THE ANTIDOTE TO DEPRESSION IS GENEROSITY
A good heart is better than all the heads in the world. - Edward Bulwer-Lytton
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. - George Washington Carver
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We are in Breaking: Yahoo News as WXB102 announces international syndication of our Las Vegas radio program, the award-winning Basham and Cornell Show. In the audio archives of you can listen to over 150 interviews with movers, shakers, political leaders, celebrities, bestselling authors and pundits — but below I've posted the Mp3 links to a few of our recent interviews with John Edwards, Bill Press, Pulitzer Prize winner Charlie Savage, Pat Buchanan, Valerie Bertinelli...
Fri May 23, 3:01 AM ET
Lydia Cornell Interviews World Leaders, Presidential Candidates, And Pulitzer Prize Winners for New Radio Show Co-hosts new Las Vegas radio show about politics and celebrity, signs with renowned literary agency for upcoming books.
Read more at... Yahoo! News
The Basham and Cornell Show broadcasts weekday mornings at 8 am Pacific (11 a.m. Eastern) on KLAV 1230 AM Radio live in Las Vegas. Again, all shows are simulcast worldwide on the Internet (and archived) and can be listened to at Basham and Cornell Radio If you've missed our show, check out the audio archives.
You can click on these MP3s to listen to a few of our recent shows, or download the podcasts:
Lydia Cornell - John Edwards interview:
John Edwards Interview
Pat Buchanan interview:
Pat Buchanan Interview
NBC Tel Aviv Bureau Chief Martin Fletcher interview:
NBC Tel Aviv Bureau Chief Martin Fletcher Interview
Bill Press interview:
Bill Press Interview
Valerie Bertinelli interview:
Valerie Bertinelli Interview
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Charlie Savage:
Charlie Savage Interview Charlie’s new book is titled, “Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy.”
Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich interview:
Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich Interview
Georgetown University Jacques Berlinerblau interview:
Jacques Berlinerblau Interview
UPCOMING GUESTS: Senators Arlen Specter, Tom Daschle and Lincoln Chaffee. If you live in Vegas you can tune in Live or go to our website and listen in the audio archives.
The Basham and Cornell Show broadcasts weekday mornings at 8 am Pacific (11 a.m. Eastern) on KLAV 1230 AM Radio live in Las Vegas. Again, all shows are simulcast worldwide on the Internet (and archived) and can be listened to at Basham and Cornell Radio If you've missed our show, check out the audio archives. We have interviewed John & Elizabeth Edwards, Dennis & Elizabeth Kucinich, Norman Soloman, John Dean, Pat Buchanan, NBC Bureau Chief in Tel Aviv Martin Fletcher, Pulitzer Prize winner Charlie Savage, Congressman Charlie Rangel,Valerie Plame, Christine Pelosi, Dahr Jamail, Senator Mike Gravel; Senator Byron Dorgan; bestselling authors Greg Palast, Paul Krugman, Greg Anrig.
Our MySpace Page
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Let's get Obama and Clinton together! An unbeatable ticket...
MEMORIAL DAY 2008 * GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS
Since the beginning of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, California has lost 492 of its sons, daughters, fathers and mothers. Their median age was 23 and they left behind 205 widows, 3 widowers, and more than 300 children." From the Los Angeles Sunday Times May 25, 2008
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The "War on Terror" sounds like The War on an Abstract Noun". And Appeasement? Let's talk about appeasement. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were SAUDIS, yet Bush has made a deal to give the Saudis over 2 billion in high-tech weapons. Bush also gave into Osama Bin Laden's demands to remove our largest airforce base in Saudi Arabia. That is appeasement.
When someone hates you, send them love. It works like a charm. You make your enemies stronger by fighting them. WE MUST TALK TO OUR ENEMIES. In fact, the minute we stop seeing them as enemies, we heal the rift.
It's easy to fight those who hurt you; the higher law calls on us to love those who hate us and seek to hurt us. Then we will see miracles begin to happen in human relationships.
As Einstein said, "No problem can be solved on the same level it was created on." You must go to a higher level — to a diplomatic or spiritual solution. To retaliate on the level of engaging in fear-based obsession and magnifying the enemy, only makes the "enemy" larger. This is a spiritual law. Violence against innocents on the hopes of killing militants, is always wrong. There are much more clever and thoughtful ways of annihiating an enemy and it starts in your thought about them. They diminish when the nations of world unite to reduce their power. Not by creating more violence! We are feeding the violence by fighting it. We are giving it more power.
There are 1.5 billion Muslims. They want to raise their children in peace. Only fundamentalist extremists (in all religions) preach intolerance. To those who do so, look in the mirror.
We have to try to understand others. Why do people blow themselves up to kill Americans? Is it because they 'hate us for our freedoms' -- or could it be that our footprint is on their holy land raping their oil, killing their children and stealing their natural resources. "Seek first to understand rather than be understood...You get more flies with honey than with vinegar...Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."
McCain is wrong and even going against his prior behavior. If we're trying to spread democracy across the world, we at least have to set an example and talk to the leaders that were voted into power by the democratic process -- as Hamas was in the Palestinian territories! Even in our country we voted in the corrupt Bush-Cheney regime and we call ourselves a Democracy that must be reckoned with.
If we actually stopped making the enemy so powerful with our obsessive focus on him, and go about the business of creating a beautiful, clean, proserous safe world for our children -- focusing on our own challenges at HOME, the "enemy" would never have any power over us. It's our attention to him that makes him bigger, for what you focus on grows.
These simple principles are the absolute answer to all the strife in the world and in our personal lives.
McCain and the Republicans call it "strength" -- that is their code word for war and military might. They think everything can be solved with bombs.
____________________________________Take a moment to appreciate beauty. For weeks I've been awestruck by the gorgeous fuscia color of this bougainvillea in our backyard. I also have Rosemary and it really perks up your mood to breathe the delicious scent. This photo, taken with my phone yesterday, does not do it justice. A week ago, the color was too vibrant to be true. As I appreciate more and more of the beauty in life, it seems to "play" and interact with me. More and more beauty becomes apparent. A French couple stopped their car to marvel at this color the other day, and on Thursday a woman -- whom I swear was an angel — stopped, and at the right moment said the exact words I was thinking: "Nature is the greatest painter." God has given us such beautiful vistas and playful creatures with which to enjoy in this life.
There is an old saying that goes: "Worry is often the cause of illness." The perceived weakening of the economy, too, may have its beginnings in the mind. Many of our problems are problems of perception. The way to be happy is to stop, look up, look around, breathe deeply and realize the sky is not falling. Take a moment to appreciate the smallest things. Think of how you can help someone else who may not have as much as you do. That will increase the wealth in your life a hundred fold. Just watch.
Of course, then there's this.... a portrait of someone who is sorely misguided and believes war is the answer to all our problems...John McCain is aligned with "Pastor" Hagee who actually believes Hitler had a high calling from God to eliminate the Jewish People to force them to establish the nation of Israel -- for a perverted, surrealistic "Armageddon" theory that will force all Jews to be in Israel in order for Christ to come back.. and kill the Jews who did not convert to Christianity!!
God Bless Uncle Lou and Aunt Annie. Keep him alive and off the ventilator.. God Bless all the victims of recent catastophes from the earthquake in China, the cycone in Burma, the wildfires in Florida, and the tornadoes in Oklahoma and Missouri. And our hearts and prayers go out to Katherine Wolf, the beautiful 26-year old mother from our church who suffered a major brain hemorrhage on April 21st, and her faithful family has been at the hospital round the clock ever since. Katherine has made some great strides, but it's still going to be some time before she goes home... God Bless Katherine, Jay and their baby.
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Did you hear Senator Lieberman joking around with Bill Bennett about Hillary Clinton on his right-wing radio show?BENNETT: And Joe, you know, this is my style. This is a girl who puts on her pearls, goes down, throws down a shot of liquor and bombs Iran, you know. This is…lookout Mrs. Bennett, this is my kind of girl.
LIEBERMAN: Hehehe, it does have an appeal to it." BOMBING IRAN HAS AN APPEAL TO IT? Senator Lieberman and Mr. Bennett you should be ashamed of yourselves. (Apparently Hillary never said this anyway.)
MORE ABOUT DIPLOMACY...
Anyway, it's hard but every single time I think hateful thoughts about terrorists, or George Bush or intolerant neocons, I turn my thoughts to love. The hardest people to do this with are ex-friends and family. It works, even if you can only do it 9 times out of 10. It changes everything.
Our enemies can also be our thoughts about ourselves, including our fears of financial insecurity, suspicion, bigorty, intolerance, worry, accidents, disease, terrorism and all sorts of fears of losing what we have or not getting what we want.
