“…nine big U.S. banks paid $32.6 billion in bonuses in 2008, while receiving $175 billion in taxpayer funds. In the first half of this year, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has already boosted compensation and benefits by 33%, setting aside a record $11.4 billion for such payments. And Citigroup and Bank of America have just formally asked the government’s permission to pay bonuses to their most senior executives…”

“…Congress can do much more to ensure that companies act more responsibly on executive compensation  by taking a simple, straightforward step: eliminating the tax break for irresponsibly high CEO pay…”

“…By eliminating the deduction for any compensation above $1 million, they can simplify the tax code, abolish the taxpayer subsidy for irresponsible compensation and restore bonuses and stock options to their original purpose of rewarding good performance rather than as a means to avoid paying taxes…”

READ MORE @ New York Daily News

The American Dream is over folks. This shows that the Liberal Democrats are just as paid off by corporations as Conservative Republicans, and have just as little desire to represent the people. Maybe now more of you will join me in voting third party (independent, green, libertarian, etc) in the mid-term congressional elections in 2010 and the presidential election in 2012.

I love that this was caught on film. It’s an excellent example of the attitude of our lawmakers. Having been paid off by the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and then making sure that only they are represented in the discussion of health care reform, citizens stand up and demand “their” representatives to represent their needs, and the response is that “we need more police” to shut them up. It’s Animal Farm. “All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”

YouTube – Protester Delays Senate Committee Opening

See also: Single Payer Action

TEA BAGGERS are SWALLOWING WHOLE the Fox News STAFF's SCHTICK

MSNBC’s David Schuster: If You’re Planning Tea Bagging Across The Country, ‘You’re Going To Need A Dick Armey’

This is pretty damned funny! He uses most, if not all, of the innuendo I’ve already heard floating around…

I took the liberty of transcribing it:

“For most Americans, Wednesday, April 15th will be Tax Day, but in our fourth story tonight it’s going to be TEA-BAGGING day for the right wing and they are going NUTS for it! Thousands of the WHIPPED OUT the festivities early this weekend and though the parties are officially TOOTHLESS, the protesters are FULL-THROATED about their goals. They wanna give President Obama strong TONGUE-LASHING and LICK government spending. Spending they did not oppose when they were under Presidents Bush and Reagan. They oppose Mr. Obama’s tax rates which will be lower for most of them, and they oppose the tax increases Mr. Obama is imposing on the rich, whose taxes will skyrocket to a rate that’s about 10% less than it was under Reagan. That’s TEA-BAGGING, in a NUTSHELL. Taking it’s inspiration from the Boston Tea Party when colonists tossed British tea into the sea because the tax on it had not been voted on by their duly elected representatives. That’s exactly the opposite, of course, of todays’ taxes, which is known in some quarters as ‘Taxation With Representation’. But as New York Times coumnist Paul Crudeman points out today, this time the TEA-BAGGING is not a SPONTANEOUS UPRISING, the people who came up with it are a familiar circle of Republicans, including former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, and former house majority leader Dick Armey, both of whom have FIRM support from right wing financiers and lobbyists, as well as Washington prostitute patron, Senator David Vitter who has issued statements in support of TEA-BAGGING, but is publicly type-left. Then, there was the media, specifically the Fox ‘News’ Channel, including Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Both are looking forward to an UP CLOSE and PERSONAL TASTE of TEA-BAGGING, themselves at events this Wednesday. But most amusing of all is Neil Cavuto, a member of the network’s executive committee. Neil’s online bio says he joined the network in July 1996, three months before the Fox News channel went on the air. Cavuto, defending his network’s promotion of TEA-BAGGING, said, quote ‘We are going to be right in the middle of these [TEA-BAGGERS], because at Fox we do not pick and choose these rallies and protests. We were there for the Million Man March.’ Can we roll that footage, the footage of Fox News at the Million Man March, back in October of ‘95? Of course the Million Man March occurred, as NewsHounds.org points out, almost a year before Fox News was on the air. We can only speculate why widespread TEA-BAGGING made Cavuto think of the Million Man March… Unless, he got them confused with DICK ARM[E]Y. And in Cavuto’s defense, if you are planning SIMULTANEOUS TEA-BAGGING around the country, you’re going to need a DICK ARMY!”

