Tag Archives: bankruptcy

Sarah Palin is Just W in a Dress

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Eight years ago, the Bush Error began when voters picked the guy they most wanted to have a beer with, today they are focused on which they would most like to have sex with. No wonder the country is swirling around the bottom of the toilet bowl.

Stock market crashing, after weekend bankruptcy of Lehman Bros., and Merril Lynch agreeing to be bought out by Bank of America for pennies on the dollar.

John McCain is the ultimate flip-flopper.

Wow, even Karl Rove says McCain’s ads have gone too far.

Sarah Palin is just W in a dress.

Sarah Palin lied about visiting Iraq.

Every word out of their mouths is a lie, including the words “and” and “the.” McCain lies and says Palin never requested federal earmarks, at the same time she was defending her requests for earmarks, the highest per capita in the nation.

Kinky. Sarah Palin’s husband Todd ordered to testify about her abuse of power.

Palin claims she has “nothing to hide” in TrooperGate. So why, then, has she been fighting tooth and nail to have the investigation quashed?

Joe Biden, tightwad. He just released his tax returns, and over the last 10 years he has given an average of one seventh of one percent of his income to charity. That’s 1/70th of the average for his income bracket.

Red Cross orders journalist/evacuee to leave hurricane Ike shelter, they can’t risk the press knowing how they actually treat evacuees.

Nothing says “Jesus” like genocide, eh?

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Sept 15 notes, thomasmc.com.

Obama’s MORE WAR TENT circus

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Afghanistan
This staying quiet and not vocally opposing the US War Against Afghanistan and hemming and hawing about supporting the so-called ‘Global War on Terrorism’ has earned Democratic Party voters the candidate they deserve this year. They are getting Barack Obama, who is promising to increase the war effort, rather than sending the US troops home where they belong.

These liberal ‘peace’ de-activists are not getting betrayed by Obama’s Afghan tent circus, for they are the one’s who have largely betrayed their own cause before hand. Obama opens foreign tour in Kabul

They’re getting more war simply because they simply have not opposed most of the war going on. They’ll be getting the economic bill soon enough, too. They thought Afghanistan was of no import, and their peacenik verbiage could stand on Iraq alone? Wrong.

Now we get to see the liberal Democrats play stupid, and look like donkeys for sure when the Bush regime bombs away in Pakistan, moves to attack Iran militarily, and sends more troops to Afghanistan, even as they murder Afghan civilians daily in the dozens. Their candidate, Obama says it’s all right, not to worry, he is a better Commander-in-Chief than McCain would be. Hee-haw, hee-haw! Hee-haw, Suckers! Obama is who you got.

All you liberals doing nothing other than vote will buy this country bankruptcy, both economic and moral. You are getting a preview now of your wannabe CIC to be. It is not a great sight.

New chairwoman of PPJPC Board calls the police on members of her group!

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Called to the sceneAfter over a year of meetings between PPJPC office staff with the police here in Colorado Springs and a purge of the former activist Chair of the group, it has been obvious that the Pike Peak Justice and Peace Commission was already in a state of steep decline.

The group is hemorrhaging money from its overpaying their office staffers who are glued to protecting their salaried positions at the expense of the rest of the membership, and its misuse of its office itself, which is almost always closed to the public. The group has no internal democracy at all, and it is very difficult to work with the proprietors of the club But tonight, we really got a glimpse of what a mess this group has become, as member activists tried to come together in a meeting at the office to decide how to protest the US government plans to start war against Iran, and how to participate nonviolently at the Denver Democratic Party Convention?

Re-keyedUpon arrival at the offices, we found that the locks had been re-keyed, and the place where the spare had always been kept was hanging open as a kind of insult to us who had planned to meet inside. This, despite the fact that the key had stayed the same for years, and the Directors have secretly made the decision to vacate the present offices at the end of next month! Evidently they found it so imperative to keep us from using a meeting space inside the office that would not be controlled entirely by the paid office officials, that they dished out the money to the locksmith.

Lock-boxWe decided then to sit outside and meet there instead, hardly being anything other than the non-violent pro-peace activists that we are. In fact, even though we are members of the PPJPC, we had to meet outside the space that our dues had helped pay for!

