Chapter 1

How We Got Here

The extremely troubling problems that we have been witnessing during the past five years, and the ones looming in the future, did not all start with the George W. Bush administration but there is an indisputable correlation between the Republican Party and almost all our past and current problems.

The Bush administration has compounded our government's fiscal problems by cutting taxes and raising spending so much that the budget projections have swung $10 trillion dollars in the wrong direction and created the largest budget deficits in our country's history. They have created a huge new problem by taking our country into a bloody and costly war in Iraq. Sadly, these two items are just the tip of the iceberg but they are indicative of the Republican Party's corrupt, immoral, and deadly ideology which is far from conservative but is almost identical to fascism.

The Democratic Party is also partly to blame but their guilt is more about their ideology shifting to the right, spineless fear, party members who are Benedict Arnold traders, and being a powerless minority unable to stop or control anything. For example, during the first year of the Clinton administration the Democrats controlled Congress and with this majority power they were able to raise taxes on the very rich. This tax increase, that none of the Republicans voted for, along with spending controls, like PAYGO, helped balance the federal budget. Then they passed the Republican's pet project free trade deal, NAFTA, and since that time our trade deficit has been skyrocketing. These and other actions expose a contradiction in the Democrat's ideology. Rather than liberals or moderates these actions indicate they are very conservative.

Therefore, it is correct to assume both political parties have moved to the ideological right and they are both corrupted whores for the top 1%. The Republican Party is just more arrogant, shameless, and ruthless about its extremist right-wing agenda than the Democrats and probably only represents the top .0001% of the American people.

 The rest of this chapter will expose the GOP's extreme level of corruption and how it got us into the trouble we are in today. However, the bottom line is that today we have two corrupt right-wing parties representing different groups of extremely rich people. As a result, the top 1% of Americans are very well represented within our federal government and the other 99% of us are voting against our own self-interest when we support either party.

How did this narrow elitist special interest leadership problem occur? And why doesn't the media inform us about this serious problem with our democracy? The answer is really very simple and obvious: campaign finance corruption.

The Media Conspiracy

In the 1950's the cost of political campaigns began skyrocketing due largely to the cost of media advertising. That trend has continued at an exponential rate and today people running for Congress must raise tens of millions of dollars just to be able to compete in political campaigns, and people running for president must raise hundreds of millions of dollars each election cycle.

In 2000, when Bush and Gore were running for office, it is estimated that both parties raised and spent over $500 million dollars with most of that money going to a handful of giant media companies, and that number almost doubled in 2004, according to Opensecrets.org. Who do you think gives all this money to these two parties, and what do you think they expect in return?

As a result of this money corrupted political system we now have a government of, by, and for the very wealthy which by definition is not a democracy but is a plutocracy; or more accurately named, a mafiaocracy. We also have a corporate owned mainstream media that is feeding on this political corruption and is playing on the American people's gullibilities.

 Who Represents You?

It should be becoming much more obvious to everyone by now that the Republican Party represents extreme wealth and practices an extreme form of politics based on an extreme right-wing ideology, which according to Dr. Lawrence Britt's analysis closely resembles fascism. The Democratic Party also represents wealthy special interest and it practices a corrupt form of politics which appears very conservative. That leaves no one in Congress to represent the poor, the middle class, or even the upper middle class.

The evidence of this lack of political representation for 99% of the American people can be seen in the recently passed bankruptcy reform legislation. Neither party put an exception in this legislation for medical emergencies, economic cycles, or even for natural disasters, like Katrina. As a result, middle class families can no longer wipe the slate clean and get a fresh start if they get into financial trouble, no matter what the reason. Both parties have spoken and they say "no compassion, no mercy, and no help from Uncle Sam, you will pay your debts or you will go to jail", end of story.

The evidence of this lack of representation can also be seen in our tax laws, or who in our society is burdened with the highest levels of taxes. President Reagan passed huge tax cuts for the very rich and this legislation shifted the tax burden from the very rich to the middle class. President George W. Bush took that tax shifting ideology several steps further by passing more tax cuts for the very rich including the repeal of the estate tax. As a result of these highly regressive and unfair tax cuts a self-employed person making around $90,000 a year is now the most highly taxed person in our society.

Robbing The Federal Government

This shift in the tax burden is hampering small business growth, it is squeezing the middle class downwards, it is concentrating wealth into the hands of the top .0001%, and it has sent the deficits and debt skyrocketing. The three highest government deficits ever have been during the past three years (2003, 2004, & 2005), with the second highest ever being projected for this year, 2006. And the four highest consecutive years before that were the four years of the George H.W. Bush administration (1989, 1990, 1991, & 1992).

During the Reagan and H.W. Bush twelve years the federal debt increased by almost $4 trillion dollars, and during the first five years of George W. Bush the debt has increased by almost $3 trillion dollars and is projected to hit $5.6 by the time he leaves office. That will leave us with a total debt of around $10.8 trillion by the year 2009.

That will mean that over 90% of our government's debt has occurred while a "Bush" was leading or working in the executive branch of our federal government. These two former CIA clowns have set our government on crash course for a huge fiscal train wreck.

