Memo to Charlie Rangel

Please do not allow the Congress to authorize any additional military spending. President Bush has indicated he will request an additional $50 billion for the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. President Bush and his military have not demonstrated the competence to use taxpayer money for military operations.

The Congress has already authorized far more money for war than the most exhorbitant estimates by any expert prior to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The "cost overrun" of the Iraqi occupation disqualifies the Bush administration from any further credibility or allocations by the American people.

Additionally, it is widely believed that President Bush is seeking an opportunity to effectuate "regime change" in Tehran. The United States is already viewed by our former friends as an aggressive, rogue state. If we proceed to unilaterally attack Iran, causing infrastructure damage and civilian casualties, for whatever ostensible reason, we will further drive a wedge between the American people and the good will of Europeans, Asians, Africans and South Americans.

Finally, military spending has increased drastically under the Bush administration, and domestic programs, as well as traditional diplomatic programs, have received less support from the government and the media. This is a dangerous imbalance that I'm sure you agree needs to be rectified. We must reduce military spending in the long term in order to focus as a country on rejuvenating our society for the future, and building alliances for global cooperation.

Therefore, please use your power and any means at your disposal to impede the appropriation of any additional funds for military operations on behalf of the Bush Administration.

Please work to reduce overall military spending and military conflict as soon as possible.

Thank you for all your hard work.

Sincerely,

AC-130 (Long Version)

As horrific as war is, this Army film of "precision" air attacks on Afghan insurgents raises the nightmare to an even more chilling level. Helpless "personnel" in a tiny, plain "insurgent compound" are eradicated like ants by firebombs. The bombs descend from a US plane, precision targeting the fragile, mortal shapes below as they helplessly flee for their lives from the flying menace.

This film demonstrates how our armed forces have brought the dehumanization of mass killing and destruction to unimaginable efficiency.

No peace will come of this.

The rot in the White House

We're seeing the face of treason beneath the mask of deceit. Why does treason never prosper? Because if it prosper, none dare call it treason.Besides the phony reports, there are rumors of widespread blackmail of Congress persons by Administration officials.But that's another story

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A Rigged Report on U.S. Voting?

After the 2000 Florida election debacle, Congress established a body called the Election Assistance Commission to improve voting and democracy in this country. Two years ago, the commission approached me about doing a project that would take a preliminary look at voter fraud and intimidation and ...

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End Nigh for Muni Wi-Fi?

Wireless internet on a municipal scale seems to be suitable for small to mid-size cities. In larger metropolises, the scale of the engineering has proven to costly and daunting for Chicago, Houston, and other cities.The slashing of hundreds of jobs by Earthlink--many of which were outsourced to India in the first place--underscores the pressures for ISP consolidation and against local entities.

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Dubya Discovers Poverty Data

The poverty numbers being showcased as proof of prosperity are not what they seem. Just because the poverty rate ticks down .3% one year doesn't rectify the five other years in Bush's presidency when the rate ticked upward. In any case, the rate is a full percentage point above when BushCo first took office and introduced tax-cut prosperity.

Furthermore, let's not forget the simple fact that the poverty rate isn't measured on the basis of individual income per se, but on household income. So, a decrease in the poverty rate may simply indicate that more people in every family have to work, or work more.



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Study: US preparing 'massive' military attack against Iran

Raw Story ran this yesterday: The United States may be prepared to launch without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, according to a new analysis of "what the military option might involve if it were picked up off the table and put into action."The scary thing about this article is that it is coming from the fringe media, and the American media don't seem concerned about the human cost of more large scale violence. As Iraq has proven, it is much easier to destroy a country than to rebuild it.For the United States and the Israelis and UK, or whoever else is involved, to insist on smashing up Iran without attempting other diplomatic, humanitarian, and/or international means of resolving the conflict, threatens civilization itself. If our leaders prefer military intervention, on a massive, expensive and destructive scale to any other means of resolving conflict, then it won't be long before we have destroyed the fabric of our own civilization, too.We're all interconnected. You can't have one country trying to dominate the world, or you have war and waste, destruction and human devastation.

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Who Owns the Media and How the People Can Take It Back

This story picks up right where we need it to: telling us how to get active supporting independent and local media. Forget about big corporate media. Citizen broadband, FCC lobbying, letters to Congress, LPFM and other options await the activist who wants honesty, plurality and inclusiveness in media.

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Conyers's Excuses

I heard this this morning on Democracy Now, but didn't catch the full impact of what was being revealed until I read about it online this afternoon.

It's fear. They're all afraid of being gang-tackled by the Republicans and the media. They're afraid the motion would go nowhere and they would be ruined.

Perhaps. But isn't it worth the risk? It could save the country.

So now we arrive at the real "balance of power." Power belongs to those who can balance the Constitution and a calculator for popular support!

The Third Rail War

Firedog Lake is one of the top five political blogs, because of analyses such as this one about the standoff facing Americans over the costs of having a society.The rich are either going to pay taxes again, or America will go out of business in the next generation.We'll have the Founding Fathers' nightmare: aristocracy and debt slavery.

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Corruption

This article describes the unhappy fate of government whistleblowers who reveal contractor corruption in Iraq to the Bush Administration or our military.

This article explains what the Iraq war is really about: enrichment of Bush's corporate allies at the expense of the US taxpayer, the Iraqi people, and the next 10 generations.

A Saturday at the end of August, when Congress and everybody else is on vacation: will the corporate media pick the story up?

The Price of Oil

The skinny on what oil really costs us. Awesome graphics, too. This website provides a comprehensive review of the many-faceted but little publicized "hidden costs" of our addiction to fossil fuels.

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Stuck With Warfare State

Andrew Solomon is barking up the right tree but we might as well be howling at the moon. We have to fight war at home, personally, all the time

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John Edwards: Time to End the Game

End the game- today in New Hampshire

American Fascism

Military backs up corporate imperialism.



The (new) reason we're fighting: to prevent an Iraqi bloodbath.

In the Los Angeles Times today, Julian E. Barnes writes in Sadr's Army Proves Hard to Beat:

In the east Baghdad strongholds of the Al Mahdi militia, U.S. efforts to weaken ties between the militant Shiite Muslim group and the Shiite population are falling short, say American soldiers assigned to carry out the plan.

In Dangerous Delusions, author Leon Hadar contrasts the reality we live in with the fantasy world inhabited by the neocons, Bush, and the portion of the American people they routinely brainwash.

In their alternate reality, the ouster of Saddam Hussein was part of the war on the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. In the real world, Saddam Hussein had no ties to al-Qaeda, whose leaders and members are now hiding in Pakistan (which in the Neocon World is an ally of the United States in the war against al-Qaeda). In the Neocon World, there were WMDs in Iraq. In the real world, such Iraqi WMDs do not exist. In the Neocon World, the United States has liberated Iraq. In the real world, U.S. troops are facing a powerful insurgency, and most Iraqis want them out. In the Neocon World, the United States has turned Mesopotamia into a model of political and economic freedom. In the real world, Iraq is ruled by a Shi'ite government committed to narrow ethnic interests and religious values, its economy is ruined, and it is disintegrating into a bloody civil war. In the Neocon World, the United States is now spreading democracy in the Middle East. In the real world, the United States is providing huge arms packages to help strengthen the power of the theocracy of Saudi Arabia and the military regime of Egypt. In the Neocon World, the Iraq War is strengthening the position of the United States and its allies in the Middle East. In the real world, the Iraq War strengthened the hands of anti-American Iran and its allies in the Middle East, including Hezbollah and Hamas.

Yes, fascism is and has always been the politics of illusion

Consent of the Governed?

It's one thing to pretend you're elected--if the media and the Congress go along with it and drag the American people with them. Then you can stack the courts with political operative judges, turn over government to rapacious and inefficient private interests, and let Congress rubber stamp every unconstitutional action your operatives commit.

But, if you have to start covering your tracks from Congress and the American people, from Inspectors General and subpoenas and lawsuits, and the only way you can keep the evidence of wrongdoing buried is to hide it, bury it, or destroy it, then you're really pleading guilty to all the crimes the people are accusing you of--whether the media publicize it or not.

Take the case of the 5 million missing emails, for example. They have proven to be important as evidence in numerous investigations, including Congressional corruption probes involving the Abramoff syndicate, the outing of a CIA undercover agent, and the firing of the US Attorneys.

The White House has said it is aware that some e-mails may not have been automatically archived on a computer server for the Executive Office of the President.

The e-mails, the White House has said, may have been preserved on backup tapes.

``The Office of Administration is looking into whether there are e-mails not automatically archived; and once we determine whether or not there is a problem, we'll take the necessary steps to address it,'' said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

No leading candidates want to cut Defense

Berrigan exposes how the Democratic candidates are trying to get elected by pandering to the special interests who line their pockets with Pentagon spending. Clinton and Obama are particularly stricken by Berrigan's incisive charges.

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Bob Schieffer Remarks about Petraeus Report

This guy sounds pretty good for a corporate media pundit. I suppose humans have consciences after all, whether they choose to listen to them or not.

Fighting for One America - Dean Pro

health care

Jail them Now

Anonymous Liberal has a penetrating post on the possibility that Gonzo lied to everybody--not just Congress--about the wiretapping program.

My attitude is,

There's already been enough evidence of improprieties by Gonzales, the White House, the NSA, the telecoms, and anybody else who was involved in this sordid history-- even insofar as they just gave (or withheld ) testimony.

This is a brilliant piece of inductive reasoning, but aren't we well past the point of trying to figure out if somebody committed a crime, perjury, or just deceived somebody else in the Administration, or the public, for that matter?

Anybody in Congress who doesn't act to throw these sleazebags in jail is complicit and should likewise be tried for treason, before 2008.

George Bush Owned

Bush can't answer an important question.

DENNIS KUCINICH *I AM MAINSTREAM* MSNBC AUG 07, 2007

Lying About Lying America Into War

This is a video posted by David Sirota featuring Don Rumsfeld lying about how he and BushCo lied us into the Iraq occupation.

Fascist Propagandists, Mainstream Media

If there is anyone in America who hasn't caught on yet, this soliloquy by Chris Matthews should open your eyes to the ugly truth once and for all. Think Progress reports that Matthews lauded Bush for three uninterrupted minutes after his press conference, in which the President pled ignorance and recalcitrantly denied documented allegations of torture,.

Another view of the press conference appeared in Froomkin's comments in the Washington Post:

When it came to Iraq, Bush said at least one thing that was untrue, and one thing that was only too true. "In the July 15th report that I submitted to Congress, there were indications that they had met about half the benchmarks and some of the political benchmarks they were falling short," he said. The White House's own report found "progress" in only eight of 18 benchmarks -- not that the benchmarks had been met. And even that assessment is highly debatable.

So, where was Matthews coming from?
It should be obvious to every American with a brain that CNN--particularly Chris Matthews, Fox--particularly Shawn Hannity, Alan Colmes, Bill O'Reilly and "guests" like Robert Novak, Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol and paid Pentagon propagandist operatives.
None of these people, nor any of the Administration officials they are ostensibly paid to monitor and inform the public about, have a shred of credibility.
But they do have the floor.
What they say to millions of Americans cannot be disputed on the airwaves (although it can on the internet and the blogs, so far), thanks to the Clintons and the big money monopolies in the telecommunications industry.
Not only is it propaganda, it's censorship. Not only are they telling us what to think, but they are squelching any dissent.
"Why?" we used to ask, because we couldn't see the elephant in the room.
"Why don't they want us to know the truth?"
"Why do they have to control all the broadcasting and propagate an incessant daily deluge of pro-big money, pro military, pro-corporate verbiage?"
"Isn't the truth--whatever its content--good enough?"
No.
The truth would open the floodgates of public outrage at pro-business, anti-citizen financial, industrial, trade, environmental, education, and immigration policies.
The truth would cause a surge in public outrage that would sweep most incumbent Congressmen and Senators out of office in the next election--if not sooner.
The truth would reveal payoffs and massive funding shifts from taxpayers' interests to Pentagon interests. The puppetmasters in the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Office of Net Assessment, and other Pentagon think tanks and policy kitchens would be unmasked, in all their fascist, Orwellian, inhumane and uncivilized hideousness.
Thus, George Bush's press conferences, Chris Matthews's soliloquies of praise, Hillary Clinton's defense of lobbyists, Bill Kristol's urge for the surge, etc...

It may already be too late.

We the people have to take back the country now.

Anyone familiar with history knows what will happen otherwise. And we don't want to go there.

BushCo Arms Deal

The $63 billion sham

By Derrick Jackson, Globe Columnist | August 1, 2007

SECRETARY OF STATE Condoleezza Rice said the United States wants to send $63 billion in military aid and weapons to the Middle East to "bolster forces of moderation and support a broader strategy to counter the negative influences of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran."

Talk about wriggling in quicksand. Having destroyed Iraq to save us from horrors that did not exist, Rice now wants to save us from Iran's future nukes by selling American weapons of mass destruction. Over the next decade, the Bush administration wants to give Israel $30 billion in military aid, a nearly 43 percent increase over what that nation received over the last 10 years, according to The New York Times. We want to give $20 billion to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. We want to give Egypt $13 billion.

Do you feel safe?

"This is throwing bad money after worse money," said Frida Berrigan, senior program associate at the Arms and Security Project of the New America Foundation. The program was formerly known as the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute. "You can see the whole arms package as a buyoff of Arab nations for what we've done in Iraq.

"Justifying the sales because these countries feel threatened by Iran doesn't hold water. Iran is five to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon. That gives the United States and its partners more than enough time to come up with diplomatic solutions," Berrigan said. "This is just going to reinforce Iran's desire to have a nuclear weapon."

The United States had already set records for global arms sales. The New York Times reported in November that the Bush administration and American military contractors doubled arms sales from $10.6 billion to $21 billion from September 2005 to September 2006. Berrigan estimates that the latest proposal will increase military aid and weaponry by another 25 percent.

This is a bipartisan craziness that never ended despite the end of the Cold War. Under the dual guise of national security and protecting American jobs, the first President Bush and President Clinton aggressively promoted US arms sales to more than twice their level of the last years of the Cold War.

Lawrence Korb, assistant defense secretary under President Reagan, told the Globe in 1996, "The brakes are off the system. . . . There is no coherent policy on the transfer of arms. It has become a money game; an absurd spiral in which we export arms only to have to develop more sophisticated ones to counter those spread out all over the world. . . . It is a frightening trend that undermines our moral authority in the New World Order."

The absurd spiral did nothing for regional stability, democracy or stop terrorism from spreading to American shores. Saudi Arabia was a big buyer under Clinton. It remained a "problematic ally," according to the 9/11 commission. This week, the US envoy to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, could not decide whether Saudi Arabia was "a great ally" or "undermining" the United States in Iraq.

There is no hint of a coherent policy. Under the president, 80 percent of nations that received arms from America in 2003 were classified by the State Department as being either undemocratic or having a poor human rights record, which covers all the Arab countries in the new deal. Israel is a democracy, but in its 2006 country profile, the State Department cites a source that determined that 322 of 660 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military "were not engaged in hostilities when killed and 141 were minors."

This latest deal is so over the top that Israel is not opposing the $33 billion to Arab states because it gets $30 billion to maintain its military edge. En route to the Middle East this week, Rice denied that the military package was an attempt to buy allies with bombs. She also denied that the United States was relaxing its standards for democracy and human rights.

But a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit said that "the weak response in the Middle East to pressures for democratization, as well as the experience with imported political change in Iraq, is making a mockery of George Bush's 'freedom' agenda." Reuters this week quoted Paul Salem, director of the Middle East Center at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as saying that the arms deal meant Bush's effort to spread democracy in the region was "more than dead."

Berrigan said, "We've created a black hole in what used to be a country and this is supposed to be the solution? More military aid and more high-tech weaponry? The best case scenario is that Congress exercises its power and keeps this from happening."

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.



© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Sanders, Reid, Nussle

Honorable Senator Reid:

Thank you for your hard work and courageous, strong leadership on behalf of the American people over the last 3-1/2 years.

I shudder to think where we might be--especially concerning civil liberties, environmental protection, education and health care, were it not for your consistent support for the values and priorities of working Americans.

Now, Senator Sanders is attempting to force a delay in the Senate confirmation hearing of Mr. Nussle.

Please support the block, as Nussle is another radical, elitist, pro-special interest Bush crony. Haven't the American people had to suffer enough already from the misrule, misjudgment and greed of this class of tyrants?

I know you understand that Americans want to work hard to make our country a better place for us all. Don't allow the Bush Administration to bully the Senate into handing all the rights, privileges, and wealth of our country over to a handful of oligarchs, further disenfranching an already displaced and disempowered electorate.

Thank you.

I trust you to lead us out of the wilderness of debt and the forest of misplaced priorites where the Bush Administration has left us and posterity to wander without a clear vision of the way forward to peace and prosperity for all.