![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Tell me again, Why is Obama being Popular with our Allies a Bad Thing?
Jul. 25th, 2008 | 01:23 pm
One has the feeling that if Obama was suddenly revealed as the Second Coming, the Rebooblicans would still find something to gripe about. I suggest John McMumbles go to Berlin also and give a speech there - then we can all sit back and find things to complain about with him.
How can anyone be against peace? Against diplomacy? Against trying to get along? Arianna Huffington says it for me:
Tell me again, Why is Obama being Popular with our Allies a Bad Thing?
by Arianna Huffington
I understand why John McCain's campaign is desperately looking for negatives in Obama's overseas trip. But why have so many in the media internalized the McCain campaign's claptrap?
Here is the McCain line on Europe, delivered via Politico by a nameless campaign aide: "I don't know that people in Missouri are going to like seeing tens of thousands of Europeans screaming for The One."
And here was Gloria Borger on CNN, responding to Wolf Blitzer's assertion that Obama seemed to be on top of his game by pulling out the Straight Talk talking points (and leaving logic and rational thinking in a pile on the studio floor):
...as the McCain campaign points out, he can't appear to be seen as running for the president of Europe. He's going to be really cheered in Europe, he's going to give a huge speech. He's going to have a lot of support there. But he's running for the president of the United States. And so they have to walk a very, very fine line here because they don't want to be seen having too many adoring people after him in Europe because he's running for president of the United States.
What do Borger and the McCain campaign think would play better in Missouri, Obama getting off the plane in Germany and having the locals throw tomatoes at him? Would that endear him to the people in Middle America -- who, in McCain World, are like an insecure girlfriend, panicked by just the thought of someone else finding their guy attractive?
Sadly, this absurd line of thinking is spreading fast. Here is the L.A. Times' Michael Finnegan:
In Europe, where he is highly popular, Obama plans a speech in Berlin on U.S. relations with allies. He will probably find a warm, even rapturous, reception -- which poses its own challenges. 'There's such a thing as being too popular overseas,' said [William] Galston, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. 'And that may create some misgivings here at home.'
The Baltimore Sun's Washington bureau chief Paul West ominously warns: "European adulation for Obama will make him the continent's poodle."
And even Maureen Dowd appears to have bought into the McCainites' Euro-phobia, suggesting Obama "can't be seen as too insidery with the Euro-crats" lest Obama-wary Americans "wonder what he's doing there, when they can't pay for gas, when the dollar is the Euro's chew toy, when Bud is going Belgian and when the Chrysler Building has Arab landlords." And don't forget all those German cars on our roads. Which we can't afford to drive because gas is too expensive (for which, according to McCain, we can blame Obama).
Of course, at no point does the McCain campaign or anyone in the media point out what, exactly, is the danger to America if our closest allies actually, you know, don't hate us.
They also fail to mention that along with being our allies, the European countries Obama is visiting are also democracies -- so it's a lot easier for their leaders to make nice with us if their constituents don't view our president as an object of disdain and ridicule.
And, as Jason Linkins points out, George Bush keeps giving them reasons for ongoing disdain and ridicule. As does McCain. Is it really better for America's standing in the world to have a president who doesn't know that Czechoslovakia no longer exists and who thinks there is a border between Iraq and Pakistan?
Iraq has shown us what an essentially go-it-alone war looks like.
And the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan -- resulting in more U.S. troop fatalities there in May and June than in Iraq -- is a tragic reminder of the consequences of a U.S. military spread too thin, and of not having our allies fully backing our efforts.
Given a recent poll showing the German public prefers Obama to McCain 67 percent to 6 percent, it's no surprise that McCain would try to spin his opponent's popularity there as a black mark on his record. It's also no surprise that McCain isn't willing to admit that our allies' antipathy toward Bush and his policies -- exacerbated by the contempt the Bushies always seemed to delight in directing at them (see Rummy on "Old Europe") -- has cost us dearly in blood, treasure, and goodwill. But it is a surprise that the media are so eagerly parroting the "popular is a problem" meme.
Thankfully, most Americans understand that having a president who is lauded around the world is infinitely better than having one who is loathed.
How can anyone be against peace? Against diplomacy? Against trying to get along? Arianna Huffington says it for me:
Tell me again, Why is Obama being Popular with our Allies a Bad Thing?
by Arianna Huffington
I understand why John McCain's campaign is desperately looking for negatives in Obama's overseas trip. But why have so many in the media internalized the McCain campaign's claptrap?
Here is the McCain line on Europe, delivered via Politico by a nameless campaign aide: "I don't know that people in Missouri are going to like seeing tens of thousands of Europeans screaming for The One."
And here was Gloria Borger on CNN, responding to Wolf Blitzer's assertion that Obama seemed to be on top of his game by pulling out the Straight Talk talking points (and leaving logic and rational thinking in a pile on the studio floor):
...as the McCain campaign points out, he can't appear to be seen as running for the president of Europe. He's going to be really cheered in Europe, he's going to give a huge speech. He's going to have a lot of support there. But he's running for the president of the United States. And so they have to walk a very, very fine line here because they don't want to be seen having too many adoring people after him in Europe because he's running for president of the United States.
What do Borger and the McCain campaign think would play better in Missouri, Obama getting off the plane in Germany and having the locals throw tomatoes at him? Would that endear him to the people in Middle America -- who, in McCain World, are like an insecure girlfriend, panicked by just the thought of someone else finding their guy attractive?
Sadly, this absurd line of thinking is spreading fast. Here is the L.A. Times' Michael Finnegan:
In Europe, where he is highly popular, Obama plans a speech in Berlin on U.S. relations with allies. He will probably find a warm, even rapturous, reception -- which poses its own challenges. 'There's such a thing as being too popular overseas,' said [William] Galston, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. 'And that may create some misgivings here at home.'
The Baltimore Sun's Washington bureau chief Paul West ominously warns: "European adulation for Obama will make him the continent's poodle."
And even Maureen Dowd appears to have bought into the McCainites' Euro-phobia, suggesting Obama "can't be seen as too insidery with the Euro-crats" lest Obama-wary Americans "wonder what he's doing there, when they can't pay for gas, when the dollar is the Euro's chew toy, when Bud is going Belgian and when the Chrysler Building has Arab landlords." And don't forget all those German cars on our roads. Which we can't afford to drive because gas is too expensive (for which, according to McCain, we can blame Obama).
Of course, at no point does the McCain campaign or anyone in the media point out what, exactly, is the danger to America if our closest allies actually, you know, don't hate us.
They also fail to mention that along with being our allies, the European countries Obama is visiting are also democracies -- so it's a lot easier for their leaders to make nice with us if their constituents don't view our president as an object of disdain and ridicule.
And, as Jason Linkins points out, George Bush keeps giving them reasons for ongoing disdain and ridicule. As does McCain. Is it really better for America's standing in the world to have a president who doesn't know that Czechoslovakia no longer exists and who thinks there is a border between Iraq and Pakistan?
Iraq has shown us what an essentially go-it-alone war looks like.
And the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan -- resulting in more U.S. troop fatalities there in May and June than in Iraq -- is a tragic reminder of the consequences of a U.S. military spread too thin, and of not having our allies fully backing our efforts.
Given a recent poll showing the German public prefers Obama to McCain 67 percent to 6 percent, it's no surprise that McCain would try to spin his opponent's popularity there as a black mark on his record. It's also no surprise that McCain isn't willing to admit that our allies' antipathy toward Bush and his policies -- exacerbated by the contempt the Bushies always seemed to delight in directing at them (see Rummy on "Old Europe") -- has cost us dearly in blood, treasure, and goodwill. But it is a surprise that the media are so eagerly parroting the "popular is a problem" meme.
Thankfully, most Americans understand that having a president who is lauded around the world is infinitely better than having one who is loathed.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
A Voice of Hope
Jul. 24th, 2008 | 02:34 pm
Did you watch Barack Obama's speech in Berlin? Was it not wonderful to see a U.S. citizen cheered by 100,000 people? Was it not wonderful to see a presidential candidate who could speak of hope and peace and working together?
A League of His Own
League of Conservation Voters endorses Obama for president
The League of Conservation Voters on Monday endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, citing the freshman senator's policies on climate change and clean energy. "When you look specifically at the twin challenges of cutting global warming pollution and moving toward a clean energy future, on those issues Barack Obama has the most comprehensive plan we have ever seen for a presidential nominee," LCV president Gene Karpinsky said. LCV gave Obama a rating of 67 in this year's annual scorecard, lower than his previous average due to missed votes while on the campaign trail. He maintains an 86 percent rating overall for his first three years representing Illinois in the Senate. His main opponent, John McCain, has a lifetime LCV score of 24 percent, and earned a zero for 2007 after missing every vote LCV included in this year's tally. LCV joins Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, who have also endorsed Obama.
sources: Associated Press, League of Conservation Voters
A League of His Own
League of Conservation Voters endorses Obama for president
The League of Conservation Voters on Monday endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, citing the freshman senator's policies on climate change and clean energy. "When you look specifically at the twin challenges of cutting global warming pollution and moving toward a clean energy future, on those issues Barack Obama has the most comprehensive plan we have ever seen for a presidential nominee," LCV president Gene Karpinsky said. LCV gave Obama a rating of 67 in this year's annual scorecard, lower than his previous average due to missed votes while on the campaign trail. He maintains an 86 percent rating overall for his first three years representing Illinois in the Senate. His main opponent, John McCain, has a lifetime LCV score of 24 percent, and earned a zero for 2007 after missing every vote LCV included in this year's tally. LCV joins Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, who have also endorsed Obama.
sources: Associated Press, League of Conservation Voters
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
We Who Are Above the Law...