Also, to allow the terrorists to define our lives for us, to "hop" to their commands and live in fear of their threats, is to give them too much power.
Thoughts rule the world. We can lift our consciousness above what the material senses tell us. Then we will see heaven on earth.
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HUMILITY
Nothing is set in stone. We are all redeemable, even the "bad guys" in government and politics, even our leaders. I heard a humble young Israeli at a recovery meeting day say that he 'to become humble' is everything. It's the only way to attain peace. He made a list of his character defects and then made a list of each of their "opposites." To overcome depression, think of others first. To overcome selfishness, give to others. To overcome arrogance, learn humility.
Humility is one of the greatest virtues. When I think of how I can "give" instead of "get" the whole day goes better. When I think of how to "understand" rather than be "understood" or force my will and my opinions on others, I attract love.
Love is circular. Let's all be thinking of how we can help others. Human kindness is really all that matters.
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WOMEN WE LOVE AND ADMIRE:
Drew Gilpin Faust, first female president of Harvard, and author of This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Knopf
Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust (born September 18, 1947) is an American historian, college administrator and the first female president of Harvard University. Faust, the former Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is also Harvard's first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or graduate degree from Harvard.
I also adore Raven-Symoné, 22, the youngest Cosby kid and star of THAT’S SO RAVEN! She is a wonderful role model for young girls.
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House Subpoenas Karl Rove! FINALLY
by Lara Jakes Jordan
The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed former White House adviser Karl Rove as part of its inquiry into whether the Bush administration politically meddled at the Justice Department.
Accusations of politics governing decisions at the agency led to the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
The subpoena issued Thursday orders Rove to testify before the House panel on July 10. He is expected to face questions about the White House’s role in firing nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 and the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, a Democrat. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers had negotiated with Rove’s attorneys for more than a year over whether the former top political adviser to President Bush would testify voluntarily.
© 2008 Associated Press
valerie bertinelliLabels: bush, Drew Gilpin Faust, gratitude, Harvard, humility, John Edwards Hillary war, McCain dementia, Obama Basham and Cornell, Valerie Bertinelli
posted by Lydia Cornell at
10:35 AM
326 Comments:
Happy Mothers Day Lydia!
By
MCH, at 3:35 PM
Thank you Mike. All the boys took me out to lunch at Houston's and then I had one of those mini-massages at the mall. Then we went to Sports Authority for some Nike pants and Big League Chew.
By
Lydia Cornell, at 4:58 PM
Happy Mothe's Day Lydia!
By
Mike, at 5:55 PM
BTW, Great pictures and post!
By
Mike, at 5:56 PM
Oops I meant thank you mch.
Mixed up the names.
Ditto to Mike
By
Lydia Cornell, at 6:10 PM
Did you read the article I just posted about Obama's Mama?
She was a fascinating woman and if she were alive today, would connect with Hillary's base.
By
Lydia Cornell, at 6:11 PM
Okay, the blog is publishing again. Thank you for your patience.
Love to all!
xoxox
Lydia
By
Lydia Cornell, at 2:43 PM
Thats ok as my name is Mike also ... but you already have one of those so mch works perfectly fine.
You know, I don't understand all the fuss about speaking with terrorists -- people have been speaking with Cheney for years.
By
MCH, at 6:43 PM
Keith Olbermann unleashed what may well have been his angriest, most blistering Special Comment yet, aimed squarely at his favorite target: President Bush. Olbermann was responding to Bush's claim that he had given up golf in honor of the Iraq war — and his assertion that a Democratic president withdrawing from Iraq would "eventually lead to another attack on the United States" — a statement Olbermann called "ludicrous, infuriating, holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong." Olbermann continued in that vein for a full 12 minutes (or 2,000 words), frequently raising his voice and spitting out his words in disgust.
Olbermann turned Bush's reference to "cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives" around and threw it back at him, saying that such killers were "those in -- or formerly in -- your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes." It didn't get any milder — saying that, to Bush, "freedom is just a brand name," and pointing out that al Qaeda in Iraq was a result of the invasion: "Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush!" Olbermann also criticized Bush's statement that he was "told by people" that there were WMDs in Iraq: "People? What people?... Mr. Bush, you destroyed the evidence that contradicted the resolution you jammed down the Congress's throat, the way you jammed it down the nation's throat."
Olbermann saved his most vicious scorn for Bush's no-golf pledge. "Golf, sir? Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq?...You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed. Sir, to show your solidarity with them you gave up golf?" He then went on to lambaste Bush for failing to keep to that pledge — ostensibly made in August 2003 — and showing photos of Bush playing golf in October 2003. "Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you 6 1/2 years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people," said Olbermann (using slightly odd math), "But the war in Iraq is not about you....It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box." The directive to "Shut the hell up!" came soon after.
The same directive should go to the Deranged John McCain.
By
Larry, at 4:07 AM
Soldier Refuses Iraq Tour, Citing 'Stomach-Churning Horrors'
by Aaron Glantz
A US Army soldier who served as a military journalist in Afghanistan, Japan, Europe and the Philippines announced Thursday his intent to refuse orders to deploy to Iraq.
"As an Army journalist whose job it was to collect and filter service members' stories, I heard many stomach-churning testimonies of the horrors of the crimes taking place in Iraq," said Sergeant Matthis Chiroux, 24, in an announcement under the rotunda of the House of Representative's Cannon Office Building.
"For fear of retaliation from the military, I failed to report these crimes, but never again will I allow fear to silence me. Never again will I fail to stand," he said.
Chiroux said he's aware he will likely face prosecution for refusing the deployment, but said, "I choose to remain in the United States to defend myself from charges brought by the Army if they are willing to pursue them. I refuse to participate in the occupation of Iraq."
Chiroux is a victim of stop-loss, a controversial wartime power that the George W. Bush administration has used to keep soldiers from leaving the military when their term of service expires. Critics call the policy a "back-door draft". More than 50,000 troops have been stop-lossed since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In an interview shortly before his announcement, Chiroux told IPS the stop-loss order sent him into a downward spiral of depression.
"I became borderline suicidal," he said. "I just went into my room and shut the door and barely emerged for close to a month. I just sat in my room reading news about Iraq and feeling completely hopeless, like I would be forced to go and no one would ever know how I felt. I was getting looped into participating in a crime against humanity and all with the realization that I never wanted to be there in the first place."
The turning point, Chiroux said, came when one of his professors at Brooklyn College in New York suggested he listen to the Winter Soldier hearings. The hearings, which were organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, took place in March in Washington, DC.
Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that well-publicized incidents of US brutality like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha are not isolated incidents perpetrated by "a few bad apples", but part of a pattern, the group says, of "an increasingly bloody occupation".
For four days, dozens of Iraq war veterans testified about the horrors they'd seen and the actions they carried out while deployed. As Chiroux listened to their testimony, he realized he was not alone.
"Here's an organization of soldiers and veterans who feel like me," he said. "All this alienation and depression that I feel started to ease. I found them and I've been speaking out with them ever since."
Chiroux timed his announcement to coincide with a Congressional forum meant to highlight testimony offered at Winter Soldier within the halls of Congress.
Nine veterans spoke at the hearing, which was organized by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. They talked about extremely lax rules of engagement handed down by commanding officers, which they said virtually guaranteed atrocities would be committed -- which in turn would create a violent backlash among Iraqi people and a continued cycle of violence.
"On several occasions our convoys came upon bodies that been lying on the road, sometimes for weeks," said Marine Corps veteran Vincent Emmanuele, who served in al-Qaim near the Syrian border in 2004 and 2005.
"When encountering these bodies standard procedure was to run over the corpses, sometimes even stopping and taking pictures, which was also standard practice when encountering the dead in Iraq," he told the Progressive Caucus.
"On one specific occasion, after I had shot a man trying to flee while planting a roadside bomb, we dragged his body out of the ditch he was laying in and we subsequently left this man to rot in a field where we saw this man up to a week later," Emmanuele said.
Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War hope Thursday's Progressive Caucus hearing will spark an investigation by a full Congressional committee and speed the end of the wars. But with the House of Representatives moving toward approving another 186 billion dollars in war funding, these former soldiers and Marines will have to satisfy themselves with the sentiments of liberal Congresspeople like Maxine Waters, who praised the veterans for speaking out.
And McCain says the war is already won.
By
Larry, at 4:14 AM
John McCain’s Promise to the World–‘You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet Folks’
By Mark Glenn
Americans and others around the world–weary from the ‘war on terror’ and beginning to recognize that the present debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan are just the tip of the planned iceberg to come–may be holding out hopes that things will change with the upcoming presidential elections in the US. In some respects they are right–things will change, but only in the sense that they will go from ‘run-of-the-mill’ horrible to ‘exceptionally’ horrible, and particularly if John McCain is elected. With the election of George Bush in 2000 the world was given Afghanistan and Iraq, but with the election of Maddog McCain it will be Iran, Syria, and–even more worrisome–Russia.
