Tag Archives: Clinton

Nader says that Barack Obama is the worst of Clinton

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NaderRalph Nader speaks to Alexander Cockburn about the poor performance of his campaign this year, but fails to mention the main reason that was so. This was Nader’s third and most probably last run for the presidency and what it lacked was any noticeable performance by Ralph Nader in the non election years.

Where was this guy in trying to build any non-electoral Mass Movement, like one that would correctly center itself in building a Movement Against US War and Militarism? He basically was not to be found, and that showed in the results to his election bid.

A movement to replace the American Two Party Dictatorship of Corporate Power cannot be built on the cheap, Ralph. You have to try to built something other than a Campaign Committee or two. Unfortunately, your legacy is that you did not try to do this, unlike Cindy Sheehan, who is perhaps the major American figure that provides an example of somebody who has put effort into trying to build a Mass Movement against the Iraq Occupation by the US.

Still, Ralph Nader has been a major spokesperson against liberals just capitulating entirely to the Democratic Party, and continues to be so. It would be great if he would turn over a new leaf now, and call for a unity grouping with the likes of Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney and other major independent Left activists to help create a new and national Progressive Movement free of the shackles of corporate run faux liberalism that enslaves the American people inside the Two Party bipartisan shell game. Will you do it, Ralph?

More from Cockburn interview with Nader….

AC: How about the liberals and the left now?

Nader: The real crisis is the self-destruction of the liberal progressive community. It’s got nowhere to go, other than to renew its three out of four year cycle of criticism of the Democrats. They’ve nowhere to go because they’ve made no demands. He’s been a candid right-center Democrat and they’ve given him a free ride. No demands. From Labor? No demands. He gave them a sop on the card check. He campaigned for two years, promised blacks nothing, Latinos nothing, women’s groups nothing, labor nothing. Contrast the lack of demands on the liberal progressive side to what the Limbaugh crowd exacted from McCain.

Full Cockburn post election Hail to the Chief! interview with Nader Check it out!

Working

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StudsOne of America’s great socialist leaders, Studs Terkel died last week during the pre- election hoopla. What made Studs Terkel stand out from all the other Americans of lesser stature was his respect for the average working person as a human being. He proselytized on behalf of the common people, even as American society increasingly began to devalue those who actually do the work of society, as opposed to holding up high those that are profiting from the work of others.

Studs was best known for his book,WORKING, which was not a novel, but rather a book of interviews where working people told of their lives. In today’s America, the reading of this book would be a revelation for many, who grew up and learned only the warped values of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Cheney Era.

See Democracy Now for interviews and programs about Studs Terkel, a Great American leader of the First Class, the American working class.

Rahmbo shoots down ‘Peace’crats fast

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RamboHow fitting it is that the first announcement of a major figure in the newly forming Obama Administration is a pro-war Zionist nicknamed Rahmbo. Rahmbo accepts job as White House chief of staff Yes, with Rahmbo, Barack Obama is already shooting down the ‘Peace’crats who stubbornly refuse to do anything other than stumble about with HOPE in their teary eyes. It’s a HISTORICAL moment of stupidity on their parts for these Regressives.

Rahmbo comes straight out of the Democratic Party Mis-Leadership camp, too. A rabid Clintonite with a long history of toeing party line under Slick Willie. No… Make that he was one of the chief formulators of Slick Willieism and made the lines to be toed! Now how do we spell… NO CHANGE HERE?

Here from wikipedia is more info about Rahmbo Emanuel’s previous history… ‘Emanuel is noted for his strong style and his fundraising prowess.[2] He is co-author with current Democratic Leadership Council President Bruce Reed of the 2006 book The Plan: Big Ideas for America.’ More like more deep doo-doo for America, don’t you think?

I already have run into trouble with the Democratic Party’s ‘Peace’crats, having had them call the police on us for trying to meet locally here as more Left leaning members in Colorado Spring’s so-called Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission tried to hold a planning discussion for Peace action. And just today, the major website of the Democratic Party loving ‘Peace’crats, CommonDreams.organization booted me off from being allowed to read material there! I kid you not! They put me into a loop where I cannot log into their site to read material that most all others can read without logging in. I have been shunned! Boo-hoo-hoo??? Oh, Praise Their Lord, Barack Obama! My crime? I linked to the commentary here on NMT where I said that Obama would get us out of Iraq by taking us into Iran… Sacrilege! Block the Messenger!

The directions Obama is headed towards is a pretty obvious political place for the Democrats. He is headed to being the Commander-in-Chief of a country glued to imperialism and war. His party is headed toward continuing to try to prop up the total system of Military Welfare spending that our country is known for. No change here, My Friends. And the rest of the world, contrary to corporate reporting in this country, is not waiting a ‘new’ Adminstration with baited breath. Rahmbo and others soon to be announced will shoot down the “Peace’crats fast. They already have. And the whole world prtty much knows that already.

BBC reports how US forces murdered Ossetian civilians in Tskhinvali

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south-ossetia-world-mapJust like how the Bush Administration just got though murdering Syrian civilian children in an unlawful attack on a foreign country, the US led forces of Georgia’s US puppet leader, President Mikhail Saakashvili, targeted, attacked, and murdered Ossetian civilians in that area of our world, too. Georgia accused of targeting civilians

And there’s worse, as this despicable US political party, The Republicans, is even running a torturer of Iraqi civilians for Congress! Once again we turn to the British media for a report about this. Allen West oversaw the brutal treatment of an Iraqi. Now he is running for Congress And the Democratic Party went alongside and worked alongside the Republican Party these last 8 years, following their Clinton regime of murder of Iraqi children by ‘sanctions’, their prepping of the lies the Republicans used to invade and occupy the country, and their votes that most often were directly with the Republicans in funding this huge atrocity, all which is now bankrupting our own economy here at home.

Yes, the Democratic Party under Obama, Pelosi, and Clinton, sit by and do absolutely nothing to oppose any of these moves by the Republcian Party, even as these murderous attacks on Syrians and Ossetians seem even to be almost partisan engagements on behalf of trying to get John McCain elected! What a sorry group of louts!

McCain won’t need on the job training, he’s almost dead in this election

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beam me upThe funniest part of the debate was McCain saying that he won’t need any on the job training for being President unlike how Obama supposedly would. That’s right, John, clones of Bush/ Reagan do not need any on the job training at all. However, neither do clones of Clinton.

But how stupid could McCain get with using this line? People aren’t comparing Obama’s ‘experience’ as a political hack with that of Old Fart John, they are comparing Obama’s experience with that of Sarah Palin since they figure that such a decrepit tottering old fool probably won’t last his 4 year term. In fact, McCain looked so bad health wise in tonight’s debate that many folk will have trouble thinking that he could make it through even another year!

As to substance? Well there was little. Neither candidate had anything to say about the effects of deficit spending for the military plunging (that’s today’s Wall Street word) the world economy into the deep, yet they blabbed on about it for most of their time. And to the military and what wars to fight, Obama outflanked General McCain to the far right, saying that we must go aggressively into Pakistan and Afghanistan yet more than has already been done! He wants to invade Sudan, too, it seemingly appears. McCain says that Obama speaks big, but carries a small stick, where as with Viagra McCain it is the other way around. Hey, that’s differences for you!

Obama seemed to score a point or two on the theme of health care, simply because McCain’s approach was to say let the poor die in the streets and don’t bother business folk with such picayune affairs. Obama replied that he was not so eager to napalm the American public.

