WHO WOULD STARVE JESUS?

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR NATION? With all the negativity the Bush administration has been generating and the polls are, at last, exemplifying this, they still are PILFERING every last drop of life-giving resources from those who are in need, the most. They have no shame. I saw Frist, announce so brazenly, when Democrats finally discovered they had a spine and shut down the Senate:

"the chamber was "hijacked" by Democrats." "Once again, it shows the Democrats use scare tactics. They have no conviction. They have no principles. They have no ideas," Frist said. "But this is the ultimate. Since I've been majority leader, I'll have to say, not with the previous Democratic leader or the current Democratic leader have ever I been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution." - Bill Frist

TALK ABOUT BEING A HYPOCRITE! That statement takes hypocrisy to new heights! He claims he was slapped in the face... Holy Crapoly...

But his March 17th battle cry to lead the charge of the Family Research Council against “activist judges” shows a totally different side:
"One of the first tasks we will have is this whole confirmation of judges. This is at the top of the challenges that we must overcome in this Congress. We all know that activist judges in the past have recently cited international law written by U.N. bureaucrats. They directly undermine marriage being between a man and a woman. They struck down our partial-birth abortion bans. And these activist judges are not interpreting the Constitution. They’re rewriting it, and that’s wrong. And it’s something that I know you’re committed to, and I’m committed to…We know we’re right and we want to win. We want to protect marriage from activist judges once and for all and we will do it."
http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=577

Like the rest of the supposedly compassionate
conservatives... His words are so Orwellian that George Orwell
( Pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. 1903-1950. British writer whose
imaginative fiction attacks totalitarianism and reflects his concern with
social justice. His works include Animal Farm 1945 and 1984 written in
1949. - AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY)
himself would come back from the dead and SLAP HIM UPSIDE HIS FACE, if he
could! READ MORE OF FRIST'S OUTLANDISH QUOTES HERE. OR
Frist's Hypocritical and Dishonest Attack on Democracy OR
Bill Frist -GOP Hatchet man

The below article from THE PEN once again, SAYS IT ALL! Thinking Blue

PS: The new budget bill proposes $70 billion in new tax breaks for the rich
while cutting $10 billion in Medicare and Medicaid for the elderly and
poor. A new tax code is being recommended that would tax labor more
heavily then dividends or capital gains. In other words if you make money
shoveling, you"ll pay a higher tax rate then the guy going by in the back
of his chauffeured Rolls-Royce.

The government just allowed approximately $300 billion in offshore
earnings to enter the country under a special deal that only taxes it a
rate of 5%. So the government won"t find itself in the embarrassing
position of having to work out special deals for its campaign donors in
the future, the new tax code recommends that corporations not pay any tax
on money earned overseas.

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Congress and the Culture of CRUELTY
http://www.millionphonemarch.com/no_cruelty.htm
(Save our social services)
http://www.millionphonemarch.com/anwr.htm
(Save the ANWR)

WHO WOULD JESUS STARVE?
With a national budget hemorrhaging red ink, even the profligate pork
barrel princes in Congress had to do something. And what is their
solution? Will they trim back even modestly any of the gratuitous tax cuts
gifted to the most wealthy and the most fortunate? No, they propose
to cut the last ropes of what remains of the social safety net for those
hurt most by their "soak the masses and give it all to the corporate kingpins" policies, apparently to pave the way for even MORE reckless tax injustice.

When a right wing think tanker said he wanted to shrink the government
down to where it could be drown in a bathtub, he was talking about the
social services that are the only thing that keep the burgeoning class
of the abjectly poor going. Perhaps the former residents of New
Orleans experienced exactly what he meant by drowning, as FEMA had been
degenerated into a dispenser of Christmas plums for administration cronies
only. The only thing he wanted to shrink was that part of government
that does NOT serve the most powerful corporate interests. For the rest
it's still unlimited, no-bid, cost plus party time.
Yes, for those whose agenda is war profiteering, or bankrupting
families with blockbuster medical bills, or gouging the public with usurious
interest charges and fees, or pocketing unneeded subsidies while they
collect windfall profits for environmentally hostile sources of energy,
or absolving corporations of any social responsibility whatsoever . . .
for them it's supply side as far as the eye can see. And the primarily
Republican members of Congress they own lock stock and beholden barrel
have no shame in continuing to push though special interest legislation
written word for word by the corporate lobbyists themselves, to the
detriment of every other pressing national policy need.

This groaning chuck wagon of cruel greed will be ringing the bell once
again in the House of Representative this coming week. And if the
failure of the Senate last week to stand up and protect the most weak and
needy wasn't bad enough, the House version of the budget bill proposes
even MORE cuts for essential and indispensable lifeline services. They
want to cut to the bone Medicare, Medical, food stamps, student loans,
pension protection, Supplemental Social Security . . . the massacre
list goes on and on.

