PICTORIAL: "US has poured $9Billion into rebuilding Iraq"......

[Bluebear]

Meanwhile in the United States. . .


Delapidated highway in Ohio

Crumbling bridge, Lake Orion, Michigan

Railway in disrepair, Nevada

This is Dr. Mary Wirshup (yes, that IS how Bushbots spell worship but I digress.)
She volunteers at a Clinic for the Working Poor in Pennsylvania. These people work full time but have no health insurance
and nowhere to turn. Brightest blessings, Dr. Wirshup.

No, it's not a scene from "Airport '75" but the equipment is.
And it failed during heavy snow during busiest day of the year. Reno, Nevada

Lakeside Veterans Hospital, Illinois. Sorry! Closing due to funding.

Ceiling tiles crumbling in a school, Maine

Decaying schoolhouse on Lakota reservation, South Dakota

Abandoned downtown, Wichita Falls, Texas

The NEWEST mental hospital in Oregon

The same mental hospital's patient activity courtyard

A clogged, decaying dam, Ohio

American health care. Flu shot line in South Carolina

American school ceiling. The student named the picture "one more pic of our poorness".

Same school. "Our ghetto ceiling. Oh, wait, we don't have one."

Street scene, New York

The Orlando Jeb doesn't show you in tourist books. "Project Refuge" Homeless shelter was closed due to no funds.
Its one-woman staff poses in front of their donated stuff she is trying to give away.

Seniors pose in front of bus taking them to Canada to buy prescription drugs, Minnesota
.


.


.


.


.

Nice job, "W".

[Greeby]

1. Bloody hell

I've seen hovels better maintained than those shitheaps.

[Lars39]

2. Nominated.

Somehow I'm still hearing the war cheerleaders chanting,"we're #1!!!

[havocmom]

3. Gotta make tax cuts to the top 1% permanent

and make sure the top 4% estates get passed on to the next generation of spoiled users without any estate taxes! Can't go making the wealthy pay like workers do to try and hold the infastructure together! Why, that would be like communism! Those rich guys need every penny they can fuck us out of!:sarcasm:

[JDPriestly]

4. And, in Los Angeles,

the poor live crowded in tiny apartments for which they pay outrageous prices. There is no money for subsidizing and building sufficient housing for Americans, no money for healthcare for the working poor, no money for education for the poor. "Some people" call it Christian values.

[SmokingJacket]

5. Post of the month!!!! nt

[ananda]

6. except that in Bushrovian newspeak..

.. "rebuilding" means destroying, killing, harming, and exploiting.

Sue

[proud patriot]

7. The richest country on earth shouldn't have pictures like this

:grr:

[Cobalt Violet]

8. That's just the start of the America the repugs have in mind.

It will only get worse.

[Mugsy]

9. My first reaction: *9* Billion? Didn't we appropriate 30-50???

$200 Billion and growing.

But where is it all going? Soldiers were complaing of poor equipment, rumaging through junkyards to uparmor their vehicles (something "supposedly" since improved), inadequate amounts of amunition, troops being served "recovered" food full of shapnel and past its due date, water treatment facilities and electric power plants still in disrepair...

WHERE THE #@$*! HAS ALL THE MONEY GONE TO???

No, wait, don't answer that. I already know. :(

[Bluebear]

10. Gimme an H. Gimme an A. Gimme an L. Gimme another L.....

[kenny blankenship]

35. Much of the appropriated money (for rebuilding)

is earmarked for something or other, a contractor gets an initial payment, then refuses to carry out the work citing the poor security conditions. Meanwhile the money for destroying Iraq is still being spent with a free hand.

[MisterP]

48. $30 for green paint for the schools we dropped bombs on,

$50B slush fund to illegally prepare to invade Iran, $50B for sub-quality equipment, $1B to pay off media not firmly in pocket, and $98,999,999,970 for the perpetrators.

[NeoConsSuck]

11. Another crumbling bridge in Albany, New York

[Rex]

12. The national infrastructure is falling apart.

With every cut made by the BFEE, corners get cut and neglect becomes SOP for lack of funds. Wait until it becomes an epidemic in the big cities. Boosh looks like a cowboy pimp. I can see him telling that cop, "get my ride here fast you fat pig!"