Together, this "Bush" father and son team will have helped lead the effort to charge over $9 trillion dollars on the government's credit card, and they managed to pull this off over in just 17 years. By the year 2010 interest on the federal debt will be costing the American people over $600 billion dollars a year in just interest payments, and that's only if interest rates stay low. All this new borrowing already has long-term interest rates rising.

This fiscal mismanagement is not accidental or coincidental but it is deliberate, calculated, premeditated, and criminal. The Republicans are colluding and conspiring with their mega wealth friends to bankrupt the federal government so they can buy its $100 trillion dollars in assets, our assets, for pennies on the dollar. Those assets belong to all the American people, unless our government goes into bankruptcy in which case they will belong to the highest bidder.

If these guys were running a major corporation instead of the U.S. government they would already be in jail for embezzlement, fraud, conspiracy, racketeering, and numerous other felonies.

I don't see how anyone can define this criminal plot to rob the U.S. government with any word other than "treason". The Constitution says people guilty of treason should be put to death. Since we are self-governors that puts the burden on us to hold these people accountable. Normally, we should be able to rely on our elected representatives to hold treasonous criminals accountable, but things have changed, as you are about to learn if you didn't already know.

All this corruption, conspiracy, and lack of accountability is a direct result of an out of control campaign finance system with big media companies and mega wealthy individuals being the primary beneficiaries. They, along with their puppets in our government, are the people we must hold accountable before they finish robbing our government, undermining our democracy, and rolling back our legal system.

If we fail to stop the GOP, their wealthy friends, and the big media companies we will become their impoverished slaves and helpless victims. For a clearer picture of what that will be like just look at the poverty stricken society in Mexico today, or the racist abuse of the Palestinian people by the Jews in Israel, or the collective punishments and torture the U.S. has used against the people of Iraq, or the genocide in Sudan, etc.

If these few corrupt individuals succeed in robbing our government of its assets they will have won. If they do win the rest of us can try to run and hide, or we can get on our knees and beg the new royalty for mercy and some crumbs of food.

Murder In Dallas

All this horrible political corruption in America did not just begin recently but can be seen as far back as November 22, 1963 when our very popular elected president, John F. Kennedy, was murdered in Dallas, Texas and his assassination was covered up by right-wing forces working inside our government and in Dallas.

The evidence of this conspiracy and cover-up is in the people who were picked to investigate the assassination, including Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA, who JFK had fired. Also, eyewitness testimony placed one of the assassins behind the picket fence and photographic evidence places Oswald standing at the front door of the School Book Depository at the time of the shooting. Jack Ruby, a Mafia figure with close ties to the Dallas Police Department, killed Oswald and thereby sealed the case for the Dallas DA and turned anyone who disagreed with the Warren Commission's conclusions into a conspiracy nut.

Vietnam War

After JFK was murdered a Texan moved into the White House and the war in Vietnam was started. This war was started based on a lie, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, it was fought based on a series of lies that the Pentagon Papers exposed, and it ended as it should have with the immoral side getting its ass kicked at a cost of over 55,000 American soldier's lives and $200 billion dollars.

In retrospect, it looks like our political leaders never wanted or expected a victory in Vietnam, but the war was just a scam to kick off a power shift and wealth concentration plan dreamed up by some very rich and immoral southerners, probably based out of Texas. Stopping the spread of communism was just the excuse for going to war in Vietnam. If our leaders really believed communism was so evil why is communist China America's biggest trading partner today? The reality is we have a fascist running our government, George W. Bush, and China has a fascist running their government, Hu Jintao, and that is why these two sycophant whores got along so well at their recent meeting in Washington (4/20/2006).

The parallels between the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq are uncanny, and thus the outcome in Iraq is also predictable. Instead of our leaders telling us we are fighting communism this time they are telling us we are fighting terrorism. I can't wait to hear their next excuse for killing thousands of innocent people and wasting hundreds of billions of our tax dollars.

Nixon's Sickness

President Nixon was the typical Republican politician. He was corrupt, immoral, compassionless, paranoid, power hungry, vengeful, a liar, a thief, a sycophant, and a murderous tyrant. His shining media moment was his visit to Communist China, and America's current huge trade deficit with China is that visit's legacy. Watergate was only the tip of the iceberg that exposed Nixon's psychopathic mental illness and the American people will forever pay for his misdeeds.

The parallels between Richard Nixon and George W. Bush are frightening similar. I have no doubt that Bush's mental illness is every bit as severe as Nixon's was. I suspect the horrible decisions of both of these men, even only the decisions the public knows about, are probably enough to rekindle the fires of hell many times over. Regardless of the afterlife consequences for these two sick political puppets their immoral and illicit decisions should motivate all of us to fight back against the Republican Party with very ounce of energy we can possibly muster.

Reagan's Conservative Revolution

President Reagan's legislation proved that he was also no friend of the middle class. His tax legislation shifted the tax burden onto middle class families and off the very wealthy while massively increasing the federal debt. His domestic legislation cut benefits for workers, homeowners, and the elderly while opening the flood gates to the rich with deregulations that resulted in corruption.