Jul. 10th, 2008 | 12:40 pm
From: http://www.motherjones.com/
Members of the House Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law didn't even wait until the 10 a.m. mark to declare former presidential adviser Karl Rove a no-show this morning. The committee had subpoenaed Rove to appear to discuss the politicization of the Justice Department and allegations of selective prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman. But Rove, through his lawyer, asserted that "as a close advisor to the President," he is "immune from compelled Congressional testimony."
Committee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) was having none of that, saying, "I hereby rule that Mr. Rove’s claims of immunity are not legally valid, and his refusal to comply with the subpoena and appear at this hearing to answer questions cannot be properly justified." In her official statement, she pointed out that if the White House wanted to assert executive privilege on Rove's behalf, it was required to do so by going to court, which it hasn't done. She also noted that the Judiciary Committee has already seen a parade of witnesses from the White House who have not made this argument, most notably, David Addington, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, who, while clearly hostile, did actually make the trip up the Hill to testify recently.
Sanchez disparaged Rove for failing to cite a single court precedent that would back up his claim that running political campaigns inside the White House gave him absolute immunity from ever having to talk to Congress on any subject whatsoever. Quoting the Supreme Court, Sanchez said, “[n]o man in this country is so high that he is above the law,” and “[a]ll the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it.”
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
"Why I'm Not Patriotic"
Jul. 5th, 2008 | 02:40 pm
To some, the following will seem treasonous. To many, it will come across as incredibly ungrateful and mean-spirited. But I share it here because - much like religion - there are many evils done in the name of patriotism. Thinking your country can do no wrong no matter what is to my mind much like watching your child commit murder and saying "ah, well, he's just a child." This is our country - with it, comes the inherent responsibility to see that it is run with ethical and moral accountability.
The 4th of July is not just an excuse for people to party, drink, and act stupid. It is a reminder of what we have fought for and why we need to take our country back before it is gone for good.
Why I’m Not Patriotic
By Matthew Rothschild, July 2, 2008
(In memory of George Carlin.)
It’s July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out.
Spare me the puerile parades.
Don’t play that martial music, white boy.
And don’t befoul nature’s sky with your F-16s.
You see, I don’t believe in patriotism.
It’s not that I’m anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic.
Love of country isn’t natural. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s an inculcated kind of love, something that is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game.
Yet most people accept it without inspection.
Why?
For when you stop to think about it, patriotism (especially in its malignant morph, nationalism) has done more to stack the corpses millions high in the last 300 years than any other factor, including the prodigious slayer, religion.
The victims of colonialism, from the Congo to the Philippines, fell at nationalism’s bayonet point.
World War I filled the graves with the most foolish nationalism. And Hitler and Mussolini and Imperial Japan brought nationalism to new nadirs. The flags next to the tombstones are but signed confessions—notes left by the killer after the fact.
The millions of victims of Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot have on their death certificates a dual diagnosis: yes communism, but also that other ism, nationalism.
The whole world almost got destroyed because of nationalism during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The bloody battles in Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s fed off the injured pride of competing patriotisms and all their nourished grievances.
In the last five years in Iraq, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died because the United States, the patriarch of patriotism, saw fit to impose itself, without just cause, on another country. But the excuse was patriotism, wrapped in Bush’s brand of messianic militarism: that we, the great Americans, have a duty to deliver “God’s gift of freedom” to every corner of the world.
And the Congress swallowed it, and much of the American public swallowed it, because they’ve been fed a steady diet of this swill.
What is patriotism but “the narcissism of petty differences”? That’s Freud’s term, describing the disorder that compels one group to feel superior to another.
Then there’s a little multiplication problem: Can every country be the greatest country in the world?
This belief system magically transforms an accident of birth into some kind of blue ribbon.
“It’s a great country,” said the old Quaker essayist Milton Mayer. “They’re all great countries.”
At times, the appeal to patriotism may be necessary, as when harnessing the group to protect against a larger threat (Hitler) or to overthrow an oppressor (as in the anti-colonial struggles in the Third World).
But it is always a dangerous toxin to play with, and it ought to be shelved with cross and bones on the label except in these most extreme circumstances.
In an article called “Patriot Games” in the current issue of Time magazine (July 7), Peter Beinart, late of The New Republic, inspects his navel for seven pages and then throws the lint all around.
“Conservatives are right,” he says. “To some degree, patriotism must mean loving your country for the same reason you love your family: simply because it is yours.”
And then he criticizes, incoherently, the conservative love-it-or-leave-it types.
The moral folly of his argument he himself exposes: “If liberals love America purely because it embodies ideals like liberty, justice, and equality, why shouldn’t they love Canada—which from a liberal perspective often goes further toward realizing those principles—even more? And what do liberals do,” he asks, “when those universal ideals collide with America’s self-interest? Giving away the federal budget to Africa would probably increase the net sum of justice and equality on the planet, after all. But it would harm Americans and thus be unpatriotic.”
This is a straw man if I ever I saw one, but if the United States gave a lot more of its budget to eradicating poverty and disease in Africa and other parts of the developing world, it might actually make us all safer.
At bottom, note how readily Beinart disposes of “liberty, justice, and equality.”
He has stripped patriotism to its vacuous essence: Love your country because it’s yours.
If we stopped that arm from reflexively saluting and concerned ourselves more with “universal ideals” than with parochial ones, we’d be a lot better off.
We wouldn’t be in Iraq, we wouldn’t have besmirched ourselves at Guantanamo, we wouldn’t be acting like some Argentinean junta that wages illegal wars and tortures people and disappears them into secret dungeons.
Love of country is a form of idolatry.
Listen, if you would, to the wisdom of Milton Mayer, writing back in 1962 a rebuke to JFK for his much-celebrated line: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
Mayer would have none of it. “When Mr. Kennedy spoke those words at his inaugural, I knew that I was at odds with a society which did not immediately rebel against them,” he wrote. “They are the words of totalitarianism pure; no Jefferson could have spoken them, and no Khrushchev could have spoken them better. Could a man say what Mr. Kennedy said and also say that the difference between us and them is that they believe that man exists for the State and we believe that the State exists for man? He couldn’t, but he did. And in doing so, he read me out of society.”
When Americans retort that this is still the greatest country in the world, I have to ask why.
Are we the greatest country because we have 10,000 nuclear weapons?
No, that just makes us enormously powerful, with the capacity to destroy the Earth itself.
Are we the greatest country because we have soldiers stationed in more than 120 countries?
No, that just makes us an empire, like the empires of old, only more so.
Are we the greatest country because we are one-twentieth of the world’s population but we consume one-quarter of its resources?
No, that just must makes us a greedy and wasteful nation.
Are we the greatest country because the top 1 percent of Americans hoards 34 percent of the nation’s wealth, more than everyone in the bottom 90 percent combined?
No, that just makes us a vastly unequal nation.
Are we the greatest country because corporations are treated as real, live human beings with rights?
No, that just enshrines a plutocracy in this country.
Are we the greatest country because we take the best care of our people’s basic needs?
No, actually we don’t. We’re far down the list on health care and infant mortality and parental leave and sick leave and quality of life.
So what exactly are we talking about here?
To the extent that we’re a great (not the greatest, mind you: that’s a fool’s game) country, we’re less of a great country today.
Because those things that truly made us great—the system of checks and balances, the enshrinement of our individual rights and liberties—have all been systematically assaulted by Bush and Cheney.
From the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act to the new FISA Act, and all the signing statements in between, we are less great today.
From Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Force Base and Guantanamo, we are less great today.
From National Security Presidential Directive 51 (giving the Executive responsibility for ensuring constitutional government in an emergency) to National Security Presidential Directive 59 (expanding the collection of our biometric data), we are less great today.
From the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to InfraGard and the Terrorist Liaison Officers, we are less great today.
Admit it. We don’t have a lot to brag about today.
It is time, it is long past time, to get over the American superiority complex.
It is time, it is long past time, to put patriotism back on the shelf—out of the reach of children and madmen.
The 4th of July is not just an excuse for people to party, drink, and act stupid. It is a reminder of what we have fought for and why we need to take our country back before it is gone for good.
Why I’m Not Patriotic
By Matthew Rothschild, July 2, 2008
(In memory of George Carlin.)
It’s July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out.
Spare me the puerile parades.
Don’t play that martial music, white boy.
And don’t befoul nature’s sky with your F-16s.
You see, I don’t believe in patriotism.
It’s not that I’m anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic.
Love of country isn’t natural. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s an inculcated kind of love, something that is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game.
Yet most people accept it without inspection.
Why?
