Angie Riedel

The presidential election is only a matter of days away now. I wish I could say there is reason to be optimistic that it will bring an end to the reign of greed and destruction of the bush regime. The reality is that there is little to be optimistic about.

A new president will not herald the changes we want and so desperately need. There will be no more than a changing of faces that will still tell us lies. We will still have a king instead of a leader. He will still act as though the constitution is somewhere between optional and flat out objectionable.

We will still have a government that is separated from us, that asserts a right to be above us and to rule over us with two separate sets of laws. The laws for themselves forgive every felony and lie, and excuse every wrongful death, theft and trespass. The laws for us forgive nothing, excuse nothing, and mete out brutal punishments and imprisonment even before crimes have been committed. ― We will still be held hostage by, and held accountable for the mental midgetry of our disconnected elites. We will still have multimillionaire legislators and multimillionaire White House denizens who's services are already pre-purchased by people whose interests are in direct conflict with our own.

Too many of our elected pseudo-deities literally have no idea what it means to work for a dollar, or to struggle to get by, or to slowly drown in insurmountable debt and burden until the point is finally reached where there are no further options and everything is lost. They have no idea what it's like to feel yourself going down for the last count while nobody seems to care. I guarantee you, they don't know, and they don't care. They're too busy handing free hundreds of billions of our hard earned dollars to billionaire bankers who blow more cash on a few days at the spa than ten of us earn in a year. They call that a "bail out". What it needs to be called is a bald faced rip off the likes of which has never been seen, the biggest most despicable financial heist in living history.

No discussion whatsoever has been raised to change the system of the ultra rich sucking the life blood out of the struggling working class, and nothing will be done to change it. Therefore no matter who wins the prestigious career prize of the presidency, we the people will still not be served. We will continue to be used, marginalized and lied to while they rip us off and treat us with ever more disrespect. Who's going to stop them? They're supposed to be stopping themselves.

Where are the checks and balances? That's a dang good question. They're gone. And I'm sorry but whoever the next president is, do you really expect him to bring them back?

It's always been the case that every right and freedom we've ever won for ourselves has only come about through tremendous struggle, and with our government fighting us every step of the way; and now that process will be harder than ever. The very idea of the people having anything resembling a fair share of prosperity or having any true freedom has become officially undesirable. Such things would threaten the imperial rule of this globalist oligarchy. All that matters to them is themselves. The only other thing that matters is that we comply. And should we fail to comply the punishments are ever more swift in coming.

I wish I could say that democracy and freedom have not been imprisoned, tortured and murdered along with the still uncounted civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they are every bit as dead as the innocent citizens of those foreign lands, and every bit as dead and wounded and permanently disabled as our own soldiers who went to those foreign lands with the desire to serve and do something good for those people and yet so often ended up betrayed, disillusioned, abandoned and treated like chattel.
In spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans have made it perfectly clear that we want our troops pulled out of the Middle East now, both of the leading candidates have already pledged to keep all battlefronts going, and to fund them and even to send more troops abroad. The 2008 election won't bring an end to the militarism we abhor, it will extend it.

The depth and breadth of the damage done in the small space of eight years truly exceeds comprehension. Please don't believe it was all a string of accidents made by inept and clumsy clowns and morons. This much destruction took a tremendous amount of planning and concerted effort to achieve. It is no accident that it all plays right into the hands of those who want to shove their one world government and Agenda 21 treachery down our throats.

The neo-con machine has consciously worked to undo and destroy everything we believe in and stand for. Bush has recklessly spent more money than all presidents before him combined. He has broken every rule of democratic government in the name of his self-proclaimed imperial right to be "the decider". He's broken every law he didn't like in spite of being well counseled that it's still criminal when the president does it. This president proclaimed his own lawbreaking to be his presidential prerogative, as if his own personal desires are of more value than the laws we need to protect us specifically from the likes of him. That won't change with the 2008 elections. What president is going to give up having imperial power?

The bush regime has consistently treated the working class and the poor with disrespect and contempt. Every assault on our freedoms and rights has been carried out with characteristic smugness and arrogance. His anti-democracy team purposely sought to undermine and redefine freedom, rights and justice not to improve upon these concepts but to negate them.

Little if anything that belongs to us has been left unmolested. We've had sweeping attacks on all of our rights and now none of them remain intact enough to afford us the protection that was all we had to defend ourselves with. A million names on the no-fly list, "free speech zones", gag orders, kidnapping and torture, and trashing the Geneva Conventions are barely the beginning.

Property rights, health rights, parenting rights are all in some stage of being totally usurped by the government. Rights to privacy, to be safe and secure in our own homes and with our own property, these are mere memories. Reasonable expectations of common sense business and industrial regulations to protect us from all manner of corporate greed, predation, malfeasance and unconscionable usury, these literally no longer exist. No more legal protection from intrusive, warrantless wiretaps and unregulated collection of all of our most intimate, personal data, permanently stored and on sale cheap. In all good sense, in every legal sense and in common decency these things should never have happened.

