The Guerrilla Campaign

Bush Social Security Plan Would Cut Future Benefits By Jim VandeHei and Michael A. Fletcher Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, April 29, 2005; A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/28/AR2005042801044.html ...Despite opposition from Democrats and a lukewarm response from the public, he intensified his push for private accounts financed by a portion of a worker's payroll taxes. To pacify those worried about the risk associated with investment, the president, for the first time, said one of the investment options should be no-risk Treasury bonds . ... Now would those be the same bonds that the president bush has called "worthless IOU's?"

Just a quick post before the Anointed One and Source of All Wisdom, the president bush, gets up to spew his enlightenment on us mere mortals. Here’s the stock market as it stood at closing on April 22, 2005. How’d you like to retire on these numbers?

Deepening the Religious Divide Republicans think they can put right-wing religion above the rule of law. That might be their biggest mistake. By Robert B. Reich Issue Date: 05.06.05 American Prospect In the religious war now being waged by the Republican Party, battles are designed not to be won but to mobilize troops for larger battles to come. The ultimate goal is not to dismantle the wall between church and state, although this would be a byproduct. It is to bring the majority of Americans who consider themselves religious into the Republican Party, thereby securing the GOP’s dominance for generations to come. […] A Fine Christian Nation Sex Trumps Torture and Murder DAVE LINDORFF, CounterPunch http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff04262005.html […] we don't see nearly the public interest in this scandal, don't see nearly the media coverage, and even when, as happened this week, the top generals who oversaw the whole thing, and who helped try to cover it up, are exonerated by...

American Progress IRAQ $300,000,000,000.00 We'd call it buyer's remorse, but "remorse" doesn't quite capture the stunning tragedy of the moment. Following yesterday's Senate approval of the latest war supplemental , American taxpayers will soon have paid three hundred billion dollars – that's $300,000,000,000.00 – to help finance the most disastrous foreign policy decision of our generation. You paid. Your co-workers paid. Elderly couples, struggling single parents, college kids, middle-class families – we all paid.... 1744 Coalition deaths, 1567 of them American 11888 US wounded in action and over 100,000 Iraqi's killed

President Dedicates Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum Springfield, Illinois For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary April 19, 2005 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050419-5.html 11:59 A.M. CDT Our interests are served when former enemies become democratic partners -- because free governments do not support terror or seek to conquer their neighbors. Our interests are served by the spread of democratic societies -- because free societies reward the hopes of their citizens, instead of feeding the hatreds that lead to violence…. Well, I guess it’s official. Especially among those who worship the president bush, and believe only the truth comes out of his mouth. There it is, right in his speech. America is no longer a free, democratic society. Gotta be true, georgie says so. Flying a plane into a building full of people is terrorism. Dropping a bomb from an airplane into a building full of people is terrorism. No difference. We could ask the people...

There are millions of Christians in the world, and the vast majority of them pattern their lives according to the teachings of Jesus. These are not the Christians I’m talking about. There is a cult that has formed on the fringes of this religion. And this cult has gained power and influence far out of proportion to their numbers. The american taliban is about one step away from completing their takeover of the US government. The policies of these ‘christians’ would condemn all, believers and non-believers alike, to a life of fear and distrust. How else would a person react, while waiting for the denunciation that will be coming from someone who has a grudge against them. That is the end result whenever any religion gains the ascendancy in the political arena. We’ve had the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Stalin show trials, the Taliban in Afghanistan. Throughout history, we see the religious wars that have caused so much death and destruction. Basing their social contract on t...

Loudly, With a Big Stick By DAVID BROOKS OP-ED COLUMNIST Published: April 14, 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/opinion/14brooks.html Disaster, Not Diplomacy By Richard Cohen Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page A27 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51669-2005Apr13.html I've posted both of these at the Guerrilla Campaign site together . And my response to Mr Brooks is below. In the first column, Brooks, rather ineffectually I think, takes the position that bolton would be a good choice for our ambassador to the UN. It seems, though, that it's his disdain for the UN that makes him the right person. Since it seems to match Brooks' disdain. In the second, Mr Cohen argues that bolton would be a disaster for the people of the US and the world, if he were to be confirmed. "...But there are things that the United States will want done at the United Nations -- and Bolton is the wrong guy to get them done. After all, once an ambassador is instructed as to a policy ...

