Once again, the Democrats have failed me. I have had type1 diabetes for twenty years. I am terrified. I don't know how I can survive without stuff like the Americans with Disabilities Act, equal opportunity employment, and the forty hour work week. Game over. I am screwed. The Bush administration has done nothing but terrify me since they stole the 2000 election.

Mr. David Corn,

Of course Alito will be confirmed.

The character of America is dead. Love live the neo-American neo-fascists (with the consent of the Democrats)

Thanks for all of your work and the open forum.

Kirk

So when did the United States stop being a republic where the representatives of the citizenry are (technically) in charge and able to oversee the actions of the federal government? Sometime, it seems, after George W. Bush became president. David Corn

The National Security Act, Corporations, and the Media August 01, 2005
By: Sheldon Drobny
Common Dreams

The National Security Act (NSA) created the CIA and other covert agencies in the executive branch. It was passed in 1947 and signed by Harry Truman. Allegedly the act was a post World War Two measure to counter the expansion of the Soviet Union. That was the governments official public announcement about the reasons for the Act and the media was in lock step in its reporting of this reason. However, Gore Vidal and many other astute writers and historians know that the official reason for the Act had nothing to do with its genesis. Let me explain. Many historians know that the United States was unmatched in military and economic power in 1947. The Soviet Union had been virtually destroyed in the War and that country had lost approximately 25 million of its people. The Yalta Conference was supposed to settle the issue of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. Russia had been attacked 3 times in the 20th century through what is called the Polish Corridor and wanted security from further attack. So the military victories by the Soviet Union at the end of the War created the political reality of Eastern Europe. The United States only had a problem with oppressive Soviet style dictatorships, but did not have a problem with fascist regimes all over the world before and after the War. The NSA was the linchpin upon which the government operations went underground and was the birth pang to the military industrial complex that Eisenhower spoke about. What most people are not aware is that all of this was about corporate dominance and big business. More.

**********************

Certainly things have been aggravated in the past 50+ years, but...

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.

The dems NEVER let me down, because this is exactly what I expect of them. I'm sorry to say "I told you so" corky, but we can't rely on anyone from either side of the isle to bail us out of this train wreck. I jsut read this article,

Top Senate Democrat Supports Outsourcing
By S. SRINIVASAN
AP

BANGALORE, India (Jan. 13) - U.S. Senator Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, said Friday he supports outsourcing white-collar jobs to low-wage countries such as India - a position at odds with his party's traditional stance on the issue.

Baucus insisted a majority of fellow Senate Democrats agreed with him, despite the party's longtime opposition to American companies moving jobs overseas.

"Everybody is concerned about job losses and so am I," he told The Associated Press in an interview in Bangalore, his first stop on an five-day tour of India with U.S. business leaders.

"But the world is flat and we must work harder to better retrain our people," rather than resist outsourcing, he said. "Offshoring is a fact of globalization. Opportunities for U.S. companies come from everywhere - including India."
--------
Classic dem doubletalk. Express concern for job losses, then support outsourcing. Maybe he thinks our kids, after pouring many thousands of dollars into college, should then head on over to India and work for $30 a month, what a GREAT plan! With asshole frinds like that, who needs enemies??

Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 13 January 2006

The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.

The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.

[...]

What had long been understood to be protocol in the event that the NSA spied on average Americans was that the agency would black out the identities of those individuals or immediately destroy the information.

But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law.

James Risen, author of the book State of War and credited with first breaking the story about the NSA's domestic surveillance operations, said President Bush personally authorized a change in the agency's long-standing policies shortly after he was sworn in in 2001.

"The president personally and directly authorized new operations, like the NSA's domestic surveillance program, that almost certainly would never have been approved under normal circumstances and that raised serious legal or political questions," Risen wrote in the book. "Because of the fevered climate created throughout the government by the president and his senior advisers, Bush sent signals of what he wanted done, without explicit presidential orders" and "the most ambitious got the message."

More.

******************

O.K. so they were listening prior to 9/11, which goes to either dispute the efficacy of listening in the first place or argues for involvment or complicity in the event.

sorry about the typos, caffeine hasn't kicked in yet!

Robert, since they are spying on Quaker peace groups it's pretty obvious that terrorists are not the target, unless peace groups are now considered "enemy combatants." I wonder if the people will ever figure out what they're up to? Maybe they don't want to figure it out, I guess it sucks to have your whole fantasy world collapse around you.

Just another example of how MANY are screwed...

Backdoor Draft, Back Again -- In These Times

"When I signed my contract, the impression was that the IRR was rarely used, only in a national emergency," says Jason. "I didn't think it would be used as a manpower tool to support an occupation."

Hey Saladin,

Of course the Quakers are "enemy combatants" - the NEA are "terrorists" according to Rod Paige...

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." ~ Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

Saladin, it doesn't do any good to say "I told you so." I can't speak for Corky, but I know (personally) dozens and dozens of people who worked their hearts out to try to get our country back on track (including a few elected officials I know). The Democratic Party HAS done things to help people like Corky and it has every right to feel let down, without someone telling him, "I told you so."

That is counter-productive and, frankly, MEAN, IMO. Some of us had held out a little hope -- that is a GOOD THING. Whether you think so or not! You don't know everything! You act like you've got it all figured out and the rest of us are idiots.

...sorry...he

caffeine, not necessary...I'm just pissed.

Fuck off, Saladin. You effin' know it all.

micki, my intent isn't to be mean. You have missed the back and forth between corky and I many months ago, so I don't expect you to understand what I'm talking about. I am well aware of the hard work that has been done by many people on this countries behalf, I am also aware that there are a few politicians left, on both sides, that seem to care, but they are badly outnumbered. I have never claimed to "have it all figured out," and the last thing I would ever think is that anyone here, besides bushbots, are idiots. You are projecting intent that isn't there. I'm not looking to be counter-productive, the very opposite is true. This country is going down the drain, and one of the primary reasons is because of misplaced faith in politicians that have proven over and over again that our welfare is not the priority. And the sooner people wake up to that fact, the better chance we will have of averting the oncoming disaster. It is impossible to make sound decisions based on endless lies and deceit, which is what we have been given to work with, and I, for one, am fed up with it. It's not as if I haven't provided hundreds of links with information to back up what I have been trying to say. I love this country and hope for it to be restored to what it once was. But I have known for a long time that we need serious change, from top to bottom. The status quo is unacceptable to me. My post at #147 on the previous thread makes clear how I feel. We have to come together, before it's too late. I'm not the bad guy here micki.

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope." ~ Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

The other day, a radio talk show had a brief topic "what to name the new era we are in". The speaker was hoping for something positive...but could not find a word that summarized this era in a positive light.

Can we try for a accurate word? What about

"PREVARIFICATION"

With an Alito confirmatioon, that would sum up the era we have entered. The Age Of Prevarification.

We are in it now...no turning back.

Courage friends. Courage, we need daily affirmations that we seek goodness and truth in all things, each day. That is all we can do, regardless if whether it is enough.

Peace,
th

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men." ~ Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968), Strength to Love, 1963

carolines comment is something the trolls will just use against all of us. Way to go. I guess my desire to see bushco go down inflames isn't good enough for some people here, I just don't tow the proper line. And I never will.

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." ~ Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

I couldn't care less what the trolls say about "us" -- I'm not one of "you."

Saladin, you have bashed ALL Dems and Repugs over the months -- they are all alike, yada yada yada -- and then you back-off when challenged and say, "well, a few are okay."

But, I am not going down that path with you.

Come together? You want to throw out the whole government, lock stock and barrel. That is not realistic. If you think Libertarians are our saviors, I've got news for you, hon.

WHOOOA...

I dont think Saladin intends to be mean. I think she is pretty much right about the Democrats these days. I just don't know if they are being simply incompetent or complicit. Thanks to the Democrats, who I have often loyally voted for, my future is pretty bleak.

Great qoutes capt.!

Bush could seize absolute control of U.S. government

President George W. Bush has signed executive orders giving him sole authority to impose martial law, suspend habeas corpus and ignore the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits deployment of U.S. troops on American streets. This would give him absolute dictatorial power over the government with no checks and balances.

Bush discussed imposing martial law on American streets in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by activating "national security initiatives" put in place by Ronald Reagan during the 1980s.

These "national security initiatives," hatched in 1982 by controversial Marine Colonel Oliver North, later one of the key players in the Iran-Contra Scandal, charged the Federal Emergency Management Agency with administering executive orders that allowed suspension of the Constitution, implementation of martial law, establishment of internment camps, and the turning the government over to the President.

John Brinkerhoff, deputy director of FEMA, developed the martial law implementation plan, following a template originally developed by former FEMA director Louis Guiffrida to battle a "national uprising of black militants." Gifuffrida’s implementation of martial law called for jailing at least 21 million African Americans in "relocation camps." Brinkerhoff later admitted in an interview with the Miami Herald that President Reagan signed off on the initiatives and they remained in place, dormant, until George W. Bush took office.

Brinkerhoff moved on the Anser Institute for Homeland Security and, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, provided the Bush White House and the Pentagon with talking points supporting revised "national security initiatives" that would could allow imposition of martial law and suspension of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1978, the law that is supposed to forbid use of troops for domestic law enforcement.

Brinkerhoff wrote that intentions of Posse Comitatus are "misunderstood and misapplied" and that the U.S. has in times of national emergency the "full and absolute authority" to send troops into American streets to "enforce order and maintain the peace."

Bush used parts of the plan to send troops into the streets of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In addition, FEMA hired former special forces personnel from the mercenary firm Blackwater USA to "enforce security."

Blackwater USA, in its promotional materials, describes itself as "the most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world," adding that "we have established a global presence and provide training and operational solutions for the 21st century in support of security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere."

Blackwater is also a major U.S. contractor in Iraq and has a contract with the Bush White House to provide additional security work "on an as-needed basis."

The Department of Homeland Security established the "Northern Command for National Defense," a wide-ranging program that includes FEMA, the Pentagon, the FBI and the National Security Agency. Executive orders already signed by Bush allow the Northern Command to send troops into American streets, seize control of radio and television stations and networks and impose martial law "in times of national emergency."

The authority to declare what is or is not a national emergency rests entirely with Bush who does not have to either consult or seek the approval of Congress for permission to assume absolute control over the government of the United States.

The White House press office would neither confirm nor deny existence of Bush’s executive orders or the existence of the Northern Command for National Defense. Neither would the Department of Homeland Security.

But my sources within the White House and DHS tell me the plans are in place, ready for implementation when the command comes from the man who keeps telling the American public that he is a "war time president" who will "do anything in my power" to impose his will on the people of the United States.

And he has made sure that power will be absolute when he chooses to use it.

and the abyss widens. corky, if I have hurt your feelings I'm sorry. I hope you know me well enough to realize that wasn't my intent. I hope what I sent to you was received, so you will know that I do have hope, otherwise I would leave this country behind and never look back.

"A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

All of the "us" and "them" stuff is a creation of evil men like Karl Rove. The only divisions that should concern us now are GOOD and EVIL. Once the people figure that out we will be okay. I believe that Karl has convinced a great many people that his side is the "good" side. Like smoke on the water in the morning, his lies will be burned away by the warmth of a rising sun of truth.

Again I must say I come for my daily laugh. But after reading what Saladin had to say on post #15, I agree with him. Even though I come here to pock fun and laugh at the liberals, I am by no means happy with this current crop of Republicans. I would support real 3rd party only if would diplace both current party's. But won't support a third party if it is just going to get the Liberals back in power.
Couple of questions for the Liberal folks here. What are you going to say when the WMD are found in Iraq? How are you going to act? What are you going to say when the real facts are revealed and Saddam and Osama were in it together? Just wondering

Saladin,

No harm done my friend.

"The only divisions that should concern us now are GOOD and EVIL."

Amen - brother!

capt

micki, that is NOT true! What path are you talking about? I have always acknowledged the presence of some good guys, I have posted many links written by the real patriots that are not afraid to call a spade a spade. I have never said Libertarians are the knights in shining armor, just that they could provide a viable third party, which we desperately need. I have read many comments on this forum advocating throwing out the govt. and starting over, yet when I say it, even jokingly, you go off the deep end. You are welcome to your traitorous dem party, I want no part of it. If someone ever comes along with the balls to drag the truth out into the light, I will support that person, but I'm still waiting. Unfortunately, Cynthia McKinney has already been stabbed in the back by her own, she is one of the few brave souls in DC. And since Wellstone, who was my last hope, has been murdered, the wait may be a long one.

WMDs in Iraq?

I am still waiting for somebody to find Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, wireman.

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Padilla filled out an application to join the al qaeda organization? and it was whipped out at his trial and used as evidence against him? ha I wonder what his references were? list your last five places of employment beginning with the most recent: uh...shoe bomber...stewardess...uh...
I wonder if he worked at the magic box cutter factory? reason for leaving this place of employment? uh...the boss had it in for me, ya that's it...

Just a couple hypotheical questions Corky, but that was funny.

"Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are some great democrats and even a couple of good republicans out there. They just do not get any press. This may be a crazy sounding idea, but I think our greatest hope to stop this madness might be Christians. Not Pat Robertson Christians(the ones who are radical fundies like Osama) but REAL Christians who actually look at the ENTIRE Bible, not just one or two vague passages about sodomy. That is why the Neocons have siezed the church. That is why the government wastes so much time and energy on watching the Quakers.

wireman, I am a she. Your fantastical WMD's will never be found because they were never there in the first place. Osama and saddam hated each other, and neither one had anything to do with 9/11. Have you ever heard of the petro dollar? How about the coming Iranian oil Bourse to be traded in euros? Did you know it will start up in March, the same time they are talking about an attack on the nuclear power plant there? Pull your head out and do some research. The terrorists are in DC. If you won't do the research, you have no room for debate. Rhetoric and dogma do not facts make.
Thank you corky. There are a few people here who have always felt annoyed with me, but that's OK. You guys more than make up for that!

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

When Hitler was taking over Germany he tried to buddy up with the church. Then when the German people handed him absolute power (he said he needed it to protect the "homeland from terrorists) he replaced all of the Bibles in the church with copies of Mien Kampf and replaced the crucifixes with swastikas.

I still don't know what the Democrats were thinking.

the daily show's Jon Stewart wondered if the posturing by the democrat senators was just "theatre for their constituents"

#24 I don't think that shrub could seize control of crawford texas if he wanted to. Take a look at Iraq, not very successful there, do you seriously think that the american public will stand for martial law in the US? Even if he wanted to declare it he just flat out doesn't have the manpower. He is a legend in his own mind. This guy lives in a bubble and is enthralled by all the people surrounding him telling him he da man. BS, the reality of whatever they think they can pull off is much different than his brain fart style of governance. Let's see them put another hundred thousand "enforcers" or "storm troopers" on the street. Hell they can't even put a hundred thousand additional cops on the street, no additional border patrol, so just where are they going to get the troops to lock down the US? Not a chance in this lifetime. What we do face is a gradual decline in standard of living for most if not all of the citizens and a waking up that government can't and won't do a damn thing to lend a hand. Fantasy lives in DC and actually thinks it makes a difference. Screw em.

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Protesters Under Patriot Act

By Patriot Daily
News Clearinghouse
1-13-6

George Bush wants to create the new criminal of "disruptor" who can be jailed for the crime of "disruptive behavior." A "little-noticed provision" in the latest version of the Patriot Act will empower Secret Service to charge protesters with a new crime of "disrupting major events including political conventions and the Olympics."

The Secret Service would also be empowered to charge persons with "breaching security" and to charge for "entering a restricted area" which is "where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting." In short, be sure to stay in those wired, fenced containments or free speech zones.

Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse's diary:

Who is the "disruptor"? Bush Team history tells us the disruptor is an American citizen with the audacity to attend Bush events wearing a T-shirt that criticizes Bush; or a member of civil rights, environmental, anti-war or counter-recruiting groups who protest Bush policies; or a person who invades Bush's bubble by criticizing his policies. A disruptor is also a person who interferes in someone else's activity, such as interrupting Bush when he is speaking at a press conference or during an interview.
----------
I'm curious, is there ANY line at all the bushbots have drawn in regards to this unconstitutional behavior? Is it "all good" as long as it is enforced by bushco?

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" is a good read and the parallels to the Bush regime are incontrivertable and chilling.

To deal with people who had chronic health conditions, doctors in the Third Riech would have the "patient" wait in room that was then filled with cyanide gas.

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I hate being unemployed.

A thought:

Do you think Bush let the situation in New Orleans get so out of hand in the hopes that the people would go nuts and then he could institute his martial law policy? Unfortunately for him those people were remarkably well behaved.

corky, I think the story you told about the lady at your old job was very sad. What you did was honorable. You will find something, and I hope that jerk gets what he deserves!

I gotta go eat. Take it easy my friends. And remember what MLK said. When the trolls come in here, shower them with love and positive energy. The hate and labels are for Bill O Rielly, Karl Rove and Lucifer.

Iraq, the mother of all budget busters

"If Bush had come to the American people with a request to spend several hundred billion dollars and several thousand American lives in order to bring democracy to Iraq, he would have been laughed out of court." ~ noted political scientist Francis Fukuyama

It turns out the eventual cost of the war in Iraq will not be several hundred billion, but according to a new study at least a thousand billion dollars - US$1 trillion, in other words. This figure dwarfs any previous estimate by orders of magnitude.

Given the projected cost of $1 trillion to $2 trillion, one might imagine that American taxpayers are now rolling on the floor in hysterical laughter while gasping for air.

To get an idea of the economic black hole the Iraq war could become, it is useful to remember some of the past estimates given by the administration of President George W Bush. Recall, for example, when then-White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey suggested in 2002, six months before the war, that the mission could cost $100 billion to $200 billion, Bush fired him because his estimate was up to three times the $70 billion the administration estimated.

Conservative columnist Paul Craig Robert wrote after the latest estimate: "Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war. Bush sold his war by understating its cost by a factor of 28.57. Any financial officer anywhere in the world whose project was 2,857% over budget would instantly be fired for utter incompetence."

The latest study was done by US economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, who teaches at Columbia University, and Linda Bilmes of Harvard University.

For the sake of comparison, consider that late last summer the Pentagon was spending $5.6 billion per month on operations in Iraq, an amount that exceeds the average cost of $5.1 billion per month (in real 2004 dollars) for US operations in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972. Currently, the Pentagon is spending about $6 billion per month in Iraq. The total direct cost of the decade-plus Vietnam War to the United States was estimated to be $600 billion. And not even three years after its start, Iraq has already cost 42% of what the Vietnam war did.

"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thank you Mr. Corn for your insightful posts and the opportunity to learn from some of the best regular posters on this blog….Capt, Micki, Saladin, Jeanne and Hajji….you guys rock!

Pandemoniac,

I Bee sitting on the sideline reading while lmao.

It’s almost inconceivable for a woman, no less a minority woman, to reign her tongue or fingers as the case may be; but believe me, this one is for real. However, once I get started I don’t know when to stop and I definitely do not want my Rican trunk punk’d… I take things so personally.

Reference to “silent minority” came about from a Happy post, ……excluding the Silent fans who visit w/out posting….., although from your post I now see it from a different perspective.

Y’all have a good day!

corky, I read that they have begun bulldozing thousands of homes, many that were not that badly damaged. A court order was issued to stop them but they just came back with a different machine and kept going. My theory, and let me make clear I am not claiming to "know it all," is that these people are being systematically removed from N.O. to make room for more lucrative enterprises. There are plans for casinos and high end housing tracts that will leave the poor of the city with nowhere to go. Does that sound like a bush move to you? Check out who gets the contracts, follow the money, as usual.

What are you going to say when the WMD are found in Iraq? How are you going to act? What are you going to say ...

I don't know about anybody else, but I will say HA

Did Plame out WH plans for finding WMD in Iraq?

In addition to identifying the involvement of individuals in the White House who were close to key players in nuclear proliferation, the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division prevented the shipment of binary VX nerve gas from Turkey into Iraq in November 2002. The Brewster Jennings network in Turkey was able to intercept this shipment which was intended to be hidden in Iraq and later used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction.

"Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sal, will you quit being SO annoying already! (he sez jokingly) Just like the troll sez were slinging turds at each other. Paul Wellstone was a GREAT senator, constantly fighting the bullshit peddlers. Cynthia McKinney is equally adept at this also but cannot do it alone. So many jerkoff elected officials trying to cover their political asses makes me SICK. Dem or Rep doesn't matter it seems, both politically correct as to be re-elected to their cushy jobs while chimpy drives us straight to hell. We are at the beginning of the end and I don't think we will ever see the upside, hope is good but realistically there are so many forces in motion now we are truly screwed.

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

DEN, you expose yourself to great condemnation posting such negative comments! That whole episode with McKinney is when I finally threw my hands up in disgust and forever lost hope in the dems. I will never forgive them for what they did to one of the bravest people in DC. They are wretched and useless, truth is not on the agenda, political correctness, going along to get along, that's where it's at if you want to keep your position. I've been waiting for the hammer to fall on Conyers, he is another good guy, but maybe he serves some sort of purpose that I just haven't figured out yet. Perhaps he hasn't rocked the boat hard enough to get the boot!

#50, Sal, I was also dismayed about corky, wish assholes like that would get theirs. Like the idiot that cuts you off to make his exit then flips you the bird cause you got in his way. jerkoffs like that asshole in the workplace are corrosive but when you try to go up against them YOU are the bad guy for making a fuss...go figure. I wish you luck corky! chin up! usually when crap like that happens you end up finding a better job anyway, its happened to me too and worked out for the better.

condemn me! I don't care! like water off a ducks back, it runs right off. I was rejected at an early age (adopted) and have had plenty of time to get used to it (53years) if people don't like what I say, tell me why its wrong or shut the f**k up.

George Bush's rough justice

The career of the latest supreme court nominee has been marked by his hatred of liberalism "

"If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" "No treaty," replied John Yoo, the former justice department official who wrote the crucial memos justifying President Bush's policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance without warrants.

Yoo publicly debated last month the radical notion of the "unitary executive" - that the president, as commander-in-chief, is sole judge of the law, unbound by hindrances such as the Geneva conventions, and has inherent authority to subordinate independent government agencies to his fiat. This is the cornerstone of the Bush legal doctrine.

Yoo's interlocutor, Douglass Cassel, a professor at the Notre Dame law school, pointed out that the theory of the unitary executive posits the president above other branches of government: "Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo."

"I think it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that," said Yoo.

The "unitary executive" is nothing less than "gospel", declared the federal judge Samuel Alito in 2000 - it is a theory that "best captures the meaning of the constitution's text and structure". Alito's belief was perhaps the paramount credential for his nomination by Bush to the supreme court.

Alito's manner before the Senate judiciary committee's hearings has been prosaic and dutiful. He seems like an understudy for the part of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. But behind the facade of the supplicant who wants to be liked seethes a man out to settle a score.

Few public figures since Nixon have worn their resentment so obviously as Alito. The son of a civil servant, he attended Princeton and Yale law school. "Both opened up new worlds of ideas," he testified. "But this was in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart and privileged people behaving irresponsibly."

In his application to the Reagan justice department, Alito wrote that his interest in constitutional law was "motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren court decisions ... particularly in the area ... of reapportionment" - which established the principle of one person, one vote. Alito's law career has been a long effort to reverse the liberalism of the Warren supreme court.

In the Reagan justice department, he argued that the federal government had no responsibility for the "health, safety and welfare" of Americans (a view rejected by Reagan); that "the constitution does not protect the right to an abortion"; that the executive should be immune from liability for illegal domestic wiretapping; that illegal immigrants have no "fundamental rights"; that police had a right to kill an unarmed 15-year-old accused of stealing $10 (a view rejected by the supreme court and every police group that filed in the case); and that it should be legal to fire, and exclude from funded federal programmes, people with Aids, because of "fear of contagion ... reasonable or not".

Against the majority of his court and six other federal courts, he argued that federal regulation of machine guns was unconstitutional. He approved the strip search of a mother and her daughter although they were not named in a warrant, a decision denounced by fellow judge Michael Chertoff, now secretary of homeland security. And Alito backed a law requiring women to tell husbands if they want an abortion, which was overturned by the supreme court on the vote of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor,

On the supreme court, as O'Connor's replacement, he will codify the authoritarianism of the Bush presidency, even after it is gone.

*****end of clip*****

Crash helmets and safety belts, we are in for a rougher ride in this proverbial handbasket.

If Fitz was the emergency brake, no filibuster for Alito might have snapped the cable.

capt

#19 " I just don't tow the proper line. And I never will".

Well boo hoo. Have you ever considered that you aren't special but just a arrogant, superior, offensive know - it - all???

Great quotes Capt! Here is one of my favorites, though it is from the Greek scriptures, I dedicate it to the politicians that are letting us down.

"I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or else hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say "I am rich, and have aquired riches, and do not need anything at all," but you do not know that you are miserable and pitiable, and poor and blind and naked. I advise you to buy gold refined by fire, that you may become rich, and white outer garments that you may become dressed, and that the shame of your nakedness does not become manifested, and eyesalve to rub in your eyes, that you may see." Rev. 3:15-18

This is a metaphorical statement. Those with ears to hear, listen.

U.S. pays millions to Halliburton for excess trucks sitting idle in Iraq

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 (HalliburtonWatch.org) -- Halliburton charges millions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers for Mercedes trucks that sit idle and unused in the Iraqi desert, an internal Pentagon memo obtained by HalliburtonWatch reveals.

The memo, written on Sept. 16, 2004, by the Baghdad branch manager of the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), reported that Halliburton's KBR subsidiary "procures and retains excess vehicles" under its troop support contract with the Army Corps of Engineers. The memo concludes that the excess vehicles result in "increased costs to the government."

The total value of the vehicles under review was $300 million and included both purchased and leased vehicles.

*****end of clip*****

The linked piece has a photo. Parked trucks but it seems to fit the formula. No-bid "cost plus" government contracts are the trough from which the pigs devour our grandchildren's tax dollars.

They want to bump the debt ceiling AGAIN.

"Please keep your arms and legs inside the basket!"

capt

Saladin, no doubt!

EEEgad!

I thought about my post at ?15?. MISSPELL! Got to place where I could log in and mea culpa.

The correct spell...PREVARICATE.

Mea culpa.

Foregoing the misspell, that is the word I woud suggest to accuratly portray the era we have entered, and is poignantly illustrated by the Alito hearings and predicted appointment.

Me? I just try to find truth and good in all things, even in trolls. Although,their prevarication obscures and obfuscates the good that exists somewhere in each of us. I keep on hoping.

+++++++++++

Good quotes Capt. Thanks.

Later,
th

64, what's your point? If you find me offensive, don't read my posts!

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

MLK born - January 15, 1929

War, Lies, and Videotape
They fabricated the case against Iraq, now they're moving on Iran

From: Antiwar.com
By Justin Raimondo

...All right then, let's release the hidden "evidence" of al-Qaeda's much-touted "links" to Saddam: I can hardly wait to see the videotape of the Iraqi dictator playing Risk with Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as the three of them chat amiably about how to nuke New York, Washington, and Crawford, Texas.

This is the fallback theory the neocons are pushing in light of the complete collapse of the case for WMD, which only the most die-hard cargo-cultists of Neoconland still uphold. It's much more fluid, and easier to "prove," if only in the minds of the president's supporters. Although an alleged Prague meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent turned out to be a crock, there is an infinite number of similarly tall tales on tap, and I'm sure Senor Hayes and other authors of the neocon school of docudrama will rise to the challenge.
---------------
Great article.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United States. Starting in 1965, King began to express doubts about the United States' role in the Vietnam War. In February and again in April of 1967, King spoke out strongly against the US's role in the war. In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C. demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States.

Along the way, King also had an impact on popular entertainment. He met Nichelle Nichols who mentioned that she was going to leave the cast of the television series, Star Trek, since she felt was being mistreated by the studio. King personally persuaded her to remain with the series for the sake of being an excellent role model for African Americans on television.

*****end of clip*****

MLK and "Star Trek" - who would have thought it?

capt

Writer jailed for 30 years for criticising U.S.-puppet Government in Iraq

AlJazeera.com | January 13 2006

A lot of conflicting reports have been circulating about the legal case involving Dr. Kamal Sayid Qadir, who was arrested according to law and an established court system for writing an article criticising the puppet U.S.-led government in Iraqi Kurdistan.

In accordance with law no. 21, article 1, enacted by the Kurdistan National Assembly (KNA) in 2003 pertaining to defamation of public institutions, Dr. Qadir, a leading Kurdish academic and one of the region's most prominent writers, has been sent to jail for 30 years for harshly criticising leaders of the U.S.-backed, KDP.

Representatives of many International Human Rights organizations stressed that KRG, now facing pressure from NGO's and UN instruments, angered by KDP's inhuman act(s), must release Dr. Sayid Qadir if it seeks carrying on with its bid to become an applicant for democracy.

And some analysts believe that the arrest of Dr. Sayid Qadir comes as a crucial test of KRG's relations with the international community on one hand, and the KRG protection of freedom of expression on the other hand.

Dr. Sayid Qadir is accused of 'insulting' Massoud Barzani, head of the U.S. backed Kurdish Democratic Party, KDP, one of two parties that rule Iraqi Kurdistan, and publishing critical views of the system in the region.
-----------
HEY! That sounds just like OUR democracy! Way to go bush.

Big Government Is Even Bigger Than You Think

Big Government in America is so huge it boggles the mind and numbs the senses.

But exactly how big is Big Government? For the moment, just consider one key factor: the money spent and controlled by government.

How much of our annual earnings does Big Government take and spend, command and control?

Add the federal budget to all the state and local government budgets in the United States, and subtract out the amounts that they shift between each other ("intergovernmental spending").

Federal, state, and local governments together directly spend a whopping $4.8 Trillion –†every year.

But wait, there's more!

Big Government Politicians hide massive amounts of spending they call "off budget." They conveniently keep these funds out of public view. They pass laws to make these deceptive accounting practices perfectly legal –†for themselves.

Say you file your income taxes this year with a stated income of $60,000. What does the IRS do when they audit you –†and discover that you earned $20,000 a year "off budget?" Do they chalk this up to "normal accounting practices...just like governments do" –†and let it slide? Or do they increase your tax bill, fine you, and throw you in the hoosegow?

Massachusetts state government alone spends at least $20 billion off-the-books –†every year. Conservative estimates give us total off-the-books federal, state, and local government spending of at least $700 billion annually. Add this to the on-the-books spending, and you get government spending of $5.5 Trillion –†every year!

But wait, there's more.

Big Government mandates –†compels us to spend –†another $1.5 Trillion to $3 Trillion every year. This is the externalized cost of government, i.e., the amount that governments force businesses, non-profits, and citizens to spend to comply with government regulations. Examples include collecting payroll taxes, filing tax returns and complying with OSHA, Medicare, EPA, FDA, FTC, FEC, and USDA regulations (to name just a few).

Combined direct and mandated government spending may well exceed $7 Trillion –†and rising –†this year, next year, and every year!

$7 Trillion out of this year's total U.S. economy of approximately $12 Trillion.

Big Government in America is so huge it boggles the mind and numbs the senses.

*****end of clip*****

Nothing CONSERVATIVE about big government.

capt

Capt, no need for conservation when the printing presses are running 24/7! That makes people like happy SO happy! Legal counterfeiting, ya gotta love it!

Upset daddies away at the war? Missing and worried about your spouse? Or maybe your just cross about lossing your buddies and/or limbs...

Not to worry!

Pentagon to families: Go ahead, laugh By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
Fri Jan 13, 6:45 AM ET

-you're-

"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Corky #48. Being unemployed was always my best time. In fact, I enjoyed stretching those periods of not working for the man to maximum length. #49. He let it go because NO was Dem and carried the state to blue. That may have been the Rove factor engaged, but Bush is a ruthless man who will employ meanness to get his way.

Just a word on martial law -- considering current conditions of discord and dissatisfaction, such a declaration would eventually serve to wake the sleeping dog. Bush would need all of the Secret Service, Blackwater and Special Forces just to make sure he didn't get shot. Have you ever seen a chickenhawk cry?

All you fans of Bill Mahr, he is scheduled to be on Larry King tonite. I like him cause he's a straight shooter, no BS guy......How 'bout a little humor? The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta has issued a warning about a new, virulent strain of STD. The disease is contracted through dangerous, high risk behavior. The disease is called Gonorrhoea Lectim and pronounced " gonna re-elect him. " Many victims contracted it in 2004 after having been screwed for the past four years. Cognitive characteristics of infected individuals include: Anti-social personality disorders, delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones, extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to process new information, pronounced xenophobia and paranoia, inability to accept responsibility for own actions, cowardice masked by misplaced bravado, uncontrolled facial smirking, ignorance of geography and history, tendencies towards evangelical theocracy, categorical all or nothing behavior. Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed at how this destructive disease originated only a few years ago from a bush found in Texas.

January 12, 2006 -- Informed intelligence sources have informed this editor that he has, since October 2005, been under an active federal criminal investigation as part of the Bush administration's probe of leaks about illegal NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens.