It has been called "immoral" by voices representing a wide ranging
spectrum of the religious community. For example, all 65 synod bishops of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have signed a letter to members of Congress in strong protest opposing the proposed budget cuts. But what of you conscientious reader? What are you doing to speak
out about this uncompassionate cruelty, so cold of heart that it would chill
any but the most unrepentant Scrooges among this administration's cronies?

For those who profess to be Christians, is it not written in your bible?

"I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." (Matthew 25:43-45)

And yet here we have a bill which will take AWAY food from the hungry,
rob medicine from the sick, and steal clothing intended for those who
are already naked. What would your Lord say should be the judgement for
those who do such things? Perhaps you already know the next verse.

What do you have to say about all this? Words of true compassion can
be found in all faiths. Send a message to Congress and tell them to get
their priorities straight.

http://www.millionphonemarch.com/no_cruelty.htm
(Save our social services)
For those who profess to be liberals, or progressives, or whatever the
latest trendy label for people who care about their fellow human being,
who will speak out if not you? The action pages linked from this
article will send your personal message in real time to your own members
of Congress with just once click, and you can make it also a letter to the
editor of your nearest daily newspaper as well all at the same time.

And those who profess to be conservatives, even if you care only for
yourselves, do you not understand that those who are fortunate in society
prosper MOST when there are more who can afford to buy the goods and
services from which you profit. The more you cheat the workers in
your businesses the less they can buy the necessities which in truth drive
the very economy itself. The more you force people into the ditch of
debt, the less there will be for all but a handful of unaccountable owners
of monopoly corporations, which so few of even you will ever be.

Is if that were not enough, they have also stuffed another giant
giveaway to the oil companies into the budget bill in the form of
violation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Even IF there were not any
direct environmental damage from drilling another one of our precious
environmental resources up like Swiss cheese, the real harm will come in
the acceleration of global warming from our crack addict dependence on oil
as fuel. Unless we reverse the explosion of CO2 levels in the
atmosphere, this last hurricane season may turn out to be one of the
relatively mild ones of the coming decades.

http://www.millionphonemarch.com/anwr.htm
(Save the ANWR)

What we REALLY need to do to bring down energy costs is end the illegal
self-defeating occupation of Iraq, which is the PRIMARY cause of the
political instability in the Middle East which has so exacerbated oil
prices. And then we need a crash program to develop renewable
bio-fuel resources and then they can swim in their oil if they want to. We
need dramatic policy change and we need it now, or else as Louis XV used to
say (or maybe it was Noah), "After me, the deluge."

To his credit on at least one measure, John McCain has sworn that
unless his amendment (passed 90-9 in the Senate) to ban torture is
included intact in the new defense bill he will add it to every subsequent
Senate bill from now on. The ban is against "cruel" punishment among
other things. It is time that we renounce the voices of cruelty in all
other areas of our government as well. This shameful budget bill must not
pass without major revision. It is time for people who are NOT cruel
to speak out against those who are. Your members of the house of

Representatives are all up for election next year. It would not hurt
to remind them of that.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.
If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at...

http://www.usalone.com/in.htm

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AN EXCERPT FROM ANOTHER GOOD ARTICLE:

The White House Criminal Conspiracy

Elizabeth de la Vega The Bush Administration should be prosecuted for
conspiracy to defraud the United States by using half-truths and
recklessly false statements to lead the country into an illegal war. This
article is a collaboration with TomDispatch.com.

November 14, 2005 issue

These three actions can be called for simultaneously. Obviously we face a
GOP-dominated House and Senate, but the same outrage that led the public
to demand action against corporate law-breakers should be harnessed behind
an outcry against government law-breakers. As we now know, it was not a
failure of intelligence that led us to war. It was a deliberate distortion
of intelligence by the Bush Administration. But it is a failure of
courage, on the part of Congress (with notable exceptions) and the
mainstream media, that seems to have left us helpless to address this
crime. Speaking as a former federal prosecutor, I offer the following
legal analysis to encourage people to press their representatives to act.

The Nature of the Conspiracy

The Supreme Court has defined the phrase "conspiracy to defraud the United
States" as "to interfere with, impede or obstruct a lawful government
function by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are
dishonest." In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement "between two or
more persons" to follow a course of conduct that, if completed, would
constitute a crime. The agreement doesn't have to be express; most
conspiracies are proved through evidence of concerted action. But
government officials are expected to act in concert. So proof that they
were conspiring requires a comparison of their public conduct and
statements with their conduct and statements behind the scenes. A pattern
of double-dealing proves a criminal conspiracy.

The concept of interfering with a lawful government function is best
explained by reference to two well-known cases where courts found that
executive branch officials had defrauded the United States by abusing
their power for personal or political reasons.

One is the Watergate case, where a federal district court held that
Nixon's Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, and his crew had interfered with
the lawful government functions of the CIA and the FBI by causing the CIA
to intervene in the FBI's investigation into the burglary of Democratic
Party headquarters. The other is U.S. v. North, where the court found that
Reagan Administration National Security Adviser John Poindexter,
Poindexter's aide Oliver North and others had interfered with Congress's
lawful power to oversee foreign affairs by lying about secret arms deals
during Congressional hearings into the Iran/contra scandal.