Reagan's budgets added almost $2 trillion dollars to the federal debt in eight years despite his 1980 campaign pledge to be a fiscally conservative leader. His corrupt Savings & Loan deregulation scam alone cost taxpayers over $500 billion dollars while lining the pockets of wealthy land owners and developers in Texas, Colorado, California, and a select few other southern states, as well as a couple of President Bush's brothers. His domestic legislation sent crime, poverty, and homelessness way up. The people working in his administration were constantly being exposed as criminals and corrupt liars.

Republican politicians and right-wing media personalities constantly lavish great praise on Reagan's legacy, but that is only because he was the perfect corrupt right-wing fascist. His Iran/Contra criminal actions is the model for corrupt dictatorial power in the White House, and it appears that President George W. Bush has embraced that model whole heartedly.

Reagan's presidency exposed how the wealthy right-wing uses puppets (actors) to get our government to give them what they want, and what they want is more gold and power, and less risk and liability. It is a highly profitable game for a few but a costly one for everyone else.

The Bush Senior Years

President H.W. Bush got Reagan and his co-conspirators off the hook for their Iran/Contra crimes when he pardoned key players in 1989. He also followed in Reagan's budget footsteps by adding almost $2 trillion dollars to the federal debt in just four years.

H.W.'s horrible leadership motivated a Texas billionaire, Ross Perot, to get into the race in 1992 to make sure H.W. did not win reelection. Ross campaigned on the need for responsible fiscal management in our government. Ross said: "Our first priority is to balance the budget. The United States government must pay its way. There are only two ways to do it: reduce spending and generate revenues. It's that simple.". And it is that simple but these corrupt politicians want us to be confused, in fear, and complacent while they rob our government of $100 trillion in assets that really belong to all the American people.

An interesting footnote to H.W.'s history came from an FBI memo that identified H.W. Bush as a CIA agent at the time of the JFK assassination, a fact which H.W. refutes. He claims that he did not work for the CIA until he became Director of the CIA in 1976. This should make you wonder what other dirty skeletons lurk in his closet, and in the CIA's closet.

The Clinton Years

The first thing President Clinton did after taking office was pass legislation that raised taxes on the top 2%, and he did so without one vote from any of the Republicans. The next year the Republicans won control of the Congress and Clinton was forced into a position as a lame duck unable to move any significant legislation until 1997. During this time he was under constant attack from the right-wing's operatives for things that where mostly just made up to make him look bad but that never materialized into any crimes. However, Clinton's 1993 tax increases helped to eliminate the huge budget deficits and they created the largest surpluses in our country's history.

President Clinton's sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, and his lies about this affair, added creditability to all the mud throwing the GOP had been doing. This sexual indiscretion badly tarnished his image and legacy. This entire matter exposed that the Democrats can be just as stupid, corrupt, and immoral as the Republicans. President Clinton is a brilliant man but he showed some extremely bad judgement; but to error is human so we can forgive him.

The George W. Bush Years

George W. Bush, on the other hand, does not deserve our forgiveness yet because he has not yet paid for his numerous and costly errors. George is another great example of how the right-wing picks, polishes, and promotes their political puppets. George is a made man from start to finish; notice that I did not say "self-made". He was an alcoholic, probably a cocaine addict, and a failure as a businessman, but he was the son of a former president and that gave him the right name to have friends, raise money, and win office. So the right-wing groomed him, made him a multi-millionaire, made him governor of Texas, and did everything in their power to make him President of the United States.

George has been a good puppet because he follows orders, stays on script, and doesn't try to think for himself. However, his incompetence, arrogance, and immorality have shown through his carefully choreographed act and the American people are starting to see the real George W. Bush and it is an ugly sight to behold. He has already been labeled as the worst president ever by many successful and thoughtful writers, and they are right. If you ignore everything except his lies there are enough examples to make a solid case for impeachment. But when you add in all his horrible legislation, the war in Iraq, crony filled administration, Enron connections, Abramoff scandal, etc, your have a picture of a terribly corrupt and immoral leader.

Fraudulent Elections

The election in 2000 was a joke, and George's appointment by the Supreme Court was a travesty. The first thing George did after taking office was to reverse Clinton's tax increases on the rich and passed several new tax cuts for the very rich, including the repeal of the estate tax. As a result of these policies the federal budget projections have swung $10 trillion dollars in the wrong direction and they have added almost $3 trillion dollars in new debt during the past 5 years. George continues to claim that everything is going great and that more tax cuts will improve the budget outlook. Just how dumb does he think we are?

We should have been able to hold George accountable with our votes in the election 2004, but it was another cruel joke. The paperless voting computers have the wealthy supporters of the GOP laughing all the way to the White House with their puppet, George, riding on their coattails. These new paperless voting computers are built by large corporations that have histories of giving financial support to both parties, but mostly to the Republican Party. The president of Diebold even promised to help Republicans win in Ohio, which coincidentally is the state that swung the election for George in 2004.