To reiterate what I've stated before: I refuse to cede my First Amendment rights and will not cooperate with ANY grand jury asking questions about sources and I will refuse to turn over notebooks or other materials to any investigators, warrant or not. I'm willing to become a political prisoner rather than succumb to the fascist thugs in the Bush administration. WMR is working on a number of investigations involving The Carlyle Group, the Fellowship Foundation, and illegal surveillance. We will continue to publish until the Bush administration makes their move to shut us down. Again, your support has helped us to gain enough of a media presence to make the Bush administration nervous. Wayne Madsen

I'm not the only nattering nabob of naysayers here. Tom Engelhardt sums it up pretty well HERE.

What a coincidence DEN, I just finished reading that article. But, he's just a Libertarian, what does he know? No hope in that corner.

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

How do Pro-Big-Business judges influence cases?

Trader Tapes Excluded from Enron Trial
The Associated Press and Bloomberg News
Friday 13 January 2005

The upcoming trial of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth L. Lay and former Chief Executive Jeffrey K. Skilling won't feature audiotapes of Enron traders discussing how they gamed California's power system for high profit when the state was plagued by rolling blackouts and skyrocketing power prices in 2000 and 2001, a judge ruled Thursday.

US District Judge Sim Lake sided with defense arguments that such inflammatory evidence had no place in the Jan. 30 trial because neither Lay nor Skilling was charged with illegal trading or market manipulation in California.

More.

"If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolute night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Robert, I wish they would investigate the part our dear govinator had in that enron debacle. I've read about some pretty shady dealings that helped remove Davis from office. I was no fan of Davis, but what happened to him was wrong.

Yeah, I know what you mean - I wasn't a fan either, but Recall Grey Davis sounds better every day...

Arnold's Enron Secret

It's not what Arnold Schwarzenegger did to the girls a decade back that should raise an eyebrow. According to a series of memoranda our office obtained today, it's his dalliance with the boys in a hotel room just two years ago that's the real scandal.

The wannabe governor has yet to deny that on May 17, 2001, at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles, he had consensual political intercourse with Enron chieftain Kenneth Lay. Also frolicking with Arnold and Ken was convicted stock swindler Mike Milken.

Now, 34 pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through this reporter's fax machine that tell all about the tryst between Maria's husband and the corporate con men. It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.

Here's the story Arnold doesn't want you to hear. The biggest single threat to Ken Lay and the electricity lords is a private lawsuit filed last year under California's unique Civil Code provision 17200, the "Unfair Business Practices Act." This litigation, heading to trial now in Los Angeles, would make the power companies return the $9 billion they filched from California electricity and gas customers.

It takes real cojones to bring such a suit. Who's the plaintiff taking on the bad guys? Cruz Bustamante, Lieutenant Governor and reluctant leading candidate against Schwarzenegger.

Now follow the action. One month after Cruz brings suit, Enron's Lay calls an emergency secret meeting in L.A. of his political buck-buddies, including Arnold. Their plan, to undercut Davis (according to Enron memos) and "solve" the energy crisis -- that is, make the Bustamante legal threat go away.

How can that be done? Follow the trail with me.

*****end of clip*****

From the way-back machine!

capt

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhwre. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

David says- "I still don't know what the Democrats were thinking?"

This is the problem-they weren't thinking!!! They showed up with the usual incompetence that they normally display. These dimwit Sens. were no match for a intellectual conservative like Alito or Roberts.

It's a dark day in Cornut Land, the regulars are so depressed that they have turned on each other like voltures. You guys/gals have conformed to the Democrat model of self destruction. This is truly amusing to watch.

Don't worry, you can still fantasize about impeachment, or better yet-go back to that conspiracy theory about 9/11 being an inside job. Fiction always works well in perking up someone so depressed.

If you get to depressed, you can always go to Canada and end all the pain by committing legal suicide. Thats the ticket!!

Voltures?

I've heard of electric eels...

Title: Their Armageddonites, and Ours...
Source: AntiWar.com
URL Source: http://www.antiwar.com/utley/?articleid=8376
Published: Jan 12, 2006
Author: Jon Basil Utley

Iran's president and Pat Robertson more alike than you think
by Jon Basil Utley

Pat Robertson and 20 million American fundamentalists are not alone.

The new president of Iran also believes that the end of the world is nigh and "believers" can help speed it up. His government has now allocated millions of dollars for the Jamkaran mosque to help believers prepare for the event. It is staffed by the Bright Future Institute, which fields inquiries and prepares Iranians for the end of this world and eternal life in the next. Among Muslims, especially Shias, much attention is given to this coming battle between good and evil: some 20 percent of the population in Iran is reported to believe in an Armageddon-type scenario –†except the roles are reversed, with America representing evil. The ascetic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lives so modestly that his only declared assets include a 30-year-old car and a small house, and no money in a bank account.
---------
Two fundamentalists. Matching bookends. God help us.

"Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

LBH, you stick to your zero evidence 9/11 conspiracy theory, and I will stick to my mountain of evidence 9/11 theory, 'kay?

Arnold's Enron Connection

August 2003

A month before the Frontline interview and Bush's meeting with Davis, Cheney, who chairs Bush's energy task force, met with Lay to discuss Bush's National Energy Policy. Lay, whose company was the largest contributor to Bush's presidential campaign, made some recommendations that would financially benefit his company. Lay gave Cheney a memo that included eight recommendations for the energy policy. Of the eight, seven were included in the final draft. The energy policy was released in late May 2001, after Schwarzenegger, Riordan, and Milken met with Lay and after the meeting between Bush and Davis and Cheney's Frontline interview.

The policy made only scant references to California's energy crisis, which Enron was accused of igniting, and did not indicate what should be done to provide the state some relief. Cheney said the policy focused on long-term solutions to the country's energy needs, such as opening up drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and freeing up transmission lines. That's why California was ignored in the report, Cheney said.

WhatⳠunknown to many of the voters who will decide Davis's fate on Oct. 7 is that while Cheney dismissed Davis's accusations that power companies were withholding electricity supplies from the state, one company engaged in exactly the type of behavior that Davis described. But Davis would never be told about the manipulative tactics the energy company engaged.

In a confidential settlement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, whose chairman was appointed by Bush a year earlier, Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Williams Companies agreed to refund California $8 million in profits it reaped by deliberately shutting down one of its power plants in the state in the spring of 2000 to drive up the wholesale price of electricity.

The evidence, a transcript of a tape-recorded telephone conversation between a Williams employee and an employee at a Southern California power plant operated by Williams, shows how the two conspired to jack up power prices and create an artificial electricity shortage by keeping the power plant out of service for two weeks.

*****end of clip*****

Another piece from the way-back machine!

capt

Circus Maximus

Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California

The hackneyed phrase "political circus" came vividly to life on the shores of the Pacific this month. The national media, hardly sober and substantive in the best of times, was postively drunk with tabloid glee over two lurid spectacles whose simultaneous explosions of sex, blood, celebrity and raw power merged into a single glop of fevered emotionalism, driving the real story deep into the shadows.

We refer, of course, to the elevation of a cartoonish muscle-man to high office and the near-devouring of a Las Vegas circus performer by a white tiger. In the garish cacophony of America's 24-7 media bubble, the election of scandal-plagued Arnold Schwarznegger to the governorship of California was scarcely differentiated from the mauling of Vegas showman Roy Horn during his animal act at the aptly-named Mirage Hotel. Both stories were the subject of non-stop gabbling on every news outlet, with the American media's high priest, CNN's Larry King, alternating interviews with California political players and Vegas heavyweights on the implications of it all.

Politics, tigers, governments, movies: it's all one thing, one product in America's mega-merged media these days. Diversion is the name of the game: keep 'em stirred up, with witless tittilation, primitive emotion, gossip, chatter, anxiety ("Are your taxes going up? Is your deodorant letting you down? Are the terrorists gonna get you? Does your butt look big in this?")--endlessly evoking unfufillable desires for beauty, riches, security, love. Reality gets smothered in the glop.

*****end of clip*****

All from 3 years ago.

capt

Title: 1976 military planners knew hijacked aircraft alone wouldn't bring down WTC quickly enough
Source: Awoken Research Group
URL Source: http://valis.cjb.cc/
Published: Jan 12, 2006
Author: ARG

Codename Grillfire

I am United States Defense Department Intelligence Operative "Grillfire" aka US Government Federal Agent Timothy S. McNiven; in 1976 I took part in a Democratic - Republican Political Party US Congressional Commissioned Military Study to Improve US Air Travel Security while stationed on Strassberg Kasern in Idar-Oberstein,W.Germany assigned to C-Battery 2/81st FA, US Army 1975-76. The purpose of the Study was to Identify Security Lapses and Submit Corrective Actions to the US Congress; on September 11,2001 the Security Lapses that were used to carry out the Attacks were the same ones that were submitted to the US Congress for Correcting "25 Years" before.

As I stated I was an Enlistedman in the Army durring this Study, so I am able to provide you with the information that Enlistedmen were given (I have been asked about information that was part of the Sargents and Officers Duties in the Study; this information will have to come from the Sargents and Officers who took part.) and my own personal activities durring the Study. There were about 100 People from my Unit, I am just one of the Enlistedmen who took part; so I can confirm that this Democratic - Republican Political Party US Congressional Commissioned Military Study took place, what Questions I and the others were asked when I was present and the Non-Resindable Orders that I was given to get this information to the American People if the World Trade Center Twin Towers was ever Attacked in the Manner in which we discussed in the Study.

I explain these Orders in my Affidavit that I gave for the RICO Lawsuit that was filed for Ellen Mariani against the Bush Administration in November 2003 as well as in my WWU Presentation Video.

The information that you need to take away with you is that the Democrats and the Republicans Knew that US Air Travel Security needed to be Improved in 1976 when They conducted this Study to do just that, Improve US Air Travel Security in 1976; They had sufficient information to Remedy the Identified and Known Security Lapses with the Corrective Actions that were sent to the US Congress; and that They had Billions of Dollars in US Tax Payer's Money and 25 Years to "Just Begin" to Implement the Security Upgrades and Improvements from Their Own Study to Improve US Air Travel Security. And, "After all, 25 Years is; a Quarter of a Century" and if the Democrats and Republicans couldnot Act upon Their #1 US Governmental Priority "National Security" in that amount of Time, It is "Not" an International Legal Reason for any Military Action let alone a Democratic - Republican Political Party 100 Year World War.
-------------
They had no way of predicting this attack eh?

From his 2002 Polygraph Exam Results

One of the people from the group had done calculations and had came up with a time frame for a 100 story building to collapse after being hit by an airliner, it was between 1 and 2 hours the exact minutes I can't remember. Later when he was questioned by Military higher ups about a building's engineers disputing his calculations; he said, that unlike him they had to say that to keep their job.
What this shows, is that the same debates that are/were being hashed out about controlled demolition vs. aircraft damage, have already been discussed 30 years ago between building engineers and "military higher-ups."

By the way,
Is an intellectual conservative one who can quote case law up one side and down the other, but not remember being a member of a group that he put no his resume in 1985? Or does it take someone who uses "a" instead of "an" before intellectual to recognize the towering quality of that intellect and integrity?

LBH must be a fan of the Reagan quote "facts are stupid things."

I almost forgot, Alito claims that he put group membership on his resume because he wanted to support ROTC which had been kicked off campus. However, ROTC had been back at Princeton for more than 11 years in 1985 and was thriving. That type of sterling integrity reminds me of one of the great animal symbols that represents American politics....the weasel.

Solly

HAHA Solly! But I wish they wouldn't keep using animals as symbols for idiots and assholes, it's humiliating, for the amimals!

"A lie cannot live." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

animals, whoops!

I like amimals!

"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Saladin,
Agreed. I would rather be stuffed into a wet sack full of weasels than have brunch at the Ritz with politicians and corporate lawyers. And that is not just because brunch at the Ritz is over-rated.

To quote Homer Simpson, "But weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."

Solly

capt,
Amimals= friendly French animals?

Solly

500,000 Americans working for principles like those of Martin Luther King Jr.

TrueMajority's vision for America is based on a set of ten principles, like attacking poverty, getting money out of politics, and ensuring equal treatment under law for everyone. Dr. King's stirring words and the example of his life evoke that vision better than anything we could say. If you agree with that vision, join the group.

If you're already a TrueMajority member, push for these principles by calling and writing to Congress, visiting legislators, and speaking up when it counts.

Today is the day we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. But together we can make every day a day to work toward his dream.

The Democrats do have one thing going for them big time. They have the Iraq War Vets running for office. David, they have guts. *I smile* - *a wicked smile*

I think Alito is a spousal abuser and I'm not alone. read this

I wonder if anyone noticed Alitos wife yesterday, she could hardly wipe that Zanax inspired grin off her face. Alito=ASSHOLE+LIKES+IT+TORTURING+OTHERS

#109
Den,
Boy did she get left in the dust. If she went missing I wonder how long it would have taken for him to realize she was gone. Maybe when he was looking for supper on the table? There's a guy who doesn't think he needs the woman he married. What a fk up.

Where are this generations great orators and speakers? Where are our great men of peace and freedom? Where is this leadership taking us as a nation, as a part of the community of nations that share the planet?

War is not the answer. Tax cuts for the wealthy does no address poverty. Cutting social services does not make the needy self-sufficient, the disabled able, nor feed those who cannot provide for themselves.

I have been listening to a few MLK sermons and speeches. The good Reverend can still give me goose-flesh and move my internal dialogue to an emotional high.

I just do not get that from any of the lot of poor politicians we have now.

I wait, eager to be moved by a new politician, one that can move me with simple words about equality, truth, justice and love. Of non-violent action and the big values that matter. The high ideas and ideals that once spoke to all people not just half of a divided nation.

Someday . . .

capt

Hail Chimpy! Absolute Ruler of the unwilling. Thus, the Government can and should throw Jose Padilla in a military prison without a trial and without a lawyer because George Bush has decreed that he is bad. The Government can and should eavesdrop without warrants or oversight on American citizens because it assures us it's only doing it to those people who George Bush believes are bad. The Government can and should strip search children, even without the warrants required by the Constitution, because its only doing it to the people who are bad. And the Government can and should break whatever laws it wants to break in order to act against those people who George Bush says are bad. Read the whole article

"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jeanne, It set her off when he claimed he wasnt any kind of bigot....why?....She knows him TOO well. I have been in direct proximity of a horrendous spousal abuser father in law. His poor wife would break into tears at the mere mention of him being a "good guy" form anyone. So sad that a man can gain power from doing such a thing. Sick man. Ironic that he would be replacing Ms. O Conner.

capt 112

Why not you capt.? I would lead the people but I don't even have a job.

HA!

I am far too shallow and would likely be very corruptable!

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position." ~ Mark Twain

capt

Arrested for Exposing Terrorists
The Singular Story of the Cuban Five

Five Cuban men, were arrested in Miami, Florida in September, 1998 and charged with 26 counts of violating the federal laws of the United States. 24 of those charges were relatively minor and technical offenses, such as the use of false names and failure to register as foreign agents. None of the charges involved violence in the U.S., the use of weapons, or property damage.

The Five had come to the United States from Cuba following years of violence perpetrated by a network of terrorist made up of armed mercenaries drawn from the Cuban exile community in Florida. For over forty years these groups have been tolerated, and even hosted, by successive U.S. Governments.

Cuba suffered significant casualties and property destruction at their hands. Cuban protests to the United States Government and the United Nations fell on deaf ears. Following the demise of the socialist states in the early 90's the violence escalated as Cuba struggled to establish a tourism industry. The Miami mercenaries responded with a violent campaign to dissuade foreigners from visiting. A bomb was found in the airport terminal in Havana, tourist buses were bombed, as were hotels. Boats from Miami traveled to Cuba and shelled hotels and tourist facilities.

The mission of the Five was not to obtain U.S. military secrets, as was charged, but rather to monitor the terrorist activities of those mercenaries and report their planned threats back to Cuba.. The arrest and prosecution of these men for their courageous attempt to stop the terror was not only unjust, it exposed the hypocrisy of America's claim to oppose terrorism wherever it surfaces.
-----------------
Good overview article on the Cuban Five. This is a very interesting case. What makes it even more interesting is the treatment of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. These two men are true terrorists. Bosch, I believe, still walks the streets of Miami and Carriles who.....

--also became the recipient of inexplicable hospitality from the government of the U.S.. His presence in the United States, following a fraudulent pardon by the outgoing President of Panama, was an open secret, but he was reluctantly taken into custody only after giving a televised press conference. He's now housed by American authorities, not in a prison, but in a special residence inside a detention facility. He faces no prosecutions, only an administrative procedure for not having appropriate residential documents, which could lead to his deportation to a country of his choosing. Meanwhile the U.S. has refused to extradite him to Venezuela where he is facing charges related to terrorism.
--------------------
Cuban Five website

NATIONAL COMMITTEE TO FREE THE CUBAN FIVE

Bush has already seized absolute control of the government.

My watch is to see the rise and fall of the Fourth Reich, a.k.a. Nazi America.

"Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Solly #99

Solly, yes Alito had a one-time membership to a club of little importance shown to be a dud by the dimwit Teddy Kennedy. It seems that Teddy is the one who has the problem with women, not Alito. Teddy still belongs to an all male Havard club that was thrown off campus 20 years ago for not allowing women to join. It looks as if the intellectual dishonesty is once again a liberal trait, not conservative.

Thank God the NSA is spying on the Quakers. Wouldn't want peace activist in our midst. I wonder if they were concerned about this guy.

Orlando Bosch's terrorist curriculum vitae

Few terrorists in history have achieved as high a level of criminal activity as Orlando Bosch.

In 1968, his fame was so great that, while under arrest for a bazooka attack on a Polish freighter, the city of Miami proclaimed Orlando Bosch Day, in support of that "exemplary" anti-Castro fighter. The pace of the attacks he carried out consisted of a campaign of terror aimed at scaring the Miami community, and raising money for "the cause" –†including, of course, the terrorist leader's bank account.

Unfortunately, his fellow Miami Cuban Otto Reich, now the White House's top man in Latin America - who helped Bosch escape from Venezuelan justice and find refuge in the United States –†seems to have lost his memory. He declared at a Senate hearing, with apparent candidness, that he was unaware of his friend Orlando Bosch's terrorist past.

That declaration notwithstanding, dozens and dozens of terrorist attacks are attributed to Orlando Bosch and the gangs he led. Perhaps this "black list" will refresh the memory of George W. Bush's close collaborator.
------------------
The list of terrorist activity is a mile long.

Solly #99

"LBH must be a fan of Reagan"

Solly must be a fan of Billy Clinton who famous quote is, "I did not have sex with that women" & "It depends on what the meaning of is ,is"

Now those are great quotes to live by!

DEN 113, don't forget crushing the testicles of little boys in the pursuit of terrorists! (I'm not making that up.)
LBH, dishonesty is a HUMAN trait, sheesh!

LBH, if you want to debate the lies and crimes of clinton, get serious. Forget the blowjob. If lying about sexual escapades was the worst thing politicians did we wouldn't be in this leaky ass boat in the first place!

Saladin #124

Dishonesty is a human trait? Sure if you're a liberal, this is good as an excuse as any.

Gerald,
I saw a book on the mature mind on the Today Show.
It's called the Mature Mind by Gene Cohen.

Publishers Weekly
Old dogs can learn new tricks, says psychiatrist Cohen, drawing on the latest studies of the aging brain and mind. In fact, new scanning technologies show that in some ways the aging brain is more flexible than younger ones.

LBH,
However, rampant assumptions belong to you alone. I do not like either Clinton or the Kennedy family. By the way, I said you must be a fan of the quote. Cutting off my quote is typical of dishonesty and lack of intergrity.

You consider being a memeber of a club that points to increasing numbers of women and minorities at Princeton as "watering down" the student body to be unimportant? For a judge ruling on civil rights issues?

What should I expect from someone who is intellectually dishonest enough to misquote me and make unfounded assumptions about who I do support based on who I do not. Your accusing me of such is laughable since all I did was point to facts.

I should have known better than to feed a troll, but he did hoist himself on his own petard.

Solly

Solly, that is why I generally refrain from engaging them in debate. They have nothing to offer and are not interested in anything beyond partisan bashing, no brain, no headache! No fun at all.

Saladin #125

No debate is necesssary, the facts are already recorded in history on the impeached Clinton. However, we can debate what is fact or fiction according to convictions on Bush's Presidency. I would like to know what has Bush been convicted of?

#126

Sure 'n conservatives never lie....

#127 Jeanne, how do we train the old bushians new tricks like love and mercy? If a youthful brain has been flexible, the aging brain can continue to be flexible. It's when we have our children goosestep in unison with the gestapos that an aging brain will be more deadly toward humanity.

DoLittle, his pork will be missed here in the largest population of Repugs in the state of California. and heres why I'll miss his smirking little face.

DEN, they want you to register, I really hate that! What's the scoop, in a nutshell?

Solly #128

Solly, I left your quote off because it was a dishonest quote to begin with. Alito quit that club over 20 years ago, so your argument is as lame as Kennedy's. You should be more worried about Kennedy's current membership to a club that discriminates against women and minority's. Kennedy makes law, if you didn't know this. You have proven my point about intellection liberal dishonesty. Keep it coming!!

I would look at the Bush administration that has appointed more women and minorities than any previous Democrat, including your beloved Billy Bob Clinton, as a shining example of fairness.

Questions about my record

By Rep Murtha

This afternoon, CNSNEWS.com published an article entitled "Murtha's War Hero Status Called Into Question" on its website. The article questions the validity of my purple hearts. This is my response:

"Questions about my record are clearly an attempt to distract attention from the real issue, which is that our brave men and women in uniform are dying and being injured every day in the middle of a civil war that can be resolved only by the Iraqis themselves."

"I volunteered for a year's duty in Vietnam. I was out in the field almost every single day. We took heavy casualties in my regiment the year that I was there. In my fitness reports, I was rated No. 1. My record is clear."
----------------
The only thing the neocon republicans have the courage to do is smear a vet. Is America really safe under this leadership? I don't think so.

The best that the bushbots or the reich wing kool aide drinkers can come up with is clinton lied about getting a hummer from some intern? Please equate that with lying us into war, illegal wiretapping of citizens, ignoring the constitutional laws, and a myriad of other documented crimes, ever hear of FISA? dimwits all and they even get to reproduce under our laws at this time, but wait until their god becomes all powerful then they will gladly enter into the eugenics program for mental defectives lovingly called racial pride.

Saladin #129

You call correcting mis-stated facts partisan bashing? You are more than eager to engage in debate, until you lose that is.

LBH, heres the info you requested regarding Bush and his conviction, read it and weep, now go bother somebody that gives a shit what you say.

#132
Gerald,
It's called the MATURE MIND. That leaves the bush worshipers out of the picture.

Robert #131

No one should lie and I just do not make excuses for lies like you liberals seem to want to do when necessary. Do you excuse Kennedy's lies as a human trait also?

Exploitation

Dear Cornposters:

This is another open letter to you. I have recently received information from the Catholic News Service and in this service there was two short articles. Here are their titles, "War, poverty ignore truth about human dignity" and "More than 800 million children are exploited."

In the first article Pope Benedict XVI spoke to ambassadors and diplomats representing their nations at the Vatican. He said, "Bloodshed does not cry out for revenge, but begs for life and for peace." The Pope spoke specifically on the tensions in Israel, Palestinian territories, Iraq, Lebanon, Darfur, and the Sudan.

In the second article it mentions that more than 800 million children around the world are victims of malnutrition, disease, trafficking, and other economic and social exploitation. Among the worrisome trends are the more than 200 million child laborers between 5 and 14 years of age and the increase in street children on several continents. Million more children are forced into armed conflict and prostitution.

We are talking about the exploitation of children but there is also ongoing of exploitation of adults. In Nazi America our government exploits her people and people in foreign lands. Our Nazi government is spreading hatred under the disguise of spreading democracy. Nazi America's hatred and exploitation covers the entire planet.

Nazi Americans hate anyone who thinks differently from them or who believes differently from them. In the Serenity Prayer we must follow Jesus. He took this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. We are to trust in Him to make all things right. Trying to change people to lock step in our ways is doomed for failure. We live in a diverse world and not everyone will think like us or be like us.

Nazi America for her hatred and exploitation will lead toward her destruction.

Let us look closely at five public officials who are the personification of hatred and exploitation. Their names are Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Gonzales. We can also add the names of citizens who have some influence over our people and their names are Coulter, O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, and O'Beirne. Ministers can also be part of the hatred and exploitation of the population. Their names are Dobson, Jones, Falwell, Robertson, and Franklin Graham. From these names they are a formidable challenge for average citizens.

The hatred and exploitation is so deep and widespread that the average citizens are overwhelmed and they will be unable to change the course of Nazi America's self-destruction.

Nazi America has chosen to use her negative energies to carry out wars, murders, and war crimes. If Nazi America had chosen her positive energies toward ending malnutrition, disease, human trafficking, and economic and social exploitation, you only imagine what a great world this would be for all of God's children.

Sincerely,

Gerald

Mr Clueless #137

Again, refresh my memory Mr. Clueless, which one of these accusations has Bush been convicted of? Oh, that's right none!!!

The Bar Association does not agree with you about lying under oath or they would not have disbarred the idiot who came up with "It depends on what the meaning of is, is" and you fools keep defending him to the end.

"Freedom in action"

Yesterday Mr. Bush warned U.S. citizens of more violence in Iraq...again.

He called it the "Price of progress" as Iraq "moves toward democracy."
In the shady, smoke and mirror filled world of Mr. Bush where violence is progress and Iraq inches ever closer to their elusive "democracy," truth remains ever distant from the rhetoric of his speech writers.

Mr. Bush referred to "a good deal of political turmoil" in Iraq as "freedom in action."

If only reality matched his hallucinatory projections...

An email I received today from an Iraqi man in Baghdad runs a bit contradictory to the rhetoric of Mr. Bush's speechwriter:

"Dear Dahr,

It is difficult to make a picture of what is going on, the situation is just so bad.

Lack of supplies, including water, petrol and electricity.

Jamming of traffic, as the police allow one lane to pass through the security check points, and it takes long time to pass through these check points.

Many areas in Baghdad are very unsafe, and quite inaccessible.

The kidnapping and assassination of physicians is still going on.

A consultant surgeon was recently assassinated in his home. He lives in Yarmouk district near the culture center. One of his sons was kidnapped a few months before and released after paying several thousands of U.S. dollars.

A friend of mine, Dr. S. who is a well known Neurologist, was kidnapped from his clinic and his family asked the help of his friends and relatives to help collect the ransom.

My wife was driving downtown and she was hit on her left hand by a big stone thrown from a police pickup because she did not recognize that she should give way to a fast car that was trying to bypass her.....she is lucky not to get shot by them!!!!

The Iraqis now get frightened from the local police and military as they exhibit a very high level of misconduct and abuse of the authority that they now have.

Have I mentioned that power supply is one hour every five hours!!!!!

Ahmed [Name changed for security reasons]"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at January 12, 2006 07:50 PM

140 Jeanne, that is why the bush worshipers are so deadly.

I cannot vote for Mr. Kennedy. He is not my concern. I am concerned with policy.

Now I will grant that I'd prefer politicians that never lie - never gonna happen.

But there are lies about sex, and then there are lies about war. They are of a different degree of offense.

Den #139

That's your proof, what a hoot!! Clinton must also be guilty then for bombing Iraq without the UN's ok before he did it.

If you want to use crap like that then lets throw out the murders taht Clinton and his brother commited in their cocaine ring of corruption.

Serenity Prayer

Dear Cornposters:

Reinhold Niebuhr gave us this Serenity Prayer and I will paraphrase parts of it.

GOD, GRANT ME THE SERENITY

Don't worry about anything; instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. If we do this, we will experience God's peace.

TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE,

Learn how to be content in whatever state I am

THE COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN

Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust Him to help you and He will

AND THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE,

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and mind. Let God direct our lives to make straight our path to Him

LIVING ONE DAY AT A TIME,

The Lord's love ceases and His mercies never come to an end

ENJOYING ONE MOMENT AT A TIME,

This is the day to rejoice in the Lord

ACCEPTING HARDSHIP AS A PATHWAY TO PEACE;

Take refuge and strength in God

TAKING AS JESUS DID, THIS SINFUL WORLD AS IT IS, NOT AS I WOULD HAVE IT;

Never give up and quit because God will never abandon us

TRUSTING THAT YOU WILL MAKE ALL THINGS RIGHT IF I TRUST TO YOUR WILL;

God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love him

SO THAT I MAY BE REASONABLY HAPPY IN THIS LIFE

Trust in God with all your heart; He is your strength and shield from every danger

AND SUPREMELY BLESSED WITH YOU FOREVER IN THE NEXT. AMEN!

For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He gave us His only begotten Son, so whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

Sincerely,

Gerald

Matthews: Breaking the law may be "part of the job" of president

Summary: MSNBC's Hardball host Chris Matthews asserted that illegally spying on Americans in an effort to track down terrorists was "maybe ... part of the job" of the president of the United States.

On the January 12 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, host Chris Matthews asserted that wiretapping Americans in an effort to track down terrorists -- which his guest asserted would be "breaking the law" -- was "maybe ... part of the job" of the president of the United States. During a discussion with Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency (NSA) employee who has stated he is one of the sources for the December 16 New York Times article that revealed a secret domestic spying program under which the NSA reportedly eavesdrops on the communications of people within the United States without court approval, Matthews stated:

MATTHEWS: We're under attack on 9-11. A couple of days after that, if I were president of the United States and somebody said we had the ability to check on all the conversations going on between here and Hamburg, Germany, where all the Al Qaeda people are, or somewhere in Saudi [Arabia], where they came from and their parents are, and we could mine some of that information by just looking for some key words like "World Trade Center" or "Pentagon," I'd do it.

When Tice responded that "you'd be breaking the law," Matthews replied: "Yeah. Well, maybe that's part of the job."
---------------------
What's a little law anyway?
By the way, Chris, is it ok if they spy on you?

This is not for the weak.

I want this on a billboard

Robert #146

I am glad to see that you are not defending Teddy. I assume that you have proof that Bush intentionally lied about the WMD. I am still waiting from the Dems to provide us with this proof. Without proof then this doesn't amount to much of an argument.

The two party system is dead. With Bush's approval ratings hovering just above Richard Nixon's at the height of Watergate and the Congress recording all time approval ratings, if this isn't the time and place to challenge this bogus nomination with a fillibuster, then when IS the right time? All I can say is RUN AL RUN in 2008

Downing Street Memo
Paul O'Neal
Richard Clarke

Robert

Come on you can do better than that, using has-been references like that. No one even remembers these fools or the supposed devestating Downing Street Memo. You people need some new material if you want to compete.

Ahhhh, I'm beginning to see a pattern. The smear machine is on full blast. Must have employed some frat boys and the young repugs for this campaign.

The New Jeff Gannon Strikes

Les Kingsolving has taken the mantle from Jimmy/Jeff. Why do some republicans think that Alito shouldn't be asked any tough questions at his hearing, especially Lindsey Graham? I know they need the apperance that the Democrats are mean, but it's a rather ridiculous theme. They are only looking for another crony rubber stamp and a way to manufacture a scandal when there isn't one. I wonder how many Press reporters complained of Tom Coburn's endless nonsense? Listen to Les ask this of Scotty:

Les: Which Senator if any- would you say is uglier than Ted Kennedy? (later) In other words you can't think of anyone uglier can you-then Kennedy...

Scotty: I think the American people expect more from their elected leaders.

I wonder how they fell about Tom Delay and the rest that will fall under Abramoff's scandal? (I know he's been around for a while) We'll keep our on eye on Les.
--------------------------
Watch the video. It reeks of rehearsed republican partisanship.

I am still waiting for the list of convictions, try Google under Bush and then Clinton and lets compare, shall we.

It figures a bushbot would ignore the law, just like his hero, chimpy. Report of the International Criminal Tribunal, too many big words?

Oh ya, I forgot to mention that all you AOL dial up regulars might have to wait awhile to open up the Clinton list of scandals and convictions.

January 13, 2006
Have You No Sense of Decency?
By Thomas Lifson

Most Americans were not glued to their televisions yesterday watching the Alito confirmation hearings. But today a substantial portion of the electorate is aware that Judge Alito’≥ wife Martha-Ann Bomgardner was driven to tears, as Senator Lindsey Graham apologized to the nominee and his family for the hectoring and smearing he and they had endured.

It was one of those moments which encapsulate a complex drama, speaking to common (and noble) human emotions. Anyone who has ever stoically attempted to control the deep pain of seeing a loved one suffering or under stress knows that the merest expression of sympathy is enough to burst the dam, and let the cathartic rears flow.

All of us who love, who have watched our loved ones under duress, and who have received support understand Martha-Ann Bomgardner, even if the subtleties of the theory of the unitary executive and stare decisis elude us.