The proof that the son of Admiral McCain (appointed as overseer of the cover-up of Israel’s murderous attack on the USS Liberty in 1967) will not only ‘follow the course’ but will widen the road to Armageddon to include even more bloodshed and world-wide instability is a no-brainer. He has made it clear–both by his actions as a US Senator and on the current campaign trail–that he will do whatever is required of him by his Zionist masters in getting elected to the highest office in the world. He stated clearly that America will be in Iraq for the next 100 years and said unequivocally that there will be ‘more wars’ under his watch. When asked about his plans for Iran while stumping for the American vote, he mockingly spoke about the destruction of millions of innocent lives by mimicking the old Beach Boys’ song with his own version of ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb…bomb, bomb Iran’. He has lately become cozy with Pastor Rod Parsley whom he calls his ‘spiritual guide’ and a ‘moral compass’ for America. Parsley, in the same screeching and hollering tones that have come to typify his internationally-televised sermons had the following to say concerning the clash of civilizations between the Christian and Muslim worlds–
‘Islam is an anti-Christ religion…America was founded in part with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed…America has historically understood herself to be a bastion against Islam in the world…I do not believe our nation can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam…’
Parsley, seemingly destined to replace the aging (and soon-to-drop-dead-from-weight-induced-heart-failure) John Hagee as the new voice of Christian Zionist mania ended his comments with ‘We were built for the battle!!! We were created for the conflict!!! We get off on warfare!!!’
In other words, Parsley, the man whom John ‘Son of Cain’ McCain considers his moral advisor has interpreted the Book Of Revelations and the Apocalypse therein to mean that America’s reason for existence is fighting Israel’s never-ending wars against the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims spread out in dozens of countries at a time when America is all but bankrupt.
Now however–as if a protracted war against the Islamic world weren’t enough–there is a new twist to the madness that truly portends the worst for all mankind, which is no less than potential conflict with a nuclear armed, nationalist-minded and increasingly-assertive Russia.
Besides the statements coming out of McCain himself–namely that Russia should be excluded from the G8, that Putin is nothing more than a KGB thug and other verbal daggers meant to taunt and threaten Russia, there are McCain’s campaign advisors to consider. There is Max Boot who lauds McCain as the candidate who would ‘scare the snot out of our enemies’ and whose ‘bellicose aura’ would result in other countries being ‘more afraid to mess with him than with other occupants of the Oval Office’ including–if it can be believed, George Bush himself. Robert Kagan, one of the ayatollahs of the Project for the New American Century (basic blueprint for worldwide American warmongering and domination) has made pushing for confrontation against Russia his favorite calling card. James Woolsley, former CIA director (who also sits on the same Jewish Institute For National Security Affairs investigated several times by the FBI for Israeli espionage and who has called for the release of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard from prison) has never met a war he did not like, including any future conflict with Russia. Besides these individuals, there is Bill Kristol to consider, son of one of the godfathers of the Neocon movement and himself co-founder and chairman of Project for a New American Century, and, last but certainly not least, there is John Bolton, former Bush-appointed ambassador to the UN who salivates so much at the prospect of war against Iran and Syria that he should wear a bib in public.
All of the aforementioned men, including McCain himself, have publicly supported Bush’s move to station US missiles in countries bordering Russia, a move viewed so threatening that Putin warned that countries allowing themselves to be used as American proxies would have nuclear weapons aimed at them.
Those who doubt it is within the Neocon schedule to bring about war with a nuclear-armed Russia should keep in mind Israel’s motto of ‘never forget’. What’s at stake here is the settling of old scores. Israel was founded by the very same Trotskyite Marxists forced to flee the Soviet Union upon Stalin‘s takeover of power, the same Stalin who was so much an enemy of Trotsky that he had him killed by an icepick-wielding assassin in Mexico. For decades following their fall from power in Russia, these same internationalist Zionists dreamed of the day Russia and her vast natural resources would fall back into their hands like ripened fruit. With the ‘fall’ of communism, the election of Boris Yeltsin as president and the ‘privatizing’ of Russia’s various state-run businesses into the hands of the now-infamous ‘oligarchs’ it seemed as though Israel had reacquired what she had lost decades earlier–an economic foothold in Russia that would afford the Jewish state an opportunity of siphoning off vast amounts of wealth. With the election of Putin, the re-nationalizing of the aforementioned ‘privatized’ ventures and the flight of the oligarchs (mainly to Israel) all of that changed. Now, Israel and her supporters seem to be hell-bent upon using the military might of the United States in trying to bring to heel a Russia equally hell-bent upon surviving in the dangerous jungle of Neocon mayhem.
The reader should also keep in mind other factors as well. Israel intends to become–not just a world power, but the world power. The irrational, megalomaniacal, unstable and messianic-minded individuals who dragged her forth from her 2,000 year old grave have spoken openly of making Jerusalem the capitol of the world in line with the Old Testament idea that the Jews are God’s chosen people and that Gentiles were created for the purpose of serving them. How does Israel then achieve such an exalted position in terms of world power if there are competing powers such as the US and Russia? The answer is easy–have them wipe each other out. Those who doubt such a thing would be possible should keep in mind the 1967 war between Israel and the Arab nations surrounding her when the US came within minutes of launching a nuclear strike against Soviet-allied Egypt in what was code-named Operation Cyanide, the purpose of which was to drive the Soviets out of the Middle East permanently. There is no doubt the Soviet Union would have launched a counter-strike against American assets, resulting in an escalation and finally to all-out war between the two nuclear superpowers. As one Old Testament prophet once quipped, ‘a leopard does not change its spots,’ and just as Israel was willing to sit by and allow the US and Russia to go to war then, so too is she willing to orchestrate a nuclear Armageddon that would result in two at least nominally Christian countries being wiped off the map.
During the Clinton years, patriotic Americans never envisioned a presidency as bad as that of Bill and Hillary. Someone suggesting that one day in the future Americans would look back on the Clinton years as the good old days (relatively speaking) would have been laughed out of town. Much to their chagrin however, this is exactly what has taken place after 8 years of George Bush and his wars for Israel. By the same token, now if someone were to suggest that America will one day look back on the George Bush years with longing, such as person would be treated to the same ridicule, and yet, with a McCain presidency, that is more than likely what is to come.
In a recent interview, McCain–the same would-be president who wrote a glowing endorsement of the book by Jay Cristol exculpating Israel’s slaughter of 34 Americans serving aboard the USS Liberty–said “There’s going to be other wars. I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars…’ Judging by his comments and the company he keeps one is forced to conclude that indeed the Manchurian Candidate speaks from his heart, and that those ‘other wars’ he promises may include not only the war to end all wars, but the war to end all life on earth. Put in less fancy terms, ‘you ain’t seen nothin’ yet folks.’
Under the Deranged McCain: "More wars, lots of wars." You ain't seen nothing yet.
By
Larry, at 4:24 AM
George Bush and the 1000 Year Reich
By T Stokes
Britain and America were told W.W.II was a war against totalitarianism, Hitler’s idea for a united Europe, which was called in documents, the E.E.C Meant Britain went to war to prevent it, yet recently, Britain went begging to enter this very E.E.C. so what was the war really about?
Britain’s most popular leader ever, Neville Chamberlain was dead less than a year after being replaced by war criminal Winston Churchill. Similarly, less than a year after Robin Cook M P left office he was also dead, while war criminal Tony Blair faked and fudged us into another Mid-east war.
The Iraq wars we were told, was for regime change, as Saddham was a monster, then it was about Weapons Of Mass Destruction, then to insure oil supplies, then to bring democracy, then about climate change, then to secure Israeli interests in the area.
The planned U.S embassy/barracks in Iraq is advertised as the biggest project in any neighboring country which will give the U.S. influence for a thousand years, George Bush has described it as bringing in; “the shining age of human history”. Resistance at home to U.S. and British government terrorism, where the attacks on the town of Fallujah was compared to the attack on Dresden, has been so vast and so widespread, that the intelligence services watch their own people more than their so called enemies.
Here in Britain we watched the I.R.A bomb and burn their way across the country, while Gerry Adams and Martin Mg Guinness were actually protected by the British, and when I.R.A terrorist Bernadette Devlin was shot, her life was saved by army medics. In this present “war on terror” we arrest anyone, e. g. Muslims, who speak in a way that the government does not approve. Many feel there was no Mid-East terrorism before we went in and bombed their families and peoples, and we used this as an excuse to bring in changes.