What David Schuster failed to include in his brilliant report, and what makes me fear for my country, much as Glenn Beck does (or pretends to), is that many of the NUT-JOBS that host and attend these NUT-FESTS to express their opinions in a (hopefully) peaceful manner, and to have a BALL (or two) with some good friends or like-minded strangers are the same people that believe, as many TEA-PARTY websites and flyer’s propose, in a “revolution”, and the same people who are buying conservative t-shirts that say “vote from the rooftops” (with pictures of sniper rifles), inferring that they wish to assassinate President Obama. I saw one conservative t-shirt for sale online that said “R.I.P. The American Dream, 1776-2008″. I thought a black man becoming the president was a pretty clear indicator that the American dream is alive and well. Perhaps these revolutionary TEA-BAGGERS who believe in “voting from the rooftops” (with sniper rifles) are racially motivated? I guess their American dream doesn’t include people who aren’t white. Or maybe it’s just jealousy? They are openly into TEA-BAGGING, so perhaps they are jealous, as black men are popularly known for having larger TEA-SPOUTS than they do…

I’m afraid that many of the TEA-BAGGERS attending the TEA-PARTIES today are lost souls, searching for a new direction, possibly a violent one. As Anderson Cooper said on CNN when describing why it’ been HARD for the Republicans to find their voice after the election, “it’s hard to talk when you’re TEA-BAGGING“

I’ve got to say, whoever created and has promoted this movement really made quite a snafu by not researching the social connotations of their terminology, but, I guess there’s no such thing as bad press. I just hope for the Republicans sake that they don’t, as I saw one guy comment on Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Project website “make up places to protest flag burning and call the Old GLORY HOLES“.

Keith Olbermann also did a funny segment about TEA-BAGGING, including some more good innuendo, including:

“SPILLING into the streets, CHOKING off traffic … pushed their own vision of TEA-BAGGING DOWN THE THROATS of the TEA-BAGGERS … SEMINAL moment … ONE LUMP OR TWO?”

And, for the enjoyment of those who are just becoming familiar with the sexual slang used for decades, and for the enlightenment of those who still don’t get it, I’ve included the following links to some definitions on Urban Dictionary:

TEA-BAGGER TEA-BAG TEA-BAGGING TEA PARTY

DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial analyst, consultant, banker, stock trader, economist, or any other type of expert when it comes to money.

I don’t have much money, so I don’t pretend to know all the ins and outs of the American economy, but I think I know what one of our biggest problems is: the stock market.

I think we should abolish the stock market.

Speculating on, buying, selling, and trading stocks, commodities, futures, and whatever else is legalized gambling.

I have nothing against gambling, so long as it is done responsibly, meaning that the gambler bets only what they can afford to lose and doesn’t borrow or steal to place or pay their bets.

The problem is, Wall Street is like a Las Vegas that’s legitimized by our political system.

The Federal Reserve Bank is just a bullying casino boss that gets it’s way, pressuring the United States government and therefore it’s people, into doing whatever best profits them.

The average stock holding citizen, that perhaps does a little light trading on the side, is not so much the problem. I’m not blaming our economic crisis on working people who are making a few investments in the stock marker on the side, although I think it’s most prudent if someone is going to do so that they put most of their money into other investments that aren’t so much like a roulette wheel.

The problem is the big players, like financial analyst firms and lending firms and banks that play little games with the money that their investors have in their companies. I suppose this is the way it has always been done, as the return on investments made by the institutions allows them to pay the interest on their customers’ investments in them. What seems to be one of the roots of our present predicament is that, as always seems to happen, people who do know a lot about money and how to move it around, explain away discrepancies, try to get to fancy, and basically play games with money, dribbling it in and out between their legs and behinds their backs like the Harlem Globetrotters do with basketballs, all in an effort to maximize short term gains for those involved, at the expense of the stability of the economy, and it ends up affecting everybody, except maybe for those who are actually playing, since they are usually wise enough to know that the magical bubble they are blowing so big is eventually, inevitably going to pop, and therefore they hide away a few million or billion into foreign bank accounts for the rainy day they are helping to ensure in the future.

