Don't Look Now, Mr. President

by Mary Pitt
June 13, 2009

Don't look now but your base is slipping! You may ask anyone involved in the Katrina disaster how important those few little grains of sand sliding off to the side can be. Nobody seemed to notice when the levees that held back the waters of Lake Ponchartrain began deteriorating but we all now know that they were the precursers to calamity.

In the same way, a few of your supporters were disgruntled when your first cabinet appointees were simply re-treaded from the Bush and Clinton administrations. We can appreciate that you needed a few key people with experience from Day One but, rather than they adapting to your point of view, you appear to have accepted their influence to shift your own views to coincide with that of the leaders for whom they previously worked!

Your persistence in continuing the bail-out process begun by the Bush administration dislodged a few small grains of sand. Many others are watching as tightly as possible for signs of success from your own domestic stimulus plan. Meanwhile, there are those who really care about the sexual-orientation discrimination in the military and are watching as some highly trained, capable, and experienced people are being lost to the cause of world peace.

But the storm is building, Mr. President! On the streets of the nation, you can hear the complaints of the common people who have lost or will lose their jobs as well as their health insurance. They were watching as you held the conference on health care "reform". With absolutely no input from the people most affected by the decisions that they and you might make, they can see less of the vaunted "hope" which you sold them on your road to the White House.

But all is not lost! You and Mrs. Obama are well known for your work with the people in the inner city slums and you have each visited in the stricken factory towns of the nation. Perhaps you should send your emissaries out into the "real world" of the small villages that are peopled by the elderly and the working poor where the only jobs in the area moved to the cities before the owners moved them offshore. The mean age of the populace increases because the young just can't wait to grow up and move away to where the good jobs may be found.

In these little backwater places, particularly in the South and Republican Central states, these people are simply ignored. When an important figure appears in the vicinity, they see only the very wealthy and the politically prominent while the people whose voices you should hear remain at home, convinced that nobody wants to hear their opinions. You must reach down and let them know that the care of which they were so convinced on election day was really from the heart. Faith does wear a bit thin when the belly is growling.

We know that you have to try to put the world back together before we can move forward but if, in the process, more lives are decimated the nation as we know it will cease to exist. It is obvious that having a majority of Democrats in Congress is not enough so long as there are still too many Blue Dogs and "moderates" in those Houses, (the same people who rubber-stamped the wartime ambitions of President Bush), and those people must be replaced with some who are more forward-looking and progressive-minded.

Those of us who still cling to the hope with which we sent you to that Oval Office want to see you taking an active part in the off-year elections of 2010. Forget the old Party war-horses who have grown into a sense of entitlement and help us to get a few more of them replaced with fresh minds and fresh ideas to match your own. You see, your supporters are not all traditional Democrats, either. Many of the votes that were eventually cast for you were from previous supporters of Hillary Clinton but many others had begun with their hopes invested in other candidates. Democrats like Cynthia McKinney and Dennis Kucinich had, (and still have), a very strong attraction with their proposals. Others leaned toward Ron Paul and Ralph Nader. These are voters who will not stand solidly behind you until 2012 if they feel that you betrayed them.

It is unfortunate that you cannot, despite the immense task before you, ignore the pressures brought about by the imminence of the next election but you will need more than four years to solidify the changes that you are trying to institute. You must tend those levees and reinforce those little grains of sand so that they remain solidly in place. You must fight for the needed programs and refuse the many "compromises" that are offered by the opposition in the attempt to cripple your programs and defraud the people. You must let Congress know that we insist on doing things our way or not at all, and then bring the problem to the people in 2010 and inspire them to give you a more progressive Congress. Otherwise, you may find that your carefully-constructed levee wall fail you in 2012 and the Obama Administration will become an obscure footnote in the history of our nation.

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

Listen Up, Buster

by Mary Pitt
June 6, 2009

We, the people, are sick and tired of hearing that "single payer is off the table" in the same breath with "health care reform". Attempting to "repair" a broken-down old vehicle without considering the possibility of a replacement as an alternative simply makes no financial sense. The same is true with trying to repair our broken health system.

We are besieged on all sides by all the profit-generated complaints about the evils of "socialism" creating waiting lines and people dying while waiting for health care as well as the specter of "paying for somebody else's doctor bills." That is pure malarkey and far from the situation as it already exists. Let's take a look at the model that is already before us.

A prime example is our existing Medicare/Medicaid system:

Nobody is required to get permission to see a doctor! You go to the same physician who has been your family doctor for years or, if you choose, you may pick one out of the Yellow Pages. You need no pre-approval. You go to the doctor. That's it.

There is no waiting line! When you call for an appointment, the receptionist will ask questions about your need based on your own complaints. If your need is urgent, most doctors will "work you in". If not, you may have to wait a few days.

There is no pre-approval required! Your personal doctor decides what you need. If you require a specialist with skills and training beyond his own, he may refer you to one. If your problem requires surgery, you will be sent to a surgeon who cares for people with that complaint, and the surgery will be scheduled. At no point is there anybody looking over his shoulder from whom he requires permission.

