatever you cost. Now maybe asking is more patriotic." How was that funded without raising taxes? Bonds. Bonds which pay 10% annually. Which means the interest is going to exactly match the principal this coming quarter. So that makes the cost to the taxpayers exactly twice what it would have cost with a pay-as-you-go system. Because the Rich Bitches like CheneyBush aren't going to let the American People get out of our obligation to line their pockets. And they're not going to tax their Rich Bitch Buddies either, they've already made that point clear. Instead they're going to blame the poorest people, those of us who control less than 1% of the total wealth, for their own little Oopsie moment, and tax us accordingly. Cut Momma's Social Security. Slash pay and benefits so we'll have less raw income with which to pay more money than all of us collectively won't see in several lifetimes of Minimum Slavery. Those of us "Lucky Duckies" who don't make enough money to pay income tax. It seems that every time Class Warfare rears its ugly head, the guns are pointed at the Working class and away from the Parasite Class. It's worth noting that within a year the first use of a machine gun (different from a Gatling gun) by the United States Army was against U.S. civilians at the Ludlow Massacre, and IWW organizer Joe Hill was blown away at Salt Lake City by a firing squad.
al Maliki says he’s quitting in ’14
Smelling death in the air I suppose. He said that one of the symptoms of lack of democracy is when the leader stays in power for thirty years. And I have to add, another symptom is if that government is propped up by the jack-booted Stormtroopers of a foreign Dictatorship.. He also made a grand gesture of giving half his salary back to "the people"... Just not, you know, redistributing any of that Blood Money that Halliburton pays him to launder the rest of the money they've stolen from Iraq and from the U.S.
Mad-ministration scared now…
Tunisia, Lebanon, now Cairo. They're said to be the lynchpins in "Middle East Peace" meaning Pox Americana. Somehow ONLY the U.S. is capable of determning peace terms WTF? Maybe there IS a huge disconnect in perception here in America. (Ok, "maybe" is just being polite) but going around conquering nations isn't exactly a stabilizing mechanism. Setting up puppet dictators in those conquered nations, conquered either through overt war like in Iraq and Afghanistan and Greece and South Korea, or through Diplomacy coupled with assassinations. That won't lead to peace either. There was a saying in the Military "Peace, through superior firepower" well, that's not peace, that's conquest. You can only force people to do your will for a limited time. Sooner or later, usually sooner, it comes roaring back and bites you square on your arse. Now Obama and Mrs Clinton are treading a fine line, do we overtly back the demonstrators, in the hopes that they'll be nice to our Slaverymongers Ambassadors of goodwill and freedom, or back Mubarak in the off chance that he'll be able to suppress this rebellion (doing it on behalf of his Washington UberMeisters) and "We" would have to make nice to him. All to keep up a maintainable position in VietRaquiStan. Synonymous terms: Fat chance, slim chance, not a snowball's chance in Hell.
Dit Fromage!
Ah, photography and cheese, together again. In French. New concept, Calendar Girls posing with ... CHEESE! It doesn't translate very well, culturally, or didn't. "Say Cheese" becomes "Dit Fromage! Dit Fromage!" Warning, the webpage is in French. So for those right wing types who are still pissed off at the French for not just allowing McDonalds to take over their country... Too bad. You lost, EU won, get over it. So the French have taken up the American bastardization of what was French technology in the first place, photography. Maybe now the Americans will take up something more than a mere shadow of French raw milk cheese. Instead of cheese made from Pasteurized milk. Which doesn't make too much sense, since cheese is rotten milk in its beginning, why Pasteurize out the bacteria and fungi which make it if you're just going to put them back later? You know, that was the "beef" McDonalds AND the Texas Cattle Raisers and Breeders Association had with them? Not so much a really well-deserved bit of Anti-American cultural snobbery. But the French and everybody else in the EU demanded (How DARE those Foreign Sovereign Nations make demands of American CorporaFascist Rulers about doing business in their pipsqueak country which has been a nation for a thousand years longer than America?) that the milk and meat served come from EU inspected sources. That would include having EU approved inspections in "our" Meat Factory mass-produced Concentrated Animal Feeding Enterprises. Which are themselves a spectacularly