Who won the debate in this debate of losers? Why Obama did. McCain is too cloned from a one letter President who is sinking faster than Wall Street stocks. It’s the economy, W. Look for the gap between McCain and Obama to grow wider with John’s weak punches. The Republican campaign is now on life support and needs Cheney to start a nuclear war to possibly rally the flag waving public back into their camp of Fantasy. We’re on to new fantasies instead! Clintonism just turned Blacker! Oh joy!

Stop the Senate of would-be thieves!

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wallstreet-bailoutCall your Band of Thieving Senators now to tell them you don’t want to give $700 Billion –more honestly likely to be $5 Trillion– to the robber bankers of Wall Street! Telephone Colorado Senators Ken Salazar at 202.224.5852 and Wayne Allard at 202.224.5941 NOW. Why not call OBAMA too! (phone: 202-224-2854) Tell them you want them to consult with at least ONE economist of repute! At least one analyst not on the corporate payroll. As he promised yesterday, Michael Moore suggests a 10 PART PLAN, only IF pressure can be brought to bear right now to stop the Senate bill.

Friends,

The richest 400 Americans — that’s right, just four hundred people — own MORE than the bottom 150 million Americans combined. 400 rich Americans have got more stashed away than half the entire country! Their combined net worth is $1.6 trillion. During the eight years of the Bush Administration, their wealth has increased by nearly $700 billion — the same amount that they are now demanding we give to them for the “bailout.” Why don’t they just spend the money they made under Bush to bail themselves out? They’d still have nearly a trillion dollars left over to spread amongst themselves!

Of course, they are not going to do that — at least not voluntarily. George W. Bush was handed a $127 billion surplus when Bill Clinton left office. Because that money was OUR money and not his, he did what the rich prefer to do — spend it and never look back. Now we have a $9.5 trillion debt. Why on earth would we even think of giving these robber barons any more of our money?

I would like to propose my own bailout plan. My suggestions, listed below, are predicated on the singular and simple belief that the rich must pull themselves up by their own platinum bootstraps. Sorry, fellows, but you drilled it into our heads one too many times: There… is… no… free… lunch. And thank you for encouraging us to hate people on welfare! So, there will be no handouts from us to you. The Senate, tonight, is going to try to rush their version of a “bailout” bill to a vote. They must be stopped. We did it on Monday with the House, and we can do it again today with the Senate.

It is clear, though, that we cannot simply keep protesting without proposing exactly what it is we think Congress should do. So, after consulting with a number of people smarter than Phil Gramm, here is my proposal, now known as “Mike’s Rescue Plan.” It has 10 simple, straightforward points. They are:

1. APPOINT A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO CRIMINALLY INDICT ANYONE ON WALL STREET WHO KNOWINGLY CONTRIBUTED TO THIS COLLAPSE. Before any new money is expended, Congress must commit, by resolution, to criminally prosecute anyone who had anything to do with the attempted sacking of our economy. This means that anyone who committed insider trading, securities fraud or any action that helped bring about this collapse must go to jail. This Congress must call for a Special Prosecutor who will vigorously go after everyone who created the mess, and anyone else who attempts to scam the public in the future.

2. THE RICH MUST PAY FOR THEIR OWN BAILOUT. They may have to live in 5 houses instead of 7. They may have to drive 9 cars instead of 13. The chef for their mini-terriers may have to be reassigned. But there is no way in hell, after forcing family incomes to go down more than $2,000 dollars during the Bush years, that working people and the middle class are going to fork over one dime to underwrite the next yacht purchase.

If they truly need the $700 billion they say they need, well, here is an easy way they can raise it:

a) Every couple who makes over a million dollars a year and every single taxpayer who makes over $500,000 a year will pay a 10% surcharge tax for five years. (It’s the Senator Sanders plan. He’s like Colonel Sanders, only he’s out to fry the right chickens.) That means the rich will still be paying less income tax than when Carter was president. This will raise a total of $300 billion.

b) Like nearly every other democracy, charge a 0.25% tax on every stock transaction. This will raise more than $200 billion in a year.

c) Because every stockholder is a patriotic American, stockholders will forgo receiving a dividend check for one quarter and instead this money will go the treasury to help pay for the bailout.

d) 25% of major U.S. corporations currently pay NO federal income tax. Federal corporate tax revenues currently amount to 1.7% of the GDP compared to 5% in the 1950s. If we raise the corporate income tax back to the level of the 1950s, that gives us an extra $500 billion.

All of this combined should be enough to end the calamity. The rich will get to keep their mansions and their servants, and our United States government (“COUNTRY FIRST!”) will have a little leftover to repair some roads, bridges and schools.

3. BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE LOSING THEIR HOMES, NOT THE PEOPLE WHO WILL BUILD AN EIGHTH HOME. There are 1.3 million homes in foreclosure right now. That is what is at the heart of this problem. So instead of giving the money to the banks as a gift, pay down each of these mortgages by $100,000. Force the banks to renegotiate the mortgage so the homeowner can pay on its current value. To insure that this help does no go to speculators and those who have tried to make money by flipping houses, this bailout is only for people’s primary residence. And in return for the $100K paydown on the existing mortgage, the government gets to share in the holding of the mortgage so that it can get some of its money back. Thus, the total initial cost of fixing the mortgage crisis at its roots (instead of with the greedy lenders) is $150 billion, not $700 billion.

And let’s set the record straight. People who have defaulted on their mortgages are not “bad risks.” They are our fellow Americans, and all they wanted was what we all want and most of us still get: a home to call their own. But during the Bush years, millions of them lost the decent paying jobs they had. Six million fell into poverty. Seven million lost their health insurance. And every one of them saw their real wages go down by $2,000. Those who dare to look down on these Americans who got hit with one bad break after another should be ashamed. We are a better, stronger, safer and happier society when all of our citizens can afford to live in a home that they own.

4. IF YOUR BANK OR COMPANY GETS ANY OF OUR MONEY IN A “BAILOUT,” THEN WE OWN YOU. Sorry, that’s how it’s done. If the bank gives me money so I can buy a house, the bank “owns” that house until I pay it all back — with interest. Same deal for Wall Street. Whatever money you need to stay afloat, if our government considers you a safe risk — and necessary for the good of the country — then you can get a loan, but we will own you. If you default, we will sell you. This is how the Swedish government did it and it worked.

5. ALL REGULATIONS MUST BE RESTORED. THE REAGAN REVOLUTION IS DEAD. This catastrophe happened because we let the fox have the keys to the henhouse. In 1999, Phil Gramm authored a bill to remove all the regulations that governed Wall Street and our banking system. The bill passed and Clinton signed it. Here’s what Sen. Phil Gramm, McCain’s chief economic advisor, said at the bill signing:

“In the 1930s … it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets.

“We are here today to repeal [that] because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.

“I am proud to be here because this is an important bill; it is a deregulatory bill. I believe that that is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been a part of making it a reality.”

This bill must be repealed. Bill Clinton can help by leading the effort for the repeal of the Gramm bill and the reinstating of even tougher regulations regarding our financial institutions. And when they’re done with that, they can restore the regulations for the airlines, the inspection of our food, the oil industry, OSHA, and every other entity that affects our daily lives. All oversight provisions for any “bailout” must have enforcement monies attached to them and criminal penalties for all offenders.

6. IF IT’S TOO BIG TO FAIL, THEN THAT MEANS IT’S TOO BIG TO EXIST. Allowing the creation of these mega-mergers and not enforcing the monopoly and anti-trust laws has allowed a number of financial institutions and corporations to become so large, the very thought of their collapse means an even bigger collapse across the entire economy. No one or two companies should have this kind of power. The so-called “economic Pearl Harbor” can’t happen when you have hundreds — thousands — of institutions where people have their money. When you have a dozen auto companies, if one goes belly-up, we don’t face a national disaster. If you have three separately-owned daily newspapers in your town, then one media company can’t call all the shots (I know… What am I thinking?! Who reads a paper anymore? Sure glad all those mergers and buyouts left us with a strong and free press!). Laws must be enacted to prevent companies from being so large and dominant that with one slingshot to the eye, the giant falls and dies. And no institution should be allowed to set up money schemes that no one can understand. If you can’t explain it in two sentences, you shouldn’t be taking anyone’s money.

7. NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD BE PAID MORE THAN 40 TIMES THEIR AVERAGE EMPLOYEE, AND NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD RECEIVE ANY KIND OF “PARACHUTE” OTHER THAN THE VERY GENEROUS SALARY HE OR SHE MADE WHILE WORKING FOR THE COMPANY. In 1980, the average American CEO made 45 times what their employees made. By 2003, they were making 254 times what their workers made. After 8 years of Bush, they now make over 400 times what their average employee makes. How this can happen at publicly held companies is beyond reason. In Britain, the average CEO makes 28 times what their average employee makes. In Japan, it’s only 17 times! The last I heard, the CEO of Toyota was living the high life in Tokyo. How does he do it on so little money? Seriously, this is an outrage. We have created the mess we’re in by letting the people at the top become bloated beyond belief with millions of dollars. This has to stop. Not only should no executive who receives help out of this mess profit from it, but any executive who was in charge of running his company into the ground should be fired before the company receives any help.

8. STRENGTHEN THE FDIC AND MAKE IT A MODEL FOR PROTECTING NOT ONLY PEOPLE’S SAVINGS, BUT ALSO THEIR PENSIONS AND THEIR HOMES. Obama was correct yesterday to propose expanding FDIC protection of people’s savings in their banks to $250,000. But this same sort of government insurance must be given to our nation’s pension funds. People should never have to worry about whether or not the money they’ve put away for their old age will be there. This will mean strict government oversight of companies who manage their employees’ funds — or perhaps it means that the companies will have to turn over those funds and their management to the government. People’s private retirement funds must also be protected, but perhaps it’s time to consider not having one’s retirement invested in the casino known as the stock market. Our government should have a solemn duty to guarantee that no one who grows old in this country has to worry about ending up destitute.

9. EVERYBODY NEEDS TO TAKE A DEEP BREATH, CALM DOWN, AND NOT LET FEAR RULE THE DAY. Turn off the TV! We are not in the Second Great Depression. The sky is not falling. Pundits and politicians are lying to us so fast and furious it’s hard not to be affected by all the fear mongering. Even I, yesterday, wrote to you and repeated what I heard on the news, that the Dow had the biggest one day drop in its history. Well, that’s true in terms of points, but its 7% drop came nowhere close to Black Monday in 1987 when the stock market in one day lost 23% of its value. In the ’80s, 3,000 banks closed, but America didn’t go out of business. These institutions have always had their ups and downs and eventually it works out. It has to, because the rich do not like their wealth being disrupted! They have a vested interest in calming things down and getting back into the Jacuzzi.

As crazy as things are right now, tens of thousands of people got a car loan this week. Thousands went to the bank and got a mortgage to buy a home. Students just back to college found banks more than happy to put them into hock for the next 15 years with a student loan. Life has gone on. Not a single person has lost any of their money if it’s in a bank or a treasury note or a CD. And the most amazing thing is that the American public hasn’t bought the scare campaign. The citizens didn’t blink, and instead told Congress to take that bailout and shove it. THAT was impressive. Why didn’t the population succumb to the fright-filled warnings from their president and his cronies? Well, you can only say ‘Saddam has da bomb’ so many times before the people realize you’re a lying sack of shite. After eight long years, the nation is worn out and simply can’t take it any longer.

10. CREATE A NATIONAL BANK, A “PEOPLE’S BANK.” If we really are itching to print up a trillion dollars, instead of giving it to a few rich people, why don’t we give it to ourselves? Now that we own Freddie and Fannie, why not set up a people’s bank? One that can provide low-interest loans for all sorts of people who want to own a home, start a small business, go to school, come up with the cure for cancer or create the next great invention. And now that we own AIG, the country’s largest insurance company, let’s take the next step and provide health insurance for everyone. Medicare for all. It will save us so much money in the long run. And we won’t be 12th on the life expectancy list. We’ll be able to have a longer life, enjoying our government-protected pension, and living to see the day when the corporate criminals who caused so much misery are let out of prison so that we can help reaclimate them to civilian life — a life with one nice home and a gas-free car that was invented with help from the People’s Bank.

Yours,
Michael Moore

P.S. Call your Senators now. Here’s a backup link in case we crash that site again. They are going to attempt their own version of the Looting of America tonight. And let your reps know if you agree with my 10-point plan.

CEO Bandits and Gump

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gump-posters.jpg The best temp gig in history gives a short accounting of bankrupt Washington Mutual and the CEOs that led the bank to its demise. But what’s new about any of this? Ronald Reagan started this trend off with the Savings and Loan Bailout of the 80s and what did Americans do? Why well they allowed him to be honored as being the supposed ‘Great Communicator’!

Next time you drive down the Interstate and see that stupid sign (paid for by the government) that calls the road ‘The Ronald Reagan Highway’, think about the typical dumb American citizens’s responsibility for the problems we now face? We didn’t just get to where we’re at from the crookedness of one man or one American institution or another, we got here because almost all of America’s population has played stupider than Forrest Gump for decades now. You allowed the CEO class to run away with the goods, while you feasted on WalMart and Dollar General! Chumps! And the best most of you can now come up with is to put the likes of Pelosi, Obama, Clintons, and Biden back in as secondary quarterbacks at the White House?! Today’s America is as gumpy as it comes! Make that dumber than Gump!

Hand over the treasure, or we’ll burn the ship down! Arrrrrr!

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First Wall St. demanded a $1T bailout, so taxpayers relaxed a bit when Paulson said it was only $700B (!) Now it looks like they’re upping the extortion to $5T. Since less than 100 million Americans actually pay Federal Income Tax, that makes your share $50,000. Just make your check out to Robber Barrons, Inc.

Hand over the treasure, or we’ll burn the ship down! Arrrrrr!

Break out the torches and pitchforks, even the Senate Republicans have turned on the Frankenstein Administration.

Newt Gingrich warns McCain not to vote for Wall St. bailout. “I don’t know how he can vote for this and with a straight face go around and say that he’s for real change and he’s the reform candidate.” Probably with the same straight face he lies with in every campaign statement and ad, “my friends,” with that creepy smile that looks like his dentures are about to fall out.

McCain suspending campaign to deal with the New Great Depression he created. Of course, by “suspending,” he means that he will make the financial crisis his own private campaign issue, and will attack Obama for “putting his campaign ahead of issues” if he even so much as talks about the bailout.

George W. Bush’s unbelievably hypocritical speech at the UN. [video]

Bill Clinton on The Daily Show.

We Are the Enemy. US Gov’t to station troops inside the US to control dissent. Hey, it worked for Hitler.

John LaBruzzo (Eugenics Party-LA) wants to sterilize the poor, and pay the rich to procreate. And people thought we were crazy when we compared them to Hitler.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Sept 24 notes, thomasmc.com.

How Obama should apologize about Lipstick, and why.

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kind of a pictorial essay.

As to do I really believe he meant Sarah Palin is ugly, well, he didn’t say she was, McCain, however, jumped to the conclusion that somebody was disparaging her looks.

Why? Is he or she or both of them together that sensitive to the subject?

Must have hit a sore spot.

Let’s not forget that McCain used the Term Lipstick on a Pig first, to describe Hillary Clinton.

And said that Chelsea Clinton, who to my knowledge has never run for any elected office, was ugly, and that the reason was that Janet Reno was her father.

So why the sudden Knight in Shining Armor routine, and why does he automatically assume that Palin is the target of the Pig comment?

These questions and many more answered on the next episode of Doap…
Apology to McCain

Gentle reminder

pig

Apology to real swine

an offended pig

McCain Only “Gets” Rich People, Dems Out To Get Protesters

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It’s a fact that the Democrats treated the protesters with as much contempt as the GOP, it’s obvious their promise of change is just an empty slogan. If they really meant it, they would have embraced the protesters, and used them to point out the need for change, instead of treating them as terrorist suspects for questioning the status quo.

McCain more NeoCon than Bush.

John McCain’s lies about Katrina.

Cindy McCain’s sister says she’s voting for Obama. “I wouldn’t vote for John McCain if he was a Democrat. I would not vote at all before I’d vote for him.”

Pandering to die-hard Clintonistas, McCain picks Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for VP. I wonder how many Conservatives would actually vote to put a woman a heart beat away from the Oval Office, with McCain as old as he is?

Oh, and she’s under ethics investigation for abuse of power. No wonder he chose her.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes Aug 29, thomasmc.com.

Obama is not “The One”

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Barack Obama defrauded the primary voters by campaigning as the “candidate of change,” then — as soon as he had the required number of delegates — he suddenly became the “candidate of same-old politics as usual.” You might as well have just voted for John Kerry again.

According the United States Constitution, John McCain is NOT eligible to be president! Not that either political party gives a damn about the Constitution anymore…

How sad that modern politics as devolved to the point where it takes a comedian to tell us the truth.

It’s only a crime if the target is a Republican. Feds to let Obama assassination conspirators off without charges. Hell, if they’d succeeded, Bush probably would have pardoned them anyway.

FDIC going broke over bank failures, and they’ve only just begun. Isn’t Conservative deregulation “glorious”?

Bill Clinton refusing to attend Obama’s acceptance speech. You don’t suppose he knows something, do you?

Who knew you can intimidate Nazis?

US troops murdered 60 children in Afghanistan. We are making Nazi Germany look like a boy scout troop.

US terrorism in Iran?

Alaska: The Land of Corruption.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes Aug 27, thomasmc.com.

The encirclement of US rivals is apace

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“Washington policy now encompasses a series of ‘democratic’ or soft coup projects which would strategically cut China off from access to the vital oil and gas reserves of the Caspian including Kazakhstan. The earlier Asian Great Silk Road trade routes went through Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan for geographically obvious reasons, in a region surrounded by major mountain ranges. Geopolitical control of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan would enable control of any potential pipeline routes between China and Central Asia just as the encirclement of Russia controls pipeline and other ties between it and western Europe, China, India and the Mideast.” –William Engdahl

In this light does it become more clear why American intelligence interests support FREE TIBET efforts, and Greg Mortenson’s Central Asian Institute “western education” encirclement of China’s southern border!

Bruce Gagnon of Organizing Notes has assembled some notes on the growing conflict in South Ossetia, Georgia, and the implications it poses for a broader military engagement.

I’ll reprint Bruce’s article here:

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT GEORGIA-RUSSIA CONFLICT?

I must admit that I am not an expert on the Georgia-Russia conflict that is now underway. But I have been following issues there for some time and have learned to see some linkages between what is going on in places like Poland, Czech Republic, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, China, and the Georgia-Russia conflict.

So here are some random, and not so random, observations and quotes that I think might give us all something to ponder.

* It’s all about oil and natural gas. Russia has the world’s largest supply of natural gas and Iran has the world’s second largest supply. There is much oil and natural gas up in the Caspian Sea region. Which ever country controls this part of the world will have a jump start in controlling the keys to the world’s economic engine for the foreseeable future.

* The expanding economy of China has tremendous need for energy. China now imports much of its oil via sea (thru the Taiwan Straits) and the U.S. has in recent years doubled its naval presence in this region pursuing the ability to “choke off” China’s ability to import oil. China is looking for alternative, land routes, to transmit oil thus pipelines through Central Asia become crucial. U.S. permanent bases in Afghanistan and attempts to put military bases in other Central Asian countries is in large part an attempt to create the ability to control these pipeline routes. F. William Engdahl, author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, maintains that, “Washington is out to deny China east land access to either Russia, the Middle East or to the oil and gas fields of the Caspian Sea.”

Engdahl goes on to say,

“A close look at the map of Eurasia begins to suggest what is so vital for China and therefore for Washington’s future domination of Eurasia. The goal is not only strategic encirclement of Russia through a series of NATO bases ranging from Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo to Poland, to Georgia, possibly Ukraine and White Russia, which would enable NATO to control energy ties between Russia and the European Union.”

“Washington policy now encompasses a series of ‘democratic’ or soft coup projects which would strategically cut China off from access to the vital oil and gas reserves of the Caspian including Kazakhstan. The earlier Asian Great Silk Road trade routes went through Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan for geographically obvious reasons, in a region surrounded by major mountain ranges. Geopolitical control of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan would enable control of any potential pipeline routes between China and Central Asia just as the encirclement of Russia controls pipeline and other ties between it and western Europe, China, India and the Mideast.”

* Some years ago I read the book called The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski which I recently wrote about in relation to his being a chief foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama. Brzezinski has been critical of the Bush administration for invading Iraq essentially saying that it was the wrong war. Brzezinski has long maintained that Russia and China were the targets that had to be militarily contained if the U.S. hoped to continue its role as chief superpower of the world. He says, “Eurasia is the world’s axial super continent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world’s three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia…..Eurasia accounts for 75% of the world’s population, 60% of its GNP, and 75% of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia’s potential power overshadows even America’s.”

* In 2005 the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline opened. It cost $3.6 billion and was funded by British Petroleum (BP) in a consortium including Unocal of the U.S. and Turkish Petroleum, and others. With the fall of the Soviet Union a scramble ensued for political and economic control of this part of the world. Georgia is on the pipeline route. Russia was opposed to this pipeline route. Brzezinski was a consultant to BP during the Bill Clinton era and urged Washington to back the project whose route would circumvent Russia.

Brzezinski also serves on the board of the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce that includes people like Tim Cejka (President of ExxonMobil Exploration); Henry Kissinger; James Baker III (who in 2003 went to Georgia to tell them President Shevardnadze that Washington wanted him to step down so U.S.-trained Mikhail Shaakashvili could replace him as president); Brent Scowcroft (former Bush I national security adviser); and Dick Cheney (who served on the board before becoming Bush II’s V-P).

The U.S. has long been involved in supporting “freedom movements” throughout this region that have been attempting to replace Russian influence with U.S. corporate control. The CIA, National Endowment for Democracy (board members include former neo-conservative congressman Vin Weber and General Wesley Clark), and Freedom House (includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, former CIA director James Woolsey, and Obama foreign policy adviser Anthony Lake) have been key funders and supporters of placing politicians in power throughout Central Asia that would play ball with “our side”.

* Now all of this hardball politics is to be expected. The U.S., Russia, and China all want control of this part of the world. OK, nothing new there. But the current Georgia-Russia conflict indicates that things are moving to a new dangerous stage of development. Very recently the U.S. and Georgia held military maneuvers in the now disputed territories. Russia countered with military maneuvers of its own. Russia is feeling threatened by expanding U.S. bases in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech Republic. Added to that are NATO attempts to put bases in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia and possibly even Georgia – all along or very near Russia’s border.

* None of this is about the good guys verses the bad guys. It is power bloc politics and when the shooting starts it is civilians who die and their communities get destroyed. Big money is at stake and big money does not mind killing innocent people who stand in the way of “progress”. For the peace movement we must first understand some of the history, and also understand the “chess” game now underway. We must not have illusions that this is about “democracy” and must denounce the military and corporate agenda of the players involved. For us in the U.S. we must also remove our blinders and see that both parties (Republican and Democrat) share a bi-partisan history and agenda of advancing corporate interests in this part of the world. Obama’s advisers, just like McCain’s (one of his top advisers was recently a lobbyist for the current government in Georgia) are thick in this stew.

* In the end the peace movement must recognize that this current fighting could trigger protracted war and the only question becomes which weapons get used? Does the U.S. decide it must “come to the aid of it’s ally Georgia”? Is an attack on Iran somehow connected to this widening war for oil? Are nuclear weapons on the table? None of us has all the answers but it is imperative that we begin asking these hard questions and learn as quickly as possible as much as we can about the region.

* Lastly, need I remind anyone, that any protracted warfare in this region will be directed by space satellite technology. Space control and domination gives the U.S. the leg-up in any superpower struggle for control of oil and natural gas.

RECREATE 68 -No more politics as usual

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Recreate-68 logoFrom RECREATE 68:
End the Occupations March and Rally — West Steps of the Colorado State Capitol, August 24, 9am
END THE OCCUPATIONS
No more free pass for the Democrats. Join R68 and others as we march to end all illegal imperialist occupations in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Hawaii, North America, and others. The Dems have the power to put an end to the United States’ illegal colonizations and wars, but they will not without pressure from the people. Join us as we create that pressure.
NO MORE! NOT IN OUR NAME! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
The March will begin at the WEST STEPS OF THE CAPITOL and end on Speer Blvd in front of the Pepsi Center.

MORE OF R68’s SCHEDULE:
Freedom March — Civic Center Park, August 25, 10am

Join supporters of Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu Jamal, The Cuban Five, and other political prisoners for the Freedom March and Rally! Leonard Peltier’s parole hearing will take place in 2008. Let us not forget that the Clintons left him in jail and did not pardon him. Free Mumia, the Cuban Five, the Guantanamo detainees, and others. The march will begin at Civic Center Park and end with a rally at the Federal Court House.

Shake Your Money Maker — Denver Mint, August 25, 5pm

It’s time to redistribute the wealth. Between security and corporate pay-offs, the DNC will cost over 100 million dollars for a party. We think the people deserve that money. Join us as we encircle the Denver MInt (where U.S. currency is produced) and use our collective power to raise the mint building in the air and shake the money out of it for the people. Don’t forget a sack to put all of your loot in.

Bring noise makers, energy, spells, magic, costumes, anything that gives you power. We’ll need it!

Days of Resistance — August 24-28

During the convention, there will be five major protests, one each day. Each protest will focus on a symptom of the disease of an imperialist, capitalist, racist system as seen in our communities. Some of the proposed themes are as follows:

Sunday – End All Occupations at Home and Abroad
Monday – Human Rights/Free All Political Prisoners
Tuesday – No Borders
Wednesday – No Warming
Thursday – No Racism/Imperialism

Festival of Democracy — Civic Center Park and Skyline Park, August 24-28

The Festival of Democracy will be a five day event running in conjunction with the DNC Convention. The Festival of Democracy will include free music and performing arts, free food, and free institution building and political training. The purpose will be to share some fun and to work towards the development of programs and networks that will address our community problems ourselves, without relying on the two party capitalist system. We will also be offering a 24 hour free medical clinic for all community members to receive free health care.

MONDAY, AUGUST 25 — Civic Center Park
TUESDAY, AUGUST 26 — Civic Center Park
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27 — Skyline Park
THURSDAY, AUGUST 28 — Skyline Park

Product Obama

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Young Barack“At the time when the American military industrial complex is despised around the world, [Barack Obama] is a front man out of central casting which will buy it more goodwill and new room to maneuver in the first 15 minutes after being sworn in that John McCain could in the next 100 years.”
 
Counterpoint columnist Joe Bageant was given the following essay by an unnamed political consultant:
Life in the Post-political Age.

Much has been written by political pundits in their attempt to explain the unexpected victory of Senator Barack Obama over Senator Hillary Clinton in this year’s Democratic Presidential Primary. When looking at the results of this race, none of the conventional political math that would help one handicap the outcome would make one conclude that Senator Obama would win this contest.

Inside a Democratic Party primary there is no demographic or political reason that a male first term African American senator from Illinois with an unorthodox name should come any where close to beating a white female senator, who happens to be the wife of the last Democratic President whose approval ratings are still above 70% with Democratic voters and who also happened to earn the endorsements of the substantial parts of the Democratic Party establishment.

The conventional analysis focused on the poor quality of the campaign run by Senator Clinton, her vote in support of the Iraq war and her advocacy of the cynical center-right triangulation policies of her husband, which soured her campaign to many primary voters and especially to Democratic Party activists. Senator Obama’s on the other hand was credited with running an innovative and inspiring campaign that excited primary voters and brought many new and especially younger voters into the electoral process.

There is some truth to this analysis, but as a whole it misses the underlying social change in society that had already laid the groundwork for a possible Obama victory. To get a clearer understanding of the results, we must better understand what this social change is and how its impact is far more significant than the dynamics of the two respective campaigns.

The underlying social change that led to the Obama victory is the unprecedented extent to which the narrative of popular consumer culture, and the media that drives it, has become the dominant influence on how Americans think, formulate their ideas and understand the world around them.

The most important result of this process has been the steady and consistent depoliticization of American society, to an extent that we can make the case that we are living at the dawn of the post political age.

The two primary features of the post political age are a politics completely drained of all its contents and ability or willingness to be used as an agent of change in social or economic policy, and its full integrations into the world of American popular, consumer and entertainment culture. To such an extent that there exists today a seamless web between our political, economic, media and consumer cultures wherein the modes and values of one are completely integrated and compatible with the others.

It should not come as a surprise that the dominant ideas and mores of popular culture have become the dominant ideas of our society. Popular culture is the breaker of customs, prejudice, tradition and relevant historical knowledge.

It is a result of this dynamic that the two consistent winners in American politics over the last 30 years have been the cultural left and the economic right. Despite the massive organizing drive of the religious right over the past three decades, they are further away from reversing the cultural liberalization of American society than when they started. On others side of the ledger, organized labor outside of a few urban pockets and industries is no longer a relevant force in American life. The ever greater electoral activism of both of these groups is generally misunderstood as a show of strength; in fact, it is the exact opposite. It is the desperate fight of the losing side of the American economic, cultural and political scene.

In essence the same forces that make it possible for the rapid acceptance of ideas such as gay marriage are the same force which can create a society that will accept massive social inequalities.

In the post political world and the candidates who can best thrive in it have tremendous appeal to the economic elites, a system that does not dwell on issues and will never ask the question, “who has power and why”, but simultaneously creates a social and media environment of stupefying distractions while destroying traditional social mores (under-credited as a source of much social solidarity). This can only benefit their continued rule of that society.