If necessary, you will enter a hospital at the convenience of the surgeon or physician! This will probably be a facility at which the doctor practices daily and will likely be not a great distance from your home. You will receive the same treatment as do all the other patients. (As you perambulate through the halls, you may see a private room at the end of the hall but pay it no mind. That is for somebody who thinks their station is too exalted to allow them to mingle with the Great Unwashed and are either there "on comp" or paying through their blue noses to satisfy their own egos.)

With those arguments out of the way, when you are restored to health, you will get a statement of explanation of the charges. You are not expected to pay in full, only to check the statement and to notify the insuring agency of any discrepancies that you may find. YOU are the first monitor of the honesty and accuracy of this billing.

A bit later, you will receive a second statement which will show the amounts paid by Medicare/Medicaid and any balance which you are charged with paying. Currently, if you receive both Medicare and Medicaid, you pay nothing at all. If Medicare only, there is now a system of "deductibles and co-payments" but, in most cases, you will find the care providers to be quite patient with the small partial payments which you can afford in your own budget.

There may be charges that deemed necessary to the care you required and are not covered. There is a schedule of maximum hospital time allowed to your particular surgery or problem. This may be appealed by your doctor due to unusual circumstances but they will seldom hamper your recovery or strain your wallet. In today's system, you will not be allowed to get free breast implants, abortions, face lifts, or even surgery to improve your vision, (except for cataracts), but those services such as cardiac surgery, appendectomy, or cancer, will be treated as routine.

This concept is not a foreign one to our free nation. Throughout our history, people have banded together and formed "cooperatives" in order to have a larger organization for purposes of bulk purchasing or marketing more efficiently. Even today, the land is dotted with "farm co-ops" which were founded for that purposes and, in rural areas, electrical power is still successfully functioning after having been begun by Roosevelt's Rural Electrification Agency. Many city people belong to "child care co-ops" where mothers exchange their labor to provide care for their children while they work and "food co-ops" flourish as people who prefer fresh, locally-grown produce to the canned, sterilized, and polluted stuff that is sold in the supermarket.

The purpose of these cooperatives is simple. That is to "cut out the middle man", the amorphous figures who produce nothing and provide nothing but profit from the work of others by controlling the access of human interaction and sharing. Our lives are full of them! We cannot go to an individual business owner to invest in their business. We must go through a stock broker who, in turn, deals through Wall Street and all the organizations represented there, each of whom takes a share of our money before it ever reaches its intended target. So it is with medical care. We go to an insurance company who takes our money, tells us to which doctors we may go to, then tells those doctors what procedures they may and may not do for us, keeping a share of our money at every step. They are not at all concerned with our health, only with the money they can keep for the privilege of brokering the services of our physicians.

Think of single-payer medical care as a giant cooperative where everybody pays in what they can afford, on a sliding scale, and each is allowed to take out what they need. This is the same principle on which we finance our government, pay for our public services, (from the bottom up), pay for our military, and even bail out our over-acquisitive banking system.

It's called "democracy" and it's the American Way! How dare they take it "off the table"?!?

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

The Political Future

by Mary Pitt
June 1, 2009

One may hear much speculation as to the future of the Republican Party as that once-august group find their following at a historic low and they have to turn for leadership to radio commentators and historic losers from their past. The most-asked questions in the television fora is, "Where is the future of the Republican party?"

The future of the Republican Party may be seen if one looks closely at the other side of the aisle in today's Congress as well as in secondary positions in the administration. After years of hearing references to RINO's, (Republicans In Name Only), we now are beginning to count the DINO's. A new President who was swept into office on a wave of Progressive support is finding his path to the restoration of our nation blocked by Senators and Representatives who profess to be of his own party.

The most prominent of these may well be Secretary-of-State Hillary Clinton. Her history since her failed attempt to establish universal medical care at the beginning of her husband's first term has been one of compromising and conceding to opponents the very heart of the principles which she professes to espouse. After eight years of watching her husband as his major successes were in the area of maintaining and improving the status quo to the benefit of the financial masters, she was so well schooled in the politics of survival as a politician that her record for supporting the policies of George W. Bush is all but unblemished. In the Senate, she diligently worked to become the leader of a "half-a-loaf coalition" that we may call the DINO's.

These DINO's are a combination of the Blue Dog Democrats and some almost-Republican opportunists who insist that we must cling to "the way we've always done it.". (If we have always done it right, why is it not working?) In coalition with a few "moderate Republicans", they have done an admirable job of foot-dragging and hampering the passage of President Obama's most progressive proposals. On the other hand, under the influence of Secretary Clinton and the many other re-treads from the Bush and Clinton administrations, the President too often has no choice but to follow their lead into the old tactics of compromise and coalition in order to make any progress at all.

