Excerpt: If the GOP can put a pre-corpse like McCain into the White House then anyone could be elected if "The System" decides to make it so. They could put a hamster into office and the national press corps would address it as "Mr. President, Sir."
Excerpt: As for why I figure Bush’s policy is in tatters, it’s because it is based on aggression, lies, ignoring international laws and conventions, torture, shoveling money to Bush’s cronies, disregarding the sovereignty of other countries, disregarding the US Constitution, murdering probably a million innocent people, and sending off US soldiers to die or become maimed for the sake of Israel’s interests.
Excerpt: The U.S. is totally vulnerable to cyberwar, and we've already lost most of our top secret shit. Plus, with the Feds gathering information about U.S. citizens, you can bet that data pirates have access to everything the Feds have. So the only people who are safe are the people who haven't yet been targeted, or who are homeless with nothing to lose.
Excerpt: In one of this week's sillier kerfuffles, Republican Presidential candidate John McCain offered to educate Democratic candidate Barack Obama on the realities of the situation in Iraq, by escorting Obama on a visit to that occupied and embattled nation. Obama, of course, declined.
Senator McCain has visited Iraq eight times since the occupation began. Senator Obama has visited only once -- but that doesn't mean McCain has an eight times better grip on the realities of Iraq.
Excerpt: You simply cannot deal with fanatics in this manner. In fact you cannot really deal with them at all because they are totally convinced of their correctness and infallibility. There is nothing you can do or say to convince them otherwise.
Excerpt: The main idea is to create international trade unions that are able to “deal with multinational companies on an equal footing and organize working people in even greater numbers.” What unions are recognizing is that “multinational companies are pushing down wages and conditions for workers ... by playing one national workforce off against another.”
Excerpt: We have silver, gold, guns, and lots of Costco toilet paper. We've got dogs, alarms, and meds to quell the constant, never ending cycle of anxiety to panic back to anxiety. There's a lot of sleeplessness and constant checking of bank balances and 401K's "just in case" because God knows if we walk up to our Bank of America ATM and they say our account is empty when our life savings is in there all hell will break loose. Yet people still trust in the banks.
Excerpt: Gen. Petraeus may be lying, but I don't think he is. I think he's right: Iran is financing a good amount of the strife in Iraq because it makes the US look bad; things are turning around in Iraq, albeit slowly; we may be able to leave in a year or two.
Excerpt: Hillary Clinton is just remarkably comfortable and at ease with habitually claiming victimhood. The press treated her unfairly, she complains (and her supporters echo). Obama hasn't treated her fairly, she complains (and her supporters echo). Everyone's trying to "push me aside", she complains (and her supporters echo). I'm not sure I know anyone as quick to play the victim, except for some Hillary Clinton supporters.
Excerpt: Regardless of whether the criminal cabal which has seized the Government of the United States proceeds with their intention to expand the war in the Mideast with an attack upon Iran, it is only a matter of time before the Country goes into a full blown depression.
Excerpt: I never had a clue what US "money" really was when I was younger, and it is only now after years of study and gameplay that I begin to see the nature of the US money fraud (I am a slow learner but a pit bull once I grasp a concept!).
Excerpt: When a military commander lies to the public, and those lies imperil the lives of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, that is a high crime indeed. That is the daily work of Gen David Petraeus.
Excerpt: It's not that there is no-one out there coming up with good ideas for energy or what not. It's that nobody really cares. The ideas get mentioned in some science publication and then disappear along with the discoverer. Why?? Because whoever he/she is, they still need to put a roof over their heads and food in their mouths and reality sets in and no-one is willing to back them.
Excerpt: She just told me that if Obama was assassinated the world would watch Black people stop killing themselves in the ghettos long enough to cause major havoc and destruction. She also said America would deserve every dead body that was the result of the riots that would ensue from Obama's murder.
Excerpt: They can cover up a tremendous amount of sh*t, but they have gone too far this time. Even people who don't have internet are starting to figure out they're being shafted. Even people who get all their news from Fox are figuring it out. Even people who don't read, watch, or listen to news are figuring it out!
Excerpt: If we succeed in finding justice from a court system that has been systematically corrupted over many years by criminal elements pursuing illegal gain from drugs, stock swindles, embezzlement and misuse of public funds, war profiteering and a host of other crimes, some known, many unknown, then we may be able to avoid a civil war and win back our freedom from this criminally inspired police state non-violently.
If, as seems likely, the criminals are so deeply entrenched in power that they can not be removed by peaceful means then the weight of their crimes will inexorably mount until spontaneous concerted action by the vast majority of the robbed and dispossessed population is turned against them, and they are swept into the sewer of history along with the likes of Marcos, Pinochet, Bautista, The Shah of Iran, and the rest of their slimy friends.
Excerpt: In my view, what the corporate elites disillusioned with Bush really want is a “multilateral system” that is really US unilateralism “cleverly packaged to grant other nations just enough slack to prevent them from fighting it [said of the neo-cons in the article].“ To me, what Bush and the neo-cons did was remove the clever packaging which revealed the basic unilateralism at play that other nations DID begin fighting against.
Excerpt: Whoever the next President is (if a change from Bush-Cheney-McCain and their ilk actually occurs) they will be sorely tempted NOT to roll back the expansion of powers Bush has claimed, and the lapdog Republicans in the House and Senate helped push as far as they possibly could.
Excerpt: So what are Hezbollah’s political goals? Are they something really radical? Do they want to change the whole system or the National Pact? There are some in the country who HAVE proposed scrapping the ratios and quotas of seats in the parliament that the National Pact creates and going for “majority rule” as in other countries (which would probably destroy Lebanon and benefit Hezbollah), but Hezbollah’s proposals have everything to do with standing behind the current system -- even though it keeps them UNDER-REPRESENTED.
May 14, 2008 2009 and beyond by Siegfried Lemelson, Unknown News
Excerpt: The overall situation is nearly irreversible because the world already has more than enough US government and agency bonds -- and it is obvious to even the most casual observer that, thanks to the magic of compounding interest, US government and agency debt may never be fully repaid.
Excerpt: They hate us all and they would love to see us separated and killing each other. That would make it a lot easier for them, because that would be less of us to feed and deal with... but God help them if we woke up and realized that it was really ALL OF US against ALL OF THEM! They are not counting on that!
Excerpt: Illegal drugs are a $500 billion per year business. That's a big chunk of change, in fact more than most corporations gross per year. I don't believe those in charge are weird but colorful, isolated nutcases, like one sees in movies. I think they're very well connected businessmen. ... If the illegal drug business stopped completely, I think the world economy would collapse.
Excerpt: What goes around, comes around. We have cause immense suffering in the world during the brief time that we have existed as a society. Now will come the time of our discontent, and out of that suffering there may yet emerge a society that we can be sincerely proud of participating in.
Excerpt: The Katrina "response" was pure evil. The evil was not "incompetence" but the deliberate actions taken to magnify the disaster. It was Disaster Capitalism taken to an extreme.
Excerpt: Today Syria’s interest in Lebanon requires that it stay stable so that the many Syrians working there can continue to do so. The Syrian business community also relies on Lebanese banks. For the Lebanese, 35% of their exports go overland through Syria and an important amount to Syria. Both Syria and Lebanon’s biggest trading partner is the EU.
Excerpt: There's a fairly obvious downside to letting potentially unbalanced and ethically challenged hired guns who owe allegiance to their company before their country reside above the law. If there's an upside to giving these companies free reign to regulate themselves and letting them act as a military despite hiring madmen and perverts, I'm just not seeing it.
Excerpt:Every single one of these hundreds of emails, ostensibly sent by dozens of different people, all come to my Republican-only email address -- which means they're either being sent by Republican Party workers, or (pretend this is a meaningful difference) Republican Party membership roles are sold, leased, or loaned to people who send these email lies.
Excerpt: Hillary will remain in the race "until a nominee is selected." Can you guess how the math could work for her?
Right. One man, one book depository, one magic bullet. Obama's plane could crash. He could suffer an embolism, fall down and hit his head, commit suicide and leave two goodbye notes like Deborah Jeane Palfrey... He could O.D. on heroin, he could be taken by aliens, he could be outed for something... maybe even something true-ish. Obama might eat a bad burrito, be bitten by a rabid dog, drown in his bathtub, or be hit by lightning! That's how Hillary wins. She hangs in JUST IN CASE. Anything could happen, and Hillary won't leave till the Fat Lady sings, because it ain't over 'till its over!
Excerpt: Clearly it is easy for Gen. Petraeus, Sec. Rice, Defense Sec. Gates, and all of those unnamed sources to spew forth their accusations/propaganda against Iran etc. while providing no proof or in the case of the “Syrian reactor” altered/fake pictures (no cooling tower). On the other hand, those of us who care about the truth have to take time to find sources that debunk the propaganda -- AND, I don’t mean sources that have to be taken with a grain of salt or LOTS of them, either. So here is what I found.
Excerpt: Two years into the so-called "Presidential campaign", for the very first time, a matter of actual political policy is being publicly discussed.
But even this one policy that's allowed to be discussed is inane beyond belief -- whether to suspend a nearly-nothing gas tax to encourage more driving this summer ... when of course, (a) the proposal is idiotic and accomplishes nothing and (b) the election is scheduled long after summer is over, making the whole discussion even mooter than moot.
Excerpt: Imagine a country with countless Paris Hiltons -- millionaires never tested by reality, never forced to dig deep and excel, never offered any incentive to improve.
Which is pretty much what we have today: an upper class of wealthy bunglers who have too much time on their hands and want to run for office. Like George W. Bush, our inbred, water-brained, devo chuckle-monkey president. How did we get him? It is as if his father screwed a chimpanzee when the circus came to town! If not for the wealth and power of the Bush-Walker clan, Curious George W. would probably have ended up as an alcoholic, cokehead con-artist used-car salesman with a sub-prime mortgage in foreclosure.
Excerpt: Or in elementary terms, chum, the price of everything else must now rise if real estate and stock prices are not allowed to fall. Otherwise, real estate would not be economically viable.
Excerpt: It took being bombed to rubble for Japan and Germany to finally get over most of their race-based nationalism which the people rallied around for their identity. And it may take the same thing for this country to finally be brought into reality and out of its delusional little bubble of denial. 9/11 was just a shot across the bow.
We believe in liberty and justice for all, so of course, we oppose many US government policies. This doesn't mean we're anti-American, redneck scum, pinko commies, militia members, or terrorist-sympathizers. It means we believe in freedom, as more than merely a cliché.
We believe you have the right to live your own life as you choose, and others have the equal right to live their lives as they choose. It's not complicated.
We believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while its opposite -- oppression -- leads to war, terrorism, poverty, and misery.
We believe it's preposterously stupid to hate people because of their appearance, their race or nationality, their religion or lack of religion, how they have sex with other consenting adults, etc. There are far more apropos reasons to hate most people.
We believe in questioning ourselves, our assumptions, each other -- and we especially believe in questioning authority (the more authority, the more questions). We believe obedience is a fine quality in dogs and young children, but not in adults.
Like America's right-wingers, we believe in
individual responsibility,
hard work to get ahead,
and stern punishment for serious crimes.
We believe big government should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most right-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like America's left-wingers, we believe in
equal treatment under law,
war as a last (not first) resort,
and sensible stewardship of natural resources.
We believe big business should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most left-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like libertarians, we believe it's wrong and reprehensible to arrest people for what they think, believe, look like, wear, eat, smoke, drink, inhale, inject, or otherwise do to themselves.
But unlike many libertarians, we're not obsessed with the gold standard, we don't believe incorporation is humanity's highest achievement, and we don't believe everything in life comes down to dollars and cents. We've read and enjoyed Ayn Rand's novels, but we understand that they're works of fiction.
We're skeptical, and we're sick of so-called 'journalists' who aren't skeptical at all.
A reader asks, what are our solutions? We propose no solutions except common sense, which is never common. We like the principles of democracy, and the ideals broadly described as 'American'. The US Constitution is a fine and workable framework for solutions, when it's actually read and thoughtfully understood by intelligent statesmen and women. So, no manifestos from us. We don't dream that big, and if there's one thing the world doesn't need it's yet another manifesto.
Our suggestion is: think. A fact-based instead of faith-based approach leads to solutions for most of the recurring issues of our time, from abortion to global climate change, pollution to universal health care, careful but real regulation of industry and economy, hunger, war, terror, human rights for humans not for corporations, science not religious doctrine in public schools, equal protection and prosecution under law, etc. Approach problems without glorifying stupidity, without demonizing intelligence, and answers usually come into focus.
These pages are published by Harry and Helen Highwater, happily married low-income nom de plumes and rabble-rousers from Madison, Wisconsin (with a few friends scattered around the world helping out).
We try to spotlight news that hasn't gotten enough (or appropriate) attention in American media, along with our opinions and yours.
We bang our keyboards against the wall, because it doesn't hurt as much as banging our heads.