In such a setting our political choices like our consumer choices, regardless of the product, are primarily about what makes us more fulfilled and feel better about ourselves.

Senator Obama’s campaign understood much better the impact of these changes on our electoral system than any of his opponents’ campaigns. In the post political world, the campaign that is less political and less issue-based but is savvier in using new modes of communication technology will be the campaign to win the greatest market share of the electorate. The candidate in this case, Obama, was not a political entity but, in essence a product, an ornament that made his supporters feel better about themselves.

One of the most telling facts about the Obama’s constituency outside of African Americans (whose support needs no explanation) is that it is a coalition of people who need or demand the least amount of social benefit from our government. They are the under politicized younger voters and upper middle class whites. The two groups, coincidently, are the ones most influenced by trends in consumer popular culture and have the greatest of ease using the latest technologies.

In commercial advertising it is the poor commercial that lists the seventeen functions of the product being marketed. The best commercials are based on image associations entirely unrelated to the functions of the actual product. In the post political world, when the same principle is applied to the political realm, it makes complete sense how Barack Obama no longer is a black man with a strange name but the iPod to Hillary Clinton’s cell phone. In the world of toys it is the one that stands out the most is the most marketable.

The reality of the post political period is best highlighted in the failed themes and ideas of Barack Obama’s two primary opponents. The Clinton campaign was based on pushing two concurrent ideas: the inevitability factor of her candidacy and the other was her supposed experience. The only thing inevitable in the post political period is ceaseless change, which she could hardly offer while running against the candidate of “Change”. How valuable of an asset can experience be in a culture where knowledge, wisdom and history are frowned upon?

John Edwards campaign on the other hand was dead on arrival. His theme and emphasis was America’s ever widening class differences, a platform as truthful as it was irrelevant. The use of the word “class” will end any political career in America. That truth violates the primary narrative that our elite use to justify their legitimacy, which is the supposed meritocratic nature of America society. While the post political constituencies have absolutely no interest in class, whose very acknowledgment are the bases of all real politics and whose acknowledgement would only lead to an existential crisis in its ranks. In the post political period the only differences allowed can be in style and modes of consumption.

Given all this as the background, what are we to make of the campaign of the candidate of hope, audacity and change? The answer lies in understanding Senator Obama’s appeal to the brighter sections of the economic and political elite, and more importantly in the lack of any organized opposition against him, of the kind that within a matter of days destroyed Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004.

At the precise moment that the intellectual underpinnings of conservative free market ideas that have dominated politics for the past 30 years are crumbling across the globe. Obama calls for a post ideological and partisan world.

At the time when the American military industrial complex is despised around the world, he is a front man out of central casting which will buy it more goodwill and new room to maneuver in the first 15 minutes after being sworn in that John McCain could in the next 100 years.

His very presence, the color of his skin, the very strangeness of his name is the best guarantee of his betrayal of the expectations of the constituencies that will vote to elect him. Barack Obama is in short order a far more reassuring prospect for the continued dominance of the financial elite than another four years of neo-conservative rule which in an almost historically unique combination of greed, ill will, incompetence and stupidity have brought the country to the edge of disaster.

Audacity yes, change hardly.

Barack Obama’s recent Bill Crosby style Jello moment

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jello.jpg Pastor Obama says that, ‘Too many fathers are M.I.A., too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men.” So spoke Obama while at church on last Father’s Day… This was Barack Obama’s Bill Crosby style Jello moment.

Lest we forget, Bill Cosby is a Black millionaire who popularized himself with Whites by acting Republican in this manner. Republicans love Black folk when they echo their own racist sentiments! Yes they do! They love it when somebody with a tan gets off on castigating cliché absent ghetto dads!

‘Bad boys bad boys, what you going to do when they come for you’ routines. Well yeah, get down with Jesse Helms and crowd, why don’t you?

But let us not forget, that these bad ‘boys’ that Obama and Cosby put the blame on simply don’t make those 6 figure annual salaries of their denouncers. They are not attorneys, politicians, and actors in Jello commercials. They live real lives, many of them lives of desperation due to the racist economic, legal, and educational structures of our racist USA. Why Hell, many of these men don’t even go to church so that they can spout off their hateful pseudo religiosity like Cosby and Obama are most prone to do.

Barack Obama is following in the media made footsteps of Bill Clinton, who the corporate press ludicrously dubbed as supposedly being ‘America’s First Black President’. Many bought for a while this nonsense, even many Blacks? What Clinton and his wife actually were were racists passing themselves off as being charitable to Blacks, even as they screwed the Black community as a whiole over royal. Now along comes Obama, who is actually part Black, who is totally prepared to do more of the same, all in the name of bringing America together!

What helps this campaign of promoting the Left image of Obama most of all towards having success is the rabidity of the nutty Right, who simply don’t think that Barack Obama hates Black males as much as say, a Jesse Helms does. They don’t find him intolerant enough of undocumented workers either. I mean Look, he even has the same skin color of some of them Haitian rabble! Sink that Obama boat! This sort of Republican Right rabies is enough to stampede the liberals into thinking that Obama must be a real sweetheart if the Nazis hate him so. But they are wrong.

In fact, I still can’t stomach watching that asshole Bill Cosby. Thank god he is rightfully retired (more or less) so that we don’t see him as often as we once did. Now I do like Redd Fox (also retired). He was a good dad and a better comedian still. True, he did run a junkyard but at least he won’t help make America into more of a junkyard, as the Democratic Party behind Obama’s imagery most certainly will.

Thank about it a little, Boys (and Girls). I like Cynthia, too, though the party she is a candidate for is a laughable charade. There are better choices than BO out there. One better choice is simply to not vote in this charade of pretend democracy that the corporations have sold to us as their product. Don’t buy.

I want more change in the White House than just skin color!

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Barack Obama is proving himself to be little more than Joe Lieberman in blackface. Oy gevalt. Cowardly Dems in the Senate (Led by Obama the Coward) passed FISA, out of fear that big meanie Bush might say something bad about them if they didn’t. As if he won’t, anyway. Duh! [detail]

As much as I dislike Hillary Clinton, at least she had the decency to vote against it.

John W. McCain didn’t even bother to show up for the vote…

The ACLU has announced it will fight the unconstitutional law in court.

Civil Liberties? WHAT civil liberties??? Bush kills Civil Liberties Board.

Time to put on your jack boots and Seig Hiel! US military to monitor internet to quell dissent.

Standing up for the truth. SC state employee quits rather than lower flag for toxic Senator Jesse Helms.

Ted Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer, surprised the Senate by showing up to vote on the Medicaid bill yesterday.

The screwing of America. Food manufactures quietly shrinking product sizes, while keeping same packaging and prices.

Marriage equality. MA Senate to consider repealing law that prevents gays from other states from marrying there.

Phil Graham has a mental slowdown, and calls USA a nation of whiners for caring that the GOP has destroyed the economy. If only we’d just focus on how much better off the filthy-rich are, and forget about everyone else.

Life imitates art. Paradise, CA — subject of the Eagles song The LastResort, and inspiration for the Showtime series Weeds — evacuated for wildfire. “Somebody laid the mountains low, while the town got high.”

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 10, thomasmc.com.

The Democrats are spending $400 million to fund war with Iran

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Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have signed off giving their support to engaging Iran in a new war planned by the Bush adminstration. In fact, the Democratic Party has signed the checks to do so… $400 million worth of checks! America’s best investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh is helping uncover this secret deal between the Democratic and Republican parties to keep the war going, and to even spread it further, to Iran. Yes, Barack is for ‘change’… but for the worse. Why is he supporting more war?

