BottleOfBlog

You Can't Expect Good Gubment From A Party That Doesn't Believe Gubment Can Do Any Good

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Lawmakers grilled bank regulators Tuesday about why they didn't intervene as lax lending standards led to a meltdown in the mortgage market and a credit crunch that threaten the economy.

"Again and again the question has been asked over the past year as our credit markets have grown increasingly impaired: Where were the regulators?," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the banking committee. "Why didn't they do more? Were they asleep at the switch? And when the alarm went off, did they merely hit the snooze button?"

Yes, why didn't the regulators do more? Where were the regulators? It's so hard to understand!

I mean, we haven't had a hundred billion dollar banking crisis, which will surely require a taxpayer bailout, in almost twenty years!

Not since Reagan and Bush I de-regulated the Savings and Loan industry, while brave, straight talking, ethical Congressmen like John McCain leaned on regulators to back off from doing more.

Because, remember, as Sainted Ronny Rotten used to tell us: government is not a solution to our problems, government is the problem!

So Reagan and the Reagan Republicans took that pesky ol' gubment out of the Savings and Loan industry and let the miracle of the Free And Unfettered Market work its magic. And within a couple of years, taxpayers had to come up with one hundred and twenty billion dollars--and those are 1980s dollars--as a solution to our problem.

So how could this happen again?

Gee, let me think...

Hmmm...what's similar...

Could it be that once again Republicans were running the gubment? And that Republicans not only don't believe in gubment regulations but actively thwart them?

There's a reason we have all these regulations--all this interminable red-tape the insane Bush clown posse is always whining about:

In the very distant past called the twentieth century, the American People suffered horrible catastrophes. And the People learned hard lessons from these catastrophes, and They made rules and regulations so that these awful events could never, ever happen again.

And after the People made these rules, everything was fine for four or even eight years.

Until another Republican got into the White House and told the People that these rules and regulations weren't solving any problems--they were the problem!

And then a bunch of limp-dick Democrats let the Republicans get rid of the rules and regulations, predictable catastrophe ensued, and then gubment had to spend an ungodly amount of taxpayers money to solve the problem.

Hundreds of Congressmen and Women do not vote to pass laws or create agencies which will be contrary to the interests of their corporate sponsors just because Congress likes passing laws. Congress does that shit at gunpoint.

Congress only passes regulatory bills when things get so unbelievably fucked up that a veto proof majority of them are afraid that if they don't do something they'll all be out of their phoney baloney jobs and lose their awesome Government provided healthcare and benefits.

That's it. They never do it before the fact. It's always after the fact. It's always too little too late. And it's always something that is and was desperately needed.

Your FDA, your EPA, your FCC, your SEC, your FDIC, your SSA--all of that shit--all of it--came in response to catastrophic disasters that Congress just could not ignore, no matter how many corporate dollar bills it cost them. The People were that angry.

And your modern Gee Oh Pee doesn't want to do anything with gubment except get rid of all the answers to all the problems we've ever had so we can have all those problems all over again.

The modern Gee Oh Pee is proud of our American heritage and they long for a simpler time--a time of bank failures, and burning rivers, poisoned food, fake medicine, soup kitchens, and exploding automobiles.

And the only thing between the American People and that Republican Utopia is your federal gubment.

Government is the problem!

And that's why the regulators didn't do anything.

And when the gubment has to poney up a couple hundred billion dollars to bail out the banks again, your modern Gee Oh Pee will insanely say that just proves what they were saying all along.

And Here's What You Won!

BAGHDAD — It's a damning indication of how poorly things have gone for the United States during its five-year misadventure in Iraq that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can drive in broad daylight though this war-ravaged city and spend the night at the presidential palace, but George W. Bush can't._

Mr. Ahmadinejad was greeted with lavish ceremony yesterday as he became the first Iranian President to visit Baghdad, a trip some said reflected Iran's great and growing power in Iraq and how severely the U.S. effort to remake Iraq into a Western-friendly democracy has gone awry._

Nearly 4,000 American soldiers have died since the war began in 2003, but Iraq's U.S.-backed government warmly welcomed Washington's No. 1 enemy with flowers and a band.

Apparently ignoring repeated U.S. charges that Iran is destabilizing his country, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani smiled broadly as he greeted Mr. Ahmadinejad outside his palace. Hailing a new era in ties between their states, the two men clasped hands and exchanged traditional kisses on the cheeks before walking together down a red carpet to review an honour guard as a military band played the two national anthems.

Despite the presence of 157,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the visit left the impression that Iran's President now feels more comfortable in Baghdad than his U.S. counterpart does.

Unlike Mr. Bush's cloak-and-dagger visits here — fly-in trips to heavily guarded U.S. military bases that only last a few hours, often with no advance notice given to even the Iraqi government — Mr. Ahmadinejad's schedule was announced days earlier…

Joost Hiltermann, a regional analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, noted that the groups now in power in Iraq, including key Shia and Kurdish political factions, are some of same groups that allied themselves with Tehran during the conflict while the United States was supporting Mr. Hussein. Many Iraqi Shia leaders lived in Iran during the war, while Mr. Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, speaks fluent Farsi.

