The Thinking Man's Blog

Gas prices are over $4 a gallon, the economy is in a recession, oil companies are turning record profits, people are loosing their houses to foreclosure based on bad loans, and the "war" is still going on with no end in sight. Yep...you did it G Dub and the Repubs, Mission Accomplished. You managed to take the United States from super power to one of the least desirable places to live. Way to go.

HUCKABEE has won the primary???!?!?!?

How many drugs are you people on! How many times were you dropped as a baby!

That's it. We're done here. There will be no more postings to this blog. The people of this country are too stupid for the truth.

...and the hits just keep on comin"!

Question: why isn't this news on any of the major American news networks today?

...as if you really needed more proof.

Keep in mind that this is a part of the world where the mandatory second language in schools used to be English.

Innocent until proven guilty...wtf is that? We've never heard of it. (And what's more, we will believe anything that anyone tells us. Yes, we G-men really are that stupid.)

Is it any wonder that nobody wants to visit the United States anymore? Now if you're a chickens**t who is afraid of all foreigners, you probably think this is good news, because all foreigners are suspect terrorists by default, so the less of them around, the better. But I'm here to tell you that your figures are wrong. Less visitors means less tourist dollars being spent in the US buying US goods and US services. So less visitors is bad for the economy. And supporting something which is bad for the economy means that YOU PEOPLE are the real haters of America.

Believe me, we need more money these days. In the 7 years since Bush has taken power, the US dollar has been sliding against every other currency in the world. Even the freaking CANADIAN dollar is valued at $US 1.06 now. Why do people insist on thinking that this prezdidnt is good for the economy???

I will repeat the travel alert. Foreigners, stay away please. It is more for your protection than ours. If you come here, you might get tasered. You might get thrown in prison. You might get tortured. You might get shipped to another country against your will. You might get killed. Thank you, this has been a public service announcement.

Okay, first it was China telling us not to hit Iran, and now it is Russia's turn because we clearly aren't listening.

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, carried out a delicate balancing act last night during the first visit to Tehran by a Kremlin leader since Stalin, by warning the US against military strikes against Iran while continuing to withhold nuclear fuel from the country's sole reactor.

[jump]

But earlier, Mr Putin said: "We should not even think of making use of force in this region," as Russia joined a declaration by Caspian Sea leaders that warned outside powers against using their territories for launching military action, in a veiled reference to possible US use of Azerbaijan as a staging post.

Now, some of you might be reading only that 1 sentence in the first paragraph and thinking to yourselves: "Russia is withholding nuclear fuel from Iran's sole reactor? Why, clearly the Russkies think they're terrorists too!"

Wrong. First of all, Iran is still eight years away from developing the nuke, so the Russians could only be selling them commercial grade nuclear material for running commercial grade nuclear plants for creating commercial sector electricity.

(Here's a fact for comparison: America has more than 100 operational nuclear power plants. If terrorists really wanted to nuke American soil, don't you think it would be easier for them to take one of ours, instead of smuggling one over here or launching it with an inter-continental ballistic missile? Just a thought.)

No, what most Americans don't seem to get is the fact that Russia and Iran are long-standing business partners. Just like China and Iran are long-standing business partners.

[ ] Moscow's relationship with the Shah was founded on commercial interests, with a total trade turnover of approximately US$ 1 billion by the time of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

[jump]

The cornerstone of Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran is at Bushehr -- a power plant construction deal worth eight hundred million dollars to Russia (with more mooted for new projects upon completion).

[jump]

Arms sales, trade including oil and gas, Caspian sea delimitation, transport links, Israel and broader strategic geopolitical considerations all form part of the complex Russia-Iran relationship. Russia is the second largest arms supplier in the world after the US and its arms contracts with Iran in the 1990s had significant impact on relations at a time when Russia badly needed the hard currency.

[jump]

More widely, Russia is involved in gas exploration in southern Iran, an Iranian satellite programme and Iranian civil aviation -- resulting in bilateral trade hitting $2.4 billion in 2005.