Those who study the sinister erosion of civil liberties, claim the anti-democratic NWO (New World Order) means there will soon be large prisons built for dissidents, like those who break the rules on political correctness and speak out openly, as in W.W.II.
Under law changes while Tony Blair was in office, we could have our goods impounded by the state, the current mass influx of foreign nationals in both Britain and the U.S is part of the long term plan to emasculate our own people. New Labour has again played the race card by allowing Gordon Brown to be a cowardly appeaser to Robert Mugabes murders in Rhodesia ( Zimbabwe ) this institutionalized racism is what we have come to expect from them.
In Britain some years back, we had an honest politician who broke ranks and told the public what the NWO had in store for us, he lost his position and was pilloried by the press, a learned and patriotic man, Enoch Powell was to die in almost obscurity on Feb 8th 1998.
By
Larry, at 4:27 AM
Conservatives in Denial about North American Union and Canadian Sovereignty
By Kevin Parkinson
Some of your readers may remember the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership) Conference held at Montebello, Quebec in August, 2007. Primer Minister Harper hosted Presidents Bush and Calderon in what turned out to be a major fiasco.
The Quebec Provincial Police admitted that undercover police infiltrated a peaceful protest against the SPP Conference, whose mandate is for the 3 countries to work towards the formation of a North American Union. An embarrassing video of the failed attempt to provoke violence by the undercover cops was posted for the world to see on Youtube. So far the Conservative government has failed to conduct an inquiry in to this anti-democratic tactic, and has moved Canada one step closer to a police state.
When the conference (no media present) was over, Harper basically laughed in the face of all Canadians when he said the sessions were about regulating the trade of “jellybeans” between the 3 countries. Bush smirked in his trademark smile and warned of conspiracy theorists dreaming up nonsense. The media was silent, basically complicit with government in its failure to the public to investigate and report on the whole SPP issue.
So why have a big conference at a huge expense for all Canadian taxpayers last August? And why did Harper go to New Orleans on April 28, 2008 for a 4th SPP conference in 4 years? To count jellybeans?
Since these conferences began 4 years ago, no one beyond an elite group of corporate CEO’s has had the issues explained
to them, or been asked how they feel about the SPP- until now.
The Council of Canadians recently commissioned Environics Research Group in April 2008 to find out how Canadians feel about the SPP issues. The full report is available at http://www.canadians.org/ however I have included a short summary here.
87% feel that Canada should regulate its own environmental, health and safety standards
89% feel that Canada should place restrictions on exports of our gas and oil if it is need here first
88% feel that Canada should have a national water policy that recognizes water as a basic human right
48% do not feel that Canada should harmonize its security policies with the U.S.
86% feel that the SPP agreement should be debated and submitted to a vote in Parliament
For 4 of the above items, the Canadian government is actually working in the reverse direction to public opinion!
Given the overwhelming percentages above, notwithstanding the issue of security in which Canadians are divided, what is the Conservative government doing to respond to Canadian concerns? Where is the debate in the House? Where are the questionnaires for the ridings to determine how people feel about the SPP issues?
When will the Conservative government start making Press Releases to inform Canadians about the 4 years of secretive SPP meetings? Will the government admit that the veil will eventually be lifted on the SPP and a North American Union will be rolled out without fanfare by 2010?
If the Conservative government is flagrantly disregarding public opinion now, will it be any different in 2010?
I think our local MP Guy Lauzon better start tackling some of the tough questions affecting all Canadians, forget about spending his time on personal promotion, and find enough courage to give his constituents some truthful answers about the SPP and where it is leading.
If you think high oil and gas prices are changing our lives now, just wait a couple more years for the emerging North American Union. Unfortunately, it may become the biggest giveaway of Canadian sovereignty in our lifetime.
By
Larry, at 4:35 AM
Price of power: McCain action helped Arizona land developer
By Matt Kelley, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain secured millions in federal funds for a land acquisition program that provided a windfall for an Arizona developer whose executives were major campaign donors, public records show.
McCain, who has made fighting special-interest projects a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, inserted $14.3 million in a 2003 defense bill to buy land around Luke Air Force Base in a provision sought by SunCor Development, the largest of about 50 landowners near the base. SunCor representatives, upset with a state law that restricted development around Luke, met with McCain's staff to lobby for funding, according to John Ogden, SunCor's president at the time.
The Air Force later paid SunCor $3 million for 122 acres near the base. It was the highest single land transaction of the private lots purchased by the government — three times the county's assessed value and twice the military's estimated value. SunCor also donated another 122 acres. Alan Bunnell, a spokesman for SunCor's parent company, Pinnacle West Capital, said the donation was meant to minimize the company's tax bill and enhance the value of adjacent property it owns.
McCain has long-standing ties to SunCor and Pinnacle West:
• McCain's campaigns have received $224,000 since 1998 from donors connected to Pinnacle West, including $104,100 for his current presidential run, according to a USA TODAY analysis of campaign-finance data compiled by the non-partisan CQ MoneyLine. Donors include employees of Pinnacle West and its subsidiaries, employees' spouses and the company's lobbyists and political committees.
• Pinnacle West's Chief Executive Officer Bill Post, vice president and lobbyist Robert Aiken and former president Jack Davis, who retired in March, are fundraisers for McCain's current presidential campaign. SunCor President Steve Betts, who joined the company weeks after the military land deal, is a former campaign lawyer for McCain and has raised more than $100,000 for his current campaign.
McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers said the senator's ties to SunCor had nothing to do with his support for the project. The Air Force had a legitimate need for the land and asked for money to buy it in a March 2002 budget planning document, Rogers said in an e-mail.
Rogers said McCain, who took credit for the funding in a floor speech in 2003, wanted to prevent the Pentagon from closing Luke. The military had cited encroaching development in deciding to close another Phoenix-area installation, Williams Air Force Base, in 1993.
"Sen. McCain's interest in this matter was only to support the formal requirements of the Air Force in a way that furthered the interests of the taxpayer," he said.
Bunnell said the company's ties to McCain were not a factor in the land deal. "This was done without any political intentions or anything other than to preserve Luke Air Force Base," Bunnell said.
Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the government watchdog group Public Citizen, said McCain appeared to be helping campaign donors.
"Any time the executives of a corporation work hard at raising funds for any candidate, they almost always want something in return," Holman said. "When it comes to SunCor … they were asking for a specific earmark. And McCain delivered."
SunCor seeks help
Executives from SunCor, which owned more than 3 square miles' worth of land near Luke Air Force Base, had complained for years about state and municipal restrictions on development there.
The issue came to a head in 2001, when the state Legislature expanded the area where development was restricted but rejected a $15 million plan to compensate landowners, Ogden said.
Ogden said SunCor developed the idea for the Air Force to buy land around the base and lobbied McCain and other members of Arizona's congressional delegation to put the money in the Pentagon's budget. Rogers and Ogden said SunCor representatives met with McCain's staff, but not the senator himself, to discuss the proposal.
"Sen. McCain was probably the last one to come on board," said Ogden, who retired from SunCor in 2005. "He's not big on anything that would help only one state, but I think he certainly saw the need to do something to help Luke."
Republican Rep. Bob Stump, whose district included Luke, got $13 million approved for the plan in 2002, when he was chairman of the House Armed Services Committee during his last year in Congress. McCain secured an additional $14.3 million for the Luke land program the next year.
Rogers refused to say whether McCain knew that SunCor owned land likely to be purchased.
Market value disputed
Once it got the money, the Air Force bought land surrounding a munitions storage area to create a buffer zone. First, the military bought 143 acres from hospital operator Sun Health Properties for $950,000, or $6,646 an acre, in July 2004. Five months later, the military paid SunCor far more for fewer adjacent acres: $3 million for a 122-acre parcel, or $25,000 an acre. The company then donated an adjacent 122 acres to the Air Force.
Bunnell said SunCor structured the transaction that way to maximize its proceeds and to help preserve the value of nearby property it owns, since the sale price would be used by appraisers to value comparable properties. Records show three SunCor-owned parcels next to the base are assessed at $24,000 to $43,500 per acre.
Donating property provides a company with a tax deduction based on the fair market value of the land, said David Cameron, associate director of the tax program at Northwestern University's law school. A company's profit in a land sale to the government, on the other hand, can be taxable, he said.
Bunnell said the company's appraisal of the land put its value at about $25,000 per acre. That is precisely the per-acre rate the Air Force paid SunCor. If the donated land is included, the Air Force paid "well below market value" — half of the company's appraised cost — for the entire 244 acres, he added.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which acted as the Air Force's real estate agent in the deal, had appraisals of the land supporting the $3 million price based on the total 244-acre package, spokeswoman Jennie Ayala said in an e-mail. That would be about $12,500 an acre, or half the value cited by Pinnacle West. Ayala said she could not disclose details of the military's appraisals because they were "privileged information."
