Here’s hoping I’m completely wrong, that we all get a chance to vote and that Bush is sent packing- and McCain too! If I’m right though, I’ll try to hook up with you in Canada.

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

It’s like my good friend at Bring It On! said over here. Another reminder why this election is so important. And it’s kind of sad we have to still be going down this road. After all, with record debts, a failing economy, energy concerns, environmental concerns, wars abroad and the whole lot of corruption and internal destruction Bush has done to our country and government, the GOP is STILL stuck up on abortion?

Well folks, take a good look at this video. Is this what you want for the women in your life?

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

And so while flexing the muscle of a bully administration, the GOP faithful gather together in Minneapolis this week to honor hypocrisy and failure and administer a promise to give America more of the same thing for as far as the eye can see.

WHAT IS THIS PLACE? TIANANMEN SQUARE?

The GOP convention got off to a great start, as federal troops and local cops were deployed to recreate a domestic version of Iraq’s Green Zone- you know, the place that proved to John McCain that Iraq was a pretty safe place to hang out. Good thing too, because over 280 people have been arrested for protesting the war. Now I’ll grant that some of those folks taken into custody went far over the line of respectable protest and should have been arrested. But many dozens of those hauled away were reporters and peaceful protestors who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And what’s the best way to deal with a flower-wielding protestor? That’s right, drench her with pepper spray. Well, maybe now the GOP can put those not-so-secret domestic detention camps that Haliburton helped build.

But hey…we already know that the US under George W. Bush and the 21st century GOP is a place of brutality first, ask questions after the waterboarding party is over. Almost a decade of illegal spying, foreign agression, and domestic security theater has all but numbed us to the jack-booted thugishness of the Compassionate Conservatives. So these convention tactics should come as no big surprise, right?

And neither, I suppose, should the resounding hypocrisy coming from the mouths of the GOP faithful as they cozy up to their terribly two-faced general election candidates. Remember, not only is the GOP the self-described party of fiscal strength, compassion, and tough on terror, they also hold the halo of moral righteousness, reminding America that sex is awfully shameful, theft is a sin, and lying-well, let’s just say that lying isn’t condoned in polite circles. Oh, and of course, none of those caveats actually apply to members of the GOP- it’s what they SAY, not what they DO that really matters…

ABSTINANCE, SCHMABSTINANCE 

VP nominee Sarah Palin supports abstinence only education. Now she admits that her unmarried 17 year old daughter is knocked up. But that’s okay…presidential nominee John McCain opposed proposals to spend federal money on teen-pregnancy prevention programs and voted to require poor teen mothers to stay in school or lose their benefits. While the right heartily condems both unwed sex and teen pregnancy, and just as heartily opposes any kind of sex education to prevent at least one of the two above topics, they are managing to pretend that in the case of THIS particular unwed teen mother to be, all is right in the world, because THIS girl plans to wed the redneck who knocked her up. Now some are saying that candidates’ kids should be off limits and I tend to agree. Except when that candidate is vying for the second highest office in the land, and she wants to federally force the rest of us to raise our kids under the rules she so successfully used in her own home. Sorry, Sarah…but we don’t think your way worked too good here, and we sure don’t want our hands tied to your own narrow set of rules when it comes to our own kids’ futures.

SHOW ME THE MONEY! 

And then there’s the “maverick” mentality that beats down the over-spending pork barrel projects with a sledge hammer that is John McCain. McSame says he’ll put an end to the wasteful earmark policies that dominate federal politcs. No matter that Bush said the same thing and has done nothing. We all know that John is just following the playbook. Too bad his choice of running mate didn’t leap on that train a bit sooner. Yes, Palin killed the Bridge to Nowhere that indicted Senator Ted Stevens worked so hard to bring to the Alaskan wilderness, but only because costs for the project were too high, not because she was ideologically opposed to wasting taxpayer money. While mayor of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbying firm to secure over $27 million for hew town of 6,700 people. Sure, they had bad plumbing and needed a new youth shelter. Don’t we all???

WE’RE THE DECIDERS NOW, BITCH

And who can forget the example of political stewardship Sarah Palin has displayed when it comes to being tough on ethics. She’s quite a trooper in this category, as in she pressured the state public safety commissioner to fire her former brother-in-law ( an Alaska state trooper) and when he didn’t cave in, she fired his ass. Who’s your daddy now?!? Add this lady’s cajones to the toughness McSame garnered as a POW and this is one kick-ass super team. Hell, if we elect these two tigers, Al-Qaeda will probably just give up then and there.