The network news honchos, for all their liberal bias, know that ҉f it bleeds it leads,Ӡand in this case, ҉f it cries, it flies.ӊ
The Judiciary Committee Democrats have disgraced themselves.

The Associated Press, once esteemed for its even-handed reporting, put out a dispatch which implied that Senator Graham was the one who abused the judge, triggering the outburst. That the AP would attempt such a violation of common sense betrays the desperation of the media branch of the Democratic Party. It won’¥ fly because it does not ring true to common experience.

The last time such an obvious disgrace took place in a Senate hearing was almost 52 years ago, in the Army-McCarthy hearings, when Joseph Welch, a Boston lawyer, gained immortality with his rebuke of Senator Joseph McCarty, for his abusive behavior toward a young lawyer, Fred Fisher. Fisher was working with Welch, and had once been a member of the Lawyers Guild, a leftist organization which McCarthy tarred as suspiciously communist.

Two of Welchճ phrases have been figuratively engraved in marble, lending the neologism ҍcCarthyismӠits flavor of extreme, unreasonable, and mean persecution of people with guilt by association.

Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty, or your recklessness […Æ]

You’∂e done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Half a century later, history has repeated itself, this time not with words, but with the moving sight of a wife reduced to tears by her husband’≥ time on the witness table cross.

Senator Kennedy is, if anything, an even less sympathetic figure than Joseph McCarthy. While Kennedy’≥ brother may have been a martyr struck down by an assassin, McCarthy never left a young woman to die in a submerged car. The way in which Senator Kennedy has lived his life disgraces whatever nobility might have adhered to him from his brother’≥ end.

As I recently wrote, most Americans do not pay attention to politics most of the time, and form vague images of the two parties based on accumulated fragmentary inputs. Because of media bias, most of the time this process favors the Democrats.

Yesterday, even those unconcerned by politics paid attention because of the human drama. A new iconic incident has just entered our political tradition. Political affiliation is both an intellectual and an emotional matter. It requires a level of intellectualizing beyond the capacity of most of us to affiliate oneself with a repulsive waddling-fat bully.

It took the GOP decades to recover from the damage inflicted by the lasting imagery of McCarthy the bully. Anti-communism, fairly or not, became stigmatized for a generation.

It was anti-racism fanaticism, the attempt to tar Judge Alito as a bigot, which was at the root of yesterday’≥ drama. If anything, the average American today has more personal experience of being impugned as a racist than the 1950s American had of being impugned as a communist. Voters have far more to identify with in Alito than they ever did in the McCarthy hearings.

The only question now is how long it will take the Democrats to understand the disaster they have created for themselves.

Thomas Lifson is the editor and publisher of The American Thinker

2+2=4, still.

Wishing the facts away doesn't work.

One cannot change the past, therefore we must improve the future so others will not wish to. DEN

Yes Den # 157

I do ignore the International Criminal Urinal that is run by a bunch of dictator thugs. You can use them all you want, but this does not prove anything other than the weakness of your argument.

Saladin,
Your point is proven. How is a quote dishonest? Reagan said it. It is on film. Despite my saying I am not a fan of Clinton, I keep getting the "your boy Clinton" garbage. He will not argue that putting membership of a club on your resume hardly distances you from it. He will not acknowledge that there is something wrong with conveniently "forgetting" membership and making up a flaccid excuse for putting it on his resume. If it is not important, why not admit it and move on. Then we get silly "cocaine ring murders" accusations from someone demanding proof. Jeez. So much for integrity.

What can you say to someone who supports the strip searching of 10 year olds and the consolidation of power in the executive branch. Real good conservative values there.

By the way, the Hasty Pudding Club is non-political. If they are so misogynist, I wonder why Glenn Close and Gloria Stienam both spoke when honored there? Really good comparison. What should I expect from such a flocculent turd.

Solly

#149 Jeanne, it is amazing that a blow job almost brought down the Nazi American government but Nazi Americans approve of Bush's breaking of laws, murders, and war crimes. A total sickness prevails over Nazi America. When will Nazi America return to Jesus? Living in Nazi America is a nightmare, a total nightmare.

Robert

2+2=4

Clinton convictions of family and friends-47
Indictments-61
Imprisoned-14
Deaths-31

Now those are the facts, maybe you should try advanced math.

You want to see arrogance? Look to a creationist

Richard E. Baker, a member of the State Board of Education, displays his apparent lack of interest in arguments for changing the state's science standards being put forth by fellow board member Martha W. Wise. Baker, who later voted to maintain the current standards, did not speak during yesterday's afternoon session, choosing instead to read the newspaper throughout.

"Richard Baker, an avowed creationist and vice president of the OBE, disagrees. ....Baker accused the scientific community of wasting time debating the plan. "We spend all this malarkey and baloney when 99 percent of all the people who are taught this have nothing to do with the rest of their lives. These scientists, they don't care about wasting their own time or anybody else's time. In business we don't waste time. To me, [the lesson] is not a big deal." According to Baker, the real reason scientists want to do away with the lesson plan is, as he said to a group of scientists at a board meeting concerning the lesson plan, "[They] think [they] know everything. [They're] just a bunch of paranoid, egotistical scientists afraid of people finding out [they] don't know anything.""
----------------------
Maybe the newspaper stunt was a prop to make the public believe he can read.

LBH, I'm done with you little man. Your boat won't float on this blog.

The Nightmare

I had a nightmare the other night and I dreamt of Nazi Americans becoming embedded in our federal government's preemptive war games, shock and awe bombings, military terrorism, and crimes against humanity as well as Bush's breaking of laws, especially international laws, such as the use of depleted uranium that laces our bombs and his use of chemical weapons in Iraq. I awoke in a cold sweat. I needed to reread an article that I finished the other day in order to feel better. The article was on the word "Shalom."

Shalom translated means peace. It is a vision of social wholeness; a state of well being for all, where everyone has access to the goods of creation intended to meet the needs of all. Shalom is the substance of the biblical vision of one community embracing all creation, where all enjoy the resources that make communal harmony joyous and effective.

Shalom is nothing less than God's intended vision of the world, a dream of God that resists our tendencies for division, hostility, fear, drivenness, and misery. If there is to be well-being, it will not be just for the isolated, insulated individuals, it is security and prosperity granted to the whole community - the poor, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, the tax collector and the sinner, the despised and rejected, young and old, haves and have nots, the powerful and the dependent. We are in it together. Together we stand before God's blessings and together we receive the gift of life. Shalom comes only to the inclusive embracing community that excludes no one.

bush crime family atrocities = uncountable
convictions = one so far, poppy bush in collusion with hitler. Many more coming soon! They are obviously more adept at avoinding getting caught than the inept clinton. Oh well, the devil will soon get his due, one way or the other.

A missing piece

Posted by Michael O'Hare
I have been dipping into the Alito hearings, not following them completely, but enough to form a distinct and I think a fair impression. I read the nominee as a competent, careful, capable legal craftsman, unprejudiced as regards religion or race, and a decent guy. He is greatly favored with petty (not trivial) virtues, such as his personal treatment of colleagues and strong proclivity to neither steal nor lie nor mistreat children (at least children present in person). He is not a lunatic reactionary, not a flamethrowing hater, and though he doesn't come across as very interesting, I'd be happy to have him living next door. He is really smart in the specific sense of IQ.

I also have a sense of a man with, as my friend Ed Reilly once said of another public figure of our acquaintance, an "unrelenting instinct for the capillary". He was described by various witnesses, some admiringly, as always deciding cases on the narrowest possible grounds. This is generally a virtue in a judge, but not always and especially not always in a judge of high or highest appellate jurisdiction. Brown v. Board of Education could have been decided like Plessy, or so narrowly as to demand only (say) equal per-pupil spending, but that wouldn't necessarily have been a better holding. Alito knows the law, but he doesn't seem to know, or care about, The Law. Every issue in the hearings was immediately reduced by the nominee to a technical question of almost bureaucratic rule manipulation. This approach is a good one for nearly all the cases courts hear, but it's not what the Supreme Court is about.

He doesn't have a screw loose; what he has is a piece missing, conspicuously, radiantly, displaying the absence of any sense of, well, justice. Not a case came up for discussion in which he registered that one or another outcome was just wrong, outrageous to a sense of decency, or to him. He's on record in a memo as believing that to shoot an eighth grader, known not to be armed, who was trying to climb over a fence in escape, is a proper use of deadly force by a policeman. In a discussion of immigration cases that have been regularly occasioning inexcusable, vile, un-American heartbreak on people who missed obscure deadlines or violated arcane requirements, all he could say was that the courts get bad transcripts and it was hard to find translators for some of the plaintiffs, but that was a problem for Congress. It wasn't exactly Pilate washing his hands, but the man appears to be completely comfortable dealing with frightful social wrongs by moving the issue down the hall to another office. Sometimes the Court has to do this, but to Alito it's an especially good day's work, not a disappointment.

A smart, decent, small man. If the US Supreme Court is a good place for a man whose ability to prove "not my job" is unparalleled, Alito should be confirmed. He will focus enormous rational power on issues not central to the cases before him, and solve problems peripheral to the work we need the court to do.

Afterthought: What lamebrain had the idea of trotting out sitting judges whose holdings would be under Alito's review if he's confirmed to say how wonderful he is? And how can the word of someone dense enough to agree to do this carry any weight at all...don't these guys have any sense of shame...or dignity?
---------------------

100,000+ Civilian Iraqi Deaths
The Lancet/Johns Hopkins

#166 Jeanne, typical Nazi behavior! Bush does not read! Does he snort during such meetings?

Saladin - Prescott not Poppy (GHWB)

Solly

I used the ring of cocaine ring murders to show how silly you people are. I didn't think that I would have to explain it to you. Not sure what your reference to Hasting Pudding club is about, but if it is in reference to Kennedy then I must again correct you. It was the Owl Club which was kicked of campus in 1984 for violating anti-discrimination laws that Kennedy belong to and still belongs to.

The strip searching law has been on the books for quite awhile-seems like liberals only get upset about these laws when convenient, not suprising.

Who's practicing McCarthyism now trolls?

A friend sent me this video and I hope it comes up.

Fire Fart

Den #167

"I'm done with you little man"

I didn't expect you to last long with that weak argument. Seems like you regulars would rather quit when backed into a wall. No-proof, no-fight!!

No proof, I'll close my eyes and make the documents go away...

Robert #171

How about the hundreds of thousands Clinton let be murdered in Rowanda or how about the millions who died from aids because of his lack of funding compared to Bush. You my friend are stretching more than Den.

I didn't care for Clinton either, fool. Besides allowing to be killed - a sin of omission, is not the same as a sin of commission - killing by the 100,000 per Lancet.

Gerald, I dont know where you found that but thanks, it is absolutly hysterical!

Saladin #169

Again, facts not fantasy please!!!

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president

More

#180 DEN, my friend said that he found it somewhere on Google. That is all I know.

Robert #177

You can close your eyes or open them, when it's only in your head as fact, it really doesn't matter.

Allowing to be killed vs. killing by lancet. That's your response? Abortion is killing by lancet-do you approve of that? Capital punishment would be allowing to be killed-you must approve of that.

Bush family caused deaths = Millions Bush family crooks yet to be indicted = thousands Stupid supporters 49% One thing you got to hand it to the bushies they are consumate criminals and non truth tellers, by the way dirtbag how about some link? don't like it go away little man your betters are on to you. boydf022@aol.com if that is real

181, I have tons of facts, but you wouldn't be interested.
Robert, I know it was prescott, I call all the sr's. poppy because they are all part of the same disgusting legacy. Didn't mean to confuse the fantasy addled troll!

Robert #182

Robert, you're starting to sound as desperate as Teddy and all the other Dimwit Dems on the Judiciary commitee. I am trying not to laugh but this is better than "My name is Earl."

Gerald,
Who says there are not alternative forms of energy?

I just love this guy!
From the essay, Gang Raping Pollyanna
By Les Visible

Galileo is long dead but we have the assurance that those who want to burn him at the stake still remain. The Sun, unmoved by this, continues to maintain the Earth in its orbit.

The more terrifying realities are not what bush has said and done so far at the behest of his handlers. They are not the recent findings concerning the Diebold polling software. They are not the hot raids into Syria and the US-British-Israeli car-bombings in Iraq, nor are they some piece of the thousands of bits of glaring evidence- or even all of the evidence taken in toto. The more terrifying realities are that this administration has 3 years to go and, what we haven't seen in consideration of what they intend.

From the crushing legislations that, in all respects, deprive the poorest among us for the benefit of the richest, to the world wide disorder everywhere in evidence it is clear that no good can come from this fascist movement save for the great and universal joy that will be experienced upon their passing. And pass they will.

I cannot fathom what it is in the human psyche that permits so many people to believe the obvious lies. I do not understand how those who are being crushed in the machinery can so willingly support those who operate it. The myth of Al Qaeda is a bankrupt fairy tale. There's no Bin Laden and there's no Al Zawqawi. There are only outraged populations that resist criminal occupation. There was no Arab bombing of the World Trade Center. The sheer weight of the evidence is so great that the missing pieces are no longer important. The walking, talking duck is a duck and that's all there is to it.

Perhaps one of the hardest features of compassion is to feel pity for those whose stupidity is beyond measurement. The recent mob actions in Texas and Florida (no surprise about the states involved) at various retail outlets speak volumes about the maturity of the American public. The free fall rate of dumbing down implies that some may go from two to four legs in the space of a single generation. It really is hard to believe. I rather suspect it isn't Jesus who is coming for these people although a shepherd of some sort is altogether likely.
-----------
They sure do NEED a shepherd!

Mr. Clueless # 185

Wow, you must be a rocket scientist to be so clever. You sure are on to me. However, if you're going to post my email address then get it right. Clever, but a little challenged.

Did you by chance do that google search of Clinton convictions vs. Bush convictions yet? I would love to chat about how you might spin that one.

The Lancet=magazine
lancet=medical implement

Owl Club- admitted women in the 1980s still have the Owl Club building adjacent to campus and owned by Harvard
Hasty Pudding Club- refused to admit women in the 1980s and voluntarily left campus
TK was a member of both. Teddy Roosevelt was an Owl Club president.

Just an FYI for anyone interested in facts. Have to go. Hopefully ther will be less nonsense later. I will no longer feed the trolls.

Solly

#188 Jeanne, if only we could bottle our farts, we would never have to want for energy.

I wonder if the Cheney and his thugs would tax us on our own bottled energy?

You know Bush and his cabal are trying to find new ways to tax the poor and the rich.

The new fart tax! Like all taxes our repugnants will fart away our tax dollars! Times are changing!

At one time we would say that the repugnants pissed away our tax dollars!

Saladin #186

I would love to see your facts. Hopefully they're better than the ones Robert or Den came up with. However, this may be a bit of a challenge since you have vowed not to engage me in debate. If you do , I promise that I will be nice and not remind you of your prior committment.

THE LEFT HAS IT ALL WRONG

by Bob in North Dakota

Why does the left assume that the Republicans have any interest at all in overturning Roe vs. Wade? As it stands today, the Republicans are having their cake, and eating it too. All the Chimp had to do, was mumble, "I believe in a culture of life," and tens of millions of votes were assured. What could be sweeter?? An issue that gives you millions of votes, and costs no money? The same goes for the Democrats. A 6-3 or 5-4 Court against overturning Roe is the political sweet spot for both parties. Both can play to their bases, and raise tons of cash, and not actually have to DO anything.

Roberts will be another O'Connor. Alito will be another Renquist. Roe is as safe today as it was a year ago. Write it on the wall. Bob in North Dakota has spoken.

Of course, the pro-abortion folks are only crying fake tears over an Alito confirmation. NARAL should send Mrs. Alito a box of chocolates...they made a ton of money over her husband's confirmation (send us money, Roe hangs by a thread, blah blah blah).

You can only be cynical about these things.

Bob in North Dakota

Solly

Teddy's spokewomen has admitted that he belongs to this club that was evicted (not a voluntary action)for violating Fed anti-discrimination law. Why are you defending him? He still belongs to this good old boy all white male club. Oh, but Alito belonged to a club that had a women as president at one point. Good spinning, must have been coached by Carville.

Hey, L(ets)B(e)H(onest), has Reid been indicted yet? No? Maybe you should get your nose out of the Moonie Times, eh?

Reid did, however, deliver a smackdown to your boy DeLay in his own hometown paper.

And as for these Clinton "indictments" and "convictions"...how about a link?

More hate from the moral values party.

Hate. Lies. Hate. Lies.

LBH didnt Ken Mehlman send you the talking points this morning? Now its time to swift boat John Murtha's war record.

Bush convictions vs. Clinton convictions?

Why are you guys still hung up on Bill Clinton? So he was able to balance the budget and didnt run the country into the ground. Get over it.

LBH Little Bit o Hubris? Well, let's see no links for your claims, your repugs have had control of the three branches of government for five years and what a success they have made of it. Now they are lining up for their perp walks along with their friends in high places, Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia and others, so counting on the records of accomplishment and hammering at old bubba for some distraction seems to be about all you got. Your e mail came from you, if it isn't right then that is on you, besides what difference does it make? You wouldn't know the truth if it jumped on you. But hey you are at least not a multiple personality troll or are you? Can't be too sure these days.

Speaking of Slick Willie, in an interview the other day he stated that he never felt the need to break the law and listen to Americans phone conversations, despite what Ken Mehlman was trying to tell everybody.

I miss the good ole Clinton days. Things were so much less terrifying.

Yeah, New Orleans is a heckuva place to bring the family.

Heckuva job, heckuva job.

According to the Bible, liars dont get into heaven. Neither do greedy people. I think heaven is definitely going to be neocon free!

You know what amazes me? It's unbelievable to me that the bullshit going on in this country can be thought of as acceptable. That anybody listens or reads the crap that gets shoveled out of the sty, formally known as the white house before the Bush reign of terror, and actually defends it.
LBH, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT.

Don #196

First, Delay is not my boy.

Second, I never said Reid was indicted.

Third, go to google and do the search. It is way more revealing to see all the links (more convictions, more links)at once not just cherry picked ones that you like to link.

Last, You shouldn't knock the Times since David Corn has used them as the source of his post today, unless you think David is a biased rag also.

LBH, are you okay? Im sorry did all of this "undignified" partisan attacking hurt your feelings? Here is my hanky... just let it out...

Are you trying to distance yourself from hot tub Tom too?

Corky #200

Clinton didn't balance the budget, Newt and the Republicans did. Clinton just signed on because he knew the Republicans were the ones with all the good ideas.

I still love you Corky-nothing but love,love, love ,love and I don't even require a blow-job to give my love!

LBH,As the new owner of the Republican party I feel I need to point out that Jesus would not approve of your hate and lies.

Good ole Newt, ummhmm why isnt he still in the House?

I love you too!

#179 Robert Schwartz, that is why we are all sinners. We know our sins of commission but we prefer to blockout our sins of omission.

Well whoever balanced the budget then sure aint doing it now!

Clueless #201

Distraction is about all you got.

Well lets see about that-
1. Tax cuts
2. Removing Sadam
3. Economy booming
4. Republican gains in Sen & House
5. Justice Roberts
6. Justice Alito
7. Germany coming onto our side now
8. Lybia giving up WMD
9. Fed judges approved
10. No terrorist attacks on American soil after 9/11

Now what were you saying about all I've got?

WOW! Jeanne said the "F" word, good for you! Sometimes it's just the right thing to do.

Neoconservative ideas:

Lie.

Repeat the lie, that will make it true.

Blame Clinton.

Appoint cronies to important government post's and then give them medals when the completely screw up. Heckuva job!

Read only the parts of the Bible that pertain to sex and sodomy, ignore the rest.

Make the rich richer.

Make the poor die.

Send all the jobs to China, borrow lots of money from them, then call Democrats commies.

When a natural disaster hits, go on vacation.

Spend, spend, spend.

I wonder if Mr. Tice was the technical intelligence specialist while Bolton was waging war against the state department and building the case for the illegal invasion or Iraq?

Talk about "probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts". Bolton has continued his serial abuser strategies at the UN, he just knows how to intimidate any one any where.

April 28, 2005
Colin Powell vs. Condi Rice: Hand-to-Hand Combat over John Bolton

Sid Blumenthal has written a blistering critique of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's position on John Bolton, making the lucid and appropriate point that whereas Colin Powell has frequently put the interests of the nation above loyalty to those on petty power trips, Rice seems to be doing the opposite.'

Blumenthal writes:

In seeking to prevent the bullying and duplicitous ideologue from representing the US before the international organisation, Powell is engaging in hand-to-hand combat with his successor. Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's first true test has not arrived from abroad. Caught by Powell's flanking movement, she is trapped in a crisis of credibility, which she herself is deepening.
Powell's closest associate, his former deputy Richard Armitage, is orchestrating much of the action. Wavering senators are directed to call Powell, who briefs them on Bolton's demerits. Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence B Wilkerson, has surfaced to give an interview to the New York Times, declaring that Bolton would be "an abysmal ambassador".

Other former foreign-service officers have queued up to provide ever uglier details of Bolton's career as a "serial abuser" and "a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy", as Carl W Ford Jr, the former director of intelligence at the state department, described him before the Senate foreign relations committee.

Rice's response to the seemingly endless stream of witnesses has been to order state department senior staff to stanch the flow of adverse stories.

"This whole building knows how Bolton dealt with people," a dismayed senior state department official told me. "If she is sending a different signal than Powell sent that will be difficult. The muzzle is being put on, the damage is being done. To the extent it's buttoned up here, it's dangerous for the secretary. Powell and Armitage created an environment of accountability about treatment of the staff. Any kind of allegation that you did things like Bolton did was death in the foreign service. Persons were removed. Now she's trying to be a team player, trying to support someone Powell ostracised."

Then focusing on the hugely important matter of Bolton's insubordination against Powell, Blumenthal exposes the probable and vital significance of the NSA intercepts Bolton was using to wage war against Armitage, Powell, and others at the State Department:

The Bolton confirmation hearings have revealed his constant efforts to undermine Powell on Iran and Iraq, Syria and North Korea. They have also exposed a most curious incident that has triggered the administration's stonewall reflex. The foreign relations committee has discovered that Bolton made a highly unusual request and gained access to 10 intercepts by the National Security Agency, which monitors worldwide communications, of conversations involving past and present government officials. Whose conversations did Bolton secretly secure and why?
Staff members on the committee believe that Bolton was probably spying on Powell, his senior advisers and other officials reporting to him on diplomatic initiatives that Bolton opposed. If so, it is also possible that Bolton was sharing this top-secret information with his neoconservative allies within the Pentagon and the vice-president's office, with whom he was in daily contact and who were known to be working in league against Powell.

If the intercepts are released they may disclose whether Bolton was a key figure in a counter-intelligence operation run inside the Bush administration against the secretary of state, who would resemble the hunted character played by Will Smith in Enemy of the State. Both Republican and Democratic senators have demanded that the state department, which holds the NSA intercepts, turn them over to the committee. But Rice so far has refused. What is she hiding by her cover-up?

The White House is toughening-up its support of Bolton, even to the point of anticipating a stalemate or even negative vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Bolton. Lawyers are now considering various mechanisms by which the Senate Foreign Relations Committee might be circumvented to take the nomination directly to the floor of the Senate, this making a mockery of the Committee, its findings, and any vote it might take.

This is incredible. The Bush administration is willing -- it seems -- to gamble everything on behalf of Bolton, even to the point of emasculating the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senators like Richard Lugar, Chuck Hagel, Lincoln Chafee, George Voinovich, and others need to say enough is enough. This is no longer about Bolton being a "loose cannon" or irresponsible manager of intelligence, or an agent in a guerilla war against Secretary of State Colin Powell's diplomacy. This is about an incredible abuse of power not by Bolton, but by the White House.

If it stays on its present course, the White House is saying that not only was Bolton's wide berth of disturbing, reckless behaviors not appropriate, White House officials are celebrating Boltonianism and mimicking it in its treatment of Lugar and his committee.

Because the White House is willing to go to such incredibly perverse lengths on this battle, I think it's increasingly clear that Bolton's opponents can and may just possibly win. The manner and style of White House pressure on its caucus is forcing the Senate to accept the unacceptable.

Dick Cheney's team is canvassing the Republican caucus to see how solid or weak support will be for Bolton in a full Senate vote -- but they are taking the vote before anyone has seen the NSA intercepts.

If Bolton played loose with the nation's most secret secrets and was spying on his superiors and passing on information to others in government, Bolton's behavior may have violated bounds of legality. The Senate will switch in a heart-beat if that is the case, despite any pre-NSA Intercepts ring-kissing operation that Cheney has going on among the Republicans in the Senate chamber.

Today, in addition to Blumenthal's devastating piece, Bolton-obsession is still running strong in the nation's papers, and particularly in the New York Times and Washington Post. In the latter case, Art Buchwald moves Bolton even deeper into pop culture, and Richard Cohen correctly argues that Bolton's misassessments of intelligence, heavy-handedness with allies, and delinqency on his real non-proliferation tasks were like an "acorn" on Dick Cheney's tree.

Bolton stories will continue to bubble out this week. But watch for a blow-up over the NSA intercepts if the White House or Condoleeza Rice continue to stonewall by restricting access to U.S. Senators demanding to see what Bolton saw.

Cover-ups never work, but it seems to me that whether or not national security related logistical reasons are the excuse for delay or Condoleeza Rice is to blame, each day that passes without response from or compliance by the administration increases the prospect of yet another major blow-up in the Committee over Bolton.

THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN MAJORITY AND MINORITY STAFF ON THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE is predicated on the good will that the staffs would collectively secure all testimony and information relevant to the Bolton case. Lugar has today joined Biden in making a formal request of the administration for NSA intercept access.

But if the administration does not comply, Biden and others on Committee -- and any miffed and irritated Senator on the floor of the Senate -- and I hear that Senator Rockefeller is one of those most miffed -- can again help launch fireworks again around the time of the May 12th Committee hearing.

The White House may be deploying new and cynical tactics, but those moderate Republicans and progressives working behind the scenes -- as Sid Blumenthal points out -- are profoundly resolved to restore integrity to American foreign policy and to protect the system of checks and balances that are being smeared and violated by the Cheney-Bolton machine.

The administration is testing its opposition, and I hear that many in the White House check out this blog each morning.

Good morning to all of you there. Just wanted to let you know that we intend to duke it out as long as the Cheney-Bolton team want to stay in the ring.

-- Steve Clemons

Posted by steve at April 28, 2005 05:17 AM

Jeanne #205

LBH you are a fucking idiot!

Hate+Hate=Hate

I don't remember calling you names-is this what it has come to? Name calling? Again, I ask what has Bush been convicted of?

Robertson said that God was punishing Sharon. Robertson excluded the red states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Oklahoma and their problems. I do not see God picking and choosing His punishment. Does He exclude America because America is such a holy country? Robertson is a total idiot. Robertson is the poster child for all the Nazis in America. There are at least 54 million avowed Nazis in America. These are the people who voted for Bush in 2004.

I do miss the balanced budgets -- and having a Congress that wants to spend less than the President. But helping Iraqis create a democratic Arab Islamic democracy is more important; plus getting closer to a pro-life US Supreme Court. I don't think Bush and many top Reps really want to overturn Roe immediately -- just chip away. Getting rid of partial birth abortions, for instance. You know, when they take the big human "fetus" and suck out its brains so it's murdered in the womb, and then they deliver it. Alito might well rule all abortions after 3 months might be made illegal by states who do so -- that won't please either base but reduces the fire in both. And until Dems are interested in cutting spending, they're just BSing on the deficit.

We'll just see about what?

1. Ignored the infamous "bin laden determined to strike U>S>" memo.

2. My Pet Goat

3. Harriet Myers

4. John Bolton

5.Katrina

6.Brownie

7. Social Security Reform

8. Valerie Plame

9. WMD s in Iraq?

10.Economy for the RICH STOCKBROKERS is booming while jobs created is still in the red.

Bob in ND,

There are no pro-abortion people.

I have called you on this before. That is a device and is beneath you.

You are better than to stoop so low. Why does your verbiage defile your post?

It is shameful coming from an otherwise sensible person.

capt

Tom Grey,

Does the Neoconservative Bible have large portions of it blocked out? Why can you guys only see small parts of it?

"It is easier to thread a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass into the kingdom of heaven." Jesus Christ

Why are emryonic cells so much more important than thousands of children bombed to pieces over nonexistent WMDs?

I agree capt. not very "dignified".

Corky

I hope that the regulars aren't looking to you as the offical cornnut spokesperson! If they are then they sure give up easy. I am always up for a good laugh so keep posting.

I did not defend Teddy. Read man, read. I have eaten dinner with David Riesman at the Owl Club. It has the same building it has always had, adjacent to the campus. I spoke to female members. It started taking women in the 1980s. I acknowledged TK was a member of this club. It never advocated that Harvard stop admitting minorities, as the club Alito was a member of did. Membership is lifetime. I was confused because you did not have your facts straight. Talk about spinning. Go back to my post and show where I defended Teddy or denied he was a member of the Owls.

By admitting he was a member of that club, TK shows more honesty and integrity than Alito who denies remembering being a member of the group he was proud enough of to put on his resume in 1985. So you support a man less honest and forthcoming than Teddy Kennedy.

What should we expect from someone who says, "I used the ring of cocaine ring murders to show how silly you all are. I didn't think that I would have to explain it to you." ???!!!

Translation- I got caught making up crap and am now backing down.

Keep tilting against liberal windmills LBH, you are making me laugh and laugh and laugh.

Solly

#214
Seriously Dude,
Are you living off your daddy's dividends? You are clueless number one. Economy booming. What a load.
Economic Policy Institute

Wage growth slows for most workers between 2000 and 2005
Despite labor productivity gains over recent years, the real wages of middle- and low-wage workers have stagnated or fallen. For more information, read this week's Economic Snapshot.

Job growth weaker than expected in December
For an analysis of the latest employment data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, read EPI's Jobs Picture.

EPI on the move
Read the latest EPI News for details.

What's wrong with the economy?
Get an accessible answer to this question in our latest policy memo, written by EPI's President Lawrence Mishel and Vice President & Policy Director Ross Eisenbrey.

The boom that wasn't (updated)
Since 2001 President Bush and congressional leaders have promised that enacting each of a series of tax cuts would strengthen the economy by bringing faster growth, more jobs, and greater investment. With Congress again debating whether to extend past tax cuts and enact new ones, it's time to review how much the last four years of tax cuts have affected the U.S. economy and budget outlook. EPI's Briefing Paper, The Boom That Wasn't—îhe economy has little to show for $860 billion in tax cuts, examines a broad range of measures to show how this economy's performance compares poorly to past averages. This Briefing Paper has been updated to include third quarter 2005 data.

Indexing the minimum wage
The federal minimum wage has not been increased in over eight years and is currently at its second-lowest value since 1955. While Congress stands idly by, many states have raised their minimum wage and some have begun indexing it to keep pace with inflation. Read more about it in this Economic Snapshot.

One-time insurance payments for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita mask continuing decay in the U.S. current account deficit
Though the data released today by the BEA showed a decrease in the current account deficit in the third quarter, this is only a reflection of unexpected, one-time inflows following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In fact, without those payments, the deficit would have increased to more than $820 billion. What's more, the data revealed that net income from U.S. investments in the second quarter was negative for the first time in at least 45 years. Read more about it in the latest Current Account Picture.

CPI dip boosts November wages, but still no overall gains four full years into recovery
For an analysis of the November's Bureau of Labor Statistics earnings data, read EPI's latest Wages Picture.

Capt #222

There are no pro-abortion people.

Sounds like an opinion to me. How can you prove that someone isn't pro-abortion. Can you read minds?

LBH,

Reading all the vitriol spewing from the left at you, I was going to try to defend you. But, like Judge Alito versus the hapless Dems on the Senate Judiciary COmmittee, you have more intellectual integrity, more reasoned arguments, more intelligent discourse, than the rest of the entire cabal of the poor misguided posters here.

Solly

You don't even make sense-confusion must be the chosen weapon of deception when nothing else works.

You can go to the owls web site and see that Teddy just renewed his membership in Sept. The kool-aid must be good at the owl club. Teddy didn't admit that he was a member. His staff person did only after being badgered by a reporter for the obvious bias by Teddy.

How many women have been president of this club? The club that Alito belonged to and quit had Laura Ingram as a club president when she was there. So much for discrimination, which is why it was a dud for Teddy to begin with.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Zealotry of either kind -- the puritan's need to regiment others or the victim's passion for blaming everyone except himself -- tends to produce a depressing civic stupidity. Each trait has about it the immobility of addiction. Victims become addicted to being victims: they derive identity, innocence and a kind of devious power from sheer, defaulting helplessness. On the other side, the candlesnuffers of behavioral and political correctness enact their paradox, accomplishing intolerance in the name of tolerance, regimentation in the name of betterment.": Lance Morrow (1939- ) Essayist, professor

=
"One of the things that bothers me most is the growing belief in the country that security is more important than freedom. It ain't.": Lyn Nofziger [Franklyn C. Nofziger] Press Secretary for President Reagan

=
"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.": Theodore Roosevelt - (1858-1919) 26th US President - Source: letter 01/10/1917

===

Thanks ICH Newsletter!

