DisasterPhilosophy

This is the result of an Iranian Military C-130 full of fuel, crashing into an apartment building. Wreckage, bodies, big fire afterward.






Lets examine another plane vs building......

The disasterpresident reached back in history(not his best subject) and made the long denied, long awaited analogy with the Viet Nam War. Yes, the Viet Nam War;
Score: Viet Nam - 1 United States - 0. Remember that War? That is the War that, the disasterpresident, Karl Rove, Darth Chenney, Dan 'Gimpy' Lungren, and a host of Republican Family Values Super Patriots(read chickenshithawks) hid under the covers shaking in fear lest they have to go serve their country. Yes, all these men dodged the draft or deserted their post in time of War. Those guys dont remember that War because they were busy and could not be there. While others, mostly Democrats, were standing up and doing their Patriotic duty to the United States, the chickenshithawks were hiding, partying, deserting their Air National Guard Post, and otherwise shaking in fear that their numerous excuses and exemptions from the draft woudl fall through.
The disasterpresident would have you believe that if it wasn't for the US pulling out our troops so quickly from Viet Nam, we would have won. Aside from the obvious assumption he makes that we lost that War, the only thing he gets right in his argument, he imagines that we should not have followed Henry Kissinger's advice; "Declare Victory and get out quick". According to this logic, we should still be in Viet Nam. The disasterpresident did say that building a Democracy in Iraq may take 50 years. If we follow this formula of Nation/Democracy building, our on going casualties from the Viet Nam front would be 170,000 dead to date. Wounded would be that figure multiplied by 8. There would not be space even in the shut down wings of Walter Reed.
With an accelerating price tag on wars and equipment since then, we see the ecconomic cost of the Viet Nam solution that the Disasterpresident proposed as a better historical policy as 3.8 trillion dollars to date.
The disasterpresident makes the same foriegn policy mistakes previous real presidents have made even inviting the same worn out people to resurect those failed policies. It is being done for a much different purpose.
The consequence of this War proposal is to have a perpetual War. Orwell warned us of this path. This perpetual War consumes the resources of the nation and we have no room for social programs. We have no room for Government subsidized Health Care programs. We have no room for education outside the military effort. We only have resources in the budget to keep us safe. When the Cold War ended and we won, the Defense(a misslabel)budget increased. After WWII atleast the military budget dipped a little and we were doing some genuine nation buliding. This state of diverting resources away from social entitlements is the tool that certian wealthy factions of our society have been pushing for years. It was not going to be voted out complely by a representative body of the people no matter how corrupt. No you have to get the people to collude in the process of selling their own future. You do this with Patiotism. You appeal to the sense of duty and sacrifice that most of us have in our society. You send other peoples children off to fight a War that will not benefit them and will squander the future of their children.
The disasterpresident and every other chickenshithawk in the Government need to bring our children home and send their own if these goals are so noble. Lets see them turn over their portfolio and pay down the budget deficit that they ran up subsidizing the corporate oligarchs in the United States. Better yet, lets throw these bastards out of office, bring our troops home, and start treating the world like they are our friends.

Collateral Damage: Bethena
Cindy Sheehan from
Amman, Jordan


Last month when Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Ray McGovern and
I took over 300 people and a petition with over a
million signatures to Congressman John Conyers (D-Mi,
Chair House Judiciary Committee) demanding
impeachment, we believed we were morally correct then.
Despite Rep. Conyers' long record of public service to
our nation and several private meetings that went
absolutely nowhere, and despite the mild to severe
criticism we have received, we believed then and still
believe now that impeaching BushCo is a
Constitutionally mandated requirement and a necessary
tool to reclaim our representative republic, end the
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan ("The troops
aren't coming home while I'm preznit," GWB), and to
hold the monsters accountable who have wreaked havoc
on our planet.

I believe what we did on July 23rd was the right thing
to do because we are all required to be active
participants in our democracy. One of the reasons that
all branches of our government are so out of control,
Dems or Repugs, is that we have been passive voters
who have allowed our elected officials to get away
literally with murder for generations. The human
element of "We the People" has been suppressed by the
fascist elite and all but forgotten by an American
public that has been lulled into an uncomfortable
apathy by the "vast wasteland" of TV and its
byproduct: a seductive, yet destructive consumerism
that has us constantly striving not only to "keep up
with the Joneses," but "smash the Joneses" in our
quest for more, more, more. We have thousands, if not
millions of Susie Soccer moms in their huge SUVs to
NASCAR dad Nick watching high performing, gas guzzling
cars go round and round in circles wasting precious
oil for our dubious entertainment, while people are
dying, being injured and displaced and while our
troops receive no more support than a yellow magnetic
ribbon on Susie's SUV.

