8 Years, 8 Minutes

This just crossed my path and I thought it was something everyone should see... My only criticism lies in the belief that this overview is far too broad and leaves far too much by the wayside, but then again, Keith only had eight minutes to burn...

Trust me on this... there are a million other bomblets set to explode in the wake of this idiot's departure... the lives of children not yet born will be profoundly affected by what has transpired these past eight years...

I hope "Hope" has plenty of carbohydrates...

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It Is Good To Be King

I was always under the impression that in a democracy, government decisions are made in a democratic manner... as in, a bill is introduced... there is debate... (money and favors are exchanged) and then the bill is either passed or vetoed... It's all right here in this helpful video below in case you wish to brush up on your civics...



However it seems as though civics have changed somewhat since I attended grade school... apparently when you are the president, you also adopt the powers of an infallible monarch...

Who knew?

As you read this, Georgy Porgy's goon squad is racing through the slick brass and marble hallways of DC, greasing the palms of death minions, litigious stooges, gutter snipes, murdering military industrialists, corporate whores, death cronies, and grimy fisted lobbyists with every last shekel they could scrounge up...

Damned be the environment, damned be the economy, damned be democracy... What we've got here is the glorified back end of favoritism, nepotism, and cronyism in action... there are fat pimpled albino asses to be kissed... white elephants to be celebrated... Satan babies to be spawned... Yep... line right up at the George W. Bush kissin' booth for some right on right wing tongue twistin' action... (Special announcement: Would all bankers please report to the Hank Paulson sauna complex for your complimentary reach-around...)

By the time George relocates to his all white gated community in Texas on January 21st, a whole new and improved cornucopia of greed called "Midnight Regulations" will have hit the ledgers...

You see... There is a gaping loophole in US law which allows a sitting president to pass last-minute legislation into the Code of Federal Regulations, which for all practical purposes, makes them law... without ANY approval from Congress...

Let freedom ring!!!

To be fair, other presidents have used this loophole to extend their agenda past their sell-by date, but W. is taking to it with the vigor of a drunken frat-boy attached to the business end of a beer bong on his 21st birthday... This is, in all essence, George's final "fuck you" statement to us all... his middle finger extended... thumbing his nose... his tongue wagging... his naked ass mooning out the school bus window for all to admire...

While the media obsesses over sociopath governors, dead toddlers and auto bailouts... While most Americans are wondering if they'll have jobs or homes tomorrow... While most of America is in a perpetual state of carbohydrate induced bliss... W. is using brilliant sleight of hand to gift his partners in crime one last box of legislative confections... the introduction of weakened workplace safety measures, rollbacks on environmental and endangered species acts, legislation that inhibits a woman's right to choose, and NRA goodies that will make certain more of our unstable citizenry will be packing heat at your kid's soccer game...

George's gift basket of ill-repute also includes the time-honored Republican standard of "self-regulation"... because lord knows that you can trust bankers, oilmen, accountants, brokerages, and insurance companies to regulate themselves much in the same way you could trust that Nero's starving lions wouldn't treat the Christians as delicious, meaty cat toys...

Obama's team will have their work cut out for them if they wish to roll back any of these new laws... you see, undoing a law puts it into the open, where a long and expensive litigious process has to take place before it can finally be rescinded. It's not like the Obama administration will have anything better to do other than clean up one more in a long list of unsolvable clusterfucks left in the wake of the USS Incompetence...

Let's take a gander at some of the pain Bush is about to bring:

The introduction of legislation which allows coal companies to dump waste from strip-mining into valleys and streams. (Nothing better than chopping off the top of a mountain and then filling in a valley... call it "landscaping" or "Oklahoma-ization")

The introduction of legislation that will allow the building of coal-fired power stations near national parks. (Because nothing says family vacation better than a case of black lung...)

The introduction of legislation allowing people to carry loaded and concealed weapons in national parks. (Because nothing says family vacation better than a sucking chest wound...)

The introduction of legislation allowing health care workers to opt out of giving treatment for religious or moral reasons, thereby putting a woman's right to choose at risk, among other things... (hmmm... just who I want treating me in the ER trauma center as I'm bleeding to death... a Jehovah's Witness who doesn't believe in blood transfusions...)

The introduction of legislation that will allow truck drivers to continue driving for 11 consecutive hours. (Ah yes... what could be better than a completely tweaked out of his mind long hauler with anger management issues listening to a Toby Keith cd locked on repeat... Hey folks, here is some unsolicited investment advice... purchase some shares of Red Bull and crystal meth...)

The introduction of legislation surrendering government control of rerouting the rail transport of hazardous materials around densely populated areas... (Remember to breathe deeply when that misty cyanide cloud hits your humble abode... you'll go quicker that way...)

