Truth About Bush

So? … A Note from Michael Moore

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Friends,

It would have to happen on Easter Sunday, wouldn’t it, that the 4,000th American soldier would die in Iraq. Play me that crazy preacher again, will you, about how maybe God, in all his infinite wisdom, may not exactly be blessing America these days. Is anyone surprised?

4,000 dead. Unofficial estimates are that there may be up to 100,000 wounded, injured, or mentally ruined by this war. And there could be up to a million Iraqi dead. We will pay the consequences of this for a long, long time. God will keep blessing America.

And where is Darth Vader in all this? A reporter from ABC News this week told Dick Cheney, in regards to Iraq, “two-thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.” Cheney cut her off with a one word answer: “So?”

“So?” As in, “So what?” As in, “F*** you. I could care less.”

I would like every American to see Cheney flip the virtual bird at the them, the American people. Click here and pass it around. Then ask yourself why we haven’t risen up and thrown him and his puppet out of the White House.

The Democrats have had the power to literally pull the plug on this war for the past 15 months — and they have refused to do so. What are we to do about that? Continue to sink into our despair? Or get creative? Real creative. I know there are many of you reading this who have the chutzpah and ingenuity to confront your local congressperson. Will you? For me?

Cheney spent Wednesday, the 5th anniversary of the war, not mourning the dead he killed, but fishing off the Sultan of Oman’s royal yacht. So? Ask your favorite Republican what they think of that.

The Founding Fathers would never have uttered the presumptuous words, “God Bless America.” That, to them, sounded like a command instead of a request, and one doesn’t command God, even if they are America. In fact, they were worried God would punish America. During the Revolutionary War, George Washington feared that God would react unfavorably against his soldiers for the way they were behaving. John Adams wondered if God might punish America and cause it to lose the war, just to prove His point that America was not worthy. They and the others believed it would be arrogant on their part to assume that God would single out America for a blessing. What a long road we have traveled since then.

I see that Frontline on PBS this week has a documentary called “Bush’s War.” That’s what I’ve been calling it for a long time. It’s not the “Iraq War.” Iraq did nothing. Iraq didn’t plan 9/11. It didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. It DID have movie theaters and bars and women wearing what they wanted and a significant Christian population and one of the few Arab capitals with an open synagogue.

But that’s all gone now. Show a movie and you’ll be shot in the head. Over a hundred women have been randomly executed for not wearing a scarf. I’m happy, as a blessed American, that I had a hand in all this. I just paid my taxes, so that means I helped to pay for this freedom we’ve brought to Baghdad. So? Will God bless me?

God bless all of you in this Easter Week as we begin the 6th year of Bush’s War.

God help America. Please.

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Iraq war ‘caused slowdown in the US’

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Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent | February 28, 2008

THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

The former World Bank vice-president yesterday said the war had, so far, cost the US something like $US3trillion ($3.3 trillion) compared with the $US50-$US60-billion predicted in 2003.

Australia also faced a real bill much greater than the $2.2billion in military spending reported last week by Australian Defence Force chief Angus Houston, Professor Stiglitz said, pointing to higher oil prices and other indirect costs of the wars.

Professor Stiglitz told the Chatham House think tank in London that the Bush White House was currently estimating the cost of the war at about $US500 billion, but that figure massively understated things such as the medical and welfare costs of US military servicemen.

The war was now the second-most expensive in US history after World War II and the second-longest after Vietnam, he said.

The spending on Iraq was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch because the US central bank responded to the massive financial drain of the war by flooding the American economy with cheap credit.

“The regulators were looking the other way and money was being lent to anybody this side of a life-support system,” he said.

That led to a housing bubble and a consumption boom, and the fallout was plunging the US economy into recession and saddling the next US president with the biggest budget deficit in history, he said.

Professor Stiglitz, an academic at the Columbia Business School and a former economic adviser to president Bill Clinton, said a further $US500 billion was going to be spent on the fighting in the next two years and that could have been used more effectively to improve the security and quality of life of Americans and the rest of the world.

The money being spent on the war each week would be enough to wipe out illiteracy around the world, he said.

Just a few days’ funding would be enough to provide health insurance for US children who were not covered, he said.

The public had been encouraged by the White House to ignore the costs of the war because of the belief that the war would somehow pay for itself or be paid for by Iraqi oil or US allies.

“When the Bush administration went to war in Iraq it obviously didn’t focus very much on the cost. Larry Lindsey, the chief economic adviser, said the cost was going to be between $US100billion and $US200 billion - and for that slight moment of quasi-honesty he was fired.

“(Then defence secretary Donald) Rumsfeld responded and said ‘baloney’, and the number the administration came up with was $US50 to $US60 billion. We have calculated that the cost was more like $US3 trillion.

“Three trillion is a very conservative number, the true costs are likely to be much larger than that.”

