The Election: It Had to Be this Way

The Democrats winning Congress and the White House just had to happen. If we are ever going to change this country from an empire to a representative democracy, we have to rid ourselves of the notion that one corporate political party can do anything toward that goal. Barack Obama will be the catalyst for a new movement, away from false hope and false promises, not because he will deliver to the people of this country anything worthwhile, but because he won’t. This will be the final nail in the coffin of our corporatist society.

There are so many so-called “progressives” that have believed that it was the Bush Republican neo-cons that have gotten us where we are. This is wishful thinking. The Democratic 110th Congress did nothing but rubber-stamp every bill that was put before it. Democrats have blindly caved in to fear of being called “anti-patriotic” if they voted against the meaningless war in Iraq. They put their political fortunes ahead of their conscience at every opportunity, from Pelosi taking impeachment “off the table” to voting for the new FISA bill that granted telecoms immunity from illegally working with the executive branch to illegally eavesdrop on US citizens. They passed every military budget and went along with almost every Bush attack on our civil liberties.

While its nice to see that some people do realize that the hypocrisy and corruption are not limited to the Bush administration and the rethuglicans, but a systemic issue, I can't say that I share the writer's optimism that the American people will wake up to that fact. After all, we've already elected a demofascist majority in the Senate and House of Representatives on the promise of change...and the sheeple were quite convinced that would ensure a repudiation of all the insanity dealt out by the Bush cabal. Well....didn't happen. And, for those that didn't already know that there is no real opposition party, THAT should have been plenty of proof. AND YET...they are celebrating the election of Obama as if it will mean a damn thing. As I said before the infamous midterm elections and this one...the only issue these two parties disagree on is who should be dictator. The link to the rest of the article is...as always...in the title.

Bush Compares Democrats To Nazi-Appeasers

While delivering an address before the Israeli parliament commemorating the 60th anniversary of Israel, President Bush said that Sen. Barack Obama and Democrats favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists. CNN reports that Bush was comparing Obama to “other U.S. leaders back in the run-up to World War II who appeased the Nazis.”

And he is right, after all they have been appeasing Bushie and his band of fascist thugs haven't they....old Georgie probably still has Pelosi's lipstick smeared on his posterior.

An Alleged "Two Party System"

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

We must be clear about the following bitter realities:

1. "Every 10 minutes an Iraqi civilian is injured or killed in a war that George Bush says will not end until he leaves office. Every 10 hours an American soldier is killed in a war that George Bush says will not end until he leaves office. Every 10 days $2 billion is removed from the U.S. Treasury and placed in the accounts of Halliburton, Blackwater and all other war profiteers that are getting rich off the misery of Iraqis and Americans by a government that will continue to remove those amounts or more every ten days as long as George Bush is President of the United States" (from Sally B. Davidson at Veterans for Peace, NY).

While Bush and Cheney remain in office, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan will continue. Bush's recent announcement of his (probably illegal) "agreement" with the increasingly unpopular, discredited, U.S.-puppet Maliki regime to continue Iraq deployment of U.S. troops indefinitely shows Cheney/Bush's absolute and total contempt for our Constitution and the wishes of 3/4 of U.S. citizens. As even Alan Greenspan admitted in his recently-published book: the Iraq War was largely about oil. The U.S. power elite, Democratic as well as Republican, wants those permanent U.S. bases in Iraq to protect access to, and control of, "our" oil, especially as China, India, and Europe become stronger economic and trade threats to U.S. global hegemony.

2. Why do BOTH major parties agree that the U.S. "needs" access to, and control of, this oil? Because, implicitly, most Americans believe that we "need" this oil to live the way we have become accustomed to living in 2007. The one, true religion of all Americans is Consumerism, and we all practice it daily via TV & radio, the Internet, and in our mega-cathedral of consumption, the shopping mall. We need to be honest with ourselves and face up to how much our consumptive (pun intended) U.S. lifestyle depends on maintaining our oil and other fossil fuels addictions, and how complacent, if not comfortable, we are about expecting that our political and military leaders will continue to secure these foreign fossil fuels to support our lavish "American Dream" lifestyle. Then we need to ask ourselves how much we are truly willing to cut back, and how we can make this a part of our activism.

We are a shallow and materialistic society, and there is no doubt that the blood shed in Bushco's wars is about money...and power of course...as Americans sell out freedom for more things that we don't even need. We have become a society of spoiled and demanding children, too busy whining for more things to care about the loss of our rights and our humanity. I know people who literally go into a panic when the cable goes out...as if it were as serious as losing one's heat on a blustery winter night...You won't see these same people upset at the reports of more innocent children blown to bits in Iraq to make sure the SUV can have a full tank, or the reports of thousands more children here drugged up for the depression and other emotional problems that stem from being raised in the empty wasteland that our culture has become. Of course many of them never see those reports, consumed with celebrity gossip and the latest sale at the mall. We have the President and Congress we elected....and they are a remarkably accurate reflection of what our society has become. Despite all the hard times and suffering that it will bring, I won't necessarily be sorry to see the house of cards that our economy has become collapse. Unfortunately, an event that extreme may be the only way our society will ever get its priorities back in order....I hear many economists saying our recent economic woes are a huge market correction, and necessary to get the country back on sound footing....well, I think that what is much more necessary for a solid and sound America is a massive values correction....and perhaps that will be the good that will come from a financial catastrophe.

The Grand Delusion

With an endless, futile and costly Iraq war, a stinking economy and most Americans seeing the country on the wrong track, the greatest national group delusion is that electing Democrats in 2008 is what the country needs.

Keith Olbermann was praised when he called the Bush presidency a criminal conspiracy. That missed the larger truth. The whole two-party political system is a criminal conspiracy hiding behind illusion induced delusion.

Virtually everything that Bush correctly gets condemnation for could have been prevented or negated by Democrats, if they had had courage, conviction and commitment to maintaining the rule of law and obedience to the Constitution. Bush grabbed power from the feeble and corrupt hands of Democrats. Democrats have failed the vast majority of Americans. So why would sensible people think that giving Democrats more power is a good idea? They certainly have done little to merit respect for their recent congressional actions, or inaction when it comes to impeachment of Bush and Cheney.

One of the core reasons the two-party stranglehold on our political system persists is that whenever one party uses its power to an extreme degree it sets the conditions for the other party – its partner in the conspiracy – to take over. Then the other takes its turn in wielding excessive power. Most Americans – at least those that vote – seem incapable of understanding that the Democrats and Republicans are two teams in the same league, serving the same cabal running the corporatist plutocracy. By keeping people focused on rooting for one team or the other, the behind-the-scenes rulers ensure their invisibility and power........

It takes more courage to boycott voting than to vote for lesser evil Democrats and in the end this is the only way for people to feel proudly patriotic. This is the only way to not contribute to the ongoing bipartisan criminal conspiracy running the federal government.

We have broken government because the spirit of Americans that gave us our revolution and nation’s birth has been broken, in large measure by distractive and self-indulgent consumerism. It is better to recognize that those who vote suffer from delusion than to criticize those who do not vote as apathetic. Non-delusional nonvoters recognize the futility of voting.

Democrats will not restore our democracy. That is the painful truth that most people will not readily accept. Such is the power of group delusion. Voting produces never-ending cycles of voter dissatisfaction with those elected, both Democrats and Republicans. It is time to break this cycle of voter despair. Voters that bitch and moan about Congress and the White House have nobody to blame but themselves, no matter which party they voted for.

He is right..electing the same bunch of criminals over and over again will change nothing...there is no true opposition party...the lack of action by the democratic congress is proof that they are complicit in the destruction of our constitutional rights. They could shut Bushco down if they chose to do so, were they not just as corrupt.

What happened to the Senate's "60-vote requirement"?

Numerous Senate Democrats delivered dramatic speeches from the floor as to why Mukasey's confirmation would be so devastating to the country. The Washington Post said the "vote came after more than four hours of impassioned floor debate."

"Torture should not be what America stands for . . . I do not vote to allow torture," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy. Russ Feingold said: "we need an attorney general who will tell the president that he cannot ignore the laws passed by Congress. And on that fundamental qualification for this office Judge Mukasey falls short." Feingold added: "If Judge Mukasey won't say the simple truth -- that this barbaric practice is torture -- how can we count on him to stand up to the White House on other issues?"

Wow -- it sounds as though there was really a lot at stake in this vote. So why would 44 Democratic Senators make a flamboyant showing of opposing confirmation without actually doing what they could to prevent it? Is it that a filibuster was not possible because a large number of these Democratic Senators were willing to symbolically oppose confirmation so they could say they did -- by casting meaningless votes in opposition knowing that confirmation was guaranteed -- but were unwilling to demonstrate the sincerity of their claimed beliefs by acting on them?

The Post said the vote "reflected an effort by Democrats to register their displeasure with Bush administration policies on torture and the boundaries of presidential power." Apparently, they wanted to oh-so-meaningfully "register their displeasure" but not actually stop confirmation.

[The most amazing quote was from chief Mukasey supporter Chuck Schumer, who, before voting for him, said that Mukasey is "wrong on torture -- dead wrong." Marvel at that phrase: "wrong on torture." Six years ago, there wasn't even any such thing as being "wrong on torture," because "torture" wasn't something we debated. It would have been incoherent to have heard: "Well, he's dead wrong on torture, but . . . "

Now, "torture" is not only something we openly debate, but it's something we do. And the fact that someone is on the wrong side of the "torture debate" doesn't prevent them from becoming the Attorney General of the United States. It's just one issue, like any other issue -- the capital gains tax, employer mandates for health care, the water bill -- and just because someone is "dead wrong" on one little issue (torture) hardly disqualifies them from High Beltway Office.]

This bit sums up the "opposition party" charade quite nicely..." Democratic Senators were willing to symbolically oppose confirmation so they could say they did"

Iran FM: US should stop supporting terrorism

Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Sunday expressed hope that Washington would stop supporting terrorism. Mottaki made the remarks at a joint press conference with his visiting Turkish counterpart Ali Babacan.

Terrorist activities in northern Iraq have increased following the presence of foreign forces in that country, the Iranian said reiterating, "Such activities are carried out through foreign support."

According to IRNA, the Iranian foreign minister denounced secret agreements reached between the US and terrorist groups, stressing that such relations have prevented Washington from adopting policies against those groups. Referring to last night telephone conversation between the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Turkish and Iraqi counterparts, he said, "The sides reviewed regional developments and expressed their concern about terrorist operations."

Condemning terrorist activities, Mottaki underscored the need for serious international measures to prevent such activities. "The regional states as well as the international community can overcome small groups whose logic is based on weapons and terror," he said.

Ah...but just think of the rise in unemployment that would result with all those CIA employees that would have to be let go ...

Chavez: take Bush to madhouse

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has condemned US president's war rhetoric on Iran, saying he belongs in a psychiatric hospital.

"The US President (George W. Bush) made an atomic bomb threat," Chavez said on Thursday, referring to Bush's war rhetoric against Iran.

"In other words, he's threatening a third world war but now with atomic weapons. It's like he should be taken to the psychiatric hospital. I think he's on the edge of the psychiatric hospital," he added.

Last week Bush claimed Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons, adding this may lead to World War III. His remarks drew fierce domestic and international criticism.

Tehran insists that its nuclear program is solely aimed at peaceful purposes. The UN nuclear watchdog has also declared that there is no evidence to prove Iran is developing nuclear weaponry.


Hugo Chavez is absolutely right....and most of the so called "Leaders" of our own country and the rest of the world are aware that Bush is insane....yet few have the nerve to say it out loud. Spineless bunch they are.

Putin: US Plan Evokes '62 Cuban Crisis

President Vladimir Putin on Friday evoked one of the most dangerous confrontations of the Cold War to highlight Russian opposition to a proposed U.S. missile defense system in Europe, comparing it to the Cuban missile crisis of 45 years ago.

The comments — made at the end of a summit between Russia and European Union that failed to resolve several festering disputes — were the latest in a series of belligerent statements from the assertive Putin.

Emboldened by oil- and gas-fueled economic clout, Russia is increasingly at odds with Washington and much of Europe on issues ranging from Iran and Kosovo to energy supplies and human rights.

Putin used a news conference at the summit's conclusion to reiterate Russia's stalwart opposition to U.S. plans to put elements of a missile defense system in the former Soviet bloc countries of Poland and the Czech Republic — both of which are now NATO members.

"Analogous actions by the Soviet Union, when it deployed missiles in Cuba, prompted the 'Caribbean crisis,'" Putin said, using the Russian term for the Cuban missile crisis.

"For us the situation is technologically very similar. We have withdrawn the remains of our bases from Vietnam, from Cuba, and have liquidated everything there, while at our borders, such threats against our country are being created," he said.

Yep...Bushco is working hard to make our country safer, inflaming cold war tensions in Europe, creating terrorists in Islamic nations, and a fascist police state at home...atta boy Georgie!....way to make the world safe for democracy.

President Visits Scene and Promises Help

President Bush toured Southern California on Thursday as investigators got down to the work of determining how one sunny fall day last weekend erupted into a 16-fire storm now in its fifth day.

Recovery crews, moving from house to house in towns where the fires have passed, found the bodies of two people in the shell of a home near Poway, northeast of San Diego. And in the early evening, San Diego officials said, border patrol agents found the charred remains of four immigrants who may have been killed after crossing the Mexican border.

They were the first confirmed fatalities since Sunday, when a man was killed in Potrero, not far from the border — but unlikely to be the last, officials said.

“I imagine we will be finding bodies into next year,” said Sgt. Mike Radovich of the San Diego Sheriff’s Department.

Mr. Bush, joined by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, also a Republican, visited the charred remains of neighborhoods, met distraught residents and exhausted fire crews and viewed fires that continue to burn throughout the region. By Thursday, the fires had destroyed 1,800 homes, injured 57 people and burned a half-million acres, a little more than twice the size of New York City.

The president pointedly praised Mr. Schwarzenegger’s handling of the country’s biggest disaster since Hurricane Katrina two years ago, making veiled comparisons to local relief efforts at that time in Louisiana.

Ha Ha... there is no end to the nerve of the Bush boy....comparing the handling of this disaster to HIS incompetent relief effort during Hurricane Katrina...as if he were not the "decider" in chief when it happened? I'm sure the people affected by this fire are remembering Katrina as well, as they listen to the empty promises of help...just like he gave in the aftermath of Katrina as he did his photo-op in the devastated city of New Orleans...which, by the way, is still waiting for that promised help to materialize.

The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know

Two former high-ranking policy experts from the Bush Administration say the U.S. has been gearing up for a war with Iran for years, despite claiming otherwise. It'll be Iraq all over again.

In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm -- not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn't realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn't wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say.

"The hard-liners are upping the pressure on the State Department," says Leverett. "They're basically saying, 'You've been trying to engage Iran for more than a year now and what do you have to show for it? They keep building more centrifuges, they're sending this IED stuff over into Iraq that's killing American soldiers, the human-rights internal political situation has gotten more repressive -- what the hell do you have to show for this engagement strategy?' "

But the engagement strategy was never serious and was designed to fail, they say. Over the last year, Rice has begun saying she would talk to "anybody, anywhere, anytime," but not to the Iranians unless they stopped enriching uranium first. That's not a serious approach to diplomacy, Mann says. Diplomacy is about talking to your enemies. That's how wars are averted. You work up to the big things. And when U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had his much-publicized meeting with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad this spring, he didn't even have permission from the White House to schedule a second meeting.

The most ominous new development is the Bush administration's push to name the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization.

"The U.S. has designated any number of states over the years as state sponsors of terrorism," says Leverett. "But here for the first time the U.S. is saying that part of a government is itself a terrorist organization."


This article is well worth following the link to read it in its entirety. Again, just as in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Bushco is pretending to seek a diplomatic solution but has had the invasion of Iran planned since well before he came into office. Iran has offered to meet the demands of Washington...repeatedly...and made quite a few good faith concessions to the militant Bush cabal....all to no avail, as a peaceful solution does not fit the neocon imperialist agenda. And surely, Congress will sit idly by, insisting that they are powerless to stop the insanity....and the Sheeple will buy it hook, line, and sinker.

Freedom's Watch targeting Iran

After successfully holding the line on Congressional support for the surge in Iraq, wealthy Bush backers are turning their attention and money to drumming up support for military action against Iran

If the U.S. undertakes military action against Iran, you can credit such longtime neoconservatives as Norman Podhoretz, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen and the swarm of ideologues buzzing about Washington's right wing think tanks. You can also credit Pastor John Hagee and his Christians United for Israel, a Christian Zionist outfit with unbending support for Israel. And credit also the billionaire and multimillionaire founders of Freedom's Watch for helping smooth the way.

Later this month, Freedom's Watch will sponsor a forum of some 20 experts on "radical Islam" that, according to a front page story in the New York Times, "is expected to make the case that Iran poses a direct threat to the security of the United States."

The forum is being "organized with the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, DC-based neoconservative think tank, and it is 'private,'" John Stauber the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy, told Media Transparency. "The fact that Freedom's Watch has been discussing it with the New York Times appears to be a great teaser to keep the press interested in who will be there, what will be discussed, etc."

"This in itself is a public relations ploy; they don't need to announce a private forum, they can hold one any time they want," Stauber pointed out. "But they want to keep the organization in the media spotlight and look significant and important from a policy perspective."

The idea for Freedom's Watch (FW) first surfaced in March of this year at the winter meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in Manalapan, Florida, where Vice President Dick Cheney accused House Democrats of not supporting the troops in Iraq. The RJC, which is credited with shepherding then-Texas Governor George W. Bush on his first tour of Israel in November 1998, is a big-money pro-Israel lobby group that networks Jewish-American neoconservatives, Christian Right leaders and conservatives in Israel.

The Freedom's Watch "inner circle of strategists and donors are close to Vice President Dick Cheney or held high posts at the White House," the Associated Press's Jim Kuhnhenn pointed out in late September.

Freedom's Watch? How incredibly Orwellian...isn't it amazing how those that threaten freedom the most always manage to present their schemes to the American sheeple as the ONLY way to preserve it? Even more amazing is that it seems to work every time. The propaganda machine is in high gear these days to spin the next item on the neocon agenda into a cause that the woefully ill informed and uninterested public at large will rally behind mindlessly, much as they managed to whip them into a frenzy to attack Iraq with their campaign of disinformation and lies.

With Democrats Like These ...

Every now and then, we are tempted to double-check that the Democrats actually won control of Congress last year. It was particularly hard to tell this week. Democratic leaders were cowed, once again, by propaganda from the White House and failed, once again, to modernize the law on electronic spying in a way that permits robust intelligence gathering on terrorists without undermining the Constitution.

The task before Congress was to review and improve an update to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, that was pushed through the Capitol just before the summer break. That bill endorsed warrantless wiretapping and gutted other aspects of the 1978 law.

House Democrats drafted a measure that, while imperfect, was an improvement to the one passed this summer. But before the House could vote, Republicans tied up the measure in bureaucratic knots and Democratic leaders pulled it. Senate Democrats did even worse, accepting a Potemkin compromise that endorsed far too much of the bad summer law.

We were left wondering who is really in charge, when in a bipartisan press release announcing the agreement, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kit Bond, described the bill as "a delicate arrangement of compromises" that could not be changed in any way. The committee's chairman, Jay Rockefeller, didn't object.

As the debate proceeds, Americans will be told that the delicate compromises were about how the government may spy on phone calls and electronic messages in the age of instant communications. Republicans have already started blowing hot air about any naysayers trying to stop spies from tracking terrorists.

No one is doing that. The question really is whether Congress should toss out chunks of the Constitution because Mr. Bush finds them inconvenient and some Democrats are afraid to look soft on terrorism.

The democrats find the Constitution and the rule of law just as inconvenient as the current administration,or they would have long since used their power to restore the damage done in recent years. How gullible are the people to still expect that the democratic wing of the ruling elite will address anything but their own political and financial interests?

Who Restarted the Cold War?

To answer that question, let us go back those 16 years.

What happened in 1991 and 1992?

Well, Russia let the Berlin Wall be torn down and its satellite states be voted or thrown out of power across Eastern Europe. Russia agreed to pull the Red Army all the way back inside its border. Russia agreed to let the Soviet Union dissolve into 15 nations. The Communist Party agreed to share power and let itself be voted out. Russia embraced freedom and American-style capitalism, and invited Americans in to show them how it was done.

Russia did not use its veto in the Security Council to block the U.S. war to drive Saddam Hussein, an ally, out of Kuwait. When 9-11 struck, Putin gave his blessing to U.S. troops using former republics as bases for the U.S. invasion.

What was Moscow's reward for its pro-America policy?

The United States began moving NATO into Eastern Europe and then into former Soviet republics. Six ex-Warsaw Pact nations are now NATO allies, as are three ex-republics of the Soviet Union. NATO expansionists have not given up on bringing Ukraine, united to Russia for centuries, or Georgia, Stalin's birthplace, into NATO.

In 1999, the United States bombed Serbia, which has long looked to Mother Russia for protection, for 78 days, though the Serbs' sole crime was to fight to hold their cradle province of Kosovo, as President Lincoln fought to hold onto the American South. Now America is supporting the severing of Kosovo from Serbia and creation of a new Islamic state in the Balkans, over Moscow's protest.

While Moscow removed its military bases from Cuba and all over the Third World, we have sought permanent military bases in Russia's backyard of Central Asia.

We dissolved the Nixon-Brezhnev ABM treaty and announced we would put a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Under presidents Clinton and Bush, the United States financed a pipeline for Caspian Sea oil to transit Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea and Turkey, cutting Russia out of the action.

With the end of the Cold War, the KGB was abolished and the Comintern disappeared. But the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and other Cold War agencies, funded with tens of millions in tax-exempt and tax dollars, engineered the ouster of pro-Russian regimes in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia, and sought the ouster of the regime in Minsk.

At the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, historic or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred.

We blew it.

We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our "indispensable-nation" arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles.

Who restarted the Cold War? Bush and the braying hegemonists he brought with him to power. Great empires and tiny minds go ill together.

This criminally insane administration has endangered our country and the entire world with it's arrogant and imperialistic policies, with Congress to aid and abet this insanity....and the American people are too weak and apathetic to stand up against it, making the sheeple just as guilty as the political hacks we elect.

The Great Navigator

By Charles Krauthammer

The Post correctly called Hillary's retreat from free trade " opportunism under pressure," the pressure being the rampant and popular protectionism of her presidential rivals, particularly in protectionist Iowa. But while "opportunism under pressure" suggests ( pace Hemingway) cowardice, the better description of Clintonism is slipperiness. Adaptability. Cynicism, if you like.

Note her clever use of terms. Reassessing NAFTA sounds great to protectionists, but it is perfectly ambiguous. It could mean abolition or radical curtailment. It could also mean establishing a study commission whose recommendations might not reach President Hillary Clinton's desk until too late in her second term.

The Post editorial noted "a perverse kind of good news" in Hillary's free-trade revisionism: "There's little chance that her position reflects any deeply held principle." And there lies the beauty not just of Clinton on free trade but of the Clinton candidacy itself: She has no principles. Her liberalism is redeemed by her ambition; her ideology subordinate to her political needs.

I could never vote for her, but I (and others of my ideological ilk) could live with her -- precisely because she is so liberated from principle. Her liberalism, like her husband's -- flexible, disciplined, calculated, triangulated -- always leaves open the possibility that she would do the right thing for the blessedly wrong (i.e., self-interested, ambition-serving, politically expedient) reason.

Funny...even the Rethuglicans admit Hitlary will be no different than Georgie boy....she is quite likely to be worse in my opinion, even more corrupt and power hungry.

Who Wants To Bomb Iran? Democrats, Not Republicans, Says Seymour Hersh

When George Bush and Dick Cheney talk about their plans to bomb Iran, they are told "You can't do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated"--that's what a Republican former intelligence official told legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. "But," the former official went on, "Cheney doesn't give a rat's ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President."

I recently spoke with Hersh, whose new piece, "Target Iran," is featured in The New Yorker this week.

When I asked Hersh who wants to bomb Iran, he said, "Ironically there is a lot of pressure coming from Democrats. Hillary Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have all said we cannot have a nuclear-armed Iran. Clearly the pressure from Democrats is a reflection of - we might as well say it - Israeli and Jewish input." He added the obvious: "a lot of money comes to the Democratic campaigns" from Jewish contributors.

But while Democrats argue that we must "do something" about an Iranian nuclear threat, Hersh says the White House has concluded their own effort to convince Americans that Iran poses an imminent threat has "failed." Apparently the public that bought the story of WMD in Iraq is now singing the classic Who song, "Won't Get Fooled Again."

Moreover, Hersh reports, "the general consensus of the American intelligence community is that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb" - so the public is right to be skeptical.

As a result, according to Hersh, the focus of the plans to bomb Iran has shifted from an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities to an emphasis on the famed "surgical strikes" on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere. The White House hopes it can win public support for this kind of campaign by arguing that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is responsible for the deaths of Americans in Iraq.

Why don't Bush and Cheney "give a rat's ass" about getting Republicans reelected to the Senate and the House in 2008? "Of course that was hyperbole to make a point," Hersh said. "When it comes to choice between bombing Iran and taking some political heat, the president will do what he wants.

It is beyond me that we still bother to give these "political parties" opposing labels...they are just one group of con artists doing the good cop bad cop routine, working in cooperation to advance their common goals ...one week the repuglinazis get to take the heat, and next it will be the demofacists turn to be the bad guys...keeping most of the sheeple convinced that they actually have a choice...what incredible insanity.

Pentagon Swindles Longest Serving Iraq Soldiers

Iraq vets say Pentagon is denying benefits

When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit.

The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.

And 1st Lt. Jon Anderson says he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

"It's pretty much a slap in the face," Anderson said. "I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership, once again failing the soldiers."

Here's what happened: Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days. Had they been written for 730 days -- one day more -- the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.

"Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.

That money would help him pay for his master's degree in public administration.

It would help Anderson's fellow platoon leader, John Hobot, pay for a degree in law enforcement.

"I would assume, and I would hope, that when I get back from a deployment of 22 months, my senior leadership in Washington -- (the leadership) that extended us in the first place -- would take care of us once we got home," Hobot said.

Both Hobot and Anderson believe the Pentagon deliberately wrote orders for 729 days instead of 730.

Wow, remember all the public speeches the Bush boy made about taking care of the soldiers when they come home?...One that comes immediately to mind is a press conference in which he stated that "nothing is too good for our men in uniform, fighting to protect our freedoms at home"...the day after he signed on the dotted line to cut veteran's medical benefits. Another big kiss off from Bushco guys......

Reality Check......

Excerpts from:
Living in an Imperial World
by Karen Kwiatkowski

The republic is dead. Not sick, not dying, not failing, or in a gradual decline, not waiting to be resuscitated, but already stone cold dead.

This death probably occurred as we began to win the Cold War, but long before we realized we had prevailed. The professionalization of politics, of military and bureaucratic service to the state, of foreign policy making, and of business seems to have completely done in the old ideas. Simply federated, decentralized, self-depreciating government that once feared the people has self-actualized into a contemptuous, rapacious and iron-fisted murderer of freedom, and murderer of men.............

The founders worried that subsequent elites and factions would take over the republic they had birthed with every aspect of their power, as the gifted political elites of their time. Yet, as the 19^th century dawned, even the most pro-state among them loved freedom and hated tyranny.

They were right about government power and human nature, and their predictions true. New elites and government-dependent factions have ascended. Unfortunately, these political elites hate freedom and love the tyranny of government solutions...........

Recognize that the republic is dead, and that we owe its rotting bloated corpse no loyalty whatsoever.

This done, act accordingly. Publicly and privately, we should observe the corpse as a public nuisance, a pollutant both aesthetically and materially. When the yellow brick road leads us to the grand doors of government services, we should not avert our gaze but instead pull back the curtain, grandly, loudly, with the contagious laughter of a child, or the righteous anger of a soldier back in pieces from a war, like most wars, that was from the beginning a brutal political lie.

Will we insult a federal or state employee, a law enforcer or judge? Will we anger a politician, a lobbyist, a corporatist employer, or a government news organ for stealing our lives, our freedom of movement and thought, our productivity? We should certainly aspire to do so, with the zeal of missionaries.

To live in an imperial world, we must first, as survivors, recognize that it is an imperial world. History is filled with imperial/totalitarian states, as global graveyards are filled with those who were too late in recognizing what had already happened.

It’s over. The faithful and the hopeful may carry the corpse of the American republic, hoping that it can be brought back into normality, into life, and into power. I am afraid these nurturers will not survive the present reality of imperialism.

But some of us will look directly at the ugly, dangerous and very real empire. We will stare – with little hope but also with little fear – into the face of the FUBAR nation, and then roll up our sleeves and get started on the only life we may honestly live, as internal dissidents. We will no longer pledge allegiance, we will not obey old rules, we will make do and make it up as we go along. Our minds focused on surviving the empire, our talents and creativity unleashed against the state and its fantasist faithful, we will live as if we are free.

This simple prescription will not only make us survivors, but it will gradually cultivate a political landscape for a future of free republics where today we see nascent totalitarianism and bankrupt empire. This prescription was written for us in 1809 by revolutionary war general John Stark. He advised, "Live free or die. Death is not the worst of evils."

We face a modern American state more overweening and dictatorial than even King George III could imagine, yet we have no declaration of independence, no privileged elite to demand it, no interested population to read and debate it. This time, our declaration will be made individually, every day, in calm desperate fearlessness, as we simply live free.

Sometimes it is very liberating to face the reality of a situation, no matter how harsh it may be, and move on...often a real solution becomes clear when hopes and illusions are no longer in the way, causing one to waste time and energy in the futile attempt to save something that is already long lost.

Tracking Political Prosecutions

Scott Horton September 22, 2007

In the last two weeks, two sources, one of them inside of the Justice Department, have told me that a scheme was hatched in the upper echelons of the Bush Administration shortly after it took office in 2001 or early in 2002. The project identified John Edwards and Hillary Clinton as likely Democratic challengers to President Bush, and identified prominent trial lawyers around the United States as the likely financial vehicle for Edward’s rise. It directed that their campaign finance records be fly-specked, and that offenses not be treated as administrative matters but rather as serious criminal offenses. The scheme contemplated among other things that raids be staged on the law offices involved, and that the records seized not be limited to campaign finance—there was an acute interest in all politically oriented documents, in order to seize valuable intelligence on strategic planning from the enemy camp. This all sounds rather fantastic—even more insidious than the enemies list days of the Nixon era. It is precisely the sort of crude harassment that a primitive dictatorship would use against its enemies—like Alexander Lukashenko in today’s Belarus, for instance. But as the descriptions were passed to me, I instantly recognized the pattern described recently in a case which has made the headlines in Michigan involving a prominent lawyer there, and a second case in Los Angeles. According to one source, the number of these cases is at least five and they are scattered about the country. One case, described to me in some detail, closely matches the pattern in Michigan and Los Angeles and occurred in the south on the Gulf of Mexico. Why, I wondered, would the attorneys involved not scream bloody murder about this? Then it struck me. The threat of criminal investigation and prosecution is devastating to their law practices. Of course, they would keep it completely secret. And that silence has made the entire scheme possible. I am told that these cases involved the attorneys general personally—both John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales—that their go-ahead was needed to stage the raids. And that in each case, the greatest concern within the political pirates commanding the operation has been that the public would get wind of the bigger picture. It was essential to pull it off that each case be viewed as something standing all on its own, and that the fact that there was a politically motivated project be obscured. The key factor here is that all the cases involve campaign finance violations which are of a rather mundane nature. And in each case the FEC violations have been hyped into something quite preposterous. The political angle, I am told, is simple: make trial attorney’s money radioactive. Dry up the source. Take out a key element of the Democrats’ campaign finance strategy. This looks very suspiciously like a Rove strategy. There is no end to the dirty dealing and criminal activity with this administration...or our government in general...and no one is ever held accountable for the real crimes, just the petty ones...and only enough of those to convince the sheeple that their "representatives" aren't above the law...what a joke.

Bush, senators blast MoveOn.org ad against Gen. David Petraeus - cleveland.com

Bush, senators blast MoveOn.org ad against Gen. David Petraeus - cleveland.com:

Republican support for the war in Iraq turned to declarations of disgust as President Bush and a Senate majority Thursday condemned MoveOn.org, the liberal activist group, for accusing the war's top general of betrayal. But 25 Democrats, including Sherrod Brown of Ohio, refused to support the amendment condemning MoveOn's recent ad, which called Gen. David Petraeus 'General Betray Us.' Brown instead voted for a pre-emptive measure that condemned criticism of all military officers - past and present."

My my, that ad managed to get past the Ministry of Truth....Rather reminiscent of the time when we had a free press, doing their part to keep government honest. Interesting that such demonstration of our quaint and antiquated first amendment rights has raised such an uproar in Congress...certainly a sign of the fascist times we live in.

Hsu to be charged in $60-million scheme

U.S. attorney's office in New York charges the Democratic fundraiser with campaign finance violations and running a 'massive Ponzi scheme.'

Moving with surprising speed, the U.S. attorney's office here charged Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu with violating campaign-finance laws and overseeing a massive $60-million fraud.

U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia of the Southern District of New York said Hsu pressured investors in his scheme to make campaign contributions to candidates for president, U.S. Senate and other offices "in an effort to raise his public profile."

Additionally, Hsu, 56, threatened investors, telling them that their failure to make campaign donations could jeopardize their investments with him. The allegations are made in a criminal complaint that was unsealed this morning.

Hsu handed out more than $600,000 in campaign donations since 2004, and gave to a variety of charitable organizations. The campaigns of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was the recipient of much of the money; he raised $850,000 for her from his network of associates.

Clinton has promised to return the money--although investors who have lost money may lay claim to at least some of it.

Garcia also accused Hsu of perpetrating a "massive Ponzi scheme" costing investors across the country $60 million, essentially using money from one investor to pay others in a pyramid fashion.

So much for all that talk by the Demofascists about campaign finance reform...acting as if the corruption was just a Repuglinazi problem. Of course, Hitlary Clinton, the chief recipient of his ill gotten funds, claims no knowledge ...just as she has in every one of the numerous scandals she has been enmeshed in.