Chapter 2

Predicting The Future

The Bush administration and the Republican Party have an extremist agenda and a five year track record to prove it. If the next five years are anything like the past five years 99% of the American are going to find themselves in a much worse off position than they are in right now, and without the ability to effect political change.

The "Trail of Tears" was what the American Indians called the journey from their homes in the southeast to the government reservations in Oklahoma. Along the way many of them died from starvation, exposure, and disease. It is hard to imagine how these Indians must have felt but their emotions must have included fear, sadness, anger, frustration, and helplessness.

The story of the American Indians is ancient history to most Americans and is therefore something they cannot do anything about, but they are wrong. Today, the native American people continue to suffer from the actions of the federal government's white leaders. The resources on their lands are exploited without proper compensation, their trust funds have been looted, and the problems with their reservation societies have been ignored.

This Indian history is important because it exposes man's inhumanity towards his fellow man and how greed has often motivated that inhumane treatment. It is also important because the past often repeats itself and the day may come when all of us comfortable white middle class citizens find ourselves on a "Trail of Tears" of our own.

President Bush and the Republicans in Congress today are very much like the land hungry white settlers who committed genocide against the native American Indians and enslaved black Americans. They take from the poor and give to the rich. They prefer to kill those who they cannot tame. They lie a lot, and when confronted with the truth they lie again. They try to manipulate the people they want to exploit and if that doesn't work they use violence. They don't honor their previous commitments and they don't mean what they say. They destroy the means by which the middle class supports itself through free trade deals, outsourcing of jobs, regressive tax policies, hiring illegal immigrant labor, and only requiring companies pay their workers a poverty level minimum wage.

The American middle class has become the new native American Indians and the GOP and their wealthy supports have become the new white settlers. The new Trail of Tears will be from our own eyes and it will lead us to a place we don't want to be if we do not stop them. That is why we must fight and we must start fighting now.

Federal Deficits

President Bush's tax cuts and spending increases have the federal government's budget deficits spiraling out of control. Just at the time in our history when our government should be generating surpluses to prepare for the looming future liabilities in Social Security and Medicare they are doing the opposite. President Bush blames the cost of the war in Iraq, the need to stimulate the economy, and fraud, waste, and abuse, but those are poor excuses and shameless lies.

President Bush and his Republican co-conspirators in Congress are deliberately pushing our federal government into bankruptcy for the benefit of a few of their mega wealthy campaign contributors. Their plan is to force our government to sell off its $100 trillion in assets for pennies on the dollar to the highest bidder in order to pay current liabilities. Bush's "Federal Real Property Asset Management Initiative" unwittingly exposes this reality.

Once these assets are sold off a period of hyperinflation will make the U.S. dollar worthless. During this period of hyperinflation these few mega wealthy families will move their liquid assets (cash, stocks, bonds, etc.) to other countries that have more stable currencies (Yen, Euro, Pound, Rupees, Francs, Marks, Pesos, etc.), and after the dollar hits rock bottom they will shift back to dollars and the game of monopoly will be over.

When this happens the U.S. stock market will collapse and if you have any of your Social Security funds invested in Bush's private accounts idea you can kiss those monies goodbye. Bush's privatization plan is just a scam to rob workers of their retirement savings.

Eventually, these few corrupt families will own everything in America and the rest of the American people will become their improvised slaves, or we will be viewed as potentially dangerous anarchist, communist, or terrorist and we will be dealt with accordingly.

That is the direction we are going, but we have the power to change that direction. A few minor changes to the tax code and we could turn the dire budget projections around, just like President Clinton did with his 1993 tax legislation. A few minor changes to our election laws and we could replace these corrupt politicians with honest free-thinking Americans. The only thing standing in our way is the GOP and a few mega rich families.

Social Security

The Social Security trust fund has been robbed. Republican administrations have taken very dime out of the trust fund and given that money to the top 1% through tax cuts. They have stolen $700 billion dollars from the trust fund in just the past five years. That money is the retirement savings of the baby boomers and generations X'ers. Not only have they robbed the surpluses but now the Bush administration wants to scam the system of even more money through his privatization scheme.

Bush's privatization plan would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to set up and manage and it would drain the system of several more hundred billion because of the revenues going into private accounts instead of into the trust account. His plan would add additional risk to these retirement funds and would cause a huge increase in administrative cost. His plan would decrease the solvency of the Social Security system. Nothing about his plan makes any sense and most Americans are starting to recognize this reality. Maybe that's why we don't hear Bush talking about it anymore. His con doesn't have any marks taking the bait. Bush's plan is really just a trick to enrich wall street bankers, brokers, and investment firms at the expense of workers.