The Progressive movement watches, aghast, as they are marginalized by the title of "fringe groups" and the "middle way" is presumed to be the proper path. The younger members of Congress are held in check by the seniority system which allows them little influence until they have become sufficiently "trained" to be allowed committee chairmanships and other positions which would allow them to assist in the needed reforms. There may be hope if the Progressives can continue to cling together in common cause through another election cycle or two and dislodge many of the bought-and-paid-for old veterans who like things just the way they are.

Both parties are represented in the House and the Senate but that may be misleading. There may well be the same sort of crisis in the Democratic Party as the Republicans now suffer. The result will be a lot of aisle-crossing as more Progressive members are added, pushing the "moderates" to the right and to the left as the parties re-align in an effort to keep their power. The future of both parties is currently represented in Congress but, with the continued efforts of "we, the people", the lines will be re-drawn. The war-mongers and mind-benders will be pushed out to the Libertarians and other militant parties, the present middle will be the right, and the Democrats will become more Progressive in their attempts to restore a nation that is free and democratic.

This occurance will be dependent upon maintaining the fervor of the common people to re-establish their power. With each election, as more young people are inspired to public service and more war veterans return home with the determination that nothing like the George Bush administration, ever happens again, we will become "a more perfect union". Then and only then will we be able to proudly boast of the government which was visualized by the Founders in forming our precious Constitution..

Seeds Of Truth

By Sheila Samples
May 9, 2009

I have learned over the past decade if I want to know what's really going on in the United States, I have to cruise through the foreign media to see what's creating a furor or causing a stink. So, while searching for the status of Spain's on-again, off-again criminal proceedings against six Bush Administration war criminals, this headline in Der Spiegel caught my eye -- "Frankenfood Ban is Neither Populism nor Panic-Mongering."

A closer look at the article revealed it wasn't a Norm Coleman ploy to get folks in Minnesota to quit eating burgers and fries, nor a menu for the genetically obscene monster in Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein," but an announcement by Germany's Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner that Germany is banning the cultivation of MON 810, a genetically modified (GM) corn produced by US biotech giant Monsanto.

The GM Monster

It appears that MON 810 is also believed to be the "Frankenstein" of GM crops by at least five other European countries -- France, Austria, Hungary, Greece and Luxembourg -- all of whom have banned its use. MON 810 was approved by the European Union in 1998, and was the only GM crop approved for cultivation in Germany. Aigner said she had legitimate reasons to believe that the genetically modified Monsanto seed "presents a danger to the environment." The plant produces a toxin that not only destroys the larvae of the corn borer moth, but other, beneficial, insects as well.

Andreas Thierfelder, spokesman for Monsanto Germany, responded that Monsanto would decide "as quickly as possible" whether to take legal proceedings. She said the "matter was very urgent as the planting season was about to start." Just how urgent was evident days later when Monsanto filed a lawsuit against the German government, claiming that its ban on MON 810 is arbitrary and contravenes EU rules. Although Monsanto sued France in an effort to overturn its ban on genetically modified corn, and lost that battle in March when France's highest court ruled that the corn "may" harm the environment and wildlife, the German government is justifiably edgy, as it must prove conclusively to the German court that MON 810 damages the environment.

But the feeder GM corn is just one tiny blip on the Frankenfood radar. And, it's not just Europeans who should worry…..

full article

Death By the Numbers:

Pakistan Counts the Toll of the Bush-Obama Drone War
Written by Chris Floyd
April 11, 2009
http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1738-death-by-the-numbers-pakistan-counts-the-toll-of-the-bush-obama-drone-war.html


As we all know, the Terror Warriors in the White House (of whatever political stripe) don't do body counts. They just kill people, make unsupported claims of "clean hits" on "militants," backtrack a bit later when eyewitness reports confirm extensive civilian casualties, promise "investigations" that kick the PR can way down the road -- and carry on killing.

But strangely enough, the people who are being killed by these well-wadded, massively protected elites do count how many of their sons and daughters and mothers and fathers are being slaughtered by American ordnance. Imagine that! It's almost like they are real people or something!

Pakistan is the latest target of the Terror Warriors; the progressive, anti-war, last-best-hope-for-world-peace Barack Obama has made it his special project to lay some heavy hurt on the Pakistanis, escalating the drone bombing campaign initiated by his much-emulated predecessor, George Widowmaker Bush. Indeed, the Obama administration is mulling expanding their expansion of the drone war into Pakistan's troubled -- but oil-rich -- southern province of Baluchistan. One begins to suspect that the progressive humanitarians in the White House have been drawing on the beserker fantasies of General Ralph Peters for strategic guidance on the "Af-Pak" front.

In any case, every week brings new reports of deadly attacks in Pakistan's frontier regions, almost all of them involving the deaths of civilians. Americans generally hear little or nothing about these attacks beyond official snippets about "successful" attacks against the apparently endless, ever-replenishing supply of "top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders." [Or to put it in reality's terms, the United States government and its progressive, humanitarian leaders regularly order, admit and applaud the "extrajudicial killing" -- i.e., murder -- of uncharged, untried individuals living within the borders of an allied country. As it saith in the Scriptures: These be your gods, O progressives!] But while Americans turn a deaf ear, in Pakistan the blood cries out, and is measured, as far as possible, by a government that is further shaken by each American attack and the violent extremism it engenders.