For when you stop to think about it, patriotism (especially in its malignant morph, nationalism) has done more to stack the corpses millions high in the last 300 years than any other factor, including the prodigious slayer, religion.
The victims of colonialism, from the Congo to the Philippines, fell at nationalism’s bayonet point.
World War I filled the graves with the most foolish nationalism. And Hitler and Mussolini and Imperial Japan brought nationalism to new nadirs. The flags next to the tombstones are but signed confessions—notes left by the killer after the fact.
The millions of victims of Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot have on their death certificates a dual diagnosis: yes communism, but also that other ism, nationalism.
The whole world almost got destroyed because of nationalism during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The bloody battles in Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s fed off the injured pride of competing patriotisms and all their nourished grievances.
In the last five years in Iraq, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died because the United States, the patriarch of patriotism, saw fit to impose itself, without just cause, on another country. But the excuse was patriotism, wrapped in Bush’s brand of messianic militarism: that we, the great Americans, have a duty to deliver “God’s gift of freedom” to every corner of the world.
And the Congress swallowed it, and much of the American public swallowed it, because they’ve been fed a steady diet of this swill.
What is patriotism but “the narcissism of petty differences”? That’s Freud’s term, describing the disorder that compels one group to feel superior to another.
Then there’s a little multiplication problem: Can every country be the greatest country in the world?
This belief system magically transforms an accident of birth into some kind of blue ribbon.
“It’s a great country,” said the old Quaker essayist Milton Mayer. “They’re all great countries.”
At times, the appeal to patriotism may be necessary, as when harnessing the group to protect against a larger threat (Hitler) or to overthrow an oppressor (as in the anti-colonial struggles in the Third World).
But it is always a dangerous toxin to play with, and it ought to be shelved with cross and bones on the label except in these most extreme circumstances.
In an article called “Patriot Games” in the current issue of Time magazine (July 7), Peter Beinart, late of The New Republic, inspects his navel for seven pages and then throws the lint all around.
“Conservatives are right,” he says. “To some degree, patriotism must mean loving your country for the same reason you love your family: simply because it is yours.”
And then he criticizes, incoherently, the conservative love-it-or-leave-it types.
The moral folly of his argument he himself exposes: “If liberals love America purely because it embodies ideals like liberty, justice, and equality, why shouldn’t they love Canada—which from a liberal perspective often goes further toward realizing those principles—even more? And what do liberals do,” he asks, “when those universal ideals collide with America’s self-interest? Giving away the federal budget to Africa would probably increase the net sum of justice and equality on the planet, after all. But it would harm Americans and thus be unpatriotic.”
This is a straw man if I ever I saw one, but if the United States gave a lot more of its budget to eradicating poverty and disease in Africa and other parts of the developing world, it might actually make us all safer.
At bottom, note how readily Beinart disposes of “liberty, justice, and equality.”
He has stripped patriotism to its vacuous essence: Love your country because it’s yours.
If we stopped that arm from reflexively saluting and concerned ourselves more with “universal ideals” than with parochial ones, we’d be a lot better off.
We wouldn’t be in Iraq, we wouldn’t have besmirched ourselves at Guantanamo, we wouldn’t be acting like some Argentinean junta that wages illegal wars and tortures people and disappears them into secret dungeons.
Love of country is a form of idolatry.
Listen, if you would, to the wisdom of Milton Mayer, writing back in 1962 a rebuke to JFK for his much-celebrated line: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
Mayer would have none of it. “When Mr. Kennedy spoke those words at his inaugural, I knew that I was at odds with a society which did not immediately rebel against them,” he wrote. “They are the words of totalitarianism pure; no Jefferson could have spoken them, and no Khrushchev could have spoken them better. Could a man say what Mr. Kennedy said and also say that the difference between us and them is that they believe that man exists for the State and we believe that the State exists for man? He couldn’t, but he did. And in doing so, he read me out of society.”
When Americans retort that this is still the greatest country in the world, I have to ask why.
Are we the greatest country because we have 10,000 nuclear weapons?
No, that just makes us enormously powerful, with the capacity to destroy the Earth itself.
Are we the greatest country because we have soldiers stationed in more than 120 countries?
No, that just makes us an empire, like the empires of old, only more so.
Are we the greatest country because we are one-twentieth of the world’s population but we consume one-quarter of its resources?
No, that just must makes us a greedy and wasteful nation.
Are we the greatest country because the top 1 percent of Americans hoards 34 percent of the nation’s wealth, more than everyone in the bottom 90 percent combined?
No, that just makes us a vastly unequal nation.
Are we the greatest country because corporations are treated as real, live human beings with rights?
No, that just enshrines a plutocracy in this country.
Are we the greatest country because we take the best care of our people’s basic needs?
No, actually we don’t. We’re far down the list on health care and infant mortality and parental leave and sick leave and quality of life.
So what exactly are we talking about here?
To the extent that we’re a great (not the greatest, mind you: that’s a fool’s game) country, we’re less of a great country today.
Because those things that truly made us great—the system of checks and balances, the enshrinement of our individual rights and liberties—have all been systematically assaulted by Bush and Cheney.
From the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act to the new FISA Act, and all the signing statements in between, we are less great today.
From Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Force Base and Guantanamo, we are less great today.
From National Security Presidential Directive 51 (giving the Executive responsibility for ensuring constitutional government in an emergency) to National Security Presidential Directive 59 (expanding the collection of our biometric data), we are less great today.
From the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to InfraGard and the Terrorist Liaison Officers, we are less great today.
Admit it. We don’t have a lot to brag about today.
It is time, it is long past time, to get over the American superiority complex.
It is time, it is long past time, to put patriotism back on the shelf—out of the reach of children and madmen.
Link | Leave a comment {5} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Blue Fridays
Jul. 2nd, 2008 | 02:45 pm
The following comes from a "spam" email but the message is worth passing on:
International Picture of the Year.
Here are two very touching photos honored this year.
First Place:
First Place
Todd Heisler
The Rocky Mountain News
When 2nd Lt. James Cathey's body arrived at the Reno Airport, Marines climbed into the cargo hold of the plane and draped the flag over his casket as passengers watched the family gather on the tarmac.
During the arrival of another Marine's casket last year at Denver International Airport, Major Steve Beck described the scene as so powerful: 'See the people in the windows? They sat right there in the plane, watching those Marines. You gotta wonder what's going through their minds, knowing that they're on the plane that brought him home,' he said. 'They will remember being on that plane for the rest of their lives. They're going to remember bringing that Marine home. And they should.'
Second Place
Second Place
Todd Heisler
The Rocky Mountain News
The night before the burial of her husband's body, Katherine Cathey refused to leave the casket, asking to sleep next to his body for the last time. The Marines made a bed for her, tucking in the sheets below the flag. Before she fell asleep, she opened her laptop computer and played songs that reminded her of 'Cat,' and one of the Marines asked if she wanted them to continue standing watch as she slept. 'I think it would be kind of nice if you kept doing it,' she said. 'I think that's what he would have wanted.'
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Blue Fridays.
Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing blue every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the 'silent majority' We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers. We are not organized, boisterous or overbearing.
Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday -- and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that .. every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something blue. By word of mouth, press, TV -- let's make the United States on every Friday a sea of blue much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in BLUE and it will let our troops know the once 'silent' majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on. The first thing a soldier says when asked 'What can we do to make things better for you?' is ..'We need your support and your prayers.' Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something blue every Friday.
International Picture of the Year.
Here are two very touching photos honored this year.
First Place:
First Place
Todd Heisler
The Rocky Mountain News
When 2nd Lt. James Cathey's body arrived at the Reno Airport, Marines climbed into the cargo hold of the plane and draped the flag over his casket as passengers watched the family gather on the tarmac.
During the arrival of another Marine's casket last year at Denver International Airport, Major Steve Beck described the scene as so powerful: 'See the people in the windows? They sat right there in the plane, watching those Marines. You gotta wonder what's going through their minds, knowing that they're on the plane that brought him home,' he said. 'They will remember being on that plane for the rest of their lives. They're going to remember bringing that Marine home. And they should.'
Second Place
Second Place
Todd Heisler
The Rocky Mountain News
The night before the burial of her husband's body, Katherine Cathey refused to leave the casket, asking to sleep next to his body for the last time. The Marines made a bed for her, tucking in the sheets below the flag. Before she fell asleep, she opened her laptop computer and played songs that reminded her of 'Cat,' and one of the Marines asked if she wanted them to continue standing watch as she slept. 'I think it would be kind of nice if you kept doing it,' she said. 'I think that's what he would have wanted.'
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Blue Fridays.
Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing blue every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the 'silent majority' We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers. We are not organized, boisterous or overbearing.
Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday -- and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that .. every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something blue. By word of mouth, press, TV -- let's make the United States on every Friday a sea of blue much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in BLUE and it will let our troops know the once 'silent' majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on. The first thing a soldier says when asked 'What can we do to make things better for you?' is ..'We need your support and your prayers.' Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something blue every Friday.
Link | Leave a comment {2} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Still proud to be an American?