bad idea and once (hopefully) American politicians grow enough balls to shut them the Hell down, it'll be a toxic waste disposal operation. In fact it already is. In a grim bit of Karma, the boson (very large aquifer) under the Permian Basin (where the Bush family has some really deep oil and gas wells that go BELOW the water level of the boson and where Bush has his ranch, now for sale, directly in the middle of the Permian Basin at Crawford) now has traces of the antibiotics from the CAFE raised animals in it. This boson is called "fossil" water because it's been developing ever since the Permian Basin was under a shallow sea, which hasn't been for the past 63 million years or so. Now the boson (until they fractured the rock above and to the side of it drilling for oil) HAD been feeding from water which took 10,000 years to percolate down through the limestone. Carbon filtering done Right, man. So people from the east slope of the Rockies, as far north as southern Kansas and as far westEAST (damn that was sloppy) as at least the Dallas area are paying extra for filtration and purification of what used to be the purest source of fresh water in America. So we don't have to drink the Bush family bullshit. Literally. The French and most of the rest of the EU didn't want any part of that kind of destruction visited on their people for the sake of
Contaminants in the runoff water
Seems they predate the Homeless Camping debate by at least a decade. One of the problems that was present when the City and County of Pueblo sued Colorado Springs for fouling their water, e-coli. Seems Colorado Springs and Springs Utilities reached a plea-bargain mitigating the judgment against the Springs by making necessary repairs to the sewage system. This includes that bad ol' StormWater that the right wingsters keep whining about. The wastewater treatment facilities were overwhelmed on several levels, not the least of which were the BlowHard Extremists like Douglas Bruce not wanting to pay their bills. Have their cake, eat it too, and then have somebody else pay for the cake. The sewer system including the Storm Drains, which funnel water off the streets, which in turn are coated with an oily residue from the exhaust fumes. More cars, more pavement, more pollution and all of it running into a sewage treatment system last upgraded in the early 1960s. 50 years ago. More streets, more infrastructure added on, and each year the cost of the labor and the materials needed to build and maintain that infrastructure increasing, yet Doug Bruce and his dumbass Zombie Followers insist on only paying the bills in 1972 dollars. And screaming that increasing the fees necessary to maintain that infrastructure and build new infrastructure to accommodate those victims of the Real Estate Scam of "Pure Rocky Mountain Spring Water" moving to town and making the water somewhat less pure. Lethally less pure. Some of the impurities in Fountain Creek before the confluence with Monument Creek keep the smelly algae that makes Monument stink so bad from growing. Also any other algae, insect larvae, and amphibian newts, efts and tadpoles. N-Nitrosodimethylamine, likely sources:Industry, cosmetics, toiletry products, cleansers; by-product of natural chemical reactions. That's the one Springs Utilities admits is beyond EPA and drinking water safety bounds. Chemicals they say are in "safe amounts" Barium, Bromodichloromethane Chlorodibromomethane Chloroform Fluoride Hexachlorocyclopentadiene Nitrates Radium, Combined 226 228 Sodium, Turbidity (muddiness) Uranium Chlorine Maloacetic Acids Trihalomethanes Coliform (bacteria) E-Coli (the coliform bacteria they're blaming on the Homeless People, before that it was the pigeons in Manitou Springs) Copper Lead A lot of the "possible sources of contamination" listed are Erosion of native deposits. Erosion hastened by destroying topsoil, uprooting native plants, GRADING FOR ROADS, COMMERCIAL AND HOUSING CONSTRUCTION, MINING, QUARRYING, DRILLING, TIMBER CLEARING, OFF-ROAD "RECREATIONAL" VEHICLE USE For instance, there's at least one defunct copper mine just outside Manitou Springs city limits that drains directly into Fountain Creek. When you pull ONE metal out of the earth, it's not in pure form, ever, is it, O Right Wing Mining Geniuses Who Think I Can't Possibly Know Anything? Nay verily. It is NOT pure and some of those impurities are other metals. Toxic metals like Uranium, White Arsenic, Sodium in many forms including Sodium Cyanide, Mercury, Lead, Copper, ooops that's one they INTENDED to pull out oopsie my bad. Petrochemicals, mountaintop removal for extracting ANY mineral including coal releases chemicals into the waters that have recently been shown to cause a hormonal mutation in small-mouth bass where the male fish develop with
BP strikes again.