Elections & Accountability

The means by which we, the American people, hold our elected leaders accountable is through elections. However, based on the elections in 2000 and 2004 it appears that we no longer have that ability.

The election in 2000 was decided by five justices on the Supreme Court who stopped the vote recount. It was stolen by state officials in Florida who manipulated the vote count using a variety of tricks.

The election in 2004 was also stolen but this time by paperless voting computers that were built by Republican friendly corporations. These computers left nothing to recount if the election was called into question like it was in 2000. This election was also stolen by state officials in Ohio where voter manipulation was once again a major factor in the outcome.

Both of these fraudulent elections resulted in big differences between exit poll results and the official vote count results which indicates these elections were stolen.

Both of these elections were stolen on behalf of the Republican Party and for the benefit of their wealthy campaign contributors. Nothing has changed to give us confidence that future elections won't also be stolen by the same people for the same reasons. Therefore, since we cannot hold our leaders accountable with our votes we must do so through other means, or we must accept the fact that we no longer live in a democracy and deal with whatever consequences that reality delivers.

The Democrats have authored legislation requiring a paper trail for every voting computer but the Republicans won't let it out of committee.

The Republicans in Congress think they have our government locked-up, and they do in terms of these bogus voting computers, but we can overcome that obstacle. We can return power to the American people through individual actions and knowing each person has that ability can help motivate us to act.

Shrinking The Middle Class

Most Americans live in the middle class, but that is changing and not because more of us are moving into the upper class. The growth of the American middle class is the result of one amendment to the constitution, the sixteenth amendment passed in 1913, and the progressive tax laws that followed its passage.

However, President Reagan and a Republican controlled Congress turned our progressive tax system into a regressive tax system in 1981. Their tax legislation reduced the number of tax brackets from 16 to 2 and cut the top tax rate from 70% to 28%. These same people also doubled the tax rate on Social Security withholdings. Suddenly, the tax burden was shifted from the very wealthy to self-employed small business people and middle income families. It was also at this time that the federal deficit began to explode into the stratosphere.

After President Clinton was elected he expanded the number of tax brackets, raised the top tax rate, and closed some tax loopholes without a single vote from any of the Republicans. The Republicans let out anguished cries claiming that this tax increase would crash the economy and doom the middle class, but we can now look back and see that they were wrong and the Democrats were right. The economy grew steadily throughout the 90's and the federal deficits turned into surpluses, and the standard of living increased for all income levels.

However, when George W. Bush took office in 2000 the first thing he did was reverse all Clinton's tax policies and passed several more tax cuts that went primarily to the very rich. These changes brought the deficits roaring back with a vengeance and have sent middle class incomes on downward trajectory. Today, he continues to push for, and pass, more tax cuts that benefit the most wealthy people in our society despite record deficits.

In 1969 155 high-income individuals were able to avoid paying any income taxes by utilizing a variety of tax loopholes so the Congress created the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). One of the other main reasons the AMT was created was because President Nixon took a $576,000 deduction when he donated his presidential papers to the National Archives resulting in a personal tax liability of only $792 dollars. The AMT forces the people at the top to pay at least some taxes. However, because the AMT has not been indexed to inflation more and more middle income families are being required to pay the higher AMT. Not surprisingly, Bush's solution is to repeal the entire AMT law for everyone at a cost of $1.2 trillion over 10 years. This would further shift the tax burden from the people at the top to the people in the middle.

If this trend continues the middle class is facing certain extinction. Our society and economy is headed straight for one modeled after Mexico with a few at the top and everyone else at the bottom. We could soon find ourselves trying to sneak across the border into Canada to find a decent paying job with benefits. This may sound funny but don't waste too much time laughing because after a while Canada will probably seal its border up tight.

The middle class can overcome this downward trend, but not as long as the GOP is in power.

The Expanding Military Industrial Complex

In 2005 the U.S. government spent over $450 billion dollars on the military, and that does not count the cost of the war in Iraq, homeland security spending, or intelligence department budgets. We are spending more on our military than all the other countries of the world combined. The Pentagon says that they cannot account for all that money. If our leaders what to find some fraud, waste and abuse they need look no further than our military and intelligence departments.