We were not a large group at all, simply because the office staff and new Chair of the group had already done what they could to keep the meeting from being publicized to its own membership. They have no plans to participate in the national protests against a War Against Iran, and did not want others to get involved in this activity. In fact, they plain just hate it when we try to democratically decide our own activities rather than taking their own orders about what should be planned by them.

It wasn’t a particularly interesting meeting, and we felt quite stymied. We had been accused of setting up another organization, but that was not the case, and the office staff well knew that. We have not paid with our time, energy, and money to build this group, just to let them run it into the ground without any effort on our part to do alternatively. We agreed among ourselves that despite being locked out by an undemocratic group of PPJPC paid workers who have hijacked the group with the help of a few Board people, that we would continue to try to build the PPJPC.

Finally, meeting over with, we had almost packed up all our signs and equipment, and what comes rolling our way? Well, if it wasn’t the Colorado Springs Police Department, who said that the Chair, that it was she who had complained to them that we were trespassing and to come over and threaten us if we did not disperse!

What a road this group has traveled since seeing one of its former Chairs literally cry in front of the mayor and city council of the city, about how we proPeace activists were peaceful and misunderstood by the community and city government. He was, in fact, the Chair of the Board that helped put the current one in charge since he has moved to another city, and his pick is the woman who is now calling the police on the members of her own group!

The office salaried trio inside, those raking in tens of thousands of dollars in wages a year as they drive the group into bankruptcy, have organized themselves into a barricade against any change happening. It is really sad to see all this donated money go to waste, as the Chair can presently organize not much more than just calling the police on members trying to meet to plan antiwar activities in the city.

Officer PaladinoThey must truly be laughing and snickering at the mayor’s office, and the Chief of Police’s office? What a sad spectacle the PPJPC is becoming under this clique that now welds power over the group. All those meetings with this little clique of self important office troopers has really paid off, in helping the police mainly dismantle this group today. The cops that came by thought the whole situation worthy of a laugh. They were ‘the good cops’ though, and Officer Palodino would have done it entirely differently, no doubt.

An American Socialism?

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In the current housing bankruptcy “crisis” which was in fact created by the privately owned Fed through interest rates that reached 1% in 2003 combined with lax oversight of the banks, the bail out now being talked about in Congress will help… no surprise… the banks by and large. It is meant to deceive the public again by using words such as “helping” the homeowners, or “saving” peoples homes. NOTE: When you save a mortgage you save the bank’s payments by insuring they keep coming in. Besides the fact that people don’t own their homes, the banks do!

Regardless, in a socialist system this kind of gross manipulation would never have happened in the first place. And the half honest sensible solution by these charlatans in Congress should be to refi these homes to these homebuyers at the new lesser value. Because the value is lost anyway. And these homes were wildly overvalued by an out of control speculatory financial cabal. Besides, the bundled debt obligations and structured investment vehicles are worthless. Adding misery, the value of these homes will keep crashing. The rub? The banks and Investors made millions off these paper schemes and walked away… and probably paid little or no taxes. And now, the home buyers who were preyed upon by these lenders, owe money on a devalued home that was used only as a commodity by the “gentlemen” on Wall St. to manipulate, through the creation of CDO’s and SIVs? Sure! That’s capitalism. Systemic political and corporate corruption. And it’s going to get worse.

Congress desperately needs this property tax, interest payment, revenue stream to keep flowing to the banks and the states. But the reason this is a problem for Congress of “what is the best poison” to cure this, is that to bail out the home buyer who got screwed, is using tax money to keep receiving tax money. It’s double taxation!! And a zero sum game… besides rewarding the crooks. More deficit spending. But the Fed doesn’t care about homeowners and thusly told Congress as much by introducing Paulson’s new scheme to have the Fed take over the duties of the SEC and oversight of the big investment banks and their financial debauchery and chicanery. To keep the graft and secret deals going. The “dark trades” as they’re called. And spineless Congress cannot protest. They are owned by the Fed. In fact they are linked in responsibility by their repealing of the Glass-Steagall act with Greenspan’s urging (which Clinton didn’t veto) and attaching the Commodities Reauthorization Act attached to an appropriations bill in 2000. Ahhh the rewards for the capitalist elite are sweet indeed. No accountability, no worries, no chance of getting the blame. The yellow press at their beckon call.

