June 2008
Reality?
Whose Reality?
Honk If You Love Violent Criminals
Quick survey question: Do you believe America should do less to fight violent crime?
George W. Bush apparently does. He has proposed slashing funding for the Edward Byrne
Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program, which helps local law enforcement officials
deal with violent crime and serious offenders, to just $200 million next year. To put that
into perspective, the program received $900 million in 2002, the year before Bush invaded
Iraq. That’s a 78% cut in funding over six years.
One thing is for certain, this move should help the GOP lock up the violent criminal vote
in November, a demographic that has traditionally been a solid part of their base.
Bush apparently believes he’s “making America safer” by putting cops on the
street in Iraq and taking them off the street in America. Whose “reality” is
that? Not mine. I guess Bush believes in arresting violent criminals over there so we
won’t have the money to arrest them here.
We Know They Lied, and We Don’t Care!
It’s a new month and that means there’s yet another tell-all book on the shelves
penned by an ex-Bush administration official. Another poor soul who has decided to try and
wash away some of the stench of their former employer by publicly admitting that they all
lied, lied, lied their despicable asses off in order to drag our country into the worst
man-made quagmire of our lifetimes.
This time the author is former White House press secretary Scott McClellan and from what
I’ve heard he’s done a fine job of telling us once again, as so many have done
before him, that the Bush administration was determined to attack Iraq a full year before
the invasion. McClellan also says that Bush and his cohorts were “less than candid
and honest” in their approach to selling their war to the American people.
In response to this scandalous revelation there has been a tremendous outcry from the
American people for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, along with a full
investigation of all the other Project for the New American Century members who so
thoroughly populated the Bush administration and relentlessly pushed for the resumption of
the first Gulf War.
NOT!!!
The reaction from the American people has been one big, collective … (wait for it)
… yawn.
I have to say that this phenomenon distresses me to no end. Seriously, do the vast
majority of American people really not care if the president and his administration
blatantly lie to them? Do they not care about how badly their elected “leaders”
mess up the country? Do they not care about how many innocent people die as a result? Do
they not care about how badly they get screwed, as they are left paying the price for the
administration’s misdeeds?
The overwhelming indifference in the wake of McClellan’s revelations appears to
confirm that in America, the president can basically do anything he (or she) wants –
lie, cheat, steal, violate the law and the Constitution - and the public won’t hold
them accountable for it. It is truly a sad day for Justice in America. At this moment I am
so very, very proud of my fellow citizens. Words simply cannot express it …
Just When You Give Up Hope, There May Be Hope
OK, so just when the heinous acts of the Bush administration and the apathy of the
American people have convinced me that the country is headed down the drain and I should
just sell the house, grab my cat (and guitars), and flee to a tropical island, along comes
Barak Obama.
And, wonder of wonders, people vote for him!!!
Holy election results, Batman, how did this happen?
Alright, American people, what’s the story? Do you want to live in a country that
spreads evil or one that spreads good? One that promotes death and destruction or one that
promotes peace and prosperity? MAKE UP YOUR MIND for crying out loud! This whole
back-and-forth thing is driving me crazy. Is America really schizophrenic, with a Jekyll
and Hyde population, where half the country wants to destroy the American ideal and the
other half wants to preserve it?
I guess that’s the real bottom line, the true reality in America. America is not the
country that many of us wish it were, a land where truth and justice have always prevailed
over evil and bigotry. The nation’s past is plagued by episodes of cruelty and
injustice, like the killing and imprisonment of native North Americans, the ownership of
other human beings as slaves, and the denial of rights to minorities and women. Our
country’s history has been a continual struggle between the forces of good and evil,
and thankfully, on the whole, good has won out a bit more often than evil. If we’re
lucky, this may be one of those times.
Personally, I was very glad to see Obama win the Democratic nomination for president. The
large number of people who supported his candidacy makes me think that perhaps there is
hope for the U.S. after all. The real test, however, will come with the presidential
election in November, so I will withhold any final judgments until then. If Obama does
beat John McCain to become the next president, then I will truly have a reason to be
hopeful for the future of America.
Many political observers around the world had a similar reaction to Obama’s primary
victory. Minoru Morita, a political analyst in Tokyo, said “The primaries showed that
the U.S. is actually the nation we had believed it to be, a place that is open-minded
enough to have a woman or an African American as its president.”
Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, a British foreign policy institute, said
“Obama is the exciting image of what we always hoped America was.”
So what’s it going to be, America? Jekyll or Hyde? Good or evil? I sincerely hope
that you give me good reason to be proud of you this fall. Heck, I’m already proud of
the primary result, let’s just make sure we go all the way and fix as much of the
damage of the Bush administration as we possibly can over the next four (and hopefully
eight) years.
That would be a reality I could wholeheartedly participate in.
May 2008
Time Out!
Before I leave for a glorious week of relaxing in the sun, I have to do a quick overview
of a few recent news items.
Polar Bears vs. The Economy
It’s yet another beautiful day and it looks like George W. Bush is continuing his
mission to destroy as much of America, and as much of the Earth, as humanly possible. We
should all be thankful that his gross incompetence puts a significant limit on the amount
of damage he can do.
Today’s newspaper headline says that the Bush administration has added polar bears to
the list of species they are threatening (I wonder if they have humans on their list
too?), but they also “took steps to ensure the decision would do nothing to slow
greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the dizzying loss of Arctic habitat.”
Yep, “doing nothing,” that’s what the Bush administration is all about.
That, and worshiping the almighty dollar, otherwise known as “the economy,” as
their One and Only True Lord and Savior.
It was reported that when Department of the Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced
the decision to list polar bears as threatened he also “said it would be wrong to
regulate greenhouse gasses under a law designed to protect individual species. Instead, he
said the department would adopt rules to eliminate the potential economic impacts of the
decision …”
Well, I’m sure the polar bears feel a hell of a lot better knowing that the potential
economic impacts of the decision will be eliminated. After all, leading polar bear experts
agree that economic impacts are the main thing the bears worry about. Some less informed
people may think that polar bears primarily care about their habitat and food supply, but
that’s just not the case, it’s economic impacts that concern them the most.
NOT!
Jesus, what can we do about this administration?!?!? It’s amazing the lengths they
will go to in order to justify sitting on their greedy asses and doing nothing while the
planet goes to heck in a handbasket.
How much longer do we have to put up with these bozos?
Headline: “Bush Head Still Firmly in Ass”
OK, the headline actually said “Bush Digs in Heels on War Policy,” but it’s
the same thing.
Bush recently said that the troop surge in Iraq has “renewed and revived the prospect
of success,” and although he failed to define what “success” means in this
context, I think it basically means keeping the whole bloody fiasco chugging along with no
major policy changes until he gets his sorry ass out of office and hands the mess over to
someone else to clean up.
Bush is also pushing Congress to approve another $108 billion to fund his war debacle, and
I say it’s time Bush took over funding it himself. At the local gift shop they have a
sign which says “You break it, you bought it,” and that sounds like a wonderful
idea to me. So, get out your checkbook, George, and start writing the checks. You broke
it, so you pay for it. And everyone who voted for Bush too, get out your checkbooks.
Don’t expect me to pay the price for your stupidity, put your money where your vote
is (or was).
Climate Change – Time to Do Nothing!
President Bush remained true to his reputation as a lame-ass ineffective president by
introducing a strategy for stopping the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions that
“the scientific community says is too little, too late to prevent dangerous global
warming.”
Good old George W. “Too Little Too Late” Bush, could he possibly do any less to
help America? I don’t think so.
Bush called for a slow approach to addressing global warming (I guess doing nothing
qualifies as “slow”) that wouldn’t burden American businesses, saying
"The wrong way is to raise taxes, duplicate mandates or demand sudden and drastic
emissions cuts that have no chance of being realized and every chance of hurting our
economy. The right way is to set realistic goals for reducing emissions consistent with
advances in technology, while increasing our energy security and ensuring our economy can
continue to prosper and grow."
Bush then fell to his knees and worshipped The Almighty Economy for a few minutes before
being whisked off to give “private massages” to oil company executives.
Remember, according to George Bush, if it might hurt The Economy we can’t do it. We
could stop global warming from turning our planet into an unbearable sauna and causing
trillions of dollars in damage, but if it might hurt THE ECONOMY, then by God, DON’T
DO IT!!!
I don’t care how many cities are destroyed or how many people are killed, just
DON’T HURT THE ECONOMY!!!!! Women and children may die by the millions but for
God’s sake, SAVE THE ECONOMY!!!!
