Bailout Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, thanks George

It is looking more and more like the Chicago school free market economic policies of Milton Friedman are once again costing the Unites States it’s once cherished market dominance. The policies of the Republican Neo-Con administrations are on a one way ticket to destroy the American dream and the poor people who are not politically connected.

Unless you were born into or inherited enough money to weather the current economic storm you have been feeling the effects of Mr. Friedman and his cronies in the last few months. Billy Kristol of course could care less Friedman is still his idol as well as with the other moneyed and politically connected of his sect.

Friedman believed in almost no government intervention or regulation and that if left to it’s own means the market would correct for any irregularities. As it was posited by Friedman the market had it’s own equilibrium and would adjust and self correct as needed. As history has now shown again this is a severely myopic view with devastating consequences for the public at large.

While the government is only looking at a $300 billion dollar bailout or excuse me extension of credit which the American taxpayer is on the hook for a realistic loss of $30 billion with Fannie and Freddie, the free market does not seem to be correcting itself.

Lax banking standards coupled with lax investment house oversight are digging a hole deeper and deeper for the American taxpayer while the wealthy of this country are still making a killing. Even today with the financial mess that has been created the wealthy investment and banking houses are fighting any government oversight changes to protect the American populace.

The aggressive derivatives and mortgage markets coupled with the greed of banking executives hell bent on destroying the financial lives of it’s customers has brought us to this economic realization. The mortgage brokerages knew that the financial history of their client did not bode well yet they sold them into ARM hell and are now asking for bailouts from the government. Maybe now someone might think that the government should be a little more involved in regulating various industries.

Banks, investment houses and our rapidly deteriorating airline industry, wow this deregulation thing doesn’t seem to have worked out like we were told it would. But not to worry the after all the money has been bleed dry the government will bailout the banks after they destroyed hundreds of thousands of Americans of whatever dreams they may have had.

Yes it does cost money for the government to operate and sometimes they are not the most efficient entity to be found. But at least they will be consistent with their oversight and that is sorely needed right now and into the future. Deregulation was not the best of ideas and re-regulation is the pill we must take to correct for the wild west attitude now in place in the American economic system. The far right will cry no more taxes and Rush Limbaugh will crumble up his papers and yell into his microphone with his daily diatribe.

Well just remember that while we are in a war estimated to cost into the Trillion’s of dollars our President gave tax breaks to the ultra rich even as the dollar declined in value which has contributed to our current state of affairs.

There is little if any regulation in investment houses and mortgage companies with their get rich quick schemes that have sold us down the river for the foreseeable future.

I for one do not enjoy paying taxes either and would prefer the government wasn’t on my back however I will take the financial hit now rather than pay the price we are going to be paying even after I am gone. Rather than just thinking about yourself and screw the rest like the Neo-Con Republican mindset, why not look just a little further ahead and realize the government has to be engaged so that all Americans have a shot at the American Dream.

No you can’t put all of the blame on our current inept disengaged President it took some time to straighten out the lack of policy of the Reagan administration remember the S&L crisis when the leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers were occuring right under his nose and he did nothing.

Well we finally got on the right track with Clinton in office who besides having some sexual endeavors in office was a great President.

Then came George who didn’t really get the government thing and he just did what his advisers told him to, well those advisers were from the Chicago school and look where we are now. Not to mention we did add fuel to the fire with a trumped up war and our illegal occupation of a couple of foreign nations.

So now the time has come for a change and hopefully we will not re-elect another Bush term under the guise of John McCain I for one don’t think this country can take four more years of failed policies.

So cry over your spilt milk eat some crow and digest some taxes so the dreaded government can step in and try to straighten out this mess again thanks to the Chicago school principles which have failed us again. It might not be what you wanted but at least the American public will get a fair shake even those without moneyed pasts and politically connected pasts.

So ask yourself do you care about your children and their future or do you only care about what is best for you and the rest of the nation be damned.

George W Bush and his homegrown Terrorists here and abroad

Diya Muhammad Hussein while not related to the disposed dictator of Iraq does have a common belief which is held by many of his countrymen and that is his desire to rid his country of the American occupiers.

While most sixteen year old children would be interested in school studies and their growing attraction to the opposite sex and the latest video games the teenagers of Iraq have much more dire thoughts on their minds.

After many years of American occupation and death and despair always at the door, hatred for the imperialists who occupy the land is foremost on their minds. After the many thousands of deaths in the quagmire of American design it is only logical that the youth of such a country would be more than willing to kill or be killed to put and end to the occupation.