I think the stock market is the most obvious example of how wealthy people gamble not only with their own money, but with the money and jobs of the everyday worker, who is too busy toiling away in obscurity to realize that their life savings or their retirement or their home mortgage or their kids’ college tuitions is about to be lost at the craps table by some guy in a remote tower in a distant city.

Speculating and trading stocks, commodities, futures, and whatever other things they have on Wall Street nowadays is just a bunch of rich guys playing a giant card game trying to trick each other into giving up the good cards and whomever ends up with the best hand walks away the winner while the rest of us leave the table broke.

We don’t need stocks. Companies don’t need to be publicly held or traded. The only people who benefit from such nonsense in a major way is the people who usually end up screwing everything up with their greed and cheating and lies.

If everybody just kept working and making and buying things, we’d be alright without stocks.

Things would be worth as much tomorrow as they are today and as they were yesterday.

Maybe it’s not as glamorous or exciting, but it’d be a hell of a lot more stable.

When I contemplate the sad state of America today, the first thing that comes to mind is our political system.

We call ourselves a democracy, but are far from democratic. In a democracy, citizens vote on issues, taking an active role in decision making.

We are supposedly a republic, which is a representative democracy where citizens elect officials based on their platforms and promises, according to which candidates best represent their beliefs, and thus are most likely to vote the way that the constituents who elect them would vote.

We are actually more of an oligarchy, where  the majority of power is held by a small group of people from certain families, communities, universities, and secret societies, and the monopoly of power is kept from the common people, with the rich and powerful controlling the military and law enforcement to protect them from retribution, all the while making decisions which are beneficial to the business interests that pay for their campaigns and support their opulent lifestyles with bribes once in office, rather than enacting legislation to protect and serve the workers of the lower and middle classes.

We are obviously not a meritocracy, wherein persons are elected or appointed and given power and responsibility based on talent and ability! If this were the case, we would see a lot less corruption and ineptitude in the daily news stories of our politicans’ exploits…

I think the main problem with our political process is that it’s designed so that being corrupt and getting paid off are too easy, and there are many rich and powerful interests lobbying the politicians to ensure that it remains that way.

If we reformed the nature of political positions to make them more transparent and accountable, then mostly only people who wanted to represent the people would bother getting into politics, with the exception of a few who are willing to work harder at being sneaky and underhanded.

I doubt that this will ever happen without a violent revolution, as the people responsible for reform are the same people who profit from corruption. However, for the sake of argument, I offer the following suggestions:

I suggest that politicians be held legally accountable for their platforms and the promises they make when campaigning, and that they be immediately terminated if they do not fulfill the duties specified in their contracts, JUST AS ANY OTHER EMPLOYEE WOULD! After all, the elected officials in our government are not supposed to be our bosses, but rather our servants.

If a person interviews for a job and is hired, but fails to perform the duties that they have accepted, in a timely and reasonable fashion agreed upon with the employer, the person is fired.

For example, let’s say that an employee is hired on at a convenience store. In the job interview, the candidate agrees to perform transactions, stock products, and clean. Once hired, the person talks to friends on the phone, steals money from the cash register, and deals drugs from the establishment, while neglecting their job. In almost every case, the person would be promptly fired, even if it leaves the team short-handed.

Why is it then that when a candidate for office makes campaign promises and then doesn’t keep them that they get to keep getting paid for 2 to 4 years, even if they are not doing the job they were hired to do, and that they then might even keep the job longer unless another interviewee can convince the employer (the American people) that they would be a better employee?

I think that any politicians that are not doing exactly what they said they would should be immediately fired, every time, PERIOD.

Then we can interview some new candidates, and have them sign legally-binding contracts that they will have to abide by, or they too will be terminated.

The contracts for publicly held offices should be specific, stating how the candidates will vote on key issues (yes or no), and how much money they will spend on various projects and expenses.