Socialism would put all properties under the ownership of the people with all rents going to the citizens public fund and distributed to each social association for necessary services, loans, needs. There is no reason for housing or land to have any kind of increased value over the years. NONE. Ask yourself why your car then, doesn’t appreciate in value? Or your furniture? Real estate has been another way to oppress and exploit people by putting them into massive debt and making them pay banks twice the value of the home over the term of the loan. Besides the fleecing by the middlemen realtors and speculators using homes as commodities,(thus the current death spiral in housing). Have you ever looked at your amortization schedule? On a fixed rate 30 year loan? You pay twice or more of purchase price, if you paid off your loan! And you’re paying the bank first. We are insane for agreeing to this but that’s why the banks are the most powerful sector of capitalism. Which include the privately owned Federal Reserve. Oh you say, I made thousands when the market was good! No, you made the banks richer and more powerful by putting the next person into new debt for 30 years at 1 1/2 to 2 times the mortgage payment. Now your house increasing in value, puts upward pricing pressure on all homes and finally drives them out of reach of buyers. Thus the 1% housing bubble. For every person who “wins” in the capitalist system, 8 people lose (and those who depend on them). Otherwise you wouldn’t have a system where 10% of the population own 85% of the household wealth and property. The trick is to keep you thinking you’re winning when you’re really just up to your neck in debt in this American Casino Land.

Capitalism is a constant barrage of fairy tales and propaganda aimed at deluding the masses into believing there is no other way a social/economic system can be run. And that to be rich (or at least have the opportunity-possibility to be) is the ultimate goal because that is the genuine expression of self freedom and self worth! Or the lie that mercantilism and worker owned production could not work alone… without the corporate structure or Wall St. But the facts on the ground show us the truth, that capitalism is a fascist system designed to concentrate wealth at the top, steal our productive gains, and by doing so, makes those at the top the most powerful, privileged members of a society. It’s Monarchical. A plutocracy. Oligarchs rule. Fascism! Congress, the court system and state/city regulatory systems are subservient in every way to maintaining the fascist construct. Question: Ever taken part in an organization by volunteering to help change one of the many injustices in this country? You know what I’m talking about then. Wall after wall after obstacle after pot hole after bought off politician …all lined up to trip you, slip you and flip you upside down. New rules to increase petition signatures required for public ballots. Electronic vote stealing and manipulation. Redistricting. Third parties crushed. City council and board meetings held during weekdays. Hundreds of fees and licenses required to run business. Lobbyists at every turn. Zoning codes that dis-allow creative housing solutions and energy use. State insurance commissions. Mineral rights sold for pennies on the dollar… On and on and on… Unless of course your organization/church is involved in taking up the slack for capitalisms failures… then you’re a Mother Theresa! What’s that saying? “I work to feed the poor, they call me a saint. I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

Many people I talk to, on all fronts, are frustrated. And many realize that it is the corporate structure, their power to manipulate policy, to move jobs overseas, encourage wars, and the massive deregulated profit taking and currency manipulation that is at the center core of this American milieu. Besides the fact that no one I talk to has make a thin dime or dollar on Wall St. But the thing I keep running into are differences on how to solve the problem without changing the system drastically. A hypothesis that can be presented is that there is much delusion and neurosis in this land. The idea that we can somehow keep the system we have and make it work for the masses of productive working people, is the delusion as repeatedly, the corrupt one party system consistently proves otherwise. The neurosis is contained within this same idea that is the crux of the delusion. Knowing that something needs to change drastically and on the other hand knowing (by experience or observation) that it is irrational and impossible within the corrupt fascist matrix that will not allow drastic change that is needed. This creates neurosis. The constant tension of this negative psychic entrapment, is energy that has to be released and is finally. Usually negatively in some way. But it could be positive and productive IF there were a real alternative to work toward. Democratic socialism.