[phusion]

13. Excellent post!

Fucking excellent. Thank you!

[wli]

14. you missed the mass grave behind Dammasch

That particular "mental hospital" was killing its patients with quack therapies and other things and burying them in its backyard.

They got taken down when a moderately wealthy lawyer whose wife had some minor depression or similar was convinced to let her go inpatient there. I forget if she emerged in a vegetative state from electroshock/etc. or she was dead and they were unable to release her after he obtained a court order for them to do so, but in any event, she apparently had a child (they couldn't get an abortion?) and the entire place was taken down. The ensuing investigation uncovered a mass grave behind the site.

Even this was a coverup. They had the documents on their long history, extending into very recent times (no one knows how recent, since they were destroyed) of indiscriminate surgical castrations shredded in a preemptive move to defend against the lawsuit (which was filed) of the castration survivors against the state of Oregon. It's also believed that the number of deaths and/or dead bodies reported is underreported.

This is far from the only such instance. A quick googling for surgical castration survivors turned up another such lawsuit foiled by document shredding against IIRC Virginia, which officially continued its castration activities until 1979, with a considerable amount of vagueness. Other oblique websearches are required to turn up these affairs.

Any questions on the US' human rights record? Or do you need a tutorial on what's going on in the US' prisons?

[sintax]

15. kick

[geckosfeet]

16. errrrrr,,,,, rebuilding? The US has destroyed Iraq. Our money has

gone into the hands of coprorate entities.

[Eric J in MN]

17. A lot more than $9 billion of our money went to supposed reconstruction.

$9 billion is just the amount one GAO report said couldn't be accounted for.

[soup]

18. Near the White House

Near the White House: an unidentified homeless man sleeps in the subway stop near the White House as the falling temperatures of winter set in
http://www.w3ar.com/a.php?k=1806


http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1212.shtml

In Washington DC, as a whole:

* More than 15,000 people will be homeless over the course of a year
* Half of those homeless will be women and children
* Up to 9,000 people will be homeless on any given day
* 40% of all children in DC live below the poverty line
* 300 families are on the waiting list for emergency shelter (six month average wait for shelter)
* 11,000 households are waiting for public housing (and face an average wait of 3 years)

In Downtown:

* 90% of the homeless people spend the night on the street
* 46% live with mental illness
* 29% struggle with substance abuse
* 10% are dually diagnosed with both mental illness and substance abuse

According to HUD guidelines (30% of income should be spent on housing), a minimum wage worker in Washington, DC, would have to work an average of 100 hours per week in order to afford a market-rate two bedroom apartment.
http://www.downtowndc.org/gc_site.asp?id=Homeless_Services

[Bluebear]

20. The bottom photo is pricelessly illustrative, and damning.

Thank you for your post.

[Bluebear]

23. and for my morning friends.

[soup]

32. and thank you for the thread.

When I saw the first picture you posted (the car navigating the potholes), it reminded me of **'s repetitious joke to mayors about fixing potholes.

So, I set off to document how many times it was repeated.... Spend almost an hour, get up to about 14, and come across the 'repeat offender' list already compiled at http://www.dubyaspeak.com/repeatoffender.phtml?offense=potholes">DubyaSpeak.com:

#1. I can't forget to say hello to my Mayor, the Mayor of Washington, D.C., Mayor Williams. I tell you, he is a -- one of my first lunches was with the Mayor, and I'm impressed. And I know the mayors who know him are impressed, as well. So, Mayor, thank you. There's a couple of potholes out back that I'd like to talk to you about. (Apr. 5, 2001)

through

#66. The Mayor is here from the city of West Point, Andy Conklin. I want to thank you, Mr. Mayor, for joining us. I like to tell mayors -- they never ask for my advice, I give it anyway when I see them -- and that is fill the potholes. (May 16, 2005)

He's just such a cut-up isn't he? Funny funny George. (ha ha ha ha) (laughter)

---

Lebanon, Ohio Mayor, Amy Brewer's response was a little snippy - Love it, love it, love it:

"(Mayor Amy Brewer) didn't ask for any advice, but I'm going to give her some: Fix the potholes, Mayor," Bush said.