Jun. 28th, 2008 | 12:44 pm
Greetings from Guantanamo Bay ... and the sickest souvenir shop in the world
By ANGELA LEVIN
Last updated at 00:06 04 May 2008
Mockery: A child's T-shirt proclaiming the camp a tourist spot
The sands are white, the sea laps gently and crowds of bronzed Americans laze in the Caribbean sunshine.
They have a cinema, a golf course and, naturally, a gift shop stocked with mugs, jaunty T-shirts and racks of postcards showing perfect sunsets and bright green iguanas.
Only the barbed wire decoration, a recurring motif, hints at anything wrong.
Welcome to "Taliban Towers" at Guantanamo Bay, the most ghoulishly distasteful tourist destination on the planet.
As these astonishing mementoes show, the US authorities are promoting the world's most notorious prison camp as a cheap hideaway for American sunseekers ? a revelation that has drawn international anger and condemnation.
Just yards from the shelves of specially branded mugs and cuddly toys, nearly 300 "enemy combatants" lie sweltering in a waking nightmare.
It is six years since foreign prisoners, many captured in Afghanistan, were first taken to this US-occupied corner of Cuba. Yet even now, no charges have been brought against them.
While the detainees lie incarcerated, visitors can windsurf, take boat trips and go fishing for grouper, tuna, red snapper and swordfish.
The United States' 1.5million service personnel and Guantanamo's 3,000 construction workers are eligible to visit the "resort", which boasts a McDonald's, KFC and a bowling alley.
They even have a Wal-Mart supermarket.
The vacation comes at a knock-down price: just $42 (£20) per night for a suite of air-conditioned rooms, including a kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedrooms.
But it is the souvenirs that have led to the greatest criticism. One T-shirt from the gift shop is decorated with a guard tower and barbed wire. It reads: "The Taliban Towers at Guantanamo Bay, the Caribbean's Newest 5-star Resort."
Another praises "the proud protectors of freedom". A third displays a garish picture of an iguana and states: "Greetings from paradise GTMO resort and spa fun in the Cuban sun."
A child-sized shirt says: "Someone who loves me got me this T-shirt in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."
There are mugs inscribed with "kisses from Guantanamo" and "Honor Bound To Defend Freedom".
The Guantanamo holiday trade was exposed by Zachary Katznelson, a British-based human rights lawyer and spokesman for Reprieve, the group leading the international campaign against the camp.
"When I see the conditions the prisoners have to cope with and then think of the T-shirt slogans, I am appalled," he said. "To say I am repulsed is an understatement. Unbelievable as it may seem, the US authorities are proud of the 'souvenirs' and what they are doing."
Mr Katznelson represents 28 of the detainees and makes regular visits to the prison.
"The military keeps a tight hold on everything that is available in Guantanamo Bay and someone senior has given their approval for this disgusting nonsense," he said.
"Pretending that Guantanamo Bay is essentially a resort in the Caribbean is grossly offensive and the idea of relaxing in the sun while close by many individuals are robbed of their rights, tortured and abused is both repugnant and ridiculous."
His anger is shared by other human rights campaigners. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said Guantanamo represents a shameful chapter in American history.
Amnesty International said: "These supposedly 'fun' souvenirs are in grotesquely bad taste and the fact that they are on sale at the camp quite frankly beggars belief."
There are currently 280 prisoners sweltering in cages in temperatures of up to 100F (38C). The camp, where 7,000 soldiers are stationed, was established in 2002 following the invasion of Afghanistan.
Guantanamo bay: The U.S. was accused of deliberately pushing detainees to the edge
In 2004, photographs of cowed Guantanamo prisoners in orange jump suits shocked the world.
"The majority are kept in isolation in cells that are no bigger than a toilet," said Katznelson. "There is no sea view. Instead, if they have a window, it looks out on to a bleak corridor. The cells are lined with steel from floor to ceiling, including the toilet, sink and bed base.
"There is a popular misconception that these men have had trials and been found guilty. Nothing is further from the truth. Not one of them has.
"The tortures that the Americans use are wide-ranging and inhuman. One is to blast the cell with freezing cold air. Another is to pretend to take the prisoners to a country like Egypt where prisoners are tortured, even to the extent of taking them on a mock flight, so they can be treated in a barbaric fashion."
Katznelson continued: "Inmates are offered three meals a day, but there are eight prisoners who have been on hunger strike for over a year asking either for a trial or to be set free.
"These men are force-fed twice a day. First they are strapped down with 16 different restrictions, including one that jerks their head back. Then a tube is fed through their nose and down into their stomach.
"The guards don't always use lubrication and regularly use the same tube for several different prisoners without bothering to clean it."
Guantanamo Bay has been rented as a military base from Cuba since 1903 for an unchanged $4,499 a year.
"As it is outside American territory the US Constitution doesn't apply," said Katznelson.
This may soon change as the US Supreme Court is about to reach a verdict on whether the Guantanamo Bay area is de facto American soil.
If so, the US Constitution does apply and the men will have the right to a fair and speedy trial.
Find this story at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-563791/G
By ANGELA LEVIN
Last updated at 00:06 04 May 2008
Mockery: A child's T-shirt proclaiming the camp a tourist spot
The sands are white, the sea laps gently and crowds of bronzed Americans laze in the Caribbean sunshine.
They have a cinema, a golf course and, naturally, a gift shop stocked with mugs, jaunty T-shirts and racks of postcards showing perfect sunsets and bright green iguanas.
Only the barbed wire decoration, a recurring motif, hints at anything wrong.
Welcome to "Taliban Towers" at Guantanamo Bay, the most ghoulishly distasteful tourist destination on the planet.
As these astonishing mementoes show, the US authorities are promoting the world's most notorious prison camp as a cheap hideaway for American sunseekers ? a revelation that has drawn international anger and condemnation.
Just yards from the shelves of specially branded mugs and cuddly toys, nearly 300 "enemy combatants" lie sweltering in a waking nightmare.
It is six years since foreign prisoners, many captured in Afghanistan, were first taken to this US-occupied corner of Cuba. Yet even now, no charges have been brought against them.
While the detainees lie incarcerated, visitors can windsurf, take boat trips and go fishing for grouper, tuna, red snapper and swordfish.
The United States' 1.5million service personnel and Guantanamo's 3,000 construction workers are eligible to visit the "resort", which boasts a McDonald's, KFC and a bowling alley.
They even have a Wal-Mart supermarket.
The vacation comes at a knock-down price: just $42 (£20) per night for a suite of air-conditioned rooms, including a kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedrooms.
But it is the souvenirs that have led to the greatest criticism. One T-shirt from the gift shop is decorated with a guard tower and barbed wire. It reads: "The Taliban Towers at Guantanamo Bay, the Caribbean's Newest 5-star Resort."
Another praises "the proud protectors of freedom". A third displays a garish picture of an iguana and states: "Greetings from paradise GTMO resort and spa fun in the Cuban sun."
A child-sized shirt says: "Someone who loves me got me this T-shirt in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."
There are mugs inscribed with "kisses from Guantanamo" and "Honor Bound To Defend Freedom".
The Guantanamo holiday trade was exposed by Zachary Katznelson, a British-based human rights lawyer and spokesman for Reprieve, the group leading the international campaign against the camp.
"When I see the conditions the prisoners have to cope with and then think of the T-shirt slogans, I am appalled," he said. "To say I am repulsed is an understatement. Unbelievable as it may seem, the US authorities are proud of the 'souvenirs' and what they are doing."
Mr Katznelson represents 28 of the detainees and makes regular visits to the prison.
"The military keeps a tight hold on everything that is available in Guantanamo Bay and someone senior has given their approval for this disgusting nonsense," he said.
"Pretending that Guantanamo Bay is essentially a resort in the Caribbean is grossly offensive and the idea of relaxing in the sun while close by many individuals are robbed of their rights, tortured and abused is both repugnant and ridiculous."
His anger is shared by other human rights campaigners. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said Guantanamo represents a shameful chapter in American history.
Amnesty International said: "These supposedly 'fun' souvenirs are in grotesquely bad taste and the fact that they are on sale at the camp quite frankly beggars belief."
There are currently 280 prisoners sweltering in cages in temperatures of up to 100F (38C). The camp, where 7,000 soldiers are stationed, was established in 2002 following the invasion of Afghanistan.
Guantanamo bay: The U.S. was accused of deliberately pushing detainees to the edge
In 2004, photographs of cowed Guantanamo prisoners in orange jump suits shocked the world.
"The majority are kept in isolation in cells that are no bigger than a toilet," said Katznelson. "There is no sea view. Instead, if they have a window, it looks out on to a bleak corridor. The cells are lined with steel from floor to ceiling, including the toilet, sink and bed base.
"There is a popular misconception that these men have had trials and been found guilty. Nothing is further from the truth. Not one of them has.
"The tortures that the Americans use are wide-ranging and inhuman. One is to blast the cell with freezing cold air. Another is to pretend to take the prisoners to a country like Egypt where prisoners are tortured, even to the extent of taking them on a mock flight, so they can be treated in a barbaric fashion."
Katznelson continued: "Inmates are offered three meals a day, but there are eight prisoners who have been on hunger strike for over a year asking either for a trial or to be set free.
