Things That Just Piss Me Off

It amazes me how Bush fooled everyone with a little slight of hand and that there are still people who believe him. 911 was planned and carried out by terrorists in Afghanistan. Usama Bin Laden claimed responsibility.

So Bush attacked Afghanistan and I supported it 100%. We needed to respond to an attack on American Citizens inside our borders and we needed to do it effectively.

However, in the 90s, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others tried to get the US to attack Iraq. They wrote letters to Clinton urging him to finish what George Bush Sr. started.

When Bush was elected, they already planned to attack Iraq because they had wanted to all along. Then 911 happened. Bush responded, as he should have, but then he pulled a fast one. He used the 911 attacks to further the agenda he and Cheney had been pushing in the 90s. He told everyone that invading Iraq had something to do with 911. It was a lie. They had wanted to invade Iraq long before 911 ever happened.

George Bush Sr. went to war with Iraq. He never finished it. George Bush Jr. went to war with Afghanistan. He never finished it. George Bush Jr. went to war with Iraq. He never finished that either even though we can all find pictures of him in a borrowed military uniform under a banner that said Mission Accomplished.

The mission it referred to must have been the mission to fool the American Public into thinking he was going to war with Iraq because of 911. Had he focused on Bin Laden and Afghanistan, the war on terrorism would be won, Bin Laden would be dead or captured, and we would not be trillions of dollars in debt.

Bush’s presidency will be remembered for not being able to finish anything, for trampling the constitution, and for taking a surplus and turning it into a deficit. Oh, and for giving more tax breaks to corporations and the rich than any president in history.

John McCain and George W. Bush want you to believe that more drilling will lower the cost of gas. The oil companies already have leases they are not using, wells they are not drilling, oil they are sitting on and not putting on the market.

They control prices this way. The only way that new drilling leases will lower the cost of gas is if the oil companies made a deal with Bush that if he gave them their new leases they would lower the cost of gas. Did that happen?

From CNN MoneyExxon posts record $11.68 billion profit
World’s largest publicly traded oil firm makes $1,485.55 a second in the quarter, but misses forecasts.

Exxon Mobil once again reported the largest quarterly profit in U.S. history Thursday, posting net income of $11.68 billion on revenue of $138 billion in the second quarter.

That profit works out to $1,485.55 a second. That barely beat the previous corporate record of $11.66 billion, also set by Exxon in the fourth quarter of 2007.

The company returned $10.1 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks, 12% more than last year.

Do you think the people that received these dividends care what you pay at the pump?

Bush has invoked Executive Privilege over and over again because he believes that he and his administration are above the law. Not since Nixon has a president been so secretive. It isn’t about terrorism or your safety. It’s about a president who believes he is above the law.

after years of White House stonewalling, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas to the Bush administration for documents related to the warrantless domestic surveillance program.

Today, during a background discussion with reporters, senior Bush administration officials indicated that they would invoke executive privilege in order to deny the NSA documents to Congress, just as they did this morning concerning subpoenas related to the U.S. attorney scandal. “Our response to [the NSA] subpoenas will be the same as our response was before,” said an anonymous official.

Even if we gave him this one that supposedly is only being used against potential terrorists, there’s more . . .

With a contempt of Congress vote looming by Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-CA) House Oversight Committee, President Bush asserted executive privilege this morning to block the committee’s subpoenas for documents relating to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to reject California’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to override scientific recommendations on ozone standards.

Waxman’s committee had scheduled the 10 am business meeting to hold contempt votes for EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and White House Office of Management and Budget regulatory administrator Susan Dudley. On May 20, Johnson appeared before the committee, without the subpoenaed documents and evading questions about Bush’s involvement.

I wonder how this ties in with the whole executive privilege deal where Bush says he only does it on issues of national security. There’s more . . .

President Bush has blocked the release of Vice President Dick Cheney’s interview with investigators probing the leak of a CIA agent’s identity, invoking executive privilege Wednesday to keep that document and others under wraps.

Bush asserted the privilege claim at the request of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who has been under pressure from a congressional committee to turn over the transcript of Cheney’s interview, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

The records stem from the investigation into the 2003 exposure of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, whose husband had accused the Bush administration of twisting the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted of obstructing justice and perjury in connection with the disclosure, but was not charged with leaking her name.

I guess this is national security too. But I bet he didn’t like this too much . . .

The Bush administration and its radical theories of executive power suffered yet another blow today from the judiciary, as a Federal District Judge, John D. Bates of the District of Columbia District Court — a Bush 43-appointed (and generally very pro-Bush-administration) Judge as well as the former Deputy Independent Counsel for the Whitewater investigations — held in a 93-page ruling (.pdf) that Bush aides Harriet Miers (former White House counsel) and Josh Bolten (White House Chief of Staff) are not entitled to absolute immunity from Congressional subpoenas. The dispute arose out of the investigation by the House Judiciary Committee into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys who, in many cases, had either aggressively prosecuted GOP officials or had refused to prosecute Democrats or otherwise advance the GOP’s political interests.