Then, each president, senator, house representative, governor, secretary, committee member, etc. would be required to keep a publicly viewable log on their website showing when they were in session, when they were not in attendance for important decisions, how they voted on each topic, and how much of our money they agreed to spend on what.

To take this accountability and transparency one step further, holders of public offices should be required to take input from their constituents on each issue, perhaps with voters logging in with distinct ID numbers and casting their voted directly. In that way, corruption by lobbyists and other bribery would be blatantly obvious, assuming that it made them vote differently than a majority of the people that they supposedly represent asked them to, which is usually the case.

Until this kind of reform is carried out, I am certain that corruption will continue to proliferate in the American political system.

This film was disappointing. I am definitely more of a liberal than a conservative, but was looking forward to seeing what I thought was going to be an insightful parody of Michael Moore, whose films I enjoy, but whom I admit has a definite slant and probably leaves out details damaging to his arguments. What I saw instead was a rude, immature slap-in-the-face to liberals and independents, and a blind-faith ass-kissing of the United States government.

The movie does make a good point about the damage caused to our country caused by a lack of morale and a lot of self-hating. However, instead of wisely acknowledging that we should try and remember how important it is to stand up for freedom and to protect ourselves from aggressors, even if out patriotism is lacking while the present administration and other forces in our government are lying, cheating, stealing, and killing to further their own wealth, power, and political agendas, An American Carol white-washes the entire situation to make it seem as if those who are discontent are angry about nothing, and that everything is just fine, and that we should quit thinking and questioning and instead just shut up and blindly pledge our allegiance to whatever war that those in power are currently profiting from.

An American Carol tries to include humor in it’s message, but relies, primarily, on making fun of Michael Moore’s weight by suggesting that he is constantly pigging out, making fun of his smell, saying that he needs a bath, and having characters slap him. This makes me think that the film was made with the intention of pleasing hateful conservatives, but not concerned with changing the minds of their opposition. It’s kind of like a loud, rude parent who tries to “slap sense” into their children; not much teaching happens, as the one who is supposed to learn a lesson instead just learns resentment. There is a lack of clever dialogue; most of the conversations are just predictable insults towards liberals, and little kids using “vulgar” words. To be fair, many favorite lampoons by liberals and for liberals can be a little juvenile in their parodies of conservative symbols like George W Bush, making fun of his reading difficulties, speach impediments, memory problems, and choking on pretzels. However, these are well known aspects of the man’s public character and help to make any depiction of him believable, whereas, in Michael Moore’s public appearances, be they interviews or on in his films, we don’t see him snacking incessantly, farting, being slapped, or being asked to bathe, so I don’t feel that these behaviors were necessary to establish that it was Moore who was being made fun of in this film.

So, in terms of entertainment and realism, this movie is a failure.

However, the film is educational, in that it is an excellent summary of the current beliefs and attitudes of most conservative thinkers. It makes use of the same fallacies of logic that conservatives love to use when attempting to argue with liberals. Conservatives try to imply that if you don’t agree with your president, your government, or them, that you are not patriotic about your country. This is very convenient, as it allows the ass-kissing, brainwashed fools among us to quickly and easily convert the easily brainwashable to their side, and this is, after all, their target demographic, as individuals who are possessed of free thought or the ability to question authority end up being liberal in their philosophies. For example, in the film, Michael Malone is explaining key issues like the need for healthcare to General Patton, and Patton blows him off, suggesting that by making a fuss about such things, he is actually helping terrorists! This is absurd, and hearkens back to the conservative notion of ”America: love it, or leave it!”, which doesn’t allow for the popular position of loving what it should be and trying to fix it.

It is frustrating to me to think of all the conservatives out there, who, after watching this very immature, though perhaps well intentioned movie, are sitting around, smiling, laughing, patting each other on their backs, and agreeing that their point has been made. If only they could realize that their point can only be made to themselves, and never to those they are disagreeing with. Sadly, our points can’t be made to them either.

And thus, the American Civil War, which began when this land was colonized by poor peasants and rich merchants, and reached it’s height in the late 1800s with battles between the north and south, continues onward into a fifth century.