"These men are force-fed twice a day. First they are strapped down with 16 different restrictions, including one that jerks their head back. Then a tube is fed through their nose and down into their stomach.
"The guards don't always use lubrication and regularly use the same tube for several different prisoners without bothering to clean it."
Guantanamo Bay has been rented as a military base from Cuba since 1903 for an unchanged $4,499 a year.
"As it is outside American territory the US Constitution doesn't apply," said Katznelson.
This may soon change as the US Supreme Court is about to reach a verdict on whether the Guantanamo Bay area is de facto American soil.
If so, the US Constitution does apply and the men will have the right to a fair and speedy trial.
Find this story at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-563791/G
Link | Leave a comment {1} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Richard Hayes Phillips, Author of "Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election"
Jun. 22nd, 2008 | 12:34 pm
The cover of the book, pictured above, shows where an oval sticker was placed on an actual ballot to cover up a vote for John Kerry so that the optical scan machine wouldn't be able to read it, and a vote for George Bush was filled in just above the sticker
"In the sphere of election integrity, Richard Hayes Phillips stands out. For the last several years, he has dedicated himself to investigating the forensic evidence of the 2004 presidential election in the state of Ohio. Why Ohio? Because it was key to the Bush “victory,” and because he saw disturbing anomalies, he threw himself into what would turn out to be a three-year project “to find out for [him]self” (p. 1). Long after most people had reluctantly returned to their normal lives, Phillips soldiered on, studying the election records to a degree that they had rarely, if ever, been studied before. He requested, photographed, and analyzed “126,000 ballots, 127 poll books, and 141 voter signature books from 18 counties in Ohio.” ~ http://www.opednews.com/articles/Exclus
If you voted in 2004 or intend to vote in 2008, you owe it to yourself and to your country to be an informed citizen and there is no better way to accomplish that than to buy and read this book.
Phillips holds a B.A. in politics from the State University of New York at Potsdam, an M.A. in geography and an M.A. in history from the University of Oklahoma, and a Ph.D. in geomorphology from the University of Oregon. A former college professor, he has taught twelve different courses in geology, geography, and history. He has investigated the use of herbicides containing dioxin in New York, and groundwater hydrology at nuclear dump sites in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. He has written or co-authored more than a dozen geologic and hydrologic papers, in both English and Spanish, which he submitted to regulatory agencies. He has four times been recognized as an expert witness in state and federal proceedings, twice as a geologist, and twice as an election fraud investigator.
Link | Leave a comment {1} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
And that's just for ONE day
Jun. 20th, 2008 | 03:30 pm
The Greater Lansing Network Against War and Injustice, a UFPJ member group, posted this billboard at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Francis Street, where it will remain for a month, drawing local residents' attention to the enormous daily financial costs of the continuing occupation in Iraq.
Health care? Education? Infrastructure? Environment? Social Services? That's a lot of money - what would you do with it all if it weren't going for war???
Health care? Education? Infrastructure? Environment? Social Services? That's a lot of money - what would you do with it all if it weren't going for war???
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
No Friend of Mine
Jun. 11th, 2008 | 12:08 pm
Although I personally have mixed feelings about abortion, I feel very strongly that it is a woman's choice - apparently, John McCain does not.
Why McCain should worry women
By Robyn E. Blumner, Times Columnist
Published March 9, 2008
Sen. John McCain wants people to know that he is a true conservative. The right flank of his party, particularly blowhards like Rush Limbaugh, want to paint McCain as a closet pinko because he only has an 82 percent rating with the American Conservative Union. But McCain insists that his conservative credentials speak for themselves.
Believe him. They do.
What scares me most about McCain, beyond our 100-year presence in Iraq, his itchy trigger finger relative to other foes, and his enthusiasm for tax cuts for the rich, is his fiercely conservative record on women's reproductive freedom. Here, there is no moderate McCain or reach-across-the-aisle McCain. On issues related to abortion and even birth control and sex education, McCain is as ideological as any Operation Rescue activist crawling around in front of an abortion clinic.
You want to know what's coming with a McCain presidency? How about the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. I'm not kidding. The latest case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court on abortion made it clear that the two newest justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, will vote for substantial incursions into abortion rights, if not their outright elimination. It turns out that Roe isn't a "super-duper" precedent after all. It's now hanging by the thread of 87-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens' continued vitality.
The next president will be the decider on whether women's emancipation from the slavery of the womb will continue in this country. We are on the cusp of losing the right to control our bodies and determine our family size. McCain promises as much.
Due to McCain's reputation as a maverick, many voters seem to attach more moderate abortion views to him. In Florida's primary, for example, 45 percent of those Republicans who said abortion should be legal voted for McCain. Whereas the prochoice Rudy Giuliani won over only 19 percent of the prochoice Republican vote.
But McCain's voting record is solidly antichoice. He said directly in South Carolina that Roe "should be overturned" and strongly reiterates that position on his campaign Web site. He told the American Conservative Union that one of the three most important goals that he wants to achieve as president is to promote "a nation of traditional values that protects the rights of the unborn."
In accordance with these views, McCain promises to "nominate strict constructionist judges," which is code for "will overturn Roe if given half a chance."
McCain also supports the global gag rule - probably the most backward foreign policy initiative since the importation of slaves. This is the policy that bars foreign family planning organizations from receiving U.S. funds if the group in any way advises clients on abortion as an option or advocates for legal abortion - even when using their own funds. We know that population control and family planning is the only way for Third World nations to advance, yet the United States and its antiabortion zealots have put a foot on the neck of the most effective groups.
An intelligent person might think that someone as rabidly antiabortion as McCain would be backing approaches to prevent unwanted pregnancies, thereby, ipso facto, fewer abortions. Well, think again.
McCain is an antagonist of sensible family planning and effective sex education. In 2005, he voted "no" on a $100-million allocation for preventive health care services targeted at reducing unintended pregnancies, particularly teen pregnancies. In 2006, he voted against funding for comprehensive, medically accurate sex education for teens.
McCain is much more comfortable with President Bush's wasteful and utterly ineffective abstinence-only approach.
The New York Times Web site reported the following exchange with a reporter in Iowa in March 2007:
Q: "What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush's policy, which is just abstinence?"
McCain: (Long pause) "Ahhh. I think I support the president's policy."
Q: "So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?"
McCain: (Long pause) "You've stumped me."
Do you really have to say such idiotic things to win the Republican nomination? It is an incontrovertible fact that the use of a condom will help interfere with HIV transmission. But I guess McCain sees it as a fact too liberal to acknowledge. Jeesh.
Now that the senator from Arizona has locked up the Republican nomination, he may be spending less time asserting his conservative bona fides and more time focusing on his occasional bipartisanship. This appeal will help to blur his record. Yet any voter who worries about government dictating to women what they can do with their bodies needs to understand the danger that McCain poses. Roe can't survive another president like Bush, and McCain is promising to be just like him.
© 2007 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
Why McCain should worry women
By Robyn E. Blumner, Times Columnist
Published March 9, 2008
Sen. John McCain wants people to know that he is a true conservative. The right flank of his party, particularly blowhards like Rush Limbaugh, want to paint McCain as a closet pinko because he only has an 82 percent rating with the American Conservative Union. But McCain insists that his conservative credentials speak for themselves.
Believe him. They do.
What scares me most about McCain, beyond our 100-year presence in Iraq, his itchy trigger finger relative to other foes, and his enthusiasm for tax cuts for the rich, is his fiercely conservative record on women's reproductive freedom. Here, there is no moderate McCain or reach-across-the-aisle McCain. On issues related to abortion and even birth control and sex education, McCain is as ideological as any Operation Rescue activist crawling around in front of an abortion clinic.
You want to know what's coming with a McCain presidency? How about the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. I'm not kidding. The latest case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court on abortion made it clear that the two newest justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, will vote for substantial incursions into abortion rights, if not their outright elimination. It turns out that Roe isn't a "super-duper" precedent after all. It's now hanging by the thread of 87-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens' continued vitality.
The next president will be the decider on whether women's emancipation from the slavery of the womb will continue in this country. We are on the cusp of losing the right to control our bodies and determine our family size. McCain promises as much.
Due to McCain's reputation as a maverick, many voters seem to attach more moderate abortion views to him. In Florida's primary, for example, 45 percent of those Republicans who said abortion should be legal voted for McCain. Whereas the prochoice Rudy Giuliani won over only 19 percent of the prochoice Republican vote.
But McCain's voting record is solidly antichoice. He said directly in South Carolina that Roe "should be overturned" and strongly reiterates that position on his campaign Web site. He told the American Conservative Union that one of the three most important goals that he wants to achieve as president is to promote "a nation of traditional values that protects the rights of the unborn."
In accordance with these views, McCain promises to "nominate strict constructionist judges," which is code for "will overturn Roe if given half a chance."
McCain also supports the global gag rule - probably the most backward foreign policy initiative since the importation of slaves. This is the policy that bars foreign family planning organizations from receiving U.S. funds if the group in any way advises clients on abortion as an option or advocates for legal abortion - even when using their own funds. We know that population control and family planning is the only way for Third World nations to advance, yet the United States and its antiabortion zealots have put a foot on the neck of the most effective groups.