This week, Pakistani officials released stunning figures of the civilian death count in the American drone war: almost 700 innocent men, women and children killed so far -- as opposed to 14 actual, wanted extremist leaders. As the Pakistani paper The News reports:
Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent....

According to the figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities, a total of 537 people have been killed in 50 incidents of cross-border US predator strikes since January 1, 2008 to April 8, 2009, averaging 34 killings per month and 11 killings per attack. The average per month killings in predator strikes during 12 months of 2008 stood at 32 while the average per attack killings in the 36 drone strikes for the same year stood at 11.

Similarly, 152 people have been killed in 14 incidents of cross-border predator attacks in the tribal areas in the first 99 days of 2009, averaging 38 killings per month and 11 killings per attack.

Now there's change you can believe in (to coin a phrase)! In just a few months in office, Obama has managed to raise the average kill rate achieved by Bush from 32 to 38 per month. And who can doubt that this young, capable, charismatic president will not increase that civilian slaughter rate even further as he ratchets up the drone war in the months -- and years and years -- to come?

You are being lied to about pirates

Some are clearly just gangsters. But others are trying to stop illegal dumping and trawling

by Johann Hari
Monday, 5 January 2009
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labelling as "one of the great menaces of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell – and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often saved from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains Of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence.

“If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked often, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.”

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century".

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy." This is why they were romantic heroes, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age, a young British man called William Scott, should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirateing to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence".

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas." William Scott would understand.

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail – but who is the robber?

The Long War Generals

March 23, 2009
Posted by Jeff Huber
http://www.atlargely.com/2009/03/the-long-war-generals.html

If you’re not cheating you’re not trying.
--Anonymous U.S. military officer

As a naval aviator pal of mine once remarked, cadets in our military academies spend the summer before their freshman year learning an arcane honor code and spend the next four years learning how to violate it without getting caught. So is it any wonder our general officer corps is populated by Orwell-class doublethinkers who speak doubletalk like it’s their first language?

During the run up to the Iraq invasion, then Army chief of staff Eric Shinseki was the only four-star who had the strength of character to take a public stance against Donald Rumsfeld’s plan to conquer Iraq with a small force, relying on crackpot warfare theories like network-centric operations and shock and awe to make up for insufficient troop strength. Shinseki’s principled stand bought him a one-way ticket to Fort Palooka. Rumsfeld, not satisfied that any of the active duty generals would toe the line sufficiently, brought his old cow tipping buddy Peter Schoomaker out of retirement to replace Shinseki. Rummy had sent an unmistakable message: it was his way or the exit ramp. The remaining generals either fell into lockstep or kept their own counsel, and we got four years of dead-enders in their last throes.

As the 2006 elections neared, almost everyone at Defense, including Rumsfeld, was talking about lowering public expectations for Iraq and beginning a drawdown of U.S. presence. Narcissus, however, wouldn’t let young Mr. Bush lose a war that could be lost on his successor’s watch. Levers were pulled, wheels turned, somebody shoved a pie in the Iraq Study Group’s face and, voila, out trotted the surge.

For the longest time we thought neoconservative academic Fred Kagan was the chief architect of the surge. Recently, Thomas E. Ricks told us that the real genius behind the Iraq escalation was David Petraeus’s 300 lb. lapdog Ray Odierno. That assertion required a worm-to-butterfly transformation of Odierno, whom Ricks had earlier portrayed as the bull in the china shop who single-handedly fomented the Iraq civil war. Now Odie’s the Desert Ox.

Whoever actually cooked up the surge, the Joint Chiefs and commander in Iraq General George Casey were dead set against it. But then the dope dealing commenced and the four-stars’ objections faded like the Chicago Cubs. The ground service generals were promised a larger Army and Marine Corps, Casey got the Army chief of staff assignment and Admiral Mike Mullen was promised the chairman’s job.

January 2007 was a key month in American history. On the fifth, the American Enterprise Institute published Fred Kagan’s Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq. On January 10, Mr. Bush announced that he would increase U.S. presence in Iraq by 21,000 troops. On the twelfth, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain endorsed the surge and became the de facto presidential candidate of the neoconservative movement.

January 2007 was also the month David Petraeus assumed command of international forces in Iraq. Tom Ricks kick started the public image campaign to make Petraeus into a five-star deity, describing the general in the media as a “fascinating character” who was “just about the best general in the Army” and, oh yeah, “quite ambitious.” Ricks noted Petraeus’s “very successful first tour in Iraq in 2003-2004,” referring to his command in Mosul, but did not mention how Mosul collapsed after Petraeus left and the bribes he’d been handing out dried up. That January was also the month the Bush administration promised to provide evidence that Iran was providing arms to Iraqi militants. The administration never did prove those accusations, but that didn’t prevent it from repeating them loudly and often.