Some impressive dollar figures, eh? And you think the Russians would just let us walk in and destroy that entire market, and threaten the lives of over 1000 Russian citizens and engineers living and working in Iran? The Chinese aren't exactly a bunch of feckling cowards or dummies, either. And they have pretty much the exact same trading-partner setup with Iran that Russia does. How many other superpowers need to threaten us before we get the message to leave Iran alone?

In the final summary, before we reverse our course of insanity, how many nations of the world will align themselves in a giant coalition against the United States? Will it become a situation of America versus the rest of the world? It is certainly starting to feel that way.

A new weapon has materialized in the hands of the insurgents.

In southern Iraq, where U.S. troops and the remnants of the multinational coalition wage a low-intensity war against militant factions themselves at war with each other, soldiers say one of the enemy's weapons has blown their confidence more than all the others. So called EFPs, or Explosively Formed Penetrators, have become the weapon du jour among the Shi'ite fighters. The devices cap a tube or pipe full of explosives with a solid copper disk that, due to the force and heat of the blast, transforms itself into an armor-piercing slug. EFPs can destroy Humvees and disable even the Abrams tank. U.S. officials insist the weapons are made or at least designed in Iran but have so far failed to produce a direct link. And while EFPs are only a small fraction of the bombs used by opponents of the U.S., news reports say that they caused 23 of the 69 U.S. fatalities in the month of July. To the soldiers who face the threat on a daily basis here, it doesn't really matter whether EFPs come from Iran or are made in Iraq. They just hope and pray they can find them and disarm them before they explode.

Get the troops out of Iraq now. Not just the American ones. End the war like yesterday.

Every EFP that is detonated kills 2.5 soliders. Humvees, body armor, and tank armor notwithstanding.

An EFP can be built into an object as small as a jar of peanut butter and then buried in the dirt. I know you're thinking "metal detectors?" but you have no idea how many tiny scraps of metal are to be found on the roads, how much metal the tanks and convoy vehicles and troops are carrying, now many EFPs will not be found in time. Besides, are you really going to stop the whole convoy EVERY time you get a metal signature?

And suddenly, this sort of news makes a whole lot more sense.

Bring them home. Now.

Get them out. Now.

End the war. Now.

Seriously, this piece lays out everything in detail:


Mistakenly, many Americans still believe President Bush’s war on Iraq is justified because Congress supported it and funds it.

Yet, as international legal authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois points out, President Bush got congressional backing by lying that Hussein had W.M.D. and that Hussein was connected to 9/11. That’s fraud, probably the bloodiest, costliest lie in White House history.

Also, to start a war, a country needs UN Security Council approval, which Bush failed to get. Otherwise, a nation can fight only in self-defense when attacked.

By attacking Iraq, Bush violated the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, the UN Charter, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals, and the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles, Boyle said.

As all treaties become the supreme law of the land under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, the Bush-Cheney presidency is guilty of breaking all of the above, warmongering in spades.

In testimony defending U.S. soldiers who have refused to fight in Iraq, Boyle noted that, under Nuremberg, "a soldier has a right to absent himself or herself from committing international crimes." In short, if given a criminal order, the defense used by Adolf Eichmann, Hitler’s master killer, that he was only doing his job, is a phony.

Boyle testified that First Lt. Ehren Watada had the right, "if not the obligation," to say, "I don’t want to participate in this." Watada faced an army court martial for not deploying with his unit for Iraq. Watada won a victory when the judge ruled a mistrial.

Boyle believes, "A soldier has an obligation to disobey illegal orders," which he says is printed in black-and-white in the Army’s Field Manual(AFM) 27-10.

Without Security Council authority, President Bush’s war is "a crime against peace," Boyle says. That’s also written in paragraph 498 of the AFM.

"Any person, whether a member of the armed forces or a civilian, who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment (as)…crimes against peace," the AFM reads.

This broad definition would seem to include trigger-happy private contractors in Iraq. And since the U.S. has committed war crimes in Iraq, U.S. soldiers are legally within their rights not to serve there, Boyle said.


Of course a solider has an oblivation to disobey illegal orders. I watched A Few Good Men, I trust Jack Nicholson to know these things.

But seriously...some of you are now going to scream "who the hell is this Francis Boyle, and what the hell does he know, just another tough-talking leftie pinko commie I'll bet" and think this is a good counter-attack. It's not.

