YARDDOG AND THE WALL STREET BAIL OUT

So tell me how I am suppose to trust an administration that took us into a needless war and a place we should not be and now support a Wall Street bail out ???

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

I can not put myself on some "supper level" when it comes to understanding what the last seven years in our political history have been about. Many others are beginning to reveal the inter-workings of the Bush White House. The latest is the book by Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan called, "What Happened".

I read about the book and twice listened to Mr. McClellan's interview this morning on the Tim Russet show. Mr. McClellan says he didn't speak up against the overselling of war in Iraq at the time because he, like other Americans, gave the president the benefit of the doubt.

What the hell is that all about? Are we at war because people were afraid to speak up? Listen to McClellan! Everything he says maybe true but what kind of a person would put this country and it's people at such a risk?

Are they stupid? Who in the world have we let be in charge? What the hell is going on?

I have no respect for Mr. McClellan; not because he ratted on the idiots who seem to be running things but because he did not have the guts to confront what was happening around him ... and instead contributed to the very thing he now exposes.

PRESIDENT BUSH AND TERROR

ABC NEWS
April 11, 2008
By JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG, HOWARD L. ROSENBERG and ARIANE de VOGUE

President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.

Nothing I could say here will change this reality. I just don't know how this one man can lay havoc to the American way of life; destroy the legal systems and put himself above the law and get away with it.

The ABC News Photo Illustration above says it all ... except perhaps if Mr. Bush were in that chair, under that light bulb and being asked, "Why?"

Mr. Bush's blind arrogance!

Years ago the FBI knocked on my door; that is a story for another time but it sets a stage. Because given the environment President George Bush has created in this country, we have every reason to believe it will happen again. And it will start when ordinary citizens begin to do small, extraordinary things to take back the country they love.

It may not be as simple as providing housing for young men scared to death of war; trying to discover why students at the University of California at Berkeley were willing to get their head bashed to stop it or having the body count effect a life so personally. This time it may will be more abstract.

But the process of change must begin again.

There is nothing about Mr. Bush that is American, patriotic, loving, good or kind. With each day, each minute, each millisecond he inflicts upon this country the very worst of human nature. Listen to today's news: "Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the (CIA) from using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning."

Even senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has criticized the technique. "Sure," he said on CBS's 60 Minutes, "yes, without a doubt. We prosecuted Japanese war criminals after World War II and one of the charges brought against them, for which they were convicted, was that they waterboarded Americans."

It is universally rejected by military and law enforcement agencies and it is internationally scorned. Yet Mr. Bush thinks it is American, that it is patriotic, that it is a good thing to subject people to it!

Well, damn it, not in my name!

A blight like some Egyptian plague has come over us. Collectively we, as a people, have lost our way. For reasons this one ordinary citizen can not grasp, the United States of America has become the home of the intolerant and fearful where justice is no longer the rule.

There is no rational reason for Mr. Bush's blind arrogance in redefining the rule of law. Only tyrants and evil people would seek to justify coercive interrogation tactics.

At the end of Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet a little noticed character, The Prince who is the ultimate moral arbitrator of the play laments with at his countrymen:
"Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this..."

For never was a story of more woe ... but, now, we need to reclaim what it means to be a good and decent again.

PRESIDENT BUSH AND YARDDOG'S GAS PRICES

The Washington Post report today that "the House of Representatives brushed aside threats of a White House veto yesterday and voted 236 to 182 in favor of an $18 billion tax package that would rescind a tax break for the five biggest oil companies and use the revenue to boost incentives for wind and solar energy and energy efficiency.

"The Bush administration, Republican lawmakers and big oil companies condemned the bill, which they said would raise fuel prices for consumers..."

Who exactly is Mr. Bush trying to fool? Gasoline at my local station is $3.49 for regular. Is he nut?

POLITICAL TRIVIAL -- the smiling kind.

One of Washington's most feared columnists and top journalists, Dana Milbank, has written a new book on the government called Homo Politicus. In it he recounts President Bush’s October 2006 visit to the city of La Plume in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Bush was there to campaign for Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) during the week Bush proclaimed, “National Character Counts Week.”

"I'm pleased to be here with Don Sherwood," said a smiling president pictured in the S. John Wilkin Associated Press picture above. Bush told the congressman's loyal but dispirited supporters at a luncheon fundraiser, "He has got a record of accomplishment."

Why were the supporters dispirited? President Bush failed to mention that Rep. Sherwood had acknowledged having an "extramarital affair,” or that he had "repeatedly chok[ed]" and "attempt[ed] to strangle" Cynthia Ore, his former mistress, 35 years his junior.

In court Sherwood admitted to the five-year extramarital affair and settled a 5.5 million dollar lawsuit in which he did, indeed, admit to choking her. He denied he abused her and aired a campaign commercial asking his constituents to forgive his infidelity!

I wonder, just wonder, what just what is Mr. Bush's defination of: "character"?

HEADLINES ...

Tuesday's Headline: BUSH signs largest Pentagon Spending Bill in History.

History's Headline: Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." - Matthew 26:52

FLAT EARTH PEOPLE!

They say that Al Gore is happy now ... that being out of politics, for him, is a good thing. I understand that point of view, that being away from a dysfunctional work setting is a good thing. Finding happiness should be everyones main goal ... especially when you can speak out against flat earth people! Gawd!

One of the great, forever unanswered questions will be, what kind of world would we be living in if the Presidency had been given to a good man instead of Bush.

TORTURE IS NOT LEGAL

Dana M. Perino, the White House press secretary said Thurday, “I can’t imagine the Democrats would want to hold back his nomination just because he is a thoughtful, careful thinker who looks at all the facts before he makes a judgment,”

He made that statement because the real CAREFUL THINKERS who happened to be senators want to know if a future Attorney General of the United States thinks that torture is legal in this country.

WHY DOES THAT QUESTION EVEN HAVE TO BE ASK? DAMN IT! TORTURE IS NOT LEGAL. And that, of course, is the real issue; if he does say it is illegal than anyone in the past who has carried it out or authorized it, like Bush, could be found liable for their actions!

WHY THE HELL ...

...does this man think it is okay to torture people?

WEAK SS AND EVEN WEAKER GOVERNMENT

Thanks to the Bush Administration and a weak congress for passing and signing the misguided Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Medicare premium increases are now at the highest dollar amount in the program's history and are claiming a growing share of the annual Social Security Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) — on top of rising fuel, food, and housing costs your COLA is supposed to cover!

Ain't that special!

Fascist anyone?

Do these sound familiar?

Laurence W. Britt writes the following in an article called Fascist Anyone. He outlines 14 basic characteristics that are more prevalent and intense in some fascist regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity:

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
5. Rampant sexism and homophobic
6. A controlled mass media
7. Obsession with national security.
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
9. Power of corporations protected
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
14. Fraudulent elections

Read the Link in the title above at Council of Human Secularism’s web site and get the whole article.

REALLY REALLY FUNNY

This is really good And thanks to BME'er Eroy in Australia for sending it.