On the heels of every other company in America jumping on the “we lost all of our/your money, please save us” bandwagon, auto makers are asking for handouts to keep from going under. Republicans and Democrats seem to be taking notice. Most notably, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and President-elect Barack Obama (in a White House visit with George W. Bush), among others, are proposing the use of $25 billion of the $750 bailout to keep US car makers GM, Ford, and Chrysler afloat.

Not to be insensitive to those who are employed by the auto industry or who have stock in it, I think this is a step backward. Why bolster companies who provide products that most consumers can’t afford and which lack the features that most consumers want?

Instead of subsidizing automakers, who are the lapdogs of the oil companies (which is best for the politicians who get paid by oil lobbyists), we could do what is best for the people (in the long-run), and let car companies fail unless they quit bragging about 30 MPG and convert us to plug-in hybrids with Flex-Fuel tanks, which would easily give us over 100 MPG average.

It’s shameful that car companies brag about 30 MPG on TV ads, and more shameful that most Americans fall for it. It’s comparable to if Apple and Microsoft were touting pen and paper as the latest technology. But what is most shameful of all is the way that the American government continues to legislate against improvements in fuel economy and implementations of alternative energy, falling back on tried and true excuses such as “doesn’t meet Department of Transportation standards”. Well, if other countries are using Toyota Priuses in electric only mode, for example, and even using cars with technologies based on air and water that get 100s of MPG of gas, and it’s working for them, perhaps the standards need to be reviewed and revised…

There is a lot of talk in the media, both on television and online, from major outlets and individuals, about electric power for cars, including both hybrid and plug-in technologies. While I definitely think that electric power for cars is an important move forward for affordability and ecology, I feel that while these technologies are being improved and gradually implemented, there is another, immediately available option which is not receiving adequate attention.

Car companies spend millions, if not billions of dollars annually on glitzy Hollywood ads full of dazzling computer generated imagery and celebrity voice-overs for their obsolete 30 MPG vehicles. If they would trim their bloated advertising budgets, they could spend about $100 per vehicle to put Flex Fuel tanks to use E-85 (15% gas, 85 % ethanol) NOW!

And instead of our government subsidizing the failing auto companies with billions of dollars to keep making 30 MPG guzzlers (which Republicans and Democrats both support), we could instead spend the money converting our nation’s gas stations to Flex-Fuel, for $20,000 – $60,000 per station, according to an article from Fareed Zakaria, published in Newsweek, entitled “Imagine: 500 MPG”.

Here is a quote from Zakaria’s article:

The current crop of hybrid cars get around 50 miles per gallon. Make it a plug-in and you can get 75 miles. Replace the conventional fuel tank with a flexible-fuel tank that can run on a combination of 15 percent petroleum and 85 percent ethanol or methanol, and you get between 400 and 500 miles per gallon of gasoline. [BLOGGER'S NOTE: by "400-500 MPG of gasoline", he means ~100 MPG of E-85 mix]

While I don’t think GM deserves any praise for the Volt concept, especially after burying their electric car almost 20 years ago, probably due to pressure from oil companies, I must give them accolades for adopting Flex-Fuel on some of their vehicles. They are also trying to increase the number of Flex-Fuel filling stations, namely working with big retailers like Wal-Mart and Target to get pumps installed.

If we could get our government and American automakers to stop answering to oil companies, who want poor gas mileage and high gas prices to gouge us at the pump, and get them to start answering to us, the consumers, we could get the “big three” (GM, Ford, & Chrysler) to start making all their vehicle models plug-in hybrids with Flex-Fuel tanks.

Then we wouldn’t need to subsidize them to keep making cars no one is buying. Everyone would start buying their cars. And if the government is going to subsidize them to adopt these alternative technologies, they could subsidize them with conditions. For example, if GM, Ford, & Chrysler get X number of billion dollars of taxpayer funding to convert to plug-in hybrids with Flex-Fuel tanks, then they agree to also start putting up solar panels and wind turbines to create environmentally friendly electricity for vehicle fueling stations, thereby creating a self-reinforcing cycle of improvement for consumers’ finances and for the environment.

