Browsed by
Tag: Carlyle Group

75 Reasons to Reexamine George W

75 Reasons to Reexamine George W

Comments 0 Comment

This was originally titled 75 reasons not to hire Georgie, but I think it’s a little late for that now. I’m sure this has been circulating around for a bit, but it was still interesting. Here’s some of what we know, what is out in plain sight. Assess this resume again.

Past work experience:

1) Ran for congress and lost.
2) Produced a Hollywood slasher B movie.
3) Bought an oil company, but couldn’t find any oil in Texas, company went bankrupt shortly after he sold all his stock.
4) Bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using tax-payer money.
5) With fathers help (and his name) was elected Governor of Texas.

Accomplishments:

6) Changed pollution laws for power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. Replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog ridden city in America.
7) Cut taxes, and bankrupted the Texas government to the tune of billions in borrowed money.
8) Set record for most executions by any Governor in American history.
9) Became president after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes, with the help of his daddy’s appointments to the Supreme Court.

Accomplishments as president:

10) Attacked and took over two small, helpless countries. Slaughtered over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children.
11) Spent the surplus and bankrupted the treasury.
12) Shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history.
13) Set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any twelve-month period.
14) Set all-time record for biggest drop in the history of the stock market.
15) First president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.
16) First president in US history to enter office with a criminal record.
17) First year in office set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history.
18) After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, presided over the worst security failure in US history (911).
19) Set the record for more campaign fund-raising trips than any other president in US history.
20) In his first two years in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.
21) Cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any other president in US history.
22) Set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a twelve-month period.
23) Appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any other president in US history.
24) Set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president since the advent of television.
25) Signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any other president in US history.
26) Presided over the biggest energy crises in US history, and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.
27) Presided over the highest gasoline prices in US history, and refused to use the national reserves, as past presidents have.
28) Cut healthcare benefits for war veterans.
29) Set the all-time record for most people worldwide simultaneously to take to the streets to protest against him (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any one person in the history of humankind.
30) Dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.
31) His presidency is the most secretive and un-accountable of any in US history.
32) Members of his cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The ‘poorest’ multi-millionaire, Condoleeza Rice, has an Exxon oil tanker named after her).
33) First president in US history to have all 50 states simultaneously go bankrupt.
34) Presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud of any market in any country in the history of the world.
35) First president in US history to order a US attack and military occupation of a sovereign nation. Many American boys and girls were lost to his greed, and countless civilians.
36) Created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States. How can he make government even bigger? Perhaps by establishing a Bureau for Acceptable Sexual Practices!
37) Set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending-increases – more than any president in US history. His tax-giveaways to the very rich alone might require three million million dollars!
38) First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.
39) First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Elections Monitoring Board.
40) He removed more checks and balances, creating less Congressional oversight, than known by any presidential administration in US history. Now, no one knows his plans until they are already accomplished!
41) He took from sound programs that helped people, and gave the money to the richest people in the world.
42) Rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant.
43) Withdrew from the World Court of Law.
44) Refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war.
45) So, by default, he no longer abides by the Geneva Conventions. These have been mocked by his appointed puppet, Alberto Gonzales.
46) First president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the twenty-oh-two US elections).
47) All-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.
48) His biggest life-time campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).
49) Spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.
50) First president in US history unilaterally to attack a sovereign nation against the will of the United Nations and the world community.
51) First president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then lied, saying that the enemy had the code to Air Force One).
52) First US president to establish a secret shadow government.
53) Took the enormous, overflowing sympathy of the whole world for the US after 911, and in less than a year, made the US the most resented and despised country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).
54) With a policy of “disengagement,” created the most hostile Israeli-Palestinian relations in at least 30 years.
55) First US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view his presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.
56) First US president in history to have the people of South Korea feel more threatened by the US than by their immediate neighbor, North Korea.
57) Changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
58) Set all-time record for number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling huge investments in corporations bidding for government contracts.
59) Failed to fulfill his pledge to get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.”
60) Failed to capture the anthrax killer who tried to murder the leaders of our country at the United States Capital building. After 18 months he had no leads and zero suspects.
61) In the 18 months following the 911 attacks, he prevented any public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the United States.
62) Removed more freedoms and civil liberties from Americans than any other president in US history.
63) In a little over two years, he has created the most severely divided country, where people used to stand in unity. This is possibly the most divided the US has ever been since the Civil War.
64) He entered office with the strongest economy in US history; and, within less than two years turned every single economic indicator south.

Records and References:

65) At least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available for public inspection).
66) AWOL from National Guard.
67) Deserted the military during a time of war.
68) Refused to take drug test.
69) Refused to answer any questions about drug-use.
70) All records of his tenure as governor of Texas have been mysteriously spirited away to his daddy’s library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
71) All records of any SEC investigations into his insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
72) All minutes of meetings for any public corporation in which he served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
73) Any records or minutes from meetings he (or his VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
74) For personal references please speak to his daddy or uncle James Baker (They can both be reached at their offices at the Carlyle Group for War-profiteering.
75. Last but not least, he has taken very important and significant steps to transform the United States into a truly fascist country.
(“Fascism” is sharing governmental power with corporations.)

Thanks Richard as always!

Fahrenheit 9/11

Fahrenheit 9/11

Comments 0 Comment

I’ve just seen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.