These new voting computer don't generate a paper audit trail and therefore there is no way to recount the votes if a election is close, or if an election is called into question for some other reason. With these type of fraudulent election computers in place it should be no surprise to anyone why George and the Republicans in Congress act so fearlessly and shamelessly like they currently do. They have no fear of voters. These bogus computers have muted public opinion and given our government permanently to a small group of fascist right-wing elites.

We must steal our government back from this group using the same extreme methods they used to steal it from us.

Republican Control

The Republicans have been in control of all three branches of our government since 2002 and this absolute uncheck power has been used time and time again to help the rich and powerful, and to ignore or hurt everyone else. All this concentrated power might be tolerated if they policed themselves but they refuse to hold their own people accountable for everything, ever.

During the past 4 years that the Republicans have been in control they have rolled back environment laws, labor laws, progressive tax laws, tort laws, international treaties and laws, habeas corpus laws, civil rights laws, and cronyism rules. They have passed legislation that opens public lands to exploitation; that robs the Medicare trust fund and gives that money to the insurance and drug companies; that prevents people from using bankruptcy to get out of debts; and that showers the very rich with tax benefits at the expense of everyone else. They refused to take action when a few big energy companies were cheating the state of California; when Enron was robbing its employees and shareholders; when gas companies were price gouging the American people; and when our soldiers are getting slaughtered in Iraq. And these are just a few examples of the GOP's fascist ideology and corrupt political immorality.

Lord Acton was right when he said "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". The Republicans try hard to stay within the boundaries of the letter of the law but they are clearly violating the spirit of the law. The Republican's abuse of their power is not acceptable and we must fight back to stop them and hold them accountable before it's too late.

9/11

The terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, that killed 2,986 Americans, gave the Bush administration the excuse they had been looking for to take our country to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, to increase military spending, to roll back our civil liberties, and to balloon the federal deficit.

Just after the attack Bush's poll numbers, which had been dropping like a rock, suddenly shot way up.

On 9/11 just after Andy Card whispered into Bush's ear that a second plane had hit the second tower Bush sat quietly reading "My Pet Goat" to school children for several more minutes. Mean while, VP Dick Cheney was involved is some strange terrorist attack simulations involving airplanes and FEMA emergency response teams in the northeast. In response to this terrorist attack no fighter jets were sent out for almost a full hour, and it appears that the plane that hit the Pentagon had no wings.

It looks like Anthony Lake, President Clinton's first choice to head and reform the CIA, was right when he said: "Washington has gone haywire!".

Since the Republicans have been the primary beneficiaries of the attack on 9/11, it happened on their watch, and it was their people's intelligence failures it should make you wonder if there was some conclusion and conspiracy between the terrorist, most of whom were from Saudi Arabia, and the Bush administration. I have no proof that they were criminally involved but the facts are highly suspicious.

Anthrax Attacks

A week after the terrorist attack on 9/11 someone in New Jersey began mailing letters containing military grade anthrax to media companies in New York and Florida, and to two U.S. senators, Daschle and Leahy, both Democrats. Five people died and over $1 billion dollars was spent cleaning up and investigating but no one has been arrested. The notes in the letters indicate a Middle East terrorist was responsible but that was probably done to help justify the Bush administration's plan to go to war in Iraq.

We will probably never know who was responsible for this bio terrorist attack, but we do know that Dick Cheney's staff began taking Cipro, the anthrax antibiotic, a week before the first attack. And when President Bush was ask if he took Cipro he said: "I don't have anthrax".

The GOP's Secret "Shadow Government"

Just after 9/11 the Bush administration implemented a plan from the 1950's to provide for the continuation of the U.S. government in case of a nuclear attack against Washington D.C.. This plan placed about 100 senior level government officials in two different secret underground locations somewhere on the East Coast. What is really interesting about this event is that none of the Democrats in Congress were told about it, and when they did find out about it they were outraged about not being told.

This secret GOP plan should make you wonder what other secrets the Republicans are keeping from the Democrats, and from the American people. Who were these un-elected people the Republicans picked to staff this shadow government? My guess is they were the children of the Republicans in Congress.

Perhaps what we really have in America is a "Shadow Government" running our country, and President Bush and the Republicans in Congress are just their stooges. Maybe the real decisions are being made in some high-rise corporate boardroom by a bunch of greedy oil men down in Texas, or maybe in some rich person's foundation by a bunch of his inheritance rich spoiled brat children and their lawyers, bankers, and security personnel. If either of those scenarios is true it would help explain a lot of awful decisions and immoral actions by the Bush administration.  

The Death of Senator Wellstone

Was Senator Wellstone assassinated, or was he just the victim of an unfortunate airplane accident? Conspiracy theory professional James Fetzer Ph.D. has written a book about this plane crash that concludes the evidence is overwhelming that Senator Wellstone was in fact assassinated by people who were ideologically opposed to his politics and who did benefit by Wellstone's death.

