A point for Conscience

Scotty McClellan finds his soul... about 6 years too late.

MSNBC

EXCERPT
McClellan admits to letting himself be deceived about the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, which resulted in his relentless pounding by the White House press corps over the activities of Rove and of Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the matter.

"I could feel something fall out of me into the abyss as each reporter took a turn whacking me," he writes of the withering criticism he received as the story played out. "It was my reputation crumbling away, bit by bit."

The truth will reveal itself, more and more, as Bush's last days in office expire. These cunts can't lie for this dirty son of a bitch forever, and they WON'T.

It's a little fucking late, but better late than never for the millions of dumbass Americans who have been hanging on every one of Bush's lies.

They've been played for fools, and our country is suffering for it.

Damn every one of the stupid bastards who have supported this vile piece of shit for the past eight years.

Damn them all to hell.

Friends, Liberals, Countrymen

Followers of both sides of the the Democratic Civil War:

Whether you like Clinton or Obama- (or Kucinich, Edwards, Richardson, Gravel for that matter)

This is a public service reminder -

This IS our REAL (the really real) Enemy: REPUBLICANS

Try to keep this in mind, while you pimp (oops did I say pimp?) your favorite candidate

This is how Republican minds work:



This is their idea of a great leader:





They support these troops:



Not These troops...



They believe that Sept.11 is an accessory, not an atrocity



Their idea of "fair and balanced" is waaaayyyy off




Even their women don't want women to be able to vote



And here's the Republican platform. They support a whole lot of this:
Racism
Sexism
Hate
Torture
Republican fascism
Never Ending War
Xenophobia
Class War
Ancient Fundamentalist Dogma
Hypocritical Sex criminals
Ignorance

So whoever you vote for in 2008, just make sure it's not THIS Guy:


And things will be okay. Or at least you won't be entertaining hopes for the Rapture or fears of the Apocalypse on a daily basis...

Remember, back in 2000, some liberals were saying that Gore was as bad as Bush. I think, well I certainly HOPE, that we have learned our lesson. They may not be Progressive messiahs, but Obama or Clinton are light years ahead of the competition.

UPDATE: Dcup gave me some link love at American Street - Give the site a visit-
UPDATE2: Hi to all my friends visiting from C&L and Mike's Blog Round up!

Bloggers Selling out

Note to all my fellow Blog-Patriots, fighting the good fight and struggling to take our country back:

If Your Blog is sportin' Rush Limbaugh ads, then YOU are part of the fucking problem.

If you are selling hate speech, unknowingly or not, as pop-ups or ads on your sidebar, then You are a two bit hypocrite.

I am tired of seeing ads pimping Ann Coulter's email on top of supposedly Progressive blogs. Is the money from these ads trickling into your credit card worth it If one more American becomes indoctrinated with her vile spew as a result of an ad on your blog?

I don't think so.

I know you can't control what ads you are helping sell- but it doesn't matter. If you CANNOT control which crap YOU are helping to sell, then stop allowing your blog to be used.

I can't take a post about the damage torture does to our own troops seriously when your blog is helping to push the Pro-Torture dialogue.

If even Progressive bloggers can't keep their damn hands out of the corporate cookie jar for fucking pennies, how can you dare demand the same of our main stream media pundits?

Please, take down ads on your blog. I'm probably a lot poorer than most of the damn bloggers out there, but you'll never see an ad on this blog, as long as I can help it!

And for those of you who are on the same page as me- Great- Help spread the word and Boycott the bloggers that are helping keep Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the rest of those slimy assholes marketed all over the damn internet!

Don't help sell hate. If you demand a better democracy, a better life and a better world- you've got to start at home. Don't be a hypocrite.

ONE DOWN

War Profiteer Arrested

A thousand failures.

The news of American government is often bleak and full of incompetence. Failures abound all around us, even as our corporate sponsored media puts happy faces on corpses.

American Government in ... "action".

It's a story of U.S. government officials letting people die, and refusing to lift a finger as the situation spirals downward because they are too worried about their own asses. It's a familiar tale these days.

This story is yet another microcosm of how inept our government has become. Anyone who is in charge is frozen in fear for themselves. Time and time again, they fail to perform their duties which rolls downhill in a domino effect of disaster. Our entire country is wallowing in selfish, cover-your-own-ass thinking that destroys Everything that America is supposed to be based on.
Everywhere you look there is failure after failure in this government's policies. The men who SHOULD be most outspoken about these failures are the men who have failed. And when they fail to acknowledge their failures - they fail to acknowledge a need to correct the many mistakes they have made. Nothing can be learned in their constant mental state of denial.

Katrina. Iraq. Global Warming. Terrorism. The major mistakes that are common knowledge to Americans, but yet still those who NEED to be held accountable have not been. Still they pass the buck and blame everyone but themselves.

Then there are: Work related Hazards. Immigration/Border control issues. Crime. Healthcare, housing, and pyschological care for our veterans. Living wages and healthcare for our poverty stricken citizenry, whose numbers increase every day. These "small" issues that affect the very heart of our nation in thousands of ways.

