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George W. Bush

“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

– A United States Office of Strategic Services report on Adolf Hitler.

US citizen's taxes fuel the war profits of a secretive group of people growing ever richer at their expense. This "government of thieves" practises a revolving door of war for business and business for war. The Bush administration has promoted a huge increase in military spending for purposes such as invading Iraq, providing an enormous source of extra profit for big defence contractors and military-corporate shareholders, who at the same time have also been given large tax cuts by Bush and his cronies.

All this money is in effect stolen from the remaining 90% of the population. As a consequence, education, health, social welfare and many other useful or vital areas of government must be cut back. As well, numerous jobs are lost in these fields. Many ordinary people are suckered into voting for Bush by appeals to patriotism and religion - this from the family that has failed to find Osama bin Laden, but which protects the Saudi elite whose oil dollars work to promote Islamic fundamentalism against more moderate forms of Islam and all other religions and creeds.

How this theft affects Americans was brought home vividly in the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The best resources of the local National Guard, intended to protect their communities, had instead been diverted to the imperial war in Iraq, along with much money meant to secure the levees of New Orleans against floods. As well, an incompetent director who later had to be sacked had been appointed to the FEMA body meant to respond to civil emergencies, because he had contributed a large amount to the Bush campaign coffers. New Orleans inhabitants paid a terrible price because of these scandals.

– A Government of Thieves: Part Two - the Thieves in Action.

It's always satisfying to have a pet theory supported by new data. A large and authoritative study, just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirms a favorite hypothesis of mine, that there is more mental illness and insanity, far more, in America than you find in other advanced societies.

The study, led by a Harvard Medical School researcher, found evidence of mental problems in 26.4% of people in the United States, versus, for example, 8.2% of people in Italy. The researchers were concerned with matters such as lack of access to treatment and under-treatment, but for those concerned about a safe and decent world, I think the salient finding is simply America's high percentage. The world is being led by a nation where more than one-quarter of the people have genuine mental problems.

The finding is strangely both comforting and disturbing.

It is comforting because it helps explain why Americans continue supporting a man proven wrong every time he opens his mouth, a man who has de-stabilized parts of the world in the name of creating stability, a man claiming sound business principles who has pitched the United States into deficit free-fall, and a man who arouses suspicion and fear throughout the world.

– First in the World in the Deranged: Insanity in America by John Chuckman, 03 June 2004.

In fact, the wealth of American intellectual life in its universities stands in sharp contrast to the provincial insularity of its leadership. Morris Berman, professor at MIT, writes in Twilight of American Culture that America has fallen into an irretrievable "dark age". The "dumbest" president in the history of the US presides over a society where the number of people reading a daily newspaper has halved since 1965. In Berman's survey, 40 per cent Americans couldn't name the US's World War II enemies and 120 million Americans had the cognition of an 11-year old.

– Dumb Americana by Sagarika Ghose, 07 April 2003.

Freedom is Slavery

Two weeks ago, an obscure, unelected, Republican-appointed official in California decided the future of the world. That future – at least for the next several years – will be an accelerating nightmare of war, corruption, repression, atrocity and terror. That's because the loyal apparatchik has, with the stroke of a pen, guaranteed the perpetuation of the Bush faction in power in 2008 and beyond.

– Party Hacks: California Sinks Into the Bushist Sea by Chris Floyd, 03 March 2006.

War is Peace

How not to see callousness [...] in the spectacle of privileged old men calling for a "little sacrifice" from the comfort of their conservative perches? Whose sacrifice? Not theirs, that much we know. The Bushies would rather cut down veterans' benefits—$21 billion reduction over 10 years—than give up their cherished tax cuts. No, the lucky ones slated for sacrifice are the GIs bogged down in Iraq and the likes of Ali Abbas, the boy who lost his entire family and his two arms in a US bombing raid over Baghdad. This war will prove a calamity for everyone, except, of course, for little Ali, who will eternally bless his luck that President Bush liberated him from the tyranny of his parents, his siblings, and his limbs.

–Bush's Desolate Imperium by Bernard Chazelle, December 2003.

Economy

Bush lowered interest rates, cut taxes for the super rich, slashed social programmes and solved his nation's problems. Cataclysmic borrowing, soaring unemployment and homelessness, soup kitchens, bankruptcy, increased racial segregation and collapsing access to medical care and education are all signs of a healthy economy …

– More bums and deceit by AL Kennedy,11 February 2004.