One of the loudest Iran bashers was Petraeus, who didn’t even pretend to have credible proof Iran was arming Iraqi militants. Reminiscent of the joke about the man beating his wife, Petraeus simply challenged Iran to prove that they had stopped arming Iraqis. Then Irony cleared its throat: in August 2007 a story broke that in 2004, while in charge of training Iraqi security forces, Petraeus had lost track of 190,000 AK-47 rifles and pistols that couldn’t have walked anywhere but into the hands of the Iraqi militants Iran was supposedly arming. Irony might also mention that as Petraeus was arming the insurgency, Doctor Conrad Crane and others at the Army War College began work on the new counterinsurgency field manual that Ricks and others would later claim Petraeus “wrote.”

Petraeus pursued an aggressive information campaign that promoted the agenda he shared with the neocons to establish a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq. His most outrageous publicity stunt was the March 2007 Baghdad shopping spree he staged for McCain and McCain’s office wife Lindsey Graham. At a news conference, McCain, Graham and other Republicans remarked that they could “mix and mingle unfettered” with Iraqis and that the market reminded them of “a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summer time." The next day, the New York Times and other sources revealed that Petraeus had put more than 100 of his troops in harm’s way to provide security for a propaganda demonstration supporting the surge strategy and the McCain candidacy.

Admiral Mullen also tried to tip the election toward the GOP. In a July 2008 Joint Force Quarterly article, Mullen wrote that every day, troops asked him questions like “What if a Democrat wins? What will that do to the mission in Iraq?” (Italics Mullen’s.) The article’s title (Irony winks) was “From the Chairman: Military Must Stay Apolitical.”

Also that month, right after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki agreed with candidate Obama that 16 months would be the right interval for a withdrawal timeline, Mullen warned on FOX News that a withdrawal timeline would be “dangerous.” In his July JFQ article, Mullen wrote that “we [in the military] defend the Constitution” by “obeying the orders of the commander in chief.” He didn’t specify whether he meant obeying all commanders in chief or just the Republican ones, but he didn’t have to. Everybody got the message.

By mid-summer 2008, Petraeus had beaten Admiral William Fallon two out of three falls for control of Central Command, he had hand picked the next generation of Army generals, and young Mr. Bush had announced that his “main man” Petraeus would be the decider of when and if U.S. troops would redeploy from Iraq. Petraeus and his long war generals owned American foreign policy, and they were determined to keep it. Fortunately for them, their best course of action was obvious: they merely had to keep doing what they were doing, which was entrenching America deeper and deeper in to Iraq. If McCain pulled an upset in the election, great, he was already on board. The beauty part was that Obama would have to go along with what the long warriors wanted as well. If he crossed them openly, and things went poorly (which they’re bound to whether Obama follows their advice or not), it would be Obama’s fault for ignoring his generals. Defense secretary Robert Gates turned a nice trick in this vein during a recent interview on Meet the Press. He told David Gregory that the generals would obey the mandate to end the combat mission in Iraq by August 2010, but if they “had had complete say in this matter, they would have preferred that the combat mission not end until the end of 2010.”

Obama played into the long war strategy by insisting he would finish the job in Afghanistan. Now his generals are pushing him into an aimless escalation of that conflict that will likely make us the latest superpower to embalm itself in that part of the world. Nobody in the Pentagon is taking the Iraq Status of Forces agreement’s December 2011 deadline seriously. The ink on the SOF was barely dry when both Mullen and Odierno smirked that “three years is a long time,” and that the situation cold change. Gates claims that Obama himself may force Maliki to renegotiate the agreement. Thanks to Ricks, Odierno is on record as wanting to keep 35,000 or more troops in Iraq through 2015. And if anyone thinks to question the need to sustain these two wars, the long generals can always tell another lie about Iran (like Mullen did recently when he said the Iranians have enough fissile material to make a bomb—they don’t) and claim that our presence in Iraq and the Bananastans is necessary to keep Iran contained.

Our generals are forcing a self-defeating security policy on us for the sake of preserving their institution, which means far more to them than the Constitution they swore to protect or the country they’re supposedly defending. In a finer era of American journalism, editorial pages across the nation would have demanded the forced retirement of every four-star on active duty. Today’s big news media, unfortunately, are either afraid of the Pentagon or in its corner. Congress has been on life support for nearly a decade, and as we have discussed, Obama political constraints are considerable.

It’s up to what few retired or active duty generals of integrity we have left to confront the junta in a very public “have you no sense of decency?” moment.

Unfortunately, that would amount to generals ratting out fellow generals, which would violate their honor code.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword

What Happened to the War?

by Laurence M. Vance
March 20, 2009
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance167.html

As of today, March 20, it has now been six years since the United States invaded Iraq. Yes, the United States still has tens of thousands of troops in Iraq, although we don’t hear much about the war any more. What happened to the war?

