“Giving lots of money to the public schools makes you money!”

“Giving lots of money to the public schools makes you money!”
When our pathetic schools send a generation of idiots and illiterates out into work-a-day world, how in God's name do you expect to make any money? Right now, your office is full of people who cannot spell, who cannot do long division, who do not know how to ship a box to Bolivia because they haven't a friggin' clue what a Bolivia is.
Wonderin why your wallet is gone and the punk in front of you is ready to shoot you? Try these statistics on for size: 40 percent of the U.S. Prison population is functionally illiterate. Gee, how'd they get that way ? From 1980 to 2000,states expenditures on education went up 32 percent. In that same period of time, states' spending on prison went up to 189 percent. Now that's smart thinking! And while the're in prison, are they making you money? No! The state is actually taking license plate work away from your coffers- You want those workers free so they can come to work in your prison!
Seventy-five percent of welfare recipients are illiterate. Don't you think things might be a little different if they could read and write? I don't mean different for them, I mean different for YOU- That's a lot of welfare mothers who could be slaving away for you and making you money if they weren't stuck in the prison of their illiteracy. Educate them well and you will reap the rewards.
It totally buggles my mind that conservatives haven't demanded , purely out of self-interest, that our schools prepare young people to contribute and even excel in the workplace. Workers are supposed to bring you great ideas and make you filthy rich- Instead they're sitting out there in their cubicles trying to figure out how to download the latest Weezer album. That's the result of all these years of chanting “leave no child behind” and demanding that your state keep testing kids with mandated exams. Teachers have stopped teaching anything useful and now teach for the test. Here's what it got you. A lot of kids who know how to beat a test but not much else. I've got a kid in my office right now who thought the U.K. Was Russia, had never heard the name “George McGovern,” and figured a legal pad was where you store legal court documents. And he's the smartest one in here! HELP!!!
From the book 'Dude,Where's My Country' by Michael Moore

You are never going to be rich

Listen friends, you have to face the truth: . The chance of that happening is about one in a million- Not only are you never going to be rich, but you are going to have to live the rest of your life busting your butt to pay cable bill and the music and art classes for your kid at the public school where they used to be free.
And it is only going to get worse. Whatever benefits you may have known are going to get whittled down to nothing- Forget about a pension, forget about Social Security, forget about your kids taking care of you when you get old because they are barely going to have the money to take care of themselves. And don't even think about taking a vacation, because odds are your job won't be there when you get back. You are expendable, you have no rights, and by the way, “whats a union?”
I know, many of you don't think it's that bleak. Sure. Times may be tough, but you think you'll survive. You'll be that one person who somehow escapes the madness- You are not going to give up the dream of some day having your slice of the pis. In fact some of you believe the whole pie might some day be yours.
I have some news for you: You are not even going to get to lick the plate. The system is rigged in favor of the few, and your name is not among them, not now and not ever. It's rigged so well that it dupes many otherwise decent, sensible, hard-working people into believing that it works for them, too- It holds the carrot so close to their faces that they can smell it. And by promising that one day they will be able to eat the carrot, the system drafts an army of consumers and taxpayers who gladly, passionately, fight for the rights of the rich, whether it means giving them billions in tax breaks while send their own children into dilapidated schools, or whether it means sending those children off to die in wars to protect the rich man's oil. Yes, that's right: The workers/consumers will even sacrifice the lives of their own flesh and blood if it means keeping the rich fat and happy because the rich have promised they can join them at the table.
But that day never comes, and by the time the working stiff has this figured out, he's in an old age home spewing a lot of bitter mumbo jumbo about authority and taking it out on the aide who is trying to empty his sorry bedpan.
From the book 'Dude,Where's My Country' by Michael Moore

Osama by his rightful title multi-millionaire

I've always thought it was interesting that the mass murder of September 11 was allegedly committed by a multi-millionaire. We always say it was committed by a “terrorist” or by an “Islamic fundamentalist” or an “Arab”, but we never define Osama by his rightful title: multi-millionaire? Why have we never read a headline saying, “3,000 Killed by Multi-Millionaire”? It would be a correct headline , would it not ? No part of it is untrue _ Osama bin Laden has assets totaling at least $ 30 millions; he is a multimillionaire. So why didn't that become the reason for profiling potentials terrorists? Instead of rounding suspicious Arabs, why don't we say, “Oh my God, a multimillionaire killed 3,000 people! Round up the multimillionaires! Throw them all in jail! No charges! No trials! Deport the millionaires!!”
We need protection from our own multi-millionaires, corporate terrorists, the ones who rip off our old-age pensions, destroy the environment, deplete irreplaceable fossil fuels in the name of profit, deny us our right to universal health care, take people's jobs away whenever the mood hits them. What do you call a 19 percent increase in the homeless and the hungry from 2001 to 2002? Are these not acts of terrorism? Do they not cost lives? It is not all part of a calculated plan to inflict pain on the poor and the working poor, just so that a few rich men can get even richer?
We have our “terrorists” to deal with, and we need out entire focus returned to them so that we can one day live in a country where the people once again pick the president, a country where the wealthy learn that they have to pay for their actions. A free country, a safe country, a peaceful country that genuinely shares its riches with the less fortunate around the world, a country that believes in everyone getting a fair shake, and where fear is seen as the only thing we truly need to fear.
From the book 'Dude,Where's My Country' by Michael Moore

Torture

“The first jolt was so bad I just wanted to die”
Gloria Esperanza Reyes, speaking of her torture in Honduras, where electric wires were attached to her breasts and vagina
“They always asked to be killed. Torture is worse than death.”
José Barrera, Hoduran torturer
Turkey, July 14, 1999, the police break into the home of a Kurdish family and announce they want to take the two daughters -Medine 14, and her younger sister Devran – i for questioning. “I headed for the bedroom to get dressed,” said Devran later, “but Medine...went straight to the window and jumped.”
Medine's mother explained : “My daughter, you see, preferred death to being tortured once again.”
“Torture might last a short time, but the person will never be the same”
Amnesty International report
“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.”
The convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman o Degrading Treatment or Punishement, Article 2, S
From the book “Rogue State” by William Blum

Under a system codenamed ECHELON

Under a system codenamed ECHELON – launched in the 1970s to spy on Soviet satellite communicating – the NSA and its (very) junior partners in Britain, New Zealand, and Canada operate a network of massive, highly automated interception stations, covering the globe amongst them. In multiple ways, each of the countries involved is breaking its own laws, those of other countries, and international law - the absence of court – issued warrants permitting surveillance of named individuals is but one example. But who is to stop them?
In 1999, the House Intelligence Committee of the US Congress sought internal NSA documents about its compliance with the law that prohibits it from deliberately eavesdropping on Americans, either in the United States or overseas, unless the Agency can establish probable cause to believe that they are agents of a foreign government committing espionage or other crimes: NSA stonewalled the committee.
Apart from specifically targeted individuals and institutions, the ECHELON system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and using computers to identify and extract messages of interest from the mass of unwanted ones. Every intercepted message – all the embassy cables, the business deals, the sex talks, the birthday greetings – is searched for keywords, which could be anything the searchers think might be of interest. Computers can “listen” to telephone calls and recognize when keywords are spoken. Those calls are extracted and recorded separately, to be listened to in full by humans. The list of specific targets at any given time is undoubtedly wide – ranging, at one point including the likes of Amnesty International and Christian Aid.
From the book 'Rogue State' by William Blum

We now have the precedent of secret detention that might make banana republics envious

