On this Memorial Day

Let's face it, if we really "respected our troops", we wouldn't have sent them in harm's way, first in Iraq, for the chosen, arbitrary, unnecessary, ignorant-to-the-point-of-stupid and illegal war that was and then into Afghanistan, where those people didn't want us, either.

We have George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to thank--rather, to hold responsible--for both.

They are war criminals, by their own words. We should hold them accountable, charge them and put them on trial.

We won't. We never will.

But we should.

Republicans' current complaint of the President

Karl Rove's "American Crossroads" group put out a video today, complaining that President Obama is, apparently, "too cool": Apparently they'd prefer we'd return to Mitt Romney, so we can have more things like this: God forbid. What a disaster that's been for us, to this day. And for them to complain about the state of our economy when they're so blatanly, obviously impeding the nation's progress is rich. And absurdly hypocritical. It's disgusting.

What's going on with Americans?

What's up with Americans today? What has happened to America? The America I knew? The tough, smart one? I see, hear and read so much paranoia and suspicion anymore, it's shocking. There is expectation of much ugliness and evil and huge "powers that be" and it's surprising and new to me. It seems paranoid and really gets tiresome. We had a financial collapse in 2008, we elected a black man president in 2010 and lots of large weather anomalies have taken place in the recent past. That and a lot of people have lost their jobs or their socio-economic status and still others are having to get used to women having more power and clout in our society possibly. I understand all that but the suspicion or paranoia or whatever it is is really getting out of hand. I've never known Americans to be like this. What brings this about is a conversation on Facebook with "friends" due to this video: People were saying it's chemtrails they think and that the government must be poisoning us, instead of just jet contrails. And sure, it could, remotely be possible. Governments around the world have done some of this stuff. England recently admitted to doing it from the 40's to the 70's but honestly, I see and hear so many people saying that it's "the end of the world", literally, and that the government is preparing to either kill us, like this, or heard us all into FEMA camps and it gets really old. Here's the thing, if everyone's so upset now, why weren't they raising hell when that white moral and mental midget George W. Bush was spending us into oblivion, giving away tax cuts to his already-obscenely rich friends and taking us into a horrible, tragic, needless, mindless, nationally and internationally illegal war in Iraq? Where were these people then? Why didn't they raise hell about the honky who was screwing things up? I'd love to know. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory

Things our soldiers are doing in our name

We send them over there. The least we could do is know what they're having to do for us.

The Iraq War

From our own Iraqi soldiers

Honor the soldiers indeed. Bring them home.

Click on picture for easier reading.

Thank you, Calvin, George. Now, go away.

On Solyndra and that 535 million dollars we "loaned" them

About those two executives of the solar panel company, Solyndra, and the $535 million we loaned them. Remember they were taken before Congress and asked questions about the money and all they--we--got in answers to the questions were "I'll take the fifth"? Yeah, well, I have to say, I hope this is being pursued to see if those two--or anyone, really--did anything remotely illegal with and/or about that half-a-billion dollars they got. I hope this is being pursued. I see where the Department of Energy official who set this debacle up is leaving the agency. I hope our government isn't just walking away from this episode without seeing if anything illegal was done. I'd like to look into getting some--most?--of that money back. I hope SOMEBODY is looking into this. Link: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/10/energy-department-official-involved-solyndra-controversy-resigns/43431/