The Maricopa County Assessor's Office calculated the 2005 value of the 244 acres at $1.9 million, or about $7,900 per acre, spokesman Paul Petersen said in an e-mail. Petersen said in a telephone interview that the county tries to accurately reflect market value, but often comes up with assessments that are lower than actual sales prices.
County records say the former Sun Health property was assessed in 2005 at $290,000, or $2,029 per acre, less than a third of the per-acre price the Air Force paid.
The Air Force has made offers to buy or purchase development rights for other parcels of SunCor land near Luke, Bunnell said, but no agreements have been reached.
McCain's not only Deranged but he is also Corrupt.
By
Larry, at 5:05 AM
Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s most influential investment banks, underscored that sentiment Friday when it hiked its oil price forecast for the second half of the year to $141 a barrel, up from $107 previously. Analysts at the bank argue that the oil market is undergoing a “structural repricing” that will continue to play out for some time to come.
“We would view any pullback in oil, regardless of the size or duration — although a correction could be as large as 15 percent — as an opportunity to re-establish long positions in oil before the summer,” Goldman Sachs advised traders.
Translation: Buy when barrels go on sale, because prices are bound to keep heading higher.
And buy they did Friday. The price for a barrel of benchmark light, sweet crude for June delivery jumped $2.17 to settle at record close of $126.29 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the session, prices surged to $127.82 a barrel, also a new high.
And McCain says the economy is good.
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Larry, at 5:18 AM
That's funny!
mch: "You know, I don't understand all the fuss about speaking with terrorists -- people have been speaking with Cheney for years."
By
Lydia Cornell, at 9:52 AM
Manufacturing continues to fall according to new numbers from the Federal Reserve released on Thursday. Industrial production, including factories and mines, fell 0.7 percent in April. The number of plants being utilized also fell to 79.7 percent, that's the lowest number since September 2005. Motor vehicle production dropped 8.2 percent, continuing a month over month decline.
And Bush is proud of this.
By
Larry, at 9:12 PM
Food prices were sharply higher in April, the biggest jump in food prices in 18 years. Inflation is running officially now at 3.9 percent. Gas prices have hit another record high. And home foreclosures in April were up 65 percent over a year ago, with more than 243,000 households going into foreclosure. Kevin Phillips, author of the book, "Bad Money," says more misery is actually being felt by workers than government numbers indicate. He says real consumer prices are up by much more than the official inflation number.
McCain says this is a sound economy. Very delusional.
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Larry, at 9:22 PM
A big part of the American Dream is based on the premise that if you work hard, you can provide for yourself and your family. But in today’s economy, good jobs are disappearing.
To survive, America’s workers are forced to take low-paying jobs that rarely offer health care or retirement security—and that’s not right, says Constance, a 59-year-old single woman from Illinois. If you work in the United States, you should be able to do more than just scrape by.
I left a job in a neighboring state two years ago to come back to help take care of my last immediate family member. I am single. I moved to Illinois, accepting a position with a small insurance company, who downsized, and within six months I was out of work. You can’t afford health insurance on unemployment wages.
I hired into a new position five months later, after a long search, and enrolled in their health insurance. I worked for them nine months, and again the company downsized and my job was eliminated. Again, I lost the health insurance, even though I was offered COBRA, [which I couldn’t afford because of] the exorbitant cost. You can’t pay $400 a month for health insurance when you are making $150 a week on unemployment.
After searching for employment, and finding nothing in this depressed economy here, I took a position with an insurance agency, which employs six people. [The owner] would not purchase a group plan and told us we were considered “self employed,” and we have no benefits.
Needless to say, at age 59, my alternative is eating or having health care. I have always worked all my life, paid my bills, voted in every election, and now find myself living beneath the poverty level.
Constance is one of the more than 26,000 people who took the AFL-CIO/Working America 2008 Health Care for America Survey. In the comprehensive survey, nearly 7,500 respondents took the time to write about their personal health care experiences. The overwhelming majority, 95 percent, say the health care system needs fundamental change or to be completely rebuilt.
Like Constance, 57 percent of the uninsured and 61 percent of people with uninsured children had to choose between paying for medical care or prescriptions and other essential needs such as food, rent or mortgage and utilities.
The AFL-CIO is mobilizing to make health care a major issue in the 2008 presidential and congressional campaigns and will present the results of this survey to candidates for public office at every level and increase its mobilization to help ensure that candidates who win in November go into office with a mandate for real health care reform.
The two Democratic candidates contending for the presidential nomination, Sens. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), have released comprehensive health plans that would help working families, unions and responsible employers providing health care coverage. The Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) wants to hand individuals the burden and the bill for health care.
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Larry, at 9:25 PM
Exposing McCain’s ‘Free Ride’
by Seth Michaels,
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is running for president, and he’s running on a Bush-style platform that won’t turn America around for working families. In a time of economic crisis, this could stop his candidacy cold—because the last thing we need is more of McSame.
There’s one problem, though: The national press, whose job it is to talk about the policies and priorities of candidates, hasn’t given McCain any scrutiny on the real issues. The media elite decided long ago that they like him too much to look too closely.
As a corrective to this media bias, Media Matters for America has released Free Ride: John McCain and the Media in which authors David Brock and Paul Waldman detail exactly how the senator has been able to manipulate the press over his decades-long career in Washington.
Brock and Waldman note that the press holds McCain to a different standard—ignoring his flip-flops, underplaying his gaffes and keeping his hard-right voting record and lack of expertise out of their coverage. They write:
To grasp just how different his media image is, imagine for a moment if every politician were portrayed the way John McCain is. The focus would stay on their perceived greatest strengths, not their most glaring weaknesses. Reporters would re-tell the stories of candidates when they seemed at their best, not the moments when they were at their worst. Their “character” would be defined in the media by the noblest thing they had ever done, and the less flattering incidents would be pushed aside, to be dismissed if mentioned at all.
Despite his image as a campaign finance crusader, McCain is deeply tied to Washington’s lobbyist culture. Despite his image as a “maverick,” rather than a typical Republican, McCain has been a loyal vote for Bush’s priorities—voting with Bush 89 percent of the time, and 95 percent in 2007.
Cutting through the myths and the spin by getting to the truth about McCain’s record and policies, and applying public pressure on him to pledge a different course, are at the heart of the AFL-CIO’s McCain Revealed effort. Union members across the country, from New Hampshire to California, are working hard to mobilize and get the word out about, and to, John McCain.
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Larry, at 9:27 PM
Edwards rules out vice presidential run with Obama
By David Alexander
Reuters- Former presidential contender John Edwards said on Friday he would not be Democratic front-runner Barack Obama's running mate, but did not rule out taking a role in an Obama administration.
"Won't happen," Edwards told NBC's "Today" program when asked if he would be Obama's vice presidential pick. "This is not something I'm interested in."
Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, dropped out of the presidential race in January after failing to win any early primaries. On Wednesday, he gave his coveted endorsement to Obama over rival Hillary Clinton.
Asked if he had spoken Obama about a role in his administration if he beat Republican John McCain in November, Edwards said, "Only in the most abstract way."
Edwards said Obama had told him, "I want you on my team. I want to help you both in the campaign and with the work we want to do when I'm the president."
His endorsement of Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, came the day after Clinton won a landslide victory in West Virginia that renewed doubts about Obama's ability to draw white low-income voters.
Edwards denied his endorsement had been deliberately timed to take the wind out of her victory.
"It was the right time to do it. I made the decision that the public should know at this point what my view is," he said.
He said he had voted for Obama in the recent North Carolina primary and had decided "that it's time for Democrats to start uniting around this candidate."
By
Larry, at 9:34 PM
SUNDAY TALK SHOW LINE UP
ABC’s “This Week”: Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), and a round table with the New York Times Magazine’s Matt Bai, the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and George Will.
Bloomberg’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt”: Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va).
CBS’ “Face the Nation”: Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Republican Strategist Ed Rollins, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer.
CNN’s “Late Edition”: Carlos Gutierrez, U.S. Commerce secretary; Trent Lott, McCain supporter and former U.S. senator; and CNN’s John King, Jessica Yellin and Dana Bash.
C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers”: Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) will be interviewed by the Dallas Morning News’ Todd Gillman and Politico’s Martin Kady.
“Fox News Sunday”: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Republican whip and McCain surrogate; Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.); Karl Rove, former White House senior adviser and Fox News contributor; Big Brown’s trainer, Rick Dutrow Jr., Power Player of the Week; and a panel with Brit Hume, Washington managing editor of Fox News; Mara Liasson, National Public Radio and Fox News; Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard and Fox News; and Juan Williams, National Public Radio and Fox News.