From where she was standing, Brewer missed parts of the speech and didn't hear about Bush's remark until later.

"If at any time, when the city takes a look at paving streets and fixing potholes and we need funding support," she said, "I'm going to tell the community, 'Remember what President Bush said.' "
Lebanon Ohio May 2004
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/05/05/loc_bushnotebook05.html

[Warren DeMontague]

19. I'm not sure if having Military contractors hauling $$ out of THIS country

in duffel bags, as they have done with that "plum varnished" Iraqi reconstruction money, would help any of those situations you pictured.

But, yes, it's a travesty on many different levels.

[rman]

21. $9 Billion, most of which ended up in the pockets

of Bush's corporate buddies.
Exactly the same thing that happens with developing nations that accept economic 'help' from WTO, World bank etc, in the form of various *FTA's.

[Mojorabbit]

22. OMG

I lived outside of Wichita falls as a kid! What a shame.

[Zodiak]

38. Wichita Falls died in the late 80's....

The neocons took over Wichita Falls through the established rich families in town and the Baptist Church....and then the corruption and the graft were ramped up a thousand-fold compared to the good ole boy network that ran the town before. It is a story much like any other in North Texas.

[anarchy1999]

24. Excellent pictorial Bue Bear! Thanks.

Just makes you want to cry.

BY THE WAY, HAPPY AUGUST 1st and HAPPY MONDAY EVERYONE!

Have a cup of "joe" and off to work we go!

[SmokingJacket]

25. Kick nt

[GreenPartyVoter]

26. We have 2 Americas, W can't keep denying that.

[newportdadde]

27. None of those places have oil.

[SammyWinstonJack]

30. None of those pictures are anything that the repukes care

about, obviously.

[JHB]

28. Isn't $9B just the part that's gone missing?

And frankly, I'd like to see ANY pics of "my tax dollars at work" in Iraq just about anyplace outside the Green Zone.

[SammyWinstonJack]

29. Ain't America great?

How many of the "Haves and Have Mores" bought their second or third vacation home or whatever else they spent their not needed tax cut on, while the poor get poorer and America's infrastructure and schools fall apart?

[meganmonkey]

31. Excellent post, Bluebear.

Very good compilation.

:kick:

[Stephanie]

33. That NY homeless person is either in Soho or Tribeca

Judging from the background, that's Soho or Tribeca, home of the wealthiest, hippest New Yorkers. George may have sent our money to Iraq, but he also redistributed wealth to the rich and left the poor out in the cold. Nowhere would you see the contrast more starkly that with the homeless camped out near the four star restaurants of lower Manhattan. Bouley, Nobu, Chanterelle - dinner for two would equal about a month's rent for that poor cardboard box dweller.

[Straight Shooter]

34. It needs pics of tombstones of kids who died from lack of healthcare.

I'm sure they're out there.

Good work, Bluebear. An amazing photo essay all around. Really depressing, though. It's obvious that we don't matter.

Nominated.

[Deja Q]

36. America first, baby. Bring down America first.

[LibraLiz1973]

37. Excellent excellent excellent

THANK YOU for that post

[4_TN_TITANS]

39. The pics say it all....

our country is falling apart. Excellent post.

[Az_lefty]

40. F*cking Neo-Cons...

I don't have the words to describe how much I hate those greedy, immoral bastards!
:grr:

[dmr]

41. Pictorial Essay of a Decaying America

and there is no reason for any of it.

Thank you bluebear for putting together this essay.

What's the old saying a picture is worth a thousand words?

These pics sure speaks volumes, don't they?

Edit: spelling

[w8liftinglady]

42. Excellent post! nt

[hiley]

43. Excellent post

thank you .
Hiley

[Capn Sunshine]

44. Best Post in days-weeks-months

Nice job. Can I post this elsewhere on the net ?

[Bluebear]

47. Please feel free! nt

[Imagevision]

45. This President has sold his own country out - 06 make sure your

votes count! - get back the House & Senaye - it's the only way people.

[Duncan Grant]

46. Kick

Among your finest posts Bluebear! Beautifully done. :thumbsup: :kick: