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Kenology
Veteran Poster
Username: Kenology
Post Number: 53
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 15, 2006 - 11:44 am: | 
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...to believe all the Bush/Cheyney lies?
http://www.unknownnews.org/060714a-hh.html
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States:
"I happen to believe that when you say something you better mean it. ... And so the choice was Saddam Hussein's choice. He could have not fooled the inspectors. He could have welcomed the world in. He could have told us what was going on. But he didn't. And so we moved."
That's President George W Bush, just last week repeating the same lie he offered before attacking Iraq three years ago. As America sinks into the quagmire he created where Iraq used to be, George W Bush is still lying, and he still thinks you're so stupid you don't know that Saddam Hussein did disclose, that he had disarmed, that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Bush thinks you're so brainwashed, you'll believe that the choice for war was Saddam Hussein's choice. He thinks you'll believe that Hussein didn't allow the world's weapons inspectors in, that Saddam Hussein didn't say plainly and repeatedly that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Does anyone even believe that Bush believes his own lies? Bush can't possibly believe such nonsense as his absurd notion that terrorists attacked America because "they hate our freedoms." He's said many times that he didn't want war who's stupid enough to believe that?
After years of Bush manure, who's naοve enough to believe any of the myriad lies from the White House
that the Bush-Cheney administration had no advance warning of a terrorist plot against America in the summer of 2001
that nobody anticipated the breech of the levees in New Orleans
that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11 (alternating with lies that nobody ever said that)
that Congressmen and Senators have access to the same
It's time to speak truth, not in a whisper but as loud as it can be shouted:
The truth is the opposite of whatever the Bush-Cheney administration says.
Their facts are dead wrong, always, week after month after year.
While lying that they're "protecting" America, Bush and Cheney have willfully made America far less safe, and made themselves enemies of everything that ever made this nation great.
The sum total of Bush-Cheney policies on economics, foreign policy, the environment, privacy, civil rights, health, education, you name the topic is the end of America as we know it.
intelligence the White House sees
that "the smoking gun could come in the form of a mushroom cloud"
that Social Security is nearing a meltdown
that anyone who leaks a CIA agent's identity would be fired from this administration
that "We do not engage in torture"
that "Leave No Child Behind" has accomplished anything worthwhile
that Bush-Cheney tax cuts helped anyone but the fabulously wealthy
that the new prescription drug program helps seniors a fraction as much as it helps the pharmaceutical companies
that Don Rumsfeld is doing a fine job
that the prisoners on Guantanamo aren't prisoners, or that they were captured on the battlefield
that the US has disrupted "at least ten" terrorist plots against America
that seemingly every Muslim captured or killed is the number three man in al Qaeda
that warrantless monitoring of your every phone call, email, and bank transaction has something to do with an alleged war on terror
that reporting on Bush-Cheney lawbreaking imperils national security
that the Clean Air Act cleans the air
on and on and on
lies and lies and more lies
and then, more lies.
From his first Presidential lie, when he swore to uphold and defend the Constitution, who's stupid enough to believe Bush has told the truth about anything?
And let's not even take a depressing detour to all the reports the Bush-Cheney administration has sought to have suppressed because they didn't like the facts. Let's skip past this administration's disregard for the Freedom of Information Act and their fetish for classifying every shred of information that belies their lies. No, let's get to the point:
With the exception of the mentally handicapped and the chronically un-informed, nobody in the world is stupid enough to believe that Bush and Cheney are men of honor steering America's future to the best of their abilities. You'd have to be dumber than a dish-mop to respect Bush as a "leader" or "a man of character."
Anyone who's paying attention knows that Bush and Cheney are criminals, but millions of people can't or don't pay attention. They're struggling to survive in this Bush-ruined economy, or maybe they're just not interested in politics. Thirty percent of Americans still support the Bush administration, and sure, a lot of those people are just plain stupid but a lot of them probably believe in Bush because the corporate-controlled media refuses to report the facts of the matter. AP and the New York Times have reporters covering the White House beat, the Washington Post and CNN and MSNBC have reporters there, and all these reporters know what's happening but if any of them tried to report the facts of the matter their reports wouldn't run, and the reporters would be fired and replaced.
So it can't be reported in corporate-controlled newspapers, cannot be broadcast on for-profit news networks. There's no money to be made from reporting the awful truth, and there are still profits to be squeezed out for as long as the charade can be extended, so the facts of the matter must remain mum, only whispered, never spoken plainly by the likes of Stone Phillips or Brian Williams.
But we'll tell you what the mainstream media won't: The ship of state is not being steered either that or it's being piloted full-speed ahead straight for the rocks.
This is not "politics as usual." Bush and Cheney are not ordinary leaders, with ordinary problems of political corruption or bumbling incompetence. They have exponentially surpassed previous standards of US political malfeasance and chicanery.
