Rich

Keith Olbermann -Special Comment on healthcare( Must Watch)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Barry Crimmins

Recently I found out that Barry Crimmins,one of my favorite comics of all time has announced that he is giving up performing . He is going to do a couple last shows. One near Buffalo N.Y were he is from and another in Boston were he made his home and mark promoting and performing comedy in it's hay day, in the late Seventies till the early 90's. I have had the pleasure of seeing him perform countless times.

Check out barrycrimmins.com  for his great political insight. 

Here's his latest rambling

No god & no religion can survive ridicule, no political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field & live

-- Mark Twain

We Are Here

By Barry Crimmins

We wouldn’t be human if we weren’t anxious to consider all that Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter have to offer as potential chief executives but before we plumb the depths of the 2008 presidential race it’s important to establish just where our current president has led us.

Unfortunately I don’t have a complete list of the failures and scandals of the Bush-Cheney Administration. I really need to get the latest copy of the Guinness Book of World Records.

There has been so much malfeasance in this malignancy of a White House that you have to figure henchman-in-chief Karl Rove’s strategy is to camouflage disgrace with more disgrace. And then plenty of outrage. And then even more disgrace.

Gandhi said, “Fill the jails,” which was a brilliant strategy, meant to ball up the works of oppressive regimes. Now an oppressive regime has adopted the ‘ball up the works’ tactic with scandal overload, while perversely filling the jails with people other than themselves. Some of the jails are hidden beyond our borders and many of the prisoners are unidentified. But that’s getting too scandal-specific and I’m after the big picture here. Or big mug shot, anyway.   

Perverse hypocrisy is the trademark of this junta of chickenhawks. From long before Bush literally took office, he was shiftier than an 18-wheeler headed for the Great Divide. His baggage included a history of drug and alcohol problems and a murky military record. More recently his background was as a failed businessman, private beneficiary of public stadium funding and as the governor of a state that is a reminder of why we should never rob Mexico. He ran for president promising to bring ethics back to Washington. It turned out to be more of an extraordinary rendition.

The ‘fill the jails strategy’ was tipped early with his choice of Dick Cheney as his vice-president. Right away watchdogs had two slimy trails to follow. In short order they led through a labyrinth of smoke and mirrors meant to obfuscate the most massive criminal enterprise ever to lay its hands on the government of these United States.

Never have so few benefited from robbing so many. And therein lies the only success to which George W. Bush can lay claim. It must kill the little braggart that you can’t flaunt such thuggery without couching it in foggy terms.

Bush has deregulated everything, including the conduct of most of our government. But that’s because it’s good for business, right? Not in the long run. At the moment Buah's policies are good for stockholders -- unless of course they need things like clean air and water and a safe food supply. To survive in the current rigged game, many businesses play for short-term extreme profitability-- which means layoffs at home and exploitation of defenseless peasants abroad. But when most of a company’s customers can no longer afford its products, then what? The Dow is over 13,000, which is approximately how many people are economically better off thanks to the destruction of the middle class that has driven the market so high its apex is only visible from penthouse terraces.

Beyond the health care rackets, the preponderance of dependable growth businesses are in the military/police/prison-industrial complex. The oppression that Bush has exported to Iraq has made its way home. As the government operates from behind an ever more opaque curtain, private citizenry is subjected to increased violations of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What should be public is private, what should be private is public. Extrajudicial private concerns now conduct our foreign policy and run detention centers at home.

A current poll says 28% of Americans approve of George W. Bush. This means 27.5% of Americans hate themselves and the other 0.5% of Bush approvers are happy to rake in immediate and obscene profits regardless of the suffering such profiteering inflicts upon the innocent.

As the election of 2008 approaches, George W. Bush must face life in the shadows. After spending two terms hiding in them it shouldn’t be too tough an adjustment. Nevertheless he must now consider his legacy – as president (as opposed to the one that allowed him to bring permanent disgrace to Yale.) What he has actually accomplished has been done under backroom tables. Therefore his public legacy must be cobbled from some mighty slim pickings.