What an amazing concept...driving out a good percentage of your customers and workers out of town is very bad for the local economy. I am shocked...shocked to the core of my being that anything so unpredictable as cause & effect could turn out this way. Shocked, I tell you. I might even faint.

(Psst. Hey, you dumbass GOP mo-fos. Yeah, I'm talking to you. It's called supply and demand. Pay more attention in Economics 101 next time.)

RIVERSIDE, N.J., Sept. 25 — A little more than a year ago, the Township Committee in this faded factory town became the first municipality in New Jersey to enact legislation penalizing anyone who employed or rented to an illegal immigrant.

Within months, hundreds, if not thousands, of recent immigrants from Brazil and other Latin American countries had fled. The noise, crowding and traffic that had accompanied their arrival over the past decade abated.

The law had worked. Perhaps, some said, too well.

With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.

Is the lesson clear yet? Is the point driven home yet? This is the reason why America has always been the Great Melting Pot of multi-culturalism for the whole world to follow and admire. We shut out no one. (Or at least, we aren't supposed to.) "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Where the hell would YOU be today, if your parents or grandparents had been turned away from Ellis Island? (Only Native American Indians don't need to answer that question.)

Think about that for a second.

Now here's the second part of that same lesson. It's one thing to allow immigrants to immigrate...but it's another thing entirely to discriminate against them when they arrive in their new nation, block them off from jobs and resources that everyone else gets, and just generally treat them like slaves or scum or second-class citizens.

Where the hell would YOU AND YOUR FAMILY be today, if your parents or grandparents had not been allowed to start businesses and take jobs and thrive in America? Where would your education and health care have come from?

Think about that one for a second, too.

Meanwhile, the town was hit with two lawsuits challenging the law. Legal bills began to pile up, straining the town’s already tight budget.

Oh yeah...forgot to consider that, didn't you? Those pesky inconvenient laws. So unfair. They should be re-written so that only white Christians will be allowed to work and to live here and to own property, is that it? Everyone else gets shipped out to prisons or concentration camps, and you keep their stuff. Is that your idea of fairness?

I'm sure that the Nazis would have agreed with you.

Idiots. The laws are written they way that they are for a reason. A lot of good reasons. Maybe you could try reading a few of them (the federal kind) before you try passing illegal ones at the State level next time. Just a thought.

Suddenly, many people — including some who originally favored the law — started having second thoughts.

Wimps! Blame-America-firsters! Y'all just enabled the enemy and helped the turrists! Stay the course, stay the course, stay the course!

Wait...what does the immigration scene in America have to do with the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan?

That's very simple. You need to respect the brown people here, so you can learn to respect them over there.

So last week, the town rescinded the ordinance, joining a small but growing list of municipalities nationwide that have begun rethinking such laws as their legal and economic consequences have become clearer.

“I don’t think people knew there would be such an economic burden,” said Mayor George Conard, who voted for the original ordinance. “A lot of people did not look three years out.”

A lot of Americans don't think past the next ballgame or the next episode of Lost. But hey, that's Americans for you.

War: the only way that Americans learn about geography.

But while Riverside’s about-face may repair its budget, it may take years to mend the emotional scars that formed when the ordinance “put us on the national map in a bad way,” Mr. Conard said.

Translation: We were stupid, we did not know we were in the wrong until we were mocked before the whole world, and now we're very sorry that we did it.

That's another thing the immigration scene in America has in common with the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Because someday we will be saying the same thing about those two wars.

So...you admitted you were wrong...great. That's only half the battle to reach the point of full redemption.

What else are you going to do in order to repair the damage, Riverside?

Some have adapted better than others. Bruce Behmke opened the R & B Laundromat in 2003 after he saw immigrants hauling trash bags full of clothing to a laundry a mile away. Sales took off at his small shop, where want ads in Portuguese are pinned to a corkboard and copies of the Brazilian Voice sit near the door.

When sales plummeted last year, Mr. Behmke started a wash-and-fold delivery service for young professionals.

“It became a ghost town here,” he said.

A ghost town...huh. How strange...I'm getting the weirdest sense of deja vu...