#15 Saladin thanks for the link earlier. Also the truth hurts some folks. Keep speaking your truth and do not feel guilty. Reflection is good but stay with the truth.

#70 Saladin...Justin Raimando has hit the nail on the head more than any other journalist in regard to the run-up to the invasion and just who was/is behind the middle east regime change agenda.

#73 Capt...The revolving door in Wash has provided the DEFENSE INDUSTRY trillions for years. The Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld/Pnac/Perle/Feith Cabal are happy as clams with the defense industry deals made with the "Clash of civilizations" that they led us into.

I truely believe this is why Valerie Plame was taken out.

FOLLOW THE WEAPONS MONEY......

What Did Eisenhower Mean When He Warned of a Military Industrial Complex? Take a Look at the Carlyle Group.

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

With Dan Briody, Author of "The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group"

They are at the epicenter of the military-industrial-complex-Bush-Cheney-crony-capitalism administration. The Carlyle Group is the model example of the nearly seamless connection between the Bush administration, self-enrichment and companies who receive big government defense contracts.

The roster of Carlyle ңonsultantsӠreads like a whoճ who guide to government officials of the 1980s, starting with former president George Bush, former secretary of state James Baker, and former defense secretary Frank Carlucci.

The most chilling aspect of Briody’≥ book is that the political connections and lobbying activities he unmasks are not illegal.

It is a testament to the brain dead mainstream media that the relationship between the Carlyle group and the Bush-Cheney cartel is not a national scandal.

Brady is an award winning journalist who has written for Forbes, Wired, Red Herring and the Industry Standard.

You can purchase his book as a BuzzFlash premium at: "The Iron Triangle:Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group."

* * *

BUZZFLASH: If we were looking at the Carlyle Group

"It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Since no-one has come foward with any (real)proof that Bush has been convicted with a crime, I am assuming that you all have given up and I rest my case. I hope everyone had as much fun looking over all the links to Clinton convictions vs. Bush convictions as I did on the Google search-what an eye opener!

Jeanne, if you weren't such a negative downer all the time, someone might actually give you a good job. I tend to stay away from negative people and have spent way to much time with you trolls, it is rather draining! Now I know why successful people avoid trolls like you.

So you now admit that the Owl Club has women members and still has its' old building on campus.

Another liar exposed. Lie number two, after the cocaine ring crap. Thanks for playing and you can now go back to Michael Savage's talking points.

"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

#235
What a bozo.

It is really incredible to see the morass into which the Democratic party has fallen. Here you have Teddy Kennedy, an old, corpulent, besotted, murderous, miscogynistic philandering trustbaby, lecturing Judge Alito on ethics and morals. The true face of today's Democratic party.

I think it was 1964 or 1965 when the progressives last had a new idea. Progressives may not like it, they may not agree with the logic, but it is truly the conservatives with the only new ideas in town.

Slinking out after being caught in a web of lies. How .... typical.

Whoa,
the smear machine is really mad at Ted Kennedy isn't it? He asked too many questions I guess. And Judge Alito had to answer them. That's kind of how the system works. I know it's outside the crony atmostphere you trolls are used to. How much is Rove paying the trolls this week? Minimum wage? You get any benefits with the action? Health care? 401K? I didn't think so. Don't get sick or old.

LBH,

You must be a new poster to this blog. A few words of warning.

(1)The progressives don't like having their ideas challenged. They will try to chase you from the site.

(2)Progressives don't like to engage in reasoned debate. They are intellectual cowards.

(3)When progressives lose an argument, which is all the time, they resort to obscenities and name-calling. It is because they are as bereft of vocabulary as they are of ideas.

(4)Progressives love to post from other sites, because they have no original ideas themselves.

(5)Progressives always think the worst of both themselves and everyone else.

(6)To a person, they are an extremely dour lot.

I could go on, but you get the point.

Iraq Bloggers Souring?

Sheldon Rampton of The Center for Media & Democracy kindly writes:

"In case this hasn't crossed your viewfinder, you might want to check out recent developments with your old pals at Iraq the Model. Apparently they're not very happy with the recent election results. Here's an excerpt from Omar's January 5 blog post:

*****end of clip*****

Juan Cole, always informed comment!

capt

Tempting as it is, PLEASE don't let something like post #239 get to you so that you feel you have to respond. It's SUCH a waste of time. Plus you're wasting breath (bandwidth) going round and round with ignorant people. There is no point to this. What makes you think any proof you provide will get thru to deaf, dumb and blind assholes? I'm worn out reading thru this thread tonight.

Solly

"So you admit that it now has women and still has it's old building"

Who friggin cares-you miss the entire point like everyone else on this site. The Owl Club discrimated against women when Teddy was there-end of story. Who cares what building it was in. It's called hippocracy exposed.

Clintons cocaine ring-again, you miss the point one more time, let me help you. I used the Clinton cocaine ring to show how dumbass the conspiracy theories you trolls have come up with. I do not stand by any kooky Clinton cociane ring conspiracy, unlike you trolls that bite onto anything thrown at you that can be attached to Bush. Do you now get it? Or, do I have to explain a third time, slower?

Jeanne,
It is the right-wing radio way to dance around the shortcomings of Alito. Whaether it be this group he put on his resume, or the strip search case. Attack the accuser. You know the drill.

Having personal knowledge of Harvard and the Owl Club, I had to after this one. Notice how he changed the subject after he got nailed using totally innacurate information.

You were right about "Country Boys". The ending was certainly worth waiting for.

Solly

Jeanne,

No, Teddy Kennedy didn't ask too many questions; he asked too few. He spent the rest of the time either pontificating or reading, head down, from a script obviously prepared for him by a staff member who had a pipeline to NOW, NARAL, et al.

And, as did Chief Justice Roberts, Judge Alito simply blew him away.

Actually, I am very grateful that Ted Kennedy is the face of the progressives. He is obviously the best of the bunch.

When are the progressives going to learn that they just can't compete in the arena of ideas and intellect?

What is important is that you were talking out of your ass and making things up. This makes everything else you say suspect. I do not believe that the cocaine ring crap was a metaphor. There was no indication of such and you made up info about the Owl Club, so why not here.

You are a liar who peddles disinformation. Try it elsewhere. You got caught. Period.

Solly

Carol,

It is a futile effort. Some here feel bound to respond to the most inane and meaningless crap. More than a waste of bandwidth, the troll effectively derails meaningful commentary.

If we all just ignored the piffle posts. . .

Well, OFW! They will be with us as long as people respond to their stupidity. (so it seems they will always be here)

capt

Jeanne

I guess Teddy who murdered his girlfreind, Bill who raped a women and slandered/threatened others are your role models for womens rights, is this correct?

Judge Alito made Teddy look like an idiot with his buddies Schumer, Feinstien and the rest of dimwit Dems. No need for me to defend Alito, you trolls are no match for him.

Put yourself in a state of mind where you say to yourself, "Here is an opportunity for me to celebrate like never before, my own power, my own ability to get myself to do whatever is necessary." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

BTW-
It's hypocrisy. Hippocracy is a government by hippos. Still want to stick with insulting my intelligence? You are a lying half-witted tool.

Way to allign yourself Bill.

Capt:

Thanks for the MLK quotes.

I'm of that age but I eschew preachers and I never really listened to him.

But I know strength and wisdom when I read it.

You're right. Who is our leader? Can you believe that we went from Martin to Bush/Cheney in 40 years?

But that spirit is not dead and I wait like you for a leader that will lead us out of the wilderness.

"The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one." ~
Martin Luther King, Jr.

#253

Someday . . .

Thanks

capt

When was Clinton convicted of rape? Oh, no innocent until proven guilty in LBH land? Of course not, you are a proven liar who will say anything to make a point...badly.

Liar.

Solly

Solly

How can you be so brain dead? You make no sense and claim victory. Your intellectal dishonesty/stupidity is spewing through your spores. Now, I wasn't going to resort to name calling like you trolls but enough is enough-get a damn clue!!!

"The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

LBH,

Do you see by posts such as those at 244 and 249 that these people have no stomach for anyone disagreeing with their ideas? Their voices only resonate in an echo chamber. They simply cannot compete in the arena of ideas.

They are at once intellectual bullies and cowards. I don't think they are stupid, but they are certainly logically lazy.

Capt#249

Derail meaningful commentary

What meaningful commentary? All you have posted is quotes of other people, my second grader could do that.

I want to see feathers. Lots of them.

Oh well, onto current news. Hmmmm.

Vampire Seeks Job as Minnesota Governor

MINNEAPOLIS (Jan. 13) - Minnesota voters, who eight years ago elected a former professional wrestler as their governor, may find a self-proclaimed vampire on the ballot for the office this year.

"Politics is a cut-throat business," said Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey, who said he plans to announce his bid for governor Friday on the ticket of the Vampyres, Witches and Pagans Party.

Like Jesse "The Body" Ventura, who was elected governor as an independent in 1998, the 41-year-old Sharkey once was a wrestler. He went by the nickname "The Unholiest of Kings: Tarantula" on obscure professional circuits.

"I'm a satanist who doesn't hate Jesus," Sharkey told Reuters. "I just hate God the Father."

However, he claims to respect all religions and if elected, will post "everything from the Ten Commandments to the Wicca Reed" in government buildings.

Sharkey also pledged to execute convicted murders and child molesters personally by impaling them on a wooden pole outside the state capitol.
---------------------
What a guy.

And I believe a progressive invented the non-sequitir.

Capt and carol,
If you did not like the thread I am sorry, kind of. The guy said something that I know from personal experience to be a lie. I lurk sometimes, and when no one responds, the insults and garbage still fly. There was some content here, and the echo chamber effect can be a little stultifying at times. Like people often say about the trolls, if you do not like it you can always scroll past. No one made you read it. If David wants to tell me I was wrong, I would apologize to him. In the mean time, I caught a troll in a blatant lie and feel good about it.

Pax et veritas
Solly

Solly

I never said that Clinton was convicted of rape-He has so many links to convictions from google that you may have gotten confused by the kool-aid again. You're staring to sound a little hysterical maybe you should take a time out and gather your thoughts.

I hope this is on C-span.

Gore to Address "Constitutional Crisis"

It sounds as if Al Gore is about to deliver what could be not just one of the more significant speeches of his political career but an essential challenge to the embattled presidency of George W. Bush.

In a major address slated for delivery Monday in Washington, the former Vice President is expected to argue that the Bush administration has created a "Constitutional crisis" by acting without the authorization of the Congress and the courts to spy on Americans and otherwise abuse basic liberties.

Aides who are familiar with the preparations for the address say that Gore will frame his remarks in Constitutional language. The Democrat who beat Bush by more than 500,000 votes in the 2000 presidential election has agreed to deliver his remarks in a symbolically powerful location: the historic Constitution Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution. But this will not be the sort of cautious, bureacratic speech for which Gore was frequently criticized during his years in the Senate and the White House.

Indeed, his aides and allies are framing it as a "call to arms" in defense of the Bill of Rights and the rule of law in a time of executive excess.

The vice president will, according to the groups that have arranged for his appearance -- the bipartisan Liberty Coalition and the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy -- address "the threat posed by policies of the Bush Administration to the Constitution and the checks and balances it created. The speech will specifically point to domestic wiretapping and torture as examples of the administration's efforts to extend executive power beyond Congressional direction and judicial review."

LBH,

Please re-read post #242. All these people can do is quote from others because they have not idea one in that glorious brain of theirs.

You see, with ideas comes intellectual fortitude. Sadly, the progressives are possessing of neither.

Democrats plan delay but no filibuster of Alito

BY JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURGChicago TribuneWASHINGTON - As the weeklong hearings on Judge Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination came to an end Friday, Senate Democrats indicated they would delay a vote on his nomination for a week. But those on both sides of the aisle said they expected Alito to be confirmed this month without a filibuster by the full Senate.

Gaveling the hearing to a close Friday afternoon, Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter announced he would vote for Alito, setting the stage for a 10-8 party-line vote in the committee in favor of the nomination. No Democrats among the eight on the committee have officially announced how they will vote, but all have suggested they will oppose Alito.

In previous battles over President Bush's judicial picks, a party line vote out of committee has presaged a filibuster. But several Senate Democrats said a filibuster was highly unlikely, largely because of Alito's performance during 18 hours of questioning.

*****end of clip*****

As a self confessed cynic, the first thing that comes to mind is the Democrats need to long weekend to create the illusion of opposition and to choose which ones will side with the fourth Reich.

capt

Solly, no apologies necessary, just my opinion. I have no facts to support my assumption(s).

A non-partisan factoid for Everyone

David:

The last part of your post:

"So when did the United States stop being a republic where the representatives of the citizenry are (technically) in charge and able to oversee the actions of the federal government? Sometime, it seems, after George W. Bush became president."

Caught my `Mathgination' so I decided to do what your Regulars love to do, research!

Total Federal Reps., House & Senate= 535
2005 Fed. Outlays (estimate) = $2,470 Billion
1999 Fed.Employees, Civ.& Military = 4.25 Million

Divide Outlays & Employees by the #of Reps. to see what each "oversees":

Outlay per Representative ~ $4,600,000,000
Employees per Representative ~ 8,000

I HAD a business w/less than 10 employees and grossed less than $1 million/year, and I worked 60 hours per week! It was rough and I didn't even had to campaign, do photo-ops, enjoy junkets, sit through Alito-type hearings, etc...

Kinda Sobering, isn't it?

"The time is always right to do what is right." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Solly,

According to your logic, Stalin and Hitler were also blameless, because neither of them was convicted of a crime, either.

"Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Where was it Hitler wrote Mein Kampf?

Oh yeah, in prison. Now I remember.

Again, you have sent your best and brightess to smear me a liar because you could'nt answer my basic question of "what has Bush been convicted of" At least Solly tried to deflect with a little bit of fight. More than I can say for Don, Robert, Mr clueless or even Capt. We now know who wheres the pants in this family.

Until another day, goodnight!

Smear= paint with a false accusation

He got caught red handed in blatantly making up
"factoids". As in a court, everything else he says should be considered to have equal veracity.

Solly

Here's a breath of fresh air

Maryland law targeting Wal-Mart could ripple across U.S.
BY TONY PUGH
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Maryland's bold new law requiring Wal-Mart and other large companies to increase health care coverage of their workers has given new life to supporters trying to pass similar legislation nationwide.

The state's Legislature on Thursday passed a law that directs firms with more than 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payrolls on employee health benefits. The law targeted Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, whose low pay and scant benefits have drawn widespread criticism.

Carol,

Interesting point about Wal-Mart. Actually, I see this as similar to what is happening in New England - a bunch of upperclass white people denying those less well-off an ability to both be hired and buy goods at cheaper prices.

Perhaps you can shed a little light on what Wal-Mart's wage and benefits package is versus the prevailing package in Maryland. Or do you want me to do it for you? Or are you just interested in parroting platitudes?

I think you know I already have the answers, but I'd be interested to see if you have the honesty and fortitude to get them yourself.

#276
Too bad the answers are hollow.

Carol,
There are 2 choices. The first is having the employer pay for health insurance. Or the second option - National Health Care.

Jan 13
Presidential (mis)Speak.
"So this little program, in a dark neighborhood,...heard a call...to try to help people in need."

Jeanne and Carol,
Not only does Wal-Mart direct managers to keep workers just under 35 hrs. per week to avoid health care, show them how to get these workers on medicare/medicaide in published pamphlets, and bully their way into areas that do not want to zone for big box stores, but their prices are not that low in reality. The yellow smiley face prices are very low "loss leaders." Items sold at below cost to bring people into the store. Let's say you want a DVD player. There will be a $39 one that is the cheapest in town, but it is a no name brand with no warranty and zero feature. If you go into the aisles, the prices are no better than Target, Value City, and other retailers that do not participate in such shoddy labor practices. So the unpaid overtime, low-wages, and other "savings" really go to the owners and shareholders, not the buyer.

A local conservative columnist, looking to defend Wal-Mart, saw the study that wrote about it. Yet another reason not to shop with Sam.

Solly

Pande #181 (last thread)

I am profoundly disappointed in your response. Yes, you affirmed your reputation as the `meanest' of the Regular bunch in your puusuit of fun n games. That character trait, I am certain, will take you very far in life.

The second lasting impression is of an immature ethnic who, because he's got a college education, has gotten his head so big, he just has to show off somewhere safe, like here, since he is still low man on the totem pole; working for others and will probably always work for others he mostly despise.

I have nothing further to say to you! It takes a lot to piss me off but you manage to do it. You know what, I will give an extra couple of hundred bucks to the RNC in your honor!

Disgraced Congressman 'Wore a Wire'

Sources tell TIME that Duke Cunningham wore a wire after agreeing to cooperate with a graft probe

HA!

capt

Solly,
Another thing that will happen is a company picking up foreign contract workers and then expecting them to get on the state insurance plans. So not only are they not hiring the local unemployed, they are asking the taxpayer to pay the insurance for their employees. This isn't just Wal-Mart but other companies.

I've been so upset over the state of health care in this country the last 25 years that I could spit. It's criminal how human beings are treated in this so-called wonderful country. My husband can't retire and has to keep working 10 hours a day for a Hitler just to make sure I'm covered. He's 66 and has Medicare, I'm 6 years younger so he keeps plodding away until I can get Medicare.

In the meantime, Hitler has been busily screwing up the health insurance Bob gets and just last week changed carriers again RIGHT in the middle of the PHP plan. Blue Care Network now. Isn't it great that our doctor, who we took a year to find, DOESN'T TAKE BCN! Everyone has paid their deductibles and suddenly they have them all over again. Everything covered in the new plan? Employees will have to pay 20% of everything. We all know that every damned thing you do medically cost a fortune and people can't afford those huge bills. Old Hitler's next thing is he's looking into medical saving's accounts. Humph. Who could save enough money to cover even a stubbed toe for god's sake!

One of the guys that quit has been using Cobra, paying $400 a month out of his meager pocket and just had surgery. What's going to happen to him with this switch in insurance carriers? His doctors don't take BCN either.

When I saw that Wal-Mart article I was delighted. Now, when are ALL the states or the federal government going to start giving a shit about our lives? OUR LIVING, BREATHING LIVES? Never. At least not in MY lifetime. Until we get the gd money out of politics we can all just suffer and drop dead because no representative that WE elect will EVER give a shit about us. They only have one master, money. We The People should be giving them the campaign money, NOT big business. - We are SOOOOO doomed.

"Until we get the gd money out of politics we can all just suffer and drop dead because no representative that WE elect will EVER give a shit about us."

Unless there is profit in it. It is just business after all. (sarcasm)

capt

Pande, you upset Happy!

Hate to tell you, Happy, but most of us HAVE to work for others. The big guys along with the government's help have pretty much stopped the little guy from having his own business. Now they're sending the jobs overseas and leaving only service jobs. Can't start your own business and can't find a job with a good company. Asshole.

"Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Pande, have I told you lately that I love you?

The jailer

Ariel Sharon is lauded for breaking with his hard-line past. But the truth is that he simply embraced a smarter way of locking up the Palestinians. "

Even as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stirs fitfully from his coma, in the aftermath of a massive stroke and several operations, Gazan militants with a bad aim have fired several Qassam rockets into Israel. Israel is now, and is likely to remain for some time, a dark postmodern terrain of wealthy fortress communities besieged by hopeless unemployed militants from isolated ghettos. This archipelago of anxiety, reminiscent of the noir science fiction film "Blade Runner," is in some significant respects the creation and legacy of Sharon.

The conflict between Sharon and the Likud Party, with which he recently broke, was over two distinct far-right-wing visions of Israel. The somewhat messianic Likud is committed to completing the creeping dispossession of the Palestinians by relentlessly colonizing the West Bank and Gaza (at least), and refusing to accept any clear demarcation between Israeli territory and that of its neighbors. This 19th-century-style settler colonialism, reminiscent of the French in Algeria or the Italians in Eritrea, is so blatantly aggressive that it continually threatens to disrupt vital economic and diplomatic relations between Israel and Europe. Sharon saw that, but his rival Benjamin Netanyahu never could.

Likud is hoping that somehow along the way the indigenous population will gradually be convinced to leave for Egypt or Jordan, as the Israelis move in. (Some hard nudging is not ruled out by some elements of the party.) In the meantime, in the words of Likud leader Netanyahu, the Palestinians might have self-rule, but would not be allowed to have self-government.

In reality, it is the Palestinians, with their high population growth rates, who have the demographic advantage. Israel's ability to retain new immigrants fell during the second intifada or Palestinian uprising. As the Russian economy benefits from high petroleum prices, further major immigration by Jews from that country seems unlikely. Indeed, some of the 1 million Russians in Israel, many of them not actually Jewish, may start returning to the old country. By 2020, most projections predict that Jews will be a minority in the area comprising Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Even among Israeli citizens, Israeli government demographers predict that by 2030 the population could be a third Arab.

*****end of clip*****

The idea that Israel is a Jewish state really does discount a huge number of Israeli Christians, Israeli Arabs and a host of other non-Jewish Israelis.

capt

Man, the full moon is affecting all the werewolves tonight. I'm in Durango for the night to go check on some meters in the mounts outside of town.

Who the hell is this bill guy. And that lbh android? AS is typical, they try to make it sound like they have all the facts and all the stats and all the wax, but in the end we are all painfully aware that these folks are 'bout 33 ticks shy of a full hour. Just a duece shy of a full deck. If only they could focus on the full clock.

Its true that the left leaning folks here seem to be easy prey for the less motivated bloodthirsty righty, but their short attention span quickly causes them to give up and go sniffing somewhere else, usually to the child porn sites.

I always crack up when some righty gives advise to the other side. Why??? What do they care?

But don't take it personal guys, bushcos have been reading from the jokers clock. Most people here reasoned that out long ago.

Right now I'm on my way to town for a jam session. My roomate is watching a Denzel Washinton movie. He thinks DW pix are documentaries. Lord F*k a Duk!

Later
th
PS Play in the key of B.

"We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Carol,
You are absolutely right. As someone who is working in/toward a public health career, the state of public health is one of the tragedies of our times. Here in St. Louis, the state of public health in poorer neighborhoods is an abomination. It is not much better for the hourly workers anywhere. Public elections and NO monetary gifts to politicians are the only answer. As it is, a politician has to return a sweatshirt from a catholic school he visits, but can take away $10,000 in soft money from the company that wants to take over its property (actually happened here).

Money+politics=no real democracy

Solly

"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

#247 Bill you really have to be kidding "ideas and intellect". Scalito revealed absolutely nothing.

The only moment he was thrown off even for a second was when Kennedy let him know that he knew Alito would not be be a true representative for the american people in regard to justice, moderation, and truth. Alito actually raised his hand and wiped off his brow at his point. This was basically the only time that Alito moved.

Nothing was revealed about Alito...all we have to go on are his past judgements, which do not reflect moderation and impartiality.

For those in the mood for a good laugh, and those who I irritated by taking on LBH (but I did paint him into a corner but good) I found this:
Bush is a Girlie Man

"Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another's flesh." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1963.

Carol #285

You couldn't be more wrong. New small business start ups are stronger than ever. The majority of jobs created are from small business and it is easier than ever to start a small business. Heck as a women you could even get government assistance. That is if you are a women. So instead of whining about not being able to find a good job, how about getting off the lazy ass bus and taking advantage of the many opportunities that this country has to offer. If you need help you can go to the small business administration, chamber of commerce or a local bank, now get going!!!

I guess anyone can feel sorry, that does not make us crazy, it does not even rise to the top ten. I always get this picture as a visual when the troll show their true scolors so the joke is always on them.

Graphically speaking that is!

capt

"I am aware that there are many who wince at a distinction between property and persons--who hold both sacrosanct. My views are not so rigid. A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man. " ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.

Solly, I'm reading (audio book) The Grapes of Wrath. This has always been a horrible country. People have always been cruel. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. It's a constant struggle to survive and it doesn't have to be. Everything is so hopeless.

Solly

The only corner you painted was your ignorance of what a debate is. I find people who call someone a liar because they don't get what the debate is about a charming quality but can't help but laugh at the air that passes through your ears. Is this a liberal quality all cornnuts share?

"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority. " ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

Carol

The only thing that is hopeless is you and Solly.

#297
Capt,
I couldn't have said it better myself. One thing I've noticed about the right on this blog. They hate women. They either don't address women at all or when they do they are very derogatory. Like... even a woman could get government assistance. Get off your lazy ass. What's the point? What a pitiful way for a person to get their jollies.

"Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measures of Man, 1959

Kathleen, I try very hard to stick with the truth. I am constantly learning and adjusting to new facts. I want to know both sides, how else can you make good decisions? The worst thing that happens in this country is when people pick a side, based on nothing more than emotion, and refuse to see the possibilities that are present. I come here for new perspectives, and I am usually rewarded for my effort.

Solly, Jeanne and Carol, if you haven't yet read "Nickel and Dimed, On Not Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich, I highly recommend it. She had the guts to go out there and live the life of the working poor, and it was quite the indictment of corporations like Walmart, and other parasites that deceive and loot the people that keep their businesses afloat.
th 289, I have never been able to understand the thrill these bushbots get in coming to this very overtly bush bashing blog and exibiting shock that we despise bushco policies. Is it because they are free, unlike the facist neocon supporting blogs, to spew such ridiculous and hateful rhetoric? Are they bored with people that are, as one described it, being stuck in an echo chamber? Or are they just bullying thugs that like to be mean in general? In any case, I don't really care, scrolling past is a breeze when they offer no insight or any dialogue to give me new perspective. I need a challenge, and they are poorly equipped. They're still whining about clinton for God's sake! Can't they play a new record? We're not still blaming reagan for the shit factor today.

Carol,
The numbers of kids without medical coverage in this country is a crime. We wonder why TB is coming back.
The thing is, if you're going to insure the kids you have to insure the parents. What good is insurance to a kid if the parent is dying from pneumonia? And a kid will feel a huge burden knowing they have health care but the parent or the grandparent doesn't have it.
I think that part of the catastrophy of health care is the insurance industry itself. It shouldn't be an industry. There shouldn't be a billion companies out there. The overhead, the paperwork, the differences in coverage...there is nothing uniform about it and it's costing the country too much money.
Don't even get me started on pre-existing conditions.

Jeanne,
And they make such asses of themselves doing it.
"A women"-twice. Once is a typo, twice is a lonely high school putz taking out his anger being at home on a weekend night on women. Probably a feminist "women" of the kind that tells other women it is okay to avoid domineering, lying, jerks. The incohate anger is palpable.

Solly

Saladin,
I loved "Nickel and Dimed."

Solly

# 289 Durango? You lucky dawg!!

Solly,
It's pretty amazing considering they all claim to have masters. But then so does Bush.

The troll has so self marginalized themselves I can no longer muster a read of their piffle.

It is just incredible that the troll is always a PHD (yes - they capitalize all three) or a Captain of industry, veteran or active service member or they work closely with Rummy in the Pentagon. (I am positive more than one of them is lying)

They are not credible in any consideration.

But that is just one un-educated old man's opinion. I am wrong more often than not so no reason to think I am right about them.

You can always identify the crud I think is piffle, it is when the pathetic troll snipes at someone’s commentary. They really have nothing to say except to spew about themselves or personal attacks on the regulars. Always a major tell in my book.

I know GOPhers, and a few that call themselves Indies and the troll population on this board are as ridiculous as made up cartoon characters by comparison. They do not even sound serious because they are just here to roil the regulars and post insults, dada pretzel logic, or invoke the name of their greatest demon CLINTON.

A waste of space, energy and oxygen.

Of course, and again, just my opinion.

I do continue to offer a challenge to ANY and ALL takers: Show me one troll that accepts one single facts or has been convinced of anything?

(crickets chirping)

The fact is - the troll will come and post their piffle, I just do not think I have read anything that rises to the level of civil discourse, political or otherwise. Posting to them is not an effective teaching tool, the troll would have to want to learn and even then I doubt the outcome.

*sigh*

capt.

Saladin, I don't have time to read books, only listen to them. Library doesn't have Barbara's book on tape. I'll check again. I've been wanting to listen to that book forever now. - Off now to play a game. I need to get my head cleared. I need mindless entertainment. I need to escape. (first I'll check the library on-line) Good-night all.

I put a pretty funny column from gadflyer.com at #294, if anyone wants lighter political fare.

Carol,
Grapes of Wrath was a huge inspiration, but not all is hopeless. That very period led to the New Deal and more gains in worker rights and safety. May I also suggest "The Ballad of Tom Joad" by Bruce Springsteen. It is bleak and beautiful, sad and inspiring all at the same time.

Solly

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Carol, True, the state of health care in this country is shameful. Several months ago Hillary Clinton called the new prescription drug plan for Medicare/Medicaid patients "a cruel hoax". Well, I've read several articles in the last few days that declare the new plan a disaster and a new health care crisis is evolving as a result. I shutter to think about what is coming down the pike.

"Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness--justice. " ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

I have often thought this neofascism is a necessary growing pain for America and civilization(if you can call it that). Maybe the good doctor was as prescient as he was profound.

capt

Saladin, OH MY GOSH! Library has the audio book AND the A&E video. I'll get the video after I listen to the book. Have you read Bait & Switch? I'll get that one next. - off to my game for SURE this time.

"Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’≥ point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.. " ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam - April 4, 1967. New York, N.Y.

California starts emergency program to pay for seniors' medicine

California will buy prescription drugs for senior citizens and the disabled who cannot get their medicine because of bureaucratic foul-ups under the new federal Medicare program, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced.

The governor on Thursday ordered state health officials to cover pharmacy costs for prescription drugs for five days and said the state Legislature planned to extend the emergency coverage for another 10 days.

Under the emergency plan, the state will temporarily supply its most vulnerable residents with "lifesaving medications they are in danger of losing because of significant problems with the new federal Medicare prescription drug program," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

"Starting later today, the state will be the payer of last resort," he said.

He did not estimate the cost but it could run to millions of dollars. The governor said he would ask the federal government to reimburse the state costs.

About 1 million Californians who are eligible for both federal Medicare and state-run Medi-Cal health insurance were automatically switched from their current prescription drug coverage to Medicare coverage as of Jan. 1 under a plan touted by the Bush administration as a key reform.

California is home to about 1 in 6 of the eligible recipients nationwide.

But the Medicare program isn't monolithic. Instead, seniors obtain coverage through one of hundreds of private drug plans that take part in and are reimbursed under the federal program.

Some of the mainly low-income recipients have reported trouble obtaining their medication from pharmacies that have been unable to confirm they are covered. In some cases, people who enrolled in plans have discovered they aren't listed as participating when pharmacies check their computers.

Other beneficiaries found they were listed as owing a $250 deductible when they should have been paying only a few dollars per prescription.

Federal officials have estimated an error rate of about 20 percent, meaning about 200,000 Californians are at risk of being unable to get their medications, state Health and Human Services Secretary Kim Belshe said in a conference call Thursday.

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No success like failure under the Bush plan. Everybody knows the only thing that grows under a Bush is a deficit. (and illegal war - wiretaps - big government - corporate welfare and the number of billionaires in Texas)

capt

Feinstein: 'Major health emergency' in Calif. from drug plan

WASHINGTON Problems with the federal government's new Medicare prescription drug plan are creating a health crisis in California, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Friday, a day after the state announced emergency drug coverage for California's seniors because of the problems.

Unlike most Democrats, Feinstein voted for the prescription drug plan pushed by President Bush when it passed the Senate in 2003. But in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, she said it was "incomprehensible" how many problems there have been with the program's implementation since it took effect Jan. 1.

Reported problems include elderly people being denied benefits because of wrong information in government databases. Pharmacists are supposed to be able to get eligibility information about seniors from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, but the electronic systems aren't working, forcing pharmacists to call 1-800-MEDICARE and wait for hours on the phone, Feinstein said.

*****end of clip*****

Just like a pol - D. Feinstein voted for the boondoggle now wants to complain it does not work. I find her a bit maddening, maybe more than a bit.

capt

Captain,

Conservatives operate in the arena of ideas. Progressives seem to be stuck in this time warp of the 1960's. As Texans would say - all hat and no cattle.

For instance, Carol condemns Wal-Mart, but is reticent to learn the facts, not promulgated by Wal-Mart, but by Maryland governmental agencies, hardly friends of Wal-Mart, of the true economic impact and conditions of Wal-Mart.

And, Captian, all you seem to be capable of is parroting stale quotes from other people. Do you not have an original idea in that head of yours?

Wal-Mart was going to build a distribution center in Maryland employing 1,000 people. There was no forced labor. People were not being dragooned to work there.

And now there is not going to be that Wal-Mart in Maryland. Who is going to provide work for the 1,000 people who would have had those jobs you so denigrate?

Will you, Captain?

You progressives seem to be so fond of choice. How about giving the people of Maryland a choice? If people don't want to work at Wal-Mart, don't work there. If shoppers want to boycott Wal-Mart, let them boycott Wal-Mart.