Now, Bush’s lawyers will appeal the decision of course. They won’t be testifying before Bush is no longer in office due to legal maneuvering. Then no one will do anything about it because bush has left office.

Everytime anyone brings up how bad Bush has messed up the economy, his supporters point to low unemployment as proof he is not doing a bad job. But let’s see how that unemployment rate is calculated.

Years ago they did not count people in the military when figuring the unemployment rate. That changed in the Reagan years to make the numbers look better. I agree they should count as employed. They are receiving a paycheck. I’m just pointing out how numbers can be manipulated to make the public believe there has been a change.

Here is another way that Bush and his supporters make it seem that unemployment is down.

From the NyTimes - The number of Americans who have seen their full-time jobs chopped to part time because of weak business has swelled to more than 3.7 million — the largest figure since the government began tracking such data more than half a century ago.

The loss of pay has become a primary source of pain for millions of American families, reinforcing the downturn gripping the economy. Paychecks are shrinking just as home prices plunge and gas prices soar, furthering the austerity across the nation.

On the surface, the job market is weak but hardly desperate. Layoffs remain less frequent than in many economic downturns, and the unemployment rate is a relatively modest 5.5 percent. But that figure masks the strains of those who are losing hours or working part time because they cannot find full-time work — a stealth force that is eroding American spending power.

All told, people the government classifies as working part time involuntarily — predominantly those who have lost hours or cannot find full-time work — swelled to 5.3 million last month, a jump of greater than 1 million over the last year.

These workers now amount to 3.7 percent of all those employed, up from 3 percent a year ago, and the highest level since 1995.

So, when you hear Bush and his supporters say that unemployment is just 5.5%, remember to raise that to 9.2% of American Citizens that cannot get a full-time job and support their families. Almost 1 out of 10 Americans cannot make a decent living due to Bush’s failed economic policies.

Bush also helped big business in more ways than just giving them more tax breaks. Bush appointees also allowed rules to get passed that allow companies to deny benefits to part-time workers that full-time workers would get under federal law.

So the companies changed to a strategy of making more part time jobs available and less full time jobs available, saving them money while making the unemployment figures seem low for Bush. A win-win for Bush and his big business buddies. A loss to Americans nationwide.

When we first started deploying troops into Iraq, Bush said none of them would have to serve more than 12 months. It was a lie.

At the beginning of the surge, Bush said they would be able to start bring troops home by July of this year and none of the troops would be there more than 12 months. It was a lie.

Now;

From the NYTimes

Bush gave the clearest indication yet that conditions in Iraq would allow him to begin reducing the number of American troops there before he leaves office in less than six months.

The administration propelled those negotiations after Mr. Bush agreed to a “general time horizon,” which many Iraqis like to view as a timetable for withdrawing American and other foreign troops and turning over security to Iraqi forces.

Funny stuff. When Bush agrees to a time table, it’s a time horizon, and perfectly accesptable. When Obama talks about a timetable, it’s defeatist. Obama, the Prime Minister of Iraq, and Bush all agree that troops can be brought home over the next 2 years. McCain is the only one thinking that it’s impossible and that we may be there for 100 years.

Well, this doesn’t really piss me off. In fact it makes me happy. John McCain’s whole staff and the whole republican machine tried to find anything at all they could use against Barack Obama regarding his successful trip overseas.

The only thing they came up with was one canceled visit to a german army medical center. Fox news, Redstate, the republicans, and John McCain are distorting the facts on this daily hoping someone will buy it. They say he didn’t visit the wounded soldiers because he could not take camera crews.

It is a lie. He visited wounded soldiers while he was in Iraq, where our soldiers are actually fighting a war, and he didn’t take a camera crew even though he would have been allowed to do so. Funny how Fox news and McCain fails to mention that visit.

McCain has nothing positive to say. He has no plan, except to bash Obama as much as possible and try to keep the white house in the same hands it has been in for the last 8 years. He has literally become a grumpy old man who is pissed off becasuse Obama is more popular than him. Bigger crowds turn out to see Obama, so McCain’s petty jealousy has taken over his campaign.

The republicrooks complain that Obama gets more media coverage and it’s true. But the reason why is different from what they claim. They claim the media covers Obama more because he is a democrat. The real reason they cover Obama more is because McCain is a bore.

News agencies need viewers to survive. Obama keeps people awake. McCain puts them to sleep. As a news business who would you cover?

McCain’s latest commercials try to associate Obama with britney spears and paris hilton. Wow! McCain is really getting desperate now. Hilary Clinton got desperate and tried attacking Obama as her campaign strategy and look how that turned out.