The day before Wellstone's plane went down, killing his wife, his daughter, three members of his staff, and his two pilots, Wellstone voted not to give Bush the right to attack Iraq. Wellstone was also moving ahead of his opponent, Norm Coleman, in his race for reelection to the U.S. Senate. Wellstone opposed Bush's plan to privatize Social Security, he opposed Bush's tax cuts for the rich, he opposed Bush's positions on the Middle East, and he opposed just about every other Republican proposal. In other words, Wellstone was a thorn in the GOP's side and they wanted him gone.

On October 25, 2002 the GOP got their wish when Wellstone's plane crashed and burned in a wooded field in Minnesota. News reports attributed the crash to icy weather conditions or pilot error, but both of these causes are highly unlikely and probably just excuses the media used to avoid speculating on sinister conspiracy theories involving people in the right-wing of America's economic and political apparatus.

This plane crash makes me suspect that Senator Carnahan's and JFK Jr.'s plane crashes were also political murders committed by the right-wing's preemptive war making political machine.

It is highly unlikely that the public will ever know the truth about Wellstone's death, just like they still don't know the truth about the assassination of JFK, but we as a people must never allow these men's dreams of democracy, freedom, equality, justice, and social protections for the American people be destroyed by people on the extreme ideological right who's greed is only exceeded by their ruthlessness.

"When I first met the President, he called me 'Pablo,'" Wellstone jokes. "That lasted a day or two. Then they started trying to figure out how they were going to get rid of me." - Paul Wellstone

The War In Iraq

The war in Iraq exposes how both parties are lying to us, cheating us, manipulating us with fear, looting our government, abusing our military power, using the poor as expendable pawns, and undermining our rights and democracy.

President Bush lied when he took us to war based on WMD's in Iraq. He lied when says Iraq was somehow connected to what happened on 9/11. He lied when he said Iraq was a terrorist state. He lied when he said he wanted to liberate the Iraqi people by giving them a democracy. He lied about the progress we are making in Iraq. He lied about how this war would be paid for. And the list of Bush's lies about Iraq could go on and on.

President Bush's father did not go into Iraq after liberating Kuwait because he believed we would get stuck in a long-term bloody quagmire that would be very costly in dollars and lives, and he was right.

President Bush has blocked the media from photographing the coffins of killed American soldiers being brought back home. He does not want the American public to see the real cost of this war in a way that might upset them emotionally and cause them to become critics of his war policies. If the public got to see all the 2,165 coffins coming back from Iraq Bush's job approval rating might not be as high as it is right now -- 37% --.

President Bush expressed concern about the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but then he threatened to veto a defense bill because it contained a provision to outlaw torture. It was later revealed that the CIA has secret torture prisons in different parts of the world and that they use renditions to ship prisoners to countries that allow brutal torture. Bush continues to lie to the American people about his torture policy despite a mountain of facts that expose him as a liar on this subject.

President Bush sent our troops into Iraq without proper planning, needed equipment, necessary troop levels, and a honest exit strategy. As a result of these failures over 2,165 soldiers are now dead, over 14,000 have been seriously injured, and over $350 billion dollars has been wasted. At the same time he has been busy cutting veterans benefits, cutting overtime pay requirements, cutting taxes for the rich while running huge budget deficits, and cutting ties with our allies.

Don't you find it ironic that our soldiers are being ask to fight and die for a democracy in Iraq when they are losing their democracy back home?

Sadly, most of the Democrats voted with the Republicans for this war in Iraq, including Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman, both of whom continue to support the war in Iraq and have been saber rattling towards Iran.

This war in Iraq, that was lobbied for by a group of neoconservative chickenhawks at PNAC, has cost America over $350 billion dollars, but is being projected to have a total price tag of over $1 trillion dollars. Much of that money has gone to big corporations that were given no-bid contracts, like Halliburton which is Dick Cheney's old company that continues to pay him a deferred compensation. Also, much of that money cannot be accounted for by the Pentagon.

In addition to all that wasted money for the war in Iraq we are now funding our military budget by over $450 billion a year, which is more than the military budgets of all the other countries of the world combined. President Eisenhower warned us about the growth of the military-industrial complex and we are now seeing what he was talking about with George W. Bush and the Republicans in Congress leading the way, and the Democrats meekly following behind. These politicians are burying our democracy, government, middle class, rights, freedoms, and system of justice along the way.

Corporate Scandals

When the accounting scams where uncovered at Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and Arthur Anderson the Republicans in Congress acted surprised and promised corrective legislation. However, they were the ones who blocked the Clinton administration from passing legislation designed to prevent these types of corporate frauds against investors. They were the ones who blocked legislation that would have prevented the use of off-shore accounts to avoid paying taxes and manipulate earnings. They were the ones who took huge campaign contributions from these companies.

These corporate crimes occurred on the Republican's watch and their corrective actions so far have been a slap on the wrist. This provides further evidence of the GOP's fascist ideology, incompetent leadership, and corrupt personnel.

John McCain & The 2004 Campaign

Senator John McCain is a self-proclaimed political moderate who loudly and emotionally condemns pork barrel spending and budget deficits. However, during the 2004 presidential campaign John McCain was out campaigning for George W. Bush, the worst violator of pork barrel spending and budget deficits ever. John McCain praised President Bush as real fiscal conservative and a great military leader. Give me a break.