Oil and Dispersant filled crabs showing up on the Gulf seafood market. BP is playing the jobs card here the same as they do on the Gulf. They're wanting to re-open "extraction" of the oil shale beds near Guffey and Florissant CO.. Park County... near the non-fiction town of Southpark. To do it they'll be basically mining the oil, taking rocks, crushing them and boiling the oil out. Using the really scarce water resources, every drop of which is claimed by people as far east as the Mississippi and all the way to the West Coast, Brownsville, and Mexico. The watersheds from here flow to everyplace lower than here, which means, everyplace in the Western two thirds of the United States. Which was why the Shale Oil enterprises were shut down before they could even get started back in 1974. We've got at least 8 candidates on the ballot who say that cost Colorado jobs. They neglect to mention the jobs which will be destroyed when the ecosystem is destroyed, when more water than is actually available is used for cooking the shale, and the runoff from it is going to be Toxic. BP and Exxon-Mobil are the biggest contractors wanting to do this. The ones who say their little Ooopsie Moments aren't destroying every non-Oil job in the gulf either, the ones Sarah Palin "Stood up to" in Alaska, the ones who the Government of Alaska "negotiated a tough settlement" with over Exxon Valdez, real tough, about a penny on the dollar worth of tough. Spill, baby, Spill. The same kind of "Tough Negotiations" that Tancredo, or Maes, perhaps, would do. Maybe have a bankrupt and imprisoned for life ex-Exxon employee held responsible for the rest of the money. Real tough... tough on the Non-Oil Corporation workers who will be displaced by such a disaster. Speculative? Until late this spring the Oil Spill in the gulf from Deepwater drilling was "speculation". Nothing to see, citizens, keep moving, nothing to see... Oh, and they've got Halliburton involved. Not surprising, Halliburton is the largest Oil Facility construction company in the world. Halliburton which cut loose its subsidiary Industrial Labor Services just before they broke my feet up. Neat little idea, subsidiaries. The CEO of ILS was taking out Social Security employee payments, the FICA tax, but not paying it to Social Security, nor of course the Employer Contribution. And got busted. So rather than the whole corporate umbrella, who were also beneficiaries of the scam, walked away from it unscathed. A very few financial officers of ILS actually did "hard time" -- three years at Club Fed, for their theft. Compare that to comment 15 about a person getting a Life Sentence for a different money fraud, a $750 hot check also perpetrated in Texas. Rich folks get all the breaks because they own the courts and the cops. Just like they own the Colorado judges, prosecutors and cops who will be responsible for deciding their liability when they do an Oopsie-moment in our water
Oil Company and Military “job creation” in the Springs..
Are going to go to... people who already work for the oil companies and the Military Industrial Complex. The (God this is a stupid term) Surge in employment is of the trickle down variety. Like the ghost of Reagan pissing on us in death the way he did in life. Let's dissect the Oil Jobs, yes? They've got a bunch of unemployed oil people. Fewer and fewer wells, more and more people who have experience and tenure, no need for Halliburton or BP to train people locally. We'll get jobs like More McDonalds, or Workin' at the Car Wash Blues, oh, and the oil and Military Industrial folks will bring their families so a portion of the New Jobs will be eaten up by them. Then there's what they'll be DOING. In the early 70s they tried this same shit, there were about a third as many people in the area, and still a water crisis. Since the Springs area feeds the watersheds that provide water to every where west of the Mississippi, that's a huge responsibility. Every drop of rain that falls here is already claimed a year or more in advance. The Shale Oil extraction process takes up a lot of fresh water. huge amounts. More than is actually available even without the water demands of the local population. Which is a lot more people now. So they're going to bring in more people, add fewer jobs than they take up, and less water. The ones pushing this political boondoggle, this government giveaway, yet another one... Halliburton and BP. Oh, I know, their political faces are the likes of Dan Maes and Tom Tancredo, and a slew of others who are going to defeat the "Liberal Hippie Anti-Oil Giant U.N. Sponsored Conspiracy". But it's the giant oil corporations running the show. The ones who slough off paying taxes, and collect unspeakable abominations of Government Giveaways like the Continual War, a giant funnel leading from the U.S. Treasury directly into their greedy pockets. Their predatory mouths stuffed with the blood of Mine and Oil workers whose lives they casually dismiss. And the unspeakable devastation they do to the economy and ecology both, that's just icing on their bloodstained cake. I bet their CEOs and CFOs look at the videos of their disasters, "Oh, look, that one, falling off the rig and burning... he's still alive! Damn, that's HAWT! I'm gonna have to change pants it's so good!" "Awwwww, lookit at the widows and orphans of the miners, crying because daddy ain't coming home... isn't that just the greatest thing you ever saw? A real Kodak moment! I haven't laughed this hard since we actually convinced the stupid bastards that Trickle Down was going to work for THEM instead of just us!" They get money, on the Halliburton side, not only from the fat contracts with no taxation in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking Public Welfare to the tune of Trillions and never putting any back. but also contracting the people who watch the reservoirs to keep al Qa'eda operatives