Socialists are realists. They are objective creative intelligent humanitarians who know that this delusion and neurosis is not healthy and requires a clean break from the causation. Often I am scoffed at by others for this view. Where? Where would – could this happen? I think that if it’s possible anywhere it would be in a state that seceded from the nation. Vermont’s trying and testing the water. Though even then, there would be no consensus for a socialist form of citizen led, decentralized government. No, until the public is re-educated as to the true intent and purpose of democratic socialism and its platform, and can be persuaded that exploitation of man by man is unacceptable, they will forever bicker and fight among themselves, as children who fight for a place in the lunch line or over possessions. Seemingly without the skills to reassess, re-strategise, and break away from the malignancy present all around us. Socialism takes a deep commitment and concentration to assess the situation on the ground (objectivism) and rationalize, then actualize the alternatives that will then benefit the real producers of capital (us) and replace the owners of the means of production and pushers of propaganda. It’s time to consider socialism as the correct answer to our dilemma.

An economy gasping for air

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Fed move risks long-term pain for short-term gain More cheap credit issued by the Federal Reserve was what drove the stock market rally yesterday. The US has an economy gasping for air.

The Iraq War has been a boondoggle that allowed the major international corporations to loot the American economy while providing no real service to either the Iraqi people or the American.

An economy based on allowing the real estate firms to loot America’s housing stock with cheap and crappy development, allowing the medical supply-insurance firms to loot funds needed for the elderly and the sick, and allowing the War contractors to loot funds from all of our society, but especially funds needed by children and their schools is an economy that can go absolutely nowhere except toward bankruptcy for the majority of the population.

The easy war is no longer going to be so easy for Americans as they now begin to lose their jobs, their mortgaged houses, and their ‘national security’. Why? We let ourselves be suckered into allowing the super rich to direct all our affairs without any brakes on their power.

From Dallas to Dubai, Oh Why?

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How was it that my former employer, Halliburton, has floated from Dallas to Houston to now, Dubai? JR, where are you? You left the ranch!

Youngsters might not have ever seen the US’s favorite soap opera of all time, ‘Dallas’, where JR Ewing was owner of Ewing Oil? For years fans made pilgrimage’s to the ranch, Southfork (read South forked tongue), where JR reigned supreme in this sappy TeleFantasy. JR is now our vice presdent (in real life) and his company is called Halliburton, a major source of corruption throughout the world as well as in the White House.

When Dick Cheney was getting his start, it consisted of buying up Dresser Industries in Dallas, where I worked as a production machinist way back in the early ’80s. The company made oil field equipment and used a lot of asbestos in its production. Cheney gobbled up the company for Halliburton at cut rate prices, thinking for sure that his high connections would get the company off very easy from all the workers and their families suing the outfit for exposing them to this deadly substance. He was right, the injured workers had to settle for pennies as they begin to die off. Halliburton had filed for bankruptcy!

As we all well know, this evil company headed by Satan (Dick Cheney) has risen from Hell to infect the world once again with its sin. Most notably in Iraq, where it has taken the US tax payer to the cleaners, as literally billions have disappeared under its watch. Might there be liability of some form ahead? Plus, the company has ripped off various cleanup funds for hurricane hit areas, most notably Katrina, but also including other storms. Halliburton is corruption personified.

But wait! This All American company has just relocated to Dubai, one of the 9 emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates. You might think this all logical, as so the company maintians due to Dubai being the center of the world’s major oil producing region? But only about 7% of the economic activity of Dubai is related to oil. The main source of income is from tourism! Yes, tourism.

I know, I know. You are probably sick of visitng Disneyland and Las Vegas, and have suggested to yoour husband or wife or Significant Other,

‘Hey, why don’t we vacation in Dubai this year?’

And they might have whined n response. ‘Dubai?’

Yes, Dubai. Let us tell you why, Dubai!

You see, Dubai is about 1 million population, making it 1/3 of the population of the UAE’s 9 emirates. But there are 3 times more men than women living there. What gives? And who are these folk?

Well, only less than 20% of them have citizenship. Huh? Well, basically Dubai’s small citizenry live in a gated community like those gated communities found in upper class enclaves in Dallas and Houston. The 80% plus of other residents are ‘servants’. Or to be more exact, many of them are basically slaves. It’s kind of like Texas, but even more Texas than the original.

Dick Cheney and his cohorts at Halliburton will feel just fine there. English is the language of the schools, and also the language of business. It’s a dictatorship, theocracy, and a Kingdom. Plus, the banking laws are just right! What liability?

