The Real State of the Union, 2005

The �Real' State of the Union, 2005

Our current cheerleader for the corporate criminal class, George W. �Dubya, the Dangerous Dumb-Shit' Bush---he was a cheerleader in college---gave his State of the Union address last week and his hubris was outrageous. I use the word hubris because it means an �exaggerated pride or self-confidence often resulting in retribution,' and due to his ignorance and arrogance, the threat of terrorist attacks against America has grown exponentially. When I look at Bush Jr., I am reminded of Ronald Reagan and his simplistic world-view. Both of these mental midgets viewed the world as some sort of old western such as High Noon and saw themselves as Gary Cooper bravely going out to face the bad guys in a shoot-out. Both of these men have seriously impugned our reputation around the world and America has come to be considered somewhat of a dangerous joke. I submit that Bush is one of the most outlandish liars, cheaters, frauds, and killers of all time and should be ranked alongside of Hitler & Stalin. Right about now you're probably thinking I should be run out of the country for being anti-American? Well my friend, I argue that it is far easier to just blindly go along with the herd in terms of popular opinion and that I in fact am a loyal American because I take Thomas Jefferson's admonition seriously. Jefferson forewarned us that it was not only our right but our duty to hold our government accountable. Jefferson, John Adams, and others feared one branch of our government gaining too much power and this is why they established the separation of powers by creating a three-way division of power i.e. the legislative, the judicial, and the executive. Well, we have slid down that slippery slope towards an oligarchy and I posit that we have indeed arrived there. The executive has effectively usurped the overwhelming majority of the true power of our government. In fact, it's nave to even refer to it as �our' government any longer. Why? Well, consider the definition of �oligarchy' (a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes).

For instance, here are but a few brief illustrations of the Bush/Cheney junta or cabal which reveal we are living under an oligarchy: the presidential election of 2000 in which there was massive voter-fraud in Florida (which coincidentally was governed by Bush's brother, Jeb) and the Supreme Court took the unprecedented and anti-Constitutional action of intervening in and appointed Bush as the president; the fact that this is the most secretive administration ever in U.S. history i.e. Cheney's �Energy Summit' and his refusal to disclose who attended & the fact that his refusal was backed by the Supreme Court; the intimidation and manipulation of the major intelligence agencies in order to con the U.S. public into supporting the invasion of Iraq; the almost total acquiescence on the part of Congress in going along with the Bush agenda righ t down the line; the repetition of voter fraud in the 2004 presidential election and the immediate abdication by the �democratic' contender, Senator John Kerry; etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on & I will highlight more examples as I piecemeal Bush's State of the Union speech.

I downloaded a copy of the complete text of Bush's address and the following is my critique or dissection of this dangerous dissimulator's rhetoric and dogma which his spin-doctors so cleverly wrapped in simplistic images and empty words and phrases designed to pull at our heartstrings in order to cloud our judgment and manipulate us. And speaking of manipulation, it is apropos to start off with this caution, perhaps the most pernicious proverb ever uttered is �Ignorance is Bliss?' Why do I say this? Because the more ignorant a people are, the easier it is for the powers that be to control and manipulate them. And this is the motto of the evangelical fundamentalists of which Bush is a pr oud member and champion. But on the contrary, St. Jerome stated that "It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance." In other words, far too many Americans aren't even aware that they are ignorant. And I say this not out of a spirit of arrogance but as a matter of sad fact. Because our educational system is so extremely bureaucratized with layer upon layer of administrators all trying to hold onto their power and prestige, our children and hence, our citizenry, ranks 50th amongst approximately 150 nations that make up the United Nations. It is important to bear in mind that ignorance isn't the same as stupidity. Ignorance simply means to not know and the overwhelming majority of Americans simply aren't aware that they have been so seriously short-changed in their public education.

Furthermore, I would remind you of the dire warning George Santayana gave us; "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." In brief, because the majority of us are the products of such an inferior public educational system, we often don't make the connections or remember the events of even the relatively near-past and the corrupt politicians and corporate C.E.O.s again and again get away with ripping us off. Georgie is suppose to be an affable, bumbling �Big Brother' of benevolence simply trying to bring �democracy' to the world yet, he struts around the world stage like a bantam rooster, cocky and sneering. I believe his image as a down-home, good ol' boy from Texas is a total faade and this charade has been used time and time again to dupe the public into believing that they're one of us. Yeah, right! He was raised in the northeast and went to elite prep schools and got into Yale on his daddy's coattails and was a member of that ultra secret Skull and Bones Society of which John Kerry was also a member. They really think we're all a bunch of stupid morons to believe we will fall for this country boy image. Every politician that runs for president cloaks themselves in this image because it has been so effective and it dates back to Abraham Lincoln and his being born in a log cabin and being a humble man who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. You can't even run for president in today's America unless you're a multi-millionaire or billionaire! And herein lies the problem, in order to raise the kind of money necessary to run for the presidency, a politician must make countless deals with the corporate cockroaches and they don't give money without expecting something in return i.e. protection from prosecution, sweetheart deals such as Halliburton's contracts to �rebuild' Iraq after our military bombed it into the Stone Age, etc.

Now, I am often guilty of long, polemical diatribes when I get into talking about politics but I am doing so partly because I often feel on the defensive because so many people I get into heated arguments and/or discussions with, have never heard the things I accuse Bush et al of. I want to cite Noam Chomsky here because I agree with some who have declared him as among the top ten most quoted people throughout western civilization and he happens to be the only one alive. This is my crude paraphrasing of something Chomsky said awhile back on Free Speech T.V.; "the information is available but few are able or willing to put the tremendous amount of effort into researching and digging the information up." This essay is my opinion and my qualifications are the over thirty years I have spent pursuing the �truth,' wisdom, knowledge, and experience. I have traveled fairly extensively, spent fourteen years pursuing & earning a bachelor's degree in English literature, worked at perhaps a hundred different jobs, been an educator for over fifteen years, collected several thousand books, and read several hundred of which while making copious notes in them, etc. And I am not saying that I possess the �Truth' but simply that I feel that I have at lea st paid some substantial dues and therefore deserve at least to be heard, and this brings me back to Chomsky. He points out that Bush and "most politicians use terms like �values' in order to avoid the issues because discussion of the issues would reveal their true policies and actions. And �values' appeal to people's emotions and cloud their reasoning abilities." (my paraphrasing) For example, note how often Bush used terms like �democracy' and �freedom' in his State of the Union. I have also noted how fond Bush is of throwing the word �tyranny' around. Consider the definition of tyranny if you will (a government in which absolute power is vested in a single ruler; oppressive power), I contend that Bush is �projecting' upon all the other �leaders' of the nations he doesn't like, this image of tyranny which in fact he is dangerously close to realizing in total himself. Let's now get to the meat and potatoes of his rhetorical bombast.

In the very first sentence of his speech, Bush asserts or claims that "we have been placed in office by the votes of the people we serve." Well this may be a Freudian Slip because the people he serves are the top 1% or the corporate ruling elite but on the other hand as I said, this is a lie because he was appointed by the Supreme Court and therefore it wasn't a true election. I believe this was significant and purposely chosen because in approximately half the nation's voters' minds, there is still doubt that he won the 2004 election fairly? And one thing all spin-doctors know is that if you repeat a lie long enough, most people will eventually accept it as fact or truth. In the next sentence he proclaims that Iraq is �free and sovereign.' This is an incredible statement because only the most nave and woefully ignorant could look at the current state of affairs in Iraq and call it free and sovereign. Their �provisional government' was hand-picked by the Bush cabal who first tried to install Chalabi as presi dent. Then Chalabi was revealed as a bank embezzler who is wanted by the Syrian government and all of a sudden Chalabi was persona non grata and just like ol' �Kenny Boy' i.e. Ken Lay of ENRON, Bush et al claimed they barely knew him. Yeah, right! Look up Bush's first �inauguration,' and the picture that was splashed across the front pages of newspapers all over America and the world clearly shows Chalabi seated right behind Bush as he is giving his speech. Barely knew him? Yeah, right!

Next, Bush says that he has "renewed the commitment of our Nation to the guiding ideal of liberty for all." Hmm? He has a strange notion of �liberty?' Because when I look at Afghanistan, Kabul is the only place that has some degree of law and order and only because it is heavily defended by U.S. forces. Outside of Kabul, the drug war lords rule once again just as they did before we invaded Afghanistan. Funny that we don't seem to be concerned about the fact that these war lords preside over perhaps the largest opium growing fields on the planet? The people of Afghanistan are definitely not liberated from their oppressors. And the people of Iraq are definitely not liberated and in fact have been demanding that the American military leave for over two years. The people of Iraq are often under martial law, go through check points where they are bodily searched daily, have no work, electricity for about two hours per day, live under constant fear of being blown up by either an �insurgent' or an American bomb or be shot, etc. This is so chillingly Orwellian in that oppression has now become �liberty.' Equally important is the fact that with the aid of the �Patriot Act' which only one member of Congress even bothered to read before it was signed and passed into law, which has demonstrably gutted our Bill of Rights. The ultra secretive and scheming Bush is now free to enter our homes and rifle through our personal belongings and lives w ithout ever telling us and without a warrant. They can spy on our mail, our phone calls, the websites we go to, in short, they have complete freedom to spy on us whenever and wherever they please. They can and they have arrested hundreds if not thousands of Americans and held and tortured them all without ever even charging the people they abducted, giving them legal representation, or notifying their loved ones where they were being held. This is �liberty?' The only �liberty' is the liberty of the powerful and rich to screw us and the entire world. We are free to be subservient, an oxymoron George Orwell would have probably appreciated. Furthermore, Bush's concept of �liberty' is again revealed in the fact that at all his �public' speeches and/or rallies, you must first sign a document testifying that you are one of his supporters. Remember that quaint notion sometimes referred to as Freedom of Speech? Or what about the right to dissent? We salute you o glorious Fuhrer! I b elieve Bush's next assertion to �advance that ideal (liberty) at home and around the world,' is a thinly disguised declaration of warfare against any and all who dare to stand up to him and his corporate masters?

Next Bush declares that we have a �healthy, growing economy.' Oh it's growing for the top 1% of the tax bracket for whom he gave the lavish tax breaks just like his second-rate actor predecessor, Reagan did. They are enjoying obscene rates of profit but for millions upon millions of working class Americans, they are being �down-sized' and their jobs are being �outsourced' overseas so their poor CEOs can make even greater profit off the slave labor of indigenous people around the globe. Bush cites a statistic of over two million new jobs have been created in the last four years but of course he forgets to mention the millions of jobs �outsourced.' Naturally, statistics can be manipulated by both the conservatives and the liberals and they vary greatly from age ncy to agency but I believe one of the most accurate statistics is that the net result of the last four years under the bushwhackers is that approximately a hundred thousand jobs have been created. But don't be mislead my friend. What the propagandists don't tell us is how many more citizens have entered the job market in the last four years along with precisely what kinds of jobs have been �created?' Are they �service' sector jobs i.e. flipping burgers and such? Or are they �part-time' as that exemplar of capitalist greed run amok, Wallmart is so fond of because they can therefore avoid providing any modicum of medical benefits? The ugly reality is that starting most blatantly under old Ronnie Reagan, the conservative extremists have been waging a war on all unions in America and around the world wherever and whenever any of their corporate interests have been �threatened.' Translation, whenever their profits are reduced or disturbed by pesky workers who ask for a fair wage so they can provide food and shelter for their families. I don't know about you but, I have been job insecure for most of my adult life. I couldn't find work for three years approximately. And I'm a college graduate. Imagine how difficult it is and has been for those millions of Americans who not only don't have a college education but many also of whom which didn't graduate from high school. Again Bush thinks that by repeating ad nauseam that our economy is �confident and strong,' it becomes a fact. This is akin to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz believing that by simply clicking her heels, closing her eyes, & wishing for something, it comes true. I'm no big fan of Clinton's but when he left office, there was something like a 400 billion dollar budget surplus and now after four years of the Bush junta, we are at an all-time record high of something like a $450,000,000 deficit. I'm definitely not an economic expert but this is suppose to be a �conf ident and strong' economy?

And then the great deceiver goes on to say that "Our generation (code for him and his creepy crime partners) has been blessed---by the expansion of opportunity, by advances in medicine" In fact, if you bear in mind that he is really referring to his inner circle, this then does indeed become a true statement. Thanks to NAFTA, GATT, and other such trade agreements along with the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, etc. which, by the way was signed by that �democratic liberal' John Kerry, the greedy corporate pigs have almost carte blanche to exploit just about every square inch of the planet. �Globalization' and �privatization' are the camouflage behind which the Robber Barons now hide. And just as they have �privatized' the hell out of South America and destroyed the economies of dozens of countries by �privatizing' their water, power, telephone, etc. utilities, in this State of the Union, Bush is now s eeking to �privatize' Social Security so his Wall Street cronies will be able to plunder it. Of course the scheming and conniving bastards behind the Bush faade e.g. Karl Rove et al, realize that the word �privatize' might scare off a good number of Americans whom aren't totally brain-dead so they cloak their intentions by calling it �retirement accounts.' And as for his claim regarding �advances in medicine,' is he being facetious because he has clearly stated and pursued a policy of stopping stem-cell research in order to placate his fundamentalist constituents. These anti-intellectual evangelicals were the primary reason Bush was able to dupe approximately half the American public into believing he is a man of character and principle.

Next, if it weren't so devastating in terms of the harmful consequences, it'd be almost hilarious because Bush with a straight-face tells us "we have provided tax relief to every person who pays income taxesopened up new markets abroa d, prosecuted corporate criminals" Let's see, hmm? �Tax relief to every person who �pays' income taxes?" In reality, most of Bush's champions of capitalism have avoided paying their taxes almost entirely by opening front corporations in places like the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. And while they reap their fantastic profits from operating in the U.S. and enjoying the protections of the U.S. government and the U.S. military, they give practically nothing back. Our infrastructure is imploding and they sit back fat and sassy like Nero fiddling while Rome went up in flames. Furthermore, I heard awhile back that Bush has cut the funding for the department of the IRS that pursues corporate tax cheaters and at the same time, Bush increased the funding for the IRS department who's job it is to pursue the small-time, individual citizens who cheat on their taxes. Equal justice for all?

Secondly, Bush stated that �we have opened up new markets abroad.' Yes, this is true but a s I stated earlier, these �new markets' were opened up via the policies and practices of the IMF, the WTO, the World Bank and etc. And what Bush neglects to inform the public of is that these markets have been �opened' through brutal intimidation tactics, through bribery, and a multitude of nefarious and immoral practices e.g. Coca-Cola has hired thugs in Columbia amongst other places to threaten, beat, and sometimes even kill union organizers in their plants. Ah yes, nothing like the �free market!' Next, the bush leaguer proclaims �we' "[have] prosecuted corporate criminals" Yeah, right! They went after that horrible Martha Stewart who wasn't actually convicted of insider trading but of some minor infraction. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of hers but her prosecution was a joke because she was clearly a scapegoat or a sacrificial lamb and when you consider the trivial amount of profit she made compared to the likes of Ken Lay and the billions he screwed his employees and in vestors out of, it's absurd almost beyond belief? I'm not sure but I don't think that Ken Lay even received any jail time whatsoever? Of course I shouldn't be surprised at this turn of events because after all, back during Reagan's reign and the Savings and Loan Scandal which also bankrupted and wiped-out tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans life savings, good old Ned Bush was the president of Silverado Savings and Loan, and he too never saw the inside of a jail cell. These pirates and ideologues keep on resurfacing over the decades and they enrich one another and pardon one another. Meanwhile, they preach to us, the public, to be honest, frugal, hard-working, and etc. By the way, ENRON was just the most glaring example of corporate malfeasance. There were dozens and dozens of corporate giants who committed the same crimes of cooking their books and manipulating the gullible public by artificially pumping up stock prices by claiming projected future earnings and et c. as assets. This would not have been possible were it not for the accepted business practices and the atmosphere of unaccountability and license to pillage and plunder the public at will.

And then Bush has the gall to lecture us that "America's prosperity requires restraining the spending appetite of the federal government." What? He and his henchmen must think us a nation of Alzheimer's patients because as I recently stated, we went from a budget surplus when Clinton left office and we are now in hock up to our eyebrows. Every snake-in-the-grass politician running for the executive office swears that he is the foe of big government and will drastically reduce its size. And every president for the past few decades has been a bald-faced liar because the actual size of their administrations has grown not been reduced. In fact, if you will recall, before we attacked Iraq, that fascist, Wolfowitz, was questioned at length about how much it might cost us to wage this war and he said about 50 billion after repeated questioning and he reassured us that other countries would contribute funding and that the oil revenues from Iraq's industry would be used to compensate our tax dollars expended. Well to date, we have spent something like 240 billion dollars and there is no end in sight. Do you see why I used the word �hubris' in my opening remarks? I used it because appropriately it illustrates a vital lesson several �empires' have learned the hard way. It was the ancient Greeks who learned this lesson first I believe? Then the Romans, then the British, and now it is our turn. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, we may go down in history as one of the shortest lived empires due to the greed and stupidity of presidents like Bush?

Furthermore, the bastard goes on to proclaim that he has "substantially reduce[d] or eliminate[d] more than 150 government programs that are not getting results" Yes indeed! What he wisely leaves out though is that while he is slashing the budgets of many programs that he disagrees with politically and policy-wise, he is meanwhile transferring the funds to his �faith-based' programs. He also neglects to mention that one of the very first acts he did upon taking the throne was to use executive privilege to make an end run around the wishes of Congress to establish his �faith-based' offices in several of the federal governments' major departments such as the Dept. of the Treasury, the Dept. of Health, Education, & Welfare, the White House, etc. etc. etc. This is clearly a gross violation of the principle of Separation of Church and State and hence anti-Constitutional. It's critically important that we wake up to the fact that King George is a �true-believer' and has an a genda with the main goal of making �Christianity' the official state religion and of silencing every dissenting voice. Dubya is serving two masters, his corporate masters and God. He might actually believe he is waging a holy crusade against the heathen Muslims? He slipped and used the word �crusade' in a few public speeches but was inundated with criticism and promptly stopped using the word. The vile, republican reptile then goes on to chastise us that "the principle here is clear: taxpayer dollars must be spent wisely, or not at all." Can you believe the audacity of this guy? We are now the largest debtor nation in the world and if two of our major creditors call in the debts we owe them i.e. China and Japan, our economy could very easily go into a tail-spin and land us in another Great Depression perhaps more severe even than the last one in the 1930s? Another bleak scenario is that the European Economic Union may get fed up with us bullying the rest of the world and sto p dealing with us which also could have catastrophic consequences for our economy. Lastly, some scholars have posited that one of the secret reasons why we invaded and will most likely occupy for decades to come is because Saddam was making overtures of switching the currency upon which oil from Iraq is currently based i.e. the dollar, to the Euro-dollar? This too would have been a serious blow to our economy.

At the same time, and in his very next breath, the Sultan of Swindle segues into "To make our economy stronger and more dynamic, we must prepare a rising generation to fill the jobs of the 21st century. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, " As some wit put it, "the No Child Left Behind Act should more accurately be called the No Childs Behind Left." Once again it's amazing how short people's memories are or how uninformed so many of us are. This �miracle' act of legislation originated in Bush's former governorship of Texas. The television program 60 Minutes! aired a story sometime back which revealed that school administrators falsified data and records to make this act appear a success and Bush still goes around the country touting its positive results? Once again the wizard of oz is attempting to fool us into believing his hocus pocus i.e. because he has declared its efficacy, it is so. Additionally, just because they �raise the standards' and claim that �test scores are on the rise,' doesn't make it true or real. As a person who has worked in our public schools in both L.A. and Portland, Oregon in a variety of capacities and for over fifteen years, I know a thing or two about this subject in particular. Simply raising standards does nothing in terms of enabling teachers to become better teachers. Teachers need their bureaucratic paperwork to be reduced substantially, they need more rigorous training in college, they need more teaching assistants, they need better classroom furniture and environments, th ey need drastically better textbooks, they need to be paid at least $30,000 to start and be able to advance up to perhaps $100,000 per year if they have made significant improvements in the overall educational abilities of their students. Moreover, Bush leaves out of his rhetoric the fact that due to his massive giveaways to the oil industry, the Pentagon, the rich, his cuts in federal programs designed to help cities and states pay for their infrastructures costs, along with federal programs for health, education, and welfare, along with the �outsourcing' of millions of jobs, school funding has been shrinking and the results are even lower levels of excellence and accomplishment. This pretense of caring about our children's educations is a stupendous sham. Bush and his cretin friends don't give a damn about public education because their children attend the elite private academies where the Classics in history, philosophy, literature, political science, etc. are rigorously taught. This �superior' class believe like the �royalty' of Europe during the medieval ages that theirs is a �divine right to the monarchy' i.e. they alone are meant to rule and they alone are capable of �leading.'

Now Bush gets to what is the core of the �truth' which lurks behind all the diatribes and polemics. "To make our economy stronger and more competitive, America must reward, not punish, the efforts and dreams of entrepreneurs (Chalabi, for instance). Small business is the path of advancement, so we must free small businesses from needless regulation and protect honest job-creators from junk lawsuits. Justice is distorted, and our economy is held back, by irresponsible class actions and frivolous asbestos claims" This last passage is so rife with lies and distortions that I hardly know where to start? Well, to begin with, this is the crux of the agenda by Bush and his gang in that what they want ideally is complete and total free rein for the megalithic corpo rate leviathans. Ken Lay was one such �entrepreneur' as well as Chalabi whom I mentioned above. And there were and are countless other such rugged individualists whom are bankrupting their companies, their countries, and the environment. And in this process of unbridled capital accumulation, millions and billions of human beings are suffering and dying from unspeakable �living conditions.' Perhaps I should remind my reader here that entrepreneur is defined thus; �one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise' ? Now I ask you who actually assumed the �risks' of ENRON, the Savings and Loan industry, the war against Iraq, etc. etc. etc. Yeah, Kenny Boy and the hundreds if not thousands of other corporate cockroaches pretended to accept the �risk' but the end result has been that millions of Americans were the ones who paid the costs because they trusted their politicians, pundits, preachers, journalists, and corporate icons. It's imperative that we remember how pervasive the corruption was in many of the most venerated Stock brokerage houses such as Merrill Lynch.

Of course by �small businesses,' Bush really means the small businesses such as Halliburton, Bechtel, General Electric, Shell Oil, etc. And these �honest job-creators,' who threaten their employees that if they complain or demand better wages or job conditions, they will close up shop and go overseas. In addition, even though the majority of workers around the country have capitulated and even taken reductions in pay and benefits, they have still been �down-sized' and reduced to near poverty conditions and have suffered serious depression and personal humiliation. This again is a reflection of the true �compassionate conservatism' that Bush's handlers came up with as their motto. The �needless regulations' Bush was referring to are trivial matters such as polluting our environment and speeding up the process of global warming, the paying of bribes t o �journalists' who then help spread the propaganda put out by Karl Rove, banking regulations, savings and loans regulations, campaign contributions, workplace safety regulations, the selling off of our national parks, the insider trading regulations of which Bush himself was guilty but beat the rap with the help of his recently nominated Attorney General, the manipulation of stock prices, the right for workers to form unions, etc. etc. etc. Yes, these are all �frivolous' and unnecessarily obtrusive regulations on those �honest job-creators.' The aristocracy demands complete freedom and trust for those CEOs who have shown us repeatedly how untrustworthy they are and at the same time they have the balls to also declare that these self-same thugs not be held financially liable to all whom they screw, bankrupt, and physically maim or kill. The fact that the majority of politicians are or were lawyers is especially pertinent here. As lawyers they know that the highest paying cli ents are the corporations because the corporations can write off their legal expenses as business expenses. And when you have the kinds of assets and resources that these giants have at their disposal, they can clearly afford to outwait the little piss-ants who dare to sue them for their grievances. They simply play the delay game until the little guy or gal becomes totally destitute and is forced to drop their lawsuit. Isn't it interesting that �irresponsibility' and �frivolous' are the adjectives applied to us as individual citizens but Bush doesn't mention the �irresponsibility' i.e. deaths and wiping-out of millions of Americans pensions and/or life savings? Bush at least did get something right although he attempted to misdirect us by laying the blame on the victims rather than the culprits when he said "Justice is distorted, and our economy is held back" Even the most illiterate amongst us know the reality of our justice system i.e. if you're rich you can often get awa y with literal murder but if you're poor, justice is swift and brutal!

