jj Gudat,

Obama's Line On Lobbyists is Misleading
http://www.alternet.org/election08/77492/

Obama claims that he doesn't take money from lobbyists. The truth is, he is as beholden to special interest groups as all of the other candidates.
Contributions made by the various industry sectors tell the real story in a presidential race. And Opensecrets.org shows that Obama is picking up gobs of money put on the table by these special interests -- including those involved in health care, which will surely have a lot riding on the outcome of the election and will expect to be heard after the election is over.Consider the sector called lawyers and law firms. Clearly, lawyers and law firms lobby on behalf of their own interests -- like fighting malpractice reform, which could again surface as a thorny issue for the new administration. Clinton and Obama have raised similar amounts from lawyers and law firms -- $11.8 and $9.5 million. McCain and Huckabee have taken far less. The health sector has also given to Obama, Clinton, and McCain. In the pharmaceutical and health product industries, contributions to Clinton total $349,000 and $338,000 to Obama. Again, McCain trails in donations at about $98,000, an indication that the sector sees the real action on the Democratic side of the ballot. Health professionals, which include doctors, nurses, and dentists, have given Clinton some $2.3 million and Obama $1.7 million.Last August The Boston Globe, in a piece by Scott Helman, took a hard look at Obama's contributions, noting that "behind Obama's campaign rhetoric about taking on special interests lies a more complicated truth." That truth revealed that as a state legislator in Illinois, a U.S. senator, and as a presidential aspirant, Obama had collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from lobbyists and PACs. Helman quoted an Obama campaign spokeswoman saying that after he experienced firsthand the influence of Washington lobbyists, he was taking a different approach to fundraising than he had in the past, and that "his leadership position on this issue is an evolving process." If Obama's leadership on campaign financing is indeed evolving, more news outlets should be following the evolution.
Sorry this is off-topic, after Bill Press repeating this lie, for the uptenth time this morning, I just can't take it!!

Is Barack any different then any other candidate, NO! But the rest don't claim to be!!!

Many women do not have children or get married.   His criteria of work is skewed.  His idea of non-discrimination is false.   Women are actually better as managers.  They are better as managing multiple tasks.  Working with people.   But, as with anything else, it all comes down to the individual.  
The general rule is that men get management positions because they are men.   
Women sometimes end up in management for the wrong reasons but most are highly qualified instead of just being the 'right' sex.   The idea is that men will leave the company if not recognized and promoted.     
Frankly, most jobs can be handled by either sex with no difference in performance.  
 
I don't believe he did much research on the subject.  Women were active on campus back in the 70's.   Then, in the 80's,  Phyllis Shclaffy (? sp)  came around and tried to make all the Womens programs give equal time to home economics.  
 
Title 19 was intended to give unbiased views based on sex or race.  The Reagonites declared that it was being used to create manhaters who would take over the country!   Phyllis Schlaffy (?sp) was put in charge of that too.  Not that those she hired had any idea of what they were there for.  
 
Reagonites also attacked child care --- of course, they declared it was used for letting women go out to lunch instead of raising children.   

Republicans gave lip service to womens' rights - never voted 'for' any legislation.   Reagan put a stop to that.  During the Republican Convention, the Republican women ran around in their cute little suits (skirts!), gloves, hats and  STOP SIGN buttons that said STOP ERA! 

Reagan told women their job was to get a husband.  Those on welfare or ADC needed to spend more time fixing themselves up to get a husband. 

during that period when candidates run for their party...
an electorate can either BE at the negotiating table.

or not.

But the corporate backers of your Democratic candidates... are negotiating.

...isn't that the negotiation stage?
when their financial backers & their electorate
negotiate
for their candidate's position?

& nobody is actually negotiating unless:
...they make demands
...& demonstrate intention & power.

Exactly what sort of POWER does the electorate have over Obama & Clinton?
Exactly what sort of desire to negotiate do the people demonstrate these days?

nothing. The Electorate is rolling over & squealing, "oh! wonderful, whatever you say sounds good to me! I sure hope you mean it!"

Exactly WHAT about that is a negotiation?

...that simply leaves the candidates to haggle with their corporate backers & party 'sell outs' for **what they can get away with**.

Nader is showing you what nobody is willing to put on the Table & asking, "are you serious? you don't even want to TALK about it??"

& the Democrats want to snivel their unfairly treated...
...getting good at that, aren't they?

Who the hell managed to convince Americans that the Revolution for Human Rights was... won? because, they certainly managed to figure out how to turn what could have *been* something... into a pack of self-centred & frightened wannabes.

More Deadly than Berlin Wall: Mexico-US Border Immigration Policy Brief on Humanitarian Crisis at the Border

~~~
"Spread Love...
... but wear the Glove!"

Namaste,
BlueBerry Pick'n
can be found @ ThisCanadian
Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced
Learn. Think. Believe & Act...

http://www.rense.com/general80/web.htm

excerpted

<blockquote> .... Goolsbee is widely reported to have told Obama not to back a compulsory freeze on home mortgage foreclosures to help the struggling middle class in the current depression crisis, as demanded by former candidate John Edwards. Hillary Clinton has advocated a one-year voluntary freeze on foreclosures. Obama has offered counselors to comfort mortgage victims as they are dispossessed, citing the 'moral hazard' of protecting the public interest from Wall Street sharks.

By adding the infamous Skull & Bones secret society to his campaign roster, Obama, who bills himself as the candidate of change and hope, has attained a prefect trifecta of oligarchical and financier establishment backing for his attempt to seize the nomination of the Democratic Party for 2008. Obama's main overall image adviser and foreign policy adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski, the co-founder of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission, and the mastermind of the disastrous Carter administration. Obama's wife Michelle is reputed to be closely linked to the Council on Foreign Relations. Behind the utopian platitudes dished up by the Illinois senator, the face of the Wall Street money elite comes into clearer and clearer focus....

From Wikipedia: 'Austan D. Goolsbee is an economist and is currently the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He is also a Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation[1], Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a member of the Panel of Economic Advisors to the Congressional Budget Office. He has been Barack Obama's economic advisor since Obama's successful U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois. He is the lead economic advisor to the 2008 Obama presidential campaign.'</blockquote>

===
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.--Eleanor Roosevelt

In Washington state, Obama won the delegate caucus, but a while later Hillary won the primary election....Right?

===
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.--Eleanor Roosevelt

Right, you people who so effectively came together to achieve accountability for the deliberate negligence that led to the demolition of NYC's WTC where molten metal smoldered for weeks in a cloud of drain cleaner level toxic dust fog while the public was reassured it was perfectly safe, and bringing to justice those who suppressed evidence of the cover up in Shanksville PA where no bodyparts or 6 ton jet engines were recovered, not to mention the courts marshal of the conspirators who failed to intercept the UFO that entered the Whitehouse & Pentagon LEVEL 1 RESTRICTED AIRSPACE RAYTHEON - LOCKHEED MARTIN GROUND TO AIR PATRIOT MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM PROTECTED NO FLY ZONE from NORAD/NEADS as they had done as SOP numerous times in the months prior that 3 frames of surveillance video released to the public revealed DETONATED at the sole BALLISTIC REINFORCED 95% personnel relocated for renovations section of DoD HQ leaving a 16' entrance hole once again absent indestructible landing gear that the "OFFICIAL" CAVEMAN conspiracy theory proposes "EVAPORATED" on impact, you are calling for courageous leaders to come forward and stand up to overthrow the DLC DCCC DNC establishment responsible for stifling Kucinich's participation in debates in his run for POTUS, conspired to take IMPEACHMENT OFF THE TABLE and collaborated to leave Feingold swinging in the wind on his CENSURE of the POTUS for "WORSE THAN WATERGATE" FISA violations? Did I miss the vociferous umbrage about the recent "REVELATION" that Zelikow whitewashed the Kean-Hamilton Report in plain sight of the commissioners who went along lock step as Arlen Specter did on the Warren Report, without SUSTAINED OUTRAGE from your organizations?

BRILLIANT!!!

Because of the wretched performance of the Kean-Hamilton 9/11 commission, many well established facts and timelines pertaining to 9/11 have been blurred and defaced. The 9/11 commission has corrupted and confused public awareness of the basic facts of 9/11 far more than it has enhanced it. It is a rule of thumb for researchers that some of the most revealing information on a cataclysmic event like 9/11 generally becomes available in media reports in the immediate aftermath of the event. This is before the editors and producers have fully assimilated the party line of the oligarchy on what has happened, so they may well publicize facts which are incompatible with the official, mythical version of events. As time goes by, such heuristic revelations become rarer, although they may yet inflict fatal blows on the official story, particularly if the official story is beginning to break up. The 9/11 commission represents the triumph of oligarchical scholasticism, the embalming of what had been a living tragedy into a smoothed-over textbook account from which virtually all of the truth has been drained. (p.11)

Closer to the heart of the matter, the Kean-Hamilton has failed to indict the real September criminals. It leaves untouched the network of moles in the US government without whose efforts, both in preparation and in coverup, the events of 9/11 could never have happened. It has not identified the clandestine command center which directed the operation. It has taken not one step towards locating the technocrats of death who actually had the physical and technical capability to make these events happen, in contrast to the supermarket-caliber terrorists who are supposed to have caused them. All of these networks remain in place, and remain anxious to avoid detection. The September criminals and their project, the clash of civilizations in the form of a new Thirty Years War, remain at large, their desperation magnified, but their power undiminished. Think of this when you hear the strident clatter of the Bush regime as it warns the public that a new wave of terror attacks, quite possibly using weapons of mass destruction of the atomic, bacteriological and chemical varieties, is inevitable before the November 2008 elections. (p.14)

There is an imminent threat of new terrorist attacks, organized in large part by the original September criminals. This is a time of aggravated world economic, political, and strategic crisis, wars, depression, and breakdown crisis, which is part of the explanation of why the 9/11 attacks happened. Be aware of the underlying long waves of American history. The 2004 election completed a fateful cycle of that history – the pattern of party re-alignment which has recurred every 36 or so years since the ratification of the federal Constitution, taking place in 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932, and 1968. We are due for a profound shakeup in the party structure and the basic pattern of political life in this country.

If the 9/11 myth can be dismantled, discredited, and denounced before the masses, there is hope that the party re-alignment may unfold in a progressive direction, perhaps with the collapse of the Republican Party, perhaps with the split of the Democratic Party into factions representing roughly the views of Senator Lieberman and those of Senator Kennedy. Under these conditions, the OCCUPATION of Iraq and Afghanistan can be terminated, and new aggressions warded off. The neocons can be brought to justice. International monetary reform, world reconstruction and economic development, vast projects of infrastructure can be addressed.

But if the 9/11 myth is allowed to stand intact as the basis for US national life, the current regime, and the Republican and Democratic Parties, then there is every reason to fear that the likely party re-alignment will represent the transition to fascism in some form whose outlines we can already see. (p.16)
www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/07/317436.pdf

How can you call for "RADICAL CHANGE" when you are suffering cognitive dissonance regarding the criminals running the asylum and their Eichmanns in DEM clothing? Or is it that, you want INSIDE THE BELTWAY "INCREMENTAL CHANGE" like rolling back the 2000+ ILLEGAL signing statements, one by one?

Perhaps empowering the "ETHICS" committee and the FEC is the way to get at restoring HABEAS CORPUS, ya think?

All righty then. Here's your sign:
http://www.benfrank.net/nuke/images7/52warnings-condi_rice.jpg
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/wtc7_sec.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XH8K7BZHL._SS500_.jpg

http://static.scribd.com/docs/2wde9h6p3c3kf.swf
http://www.killtown.911review.org/911smokingguns.html

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/6/26/with_thousands_of_new_yorkers_sick
http://sbutki.newsvine.com/_news/2007/03/26/633452-interview-with-penny-...

http://www.youtube.com/v/d3BD9KU5_9Y
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=4608078350117479236

Speaking of HABEAS CORPUS DELICTI, where's Jimmy Hoffa?
www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/jimmy_hoffa/4.html

Dead Poets Society Membership, Joan of Arc Quasi-Martyrs .... NOT!!!

A SHORT LIST OF LUCIFER'S DARK SIDE FRATERNITY BROTHERS RIGHTEOUS ACCOMPLISHMENTS. RAPTURED ON DEMAND, NEUTRALIZED ASPIRING ANGELS:

(Globetrotting Economic Hitmen achievements not included. "LONE" gunmen, not so much.)

Abraham Lincoln, (1865), President of the United States

James Hinds, (1868), U.S. Congressman killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan

James Garfield, (1881), President of the United States

William McKinley, (1901), President of the United States

Don Mellett, (1926), newspaper editor and campaigner against organized crime

Huey P. Long, (1935), Louisiana senator and former governor

Carlo Tresca, (1943), anarchist organizer

John F. Kennedy, (1963), President of the United States

Medgar Evers, (1963), U.S. civil rights activist

Malcolm X, (1965), black Muslim leader, killed in a Manhattan banquet room as he began a speech

Martin Luther King Jr., (1968), U.S. civil rights activist

Robert F. Kennedy, (1968), Presidential candidate and John F. Kennedy's younger brother, shot in Los Angeles

Fred Hampton, (1969), Deputy Chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party

Orlando Letelier, (1976), Chilean ambassador to the United States under the administration of Salvador Allende

Harvey Milk, (1978), gay rights campaigner and city supervisor of San Francisco, California

George Moscone, (1978), Mayor of San Francisco

Leo Ryan, (1978), Congressman from California, killed as part of the Jonestown Massacre

Allard K. Lowenstein, (1980), Congressman from New York

Alan Berg, (1984), radio talk-show host, killed by Neo-nazis

Alex Odeh, (1985), Arab anti-discrimination group leader, killed when bomb exploded in his Santa Ana, California office

Tommy Burks, (1998), Tennessee State Senator

James E. Davis, (2003) New York City Councilman assassinated by Othniel Askew, a political rival in the Council chambers in City Hall

Gary Webb (2004) Prize-winning American investigative journalist connected Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who distributed crack cocaine into Los Angeles through Mena Arkansas under Governor Bill Clinton and fueled the widespread crack epidemic that swept through urban areas across the US under fmr CIA CZAR Bush 41, found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head deemed to be a suicide. (Clinton 42 then halted further investigation and pardoned IRAN-CONTRA cabal including convicted Oli North upon taking office)

Chauncey Bailey, (2007), journalist assassinated by black bakery mafia for investigating San Francisco police relinquishing patrol to extortionist militia (Serpico deja vu)

www.tinyurl.com/yuqgge

www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/07/317436.pdf

http://static.scribd.com/docs/2wde9h6p3c3kf.swf
http://static.scribd.com/docs/6vwxlxphx83z0.swf

RFK:

www.youtube.com/v/TaF6pW45d0o
www.youtube.com/v/-Ib1IeHuciQ
www.youtube.com/v/kjjosTb_ON0
www.youtube.com/v/TknldheCBdw
www.youtube.com/v/k2VZl6Sbz6g
www.youtube.com/v/6HsMe-Jf-v0
www.youtube.com/v/ga_oO3wkl4E
www.youtube.com/v/L3Aiff8bkUQ
www.youtube.com/v/Z0fdp1V6yGY
www.youtube.com/v/2ZLFSBO1P58
www.youtube.com/v/j-7D1y7Xp7I

http://flash.revver.com/player/1.0/player.js?mediaId:15088

www.JFKii.com
http://revver.com/video/15088/jfkii

www.oilempire.us/wellstone.html
http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2006/03/cold-blooded-killers.html

Nacht und Nebel: www.tinyurl.com/ypxxjq
www.citizenagainstlies.com/?p=1497

America’s "Noble" Cause:
Preserving its Right to Murder, Exploit, Torture, and Impoverish with Impunity

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
- Oscar Wilde

“Why are we over there in Iraq?”

“To protect our freedoms.”

“How are the Iraqis threatening our freedoms?”

“They attacked us on 9/11.”

“If that is true, why are so many Americans against the war?”

“I don’t know, but I think Cindy Sheehan and all the other war protestors should be rounded up and shot.”

04/10/06 "ICH" -- -- I was involved in this exchange with a co-worker about two months ago. I was utterly perplexed at how this individual managed the obvious cognitive dissonance created by thinking that we are fighting to protect our “freedoms” while simultaneously holding the notion that non-violent dissidents “should be rounded up and shot”.

In retrospect, why was I so surprised? As a vehement critic of the United States government’s foreign and domestic policies, I have received numerous death threats from “patriotic” loyalists to the American Empire over the last year. Recently, a severely brain-washed US resident who maintains a site called American Jihad issued a “Farwa” (his spelling) against the editors of Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and Uruknet and against dissident writers Mike Whitney and Kurt Nimmo. Many of my essays have appeared on Dissident Voice and Uruknet, so I suppose I am a target of the “Farwa” too.

Violent Extremists Abound

While many death threats issued by American hate-mongers may be hollow, the nations of the Middle East do not have the market cornered on fanatical ideologues who commit acts of terror. Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Michael Griffin, Paul Hill, Ted Kaczynski, Baruch Goldstein, David Lane, Donald DeFreeze, Clayton Waagner and Earl Krugel are but a few of America’s home-grown violent extremists. America, and often components of its government, have a history of assassinating dissidents who become too powerful as they pursue equality and human rights. Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, RFK, MLK, and Paul Wellstone each met a premature demise which ended their efforts to introduce real social justice into the Empire.

Your Mind is our Vessel

Actually, I suspect many of the ardent supporters of the American Empire truly believe that they are preserving and spreading noble principles like freedom, democracy, equality, and human rights. There is no shortage of propaganda to convince them of this “fact”. Delusions and illusions “generously” provided by the corporate-controlled mainstream media afford Empire loyalists with the opportunity to avoid the burden of independent thinking. Sound-bites, canards, propaganda, stereo-types, and white-washed versions of the truth supply their programmed minds with a virtually endless loop of rationalizations to justify their approbation of a morally reprehensible entity.

People who continue to nurse at the bosom of Lady Liberty, the noble symbol of an imaginary land which has never existed, rail against those who seek peace, social and economic justice, and human rights. In their perverse worldview, health care, safety, ample nourishment, and adequate shelter are reserved for a select segment of the population in the Empire’s homeland. Those of us who believe in a more just and equitable world are indeed a threat to the oppressive capitalist imperialism of the United States. To perpetuate the Empire’s military dominance and parasitic exploitation of humanity, our attempts to awaken and rally the masses must be stopped by any means necessary.

Often accusing proponents of a more just and humane world of seeking “entitlements” for the poor and oppressed, the foot soldiers of the Empire are actually struggling with virtually every fiber of their being to preserve what they believe to be their own entitlements. Since the concept of “might making right” reinforces their belief that their “special rights” supersede the Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is time to identify and enumerate these exclusive privileges:

Inalienable Rights of "Select Citizens" of the American Empire

1. We have the right to pre-emptively attack the nation or region of our choice simply based on our belief that they may be a threat to the Empire. No evidence necessary.

2. We have established and will maintain the right to murder an unlimited number of innocent civilians so long as our military machine does the killing and we label the victims as “collateral damage”.

3. We have the right to label whomever we choose as “terrorists” or “enemy combatants” and to hold them indefinitely without a trial.

4. We are exempt from the Geneva Conventions and have the right to commit acts of torture or to rendition our unconvicted prisoners to other countries which will torture them.

5. We have the right to continue glorifying and justifying the land theft and genocide we committed against Native Americans.

6. We have the right to continue to claiming we are the “leader of the free world” when slavery was a legal institution in our nation until the Civil War, women were not able to vote until the Twentieth Century, institutionalized segregation existed until the 1960’s, and we deny 5% of our population (Gays and Lesbians) equal rights and protection under the Constitution.

7. We have the right to sell ourselves as a “democracy” despite the fact that we are a constitutional republic, and despite the fact that corporate interests, lobbyists, wealthy campaign donors, and Israel shape most of our foreign and domestic policy.

8. We have the right to bill ourselves as a “bastion of human rights” (and thus justify our imperial interventions) despite the fact that we have the highest prison population in the world, we have a government which tortures on a wide scale, and we are one of the few “developed” nations which metes out the death penalty.

9. We have the right to hoard the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the history of humankind while prohibiting other nations from possessing such weapons. We also are the only nation with the right to employ WMD’s on a wide scale, as evidenced by our annihilation of over 100,000 Japanese civilians.

10. We have the right to plunder 25% of the world’s resources to provide for a scant 5% of the world’s population, while blustering that if the rest of the world embraced laissez-faire capitalism, they could reap the same bountiful harvest. (Forget the mathematical impossibilities involved. Those just get in the way of the propaganda!)

11. We have the right to continue to empower multi-national corporations with the rights of person-hood, limit their exposure to criminal prosecution and civil suits, and to enable them to exploit human beings in other nations. As long as our corporate friends are showing a profit, they can operate sweat-shops, facilitate the murder of labor agitators, maintain monopolies, off-shore American jobs while exploiting the foreign workers who take them, avoid paying taxes by setting up “shell headquarters” in places like Bermuda, destroy the environment, and continue the race to the bottom in wages and benefits, here and abroad.

12. We have the right to maintain and enhance a socio-economic system that places a significant portion of the world’s wealth in the hands of about 3 million people (approximately one percent of the US population). Tax cuts and an end to estate taxes will ensure that the Empire’s plutocracy perpetuates its reign. We have the right to foster a malevolent world economic order which results in 3 billion human beings living on less than $2 per day.

13. We have the right to account for half of the world’s military expenditures to “provide for the common defense” of 5% of the world’s population while 46 million of our people have no health insurance, 13% of the overall American population lives in poverty, over a million are homeless, an alarmingly high percentage of Black America suffers poverty and receives a pathetic education, and crises like New Orleans result in passive mass murder and diasporas of “undesirables”.

14. We have the right to send military recruiters into public schools. Our recruiters have access to student addresses and phone numbers and we pay them to use propaganda and financial incentives to entice our youth into sacrificing themselves for the latest imperial crusade.

15. We have the right to accrue as much public and personal debt as we deem “necessary” to perpetuate the American Dream for our nation and to satiate our personal obsessions with acquiring material possessions.

16. We have the right to impose our hollow, shallow, and violent cultural values on a world cowed into acceptance by the raw military and economic power of the American Empire.

17. We have the right to spy on our citizens, eliminate habeas corpus, and contract private companies like Blackwater to avoid the constraints of posse comitatus. It is of no concern to us that our actions seriously conflict with the US Constitution.

18. We have the right to produce 25% of greenhouse gasses, ignore and discount mounting evidence of global warming, and refuse to sign the Kyoto Treaty.

19. We have the right to malign, threaten, intimidate, or kill those within the Empire who have the audacity to question or oppose our agenda.

20. We have the right to maintain a corrupt Duopoly consisting of the Republican and Democratic Parties, which consistently present American voters with candidates whose goals are to perpetuate the Empire and the agendas of its corporate and plutocratic leaders.

21. We have the right to use the IMF and World Bank to impose our economic will on “developing” nations which we “help” by burdening them with crushing debt.

22. We have the right to ignore and violate international law while demanding that the rest of the world (excepting Great Britain and Israel) adhere to it stringently.

23. We have the right to subsidize and support Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

24. We have the right to concentrate the power of the United States government in the hands of the Executive Branch under the pretext that it is necessitated by the “War on Terror”.

25. We have the right to label those who dare to oppose our invasions or genocides as savages or terrorists and strip them of their human rights.

There you have it. Now the American Empire’s principal supporters and beneficiaries have their own “Bill of Rights”. Ironically, it has more than twice the number of rights guaranteed to all Americans under the original Constitutional Amendments. Since the true Bill of Rights is anathema to their cause, it is essential that the Empire loyalists’ “special rights” outnumber the rights protected by our Constitution.

A Severe Spiritual Malady

Certainly believing in America’s and its supporters’ entitlement to these “special rights” would qualify one as a sociopath (one with minimal concern for the welfare and feelings of others) within the world community. However, in the American Empire, those subscribing to such depraved and self-centered “rights” receive affirmation and acceptance.

Obviously this Bill of Rights II is my construct and does not formally exist. However, each of the entitlements I enumerated is necessary to enable the United States to exist in its current perverse form. If you truly support and pledge allegiance to the American Empire, this Bill of Rights II represents the core of your sociopolitical beliefs.

For those of you who embrace the notion that Divine Providence bestowed these “inalienable rights” upon you and your nation, I call upon you to search your souls. I challenge you to do a long and fearless moral inventory. If you do, and the maleficent elements of the United States of America have not managed to burn your conscience out of your psyche, I predict you will begin the journey to rejoin the brotherhood of humanity by renouncing your support of the American Empire.

If you are so narcissistic (or perhaps morally bereft) that you have no problem with the means by which the American Empire sustains its unregenerate existence, at least consider a pragmatic angle. The United States is pursuing a ruthless course which will eventually lead to a fierce and violent backlash, which will probably affect you. The 6.2 billion other members of the human race are only going to accept so much abuse before they strike back in a powerful way.

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12679.htm

It's breaking my heart that Laura cant see the up side to linking the value of currency to a tangible product's worth or algorithm locked to productive output.

Perhaps if she OWNED SOME she would climb aboard the HALT DEBT CEILING ELEVATION bandwagon that includes the US TREASURY absorbing the FRB, thus ending the cycle where a handful of ILLUMINATI create DOLLARS out of thin air via fractional reserve smoke and mirrors, which the US POPULATION must pay interest on, NEVER BREAKING EVEN.

Corporations can sell out to CHINESE, House of Saud, et. al. via SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS, but the Dubai Ports deal, US HIGHWAYS into foreign owned toll roads, WATER RESERVOIRS, GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!!!!!!!

Perhaps some gold in her hot little hands would help, ya think?
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5547481422995115331

Who's Laura?
www.lauraflanders.com/pages/contact.html
www.lauraflanders.com/laura/pages/contact.html
www.lauraflanders.com/pages/articles.html
flanders.laura@gmail.com

Credit Crunch: What To Do About Wall Street

Liz Moyer, 02.14.08, www.forbes.com/2008/02/14/washington-congress-spitzer-biz-wall-cx_lm_021...

So who's to blame for the subprime mess? Banks? Investors? Regulators? Ratings agencies?

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, in testimony to the House of Representatives finance committee, laid the blame at the feet of federal regulators and ratings agencies, who failed to stop the growth of the subprime mortgage bubble before it got out of control. And he said a swift resolution to the severe capital pressures the bond insurers are facing is necessary to stop a "tsunami" of problems in the financial markets.

Gov. Spitzer said he hoped a private effort by Wall Street banks to inject capital into some of the hardest-hit bond insurers could get done in the next three to five business days. If not, regulators would have to resort to the "good bank, bad bank" split of the bond insurers, as proposed Tuesday by Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett.

"The clock is ticking," Gov. Spitzer said. "We will be forced to act." ...

Hillary to favor Bush 41 by pardoning the war crimes of the Bush 43 Administration just as Bill did for the Bush 41 Administration's IRAN-CONTRA infestation reincarnated in the WH and Carlyle Group TODAY. www.ringoffireradio.com

Congress enacted the War Crimes Act in 1996. That act defines violations of Geneva's Common Article 3 as war crimes. Those convicted face life imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

The President is undoubtedly familiar with the doctrine of command responsibility, where commanders, all the way up the chain of command to the commander in chief, can be held liable for war crimes their inferiors commit if the commander knew or should have known they might be committed and did nothing to stop or prevent them.

Bush defensively denied that the United States engages in torture and foreswore authorizing it. But it has been well-documented that policies set at the highest levels of our government have resulted in the torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of U.S. prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. ... www.alternet.org/module/printversion/41411

Bush Pardons Himself for Possible WAR CRIMES
Cafferty www.youtube.com/v/wBUkxvfL_eE
Skull&Bones www.youtube.com/v/cgPzA-qmWe4
PD-51 www.youtube.com/v/mMs733gFg

Spitzer www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_mojoblog.pl?url=http://www.motherjones...

DéjàVu www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_mojoblog.pl?url=http://www.motherjones...

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/awful-new-photo.html

The Torture Playlist

NEWS: Music has been used in American military prisons and on bases to induce sleep deprivation, "prolong capture shock," disorient detainees during interrogations—and also drown out screams. Based on a leaked interrogation log, news reports, and the accounts of soldiers and detainees, here are some of the songs that guards and interrogators chose. ... www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2008/03/torture-playlist.html#content

Speaking of pardons, remember Scooter Libby who with Rove orchestrated the outing of CIA NOC Valerie Plame ... IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN:

In his State of the Union address, President Bush asserted “a solemn duty to prevent the terrorists carrying out their plans.” And that, he said, meant liability protection for companies that have cooperated with the eavesdropping program. Well, I can imagine Mr. Bush, if nothing else avails, issuing a blanket pardon for phone companies that may have broken the law. I can see these backstage battles spinning on for the rest of the President’s term.
www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/31/daniel-schorr-predicts-bush-will-pardo...
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18549100

Valerie's mother, Diane Plame, an elegant former school teacher, turned out to have had a previously unreported role in launching her daughter's CIA career – sending her the newspaper ad that the CIA was hiring when Valerie was a senior in college trying to figure out what to do with her life.

A posse of Plame's CIA Career Trainee classmates and former colleagues, disturbed by how Plame had been treated by the government, agreed to talk with me on the record; Jim Marcinkowski's full account of how partisan operatives on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee tried to suppress his testimony was especially arresting (see the accompanying book excerpt).
www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones....

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history. The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me,” Carter said in a copyright story in Saturday’s edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

“We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered. But that’s been a radical departure from all previous administration policies.”

Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, criticized Bush for having “zero peace talks” in Israel. Carter also said the administration “abandoned or directly refuted” every negotiated nuclear arms agreement, as well as environmental efforts by other presidents.

Carter offered his harshest assessment for the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which helped religious charities receive $2.15 billion in federal grants in fiscal year 2005 alone.

“The policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion. Those things in my opinion are quite disturbing,” Carter said. “As a traditional Baptist, I’ve always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one.”
www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/19/1305/

My congressman and personal hero, John Lewis (D-Atlanta, GA), decided to officially pledge to switch his "superdelegate" vote to Barack Obama, after having previously supported Hillary Clinton, when Georgia went overwhelmingly for Obama (and Lewis' district: 109,581-35,668 in Fulton County, 113,278-34,098 in Dekalb County).  He's a little late to Barbara Boxer's game, but better later than never to support democracy!

 There are several NASTY letters in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today at http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/printedition/2008/03/03/lettsed0303.html

 I wrote two letters, one to the AJC:

Dear Editor:

I find the letters published 3/3 in response to Rep John Lewis' decision to honor the democratically-expressed will of the Democratic primary voters in Georgia very offensive. Lewis understands better than anyone the importance of citizens' voting rights and literally shed blood in the cause. I am glad he has decided to put aside his political loyalties to vote with his constituents--who voted overwhelmingly for Senator Obama. I congratulate Congressman Lewis for standing up for democracy in this primary.  And no, I did not vote for Senator Obama in the primary nor am I an African-American. Lewis' choice is the best for all Americans.

and one to Congressman Lewis:

Congressman Lewis, thank you for having the courage to abide with the will of the primary voters in casting your "superdelegate" vote at the Democratic convention this year.  I myself did not vote for either Senators Clinton or Obama (I voted absentee ahead of time for John Edwards), but I think this is absolutely the right decision.  The "superdelegate" system is unfortunately undemocratic for our Democratic party and should be changed.  In the meantime, I think more "superdelegates" should follow in the footsteps of you and Senator Boxer in promising to follow the will of your constituents.  This is good for democracy, good for the Democratic Party, and good for America.  Ignore the racially-charged invective from some quarters.  I am deeply grateful as a "small-d" democrat and a "capital-d" Democrat for your choice.  As always, I am proud of you as an American.  Thanks and kudos!!!!!!