Just before President Eisenhower left office he warned us about the military-industrial complex with the following message:

"....we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together." Dwight D. Eisenhower - January 17, 1961

Now, over forty five years later we can see that his prophetic warnings have some true in an ugly right-wing chickenhawk war mongering reality. There has been a disastrous rise in misplaced power that the Republicans Party exposes through their actions and legislation. Our liberties and democratic processes have been eroded with the Patriot Act, fraudulent elections, and threats of a nuclear option in the Senate. The American citizenry has such busy life styles they are not alert or knowledgeable about what is going on in our federal government. The huge rise in military budgets and cuts in domestic programs expose an imbalance that is threatening our liberties, democracy, and life styles. The war in Iraq, 9/11, and torture have exposed that our intelligence, military, and political leaders are either incompetent or corrupt, or probably both.

It is time we make some changes to our military budgets and personnel and getting rid of the Commander and Chief, George W. Bush, will be a good start. After that we can focus on getting rid of the other corrupt politicians in Washington. If we fail to make these changes we may find ourselves in country that is no different than Nazi Germany under Hitler's command.

New Legal System

Most of us have heard President Bush talking about "junk lawsuits" and how they are hurting our economy. He wants to pass tort reforms so that when someone is injured by a negligent corporation they will be limited on the amount of compensation they get through a lawsuit.

First, the problem of junk lawsuits filed by injured individuals is a myth. According to Public Citizen, corporations are 160 times more likely to file a lawsuit than an individual, and are 68% more likely to file a frivolous lawsuit, or defense, than an individual. The truth is corporations and their owners don't want to be held accountable for anything. Thus, by passing tort reform laws that limit compensation and requiring the loser to pay court cost they will be able to get away with murder.

Second, lawsuits don't harm the economy. In fact, lawsuits stimulate the economy by creating new opportunities and by forcing corrective actions by the offending corporations. Take the example of the woman who sued McDonalds for million of dollars because she was injured when she spilled scalding hot coffee on her crouch. She won the lawsuit and McDonalds has turned down the temperature of their coffee makers, but they still did not pay her a dime for her injuries. They were able to appeal the verdict and delay legal actions for years even though they lost a jury trial. Eventually, they did settle with her but not for the jury awarded amount of $2.7 million, and not for the amount of the award reduced by a judge of $480 thousand, but for much less. However, during all this time a lot of money has been spent on lawyers, court cost, and other related expenses and all these things help boost our economy even if they do delay justice.

If anything lawsuit reforms need to go in the other direction and give the injured party and juries more power and rights, and not less.

If the Republicans succeed in getting these tort reforms past into law and you get injured you might as well just plan on getting injured a second time in court when you get screwed out of a fair compensation for your injuries.

Working Longer For Fewer Benefit

According to the International Labour Organization, American workers already work more hours per week than workers in any other industrialized country. For the past forty years wages have not keep up with inflation resulting in stagnate or slightly declining wages. Pension plans are being ended or suspended, even by large successful corporations like IBM and General Motors. Most manufacturing companies have already moved their manufacturing operations to Mexico, Korea, China, or Taiwan, and now high tech jobs are going to India, Asia, China, and Europe. Unions have failed to bring in new members and as a result workers have less power against corporate power and virtually no political representation.

Workers have been sold out and corporations are reaping record windfall profits which they often hide in offshore accounts to avoid paying any taxes to our government. Back in the 1950's the share of tax revenues from corporations and individuals was about equal, but today corporations pay an average of 9% of all income tax revenues with individuals making up almost all the rest in personal income and Social Security taxes.

If these trends continue the day will come when most high paying jobs will be outsourced to other countries and a good job will be working for Wal-Mart or McDonalds, which are already the two largest employers in America. Before long families may need three full-time incomes to pay their bills. Talk about busy life styles.

Health Care

Currently, over 45 million Americans don't have any health insurance. President Bush blames junk lawsuits on the rising cost of health care but lawsuits only account for 1% of total health care cost. Companies are closing their businesses and moving overseas to avoid paying for the rising cost of their employee's health care, but our government leaders don't have the balls to stand up to the insurance and drug industries to stop this price gouging.

Many elderly Americans are being forced to decide between buying food or prescription drugs. President Bush's prescription drug plan through Medicare is unnecessarily complex, has a very tiny benefit for average Medicare patients, and is going to cost over $300 billion more than Congress was told when they agreed to it. However, this plan is a financial bonanza for the insurance and drug companies. This plan has greatly accelerated the Medicare programs insolvency. This plan also makes it illegal for the government to negotiate for lower drug prices through bulk drug purchases. This plan is typical of the Bush administration's sell-out scams.