MSNBC’s “Chris Matthews Show”: Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic; Gloria Borger of CNN; Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune; and Norah O’Donnell, chief Washington correspondent, MSNBC.
MSNBC’s “Tim Russert”: Ted Sorensen, author of “Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History,” and Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian.
NBC’s “Meet the Press”: Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and a round table with former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), Mike Huckabee, Republican strategist Mike Murphy and Democratic strategist Bob Shrum.
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Larry, at 4:16 AM
McCain Can Run, but Bush Won’t Hide
By FRANK RICH
THE biggest gift President Bush has given his party this year was to keep his daughter’s wedding nearly as private as Connie Corleone’s. Now that his disapproval rating has reached the Nixon nadir of negativity, even a joyous familial ritual isn’t enough to make the country glad to see him. The G.O.P.’s best hope would be for both the president and Dick Cheney to lock themselves in a closet until the morning after Election Day.
Republicans finally recognized the gravity of their situation three days after Jenna Bush took her vows in Crawford. As Hillary Clinton romped in West Virginia, voters in Mississippi elected a Democrat in a Congressional district that went for Bush-Cheney by 25 percentage points just four years ago. It’s the third “safe” Republican House seat to fall in a special election since March.
Party leaders have been haplessly trying to identify possible remedies ever since. It didn’t help that their recent stab at an Obamaesque national Congressional campaign slogan, “The Change You Deserve,” was humiliatingly identified as the advertising pitch for the anti-depressant Effexor. (If they’re going to go the pharmaceutical route, “Viva Viagra” might be more to the point.) Yet for all the Republican self-flagellation, it’s still not clear that the party even understands the particular dimensions of its latest defeat and its full implications for both Congressional races and John McCain in November.
The Mississippi election was actually a runoff, required by law after a preliminary vote left neither candidate with the required 50 percent. In the last round, on April 22, the Democrat, Travis Childers, beat the Republican, Greg Davis, 49 percent to 46 percent. (The rest went to minor candidates.) On Tuesday, that margin increased dramatically: the Republican remained at 46 percent while the Democrat jumped to 54 percent.
What happened in the intervening three weeks helps explain why. The G.O.P. didn’t merely step up its expensive negative campaign, attempting to take down Mr. Childers (who is a white, conservative Democrat) by linking him with Mr. Obama, a ranting Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Nancy Pelosi. It also brought in the party’s big guns. Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain recorded mass phone pitches for Mr. Davis. Karl Rove and Mr. Cheney campaigned for him.
The vice president’s visit was last Monday, the centerpiece of a get-out-the-vote rally in DeSoto County, a G.O.P. stronghold. “We’ll put our shoulders to the wheel for John McCain,” the vice president promised as he bestowed his benediction on Mr. Davis. Well, he got out the vote all right. In the election results the next day, the Childers total in DeSoto County increased 142 percent, while the Davis count went up only 47 percent.
The district as a whole is the second whitest in Mississippi. (Its black population is 27.2 percent.) It’s the sole district Mr. Obama lost to Mrs. Clinton in the state’s Democratic primary in March. Yet even in this unlikely political terrain the combination of a race-based Republican campaign and the personal intervention of Mr. Cheney energized enough white moderates and black voters to flip the district to the Democrats. Keep in mind, it’s the Deep South we’re talking about here. Imagine how the lethal combination of the Bush-Cheney brand and backlash-inducing G.O.P. race-baiting could whip up a torrential turnout by young voters, black voters and independents in true swing states farther north and west.
Just 36 hours after the Mississippi debacle, Mr. McCain tried to distance himself from the administration by flip-flopping on his signature issue, Iraq, suddenly endorsing just the kind of timetable for withdrawal he has characterized as “surrender” when proposed by Democrats or Mitt Romney. (When Mr. McCain proposes it, he labels it “victory.”) But hardly had Mr. McCain spoken than his message was upstaged by Mr. Bush’s partisan political speech in Israel. The president implied that Mr. Obama would have enabled the Nazis even more foolishly than his own grandfather, Prescott Bush, did in the 1930s when he maintained “investment relationships with Hitler’s Germany,” as Kevin Phillips delicately describes it in “American Dynasty.”
Mr. McCain’s Iraq stunt was his second effort in a week to flee Mr. Bush, following a speech bemoaning administration inaction on climate change. These gambits were in turn preceded by Mr. McCain’s attack on the White House response to Hurricane Katrina. Too bad he took this strong stand nearly three years after it might have sped relief to those suffering in New Orleans.
The McCain campaign is hoping that such showy, if tardy, departures from Bush-Cheney doctrine will constitute a galaxy of Sister Souljah moments, each with headlines reading “McCain Breaks With Bush on...” and the usual knee-jerk press references to Mr. McCain as a “maverick.” Enough of these, you see, and those much-needed independent voters might be flimflammed into believing that the G.O.P. candidate bears no responsibility for the administration’s toxically unpopular policies.
You can’t blame him for trying. Independents favor Democrats over Republicans on most issues, according to the April New York Times/CBS News poll, including the economy (by 30 points), Iraq (by 13 points) and health care (48 points).
But are independents suckers? They’d have to be to fall for the pitch that Mr. McCain is an apostate in his own party in 2008. He has been an outspoken Bush defender since helping him sell the Iraq war in 2002 and barnstorming for him in 2004. Despite Mr. McCain’s campaign claims to the contrary, he never publicly called for the firing of Donald Rumsfeld. He is still one of the president’s most stalwart supporters in Congress, even signing on to the president’s wildly unpopular veto of an expansion of children’s health insurance.
Mr. McCain’s one major domestic policy rebellion, over the Bush tax cuts, has long since been ditched. Last Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” his economic surrogate, Carly Fiorina, implied that Mr. McCain would make budgetary ends meet by cutting earmarks — federal pork that, in her inflated estimate, amounted to $42 billion over the past two years. But even if he cut all $42 billion, total federal spending would still be reduced by only 0.78 percent.
Hard as it is for Mr. McCain to run from the Bush policies he supports, it will be far harder to escape from Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney themselves. When Mr. McCain accepted Mr. Bush’s endorsement at the White House in March, he referred three times to the president’s “busy schedule,” as if wishing aloud that the lame-duck incumbent would have no time to appear at, say, get-out-the-vote rallies. Alas, Mr. Bush and company are not going gently into retirement.
Just look at Mr. Rove. Some Democrats are outraged that he is now employed as a pundit by Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal as well as Fox News. Instead of complaining, they should be thrilled that Mr. Rove keeps inviting Republican complacency by constantly locating silver linings in the party’s bad news. His ubiquitous TV presence as a thinly veiled McCain surrogate has the added virtue of wrapping the Republican ticket in a daily and suffocating Bush bearhug, since Mr. Rove is far more synonymous with his former boss than Mr. Obama is with his former pastor.
The Democrats can only hope that Mr. Rove will be a color commentator, so to speak, at the conventions. The parties’ weeklong infomercials are shaping up as quite a study in contrasts. For all the fears of a Democratic civil war, the planets may be aligning for a truce, and possibly a celebration. As fate has it, the nominee’s acceptance speech is scheduled for the night of Aug. 28, exactly 45 years after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. electrified the nation with “I Have a Dream.”
The next day brings another anniversary: Mr. McCain turns 72. And then, on Sept. 1, comes the virtually all-white G.O.P. vaudeville in Minneapolis. You’ll be pleased to know the show will go on despite the fact that the convention manager, chosen by the McCain campaign, had to resign last weekend after being exposed as the chief executive of a lobbying and consulting firm hired by the military junta in Myanmar.
The conventioneers will arrive via the airport whose men’s room was immortalized by a Republican senator still serving the good people of Idaho. This will be a most picturesque backdrop to the party’s eternal platform battles over family values, from same-sex marriage to abortion.
For good measure, antiwar demonstrators from within the G.O.P. — Ron Paul devotees — could provide at least a smidgen of the 1968-style disruptions the Democrats may avoid. In April, the Nevada Republican state convention abruptly adjourned in midsession after the Paul forces won rule changes. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that other Paul cadres, operating below the national press’s radar, have also been fighting guerrilla battles “at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi.”
Already one of the national convention’s de facto hosts — Minnesota’s endangered Senator Norm Coleman — is frantically trying to save his seat by disowning his record as an Iraq war booster and disentangling himself from the president. Good luck! But how can Mr. McCain escape the dread specter of this White House at the convention? Surely Mr. Bush will exercise his prerogative to address the nation in prime time.
Unless, of course, Labor Day week just happens to be the perfect moment for a second Bush daughter to tie the knot in Crawford.
By
Larry, at 5:03 AM
Lydia
Is a happy Mothers day still in Order? If so happy Mothers Day! That was a good post and I wish a speedy recovery to that Woman and well to her and her family. that was a good post!