But most of all, it is the sex capital of the region! Non citizen ‘guest workers’ automatically have their passports confiscated by the police upon entering The Emirate. That includes female ‘guest workers’ especially. That’s what makes tourism supreem in Dubai! ‘Businessmen’ come from worldwide for Dubai’s beaches and its uh?, nightlife. Got the picture?

Check out this documentary on Dubai’s trade in slave flesh. Made by concerned Armenians, no less.
‘Desert Nights‘. It is 45 minutes long, more or less, and gets more interesting as it goes. Perhaps you wanted to visit Bangcock? But why not follow the Halliburton executive crowd and get to know the slaves of Dubai instead?

Cuban doctors vs Bush’s US floating militaristic showtime

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The bankruptcy of US foreign politcy in Latin America will become highlighted later this week when Bush deploy’s himself into Latin America with a Navy ‘floating hospital’ in tow. What the world will see is Top Gun military doctor Dubya diplomat in action, and it is assured ahead of time, to underwhelm rather than ‘shock and awe’.

The gigantic US navy war vessel accompanying the donkey is to perform surgeries at high cost to the US taxpayer, and minimal real long term medical value (if any) to the chronically malnourished and ill of Latin America.

Meanwhile, Cuban doctors quietly and with little fanfare continue to run medical clinics in country after country when allowed to do so, and Hugo Chavez continues to offer low cost fuel supplies to the not so well off, in addition. The main tool the dumbest ass neo-con gringo rulers have to provide in response, is an creased militarization everywhere in the region using the drug war as excuse. Cops, soldiers, prisons, death squads, and neo-liberal imperialist inforced privatization is DC’s way to winning ‘hearts and minds’! What a formula for success!

Eventually Washington’s war on many fronts will turn into defeat on many fronts. Nowhere is that day nearing faster than in Latin America. Imagine the ridicule that this Pentagon ‘floating hospital’ will arouse. The US is widely known as providing inadequate medical care to its own population(to children in Texas, for just one example), let alone to other nations. While the Pentagon is most noted for its constant ‘collateral damage’ to innocents, not being any angel of mercy.

Latin America will watch as Bush hobnobs with ruling elites that the mass of people despise rather than considering them as potential saviours from their economic insecurity. People need help, and America offers up a clown and a media circus. What a contrast to the Cuban doctors doing real work. US elite intellectual bankruptcy at its finest.

The farce

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America’s idiotic politics has been never more pathetically framed than in the grand pseudo debate over the nonbinding resolution on whether to ‘surge’ or not. All the Democratic Party posturing done here doesn’t add up to a bean of real opposition to the Bush Administration’s constant war plans. Instead, we the public, got merely a grand show, a grand farce of pretend ‘opposition’ that is not a real opposition by any yardstick of measurement.

What delusion, what illusion, that the Democratic Party in actuality even opposes any of the torture, war, and bankruptcy being engaged in by ‘our’ Empire. The Democratic Party leadership is more delusional about Bush’s war than even the Republican Party itself is! And folk that follow behind them are as much the problem as the rabble of Republican Party nitwits themselves.

Iraq is not even the main issue, a new war against Iran is not just the issue neither. Torture and destruction of the Constitution of the US is not the issue. Destruction of the environment is not the issue. The real issue is whether the US population has anything other than total lethargy and apathy within itself to offer up for self-protection? The issue is whether the US public can ever begin to mount any campaign to rein in the fascistic minded corporate power that is sinking the whole ship? Or will it just allow itself to be pacified by nonbinding do-nothing irresolutions and pathetic babbling by a phoney play pretend opposition? The real issue is whether the public is going to ever be able to dump both of the two corporate parties, or not? They both got to be thrown out and not just one, for things to ever begin to start to change.

Nonbinding resolutions what a crock! There is no real national opposition to the war machine other than what we can put together from near total scratch. We’re staring into the possibility of Bush using nuclear weapons soon and all the Democrats can come up with are nonbinding resolutions? It’s beyond nauseating and meanwhile the public just goes on driving around in circles nonstop in their oversized and imbecilic vehicles! That’s what the real issue as our population acts more like a deer in the glare of the headlights of an oncoming truck than anything else. One out shopping…. One out to lunch.