Warrantless searches, seizures and destruction of our personal property by brutal thugs called police; the infiltration and tracking of our private lives, personal associations and activities; being squeezed to the marrow for tax dollars that are shamelessly wasted on the extravagances of the wealthy and well protected; a CIA owned and manipulated press with a multimillion dollar budget used to lie to us; the overturn of posse comitatus; these have all been made reality with subterfuge or with devious tactical legislation specifically devised to negate our rights. This short list doesn't even begin to cover the long list of abuses that this government is now legally entitled to perpetrate against us. If you think the next president is going to turn any of that around, don't hold your breath. You'll be long dead and none of this will have changed, at least not for the better.

Protecting and defending our rights, our freedom, the constitution, or ensuring there is a bona fide democratic process was not a part of this government's game plan. On the contrary. They set out to destroy all of these things for us, while retaining frighteningly exalted versions of them only for themselves. Our lives, our values and our laws mean nothing to these people. So, today, in accordance with their extremist belief system, Americans will only get as much freedom and justice as they can afford to buy, and trust me, you and I can't afford them.

The same goes for our health and food and all basic human necessities. Henceforth, it is official that if you can't afford these things because of the despicable fiscal policies of this government then you'll just have to die, apparently. You'll also have to bear the insult of being blamed for being victimized by zealous ideologues and their system of rampant corruption and raging anti-American values.

Are there still any Christians out there who believe these people are following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ? Good God, I hope not. They are the obscene and defiant antithesis of Christ.

Did you hear what the president's press secretary had to tell us about our crisis of unemployment? Bush will veto legislation that would extend the number of weeks of unemployment benefits for American workers who cannot find work. The unavailability of work due to tens of millions of jobs being sent off to other countries does not warrant any extension of unemployment benefits for working people. After handing the breath taking instant, no-strings attached free gift of $850 Billion dollars to billionaire bankers to bail them out of their gambling debts at our expense, our need for food to eat and a roof over our heads does not warrant the puny amount of dollars required to save our very lives.

Hundreds of billions of dollars, no, trillions of dollars have flowed like cheap wine through the office of this president as though there was no end to it, as though it was free for the taking in limitless amounts. With borrowed billions he has greased the greedy palms of favored cronies, war profiteers, loyalist campaign contributors, billionaire bankers and fellow multimillionaire capitalists, and he's even paying off the selfsame terrorist insurgents that he initially sent us overseas to kill. Now they're on the payroll too. It seems everyone is being lavishly rewarded with our money, except us.

In all history never have the rich been so rich. Glutting themselves on the people's money, their wealth has expanded so profoundly that it's literally obscene. And yet our national infrastructure is crumbling away. Bankrupt cities and counties are in dire need of major updates and maintenance of public roads, buildings and public utilities. Bridges and highway overpasses are collapsing, levies are breaking, hurricanes and floods are demolishing cities, fires rage across thousands of acres, drought scorches vast areas of numerous states, and people are dying from all of these things; a million families are losing their homes, losing their dreams, losing their prosperity and hope.

Did the people who suffered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's burst levies receive any of that luxurious and speedy multibillion dollar generosity? No, afraid not. Still not. Sorry. That sort of thing just doesn't appeal to the interests of the wealthiest people in the world.

The small percentage of citizens that own outright the vast majority of all our nation's wealth don't care about anyone but themselves. They exist to gratify their own greed and they do it by raping this nation and its citizens. They're not about to feel bad about it. They're much too morally bankrupt and proud of it to give a damn how much harm they cause, or how much suffering they leave in their wake. They prefer to focus on their own luxuries and comforts, to enjoy their prestige and overwhelming advantages. They fully expect us to be fine with that, and even to support it. They've shown us this repeatedly and without exception with their own actions and have told us so in their own words over and again.

There is nothing there to be proud of.

Nothing so shameful as this should ever have reached into imagination much less have been achieved. What manner of despicable beings are these? How can these people bear to be inside their own skins? They are revolting in the truest sense of the word. They are utter and abject failures as human beings.

There is nothing to feel but shame from predating other people or from bludgeoning other people into submission or to death. There is no conceivable reason to feel pride after lying, deceiving, stealing and in every other way cheating to gain the desired ends. Cheating is not winning, it is stealing and it is lying, it's something to be ashamed of. Winning is something that can only be done fairly, ethically and morally and none of these people are burdened by any obligations to moral considerations. They truly are, at least in my deeply sincere opinion, amongst the literal scum of the earth. Few could aspire to become any lower life form than these people. They thoroughly disgust me.