We could apply the same model to electric companies providing power to residences and businesses.

All it takes is enough pressure from the consumers (boycotts, bargain shopping, voting) to break the greedy cycle of the politicians, auto makers, and utility providers serving the oil companies and vice versa.

Another way we could reform the auto industry is to manufacture less cars, putting only a few examples of each vehicle at dealerships, and sell custom-designed made to order vehicles via the internet or computerized kiosks at dealerships, or with the assistance of a salesperson entering preferences and assisting with orders. After all, for most of the population, vehicles are too expensive to be considered impulse items; there is no need to every color and flavor readily in stock at the check-out counter.

And if this means that some assembly workers and sales people lose their jobs, the government could help to convert them over to builders, maintainers, and operators of new mass transit. Imagine if all of America was covered in high-speed, low-energy bullet trains and nice new buses…

TO READ MORE, FOLLOW THE LINKS BELOW…

Plan Gives GM, Ford, Chrysler $25 Billion
Hybrid Car Blog – Prius VS Volt
California Cars Initiative – 100 MPG + Hybrids – Fareed Zakaria – Imagine
c|net – Hacking your Prius
c|net – Coming Soon – 100 MPG+
Hack Your Hybrid—Activate EV Stealth Mode, Get Rid of the BEEP, and More!
Coastal Tech – Electric Only Mode
GM CEO: U.S. needs 10 times more ethanol stations

I will now provide a little clarification regarding The United States,
for curious foreigners and oblivious citizens.

America is controlled by corporations. They fund the Republicans and
Democrats, who sold out and now play their game. They don’t fund third
parties and independents, especially those who speak against them, like
Ralph Nader. That’s why he is not in the debates, or many “mainstream”
interviews and commercials. He simply can’t afford it, for the most part,
and where he can, there is resistance to airing someone on your media
outlet when he is declaring war against the powerful industries whose
advertising revenue keeps you on the air.

The Republicans and Democrats appeal, mostly, to the most extreme of
Americans, the “blue liberal left”, and the “red conservative right”.

The “blue liberal left” want more and better jobs, more and better wages,
more and better benefits, and health care, and equal civil rights for women,
racial minorities, poor people, disabled people, etc., as well as improvements
to infrastructure. In general, this group wants peace, love, and happiness
for their tax money.

The “red conservative right”, is more of a combination of two groups: the
leadership right, and the conservative base.

The leadership right are rich, and own the corporations, who want less
jobs for Americans, more people doing the work of multiple people, more
jobs shipped to desperate third world countries willing to work for less
money, and ultimately, more computers and robots to machinate more
processes to get rid of jobs and pesky workers, who need wages and
benefits and sick-time and vacations and days off and time to sleep.
The leadership of the right also want more war, in places with resources
like oil, or cheap workers, or new markets for their mass-produced crap,
so they can occupy and restructure the world into new factories and
shopping malls.

To control the conservative base, they downplay all of this, and convince
them that they are not building financial empires, but rather policing the
world to protect us from terrorism and liberate the oppressed, forming
capitalist democracies, in the name of Jesus.

The conservative base, which is mostly rural, less educated, and more
fanatical than the rest of the country, which they call “fake” or “anti”
American, believes what their leadership tells them, regardless of any
evidence to the contrary, and believes that regardless of how many
of their jobs, benefits, wages, privacies, rights, or soldier’s lives are
stolen from them to create more wealth and power for their leaders,
that this is all done in the name of American patriotism and good
Christian values.

The corporate masters, Republicans, & Democrats are happy with the
way things are, sharing power and money, functioning as one big family,
keeping out pesky outsiders like third parties, and acting like it’s two
parties fighting each other, to distract America from the ugly truth of
their freedom being stolen while their country is sold out from under
them, piece by piece.

Those in power benefit from dividing us against ourselves, creating this
cold war kind of civil war, so we don’t get together and vote them out
of power. It’s a very subtle and effective conspiracy.

Those who created and control The United States of America like for
citizens and foreigners to believe that it is the defender of liberty and
justice for all. However, it started out, and is to this day, nothing more
than a militant money making venture.