The trouble with progressives is that they are snobs. They think that the great unwashed masses are utterly incapable of making any type of decisions in their lives, so some monolithic governmental authority must make it for them.

Yes, let's have a Canadian healthcare system that's just been declared unconstitutional, even in that progressive haven. Let's have a system where specialists can't be seen for an average of nineteen weeks after the patient's consultation with the primary care physician. Let's institute a process whereby there is no dialysis treatment, and men have to wait up to six months for prostrate surgery after it has been diagnosed. Right now the number one place for hip replacements for Canadians is Cleveland, Ohio. Yep, people are dying to get into that system. No, wait, people are dying - literally - to get out of that system.

Well, I have greater confidence in my fellow Americans, and greater confidence in myself. If you are so weak as to require Big Brother to direct your every move, please do not heap the same calamity on me.

I'm getting my tubes tied next month. Not just because the Pill makes me sick; no, since I don't want kids, I don't want to run the risk of having to get a back-alley abortion once Alito The Flip-Flopping Woman Hater gets confirmed. The surgeon told me today that there has been a surge of tubal ligations scheduled since Alito came on the scene. She does several each week, and she isn't a full-time surgeon.

Can you dig it, folks? Women feel as though they must alter their own organs rather than face having a fundamental right denied to them. I mean, am I the only one who wants to VOMIT whenever Alito suggests that women are the property of their husbands? Because, you know, that is what all of this "ask permission/inform" bullshit is all about.

Get your asses back in the kitchen, bitches. Get knocked up and know your place. Fifty years of feminism in the shitter.

Posted by: Daughter of Viet Vet | Jan 12, 2006 2:58:29 AM

Bremer attacks 'idiotic' Spanish troops in Iraq

MADRID The former US governor of Iraq has condemned Spanish troops for their 'idiotic' conduct in Iraq.

Paul Bremer claimed they "did nothing" as a battle between Shi'ite militia forces and coalition troops went on around them in the Iraqi city of Najaf in 2004.

In his memoirs, Bremer wrote: "They are sitting in tanks doing nothing", quoting from notes he made at the time.

"It is a perfect outrage I call it the 'coalition of the not-at-all- willing'."

Bremer's book, 'My year in Iraq: The struggle to build a future of hope', challenges the version given by the Spanish military of the Najaf uprising in April 2004.

The rebellion took place just days before Spanish troops were due to be withdrawn from Iraq by the newly-elected Socialist government which won a general election weeks earlier.

Bremer claims Spanish troops deployed five kilometres from Najaf refused to help US marines and troops from Latin American countries who were fighting insurgents.

The defence ministry of the present Socialist government and the Popular Party, which first deployed Spanish troops when it was in power, defended Spanish troops.

"There is no reason to doubt their work," a defence ministry spokesman told the Spanish daily El Pais.

*****end of clip*****

Yeah, funny thing when the coalition is of the arm twisted not the of the willing.

capt

Carol, Carol, Carol:

You said in #283: "When I saw that Wal-Mart article I was delighted"

You also said in #285: "Can't start your own business and can't find a job with a good company. Asshole."

Let's see, Carol, you detest the Biggest of business and the Small of the smallish businesses (mine, see #268)! I am probably safe to assume you detest all businesses in between. Hmmmmm... No wonder...I would offer you a job but I know it won't work out.

Dispite your calling me name, I wish you good health!

Dear Viet Vet Daughter,

There is an entire argument that says that, while you want to have a good life by controlling your body, there is a living breathing "other" body within yours that has as much right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness as you do, but let's reserve that debate for another day.

Right now, let's stick to the question of the fate of legal abortion. Many of the constitutional scholars, even those fiercely pro-abortion, feel that Roe was, constitutionally, horrible due process. Don't you see - many of us not only hate the outcome but also the way in which it was decided? I believe the vast majority of Americans, even those strongly pro-life, would abide by some type of abortion laws if it were decided by the people.

But, once again, progressives believe that it is only the purview of the courts, the last bastion of the unthinking progressive, that can save the poor, American public from itself.

I believe that if Roe is reversed (and I hope it will be), it will be remanded to the state courts and legislatures for the people to decide its fate. And, don't you agree that it should be the decision of the electorate what laws should be passed, not same fiat handed down by a bunch of unelected people in robes?

Many of the states already had legalized abortion when Roe was decided in 1973. And at the state level is where it should be decided, unless there is a federal constitutional amendment for it at the national level.

#325
Of course, you're a guy. Talk is easy. Oh would the story be different if old Bill could get pregnant.

The Unkindest Cuts

Anya Kamenetz is a columnist for the Village Voice and author of Generation Debt: Why Now is a Terrible Time to Be Young, about student loan debt, the job market, and other matters of generational politics The book is forthcoming from Riverhead Books in February 2006.

A plurality—≥2 percent—Øf the $39.7 billion in cuts in the current budget reconciliation bill come from the student aid programs. The $12.7 billion represents the largest reduction in the history of federal student aid. I bet the nation's population of college students—∑ho are in their 20s, on average, and working about 30 hours a week—§idn't realize they were the single most financially healthy sector of society, strong enough to bear the bulk of the sacrifice for everybody.

What's insidious about the current reductions is that the Republicans who negotiated them claim the cuts are coming out of the $17 billion in annual subsidies to banks that lend money through the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP). Rep. John Boehner, the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, points to changes like the elimination of 9.5 percent bond recycling, a notorious loophole that was costing the government up to $1 billion a year. The House and Senate leadership and the banking lobby alike take advantage of people's confusion about a Byzantine system to obscure the true import of what they're doing.

*****end of clip*****

The wealthy and powerful want those getting an education to fall into line, kiss some rich butt and find a benefactor. No self-made people, they are not easily controlled.

capt

corky 40
When Hitler was taking over Germany he tried to buddy up with the church

Sounds exactly like what John Kerry tried, doesn't it?
John Kerry turns traitor on his own country in time of war, stabs his fellow soldiers in the back, then try to buddy up to jesus.

John Kerry ... what a pathetic pig.

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Proof Bush Deceived America

James Risen's State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, may hold bigger secrets than the disclosure that President George W. Bush authorized warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.

Risen's book also confirms the most damning element of the British Cabinet Office memos popularly called the "Downing Street memos;" namely, that "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy." The result is that it is no longer credible to maintain that the failures in the Iraqi intelligence were the product of a broken intelligence community. The Bush administration deliberately fabricated the case against Iraq, lying to Congress and the American people along the way.

One world leader recognizes the extreme danger of official lies told to a nation in the service of an aggressive war. He also happens to be a leader who survived the horrors of fascism in the last century. In a Jan. 1 address to the world, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the consequences of lies such as these, in what can only be a thinly veiled reference to the president of the United States:

" . . . Sacred Scripture, in its very first book, Genesis, points to the lie told at the very beginning of history by the animal with a forked tongue, whom the Evangelist John calls ''the father of lies'' (Jn 8:44). Lying is also one of the sins spoken of in the final chapter of the last book of the Bible, Revelation, which bars liars from the heavenly Jerusalem: ''outside are... all who love falsehood'' (22:15). Lying is linked to the tragedy of sin and its perverse consequences, which have had, and continue to have, devastating effects on the lives of individuals and nations. We need but think of the events of the past century, when aberrant ideological and political systems wilfully twisted the truth and brought about the exploitation and murder of an appalling number of men and women, wiping out entire families and communities. After experiences like these, how can we fail to be seriously concerned about lies in our own time, lies which are the framework for menacing scenarios of death in many parts of the world.

*****end of clip*****

Bunnypants could not care less about his lies.

The "all who love falsehood" has to be a real buzzkill for the neocons. (falsehood = Bunnypants) - talk about smacked down by the Pope! OUCH!

capt

U.S. seeking Arab peacekeepers in Iraq

CAIRO -- The U.S. is reportedly seeking to convince Arab countries to send troops to Iraq to replace U.S. forces after the formation of a new Iraqi government.

Cairo-based Arab diplomatic sources said U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney who will start a Middle East tour on Sunday including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Oman, will discuss the matter with Arab leaders.

The sources told United Press International Friday Cheney will raise with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and other Arab leaders the possibility of dispatching Arab and Islamic troops to Iraq to pave the way for the reduction of American forces.

Washington hopes Arab forces would participate in keeping peace in the regions from which it will pull out its troops, and as such send a positive message to Iraq's neighbors that it does not intend to keep its forces in the Arab country, the sources said.

Cheney will visit Egypt on Sunday for a few hours during which he will meet President Mubarak only, Egyptian officials said without elaboration.

Cheney's last visit to Egypt took place in March 2002 as part of a regional tour to win Arab support for war against Iraq which Washington waged a year later to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.

The U.S. administration is facing growing pressures from Congress and U.S. public opinion to pull out troops from Iraq as quickly as possible, but officials hinted to a possible reduction of troops, arguing that an early withdrawal would give wrong signals to insurgents.

Cheney's visit coincides as well with Egyptian and Saudi efforts to ease tensions between Syria and the West over the results of the international inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri which named Syrian officials as suspects and requested to interview Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Some very interesting reading this evening.

Socialized medicine. What a joke. Does not work and is never free. If socialized medicine was the answer, why do people from Canada seek medical attention in the United States and why are there private hospitals in the Socialist Utopian European nations? Could it be that people will pay for the best medical care available instead of participating in a heavily taxed, over burdened, socialized system? In socialized medicine, government sets the wage of the physician. That wage is set regardless of the number of patients the physician treats on a daily basis. Since the wage is set, there is no compelling reason for the physician to see as many patients as possible on a daily basis. They are paid the same whether they treat 5 people or 50. Which do you think they choose to do? There is also no reason to specialize. Since government sets the wage, rarely does the wage justify the cost for the education required to become the best heart surgeon, the best dermatologist, etc. Socialized medician creates a status quo and everything just falls into place from there. Another thing, socialized medicine is not free. Take a look at the tax rates of those countries who have socialized medicine.

Maryland v. Wal-Mart. This is nothing more than the U.S. Gov't v. Microsoft or U.S. Gov't v. Big Tobacco, only on a smaller scale. Why did Maryland set the cutoff for the number of employees in the state at 10,000? Why not 100? Because they knew the only company that would be affected would be Wal-Mart and not all the others. It would not have passed if it affected many other companies but since the Socialists in Maryland have their knockers in a bind over Wal-Mart, they knew it would fly.

Note to Wal-Mart. Do not do business in the state of Maryland. Move your business elsewhere. Give those 17,000 people you employ in Maryland the opportunity to move with their job. If not, they can just become an unemployed burden on the state of Maryland.

Capt, Satan and devil, direct translation, liar and deceiver. Think someone is trying to tell us something? Goodnight all.

TRH, what a bummer that would be! Having to trade your mimimum wage job with no hope of benefits at Walmart for the same at McDonalds. Maybe all the customers at both businesses would be happy to stock and cook and pay all at the same time. Who needs employees anyway? Especially when your making billions. Read Nickel and Dimed, it will do you good. Everything is not the black and white capitalist heaven you make it out to be.

Saladin,

Capitalism is not heaven. Capitalism creates
opportunity for those who choose to participate. It also creates competition whereby those companies who provide the best product and service at the best price will prosper. Wal-Mart is not competing with Marshall Fields. They each have a targeted customer and their respective competitors are trying to gain as much market share within that targeted customer base. The ongoing Pepsi v Coca-Cola war is a classic example. Between the two, they control the overwhelming majority of the soft drink market,
yet they continually compete against each other for a greater share of that market.

Maryland attacking Wal-Mart is pathetic. I would be willing to bet that those legislators who overode the governor's veto never shop at Wal-Mart, they shop at Marshall Fields. But, I wonder where a lot of their constituents shop?

Here is what I see happening. Wal-Mart will stay in Maryland, because it would be costly to simply move out. But instead of employing 17,000
in Maryland, they will cut back to about 9,999
employees. Remember, the legislation only affects those with 10,000 or more employees.

Jane Hamsher at FDL notes that the blog's contributors are reasoned and articulate. Now, having been a writer all my professional life I may be relatively articulate, but reasoned?

Not these days.

Rather I'm frustrated, angry, and depressed. The repeated victories of the moron and his gang of Fascists have elicited in me some very ancient impulses, like, uh, an overwhelming urge to do some serious physical damage to these fat fucks, if ONLY I could get my hands on them.

What in hell does "reason" have to do with anything these days? Yes, there ARE articulate and reasoned people on progressive/liberal blogs, but the bottom line is that we are totally impotent in the face of the Fascists' well-oiled machine.

One part of the Fascists effectiveness is that they all speak with one voice on a daily basis, and they never depart from the script. One message each day, in short, clear, declarative sentences.

That's what the pants-pissing, brain dead 45 percent of the American electorate who love the moron need right now.

Here's what's so frustrating. To defeat these slimy bastards we would all have to become exactly LIKE THEM. Cynical manipulators, bullshit artists, liars. Criminals.

I don't have the stomach for it, honest to God. They do. Which is why we'll never win.

Chile's pension no model for US Social Security

"Free marketers" pointed to Chile's privatized pension system as the model for a privatized US Social Security System, but the Century Foundation notes that all of the candidates in Chile's presidential contest agree that the privatized pension system, which was created by the dictator Augusto Pinochet 25 years ago, is in trouble and needs immediate repair. Transition costs from the old system have been higher than expected while pension benefits are lower than expected.

Century Fund noted that "voracious commissions and other administrative costs have swallowed up large shares of personal accounts." One measure estimates that fees took roughly 28 to 33 percent of contributions made by employees retiring in 2000.

No wonder Wal Street hopes to get its hooks into the Social Security fund if Republicans maintain control of Congress.

You are quite the optimist, John. I hope your messsage is taken to heart by those who agree with you. However, if you are truly articulate as you state, you would make a passioned argument for ideas and policy instead of merely
casting insults at those who continually defeat your apparent choice of politician at the polls, year end and year out. You will not change one mind with your pathetic rant, but you could change many with articulate, reasoned argument for ideas. However, one must first have an idea.

Bill Clinton encourages a political for country singer Tim McGraw. I have to post this because I can't believe the last line of what Clinton said. I guess Clinton has been pretending all these years.
****************************
Country singer Tim McGraw says he wants to run for office someday in his adopted home state of Tennessee - perhaps for governor or U.S. senator - and he's getting encouragement from a fellow Democrat, former President Clinton.

"I think he's got it," Clinton says of McGraw in an Esquire magazine story that hits newsstands Monday. "The Democrats need candidates whom people can relate to in a personal way, people who understand their lives and their concerns and share their values. And I think that's something Tim can do without even pretending."
************************

Impeachment Calls Grow Louder

I'm telling you, my friends, there's something going on at the grassroots that the mainstream media isn't getting.

And that's this urgent desire by millions of Americans to defenestrate Bush from power and reclaim our democracy.

There were other overflow crowds in Sacramento, Chicago, and Livonia, Michigan, according to an inspiring report on afterdowningstreet.org.

The move in Congress, headed by John Conyers, is also picking up co-sponsors here and there.

"A total of eight U.S. House members have co-sponsored Resolution 635 to create a select committee to investigate the grounds for impeaching President Bush," according to Atlanta Progressive News. "The co-sponsors are Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)."

Senator Russ Feingold said on January 8 that he, too, would consider impeachment.

"I think there is an orderly and dignified way to find out what happened," he said. "And if there was a legal violation there needs to be accountability," he said, according to a report in the Vermont Guardian. "You can’¥ put the cart before the horse, but I would not rule out any form of accountability."

The Vermont Guardian said Feingold added that this would include impeachment. Feingold said that Bush "probably broke the law" when he authorized the NSA to spy in the United States without warrants.

Former Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who was on the House Judiciary Committee that impeached Richard Nixon, has come out for impeachment of Bush in The Nation. "A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law and repeatedly violates the law thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal of office."

The fuel for impeachment lies at the grassroots. That is where the organizing must happen. The city council of Arcata, California, is leading the way, adopting on January 4 a resolution demanding the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

Other towns and cities will surely follow, and not just in progressive strongholds like Arcata.

Americans of almost every stripe don't want a President wiretapping their phones or snooping on their e-mails without warrants.

Americans of almost every stripe don't want a President who puts a crown on his head.

Time for us to tire out our feet, and save the soul of this country.

*****end of clip*****

Anything short of impeachment will be the death of the heart and soul of our once great nation.

capt

If you're weary of the fudds, may I suggest the site driftglass.blogspot.com? It's remarkably free of fudds (trolls) for some reason. Either no one's heard of him and/or the fudds fear him.

Good God, did anyone hear Corky???????

Im getting a little depressed at how little we seem to care about our fellow man.

A person who has led an exemplary life talks to you, and you can't bother to respond?????????

This mans issues are REAL and he only represents a huge number of people in his same shoes. He has the courage to speak out in representing these people, and you bloggers just BLOW THIS OFF????

Im disgusted with humanity.

I might get over it, but DAMN, People, Where the hell is our humanity?????

#305 Well put Sal. Tickles me how they look backwards and try 'n find fault with the last Dem president to justify what this one has done.
There's no comparison, but it's all they have.

Solly, no mea culpa needed after the troll e-slap (props to James Ha for the new word). Sometimes, it just has to be done... 'specially when they touch on something you've have personal experience with. For an on-the-side comment, when I first came here, I got you 'n Sal mixed up a couple of times(hella I know why, Sal/Sol is close?). That's a complement to you both. *smarts, and empathy to go with it

Is Capt cool or what? Qoutes that hit the nail on the head, and troll-speak bounces right of of him. I think he has a truth-shield. Market that sumbitch Capt, and you're buying the drinks!

It's for '420' on my screen here. haha How appropiate.
g'nite y'all

John P: "I don't have the stomach for it, honest to God. They do. Which is why we'll never win."

But eventually we do always win, at least for a little while. Eventually their incompetence has such disastrous consequences that even the biggest fools turn against them. It happened during the Great Depression, during the Vietnam disaster, and to a lesser degree during the the early 90s, when -- after 12 years of Republican supply-side economics -- Japan started buying off our companies and cultural icons. (Remember when 41 puked in the Miyazaki's lap? Talk about symbolism.)

It's happening again now. The fools are turning, slowly but surely. All this incompetence is starting to inconvenience them personally. So take heart. We we will win again, if only for a little while.

TRH: "You will not change one mind with your pathetic rant, but you could change many with articulate, reasoned argument for ideas."

When it comes to politics, people's minds are rarely changed by debate, no matter how well reasoned.

In that sense, politics is much more like religion than science. Beyond the usual childhood indoctrination, it's often some sort of personal crisis that causes people to embrace religion. Or to reject it entirely.

The same seems true of politics. More than a few well known liberal pundits claim to be reformed conservatives. And, yes, many conservatives say they were liberals before they saw the light. Their change seems to have been more a conversion than a gradual transformation.

Maybe that's what's happening now. Maybe we're seeing the kinds of personal crises that create converts -- people losing relatives to a senseless war, double-income families sinking deeper and deeper into debt, people unable to see a doctor or buy the drugs they need. Maybe that's what it takes.

I find it absolutely enthralling that a progressive cannot make a reasoned, persuasive argument, engage in any type of debate, or participate in any type of colloquy or dialogue.

There have been several conservative/libertarian posts to this thread about abortion, health care, minimum wage, etc. Now, progressives may not like what is said. They may have a visceral objection to the posts. The suggestions, such as mine, may be terribly wrong.

But at least we are engaging in the arena of ideas. The only retorts seem to be of the "so's your-old-man" variety. No actual response to the actual topic itself.

I make an reasoned argument about abortion, and does Jeanne respond with any type of reasoned counterpoint. No; all we get is a slap at my gender.

And the poor Captain seems to be retreating deeper and deeper into that platitudinous shell of his. He is entirely incapable of original thought. Like a jackass, all he wants to do is kick down the barndoor. He has no clue as to how to rebuild the barn.

Finally, when the absurdity and futility of their positions are exposed, progressives are urged to retreat to another website, obviously another echo chamber where they are comfortable in their own little cocoons.

The reason progressives always lose isn't that conservatives are mean or evil or corrupt. It's because ideas always beat the lack of ideas.

All this moaning and groaning about lost rights is lost on me. I mean, aren't we the ones who wanted this? The air conditioning, the SUVs, McDonald's, Wal-Marts, NASCAR, FRIENDS... you assholes. We want this because we do nothing to prove we don't. We are what we've eaten -- and now we're all sick as hell.

Elmer,

Those things wouldn't make me vote for a Democrat, let alone become one. The examples you give are hilarious. You are basically saying that you don't want the federal government to protect and defend you against enemies of the United States, foreign or domestic, which the federal government is required to do. You would prefer them to be your doting nanny, wiping your nose, picking up after you and providing an allowance whether you do your chores or not. That is not what the federal government is for.

As for your nationalized health care, we already have it here in the good ole USA. Ask any veteran what they think of their nationalized health care. My guess is that the veteran would say there are two things they would not wish upon anyone, war & the Veteran Administration's government issue health care. Liberals tried to do that 13 years ago and it failed miserably. That was before Fox News and the internet explosion. Do you think it would fly now?

Congress and "intelligence?" What an oxymoron that is. Point No. 2: The Democrats, as you pointed out so succintly, once again floundered -- snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The outcome of the Alito hearing was a foregone conclusion. No guts, no glory for the weakling Demos.

#342 "Good God, did anyone hear Corky???????"

"A person who has led an exemplary life talks to you, and you can't bother to respond?????????"

"...and you bloggers just BLOW THIS OFF????"

Well, titchaba, I'm not entirely sure just what it is you are referring to. There were a couple of responses, with a few comments in rebuttal. But even corky came back in and pretty much sidled up to the very bloggers here who have no regard for government and the social programs that it provides for those who need a safety net.

This blog looks like the classic case of "what's the matter with Kansas?"

Caroline,

I don't know where she was coming from, but then again, I really didn't want to find out.

Not that I think Catholic Bishops have all the answers, but:

Bishops Urge US to Transition out of Iraq
By Larry B. Stammer
The Los Angeles Times
Friday 13 January 2006.

A certain someone used the phrase 'better facts' and hoped that another poster had 'better facts' than I had used.

Which got me to thinking about this 'better facts' concept...I mean, when you're intention is to illegally invade another country, and the intelligence community is giving you mixed signals, so you go out looking to produce 'better facts' like the forgeries which led to the Niger uranium debacle.

Of course, the production of 'better facts' is nothing new. The U.S. intelligence community has funded and trained groups such as the Iraqi National Congress, and Ahmed Chalabi, a group which would never have been but for the production of 'better facts.'

Here are some 'better facts' to look at, but they ain't pretty.

Exactly who would those bloggers be caroline? corky has been here a long time and has made many friends. None of the people he "sidled up to" hold any such sentiments as the ones you describe. Maybe we aren't all the shining examples of the left that you seem to expect here, but we are good and caring people.
TRH, your description of capitalism made me laugh! Maybe in the perfect world that is the kind of system we would have, but sure as hell not in this one. You are making the same mistake the typical troll makes, that is posting a sweeping statement concerning those you perceive as "liberal" when you don't know anything about them. Do you really think dems want to be babysat by a nanny state? Do you really believe they all want to collect govt. money for nothing? That is idiocy I didn't expect from you. Your continuance to support the bush administration simply because they wear your favorite label is ridiculous. They are not conservative republicans in any sense of the term, they are NOT protecting our borders, they are overseas invading sovereign nations in an illegal, imperialist war. They have turned your so-called welfare state into a coddling, nose-wiping piggy bank for the super wealthy who continue to send jobs to China while hiding massive amounts of income in offshore bank accounts. Yes, I know this was going on under clinton as well, but this new gang of marauders seems hell bent on finally sinking the ship. And sinking it is. Your assumption that every single individual in this country has the same opportunities as you is wrong and stupid. The working poor perform jobs you wouldn't want to do, jobs that make your life a more convenient, satisfying routine. They deserve to be treated with the same respect as everyone else, not ripped off and kept down in the name of profits. That may be legal in this country, but lots of immoral and disgusting corporate practices are legal, that doesn't make it right.

One of the 'facts' that I had posted which didn't make the 'better facts' cut of a certain critic was the Downing Street Memo.

Risen fills in gaps regarding the urgent visit to Washington by the British intelligence chief, Richard Dearlove, and the meeting he had with Tenet on July 20, 2002. We already knew from the famous "Downing Street Minutes" published by London's Sunday Times on May 1, 2005 - official minutes taken at a July 23, 2002, meeting of Blair's top advisers - that Dearlove brought back word from Washington that Bush had decided to remove Saddam Hussein by force, and that the war would be "justified" by cooking up intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction and warning that Iraq might give them to terrorists like the ones responsible for 9/11. While Tenet's name sat atop the list of usual suspects, we did not know for sure that it was he who provided this reassurance to the British, until one of Risen's CIA sources, who took part in the discussions with Dearlove, filled in that particular gap.

Risen's revelations add weight to the "Downing Street Minutes." These remain a pearl of great price, since they provide the smoking gun - documentary evidence that President George W. Bush, with Blair's acquiescence, had decided by mid-2002 to effect "regime change" by force on false pretenses. The minutes of the July 23 meeting leave no doubt that the president had decided to attack Iraq, even while saying in public that war would come only as a "last resort."

Dearlove is quoted as saying that Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy [emphasis added]." But I have often wondered, why did Dearlove begin that sentence with the conjunction "But?"

Pregnant Conjunctions

Reference to the "conjunction" of terrorism and WMD is transparent. By the time the Downing Street minutes hit the front page of the Sunday Times, it had long since been clear that, for whatever reason, Blair had bought into Bush's plan to invade Iraq; that the plan included conjuring up the specter of a "mushroom cloud" to deceive Congress and Parliament into approving war; and that this would be achieved by pretending that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and might give them to terrorists. That "conjunction" is clear.

But what about the "But?" The answer to that becomes clearer elsewhere in the minutes, which quote Foreign Secretary Jack Straw daring to warn that the case was "thin." According to the minutes, Straw said that:

It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.

It was presumably at this point that Dearlove countered, "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Sadly, as is now well known, in the summer and fall of 2002 that is precisely what was done, with the full cooperation of American and British intelligence and invaluable help from the likes of the archdeacon of con-men, Ahmed Chalabi, and his stenographer, Judith Miller of the New York Times.

[...]

Risen's book throws intriguing light on the intrigue. We know from other leaked British official documents that Jack Straw was something of a thorn in the side of Blair's more war-prone advisers, and was regarded as a general nuisance for raising picayune matters like whether the war might violate international law. Here is an excerpt from a memo he wrote to Blair on March 25, 2002, before Blair visited Bush at Crawford and came home committed to support war:

"There has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with UBL [Usama Bin Laden] and Al Qaida. Objectively, the threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September.... regime change per se is no justification for military action ... A legal justification is a necessary but far from sufficient precondition for military action. We have also to answer the big question - what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than in anything.... Iraq has had NO [emphasis in original] history of democracy so no one has this habit or experience."

Ray McGovern

******************

"Just the facts, ma'am" - Joe Friday

Wow, TRH you lie like a rug!

The "moral christian values party" hates healtcare? Go buy a Bible and read you heartless freaks. Being Christian only in the ways that Ken Mehlman tells you to be is not really being Christian. Only some rich guy would freak out about healtcare for the poor. Jesus would definitely support sick people being taken care of.

I think maybe Titchaba is confused about all of the Bushbots who posted hateful Unchristian stements on this blog(as they do all day long). This blog, unlike the Conservative forums, actually allows peole to share their points of view, no matter how untruthful, hateful, undignified, or unchristian thier post's may be. Most forums would ban or erase undignified comments like TRH. TRH is probably posting under 5 or 6 different names. He may have even posted under Titchabas name. I know its hard to believe someone from the "Christian moral values party" would risk going to hell by lying about political rhetoric, but it happens.

Unlike TRH, I have visited Canada, and the people I have talked to there were quite happy with thier healthcare. The fact is, even imperfect healthcare is better than NO HEALTCARE at all. Period. NO HEALTHCARE AT ALL is what I have.

Speaking of healthcare, looks like the new Medicare is a COMPLETE DISASTER!!! Heckuva job King George! Heckuva job!

Alan,
Thanks, man. I just had to do it. For more evidence that Dems will not stand up to the moneyed interests, Max Baucus (D, Montana) top Dem. on the finance committee told and audience in Bangalore India that the "out-sourcing" of white collar jobs to low-wage countries is a fact of life and Americans should just get used to it. Jobs out and capital in. Who benefits? Why big contributors to campaigns of course.

Caroline,
I think you miss the point of the disdain for government by regulars here. It comes from government being bought out and not providing ENOUGH of a social safety net. Instead it provides golden parachutes to wealthy business people and corporations to pad profits. Frank was referring to people of meager means voting for these pro-corporate candidates because of wedge social issues that should not be a part of the government anyway. I usually vote for Democrats, but I feel they have sold me out. And to what end? All three elected branches are now republican.

titchaba,
I feel for corky and have told him so before. What should I have done, tell him, "I agree, you are screwed?" How will that help. I could buy some insulin and needles and mail it to him, but I think I could get in a little trouble for that. Sorry if you felt it was callous not to respond, but I just do not know what to do other than what I am doing locally.

Solly

Why do rich conservatives hate poor people so much?

Its okay solly. I think Titchaba let that TRH guy upset her. She has had to watch her son struggle with an incurable disease while the "moral christian values party" tries to make life more unlivable for poor sick people every day. TRH's unchristian and undignified hatespew may have touched a nerve.

I don't know how National Health Care will work, can work, whatever. I do know the health care in this country is in crisis. To throw out the idea of national health care because it doesn't work in Canada (people's assumption) is foolish. I believe Americans are smart enough to look at a program and take what works and make it better. I think the arguments I've been hearing for the past several years defeatist. I've been through really hard times. Cobra for us was $1024 a month.

Solly, all of the regulars have responded to corky. He told us his story months ago, We know what he suffers and have offered our support. Titchaba hasn't been here as long as corky, so she missed all the comments regarding his health problems. I have a very good friend that has type 1 diabetes and it is all he can do to come up with the money to treat it. Just buying the blood test strips is a burden. He is poor, working as much as he can, and has no health insurance. Also, he is an older person who used to be a college geology teacher. I'm sure TRH will assure us that we need to just accept the wonderful world of capitalism as he sees it and stop whining. Are there really such cold and callous people out there? I find it nearly impossibe to believe that he is even remotely related to Hajji!

I refer to our "healthcare" as a Hate Based Iniative. Neocons enjoy breaking the back of the poor. Plain and simple

corky,
They do not make big campaign contributions, vote Democratic, and take tax money away from no-bid contracts and pork barrel pet projects. Then they actually criticize this country, which emboldens the enemy in the war on terror. Let's review:
Poor=terrorist
Liberal=terrorist
Union aggitator=terrorist
Critical thinker=terrorist

Now why do you ask so many questions? Hmmmmm. :)

Solly

Jeanne, there is one reason we will never see a workable health care plan in this country, INSURANCE COMPANIES! As long as they have the corporate upper hand, that notion, regardless of how good the plan may be, will remain dead in the water. The clintons didn't have a snowballs chance in hell to push that through, and they knew it. And it wasn't because the people didn't want it, the insurance co.'s will never allow that never ending river of money to stop flowing into their coffers.

Until the healthcare system here becomes a not for profit enterprise there will be no relief, the insurance companies suck up the money for administration and other hidden charges, even when Hillary tried to do something she involved those blood suckers, once we get bean counters out of the medical decisions and let the medical staff make them along with the exorbitant malpractice insurance carriers we will all be better off. Big business has our country in a stranglehold and the sooner we get them out of our government the better, if they want to outsource and move overseas great. Just leaves room for some humanity in business to come forth.

The comments are reaching numbers that will soon prevent me from getting in. I know a few will be glad to be rid of me, but I will check the last thread for any new comments and respond if I see them. Hope to see you there Carol, I know you have the same problem.

Capt wrote: >There are no pro-abortion people.

Chomsky: 'There Is No War On Terror'

The acclaimed critic of U.S. foreign policy analyzes Bush's current political troubles, the war on Iraq, and what's really behind the global 'war on terror.'

For over 40 years, MIT professor Noam Chomsky has been one of the world's leading intellectual critics of U.S. foreign policy. Today, with America's latest imperial adventure in trouble both politically and militarily, Chomsky -- who turned 77 last month -- vows not to slow down "as long as I'm ambulatory." I spoke with him by phone, on Dec. 9 and again on Dec. 20, from his office in Cambridge.

Geov Parrish: Is George Bush in political trouble? And if so, why?

Noam Chomsky: George Bush would be in severe political trouble if there were an opposition political party in the country. Just about every day, they're shooting themselves in the foot. The striking fact about contemporary American politics is that the Democrats are making almost no gain from this. The only gain that they're getting is that the Republicans are losing support. Now, again, an opposition party would be making hay, but the Democrats are so close in policy to the Republicans that they can't do anything about it. When they try to say something about Iraq, George Bush turns back to them, or Karl Rove turns back to them, and says, "How can you criticize it? You all voted for it." And, yeah, they're basically correct.

