Ok Big Stan is gone, does it make a difference?
From the Michael Hastings article in Rolling Stone
"But even if he somehow manages to succeed, after years of bloody fighting with Afghan kids who pose no threat to the U.S. homeland, the war will do little to shut down Al Qaeda, which has shifted its operations to Pakistan. Dispatching 150,000 troops to build new schools, roads, mosques and water-treatment facilities around Kandahar is like trying to stop the drug war in Mexico by occupying Arkansas and building Baptist churches in Little Rock."
The USA has lost the War. When will they admit this?
Jun 24, 2010
Jun 19, 2010
When are these corrupt politicians going to be fired?
If the financial catastrophe and the gulf catastrophe and whatever other catastrophes lurk have any meaning at all, it is that business as usual is no longer enough to stem the tide of corporate influence--insidious, secret corporate influence--in agencies of the U.S. Government. It is an institutional problem--relentless, remorseless, constantly grasping and insinuating corporate influence. It will never go away. It will only worsen as corporations get bigger and richer and more global, and there has to be an institutional mechanism in place to resist it so that it no longer takes a catastrophe to call the failure of governance of an American regulator to proper attention.
Business as usual is no longer acceptable
Business as usual is no longer acceptable
From:
Sheldon Whitehouse: Clean Out Corporations From Government
The wealth of the international corporate world is staggering. The five biggest oil companies just this quarter posted profits of $23 billion--that is a 23 with 12 zeroes behind it--in just one quarter.
Sen. Whitehouse' example of corporate resources available to influence elections puts it into perspective:
The Republican appointees on the Supreme Court just overturned decades of precedent and 100 years of practice to give these big corporations freedom to spend unlimited funds in our American elections.
Put it to scale. Consider $23 billion of pure profits just in one quarter by big oil, and compare: The Obama and McCain campaigns together spent about $1 billion in the last election. Do the math. For 5 percent of one quarter's profits, big oil could outspend both American Presidential campaigns. That may be some politician's idea of a happy day because that is who they work to please, but it is wrong and it needs to be stopped.
He then looks at how deeply that influence is nestled into our agencies right now:
But think, if that is what corporate influence could do in a national election, think of what those vast, powerful tentacles of corporate influence can do to a little government agency such as the Minerals Management Service: Revolving doors to lucrative jobs in the industry so you are set for life; sports tickets, gifts, drugs; constant, relentless lobbying pressure and threats of litigation; steadily inserting operatives in regulatory positions.
There's more:
http://crooksandliars.com/
Sheldon Whitehouse: Clean Out Corporations From Government
The wealth of the international corporate world is staggering. The five biggest oil companies just this quarter posted profits of $23 billion--that is a 23 with 12 zeroes behind it--in just one quarter.
Sen. Whitehouse' example of corporate resources available to influence elections puts it into perspective:
The Republican appointees on the Supreme Court just overturned decades of precedent and 100 years of practice to give these big corporations freedom to spend unlimited funds in our American elections.
Put it to scale. Consider $23 billion of pure profits just in one quarter by big oil, and compare: The Obama and McCain campaigns together spent about $1 billion in the last election. Do the math. For 5 percent of one quarter's profits, big oil could outspend both American Presidential campaigns. That may be some politician's idea of a happy day because that is who they work to please, but it is wrong and it needs to be stopped.
He then looks at how deeply that influence is nestled into our agencies right now:
But think, if that is what corporate influence could do in a national election, think of what those vast, powerful tentacles of corporate influence can do to a little government agency such as the Minerals Management Service: Revolving doors to lucrative jobs in the industry so you are set for life; sports tickets, gifts, drugs; constant, relentless lobbying pressure and threats of litigation; steadily inserting operatives in regulatory positions.
There's more:
http://crooksandliars.com/
Jun 7, 2010
Osama Bin Laden and Bush Partnership - Congressman Grayson
Alan Grayson - Todays War is now the longest in American History -- Thanks to the Bush crime family.
It turns out that Bin Laden has a keen grasp of the federal budget: "As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujahidin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan . . . ."
But Bin Laden felt that he needed to share the credit for the success of his plan -- share it with the Bush White House. "Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations -- whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction -- has helped al-Qaida to achieve these enormous results." why did the Bush White House do so? Because Bin Laden saw the Bush Administration as his partner in the destruction of America's economy: "It is true that this shows that al-Qaida has gained, but on the other hand, it shows that the Bush administration has also gained, something of which anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind, will be convinced."
The new "war front" to which Bin Laden referred in 2004 was, of course, Iraq. As he put it: "So the war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq . . . ."
There is more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/the-longest-war_b_602108.html
It turns out that Bin Laden has a keen grasp of the federal budget: "As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujahidin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan . . . ."
But Bin Laden felt that he needed to share the credit for the success of his plan -- share it with the Bush White House. "Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations -- whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction -- has helped al-Qaida to achieve these enormous results." why did the Bush White House do so? Because Bin Laden saw the Bush Administration as his partner in the destruction of America's economy: "It is true that this shows that al-Qaida has gained, but on the other hand, it shows that the Bush administration has also gained, something of which anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind, will be convinced."
The new "war front" to which Bin Laden referred in 2004 was, of course, Iraq. As he put it: "So the war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq . . . ."
There is more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-alan-grayson/the-longest-war_b_602108.html
Jun 6, 2010
IT IS TIME TO SEND OUT A MAINSTREAM MEDIA SOS
From:
http://usunemployed.blogspot.com/p/media-sos-campaign-main-street-needs.html
The long term unemployed have now went through the process of sending M-A-Y-D-A-Y faxes to all target members of Congress. Do you want to give those members of Congress the opportunity to ignore that massive campaign without any mainstream press coverage? Are we going to allow Tom Coburn to declare that we will get an extension to 103 weeks and extend it even more and then allow Senator Max Baucus say that he believes 99 weeks is enough and there is hardly any mainstream press coverage?
US Unemployed Blogsite does not believe this is the right thing to do. Too much time and effort has gone into this cause to allow it to be untouched by the larger audiences that will apply the heat to Congress for that "political will". When you consider that the one Senator who promised more weeks has voted against the extensions and then you consider the other Senator who said 99 weeks is enough has voted for the extensions - it really proves the point that these people in Washington are saying one thing to the camera and doing another on the Senate floor. Enough is enough. They all need to walk the walk if they are going to talk the talk.
If you are sitting there thinking to yourself, "what good will that do?” Think again please. Ask yourself again how in the whole wide world this effort could possibly hurt the cause. If you do not get that job you wanted but doesn't exist today, do you have anything better to do? The pressure needs to be mounted if Congress needs that "political will". Remember, the unemployed only represent 9.7% of the United States population.
Millions of other Americans need to fully know the plight of the long term unemployed because mainstream is failing to report the issue. If you are employed and not in this nightmare, you may be more inclined to believe the news story that Congress is actually doing an unemployment extension (or has recently already done an unemployment extension and things are fine until June) and not care about the detail that Congress only changed the dates available for existing tiers. There is still an unemployment crisis in this country and the larger media outlets need to be reporting the whole story.
Let's not allow mainstream media to report another half-truth unemployment extension story without mentioning the need for Tier 5 Unemployment Extensions!
There is more:
http://usunemployed.blogspot.com/
http://usunemployed.blogspot.com/p/media-sos-campaign-main-street-needs.html
The long term unemployed have now went through the process of sending M-A-Y-D-A-Y faxes to all target members of Congress. Do you want to give those members of Congress the opportunity to ignore that massive campaign without any mainstream press coverage? Are we going to allow Tom Coburn to declare that we will get an extension to 103 weeks and extend it even more and then allow Senator Max Baucus say that he believes 99 weeks is enough and there is hardly any mainstream press coverage?
US Unemployed Blogsite does not believe this is the right thing to do. Too much time and effort has gone into this cause to allow it to be untouched by the larger audiences that will apply the heat to Congress for that "political will". When you consider that the one Senator who promised more weeks has voted against the extensions and then you consider the other Senator who said 99 weeks is enough has voted for the extensions - it really proves the point that these people in Washington are saying one thing to the camera and doing another on the Senate floor. Enough is enough. They all need to walk the walk if they are going to talk the talk.
If you are sitting there thinking to yourself, "what good will that do?” Think again please. Ask yourself again how in the whole wide world this effort could possibly hurt the cause. If you do not get that job you wanted but doesn't exist today, do you have anything better to do? The pressure needs to be mounted if Congress needs that "political will". Remember, the unemployed only represent 9.7% of the United States population.
Millions of other Americans need to fully know the plight of the long term unemployed because mainstream is failing to report the issue. If you are employed and not in this nightmare, you may be more inclined to believe the news story that Congress is actually doing an unemployment extension (or has recently already done an unemployment extension and things are fine until June) and not care about the detail that Congress only changed the dates available for existing tiers. There is still an unemployment crisis in this country and the larger media outlets need to be reporting the whole story.
Let's not allow mainstream media to report another half-truth unemployment extension story without mentioning the need for Tier 5 Unemployment Extensions!
There is more:
http://usunemployed.blogspot.com/
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