The war should have been an issue in the election. It wasn’t. And thanks to the disaster that is the Republican revolution that wasn’t, it didn’t even have to be. We hardly heard about the war after the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions. Republicans were perfectly willing to exchange one war criminal for another. Many Democrats only opposed the war because it was a Republican war. And now that Obama is president, no one from either party seems to mind that he wants to send 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

The war is still an immoral, aggressive, unjust, unconstitutional, unnecessary, and senseless war that that violates every "just war" principle ever formulated. It was a manufactured war based on manipulated intelligence, bogus claims of weapons of mass destruction, and an assortment of other lies.

The war is still making terrorists and enemies of the United States. Although Fred Barnes wrote (in the Weekly Standard) that the invasion of Iraq was "the greatest act of benevolence one country has ever done for another," we know that it was instead, as Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, described it: "The greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

The war is still draining the treasury. The cakewalk that was supposed to cost $50 billion has bled U.S. taxpayers for almost a trillion dollars. About $12 billion was spent fighting the Iraq war each month last year. It costs about $390,000 to deploy one soldier to Iraq for one year. The cost for a lifetime of support and medical care for each severely wounded American soldier is in the millions.

The war is still resulting in the deaths of Iraqis – thanks to the U.S. invasion and occupation and the genocide we unleashed. The latest estimate of the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration, and continued by the Obama administration, is about 1 million. Additionally, there are the millions of Iraqis who are wounded, disabled, displaced, homeless, refugees, widows, or orphans.

The war is still destroying the lives of American soldiers and their families. Many thousands of U.S. soldiers have been severely wounded. Hundreds of these have had limbs amputated. Untold numbers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Defense Department doctors have recently reported that there may be as many as 360,000 U.S. soldiers who have suffered wartime brain injuries. Some returning soldiers will spend the rest of their lives unable to hold down a job. Others will live out their days as physical and/or emotional basket cases.

The war is still killing American soldiers. When I wrote about the war on its third anniversary, 2,317 American soldiers had died for a lie. On the fourth anniversary, that number had risen to 3,218. On the fifth, 3,992. The number of dead American soldiers is now up to 4,259. Although the total number of American deaths per year is falling, there are two ways in which American deaths are rising: military suicides and the war Afghanistan. There were more American soldiers who killed themselves in January of this year than died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military suicides are not only up for the fourth year in a row, they are at the highest level they have ever been. The number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan is now up to 666.God only knows how many men from Obama’s 17,000-troop surge will be added to that number. Yet, none of these soldiers had to die. They died neither for our freedoms nor the freedoms of anyone else. They all died in vain.

What happened to the war? Nothing happened to the war. It is still just as wrong as ever. It is still just as deadly ever. I’m afraid that most Americans, like Rhett Butler, just don’t give a damn. As William Lloyd Garrison once said: "The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead."

Laurence M. Vance [lmvance@juno.com] writes from Pensacola, FL.

Cheney's Mission Accomplished

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
by Juan Cole
http://www.juancole.com/2009/03/cheneys-mission-accomplished.html


Dick Cheney: "I guess my general sense of where we are with respect to Iraq and at the end of now, what, nearly six years, is that we've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do...."


What has Dick Cheney really accomplished in Iraq?
- An estimated 4 million Iraqis, out of 27 million, have been displaced from their homes, that is, made homeless. Some 2.7 million are internally displaced inside Iraq. A couple hundred thousand are cooling their heels in Jordan. And perhaps a million are quickly running out of money and often living in squalid conditions in Syria. Cheney's war has left about 15% of Iraqis homeless inside the country or abroad. That would be like 45 million American thrown out of their homes.
- It is controversial how many Iraqis died as a result of the 2003 invasion and its aftermath. But it seems to me that a million extra dead, beyond what you would have expected from a year 2000 baseline, is entirely plausible. The toll is certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Cheney did not kill them all. The Lancet study suggested that the US was directly responsible for a third of all violent deaths since 2003. That would be as much as 300,000 that we killed. The rest, we only set in train their deaths by our invasion.
- Baghdad has been turned from a mixed city, about half of its population Shiite and the other half Sunni in 2003, into a Shiite city where the Sunni population may be as little as ten to fifteen percent. From a Sunni point of view, Cheney's war has resulted in a Shiite (and Iranian) take-over of the Iraqi capital, long a symbol of pan-Arabism and anti-imperialism.
- In the Iraqi elections, Shiite fundamentalist parties closely allied with Iran came to power. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the leading party in parliament, was formed by Iraqi expatriates at the behest of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1982 in Tehran. The Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party is the oldest ideological Shiite party working for an Islamic state. It helped form Hizbullah in Beirut in the early 1980s. It has supplied both prime ministers elected since 2005. Fundamentalist Shiites shaped the constitution, which forbids the civil legislature to pass legislation that contravenes Islamic law. Dissidents have accused the new Iraqi government of being an Iranian puppet.

- Arab-Kurdish violence is spiking in the north, endangering the Obama withdrawal plan and, indeed, the whole of Iraq, not to mention Syria, Turkey and Iran.
- Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women have been widowed by the war and its effects, leaving most without a means of support. Iraqi widows often lack access to clean water and electricity. Aljazeera English has video.