Volunteer Street Cleaners Help Prepare For MLK Celebration

It's another victory for South Mississippians determined to overcome tough odds. Despite some hardships left by Katrina, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. parade will proceed through East Biloxi on Monday. But the streets along the route were a mess. At least they were until Friday morning.

"We have over 100 Keesler Air Force Base Airmen, and some Marines and just all sorts of volunteers to help clean up the Martin Luther King parade route for the parade on Monday," says Lt. Col. Claudia Foss, Keesler's Public Affairs Director. "And we've partnered with Hands On USA to bring a whole team together."

Hands on Volunteers welcomed their camouflaged comrades into what they call their Re-Jubilation Effort.

"We want to bring back a sense of normalcy to the city," says Team Leader Janos Marton. "And in doing so, we're going to clean up streets, parks, schools, churches, basically anything we view as a public area that lots of people enjoy."

The decision to carry on with their traditional observance amid rubble and litter strewn streets wasn't easy for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Coastwide Birthday Celebration Committee.

"We're doing everything we normally do except we just don't have the bands coming to do the Battle of the Bands," says Committee Chairman James Crowell. "But otherwise everything else is in place."

Now residents will be able to celebrate the life and legacy of the great civil rights leader, on streets swept clean by people of nearly every creed and color. To the people of these neighborhoods, it's truly a dream realized.

"One thing the storm did is it leveled all of us, you know, from the millionaire down to the poorest," says Crowell. "So we're trying to lift one another up. We got to work together to do that."

*****end of clip*****

"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

capt

The dollar may fall this March
01/14/2006 16:41
America's foreign debt currently standing at $8,184 trillion will hit the debt ceiling as early as February-March 2006

The United States is heading to financial crisis at top speed. That is correct, America will default on its foreign debt sooner or later if the actual trends remain unchanged. Consequently, the whole dollar-based world (including savings in U.S. currency) may crumble.

Several factors will have an extremely detrimental effect on the dollar, according to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury John Snow who forwarded a letter full of ominous predictions to 21 members of U.S. Congress. The letter was made public after the markets had been closed for Christmas and New Year's holidays - a rather appropriate precautionary move in terms of the international foreign exchange market, which is extremely sensitive to any sound produced by U.S. bureaucrats.

In his letter, Snow predicts a crisis in February this year. Citing U.S. government forecasts, Snow believes that America's foreign debt currently standing at $8,184 trillion will hit the debt ceiling as early as February-March 2006. For decades the White House has been borrowing money to cover expenditures that exceeded the real economic growth rates. As a result, the U.S. public debt currently totals to $8.1 trillion, a huge figure compared to the U.S. GDP that is slightly above $11 trillion.

experts point out that America is definitely getting ready for default.

The thing is, a number of events are due take place in March. The events look very alarming to the world of the dollar.

First, Iran is to officially switch into the euro in its foreign trade operations including oil exports. Second, China is hinting at a potential increase of the euro share in its Central Bank basket of currencies. The dollar share currently holds 70% of the basket. The dollar will be severely affected should the two countries, an oil and gas producer and a manufacturer, take action in a simultaneous manner.

Besides, the U.S. Federal Reserve is going to stop publishing the so-called "M 3 aggregate" reports i.e. data on increase rates in money supply. Given the New Year's predictions by John Snow, the Fed's intentions look pretty suspicious. In other words, the international community will have no tool for measuring a real value of the dollar.

The Fed is going to pull the plug on the data in March this year. Several events should occur in different countries more or less at the same time and thus damage credibility of the U.S. securities. Risk-averse investors get rid of speculative securities e.g. the dollar securities under the circumstances.

All in all, the situation is quite alarming though it looks like a play being staged on purpose. The currency market and the U.S. foreign policy are hard to foretell.
------------
The economy is absolutely BOOMING, to fact challenged bushbots anyway. The reality, train wreck, dead ahead. Now, what was that about Iranian WMD'S? Are we really going to fall for that same lie again? Short answer, HELL YES!

Solly, Carol & Jeanne

Please let me set the record straight again. I do not hate women, I have been happily married for 20 years to a wonderful mother of our three children. She also is equal owner in our small business. My reference to women getting government assistance is the women and minorty low interest loans that the government offers to help them start a business. The lazy ass bus was a correct statement for anyone who wants to complain instead of taking action-men or women.

I only get frustrated with people-men or women- who continue to try and distort what I said and lie. This would be you three. I also get frustrated with people who can't offer anything in a debate but stupidity.

There you go, setting the record straight once again!!

"The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty. " ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967

More from the Chomsky interview: (thanx Capt.)

Alternet: How could the Democrats distinguish themselves at this point, given that they've already played into that trap?

Chomsky: Democrats read the polls way more than I do, their leadership. They know what public opinion is. They could take a stand that's supported by public opinion instead of opposed to it. Then they could become an opposition party, and a majority party. But then they're going to have to change their position on just about everything.

Take, for example, take your pick, say for example health care. Probably the major domestic problem for people. A large majority of the population is in favor of a national health care system of some kind. And that's been true for a long time. But whenever that comes up -- it's occasionally mentioned in the press -- it's called politically impossible, or "lacking political support," which is a way of saying that the insurance industry doesn't want it, the pharmaceutical corporations don't want it, and so on. Okay, so a large majority of the population wants it, but who cares about them? Well, Democrats are the same. Clinton came up with some cockamamie scheme which was so complicated you couldn't figure it out, and it collapsed.

Kerry in the last election, the last debate in the election, October 28 I think it was, the debate was supposed to be on domestic issues. And the New York Times had a good report of it the next day. They pointed out, correctly, that Kerry never brought up any possible government involvement in the health system because it "lacks political support." It's their way of saying, and Kerry's way of understanding, that political support means support from the wealthy and the powerful. Well, that doesn't have to be what the Democrats are. You can imagine an opposition party that's based on popular interests and concerns.

************************

The illth of nations

I Have a Dream - Address at March on Washington August 28, 1963. Washington, D.C.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

*****end of clip*****

Sadly, it is still just a dream as we have not found the even ground, we have not found equality for race or gender. We have not realized the great dream. *sigh*

capt

Robert and Capt, that Chomsky interview has said, almost word for word, what I have been saying for a long time. Will his negative statements leave him open to the same rude commentary I have received? Somehow I doubt it. Chomsky is right on, always has been. He also knows that we have no such thing as capitalism in this country, that is as much a BS fantasy as Iraq's WMD'S!

Remembering a real war hero

Hugh Thompson died last week. He was a difficult kind of hero. He took a stand for decency and humanity, and some people vilified him for it.

News of his death did not get anywhere near the attention it deserved. Maybe that's because we are still so uneasy with that day almost 37 years ago when American soldiers showed a capacity for depravity and savagery that called all kinds of moral assumptions into question.

Was it an isolated aberration or just grizzly proof that Americans are not immune from the kind of evil that can shut down years of civilized living and turn a man into something his family wouldn't recognize? Even as we go to war again, we don't seem to have a solid answer.

In the village of My Lai, in what was then South Vietnam, American men went on a killing spree on March 16, 1968, that left hundreds of people who had nothing to do with the war _ old men, women, children _ dead in a ditch. There was rape and mutilation.

And Hugh Thompson, a warrant officer and pilot, saw it all from the air and put his helicopter down in the middle of it, between the soldiers gone mad and the few remaining villagers left alive. He told his two-man crew to open fire on their fellow Americans if they had to. He called in nearby gunships to fly four adults and five children to safety. And he flew one small child to a hospital.

The child was spotted moving in the killing ditch and pulled from among the bloody corpses.

News of the barbaric slaughter was slow to reach the folks back home. The Army did not move quickly or thoroughly to investigate the reports of a massacre. But in 1970, author Seymour Hersh laid it all out for us. He won the Pulitzer Prize for telling us about Lt. William Calley and the men under his command who allegedly were looking for the Viet Cong when they crossed over to the dark side and created a hellish bloodbath of innocents.

Thompson and his crew _ door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta _ simply couldn't accept what they saw from their helicopter. They landed and showed incredible courage. They went against their own when they knew their own were brutally, criminally wrong.

It was the kind of courage not easily fit into Army history. Some people, including one crazed congressman and some fellow soldiers, thought Thompson and his crew deserved condemnation rather than praise. It was not until 1998 that Thompson, Colburn and Andreotta were given the prestigious Soldier's Medal.

It was a posthumous award for Andreotta, who was killed in action three weeks after My Lai. Even 30 years after the killing, Army officials were wary of reviving memories of the day the war in Vietnam went terribly, murderously wrong.

Calley was eventually tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the massacre, but President Nixon reduced his sentence and he served an insultingly brief three years of house arrest.

Thompson apparently lived a quiet life after Vietnam. He did visit West Point once a year to lecture on his experience. He died of cancer last week in a Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Louisiana. He was 62.

Seymour Hersh has, of course, moved on to Iraq, where he has written about another generation of soldiers and other dark chapters.

But it will be years before Hersh or anyone else tells us the full story of this underreported war in Iraq. And it will be years before we know how well the courageous legacy of Hugh Thompson was embraced by those who followed him.

I found this interesting

The top 1% of the economy now control more wealth than the bottom 90%. This inordinately top heavy wealth distribution is 3x the next closest country: Germany.

Hey Capt.

I posted an RIP here to Hugh with a link to an obit., and no one responded.

Remember Colin Powell was part of the information office that tried to hide the My Lai story.

Solly, it's the capitalism dontcha know?! Everyone has an equal opportunity to become one of the super-duper wealthy elite if they would just get off their lazy liberal asses and get a job!

People keep talking about a "democratic strategy" as if there is some end-all means of getting things accomplished. We control no branch of the government in the capitol, when we have an idea, the republicans just co-op it(see: Homeland Security Dept., Iraq Exit Plan).
What has to happen is a massive grassroots effort to get people to see that the country is being stolen from them, right before there eyes. This all under the bullshit ageis of "protecting the american people."
Way to to many people have been bullied and scared into voting agains their interest and as long as they keep clowns like Bush in office, this trend continues.
Howard Dean may not always be the best spokesperson, but he is crisscrossing this country rallying the people. If we are to ever get this country back to where it cares about the average citizen, we have to get the people on the lower end,who are being completely shut out, to vote.

Pakistan Condemns Purported CIA Airstrike
By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 53 minutes ago

Pakistan on Saturday condemned a purported CIA airstrike on a border village that officials said unsuccessfully targeted al-Qaida's second-in-command, and said it was protesting to the U.S. Embassy over the attack that killed at least 17 people.

Thousands of local tribesmen, chanting "God is Great," demonstrated against the attack, claiming the victims were local villagers without terrorist links and had never hosted Ayman al-Zawahri.

Two senior Pakistani officials told The Associated Press that the CIA acted on incorrect information in launching the attack early Friday in the northwestern village of Damadola, near the Afghan border.

More.

********************

Don'tcha just love these 'better facts'....

Discombobulated

Dear Cornposters:

This is an open letter. With the assured confirmation of Alito eminent and the overthrow of Roe v Wade, we need to focus on two groups and their next battle issues. These two groups are the pro-life and the pro-choice groups. After a period of discombobulating these two groups will have to contrive more moneymaker issues. These groups are the personification of how to raise money and keep the American dream alive that money is still god in America.

We have the unholy trinity that is very much alive in America. The unholy trinity is the bushgod, the moneygod, and the nucleargod. Of these three gods the moneygod reigns supreme. That is the bottom line and that is the American way and only the American way.

As I watched the NOW program on January 13, 2006, the guest was from a pro-life group from Kansas. She did not want to be overly excited with Alito's confirmation but she was excited. I believe that her present reservation was due to the fact that they have not come up with a new issue that would create and generate money for their group. Make no mistake money is the driving force in America and among Americans. Money is our god.

We will now see if these two groups work together for national health care, especially for women and children. I doubt that they will work together and more moneymaker issues will be born from these two groups because that is the American way.

Sincerely,

Gerald

That is 17 murdered Pakistani citizens.

Pakistan should insist on murder charges being brought. We are not at war with Pakistan. Pakistan has not given permission to the U.S. to conduct military missions on their territory.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Those psychos in DC won't be happy until the entire planet is turned into one monstrous green glass parking lot!

January 14, 2006 -- Serious questions remain concerning Col. Westhusing's "suicide" in Iraq. Army's chief ethics expert was murdered, according to Carlyle Group insider.

According an informed source within The Carlyle Group business consortium, Col. Ted Westhusing, the Army's top military ethicist and professor at West Point, did not commit suicide in a Baghdad trailer in June 2005 as was widely reported in the mainstream media five months later. At the time of his death, Westhusing was investigating contract violations and human rights abuses by US Investigations Services (USIS), formerly a federal agency, the Office of Federal Investigations (OFI), which operated under the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). - Wayne Madsen

#330 capt, great post! #367, Amen!

#352 Roebrt Schwartz, great post! The Face of War are pictures that glorify the Fourth Reich a.k.a. United Nazis of America.

Women are the greatest, period! There is no greater experience than to love and be loved by a woman!

#384 Robert Schwartz, I am betting that Col. Westhusing was done in by the CIA or the Pentagon, especially if he was now leaning against the war. Covert operatives are operating to kill any dissenters of this war.

Robert, isn't it amazing the sudden rash of "suicides" occuring within the investigative reporter ranks recently?

The American Global Crisis
by Jack D. Douglas

"Buried deep in the financial pages, telltale signs are appearing that suggest America may well be headed for a financial meltdown. In January 2004 the staff of the International Monetary Fund, who normally worry about profligate nations like Argentina, took direct aim at the United States, warning that we are careening toward insolvency... As a nation we are running on empty."

~ Peter G. Peterson, Running on Empty, Preface

My arrangement of each of these Great Financial Crises is just a rough, inherently problematic ranking. Number 10 may look less "Great" to me now, but look like the worst of all to you, and may in fact wind up being the one that proves fatal in the end.

The crucial thing is the obvious order of magnitude and general dimensions of the Crises, not pseudo-scientific precision. I see each of them as so big and cutting across so much of our society that I am merely pointing out a great mountain range, THERE it is looming on the horizon, you can't miss it, if you just look. It does not really matter if it is a $10 Trillion Crisis or a $30 Trillion one: it's huge and can trigger a fatal cascade of problems that grows into a catastrophe of some sort, such as a CRASH or even a system implosion.

Number 1. Soaring hundreds of trillions in derivatives contracts that have never been tested in a major financial crisis.

Number 2. Soaring tens of trillions in medical and Medicare costs as far as anyone can pretend to see.

Number 3. Soaring social security and pension system costs and bankruptcies.

Number 4. The Chinese-American bubble is the greatest financial bubble in history and is the result of the unsustainable imbalances of currencies, currency manipulations, debts, investments, and much else.

Number 5. Soaring energy costs threaten us with soaring inflation, decreasing competitiveness, loss of all energy-intensive production here, declining investment returns and more.

Number 6. The great real estate bubble will sink one way or another and take much of our consumption with it.

Number 7. Debts of all forms have soared in the U.S. and much of the world and savings have hit sub-zero in real terms in the U.S.

Number 8. We have a great stock market bubble and all the obvious signs of speculative excesses in financial markets.

Number 9. We face soaring long-run costs from pollution control to prevent global warming and other catastrophes.

Number 10. The U.S. faces soaring military and security costs of all forms in its permanent world war against roughly sixty Muslim nations with one and a third billion (and soaring) enemies.

Number 11. We face soaring education costs with no clear idea of how to resolve the education crisis.
-----------
Each of these points come with frightening details. Not for the faint of heart or religiously zealous bushbots.

Operators are standing by! Call now!

Sometimes in life there are no easy answers (e.g., nationalized healthcare), as the progressives would want them to be. No, it is easier to wish for things that progressives know will never happen rather than trying to make the current situation work. To progressives, the good is always the enemy of the perfect.

Well, unfortunately we are not in Heaven, a place I would imagine most progressives deny existing. There are no easy answers, no perfect answers. But liberals want to turn over, for instance, one-seventh of our economy (healthcare) to possibly the most corrupt, most inefficient organizations imaginable - the government. Really - do you want the same people who gave us the Post Office and public schools running our healthcare service?

And what makes you believe we can do anything any beter or differently than Canada? There is an expression in Canada - "We're happy with our healthcare system - until we're sick." Then they want to come to the U.S.

No - all I hear are complaints; I never hear any solutions. Again, it is because liberals/progressives ran out of ideas about forty years ago. Poor old Captain probably hasn't had an original thought since he voted for Wallace - Henry Wallace!!

While most Canadians - 80 per cent according to Statistics Canada - are satisfied with their access to the health care system, many experience long waits to see a specialist, get diagnostic tests and undergo elective surgery. Others find themselves facing huge bills for prescription drugs they need to survive.

Is the Canadian system perfect? No, but I doubt 80% of Americans are satisfied...

Is Franklin Graham REALLY the son of Billy Graham or was he hatched from a test tube?

Intolerance

Talk of nationalized health care is a waste of effort now. Even if someone could come up with a perfect plan to make everyone happy, we couldn't afford to implement it. This country is teetering on bankruptcy. Our taxes are not funding anything anymore, they are barely covering the interest on the crushing debt these so-called conservatives in DC seem determined to build until they reach the landslide proportions that will finally bury us. What is it people don't understand about this deficit economy that is killing us? Why do people like bill come here and make comments about liberals and progressives that can be equally applied to those fiscal morons in charge at the moment? Someone above commented that it would take nothing short of fiscal calamity to make the sheep wake up, and they are correct. That day is coming, right around the bend.

Phase Change in Fluids Finally Simulated After Decades of Effort

Everyone knows what happens to water when it boils—everyone, that is, except computers. Modeling the transformation process of matter moving from one phase to another, such as from liquid to gas, has been all but impossible near the critical point. This is due to the increasingly complex way molecules behave as they approach the change from one phase to another. Researchers at the University of Rochester, however, have now created a mathematical model that will allow scientists to simulate and understand phase changes, which could have an impact on everything from decaffeinating coffee to improving fuel cell efficiency in automobiles of the future. The findings have been published in Physical Review Letters.

"This problem has baffled scientists for decades," says Yonathan Shapir, professor of physics and chemical engineering at the University of Rochester, and co-author of the paper. "This is the first time a computer program could simulate a phase transition because the computers would always bog down at what's known as the 'critical slowdown.' We figured out a way to perform a kind of end-run around that critical point slowdown and the results allow us to calculate certain critical point properties for the first time."

*****end of clip*****

Wow, I am always encouraged that some very smart and savvy people are just entering the game of science. We have not had the computing power until recently to pursue some of the more complex and meaningful models.

Imagine, a day where something is invented/discovered that makes burning fossil fuel obsolete.

Now I can say, I have a dream!

capt

Saladin, if nothing else, national health care would save the 30% overhead that the insurers skim right off the top.

But, the financial state of things is teetering on insolvancy, no doubt...

Teresa Whitehurst in the above article, "Intolerance," mentions that Church-going people are more intolerant. I find it hard to believe but it is possible. For me participation in the Liturgy of the Eucharist is a sign of love; God's love for us is a real experience. The Cross for me is a plus sign and not a negative sign. The Cross for us is God's expression of love for you and me.

"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true." ~ Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)

Do you have the feeling that the progressives and the thinkers and the caring people on this website know and see the real important issues that face America? War is a distraction from real caring issues.

Robert, let's not dwell on trivial details, HAHAHA! One thing I agree with bill on, and that is if the govt. takes over, given it's performance with every other financial aspect it controls, it would be a disaster. Isn't there a third alternative, something that doesn't involve raping, pillaging insurance companies and their pharma partners in crime, or the govt.? I sure can't think of anything, and even if I could it would be bound to piss off a large segment of the US population. No matter how hard you try, you can't please everyone, but it would be nice if someone with some clout would at least try!

This quote is from Richard Daughty, AKA the Mogambo Guru. This is how all self-respecting conservative republicans really feel about the psychotic bush regime.

...But this is not about how I love the money and the bennies of being a doctor, and that is why I pretend to be a doctor a lot, or even how I can legally do this because laws do not apply to me anymore as I think there is an emergency that allows me to override existing laws and regulations at my sole discretion. I pattern this interesting and handy "laws do not apply to me" rationale after the way George Bush feels justified in willfully violating the Constitution and Bill of Rights because it makes things easier for law enforcement! Hahaha! No wonder that a reported 85% of Americans want this megalomaniac fascist religion-addled idiot impeached. But then Cheney would be President! The manly shoulders of The Mogambo (MSOTM) shudder at the concept.

Capt wrote:

>There are no pro-abortion people.

Forgive my cynicism, Capt. As far as I am concerned, there are a lot of pro-abortion people...after all, it is a large and very profitable industry...and I include groups like Planned Parenthood, NARAL, AND Focus on the Family under that category. All of them have huge financial interests in keeping the status quo. The Alito hearings alone brought millions into their collective coffers.

Bob

Someone above commented that it would take nothing short of fiscal calamity to make the sheep wake up, and they are correct. That day is coming, right around the bend.

and you know what will probably happen when the sheople wake up? the entire issue will be twisted and spun out until it's the democrats fault. and the democrats will be either too spineless to stand up about it or else complicit in the whole thing anyway. IMO

#377
Robert,
Not long before you posted the obit somebody posting as Hugh Thompson did a posting on his life. I commented on it. I did a report on the massacre in high school. I read Sy Hersh' report. I have always considered Hugh Thompson one of the most compassionate and heroic people in my lifetime.

James, one side accusing the other is what they always do. Neither side wants to take responsibility for something both have been contributing to since the Wilson era. DC's mantra is "Pass the buck."

Saladin,

I couldn't agree with you more about the current crop of Republicans in charge of this country. I think if either side, conservative or progressive, gave the populace a choice, most of the incumbents of both parties would be out on their ear.

Republicans have horribly mismanaged many, many things (witness the impending Medicare prescription fiasco), but progressives give no viable alternative. And so the American voter holds his nose and selects the lesser of two evils.

How about a President/Senator/Congressman who came along and said:
1. The only war in which we will engage will be a war of total victory. Either we will send the full force of our fighting capabilities to annihilate the enemey, or we will refrain from combat.

2. Lobbying will become a federal crime - including corporatists, unionists and special interest groups of all stripes. These groups can speak all they want - they just can't try to curry favor with me individually.

3. All states will have the right to declare if they wish to enact abortion choice.

4. Unless in time of war, a balanced budget will be mandatory.

5. All health care will be portable. The same system available for us will be available to all Americans.

6. Education will be the choice of the parent or guardian - not the dictate of the state to enslave students in failing schools. Therefore funds will flow to the student - not the institution.

7. Retirement benefits will require investment in a large percentage of safe assets as dictated by the federal government, but a portion will be available for investment in other safe investments of my choosing. I am the master of my fate.

These are just some of the topics that I think would appeal to both progressives and conservatives alike. We all want a better life. How about some ideas from you folks that might be palatable to a wide swath of Americans?

New York Times 'disconnects' public e-mail addresses for its columnists

Months after moving its Op-Ed columnists behind a "paywall," the New York Times will now 'disconnect' columnists' public e-mail addresses, RAW STORY has learned.

The Times has advised papers which receive their news content to remove any old e-mail addresses which they may have published alongside Op-Ed columns.

"The New York Times no longer provides public e-mail addresses for its Op-Ed columnists," a memo obtained by RAW STORY asserts. "With the advent of the paper's online program TimesSelect, subscribers are invited to contact columnists from within The Times' Web site, nytimes.com."
--------------------------
The columnists are going to get a real clear view of what America thinks aren't they. Only those who can afford the online paper have an opinion.
Paul, Bob, if you want my opinion you're going to have to post here.

Bill wrote:

If you are so weak as to require Big Brother to direct your every move, please do not heap the same calamity on me.

This is a laugh. Do you read newspapers or magazines? Have you turned on a radio or television some time in the last month? Perhaps you've heard of the NSA's domestic spying on American citizens sans warrants? Have you heard recently about your Dear Leader's belief that he is above the law? It is the administration that you support that leads this country down the Orwellian road. It is you and your craven enuretic brethren who look to Bush as the Daddy to protect America from Islamofascists hiding under the bed.

Tell your story walking.

bill, I am the wrong person to ask because I am not what you could describe as a traditional liberal/progressive. While I believe unerringly in a free market system, I also know that inevitably there will be many left out in the cold for various reasons, many of which are out of the individuals control. In that situation what do you suggest? As a fiscal conservative I hate the idea of randomly throwing taxpayer money at problems hoping they will right themselves. As a social liberal, I also hate the idea of millions of people who have to do without the basic necessities like decent healthcare and housing because they are stuck in a minimum wage job. We can self-righteously claim that it is the fault of the poor if they remain poor. But the truth is, the lowest paying service sector jobs have to be performed by someone, everyone can't be a lawyer or engineer or real estate agent. Why should these hard working people be forced to do without because they are lower on the social totem pole than a doctor? Is the doctor willing to clean the bathrooms, sweep up the trash and mop the floor? Will the engineer cook and serve his own food at a restaurant then bus the table and wash the dishes? I am of the opinion that all who are able and willing to work be given equal consideration in the big scheme of things. There is no reason, in a society like ours, that any working person, or someone unable to work for health reasons, should have to go hungry, suffer homelessness, and be unable to go to the doctor when they need to. I don't have the answers, and for some reason, the right has a serious problem with helping people who really need help. One thing I do agree with, lobbyists have got to go. I think they are the single biggest impediment to social and economic progress in this country. Until that happens, no politician from either side will be allowed to make the changes that are necessary for a healthy and viable economy. But I'm not holding my breath for that.

TRH wrote:

Maryland attacking Wal-Mart is pathetic.

Maybe Maryland is fed up with subsidizing the health care of Wal-Mart employees.

The same people who tout the glories of "capitalism" and whine about "welfare queens" are the same ones who have absolutely no problem with corporate welfare like this. I'm sure if Wal-Mart decides to move, another company, perhaps one that values it's employees, will take it's place.

Fuck Wal-Mart.

Sal,

I am of the opinion that all who are able and willing to work be given equal consideration in the big scheme of things. There is no reason, in a society like ours, that any working person, or someone unable to work for health reasons, should have to go hungry, suffer homelessness, and be unable to go to the doctor when they need to.

One thing I think everyone here agrees on is that we live in the greatest country in the world. There is no reason that with our wealth and ingenuity we can't come up with a health care system that covers everyone. We don't have to make it exactly like the Canadian or European model; let's take the best of each model and create something uniquely American.

Right now, employers are trying to shift the burden to employees and vice versa (and watch your representatives as Bush pushes his health care "reforms" to see which way they lean). There's no reason it has to be this way; we've got to figure out a way to spread the costs across the board.

Why do we go through this time and again? The Democrats are a sham opposition. The Democratic Party is not incompentent. Instead, they have very competently done exactly what they set out to do with the Alito hearings.

a) The Democratic Party obviously wants Alito confirmed. Given that there is a mechanism by which they could block the confirmation (ie, the fillibuster), and since they apparently are going to choose of their own free will not to block the confirmation, then the only logical conclusion is that the Democrats want Alito on the Supreme Court. Exactly in the same way the only logical conclusion is that they wanted Roberts on the Supreme Court.

b) On one level, the Democrats will say that they don't oppose such things (nominations, tax cuts, budgets, wars, trade deals, etc) is that they want this to be an issue in the fall elections. To some extent, the behavior of Democrats during these confirmation processes seems to support that. They want to look like they were asking tough questions, but were then overwhelmed by the Republicans. Thus, vote Democrat in the fall if you don't like the outcome. This only makes sense that if citizens are so poorly educated that they don't know the fillibuster could stop a confirmation, or that they don't have the political sense that says that support can build during a strong fight.

c) However, since this happens time after time, and follows almost the same script , at some point even this explanation seems very weak. By the time the next elections roll around, all of these 'issues' the Democrats saved for the election by not fighting them will be forgotten and ignored. Most likely the Democrats will chose to fight the fall elections on something like an issue like their version of the patients bill of rights differs from the Republican version is section 52, part d, where the Democrats would support your right to sue for double damages instead of the 1.9x damages the Republicans supported.

d) When you step back and look at this, the other logical conclusion you can draw is that the Democrats are a sham opposition. I'm weary of the argument that Democrats have simply been incompetent for the last decade. Since the party keeps the same high officials and consultants after every defeat and debacle, and since the strategies never change, at some point the logical assumption is that the results that keep occurring are exactly what the leadership of the Democratic Party desires.

Note that the Democrats are largely funded by the same big money sources as the Republicans. Not exactly the same contributor list, but generally from the same segments of the society. And, should power shift between the parties, many who are now Republican contributors would return to being Democratic contributors.... just like they were before power shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans.

Also note that the on the big issues facing our society, there is little or no difference or debate between the Republicans and the Democrats. One example is trade policy. There is virtually no opposition to the 'race-to-the-bottom', 'favor-capital-over-labor' trade policies of the two countries. Most of the current trade agreements, notably NAFTA and WTO were passed with the signature of a Democratic President and the support of Democratic members of Congress. And repeal of these agreements is not an issue brought up by Democrats. War is essentially the same, as the Democrats all largely supported Bush's wars. Its only a recent occurance, that with 60% of the country disagreeing with both parties that a sub-set of Democrats have started opposing the war. Even then, the Democrats seem to be working quite hard to choose candidates who will not make the war in Iraq an issue in the fall elections.

Same goes for tax cuts for the wealthy. Here the Democrats act like they've been acting during the Alito hearings. Mouth some weak objections, then fail to take effective action to block the tax cuts. The large Democrat support for the Bankruptcy bill is another example of Democratic support for Republican issues. And even on Social Security, large blocks of the Democratic leadership were already caving in to the Republicans when basically a rebellion from the American citizens stopped Bush's plan to give the Social Security trillions of dollars to Wall Street. In the fall elections, you might hear some weak claims that the Democrats saved Social Security, but you won't hear any sharp attacks on the Bush plan.

All of this adds up to one thing for me. If we really want to change the direction this country is heading, the first thing we must do is to destroy the Democratic Party as it exists today. Then, and only then, can we build a true opposition party that supports the interests of ordinary Americans against the ownership class.

And guess what, we have the power to do it. We can torpedo almost any Democratic campaign we want. When 10% of the electorate gets together and decides to vote for a 3rd party, the Democrats are almost certain to lose. If we can put together blocks like that in elections, we can flat out announce to the Democrats that if we don't like their candidate, we can guarantee its loss. By doing that, we can either destroy the Democrats as an effective party, or we can force change in the Democratic Party.

Don, there is one reason why we can't come up with something that works, and that is the constant opposition we face from the wealthy elite whose interests benefit from keeping a huge segment of people enslaved by poverty. As long as they can continue to generate class warfare, and keep the BS left-right pot stirred up, they can continue to suck this country dry like the parasites they are. I completely agree with Mark, we need a REAL opposition party, and quick. The dems caved in to the vampiracle neocons long ago, and with the exception of a very few on the left, they are a hopeless case, especially if the likes of diebold are allowed to play dirty with voting machines. Maybe boycotting these machines would be a good start. If crowds of people got together and demanded paper trail ballots, and refused to vote until they were provided, maybe that would be a good start to a revolution to force politicians to remember they work for US, not the other way around.

Mark wrote:

>a) The Democratic Party obviously wants Alito confirmed.

Of course they do. Roberts replaces O'Connor, and Alito replaces Renquist. Net change on Roe...zero. A 6-3 or 5-4 Court against overturning Roe is EXACTLY what the entire abortion industry (including both political parties, and groups like NARAL and Focus on the Family) wants....it is a "sweet spot" that allows them to play to their base, demonize their foes, raise TONS of cash, etc.

But here is the DIRTY LITTLE SECRET...overturning Roe would be the biggest nothing-burger since Y2K....in the states where 90% of Americans live...abortion would remain legal. In the states that would outlaw abortion, there are very, very, very few clinics anyway. South Dakota, North Dakota and Mississippi only have one clinic each. If they are closed, another clinic would open up 1-20 miles away in a different state. But the abortion hype industry would collapse.

Bob

Bob @ #412 is spot on. Abortion is kept alive by the right and the left. Poor old Pat Robertson and Kate Michelman would lose their respective stages if abortion became a states' right rather than a federally imposed mandate.

The same with the poverty pimps posing as champions of the poor. Jesse and Al turn up in front of every camera, only to be told later that there were more whites killed in Katrina than blacks, more economically well-off killed than in poverty.

Jesse shows up at the execution of Tookie Williams, preening for the cameras, but can't name the name of one of Tookie's victims. These are truly despicable men who have their own hell waiting for them in eternity.

Saladin, I'm like you - I don't like to see anyone go hungry or wanting. But I just think that government is the absolutely worst deliverer of those goods and services. And I believe that history has proven me correct.