I have been going through the comments and of course Larry you stand out. Listening to Bush in the middle east and how he wants more Destructive Democratization in the middle east and around the world you know I think McCain is already the new Republican false God and they will get him at the helm one way or the other so this mess can continue.
This mess is going to get a lot worse! McCain will see to it if Bush doesn't do somet5hing to stay at the helm of this Democratic Facade. All right I'll shut up but you peak my curiosity Larry as to where you find all this stuff!
By
an average patriot, at 11:13 AM
Average Patriot - thank you!!
yes, Bush actually, really said this: WAR IS PEACE, just as Orwell predicted.
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Lydia Cornell, at 12:26 PM
We NEED to take a look at what a pathetic dishonest joke the CPI has become..............have you been to the gas pump pr supermarket lately................this pack of dishonest fools feels they can insult our intelligence and tell us gasoline prices are DOWN 2% "seasonly adjusted" and food prices are only up .9%.
Like I said have you been to the gas pumps or Supermarket lately, over the last year and a half gasoline and eneregy prices as a whole have essentially doubled and food prices arent far behind yet the government seems to think they can tell us that gasoline prices are DOWN 2% "seasonly adjusted" when they are at ALL TIME inflation adjusted highs and food prices are rising at ungodly rates.
I dont know about you but food and energy probably make up 65% of my expenses not the roughly 10% or 11% the goverrnment buffoon counters CLAIM it is.
This cabal of cronnies has been robbing senior citizens and the poor blind with these outright lies, and bottom line anyone thats a senior citizen or middle class thinking of voting for McSame and a continuation of GWB's Robber Barron policies is a fool.
Like i said earlier the cabal of robber barrons infecting our government and the banking sector are certainly fools but so are the poor, middle class and seniors who support and vote for these losers...........like Obi Won Kenobi said " Who's worse the fool, or the fool who follows him....................JFK had the right idea when he wanted to dismantle the Federal Reserve and put monetary policy back under the authority of the US Government again.
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Mike, at 1:56 PM
Check out the photo and new caption on the front page. thank you
By
Lydia Cornell, at 3:15 PM
Great photo, kinda reminds me of the Azlea'a on the plantations in the South............Spring and Fall are such great seasons, the weather is great in the Fall in Texas but I sure miss Fall in the North with all the leaves changing and falling.
By
Mike, at 5:01 PM
BTW, great point on appeasment, the hippocrissy coming out of Bush and McSame is astounding!
Obama sure made him look stupid though i cant wait for Obama to crush the angry old man in a debate.
By
Mike, at 5:02 PM
That's an excellent point, Mike -- the angry old man.
Remember during the Bush/Gore debates how Gore's emotions tended to work against him -- especially in the first debate? You just know that with McCain's short fuse, he's going to lose his temper and seriously destroy his credibility. People are going realize you cant have somebody with that kind of temper in charge of the bomb.
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MCH, at 7:02 PM
He will lose his temper AND he will look foolish.............McSame isnt smart enough or sharp enough to go toe to toe with Obama in a debate.........especially when he is running on gWB's policies that about 80% of the country are against.
By
Mike, at 9:15 PM
With Contempt
An Open letter to Dianne Feinstein
By Michael Piotrowski
Dianne,
You may be surprised and offended by my familiar salutation, but you have lost the right to be addressed as Senator Feinstein. Although I have voted for you in every single election I could (a lot, I'm 60), you have failed miserably as my elected Senator. I now completely withdraw my support for you and the Democratic Party. For the past seven years I have begged and pleaded with you do your job and uphold the solemn oaths you have repeatedly sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of these United States and its laws. Your standard pablum response has been a patronizing pat on the head and a vacuous reassurance that someday something might be accomplished through further legislation, providing Bush doesn't veto it or your colleagues disapprove. Your latest such response (written correspondence, 29 April 2008, regarding torture) is the final straw. I am tired of your sorry excuses and dilatory tactics. Your failure to do your duty has helped bring us to this sorry state of affairs.
I was deeply disappointed, but completely unsurprised, by your utter disregard for the Constitution, the law and what is morally right. From what I can deduce from your actions, words and behaviors, protecting your position, your party, and your class are your driving motivations, not governing, not protecting the NATION (you remember the 99% of us who aren't wealthy?), not respecting the rule of law. Despite his assertations to the contrary and your obsequeious submission to them, the President is not, repeat NOT, above or beyond the law whether in peacetime or wartime. In wartime, the President is Commander-in-Chief, and as such is subject to the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as much as the lowest private is. He stands in violation of that code, and YOU accept it. Beyond the many laws this criminal has violated and could be prosecuted for, there is the Constitutional remedy you have repeatedly refused to employ: impeachment.
It is far too late for you to ever regain the respect I once had for you and your party, but at least you might reduce the degree of contempt in which I now hold you. DO THE RIGHT THING: stand up for immediate impeachment. Before you tell me that it is the House's responsibility (trust me, I apparently know more about this than you do), let me point out that it is YOUR responsibility to LEAD. The House will do nothing unless and until the Senate signals its willingness to go forward with it. If your argument is that elections are near and soon he will be out of office, kindly explain to me in a written response that actually addresses the points I'm raising, why that excuses criminal behavior (illegal wiretaps, use of outlawed torture, kidnapping and assassination as government policy, corruption, fraud, cronyism, lying as official policy [Pat Tilman, Abu Graib, Jessica whatever-her-name was}). Failure to impeach this criminal will be the deathblow for this nation. We may stagger on a few years, but I see the end of the United States looming as clearly as the demise of the USSR. Failure to impeach, to hold a fellow member of your socioeconomic class actually responsible for the harm he has caused us will make most doubt the whether the return on investment, the cost of supporting a system that works against 99% of us, is worth it. The Soviet citizens decided that their system wasn't worthy of support and ended it: the same is already happening here.
As an example of why this is occuring, I cite the response I will receive from your office regarding this email. Despite the time, care and thought I have put into it, not only will you not read this, you will probably be completely oblivious to it. I will recieve yet another pablum response thanking me for my interest, citing some meaningless future bill that might be remotely related to one or two of the issues I've raised, written by some juvenile intern hoping to make his or her fortune in politics. In other words, I have wasted my time and thought with trying to communicate with you: you and this system are unworthy of any further support. I will be showing the response I receive from you to many people in my social circle, and advise them to vote one last time for true change. No, not for Obama or Hilary or McCain or any other Democrat or Republican. I will advise them to vote for ANYONE who is not a Republicrat. When that fails to get the message through, as it will, my advice will be to start doing what the Senate does: ignore any laws and resposibilities they don't like, as there is no longer a valid contract between the citizens and their "elected" officials.
Mark my words: you have perhaps a year, maybe two, before the riots start. High gas prices, high food prices, incompetent disaster relief, home foreclosures, lack of jobs, and a loss of faith in the system will combine to create chaos. If your aides were to look up my previous correspondance with you they will find that I accurately predicted the lack of WMD, the quagmire that is Iraq, and a number of other things. I'm sure you believe that if we can just get throught the election, everything will be better with a Democratic President. Wrong: whoever is president will soon discover that we are broke, the business class has no interest in rectifying anything, and we are bereft of influence. More people will lose their homes while you and your colleagues pump billions into corporations "that are too big to fail". Those corporations will take that tax money and invest it outside the United States. The kicker is going to be TV, in February '09. When you have millions of people with no home, no work, no money, hugely expensive gas and food, and nothing much to do besides watch TV, and you take THAT away from them what exactly do you think they will do? Vouchers for new TVs or adapters don't help if you can't afford to feed your children. The subsequent riots will spin completely out of control with most of the National Guard deployed overseas.
While most of this is too far gone to stop, it might yet be mitigated if you do the right thing and support the impeachment of Bush and his cronies. Unfortunately, my concerns are going into the empty head of some ignorant intern who is likely going to have to look up some of the words I've used (and still not comprehend them). So to you who is actually reading this: hide and watch as our country falls over the next two years or so and when it happens, remember that she was warned well in advance and nothing you could do would get her to do anything constructive about it, because that would require more sacrifice and selflessness than she, or anyone in Washington for that matter, is capable of.
Despite all that, I still expect a written response, if only to annoy the office. But don't worry: I don't expect anything like a reasoned, respectful response, just more phony pablum.
with contempt,
Michael Piotrowski - Citizen, Vietnam Vet, Educator, former Democrat
By
Larry, at 9:30 PM
Has the Battle for America Begun?
By Richard C. Cook
This article contains several forecasts, including the possible start of a major war with unforeseeable consequences, if the U.S. should happen to attack Iran .