The FDA, Accountability, and Your Right to Have Arms
It’s good to know that as we go about our daily lives the Bush administration is
always hard at work, quietly carrying out their relentless assault on our civil rights.
The administration’s latest attack involves your right to sue drug companies if you
are harmed by an FDA approved drug. It all started when a musician named Diana Levine lost
her arm due to a gangrene infection after she was inappropriately injected with a drug
made by Wyeth pharmaceuticals. Levine won a lawsuit against Wyeth, but now the Bush
administration has joined with Wyeth to challenge the win in the Supreme Court.
The Bush administration wants to take away your right to sue a drug company if you are
harmed by a drug that was FDA approved. The administration claims that the FDA should
provide the final word on a drug’s safety and merit, a word that they don’t want
you to have the right to challenge.
Apparently the Bush administration doesn’t care that last year the FDA’s own
science advisory board said that the FDA was “so underfunded and understaffed that
it’s putting U.S. consumers at risk in terms of food and drug safety.” The
administration also doesn’t seem to care that the Government Accountability Office
and the Institute of Medicine both came to the same conclusion.
The Bush administration also doesn’t seem concerned by the fact that drug companies
routinely pay off the FDA to approve new drugs as quickly as possible. Yes, the FDA
actually collects fees from drug companies in exchange for promising faster drug
approvals. These payments account for nearly half of the $680 million a year that the FDA
spends on new drug reviews.
And when a dangerous drug slips quietly through this cozy little payoff system, gets
rushed to market with inadequate testing and causes you permanent medical harm (or even
death), the Bush administration wants to take away your ability to hold anyone responsible
for it.
Nice bunch of bastards, aren’t they? Makes you proud to pay your taxes, doesn’t
it?
It occurs to me that this case sums up much of the last 7+ years of the Bush
administration. The organization that is supposed to be working for and protecting the
American people is ineffective, they are taking payoffs from the big companies that
they’re supposed to be protecting Americans from, and when people get hurt or die as
a result, they don’t want to be held accountable for their actions.
We’ve certainly seen that movie over and over again all throughout the history of
this administration.
The Supreme Court case is scheduled to be heard in October, so stay tuned for more on it.
And now I’m off for a week of fun in the sun in Jamaica!!!
Bye for now!
April 2008
Onward
Into The Abyss
Yes, I must be in one of my moods. If there’s a reason, it must be because I’ve
been reading about Albert Einstein recently, and also about some of the latest theories on
the nature of the universe and this mysterious thing enveloping us that we call
“reality.”
It still boggles my mind that in the early 1900’s Einstein worked his day job at the
Swiss patent office and spent his evenings and weekends honing his revolutionary ideas
about the universe that we now know as the theories of special relativity and general
relativity. To his coworkers he probably seemed like just another average (or perhaps
above-average) person, but little did they know that his mind was at work crafting a new
model for the nature of our reality that was so different and so radical that even today,
generations later, the vast majority of people do not grasp its significance. It makes me
wonder what other minds are at work today, carefully crafting the next breakthrough, the
next radical paradigm shift, the next flash of insight that will bring about a quantum
jump in our understanding of all that surrounds us.
It might even be someone you know. Oh, if only I had more time. I need to wrap my head
around quantum loop gravity … let me know if you’ve got it down. I’m pretty
comfortable with string theory (and its extensions, like M theory) at this point, and
concepts like the zero point energy of space as a quantum value and the implications that
has on an ever-expanding universe (is anyone up for an infinite series of Big Bangs as the
minimum energy density of “space” is reduced, dropping from one quantum value to
the next, starting the “universe” over and over again with new particles, new
forces, and new laws of physics? and has anyone made the connection that if this is in
fact the case, then there is no need to invoke “inflation” immediately after the
Big Bang to explain how the universe supposedly expanded faster than the speed of light?).
Yes, that is one heck of a run-on sentence, with more commas and parenthesis than any man
has a right to use at one time, but my point remains, if the zero point energy of space
does drop in quantum steps as space expands, it radically changes the playing field that
is our universe, does it not?
What I don’t have a good grip on is how that would change the pattern of the
background radiation that permeates all of space. The temperature of that radiation has
been measured to within millionths of a degree and it seems to agree with the post-Big
Bang inflation theory, but if there has been a series of zero point energy drops as space
expanded, and each one produced a completely new universe with different fundamental
forces, different particles, and different laws of physics, how could we ever predict what
the resulting background radiation “should” look like for the one universe (out
of potentially trillions?) that we just happen to be observing? How could we even predict
what form it might take for any given universe when that universe would be comprised of
energies and forces and particles that are completely foreign to anything that we could
ever imagine?
And of course there’s the problem of how the energy of space got so high in the first
place, and what happens when it finally drops to its lowest possible level. Does the
entire universe just slowly meld into one big mushy blob of Bose-Einstein condensate as
the mean temperature drops to absolute zero, forming a vast energy field “soup”
where all the atoms lose their separate identities and blend together?
While we’re pondering the nature of the universe we shouldn’t forget about the
theory of multiple universes existing as multidimensional “branes” (short for
membranes) in some sort of many-dimensional “bulk,” accidentally bumping into
each other every trillion years or so and causing a radical breakdown in the forces that
keep the branes stable, thus triggering what we humans have become fond of calling a Big
Bang … thereby starting the whole cycle over again … and again … and again
… and again.
And oh the bizarre poetry of it all. To think that in this cycle a phenomenon called
“life” emerged on at least one of the trillions of planets orbiting billions of
stars, evolving to the point of finally understanding the nature of the universe that
surrounds it, only to have the slate wiped completely and utterly clean, with all
knowledge gained by every thing that ever lived gone, obliterated, with no
“past,” no history, as if it never even existed.
I warned you, read more if you dare …
And to think that when I sat down at the computer I was going to write about politics. I
guess I got a bit sidetracked? I’ll have to come back to that subject later.
If you’d like to read an excellent book that gives a good overview of quantum physics
and relativity, and a thorough explanation of string theory, I recommend “The Elegant
Universe” by Brian Greene. It will no doubt expand your view of reality.
January 2008
Peeping
Dick, Sneaking Wolf
Our illustrious VP, Dick “Peeping Tom” Cheney, has been at it again, arguing for
the right to listen in on the phone calls and read the emails of US citizens without a
warrant. Of course this is a direct violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) which requires a warrant for wiretaps when one of the parties involved in the
communication resides in the United States, but Cheney is not the kind of guy to let the
law get in his way.
Cheney made his plea to invade your privacy while speaking to the Heritage Foundation, an
organization that is described as a conservative think tank. Now, I’m probably not
the only one to say that “conservative think tank” is an obvious oxymoron. Based
on what I’ve seen of the current conservative “leadership” it’s
apparent that there’s not a whole lot of thinking going on in that bunch.
Cheney made his plea because the Protect America Act (PAA), which temporarily amended FISA
to allow wiretaps without a warrant, is due to expire February 1. The Protect America Act
allows warrantless wiretapping by the NSA provided 1) the target of surveillance is a
foreign intelligence target located outside the US, and 2) the FISA Court is notified
within 72 hours of NSA wiretap authorization.
By the way, don’t you just love the names these guys come up with when they’re
trying to do something sneaky and circumvent the law? The “Protect America Act,”
who can argue with that? Who can say they don’t want to protect America? They might
as well call it the Kittens and Ice Cream Act. You’ll never see the “Spying on
US Citizens Without a Warrant Act,” even though that’s what it’s all about.
Now, who wants some more ice cream and a cute little kitten?
Cheney not only wants to make the PAA (Peeping on Americans Act?) permanent, he wants to
expand it to grant immunity from lawsuits to phone companies and other communications
service providers who help the government eavesdrop on US citizens. My concern with this
is that it would set a precedent that could very easily be abused in the hands of people
like Cheney and Bush. Imagine crooked leaders (that shouldn’t be hard to do)
approaching a private company and requesting their help in doing something of questionable
legality. If the company cooperates in the shady dealings they are promised immunity from
lawsuits. If they refuse to cooperate, it’s not hard to image how vindictive
politicians could retaliate against them. Do we really want to start down that path? And
do we really need to?
Speaking of Cheney, with all of his ongoing heart problems he must have been thrilled to
hear that scientists have successfully grown a working rat heart in the laboratory (for
full article see http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-01-13-ratheart_N.htm).