McCain is following the same failed strategy in his campaign as Hilary Clinton did and he supports continuing the same failed strategy in the war on terror. Do you see a pattern here?

Our allies hate Bush and therefore the US. Without allies we are in really big trouble. The US cannot stand alone against the entire world. Another 4 years of that strategy will hurt us, possibly to the point of no recovery, with our allies. Obama will bring our allies back to our side. He proved that on his overseas trip.

From the NYTimes - Mr. McCain’s campaign is now under the leadership of members of President Bush’s re-election campaign, including Steve Schmidt, the czar of the Bush war room that relentlessly painted his opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, as effete, elite, and equivocal through a daily blitz of sound bites and Web videos that were carefully coordinated with Mr. Bush’s television advertisements.

The run of attacks against Mr. Obama over the last couple of weeks have been strikingly reminiscent of that drive, including the Bush team’s tactics of seeking to make campaigns referendums on its opponents — not a choice between two candidates — and attacking the opponent’s perceived strengths head-on. Central to the latest McCain drive is an attempt to use against Mr. Obama the huge crowds and excitement he has drawn, including on his foreign trip last week, by promoting a view of him as more interested in attention and adulation than in solving the problems facing American families.

Mr. McCain’s assault comes after one of his worst weeks of the general election campaign, when he seemed to fumble for a consistent, overarching critique of Mr. Obama. And McCain’s campaign is being urged by some supporters to cut back the frequency of his question-and-answer sessions with reporters, a staple of his campaign but one that occasionally yields unscripted moments, misstatements and off-the-cuff pronouncements.

No more Bush means not electing John McCain. Electing Obam means putting us back to number 1 in the eyes of the world.

10. People over the age of 65 who are still allowed by law to get behind the wheel of a vehicle! The 75 million “Baby Boomers” still alive in this country are getting older, slower and more frail. They will account for the second most auto deaths…right behind the 18-24 idiots who think they’re all
Dale Earnhart!

9. People found guilty of serious crimes and sentenced to:

• life in prison without the possibility of parole
• multiple life sentences
• death

The first two are a complete waste of taxpayers dollars ($15,000 to $18,000 on average per year per inmate).
The last is ridiculous not just because it is also a waste of taxpayers dollars, but simply because the criminal is “allowed by law” to appeal their conviction for years (sometimes 10 or more) before the actual execution takes place…unless they get killed or die in prison first.

8. Reality shows depicting the lives of D-List celebrities actually trying to be “real”. Your careers are over for a reason. Spare us the agony!

7. YouTubers who leave stupid, opinionated, ignorant comments on videos. You don’t know what you’re talking about, so shut the hell up. Thank you.

6. Hot chicks who continue to hook up with ugly guys. See…money does buy happiness.

5. People who still believe in “God” and that the Bible is the “word of God”. Wake up people…it’s 2008!

4. People who think Bill O’Reilly isn’t a corporate tool. FOX…hint, hint

3. People who think John McCain knows what he’s talking about.

2. People who live in the United States and don’t speak English! Learn or leave!

1. The Iraq War…what a waste of human life! Good job George. Thanks for the memories!

Everyone is talking about the extra money we have to pay for gas, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Now you have probably received a notice like this one. If not, you will.

On July 1, the Florida Public Service Commission approved an adjustment in the pass-through fuel charge on customer bills. This is a result of the extraordinary increase in fuel prices that we have been experiencing.

You will see an initial portion of the fuel adjustment on your bills for meter readings beginning August through December 2008 (which means beginning with the meter reading for your July energy usage). A 1,000 kilowatt-hour monthly residential bill will go from $102.63 to $110.77, which is an increase of $8.14 - or about 8 percent.

So these approvals for price increases will go on for utilities. McCain thinks a month off of gas taxes will help us in some way? Give me a break. We will still be paying higher utility bills and paying more for everything else as companies raise prices on everything we buy to offset their fuel costs.

McCain’s gas tax holiday is like putting a bandaid on the victim of a drive by shooting. He knows this, but it sounds good and makes it look like he cares.

High fuel costs are going to kill what is left of the economy that George Bush ruined. Opening up more places to drill for oil is like filling a bathtub with the stopper out, it might eventually help a little but it’s wasteful.

The oil companies have wells that are capped off that could be opened up right now without more drilling. They are using this crisis to buy up more leases.

The DeBeers family controls the diamond market. If all the diamonds that have been mined were put onto the market today, diamonds would be worthless. But they control how many diamonds hit the market and prop the price up.

The oil barons are no different. They want to control all the places where oil can be found so they can control how much oil hits the market. They prop up the prices for oil just like the DeBeers family does for diamonds.