Of course it is in the nature of forecasts to be speculative. There are also forecasts that are intended to serve as warnings and thereby contribute to preventing the events under analysis from ever taking place.
The world’s financial elite, long having made their homes in the metropolises of Western Europe, also with a major branch in New York City , may be the party that is really behind what could be an attempt to start World War III by pitting the U.S. against the Asiatic land powers, most notably Russia
The elite have long viewed control of the vast resource-rich Asian continent as the key to control of the world, with the fulcrum of domination being the oil-rich Middle East . Such a war could begin if the U.S. and Britain follow through by attacking Iran on the heels of the Afghan and Iraq wars and recent military deployments to the Persian Gulf region.
The attack may be nuclear, egged on by neocon extremists in the U.S. and their counterparts in Israel , who may simultaneously carry the attack to Lebanon and Syria . (See Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, “Beating the Drums of a Broader Middle East War,” Global Research, May 7, 2008.) These events are closely tied to the U.S. economic recession now underway and the 2008 presidential election.
What is unique about this analysis is the author’s contention that the U.S. is being used unwittingly by the European-based financial powers for their own purposes. They know that the U.S. economy is bankrupt, because they have made it so through a quarter century of financial manipulations that have destroyed our manufacturing base and left us horrendously in debt.
Now they have suckered us into the last thing we need—a major Asian land war that threatens to bring Russia and perhaps China into the fray. But that’s all right, because once we have exhausted ourselves and courted nuclear retaliation, Europe, which is uniting under the European Union, will likely be left standing, as will Israel .
Note that Israel was created by and owes its primary allegiance to the European financiers, especially those in London , even though the U.S. has been its primary arms supplier and enabler since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. If the financiers, aided by Israel , can instigate a major war to get rid of Russia , along with the U.S. , as world powers, they will have accomplished their aim.
The Unique Status of the U.S. and Russia
The U.S. and Russia are the two great continental powers which up until about a century ago most stood in the way of the rapacity and greed of the international financial elite. The people of both nations have a history of being deeply spiritual, talented and innovative, and rooted in the land. Both nations tried for a long time to keep Western Europe , with its history of economic and colonialist imperialism, at arms length.
Despite the wars and traumas of the 20th century, both the U.S. and Russia remain cultures where ordinary people have struggled to express themselves, to learn, to work, and to excel, even with Russia ’s background of Tsarist and Soviet autocracy. See, for instance, the writings of Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-).
This heritage is much different from that of the Western European aristocratic culture with its rigid class divisions, where an economically powerful oligarchy has controlled society for centuries and has always managed to stay on top despite wars and revolutions.
The aristocratic tradition is most notable in Great Britain , with the incredible wealth of the Windsor royal family and the concentric circles of power and influence which surround it. These circles are made up of a blend of the old nobility with the more recent additions of bankers, financiers, industrialists, government executives, media moguls, and intelligence operatives who continue to control much of the wealth of the world.
The people who settled America fled that predatory aristocratic culture to find freedom. It is less well known how Tsarist Russia resisted Western European domination, but it is a fact that a longstanding alliance among the House of Romanoff, the Orthodox Church, the rural nobility, and the peasantry came together to create a culture that successfully kept that nation free from external control for most of its history.
European Lust for Control of the Middle East
It was really the European elite, both deeply materialistic and coldly inhumane, that was responsible for both of the 20th century’s world wars, for funding the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia , and for bringing about today’s economic crisis that threatens to reduce to abject poverty or even starve perhaps half of the world’s population. Now a third world war threatens, and while it appears on the surface that the immediate cause may be U.S. ambitions in the Middle East , this is a mask for the underlying machinations of the European controllers who are pulling the strings.
These people couldn’t care less if the U.S. is bankrupted or destroyed in a larger Asian conflict while engaged in doing their dirty work. In fact that appears to be the plan. A nation like the U.S. that owes as much money as it does today to foreigners, including China and Japan who purchase close to half our national debt, is no longer master of its own destiny.
The European desire for military conquest of the Middle East dates to the Crusades which started in the 11th century. By the end of the 18th century, Great Britain had planted itself on the eastern terminus of the region through the conquest of India . In 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt . World War I saw the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, with Britain and France redrawing the map of an area consisting of almost a million square miles. When Israel was founded in 1948, it became a Western bridgehead.
But today it’s the U.S. , with its bases in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, and conquests in Afghanistan and Iraq , that leads the charge. This is so, even though a glance at the map shows how contrary to our strategic interests—and how unimaginably expensive—it is for us to have been drawn into a major open-ended military commitment in this part of the world. Some call it empire. Rational men call it lunacy.
How has this come about? Since the 1970s, the U.S. has been dangerously dependent on Middle Eastern oil and on the OPEC nations to purchase our Treasury bonds. The need to sell our debt abroad came about late in the Vietnam War when our post-World War II trade surplus was reversed and the government went deeply into debt to pay for the war and the growth in income support entitlements.
But there is another explanation for why we are there—pressure from the Jewish lobby. This lobby acts in the U.S. , perhaps unwittingly and certainly against its own interests as U.S. citizens, as a surrogate not only for Israel , but, taking a longer view, also for the European financial elite who backed the creation of a Jewish national state in Palestine in the first place.
Of course many Jews, including sizeable numbers in Israel , themselves no longer believe in policies which have brought them so much ill repute. Increasingly, people of goodwill, including many of the Jewish faith, are coming to understand that neither opposition to the abuses of the financial elite nor questioning the actions of the Israeli state itself is anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic.
But if events continue in the same direction, the Asiatic land powers, now loosely organized through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes China , Russia , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , Tajikistan , and Uzbekistan , with Iran as an observer, will have had enough. There is a line in the sand facing west as well as east. A major war is clearly on its way which seems to be timed to coincide with the ongoing economic collapse that is undermining the U.S. economy and also threatening to plunge much of the world into famine.
Connection with the 2008 Presidential Election
The war scenario is unfolding now and will likely accelerate as we approach the November presidential election. The actions underway appear to be designed to present any new president with a fait accompli, where corrective action is no longer possible. It would be the last and worst of the catastrophes visited on our nation by the revolutionary cabal of George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and the neocon shock troopers who took over when the Supreme Court awarded Bush the presidency after the 2000 Florida election debacle. Within nine months came the 9/11 attacks, followed by wars against Afghanistan and Iraq using off-the-shelf plans. Next came the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Acts.
Now in 2008 the three remaining presidential candidates are all compromised. Hillary Clinton, with her husband Bill, have long been servitors of that branch of the international financial elite headquartered on Wall Street in New York City . Recently, Republican candidate John McCain traveled to do homage to Israel , then attended a soiree with the Fourth Baron Rothschild in London . Barack Obama has also affirmed his loyalty to Israel , though his utterances against Iran are less vehement than those of Hillary Clinton, who has threatened to “obliterate” that nation.
Obama appears the most likely to become president, because the financial controllers, acting through the corporate media, seem to have designated him as such. Hillary Clinton is under intense pressure to get out, even though the Democratic race is a virtual dead heat and she just routed Obama in the West Virginia primary. The latest blow to Clinton is the endorsement of Obama by John Edwards, the Democrats' 2004 vice presidential candidate.
Obama is the candidate who came out of nowhere because eighty percent of Americans believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction. He is the candidate calling for “change,” whatever that means.
Paul Krugman, writing for the New York Times, says, “Mrs. Clinton, we’re assured by sources right and left, tortures puppies and eats babies. But her policy proposals continue to be surprisingly bold and progressive….Mr. Obama is widely portrayed, not least by himself, as a transformational figure who will usher in a new era. But his actual policy proposals, though liberal, tend to be cautious and relatively orthodox.”
The determination by the financial controllers that Obama is the anointed one may also be shown by the entry into the race of former Georgia congressman Bob Barr as the candidate of the Libertarian Party. Barr will siphon votes away from John McCain and make Obama’s election a certainty, just as Ross Perot did with President George H.W. Bush in 1990, allowing the election to swing to pro-business Democrat Bill Clinton.
Barr’s entry is no accident and serves multiple purposes. According to journalist James P. Tucker, Jr., for instance, attendees at an April 25-28 meeting of the Trilateral Commission in Washington , D.C. , made a determination to stop Republican candidate Dr. Ron Paul’s momentum in stirring up a political “revolution.” (James P. Tucker, Jr., “Trilateral Commission: Global Elite Gather in D.C.,” Global Research, May 6, 2008)
Dr. Paul, who has been delivering the news that the Federal Reserve by which the bankers rule should be abolished, and that U.S. foreign policy based on military conquest of the world should end, has been causing, according to the Trilateralists cited by Tucker, “significant future damage.” Bob Barr will doubtless be awarded handsomely for his trouble in helping de-fuse