- $32 billion were wasted on Iraq reconstruction, and most of it cannot even be traced. I repeat, Cheney gave away $32 bn. to anonymous cronies in such a way that we can't even be sure who stole it, exactly. And you are angry at AIG about $400 mn. in bonuses! We are talking about $32 billion given out in brown paper bags.
- Political power is being fragmented in Iraq with big spikes in the murder rate in some provinces that may reflect faction-fighting and vendettas in which the Iraqi military is loathe to get involved.
- The Iraqi economy is devastated, and the new government's bureaucracy and infighting have made it difficult to attract investors.
- The Bush-Cheney invasion helped further destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean, setting in play Kurdish nationalism and terrifying Turkey.

Cheney avoids mentioning all the human suffering he has caused, on a cosmic scale, and focuses on procedural matters like elections (which he confuses with democracy-- given 2000 in this country, you can understand why). Or he lies, as when he says that Iran's influence in Iraq has been blocked. Another lie is that there was that the US was fighting "al-Qaeda" in Iraq as opposed to just Iraqis. He and Bush even claim that they made Iraqi womens' lives better.
The real question is whether anyone will have the gumption to put Cheney on trial for treason and crimes against humanity.

Six Years

still no lessons learned.

Don't Sell Kathleen Short

by Mary Pitt
March 2, 2009

I have been watching the news reports about the appointment of Kathleen Sebelius to the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services. There was a time when she was considered a possible candidate for the job of Vice-President and there is no reason why those who write the news for television should not have done their homework on her qualifications. However, after the announcement was made of her new appointment, they treated her like a total unknown and spoke briefly about her eight-year career as Kansas Insurance Commissioner before she won the governorship of our "red state" not once, but twice.

Kathleen (the name by which Kansans speak of her with varying degrees of reverence, depending on our political leanings), literally imbibed politics with her Pablum since her father, John Gilligan, was Governor of the State of Ohio, and the father of her husband, Gary, was once US Representative from the State of Kansas. She is an accomplished politician and earned honors from both sides of the aisle in establishing many programs in Kansas that are of benefit to the poor and, particularly, to children. The MSNBC newscast early in the day could only refer to her one big defeat as Governor in failing to get full-coverage health care for all children in the State. They did not mention the Kansas Health Wave program which allows working parents of young children to "buy in" to a program similar to Medicaid and provides a means for working, low-income women to provide affordable medical care for their children rather than giving up their jobs and living on welfare.

She also bore ultimate responsibility for the administration of the Federally-funded programs for the poor as well as the Home and Community-Based Services, which saved the State a lot of money by allowing handicapped and retarded people to live in their own homes in the community rather than in nursing homes or the horrendous State institutions. As the parent of a severely handicapped daughter, it was a godsend to have her near home for her remaining years and I will be eternally grateful.

As State Insurance Commissioner Kathleen blocked the takeover of the customer-owned Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Kansas by a national corporation, thus saving the people in the State from the great premium increases that would have been inevitable under the new ownership. She kept honest those insurance companies who did operate in Kansas by strict oversight and enforcement of their policy provisions. Most important, she knows the insurance business thoroughly and will surely hold their feet the fire once the new medical-care plan is ready for implementation.

Kathleen is a sweet, compassionate person and, rather than boasting of her performance, she often appeared apologetic that she could not accomplish even more for the people of her State. She is a good Catholic who ran afoul of the Church for her opposition to measures that would have abolished abortion because she felt that it is a religious matter in which the State has no right to intrude. How sad that such good people are having to choose between Church and State for having stood up for their Constitutional separation!

It is with a great deal of trepidation that Kansas surrenders this great leader to the rest of the nation. There is no really ready replacement among the Democratic leadership of the State but perhaps there will be by the next election in 2010. Do not worry about her ability to cope with Congressional opposition in her new job. She has had six years of experience with a solid Republican Legislature and she drove them like a 20-mule team with a soft voice and a long whip, accomplishing more in the area of social services than any Governor in the last 30 years.

Go with our love, Kathleen! And in the words of the late, great Tip O'Neill, "Never forget where you came from and who sent you here." In addition, if they don't treat you right, come on back home! We love you.

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

It's Time For The Madness To Stop

By Sheila Samples
March 2, 2009

Sometimes it's hard to come to grips with the truth -- especially if that truth is about our own country, and is in direct opposition to everything we've been taught since childhood. Patriotism is in our genes, and through the years it has been a national conviction that, if our country needed us, serving in the military to protect our freedom was not only the right thing to do, but the only thing to do. We still believe that. We still leap to our feet at the first beat of a drum at a military parade, clutch our hearts at the sight of the Stars and Stripes, weep at the refrain of the National Anthem. However, far too many of us succumb to the pomp and pageantry of war -- of mission accomplished -- with little concern for the human beings who made that possible -- what they went through, what they're still going through -- so we can maintain our arrogant national pride.