So what will GWB turn to when he needs to publicly rationalize his two terms as president? An examination of the last six-plus years leads to the same thing Bush always cites when there is no legitimate answer for a question: 9/11. And so the greatest tragedy that has struck our land since at least the Vietnam War is what he’s left with as his finest moment. And in that moment, which lasted for several days, he read to us about a goat and climbed upon rubble filled with the earthly remains of countless souls so he could lie to us through a megaphone. Fear and common decency conspired to provoke 90% of us to ignore the fact that he was then and always would be a dodgy little con artist. He was given the benefit of the doubt and he took it into needless, and what may well become, perpetual war.

And that’s his highlight!

So forgive me if I’m not itching to find some new politico in whom to invest blind faith. I’m sick of living in a country that is so wrapped up in choosing a “leader.”  Only morons need leaders because to have a leader is to divest oneself of the responsibility every citizen in this republic must meet for us to become a truly free and just society. What we need are public servants who act upon the demands of an informed electorate. Judging by the first two presidential debates, there are only a few people running for president who would even consider undertaking the hard work of public servitude. The rest want to be leaders and leaders lead us to awful places like war and prison. In the process they treat us as subjects rather than employers.

To be a bona fide member of that informed electorate requires more than simply choosing from the limited and predictable rhetoric of political aspirants. It requires more than simply consuming what others decide are the issues of the day. We cannot expect to make any progress if our discourse is limited to a lexicon of soundbites.

We can’t get over George W. Bush and Dick Cheney by declaring them impertinent and then simply replacing them. We must demand that bright lights are shone throughout the network of rat tunnels from which our nation has been undermined. The candidate that pledges to take on that grimy task will have my support until he or she proves they're not up to the task.   

Another Keith Olbermann "Special Comment"

I just can't say enough good things about Keith Olbermann and his special Comments. He just nails it and holds nothing back.  He  can certainly speaks his mind in a very clear and precise manor. 

I hope you enjoy this and hopefully I'll finish writing my own piece very soon

You knew Keith was going to comment after Bush's disastrous speech last night. Most of America, many in Congress and Bush's own military leaders are against this move. I guess only the neocons matter to Bush. Being a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute seems to be more important than over 60% of the country. Keith takes it apart—bit by bit. It is surprising to see him speak out in back to back shows, but the situation obviously warranted it.

http://www.olbermann.org/ko/video_detail.cfm?id=2088

The War

Tonight, I’m listening to today’s Stephanie Miller show on my computer and they are discussing Cindy Sheehan, The Anti War Mom who lost her son fighting in Iraq. She is trying to stop the war now .Before any more families lose their loved ones fighting for this useless and senseless cause.

They are playing clips from right wing radio shows like Rush, O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, etc.

All of them must be reading the same script because they all are repeating the same nasty and vicious lies about her over and over again.

They were calling her a far fringe left wing nut case .They also claim that she has accused President Bush of being a Terrorist, a fascist and said she also compared him to Hitler (All False)

The Pro war people must really be afraid of her to spend so much time and effort into defaming a grieving Mother with such vile  garbage.

I for one have always been against this war. I never believed the false pretence of going to war in the first place.

The facts are that there were no weapons of mass destruction ever found. There was no al-Qaida –Iraq link. Saddam had nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet we were all led to believe that these things were true through a relentless White House propaganda machine that spread lie after lie playing on a shell shocked 9/11 populace and unfortunately most Americans gobbled it up and followed like lemmings going into the sea.

I do agree that Saddam was a bad man but I think that we had him well under our control . We had himboxed in with the no fly zone and the U.N inspections that kept Saddam on his toes. By the way they had destroyed all of his weapons right after the first Gulf War.

He did have some badass weapons at one time only because many of the people who are , or were in. the current Bush Administration  gave it to him during Iraq-Iran War. Yes, Saddam was, " Our friend", for many years. Our Government knew that these weapons were destroyed and Saddam was only boosting that he still had some weapons to ward off his internal and external enemies. 

Have you seen this picture of Rumsfeld is shaking hands with Saddam?