Oh yeah, now I remember. People are still using that phrase to describe New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Hilton, the former mayor, said some of the illegal immigrants have already begun filtering back into town. “It’s not the Wild West like it was,” he said, “but it may return to that.”

And wouldn't a certain cowboy president just love to see that?

Please watch both of these videos.

This should probably be the final post on this blog. A new study shows that liberals and conservatives have radically different brain structures. Man is indeed a political animal. We are not swayed so much by personalities or ideologies as we are by genetics.

So this means that...all of the work that we've been doing in here, trying to convince the mule-headed that King Bush the Second is not the best president that this country has ever seen, was probably pointless. Because it has now been proven that you people don't listen well to reason. The only thing that could change your minds is some kind of emotional plea.

Did you ever wonder what the deal was with those post-9-11 anthrax scares?

Congress sucks...this is nothing new.

The only thing different these days is that we now have a White House that is equally corrupt and contemptuous of the law. So now every Congressman feels that he can felonize and hypocritize all he wants to -- the President will pardon him. And the converse is also true. Congress won't impeach or censure the President, they need his protection just like he needs theirs.

Which leaves the judicial branch all alone as being the sole standard of morals and propriety under the law. (I am not including the Department of Justice in that statement because it is an executive Cabinet run by Alberto "Abu Gharib" Gonzalez.) And now you understand why everyone in the government is attacking the judges.

On Friday, what was left of the American federal Constitution passed away. It was 220 years old. Despite the ravages of the last 7 years, it enjoyed a fairly long and robust life. It leaves behind no successors. It will be remembered fondly.

I say this because Friday Congress overwhelmingly approved Bush's new version of the FISA law without edits, which will have the unfortunate side effect of removing all remaining civil liberties and giving our government (excuse me, I should say our executive branch) vast unchecked power in the ability to spy upon anyone, anywhere, anytime, and for any reason known or unknown, stated or unstated.

Yeah...reasons for cops and jackbooted thugs to do the things they do is *such* an antiquated concept, anyhow. I mean, who needs reasons to break down doors and seize personal property and punch people in the face? And those pesky civil liberties...surely we are all just so much better off without them in the way.

It is also official that both parties suck in equal measures, and consequently neither one is worth supporting or defending.

So perhaps it will come as no surprise, to some of you, that we do not actually live in a democracy after all. No, what we are experiencing is actually called a plutocracy. A government by the wealthy, in eternal dominion over the poor. I don't entirely buy into everything that is written in that linked page, but it sure goes a long way towards explaining what the Democrats are doing these days. Sucking up to Republicans only makes them look like Republican suck-ups. I'm just sayin'.

Memorial services for the Constitution will be held today in the hearts and minds of all true patriots of this once great country. If you wish to donate, please send checks and money orders to the ACLU. This has been a public service announcement.

It was reported in the Australian press today (for some reason, the truly damning stories like this one never wind up in the American press) that the Bush administration lost approximately 190,000 weapons in Iraq. No, I don't mean lost due to the damage of being used in war. I mean lost, as in one second they were here in a military-controlled warehouse all stacked up nicely in crates, and then the next second, they weren't. Strange.

This is in addition to and on top of losing 363 tons of $100 dollar bills in Iraq (estimated to be worth twelve billion) and losing 380 tons of explosives in Iraq.

Who's really aiding and abetting the terrorists?

Monkey boy is at it again. This time he wanted to curb the spending in government by eliminating the funding for Public Broadcasting. Ol' G-Dub figured that he could solve the budget problem by cutting out that $420 million that is being spent. The House, rightly so, told him and the few that supported the measure to go fuck themselves.

I got an idea for you, Chimp of the Change-Purse. Why don't you bring our troops home from Iraq and stop wasting all that money there. Then use some of that money you get back to fund catching bin Laden in Afghanistan so those troops can come home sooner. In 6 months to a year, you will save hundreds of billions of dollars AND catch the most wanted man in the world. Oh right....you can't do that because that would be thinking and heaven forbid we have any of that going on.

The rumor on the Internets is that Bush tried to axe PBS because of the "Frontline" series of investigative news programs, and the sheer amount of untold political damage this series was causing to Bush and his cronies. Just look at some of these titles...or better yet, watch them.