Finally, "fraud" is broadly defined to include half-truths, omissions or
misrepresentation; in other words, statements that are intentionally
misleading, even if literally true. Fraud also includes making statements
with "reckless indifference" to their truth.

Conspiracies to defraud usually begin with a goal that is not in and of
itself illegal. In this instance the goal was to invade Iraq. It is
possible that the Bush team thought this goal was laudable and likely to
succeed. It's also possible that they never formally agreed to defraud the
public in order to attain it. But when they chose to overcome anticipated
or actual opposition to their plan by concealing information and lying,
they began a conspiracy to defraud--because, as juries are instructed, "no
amount of belief in the ultimate success of a scheme will justify
baseless, false or reckless misstatements."

From the fall of 2001 to at least March 2003, the following officials, and
others, made hundreds of false assertions in speeches, on television, at
the United Nations, to foreign leaders and to Congress: President Bush,
Vice President Cheney, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Under Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. Their
statements were remarkably consistent and consistently false.

Even worse, these falsehoods were made against an overarching deception:
that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks. If Administration officials
never quite said there was a link, they conveyed the message brilliantly
by mentioning 9/11 and Iraq together incessantly--just as beer commercials
depict guys drinking beer with gorgeous women to imply a link between beer
drinking and attractive women that is equally nonexistent. Beer
commercials might be innocuous, but a deceptive ad campaign from the Oval
Office is not, especially one designed to sell a war in which 2,000
Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, and that has cost
this country more than $200 billion so far and stirred up worldwide
enmity.

The fifteen-month PR blitz conducted by the White House was a massive
fraud designed to trick the public into accepting a goal that Bush's
advisers had held even before the election. A strategy document Dick
Cheney commissioned from the Project for a New American Century, written
in September 2000, for example, asserts that "the need for a substantial
American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of
Saddam Hussein." But, as the document reflects, the Administration hawks
knew the public would not agree to an attack against Iraq unless there
were a "catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor."

Not surprisingly, the Bush/Cheney campaign did not trumpet this strategy.
Instead, like corporate officials keeping two sets of books, they
presented a nearly opposite public stance, decrying nation-building and
acting as if "we were an imperialist power," in Cheney's words. Perhaps
the public accepts deceitful campaign oratory, but nevertheless such
duplicity is the stuff of fraud. And Bush and Cheney carried on with it
seamlessly after the election.

By now it's no secret that the Bush Administration used the 9/11 attacks
as a pretext to promote its war. They began talking privately about
invading Iraq immediately after 9/11 but did not argue their case honestly
to the American people. Instead, they began looking for evidence to make a
case the public would accept--that Iraq posed an imminent threat.
Unfortunately for them, there wasn't much.

The fifteen-month PR blitz conducted by the White House was a massive
fraud designed to trick the public into accepting a goal that Bush's
advisers had held even before the election. A strategy document Dick
Cheney commissioned from the Project for a New American Century, written
in September 2000, for example, asserts that "the need for a substantial
American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of
Saddam Hussein." But, as the document reflects, the Administration hawks
knew the public would not agree to an attack against Iraq unless there
were a "catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor."

Not surprisingly, the Bush/Cheney campaign did not trumpet this strategy.
Instead, like corporate officials keeping two sets of books, they
presented a nearly opposite public stance, decrying nation-building and
acting as if "we were an imperialist power," in Cheney's words. Perhaps
the public accepts deceitful campaign oratory, but nevertheless such
duplicity is the stuff of fraud. And Bush and Cheney carried on with it
seamlessly after the election.

By now it's no secret that the Bush Administration used the 9/11 attacks
as a pretext to promote its war. They began talking privately about
invading Iraq immediately after 9/11 but did not argue their case honestly
to the American people. Instead, they began looking for evidence to make a
case the public would accept--that Iraq posed an imminent threat.
Unfortunately for them, there wasn't much.

In fact, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in effect as of December
2001 said that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons; was not trying to get
them; and did not appear to have reconstituted its nuclear weapons program
since the UN and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors
departed in December 1998. This assessment had been unchanged for three
years.

As has been widely reported, the NIE is a classified assessment prepared
under the CIA's direction, but only after input from the entire
intelligence community, or IC. If there is disagreement, the dissenting
views are also included. The December 2001 NIE contained no dissents about
Iraq. In other words, the assessment privately available to Bush
Administration officials from the time they began their tattoo for war
until October 2002, when a new NIE was produced, was unanimous: Iraq did
not have nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons programs. But publicly, the
Bush team presented a starkly different picture. Read The Rest Of This Article Here.

WaPo: Bush Orders Staff to Attend Ethics Briefings (F-ING HILARIOUS!)

Warning very Graphic REAL PICTURES OF WAR

CAROLYNCONNETION - I've got a mind and I'm going to use
it! ThinkingBlue blogspot

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