Shelley Winters, two-time Academy Award winner, dies at 85

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Shelley Winters, the forceful, outspoken star who graduated from blond bombshell parts to dramas, winning Academy Awards as supporting actress in "The Diary of Anne Frank" and "A Patch of Blue," has died. She was 85.

Winters died of heart failure early Saturday at The Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills, her publicist Dale Olson said. She had been hospitalized in October after suffering a heart attack.

The actress sustained her long career by repeatedly reinventing herself. Starting as a nightclub chorus girl, advanced to supporting roles in New York plays, then became famous as a Hollywood sex symbol.

A devotee of the Actors Studio, she switched to serious roles as she matured. Her Oscars were for her portrayal of mothers. Still working well into her 70s, she had a recurring role as Roseanne's grandmother on the 1990s TV show "Roseanne."

*****end of clip*****

Rest in peace Shelly.

capt

#408
Don,
Maybe Cosco. They put their employees first. They know how valuable the people on the floor are.

Value City (out of Columbus Ohio I believe) also treats their employees well and gives solid benefits. I'll pay a dollar more (if that) for that anyday.

Solly

Ellsberg urges whistle-blowing Reveal secrets to save lives, he says

PALM DESERT (AP) - Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers 35 years ago, said Friday that whistle-blowers shouldn't be afraid to reveal government secrets in an effort to save people's lives, even if it means going to jail.

''Don't do what I did,'' Ellsberg said. ''Don't wait until the bombs are falling in Iran. Don't wait until people are dying. Go to the press and reveal.''

Ellsberg told the American Bar Association's Forum on Communications Law that he waited nearly two years before handing over the top secret study of the Vietnam War to The New York Times in 1971.

''I wasted 22 months,'' he said, advising others planning to leak materials to ''take your risks and go to prison if it means saving lives.''

He compared the Pentagon Papers revelations to the recent New York Times disclosures that President Bush had authorized wiretapping the phone conversations of U.S. citizens without court authorization. He also noted that the Times has acknowledged holding that story for a year at the White House's request.

In an interview following his talk, Ellsberg said he believes that by withholding the story the Times played a role in Bush's re-election.

''We had a lawbreaking president here and they helped to re-elect him,'' he said.

He added, however, that it was fortuitous the story appeared before a congressional vote on extending the Patriot Act, adding the Times should be commended for that. The act was temporarily extended until next month while debate on it continues.

Ellsberg shared the stage at the gathering of some 250 First Amendment lawyers with other players in the Pentagon Papers drama, including former New York Times Executive Editor Max Frankel and former Times attorney James C. Goodale.

They gave vivid recollections of key decisions that shaped the historical case.

Frankel said Goodale immediately feared the government would seek an injunction claiming national security dangers, which it did.

Asked about his newspaper's concerns about exposing a secret government report, Frankel, then the Times Washington bureau chief, said he was more concerned about the consequences of not publishing.

''The frame of mind of people at my level was, 'It's a hot story and how do we get it out and damn the consequences,''' he said. ''The first instinct and the last instinct is to get it out.

''What you judge are what are the consequences of not publishing,'' he continued. ''What happens when your readers find out you had it and you didn't publish it?''

Goodale said he did some quick legal research, determined there was no law against leaking and that Ellsberg's actions did not fall under espionage statutes. While he at first urged caution, he said that his attitude changed after reading the Pentagon Papers.

''I got so darned angry at the documents and the history that I decided they had to be published,'' he said.

He added that there was so little legal precedent on the issue that, ''I felt rather certain that the government didn't know what it was doing.''

Another panel member, David Rudinstine, said he was confident that if the case went to court today The New York Times would still prevail.

Rudinstine, dean of the Cardozo School of Law in New York and author of a book on the Pentagon Papers case, also noted that the existence of the Internet has made it harder to keep information from being publicized once it is leaked.

''Once it's out there, you can't restrain it,'' he said.
--------------------
Whistleblowers of the world,
Listen to the man. He walked in your shoes.

Don: "Maybe Maryland is fed up with subsidizing the health care of Wal-Mart employees."

As much as I despise Wal-Mart's employment practices, I sometimes wonder if it's wise, or even fair, to insist that corporations pay for the health care of their employees.

For one thing, on a moral level, where did we ever get the idea that this should be an employer's responsibility? Or did this originate with individual employers themselves, as a means of attracting better employees?

For another, if all employers were to stop paying anything for their employees health care, wouldn't this pretty much ensure that we'd have a single-payer national healthy care system in short order? Seems to me that the political pressure to provide national health care would become enormous in that case.

Maybe rather than fighting the battle inch-by-grudging-inch, against people who get paid to fight such battles, we should take a more judo-like approach and let them have their way, knowing that doing so will get us the national health insurance that everyone knows we need (O.K., anyone with a clue). That's one revolution that I think most corporations outside of the health care and drug industries -- yes, even Walmart -- would welcome.

Solly,
I won't shop Wal-Mart. They ruin small towns. They tell cities one thing and then do another once the get the ok to build. They run small businesses out of business. Corporate treats employees like cattle. I have a real problem shopping in a place that treats human beings like a means to an end, money money money.

Drewp,
I think it's fine that Maryland insist that Wal-Mart pay for the insurance. We have a crisis in this country and making life easy for the corporate side of things will not help the situation. They need to be part of the solution. If they feel the burden they will help to find a solution that much faster. For Wal-Mart to decide they are going to leave because they would have to pay benefits tells me Wal-Mart has no real community ethics.

Don: "One thing I think everyone here agrees on is that we live in the greatest country in the world."

For some reason (maybe it's because I lived abroad for years), I'm always puzzled by statements like this.

Why should I agree that the U.S. is the greatest country in the world?

What makes it superior to the many other countries where people live in freedom, peace, and prosperity?

"They need to be part of the solution. If they feel the burden they will help to find a solution that much faster. "

Jeanne,

That seems reasonable. Then again, megacorp GM has been shrieking for years that employee/retiree health care is killing them, but that hasn't resulted in any real change.

Maybe it will take more direct pressure on the pols by desperate constituents.

It's not easy for the people. It shouldn't be easy for anybody. When the crisis hurts top to bottom then the solution will come. If not...then we've become a third world country.

Jeanne: "If not...then we've become a third world country."

Judging by our infant mortality rate, we already have. So much for the "pro-life" movement.

I wrote: "What makes it superior to the many other countries where people live in freedom, peace, and prosperity?"

I shouldn't have implied that we live in peace. Sept. 11 should have ended that assumption.

This country had so much going for it six years ago. Now we teeter on the brink. Maybe not, maybe I exagerate. But I know there will be a point where going back to who we were will be harder than becoming something new. What will the 'new' be?

Bill, I agree that the govt, because of it's tendency for corruption, is not a reliable provider. But we have GOT to have a safety net. Unlike what some people on this blog accuse me of, I strongly believe that it is the responsibility of everyone, for the good of the country, to make sure that those in real need have something to fall back on. I agree with Jeanne that the nationwide corporate takeover has destroyed neighborhoods and towns, and the spirit of the free market. How on earth can the little guy with the small, independent coffee shop survive when Starbucks builds a huge store right across the street? This is happening in my little town. Not only did they put an express stop in the local Safeway, but they just opened a major outlet right in the middle of several locally owned shops. It's only a matter of time before the mom and pop stores start closing. They can't compete because they don't have the advertising budget or the lobbying power they need to bring in the big bucks. I'm not saying Starbucks has no right to be in business, but I think they should consider the local market, and the potential disaster they will create when they move into a small town that can only support so many coffee shops. This is responsible citizenship. I hate to see the locals go out of business just so Starbucks can make a few extra thousand dollars a week that they certainly don't need. This is just one small example of why our so-called capitalism is a failure. It favors those with the most money, while the rest struggle just to pay the monthly bills. Capitalism is a great idea on the surface, but like all other great ideas, if the rich are allowed all the influence and tax incentives, it will be at the expense of everyone else. History has proven that over and over again. Why can't we find a happy medium?

#335 TRH...It is just a bit difficult to play the capitalist game if a person is unable to access capital. It just will not work if you do not have access to the game.

#340 Capt..The IMPEACHMENT DEMAND has certainly grown. Just a few years ago if you googled Impeach Bush you would get Ramsey Clarks site and a few more. NOw even Pennsylvania Senator Jim Ferlo has a site for Impeachment.

To all... just had Paul Hackett come and speak here in athens ohio. We had 12o people show. Also a physician and a pres of the UAW who support the SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE PLAN here in OHio spoke at this event. I am convinced that we may be more successful at getting health care coverage for all when we address it state by state.

HEALTH CARE IS GOING TO BE HUGE THIS FALL. interesting. Will

Kathleen,
I agree with you on health care. An interesting thing is happening in Georgia. My husband told me that the state pays for K thru 12 but is now paying for the first 2 years of college. Minnesota is looking into the program. The states that progress forward on health care and education are going to be the states that are the healthiest. If you want a healthy workforce you have to pay for some of the benefits.

Proof Bush Deceived America - Ray McGovern

James Risen's State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, may hold bigger secrets than the disclosure that President George W. Bush authorized warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.

Risen's book also confirms the most damning element of the British Cabinet Office memos popularly called the "Downing Street memos;" namely, that "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy." The result is that it is no longer credible to maintain that the failures in the Iraqi intelligence were the product of a broken intelligence community. The Bush administration deliberately fabricated the case against Iraq, lying to Congress and the American people along the way....

....One world leader recognizes the extreme danger of official lies told to a nation in the service of an aggressive war. He also happens to be a leader who survived the horrors of fascism in the last century. In a Jan. 1 address to the world, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the consequences of lies such as these, in what can only be a thinly veiled reference to the president of the United States:

-Sacred Scripture, in its very first book, Genesis, points to the lie told at the very beginning of history by the animal with a forked tongue, whom the Evangelist John calls ''the father of lies'' (Jn 8:44). Lying is also one of the sins spoken of in the final chapter of the last book of the Bible, Revelation, which bars liars from the heavenly Jerusalem: ''outside are... all who love falsehood'' (22:15). Lying is linked to the tragedy of sin and its perverse consequences, which have had, and continue to have, devastating effects on the lives of individuals and nations. We need but think of the events of the past century, when aberrant ideological and political systems wilfully twisted the truth and brought about the exploitation and murder of an appalling number of men and women, wiping out entire families and communities. After experiences like these, how can we fail to be seriously concerned about lies in our own time, lies which are the framework for menacing scenarios of death in many parts of the world.

The ethos of the Central Intelligence Agency in which my contemporaries and I worked was chiseled into the marble at the entrance of CIA headquarters: "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Sadly, the agency has come a long way.

This may be one of the most off the wall things I have ever seen. And, very interesting.

Spiders on LSD

Costco:

Chinese Over Sea Trading Company.

Check connections to Feinstein and her hubby.

Healthcare as well as most "benefits" are the result of unions and collective bargaining gaining benefit in lieu of higher wages and those benefits putting pressure on non-union jobs to stay competitive.

Employee's were once seen as an asset, now considered a liability.

As the mega-corporation have taken over we will see more cuts in pay and less or no benefits.

GM expects a $4 billion dollar recovery and on the same day the projection was published (yesterday) they announced they will see pay cuts from employees.

Why do you think the DJIA loves low job creation numbers and tanks on high job numbers?

The corporations are in the mind-set that employee's and their costs are no longer an asset - the employee's are seen as an expense, that is unless you are a CEO or company officer.

capt

"A true revolution of values will say of war, ' This way of settling differences is not just.'. I call on Washington today, I call on every man and woman of goodwill all over America today: Take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late; a book may close. And I don't know about you -- I ain't going to study war no more." - Martin Luther King - Click here to watch http://tinyurl.com/deajr

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We cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others--even when we cause it: - James Carroll

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Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things when they are shown their form or told their use; but the speculatist, who is not content with superficial views, harasses himself with fruitless curiosity, and still, as he inquires more, perceives only that he knows less." : Dr. Samuel Johnson - (1709-1784)

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FOOLS. MEN OF LITTLE WISDOM, GO ABOUT WITH THEMSELVES AS ENEMIES, DOING ACTIONS THAT PRODUCE BITTER FRUIT. - BALA VAGGO (THE FOOL) DHAMMAPADA

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Thanks ICH Newsletter!

This post is specifically for Corky and his mother who posts as titchaba.

Corky #355

Where have I lied? You lied in your post claiming I also post as other names etc. I will shut you up the way I shut up the Capt. I will wager $100.00 to your $50.00 if you request the webmaster to this site to release the IP addresses of those who post as TRH, baf, miku et al, to include thos who post with three initials in capital letters. I have granted the webmaster the authority to do so. Unless you are willing to put your money where your mouth is, quit posting lies.

Regarding me being unchristian. Show me where I have ever posted on this site that I am a religious person. I am willing to say you will likely find many posts where I have stated that I am not a religious person. Therefore, since I do not profess to be a christian, I cannot be unchristian-like. Another lie on your part. Yet, you profess to be christian and accuse me of not being christian-like. I say that makes you the one who is unchristian. Is it not up to God to judge me, or are you on God's Judiciary panel?

We have discussed your diabetes before, Corky. Or have you forgotten. I lost my mother to complications from that disease. It is awful.
However, if you are looking to government to be your savior, your faith is woefully misplaced. Take it from somebody you refer to as unchristian-like. At least I place no faith in the government, which is something I cannot say for you.

titchaba,

Tell Corky you weren't referring to me in your earlier post. He thinks I upset you. I noticed in the last thread that someone posted as titchaba and referred to the both of you as Beevis and Butthead. That wasn't me. And for either of you to accuse me of such an act withour an ounce of evidence is, well, unchristian-like. But, I shall let your God be the judge of that.

Remember this,

The declaration of independence states that a United States citizen is inalienable rights. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is governments responsibility to protect those rights, not provide for them directly. God grants you life and liberty, it is up to you to pursue happiness. You also have the right to be a poor, pathetic, woe is me, life isn't fair individual.

TRH,

You have never shut me up, you are a pathetic psycho.

Leave it alone. You are better than that.

capt

Regulars, please note, this is what you get for posting to the troll.

Are we having fun yet?

Capt,

I should have said you stopped accusing me of being baf, miku et al. Are you still willing to take the bet? Didn't think so!

You are one pathetic psycho as well.

I am having a lot of fun Capt. The conservatives are winning in the arena of ideas and the liberals are sinking to the lowest levels measuarble. Look out for the trolls. Apparently it is them who keep you from having "fun."

Drewp #418 & #421,

I've done enough traveling to form my opinion that I live in the best country in the world. I am aware that this is only my opinion and I apologize for assuming that everyone else on the board would agree with me. I guess I also shouldn't make the assumption, as logical as it might seem, that anyone who has lived elsewhere, and liked it better, would choose to stay there. YMMV.

As for health care insurance, as a small business owner, I can offer one really good (and somewhat selfish) reason for employers to pay for health insurance: healthy and happy employees! However, I certainly agree with you that in the long run that the costs are going to be too much to bear for either companies and individuals and national health insurance is in the best interest of our both our government and its citizens.

#439 correction: either companies or individuals.

Saladin,

Interesting post about Starbucks versus the neighborhood mom and pop store. The problem with trying to protect inefficient segments of the economy (or government) or anything else, is that it robs resources from the productive sectors/segments.

Jeanne was right in one of her previous posts. She doesn't believe in Wal-Mart and won't shop there. That is her prerogative. That is her absolute right in America. But, if I choose, why shouldn't I have as much a right to shop at Wal-Mart as Jeanne does not to shop there? If I choose to work at Wal-Mart, who is one to tell me I can't? That is elitism to the infinite power.

The problem with safety nets is that there is usually some unholy bureaucrat determining how big they should be. Remember the whaling and gnashing of teeth when Clinton reformed welfare? Well, the economy boomed, and I don't remember the soup lines becoming any longer. All of a sudden, the people who desperately needed welfare seemed to be operating quite well, thank you, without it.

It is not the individuals who cannot adapt; it is these prehistoric corporations. Think of what GM and Ford have let happen to them. IBM once had a chance to buy Microsoft, but wasn't visionary enough; it thought hardware was more important than software. And so the lobbyists head to Capitol Hill looking for protection. And we all suffer because of it. Same with the public schools.

A couple of posts ago, someone talked about universal health care provided by government. You mean the same government that can't shoot straight now? And if you think that governments aren't the most totally inefficient allocators of goods and services at all levels, think again.

There might be a third way. How about having the government make available a program (health care, housing, education, retirement, etc.), but then have the private sector run it. But no Halliburton no-bid contracts. No sweetheart deals. No corporate welfare.

So, instead of the Post Office, we get FedEx or UPS. Instead of MaBell we get Cingular or Sprint or some other company. Instead of condemning our children to failing public schools, we make available the best charter schools in the nation.

Finally, back to Starbucks vs. Mom-and-Pops-Coffee Shop. If people want to shop at the latter, like Jeanne and you, let them. But give others the freedom to shop at Starbucks if they wish. And make the safety net for transition to another occupation the exception to the rule.

Don,

I can't believe your post at #439. If you are a small business owner, how can you possibly say that people and companies can't afford health insurance, so the government will have to pay for it?

Whom do you think the government is? All the government does is take our/your money, charge us about a 30% handling charge, and return it to us in the form of inferior goods and services.

Bill,

For some reason there is a segment of society that derides Wal-Mart for all the woes of their being. Wal-Mart is nothing more than the modern day JC Penney or Sears. Same way that Krogers,in this area anyway, supplanted the mom & pop Foodland grocery stores. Lowes, Home Depot's etc. have all supplanted the neighborhood hardware stores but nobody is calling them evil.

What we have here is a segment of society who is
not pro-choice when it comes to the consumer. I however, am. Case in point, I purchase about 3 pair of jeans from Wal-Mart a year. They cost $10.00 a pair. I wear these jeans when I am doing yard work etc. I expect them to get dirty and worn, quickly. I also go to JC Penney and purchase 3 pair of jeans. They cost between 25-30 dollars a pair. I wear these jeans on occasions where I go out to eat or to a party. I can't purchase both of the same kind of jeans at either of those places I mentioned. Each of the stores provide me a choice, yet once I am in the store, I have limited choice. If JC Penney sold $10.00 jeans, I would probably buy them there since I do not go to Wal-Mart for anything else.

Saladin,

Watch and see. At lease 7,001 people are going to lose their jobs in Maryland because of the legislators new law. And whoever posted that new jobs will move in because Wal-Mart may move out, don't be so sure. What Maryland did was anti-business, and CEO's & shareholders will read their decision for what it is.

Bill #442,

The argument that because government provides some services poorly it should provide no services at all doesn't wash with me.

I hope you and TRH are enjoying your Adam Smith wankfest. You're both deluding yourselves if you think the American economic system is a model of capitalism.

Don,

If the United States isn't, who is?

As far as a wank fest, this is the first time I've seen Bill post here, so I have no ties to him. Apparently you are speaking of your own experience with your fellow cornposters. Keep on wanking Don! You do amuse me.

Don,

I'm sorry; I don't know what a wankfest is. Please expand.

Yes, by all means, let's devolve major segments of our economy to the people who gave us Social Security, public education, public housing, lines at driver's license offices, the IRS and the VA hospital system.

And do you really believe that people can't afford programs but governments can? Again, whom do you think funds the government?

And where did you get the idea that I thought the American economic system is a model of capitalism? Au contraire. It is precisely because it is not the model of capitalism that it runs so poorly.

Yada yada yada..health care is going to be a HOT issue in the 2006 elections. Oh, sure. Like THAT will get people elected. No it won't. The "experts" say that health care will have to be positioned as a "moral imperative" to get independent and swing women to vote either one way or the other (Dem or Repug) on this important issue.

According to the so-called experts, it is women who view health care as a very important "values" issue -- but it was these same women (the ones allegedly so concerned about those in their care who caved to the "security" issue and helped "reelect" GWB) who will cave once again if security trumps their family values/moral issue of health care accessibility for children.

You are deluding yourselves if you think that elections will be WON on health care.

Micki,

Think about the logic of what you just posted, and I agree with you completely, by the way, at least on a part of your argument.

If women are willing to forfeit health care for their children for a chance at security, what does that say about what they believe about the Democrats' ability to keep us safe?

Your argument says that Americans believe the Democrats are so dangerous on the issue of security that they will put their own children's lives at risks so as to deny the Democrats' ability to govern.

Natinal Health Care

No individual can pay for their own health care. It is priced so far out of sight that corporations are balking at the outrageous costs. Needlesstosay, small businesses can't pay for it either. GM spent $5.2 billion in 2004 on health care for its 1.1 million employees, retirees and dependents, up from $4.8 billion in 2003.

None of us in the middle class, or the poor, or hell, even the rich can pay for doctor bills or medical tests out of our pockets should we get sick. Can't afford paying for health insurance either. My husband's grandfather used to put money in a cookie jar to cover doctor bills. Even if we had a giant cookie jar none of us could put enough money away for medical bills. That's why medical savings accounts are a joke.

You trolls may snear at a government run health care system but there is no other way to handle it. SS runs just fine, so would a national health care if the folks in Washington actually got serious about protecting we American citizens. Like everything else in this country the rich and big business have been allowed to run wild, run amok. Suddenly, there is no regulation and you have the right always screaming about having less regulation. That's bull shit and young people don't know and older people with short memories don't remember how well all businesses did when there was regulation, or how many more businesses there were. Regulation creates a level playing field. It gives everyone a chance to run a business, to compete fairly.

The health care industry, allowed to run unfettered by rules to operate in this country, has gone nuts. The health, the very lives of the people of this nation have been tossed aside. It's the business of our government to see that all is well in this country starting with our health. Government takes having a strong military pretty damned seriously, but why isn't our health just as serious?

Whose going to pay for a national health care? US! WE THE PEOPLE! The business of government should be us. All Americans should have jobs, food, a roof over the head and the certainity that they can see a dentist and doctor without fear of the cost. And there has to be safety nets for the people that can't take care of themselves. No one should suffer needlessly.

You hate paying taxes? Well, so do I but that's because of the way "they" spend the money. First off I resent the rich and big business getting away with murder. Tax cuts, off-shore accounts, moving jobs to other countries. Ninety percent of us are being gouged because of all that. Makes no sense, no sense where the running of a nation is concerned. Nobody in charge is looking at the big picture and that's why we're all here on the Corn site and surfing the net constantly for information because none of us can effin believe this country anymore. The solution to everything is so simple and none of the big shots are interested because of their own personal agendas. America is the Land of Greed now. Forget being called the Land of the Free.

I'm with Drewp; this is NOT the greatest country in the world. Anyone who thinks that is deluding themselves. I am NOT proud to be American anymore. I'm embarrassed.

This Brief must go further than words. The Pope must call upon rulers of the world, like Nazi America, to offer policies that will make marriages, families, and education succeed. Cutting social programs as Bush is doing and will continue to do will disrupt the families and add to the growing problems within marriages, families, and education. Bush's policies are orchestrated to have marriages, families, and education fail!!!

A Marriage of Family and Education
Stable Home Life Helps Children Learn

NEW YORK, JAN. 14, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Family structure has a significant influence on children's educational performance. So says a recent study published by the Center for Marriage and Families, part of the New York-based Institute for American Values. The director of the center, Elizabeth Marquardt, gained wide attention earlier last year with a book she published on the effects of divorce on children.

The more-recent study produced by the center is entitled "Family Structure and Children's Educational Outcomes," a work that relies on an extensive review of recent academic research.

Family structure affects all levels of educational performance, from preschool to college, the brief argues. This is so because what happens in the family has a big influence on a range of child behaviors, such as school misbehavior, drug and alcohol consumption, sexual activity and teen pregnancy, and psychological distress.

Over a 35-year span, the proportion of children in the United States being raised in two-parent homes has dropped significantly -- from about 85% in 1968 to 70% in 2003 -- while the proportion of children living in single-parent homes has nearly doubled. Before they reach the age of 18, most U.S. children are likely to spend at least a significant portion of their childhoods in a one-parent home.

Before going on to detail the conclusions of research into the effects on education, the policy brief took note of some problems with the methodology of the studies.

Some studies define family structure inconsistently, and others do not differentiate between stepparents and biological parents. Other defects include data taken from very small numbers of unmarried cohabiting parents, or data for only one point in time.

Despite these limitations, the research brief argued that a large body of research clearly suggests that family structure significantly affects children's academic and social development.

The first years

Three- and 4-year-olds growing up with their own married parents are three times less likely than those in any other family structure to experience emotional or behavioral problems such as attention deficit disorder.

Overall, children living with their own married parents have fewer behavioral problems compared to children whose parents are living together but not married. Differences in the area of physical health also exist. Young children in single-parent families are less healthy overall than are children in all other family types.

Moreover, children living with their own married parents are more likely to be involved in activities that help them learn to read than are children from single-parent homes. These differences at such a young age can establish behavior patterns in education that persist in later educational levels, the study warned.

In primary school, the ability of children to perform in basic subject areas and at their grade level is weaker for those who don't live with their own married parents. For example, fourth-graders with married parents score higher on reading comprehension, compared to students living in stepfamilies, with single mothers, and in other types of families. Living in a single-parent family is also linked with decreases in children's math scores.

To some extent the financial penalties of living in a single-parent family explains some of the negative results, but not all. The question of marriage itself also has a measurable impact on these educational outcomes.

High school and beyond

Children growing up with non-intact families engage in more adolescent misbehavior, which harms grades and test scores. At this older age, the negative consequences due to family structure are notably more serious. They affect such matters as high school dropout rates, graduation rates, and age at first pregnancy.

The brief explained that studies carried out in both Sweden and the United States show that children living in non-intact families do worse educationally. In fact, each additional year a Swedish or an American child spends with a single mother or stepparent reduces that child's overall educational attainment by about one-half year.

The brief commented that these similarities between U.S. and Swedish children in non-intact families are particularly striking in light of these two nations' dramatic differences in both family policy and in areas such as income inequality.

When it comes to college, adolescents from non-intact families continue to pay a high price. It involves such negative consequences as lower college attendance rates and acceptance at less-selective institutions.

As well, young people, especially women, who grow up with their own married parents tend to marry later. Research has shown a link between delayed marriage and higher educational attainment among young women.

Problem behavior

The brief outlined a number of negative behavior patterns more evident in children from non-intact families.

-- Misbehavior at school. Marital breakup is associated with a higher incidence of anti-social behavior in the classroom for boys. Children from homes headed by their own married parents have the fewest incidences of misbehavior at school.

-- School attendance and tardiness. Students from non-intact families miss school, are tardy, and cut class about 30% more often than do students from intact homes. These differences exist in part because parents in non-intact family homes appear less able to supervise and monitor their children.

-- Smoking, illegal drugs, and alcohol consumption. Teen-agers from non-intact families are more likely to smoke, use drugs and consume alcohol, even when controlling for important factors such as age, sex, race and parent education. One study found that family structure had a significant relationship to family attachment, with intact families reporting higher levels of attachment. In turn, family attachment had a direct and deterrent effect on adolescent cigarette smoking and illicit drug use.

-- Sexual activity and teen pregnancy. Teen-agers from non-intact families are more likely to be sexually active. There appear to be no significant differences in sexual behavior between adolescents from stepfamilies and those from single-parent families. The similarity of sexual behavior among these two groups of adolescents suggests that remarriage presents some risks with regard to monitoring adolescent behaviors effectively and transmitting values that deter early sexual relationships.

-- Illegal activities. Being in a stepparent or single-parent family at age 10 more than doubles the odds of a child being arrested by age 14. One study found that male adolescents in families without a biological father were more likely to be incarcerated than teens from intact-family homes. Young people who have never lived with their biological fathers have the highest odds of being arrested.

-- Psychological problems. For children, growing up without their own married parents is linked with higher rates of stress, depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem during the teen-age years -- problems that can significantly reduce their ability to focus and achieve in school. Research consistently shows that parental divorce has lasting negative emotional effects throughout childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

The brief concludes with recommendations for improving matters. For a start, given that many children now grow up in non-intact families, programs and policies should help families offset as best they can the negative effects linked to these family structures.

More fundamentally, the brief concludes that education policy and family policy logically go hand in hand. And, if we want better-educated children, we need to strengthen families. Supporting marriage will allow a greater number of children to succeed educationally and flourish socially, the brief argued. A resolution worth recommending for the new year.

By the way, if any of you have seen that Medicare Part D commercial featuring Fred & Ethel Mertz from I Love Lucy I hope you had a good laugh. That's a big lie foisted on the TV watchers. Fred & Ethel didn't NEED Part D back in the 50's. Back then individuals could pay for their drugs and doctor appointments no problem. That commercial is a good example of the brainwashing always in our faces.

Carol,

Social Security runs just fine? Are you on Social Security? If you are age 50 or younger, Social Security will not be around when you are old enough to "withdraw" your "secure" funds that you have "unwillingly" paid for all of your working life.

What a joke. You are funnier than Capt.

Carol @449,

$44 Trillion shortfall > In a Fortune article titled The $44 Trillion Abyss. Boston University Professor Larry Kotlikoff refers to America's massive underfunded entitlement liabilities as The Great Treasury Cover-Up. According to the professor, the government doesn't really know what it owes, which makes the situation even more frightening. What's more, our politicians refuse to level with voters and tell them the truth. How do you level with a voter and tell him all of the surpluses have been spent as politicians from both parties have persistently raided the trust fund and spent all surpluses? Here's a break-down of that $44 trillion > $7 Trillion underfunded Social Security and $37 Trillion underfunded Medicare, per Census bureau - Smetters and Gokhalebased, based on current revenue and spending.

Still think Social Security and Medicare work well? Still want to have our federal government handle retirement and health care? Do you have any real world experience whatsoever?

#447 micki, you got it right!

Health care should be a moral issue but in Nazi America, I find that Nazi Americans cannot distinquish right from wrong. They are more concerned about what is right and what is left.

I think that every citizen in these United States should have fair access to health care services, without regard to ability to pay or other limiting eligibility criteria. Access should be consistent across the country -- but in exchange for that, at the very minimum, people shouldn't expect to be able pick their own doctor. And, unless it is an emergency or a chronic illness that needs immediate attention, you should accept the fact that you may have to wait for several weeks for an appointment. (If you want your car serviced, you may have to wait for an appointment.)

Think about it: If you didn't have health insurance and had to rely in an emergency on the local hospital's ER, you'd have to take the doctor on duty -- or do without. (BTW, some of the very best doctors, most up-to-date, are those ER doctors, IMO.)

Take what you get -- or pay a premium for extraordinary tests, attention, quicker access in non-emergency situations, elective surgery, etc. Eliminate ALL drug-to-consumer advertising. Require doctors to fully disclose where they have a vested interest in prescribing tests at facilities where they receive financial remuneration -- whether its because they are an owner in the facility or receive the equivalent of a "finder's fee."

Medical consumers (especially those with broad insurance coverage) have a responsibiity, too, to utilize health care services only when it is necessary.

I do not pretend that these suggestions will fix anything in the short term, but to rely on the next election as a possible panacea for the health care access ills in this country almost makes me cry.

I'm sorry; I don't know what a wankfest is. Please expand.

It means I think you're a jerk-off, Bill.

Yes, by all means, let's devolve major segments of our economy to the people who gave us Social Security,

Social Security is considered by most Americans to be the most successful government program in history. That's why Bush's "plan" to dismantle it went down in flames.

public education

It's only recently (by that I mean the past couple of decades) that the rest of the world has caught up or passed us. Certainly room for reform, but you want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

public housing,

I'm really not familiar with public housing programs so I won't comment.

lines at driver's license offices,

What state do you live in? In Michigan, we can register/renew in the mail or on the internet. You go in once every four years for the picture on your license. I've found it no more inconvenient than getting an oil change or waiting in a doctor's office.

the IRS

No argments there; needs reform.

and the VA hospital system.

Then you should tell the Republicans to stop cutting funding for the VA.

And do you really believe that people can't afford programs but governments can?

Some people can't afford programs.

Again, whom do you think funds the government?

Again, some people.

And where did you get the idea that I thought the American economic system is a model of capitalism? Au contraire. It is precisely because it is not the model of capitalism that it runs so poorly.

And so you agree that the government shouldn't be subsidizing big oil, big pharma, big agriculture, etc., right? Then you shouldn't vote Republican.

Social Security is the GREATEST SAFETY NET IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE!!!!!

Gerald,

Health care should be a moral issue?

Keep on keeping on Saint Gerald. Your view of what should be a moral issue is tantamount to an unending election disaster to the party of your choice.

TRH:

If you are age 50 or younger, Social Security will not be around when you are old enough to "withdraw" your "secure" funds that you have "unwillingly" paid for all of your working life.

Cite proof of this statement, please.

#448 Oh, for chrissakes, Brock, the Dems are just as good at security as the Repugs. The Repugs are just better at scaring the shit out of people (sheeple). The Repugs "ram" the scare tactics down the throats of the sheeple, which unfortunately includes those independent/swing/fence sitting "ewe."

Don,

The retirement of the baby-boomers will actually cause more funds to go out to retirees than will be taken in by 2017.