This isn't a trivial matter, like sex in the Oval Office it's sacrificing American soldiers' lives for nothing.
This isn't routine politics every policy of this administration is detrimental to America.
This isn't a return to sinister Nixonesque tactics it's gone far, far beyond that. Nixon, you'll recall, resigned in disgrace because he was caught in a lie over a bit of burglary, but Bush and Cheney have told lies that make Nixon's lie look like sainthood. Bush and Cheney never stop lying, and where Nixon was disgraced to be caught in a lie, Bush and Cheney simply tell another lie, then another. They're immune to disgrace.
These criminals in the White House have repeatedly broken the law, ignored the Constitution, reduced Americans' rights and freedoms, and that's what they're working on today, and tomorrow, and the day after that. That's what they do it's the only thing they've done since taking office, and the only thing they'll do until they're booted from office.
Bush and Cheney are dismantling American freedoms that earlier generations fought and died for, and smearing or shouting 'treason' at anyone brave enough to stand up for America.
It's time to speak truth, not in a whisper but as loud as it can be shouted: The truth is the opposite of whatever the Bush-Cheney administration says. Their facts are dead wrong, always, week after month after year. While lying that they're "protecting" America, Bush and Cheney have willfully made America far less safe, and made themselves enemies of everything that ever made this nation great.
Do the math yourself: The sum total of Bush-Cheney policies on economics, foreign policy, the environment, privacy, civil rights, health, education, you name the topic is the end of America as we know it.
In a particularly flamboyant lie, Bush once announced, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." But patriots know better. People who love America have had enough of the lies. If you're not standing against the Bush-Cheney administration, you're standing against America.
You'd have to be pretty dang stupid not to know that, by now.
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 2458
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 15, 2006 - 11:57 am: |
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The way it looks a sizable portion of the population is.
Here is the Hayden formula of America--
One third of the population is so stupid they'll believe anything he says
One third of the population don't believe it but is too damn cowardly to do anything about it.
The last third of the population don't know what the hell is going on.
And we got 2 and one half more years of this crap. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 4842
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 15, 2006 - 02:55 pm: |
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Andrew Greeley is a Catholic priest (Jesuit?) who has consistently supported liberal causes and is an outspoken critic of the Bush neeeeeeocons and the war they are waging in Iraq. As far as I'm concerned, this article says it all.
Iraq war was lost the day it started
July 14, 2006
BY ANDREW GREELEY
If we "cut and run" from Iraq, Republican senators argued recently, we will lose our credibility, dishonor the memory of those who have already died there, break our promise to the Iraqi people and settle for something less than victory. The United States does not quit that way. So Republicans will run in November against dishonor, flag burners, gay marriages, the New York Times, the Supreme Court and the Democrats who want to lose Iraq (just like they ran a half century ago against Democrats who "lost" China). Will it work? Sure it will.
In fact, the United States did cut and run in Korea and Vietnam. It did settle for something less than victory in these two wars. The United States did abandon the North Korean and Vietnamese people. It did dishonor the dead soldiers, if withdrawing from an impossible conflict does dishonor those who have died. Some of the senators know that. Most of the American people, ignorant as they are of history, have forgotten.
However, the truth is that Iraq was "lost" the day the war started. It was an artificial country like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, stitched together after the Great War. The British forced its rebellious tribes together with bombs and poison gas. They left the minority Sunni tribes in charge. They ruled brutally through eight decades, viciously suppressing the Shiite majority and other tribes, particularly the Kurds in the north. Saddam Hussein was merely the logical conclusion of the cruel dictators who ruled before him.
When the American invasion brought him down, it destroyed the Sunni establishment and gave power to the Shiite majority. It also confirmed the Kurds' determination that they didn't want to be part of Iraq anymore. Moreover, they had 100,000 well-trained and well-armed troops who would defend Kurdistan from any invaders.
Thus, as Peter Galbraith writes in his The End of Iraq, Iraq ended for all practical purposes when the Americans arrived. To exacerbate the centrifugal forces, the United States did not send enough troops, did not try to stop the looting --particularly of weapons, did not plan for a postwar policy and sent arrogant amateurs to administer the country.
However, the Kurds already have an independent country, the Shiites have established their own regional governments with close ties to Iran and the Sunnis have launched a civil war. Eventually, the Sunnis will form their own enclave and continue the civil war in areas they share with the Shiites, especially Baghdad. No foreign army is capable of policing these areas of continuing conflict. The central government that we have created will at best be able occasionally to mediate among these independent enclaves.
Those who knew anything about the history of Iraq were predicting this outcome before the war. The president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, and the swarm of neoconservative intellectuals around them did not know Iraqi history and paid no attention to those who did. The pretense now that the war in Iraq can still be won displays the same criminally arrogant ignorance of the Bush administration before the war. Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are still not speaking the truth, perhaps not even to themselves. Neither are the senators who will run against the Democrats (and probably win) on the platform of victory in the war.