Bernie HerPin, Billionaire Propagandist Rush Limbaugh, have a lot in common
--Like business ties to BP. The USOC deal the City Council made was also a BP front. Then there's their Anti-Worker ARROGANCE like this. Neither I nor Miss Johnnie can actually WALK anywhere. Both of us thrown to the wolves by the Corporatists, told that the medical treatments that could have kept us from becoming this badly disabled were “Too Expensive” and the Governments which THEY own, and are going to spend BILLIONS to stack with even more of their Greedy Political Whores, such as at local level our entire City Council, enforce that Corporate Welfare decision with "right to work" Slavery and "Tort Reform". My feet were broken by negligence on the part of Halliburton, who were making 4 times as much from my labor as I was paid, and wouldn’t pay so much as Workmans Compensation Insurance before the fact, fat chance they’d pay any of their bills for their Negligence afterwards. AP and other Tame Propaganda “news” sources for BP come off with an “aw, gee shucks, it ain’t that bad, look, the Seafood Industry isn’t suffering as bad (at one level) See, there’s these chefs who are proving the shrimps and such are safe to eat, don’t y’all worry your heads”. Not mentioning the massive hole the Bastards Punched into the Ecosystem. Miss Johnnie and I were in a cab going to the store. When I travel around town with her, because she can’t ride a bicycle anymore, it would be a choice of WALK which NEITHER of us can do, ride the Bus which doesn’t run on weekends or after 6 any other day, or take a cab. The Cabby is one of those Socially Inept types who feels he has to make his passengers listen to Rush Limbaugh spout his SHIT about how those Poor, poor misunderstood Rich BITCHES at BP are taking such a huge hit from all these Greedy Freeloaders who expect to Be Paid for the damage that BP did to their lives. The Billionaire Pussy Professional Liar claims he’s fighting for the “little people” who had invested their money into BP. Had to fix the code on it because everything from this point was in All Bold fonts. Why should THEY have to pay for the damages which were caused by the Business Practices, just because for years they’ve had a comfortable living off exploiting the workers not only in their own corporation but every ancillary and auxiliary industry around them? Claiming that they’re Being Punished By President “socialist” Obama, the one who has obviously Been Punked by the Oil Companies, Hell, he’s extending the wars Being Publicly funded for their Private Benefit. That somehow all the Corporate Welfare that has been funneled into their pockets and by extension HIS pockets is just their due reward. And the Taxpayers who have supported their Parasite Class for so long don't have any right to demand compensation when they break OUR ocean and OUR planet. Meanwhile “our”
Two “american civilians” killed at firing range in Afghanistan
And two Afghans. The "american civilians" is a code routine which means "Blackwater or Equivalent Mercenary Thugs who might or might not actually even be americans". So much for those "civilians" carrying guns and wearing uniforms and training other murderers how to do it. Now, how about the 120 REAL civilians, Afghans, mostly CHILDREN, murdered at Granai by United States Uniformed Military who were then given a free pass on any prosecution for their crimes? Or the ONE U.S. Soldier who is currently in a Military Prison in Iraq for exposing not just the MURDERS, of which the Afghan people were fully aware, but the LIES told by the U.S. Military to justify those MURDERS? I realize this will probably draw the "really intelligent" comments such as "you're criticizing the actions of warriors even though you're not a warrior" which is MilitarySpeak for "Hey, the only people who are entitled to question the actions of Paid Killers are Other Paid Killers". It's exactly like saying "The only people who should be allowed to be on a jury in a murder trial are Mafia Hit-men". By the way, it's not "criticizing" it's pointing out the CRIMES committed in OUR NAMES using OUR MONEY while robbing the victims of THEIR crime for the benefit of a FEW RICH BITCHES who don't bother paying so much as the taxes on their blood money. What, if we refrained from mentioning any of this, it would all magically go away, and we'd all be able to wallow in a "feel good happy happy flag-waving patriotism" and salute the Empire as it falls, dragging our nation down with it? Ska-roo that noise, bubbas. I know that for every one that writes it out there's a hundred who are thinking it. Stupid bastards, the lot of them. Your wars and other crimes tear down America and just in a bizarre Co Inky Dink the rest of the world as well. It's not "patriotism" blind or otherwise to stand and cheer for the destruction of America and the rest of the world. Nor would it be "patriotism" to say nothing, to keep silent about such actions.
“What would taxing the predatory oil, gas and coal companies mean to YOU?”