I’m going to try to get a few of my thoughts down about this film while I’m still feeling nauseous and tearful. Tears or nausea, nausea or tears?

It’s hard to know where to start – with the woman in the lobby who blindly reached for me after the film, embracing a total stranger – a middle aged, middle class woman with tears running down her face – a woman who grappled me as though I were the remaining vine that prevented her from falling off the mountain? "What have we become?" she asked me in a broken voice as her tears moistened my left shoulder.

Or perhaps with the sudden anguished moan of my intellectual husband, a man not known for displays of emotion, upon hearing the words "can they ever trust us again"? That is, after being promised not to be put in harm’s way unless it were absolutely necessary, how can those who have always been first to stand up and serve (the american poor) ever trust in their country again?

The film has faults, to be sure. It uses a bit too much caricature, which is sometimes distracting. Although I agree that our president is developmentally stunted and anything but a compassionate conservative, a less cartoonish display would have been more persuasive. What one sees in Bush finally is what one sees in the eyes of any irresponsible and narcissistic alcoholic – the dry drunk. There’s a book in that and I hope to read it one day. I also found one section of the film truly offensive. While I understood that the listing of the so-called "coalition of the willing" (outside of the US and the UK) was meant to highlight the absurdity of including nations without a military, I certainly didn’t appreciate seeing ancient film footage of nosferatu to represent Romania, a viking to represent Iceland, someone smoking a marijuana pipe to represent The Netherlands, poppies for Afghanistan (Afghanistan?!?!), and so on. Along with the superimposition of western imagery upon the current administration (which admittedly does seem driven by the tropes of westerns and thrillers), it was both off-putting and ineffective.

What sticks with me, though, are other images. I’m more of an idea person, but images from this film already haunt me. The face of the policeman who "infiltrated" the Fresno Peace group, the pro-military woman who lost her son aimlessly wandering around the white house lawn, the guy who talked about the war at the gym and was reported to the FBI, the sobs of an Iraqi woman calling out to God to avenge the houses of her innocent family, the young man digging out a piece of his neighbor’s body from the rubble, the soldiers playing their killing soundtrack, other soldiers remorseful and confused by their experiences, the brave guy who said he would never go back to Iraq "to kill the poor" no matter what the consequences – so many images, images we didn’t see, images we should be seeing. Say what you will about Michael Moore – but what comes through for me is his anger for the sake of others, and his feeling for people. He turns a mirror on America, to show us with what we have become complicit and why the nations of the world have turned away. It is a profoundly patriotic film. Its message is, in one way, very simple. For those of you on the "religious" right, you should understand: It’s all about the money, a lot more than the customary 30 pieces of silver.

However, I also learned something that I did not know and honestly had not wanted to know. Moore, after all, does not spare either the left wing or the media from his critique. All those disenfranchized voters of the last presidental "election" couldn’t get one senator to sign a petition so that their argument could be heard. Person after person stood up in the proceedings painfully led by Al Gore himself. Time and time again, they had to say they had many signatures, but the required senatorial signature was "missing." One woman said she didn’t care that she didn’t have a signature, and Gore reminded her that "the rules do care." It reminded me of what I had forgotten somehow – how very angry I was at the Democrats. Where was John Kerry for those people, or any other democratic senator for that matter? Why couldn’t they get one signature? It brought back for me the day I watched the news in disbelief as Daschle did his 180-degree turn (not long after a certain airplane crash) on his Iraq anti-war stance. Really, where IS the left in this country? I miss those old academic Marxists of the Vietnam-war era, the theorists who remembered to ask the primary questions of money and power. This isn’t really a movie about serious dissent – it’s a mainstream american film in a country that has become deeply suspicious of intelligence and education, its traditional anti-intellectualism racheted up a notch or two. For those who might not have looked at some of this information, or who are patriotic but somewhat uninformed, this movie gives a big shove in the direction of actual thinking.

All of the family ties, the network connections, the money trails – Moore points out some of the major ones – enough at least to intimate that something of major importance about Saudi Arabia is still being withheld from the American people, for example. The section dealing all the connections and disconnections between the Bin Laden family, the Taliban of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, The Carlyle Group, Enron, Arbusto Oil, Halliburton, and the Bush family – was probably a little confusing to some. If so, read any of the books on the shelves these days, from Michael Moore and others. Molly Ivins’ essays from the time of W’s Texas days are particularly enlightening with regard to such things as the Taliban. To me, it’s all about networks of power and money these days. It seems pretty clear that we mirror the terrorism network with our own nation-based criminal networks.

I don’t think Moore really got across the importance of the pipeline, or put enough into the effects of the Patriot Acts, but he did manage to convey some of what is happening to this country under this administration. Left-wingers of all types, libertarians, and republicans should see this film – the neo-cons are a different order entirely and I feel that much of America just simply doesn’t understand what is being taken from them, and what is happening in their name and to their own.

As our husbands returned from the restroom, the woman who had embraced me took a step back, embarrassed. Moving slowly, the four of us walked out into the blazing heat of the Georgia day. When you have a child and no babysitter, you don’t get to go to movies at night very often. I had to stand for a moment to breath deep against my heaving stomach. The parking lot shimmered in the sun, and for a moment, I felt profoundly alienated from everyone and everything. Then the tears came for me.