Equally important in terms of �justice' and in terms of the economic devastation wreaked upon millions of Americans to say nothing of the billions of people around the globe is the farce of concern and compassion regarding the skyrocketing health costs and the simultaneous cutting of medical benefits by employers and government officials. The health care industry has possibly the largest lobbying force in Washington D.C.? Better known as the American Medial Association, they and their co-conspirators, the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) are paid by the pharmaceutical industry for instance, to rush through certain drugs which are potential great money-makers for the industry but which haven't actually been fully tested for safety or reliability and at the same time, they drag their heels when it comes to approving the manufacture and distribution of drugs which are much more affordable for the poo r, the working class, and the middle class and which could do the general public great benefit as in the case of diseases like HIV/AIDS. These are monsters masquerading as men! As a result of their �compassion,' diseases which had once been totally eradicated are now making a comeback and countless thousands are dying and/or suffering needlessly. I don't know if I really believe in Hell but, if there is a Hell, I hope and pray that there is a special corner of Hell that is so excruciatingly painful that it makes the rest of Hell look like the Elysian Fields and I hope that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz, Perle, Hitler, Stalin, et al, spend eternity there. And since I'm dreaming or wishfully dreaming, the only other thing that would be sweeter would be that I was able to briefly visit these crustaceans and smile and spit in their faces!

Moreover, these reptiles are currently laughing their asses off at us because they via Bush's State of the Union addr ess have once again spit in our faces. The bushwhacker and his creepy cockroach cronies are now seeking to pound the final nail in the coffin of what used to be known as public health and medical programs for all Americans. Bush wants to push �health savings accounts' on us so like his scheme for Social Security accounts which will open up people's retirement safety net to the graft and corruption of his Wall Street wankers. Indeed, these pirates have the nerve to at the same time call for limiting the liability of medical corporations for such things as incompetence resulting in people's death and/or serious physical, emotional, or psychological harm. This hyena of hatred and hypocrisy then spits out another of his �compassionate conservative' public relations ploys i.e. �medical liability reform that will reduce health care costs and make sure patients have the doctors and care they need.' Translation---open season on everyone not rich and part of the controlling class! Th ey are becoming as arrogant and bold as the French aristocracy right before the guillotine was invented and the French Revolution swept over France. Remember what happened to those �superior' people. The more power the wealthy acquire, the sloppier they get and they begin to grossly underestimate the power of the people. Also bear in mind what Thomas Jefferson said i.e. every now and then the Tree of Liberty must have some blood spilled on it. (something like that?)

Next, the Minister of Mendacity tells us "to keep our economy growing, we also need reliable supplies of affordable, environmentally responsible energy." Wow! This cowardly coyote must actually believe his handlers and spin doctors' propaganda? Bush's hit team has the worst record on environmental protection of any presidency to date. They have opened up more of our forests to corrupt timber corporations who are wiping out the old growth, have cut down over 90% of the ancient and venerable Redwoods, plant tree farms for future destruction and claim they're replacing the trees they cut down, etc. etc. etc. Of course they don't tell us that it takes sometimes 10,000 years for a Redwood to grow to full maturity. They are opening up the Alaskan wilderness so we can have more oil spills like the Exxon Valdeez. They deny there's such a thing as Global Warming even though there is more than enough scientific data and research to support its existence. Bush calls his laissez-faire attitude towards air pollution the �friendly skies' initiative. It just goes on and on and I can't seriously believe they can actually call themselves good stewards of our environment? What's especially pertinent is Bush's contradictory claim regarding �environmentally responsible energy' when, Cheney went to the Supreme Court for protection against having to reveal who attended his top secret energy summit. This is being �environmentally responsible?' If it's �responsible' then why did they fight so fierce ly to keep the meeting secret? Could it be that if revealed, the identities of those who participated might show that corporations like Halliburton, Bechtel, etc. were part of the plan to invade and occupy Iraq so they could position themselves to be the only corporations to profit so fantastically off the loss of American soldiers' lives, the slaughter of a people, and the gross violation of our right to know what our government is doing in our name and to profit a handful of corporations. By the way, I just found out that Bush's legislation is called "Clear Skies," not the Friendly Skies initiative. The bull-shitting bush leaguer also declared in his speech that he submitted "a comprehensive energy strategy that encourages conservation, alternative sources, a modernized electricity grid, and more production here at home, including safe, clean nuclear energy." My God! He is not only creating a generation of young Muslims who are dedicating themselves to our destruction, he also wants to turn a blind eye to all the nuclear power plants woeful lack of safety in terms of not only vulnerability to terrorist attacks but also to melt downs like we had at Three Mile Island and countless other nuclear facilities! Again, I have a good amount of experience working with radioactive materials and I'm horrified at the complete lack of concern regarding the general public's health and safety. The idea that there is or can be a �safe, clean nuclear energy,' is a flagrant lie. Nuclear waste can't be stored safely and it has been leaking into places like the Columbia River for decades with devastating results. The evil ones are now storing it in Nevada primarily and the residents of Las Vegas have been exposed countless times and are living directly in harm's way and at great peril! I have an idea, why don't we make Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. all live next door to nuclear stockpiles of waste? If it's so �safe' what are they afraid of? You can bet your last n ickel that none on these lying & cowardly curs would never live next to such a site. The more of us that they kill off or cause to come down with cancer, the less they have to spend the taxpayer's dollars to feed, clothe, educate, or provide even a modicum of health care on.