I am ashamed of what this country has been turned into. I am ashamed of the immorality and disdain for ethics those in authority have so widely sown and made normal. I am ashamed of the arrogance and the shocking cruelty of our leadership and their sickening inability to tell the truth or take responsibility, or to show respect to anyone outside of their own private clan. This is a rapacious clique of billionaire thieves flying death flags of the Free Market instead of championing a free world. These are delusional ideologues desperate to justify their unjustifiable behavior by repeating romanticized odes to dead capitalist theorists and with dialogues of phony religiosity used as cover for their raging greed, racism, sexism, and classism. They are bullies and cowards always leaving the hard work to others, always taking the cream for themselves and leaving the clean up behind for their victims to cope with. These are not decent people.

I can't count how many times my stomach has been turned listening to the arrogant insincerity of these men and women who say they are there to serve us but who only serve themselves. We have been besieged by tragedy and destruction from within and without; and we should never have to endure vicious attacks from within. True to form, in the wake of every disaster they've stepped up and served themselves, helped themselves to more of what they want, grabbing ever more for themselves at our expense, leaving us to flounder and beg and fend for ourselves. After robbing us of our wealth it is not possible for us to fend for ourselves, you bastards.

They've spun countless lies to cover their criminal acts and more lies designed to inspire fear and weakness, tearing us apart. They've created enemies and threats we never had before they arrived. They've used their monopoly of media and their wealth to fabricate the illusion that everyone agrees with them and supports them when nothing could be further from the truth. They do not even have the courage to show us who they really are or to let us see the condition this country is really in, burying international reports, gagging scientists and medical experts and demanding censorship and even outright fraud. They have truly earned the deep contempt that is felt for them all over the world.

Shame on them for their icy hearts of stone. Shame on them for their ravenous greed, their incivility, and their dishonesty. Shame on them for their world record breaking selfishness. Mountains of shame on them.

These people are the walking embodiments of shame. They are the living, breathing personification of all the worst qualities that men can possess. They have no honor, no compassion and no desire for either. They have abused the trust of tens of millions of people who would do anything asked of them because they believe in the rightness and honor of their leadership.

It is profoundly unwise to follow unproven strangers just because they are in positions of authority, and though many who did so have since come to bitterly regret it, they have still not learned the lesson and they will simply do it again. Next month.

To anyone sputtering on themselves because they're enraged at my failure to properly notice our wonderful American freedoms, or because they still, for some incomprehensible reason, believe and support the bush crime family, you are pounding your fists in defense of the very predators who have ripped you off which you can't see or admit to because of your brainwashing; a gift to you courtesy of those same conniving liars. But spare me your protestations for this simple reason: the powers that be have no moral ground to stand on. None. I can't think of even one single thing they've done to make this nation stronger, healthier or more prosperous. It is not more free, it is less free. It is not more just, it is less just. It is not more prosperous it is rife with unemployment and an economy teetering on the brink of total collapse. They've cleaned us out and left us bankrupt. There's not a single thing in their well documented history that this country can feel proud of. All that's been done has been done in deceit and disdain not only for us but for people all over the world. They have absolutely nothing to their credit.

Legitimate leaders take responsibility, they do not claim to have rights of control over the lives of others. Genuine leaders do not demand compliance to their arbitrary personal beliefs and selfish goals. Legitimate leaders empower and strengthen those they lead, they do not predate them or cheat them or deprive them of justice, nor do they force a nation to its knees in poverty and worry about the future. They do not bankrupt the nation and pocket the cash. They do not create enemies everywhere they go due to their stubborn, small minded ignorance, arrogance and hypocrisy. They do not call for wars based on lies and deceit in order to serve the goals of another country at the expense of our own goals, prosperity and progress. They do not militarize the police force and teach it to hate and violate the public at will without fear of accountability. They're leaving no legacy beyond their profound criminal greed and dishonesty. So what are you defending? Your right to be violated?

True leaders don't take, they give. These people have done nothing but take. All they've given us is a bottomless nightmare to contend with and right on cue, they will all be long gone, safe and snug and comfortable when the worst comes to kick the rest of us down and cause us more suffering than most of us can handle. This will not end with the bush administration, this is the new normal.

I'm sorry, but no matter who is elected, if they even are fairly elected, there will be very little difference between tomorrow and today. None of the critical problems and core issues that have taken us so far from where we were and who we are, have ever been mentioned. If they're not even mentioned, then there is no possibility that anything can change.

We are on our own.

If freedom actually means anything to anyone, it's time to ponder that fact well and decide where you stand on it. Then realize the 2008 presidential elections will not bring us out of this terrible tide, but with all intent and capability will push us further into it.

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Source: http://thinkorbeeaten.blogspot.com/2008/10/shame-and-2008-election.html