Thursday, May 31, 2007

"Hard Rains'a Gonna Fall"

Whatever Happened to Acid Rain?
Exxon-Mobil has convinced me that combustible engine emissions are good for the environment; why trees turn carbon monoxide into oxygen!! Hot damn, let's sell cars to the Chinese Commies!!! Even in Baghdad there are still cars and trucks on the streets.

So Hillary Clinton is a traitor--taking advice and money from Conservative advisors and Conservative backers. And why not? Hill, like her husband, Slick Willie, are Conservative Dumbocrats, more interested in Neo-Con ideas than she'd like for us to think--certainly pro-WAR same as Slick Willie and certainly for taking more of our rights away from us same as her husband, Slick Willie, and his infamous Patriot Act. I now see that the Neo-Cons see a big chance of stealing the election again if Hillary is the Dumbocrat nominee. They figure it'll be close as hen's teeth between Hillary and say Mitt "The Mormon" Romney and that way Cousin Karl and his Roving Election Bandits can rig the votes in those same ole traditionally wildass Neo-Con states like Ohio and Florida--with like chances, too, in the many hick states that will obvious let a lot of their legendary instincts keep them from voting for a woman or a Knee-grow.

Like we've reported in the past, Hillary was once on the board of Wal-Mart. Whose side do you think she'll be on when the dickheads that work at Wal-Mart want to form a union so they can get decent wages and health care and shit like that?

Obama also appears more and more like a Neo-Con puppet, too, the more I see him getting in the same-old political squirrelcage and running on the same old losing ways the Dumbocrats have been running on since 1972 when both parties then defied the wants of We the People --"Hell no we won't go" --and continued the war on in spite of us driving Lyndon out of office and getting rid of General Louis Hershey and the F-ing unfair draft, though I'm quite sure our new Chancellor and Forever Commander and Chief will reinstitute the draft in order to keep his Global Army taking Freedom on the March around the world where there's oil, like Iran, like Nigeria, like the Sudan, like Kenya, also mostly Islamic states.

How About Some Scary Reading From Harpers Magazine (http://harpers.org)

One of the telltale signs of the somnolent mainstream media is its inattention to the nation’s fiscal situation. Throughout the Clinton years, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page would raise the siren call of irresponsible spending and excess taxation, and broadcast media often followed suit. Now economic historians view this period as one of remarkably responsible fiscal stewardship – in which an impressive treasury surplus was built up and plans laid to bring down the historical deficit.

But those sirens went mute immediately upon the inauguration of George W. Bush. During his misadministration, staggering debt has been built up, and wasteful spending has far outstripped anything Washington has ever seen before. The era of Bush has been a revisiting of the Gilded Age – the era described by Mark Twain in his piece of that name from 1873, a mass of pretense, excess and corruption bent on the extirpation of everything that was ever decent about our country. The Bush era is marked by spending like a drunken sailor, as one of Congress’ few remaining fiscal conservatives – John McCain – likes to say, profiteering from it through earmarks and then covering it all up and lying to the public about the cost and consequences.

In today’s USA Today, Dennis Cauchon takes a look at the Bush budget process and lays out some very unpleasant truths.

The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year — far more than the official $248 billion deficit — when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows. The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss — equal to $11,434 per household — is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006. “We’re on an unsustainable path and doing a great disservice to future generations,” says Chris Chocola, a former Republican member of Congress from Indiana and corporate chief executive who is pushing for more accurate federal accounting…

Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined. Unfunded promises made for Medicare, Social Security and federal retirement programs account for 85% of taxpayer liabilities. State and local government retirement plans account for much of the rest. This hidden debt is the amount taxpayers would have to pay immediately to cover government’s financial obligations. Like a mortgage, it will cost more to repay the debt over time. Every U.S. household would have to pay about $31,000 a year to do so in 75 years.

Who’s to blame? A president and vice president who inhabit an alternate universe. Remember that when Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill raised the issue of deficit spending in the first cabinet meeting following the 2002 midterm elections, he was slapped down by Dick Cheney. “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter. We won the midterm elections, this is our due,” Cheney said. In his interview with Ron Suskind, O’Neill offered this distinction between his service in the Ford era and the age of George W. Bush: “The biggest difference between then and now is that our group was mostly about evidence and analysis, and Karl [Rove], Dick [Cheney], Karen [Hughes] and the gang seemed to be mostly about politics. It’s a huge distinction.”

The Bush 43 team is about short-term political gain. Full stop. Their indifference to the suffering they will leave behind, to their squandering of a nation’s patrimony, is unprecedented in American history. But not, evidently, much of a subject to trouble our pliant media.

Good ole Harper's -- they've stayed pretty fairminded over the years--good magazine, though I'm not sure who owns it--Murdoch?

theresignedgrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

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