America flaunts international law, more, again, still

First, President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney trounced international law by pre-emptively and unilaterally attacking Iraq for their 2nd Iraq War, against both popular opinion and, far worse, international law. We've been paying for that with soldiers lives, American prestige and money and materiel ever since. Next, there were "reports that the Obama administration had flown a Somali man accused of ties to terrorism to New York to face prosecution after holding and interrogating him at sea for more than two months." Yeehaw. At least we're consistent, huh? Now, finally today, anyway we find that Governor Rick Perry and the State of Texas "has executed a Mexican national for the kidnapping and rape of a 16-year-old San Antonio girl. Humberto Leal Garcia, 38, was put to death less than two hours after the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-to-4 vote, rejected pleas from the Obama administration for a delay to avoid what it called serious international repercussions." Here's where the problems come in regarding international law: "Texas authorities failed to inform him of his right to speak with officers from the Mexican consulate and failed to inform the consulate that a Mexican national had been arrested. Both of those failures violated a 1963 treaty signed by the U.S. Indeed, the consular access provision was added to the treaty at the insistence of the United States." But now, here's the tricky part, at least for the US--while we repeatedly trounce international law as shown by these 3 instances and more, regarding this last one, the US actually likes to use this treaty for its own citizens. Background: "The U.S. relies on the treaty to secure legal help and often to win release of Americans imprisoned abroad, some in countries such as Iran, Libya and Syria. Last year alone the U.S. invoked the treaty for 3,500 Americans imprisoned in other countries." So we like to invoke this law for our own citizens but for people of other countries and their governments, we figure "screw you guys, we're going our own way on this." If we were in school, the US would get a checkmark in the "Doesn't get along with others" column, at least. Can you say "blatant hypocrisy"? Trouble is, executing this Mexican National last evening was good for Texas Governor Rick Perry's presidential run that isn't even official yet. So one Humberto Leal Garcia died last night so Rick Perry could be shown as tough on crime and help his popularity. Yahoo, huh? Isn't that just terrific? I wonder what international laws we'll disregard next. And some people wonder why we have a not-so-great-name and reputation in some parts of the world. Links: http://www.representativepress.org/ViolatingInternationalLaw.html; http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/cra0868.htm; http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/u.s.-may-have-violated-domestic-and-international-law-capturing-and-holding-somali-months-sea; http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/texas-executes-mexican-national-after-supr; http://news.yahoo.com/texas-executes-mexican-court-stay-rejected-233305430.html; http://news.yahoo.com/un-official-us-execution-leal-broke-intl-law-160400028.html

Pres. Obama: 15th best president ever. So far

I love this:

Scholars Rank Obama the 15th Best President

A group of presidential scholars has ranked President Obama as the 15th best U.S. president of all time, a new survey shows...

Mr. Obama also has an advantage in the rankings over President Ronald Reagan, who came in 18th, but President Bill Clinton beats them both in 13th place.

The Siena College Research Institute's Survey of U.S. Presidents, which has been conducted five times since 1982, asked 238 presidential scholars to rank the 43 U.S. presidents on a number of characteristics.

The presidents were given rankings for six personal attributes (background, imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck and willingness to take risks), five forms of ability (compromising, executive, leadership, communication and overall), and eight areas of accomplishment (economic, other domestic affairs, working with Congress, party leadership, Supreme Court appointments, executive branch appointments, avoiding mistakes and foreign policy).

But here's the best part--the favorite part, for me, on top of Obama getting a good, solid ranking:

"his predecessor, President George W. Bush, is relegated to the bottom five.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

God I love that.

It gets better, too:

While he has only been in office a year and a half, Mr. Obama was rated highly in areas such as imagination, communication and intelligence.

By comparison, Mr. Bush was ranked 23rd when the survey was conducted in 2002, after his first year in office. This year, Mr. Bush was ranked 39th after receiving poor ratings in communication, foreign policy, intelligence, the economy and his ability to compromise. 

But wait, there's more!

Mr. Bush's best ranking came in the category of "luck," for which he was rated the 18th best president.

The four presidents who were ranked more poorly than Mr. Bush were Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin Pierce.

That is some strongly negative company he's got there.

Give him time, too.  Ol' Dubya' may well get to the bottom yet.

(Thanks and a hat tip to friend Dave H for bringing this to my attention).

Link:  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20009531-503544.html

Good on you, Mr. ElBaradei

From the news today:

ElBaradei suggests war crimes probe of Bush team     

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent

NEW YORK – Former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the "shame of a needless war" in Iraq.

Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, the Nobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of "grotesque distortion" in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bush and his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei's and other arms inspectors inside the country.

The Iraq war taught him that "deliberate deception was not limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators," ElBaradei writes in "The Age of Deception," being published Tuesday by Henry Holt and Company.

And I'll tell you, I'm all for this investigation--an impartial one--not for retribution or vengeance or any other reason but that this way, hopefully, we would make certain that history doesn't repeat.