Transcript Of July 2 Seymour Hersh interview—-
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, THE REAL NEWS NETWORK: Hi. Welcome to the first in our series of interviews with Seymour Hersh, famed author for The New Yorker. In a recent piece titled “Preparing the Battlefield,” Seymour Hersh says that the leadership of the Democratic Party has authorized spending over $400 million in support of a presidential finding that greatly expands the use of secret operations inside Iran, including perhaps the use of lethal force. Here’s what Seymour Hersh wrote in his piece.

The Democratic leadership’s agreement to commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon, and many others. “The oversight process has not kept pace—it’s been co-opted” by the Administration, the person familiar with the contents of the Finding said. “The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re authorizing.”

The interview continues at Seymour Hersh: The secret war in Iran where there is also a video copy, too.

How did London’s new Dubya-like clown mayor get elected?

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Boris JohnsonLondon, Great Britain has just recently elected a new Dubya-like clown for mayor. How did this city go from having a relatively liberal mayor like Ken Livingston, to a neo-con stooge for its highest office? The answer has some sad lessons for the US, a country that is once again desperately trying to throw its most corrupt corporate clowns out of DC. But will they return once again, just as has been the case in the past?

Sadly, the answer is YES they will return. Why is that? The answer once again is pretty simple to figure out. Just like in Britain, when a population allows another group of marginally less corrupt corporate clowns in, the worst do get back in after a short while. And in Britain, just like in the US, the corporate world totally controls the main electoral options. There simply is no electoral choice of worth.

The Hindu has a great analysis of what happened in London’s election that allowed a Tory fool to get back in as mayor there. See Extreme swings for a great analysis of how the “two party system” works in Great Britain. Yeah, I know that there are now actually three main parties, like in Mexico, but still the similarities with the US Tweedle Dee- Tweedle Dum con are chilling.

So we may well be back to having a Clintonite figure get elected into the presidency once again, but it will only be prep for returning the worst of the worst corrupt corporate Klan back later. You can bet on that. The Democrats are what make the Republicans possible, and until we get fed up as a people with both of these gangs, we will just get more of both of them in the future. Ugh, what an ugly world.

You really have to work to make it better, and just ‘voting’ in elections run by the corporate world, just will not produce any real change.

If stupidity were an energy source, Republicans could save the world!

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Desperate Clintonistas. Psychopathic liar (as proven by not one, but TWO lie detector tests) Larry Sinclair arrested at press conference where he again claimed he was Barack Obama’s crack whore.

John McCain, creepiest presidential candidate, ever!

So, Ms. McCain thinks it’s ok to go after a presidential candidate’s wife? Ok, who’s going to be the first to ask her about her past – and possibly current – drug addictions? If the McCain camp is smart, they will lock her up until after the election. Her proving she’s a cold-hearted bitch isn’t going to win him any votes, especially when she is contrasted with a class-act like Michelle Obama. Cindy McCain thinks that just being filthy rich somehow makes her classy. It doesn’t, and her mouth proves it. Her only talent is scaring small children. Between her facial plastic surgeries, and pulling her hair back as tight as possible, she looks like she’s falling backwards into a black hole.

Transcendental Politication.

Dennis Kucinich says if Judiciary Committee ignores his 35 articles of impeachment for 30 days, he will reintroduce with 60.

If stupidity were an energy source, Republicans could save the world!

Excerpted from Thomas McCullock’s June 19 notes, thomasmc.com.

British and French imperialists are the problem, too

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Together with the US, the British and French governments make up a trio of warlord imperialists that rule over the entire world in a not so benign manner at all. We in America often want to blame it all on George W. Bush and the US neo-cons, but they rule the world with the help of people like Tony Blair, Gordon Brown (current PM of Britain) and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy (the Dubya of France). Also in tow, are the Right Wing governments of Germany and Italy.

How do these gangsters operate? We can see the French fomenting war alongside the US in the Horn of Africa and in Chad-Sudan. Djibouti says France to send ships over Eritrea clash And we can see the Brits working together with Bush and Obama to threaten to extend the Middle East fighting into Syria and Iran. Bush and Brown’s warning to Iran

Why this grand alliance of gangsters? The answer is quite obvious and simple. All 5 of the these countries (US, France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain) are ruled over by the multi-national corporations HQ ed in those locales. Goodbye Democracy everywhere, as the corporate world determines for all of us the shape of the world we live in. It is not a pretty picture.

Lesson? The ‘presidential election’ is only about image changes, and not much else. There will be no real change coming about through voting to put Barack Obama into the office. Vote Obama, and you have done nothing.

In Britain, they thought getting Tony Blair into office would solve the problem of the conservative Tories. Then they thought getting Blair out and Gordon Brown in would help solve the problem of stopping British participation in all the US wars. Delusions! Nothing has changed.

If you want real change in the world, you can’t find it in simple ways. Your vote in the election will not do anything. Your message of putting Barack Obama in office will be nothing more than saying to the powers that be, that YES, they can manipulate you at will. Just like putting Carter and Clinton in office did nothing positive in the past, another corporate Democrat in office mouthing off sweet nothings ‘for the people’ will do nothing, too.

Until the populations of all the imperialist countries come alive, the world will be constantly engulfed in bloodshed, poverty, ecological destruction, and war. Passively mailing in your ‘vote’ accomplishes next to nothing at all. You must open your mouths, make your protests public and loud, and be vociferous in opposing society run by enslaved enterprise.

A soulless candidate- Barack Obama

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Anybody but McCain? Why? …McCain is liable to collapse The Empire and that would be a good thing. Still, it is rather bad politically to push for collapse of one’s own nation even if it might benefit the rest of the world. So we turn to Barack Obama and see what the man offers up to us for our possible votes? Would we be doing better to vote for Obama or cast a vote for one of the marginalized non-candidates instead? Or to not even ‘vote’?

OK, so we agree that McCain is a bad vote, right? To vote for McCain is to vote for Incompetent Imperialism, Incompetent Empire, to vote for an Empire without future. But what are we voting for if we vote for Barack Obama? Obama himself offers up the answer, but is it really the case, this ‘CHANGE’ he talks about?

We have some recent history to offer US some insight to this question. We have the 12 years of Reagan-Bush and the arrival of the Clinton team offering up the same mantra of ‘hope’. Clinton promised us something different than the Reagan Era but instead gave us only a minor and insipidly weak gap time between Reaganism and Dubya. In fact, he was prep for getting us to Dubya.

So along comes the new ‘Blacker’ version of Clintonism which is Barack Obama, and we have to have some parameters and guidelines to evaluate him with. These parameters must at least include race, sex, labor, immigration, health environment, and war. What is Obama planning for us in these areas of policy? What is this ‘CHANGE’ he talks about? Sadly, he only seems to be talking changing the incompetence level of the Dubya clique in governing The Empire.

Of the issues noted above, the question of war is by far the most dominant and important one. Bush gave us war, McCain is a continuation of that, but is Obama a negation of what the other 2 stand for concerning war and peace? Or is Barack Obama a soulless candidate who promises change, yet will do the exact same imperialist aggressions in a stealth manner?

The key to evaluating Barack Obama’s positions of war and peace can be summed up in the name of one country- IRAN. Sadly, the news is bad. Barack Obama has clearly signed himself and the Democratic Party as a whole on to a planned war with this country Iran. He has signed himself up to an extension of the Iraq war into yet more neighboring lands!