Five years after the war, the US was still spending about $US50billion every three months on direct military costs, he said.

Professor Stiglitz and another Clinton administration economist, Linda Bilmes, have produced a book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, pulling together their research on the true cost of the war, which does not include the cost to Iraq.

One of the greatest discrepancies is that the official figures do not include the long-term healthcare and social benefits for injured servicemen, who are surviving previously fatal attacks because of improved body armour.

“The ratio of injuries to fatalities in a normal war is 2:1. In this war they admitted to 7:1 but a true number is (something) like 15:1.”

Some 100,000 servicemen have been diagnosed with serious psychological problems and the soldiers doing the most tours of duty have not yet returned.

Professor Stiglitz attributed to the Iraq war $US5-$US10 of the almost $US80-a-barrel increase in oil prices since the start of the war, adding that it would have been reasonable to attribute more than $US35 of that rise to the war.

He said the British bill for its role in the war was about 20 times the pound stg. 1billion ($2.1 billion) that former prime minister Tony Blair estimated before the war.

The British Government was yesterday ordered to release details of its planning for the war, when the country’s Information Commissioner backed a Freedom of Information request for the minutes of two cabinet meetings in the days before the war.

Commissioner Richard Thomas said that because of the importance of the decision to go to war, the public interest in disclosing the minutes outweighed the public interest in withholding the information.

Open Letter To War
Criminal George Bush
By Joe Cortina
9-21-6

Mr. Bush

I cannot in good conscience call you my ‘President’. That undeserved and unearned degree of respect would stick in my throat like warm vomit. - I respect the title, but do not respect you ­ NO decent American does. You are not only a disgrace to your high office, but a debasement to the dreams of our Founding Fathers. Your conduct is untrustworthy traitorous and treacherous to the good people of this country. You can forget the predictable disrespectful letter nonsense.

You must FIRST be proven WORTHY of respect to assess any criticism ‘disrespectful’.

You have broken the Holy oath you took as President. “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God” I took a very similar oath - but unlike you I have been true to MY oath. The ‘enemies’ DO include ALL ­ both FOREIGN ( our mortal enemy Israel) and DOMESTIC (you and your cabal of Israeli loyal neo-con traitors)

You have mocked God by your outrageous blasphemies and your sadistic murder of countless innocent lives ­ especially children. Your conduct will indeed merit the Scriptural “millstone about your neck and cast into the sea”. You are a monster (certainly not worthy of being called a “MAN”) of exceptional cruelty and evil ­ a consummate liar and hypocrite of biblical proportions.

History WILL eventually hail you as not only the most evil President in the history of the United States ­ but one of the most evil persons in history PERIOD! While you were leading your privileged life of a millionaire in grade school, I was training combat troops during the worst war crisis since WWII. Most of these ­ over 1,000 - were decent young warriors ­ not our modern day civilian murderers who do your dirty work without conscience because you tell them that God is on OUR side ­ what blasphemous arrogance.

Your mockery of Christian belief and conduct, as presented by our Lord Christ is so obnoxious that you must know the nature of your fate in the hereafter. Your lack of contrition for the unspeakable war crimes you have committed against helpless innocent civilians has sealed your fate in hell ­ where you WILL spend eternity.

Particularly odious in the eyes of God ­ must be your WILLFUL conduct in the implementation of especially sinister war weapons against civilian populaces ­ so cruel that you will find that even the WWII German Army did not in conscience employ these horrid things against helpless civilians ­ especially trapped or escaping refugees.

The ridicule and contempt for God ­ by swearing that HE ­ the Prince of Peace ­ commanded you to murder countless non-combatant men women and children ­ is blasphemy without equal in history. You will be reviled by generations to come ­ for your unparalleled treason and murder. The TRUTH of the 9-11 conspiracy WILL be exposed and I pray ­ along with countless millions of freedom loving people worldwide that you are convicted and hung as the mega-criminal that you most assuredly are.

How DARE you slander my good name and those of countless other REAL patriots who have unhesitatingly placed themselves in harm’s way for love of God and country - with insults of “traitor” ­ when you yourself have betrayed AN ENTIRE NATION.

I am a Veteran Mr. Bush ­ and a member of the dysfunctional incompetent under- funded VA hospital Administration. I discovered that I could not get the drugs preferred by my physician. I asked WHY the VA would NOT Supply these life saving drugs. Their answer? Because “they were more expensive that other similar drugs”. Well some of those ’substitute similar’ drugs made me sick and it was months of my discomfort before it was discovered.

In other words ­ MY government ­ the most powerful and RICH nation on EARTH ­ CAN afford ­ at YOUR ORDER ­ to send the most deadly and agonizing weaponry to the Jews ­ by special airlift ­ at the cost of MILLIONS of our hard earned dollars - so they can murder MORE civilians ­ YOU FULL WELL KNOWING OF THE IMMINANT CEASE FIRE! Isn’t that right ‘Mr. war criminal butcher’?