If they had asked the question honestly.... But they didn't and don't. By the way, that means the aforementioned Predatory Oil, Gas and Coal companies are still fighting, with the full blessings of Washington Insiders, any regulation on their practices or repayment of the debts they owe. In a laughable smear against anybody who stands in the way of their Rape of the ecology and economy of the entire world, they have one Highly Trained Goof-Ball barking like a good little slave-doggy about the "Washington insiders" who are allegedly not deep in Oil Company pockets. I guess, you know, that buying the air time for these commercials over the past 5 years or so of this particularly sleazy campaign, was less expensive than actually reforming their industries. It paid off big for Exxon, which didn't pay a dime of income tax last year on BILLIONS of dollars of mostly Taxpayer Subsidized profits. Oh, who am I kidding, they owe ALL their profits to government intervention and deliberate stifling, at the Government level, of any kind of Sane, Reasonable and technologically sound alternatives to their slash-and-burn economic model. Not giving the Rich Pigs even MORE welfare and special advantages would be "Socialism" and "Marxist-Leninist Bolshevik Redistribution of Wealth" Meanwhile, the Working Class, hammered by bills on the wars that benefit only the Rich, hammered by an economy so broken by the economic model of Predatory Capitalism that they can't afford to keep their homes, lose any job security they thought they had, including the all-important Health Care benefits, Hammered by anti-Union Anti-Worker use of Government Force, paid by those Americans who actually PAY taxes, unlike, say, Halliburton KBR or Exxon Mobil, literally being forced to work at Slave Wages which don't even cover the cost for us to Produce Our Labor... And then hounded by the new class of Vagrancy Laws that make debt by individuals a Crime, make homelessness a Crime, make joblessness a Crime... The TeaBags and other Loyal Lap-dog types aren't going to bark one squeak of protest over such an arrangement. They sure do scream like they're being eviscerated, slowly, with a broken pair of nail clippers, if any restrictions on Corporate Predation or any payment demanded by the People from the Corporate Predators of the monstrous debt THEY owe is even quietly proposed. "Get Government off our (Corporate Masters') backs!" they whine. Even though their Corporate Masters are on OUR backs, literally supported by OUR labor... But you'll never hear a TeaBag saying something like "Get the Corporate Welfare Government and Heavily Bribed Police, Judicial, and Legislative Government Enforcers off the backs of the Workers!"
Oil spill sized profits in the other gulf
We notice oil spills, not because oil comes up missing, but when the accumulation overflows our ability to excuse it. What can we say about the embarrassment of riches piling up as development in the United Arab Emirates? It's from oil profit, yes, but also reconstruction billions siphoned from Iraq and Afghanistan. On the heels of the loot follow the miscreants stashing it there, confident they can evade eventual US extradition. Halliburton is now headquartered there, and Blackwater's Erik Prince is reported to be packing his bags.
“Energy (oil) ministers say 23 Trillion in investment needed” according to AP
--to find new sources of Oil and natural gas, of course. Strangely, that's about what my estimate of the cost of the recent 8 years worth of Federal Giveaways to the Oil Corporations would total. So, do the Oil Corporations REALLY need Welfare from all the governments of the world? Where would that much-ballihooed "Free Market" supremacy account for such a huge bailout to what's supposedly the single most profitable industry of the past century? To be honest, I didn't read past that shocking headline. I just DON'T need to ruin my day reading veiled threats (almost typo-ed "vealed" as in Fatted Calf) from the richest people on the planet about what will happen if they're not given the rest of the Planetary Treasury, the fealty of every son of Adam and a lien on the souls and service of our children for generations to come.
The REAL Welfare Fraud.