The doubling of child malnutrition in Iraq is baffling Terry Jones Tuesday April 12, 2005 Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1457630,00.html A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now. This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations. It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering. These results are even more disheartening for those of us in the Department of Making Things Better...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45305-2005Apr11.html The same people who insist that critics of Social Security privatization should offer reform proposals of their own are working feverishly to eliminate alternatives that might reduce the need for benefit cuts or payroll tax increases. I refer to the fact that House Republican leaders have scheduled a vote this week to abolish the estate tax permanently. Under a wacky provision of the 2001 tax cut designed to disguise the law's full cost, Congress voted to make the estate tax go away in 2010, but come back in full force in 2011. With so many other taxes around, it's hard to understand why this is the one Congress would repeal. It falls, in effect, on the heirs to the wealthiest Americans. Fewer than 1 percent of the people who died in 2004 paid an estate tax, and half the revenue from the tax came from estates valued at $10 million or more.... The president bush made a recent photo-op stop to riffle through the ...

The Economic Tsunami: Sooner Than You Think by Mike Whitney www.dissidentvoice.org April 11, 2005 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Apr05/Whitney0411.htm “ If the world's central bankers accumulate fewer dollars, the result would be an unrelenting American need to borrow in the face of an ever weaker dollar -- a recipe for higher interest rates and higher prices. The economic repercussions could unfold gradually, resulting in a long, slow decline in living standards. Or there could be a quick unraveling, with the hallmarks of an uncontrolled fiscal crisis.” -- New York Times editorial, 4/2/05 It seems that there are a growing number of people who believe, as I do, that the economic tsunami planned by the Bush administration is probably only months away. In just five short years the national debt has increased by nearly $3 trillion while the dollar has continued its precipitous decline. The dollar has fallen a whopping 38% since Bush took office, due largely to the massive $450 bil...

There’s a lot of ink being used, and a lot of talk, over the past few years about the appointment of justices to the federal courts. Or, perhaps, you could say, the refusal of the US Senate to ratify a certain few of the appointments of the president bush. The Enlightened One and Font of All Wisdom, since he became the president bush, has made a large number of appointments to the federal courts. I think I remember 200+, and I don’t feel like looking up the number right now. Out of those, a handful have been refused the consent of the US Senate. I don’t feel like looking up that number either. You can if you want, but trust me, my numbers are close enough. By the way, the reason for the large number of vacancies existed because of the large number of appointments by the Clinton administrations that were refused consent of the republican controlled Senate. So, what all this fuss is about, to put it in perspective, is, at the most, 2% of bush’s appointments. For those who worship money, ...

…Sadly, our society is rapidly beginning to mirror Bush's character - we are devoid of both sympathy and empathy; we have no compassion for the vulnerable nor for the innocent, we refuse to hear the cries of those who are crushed by our greed…. Super Duper George Bush April 6, 2005 By Sheila Samples Democratic Underground Sadly, this is true. I was talking to two serious bush supporters at work yesterday. Intelligent women with families. They really think he has made all the right decisions. When I asked them what they thought about his plan to privatize SocSec. They thought he was right. When I asked them didn't they care what happened to their kids, they told me they weren't worried, they were all set. When I asked them about all the other children, they said they don't care. Their parents should have got things set up like they did. When the discussion turned to Iraq, and all the children being killed, again it didn't concern them. The quote is "After all, t...

Cornyn theorizes on violence Democrat calls senator's remarks on judges, accountability 'bizarre' 11:02 PM CDT on Monday, April 4, 2005 By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News WASHINGTON – Sen. John Cornyn, speaking on the Senate floor Monday, suggested that violence against judges might stem from frustration over a perceived lack of accountability. Phil Singer, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, called the remarks "bizarre." Mr. Cornyn, a Republican and a former Texas Supreme Court justice, appearing before a nearly empty chamber, said: "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection. ... "I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence."... Well…this is interesting. Besides t...

available on-line: “The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction” Quite a thick report. I would imagine that if you’re going to do a whitewash, you’ll want more than just a couple of pages. The fault, of course, is not entirely the commission’s fault. Why would I call this report a whitewash? As we remember, the president bush didn’t want this report in the first place, and then set it up so that it would exonerate him and his administration: …our mission is to investigate the reasons why the Intelligence Community’s pre-war assessments were so different from what the Iraq Survey Group found after the war. Second, we were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community. [page 8] But, as we can see, the dance begins before we even get to page 50: …Nor do we fault the Intelligence Community for failing to uncover what few Iraqis knew; according to ...