If these types of trends in health care legislation continue more Americans will find themselves without health insurance, and many will end up in bankruptcy court due to some family medical emergency. There is something very immoral about the richest country in the world not caring for its citizens health care needs, and the missing morals of this administration mirror that sad reality.

Public Schools and Vouchers

President Bush wants to replace pubic schools with vouchers so that parents can send their kids to the school of their choice. He claims that this competition will increase the quality of public schools. This sounds reasonable and it even sounds like it might be a good idea, but it's a trick and it's being sold with clever demagoguery just like all the other right-wing proposals.

This Republican trick has three parts. First, corporations want to take over the public schools so they can make money. There is nothing wrong with capitalist wanting to make a buck, however, our non-profit public school system is very efficient and has worked well up to now, so why change it? Second, unless these school vouchers are for at least $15,000 per child per year they will not be enough for parents to send their children to high quality private schools without big out of pocket cost.

Also, where are these high quality schools located? And how many students can they hold? Do busy working parents really have time to drive across town twice a day to drop off and pick up their kids? When these high quality private schools are full to capacity where do the extra kids go to school?

The reality is the voucher program is really just a subsidy for rich people to send their kids to the private school, which they probably already attend without the need for government vouchers. Also, school vouchers are a way for big commercial real estate moguls to get their hands all that valuable public school land that is currently being wasted on non-profit public schools. That land could be used to build more for-profit prisons to house all the deadbeat dads, credit card abusers, and people without health insurance who cannot pay their bills because they are sick.

Faith-Based Initiatives

President Bush is a big advocate for giving our tax dollars to non-profit faith-based organizations to care for the poor with social services, and it was the first executive order from his administration (1/29/2001). And he is not alone, many Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, support this idea. The main problem with this idea is it violates constitutional law concerning the separation of church and state. Personally, I don't want my government in the business of deciding which religious organizations get my tax dollars, and I don't want religious organizations lobbying our elected leaders for more handouts.

The other big problem with Bush's faith-based initiatives program is that it would require people seeking social services to subject themselves to a religious indoctrination before being able to receive help. Our government should not be requiring a homeless atheist to attend Christian Bible studies in order to get some food, but this is what this program does.

Bush has been able to go around the Congress and implement this un-constitutional program through a series of executive orders. His latest order, on 3/7/2006, places this program under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security.

Therefore, if a community gets hit with a terrorist attack or natural disaster instead of people looking to their federal government for help they can go to a local religious organization and pray, or beg, for help.

This entire concept is somewhat ironic since it has come out of the most immoral, corrupt, and inept administrations in the history of the world. I wonder if Hitler had a similar program. Maybe the Jews thought they were about to receive social services before they were gassed.

Personally, when it comes to organized religion I believe what Thomas Paine said: "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit.".

I think the GOP uses religions and the word "faith" to sucker gullible Christians into voting for them. They do the same thing with the abortion issue. It is just a con and we are the marks. They are trying to distract us with a big shinny object in one hand while their other hand is busy picking our pockets. They are the people who wear their faith on their sleeves that Jesus warned us would come to mislead and destroy us. 

Media Propaganda

It is hard to imagine that the corporate owned media could get any worse than it is right now. Most of the shows and commercials on TV and radio are deliberately designed to wash the public's minds with images and sounds that are manipulative to the point of being Orwelling. Many of these programs and commercials are very entertaining, but that is just part of the bait and switch con they use to sucker us into watching TV and listening to the radio.

Parents shouldn't let their children watch any TV, or only allow viewing of previewed and carefully edited recordings.

The movies coming out today are equally manipulative and should be shunned completely or carefully edited. The propaganda is usually well concealed and cleverly done but if your look for it, you know why it is in the movie, and who put it there it is easy to spot.

Public television channels, like PBS, use to be safe havens from corporate America, but they sold out and today commercial advertising is allowed. The only channels on my cable that are commercial free are the CSPAN channels and Turner Classic Movies channel, both of which I highly recommend.

The Republicans like to criticize the media as being liberal, but the opposite is actually true. Media companies are huge for-profit corporations that are out to make as much money as possible and keep as much of that money as possible. As a result, they are inherently conservative organizations run by people who want to be deregulated, untaxed, and unburdened by a large active watchful parent like federal government.

It is true that many actors are outspoken liberal personalities, but they are just actors and are speaking for themselves and not for the corporations that make the movies and TV shows they are in.

