When Bush stole the 2000 election, the U.S. dollar was 41% more valuable than it is now. That distinction alone should be cause for great concern. Gas was cheap. You could heat your home with abandon. There was a Yankee Candle kiosk at every mall with Rush Limbaugh's ass- scented candles, beside the Starbucks, across from the Cold Stone. The Federal Treasury was busting  with a Clinton budget surplus .   But now , eight years after,with the Monkey throne-- the National zeitgeist is grim, and going grimmer. The cold stone is like a mortuary slab. ( Smoosh in !!! ) After six straight months of job losses in the U.S.,- amid news of Starbucks this week planning to close 600 stores, airlines collapsing, and  old school capitalist corporate bellwether General Motors on the edge of bankruptcy --- with nothin' but endless wars and gasoline and heating oil headed for $5 a gallon, it is hard to find much to celebrate today. Very hard.

 Besides the beer swilling, overeating and hollow patriotic bluster beside the barb-b-q, what do we got ? Sure, we can still blow away anyone on the planet, but our standard of living is 11th among the industrialized countries, and falling fast.  Magnificence ? Yes, we American insurgents kicked out the British, but how free are we today from foreign control ? Go ahead and ask yourself the Ronnie Reagan question : " Are you better off now than 8 years ago ?". (- or even a year ago ? ) The truth is things are fast spinning out of control at home and abroad, brought on by energy and food shortages and massive climate disruptions occurring all over the planet. Our fate is in the hands of  sleazy politicians, Saudi oil sheiks, shadowy speculators and hedge fund managers, --- and further ominous developments in the Nigerian delta.. Another North Sea oil platform outage, more global climate disruptions, a Gulf Coast hurricane --- any of these can now send oil past $ 150 a barrel. No problem. A strike on Iran is the absolute wrong thing right now, if your plan was to keep prices down at the oil well head. Who will directly profit from a strike on Iran ? Big oil .

 Mark this. Every time Bush mentions attacking Iran, the screw tightens further- the price goes up.Hey, it could be a drinking game!!! Base your consumption on Nexus/Lexus word searches - the frequency of the words 'war on Iran/ nuclear weapons'. You will certainly get wasted , spending the rent money, especially in the days to come. Or just kill yourself.

Around the world, the drumhead is stretched tight, our collective asses splayed on hot rolled steel, and we are all being daily shaken by the ankles at the gas pumps by our corporate overlords for any loose change, barely enough left to eat overpriced e- coli- tainted beef burgers. Hold the tomatoes!!!

The straight talk is we have never been less free and independent. We are a Nation of energy sucking vampires, too dumb to get out of our own way - too fat to see our toes, and until we mend our gluttonous behaviors, we will never be free of foreign control and undue corporate influence in our government.We are thralls to our energy consumption, hopeless junkies, need that energy fix. Our shopping malls are a hollow consumer necropolis, packed with Chinese made goods, and every where you look home foreclosures  - big rigs and boats parked by the side of the road, big city manhole covers jacked and headed for smelters in China or India. Copper coyotes. We've been screwed, outsourced, deceived - can't even heat our behemoth homes this winter --- all Phil Gramm Enron loopholes, arms makers, war mongering politicians and chemical contrails.

Enough harping.


From Truthdig, an article by Robert Scheer, " Happy Oil Dependence Day ", July 1, 2008. An excerpt describes our present sorry state of  confusion and uncertainty :



... " Any doubts as to this later governing impulse of our imperial ambitions were shattered with the recent news that U.S. advisers to our puppet government in the Green Zone of occupied Iraq have worked out agreements for American oil companies to gain control of Iraqi oil fields. But then again, what did we expect when we elected a Texas oil hustler, and a failed one at that, to be our president ?

... Only in an America dumbed down by constant propaganda about out innate moral superiority will anyone any longer believe that we didn't invade Iraq for the oil, even though Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice came to the Bush administration from the board of directors of Chevron, where they named an oil tanker after her. Like Vice President Cheney, with those Halliburton contracts, Rice has stayed true to her corporate sponsors. That's what the U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished ; for the first time in three decades after Iraq joined a worldwide trend of formerly colonized gaining control of their own resources. Big oil is getting its black gold back. It was always about the oil - that's why ' we ' invaded Iraq - only 'we' aren't  getting any - at least at a reasonable price.


... We are drowning in the ' impostures of pretended patriotism ', used to cover the lies that got us into Iraq, the defense of torture and violation of  our basic liberties. In the name of patriotism, we presume a God-given right to re-order the world to our own liking, masking the vice of unfettered greed as an obligation to national security. "







World wide climate disruption.