An intelligent person might think that someone as rabidly antiabortion as McCain would be backing approaches to prevent unwanted pregnancies, thereby, ipso facto, fewer abortions. Well, think again.
McCain is an antagonist of sensible family planning and effective sex education. In 2005, he voted "no" on a $100-million allocation for preventive health care services targeted at reducing unintended pregnancies, particularly teen pregnancies. In 2006, he voted against funding for comprehensive, medically accurate sex education for teens.
McCain is much more comfortable with President Bush's wasteful and utterly ineffective abstinence-only approach.
The New York Times Web site reported the following exchange with a reporter in Iowa in March 2007:
Q: "What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush's policy, which is just abstinence?"
McCain: (Long pause) "Ahhh. I think I support the president's policy."
Q: "So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?"
McCain: (Long pause) "You've stumped me."
Do you really have to say such idiotic things to win the Republican nomination? It is an incontrovertible fact that the use of a condom will help interfere with HIV transmission. But I guess McCain sees it as a fact too liberal to acknowledge. Jeesh.
Now that the senator from Arizona has locked up the Republican nomination, he may be spending less time asserting his conservative bona fides and more time focusing on his occasional bipartisanship. This appeal will help to blur his record. Yet any voter who worries about government dictating to women what they can do with their bodies needs to understand the danger that McCain poses. Roe can't survive another president like Bush, and McCain is promising to be just like him.
© 2007 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Two "minor" news notes ~
Jun. 4th, 2008 | 02:52 pm
Serious Health Dangers of Genetically Modified Foods
100% of all farm animals offered a choice between genetically altered feed and natural feed will “avoid” the genetically altered food and will not eat it. Rats wont eat genetically modified tomatoes. So the FDA force fed the rats the tomatoes. The outcome: all rats in the study developed lesions. 7 of the 40 rats died, they replaced the 7 rats and approved the genetically modified tomatoes.
join www.organicconsumers.org and learn more about Monsanto at: http://www.organicconsumers.org/mon
********************
Note: William Cooper was killed on November 5th 2001 by law enforcement.
A.I.D.S. is Man-made
by William Cooper
DATE/TIME: 07/27/90 21:02
To All,
During my talks in Las Vegas last weekend I revealed a few things about aids that I have been keeping close to my chest. I have already revealed that I saw that AIDS was man made to eliminate the undesirable elements of society while I was attached to Naval Security and Intelligence. I stated this fact in my paper “The Secret Government.”
Now for the rest of the story.
The first study was made in 1957 by scientists meeting in Huntsville Alabama. That study resulted in “Alternative 3.” Another study was made by the Club of Rome in 1968 to determine the limits to growth. The result of the study was that civilization as we know it would collapse shortly after the year 2000 unless the population was seriously curtailed. Several Top Secret recommendations were made to the ruling elite by Dr. Aurelio Peccei of the Club of Rome. The chief recommendation was to develop a microbe which would attack the auto immune system and thus render the evelopment of a vaccine impossible.
Read more about the Club of Rome at: http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/ha
100% of all farm animals offered a choice between genetically altered feed and natural feed will “avoid” the genetically altered food and will not eat it. Rats wont eat genetically modified tomatoes. So the FDA force fed the rats the tomatoes. The outcome: all rats in the study developed lesions. 7 of the 40 rats died, they replaced the 7 rats and approved the genetically modified tomatoes.
join www.organicconsumers.org and learn more about Monsanto at: http://www.organicconsumers.org/mon
********************
Note: William Cooper was killed on November 5th 2001 by law enforcement.
A.I.D.S. is Man-made
by William Cooper
DATE/TIME: 07/27/90 21:02
To All,
During my talks in Las Vegas last weekend I revealed a few things about aids that I have been keeping close to my chest. I have already revealed that I saw that AIDS was man made to eliminate the undesirable elements of society while I was attached to Naval Security and Intelligence. I stated this fact in my paper “The Secret Government.”
Now for the rest of the story.
The first study was made in 1957 by scientists meeting in Huntsville Alabama. That study resulted in “Alternative 3.” Another study was made by the Club of Rome in 1968 to determine the limits to growth. The result of the study was that civilization as we know it would collapse shortly after the year 2000 unless the population was seriously curtailed. Several Top Secret recommendations were made to the ruling elite by Dr. Aurelio Peccei of the Club of Rome. The chief recommendation was to develop a microbe which would attack the auto immune system and thus render the evelopment of a vaccine impossible.
Read more about the Club of Rome at: http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/ha
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
No Truth in this Advertising
Jun. 2nd, 2008 | 11:26 am
The following is a quote from Ron Kovic (best know for "Born on the 4th of July"), from a recent news article:
"To kill another human being, to take another life out of this world with one pull of a trigger, is something that never leaves you. It is as if a part of you dies with that person. If you choose to keep on living, there may be a healing, and even hope and happiness again, but that scar and memory and sorrow will be with you forever. Why did the recruiters never mention these things? This was never in the slick pamphlets they gave us."
Link | Leave a comment {1} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Where's the News???
May. 30th, 2008 | 01:37 pm
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
http://www.fair.org
Action Alert
Winter Soldier Blackout
Media still freezing out anti-war veterans
5/30/08
In March, dozens of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars gathered in Maryland to offer their firsthand accounts of what they had seen—and in some cases done—in both war zones. The dramatic Winter Soldier hearings were well-covered in the alternative and independent media. But the corporate media mostly took a pass (FAIR Action Alert, 3/19/08)--a trend that continued when Winter Soldier came to Capitol Hill.
The group that organized the first event, Iraq Veterans Against the War, was invited to Capitol Hill on May 15 to appear before the Congressional Progressive Caucus in an informal hearing. As before, the assembled veterans offered remarkable accounts of their war experiences. Given the proximity to the Beltway media elite and the fact that Congress was debating another round of funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one might have thought it would be hard for the corporate media to ignore Winter Soldier a second time.
But ignore it they did, offering even less coverage of these hearings than of the March events. One notable exception was the PBS NewsHour, which aired a report on May 21 about Winter Soldier. But they were a lonely exception to the media rule, which seems to be that there is now a little space to talk about certain veterans' issues—like post-traumatic stress and suicide rates—so long as you don't hear from the vets themselves, or at least this particular group of outspoken anti-war veterans.
ACTION: Ask the network newscasts why they decided, once again, to ignore the Winter Soldier hearings.
CONTACT:
ABC World News
Web form
Or use this link:
http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3271
Phone: 212-456-4040
CBS Evening News
Email: evening@cbsnews.com
Phone: 212-975-3691
NBC Nightly News
Email: nightly@nbc.com
Phone: 212-664-4971
http://www.fair.org
Action Alert
Winter Soldier Blackout
Media still freezing out anti-war veterans
5/30/08
In March, dozens of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars gathered in Maryland to offer their firsthand accounts of what they had seen—and in some cases done—in both war zones. The dramatic Winter Soldier hearings were well-covered in the alternative and independent media. But the corporate media mostly took a pass (FAIR Action Alert, 3/19/08)--a trend that continued when Winter Soldier came to Capitol Hill.
The group that organized the first event, Iraq Veterans Against the War, was invited to Capitol Hill on May 15 to appear before the Congressional Progressive Caucus in an informal hearing. As before, the assembled veterans offered remarkable accounts of their war experiences. Given the proximity to the Beltway media elite and the fact that Congress was debating another round of funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one might have thought it would be hard for the corporate media to ignore Winter Soldier a second time.
But ignore it they did, offering even less coverage of these hearings than of the March events. One notable exception was the PBS NewsHour, which aired a report on May 21 about Winter Soldier. But they were a lonely exception to the media rule, which seems to be that there is now a little space to talk about certain veterans' issues—like post-traumatic stress and suicide rates—so long as you don't hear from the vets themselves, or at least this particular group of outspoken anti-war veterans.
ACTION: Ask the network newscasts why they decided, once again, to ignore the Winter Soldier hearings.
CONTACT:
ABC World News
Web form
Or use this link:
http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3271
Phone: 212-456-4040
CBS Evening News
Email: evening@cbsnews.com
Phone: 212-975-3691
NBC Nightly News
Email: nightly@nbc.com
Phone: 212-664-4971
Link | Leave a comment {2} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
So Very Far From Green
May. 27th, 2008 | 04:17 pm
Now Taking Reservations
Feds can dump more waste at Wash. Superfund site, says court
Washington State doesn't have the right to refuse more dumping of radioactive waste at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, an appeals court ruled last week. In 2004, nearly 70 percent of Washingtonians voted to keep the federal government from disposing of more toxic waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation until the highly polluted Superfund site is cleaned up. The Bush administration immediately sued, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has found that "although the desire to take action against further environmental contamination and to protect the health and welfare of the community is understandable," Washington's law is preempted by federal law. Radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel have contaminated 80 square miles of groundwater near Hanford. The state may appeal to the Supreme Court.