The United States’ new backyard

When the US decided that its backyard would in future be a greater Middle East – from Pakistan to Morocco – it imagined that it could rearrange the region to suit itself. The results have been disastrous and will be long-lasting

By Alain Gresh

Donny’s Crazy tales to Protect His Wacky Bosses Back!

We all have friends who will take the heat for us while our other coworkers or neighborhood friends will cut and run and leave us to the wolves so they might have their dinner snack.

Donald Rumsfeld the former Defense Secretary for the Bush administration is one who would dig in and attack anyone who had the audacity to question any of George’s crazy wacky ideas.

As King George wants to wrestle control of the Middle East so that he can have access to all that oil and build spiffy military bases Donny Rumsfeld always came to his defense. In so far as George wanting to be the only hegemonic power in the region and topple the country of Iran as he is destroying Iraq and Afghanistan again Donny would lend his helping hand.

In what are called snowflakes, (ironic as both George and Donald are rather flaky in my opinion) good ole boy Don beat whatever drum he needed to keep Americans in the dark about foreign affairs. He wrote of the need to keep on elevating the terror threat level and that all government officials should try to link Iraq and Iran together to keep the public under the thumb of George’s wild ideas for global domination.

You see the former defense secretary hates the media especially when they try to tell the average American citizen the truth. Donald wants it to be his way and vision, or the highway for any other diverging view, even if the opposing view is valid and shared by the ordinary people in the United States and Europe. The former secretary didn’t like views that differed from his and via his propaganda machine he would attempt to reform public opinion, no matter that the public disagreed.

So on average Mr. Rumsfeld would write about 20 to 60 snowflakes a day, no matter that these destroyed relations with his fellow cabinet members, his thoughts must become part of the lexicon and quite possibly shape future policy for the United States.

During the year in 2004 Rummy was worried that the American public was waking up to the fact that the Iraqi conflict had been a mistake. He marshaled his minions to attack the pessimistic reports from the media, how dare they try to tell anyone the truth. Different standards just needed to be applied to turn around the American public and he wrote this missive, “They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory.”

We can clearly see today that the Sacrifice angle isn’t working anymore, but Donald kept up the delusion telling his staff to bring up various regional conflicts and to attempt to imbed the terrorist cry into our subconscious so that we would rally behind George and his far fetched ideas all logic be damned.

His underlings were also called to rally around Donny as many former United States generals who had been boots on the ground robots for him began to call for him to resign as they now questioned his power to reign supreme. No matter that these generals has served in Iraq and realized that the entire war had been a huge mistake Donald went on the offensive in the month of April in 2006 as they had the audacity to question his and King George’s wacky ambitions.

Donald wanted and needed a team to assist him in his quest and they needed to “go out and push people back, rather than simply defending” Iraq policy and strategy. “I am always on the defense. They say I do it well, but you can’t win on the defense,” he wrote. “We can’t just keep taking hits.”

He also lamented, “It is going to be a long war,” he wrote. “Iraq is only one battleground.” You see in Donny’s view Iraq and Iran are the same he even floated the idea of renaming the –war on terrorism- as a – Worldwide War on Insurgency. In his view no other nation in the world understood the so called big picture especially the United Nations as he thought he did.

In another of his reported quotations he stated that Muslims in general were nothing more than an oil rich lazy society who in his words were detached, “from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed,” he wrote. “An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism.”

In his mind if these not so lazy radicals got their hands on Saudi Arabia and its vast oil reserves this would become, “an enormous national security problem. On this point he is somewhat correct as it is the United States that wants to get its hands on Saudi Arabian oil fields as well as every other Middle Eastern oil field it can control with the United States vast hegemonic hands.

Later as calls for his resignation grew he demanded that a, “better presentation to respond to this business that the Department of Defense has no plan. This is just utter nonsense. We need to knock it down hard”, even in the midst that over 65% of Americans thought that George didn’t really have any plan and he still doesn’t to this day.

The New York Times had in his opinion the gall to say that the Army was ruined in November of 2006 in an editorial and Rummy said it was, “disgraceful”. There was a Brightside to the editorial which said that; “one welcome dividend” of Rumsfeld’s departure was that the United States would “now have a chance to rebuild the Army he spent most of his tenure running down”.

Donald Rumsfeld didn’t care for differing views on United States foreign policy and his tenure was one of attack and to never allow himself to be on the defensive no matter what the cost. The fact that over 3800 American soldiers and 90,000 Iraqis are now dead and over 3.2 million displaced is of little consequence to our government now or then for that matter.