Please, Don, cite for me your evidence that it will still exist beyond that. Or, next year for that matter.

TRH:

I'm not the one pulling claims out of my ass. I've never seen you provide any support for your arguments, so I guess that won't change.

Let's get Jesus back comments

After reading Bill Moyers' speech, Let's get Jesus back, I tried to summarize his speech and hopefully, I was able to highlight some of his thoughts. Here are my personal thoughts of Bill Moyers' speech.

The religious right is not Christian because they are glorified with murders and wars. They are the killing side of religion. I sensed something was wrong but I could not put a handle on what was wrong. Bill Moyers clarified what was wrong in America. Rich Americans have hardened their attitude about the poor and the middle class. They hate the poor and the middle class. They have disrupted the families by making them more dysfunctional. Families cannot even live on two incomes. Greed has changed America.

There is only justice for the Bushes, big business, and the rich with the help of the religious right. There has been a class war that has been orchestrated by the rich to gain more wealth. There are no social safety nets for Americans. The Bushes, big business, and the rich do not want Americans safe; they want Americans fearful of their own shadow.

Bush will never leave the White House because business wins with Bush. There will be no presidential elections in 2008.

We are becoming more like Latin America. No wonder why we have kept the School of the Americas for all these years. We were practicing so that Americans will be more like Latin Americans.

The Bushes, big business, and the rich with the aid of the religious right have hijacked Jesus and they have defamed Him.

America has a serious problem because both the democrats and the republicans are corrupt political parties. There is no one in either party that is inspired by Jesus to help make America, a better nation.

The Bushes, big business, and rich do not love. They hate the poor and the middle class. Christianity is dead in America because the religious right preaches bushianity, the faith of hatred, murders, torture, and wars. Americans are a lost people under the control of the Bushes, big business, and the rich.

#462 Don, how can anyone defend hatred, murders, torture, and war crimes? The repugnants are like hot dogs. Hot dogs are made from lips and assholes.

Don,

If you think SS is solvent, that there is a "lock box" just filled with the money you have paid into it, and that it will automatically be there for you when you retire, then by all means, make fun of me pulling claims out of my *ss. Please send me an e-mail when you retire and are relying on yous SS and let me know just what a great program it is. I have a feeling, it will be you pulling something out of their *ss and it won't be a claim.

If you want to see a typical repugnant hot dog, take a look at Rove and his shit eating grin!

Here is how I answer repugnant comments!

The Answer

Gerald,

G'nite. Bogart the site like you usually do at this time. Don't forget to include Capt.

Gerald, et al

Goodbye!

New Zogby Poll Shows a Majority of Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

It's 52% for and 43% against, with 5% still watching their fav 'reality show' on TV and have no clue what is going on.

Bill, what is it about mom and pop stores that make them inefficient? Think about that. I don't have a problem with Starbucks per se, I just wish they would consider the local influence they will corrupt. I don't know where you live, but in my little town, the locals have always provided the jobs and economy that tourists came to enjoy. It is that small town appeal that brings them here. If we end up looking like all the rest of corporate America strip mall main st., what do we have to offer that can't be found elsewhere? I don't know about anyone else, but I find that touch of personal effort very appealing, but maybe I'm just old fashioned. And if you read my post you will remember that I was not promoting a govt. assured safety net, but rather one that could be depended on whether in boom or bust. I am the last person who places trust in the govt's ability to take care of us. Just look at their track record. But we have to find something that works, so many people will suffer if we don't.
TRH, I couldn't care less about Walmart. You might as well cry for big oil when they are forced to bring prices down to $60 a barrel. They can rot in hell for all I care.

You wanna be a terrist? Fill out this form...

haha Spoof of the Padilla application to al Qaeda.

Cell Phones of Mass Destruction

Michelle Malkin needed another threat to the homeland to get all nipply about and she found it in swarthy types buying cell phones. Quickly, Commisioner! Turn on the Crazy Ass Racist Bitch Signal!

NASA TV-Stardust Returns

I think the "live" feed starts in an hour.

Click here to stripsearch Alito

LOL!! Back at #184 . . . the killing by lancet comment . . . HOLY SHIT! I needed a laugh - that was great!!!!!!!!!!!

Don: "I guess I also shouldn't make the assumption, as logical as it might seem, that anyone who has lived elsewhere, and liked it better, would choose to stay there. YMMV."

Truth be told, the only reason I'm here is dear old mom, who lives a mile down the road. If not for her, I'd have said sayonara to the land of my birth years ago.

There are several places where I feel more at home than here now, and I can do my work anywhere there's an Internet connection (we just had our 27th consecutive day of rain where I live, so that teak hut on Koh Samui island sounds awfully good right now). And if I'm going to pay taxes, I'd much prefer that they be used for health care or mass transit rather than ending up on a stray pallet somewhere in Iraq.

"Regarding the link to NAMBLA. David Corn is a founding member as is still a member to this day. I was just assuming that most Cornbots were also members. I wasn't trying to recruit, just providing a quick link to your favorite site."

That is the words of the troll TRH a very disturbed person.

If anyone is not familiar with what NAMBLA is, it is an acronym for "National Association of Man Boy Love of America" an association of pedophiles.

I would hate to have anybody take this TRH slug seriously. I fear a few of you have made this error.

I never forget.

Posting as Starry Eyed - a handle TRH has admitted using:

"Starry Eyed"
Hi, Saladin. Glad you are back, Saladin. You sound like you hate the Jews as much as Gerald does. At least I can probable blamd his Anti-sematism on the Viagra they are passing out to him in Junior High these days. Where does your hatred of the Jewish people come from? By the way, David. Who did you spend your week with on Cape Cod? Was it a human of the male persuasion? Not that there is anything wrong with that! Just clear your mouth of that goose down pillow before your next post. It must be embarrasing to be sitting at your computer with feathers flying out of your mouth.
Posted by: Starry Eyed at August 19, 2005 12:11 AM

TRH posting as "Capt" (notice the capitalized "C" and wrong email address):

"Post #3
Excuse me while I pull my lying Pinnochio nose out of David's backside. If I had Mick Jagger lips it would be more comfortable.
"starry Eyed"
Posted by: Capt at August 19, 2005 12:19 AM
93

TRH posting as capt AGAIN but he did correct both the cap and the email:

"Post 91
Excuse me while I wipe this foreign matter from my nose. I thought it was just a big booger. David needs to invest in some ex-lax. Me, I'll never understand why any U.S. citizen can't meet with the President on demand. Especially those who have met with him before! Who the hell does he think he is? Barbara Streisand? Gotta go now, clear my nose before my next post to David.
Posted by: capt at August 19, 2005 12:28 AM"

TRH returns to the "Starry Eyed" handle:

"Capt:
Just once I would like to see you post an argument of your own rather than posting an article and then jerking yourself off in praise of it with a sticky hand and extended fist."

***********

I could go on but I think I have made the point. If anybody is interested I have many more instances of both his pathetic lies and psychotic behavior and posting as one of us. You need only ask!

Does TRH post vile comments under fake handles? He has admitted to doing so (Starry Eyed, Bartender, etc.) I asked him recently (just asked) and he went into meltdown (again) and seems to be stuck on the issue. You can do the math on this one.

capt

Bush: 'I'm Not Making This Up'

Plaintive president pleads case for war, wiretapping

WASHINGTON, D.C.—éo doubt reassuring millions of Americans, President Bush yesterday defended his program of legally dubious wiretapping at home and strategically dubious regime change abroad for fighting terrorists by insisting he isn't in la-la land.

Terrorists want to use Iraq as a home base, Bush told reporters on Wednesday. He then added:

"I'm not making this up."

So now you know: This time it's for real.

Fighting a credibility gap, the president has steadily insisted he needs the National Security Agency domestic wiretap program so as to ferret out information on terrorist plans and empower the government to prevent future attacks. But the kind of power Bush wants amounts to a family coup, carried under the pretense of defending the homeland.

"They attacked us before, they'll attack us again if they can," Bush said in San Antonio over the weekend. "And we're going to do everything we can to stop them."

If Bush is to be king, he'd better get his act and that of his courtiers up to par, at least. All the evidence is that the government knew in one case after another well before 9-11 that we were going to be attacked and did nothing about it.

*****end of clip*****

Sounds like a five year old with a reputation as a liar:

No really, this time I am telling the truth!

HA!

"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." ~ Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)

capt

I try real hard to just observe here, its not often that I comment.

Ill take this opportunity to say thank you to those who hear and respect Corky.

I so respect my sons principles......and depression is the greatest killer of diabetics. I think this blog does a lot to give my son hope.

Life sure as hell hasn't.

I just wanted to say thank you, and you know who you are.

Ill leave you with this........

"The hotest places in Hell are reserved for thow who, in times of Great Moral Crisis, Maintain their neutrality".
Dante Aligheri, The Devine Comedy.

Saladin: "Spiders on LSD"

That's funny. Seems the spidies on acid got the munchies.

Having fun as the head honcho, Cornblog Security Agent, capt? I notice you didn't take the bet again. You are a spineless weasel. Feel free to copy amd save this post as you certainly do all others. I at least have the satisfaction knowing that anytime anyone posts here that is not me, is going to be accused of being me. So capt, go on being your paranoid little self in your liberal-lined cocoon and think it is me posting all the bad things on this site. I actually get more of a kick out of your paranoia, thinking that I am baf, miku et al. After all, I can prove that I am not, you cannot prove that I am.

You are a liar and a paranoid psychotic. And since I will be anyone posting that you determine em be on this site, this will be my last post specifically addressed to you. Just consider all attacks on you as being from me. That just goes to show how pathetic you are, capt. You think I am the only visiter to this site that disagrees with you. And yet you wonder why your side continues to lose elections.

Planting Evidence

Is the CIA framing the Iranians?

(A good example of why it's dangerous for generalist journalists to write about technical issues.)

Good Morning!!

I still want someone who wishes the government to run our retirement and health programs to address the $44 Trillion shortfall (that's Trillion!!!) in Social Security and Medicare. (As posted before - $7 Trillion in Social Security, $37 Trillion in Medicare.)

And you want this gang of bozos to take it all over?

Please.

Ultimate cost of Iraq war could reach $2 trillion, research suggests

WASHINGTON - New academic research suggests that the war in Iraq could cost America up to $2 trillion.
Congress appropriated $357 billion from 2002 through the end of 2005 for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and related security issues, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
But two research papers suggest that those numbers don't tell the whole story. When nonbudget economic factors are added, the true cost to the U.S. economy over the next decade could be anywhere from $657 billion to $2 trillion for the Iraq war alone, these studies estimate.
That's a lot of money; $2 trillion is enough to buy General Motors Corp. about 175 times at current stock prices.
------------------------
You mean take it away from the gang of bozo's who did this?

Oops no ' in bozos.

Web Site Attacks Critic of War
Opponents Question Murtha's Medals

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), the former Marine who is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, has become the latest Democrat to have his Vietnam War decorations questioned.

In a tactic reminiscent of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth assault on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during the 2004 presidential campaign, a conservative Web site yesterday quoted Murtha opponents as questioning the circumstances surrounding the awarding of his two Purple Hearts....

.....Cybercast is part of the conservative Media Research Center, run by L. Brent Bozell III, who accused some in the media of ignoring the Swift Boat charges, but Thibault said it operates independently. He said the unit, formerly called the Conservative News Service, averages 110,000 readers, mainly conservative, and provides material for other Web sites such as GOPUSA. "We won't run anything against anybody if we don't have the goods," he said.....

......The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, citing Marine records, reported that year that Murtha was wounded during "hostile" actions near Da Nang, Vietnam: "In the first incident, his right cheek was lacerated, and in the second, he was lacerated above his left eye. Neither injury required evacuation." The Cybercast article cites a 1994 interview in which Murtha described injuries to his arm and knee.
-------------------
1. David Thibault, recruiting is really low. Why don't you join? Ever been in combat?

2. Murtha served in combat. He was injured. Purple Heart.

3. Dave T. have you visited the injured in the hospitals? Murtha has. How about the relatives of the dead? Murtha has.

4. Who did the generals go to to be heard? Did they go to you, Dave T.? No? Hmmmmm. Who then? Oh...Murtha. I wonder why.

5. Who has cried over the dead? Who understands and feels the sorrow of this war? You, Thibault? Not like Murtha. He's walked in the shoes.

"You are a liar and a paranoid psychotic." TRH
Mr. TRH:
You just described yourself. I present every one of your hostile and inaccurate moonbat post's as incontrivertable evidence of you .

An important principle of the Neoconservative Bush personality cult is to accuse everyone who disagrees with your special cult of being what every good bushbot is: A constantly lying, greedy, paranoid, psychotic, blindly loyal cult follower.

TRH, in your subconcious, you know I am right.

oops: missed a bit of the first sentence:

evidence of your pyschosis.

TRH,

So much vulgar, hateful words. Would Jesus do that?

Al Gore (the guy that won the 2000 election by 500,000 votes) is giving a speech in D.C. tomorrow about our current "constitutional crisis".

I am sure the corporate media is going to ignore it.

#490
Yes but the people won't.

Jeanne 486,

I have read that good ole Jim/Jeff Guckert/Gannon is involved in this latest GOP smear campaign.

Jeanne,

Let's grant you your point that the war is a $2 Trillion fiasco. You still haven't addressed my argument. Social Security is in the hole by $7 Trillion. Medicaid is in the toilet to the tune of $37 Trillion.

And you want the government who put those programs in this condition to keep doing it? Remember what Einstein said was the definition of stupidity - doing things the same way over and over and expecting different results?

It is interesting that TRH refered to paranoid behaviour. I read Michelle Malkins latest psychotic hatespew about the guys that tried to buy cellphones at Walmart. She immeadiately declares them some sort of a sleeper cell even though the FBI did not seem to think these guys were anything but very talkative or lovers of cell phones.

The recent media declaration that terrorists tried to blow up a Starbucks as another example of widespread paranoia. The "bomb" turned out to be an old flashlight.

Bill,

What "government" would you be refering too? The one party controlled dictatorship we have now wants to destroy Medicare and Social Security more than anything. They could not be trusted to run a Taco Bell, let alone Medicare.

There aim, quite simply, is to keep the mass of men(and women) buried in desperation, working three jobs(it is uniquely American!) so that the are to busy to pay any attention to the raping of this once great nation.

Poor ol' Al Gore. Several years ago he gave a speech in New York on global warming. Turns out to have been the coldest day in that city in 50 years!!

Then he gives another major speech on the futility of the effort in Iraq on the day Saddam Hussein is captured.

All I have to say is, if his speech is going to be on the success of a particular stock - sell short. Quick.

Bill I think your figures are questionable. Would you be able to provide us with a link to your source please?

I think the scare tactics are losing their steam. People can only worry about being blown up for so long. They can only worry about lurking dangers for so long. Most of us aren't paranoid. We just live our lives.

When somebody like the president uses the scare tactics and the public finds out the president lied about it, man that really does a number on trust.

Both global warming and the futility of "freedom spreading" are self evident.

#497
Corky,
Exactly, I am not going to waste my time trying to untangle the skimpy little "facts" he provided.

Zogby poll:

52% of Americans want Bush impeached.

Only 26% of Americans felt the same way about Slick Willie being impeached.

Capt, I missed those posts because I scoll past stupid blather like that. If TRH really thinks I hate jews it's only because he never really read my posts in which I have made it very clear my feelings regarding the Jewish people as a whole and the Zionist movement, which is a completely seperate entity. Anyone who is too dense and uninformed to make the distinction isn't worth the time to respond to, which is why I usually ignore dipshits like that! Jew hater is the best they can come up with, they seem to think it is the ultimate sin. Note to all those who depend on the anti-semite label as a weapon, it doesn't phase me a bit because it is the most inaccurate, and downright ignorant usage of the term semite I have ever heard. From The New Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Semite: A member of any group of peoples, as the Jews OR Arabs, of Southwestern Asia. Jew: One whose RELIGION is Judaism. Notice, Semite is a RACE of people, all Southwest Asian natives are semites. Jewish is a RELIGION. Anyone can convert to Judaism, anyone can be a Zionist, but you have to be born a semite. There is a large segment of Jews that are not semite, most semites are NOT Jewish. If anyone is anti-semite it is the extreme zionist movement which has been slaughtering the semite natives since they took their land away decades ago, and will not be satisfied until every last one is banished from Palestine. Instead of brainlessly lip syncing the zionist propaganda, how about doing some research, get both sides of the story, if that's not too much trouble for the racist, hateful bigots out there who despise all Muslims simply because they have been taught to. YOU are the anti-Semite!

From the Neoconservative dictionary:

fact: (noun) something fabricated

Jeanne & Corky,

Facts and history have a brutal way of conflicting with the Utopian society envisioned by progressives.

Here is the site. Please scroll down about the underfunding.
http://mwhodges.home.att.net/soc_sec.

Saladin,

Like I always say, the Bushcult followers seem to spend a great deal of time accusing others of being what they themselves seem to be.

Pot to kettle, you are so black.

I think maybe you got the URL wrong, Bill.

Not suprising, it seems you get a lot of things wrong.

Corky,

That was a truly inane post at #505. You are better than that.

And make no mistake about it. The morass in which we find ourselves regarding Social Security and Medicare is truly a bipartisan effort. Most of the legislation was passed by Democratic congresses and signed by Republican presidents over the last fifty years. So, whether the people in charge are Republican or Democrat, the result is sheer folly.

And just how exactly is the federal government going to wake up and correct itself one fine day?

An introduction to Social Security

.....The Bush Administration has been making alarming claims that the current Social Security program is "in crisis" and is unsustainable. These exaggerations simply are not true. Estimates by the Social Security trustees (using rather pessimistic assumptions) and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) indicate that the trust fund is solvent for another 38 to 48 years if we do nothing. In other words, Social Security is not going broke anytime soon. Despite the fact that the Social Security trust fund is as robust today as it has been in recent years, the administration proposes to radically change the Social Security program by cutting benefits while at the same time allowing workers to create individual private accounts. While the exact provisions are not clear, any privatization proposal will not, in and of itself, do anything to ameliorate the shortfall projected in 2042 or 2052.....

I have spent 4 long years working each day around followers of the Bushcult. Thier aversion towards social programs stems from one thing. Hate. They hate the poor and the sick.

Its quite simple,Bill. The American peole elect a Democrat to fix everything.

people, me good speller

Corky,

I cut and pasted directly from the site. Go GOOGLE it yourself. Look under Social Security Underfunding. It's the first of many sites that appear.

Corky, get some intellectual curiosity and fortitude.

Jeanne, you are being reasonable about trust. Many people are not like you. They will continue to "trust" even when there is hard evidence to withdraw that trust. Witness the relationshipo between the abused and the abuser. The cycle usually continues, with the abuser "making nice" for a tactical advantage, then reverting to the same behavior, amassing even more power over the abused.

The neo-cons WILL be able to continue to scare most Americans, if they choose to do so. Using scare tactics is how they attained their power, amassed their power, and will retain their power.

They did NOT become as powerful as they are based on ideas and progress -- they did it using the "daddy/patriarchial" scare card.

Bill, did you get the right URL, yet? The one you provided did not go anywhere. I am interested in the truth, even if I dont like it. If your assertions are true I want to read about it.

Still can't find it Bill. I think I have lots of intellectual fortitude and curiosity. Whatever that is.

When I think of privatized retirement accounts, one word always springs to mind:

ENRON

corky, were you wondering about Bills numbers regarding SS and medicare? If so, I have to back him on this. Both those programs are in serious trouble. Every administration since reagan has been spending the money rather than earmarking it for it's true intent. I think that is why bushco was pushing so hard to privatize, he knows the money is gone, and if he was forced to replace it, he couldn't continue to "spread democracy" in the middle east. This article is from USA Today.

Posted 10/3/2004
The looming national benefit crisis
By Dennis Cauchon and John Waggoner, USA TODAY
The long-term economic health of the United States is threatened by $53 trillion in government debts and liabilities that start to come due in four years when baby boomers begin to retire. (Related graphic: U.S. economy threatened by aging of America)
The "Greatest Generation" and its baby-boom children have promised themselves benefits unprecedented in size and scope. Many leading economists say that even the world's most prosperous economy cannot fulfill these promises without a crushing increase in taxes —†and perhaps not even then.

Neither President Bush nor John Kerry is addressing the issue in detail as they campaign for the White House.

A USA TODAY analysis found that the nation's hidden debt —†Americans' obligation today as taxpayers, is more than five times the $9.5 trillion they owe on mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other personal debt.

This hidden debt equals $473,456 per household, dwarfing the $84,454 each household owes in personal debt.

The $53 trillion is what federal, state and local governments need immediately, stashed away, earning interest, beyond the $3 trillion in taxes collected last year, to repay debts and honor future benefits promised under Medicare, Social Security and government pensions. And like an unpaid credit card balance accumulating interest, the problem grows by more than $1 trillion every year that action to pay down the debt is delayed.

"As a nation, we may have already made promises to coming generations of retirees that we will be unable to fulfill," Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told the House Budget Committee last month.

Greenspan and economists from both political parties warn that the nation's economy is at risk from these fast-approaching costs. If action isn't taken soon, when baby boomers are still working and contributing payroll taxes, the consequences may be catastrophic, some economists say.

The worst-case scenario is a sudden crisis, perhaps a major terrorist attack or a shutoff of oil from the Middle East, that triggers a loss of confidence by investors in the U.S. economy. Foreign investors refuse to lend more money to the government to finance its deficits; drastic tax increases and benefit cuts occur suddenly; the dollar's value plummets, which raises the cost of imported goods; and a severe recession or depression results from falling incomes.
-----------
Taxes are no longer funding any of these programs, they are barely covering the interest on our foreign debt. The only way we stay above water is by borrowing. This is the situation our politicians have left us with, a debt they know can never be paid. People don't realize how bad this situation is, it would take very little to push us over the edge. If the govt. really cared about the future of this country, the first thing they would do is throw the Federal Reserve out on their ear and take back our economy. But they never will, Kennedy attempted it, and look what happened to him.

From the Neoconservative dictionary:

bipartisan: shut up and do what Emporer Bush tells you to or you will be slandered and swift boated

Saladin,

So do you see privatization as the solution?

Or maybe it is time to grind up Senior citizens into a delicious paste and call it "Soilent Green" and feed it to the poor?

Caroline,
They became as powerful as they did by remaining in the dark corners. Now that their real tactics and aims are out in the open people are chipping the bumper stickers off their cars at record pace.

They became powerful because they lied, cheated, smeared, undermined the real leadership in every state, taught people to think one issue politics are good politics, paid people off, cut people off, ignored those who had a different opinion, called those who were powerful "unpatriotic", encourage little trolls to run to blog sites like this one to spread more lies.

I could go on and on. All I know is people of this country are beginning to understand that they have been taken for a ride. The product they bought is shit. It don't work and it costs far more money than advertised.

Saladin,

Have you read about the demise of the Chilean privatized retirement program that Bush was using as an example supporting his social security destruction initiative?

I gotta be optimistic like Jeanne. We will find our way out of this. We will fix the damage that has been done. It won't be easy. I think this is the defining moment of our generation.

My biggest hope is that the wealthy corporate elite will wake up and decide that the Busheviks have become dangerous to THEIR interests and get rid of the Bush gang. I think that's the real reason Nixon fell. The other oligarchs won't tolerate a chief oligarch who wishes to be a monarch.---IBW

corky, I do not believe privatization is the answer. As far as I'm concerned, handing your financial future over to Wall Street thieves is no better than trusting govt. thieves. I have read about the Chilean disaster, also the attempt in Britain has been a dismal failure, which just proves my point. Whenever huge amounts of money are at stake, you can count on the vultures to start circling. I was not trying to advocate one solution over another. I just feel that it is important to have the facts before such an important step is taken. Putting trust in one political party over another is unwise IMO, because they have both proven untrustworthy where our economic future is concerned. Would you hand over your checkbook and credit card to a teenager to take to the mall? That's essentially the mentality we have in charge of the money. At this point, when both programs are so far in the red, I really don't know what it would take to fix it. As long as we continue along this inflationary path, we are screwed because we can never catch up. And if we are forced to keep handing over taxes to pay interest on debt that continues to grow, because we are basically indentured slaves to the Federal Reserve and their partners in crime, the IRS, you can be sure this problem will only get worse. And I am certain that if the dems take over in 2006, nothing will change fiscally, they may transfer funds from one program to another, but the crushing debt remains and will eventually sink this country, especially if they insist on continuing the invasion of the middle east. We cannot have our cake and eat it too.

Saldin, So what about the Soilent Green option?

There is always a way. I think there is plenty of wealth in this country that we can take care of our senior citizens. If all the greedy rich pigs in this country need to buy a 2 million dollar shack instead of a 3 million dollar house, so be it.

The statement that the money is not there is bullshit. Greed is the issue.

The assumption that Social Security is going to somehow bancrupt our nation comes straight from the oligarchs that IBW was refering to.

If we took all of the money that rich guy spent on sportscars, boats, hair replacement, botox injections, GOP campaign contributions, liposuction, plastic surgey, multiple million dollar mansions, and jewelery, we could solve every one of our supposed social security problems. The problem is a philosophical one, not a bureacratic one. As long as the wealthy continue to support the "culture of life" the old, the sick, and the poor will suffer.

Live simply so that others may simply live.( I have no idea who said that first, maybe capt. does.

I saw a reference to a button on another blog:

AMERICA
A Nation Of Sheeple
Ruled By Wolves
Owned By Pigs

Kinda says it all,eh?

Later, 'gators, gotta leave the Net for a while.

From the swamps of Arkansas, Ivory Bill Woodpecker

corky, I assumed you were joking about the Soylent Green option! I think the problem is both greed and the fact that there really is no money. If the US GDP is 11 trillion, but total debt, US and personal combined, is 37 trillion, you can do the math. It means the US is spending more than 3 times what it is earning. If you make $50,000 a year, but your debt is $200,000 with interest at 8%, but the value of your $50,000 is constantly shrinking due to inflation, how long do you think you will be able to support that debt? Here is another example, with gold at just over $550. an ounce, if the true value of the dollar continues to deteriorate you could potentially see gold reach $50,000 an ounce or more, not because it is becoming worth more dollars, but because the dollar has become worthless. Printing money does not mean we have wealth, it only means that there is someone out there willing to keep financing our debt. And if we continue on this war mongering, oil grabbing path, that someone, namely Asia, will get fed up and yank the credit card right out from under us. We are living on borrowed time AND credit. Yes, we could stop this insane trajectory before it is too late, but do you really see it happening? Do you ever hear any politicians honestly talk about the deep hole we are in? I sure don't.

KISS

Dear Cornposters:

I share this letter with a heavy heart. My heart is heavy because Bush continues to seek quick fixes to our country and the world's problems. There are many problems here in Nazi America and in the world. In Nazi America we have huge problems from lack of health care to lack of alternative energy sources to the environment to education to corporate fraud to education and it can go on and on. In the world the problems are malnutrition, disease, human trafficking, economic and social exploitation, rape of a countries foreign resources, Nazi America’≥ preemptive wars, the planning of a nuclear war upon Iran, murders, war crimes, torture, and Bush's quick fixes for these problems.

There are no quick fixes. Working to resolve these problems requires hard work and not an absentee or an absentminded ruler. If the spoiled brat who is our anemic amoeba emperor would be compassionate, he would not seek quick fixes for complicated problems. Bush forgot the KISS. Keep it simple stupid!!!

There are many comments that can be made to help improve our country and our world but I would like to make two comments. The first comment is WARS DO NOT RESOLVE PROBLEMS; WARS CREATE MORE PROBLEMS. The second comment is BE NOT AFRAID. We should not be afraid to the love all of God's children who are brothers and sisters in God.

Let our rulers stop complicating the problems of the world. They need to KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. Wars complicate the problems in the world. They never resolve problems.

If you want peace, work for justice. Peace and justice will come if we find unity and intimacy with God. He is the path toward a better world.

Sincerely,

Gerald

corky, it isn't just one problem, if SS was all we had to worry about, we wouldn't have any worries. If you haven't read the link I posted above at #387, check it out. This article describes 11 separate factors, all potential economic disasters for this country by themselves, but combined spell DOOM! And add to that the upcoming move by Iran to begin trading oil in Euros, which will be a f**king nightmare in terms of US fiscal policy, either because they will be allowed to proceed, which I doubt, or we will bomb them back to the stone age. Either way we can probably kiss our most important social programs goodbye, unless those idiots in DC pull their heads out and pay attention instead of constantly trying to save their own hide. Remember, those rich guys you are referring to encompass the kennedys, the kerrys and the clintons as well as the bush's and robertsons and cheneys.

Clinton backs Blair as UN chief

BBC | January 14 2006

Comment: Both Clinton and Blair came up through the globalist ranks at the same time via the Bilderberg Group

Tony Blair would make a "good" secretary general of the United Nations, former US president Bill Clinton has said.

Mr Clinton said he had discussed Mr Blair's future with him and told him there was "a lot of good you can do in the world" after leaving Number 10.

Mr Blair has said he would step down before the next general election, but has not revealed his future plans.

The current UN chief, Kofi Annan, ends his term on 31 December this year.

When asked on BBC2's Newsnight if Mr Blair should run for UN secretary general, Mr Clinton responded: "That would suit me. He would be a good one."

Mr Clinton said whatever Mr Blair did after leaving Number 10 he could expect "immense rewards" from speaking engagements, books and directorships.
"What I would say to him and what I have said to him - I saw him actually last month - is that, when he does go, he's still got a lot he can do, a lot of good you can do in the world and that's the most important thing," Mr Clinton said.
------------
Words fail me.

Selling Out - $1.3 Trillion of American Companies Sold to Foreign Corps

The following staggering amount of our wealth producing companies has been sold to foreign owners in the 10 years from 1995 through 2005. Below is a partial list of the 8,600 U.S. companies sold.

It is critical to understand that even if these are not all familiar corporate names, they are all very valuable strategic companies with vast amounts of technology, assets, production facilities, tax base, and employment attached to each one. In fact, many of the smallest, most unfamiliar acquisitions represent some of the most significant strategic and proprietary technology losses to this country. Many of these companies took decades, and in some cases generations, to build to their size and scope prior to acquisition. Not only does the US lose control of the assets and technologies of these companies as of the date they were acquired, the US also loses all future profit and title to all future advancements of these companies.

These companies were the means through which America created much of its present wealth. With the loss of these companies and having no comparable replacement, it's easy to see that our future will not be as good as our past, especially since the countries that acquired these companies are now able to compete with us in almost all industries. Why are we doing this? Don't we have alternatives? Who is responsible, demand answers from your congressperson.

The following table lists only a few of the 8,600 foreign acquisitions during this period. The $1.3 Trillion figure and complete list can be verified at the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.
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Another bad sign. Rats fleeing the sinking ship. I can't help but feel somewhat pessimistic about this.

Corky,

Sorry to let facts get in the way of your little pity party. Here is the post, since you can't find it.

Sorry. Here is the post.

April 2005 Trustee Report > Social Security will begin paying out more in benefits than it receives in taxes in 2017, twelve years from now and a year earlier than previously estimated, trustees said March 23, 2005. Trustees reported Medicare began paying out more in benefits than it received in taxes in 2004.

Is it fair that young families pay 5.2 times higher inflation-adjusted social security/Medicare tax rates than seniors did in their working years, while accepting that today's seniors consume twice as much as a typical 30 year old does compared to 35 years ago - plus receive much higher real benefits than today's young will receive when they retire?

Is it fair that young workers must protect senior pensions from inflation by granting them guaranteed cost of living adjustments, when many working people have zero inflation-protection guarantees for their own earnings?

Is it fair that young workers must pay Medicare and income taxes to help cover increased health insurance costs of seniors, while many working people must also pay increased premiums for their own medical insurance coverage including higher co-payments?

Is it fair that today's working families, where both mother and father must work, have a 1,000% higher load to cover senior pensions than in 1950 when only 1 wage earner per family was required to make ends meet?

And - is it fair that much of the increased worker payroll tax rates were to produce not just enough to cover senior pensions, but to also put a cash surplus into the trust fund to help protect younger workers - - yet every penny of that cash paid-in surplus, $1.5 Trillion extra to date, was siphoned-off and spent on other stuff as fast as it arrived?

The above inequities are as of today. Since the senior population is growing 5 times faster than the young population, these inequities are but the tip of the iceberg of that yet to come.
Were you born after 1945?

Approaching Time-Bomb Note the rising trend line starting 2005. That steep slope means a higher and higher percentage of the total national population will be age 65 or older (those 'baby boomers') - - meaning the pressure on workers during any part of that period may have even higher increased demands on their living standards to fund the explosion of the senior population - - and there are not enough workers to even do it without pushing many to poverty. And, the surplus paid into the 'trust fund' by working people with their FICA to help cover that time bomb is not there, as it was 100% spent on non-pension programs - a shell game, a scam.

To hit home, hard: The President's Economic Report to Congress of 2/03 shows in 1999 there w