Also, there is a major problem with media companies and campaign finance corruption. During every election cycle the handful of giant media companies jack up their advertising rates just in time to milk our politicians for every dollar they can gouge. It is this high cost of media campaigning that has turned our political leaders into high priced whores for the people with the most money. This is not just the media company's faults but it is also our elected leader's faults because they refuse to change the campaign finance laws. It is the American people who are paying for this corrupt system of quid pro quo money for legislation, and the big media companies are playing us like we are all just a bunch of punk-ass-bitches.

The Art Of Distraction

News events are not necessarily news events any more. There has been a steady stream of manufactured news events that are being used to distract, mislead, and manipulate the American public.

Many of these phony news events are about political and social issues, like flag burning or abortion rights, and security issues, like the color coded security alerts and Iran's nuclear potential, as well as a variety of other issues. The point of these news events is to manipulate the minds of the American public, and not to inform the public about the truth. It is akin to a slight of hand magic trick where the audience is forced to focus on one hand while the other hand is busy pulling off the trick. They are just illusionary news reports being perpetrated by some well paid right-wing manipulators of the public's minds.

Maybe the Lincoln Group, the company the Pentagon hired to write and plant false news stories in the Iraqi media about how well the war is going, is also writing stories all us suckers in America. 

Take the example of the Port of Dubai Worlds deal. In this deal the United Arab Emirates was buying a company that would have given them control over many major shipping ports in the United States. This was never a real business deal but was a manufactured news event designed to force the public to view things differently. One of the ways it was used was to make the Republicans in Congress look like they were independent free-thinkers who would be willing to part ways with President Bush on important national security issues. The truth is they did this because Bush's poll numbers are at an all time low and the 2006 midterm elections are coming up and the Republicans up for reelection needed an issue to separate them from an increasingly unpopular president. Mission accomplished?

Another example is the news reports that the IRS might start selling citizen's private tax records to companies. Once again, this is not a real possibility for obvious legal reasons but is only designed to manipulate the publics minds with fear and make them think about the need for greater personal privacy. The people who really fear this type of exposure are the top .0001%, and that is why it was made into a news event.

Another example is the Republican's "nuclear option" in the U.S. Senate. This was not so much of an effort to approve Bush's right-wing extremist nominees to the federal bench as it was an effort to overcome the Democrat's ability to stop Bush's first tax cuts from becoming permanent. The Republicans act like their heads will explode if they don't permanently repeal the estate tax for their billionaire friends. This nuclear option against the Democrat's filibuster was just an effort to test the water, or to run the flag up the pole to see who would salute. They know if they could use the rule breaking nuclear option on Bush's judicial nominees they would be able to use it on other legislation, including killing the estate tax by making Bush's first tax cuts permanent.

And the list of examples could go on and on, but the bottom line is that the American public cannot trust the corporate owned media or the Republican Party. They are just manipulating us by distracting us while they rob our government by bankrupting it; while they loot the Social Security trust fund with tax cuts for the very rich; while they undermine the rule of law with deregulations and tort reforms; while they use our young soldiers as expendable pawns in a war about oil and Israel's security; and while they steal our democracy with fraudulent elections and quid pro quo campaign fundraising.

We are being conned by the GOP, and the big media corporations are complicit in this fraud. After we take back our government we will put an end to this mind-f@#k.

Humans Vs. Robots

Japan has been busy developing robots that look, move, and respond like humans. It won't take long for this technology to develop to the point that these robots, or androids, will be able to replace many blue collar workers, and eventually many white collar workers. These smart robots will be able to work 24/7 without pay, food, or health insurance. They won't steal from their employers, make mistakes, call in sick, or develop a bad attitude.

I love the idea of having one or more androids to help me do things, but there is a high price for this technology. What are business owners and government leaders going to do with 6 billion people who are unemployed and are only adding to pollution, global warming, and using up limited resources? I think the answer is obvious. We must fight back now to make sure we are in control of our government when these new android robot workers come onto the market, and not the other way around.

Bird Flu

Recently, President Bush has been on TV trying to scare everyone into believing they might die as the result of a bird flu pandemic, similar to the "Spanish Flu" pandemic in 1918 that killed over 50 million people. There are two big differences between then and now. First, medical technology is much better now. Anti-viral and viral drug treatments are hundreds of times better now then they were then. Second, communication technologies are much better now. As soon as the first group of people become ill with the bird flu the entire world will know it within hours and people can begin to take precautions including receiving flu shots.

