No Political Correctness

2003-10-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

Well, Dubya is off to visit several foreign countries, starting with California. Maybe he'll find another we can blow up and then rebuild. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea for California.

He met with Arnold, who's apparently going to be expecting some federal help with his problems. Bush will probably be happy to oblige, if he thinks Arnold can help him carry California, which he lost badly in the last election.

Congressman Waxman was on CNBC tonight saying that Halliburton (Cheney's old company) is gouging the US taxpayer for the gasoline they are supplying to Iraq. They have all these no-bid exclusive contracts to do whatever they want in Iraq, the gist of this charge is that they are buying gasoline outside of Iraq and bringing it into Iraq for Iraqi consumption. He says they buy the gas at a wholesale price of around $.70 a gallon, and normally the charge for transporting it the 400 or so miles from Kuwait into Iraq should be something like $.10 - $.20 a gallon. But Halliburton is charging us $1.00 a gallon just for the transport. So the gas that's costing them $.90 a gallon max, is costing us $1.70 a gallon! And then they sell it in Iraq for $.05 - $.10 a gallon. Such a deal!

Is the economy really getting better? All the experts have been ecstatic over just the fact that jobs are not being lost as fast as they were. Kind of like when they don't raise taxes as much as they were going to, that's Washington's idea of a tax cut. One report showed that the 50,000 or so jobs supposedly created wasn't even enough to stay even with the population increase, so even with that rate the unemployment rate would not go down, probably even creep up some more. I certainly haven't seen any job openings anywhere. I believe I can speak for millions like me whose lives and careers have been trashed under this administration, that we would love to go back to the jobs we had and paying the taxes we were before Dubya came along and gave us a "tax cut".

2003-10-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

Corrsepondent Scott Pelley on CBS's "60 Minutes II" had a very interesting interview tonight with Greg Thielmann, a foreign-service officer for 25 years and a former expert on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He now says that key evidence in Colin Powell's UN speech was misrepresented and the public was deceived.

This helps to support what I have believed all along, that George W. intended from day 1 to get Sadam, mainly to please and avenge his Daddy. And he saw 9/11 as the perfect opportunity. Recent polls have shown that over 60% of the people in this country believe that Sadam and Iraqis were behind the 9/11 attacks, when in fact 19 of the 20 hi-jackers were from Saudia Arabia. And of course Osama bin Laden is also from Saudia Arabia. But immediately after 9/11, Bush and his people talked incessantly of nothing but Sadam, being careful to never blame him explicitly for the attacks but trying hard to leave that impression. And it worked. Most people in this country can quote statistics from every sport known to man, but they don't know one Middle-East country from another.

When the President wants something done, of course his administration is going to do everything they can to help make it happen, and that looks like what happened here. They all knew how badly Bush wanted to get Sadam, so they tried by whatever means to make the case for going after Sadam. Bush has been a two-trick pony, his answer to any questions about anything concerning the economy being "tax cuts", and his answer to any questions about anything else being "get Sadam".

Like father, like son. I was sick of hearing about Sadam and Iraq after the first Bush presidency, and now we've had to endure another term of it, only this time it's much costlier in both money and lives, and will be for who knows how long. Neither of them had a clue about how to do anything constructive in this country and both trashed the economy, again much worse under Dubya with the worst stock market crash and loss of jobs since the Great Depression. Like many other people I was appalled by Clinton's sexual escapades and was ready to see him replaced, but like the old saying, "be careful what you wish for". I sure wish he was back in office now.

Clinton and his administration pushed technology and things like computers and the internet (Al Gore even claimed at one time to have invented the internet) and that's what we need now, as companies and employees in these fields have been some of the hardest hit under Bush. I remember when Bush sr. was in office, and went to a supermarket one time and saw a price scanner at a register, he didn't even know what it was! I get the feeling that Dubya would be the same way if he ever encountered anything like a PC. Can't help but wonder what might have happened if all the money he has squandered on Iraq had been spent in this country on things like broad-band and other infrastructure.

2003-10-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

2003-10-10T22:59:00.000-07:00

So, another one bites the dust. First it was William Bennett, now Rush Limbaugh, two blowhards who set themselves up as holier-than-thou moralists to lecture to the rest of us lowbrows, and now we find that they are not all that moral after all. What was that about people who live in glass houses...

Looks like Congress is going to meekly hand over the 87 Billion additional dollars Dubya and company want for their Iraqi experiment. Where did this bunch learn about going to war? What ever happened to "to the victor belong the spoils"? It's always expensive to go to war, but this is ludicrous that we, after "winning" the war, have to now rebuild the vanquished country to a higher level than it's ever been. And we were told before the war that Iraq's oil reserves could be used to pay for any reparations needed, but now we're told we must just give them the money, we can't even make it a loan! Wonder what kind of difference we could make in our own country with 87 Billion dollars?

Bush and Cheney are now trying hard to convince us the war was worth it, even tho no WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) have been found. This was the main reason given for going into Iraq originally, but now they're trying to change their story to something more like "we did it to end the oppression of the Iraqi people". That's right up there with Cheney's saying before the war that the Iraqis would "welcome us with flowers" if we invaded the country. Seems like a lot of those flowers had bombs in them. And of course they'd have us believe that it's just a big coincidence that Cheny's old company, Halliburton, got Billions of dollars in no-bid contracts from the government for reparations after the war, before we supposedly even knew we were going to war! Kind of like the coincidence that after the first Gulf War when Cheney was Secretary of Defense and his department gave huge contracts to Halliburton for clean up, as soon as he left office Halliburton made him their CEO, even tho he had NO experience running a business!

2003-10-08T23:27:00.000-07:00

Really glad the California circus is over. Now let's see if Arnold can deliver on what he promised. So tired of hearing all the Republican commentators gushing over what a victory for Republicans this is, get real. Most people voted for a movie star, they could care less which party he says he belongs to.

Now that this is over we can get back to the real news, the Iraq mess. Bush and company have probably appreciated this distraction to get people's minds off of the bad war news for awhile. But then they need the war news to distract people's attention from the lousy economy and lack of jobs.

Wonder if Bush realized that by signing the bill for the telemarketers 'Do Not Call' list he probably eliminated the only jobs that may have been created during his term.

Not only have millions of jobs been eliminated since Bush took office, the government makes it easy for companies to bring in people from other countries to replace hi-tech workers in this country with the H1-B Visa program. And now, with rampant unemployment in the hi-tech area and this program coming under fire, surprise, the government can't even count how many of these visa holders are working here.