Thanks to this medical breakthrough, if he should ever need a transplant, he now
won’t have to worry about his furry little body rejecting a human heart.
Sorry … that’s just plain mean, but I couldn’t resist. As soon as I saw the
article about the rat heart I wondered if Cheney was funding the research. Oh, I can
sometimes be cruel. So very, very cruel.
Finally, on to that Wolf (owitz) in the hen house info that I promised.
You should remember Paul Wolfowitz, the former US Deputy Secretary of Defense in
Bush’s administration. As a die-hard neoconservative (and member of the Project for
the New American Century) he was one of the most vocal proponents of invading Iraq and
toppling the government of Saddam Hussein. In 1998 Wolfowitz even testified before
Congress that he disagreed with the decision to end the 1991 Persian Gulf War with a cease
fire instead of continuing into Baghdad and removing Saddam from power. When George W.
Bush was appointed president by the Supreme Court in 2000 Wolfowitz was one of several
neocons in the administration that pushed Bush to invade Iraq and finish the 1991 Gulf War
the way they thought it should have been finished.
After leaving his Deputy Secretary position Wolfowitz was appointed head of the World Bank
where he served for two years, and then seemingly disappeared from the public eye. But not
for long. Now the Big Bad Wolfowitz is on the prowl again and he’s managed to sneak
his way back into the Bush administration, in a capacity that causes the Brain to wonder
just what is up at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
In a move that seems to have gathered little media attention (and I’m sure the Bush
administration wanted it that way) Wolfowitz is back at the State Department, heading what
the Associated Press described as “a high-level advisory panel on arms control and
disarmament.”
As reported by the Associated Press:
Former World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz will head a high-level advisory panel on
arms control and disarmament, the State Department said Thursday.
The move by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice marks a return to government for
Wolfowitz, a conservative with close ties to the White House. As deputy defense secretary
under President Bush, he was a major architect of the Iraq war.
Wolfowitz will become chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, which reports
to the secretary of state. The panel is charged with supplying independent advice on arms
control, disarmament, nonproliferation and related subjects.
It seems that Wolfowitz’s career at
the World Bank didn’t work out so well. The Associated Press summed it up rather
nicely:
Wolfowitz was replaced as World Bank chief last June after a stormy two-year
tenure. His leadership was undermined by a furor over a hefty compensation package he
arranged in 2005 for a bank employee who was also his girlfriend.
Controversy over job arrangements for his companion, Shaha Riza, put the World Bank's
staff of 10,000 worldwide in revolt, tarnished the bank's reputation and strained
relations with other countries, especially Europeans, who led the charge for Wolfowitz's
ouster.
Wolfowitz was essentially forced to step down after a special panel found that he broke
bank rules. He was replaced by Robert Zoellick, who had been Rice's No. 2 at the State
Department and the administration's top trade envoy.
The Brain finds it very intriguing that
Wolfowitz has been put in charge of supplying the State Department with advice on
“arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation and related subjects.”
You may remember when another diehard neocon (and fellow Project for the New American
Century member), John Bolton, was appointed US Ambassador to the United Nations by George
Bush. Unable to gather enough support in Congress for Bolton’s nomination, Bush used
a recess appointment to put Bolton into the UN Ambassador position.
During his time at the UN, Bolton (representing the wishes of the Bush administration)
blocked UN initiatives aimed at curbing the illegal international trade in weapons. You
may want to read that again and pause for a second to let it soak in.
Specifically, the UN efforts were designed to crack down on the illegal trade in
“small arms,” which include “revolvers, rifles, self-loading pistols,
sub-machine guns, light machine guns, portable anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, and
portable missile launchers.”
At the very time that US troops were engaged in bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
fighting insurgents who were frequently armed with weapons that were illegally purchased
on the international black market, John Bolton and the Bush administration were opposing
UN attempts to keep those weapons out of our enemy’s hands.
Again, let that soak in for a second.
It was reported that Bolton told the UN that the US would reject “any proposal to
prohibit the ownership of arms intended for military purposes by private
individuals.” The insurgents in Iraq who are killing our troops are “private
individuals” and they’re shooting our soldiers with “arms intended for
military purposes,” yet John Bolton (carrying out the wishes of the Bush
administration) blocked UN efforts to crack down on the illegal international trade of
those weapons.
