One of the most common fears spread around the "internets" is the desire of certain wingnuts for a third world war. One of the primary spreaders is the poster child for fried brain syndrome, Newt Gingrich, who really wants to believe we are already there so we can start nuking Arabs for fun and profit. "Newt's thinking is that five years of false promises, failures, ineptitudes, errors and omissions, is hard to swallow as a mere War on Terror, but that as World War III it would all be just dandy."
read moreOf course, the possibility exists that rather than promoting war from the recesses of his demented and rapidly rotting brain cells as some ideological hallucination, he is actually a member of the future feeding frenzy party lined up at the trough and stands to profit from any and all wars. In this, he would be in some familiar company, starting with Bush's grandpa whose thievery and greed inspired Dubya the Dumber to follow in his blood-stained footsteps:
"George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany."
read moreMaking money from death is not limited to just the horse thieves in the Bush crime family:
"The three major arms manufacturers in the world – the U.S., Russia and France – provide almost 80 per cent of the sales for armaments. By itself, the U.S. sold over half of all weapons in the world marketplace: 18.6 billion dollars. Its sales increased 30 per cent between 1999 and 2000.
Among the principal clients for the armaments furnished by the great powers are the monarchies of the Middle East, like Jordan and Saudi Arabia. While continuing to improve their up-to-date airforces, they
also purchase armored cars to keep internal order. The United Arab Emirates expense for arms in 2000 was 8.4 billion dollars. Other clients for weapons are the African dictatorships like Algeria, which spent 580 million dollars, Angola, (253 million dollars), and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which spent 108 million dollars. All three countries have been ravaged by terrible civil wars which have oppressed and massacred their populations for years. Nothing stops the arms industry – merchants of death – from going after profit." read more
The greed of these war criminals/profiteers is almost endless, but it is matched by their most passionate and vindictive enemy--the corporate whores who already have dibs on any profits made on the backs of American workers. They've spent a lot of time and money making sure their profits aren't messed with by ideologues like Newt or their other worst enemy--labor unions and workers who struggle to make a decent wage.
"Just after the end of World War II, when the Jeep first became a civilian vehicle, 35 percent of workers belonged to labor unions. That’s significant because union members earn 30 percent higher wages
than non-union workers and are 59 percent more likely to have health insurance. Those better wages and benefits helped create the great middle class in America. Workers earned enough money to buy
refrigerators and homes and cars and, later, college educations for their children. The money they earned and spent churned through the economy and kept it humming." read more
But that wasn't enough profit for the corporate pigs. They realized there was money to be made by keeping wages low and forcing Americans into the endless cycle of debt they needed just to stay alive. After all, a refrigerator can be paid off and then you have to find someone else to sell another refrigerator to. A credit card can return interest investment forever. A refrigerator bought on credit will continue to add money to corporate coffers year after year, even after the refrigerator itself no longer works and is languishing in some landfill for the next generation to deal with.
"The origin of our current culture of debt goes back to around 1973. That's when America's long run of unprecedented economic growth (which began shortly after World War II) hit a wall. OPEC raised
oil prices, and European and Asian nations became industrial competitors. This was the beginning of the decline of the U.S. manufacturing economy and the end of wage growth for the American worker. Thirty-five years later, the U.S. median wage per worker still hovers around the 1973 level. For male workers, most affected by deindustrialization, wages have actually declined slightly since 1973" read more
But in order for the corporations to continue gouging the average consumer by selling them 300 dollar refrigerators that will end up costing them 3000 dollars in a couple years of paying interest on the unpaid balance, they need the cooperation of the government to throw more money their way and refuse to help the consumer in any way that would threaten those corporate profits.
"The principle of government helping big business and refusing government largesse to the poor was bipartisan, upheld by Republicans and Democrats. President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, vetoed a bill to give $10,000 to Texas farmers to help them buy seed grain during a drought, saying, "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." But that same year, he used the gold surplus to pay wealthy bondholders $28 above the value of each bond--a gift of $5 million. " read more
It also requires taking over all the safeguards put in place to help the consumer or small business person compete in the marketplace.
"..since 2003, 15 federal investigations have found that Fortune 500 firms are the actual recipients of most federal small business contracts. It has been estimated that large businesses receive over $100 billion a year in federal small business contracts. ABC, CBS and CNN have all aired investigative reports which have found firms like: Rolls Royce, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Raytheon, IBM, Xerox, Dell, John Deere, General Dynamics, GTSI, Home Depot, Titan Industries, Hewlett Packard, Battelle and British Aerospace Engineering (BAE) have all received millions of dollars in federal small business contracts." read more
In light of this, warmongering morons like Newt Gingrich are powerless to get their war on as they would have to convince the corporate whores that ideology is more important than money and that's not going to happen. There's only one thing that corporations fear and that is the loss of their money flow. They know if a world war broke out and suddenly bombs were dropping on American cities, they'd wake up to a financial catastrophe not even their paid servants in Congress could bail them out from. Think of how you bank, how you pay your bills, how you buy and use services. If cable companies like Comcast can't even keep their service up in a storm, can you imagine what would happen if just a few of their access points were bombed to shit? No one could do banking, no one could pay their bills, automatic payments and deposits would stop.
Their worst fear, and one that is becoming more possible with each bailout that rewards corporate greed and incompetence and refuses to help people who are losing their homes, jobs, savings, and retirement plans, is that people will stop paying their debts. There's no debtor's prison in this country. And when you have nothing left to lose and your credit is already shot, what's to stop an ever growing desperate population from simply walking away from their credit card and other bills the same way they're walking away from mortgages and car loans?
"So until real relief is forthcoming, citizens who are in distress should simply destroy their credit cards and stop paying the monthly bills. People are already doing this. Arrearages and defaults are climbing, and credit card debt is starting to be viewed as the next bubble to burst. But so what? If people have to use a credit card, that means they can’t really afford to buy whatever it is they think they want. If they can afford it, they should use a debit card instead." read more
What is now a trickle of people giving up on their debts would be a tidal wave if war broke out in this country, and because the arms merchants depend on corporate whores to bankroll their deadly toy purchases, they're not going to create a war that will effectively kill their golden goose. The only way a third world war would happen is if everyone lost everything, even the corporations. And even then, without the necessary funding for crime families like the Bushes to profit from it, any war would more likely be a revolution where mobs took to the streets and burned down banks and collection agencies. Any talk you hear of a stimulus package for the ordinary American is to prevent this from happening and not to save anyone from living under a bridge and sleeping in the box that once housed their refrigerators and flat screen televisions.
A funny rat with a sad expression says "After eight years of Bush all I
have left is hope." Great to wear for the inauguration and to celebrate
the election of Barack Obama as President. You can purchase it or other items with this design by clicking on the design or visiting Ursine Logic stores President Obama shop.
economy, corporate bailouts, world war three, ww3, cafepress, ursine logic, President Obama, labor unions, war criminals