Now we have George W Bush left to his own devices without Donny to help him out and Iran is firmly in the Presidents radar as his next victim. It doesn’t matter that the Russian and Chinese governments are adamantly against any military action in Iran, the rhetoric is already being ratcheted up to attack Iran.

This even as King George sees his legacy and public opinion crumbling around him. Even George must think if ever so rarely about the $4.2 trillion dollar debt for this needless unwarranted war that he will be remembered for placing this scar on American history. As the President makes no secret of his religious beliefs he must also occasionally think how he economically and spiritually took the United States down the path along with him.

How many laws were rewritten to allow for secret prisons and so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, which other civilized people would call torture. One can only hope that our President comes to his senses before he mires us in another conflict. He has already bequeathed the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq to a future administration and the debt for the war to the young populace of our nation with the added peril to our economy as another gift to the future of our nation.

Is there no one in this administration or our government at large who can counsel George to mend his ways and attempt to begin rebuilding this nation’s moral standing in the world? Or are we doomed to leap from one conflict to another as our armed forces are stretched beyond the breaking point and our nation plunges into the depths of hell.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.

Can George W Bush for once act like the President rather than a spoiled child!

Russian President Vladimir Putin is backing the Iranian government on its nuclear program and said Russia would not allow any military action to be taken by the United States. This dovetails with recent comments made by the Chinese government who are also calling for dialogue rather than Washington ratcheting up its war mongering rhetoric.

Both the Russian and Chinese governments are calling for more good faith negotiations rather than the United States stances which include further economic sanctions and rhetoric reminiscent of the administration before it invaded Iraq.

$300 Billion for Water in the USA have we reached the tipping point!

As we shower, shave, bathe, cook and drink the ubiquitous resource the inhabitants of the world are rapidly approaching an era of water shortages never before seen by modern man. It is estimated that it will cost over $300 billion dollars just to upgrade the piping systems that handle this most precious resource over the next 30 years.

Condi Rice and George W continue to Lie to the American public via the Media

Condoleezza Rice took the time to restate her required talking points while imposing further sanctions against the Iranian government this week. The US has stepped up its sanctions on Iran for “supporting terrorists” and pursuing nuclear activities.

Well it has happened Turkey has entered into the Iraq War, thanks George!

It is now being reported that Turkish F-16 planes loaded with bombs have taken action against the Kurdish PKK fighters in the northern Iraqi territories along with Cobra helicopter gun ships. Of course we can thank the world’s largest arms dealer for supplying them with their weaponry; this of course is the United States of America.

This apparently began on Sunday as the Turkish military has taken it upon themselves to attack the Kurdish rebel positions as the Iraqi government and the hegemonic overlord the USA have failed or not wished to be bothered by the complaints by Turkey.

State Department rebuked over lack of Oversight in Use of Mercenary Contractors

In the last four years the United States government contracts for mercenaries has risen from $1 billion to over $4 billion dollars. With little or no oversight or new employees hired to oversee the expenditures which has followed the massive increase in the use of private contractors the reports are starting to be released to the public at large and they point to a profoundly disturbing trend within the Bush administration.

Forget a US green card the European Union wants you to try Blue instead!

The European Union is working on offering “Blue Cards” to entice the needed highly skilled migrants that are so desired for the growth of various members who total 27 nations.

They plan on offering housing and financial benefits as well as guaranteeing at least three times the minimum wage in the country concerned plus health insurance, as this is a requirement for an applicant to apply. Furthermore they will fast track the issuance to those who apply as long as they have a contract for one year’s labor and meet the salary and healthcare requirements.

$500 Million Pledged for Mexico and the lost War on Drugs

Hidden within President Bush’s $46 billion dollar budget request is a $500 million dollar funding package for Mexico and the lost war on drugs. Members of Congress already weary of the costs of the Iraqi conflict are looking on in dismay at the $500 million dollar request as well, which they complain was negotiated in secret meetings between the White House and the Mexican government.

The United States already has the distinction of being a nation with more of its citizens incarcerated than any other industrialized nation and these funds would only exacerbate an already alarming trend.

On Monday President Bush submitted his latest request for the many wars and spy programs

On Monday President Bush submitted his latest request for the many wars and spy programs he has on his plate to the tune of a paltry $46 billion dollars!

This brings the total monetary requests for the annual budget year beginning October 1^st to $196.4 billion for the continuing debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan and the departments of State and Defense. The Defense Department will receive $189.3 billion and the State Department will garner $6.9 billion of the requested funding.