Colonial merchants wanted more money and power, and decided to break
away from England so they wouldn’t have to share profits with the King.
This fairly traditional war was called the Revolutionary War (1775–1783).
They had Paul Revere and others like him to ride out and rally the poor
to fight and die for them. Little did the poor know that by gaining their
so-called “independence” from the British monarchy, that they were
just getting new rich masters who lived closer by. By the way, the rich
still rally the poor to fight wars for them. Now they go into the midwest,
America’s “heartland”, and tell farmers and cowboys that the brown
Muslims are going to come and get them, so they better get them first.
It works amazingly well, since most of these people have an irrational
fear and hatred of anyone of a different color, culture, or religion.

After becoming independent from England, whose empire had crumbled,
The USA became the new empire.

The colonials turned on the Native Americans, who helped them learn to
survive here. They murdered them and took their land. They turned tribe
against tribe. They hearded them around like cattle for the slaughter,
telling them each time that they could have this land forever, and then
coming along and telling them they had to go elsewhere, usually killing
those who complained and thus making less to herd to the next place.
They gave them gifts of malaria filled blankets. They basically committed
an almost completge genocide against them.

Meanwhile, they brought African slaves, some abducted, some bought
from warring tribes, to build up the country for them. (Note: despite
what some racist whites like to think, I don’t think buying a slave is any
more ethical than kidnapping one, regardless of whether the seller was
the same color as the slave or not.)

Those who came here to find their fortune or freedom on their own were
not treated much better. In the west, the whites lowered visiting workers
and settlers from China and other Asian nations over cliffs in buckets to
set dynamite to make train tracks, and didn’t feel too bad when “Chinamen”
(a blanket term for any “Oriental” looking Asian in the Old West) got
blown up. In the east, later immigrants didn’t find any more tolerance
for heritage or religion or culture than they had left in the Old World
of Europe and Asia. A good example are the gang wars in New York
between the Irish and Italians.

Once America was built up strong enough on racially intolerant genocide,
slavery, and gang warfare, we became seperatist xenophobes who wanted
to be seperate from the world that we had left (been cast out from?)
and had abused to establish ourselves. During our period of relative
exlusion from the world, we had a Civil War (1861 – 1865), where the
rich of the North wanted to take over the plantation culture of the South
to build factories, and the rich of the South wanted to keep their slaves.
Both sides were organized and controlled by rich people who wanted to
dominate and use the poor as a resource in the building of more wealth
and power; the only difference being that the North wanted whites,
blacks, etc, to all work as slaves in their factories and live in their slums,
while the South wanted the poor whites to stay in their shacks and the
poor blacks to stay in the slave houses. What a noble war, huh?

(The North, the industrial culture, after winning the official part of the
Civil War, continued to fight the south for years to restructure it like
the North. The civil rights movement of the 1960s shows that the Civil
War never ended, As does the presidential campaigns of 2008, where
it once again made apparent by the South that they are still racist
and consider the North, and the East & West coasts, to be “fake/anti”
Americans.)

Once the nation was finally unified enough to act as country, the powers
that be wanted us to be an empire. Their first major, obvious step in this
plan was to get involved in World War I.

World War I (1914-1918) began when a political assasination in Austria
due to a disagreement about the heir to the throne caused Europe to
divide into two factions, each choosing a side, because war is always so
much fun, giving the rich an opportunity to get more land, resources,
and markets for their products, and for the poor to die.

The USA joined the “Entente Powers”, in 1917 (better late than never,
right?) becoming an ally to England, France, Russia, and Italy, and
therefore an enemy to Germany, whom they were fighting. This gave
money-lenders and weapons makers in the USA an excellent opportunity
for profit, and helped to kill off some of our less affluent men by
sending them to die in trenches.

Do to the overwhelming popularity of World War Episode I, their was
really no option but to have a sequel, World War Episode II: The
Germans Strikes Back (1937-1945). It was bigger, badder, and the
special effects were AWESOME!