Furthermore, this fabricating fundamentalist of �free market' fascism declares that he has provided �strong funding for renewable sources such as ethanol.' I recently learned while watching the television program The West Wing that ethanol actually costs more than it supposedly �saves' on energy costs but because it enjoys such a powerful corporate lobby in Washington D.C., due to the massive agricultural corporations who have systematically wiped out the small farmers who used to make up the backbone of this country. I believe they also pointed out that ethanol contributes significantly to the already existent air pollution? The Ambassador of Arrogance then has the insolence to insult our int elligence even further to claim that he is attempting to �make America more secure and less dependent on foreign energy.' Simply mind-blowing in his audacity, this maggot who calls himself moral, knows this is a complete sham or swindle because they invaded Iraq to control the second largest source of crude oil on the planet. It's important to not lose track of the minor fact that Bush's cabinet are almost entirely made up of former oil industry professionals who became rich in the petroleum industry. Shit, Condoleeza Rice even had an oil tanker named after her! We're suppose to swallow that now that they're in office they will turn their backs on their former bosses? Not until hell freezes over my friend.

In addition to this stroll down an amnesiac Alzheimer's fictitious fairy land we are led to believe Bush when he proclaims �we must update institutions that were created to meet the needs of an earlier time. Year after year, Americans are burdened by an archaic, inc oherent federal tax codeand I will work together to give this Nation a tax code that is pro-growth, easy to understand, and fair to all.' Well coincidentally, I just bought a book today called Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich---and Cheat Everybody Else. Pro growth is simply code for letting the corporate crime lords do whatever they want to their customers, to falsify their accounting records and hence their true worth on the stock market, pollute the environment with no consequences, etc. And if they wanted to truly make tax laws �easy to understand,' they would've done so decades ago. No, they like the labyrinth of our tax code so they can continue to evade paying their share of the tax burden with such convenient loopholes as opening a post office box in the Cayman Islands and then claiming it as their corporate headquarters so they aren't taxed. If you believe Bush and the skunk, Cheney care on e bit about �fairness to all,' you are brain-dead. Fairness to all is really favoritism for the top 1% of the country's citizens. I heard perhaps 20 years ago someone suggest that all we had to do was create a federal tax form which consisted of 3 lines i.e. name, address, & how much money you made for the year. And then everyone pays a flat 10% of their income in taxes. No exceptions! Of course they will never simplify the tax code this much because then all the corporate Benedict Arnolds would be forced to pay their fair share for once.

And then we witness Bush, the corporate cheerleader and whore pronounce that "America's immigration system is also outdated---unsuited to the needs of our economy and to the values of our country. We should not be content with laws that punish hardworking people who want only to provide for their families, and deny businesses willing workers, and invite chaos at our border. It is time for an immigration policy that permits tempor ary guest workers to fill jobs Americans will not take, that rejects amnesty, that tells us who is entering and leaving our country, and that closes the border to drug dealers and terrorists." First of all, the present administration and most of the previous administrations that preceded it don't really give a damn about the drug trade because they have turned a blind-eye to it time and time again. And in fact, the government via the military has been an active participant in the international drug trade several times e.g. the Golden Triangle which was the opium center of Asia during our Vietnam debacle, Reagan's team of terrorists smuggled cocaine from El Salvador and Nicaragua into the U.S. in order to finance the weapons they traded terrorists for American hostages, they ignored Noriega's drug dealing empire for years as well as the Taliban's poppy fields in Afghanistan, etc. etc. etc. As for Dubya's concern for the �hardworking people who want only to provide for their f amilies,' then why do they make these poor Mexican people pay outrageous amounts of money to be smuggled across our border by coyotes who often abandon these unfortunate souls in the backs of unventilated semi truck containers to suffocate? Naturally the perjurer who poses as a pious pilgrim for the poor doesn't mention all the corporations who are making record profits off the blood, sweat, & tears of these innocent souls who risk everything to get here only to be used as subhuman wage slaves. The argument that these �illegal aliens' only take the jobs that Americans won't take is only half the truth. Most of the jobs the migrant workers take pay less than a person can live on here because our cost of living is much greater than Mexico's. Additionally, the Mexican poor are used to a bare subsistence level of existence and we have been brought up to expect a much more humane level or standard of living. The greedy globalists want nothing less than to reduce the entire wo rld's workers to the pathetic state of the Mexican downtrodden. Why? Because this means ever more profits for the filthy fiends of finance and fraud. Note also that Bush and Company are against giving amnesty to these �hardworkers.' Another shining example of that compassionate conservatism. In other words, you are free to be exploited, exposed to unsafe working conditions, and near starvation wages but as soon as you become no longer profitable for your employer, get your butt back to Mexico to die in the dirt!

Equally important, don't fall for his feigned concern about terrorists crossing our borders. Terrorists are very sophisticated and enter our country and others dressed in fine suits, well-educated, and under cover of various professional guises. It's not necessary for a terrorist to swim the Rio Grande, jump fences, or hide in the desert under the cover of night. The border guard is there to simply regulate the number of poor laborers in order to keep the wage s paid to these noble souls down and hence more profitable to their feudal lords. As for the bald-faced lying bastard's claim to be worried about �the needs of our economy and the values of our country,' I am yet again simply floored due to his pathological lying and complete inability to be honest or deal with the facts and reality of his corrupt agenda and co-conspirators? The bush-baby doesn't give one hoot about our economy because he has clearly signaled the corporate vultures that they have carte blanche to rape, pillage, & plunder the planet and everyone one it except of course his top 1% or the elite aristocrats of the amoral. Recall the Savings and Loan �Scandal' and the recent tidal wave of corruption across the boardrooms of the top 500 corporations and don't fall for this pretense of patriotism. Bush is a partisan patriot of profit and persecutor of the poor and the pitiful. By the way, don't get me wrong regarding the �undocumented workers' who are �taking A merican jobs.' I don't blame them one bit. I would do the same if I were born in Mexico or in poverty. And don't forget all those good American corporations who open up their factories right across the Mexican border so they can avoid all the inconvenient laws such as workers right to organize, environmental standards, taxes, etc. They close down shop here and ruin their former loyal employees' lives so they can become obscenely rich and they cross back into America each night to sleep comfortably knowing that they're being protected by American workers' taxes in the form of our police and military personnel. How much more blatantly do they have to rub our noses in our own excrement before we do something about this travesty of justice for not only American workers but Mexican workers and workers the world over? As an illustration of the lie Bush is perpetrating, consider that the construction jobs that Mexicans perform here often pays a measly $5 per hr. for what typical Am erican construction workers earn at $20 to $30 per hr. Of course American construction workers aren't going to settle for such a paltry and insulting wage. What are the republican reptiles of rip-off going to suggest next, a 50 foot wall of concrete the entire length of our nation's borders? Fortress America could very well be not only designed to keep others out but to trap us within as well? One giant prison. Sound far-fetched? Well note that we already have more people locked up per capita than any other country and our prison/industrial complex is thriving. I mentioned my new book on our sinister system of taxation earlier so let me now give you a few, brief bits from it to help highlight yet another facet of the swindling of America's workers and citizens.

