Credit where credit is due #2

Here's a list of things George W. Bush should get credit for:

• Letting the attacks of 9/11 tale place on his watch.
• Turning a record budget surplus into a record deficit.
• Starting two wars.
• Politicizing the science.
• Ruining FEMA.
• Being slow to help New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina.
• Lowering our national infrastructure standards.
• Not going after corporate and white collar criminals.
• Taking away our civil liberties.
• Putting partisan hacks in charge of cabinet level posts.
• Being one of the most incompetent presidents ever.
• Ruining our economy by cutting taxes in a time of war.
• Doing nothing about unemployment.

He did quite a lot of things he should get more credit for, too bad for him most of the things he did were horrendous for our country.

Let's hear it for the April Fool!

The April Fool told us:

• that by going to war we'd make peace.
• that he was going to be the environmental president, yet he did nothing about climate change.
• that American business must have more government welfare to be competitive, while the rest of us see cuts in Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other government programs.
• he'd make us safer by fighting terrorists in Iraq, a country where there was little or no terrorist activity before we invaded.
• we had to surrender our civil liberties here at home so we could help the Iraqi's get theirs.
• that we have to fight for Iraqi freedom and to bring democracy to the Middle East while he ignores the democratic people's movements in Tibet and other places.
• says he supports democracy around the world but he will not deal with the democratically elected governments in Iran and Venezuela.
• we're winning in Iraq when there is little fighting and that we're also winning in Iraq when there is lots of fighting and more senseless death.
• that we can't afford to give everyone single payer not for profit health care, we can only afford to give it to him and his pals in power.

I'm not sure who the bigger fool is at this point, him, or the idiots who voted for him because they believed all his lies. I don't know about you but I'm more than ready to revolt if the April Fool decides that he's going to stay on as our Idiot in Chief past next January. Who's with me?

What's the matter with kids today?

Well the Childhater in Chief did what the said he'd do, he vetoed the SCHIP bill that a bipartisan Congress passed. He claims that if allowed to become law the bill wold have led us down the road to socialized medicine for all. And that's a bad thing how?

With this veto, which should be overridden with all due haste, our idiot President proclaims his hatred for middle class kids whose parents make too much to qualify for help but too little to actually buy the insurance they need for their kids.

Those white middle class kids now join the ranks of the other groups of kids he hates like Hispanic kids,African American kids,
and the group he hates most of all Iraqi and Afghani kids.

It's amazing how someone who gets the best health care money can buy for free will stand by and deny basic health care those who can't afford it. Email, call, or write your Congressmen (or women) and tell them to vote to override this awful veto.

The gift that keeps on giving (unfortunately)

All this nonsensical Reagan worship the Reich wing and the Republican Presidential candidate are doing is really burning my ass lately. What they are trying to do is to re-write history to fit their own twisted agenda.

Reagan was a mediocre President who benefited from being in the right place at the right time. The USSR was going to collapse under it's own weight regardless of whether he stood in front of the Berlin wall and told Gorby to tear it down or not. The economy was going to pick up whether he cut taxes on the rich or not, in fact we spent much of the Reagan years mired in recession.


Let's take an honest look at some of his accomplishments:
1) He callously avoided mentioning or doing anything about AIDS until it became clear that it was going to spread beyond gay men.
2) He did nothing to empower or to help people of color.
3) He went on a military spending spree that nearly bankrupted this country.
4) He stood behind every right wing terrorist group that tried to over throw a legally elected government, cases in point his support of the Contras in Nicaragua and the death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador.
5) He attacked a tiny tropical island nation, Grenada, because it had a few Communists in it's government.

But the worst thing Reagan did was deregulation. He deregulated every thing he could get his hands on in the name of freeing up American business so it could compete better world wide. He stopped tougher mileage standards from being adopted, he defanged OHSA and MSHA, and he helped get many more regulations and worker safeguards repealed or stopped when he was President.

We are still reeling from the after effects of his bullshit lo these many years hence. Do you honestly think our climate would be in such trouble today if he had not allowed business and industry to pollute more? Do you honestly think that we'd have such a huge stock pile of weapons if he had not kept crying about how "weak" we were? Do think the culture of corruption in Washington DC wold be so high if he had not allowed his business cronies to run things and write our nations laws?

Some of the results of Reagans "freeing up" of American business have resulted in that mine disaster in Utah, the lead paint coated kiddie toys, a Wal-Mart on every corner, that Starbucks they're getting ready to open inside your colon, and the insanity that things in nature can be patented by a multi national corporation.

Imagine for a moment how many fewer deaths from AIDS we'd have to today if he'd put the power of the federal government to work on finding a cure. Imagine how much safer we would really be today if he had stopped propping up dictators and regimes who kill and torture their citizens.


While you're imagining that, just remember that if Reagan had not set the example of corrupt Reich wing cronyism then we might not be saddled with this asshole today.

I could not resist this last post before I go

I found this on Boing Boing and they got it via MSNBC.com:

Wal-Mart Pays Teens $0 an hour!!!

The young (14+) teenagers that Wal-Mart employs as after-school baggers at its Mexican stores earn nothing at all -- paid only in tips. Technically, this complies with local labor laws, while violating the hell out of their spirit.

The company doesn’t try to conceal this practice: its 62 Superama supermarkets display blue signs with white letters that tell shoppers: OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING. The use of unsalaried youths is legal in Mexico because the kids are said to be “volunteering” their services to Wal-Mart and are therefore not subject to the requirements and regulations that would otherwise apply under the country’s labor laws. But some officials south of the U.S. border nonetheless view the practice as regrettable, if not downright exploitative.

In the interests of fairness we invited the CEO of Wal-Mart to defend his company and he took us up on our offer.

"Heh heh heh, looks like ya'll smarty pantses caught us. Heh heh heh. You know what tho? Them stores are in Mexico and not News Mexico, so the US labor laws don't apply to them peoples. Like we care about labor laws anyways, heh heh heh. Them Mexican teens is glad to work for tips, just like them rabbis in the leper colonies, heh heh heh, thass a joke. But they is glad to work for tips I tell ya. They's just earning enough money to pay a coyote to git 'em over here when they's old enough to work our good payin' fruit and vegetable pickin' and construction jobs here in the USA of America. What?...

Why is ya'll lookin' at me like that?

We didn't do nothin' wrong. My law attorneys telled me it wasn't illegal. What?

Stop looking at me like that!!!

Ya'll go on and go shopping and leave me alone.

We's Wal-Mart and we kin do anything we dang well want!!!

Now go on and go shop in one of our fine stores or Ah'm turnin' you in for being a terrorismist."