"There was always a contradiction in American policy in Iraq," he said. "If you want to turn Iraq into a democracy, you're going to bring Iran's friends to power.

"If people in Washington are surprised [at the reception for Mr. Ahmadinejad] it's because they didn't understand what they were getting into."

Whether we can "win" or not, whether the "surge" is "working" or not, what will happen if we "lose"--these are all imbecilic questions.

They always have been.

The only important question, the only important consideration since this fiasco started five years ago has always been: what can we "win"?

What will "winning" look like?

And will "winning" be worth the cost?

Three trillion of your dollars. Four thousand dead American sons and daughters, and fathers and mothers. Over twenty thousand seriously wounded American soldiers.

And what did all that "win" you?

A mid-eastern country where the President of the United States can only fly in and out of in the dead of night, while the very nearly insane President of Iran gets greeted with flowers and marching bands.

Playing the Iranian national anthem.

And you paid for it.

And you'll pay for it for the rest of your lives.

And still, through dozens of Democratic and Republican debates, after millions of words in magazines and newspapers and on the Tee Vee, not one single "mainstream" journalist is asking the only question that ever should have been asked about this stupid, expensive, catastrophic, illegal war:

Just what exactly can we hope to "win"?

And This Is Why Congress Polls Lower Than The Worst President Evah

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- who may be the most super delegate of all as chair of the Democratic national convention in Denver -- gave an interview with Bloomberg TV's Al Hunt in which she laid down the law for super delegates:

Don't veto the people's choice.

"I think there is a concern when the public speaks and there is a counter-decision made to that," she said, adding quickly, "I don't think that will happen."

She said the governors, lawmakers, DNC members and others picked as super delegates are chosen through a grassroots process and are accountable to the party's voters.

"I do think that they have a respect -- it's not just following the returns, it's also having a respect for what has been said by the people," Pelosi said. "It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided."

Yes, it's a problem when the public speaks and there's a "counter-decision" made to that.

PRINCETON, NJ -- The latest USA Today/Gallup poll finds that a majority of Americans continue to express opposition to the war in Iraq, attitudes that are unchanged in the last two months. According to the Jan. 30-Feb. 2 poll, 57% of Americans say it was a mistake for the United States to send troops to Iraq, while 41% say it was not a mistake. Those numbers are identical to what Gallup measured in late November/early December.

Though, to be fair to our strong, principled House Speaker, you have to admit: at least 57% of Americans generally wear body paint with anarchist slogans like "Impeach Bush" just so they can build Bhuddas on public streets and hide behind ridiculously flimsy legal technicalities like the First Amendment to our Constitution, when they should all be held seriously accountable to the Rule of Law of upscale municipal public nuisance codes for trespassing on the gardens and angering the neighbors of our leaders.

So there's that. When our leaders take into account what the public has decided, they have to discount at least what sixty percent of us say.

More and more bullshit.

Have you ever in your life seen politicians afraid to do things that were politically popular?

What, on Earth, is really going on with this noble experiment of Ours?

Blanks For Our Bucks

It's time for our annual game: How much is really in the U.S. military budget?

As usual, it's about $200 billion more than most news stories are reporting. For the proposed fiscal year 2009 budget, which President Bush released today, the real size is not, as many news stories have reported, $515.4 billion—itself a staggering sum—but, rather, $713.1 billion…

…It is (adjusting for inflation) larger than any U.S. military budget since World War II.

It’s astonishing, isn’t it?

In 1952, the United States had 180,000 American soldiers and Marines fighting in Korea, against like a million Chinese. We had the entire 7th Fleet plus a bunch of other ships in constant combat. We had air forces in Japan and Korea flying day and night. And, to top it off, we had about 300,000 Americans in Europe to keep the Red Army in check.

The defense budget in 1952, adjusted for inflation?

About $500 billion.

In 1968, with 500,000 Americans serving in Vietnam. 300,000 still in Europe. SAC flying twenty four hours a day, ready and just aching to drop the Big One.

The defense budget in 1968. adjusted for inflation?

About $450 billion.

Today, with 130,000 troops in Iraq and another—what?—10,000 in Afghanistan and about seventy thousand in Europe and our defense budget is seven hundred and thirteen billion dollars?

Where in the great big Red, White and Blue fuck is the other two hundred billion dollars going???

We’re spending at least two hundred billion dollars more than we spent during the hottest years of Korea and Vietnam because 19 fucking lunatics, whose last known addresses were caves, hijacked a couple of planes???

Are you shitting me???

Christ Almighty, we could do what the Saudis do and just pay bin Laden directly a couple hundred million a year to not attack the United States and we’d save two hundred billion dollars.

And if that encouraged every single homicidal maniac in the world to also come calling with their hands out, we could pay all of them too and still save one hundred and ninety nine billion dollars.

What is the sense of this War On Terrorism???

I mean, honestly, for two hundred billion dollars a year, we could just cut each and every Palestinian—all nine million of them--a check for $20,000 a year. I don’t think that’s a great idea, but I bet it would do a hell of a lot more to prevent mid-eastern terrorists from attacking the United States. And zero Americans would come home in body bags or wheel chairs or back braces with screws in their foreheads.

But then again, getting value for your tax payer dollar is something fiscally conservative, Republicans can’t even begin to understand.

That’s why most of them still think that lowering something like 40 million Americans’ tax payments by an “average” of $1500 a year, while doubling the national debt was a tax cut.

But even worse than the multibillion dollar rip off is the inescapable rip off that’s coming, but most of us don’t even know it yet:

("National Defense," by the way, does not include programs in the Department of Homeland Security; that's another story.)

Why is this so bad? Because Homeland Security will be just like the Department of Defense when it comes to handing out dollar bills. And how are dollar bills handed out to the Department of Defense now?

Congress exposes this budget to virtually no scrutiny, fearing that any major cuts—any serious questions—will incite charges of being "soft on terror" and "soft on defense." But $536 billion of this budget—the Pentagon's base line plus the discretionary items for the Department of Energy and other agencies—has nothing to do with the war on terror. And it's safe to assume that a fair amount has little to do with defense. How much it does and doesn't is a matter of debate. Right now, nobody's even debating.

We could probably have a bigger, meaner, more effective military machine for half of what we pay every year for our bloated defense budget.

The Pentagon is and has been for at least fifty years the world’s biggest shopping bazarr. And it’s a monstrously corrupt, almost comically inefficient machine—for just a taste, I’d highly recommend reading this book, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art Of War.

(And we can thank our lasting monumental military waste on the Sainted Ronny Rotten and his Reagan Republicans, who, just at the moment the Church Committee and the Military Reform Caucus, and the Pentagon reformers were gaining a bit of traction, spent the next eight years hysterically citing Team B reports and throwing billions of unnecessary dollars at totally inexistent threats. Our military has never recovered. It probably never will.)

And it’s political suicide for any Congress man or woman to object to anything the Department of Defense wants. Beyond that, it may even be political suicide for a politician to agree to what the Department of Defense wants—you all remember the Bush/Cheney ’04 ads accusing John Kerry of depriving the military of the Abrams tanks and Apache helicopters and F-16s it needed to combat the terrorism of men with plane tickets and plastic knives?

Oh, on September 11th, if only we had had more tanks flying from Boston to California!

That aside, Kerry voted for Defense cuts proposed by Dick Cheney! And he still got murdered for it! By Dick Cheney!

It’s insane!

And now we have a second Department of Defense—the Department of Homeland Security. Which was appallingly stupid and unnecessary from its retarded inception in dumbass Joe Lieberman’s war fevered little brain.

In like seven years, I think the only thing I ever agreed with Bush about was how we did not need a creepy, Orwellian sounding Department of Homeland Security. It didn't eliminate any government agencies. It just added one more level to them. And nothing ever gets more efficient by adding a gigantic whole new level of administrators.

Seriously, I was a big Bush backer on his one good decision, in seven years, to oppose that stupid thing.

But, then, Bush, , waffling, irresolute flip flopper that he was, caved because of politics—because stupid ass Joe Lieberman had the votes—and created a bigger monster than even Lieberman had envisioned in his wildest, stupidest, twisted little bobble-headed retarded garden gnomed dreams.

And, gee, guess what? Though, the Department of Homeland Security now gets a relatively small amount of our federal budget. It won’t be long before it gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

And it will face less and less scrutiny, as more and more Congress men and women become afraid of being called “weak on Homeland Security”. And more corporate Congressional lobbyists and donors, seek out those lucrative gubment Homeland Security contracts.

And soon, there won’t be any debate or scrutiny, or competitive bids on our brand new $700 billion Homeland Security budget.

And we’ll all get used to that.

Just like we’re used to spending outrageous and totally unjustified money for defense.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said recently that, quite apart from the wars, the nation should get used to spending 4 percent of its gross domestic product on defense. This isn't an unreasonable sum in terms of what the nation can afford. But the same could be said of many other functions of government. It has very little to do with what the nation needs. The $515.4 billion in the base line Defense Department budget amounts to 3.4 percent of GNP. Is that not enough? Should we throw in another $85 billion to boost it to 4 percent? The relevant question, in any case, should be not how much we spend, but what we buy.

Until the modern Gee Oh Pee hollows this country out like a gourd and totally bankrupts us, we will not have any intelligent discussion, with regard to defense or Homeland Security, about what we need.

If I believed in irony, I'd say it's ironic. The people who shout and scream the loudest about a strong military will, in the end, be the very people who wreck our American military.

Because when we finally do start talking about what we need, we’ll be so busted out and in debt, and hated and broke, we won’t have the money to pay for it.

Liberal Media Wonders Whatever Happened To The Man Who Wasn't There

…Edwards' boundless optimism and energy has his limits, and today he admitted what all the pundits and politicos have been saying for the past month: the Democratic contest is a two-person race, and Edwards is not one of them…

Yes, it is difficult to understand why, as Time Magazine wonders, John Edwards message never caught on with people when all the pundits and all the politicos have been saying for the past month that Edwards isn't even part of the Democratic primary.

When people turn on their TV sets, or open up a magazine or newspaper, or read the news on Al Gore's internets, and all the pundits and all the politicos therein tell them that there are basically two candidates for the Democratic nomination--Obama and Clinton--it sure is a big mystery why a third candidate, John Edwards, somehow couldn't appeal to more people.

Edwards' challenge from the beginning of his presidential quest was to stay relevant…

Yes, Edwards' big challenge was to stay relevant. But what Time Magazine doesn't tell you is that Edwards' big challenge was not to stay relevant to actual voters. No, Edwards' challenge was to stay relevant to Time Magazine.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its latest campaign coverage index for January 6-11, a study that does its damndest to try to quantify which political figures are sucking up the most media oxygen and why.

It found that Edwards only got 7% of political coverage during those days -- less than one-fifth of what Hillary earned, and less than one-forth of that accorded to Obama. Edwards even got less attention than Mike Huckabee, even though he, like Edwards, finished third in the New Hampshire primary…

For literally the past year we've been hearing justifications for the fact that Edwards, despite being competitive in Iowa polls, didn't get the attention that his Dem rivals got -- he didn't raise as much money; his candidacy isn't as historic as theirs; etc., etc. Indeed, the virtual media blackout of Edwards got so glaringly obvious that even New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt urged his paper to give Edwards more attention back in November. At a certain point we should just acknowledge that Edwards basically got screwed and that this shouldn't have happened to the extent that it did.

During the primaries, John Edwards, a former Vice Presidential candidate and totally viable candidate for the Presidency of the United States, got seven percent of the political coverage and Time Magazine is explaining to people now that Edwards problem was that he wasn't relevant to voters. Edwards problem was that his message never caught on.

He got one fifth of the press Clinton got and he beat her in Iowa. Can you imagine how well he might have done if he got five times as much press as he got?

Gee, it sure is a mystery worth explaining why his message never caught on with voters who never got to hear it.

[Edwards’ strategy] at first seemed shrewd: build on Edwards' surprisingly good showing in Iowa in 2004 and make his native South Carolina his firewall while garnering union support…

While he managed to pull out a surprising second-place showing in the Iowa caucuses, beating out Clinton, he placed a disappointing third in New Hampshire and his campaign was stunned when he garnered just 4% of the vote in the Nevada caucuses.

At first, Edwards' strategy seemed shrewd! His second place finish in Iowa was surprising! That's the kind of thing that can really breath life into a campaign. And we all remember how shrewd Edwards seemed and how surprising his second place finish was because of all the attention it got!

For instance, let's look at how CNN, a partner of Time Magazine, couldn't stop talking about Edwards' shrewd strategy that led to his surprising second place finish in Iowa!

DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama's victory Thursday in critical Democratic Iowa caucuses indicate voters saw him as a candidate of change, according to entrance polls…

The finish was a blow to Clinton -- the presumptive front-runner in the months leading up to this year's campaign who had hoped a win in Iowa would be the start of an uninterrupted run to the nomination….

"Just over half of Democratic caucus-goers said change was the No. 1 factor they were looking for in a candidate, and 51 percent of those voters chose Barack Obama," said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider. "That compares to only 19 percent of 'change' caucus-goers who preferred Clinton..."

Twenty percent of Democrats said Clinton's campaign mantra -- experience -- was the most important attribute of a presidential candidate.

At Obama's caucus-night headquarters in Des Moines, the hall filled with people late Thursday in anticipation of the candidate's speech…

Obama's victory came despite Clinton's support from EMILY's List…

The Clinton campaign itself also contacted tens of thousands of Iowans who had never caucused…

Appearing in front of cheering supporters Thursday with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, at her side, Clinton refused to back down...

"I am so ready for the rest of this campaign and I am so ready to lead," she said, smiling.

And there's more. The whole article is about Obama--fine, he won--and Clinton, who came in third.

Edwards, who shrewdly and surprisingly finished second, gets mentioned four times with an entire twenty words devoted to him.

Half of those words were "and", "the", "a", "North Carolina" and "also".

John Edwards campaign, the one that pulled the Democratic party millimeters towards the left where most Americans interests and hearts reside, was killed by your Liberal Media.

They hated him, they ignored him, they buried his message, and wrote him right out of the simple and exciting narrative of a two candidate race between an establishment woman and a fresh faced black man. Which was the story they always wanted to tell and was waaaaaay more interesting to them than writing all that boring blah, blah, blah whatever about falling median incomes and jobs going to Whereeverstan and something stinks and poor people are Americans, too, and whatever!

Let's talk about what's really important in this campaign: is Hillary showing more milky white cleavage these days to counter the fact that most voters think black guys have big dicks? Or maybe she's going totally lesbo with her staffers to triangulate and negate the big, black dick factor!

John Edwards may not have been the best Democratic candidate. I thought he was. But that's a personal preference, and come November I'll gladly, gleefully pull the lever for either Obama or Clinton.

But the John Edwards' Presidency was not killed because of his campaign. It wasn't killed because his message didn't catch on. And it didn't die because of money or relevancy or hair cuts or mansions or any of that other bullshit.

His campaign died because all the pundits and all the politicos killed it. Because they hated it.

And his campaign died because, once again, the good people of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina--three states you'd have a hard time finding anyone else in the remaining 47 states saying are representative of America--got to have their ridiculously disproportionate say in who will be the next President of the United States.

For the Democrats, twenty three of the most populous states in the country have zero say in who is going to be the Democratic candidate until, election after election, the field is narrowed to two.

I live in one of the ten most populous states in the country, and, in the last twenty years, I have never been able to cast even a single vote in a Democratic primary.

But every four years, the people of Iowa have a slate of six or seven or eight candidates.

The people of New Hampshire can vote for any number of candidates.

The people of South Carolina get to cast the deciding votes on whoever's left from Iowa and New Hampshire.

And the other forty seven states have to go along.

Otherwise, their delegates get stripped and they have to go along, anyway.

And afterwards, Time Magazine explains to you that the vote that 98% of you never got to cast for the candidate you never got to see 93% of the time was a clear indication that some message you never got to hear just didn't resonate with Americans.

More Mixed Signals!

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The United States is deep in its worst housing slump since the Great Depression, and according to a new report, it's not going to get better any time soon.

In a new survey, Moody's Economy.com says many metro areas will record losses of 20 percent or more during the downturn, with the national median price for single-family homes dropping 13 percent through early 2009. Factoring in discount offers from sellers, the actual price decline would be well over 15 percent…

Even though home construction has now contracted severely - the Census Bureau reported Tuesday that new housing starts were down to an annualized rate of 1.187 million units in November, the lowest in 16 years - it will take time to work through the excess inventory…

For the slump to end, much of the excess inventory will have to be worked through. Zandi doesn't envision that happening much before 2010, which he forecasts to be a very modest recovery year with low, single-digit growth.

And more stuff left up to future presidents.

America's Worst Family

A government money market debacle unfolding in Florida is raising questions about former governor and presidential brother Jeb Bush's possible involvement in the mess…

In the past few days, municipalities have withdrawn roughly $9 billion, nearly a third of the $28 billion fund (which is similar to a money market fund) controlled by the Florida's State Board of Administration (SBA). The run on the fund was triggered by worries that a percentage of the portfolio contained debt that had defaulted.

A majority of this paper was sold to SBA by Lehman Brothers (nyse: LEH - news - people ). Bush, as the state's top elected official, served on a three-member board that oversaw the SBA until he retired as governor in January. In August, Bush was hired as a consultant to the bank. Lehman spokesperson Kerrie Cohen, speaking on behalf of Bush, said they had no comment and would not say when the bank had sold Florida the paper. SBA did not return calls.

While SBA wouldn't confirm, Bloomberg reported the amount of debt in default is around $900 million.

Of course! Where ever there's a Bush and public money, you can count on some sort of massive fraud that costs the taxpayers billions.

Always.

You've got George, Sr. and the S&L fiasco of the eighties, which required over a billion dollars of taxpayer money to bail out his son Neil's Silverado Savings and Loan alone after Neil's own pardners defaulted on a bunch of lousy loans Neil made to them.

You've got George, Sr., again, in the eighties with this incredibly bizarre intelligence operation run out of the Vice President's office, involving drugs, selling weapons to terrorists, and funding the worst kind of depraved murdering thugs the South American military juntas could turn loose on Central America.

Then, in the end, everyone got pardoned or sweet immunity deals, before Bush, Sr. sent in the United States military to take out Noriega for reasons that have never, to this day, been made clear to the American People.

The taxpayers got the bill. God only knows what the real point of all that was.

You've got George, Jr. making a fortune off of the Arlington Sports Authority, using the government power of eminent domain and taxpayer subsidies to seize private property for the benefit of himself and his pardners.

You've got George and Jeb defrauding taxpayers and using public property to benefit their family friends by overpaying for worthless gas and oil rights in the Everglades and pretending it's all about protecting the environment.

You've got Neil poking his ugly, greedy mug back up from under whatever rock he slithered under to cash in on his big brudder's No Child Left Behind thing.

You've got the unprecedented, inefficient, out of control private contracting of government functions under George W., basically using taxpayer money to subsidize non-competitive Republican bidnessmen.

You had George W. trying to channel your taxpayer provided Social Security to his family friends and associates on Wall Street, just like he did with your taxpayer provided Medicare to his family friends and associates in the pharmaceutical industry.

And on and on...

Basically, this is an entire family that sees the Federal gubment as nothing more than a giant, bottomless piggy bank for their own personal bidness schemes. This is a family that views the Great American People as nothing more than captive, involuntary investors for them, their friends, their families, and their supporters.

The Bush family truly is our own American Royalty--a bunch of corrupt, jug-eared, inbred layabouts making and preserving a fortune by sucking at the gubment tit.

And how do they get away with it?

By selling the ignorant rubes, over and over again, the lie that the Bush's hate taxes! By telling the gullible rubes that, even though gubment spending is going up, taxes are going down!

Watch them go down, rubes!

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day -- or nearly $1 million a minute.

What's that mean to you?

It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.

Except that every man, woman, child and infant in the United States doesn't pay taxes. There are 300 million Americans. About 100 million filed tax returns last year. So that would be about $90,000 per taxpayer. Except that not everyone who files a return pays taxes. So, there's that, too.

Even if you've escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That's because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion…

[I]nterest payments keep compounding and could in time squeeze out most other government spending -- leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above…

The national debt -- the total accumulation of annual budget deficits -- is up from $5.7 trillion when President George W. Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion sometime right before or right after he leaves in January 2009.

Yep. That's right. In eight years, Bush nearly doubled the national debt.

That's $10,000,000,000,000.00, or one digit more than an odometer-style "national debt clock" near New York's Times Square can handle. When the privately owned automated clock was activated in 1989, the national debt was $2.7 trillion.

It only gets worse…

Despite vows in both parties to restrain federal spending, the national debt as a percentage of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product has grown from about 35 percent in 1975 to around 65 percent today. By historical standards, it's not proportionately as high as during World War II -- when it briefly rose to 120 percent of GDP -- but it's a big chunk of liability.

It's a "fair and balanced" article, so naturally there's a bunch of bullshit alongside the facts. You can feel the writer straining to make this a bi-partisan problem.

The national debt was 35% of GDP in 1975, and from 1976 to 1980, Carter paid down the national debt. Then, from 1981 until 1993, tax hatin' Republicans ran up the national debt, all the while deregulatin', and wheelin', and dealin' and makin' money hand over fist with tax payer money!

Everybody got rich!

The taxpayers got the bill.

Which an ol' "tax and spend" Democrat, Bill Clinton, started to pay off. In fact, he not only started to pay it off, but he had Alan Greenspan worried that it was being paid off too fast. Clinton bequeathed a $230 billion and growing surplus to Bush that, with mild growth, would pay off our entire debt by 2012.

And Bush took that--I mean, literally took it after he lost the general election--big surplus and healthy economy and proceeded to double our national debt. In six years of Republican leadership--four years of which the Republicans controlled every branch of our government.

So, no, it's not a bi-partisan problem. Republicans spend more than Democrats. Period. It's a fact.

And when the government spends money, whether it presents you with the bill or it borrows the money, it's taxed you.

And since 1980, the Republicans have been taxing Americans into bankruptcy.

Republicans don't hate taxes. They love taxes. They might personally hate paying them. But they love spending taxpayer money. And no Republicans love taxing Americans more than the Bush family.

The only thing the Bush family hates about taxes is when taxpayer money actually gets spent on taxpayers. It seems like such a waste. When it could be spent on them.

Bush Warns Democrats To Stop Him Before He Creates Accounting Nightmare That Will Never Be Accounted For

WASHINGTON - President Bush sternly pressed Democrats to approve money to fund the Iraq war "without strings and without delay" before leaving town for the Christmas holidays, something congressional leaders have already indicated they will not do…

Bush said this will push the Pentagon toward an accounting nightmare and affect the military's ability to do its job protecting the country.

"The American people expect us to work together to support our troops. That's what they want," Bush said Thursday after spending two hours meeting at the Pentagon with military leaders. "They do not want the government to create needless uncertainty for those defending our country and uncertainty for their families. They do not want disputes in Washington to undermine our troops in Iraq just as they're seeing clear signs of success."

Goddam right! The American people have troops in the field. Those troops need to be funded. Their lives depend on it. Congress needs to send Bush a bill funding those troops, and Bush needs to sign it. And no political wrangling should get in the way. Why the hell hasn't Congress sent Bush a bill funding those troops so Bush can sign it?

The House has passed a $50 billion bill that would keep war operations afloat for several more months, but set a goal of bringing most troops home by December 2008. After Bush threatened to veto the measure, Senate Republicans have blocked it. In turn, Democratic leaders say they won't send Bush a war spending bill this year at all.

Oh. So the Democratically controlled House passed a bill funding the troops. But, because of a political dispute, Bush threatened to veto it. And then Republicans in the Senate, because of a political dispute, blocked the funding of American troops in the field.

And now Bush is sternly pressing Democrats to stop holding up the funding of our troops because of political disputes.

I guess he wants Nancy Pelosi to put impeachment back on the table so we can remove the biggest obstacle to funding our troops. Though, Democrats can't do anything about the obstructionist Senate Republicans until 2008.

In response, Pentagon officials began saying the military will have to take drastic steps next month if it doesn't get the money soon. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered the Army and Marine Corps to begin planning for a series of expected cutbacks, including civilian layoffs, termination of contracts and reduced operations at bases.

Bush reiterated that theme at the Pentagon, backed by Vice President Dick Cheney and military leaders.

"Congress limits how much money can be moved from one account to the other," Bush said. "Secretary Gates has already notified Congress that he will transfer money from accounts to fund other activities of the military services to pay for current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — and no more money can be moved."

That's a good point! No, that's a great point! Democrats who have voted to fund our troops had better "work together" with Bush and the Republicans who have blocked funding for our troops or else the Pentagon is going to have an "accounting nightmare"! If the Democrats don't "work together" with Republicans by giving the Republicans everything they want, the Pentagon will not be able to shift money from one account to another.

Because Congress won't let the Pentagon do that--just shift money around from account to account without any kind of accountability. And the Pentagon wouldn't even think about doing that because it's so meticulous about its accounting and keeping Congress appraised of just what exactly the Department of Defense is doing with the four hundred billion dollars a year Americans give it.

The last thing the Pentagon wants or needs is some accounting nightmare caused by Congress!

The Department of Defense, already infamous for spending $640 for a toilet seat, once again finds itself under intense scrutiny, only this time because it couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes.

Oops!

But that was years ago. I'm sure the CEO styled management Dream Team of the Bush Administration fixed that!

WASHINGTON — A soon-to-be-released audit will show that at least $8.8 billion in Iraqi money that was given to Iraqi ministries by the former U.S.-led authority there cannot be accounted for, FOX News has confirmed.

D'oh!

(02-16) 04:00 PST Washington -- More than $10 billion of the money paid to military contractors for Iraq reconstruction and troop support was either excessive or unsupported by documents, including $2.7 billion for contracts held by Halliburton or one of its subsidiaries, Congress was told Thursday.

What?

Ten years after Congress ordered federal agencies to have outside auditors review their books, neither the Defense Department nor the newer Department of Homeland Security has met even basic accounting requirements, leaving them vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse…

And the Defense Department, with a $460 billion budget this fiscal year, has never even come close to passing. Because that department makes up at least 20 percent of all federal spending, the entire federal government also has failed its audits since the congressional mandate took effect…

Robert Dacey, chief accountant for the Government Accountability Office, characterized the financial affairs of the two departments as “a pretty consistent mess…”

At last count, accounting at the Defense Department is performed in 4,000 different business systems, Jonas said. And in its most recent audit, the department acknowledged that it had more than $270 million worth of unsupported accounting entries.

Jonas noted that there also have been what she called “significant successes.” In 2001, the Pentagon had hundreds of inoperable accounting systems and no data standards. This year, she said, it received a clean audit opinion on $215 billion, or 15 percent, of its assets and $967 billion, or 49 percent, of its liabilities.

That's right. Fifteen percent of the DOD's assets and nearly half of it's liabilities have been properly accounted for.

And President Deficit N. Bankruptcy wants to argue that strict Congressional oversight of the Department of Defense is a bunch of red tape in the way of our troops receiving the funding he threatened to veto if Republicans didn't block it.

I almost wish Bush could re-select himself for another four years. It would be horrible. The cost to our country in money, prestige, and progress would be inestimable.

But, after four more years of this cretin, not only would the despicable, immoral, and perverted modern Republican party be ground out of existence, but Americans might finally, fifty years after they were told by an honest to God military hero on live television, realize that they are getting ripped off, year in and year out, by the very people they put unquestioning trust in.

And they might also realize, once again, why the people who founded this country put all that shit in the Constitution about never trusting your gubment.

Good Gawd

WASHINGTON, Nov 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department said on Wednesday publicly held U.S. debt breached $9 trillion this week for the first time ever, just five weeks after Congress had raised the statutory borrowing limit…

The increase in the debt limit is the fifth since Bush took office in January 2001. The U.S. debt stood at about $5.6 trillion at the start of his presidency…

The Greatest Tax Cut Evah!

Seven years ago, the government was running a 230 billion dollar and growing surplus. By 2012--only four years from now--our national debt--our entire national debt--would have been paid off. Each and every American taxpayer would have enjoyed a tax cut from getting rid of the 300 billion dollar plus interest payments on our debt.

Instead?

After eight years of doing our part, working hard, paying our taxes, when Bush leaves office, each and every American taxpayer is going to be rewarded by owing nearly twice as much as when Bush literally took office.

That's some tax cut.

In approving the debt limit increase, Congressional lawmakers said the $850 billion increase should be large enough to allow the government to continue borrowing into 2009, well beyond next year's presidential and congressional elections.

Oh, thank goodness! I'd hate to think our elected representatives would actually have to answer questions about the trillion dollars they just borrowed in our name during an election year! That would be so distracting from the more important issues of taxing whores, burning flags, speaking English, and making little children recite a pledge they don't even understand.

The modern Gee Oh Pee is horrendous. It's a nation wrecking machine. There's no denying that.

But you've got to admit: the modern Democratic party is weak and lazy, and either too dumb or too scared to fight.

In eight years of fiscally conservative leadership, the Gee Oh Pee added four trillion dollars of debt to American taxpayers. Those were eight years under a "CEO" styled fiscally conservative Republican president. Six out of eight of those years were under a fiscally conservative Republican House, which, under Bill Clinton pretended to want a Constitutional Amendment to balance the budget. And four of those eight years--the four record setting deficit years--were under a Republican House, Senate, and President.

The Gee Oh Pee, given total control of our government, answered in red and red for once and for all the age old question of which party can taxpayers trust more when it comes to their money.

And Democrats, quite helpfully, took that issue off the table until after next year's Presidential and Congressional elections.

What a bunch of weak sucks.

The Heir To Ronny Rotten

The CIR/Salon investigation reveals that the whistle-blower system -- first created by Congress decades ago and proclaimed as a cornerstone of government transparency and accountability -- has in reality enabled the punishment of employees who speak out. It has had a chilling effect, dissuading others from coming forward. The investigation examined nearly 3,600 whistle-blower cases since 1994, and included dozens of interviews and a review of confidential court documents. Whistle-blowers lose their cases, the investigation shows, nearly 97 percent of the time. Most limp away from the experience with their careers, reputations and finances in tatters.

Legal experts and lawmakers say the system is badly in need of reform. In fact, new legislation to strengthen whistle-blower protections has been moving through Congress this year, with strong bipartisan support, and is expected to come before the Senate this session. But in the latest setback to the system, the Bush White House has vowed to veto the legislation, citing among its criticisms a risk to national security…

Of course! The cornerstone to gubment transparency and accountability, and the nasty little aristocrat we call President of the United States thinks its a risk our national security. He'd veto a blessed bipartisan bill to protect American citizens who tell the truth.

This authoritarian little creep thinks our national security would be threatened if Americans could hear the truth about their government.

Doesn't this arrested case of intellectual development know that "national security" is short for the preservation of a society free from tyrany? And doesn't he know that no society can be free from tyrany when its government can punish its citizens for speaking the truth?

You bet your ass he knows that. World's Worst History Major or not.

And The Founding Fathers knew that, too. That's why, when they wrote down a Bill of Rights, the first one on the list protected Americans from retribution from the gubment for exercising free speech.

You know who else knew that? If you believe the gospel of John, the bipartisan baby Jesus. Chapter 8, verse 32. Honest, you could look it up.

What kind of a man--what kind of an American--thinks he's defending and protecting the security of a free nation when he opposes the right of The People to know what their representative government is doing???

What kind of an American thinks its in the public interest to protect and conceal governmental waste and corruption, and criminality?

I'll tell you! A Reagan Republican!

In the wake of Watergate, Congress passed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. It established the Office of Special Counsel, with a staff of investigators to look into complaints of retaliation against employees who spoke out…

[T]he Federal Circuit Court in Washington [is] the only court that can preside over appeals of whistle-blower cases beyond the Merit Systems Protection Board…

The Federal Circuit Court's longest sitting jurist, Haldane Robert Mayer, was appointed by Ronald Reagan. Prior to his appointment, Mayer had been the acting U.S. special counsel -- the chief whistle-blower investigator. But Mayer resigned from that position in 1982 after the Office of Special Counsel was accused of holding seminars for political appointees and agency managers -- to teach them how to fire whistle-blowers effectively within the confines of the law. The scandal led Congress to strengthen the whistle-blower law, but it did not stop Reagan from appointing Mayer to the bench.

"Judge Mayer is one of the most significant people in the legal system to translate the whistle-blower law passed in response to his own [alleged] abuses of power," said Tom Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project.

George W. Bush and the Sainted Ronald Reagan--a couple of guys who didn't believe in democracy.

Read the article. The funniest thing about all of this is that whistleblower protection, which is a truly great idea, was originally proposed by...Richard Nixon!

Though, of course, Nixon proposed it during a Democratic administration in the fifties, and I'm sure his little rat like mind envisioned it as an awesome tool to encourage frightened Americans to accuse their friends and fellow workers of being communists.

So they could be persecuted by the government.

Is there any greater threat to our "national security" than the modern Gee Oh Pee?