The introduction of legislation that will allow millions of acres to be mined for oil shale... (Hmmmm... maybe this last one we can do something about...)

Wanna be a tiny thorn in their side?

The NDRC (led by such luminaries as Robert Redford, Leo DiCaprio, Billy Joe Armstrong, among others...) is launching an emergency campaign to stop Bush from awarding over 160,000 acres of pristine Utah canyonlands to oil and gas speculators on December 19th. These remote canyons have been unspoiled for thousands of years... and if Bush has his way, they will be destroyed beyond repair...

You can sign the petition here:

Stop Bush's Giveaway of America's Redrock Wilderness

My god, at long last, is there nothing these people will not destroy in order to obtain gooey black muck? Never mind that oil prices will have to be at least $200 a barrel (that should tell you where the price of gas is headed...) for such an exercise to be profitable, because this oil is deep and literally within the sediment... it has to be cooked out, a long and poisonous process that is costly in more ways than one can imagine...

So yeah... let's keep looking for pristine areas to destroy, let's keep looking for that last fix to get us through the long dark night that the end of oil has planned for us... let's raze the whole fucking planet looking for anything combustible until all that is left is carbon dust, and then let's burn that as well...

On a completely unrelated note, the Fed just dropped rates to ZERO... so there you have it folks... free money... everything is going to be JUST FINE...

Have a peachy day...

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Duck!

Wouldn't it have been a great coincidence if they had been Nunn Bush loafers?

Nothing frames a successful presidency better than a beginning marred by a stolen election and an ending spent ducking a journalist's fashionable footwear...

By the way, if the symbolism of this act is lost on westerners, getting loafers chucked at your melon is a great insult in the Arab world... The shoe tosser, Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, will no doubt be hailed as a hero...

enjoy...



As for me, I laughed so hard I cried...

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Worst President Ever

The LA Times recently revealed two pages of White House correspondence entitled "Speech Topper on the Bush Record." The feel good memo essentially lends "a few helpful suggestions" to Bush cabinet members and high-level staffers in order to summarize how the Bushy one would prefer his two term choo-choo crash to be remembered... as an "unalloyed success" no less... perhaps "colossal fuckup" would have been more accurate...

Among the memo's bullet points are these whoppers:

* He "kept the American people safe" after 9/11... (I think the operative word here is AFTER...)

* He upheld "the honor and the dignity of his office" (Politspeak for "He didn't get blown in the Oval Office.")

* He "responded with bold measures to prevent an economic meltdown" (Bold Measures?!?!? Prevent?!?!? Excuse me for a moment, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit... all that monkey did was hand our entire economy over to that henchman Hank Paulson so that he could steal the future earnings of our great, great, great grandchildren...)

* "He promised to raise standards and accountability in public schools and delivered the No Child Left Behind Act" (Yeah, he delivered it all right... unfortunately he forgot to fund it... as for the raised standards, can someone please tell why India has more engineers than we have people?!)

* "He lifted the economy through tax cuts" (Actually he briefly "lifted" the economy by deregulating the hell out of it which therefore allowed banking institutions to go hog wild, which in turn brought us the lovely market conditions we enjoy today... along with 533,000 lost jobs in the month of November... but hey, at least they got their taxes cut... permanently)

See folks, it's not so bad... a frown is a smile, only upside down...

Apparently big blue meanies such as yours truly have gotten it all wrong these past eight years... How typical of me to accentuate the negative... Little insignificant things like the epic collapse of the housing market and major banks going tits up... a spiraling stock market and a devalued currency... but hey, I've always wondered what horse meat tastes like... guess I'll soon find out... and I love being served by 80-year-olds working double shifts at IHOP... nothing like hard work and perseverance... until you drop dead... that's the American way!

And will you look over here... flawed intelligence in the flawed run-up to a flawed war, along with over 4,000 dead soldiers and countless civilian casualties... but hey, democracy is messy, you are gonna need to break some eggs to make an omelet... ever try to make an omelet with the barrel of an M16..? Apparently the eggs fight back and even worse, they taste icky...

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? Hey... what's wrong with a little frat-house hazing...? so it gotta a little out of hand... stop being such pussies... and besides, everyone knows they are guilty... of having non-western names and brown complexions...

Katrina? Clearly an act of God... and besides, that is all just water over the levees now anyways...

Think your 401K looks bad now? Just imagine if president dunderhead had been able to privatize social security...

And who can forget the Harriet Myers debacle, where he nominated his babysitter to the Supreme Court...