I have to say, even with all I know about the despicable things the Bush administration
has done, this one still stuns me. In my book, helping to ensure an ample supply of arms
for our enemies is nothing less than treason, and anyone who engages in it should be
charged and put on trial. How many of our soldiers have died because of a weapon that
George Bush and John Bolton helped to put in the enemy’s hands?
All of this ties back to Wolfowitz because he and Bolton are skunks of the same stripe,
and just as smelly. Knowing how Bush/Bolton opposed UN arms control efforts, I have to
wonder what Wolfowitz’s agenda will be as he provides the State Department with
“independent advice on arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation.”
Of course, to call Wolfowitz’s advice “independent” is a joke. He’s so
in bed with the Bush administration they should be married. As “a major architect of
the Iraq war” Wolfowitz will be anything but independent, he will continue to push
the neoconservative “Bush doctrine” to the end. What I’m curious to see is
whether he will follow in Bolton’s footsteps and continue the Bush policy of opposing
efforts to curb the sale of illegal weapons.
This is one appointment that should be watched carefully. If there is any consolation in
this development it is that with the election approaching this fall, time will limit the
amount of potential damage that Wolfowitz can do. We can only hope that a new
administration will bring with it a sane arms control policy, one that will work to keep
weapons out of the hands of our enemies and help to prevent the deaths of our troops and
millions of innocent civilians around the world.
In
Our Time of Dying
George Bush and his crooked cronies have looked more like grim reapers than great leaders
the past several weeks. (But have they ever looked like great leaders? I don’t think
so.) Apparently they have a new economic stimulus plan that involves kick-starting the
coffin industry. So who are the Bush administration’s latest victims? Let’s run
down the list.
Californians
It all started when the EPA denied California’s attempt to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from vehicles. The denial marked the first time in the 40-year history of the
Clean Air Act that the EPA has refused California’s request to enact emissions
standards that are tougher than federal standards. In response California has sued the
federal government in an attempt to defend the state’s right to protect the health
and welfare of its residents.
Shortly thereafter, Stanford University
released the results of a study which for the first time shows direct links between
increased carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and human deaths. A MediaNews article about the
study stated that “hundreds more people in the United States will die each year from
air pollution as temperatures increase from carbon dioxide,” and noted “the
study also shows that the deadly effects of carbon dioxide intensify in areas such as many
major California cities that already suffer from poor air quality. … California is
home to seven of the 10 worst metropolitan areas for ozone pollution in the United States
-- Los Angeles, Fresno, Bakersfield, Visalia, Merced, Sacramento and Hanford -- according
to the American Lung Association.”
The research indicates that increased CO2
levels will lead to around 1,000 more US air pollution deaths annually, with about 30
percent of those deaths occurring in California. Globally the increased CO2 could
translate into 21,000 additional deaths per year.
Iraqis
The bodies have also continued to pile up as a result of the Great Neoconservative Reign
of Delusion and Terror, otherwise know as the Iraq war, otherwise know (in the minds
neocon Kool-Aid chuggers Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al) as The First Gulf War
Continued. A new study conducted by the World Health Organization and the Iraqi Government
estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years after Bush’s
invasion and occupation of the country.
Note that this number is just for the
first three years of Bush’s debacle in the desert and it only includes deaths from
violence. It does not include deaths from lack of medical care that resulted from
destroyed hospitals, deaths from lack of clean water, deaths from lack of adequate food,
or deaths from living in unsanitary conditions that resulted from damaged or destroyed
infrastructure. All of these problems are direct results of the invasion and subsequent
war, and in the few estimates that I’ve seen they have claimed just as many lives as
violence. This would result in what I believe to be a conservative estimate of over
300,000 Iraqi deaths to date.
Poor Children
America’s poor children also failed to escape Bush’s scythe has he continued his
seemingly unending march of death and destruction. Bush vetoed Congressional legislation
that would have expanded the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to
provide insurance coverage for an additional 3.4 million poor American children.
Democrats in Congress tried to gather
enough votes to overturn Bush’s veto, but ultimately were unable to do so.
Republicans reportedly objected to raising cigarette taxes to pay for the expansion of the
program. Hey, that makes perfect sense to me. I’m sure Republicans just want to keep
cigarettes cheap so that low-income parents can continue smoking just as many cigarettes
as always around their children, which will lead to more poor children with respiratory
illnesses, which will then result in more premature deaths of those children whose parents
can’t afford health insurance for them.