This is not about a shortage of oil no more than it was in the 70’s. It is pure greed and manipulation of supply and demand. The politicians in office are helping the oil companies control the market. Almost every person in Bush’s administration have interests or former interests in oil, fuel, and industries that make money supporting the oil industry.

Condaleeza Rice has an oil tanker named after her. Bush was in oil. Cheney and Haliburton. The list goes on.

From the BBC on Monday, 29 January, 2001 (Before 911)

The president, vice-president, commerce secretary and national security adviser all have strong ties to the oil industry.

Vice-President Dick Cheney amassed some £50m-$60m while he was chief executive of Haliburton oil company.

Commerce Secretary Donald Evans held stock valued between $5m and $25m in Tom Brown Inc, the oil and gas exploration company he headed.

National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice was a director of Chevron.

Since that time, they have the war in Iraq which secured more oil fields for the oil companies to control. They used the attacks on 911 by Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan as an excuse to also take on Iraq. The war with Iraq was planned before 911, even before they got Bush in the whitehouse. Cheney and others had been pushing for that war before any of them took office.

Now investors buying futures has caused oil prices to a critical level. This crisis was created by investors. The reason? To give new leases to the oil companies here in the US.

The Iraq War, High oil prices pushed up by investors, and opening up new areas for oil companies to explore, are all just a coincidence with these oil barons in the white house. None of what these people do is about making more money from oil. Yeah. Right.

It irritates the hell out of me the way politicians, no not just George Bush, all politicians, lie to us about where the money goes. They like to say “it’s for the children”, “it’s for education”, “it’s for keeping you safe”, etc. etc.

The lottery in most states will serve as a great example. They say it will help fund education to get everyone to vote for it. In most states it makes up less than 2% of the cost of education while taking in billions for whatever they want to spend it on. They didn’t tell you that when they wanted you to vote for it.

Bush’s war on terrorism, (I call it his war on terrorism because most would have handled it much differently), is another great example.

They passed billions of dollars into the war on terrorism. Some of that went to “border security”. No terrorists have been caught at the border trying to enter the country. But they have been able to increase the number of drugs siezed at the border. Yes, that is also a good thing. However, they knew that the public was growing tired of the so-called war on drugs that has been a waste of time and money, so rather than ask the public for more money for the war on drugs, they asked for funds for the war on terrorism and used it for the war on drugs instead.

And now they misuse more funds meant for the war on terrorism.

Plan Would Use Antiterror Aid on Pakistani Jets
By ERIC SCHMITT of the NYTimes

The Bush administration plans to shift nearly $230 million in aid to Pakistan from counterterrorism programs to upgrading that country’s aging F-16 attack planes, which Pakistan prizes more for their contribution to its military rivalry with India than for fighting insurgents along its Afghan border.

The financing for the F-16s would represent more than two-thirds of the $300 million that Pakistan will receive this year in American military financing for equipment and training.

Last year, Congress specified that those funds be used for law enforcement or counterterrorism. Officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Congress was weighing the plan, said the timing was driven by deadlines of the American contractor, Lockheed Martin.

So to help out Lockheed Martin, 75% of the money we are to give to Pakistan specifically for the war on terror will go to upgrading their military instead so they can keep up with their rival, India.

Having the United States pay for the upgrades instead of Pakistan would also free up cash that Pakistan’s government could use to help offset rising fuel and food costs, which have contributed to an economic crisis there, the State Department officials said.

Yes, great idea, let’s use the money to help Pakistan out of their economic crisis since we don’t have one.

Under the original plan sent to Congress in April, the administration intended to use up to $226.5 million of the aid to refurbish two of Pakistan’s P-3 maritime patrol planes, buy it new airfield navigation aids and overhaul its troubled fleet of Cobra attack helicopters. The State Department notified Congress last week that the administration had changed its mind and would apply the funds to the F-16s.

They don’t use the F-16s in the war on terror at all. They do use the other stuff for fighting terrorists. So we are going to fund the F-16s with the money intended for the war on terror.

McCain’s big plan to embarass Obama about not having visited Iraq to see how the war was going seems to have backfired and made Obame seem even more presidential. All it did was give Obama a chance to look good.

The Boston Globe gave McCain the headline story though and put the story about Obama in Iraq below it, but the imagery was perfect. The top picture was McCain standing with Bush and the picture below that was Obama looking presidential in Iraq.

The message is McCain is no different than Bush while Obama is out there making on-the-ground assessments in Iraq. Great strategy McCain. Dare your opponent to do something that will just end up embarassing you.

And one more question . . . John McCain, what is up with all the blinking? Do you have a disease we are unaware of? I mean who blinks with every single word they say unless there is a medical condition causing it? They say people blink a lot when they are lying. So is it a medical condition you have not revealed or are you blinking because you are lying?