Torture, illegal wiretapping, voter fraud, incompetence, indifference, ideological warfare, secrecy and contempt... and on and on... please stop me before I hurt myself...

We as a nation ask, expect, and deserve competence from our elected officials... What we got from the Bush administration was eight years of theft, lies, and apathy from which it will take at least two generations to recover... if ever... Republicans commonly complain that the Federal Government is incapable of running things... I find that I agree with them, but with the following modification... the Federal Government is incapable of running things when Republicans are in charge... (not that Democrats are that much better, to be honest...)

The Center for Public Integrity undertook a web project of herculean proportions in an attempt to study, document and determine the scope of failure during the Bush era. Thirteen reporters deconstructed hundreds government documents, investigations, budget reports.. they interviewed dozens of experts and government workers... they sent out 5,000 solicitation emails to federal employees... the results overwhelmed the reporters to such degree that they had to pare the list down to 125 from 250 suggested failures...

Below is a short list of forty ways in which the federal government failed to perform under the administration of George W. Bush from 2001-2008:

• 45 million Americans without health care
• 60 percent of EPA scientists report political interference with their work
• 1,273 whistleblower complaints filed from 2002-2008; 1,256 were dismissed
• 190,000 U.S.-supplied weapons missing in Iraq
• $212.3 million in overcharges by Halliburton for Iraq oil reconstruction work
• $455 billion deficit for fiscal year 2008; estimated to reach up to $1 trillion in 2009
• $9.91 billion for government secrecy in 2007 — a record
• 809 government laptops with sensitive information lost by FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
• 30 million pounds of beef recalled in 2007
• $300 billion over budget for Department of Defense weapons acquisitions
• Less than 3 percent of U.S. electricity needs met by alternative energy
• 2,145 troops killed and 21,000 injured in Iraq from March 2003 through November 1, 2008, by IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and other explosives — many while awaiting body armor. Additionally, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in the conflict
• 34.8 percent of oil used in America imported during Nixon administration; 42.2 percent during first Gulf War; 59.9 percent in 2006
• $100 million for failed FBI computer network
• $100 billion in federal tax revenues lost annually to corporations using off-shore tax shelters
• 163 million airline passengers delayed 320 million hours; cost to U.S. economy: more than $41 billion in 2007
• $60 billion stolen in Medicare fraud each year
• 2.5 million toxic toys recalled in summer of 2007
• $12.5 billion for defective National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System
• $4 billion to upgrade National Security Agency computers that often crash, have trouble talking to each other, and lose key intelligence
• 60,000 flights made by 46 Southwest Airline jets in violation of FAA safety directives due to lax FAA enforcement
• 12.8 percent job turnover at Department of Homeland Security in 2006 — double that of any other cabinet-level agency
• 730,000 backlogged patent applications
• 148,000 troops not enough to secure Iraq, enabling insurgency to take root
• $1 billion, six-year “Reading First” program called ineffective by Department of Education Inspector General
• 20,000 U.S. deaths annually from lack of pollution controls on diesel vehicles and power plants
• 60,000 newborns a year at risk for neurological problems due to mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants
• Two-thirds fewer clean ups of EPA Superfund toxic waste sites during 2001-2006 than in previous six years
• 935 demonstrably false statements in lead-up to Iraq war by President Bush and seven members of his administration
• At least $500 million for FEMA trailers contaminated by formaldehyde occupied by thousands displaced after Hurricane Katrina
• 558 detainees at Guantanamo detention facility reduced to 255 after court-ordered case reviews
• 26 percent of corporations holding at least $250 million in assets audited in 2006; percent audited in 1990: more than 70 percent. IRS audit staff slashed by 30 percent
• $431.5 billion spent on Medicare in 2007, double amount in 2001
• 47 dead in mining accidents in 2006 blamed on lax oversight
• $9 billion in federal oil and gas royalties mismanaged by agency linked to drug-and-sex scandal
• 275 largest U.S. corporations pay, on average, about 17 percent in taxes in 2007, half the standard corporate tax rate
• $45 trillion in credit-default swaps, without federal oversight, in 2007
• 760,800 disability claims backlogged, awaiting hearings at Social Security Administration as of October 2008
• 806,000 Veterans Affairs disability claims in 2006, up 39 percent since 2000; backlog reached 400,000 claims by February 2007
• 2,640 days Osama bin Laden at large since September 11, 2001 (as of December 10, 2008)

Remember folks... this is the list that was edited DOWN...

Is everything on this list George's fault? Of course not... that would be a gross oversimplification. However, I don't think I am editorializing when I say that when all is said and done, George W. Bush will be considered the worst chief executive in this nation's history.

At least he's number one at something...

Barack Obama has a tough act to follow...

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