John McCain's words exposed the fact that he is a huge hypocrite and cannot be trusted. We should never again believe anything John McCain says because apparently it's all just an act. He has proven himself to be a liar on issues that are very important to the vast majority of the American people and for that reason alone we should make sure he leaves the Senate as soon as possible, and is never again elected to any public office. 

The GOP's Nuclear Threat

When the Republican controlled Senate realized that it did not have enough votes to approve President Bush's horrible right-wing extremist judicial nominees they began threatening to break Senate rules and approve these nominees anyway. This led to hours and days of heated rhetoric on the Senate floor between Republicans and Democrats. A compromise was finally reached without the need for the Republicans to use their "nuclear option" against the Democrats. Basically, the Democrats folded and approved the nominees Bush wanted.

This situation exposes the fact that the GOP doesn't play by the rules, they don't care about bipartisan cooperation, our elected leaders are extremely divided on the direction our government should be going, and the Democrats cannot stand their ground against the Republicans. And the Republicans are assholes.

Torture: Bush's First Veto Threat

Bush finally threatened to veto a piece of legislation, but not because it was too costly or contained too much pork, but only because it contained a amendment to outlaw the use of torture. Nine other senators, all Republicans, voted with Bush and Cheney to allow torture and they include: Wayne Allard (CO), Kit Bond (MO), Tom Coburn (OK), Thad Cochran (MS), John Cornyn (TX), James Inhofe (OK), Pat Roberts (KS), Jeff Sessions (AL), and Ted Stevens (AK). It is important to know who the evil murdering fascist are in your government.

During the past five years of the Bush administration our government has tortured people in Abu Ghraib prison, which is the same prison where Saddam is accused of torturing his own people. And at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center and through rendition to other countries that conduct brutal tortures. Torture is not normally associated with democracies or moral leadership. Why more Americans are not outraged by these reports of torture is incomprehensible. Maybe if they were torturing dogs, cats, or children instead of adults there might be some level of outrage by the American people.

The Republican's "Deficit Reduction Act"

According to a recent poll the GOP's hypocrisy about being the fiscally responsible party is still not registering with many of the American people.

Skyrocketing Trade Deficits

The U.S. trade deficit is spiraling out of control topping $740 billion last year. Our largest trade deficit is with Communist China. The effect of our trade deficit is like taking gold bars out of Fort Knox and shipping them to China, and other net exporting countries around the world. The U.S. is becoming worth less and the exporting countries are becoming worth more. This is simple mercantilist economics and it is destroying America's middle class.

Our politicians are doing this because it is making the top 1% of Americans much richer and that is who they represent. The Republican Party has perverted the tax code so much so that if an American based manufacturer moves its operations overseas they get a tax break.

Owners Vs. Labor

Organized labor has been experiencing a steady decline during the past fifty years, and ownership has seen the opposite during this same time period. This shift has had negative consequences for American workers as wages have not keep pace with inflation, hours worked have increased, and benefits have been slashed. In addition, a flood of illegal immigrants, job outsourcing, off-shoring, factoring closings, pension corporate raiders, regressive tax law changes, and free trade deals have turned a wealth gap into a wealth grand canyon.

The largest employers in the U.S. use to be high wage manufacturing companies that employees could count on for life long employment with fair pay and good benefits. Today the largest employers in the U.S. are McDonalds and Wal-Mart, companies that offer low pay with few, or no, benefits and high employee turnover. This shift is pushing middle class families into the lower class and it is weakening our country's economy and national security.

This weakening of America does not bother the ownership class because they have gotten much wealthier and they have the ability to move their liquid wealth to any place on the globe in the blink of an eye. The Republican Party is clearly serving the interest of the ownership class as President Bush made clear when he announced his plan to create an "ownership society" in America. He implied greater wealth for all Americans but his policies expose the Freudian reality that his comments really mean "more wealth for the wealthy". 

FBI, DEA, INS, CIA, NSA, & ATF

America spends over $100 billion dollars a year on our intelligence and national policing agencies and yet they are conspicuously absent from the problems listed above. And when you add the following shocking events you realize we have a major problem:

• Ruby Ridge - In 1992 the ATF attempted to entrap Randy Weaver, a white supremacist, using a confidential informant who claimed that Randy sawed-off the barrels of a shotgun shorter than the legal limit. This led to a 16 month undercover surveillance operation followed by a shootout with U.S. Marshals on Randy's property. After the shootout a 10 day stand-off began where the FBI used psychological warfare to harass the survivors in an extremely cruel way. The end result was the government paid Randy $3.1 million dollars for killing his wife, son, best friend, and dog as well as shooting him. Not only did a FBI sharpshooter shot and kill his unarmed wife while she was holding her baby but the U.S. Marshals shot his 14 year old son in the back and his dog up the rectum. After the shootout ended these government agents left Randy's dead dog laying on the road and they drove their half-tracks (military vehicles) over its body.

