Welcome to America in the era of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney!

I started creating the Astonisher.com Free (Thought) Banners in 2002, when it became clear that the alleged President and Vice President weren't just a political disaster for the United States, they were bad news for the entire planet.

Subsequently, as the disgraceful War in Iraq and America's financial collapse spotlighted Bush and Cheney's deep dishonesty and breathtaking incompetence, the banners continued to flow until the total approached 100.

In a way, though, the first Astonisher.com Free (Thought) Banner from December 2002 -- four months before the American invasion of Iraq -- said everything you needed to know about the Bush era in four words ("Stupid President -- Stupid War"), as did the corollary from after the invasion and the WMD fiasco ("Dishonest President -- Dishonest War").

Another Astonisher.com Free (Thought) Banner from 2003 ("This man died because George Bush lied," showing faces of American servicemen killed in Iraq) became a rallying cry of protesters during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

Two other Astonisher.com Free (Thought) Banners from 2003 and 2004 were among the first published attacks on god-like Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's low interest rate policy ("Alan Greenspan sez: "Punish savers to profit speculators," and "'I lower rates, therfore I am' -- Alan Greenspan, the one-idea man"). Greenspan and the Fed propped up the Bush administration through the early years of the Iraq War by creating an easy money boom that ultimately produced the sub-prime mortgage disaster.

And an Astonisher.com banner from late 2003 ("Coming soon! The Great George W. Bush Depression") was the first published prediction of the ultimate outcome of the Bush / Cheney administration's catastrophic plundering of the U.S. economy. This was nearly three years before the American sub-prime meltdown began the descent into the economic maelstrom.

Ironically, just about the only place where the Bushies could honestly proclaim "mission accomplished" was their intimidation of America's mainstream corporate press. Stated simply, the message Bush and Cheney sent with their hit jobs on Peter Arnett and Valerie Plame was: "if you tell the truth, we will destroy you."

In those heady days of conservative Republican "values politics," the vast majority of the United States was marginalized by America's right-wing, pro-torture, anti-everything-else Christian minority, who had aligned themselves with America's real corporate shadow rulers.

It seems incredible now that George W. Bush has personally fallen so low ("Worst President Ever"), but this Christian thuggery in support of big business worked like a charm, right through the smearing of John Kerry and Bush's reelection in 2004. In fact, it continued into late 2006 (see RA Featherston's 42 Months, at right).

If you weren't a self-righteous, self-deceiving Christian, though, the whole George W. Bush / Richard Cheney catastrophe was painfully obvious from the very beginning, as was the marvelously Biblical response to the problem ("Torture Bush & Cheney -- Then we'll get the truth!").

For your viewing convenience, we've organized the banners into three categories -- George W. Bush & Company and Things People Believe, plus our new section on The Current Predicament. Click the images below to view a larger, banner-size version. You can also right click any image and choose Save to capture the image to your system.

P.S. Don't forget to laugh -- it's only millions of people's lives, the world economy and quite possibly the ecosystem of the planet that have been damaged by this evil, religion-driven idiocy.

But hey, no worries, America. Let's go to the mall and fight over rationed rice at Costco like peasants in Afganistan! As an early Astonisher.com Free (Thought) Banner proclaimed in 2003, "Who needs peace and prosperity when we've got George W. Bush?"