Galbraith has been around Iraq long enough to know that the first Bush administration supported Saddam in his war with Iran, providing weapons, equipment and intelligence, some of it in support of poison gas attacks on the Iranians. He also remembers that the previous Bush urged the Shiites and Kurds to rise up against Saddam after the Gulf War. He and his advisers did not believe that they would take him seriously. Hundreds of thousands died. The people of Iraq have very good reason for hating Americans.
Most Americans will not read books like The End of Iraq. They know almost nothing of the history of this artificial country, which is all right because they don't know much about the history of their own country, either. The president doesn't even read memos his staff prepares. Most of the important people in the government don't have time to read. Therefore, having ignored the lessons of history, they repeat its mistakes. Americans will continue to die in Iraq because no one making decisions could bother reading its history.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 5091
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 15, 2006 - 08:53 pm: |
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Not to discount any thing that's been presented here. But I would add that one of the biggest weaknesses America has is this myopic notion of American Exceptionalism, which has been greatly buoyed by certain very persuasive and potent elements of Evangelical Christianity.
So Chris, I would add that not only are we ignorant cowards. Worse, we blindly think and behave as though we're being brilliantly brave. |
Schakspir
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 329
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 15, 2006 - 11:31 pm: |
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We think the sun rises and sets in our assholes, that history begins and ends with our concept of civilization--when, in fact, it's just another phase in history's development. In the future there will be nations and civilizations more advanced than ours--wait, there's Canada. Sorry. ;0) |
Mony
Newbie Poster
Username: Mony
Post Number: 23
Registered: 02-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 16, 2006 - 11:41 am: |
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Right on Schakspir! I'm Canadian. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 881
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 16, 2006 - 12:11 pm: |
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US Could Be Going Bankrupt
By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor
(Filed: 14/07/2006)
The United States is heading for bankruptcy, according to an extraordinary paper published by one of the key members of the country's central bank.
A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve.
Prof Kotlikoff said that, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt. "To paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary, is the United States at the end of its resources, exhausted, stripped bare, destitute, bereft, wanting in property, or wrecked in consequence of failure to pay its creditors," he asked.
According to his central analysis, "the US government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds''.
The budget deficit in the US is not massive. The Bush administration this week cut its forecasts for the fiscal shortfall this year by almost a third, saying it will come in at 2.3pc of gross domestic product. This is smaller than most European countries - including the UK - which have deficits north of 3pc of GDP.
Prof Kotlikoff, who teaches at Boston University, says: "The proper way to consider a country's solvency is to examine the lifetime fiscal burdens facing current and future generations. If these burdens exceed the resources of those generations, get close to doing so, or simply get so high as to preclude their full collection, the country's policy will be unsustainable and can constitute or lead to national bankruptcy.
"Does the United States fit this bill? No one knows for sure, but there are strong reasons to believe the United States may be going broke."
Experts have calculated that the country's long-term "fiscal gap" between all future government spending and all future receipts will widen immensely as the Baby Boomer generation retires, and as the amount the state will have to spend on healthcare and pensions soars. The total fiscal gap could be an almost incomprehensible $65.9 trillion, according to a study by Professors Gokhale and Smetters.
The figure is massive because President George W Bush has made major tax cuts in recent years, and because the bill for Medicare, which provides health insurance for the elderly, and Medicaid, which does likewise for the poor, will increase greatly due to demographics.
Prof Kotlikoff said: "This figure is more than five times US GDP and almost twice the size of national wealth. One way to wrap one's head around $65.9trillion is to ask what fiscal adjustments are needed to eliminate this red hole. The answers are terrifying. One solution is an immediate and permanent doubling of personal and corporate income taxes. Another is an immediate and permanent two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits. A third alternative, were it feasible, would be to immediately and permanently cut all federal discretionary spending by 143pc."
The scenario has serious implications for the dollar. If investors lose confidence in the US's future, and suspect the country may at some point allow inflation to erode away its debts, they may reduce their holdings of US Treasury bonds.
Prof Kotlikoff said: "The United States has experienced high rates of inflation in the past and appears to be running the same type of fiscal policies that engendered hyperinflations in 20 countries over the past century."
Paul Ashworth, of Capital Economics, was more sanguine about the coming retirement of the Baby Boomer generation. "For a start, the expected deterioration in the Federal budget owes more to rising per capita spending on health care than to changing demographics," he said.
"This can be contained if the political will is there. Similarly, the expected increase in social security spending can be controlled by reducing the growth rate of benefits. Expecting a fix now is probably asking too much of short-sighted politicians who have no incentives to do so. But a fix, or at least a succession of patches, will come when the problem becomes more pressing." |
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