• The Branch Davidians & David Koresh - In 1993 the ATF raided the Branch Davidian's compound, Mount Carmel, claiming that there were illegal weapons inside. They did this despite the fact that there were innocent men, women, and children inside; despite the fact that they knew David Koresh had been tipped off about the raid and was heavily armed; and despite the fact they could have picked up David Koresh any number of times before the raid at the local hardware store. This unnecessary raid lead to a shootout followed by a 51 day standoff with FBI agents. During this standoff the FBI used psychological warfare to harass the people inside with methods can best be describe as "sick". The standoff ended when the FBI used military tanks to inject flammable gas through the compound's walls and a fire mysteriously started and quickly engulfing the entire building in flames. This fire killed 85 people, including 17 children under the age of twelve, and it destroyed all the evidence. Some of the Branch Davidians who tried to flee the burning building were shot at and some of them killed by FBI sharpshooters, according to the survivors. President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno claimed they were lied to and mislead by senior FBI and ATF officials. The bottom line is that our government and its agents slaughtered 85 of our fellow citizens most of whom were innocent men, women, and children.

• Oklahoma City Bombing - The government wants you to believe that on April 19, 1995 one fertilizer truck bomb parked in front of an eight story reinforced concrete building took out the entire front half of the building killing 168 people. There is no question that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were involved in the construction of the truck bomb, but what about the third person, an olive skin male, who was seen with McVeigh? What about reports of a second explosion that was recorded on seismographs and reported by eyewitnesses? What about reports of other explosive devices being removed from the building? Why were some government employees told not to go to work in the Murrah building that day, a building that was occupied by the FBI, ATF, and Secret Service?

• Illegal Drug - It is estimate that the American people consume 10 truck loads of marijuana everyday, and 1 truck load of cocaine everyday. This is happening despite the fact we have a number of very expensive federal agencies, including the DEA, FBI, and INS, that are suppose to be protecting us from these drug smuggling organized criminals. When President Clinton busted some of these Mexican organized criminals, during Operation Casablanca, he deliberately left these three federal agencies out of the loop and instead used Justice and Treasury Department agents to conduct the investigation and bust. I wonder why? Maybe it's because the Mafia and these over funded government agencies are one in the same. Perhaps the GOP is really a Mafia front organization and the Republicans in Congress are providing cover and protection for these organized criminals. If the GOP does represent the Mafia, and it appears that they do, we had better learn how to fight back at a higher level of aggression and ruthlessness or they will destroy us. Robert F. Kennedy said: "If we do not attack organized crime with weapons and techniques as effective as their own they will destroy us.", and he was right then and right now.

• Illegal Immigration - It is estimated that we have over 12 million illegal immigrants living in America, and another 1 million sneaking in every year. How did they get here? Who do they work for? And why haven't our federal agencies been able to do anything about this ongoing criminal situation that is clearly a national security issue? This situation exposes the fact that America has a huge number of organized criminals operating inside our borders, and that some major American corporations and U.S. government agencies are working with these Mafia crime families to profit from this criminal activity. One of the biggest problems with these illegal immigrants is they have no respect for our laws. They violated our laws by sneaking across our border, by buying phony ID cards, by not paying taxes, and by working under false employment documents and therefore they don't take our legal system seriously. The other big problem with illegal immigrants is that American corporations are exploiting this poor, repressed, and unemployed Mexican labor and in the process they are depressing wages for American workers and encouraging organized crime. In my opinion, we should ship all 12 million back to their home countries and make them get in line for legal immigration into America under much tougher immigration standards. We should also crack down on these organized criminal operating inside America by rejecting the Republican's fascist ideology and by boycotting their businesses. 

• Support For Right-Wing Dictators - Our federal government, mainly the CIA, has a long history of supporting some of the most murderous corrupt political leaders imaginable. Leaders who have suppressed human rights, workers rights, democracies, and environmental protections, and who have murdered innocent people including left-wing political opposition. Following is a list of some of these brutal right-wing leaders the U.S. has supported: Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan; Saddam Hussein in Iraq; Pinochet in Chile; Marcos in the Philippines; Duvalier in Haiti; Noriega in Panama; Diem in Vietnam; Amin in Uganda; Banzer in Bolivia; Batista in Cuba; Cordova in Honduras; Pol Pot in Cambodia; Somoza in Nicaragua; Suharto in Indonesia; Trujillo in Argentina; and the list could go on and on. Just because someone does not pull the trigger themselves does not mean that they are not also guilty of murder.

Unfortunately, these are just a few examples and are just the events the public knows about. Based on these horrible events you can just imagine the other horrible actions taken by these government agencies in secret.

It appears we have foxes with blood covered faces investigating the chicken coup killings. We have bloated federal bureaucracies that are run by political appointees who were picked by corrupt elected officials. Elected officials, like John McCain, who point their fingers at themselves claiming "the system is corrupt". Elected officials, like Randy "Duke" Cummingham, who finally get caught after years of taking huge payoffs in exchange for legislation and government contracts. Elected officials, like George W. Bush, who lie and then when confronted with the indisputable facts lie again in the face of the truth. Elected officials, like Dick Cheney, who's former company, Halliburton, has been the biggest financial beneficiary of the war in Iraq. And this list could go on and on but these few examples expose a culture of corruption in our federal government that goes all the way to the top.