The Rev and I had another dose of reality the other
day and our actions in Conyers' office were confirmed
for both of us when we visited Bethena in al Jazeera
hospital in Amman.

An American fired mortar shell hit twenty-eight year
old, former Baghdad resident, Bethena on June 1st of
this year. Her husband was also injured in the
abhorrent attack and her mother-in-law and
sister-in-law were killed. Due to lack of medical care
at first, Bethena still has a large hole in her
stomach. She was allowed to stay in an American
hospital for 7 days, and then told she had to leave.
With a smashed arm, broken leg, and another leg
amputated above the knee, Bethena had to make her way
to Amman for medical help with her sister. She laid in
her bed gazing at us with pain-filled, yet very aware
eyes and she graciously allowed us to look at her
wounds and record them on film. The entire time we
visited with her, I couldn't help but reflect that
Casey would have been the same age as Bethena just
three days before she was mortared, if he hadn't
already been killed not too far from where Bethena and
her family were hit.

Besides the incontrovertible fact that Bethena was no
threat to the USA and we are occupying her country
illegally and immorally, her hospital bills are
costing the family 750.00 to 1000.00 a day and she
still requires two more surgeries. The family had to
sell their home in Baghdad and is rapidly going
through their savings. Bethena's sister told us that a
woman who suffered a heart attack from fright in the
same mortar attack had her bills covered by the US,
but we won't cover Bethena's bills because she was hit
by an American bomb!

We are going to the American Embassy here in Jordan to
ask the same simple question: "Why?" Why is the
government who harmed her not paying her bills?" and
she is just one of thousands. As the war crimes
compound in Iraq, the resistance heightens and no one
wins in "lose-lose" land.

My campaign for Congress' slogan "People Before
Politics" is the exact opposite of what John Conyers
told me and my staff in a meeting prior to the July
23rd sit-in: "It is more important to me (Conyers) to
put a Democrat back in the White House in '08 than to
end the war!" (Even if it is Hillary "If Saddam won't
disarm, will we disarm him" Clinton") I can guarantee
him that it is not what's most important to Bethena,
the people of Iraq and the thousands of mothers in our
own country who can't sleep at night, concentrate, eat
or do much else for worry of their son or daughter in
Iraq for the lies of BushCo and the criminal
complicity of Congress, Inc.

I wept in John Conyers' office that day as I wept over
Bethena and her plight.

We the People have also failed our soldiers and
Bethena and rest of the innocent citizens of Iraq by
allowing the partisan politics of greed and
destruction to hijack our country. I wish every
American could peer into Bethena's eyes and have an
epiphany that there are many things more important
than partisan politics as usual. I wish news cameras
would show an American mother falling on the ground
screaming in agony for her needlessly killed child. We
see the devastation on Jordanian TV caused in Northern
Iraq where over 500 people were slaughtered yesterday:
we need to see that on our TVs.

Then maybe, just maybe, this monstrosity would end.

View Photos of Bethena

http://www.flickr.com/photos/travlnauntie/show/

To help Bethena please go to www.electroniciraq.net
and donate at the "Direct Assistance Initiative."

Please donate
https://secure.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/gsfp/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=864

Israel has about 200 nuclear weapons, not all immediately deliverable. Where they got them is from South Africa during the Apartheid Governments reign. Everyone else in the world shunned this regime, but Israel openly and covertly traded with them and learned quite well how to control poplulations inside your borders and commit genocide while everyone in the world watches. They also hijacked a French vessal in the Mediteranean in International waters(piracy: I always wondered how you keep an eye patch and a yamica on at the same time....I guess Mosha Dyan was good at it). The Judeo-Fascists do not want a situation with the Arab countries around it like Pakistan has with India. If both sides have weapons they become irrelevant as a force, much like the Cold War. MAD, mutually assured destruction is what we lived by for years with the Russians. We are going back to that again as Russia regains its power through economics.
Israel gets us to do the heavy lifting for their foreign policy objectives. This has dictated everything we have done in the Middle East for the last 60 years. No one was more alarmed than Israel when we Sold Saddam chemical weapons. This is why we had to set up Gulf War I. Saddam was giving money(and prestige) to people blowing themselves up to kill Israelis. When Saddam stabilized his country after the horrendous war with Iran, he looked around for another target. It would have been Israel had we not given out mixed messages with regard to his old intentions on Kuwait. We sucker punched him. Poor bastard did not have WMD, knew he could not win against us and would have never attacked if he knew we would commit against him. He was a brutal dicatator not an idiot. He did not let al Queda on his territory and did not trade with them, they would have destabilized his country like they do everywhere else.
This is what Israel wanted and we did not go far enough. Israel does not want us to withdraw now either. If we withdraw, the sooner the region stabilizes and the sooner they can focus their wealth and anger on Israel. Israel does not have the money or the manpower to thwart a conserted Arab onslaught. So we give them money and keep the region destabilized. Arab anger gets focused on us,

http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-08-16-voa13.cfm

and we let our soldiers die for their foreign policy goals. And we look the other way when their nuclear arsenal is talked about like someone drunk at an AA meeting.
We have an embargo on Palestinians who are starving and we give the Judeo-Fascists a 25% increase in their foreign aide subsidy(that is from 9 billion a year to 12 billion a year, this does not include military aide) which we have been paying since the 70's.
We need an American Foreign policy that is best for America.

Anyone notice that the price of Oil(Read: Operation Iraqi Liberation) is up again to its highest point this year. With all the trouble in the world it is no wonder. We have the Iranians now THE biggest threat on the planet according to the disasterpresident. OOOOOO those evil Triagle of Evil folks. We have to keep 3 (count 'em), 3 carrier flotillas in the Persian Gulf just to contain the menace of Irans 40 odd patrol craft.
We have to stop Iran from any nuclear power.
What we end up doing is making Oil cost more to everyone in the world. So we are making a scarce commodity, even more scarce. This accomplishes What? you ask.
I guess we squezze Iran. Israel thanks us for this because Iran is next on the Israeli Genocide Schedule.
We also have a reason to maintain our military might in the Persian Gulf, center of the worlds energy production.
And the Oil Companies, we make the fat and Happy. We create scarcity and they charge more, right? Opps. Big Oil has lowered refined fuel prices in the US. The price of oil went up 25% and the price of gasoline is down 10%. How does that work? We are Capitalist aren't we? When something gets scarce you charge more right? Not when you're so wealthy that you can manipulate whole populations and economies and make record profits each quarter for the last several years. You time your price increases and decreases to keep the population lulled and content, and please dont question. You manipulate elections and moderate bad ratings for your darling the disasterpresident all by saying "the refinery capacity is down". The price of oil is up now and the price of gas dropped precipitously, and no refineries went on line.
We do not have a free market. We are not Capitalists. We allow corporations to run the economy and the Government with the profits that are subsidized by the American people.
Everyone who is not baaaaing at Fox News need to write their Congressman and have them implement a tax on Big Oil and every other subsidized industry(halibuton, and every defense contractor come to mind) and give that money back to the people to pay off the exorbitant mortgages that were allowed by this disasteradministration in order to take the last bastion of wealth away from the middle class in America. Corportations think we will be much more governable if we NEED that extra job a Walmart to pay the mortgage.

Quite a large minority of us go to church on sunday and a significant proportion of those are quite commited Christians. Please go to my previous blog:

http://disasterpresident.blogspot.com/2006_10_15_archive.html

You can read about the commitment that these staunch Christians make. Christian attitudes, particularly their leaders are polarizing. They preach the Theology of hate. They preach the, for us or against us, mentality. They have to have a boogeymen(the Devil)in order to justtify a belief system they feel is not strong enough to stand on its own. Thank you, leave my beliefs alone and out of the Government. Any religious leader raising millions of dollars for a church, is no longer a church and needs to be taxed. Any professed born again Christian that goes into the armed military services is not a Christian but is a hypocrit. Any Christian leader(the disasterpresident comes to mind)that conducts a preemptive war and kills hundreds of thousands of Human Beings in the process is going straight to Hell by their own Theological Tenents, along with any Christian that helped or supported the effort. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Posted by Phillip Wister on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 at 10:45 PM

From: random light
Date: Aug 12, 2007 5:55 PM


Very Scary Things

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 10, 2007, New York Times

In September 1998, the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, a giant hedge fund, led to a meltdown in the financial markets similar, in some ways, to what's happening now. During the crisis in '98, I attended a closed-door briefing given by a senior Federal Reserve official, who laid out the grim state of the markets. "What can we do about it?" asked one participant. "Pray," replied the Fed official.