EXPERIENCE THAT REALLY COUNTS

And finally, we all know that the only real measure of a commander in chief (and we must view the VP choice as a potential CIC) is the amount of foreign policy experience they have. When it comes to Palin, the Democratic ticket seems to be sadly lacking in this field. After all, Palin lives in Alaska, which is closer to Russia than any other state. And Alaska has a lot of oil, so she’e up on all those oil places around the world simply because has to deal with oil companies. In the 21st century, what other experience do you need, especially when McSame intends to follow the Bush doctrine of attack those with the most oil and the worst armies. Plus, she’s a trophy hunter, so she has all the VP experience needed to shoot a “friend” in the face on a hunting trip. Clearly an important VP consideration if one wants to fill the shoes of Dick Cheney.

Take a close look, voters, at the face of the new GOP. Here’s a hint- the hypocrisy, the thugishness, the lack of respect for individual choice, environmental stability or energy sensibility is all still right there. And so is the preference to give tax money to the richest Americans and the CEO’s of bastard corporations, reward friends and bully enemies with political power plays, and an unnereving desire to adhere to outdated and inadequate mythology to guide us towards the future. The only difference is that they are finally trying to put a pretty face in front of it, even if the do put that pretty face next to McSame’s ghastly grimace.

The 21st Century GOP- a prettier, friendlier “fuck off” to America.

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

John McCain is an idiot. He mocks that which is true and adores that which is not. John McCain is an idiot. And a liar. And he isn’t any better than Bush. John McCain is an idiot. A vote for John McCain is a vote for stupidity squared. Did I mention that John McCain is an idiot?

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

After the Great Depression and the stock market collapse of 1929, government eventually (under a Democratic president) managed to rein in the worst abuses of the private sector, and particularly the financial sectors, through regulation. Regulation that worked to protect the little guy, Joe and Jane American, while ensuring that businesses could still operate and make a profit. And low and behold, those regulations created a nation that had the highest levels of education, the highest levels of prosperity among citizens and companies, and the highest levels of innovation in the history of the modern world. But for the money-hungry power brokers and executives, that wasn’t good enough; they wanted more money and fewer rules. And so they began to lobby our supposed public servants to change the rules.

Between the late 1930’s and the early 1970’s, government regulations afforded working class Americans a way to buy a home, have safe foods and medicines, and even to save for a rainy day. It was unlikely that a serious illness could drive you from your home due to bankruptcy. It was next to unheard of for a family to be foreclosed on due to shady mortgage finances. Regulations and government agencies designed to benefit the working poor saw to it that people could find a piece of the American dream without having to sacrifice their childrens future or become indentured to the banks and corporations.

After World War II, until the late 1970s, the system work. The savings-and-loan industry was highly regulated by the federal government, with a mission to take people’s deposits and then provide loans for the sole purpose of helping people buy homes to live in. Washington insured those loans through the FDIC, provided mortgage discounts through FHA and the Veterans Administration, created a secondary mortgage market to guarantee a steady flow of capital, and required S&Ls to make predictable 30-year fixed loans. The result was a steady increase in homeownership and few foreclosures. –The American Prospect

But then came the era of Civil Rights, and it was discovered that even these regulations weren’t offering the American Dream to all citizens. The FHA, along with private lenders, were found to be discriminating against people of color in their lending practices so Congress had to act. And they did so by outlawing discrimination in lending. More regulation, passed in the spirit of fairness for all, only pissed off the money brokers.

And so began the push from the financial industry, and then every other industry under the sun, to eliminate or reduce those very regulations that made the American economy the envy of the world and the American people among the most prosperous. 

The American government, both Democrats and Republicans, have helped usher in this era of messy economics hand in hand, but the greater damage has been done under Republican administrations beholden to corporate financial largess through campaign contributions and other assorted financial goodies. The S & L crisis of the 1980’s was a direct result of government abolishing interest rate caps, opening the door to sub-prime lending practices. (An interesting note about that particular messy political era- Both John McCain (the GOP presidential nominee) and Neil Bush (the current presidents brother) were up to their eyeballs in fudiciary fiascoes during the S & L bail-outs, but we have such a short memory in this country don’t we?) The result was an intensive run-up of paper wealth, which became actual wealth in the hands of a few top CEO’s and financiers. Oh, and politicians too.

The deregulation of banking led to merger mania, with banks and S&Ls gobbling each other up and making loans to finance shopping malls, golf courses, office buildings, and condo projects that had no financial logic other than a quick-buck profit. When the dust settled in the late 1980s, hundreds of S&Ls and banks had gone under, billions of dollars of commercial loans were useless, and the federal government was left to bail out the depositors whose money the speculators had put at risk. –The American Prospect

So much for a benevolent government looking out for the little guy. And it only got worse. With the evaporation of serious financial regulation, creative money managers invented all sorts of risky schemes and unleashed them on the less-than-saavy American public.