The USA, having seen how profitable war in the modern, industrialized
era could be, just had to be a part of the fun. We had established allies
to loan money to, sell weapons to, and to sell necessity products to as
they used up their own meager resources. We also had an established
enemy. The best part was, for rich Americans like banker Prescott Bush,
and many other bankers and weapons makers, a war has two sides; you
can make money off of both! It’s like betting on both teams in a game
or both horses in a race; if you do it right, you’re sure to win.

The American people were not terribly excited about WWII, so they
needed to be motivated. Japan decided to help Germany take over the
world, so the US let Japan bomb Pearl Harbor, making no effort to
stop them despite advanced warning, to piss off Americans and get
them to back the war effort the government and industries wanted.

World War II cost the USA a lot of money and lives, and established
us a world power. We even spent $14 billion to rebuild our enemies
Germany and Japan, adding them to our list of allies who owed us.
What a surprising plot twist!

Russia also spent a lot of money and lives fighting Germany, and just
like the USA, in the post-WWII world, wanted to spread out and dominate
the world. And so we got World War Episode III: The Cold War (1945-
1991).

The Cold War was fought in many chapters such as the Berlin Blockade
(1948–49), the Korean War (1950–53), the Berlin Crisis (1961), the
Vietnam War (1959–1975), the Soviet-Afghan War (1979–89), and
the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). In each chapter, countries sided against
one another, or split down the middle, with the Soviet Union supporting
one side as communists and the US supporting the other as capitalists.

It was during the Cold War that the US announced World War 4: The
Drug War (1971 – the end of time). This war has little to do with drugs.
It has more to do with the government importing drugs, selling them via
secret channels to poor and minorities, and then jailing these undesirable
types. The other up-sides to this war are that it provides a socially
accepted excuse to invade small countries that make drugs, to set up
dictatorships under US control, and to shift more of our populace
from self-dianosing and using natural, herbal pain relievers and
recreational drugs to getting expensive prescriptions for expensive
pharmaceuticals and thus supporting the American Medical Association
and the drug companies, which are both powerful lobbyist groups
from which politicans profit. The reality is, if all the nation’s non-violent
drug “offenders” got together and could pay politicians as much as
or more than the “legitimate” doctors writing prescriptions and
pharmaceutical corporations can, the drug war would be a non issue.
The USA is not really concerned with winning this war. It is far more
profitable to continue it indefinitely, both in terms of black-market
drug sales from imports by intelligence agencies and military forces,
and also as a platform issue to gain points with America’s conservative
moral majority.

The Soviet Union collapsed under economic problems in the early 1990s,
leaving the USA as the world’s only superpower, and ending the Cold War.

Since the USA is not really “fighting” the drug war (World War 4), it
suddenly had lots of resources available and no Cold War, so it invented
World War 5: The War on Terror (AKA The War on Brown People).
This war primarily consists of the Republican party “protecting” us
from nations that we used against Russia and then abandoned and
who have since turned against us. The US government has tried to
connect the wars on terror and drugs together, with commercials
telling smokers of marijuana that they are supporting terrorists,
even though almost no marijuana comes from the countries in
question. Ironically, since the US occupation of Afghanistan, the
country, which produces 90% of the world’s opium used for heroin,
production has quadrupled when compared to what it was when the
Taliban controlled the region. The amount of opium coming into the
USA has also increased. This not would seem to indicate that forces
within the US government and/or military are involved in drug
production, distribution, and sales, but also makes the claim in
the media that pot-smokers are aiding terrorist seem like the very
black government pot calling the gray citizen kettle black.

I think that’s enough history, for now, to demonstrate why I feel
that the government and corporations of the USA, which almost
always act as a unified force, are set on world financial domination
through whatever means possible, no matter how hypocritical, violent,
and damaging to it’s people and the world.

Don’t worry, world. It will fail, as the other empires in history have;
from ignoring it’s problems at home in it’s quest for domination
until it’s people have no option left to them but to reform it, by
whatever means necessary.

If you’d like to see more about America’s history of never-ending
war, see Wikipedia.

McCain picks Presidential Transition Chief who lobbied for Saddam Hussein