Well, maybe I won't go there.

No, indeed, Bush is not the problem. He's a fast moving cancer, but even if we cut him out, we still have to deal with a weakened immune system, the parasites...

P.S. And check your mail. And may the Great Zucchini of Healing make you well.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

There is the on-budget debt, what is officially known as the "deficit," and then there is the off budget shenanigans that they have pulled to put the whole Iraq trillion (so far) on the Chinese credit card.

The baffling point is that the economy should be fucking booming, just like your lifestyle would if you had gone nuts on credit you never expected to pay back. The fact that the only "boom" has been from the runup in house prices and individuals tapping out the fictitious "equity" acquired thereby, is a separate subject but equally baffling.

Where did all that money go? The stock market didnt' even run up enough to account for all of it, not anywhere close.

The problem with ghost money is that it has to be able to maintain an apparition of reality in order for anybody to pay attention to it. I know several ghosts in Gettysburg PA who are in exactly that position, they are the subject of court suits and legal actions as to who has the right to profit from stories about their activities.

Several of them are, according to Federal Court Judge Sylvia Rambo (Harrisburg PA. I am not making this up) protected under copyright, which makes them as real as quite a number of other things we take for granted every day. They have legal existence and therefore monetary value. So ghost money is not without precedent.

He's a figurehead and a mouthpiece for that army of reeking darkness that's fed all of our futures into the Big Shitpile.

Nice post. Noticing the Emperor has no clothes and the Empire is a Ponzi scheme will git you Gitmo. The orcs owning the Security-Industrial Complex are in no danger of losing their jobs. In fact, one suspects that is where a lot those Disappeared dollars wind up anyway.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

Good post CD.

We need to connect the dots. Modern American conservative anti-government, or small government for the many, big government for the few in service, or perhaps I ought to say "in thral," to international corporate interests and culture in its insistence on privatizing government has proved to be a disaster to America's economic strength, at the expense of all Americans not in the top earning brackets - that would include poor, working class and middle class Americans.

First, we need to remember that we tamed this beast once, although it took a world war to do it. This time around it'll be harder because we are dealing with an international capitalism that is as predatory and anti-democracy and uncivil as anything we faced in the 19th and early 20th century, only harder to understand and get hold of precisely because these international instruments of economic torture - see Naomi Klein's first book as well as the current one.

We are also facing what has been an organized push-back that emerged in the 1970s against governmental activities of every stripe and the social contract that emerged through the New and the Fair Deal; That push-back became the ruling ideology with Reagan.

As to previous those connection to previous shitpiles, anyone remember junk bonds? Anyone remember the Savings and Loan Crises? Anyone remember that in eight years of his administration, Reagan added four times, that's 400%, as much debt to our National Debt than it had taken 200 years of American Presidencies to rack up. Bush41 steered us into a major recession, and then did nothing to get us out of it.

Clinton did some repair work, not changing any of the fundamentals, unfortunately, thanks to the loss of congress in 2004, but now Bush has completely undone even the minimal repairs.

The one thing we have going for our side here is that there is a real awareness this time, among a majority of Americans, that Bush and a Republican congress have used the same ideology, the only ideology of which the rightwing is capable of producing, no matter how many wrinkles Newt tries to put on it to make it sound fresh and new, has driven our economy into the ground and undercut not only our personal standard of living, add to that our functioning democratic Republic, add to that turning back the clock on hard won battles from the past, like clean air, while managing to address none of our agreed-upon not so future problems - alternative energy, global warming.

Before anyone points out that Reagan had a Democratic congress all eight years of his administration and the same for Bush 41, I'm aware of that, were this a post rather than a comment I would deal with that subject.

I am still without a functioning computer, but I hope to be back on line within the next several days, although having had my hard drive replaced and will be spending time reconstituting my programs and data.

i'm so sorry you puter is kaput.

First, we need to remember that we tamed this beast once, although it took a world war to do it. This time around it’ll be harder because we are dealing with an international capitalism that is as predatory and anti-democracy and uncivil as anything we faced in the 19th and early 20th century, only harder to understand and get hold of precisely because these international instruments of economic torture - see Naomi Klein’s first book as well as the current one.

well, it won't surprise you one bit to know that i think it will take another global war before we can truly "fix this mess." and i'm not optimistic about fixing anything after another global war. but even so, i believe that various pressures will take us to a global war, fairly soon. i just don't have faith in politicians, or most people, such that i believe a non-war solution is a likely possibility.

this is a subject i've been meaning to post on, but i'm still hashing it out in ma haid.