That's not all. We now have the precedent of secret detention that might make banana republics envious. Some 5.000 young men, mostly students, have been “interviewed” by the FBI for no other reason than they may not be citizens or they are of Middle Eastern origin. Another 1.200 people were detained, and held indefinitely and secretly, most for no reason other than minor immigration violations that would have been ignored in the past. Of the immigration violations that would have been ignored in the past. Of the immigration and Naturalization Service detainees , 11 percent were imprisioned more than six months before being released or deported. About half were imprisoned for more than three months.
In a highly critical report, the Justice Department's own inspector general found that while imprisioned at the federal detention in Brooklyn, detainees feced “a pattern of physical and verbal abuse” as well as “unduly harsh” detention policies, including 23-hours-per-day lockdown, 24-hours-per-day cell lighting, a communications blackout, and excessive handcuffing, leg irons and heavy chains. The report also criticized the FBI for making “little attempt to distinguish” between immigrants who had possible ties to terrorism and the vast majority who did not, including many swept up by chance.
It is un-American to incarcerate a large group of people when there is no credible reason to think they are dangerous.
Even worse, some detainees, have been subjected to secret deportation proceedings. Soon after the September 11 attacks, immigration courts from coast to coast began conducting scores of hearing in secret, with cout officials, forbidden even to confirm that the cases existed.
From the book 'Dude,Where's My Country' by Michael Moore

The Bin Laden family has also gotten on the Carlyle gravy train in 1994.

Until 1994, you headed a company called CaterAir, which was owned by the Carlyle Group- The same year you left the soon-to-be-bankrupt CaterAir, you become governor and quickly oversaw the University of Texas – a state institution – make an investment of $10 million in the Carlyle Group. The Bin Laden family has also gotten on the Carlyle gravy train in 1994.
The Carlyle Group is one of the nation's largest defense contractors, among their many other lines of work. They don't actually build weapons themselves. Rather, they buy failing defense companies, turn them around by making them profitable, and then sell them for huge sums of money.
The people who run the Carlyle Group are a Who's Who of past movers and shakers, everyone from Ronald Reagan's defense secretary, Frank Carlucci, to your dad's secretary of state, James Baker, to former British Prime Minister John Major. Carlucci, the head of Carlyle, also happens to sit on the board of directors of the Middle East Policy Council along with a representative of the bin Laden family business.
After September 11, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal both ran stories pointing out this strange coincidence.
Your first response, Mr Bush, was to ignore it, hoping , I guess that the story would just go away. Your father and his buddies at Carlyle did not renounce the bin Laden investment. Your army of pundits went into spin control. They said , we can't paint these bin Ladens with the same brush we use for Osama! They have nothing to do with him! They hate and despise what he had done! These are the good bin Ladens.
And then the video footage came out. It showed a number of those “good” bin Ladens – including osama's mother, a sister and two brothers – with Osama at his son's wedding party just six and a half months before September 11. It has been reported in The New Yorker that not only has the family not cut ties to Osama, but they have continued to fund him as they have been doing for years. It was not secret to the CIA that Osama bin Laden had access to his family fortune (his share is estimated to be at least $30 million), and the bin Ladens, as well as other Saudis, kept Osama and his group. Al Qaeda, well funded.
Mr. Bush, weeks went by after the attacks on New York and the pentagon, yet your father and his friends at the Carlyle Group refused to buckle in their suport for the bin Laden empire.
Finally, near two months after the attacks, with more and more people questioning the propierty of the Bush family being in bed with the bin Ladens, your father and the Carlyle Group were pressured into giving the bin Ladens their millions back and asked them to leave the company as investors.
Why did it take so long?
Tomake matters worse, it turned out that one of bin Laden's brothers – Shafiq – was actually at a Carlyle Group businee conference in Washington, D.C., the morning of September 11. The day before, at the same conference, your father and Shafiq had been chatting it up with all the other ex-goverment Carlyle bigwigs.
Mr Bush, what is going on here?
You've gotten a free ride from the media, though they know everything I have just written to be the truth ( and, in Fact, I have taken it from the very same mainstream new sources they work for). They seem unwilling, or afraid to ask you a simple question: WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?
In case you don't understand just how bizarre the media's silence is regarding the Bush-bin laden connections, let me draw an analogy to how the press or Congress may have handled something like this if the same shoe had been on the Clinton foot.
From the book 'Dude,Where's My Country' by Michael Moore