Copied and pasted directly from this page because it's too good to leave up as a simple link.

One of our neighbors is moving. I've been in this neighborhood for about six years now, but didn't really know them very well at all - just waves and nods, mostly.

So I heard the moving van pull up this morning. When I got home this evening I happened to spy my neighbor (he's like 85 years old - I don't know exactly, but he's old, talks and moves very slowly) standing on the sidewalk next to the van. I walked over and shook his hand, and we started talking. I asked him where he was moving, and he said, "Back to Germany."

I had been stationed in Germany for two years while in the military, so I lit up, and commented about how beautiful the country was, and inquired if he was going back because he missed it.

"No," he answered me. "I'm going back because I've seen this before." He then commenced to explain that when he was a kid, he watched with his family in fear as Hitler's government committed atrocity after atrocity, and no one was willing to say anything. He said the news refused to question the government, and the ones who did were not in the newspaper business much longer. He said good neighbors, people he had known all his life, turned against his family and other Jews, grabbing on to the hate and superiority "as if they were starved for it" (his words).

He said he was too old to see it happen right in front of his eyes again, and too old to do anything about it, so he was taking his family back to Europe on Thursday where they would be safe from George W. Bush and his neocons. He seemed resolute, but troubled, nonetheless, as if being too young on one end and too old on the other to fight what he saw happening was wearing on him.

I gotta tell you - it was chilling. I let him talk, and the whole time, my gut was churning, like I had mutated butterflies in my stomach. When he was finished, he shook my hand, gripping it really hard, until his knuckles turned white and he was shaking. He looked me in the eyes, hard, and said, "I will pray for your family and your country." He let go of my hand and hobbled away.

I have related this event to you in the hopes it will serve as a cautionary anecdote about the state of our Union, and to illustrate the path we Americans are being led down by a group of fanatics bent on global economic and military dominion. When a man who survived the fruits of fascism decides its time to leave THIS country because he's seeing the same patterns that led to the Holocaust and other Nazi horrors beginning to form here, it is time for us to recognize the underlying evil inherent in the actions of those who claim they work for all Americans, and for all mankind. And it is incumbent upon all Americans, Red and Blue, Republican and Democrat, to stop them.

Something to think about, during tomorrow's holiday.

Israel prepares for war on Iran.

They are offering to take the lead on this war because America doesn't want to be viewed as a warmonger superpower. But make no mistake: once the Israelis get into it, we Americans will join them. It's almost like we have no say in the matter.

We have blogged about this before.

And that is another reason why this blog goes quiet at times. We're getting tired of repeating ourselves.

Americans
are
stupid.



STUPID!!!!!



And that is why there is no one intelligent left to stop another unnecessary war.

Because the power structure of this country doesn't give a damn about us...and by us, I mean normal average everyday American citizens.

Republicans suck, this is true. But Democrats also suck. The former is full of corrupt criminals. And the latter is full of spineless lackwits who can't stand up to the corrupt criminals. (Are the Republicans bribing Democrats to soft-pedal the war and never bring impeachment charges?) From any sector of our government, there is no hope for change, there is no hope for true representation of the people's interests, and that means there is no real government.

In case some of you thought that this blog was solely created to bash the GOP, I just had to say that, and prove you wrong. We are not truly anti-GOP so much as we are pro-democracy. We just detest the Republicans slightly more than the Democrats because they do more to block the representation function of our government. But make no mistake, both parties suck.

This just in...

Dick Cheney's lesbo daughter and lesbo daughter-in-law have given birth to their first child! The two moms are doing fine and Dick Cheney is reportedly very happy with the new addition to their traditional family.

Please note the date on this article.

Then ask yourself who in the MILITARY structure, other than Rumsfeld, was supportive of invading Iraq.

It was done for the oil.

The famous GOP blogger site, RedState.com, has issued an ultimatum to its readership, asking them not to vote for Republicans until the party stops putting immoral scumbags (those with a history of corruption) up for candidates.

This includes boycotting any and all GOP candidates for President in 2008.

Let the fires of truth spread.

So says the states of Alabama and Virginia, as well as the FBI.

They don't make any mention of it, but every politician named in this article is a Republican.

Are you surprised? At all?