(Click on picture for a better view)

It’s time for us to get out and let them settle things for themselves.

Iraq now is full of well-armed terrorist, who are enraged that the Infidels, (That means us) are controlling their land.

Our soldiers are excellent targets for them and they are especially vulnerable without the proper armament they should have had.  To this date we have lost 1921 soldiers in Iraq along with another 14,362 that have been wounded

There is also a civil war starting with the Sunni and Shiite factions viciously killing each other. This is something that’s sadly going to happen whether we are still there or not.

The cost of the war is another factor. We are bleeding our treasury dry and getting us deeper and deeper in debt. That debt is going to make it more difficult to fight the real war on terrorism that we all want to and need to win. The oil that we were going to get out of Iraq to pay for the war never materialized thanks to the oil pipeline relentlessly being blow up by the insurgents. The only real winners are companies like Halliburton that have raked in Billions of dollars with their no bid contracts and war profiteering.

Let's face it; this war has been a total failure! And it's time to leave before this gets even worse. 

Let's really support the troops by bringing them home now!

I will continue this ramble later on.  Peace Out!

Here are some links to check out –The Downey street Memo-http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8709.htm the secret meting between Tony Blair and Bush’s government officials planning the war in the summer of 2002

http://www.liberaloasis.com/- lots of news and links

Here are a couple of great anti Iraq war song lyrics

Billy Bragg -A great progressive singer/ songwriter . He wrote this song before the war started in 2002 about the real reason for the war.  - Check out his official website http://www.billybragg.co.uk  to download  the song for free and to find more about him.

The Price Of Oil

Voices on the radio
tell us that we're going to war
those brave men and women in uniform
they want to know what they're fighting for.

The generals want to hear the end game
the allies won't approve the plan
but the oil men in the white house
they just don't give a damn.

It's all about the price of oil
it's all about the price of oil
don't give me no shit
about blood, sweat, tears and toil
it's all about the price of oil

Now I ain't no fan of Saddam Hussein
oh, please don't get me wrong
if it's freeing the Iraqi people you're after
then why have we waited so long.

Why didn't we sort this out last time
was he less evil than he is now
the stock market holds the answer
to why him, why here, why now.

Saddam killed his own people
just like general Pinochet
and once upon a time both these evil men
were supported by the U.S.A.

And whisper it, even Bin Laden
once drank from America's cup
just like that election down in Florida
this shit doesn't all add up.

It's all about the price of oil
'cause it's all about the price of oil
don't give me no shit
about blood, sweat, tears and toil
it's all about the price of oil.

Music and lyrics by Billy Bragg, 200

Steve Earl- A great, leftwing country singer, songwriter. Wrote this song in 2004 about the people who go off and fight the war. From his cd  The revolution starts now

Check out this great Steve Earl fan site http://www.steveearle.net/ go to the video link and see this song

Rich man's  War

Jimmy joined the army ‘cause he had no place to go
There ain’t nobody hirin’
‘round here since all the jobs went
down to Mexico
Reckoned that he’d learn himself a trade maybe see the world
Move to the city someday and marry a black haired girl
Somebody somewhere had another plan
Now he’s got a rifle in his hand
Rollin’ into Baghdad wonderin’ how he got this far
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man’s war

Bobby had an eagle and a flag tattooed on his arm
Red white and blue to the bone when he landed in Kandahar
Left behind a pretty young wife and a baby girl
A stack of overdue bills and went off to save the world
Been a year now and he’s still there
Chasin’ ghosts in the thin dry air
Meanwhile back at home the finance company took his car
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man’s war

When will we ever learn
When will we ever see
We stand up and take our turn
And keep tellin’ ourselves we’re free

Ali was the second son of a second son
Grew up in Gaza throwing bottles and rocks when the tanks would come
Ain’t nothin’ else to do around here just a game children play
Somethin’ ‘bout livin’ in fear all your life makes you hard that way

He answered when he got the call
Wrapped himself in death and praised Allah
A fat man in a new Mercedes drove him to the door
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man’s war