Under Ronald Reagan, the Patron Saint of Greedy Douchebags, government interest in regulating financial markets withered away to next to nothing. Government agencies like the FHA were all but discarded, leaving unscrupulous lenders to fill the gap. The first George Bush was not only complicit in letting this massive shift of governmental responsibility, he continued it while his sons profitted from one bad business deal after another.

The S & L bail-out cost American taxpayers billions of dollars while those at the top got little more than a slap on the wrist to think about while they counted their ill-got gains.

An eight year stint with a Democrat in the White House did little to change the tide. Although the Clinton era is widely viewed as one of economic boom, the reality is that the rise of bad lending practices really took root in the 1990’s under his watch, and continued gutting of many New Deal era regulations during the 1990’s set the stage for the unbridled greed and ultimate collapse we now live with.

The sub-prime mess, the huge risks taken by hedge funds, and the conflicts of interest that led to Enron and kindred scandals, are all the consequences of serial bouts of financial deregulation. Since the 1970s, in the name of free-market efficiency, Congress and presidents of both parties repealed key protections put in place by the New Deal. But the main effect has been to engineer windfall profits for financial insiders, replace real productive innovation with financial engineering, shift wealth from families to corporations, and put the entire American economy at ever greater risk. -The American Prospect

It would be nice to put most of the blame on the current Idiot in Charge, George W. Bush, but it just can’t be done. This era of compounding deregulation is as bi-partisan as it gets. But Georgie Boy managed to accelerate the concept to a new degree and under his watch, deregulation has enjoyed a Blitzkreig that would have made Goering proud. Where previous administrations and Congresses seemed content to limit the deregulation to the financial sector, Bush has presided over widespread deregulation of most government agencies, and especially those who’s task was to help the little guy get a leg up. The FDA, USDA, FEMA, FHA are just the tip of the iceburg. Compound this reality to the massive privatization of services once handled by government employees, services now handed out under no-bid contracts and hardly scrutinized by government accountability teams, and you can see that the conservative War on Good Government has achieved a remarkable success, at least in terms of shafting the citizens of this country and creating financial havoc the world over.

Yet it could be that the tide is finally turning…again. Enraged by the scandals of energy manipulation and loose accounting standards discovered when Enron blew apart (led by yet another Bush buddy), Americans began to pull the wool off their eyes a little at a time. Not nearly enough or fast enough to spot the shady dealings underwriting the entire mortgage industry, but enough to get politicians to start rethinking regulation policy. And that is a good thing.

And so is this. As federal prosecutors begin to haul those who practised the worst kinds of predatory financing and deceptive investment schemes, it is time for lawmakers to rekindle the idea that consumers need protection from the worst excesses of capitalism-the very kinds of excesses that too often find life wihtout a watchdog agency at their backs.

Alan Greenspan, the former Fed Chief who presided over what may well become the most serious financial crisis in modern times, once noted that it was a “collectivist” myth the idea that businessmen, left to their own devices, “would attempt to sell unsafe food and drugs, fraudulent securities and shoddy buildings.”On the contrary, he declared, “it is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product.” – TheNewsTribune.com

Right Alan. Unless of course there are no consequences to their actions and no government willing to end them. Especially when the government aids and abets their shady, unscrupulous, and definitely immoral ways.

This crisis isn’t over, in fact, it’s only really beginning. And it’s worldwide again, just like in the 1930’s. Only this time, in addition to a financial quagmire, we have an urgent energy crisis that is spiking costs of everything under the sun, a formidable environmental challenge that is creating food shortages and natural disasters of ever increasing destructive power, and several unending wars of ideology that do little more than make things worse for average people all over the world.

But the politicians and CEO’s are still raking in the dough, so I guess everything is fine after all. I mean, who really gives a shit about the rest of us? We’re just supposed to shut up and take it, right?

(Articles used for background include: Deregulation fueled mortgage fiasco, The Conservative Origins of the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis, The Bubble Economy, The Dangers of Deregulation, and Hundreds Indicted In Mortgage Fraud Probe. )

(Cross posted at Bring It On!) 

“This is … one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration,” Gingrich said. “The more successful they’ve been at intercepting and stopping bad guys, the less proof there is that we’re in danger. And therefore, the better they’ve done at making sure there isn’t an attack, the easier it is to say, ‘Well, there never was going to be an attack anyway.’ And it’s almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us.” (Raw Story has the full video clip here.)

To begin with, I’ve yet to see or hear convincing evidence that the Bush Administration actually deserves credit for the lack of attacks by terrorists on US soil since 9-11-01. Where Gingrich credits the administrations illegal domestic wiretap programs for halting domestic terror attacks, I think the closer truth is that a combination of US action in Afghanistan, a shift of targeting by the terrorists towards Europe and the Middle East, and the historical patience of the terror gangs is why America hasn’t had another attack.