As Mr. ElBaradei states:  "Do we, as a community of nations, have the wisdom and courage to take the corrective measures needed, to ensure that such a tragedy will never happen again?"

That said, an investigation will never happen, sadly, as no one has the "guts" or chutzpah or fortitude, whatever you want to call it, to even begin it, let alone see it through.  The American people aren't calling for it and don't have the will for it.  In spite of how illegal attacking Iraq was and is both nationally, internally, here in the US and the fact that it's quite against international law, George W. Bush and Co. will get away with this travesty and travesty of justice.  

They will have told many lies, broken laws, been responsible for thousands of needless deaths and hundreds of thousands of wounded people and gotten away with it all, scott-free.

Links:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_elbaradei_memoir
http://us.macmillan.com/theageofdeception
http://www.amazon.com/Age-Deception-Nuclear-Diplomacy-Treacherous/dp/0805093508

Late night fun quote

"He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." 
— Groucho Marx

(Fortunately, he's also already out of office).

(Accidental) Quote of the day

"When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure, he's just being America's accountant ... This is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill--but wasn't paid for,"   --President Obama when supposedly or apparently speaking near an open microphone.


Maybe we need to have him speak more openly, honestly and more frequently near an open mic.




Have a great weekend, y'all.


Link:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20110415/ts_yblog_theticket/obama-caught-on-audio-slamming-gop

We'd have loved to have been wrong

In 2000, there were a great deal of us who were concerned about having George Walker Bush as our President--at all, let alone for 8 full, inglorious years.

And while the same is true of Ronald Reagan, at least with him we survived and he didn't totally ruin the country. Sure, his administration did things that were illegal and unconstitutional, too, like George has done and is doing, but even he didn't have the cajones and outright, outrageous ignorance to take his administration and our country too far.

Then came George.

Before Molly Ivins died, God bless and rest her soul, she warned us what kind of spoiled child/dolt we were dealing with here.

And the family, too--she warned us about them, as did Kevin Phillips.

But now, here we are, at the end of George's 2 crime- and cronyism- and incompetence-ridden terms and the only things we can say are that 1) we'd have loved to have been wrong about him (that he really wasn't that stupid and/or irresponsible) and 2) I told you so.

The only satisfaction and vindication about having suffered this fool for 8 years is that now, the chickens have come home to roost, so to speak.

To wit:

Time Magazine recently ran an article, summarizing this President's tenure and resultant effects on the country. I will only give two paragraphs of the full article (which, as a matter of fact, isn't even all about George, he's incidental):

"It now seems clear that George W. Bush will be remembered for symmetrical disasters. His presidency began with the destruction of the Twin Towers by al-Qaeda terrorists. It is ending with the devastation of the Twin Trillions — the money spent on a foolish war in Iraq ($653 billion and counting) and on the bailout of a financial industry gone hog wild during the Reagan-initiated Era of Deregulation. Bush has revived Big Government in the worst possible way: the middle class will pay, in perpetuity, for the sins of the powerful."

More:

"It is hard to put a smiley face on this stinker. A crash — and this one seems a doozy — usually announces the arrival of hard times. The real economic woe is yet to come, as credit dries up and the economy slips into recession. The power of the next President seems destined to be severely constrained by huge debts and diminishing tax receipts — unless he finds some creative ways out of the morass ..."

(A link to the full article is here:
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1844157,00.html)

So I come back to a question I've posted before and asked many times:

Can someone please tell me what was ever conservative about George W. Bush?

--His administration reached government further into American's personal lives than any other in the history of our nation.

--He spent more money than any other President, again, in the history of this country.

--He used our military, against our Constitution and international law, to go into another country, preemptorily, unilaterally and without cause, to attack them and oust their leader, however much a tyrant he was.

--He has now taken nearly one trillion dollars of this country's tax money--our money--and given it to private business because unregulated banks manipulated us into a nightmare economic scenario.

and so much more.

I repeat: WHAT WAS, EVER, CONSERVATIVE, ABOUT GEORGE WALKER BUSH?

As a last mention: I will also say again, if you voted for George W. Bush, even once, let alone--God forbid--twice, WE BLAME YOU.

I'm not kidding on that last part.