BUT ­ you will not authorize the pittance to supply the VA so that vets can have the proper medications. Now to make matters even a higher hardship ­ YOU - MR. Child murderer ­ have authorized this evil Government you control ­ to take funds out of my meager $930 SS check ­ which is my only formal income now. Why is my SS entitlement being robbed? Because I have not paid for those UNOPENED UNUSED drugs which made me sick ­ and which I have tried countless times to inform the VA - BUT no one will answer or return calls. The VA sent me a letter as if they were the Gestapo and I was a peasant servant of the State ­ stating that I had NO recourse for my grievances and THEY did NOT want or need my input and had NO intentions of contacting me.

Since it is evident that the VA will not help ­ I must now spend my life savings to buy my own drugs ­ a several thousand-dollar/yr expense. Thank you SO much for your ‘concern’ for us vets.

BTW ­ Since you would never bother to stoop so low as to read a letter from one of the common people ­ your Gestapo agent readers would otherwise presume that I am a leftist liberal disgruntled Democrat, right? You don’t have enough gray hairs on your head to preach morality to me.

WRONG! I am not only a REAL REPUBLICAN ­ but have been called the Republican’s Republican. Voted for you twice ­ many year card holding member of the RNC. Your administration is so foul and evil, from warmonger Rumsfeld to the high priestess of hate Rice that NO REAL Christian or informed ethical American could possibly support your imperialistic greedy self-serving war making on sovereign nations who have done us no harm.

YOU ­ SIR: have been the principle person who created an enemy out of a former ally. There was no US enemy in the Mid-East before the racist secular Christian- hating bogus State of Israel came into being. That hellhole is a MORTAL ENEMY of this country and whose evil parasitic people have turned this once great country into a morally-rotted corpse.

A quick quiz ­ Mr. Warmonger. Which is the ONLY country on planet earth that has ­ since Dec. 1941 - committed ­ by PUREST DEFINITION ­ and ACT OF WAR against the United States OF America - or committed the unprovoked merciless sadistic slaughter of over TWO HUNDRED of our fathers sons brothers and neighbors? But of course that was ‘ OK’ ­ just as long as the murderers were the ’self-chosen’. Did you get that one right? Well here is another. Which is the ONLY country in the Mid-East that DOES IN FACT have a HUGE arsenal of REAL weapons of REAL mass destruction ­ AND who have OPENLY threatened/ blackmailed America that they would NOT hesitate to use them against us if we do not continue to start AND SUPPORT wars against THEIR enemies ­ NOT OURS.

YOU and YOU alone are responsible for bringing NOT ONLY AMERICA but the ENTIRE WORLD into a senseless conflict which will only end in a world wide cataclysm of horrors death and ruination the likes of which earth has never seen. You have worked VERY diligently to posture yourself as the anti-Christ ­ as I cannot imagine any world leader more evil and deceiving.

I fear more for my children and grandchildren and pray for the day of our deliverance from greedy immoral monsters of your ilk. Never in my adult life have I ever witnessed such sadistic evil and personal joy of the immeasurable suffering of your helpless innocent victims.

To forgive is divine ­ so it has been said. Perhaps Christ will forgive you ­ but I will not. You have led my country to the very edge of ruination with your bizarre slavish loyalty to the most perverse ­ violent - Godless ­ sadistic ­ pernicious people I have ever encountered. THESE are the animals that had Christ murdered. NONE of their mentality AND conduct has changed in 2 millennia ­ only the names. AND ­ I WILL remind you that according to our Lord ­ these people are vipers, hypocrites, Pharisees ­ and sons of the Devil.

If you are inclined to use tired inane insults like “anti-Semitic” then you had better rebuke Christ as well ­ for I am only the messenger ­ quoting His Holy Scripture from the NT. I am a mere mortal and am not entitled to such powers ­ but were I able ­ I would damn you to hell for all eternity for the misery and death that YOU have authored in the name of our Lord. My personal experiences of sufferings that YOU are DIRECTLY responsible for, are but a drop in a sea of tears authorized by your decree. You have MUCH innocent blood on your hands.

With utter disgust,

Joe Cortina ­ father ­ veteran ­ patriot and Christian

Vermont towns vote to arrest Bush and Cheney
Wed Mar 5, 2008 4:36am EST

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for “crimes against our Constitution,” local media reported.

The nonbinding, symbolic measure, passed in Brattleboro and Marlboro in a state known for taking liberal positions on national issues, instructs town police to “extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them.”

Vermont, home to maple syrup and picture-postcard views, is known for its liberal politics.

State lawmakers have passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and impeach Bush and Cheney, and several towns have also passed resolutions of impeachment. None of them have caught on in Washington.

Bush has never visited the state as president, though he has spent vacations at his family compound in nearby Maine.