(sources: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Spokesman Review, Tri-City Herald, Reuters)
You Can't Decide Without the Decider
Evidence that White House influenced EPA to deny California waiver
The White House influenced U.S. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to deny California the waiver it needed to regulate vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions, according to evidence presented by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. An EPA staffer swore under oath that Johnson at first "was very interested in a full grant of the waiver," then considered a partial OK, but decided on a full denial after communicating with the White House. Toting subpoenaed documents and sworn depositions, committee head Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) concluded in a memo, "The record before this committee suggests that the White House played a pivotal role in the decision to reject the California petition, but it does not explain the basis for the White House intervention." Johnson has said that the decision was "an independent judgment."
sources: Associated Press, Reuters, Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times
see also, in Gristmill: Waxman discloses evidence that White House influenced EPA California waiver
Feds can dump more waste at Wash. Superfund site, says court
Washington State doesn't have the right to refuse more dumping of radioactive waste at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, an appeals court ruled last week. In 2004, nearly 70 percent of Washingtonians voted to keep the federal government from disposing of more toxic waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation until the highly polluted Superfund site is cleaned up. The Bush administration immediately sued, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has found that "although the desire to take action against further environmental contamination and to protect the health and welfare of the community is understandable," Washington's law is preempted by federal law. Radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel have contaminated 80 square miles of groundwater near Hanford. The state may appeal to the Supreme Court.
(sources: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Spokesman Review, Tri-City Herald, Reuters)
You Can't Decide Without the Decider
Evidence that White House influenced EPA to deny California waiver
The White House influenced U.S. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to deny California the waiver it needed to regulate vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions, according to evidence presented by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. An EPA staffer swore under oath that Johnson at first "was very interested in a full grant of the waiver," then considered a partial OK, but decided on a full denial after communicating with the White House. Toting subpoenaed documents and sworn depositions, committee head Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) concluded in a memo, "The record before this committee suggests that the White House played a pivotal role in the decision to reject the California petition, but it does not explain the basis for the White House intervention." Johnson has said that the decision was "an independent judgment."
sources: Associated Press, Reuters, Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times
see also, in Gristmill: Waxman discloses evidence that White House influenced EPA California waiver
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Time to stop being a Republican - time to stop being a Democrat. Time to start being an American
May. 26th, 2008 | 01:09 pm
THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION ~ by Barry McGuire
The eastern world, it is exploding
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’
But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
[Take a look around ya boy, it's bound to scare ya boy]
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’
I’m sitting here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for 4 days in space
But when you return, it’s the same old place
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace
And… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don’t believe
We’re on the eve
Of destruction
Mm, no no, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
STOP CHILDREN WHAT'S THAT SOUND ~ by the Buffalo Springfield
There's something happinin here
What it is aint exactly clear
Theres a man with a gun over there,
Tellin me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children
What's that sound
Everybody look what's goin down
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speakin there minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
It's time we stop,
Hey what's that sound
Everybody look what's goin down
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songsand they're carrying signs
Mostly say hurray for our side
It's time we stop,
Hey what's that sound
Everybody look what's goin down
Par-a-noia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when your always afraid
Step out of line the man comes to take you away
We better stop
Hey what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down (4x)
The eastern world, it is exploding
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’
But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
[Take a look around ya boy, it's bound to scare ya boy]
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’
I’m sitting here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for 4 days in space
But when you return, it’s the same old place
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace
And… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don’t believe
We’re on the eve
Of destruction
Mm, no no, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
STOP CHILDREN WHAT'S THAT SOUND ~ by the Buffalo Springfield
There's something happinin here
What it is aint exactly clear
Theres a man with a gun over there,
Tellin me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children
What's that sound
Everybody look what's goin down
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speakin there minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
It's time we stop,
Hey what's that sound
Everybody look what's goin down
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songsand they're carrying signs
Mostly say hurray for our side
It's time we stop,
Hey what's that sound
Everybody look what's goin down
Par-a-noia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when your always afraid
Step out of line the man comes to take you away
We better stop
Hey what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down (4x)
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
One Hero, One Madman
May. 25th, 2008 | 02:19 pm
(before)In this undated photo provided by Brooke Army Medical Center, Merlin German is seen. No one expected Sgt. Merlin German to survive after he had been burned over 97 percent of his body by a roadside bomb in Iraq. But the determined Marine would not surrender. He endured more than 100 surgeries and procedures. He learned to live with pain, to see a stranger's face in the mirror. He walked again. He danced with his mother. He was dubbed the "Miracle Man." But after three years, he could no longer defy the odds. A few weeks ago, he died unexpectedly after routine surgery. (AP Photo/Brooke Army Medical Center)
(after)
Dear Mr. Bush -
How DO you and Mr. Cheney sleep at night? I suppose you manage to justify the deaths of soldiers like those above - I imagine you tell yourself whatever it takes to sooth your conscience. Or maybe you are just so out of it that you have no clue what the rest of the world is going through? Do you even know of all the people who are homeless, who have no electricity, no food, no jobs? Have you ever even *looked* at a tree to see how beautiful it is? Have you ever been so desperate you contemplated suicide? Does it ever cross your mind that there might be something more important than power and greed?
I have some news for you, Mr. Bush. When you are dead, the worms will not care if you were powerful or rich. They will climb over your body and turn you to dust just as quickly as they do the poorest of the poor. You will be remembered as the worst president ever - the most destructive, the most insensitive, the most embarrassing, the most arrogant man to ever hold that office.
You'd best sleep a lot while you still can. I don't think there is ANY sleeping in hell.
Link | Leave a comment {2} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
This would be a start
May. 24th, 2008 | 01:30 pm
From a dear friend:
I wish like in the Award winning movie, "Network," (1976) we would all-- all at once--open our windows and yell the famous ending sentence that the character, "Howard Beale" ended with. Recently heard the entire quote that the "Howard Beale" broke into while broadcasting on TV in the movie. Here's the entire quote leading up to that last memorable line:
"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,
[shouting]
I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
I wish like in the Award winning movie, "Network," (1976) we would all-- all at once--open our windows and yell the famous ending sentence that the character, "Howard Beale" ended with. Recently heard the entire quote that the "Howard Beale" broke into while broadcasting on TV in the movie. Here's the entire quote leading up to that last memorable line:
"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,
[shouting]
I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
Link | Leave a comment {2} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
What many have suspected all along
May. 22nd, 2008 | 12:50 pm
Government Insider: Bush Authorized 911 Attacks
Pakistan Daily
May 21, 2008
Keep in mind when reading this, that the man being interviewed is no two-bit internet conspiracy buff.
Stanley Hilton was a senior advisor to Sen Bob Dole (R) and has personally known Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for decades. This courageous man has risked his professional reputation, and possibly his life, to get this information out to people.
The following is from his latest visit to Alex Jones’ radio show.
Note: All honor to Stanley Hilton for risking his life so that we may know the truth of 9/11.
The Bush Junta Unmasked
“This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder.” –Stanley Hilton
Alex Jones interview of Stanley Hilton, attorney for 911 taxpayers’ lawsuit
AJ: He is back with us. He is former Bob Dole’s chief of staff, very successful counselor, lawyer. He represents hundreds of the victims families of 9/11. He is suing Bush for involvement in 9/11. Now a major Zogby poll out - half of New Yorkers think the government was involved in 9/11. And joining us for the next 35 minutes, into the next hour, is Stanley Hilton. Stanley, it’s great to have you on with us.
SH: Glad to be on.
AJ: We’ll have to recap this when we start the next hour, but just in a nutshell, you have a lawsuit going, you’ve deposed a lot of military officers. You know the truth of 9/11. Just in a nutshell, what is your case alleging?
SH: Our case is alleging that Bush and his puppets Rice and Cheney and Mueller and Rumsfeld and so forth, Tenet, were all involved not only in aiding and abetting and allowing 9/11 to happen but in actually ordering it to happen. Bush personally ordered it to happen. We have some very incriminating documents as well as eye-witnesses, that Bush personally ordered this event to happen in order to gain political advantage, to pursue a bogus political agenda on behalf of the neocons and their deluded thinking in the Middle East. I also wanted to point out that, just quickly, I went to school with some of these neocons. At the University of Chicago, in the late 60s with Wolfowitz and Feith and several of the others and so I know these people personally. And we used to talk about this stuff all of the time. And I did my senior thesis on this very subject - how to turn the U.S. into a presidential dictatorship by manufacturing a bogus Pearl Harbor event. So, technically this has been in the planning at least 35 years.
More at http://www.infowars.com/?p=2278
Pakistan Daily
May 21, 2008
Keep in mind when reading this, that the man being interviewed is no two-bit internet conspiracy buff.
Stanley Hilton was a senior advisor to Sen Bob Dole (R) and has personally known Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for decades. This courageous man has risked his professional reputation, and possibly his life, to get this information out to people.
The following is from his latest visit to Alex Jones’ radio show.
Note: All honor to Stanley Hilton for risking his life so that we may know the truth of 9/11.
The Bush Junta Unmasked
“This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder.” –Stanley Hilton
Alex Jones interview of Stanley Hilton, attorney for 911 taxpayers’ lawsuit
AJ: He is back with us. He is former Bob Dole’s chief of staff, very successful counselor, lawyer. He represents hundreds of the victims families of 9/11. He is suing Bush for involvement in 9/11. Now a major Zogby poll out - half of New Yorkers think the government was involved in 9/11. And joining us for the next 35 minutes, into the next hour, is Stanley Hilton. Stanley, it’s great to have you on with us.