The bottom line is we must fight back because we are already their victims and this victimization will only get worse the longer we wait to perform our constitutional responsibilities by holding these corrupt elected officials accountable.

Republican Political Maneuvers

The Republican Party controls all three branches of our government and their absolute power has corrupted them absolutely, and this corruption is destroying our democracy and the middle class.

The proof of this statement is in the political maneuvers the Republicans in Congress use to get their way on legislation. For example, the Republicans often won't allow any of the Democrats into important meetings about changes to major pieces of legislation. Or they wait until the last minute to bring a bill up for a vote. Or they wait until the middle of the night to debate and vote on their legislation. The Republican's final legislation is often full of laws that were never debated or included in previous versions of the bill, and never seen or read by the Democrats before the final vote.

It appears both parties allow industries to write their own legislation and then they give it their rubber stamp, but the Republican Party under the George W. Bush administration has taken this practice to a new level with secret meetings and extremely one-sided legislation.

Some Republican Senators even attempted to deny the Democrats their constitutional right to filibuster legislation by threatening to use their rule breaking "nuclear option".

The bottom line is that the Republican Party doesn't play fair, and they don't care about bipartisan cooperation despite President Bush's campaign pledge to be the great "uniter". This divisive behavior has damaged our government institutions and given control of our government to the most ruthless wealthy special interest.

Bush's 2006 State of the Union Speech

Once again Bush delivered his nebulous annual speech about spreading freedom, growing the economy, helping the poor, educating our citizens, and investing in new technologies. If this was his first speech in 2001 it would be hopeful but this is speech number five and it is the same old rhetoric full of empty promises and outright frauds. He obviously knows that if he keeps telling the same lies over and over again many people will believe him.

Bush said "Our economy is healthy, and vigorous, and growing faster than other major industrialized nations" and that is probably true but for some unexplained reason our government is about to tack on another $700+ billion dollars to the federal credit card, inflation adjusted wages are down, poverty is rising, and the new jobs being created are almost all government jobs or low wage service sector jobs.

Bush said "I urge the Congress to act responsibly, and make the tax cuts permanent." and yet making his 2001 tax cuts permanent will cause the federal deficit to explode into the stratosphere. Not only would it be irresponsible but it would only benefit the top 2% of income earners. You can write a letter of thanks to the Democrats in Congress for keeping this regressive tax policy idea from becoming law.

Bush said "....citizens have felt excluded from the promise of our country. The answer is not only temporary relief, but schools that teach every child and job skills that bring upward mobility and more opportunities to own a home and start a business.", and yet he has cut money for college loans; cut overtime pay requirements; encouraged U.S. companies to export their high wage jobs to other countries; caused upward pressure on interest rates with deficit spending; limited the ability of people to get out from under their debts; and shifted the tax burden onto small business owners. He has even robbed the baby boomers retirement nest egg of every penny in the trust fund, and in his speech he promised to try to scam the Social Security system for even more money through his privatization idea.

This speech should have been called "Bush's Bull Shit State of the Division Speech" because only half of the Congress was responding positively to his words, the American public has never been more divided about the political direction our country should take, and Bush lied.

Finally, Bush said "We should not let our differences harden into anger", but he only said this because he fears our anger and the anger of the Democrats in Congress. Bush and the Republicans in Congress have earned and deserve over ounce of anger we can possibly deliver. Our choices seem clear: 1. Get angry and fight back, or 2. Get screwed into the ground.

This speech exposed President Bush as a corrupt lying hypocrite. The truth is a few mega wealthy individuals are behind Bush's fascist ideology and they are helping Bush and the Republicans in Congress rob our government, undermine our democracy, and abuse our military's strength all because of their own greed for more wealth and power.

  Chapter 1 Summary

The Republican's current leadership positions in our government are endangering all of us and we cannot allow this to continue, and we can't count on the Democrats to stand up against these ruthless right-wing forces. We must start fighting them now or the day will come when they turn towards us and point their fingers while saying "COMMUNIST!", or "TERRORIST!".

America has gotten where it is today, on the verge of financial ruin that will impoverish the middle class and bogged down in an un-winnable war in Iraq, by way of a long-term treasonous plan that is being carried out by the Republicans in Congress and in the White House for the benefit of a few corrupt mega rich families who want more gold, more power, and less accountability. The longer we wait to act to hold the Republicans accountable for these treasonous crimes the more our government will go into debt and that additional debt will only lessen our government's health and the American people's ability to effect political or economic change.

The Republicans think the American people are too ignorant and too complacent to act. I think it's time we prove them wrong, don't you?

We must find a way to stop the Republicans and their mega wealthy supporters before our government is completely bankrupt, our democracy is undermined and replaced, more of our soldiers are slaughtered in preemptive wars, and our freedoms are taken away by treasonous criminals. Otherwise, we are looking at a future that is predictable but is one we don't want to find ourselves in, and that is the subject of the next chapter.