Roughly 12,000 people live in Brattleboro, located on the Connecticut River in the state’s southeastern corner. Nearby Marlboro has a population of roughly 1,000.

(Writing by Andy Sullivan, editing by David Wiessler)

A Two-Step Solution to Reverse the Bush Recession
Economic Policy
by Stephen Pizzo | January 18, 2008 - 2:13pm

article tools: email | print | read more Stephen Pizzo

Washington seems to have discovered what we’ve been talking about here for over three years — that the Bush tax cuts for the rich didn’t work as advertised. Of course, we knew they wouldn’t work when they were passed way back in 2001

As I’ve written so many times my fingers cramp just thinking about it… economies are not stimulated from the top down, but from the bottom up — by consumers, not producers. Very little of the money generated by tax cuts for top earners ever trickles down in ways that result in higher earnings and spending by consumers.

In reality it works exactly the other way. Cut the payroll tax for working Americans. That immediately puts more money in the hands of people who are already having trouble making ends meet. Consumers spend most or all that extra money in each paycheck. That in turn generates more demand for goods and services, which spurs hiring at the companies that produce them. Those companies then have to hire more workers to profit off that increased demand, resulting in additional workers getting the benefit of the payroll tax cut, who spend that extra money. As companies profits increase due to increased consumer buying power, tax revenues will begin to refill federal coffers gutted by the Bush tax cuts.

All of which creates a self-sustaining virtuous cycle that benefits everyone up and down the food chain.

Now that we’re in a mess that could have — and should have — been avoided, everyone in both parties is looking for a way out. And once again, everyone, in both parties, are getting it wrong.

Just look at some of the numbskull proposals being floated.

The Republican solution is another shot of the dog that bit us. They’re using looming economic gloom to fear-monger us into agreeing to make the Bush tax cuts of 2001 permanent. Of course that’s so predictable from the party that fear-mongered us into other disasters like wiretaps, Gitmo and torture. Now they are trying to scare us into setting those tax cuts for the rich into stone before the GOP gets kicked out of town next January.

Democrats have been no less predictable. Their solution is to just start handing out cash in the form of $300 to $600 one-time handouts to every taxpayer. That’s not going to solve anything. It will pay one month’s heating bill for a working family in Detroit. Then what? It’s a non-solution masquerading as a solution by candidates afraid of being accused of waging “class warfare” by opposing GOP attempts to make the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Democrats learned this little trick from Bush. He used the same trick back in 2001. He handed out the same kind of “feel-good” money then to make us feel like we were getting a piece of his $1.4 trillion tax cuts. That was our piece… a one-time $300 to $600 check — actually more a morsel than a piece — suckers. The biggest beneficiaries of Bush’s tax cuts have been the top 1% of the nation’s earners.

Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation indicate that the cost of the tax-cut provisions the Tax Policy Center has analyzed would be $3.4 trillion over the 2008-2017 period, if these provisions are extended. Applying the Tax Policy Center estimates of the share of the tax cuts that would go to each income group to the CBO/Joint Tax Committee estimates of the tax cuts’ cost shows:

* From 2008 through 2017, households with annual incomes of more than $1 million — a group that comprises the highest income 0.3 percent of the population — would receive $739 billion in tax cuts. This represents 22 percent of the total value of the tax cuts over the period.
* More than $1 trillion in tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent of households, a group with annual incomes above $400,000 in 2007. The highest income 1 percent of households thus would receive nearly one third of the tax cuts’ total value.
* The bottom 60 percent of households would receive 12 percent of the tax cuts’ value, or well under half the amount that would go to the top 1 percent. (See Table 1; for year-by-year detail, see the appendix tables.) (Source)

So here’s how we fix that “mistake” and, at the same time, revitalize the American economy. Don’t reach for a pen and note pad, because this is so simple you could write the whole economic plan on the back of a matchbook:

1) Revoke the Bush tax cuts for the top 1%
2) Shift those cuts to reduce the payroll tax by the same amount.

That’s it. A two-point economic stimulus package that will pump $1 trillion into the pockets of American consumers. And, rather than that money flowing into family trusts and other paper investments, it will get spent, piece by orderly piece, each week, every week, forever. So, if congress is itching to make a tax cut permanent, that’s the one — a payroll tax cut.

The beneficiaries of the Bush tax cut had their chance to prove the trickle-down theory, and failed — just as they failed the last time it was tried by Ronald Reagan. Both attempts left America saddled by back-breaking deficits and debt. Both attempts enriched the already enriched at the expense of middle class working Americans.

They had their chance. Now give trickle up economics a chance. Revoke the Bush tax cuts for the top 1% and give them to working Americans.

Then, just so they feel like they’re getting a piece of this new action, send each of America’s top 1% earners a government check for $300 as their share of our economic stimulus package — with our compliments.
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