But thanks to Republicans those
kids’ parents will still be able to afford cigarettes! And that’s what really
matters, isn’t it? When your kid suffers from chronic emphysema you need a smoke to
steady your nerves, and Republicans understand that. They also understand that the tobacco
industry has given them millions of dollars. The poor kids? Those little bastards
haven’t contributed a single cent to any Republican campaign coffer, so let ‘em
cough. In George Bush’s America you either fill the coffer, or you go from coughing
to coffin, it’s that simple.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino
attempted to defend Bush’s callous veto, saying “Ultimately our goal should be
to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage.” Unfortunately the
only thing that many of these children will be covered by is dirt, when they’re six
feet under ground.
Let’s summarize what we’ve
learned from all of this:
Democratic vision: Less smoking, less
childhood illness and death.
Republican vision: More smoking, more childhood illness and death.
Take your pick, America.
The cost of expanding SCHIP to cover an
additional 3.4 million low-income children would be $2 billion a year, a price that would
be covered by the additional tax on cigarettes. I can’t help but point out that this
expansion was opposed by the same Congressional Republicans and the same president who
gladly handed oil companies $13.5 billion in tax breaks at a time when those companies
were reporting record profits.
Question: Who needs a few billon dollars
more?
Democrats: Poor children without medical coverage.
Republicans: Rich oil company executives.
Heck, they should just cut out all the
intermediate BS and set up the electronic voting machines so that whenever you push the
button to vote for a Republican you fry a poor kid somewhere. Just get it out of the way
right up front so we don’t have to waste time with all the writing of bills and
vetoes and rewriting of bills and attempts to override vetoes and on and on and on.
Whales
Why should Bush limit his carnival of carnage to just land-dwellers? In defiance of
federal law, California state law, and a federal court injunction, Bush has signed an
exemption for the US Navy which would allow them to go forward with the use of
high-powered sonar in training exercises off the California coast.
As reported by Wired magazine:
With the official all-clear from President Bush, the U.S. Navy began underwater
sonar training off the San Diego coast this week, despite its own estimates showing that
hundreds or thousands of whales will be harmed by the high-frequency pings being pumped
into the Pacific.
The training comes even though a federal lawsuit filed by the California Coastal
Commission and environmental groups last month won severe restrictions on the Navy's use
of sonar off the California coast under the Coastal Zone Management Act. Last week, Bush
issued a memorandum exempting the Navy from the environmental law used to win the ruling.
The legality of Bush's action remains to be tested.
“This is unacceptable and we have filed a new brief to challenge the
waiver,” says David Hinerfeld, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council in
Los Angeles. “It is beyond dispute that sonar kills whales -- the court quoted the
Navy's own estimates of damage that this testing will affect the hearing of 8,000 whales
and permanently injure 450.”
Marine scientists say the loud
mid-frequency active sonar causes damage to marine mammal ears and brains, and can lead to
their deaths. Why would Bush want to cause brain damage to whales and other marine
mammals? He must think it would be easier to get them to vote Republican if they were a
few fish short of a full school.
Trees and Wildlife
Back on dry land Bush has set his sights on his next victim, America’s forests and
the wildlife that depend on them for survival. As reported by the Washington Post:
Millions of acres of the country's largest national forest would be open for
logging and other development under a Bush administration forest management plan released
Friday, a move critics said will hurt wildlife and destroy pristine lands.
Under the plan, about 2.4 million acres of roadless areas within Alaska's 17
million-acre Tongass National Forest could be used for logging and building roads, critics
said. They described the plan, and similar efforts in Idaho and Colorado, as an attempt by
the Bush administration to help the timber industry by circumventing federal court rulings
protecting roadless areas.
I can see why Bush wouldn’t care if
millions of trees died, after all they have a reputation for leaning in the liberal
direction, being steadfast supporters of solar energy and carbon sequestration. He just
can’t sit by and let the “tree agenda” move forward unchallenged.
Wow, I’ve covered a lot and I still
haven’t gotten to Dick Cheney’s peeping tom fetish or the Wolf (owitz) who snuck
back into the administration when no one was looking. I guess those will just have to wait
for another posting! Check back later!
To Bill's Blog 2007. |