Our prayers were answered. The Fed coordinated a rescue for L.T.C.M., while Robert Rubin, the Treasury secretary at the time, and Alan Greenspan, who was the Fed chairman, assured investors that everything would be all right. And the panic subsided.

Yesterday, President Bush, showing off his M.B.A. vocabulary, similarly tried to reassure the markets. But Mr. Bush is, let's say, a bit lacking in credibility. On the other hand, it's not clear that anyone could do the trick: right now we're suffering from a serious shortage of saviors. And that's too bad, because we might need one.

What's been happening in financial markets over the past few days is something that truly scares monetary economists: liquidity has dried up. That is, markets in stuff that is normally traded all the time - in particular, financial instruments backed by home mortgages - have shut down because there are no buyers.

This could turn out to be nothing more than a brief scare. At worst, however, it could cause a chain reaction of debt defaults.

The origins of the current crunch lie in the financial follies of the last few years, which in retrospect were as irrational as the dot-com mania. The housing bubble was only part of it; across the board, people began acting as if risk had disappeared.

Everyone knows now about the explosion in subprime loans, which allowed people without the usual financial qualifications to buy houses, and the eagerness with which investors bought securities backed by these loans. But investors also snapped up high-yield corporate debt, a k a junk bonds, driving the spread between junk bond yields and U.S. Treasuries down to record lows.

Then reality hit - not all at once, but in a series of blows. First, the housing bubble popped. Then subprime melted down. Then there was a surge in investor nervousness about junk bonds: two months ago the yield on corporate bonds rated B was only 2.45 percent higher than that on government bonds; now the spread is well over 4 percent.

Investors were rattled recently when the subprime meltdown caused the collapse of two hedge funds operated by Bear Stearns, the investment bank. Since then, markets have been manic-depressive, with triple-digit gains or losses in the Dow Jones industrial average - the rule rather than the exception for the past two weeks.

But yesterday's announcement by BNP Paribas, a large French bank, that it was suspending the operations of three of its own funds was, if anything, the most ominous news yet. The suspension was necessary, the bank said, because of "the complete evaporation of liquidity in certain market segments" - that is, there are no buyers.

When liquidity dries up, as I said, it can produce a chain reaction of defaults. Financial institution A can't sell its mortgage-backed securities, so it can't raise enough cash to make the payment it owes to institution B, which then doesn't have the cash to pay institution C - and those who do have cash sit on it, because they don't trust anyone else to repay a loan, which makes things even worse.

And here's the truly scary thing about liquidity crises: it's very hard for policy makers to do anything about them.

The Fed normally responds to economic problems by cutting interest rates - and as of yesterday morning the futures markets put the probability of a rate cut by the Fed before the end of next month at almost 100 percent. It can also lend money to banks that are short of cash: yesterday the European Central Bank, the Fed's trans-Atlantic counterpart, lent banks $130 billion, saying that it would provide unlimited cash if necessary, and the Fed pumped in $24 billion.

But when liquidity dries up, the normal tools of policy lose much of their effectiveness. Reducing the cost of money doesn't do much for borrowers if nobody is willing to make loans. Ensuring that banks have plenty of cash doesn't do much if the cash stays in the banks' vaults.

There are other, more exotic things the Fed and, more important, the executive branch of the U.S. government could do to contain the crisis if the standard policies don't work. But for a variety of reasons, not least the current administration's record of incompetence, we'd really rather not go there.

Let's hope, then, that this crisis blows over as quickly as that of 1998. But I wouldn't count on it.

This is the result of an Iranian Military aircraft full of fuel flying into an apartment building. Boy they sure do build their apartments in Iran strong. Much stronger than our commercial buildings in the US, especially in New York. I wonder why our buildings are built so weak. It must be the faulty steel that melt below regular steel's melting point and puddles for days and weeks in the rubble afterward. It might be that we build them so tall that they just automatically colapse when they get scared , like when planes fly into buildings next to them, or near them, or even across town from them. That would be scary wouldn't it children.........