Let’s face it, the time to speak out against this planned US-Israeli aggression is now, not tomorrow. Barack Obama has done quite the opposite though. Barack Obama has made it entirely clear that he supports going to war with Iran and Syria, and thereby spreading even further the bloodshed to inside Lebanon, too.

He is a man without soul, a liar and a con, when he talks about bringing us a change from Bush’s foreign policy. He now leads the element of the Democratic Party that has totally acquiesced to the neo-con game plan. And they want war with Iran.

What we will get with Barack Obama, is a new administration with an improved international public image, that will then carry out the Dick Cheney agenda in the Middle East. This is just not a good vote or a good way to spend one’s activist energies, spreading the word to vote for such a soulless creature. We will get more war.

Sad to say, that leaves us with voting for one foe the marginalized candidates (Nader, McKinney, etc.), or just not voting in an election rigged from the beginning to not give us any real choices. We do not have a functioning democracy in the US. We do not have a democracy unless the people can have a voice in the government, and not just the corporate world running the entire show.

Barack Obama is a dead end. Or worse yet, like Clinton before, Obama is just a further bridge to increase the stranglehold of the Far Right on our nation’s affairs. He will do nothing to breakdown the Right’s total current control over power in America. Vote for him at your own risk then. Vote for him if you are into self-delusion?

The Republican crowd votes for what they want and get it. The Democratic party voters seem to doom themselves to always chasing a pot of gold to be found at the end of a delusional rainbow. What is to be gained by this?

Unearthing the 70,000 Peruvians killed by the US counterinsurgency

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Americans don’t like to look at their bloody history, their bloody leaders, their bloody genocides. In fact, many liberals think it their calling to ask for even more bloody military interventions, all in the name of our supposed national goodness.

Instead of building a real Movement to end US militarism, they tell us the problem is that we merely need to make our interventionism ‘humanitarian’ oriented, as if that would be a solution to the world poverty, misery, and chaos our corporate, government, and military leaders preside over! They forget about places like Peru, Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Vietnam, to name just a few locales that we as a people have helped our elites torture and occupy.

Over at the local idiotic Justice and Peace Commission’s HQ, the paid staff and preacher jefe on top are all busy with building something they call a summer ‘Peace Camp’ for children (Vacation Bible School). There, they plan to preach the mantra they call ‘nonviolence’ to a very select few kids. This is inactivity they substitute for real activism, where they would have to talk to the general public about places like Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Haiti. There at ‘Bible School’, the kids will never hear of places like Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Peru, sites of bloody US atrocity and torture. The liberal ‘peace’ salaried workers will help blab on to the kids about turning the other cheek, etc.

Why won’t the Peace and Justice group tell the kids the real story? Why won’t they tell the kids about the unearthing of thousands of graves of other children, all murdered by a US campaign to terrorize an entire country… Peru? What a moral failure these ‘peace’ people are! They not only do not speak truth to power, they do not even speak truth to their own kids!

Yes, the US government-Peruvian government killed tens of thousands in the ’80s. Yes, Kids, your moms and dads paid the taxes for these massacres to happen, and voted for the Democrats and Republicans that authorized it. The blood of these dead kids, just like the dead kids of Gaza, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq are your responsibility, and the responsibility of your sheep-like parents. Are you going to let these atrocities continue without trying to do something to stop them?

Peruvians seek relatives in mass grave Our tax dollars should go to help these people find their relatives killed by the Pentagon. Shame on us as a society for playing dumb all the time.

And shame on the liberal Democratic Party voters for being some of the worst offenders in that regard. You know that your party is a war party alongside the Republicans, yet all the time you mouth to us the necessity of voting for them. Shame on you. Shame on you for demobilizing the protests against The War. These Peruvian graves are your fault, just as much as they are the fault of all those who vote Republcian. Iraq is your fault, the Clinton’s fault, Al Gore’s fault. You have blood on your voting hands.

Is your hate of Hillary all your own?

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Stuart RisdenIf you’re indulging yourself gloating about Hillary’s dashed presidential aspirations, you might consider who’s cheering with you. As the battle for the nomination dragged on, Ms. Clinton faced near universal scorn, whipped up gleefully by all of media-dom. When has the media reported anything that you’ve discovered was truthful? Anything?
 
(Man’s traditional response to threatening women, midwives or healers? They’re witches!)

Unless you have been keeping in touch with Hillary Clinton personally, I would hesitate to say you don’t know if she has been represented objectively. Unless you’ve seen her in person, can you really say if her head’s the size of a pumpkin? Have you seen, heard, felt pangs of intuition that weren’t spun by the waves of an electronic transmission fashioned over an editor’s desk?

I’ve become rather suspicious that Ms. Clinton may have posed the biggest threat to the powers that be, to the beltway and the corporate media, and that’s why she was painted with such dastard derision.

Maybe?

The unanimity and height of disrespect shown in the catty ridicule made of Hillary has an identical scent really of an earlier smear campaign, the ulterior motives now well documented, against the embarrassment “beyond words” of Hillary’s First Husband, Bill.

President Clinton was too centrist for my taste, but it turns out he made some inroads for the people even despite being mostly thwarted by the corporate multinationals and the bankers.

Was the combined Clinton battle experience going to be crucial facing the still predominantly neoconservative-crony Washington establishment? The DC heavyweights are criminals and profiteers to the last, do we expect them to invite a reformer into the White House?

As much as they hated the Clintons, and Hillary Clinton in her own right, the power brokers appear to be smitten by Barack Obama. What does that say to you?

Some think it’s a sign that everyone’s ready for change. Some think the Republicans are content to let a Democrat be left to pick up Bush’s pieces. A friend of mine quotes T. S. Eliot:

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.”

I think the vociferous appetite the Neocons have shown in devouring America’s treasury at the expense of the middle class indicates they don’t intend to leave even a piece until it’s in their bank account. The bad guys are not through. In these days of irradiation, they do not need their poultry kept live.

The media favoritism of Barack over Hillary says to me, they’ll abide a black man on their porch because they have no intention of letting him inside. They can serenade him even, confident they can excuse their ultimate inhospitality on the Appalachian problem. If American voters prove more progressive than they want, Diebold’s blackboxes will smite our great last hope.

Republican McCain has been criticized by none of the press. With Hillary out of the way, the press has already started to unleash on Obama, and will now be now free to lavish the erstwhile witch with the affection they now display for her term-limited husband.

America’s masters needed one heck of a ringer to face the Bush blow-back. A presumptive presumptuous first black president will prove just the straw man they need. Even the most cynical voter will not be surprised that white America is not ready to elect a black president.

All that hoopla about Obama needing to distance himself from his pastor’s unpatriotic rants was very telling. Do you remember Reverend Wright’s chief focus? God Damn America, yes, but his chief refrain? America’s racism. White America doesn’t want to believe it is racist, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

Apparently racism is gone if we want it gone. To decry its persistence is to break the self-hypnotic spell and bring racism back. Blame the messenger apparently.

It is not racist to predict that Obama faces entrenched racism. It would be swell to think America is otherwise, and the media would love for us to believe it. But they and the lobbyists and their owners Big Pharma, Big Agra, Big Oil, the financiers and the war machine are banking on McCain.

Bush the unimpeachable war criminal

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HangmanRemember when Bill Clinton was “rebuked” for misleading Congress about the nature of his conduct with a White House intern? I’m sorry. I meant IMPEACHED.
 
A decade later legislators have concluded that Bush deliberately misled Congress and the American people about Iraq, al-Qaeda, et al, drawing the nation into an illegal war, resulting in untold deaths and a ruined economy. Is Bush impeached? Indicted? No, he’s REBUKED.