Democracy cannot be built nor sustained on such a foundation of immobilization. We need a third party. We need a movement. Any more of this business as normal by liberals hooked into the Democratic Party is a dead end.

O no he didn’t…. o no he wouldn’t dare!

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I was reading through the trash Mr Chimp talked tonight. Stay the course = The New Way Forward… mind numbing but expected…. More at Evolve FishGoing to have voluntary programs to cut gasoline dependency by 20%, yeah right, but don’t we already HAVE those and if I remember they have been shuffled under by the R’s for decades… Social Security, starts getting a little deep…. National Health care, well, it’s still a Commie pinko thing and thennnnn…. after a $15,000 dollar deductible Health Care from work is counted as taxable income…. I stopped reading there…

Under a plan like that, and work with me here, that would include MEDICAID payments for work injuries that are not covered by Workmen’s compensation AND workman’s compensation.

In other words, you get hurt at work, can’t work, have monstrous hospital bills, one surgery alone would run 15 grand, then suddenly the health care you get because the Subsidized Corporate Welfare collecting sons of bitches who got you hurt in the first place were not maintaining their workplace standards, yeah THAT disability insurance… Now if you get laid up and have 50 grand worth of surgery bills, that puts you in a higher tax bracket…. you are being charged for getting hurt and your BOSS gets to skate away free. What in the name of OSHA cutting Free Market Corporate Welfare kind of shit is that? And if, like myself, you are left holding the bag while the Tort Reform movement has let your boss skip state and reorganize his LLC…. and the Government picks up the tab, YOU and not the irresponsible “Free Market Entrepreneur” who caused the accident get punitive damages put on you.

Perhaps our resident Provocateur Michael can explain how bankruptcy laws can make it impossible for Corporate Citizens to default on their bills, and you can’t touch any money the officers of the Corporate Citizens make after they reorganize, BUT if you try to default on your Income Taxes, the IRS can garnishee your wages, for the rest of your life, to pay off taxable income like the emergency medical services, repair surgery, therapy, and being unemployed…. how exactly is that tort “Reform”?

And remember, before you frame an answer, Der Scheisse-meister was an avid supporter of Tort Reform, and apparently, still is.

Let me summarize that: Go to work without protection of the law.
Boss doesn’t have to comply with EPA or OSHA standards because the enforcement from those agencies have been gutted by the Free Market Capitalists… Get hurt on the job… to the point of being disabled for LIFE… have surgery to save your life and/or limb… COSTLY surgery…
Boss man takes advantage of Free Market Capitalist loopholes in Tort Law, defaults on paying anything for his crime…
the Government steps in and charges you, for the rest of your life, out of your disability payments, or whatever measly work you can scrounge afterward, just by making the health care taxable income.

Bush’s bloody speach announces that US will soon attack Iran and Syria

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Bush’s speech was notable for not only saying that he would send more US troops to occupy Iraq, but that the US government would soon attack both Iran and Syria, which he accused of arming Iraqi Resistance forces. As the US government turns Iraq into a total hellhole, Bush is deciding on a double or nothing surge to control Iran’s oil, as well as Iraq’s.

Of course, there is no direct announcement that this is the actual goal of all the American directed bloodshedding, but the pretense of occupying Iran to help Arabs out is totally obvious to all the world now, minus only some particularly obtuse Americans. Going also, is the idea that this global war by the US government has anything to do with stopping terrorism. If anything, the US seems determined to help flare up non-state terrorism worldwide, rather than stopping it. Our US government state terrorism machine needs non-state resistance to keep itself intact. This is similar to how US cops have actually fed more drug trafficking, rather than moved to diminish it. Cops need ‘drugs’, while soldiers need ‘terrorists’ in today’s Machiavellian US Empire. Or at least the commanders-in-chiefs and generals do.

It sounds like a parrot to repeat the obvious once again, but the Democratic Party is half the problem, and not even half of any solution to this neocon-colonialist campaign to steal Third World oil. Sitting around and waiting for a Ted Kennedy or other to come superhero-like to the rescue will lead us down a dead alley. A dead alley of national bankruptcy, both moral and fiduciary. Time to do a little more to oppose the direction we are being herded to, or we as a nation suffer a lot more pain quite very shortly. Voting alone is just not going to do it.