This started as a comment on a comment, on Eric's post about HR-3962. You forgot, C Ella, to mention subsidies to Big Pharma like penis pumps (which used to be called "sex toys") Cialis and Viagra (which can be gotten on Medicare and Medicaid, but Not CONDOMS because they're birth control, IUDs and The Pill same reason.) Celebrex (which is just a split-molecule away from being generic ibuprofen, at a dollar a bottle, rather than the $5 per pill that Celebrex costs). There's also the very efficient Denial of Service "watchdogs" who make sure anybody who gets home health care (Which is actually a Money Saver) is denied as much care as possible and has to pass an electron-microscope inspection of every detail of his life and work history before even becoming eligible for Medical Assistance. Without which anybody who doesn't have Insurance is stuck with going to the Emergency Room for chronic conditions, at $1000 + per visit, which has to be written off in most cases, rather than have a visiting nurse at $500-800 per month and clinic visits at about $75 per visit. It's a case of being TOO stingy, not one of being too Liberal. Notice I said "stingy" instead of "conservative" because the current stingy system conserves nothing and increases waste. The system of electronic automated approvals of expenditures is a case in point. It costs less to run one computer at $20 a day than run 10 humans at $75 a day apiece. Then you get million dollar apiece chunks of Fraud. Since the Medicare/Medicaid programs were enacted by Congress, their bureaucracies were handed over to people who don't believe that ANYBODY deserves assistance. "Former" insurance company executives who are about as "former" as Ross Perot is the "former" boss of EDS and Richard Cheney is the "former" boss of Daddy Warbucks Inc... meaning Halliburton. Would people who screamed that the Insurance companies lost money because of Medicare/caid REALLY do an honest job of getting the badly needed assistance to everybody who qualifies? I bet they wouldn't, Especially since most of these "Former" executives are "current" shareholders. They believe their shares are worth less money because of people getting assistance, what incentive do they have for actually granting that assistance? The Real "fraud" involved in these programs is from people who believe that the poor are being helped Too Much, and scream loudly at their Tea Parties about patients "Fraudulently" actually getting necessary health care. Also when they tell lies like how concerned they are about older folks getting their Medicare. What makes that a truly outrageous LIE is that the leaders of the Tea Party (which is supposedly and Allegedly "grass roots" even though it's organized by some of the biggest Piggs in the Repigglican party, like Gingrich)(Financed by the RNC, too) fought against every aspect of Medicare in the first place. Including Ronald Reagan protesting the very institution of Medicare, saying it was "the end of Liberty in America" Does that not sound very familiar? Of course, them having total control of the economy for
Coloradans For Peace join ANSWER in DC
UPDATE MARCH 21 MARCH ON PENTAGON: Students & Communities Mobilize to March on the Pentagon and the Corporate War Profiteers Students and community organizations from across the country are mobilizing to be in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, March 21 to make their voices heard in the March on the Pentagon and the Corporate War Profiteers. The PentagonMarch.org website now lists 64 departure locations in 20 states, many of them leaving from college campuses, including: University of Iowa, Georgia State University, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Central Connecticut State University-New Britain, University of Connecticut-Storrs, Berkshire Community College, and more! Visit the PentagonMarch Transportation Page to find the departure location nearest you, or to sign-up to list your campus's or city's travel plans! Read more about the exciting plans for March 21st: The March on the Pentagon on Saturday, March 21 is shaping up to be a dramatic and highly significant demonstration. Many thousands of people are coming to Washington, D.C. to make their voices heard. March 21 will culminate in a dramatic direct action where hundreds of coffins—representing the multinational victims of militarism, Empire and corporate greed—will be carried and delivered to the headquarters of the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. From the Pentagon, we will march to the nearby giant corporate offices of Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, General Dynamics and KBR (the former subsidiary of Halliburton). The march will start close to the State Department in Washington, D.C. (assemble at 12 noon at 23rd St. and Constitution Ave. NW). Please make an urgently needed donation today by clicking this link to donate online through our secure server, where you can also find information on how to donate by check. All out for March 21! Jobs Not War! Schools Not War! Occupation is a Crime!
Mark 6TH YEAR of Iraq Occupation with profiteers Boeing, Lockheed, GD and KBR
A.N.S.W.E.R.'s March 21 MARCH ON THE PENTAGON to mark the sixth year of the War in Iraq will be directed not only at the US Department of Defense, but at the war profiteers for whom 2007 was a record year, among them Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and KBR. In Colorado Springs the merchants of death can be visited on one corner. On March 21, 2009, March on the Pentagon and the Corporate War Profiteers The March on the Pentagon on Saturday, March 21 is shaping up to be a dramatic and highly significant demonstration. Many thousands of people are coming to Washington, D.C. to make their voices heard. March 21 will culminate in a dramatic direct action where hundreds of coffins—representing the multinational victims of militarism, Empire and corporate greed—will be carried and delivered to the headquarters of the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. From the Pentagon, we will march to the nearby giant corporate offices of Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, General Dynamics and KBR (the former subsidiary of Halliburton). The march will start close to the State Department in Washington, D.C. (assemble at 12 noon at 23rd St. and Constitution Ave. NW). Please make an urgently needed donation today by clicking this link to donate online through our secure server, where you can also find information on how to donate by check. These are the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. They are the vultures who profit off the death and suffering of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, and off of the thousands of U.S. soldiers and marines who have died or been wounded in these wars of aggression. They are anti-worker and anti-union. The march will be led by a large contingent of veterans and family members of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and from earlier conflicts. Militarism and Corporate Capitalism We will march on their slick-and-shiny corporate offices that are located less than a mile from the Pentagon. Their location in the very shadow of the Pentagon speaks volumes about the intimate connection between militarism and corporate capitalism. When the Pentagon brass retire, they rotate out of their Pentagon offices and directly into the Corporate boardrooms and office suites of the Death Merchants. It is a very cozy and very profitable relationship for the elites—in and out of uniform. They make the profits, others do the bleeding. Last year was a great year for the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. Profits soared even as the rest of the economy neared collapse. The CEOs of the four corporations that we will be visiting on March 21 received more than $319 million in compensation in 2007 alone (and remember, that's just for four individuals). "We the People" paid the bill for the high tech weapons that were used against occupied people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The Corporate Executives laughed all the way to the bank while grieving parents and children buried their loved ones from Baghdad to Kabul to Gaza to Detroit. A quick examination shows that the CEOs of
Opposition to Public Education
Why Republicans HATE Public Education. In the Words of THEIR prophet Hitler "Universal Public Education is the most virulent toxin that Liberalism can inflict upon itself. It only makes the Lower Classes think more highly of themselves than they ought, and leads to discontent with their position in life. Truly, they only need enough education to be Efficient Coolies for our industries" (Liberties taken with the exact English phrases, the Original was in German) We often are accused of "ignorance" when the Anti-Semitic Supporters of Killing Palestinians, for example, or the one who calls him/herself "Friend" posts... publish their reactionary Angry Hate Speech on Not My Tribe. In a slightly backward twist we are often accused of being "intellectual Elitists", but Still ignorant. Or "idiots". Without Public Education we would be left with home-schooling, or Parochial Education. Those of us who weren't born with silver spoons in our mouths would be left out in either case. "Keep 'em Ignorant" And for not just nearly but EXACTLY the same reason American Slaves were forbidden to learn to read and write. I'm sure the Republican't respondents will argue that it's not like that, I'm just spouting Marxist Propaganda again, the Repukelickin' Party doesn't actually engage in class warfare or racism blah blah blah blah... My grandfather was a cowboy. Not like George Bush with his "ranch" and 5 cows bought and maintained by his Trust Fund, a trust fund which I'm once again going to point out came from an enterprise his family engaged in called Slave Trading. They'll say that, Yankee Puritans they claim to be, their family didn't actually own slaves. Nor did their favorite "charity" the Yale Foundation. No, they wouldn't soil their own hands with the whips and chains necessary to "earn" their money for them... They just owned a fleet of Slave Ships. That and Grand-poppy Prescott Bush laundered money for the Nazis, which they don't a) apologize for and b) they're still spending the money they got from BOTH enterprises. No, Grandpa Brown was a REAL cowboy. So was his brother Loy and their brother-in-law Tom. In Texas in those days that meant Impoverished. Cowboys were just then being romanticized in the public IMAGINATION through those new-fangled movin' picture thingies. Uncle Tom wound up being the foreman of the Rolling Hills Ranch in Keene, Texas, until the ranch was sold to Halliburton in the late 70s to make a Game Ranch. Like the one where Former Vice President and Current Active War Criminal Richard Cheney shot his friend in the face while they were "hunting" captive, hand raised "Wild" ducks. They also have or had a website wherein you could with a click of your mouse or joystick "hunt" and actually kill actual formerly live animals (until you put the mouse pointer over them and clicked) Uncle Tom described it as a place where they bought old, diseased "wild" zoo and circus animals dependent upon your actual skill level they would drug the animals or even chain them up for you so you wouldn't miss. That way you could go on an African Safari without ever leaving
An interesting Connection.
You remember what Richard Cheney, soon to be ex-vice president, was charged with in Texas a couple of weeks ago, before the Pigs threw the charges out? Seems he, as unofficial president and the instigator of Homeland Security prosecutions, helped fill the prisons aka Chain Gangs aka Forced Labor Camps aka Legalized Slavery for the profit of Private Corporations, at Public Expense, Yeah... Like THAT. If the Image doesn't come up right it's the gates of Auschwitz with the alternate spelling Arbecht Macht Frei slogan. The other thing Cheney was doing was funneling the construction contracts for Publicly Funded Private Slave Labor Plantations in Texas.... to his old company with whom he allegedly has no ties anymore. Halliburton. Funny, I couldn't find an image in the first 12 pages on google using the term Texas prison field workers. I did find page after page of Right Wing Propaganda about how Legalized Slavery is a "good thing". Judges, prosecutors, sheriffs, other PIGS, all of them probably, like Cheney, making a profit off human misery, in addition to their Sexually Depraved Enjoyment of the concept of placing Human Beings in chains and forcing to do their bidding. How about it, Right Wing Freaks who will no doubt criticize these statements? Are you Nazi Punks invested in corporations like Halliburton, Texas Correctional Industries, Corrections Corporation of America, a host of other Publicly Funded Private Slavery companies? One of the Punks replied to a letter of mine the Independent ran, the Three Legged Bitch objected to my characterization of him as a Nazi-type war criminal, and of course made all the propaganda arguments we usually get from the Local Nazi "Back the Badge" Gestapo-enablers, about how Bush and Cheney were only doing what it takes to "protect you misguided leftists and WE right wingers, even the ChickenHawk Puke keyboard warriors, actually GAVE everybody Freedom to spout off" yadda yadda yadda... I wonders, yes I does, if he, also, is invested in the Military-Industrial-and-now-Slave-Prison Complex? If he makes money from enslaving Americans or makes money from every person, American, Iraqi, Afghanistani, Coalition, who gets Killed in Messieurs Bush and Cheney's Terrorist Acts, Just Like Bush And Cheney Make Money From It Hey, if the shoe fits... If they don't like being identified with the Nazis, they should do everything possible to avoid being Nazis, or at the very least not having their actions so similar to those of the Nazis that they're indistinguishable. German Corporations made money off Slave Labor the same way American Corporations make money off the Chain Gangs. Their leaders were punished by War Crimes Tribunals for doing it, too. There are laws detailing how Accomplices are equally as guilty as the ones who actually pull the trigger or actually physically remove the cash from the register... If an Armed Robber kills the clerk, his friend waiting in the getaway car is equally guilty of Capital Murder. There's plenty of legal precedent for it, and plenty of people who have been executed in American Death Chambers or on American Gallows using that set of laws. The friends of
Sarah Palin Church Lady for President!
I may be too impressionable, but I've warmed up to Sarah Palin. For President! The American two-party delusion needs a coup-de-grace, and doesn't Palin have just authenticity enough to pull the trigger? Assail this logic if you can. The Democratic Party is already out of the picture. Since reclaiming Congress in 2006 the Dems have shown Americans what they can do. Nothing. Name the issue, whatever their constituents want, the Democrats won't deliver it. They can't even commandeer a lead in the polls against the most despised political machine in recent memory. They've got a charismatic candidate who can run pirouettes around his opponent, a corrupt, desperate, lying geriatric. But the Dems can't sway the corporate media from allegiance to the GOP. How many rotten eggs do you need hatched? The Democrats are already rolling over for 2008 election irregularities. They will give in to Wall Street's trillion-plus dollar extortion. And they won't end the war, or stop torture, or defend the Constitution, or impeach genocidal bastards, regardless the public's outrage. The Democratic Party is a dead lost cause. Dead. The Republican Party is still kicking -the shit out of us- and they've no doubt got plenty left in them. We learned in just the space of a week that the GOP financiers must get their money or they'll break the economy's kneecaps. What kind of odds do you want the goons won't be back for more? We used to imagine that asset-stripping capitalists knew enough not to kill the golden goose, but maybe we underestimate the standard of living (ours) left to strangle from her. Republican journeymen such as McCain, Lieberman, Graham, and cronies Paulson et Cheney, won't stop at extracting your gold fillings. But novitiate Sarah Palin just may have a less developed depth of greed. I've made this mistake before, when I imagined George W. Bush too simple to know that absolute power was his to corrupt. But don't you have the sense Sarah Palin is the real deal? There's no Prescott Bush in her bloodline. Palin will loot only as much as she can stash in a Winnebago. Then she'll apply herself to her spiritual calling. She's no Tammy Faye. To my mind, Palin's religiosity is sufficiently extreme to appear genuine. There may of course remain Halliburton machinations behind Palin's flirty church lady. But the oligarchs' growing mendacity, combined with Sarah Palin's small-minded zealotry, could bring Fascist America beyond the pale. I think the GOP legacy could finally close the book on our nation's Democracy fable. If we survive it, the Republicans will be gone for good. I'm with Jacques' election 2008 slogan: GOP IN 2008, GONE FOREVER IN 2012, WORTH THE RISK.
KBR’s support for troops reliably shitty
"KBR's commitment to the safety of all of its employees remains unwavering." Caught having supplied tainted water to US troops in Iraq camps Ar Ramadi, Q-West and Victory, Kellogg Brown & Root issued the usual carefully crafted denial, leaving open the loophole that the commitment level from which they do not waver, may be potentially unsafe.