It starts with every last one of us- We are the stewards of our own future. How our country's destiny may wax and wane is in our own hands. Are the people of America up to the task?

This is not just some politician's job. It's not "out of my hands". No- it definitely IS NOT! When you surrender your rights like that you not only surrender yourselves- but your weaken all of your countrymen and women.

Pull up your sleeves and work for the common good and the betterment of America. That is Exactly how we can save our country from threats both without and within.

Again, I ask - I beseech you all to dig deep and ask YOURSELF:
"Am I going to sit here and do nothing or am I going to make a difference?"

Our Future is a shared one. Do your part.

While the rich cavort, regular Americans suffer

Only a few more days until the elections. If you have already voted, Great! I did the early voting myself. If you still haven't- make sure you vote for the candidates that have America's interests at heart, and not their own party's. There are many looming problems in the United States today, but what I feel is the largest is the way the country is being splintered into the haves and have-nots. This is especially disturbing in a time when we have 140,000 troops occupying a foreign, hostile country.

Middle and Lower class Americans have done their part to fight terrorism. They have offered up themselves and their children to the military to protect our country. While the rich and superrich have benefited by stock shopping the military industrial complex and milking the Republican party's penchant for supporting corporations over small and independent American businesses, regular Americans and their children are dying and being wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our health care is slashed, our 401ks are dashed against the rocks of a CEOs multimillion dollar bonuses, and our cities' crime rates soar as our police forces are depleted by the National Guard's increasing tours in Iraq.

In the industry I work in, 90% of the people I speak to on a daily basis are in the top 5% of affluent West Texans. They are the superrich of Lubbock. They may not compare to the bigwigs in Dallas, New York, etc= but they have more money, much more money than they know what to do with. Their investments make money hand over fist, and they only lose money in the riskiest of ventures. By and large, these people take every tax advantage possible, they have shelters and advisors like me and others, who they pay exorbitant amounts just to avoid paying taxes. And their greed only makes them hungry for more, in most cases.

They speak of the Republican party with an almost reverential tone. They understand exactly what the Bush administration has done for them - even as they dismiss claims of what the Bush administration has done to everyone else in America as liberal poppycock and socialist drivel. As long as they are making money, to hell with the Republic, and everyone else who was too stupid to have been born a millionaire.

Ben Stein writes a great piece about this entitled You're Rich. Terrific. Now Pay up

He addresses the facts that while taxes for the rich and superrich are lower than they have been in 60 years, our military dies for pennies while our middle class struggles to merely stay afloat. The men who run the country are cavorting in carefree fashion while our country rots from within. It is time, for the rich to ask themselves- what they can do to help our country in a time of war. He writes of a "vision" he had while surrounded by the superrich, enjoying their excess, and ignoring the rest of the country's maladies...

EXCERPT
Suddenly, as the men happily walked away from me, I had a vision. Here we all are under the gorgeous crystal dome of prosperity, drinking, making money, eating swordfish, changing money at the temple, showing off ourselves to others, bragging — and all of it, every bit of it, is made possible by the men and women who wear the uniform.

Every bit of it is done under the protection of the Marines, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Coast Guard, serving and offering up their lives for pennies. And we're also under the protection of the police and the firefighters and the F.B.I., who offer up their lives for nothing compared with what others make trading money on computer screens.

Something flashed into my mind — something that my late father used to say, quoting loosely from the economist Henry C. Simons, a founder of the Chicago School of economics: that it is "unlovely" to see the extremes of wealth and nonwealth that are evident in contemporary America.

We may be able to live with it. Some of us may even be able to prosper amid it. But it's not pretty. The rich should simply not be that much richer than everyone else — especially those whose lives protect them from terrorism.

(...)

The real problem is the difference between the rich — (...) and the poor. It is up to the government to redress this extraordinary difference in incomes of the rich and the nonrich, even at the margins.

What Congress can do, and should do, is address the stunning underpayment of military men and women and the staggering budget deficits that will be a burden on our posterity for decades, by raising the taxes on the rich. It's fine that there are rich people. It's even fine that there are superrich people.

But if they are superrich, they derive special benefits from life in the United States that the nonrich don't. For one thing, they can make the money in a safe environment, which is not true for the rich in many countries. It is just common decency that they should pay much higher income taxes than they do. Taxes for the rich are lower than they have been since at least World War II — that is to say, in 60 years.

This makes no sense in a world at war, in a nation with so many unmet social needs, in a nation with so many people without health care, in a nation running immense and endless deficits.

America is becoming a nation of many rich people. I recently read that there were close to 10 million millionaire households. I read that there were hundreds of thousands who made more than $1 million a year. Good for them.

But it's unlovely for them to pay as little tax as they now pay. The real problem in this country is only temporarily about oil. That will right itself, or we'll get used to it and adjust.
The real problem is saving a nation that is beset by terrorism, and we cannot do that unless we feel that we are all in the same boat, pulling at the oars together. That includes the rich.
Whatever rationale there may have been in 2001 for lowering their taxes is long gone. It's time for them — us, because it includes me — to pay their (our) share.
It's not about oil. It's about fairness.