Conservatives publically lamenting the lack of terror attacks on America isn’t new with GIngrich. We’ve heard this before- in 2004 and 2006 and even more recently during this election cycle. In an effort to bolster support for Bush’s most unsavory anti-terror tactics, GOPers have verbalized their wish that some terror attacks would occur.

In 2005:

A confidential memo circulating among senior Republican leaders suggests that a new attack by terrorists on U.S. soil could reverse the sagging fortunes of President George W. Bush as well as the GOP and “restore his image as a leader of the American people.”

The closely-guarded memo lays out a list of scenarios to bring the Republican party back from the political brink, including a devastating attack by terrorists that could “validate” the President’s war on terror and allow Bush to “unite the country” in a “time of national shock and sorrow.”

The memo says such a reversal in the President’s fortunes could keep the party from losing control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.

And again in 2007:

“At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country,” Dennis Milligan, head of the Arkansas GOP said on June 3, 2007.

These people are undeniably crazy for power, it seems, if they truly wish for the death and destruction of their countrymen and women just to “validate” George W. Bush and his policies.

Remember this when you go to the polls-only one party actually wishes for terror attacks on America to justify their abuses of power at home and abroad.  The party that brought you the Iraq Debacle. The party that brought you Katrina. The party that brought you torture and spying on Americans. The party of massive deficits, distrust of science, and no capacity for true compassion, caring or common sense. That party is the GOP.

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

So we’re in the nation building game, and since we’re the ones who blew the hell out of the place, I suppose that we have some responsibility to at least get the place fixed up a bit before we go home. Or do we? I mean, if the nation we are helping build is supposed to be a democracy (of sorts) then it seems only right that our presence should be limited to the extent that the majority of that country’s citizens (or elected officials as the proxy of the citizens) wish us to remain. Once the balance tips from one side of the scale to the other, we need to acknowledge that decision, pack our bags, and promise to stay in touch.

Guess what? We’ve been asked, more or less, to start packing our bags. According to a story that isn’t getting any play in the American MSM, an Iraqi parliamentary vote on Tuesday had more than half of Iraq’s elected lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal. The non-binding petition will be presented to the speaker of parliament with the request for a vote on a formal binding resolution that adopts the petition’s demand for a withdrawal timetable.Hey- we asked for a democracy, and we’re getting one. Can’t cry foul when it doesn’t go your way.

Unless, of course, you are George Bush or Dick Cheney. The White House Wonder Twins seem to have an almost superhero ability to ignore reality. (And their ability to lie is almost as powerful, but that’s another story altogether.) See, the administration is taking a somewhat different approach than the Iraqi’s seem to want. Rather than prepare to disengage, they keep sending in more US troops. Instead of listening to what the Iraqi’s are saying, they are telling the Iraqi’s how it should be. I guess that 6 years of telling the American public what to do and how to feel, they think that everyone is as gullible. Sorry Dubya- the folks in Iraq live with the bombs of your nation building every day. They don’t seem too keen to wait for you to act anymore.

The Alternet article goes into some detail about the factional problems in Iraq and the barriers that are keeping them apart. Chief among them is the future of Iraq itself- specifically whether Iraq should remain as a strong single entity or as three separate and somewhat autonomous regions under nominal federal controls. Increasingly, Iraqi’s seem to be choosing the strong single entity model over the tripartite solution now favored by the US backed Iraqi government. One sticking point in that discussion has been the sharing of oil resources under each plan. Under the tripartite plan (favored by Team Bush remember), oil controls would be privatized and decentralized, leaving the door open for all sorts of great deals for Big Oil. Under the strong state model, the Iraqi oil fields become state property, meaning other nations will have to play nice to get access.

No matter how many times we go around the bend it always comes back to who gets the oil. With the oil comes the money. With the money comes the power. You know the drill.
The thing is, no matter how (or if) Iraqi lawmakers vote on demanding a timetable from the Bush Administration, they’re never going to get one. Not from Dubya at least. As far as he’s concerned, the U S of A ain’t going nowhere on his watch. And if the Iraqi’s have a problem with that, then they may just find themselves on a watchlist too. Iraq is a really dangerous place these days, despite what John McCain thinks. Dissidents of US desires may find themselves at risk, if you get my drift.

Even though many in Baghdad acknowledge that when US troops leave, the violence will likely get worse before it gets better, a majority of all ethnic groups want the US to get out. And the sad thing is that just about everybody knows it’s time to hand Iraqi’s the keys to their new house and let them get busy with the unpacking.

(Oh, and for those of you who decide to turn the comments section into a debate about “Yes there are terrorists in Iraq you idiot” I suggest you get a grip on reality. There are terrorists in America too but we haven’t bombed the hell out of our own towns. Anyone here think the Pocono’s need a good bombing? )

(cross posted at Bring It On! )