But before I get into my new book Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston, let me remind you of a few things. And by the way, I don't claim to have any special insights or skills as a researcher. My chief talent is my memory and this is precisely what the corrupt politicians and businessmen hope that people don't have. I simply connect the dots from the myriad bits and pieces of history I have read and/or lived through. For instance, recall that Bush-whacker senior was the director of the C.I.A. which should really stand for the Central Disinformation Agency. Our proud and patriotic secret agents who have trained the secret police for countless dictators in how to torture their dissenting citizens. And who have instigated and assisted in plots to overthrow democratically elected leaders the world over. Yeah, our Central Intelligence Agency who didn't even know the Soviet Union was imploding until it was a fait accompli. Also remember what Bush Sr. r epeatedly told us when he was president i.e. "read my lips, no new taxes." Too bad we don't have an office manned by the handicapped or the mentally challenged because they can read lips and they in their simplicity and honesty can tell when politicians are lying. Our �intelligence' agencies are a sad and dangerous joke. In short, they are treacherous thugs who believe that anything they do, no matter how immoral, is okay because it's done in the name of �National Security.' Well it is exactly this kind of mindset and the multitude of nefarious crimes committed by the CIA and other agencies such as the NSA (National Security Agency---which makes the CIA look like the Mickey Mouse Club) which has engendered such bitter hatred and a thirst for revenge against America around the globe. So, bushwhacker junior learned from his dad how to dissemble, distort, & deny like a professional which is what politicians excel at. And just like dear old dad who swore he wouldn't raise ta xes and then did, Bush-boy jr. has lied and deceived us into believing the ever-changing reasons for our invasion of Iraq. I will never understand how so many Americans can believe in this president who is nothing short of a habitual or pathological liar? I didn't need to be run over by a bulldozer before I came to the realization that he is our enemy and also the enemy of all humanity. What does it say about the anti-Christ in the Bible, that he will come disguised as our savior? Note Bush's frequent evangelical references in his public speeches? I believe to the marrow of my bones that we are once again being assaulted by the combined forces of the church and the state as has been done repeatedly throughout history. Of course, the real power behind the church and the state is the multi-national megalithic corporations who no longer have to abide by any country's sovereign laws. No, in this world where the Robber Barons have gained power never before imagined possible, econ omic blackmail is the order of the day and with the threat of astronomical fines levied for blocking the �free trade' of corporations, countries regularly back down on issues of environmental pollution, monopolization, and unfair trade practices.

And speaking of unfair trade practices, let's now turn to Mr. Johnston's book on how our tax system really works. "I believe that taxes are at the core of our democracy. Americans pay heavy taxes. When you add to our taxes what we pay privately for health care and education our collective burden is heavier than that of many Europeans. Many live in fear of the IRS, a fear skillfully exploited by some politicians.If you have heard about companies using a Bermuda mailbox to escape American taxes or that the IRS audits the poor more than the rich or that Enron paid no taxes or that executives have amassed untaxed fortunes or that the retired chief executive of General Electric had a free corporate jet, then you have already had a taste of some of the more shocking stories I found.I was especially surprised to find that some of the biggest tax breaks for the rich are not even in the tax code and that the IRS was unaware of many tax fraud techniques.Many who pose as conservatives in Washington, or at least whom the news media label conservatives, reject the idea of taxation based on the ability to pay. Few have had more influence over the tax policies of recent years than Grover Norquist, who runs Americans for Tax Reform.

A good tax system flows from the economic order and greases the wheels of commerce. Taxes make it possible to do business through the enforcement of contracts, maintenance of the infrastructure, protection provided by the military and education of the populace. In places without a real tax system, such as Honduras or Afghanistan, there is no widespread wealth. All rich countries have high taxes because wealthy societies have high demands for public goods. As Supreme Court Jus tice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, �Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.' Today, though, many want their civilization at a deep discount. Some want a free ride. There are politicians who spout law and order, but vote to handcuff the tax police.Worse are politicians who support loopholes and describe tax law enforcement as a tax increase. Representative Tom Delay of Texas, the Republican majority leader, did just that in the summer of 2004.spending money the government does not have, and financing it with more borrowing, is also unfair to honest taxpayers.

Perfectly Legal will expose how the majority of Americans are being duped into supplementing the incomes of the rich and powerful.Democracy is about individuals pursuing their self-interest in the belief that our society can achieve a common goal. Those who wash their hands of politics, do not vote and do not stay informed cede to others the shaping of society. It is this apathy that h as allowed certain individuals to remake tax rules to their benefit at the expense of the average American taxpayer. We must fight these manipulations if we are to, as the preamble to our Constitution says, �establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.' It is my hope that the truths revealed in this book will serve as a wake-up call to everyone who believes in the principles our country was founded on." (pgs. 1-5, David Cay Johnston)

Equally important my friend is the fact that we, the vast majority of Americans, are not only paying to subsidize the decadent and unethical rich of this country, but we are also paying the ultimate price in terms of sacrificing the lives of our sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, & father, sisters and brothers in wars designed and fabricated by the wealthy weasels of Wall Street and Washington D.C. Ironically, we call the owners of top managers of corporations the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and the presidency is also referred to as the Executive branch of government. And just as the executive branch of government has gained way too much power, the CEOs of corporate America and the world's other giant corporations from countries such as France, Germany, Britain, Japan, China, etc. have also garnered far too much power for any one individual to have. CEOs should more accurately be called CFOs i.e. Chief Fabricating Officer because this is their true function. They consistently lie, distort, manipulate, dis-inform, rob, rape, pillage, and plunder the earth and all its people. And this is why Bush's administration is the most secretive, scheming, and lying administration we've had since probably the days of the infamous Teapot Dome Scandal under President Taft I believe? As I have said before, Bush and his cockroach cabinet have a basically simple agenda i.e. to repeal and wipe-out every last vestige of the hard-won programs established to help the poor, the downtrodden, the physically fragile, the elderly, etc. And now they have set their sights on Social Security because it is like a juicy, ripe target for these gluttonous goblins feeding on the public like venomous vampires sucking the blood out of the body politic! Here are more of Dubya's lies and manipulations regarding Social Security:

"One of America's most important institutions---a symbol of the trust between generations---is also in need of wise and effective reform. Social Security was a great moral success of the 20th Century, and we must honor its great purposes in this new century. The system, however, on its current path, is headed toward bankruptcy. And so we must join together to strengthen and save Social Security."

No, rather we must save Social Security from you and your perverted plunderers of the public trust. Bush and his cabal are the ones who are bankrupt, they are morally bankrup t. But there is a grain of truth in what Bush says although you have to read between the lines to discover it. This administration on its current path is bankrupting America and playing a very dangerous game which could result in our complete ruin economically and could lead to anarchy and the complete breakdown of law and order in America. A word of caution my friend, you and all of us had better start preparing for how to live off the land up in the mountains. I'm not trying to be an alarmist or a fear-monger but those who are caught completely off guard will be most likely amongst the first to fall victim to the predators. And the current predators of wealth and privilege posing as simple, country folk from Crawford, Texas will not cease their campaign to reduce us all to paupers until they are stopped and held accountable for all their crimes. This mendacious moral midget masquerading as a man i.e. George Bush has the temerity to speak of �honoring' the �great purposes' of our Social Security system while simultaneously striving to gut it financially for the benefit of his political campaign contributors i.e. corporate gangsters inc. Just as we honor our parents by showing them respect, we honor the Social Security program's ideal by not opening it up to the plunderers of the public treasury. Isn't it amazing how Bush and his gaggle of craven conspirators can always come up with the billions they need to wage wars against nations who dare to tell the corporations to go to hell but when it comes to public health, education, welfare, and now the fictitious future dissolution of the Social Security system, they are at a complete loss as to how we're going to save this program established so that our elderly wouldn't have to live in a constant state of anxiety regarding how they would live out the remaining days of their lives? Bush's disingenuousness is so glaringly apparent that I'm totally incredulous he has the gall to even utter his pack o f lies? He speaks of the �great moral success' of the Social Security system when anyone who takes even a cursory glance at the history of the conservatives or the business elite can see that the conservatives have fought tooth-and-nail to block every progressive bill or piece of legislation with the aim of providing for the least fortunate amongst us! FDR's �New Deal,' and Lyndon Johnson's �Great Society' programs are amongst the most despised �liberal programs' of the rich and affluent. Almost all of the so-called �successful' and filthy rich made their fortunes by lying, cheating, stealing, and etc. yet they lecture us that we should be honest, hardworking, and always pay our taxes? The vast majority of Americans have no clue as to just how depressingly deep in international debt Bush and his buddies have plunged us. If just two of our major creditors who have loaned us billions, if not trillions, were to call in the debts we owe them, I fear we could be plunged into a �G reat Depression.' I'm no fan of Bill Clinton's but at least when he left office, we had a budget surplus of something like $400 billion dollars. By the way, I say I'm not a fan of his for amongst a plethora of other reasons, his wife, Hillary, used to be a lawyer for Wallmart that titan of tyranny in the workplace that is now the largest retail corporation in America. And speaking of tyrannical corporations, I believe that I heard somewhere years ago that shortly after the Social Security system was established, the government loaned millions to the Ford Corp. Remember good old Henry Ford, the Jew-hating American success story who supported not only Hitler but also contributed significantly to the undermining of our public educational system. Ah yes, the �free market' system! A free ride for the already wealthy and a prison for all the rest of us. A prison wherein we are held captive in the collective darkness laughingly known as the mainstream media and where we are reduced to degrading and subhuman �living conditions' and where we are occasionally tossed a few bread crumbs which the pigs of profit and piracy have accidentally dropped from their cavernous gaping holes in the masks they hide their grotesqueness behind!

Furthermore, in Bush's faade of feeling and compassion he rolls out the never disappointing tactic of whipping up the public's fear as George Orwell so brilliantly predicted. "If steps are not taken to avert that outcome, the only solutions would be dramatically higher taxes, massive new borrowing, or sudden and severe cuts in Social Security benefits or other government programs." Bush and the vicious fundamentalist Christians and free market fundamentalists of the corporate cockroach kingdom are in fact trying to turn back the hands of time to the Dark Ages. That infamous age in which the peasants only barely scratched-out an existence at the discretion of the �nobility.' The church and the state were feudal lords whom t he people had to pay outrageous taxes and/or the bulk of their crops and were left with barely enough food to feed their families. This is why the ruling elite don't want a truly well-educated public because they want to keep us in a dark ages of the mind as well as the spirit so we can be more easily duped and manipulated into doing their bidding. Naturally, the wealthy will not be forced to pay dramatically higher taxes---hell, they pay next to nothing already. And of course they will continue borrowing from other countries because after all, they are not the ones who are going to have to pay the loans back, it's always us, the worker drones who pay the lion's share of the bills owed. Lastly, they are going to make sudden and severe cuts in Social Security benefits and other government programs no matter what and you can take that to the bank. How? Oh, they're very resourceful and diabolically clever in their excuses for sticking-it to the rest of us at every opportunity t hey get.

The barracuda Bush then has the effrontery to say, "You and I share a responsibility. We must pass reforms that solve the financial problems of Social Security once and for all. Fixing Social Security permanently will require an open, candid review of the options. Some have suggested limiting benefits for wealthy retirees." Yeah, right, an �open, candid review.' Open and candid as in Cheney's �Energy Summit' that he fought so valiantly to keep secret and hidden from the public who pays all the bills including Cheney's salary. And no, we don't share responsibility with Bush because he and his heinou