What this is really about is scaring people into doing whatever their political leaders tell them, and having an excuse to pump billions of our tax dollars into the pockets of the big drug companies. So far Bush has been successful on both counts. We are scared of him and the highly profitable drug companies are laughing all the way to the bank.

Mitt Romney, The Most Dangerous Politician In America

The GOP has a small-government philosophy and they have a potential tool to deliver it in Governor Mitt Romney (R - MA). Mitt Romney is a ultra right-wing Mormon who promotes the GOP's small-government philosophy, and who has his eye on the presidency. Mitt is an unapologetic Bush supporter singing his praises at every opportunity. The reason he is so dangerous is because he is smart, good looking, wealthy, and well known and he could use these tools to win the presidency. If he does become president you can bet your bottom dollar he will take this country in the same direction Bush has taken us, and with equally disastrous results. The middle class will pay while the rich get richer.

Mitt's small-government philosophy is a slap in the face to Uncle Sam and 200 years of legal precedents. It would take us back to pre-Civil War days with business owners able to exploit their workers ruthlessly and criminally. Mitt's idea would drastically transform our federal government from one that balances capitalism with social programs for workers to one that is only concerned about the capitalist.

We must never let Mitt Romney, or anyone like him, lead this country because if we do a lucky few will prosper and everyone else will pay. His strong Mormon faith will end up being our bloody cross to bare.

The Great Depression II

Now this is something to fear. If America goes into another depression anything like the great depression of 1929 the middle class is going to get hit very hard. During the 1929 depression most Americans lived on farms in rural communities, thus they were able to cope by helping one another with things they grew on their farms or hunted in the surrounding woods. But today most of us live in big cities or sprawling suburbs and we all buy our food from the grocery stores and restaurants. We don't get our water from wells but we buy it from municipalities. We don't live in big family groups but in individual family groups in houses with mortgages, utility bills, and taxes.

Try to image what America would be like with 100 million unemployed former middle class families living in the streets. Now for the bad news. The Republicans are going to make it happen. You probably want to know why? how? and when? and I can tell you those things, but what I can't tell you is how to cope with the pain, sadness, and despair when it happens. Perhaps the solution to these emotions is to get angry.

The Republicans are going to do it because of greed and power. It is a way to transfer wealth and power from the big group in the middle to the small group at the top.

The Republicans are going to do it by bankrupting the federal government and crashing the dollar with hyperinflation. The $10 trillion dollar turnaround in the federal budget projections during the past five years is no mistake or accident. The looting of the Social Security trust funds is not just an ironic twist of faith before the baby boomers retire. The sudden turnaround in the projected solvency of the Medicare system did not just happen but was carefully calculated and the wheels have already been set in motion.

This GOP manufactured depression will probably happen within the next five to ten years. With the current skyrocketing federal debt all that it will take now is a jump in interest rates, a drop in the economy, a loss in confidence from foreign investors, and a decline in the value of the dollar and the next depression will be upon us like flies on trash. Two of these four things have already started to happen.

Now, your probably wonder if there is anything we can do to stop this from happening? The answer to that question depends on how many guns you own and how willing you are to use them. We cannot vote these ugly clowns out of office, so our only option is to tar and feather them and ride them out of town on a wooden rail. Otherwise, get ready for hard-times living on the mean streets of America.

Global Warming

This is one thing we cannot blame President Bush for, but there is no question that he has not helped the situation. Global warming is real, it is happening right now, and there is very little we can do to stop it in the short-term. It probably won't happen as quickly as the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" shows, however, unless 5 billion people disappear tomorrow it is going to happen sometime in the near future.

The weather patterns are already starting to change and the ocean temperatures have already been changing. When the Atlantic ocean conveyor belt stops Europe and possibly the entire northern hemisphere will find itself in another ice age. What happens after that is highly unpredictable but will probably involve radical weather swings between extremes.

President Bush and his very rich friends probably already have plans for their own survival and comfort, but the rest of us are like sheep grazing on grass before the slaughter. They will probably just let us fend for ourselves during the deadly chaos and mass migration into the south without any food, water, or shelter. The way they treated the people of New Orleans after Katrina is probably a good model for how they will treat us when the ice storm hits. But, that's what we get for failing to hold our leaders accountable.

Chapter 2 Summary

Even if we succeed in replacing our current corrupt government leaders with real people we are still facing a number of very difficult challenges in the near future. However, if we fail to oust these political whores and corrupt elites make sure to save the last bullet for yourself.