SH: Glad to be on.
AJ: We’ll have to recap this when we start the next hour, but just in a nutshell, you have a lawsuit going, you’ve deposed a lot of military officers. You know the truth of 9/11. Just in a nutshell, what is your case alleging?
SH: Our case is alleging that Bush and his puppets Rice and Cheney and Mueller and Rumsfeld and so forth, Tenet, were all involved not only in aiding and abetting and allowing 9/11 to happen but in actually ordering it to happen. Bush personally ordered it to happen. We have some very incriminating documents as well as eye-witnesses, that Bush personally ordered this event to happen in order to gain political advantage, to pursue a bogus political agenda on behalf of the neocons and their deluded thinking in the Middle East. I also wanted to point out that, just quickly, I went to school with some of these neocons. At the University of Chicago, in the late 60s with Wolfowitz and Feith and several of the others and so I know these people personally. And we used to talk about this stuff all of the time. And I did my senior thesis on this very subject - how to turn the U.S. into a presidential dictatorship by manufacturing a bogus Pearl Harbor event. So, technically this has been in the planning at least 35 years.
More at http://www.infowars.com/?p=2278
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
The Jewish Elvis
May. 15th, 2008 | 11:08 am
Yep, that's what he was called - Neil Diamond, the Jewish Elvis.
As with so many talented people, I was aware of Neil Diamond, liked most of his music and had some favorite songs. But lately, Neil Diamond is popping up here and there and everywhere - the man is in his 60's and still going strong. And I suddenly realize how many songs he has written - for starters:
Cherry, Cherry
Solitary Man
Thank the Lord for the Nighttime
Kentucky Woman
Forever in Blue Jeans
Hello Again
You Don't Bring Me Flowers
Sweet Caroline
I'm a Believer
September Morn
And my personal favorites, I Am I Said and Song Sung Blue. Of course, those are just the ones I can think of offhand -
Imagine being so creative - imagine bringing so much joy and positive energy into the world. You have made your mark, Neil Diamond, and you have made the world a better place by being here. Thank you!!
Link | Leave a comment {3} | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Things younger than John McCain
May. 12th, 2008 | 12:42 pm
Ok, maybe it's just me but isn't the earthquake in China just slightly more important than "Ugly Betty" moving to NYC?????
These are actual headlines....
Top News:
Production of ABC's `Ugly Betty' moving to NYC
Death toll in China earthquake rises to 8,533
EPA testing air after twister in toxic Okla. town
Obama, Clinton look to West Virginia
[more]
Here is a fun site - (apologies to any John McCain fans but ya know.....)
From www.veryshortlist.com
Sure it's an easy joke, but it's fun
Each of the remaining presidential candidates (just play along
and pretend there are three) faces a singular, politically
unprecedented biological issue - that is, overcoming voters'
uncertain, untested feelings about what race, gender, and age a
president is supposed to be. John McCain, as we're constantly
reminded, would be the oldest human being ever to assume the
office.
A cheeky new website - Things Younger Than McCain - has a whole
lotta fun with the senator's chronological-outlier status,
gleefully pointing out things that have come into existence
since his DOB (8/29/36). For instance, Israel is younger. And FM
radio! The partisan site (a link to Obama's campaign website is
always a dead giveaway) invites the public to submit its own
finds, and once you've dirtied your hands digging, it's pretty
hard to stop. Let's see . . . nylon stockings are younger, and
Social Security checks, and broadcast TV, and the freeways of
Los Angeles, and . . .
VISIT Things Younger Than McCain:
http://vsl.veryshortlist.com/ct/291
These are actual headlines....
Top News:
Production of ABC's `Ugly Betty' moving to NYC
Death toll in China earthquake rises to 8,533
EPA testing air after twister in toxic Okla. town
Obama, Clinton look to West Virginia
[more]
Here is a fun site - (apologies to any John McCain fans but ya know.....)
From www.veryshortlist.com
Sure it's an easy joke, but it's fun
Each of the remaining presidential candidates (just play along
and pretend there are three) faces a singular, politically
unprecedented biological issue - that is, overcoming voters'
uncertain, untested feelings about what race, gender, and age a
president is supposed to be. John McCain, as we're constantly
reminded, would be the oldest human being ever to assume the
office.
A cheeky new website - Things Younger Than McCain - has a whole
lotta fun with the senator's chronological-outlier status,
gleefully pointing out things that have come into existence
since his DOB (8/29/36). For instance, Israel is younger. And FM
radio! The partisan site (a link to Obama's campaign website is
always a dead giveaway) invites the public to submit its own
finds, and once you've dirtied your hands digging, it's pretty
hard to stop. Let's see . . . nylon stockings are younger, and
Social Security checks, and broadcast TV, and the freeways of
Los Angeles, and . . .
VISIT Things Younger Than McCain:
http://vsl.veryshortlist.com/ct/291
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
The Not News News
May. 8th, 2008 | 03:20 pm
I've deliberately been staying away from different news sources - but today I had to see what's been going on -
1) Neocons Admit That "War On Terror" Is a Hoax ~
JohnMicha - 5 hours ago - truthawaits.com
Key war on terror architect Douglas Feith has now confirmed Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Wesley Clark in admitting that the so-called War on Terror is a hoax.
hey, did anybody tell the 4000+ soldiers and all of the dead and injured in other countries about this? I'm sure they will want to know....
2) We all know that mountains get mined. However, George W. Bush signed a paper letting coal companies save money. The way they save the money is harmful to everyone, animals and humans. They simply blow up the top of the mountain, then push the dirt off into streams and wherever else they want without any concern. This causes the rivers, lakes and streams to flood in communties. Not only that, but by blowing up the mountain, they are also blowing up many animals, baby animals, birds, homes.
it is no secret that George Bush would sell his grandmother if there was a photo op in it for him - oh, George, you should be afraid, very afraid - karma is waiting to bite you on the neck big time.
3) The Other Global Crisis: Rush to Biofuels Is Driving Up Price of Food,.. As Planned
- independent.co.uk
Here is the program, Last MAY 07, Pat Woertz, starts the Media Brainwashing...Biofuels Are Famine Policy; Food Shortages Are Hitting,..ADM's CEO Patricia Woertz, Warned in May(07) of Inflation Ahead in Food and fuel. Then her and the media create it .
I have no doubt we could easily feed the entire world - IF we wanted to do so. But where is the power and profit in that?? As for brainwashing....I am reminded of a quote in a movie I recently watched: "one man puts a bomb in his shoe and now we are all tiptoeing barefoot through the airports."
4) The Kiplinger letter advises people to invest in Monsanto stock.
" Simply put, Monsanto helps farmers grow more food than they would otherwise. "
oh, pul-ease - Monsanto helps poison the world, intimidates small farmers, destroys the eco-system, and yeah, they make a horde of money doing it. The article should read "Monsanto: Sell Your Soul Now". Bleh
That's about all I can handle for one day - If you are out there, Scotty, it might be time to beam some of us up.
1) Neocons Admit That "War On Terror" Is a Hoax ~
JohnMicha - 5 hours ago - truthawaits.com
Key war on terror architect Douglas Feith has now confirmed Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Wesley Clark in admitting that the so-called War on Terror is a hoax.
hey, did anybody tell the 4000+ soldiers and all of the dead and injured in other countries about this? I'm sure they will want to know....
2) We all know that mountains get mined. However, George W. Bush signed a paper letting coal companies save money. The way they save the money is harmful to everyone, animals and humans. They simply blow up the top of the mountain, then push the dirt off into streams and wherever else they want without any concern. This causes the rivers, lakes and streams to flood in communties. Not only that, but by blowing up the mountain, they are also blowing up many animals, baby animals, birds, homes.
it is no secret that George Bush would sell his grandmother if there was a photo op in it for him - oh, George, you should be afraid, very afraid - karma is waiting to bite you on the neck big time.
3) The Other Global Crisis: Rush to Biofuels Is Driving Up Price of Food,.. As Planned
- independent.co.uk
Here is the program, Last MAY 07, Pat Woertz, starts the Media Brainwashing...Biofuels Are Famine Policy; Food Shortages Are Hitting,..ADM's CEO Patricia Woertz, Warned in May(07) of Inflation Ahead in Food and fuel. Then her and the media create it .
I have no doubt we could easily feed the entire world - IF we wanted to do so. But where is the power and profit in that?? As for brainwashing....I am reminded of a quote in a movie I recently watched: "one man puts a bomb in his shoe and now we are all tiptoeing barefoot through the airports."
4) The Kiplinger letter advises people to invest in Monsanto stock.
" Simply put, Monsanto helps farmers grow more food than they would otherwise. "
oh, pul-ease - Monsanto helps poison the world, intimidates small farmers, destroys the eco-system, and yeah, they make a horde of money doing it. The article should read "Monsanto: Sell Your Soul Now". Bleh
That's about all I can handle for one day - If you are out there, Scotty, it might be time to beam some of us up.