From the beginning, those in the military have served their country with unswerving loyalty. They continued to march even after Henry Kissinger belched out the truth that Duty--Honor--Country is a one-way street because "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy. And, it has long been a dead-end street for those captured or left behind on foreign soil -- for those who return from battlefields maimed both mentally and physically, and for those who are innocent victims of malicious life-destroying experiments who have no chance of the extent of their injuries being recognized and are refused the necessary health care.

The most ghastly experiment the military ever conducted was Operation Crossroads, a series of "Manhattan Project" tests requested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1946 to study the effects of nuclear weapons on ships and equipment. After bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki the year before, US officials knew the effect of massive radiation on human beings and animals. They had to know. So what else were the thousands of navy personnel positioned on ships from five to eight miles from the Bikini Atoll bomb site in the central Pacific if not guinea pigs?

One young sailor stationed at the Bikini Atoll in 1946 was Anthony Guarisco who, like thousands of others, has suffered horribly for the last 63 years as a result of radiation poisoning and like those others, has been denied the proper health care. Guarisco is the founder of both the National and International Alliance of Atomic Veterans. In 1994, Academy Award-winning team Vivienne Verdon-Roe and Michael Porter produced a documentary, "Experimental Animals," featuring Guarisco who, very calmly, describes the horrors of that 1946 July. (Note: Ecological Options Network has just re-released "Experimental Animals" on-line and as a DVD, because EON filmmaker/activist Jim Heddle says, "we think it's as relevant today as it was when it was produced.")

The first bomb -- Able -- was dropped from a B-29 on July 1. As a health precaution, military personnel in the area were told to "cover their eyes." Guarisco said it was awesome. He said it immediately "came home to me what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I could see how 55-65 thousand people could die in one-and-a-half seconds."

But the second one -- Baker -- was beyond awesome. Guarisco said it was detonated beneath the ocean from a depth of 90 feet, and "sucked a target array of approximately 100 ships into the air like little toys. I saw the U.S. Arkansas soar into the air about 200 feet and come down in two pieces. I saw aircraft carriers just flinging around as if they were toys."

According to the Navy's historical report, "The inability to complete inspections on much of the target fleet threatened the success of the operation after BAKER. A program of target vessel decontamination was begun in earnest about 1 August. This involved washing the ships' exteriors using work crews drawn from the target ships' companies under radiological supervision of monitors equipped with radiation detection and measurement devices. Initially, decontamination was slow as the safe time aboard the target ships was measured only in minutes. As time progressed, the support fleet itself had become contaminated by the low-level radioactivity in marine growth on the ships' hulls and seawater piping systems."

Ironically, although the ships were towed out of the area just 10 days after the blast where the work could be done in uncontaminated water, no warning was given to the human experimental animals, who were allowed to swim in contaminated water, walk barefoot on beaches and breathe poisonous air.

Guarisco said, "We went back into the ground zero area immediately after each of the detonations, and I spent a total of 67 days in the Bikini lagoon within one mile of the epicenter. And I became ill after the second detonation, approximately four or five days after that...I had symptoms similar to having a bad case of influenza. I had welts on my body -- I broke out with welts -- and it was scary for me. I was urinating blood, I was very sick."

And Guarisco wasn't the only one who became ill. In a 1998 National Radio Project interview with Michael O'Rourke, who monitors veterans health issues for the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, Guarisco said, "Other people on my ship were also feeling very sick. And for many, many years I thought that, well, certainly if there was anything wrong surely they would let me know. But," he said, "I found out many years later that’s not how it is. You know, the government and the U.S. military are not about to say anything about anybody who’s exposed to high levels or low levels of radiation. It was hard for me to come out of denial, to understand that I was dealing with people who really were not interested in anything else but waiting for me to die."

Guarisco says that, in one -- two -- blinding flashes, "we saw what World War III will look like. We have seen the firestorm, we have been witness to the sacrilegious devastation that nuclear weapons put forth, and we have seen our brother and our sister veterans die from being exposed to this terribleness." He says the bottom line of nuclear weapons is the bottom line of the profit margin -- that "deterrent" or "first strike" are fear code words used to keep the population at bay and to pave the way for the nuclear industry to keep building more expensive (profitable) weapons.

In his March 2008 tribute to both of his parents, Guarisco's son, Vincent, goes into greater detail about his father's lifelong battle, not only with the effects of radiation but with the nuclear industry and government itself. For more than 60 years, both Anthony and Mary Guarisco were out there, militant activists armed with the truth, relentlessly attempting to derail the nuclear train before it goes over the cliff, taking human survival with it.

The United States has more nuclear weapons than any other nation. Although we have avoided the instant, negative repercussions of another Nagasaki or Hiroshima, we have nevertheless managed to contaminate most of the world with Depleted Uranium.

In 2006, Japanese professor Dr. K. Yagasaki, by using the known amount of uranium used in the Hiroshima bomb -- about the size of a two-litre milk container -- calculated that a ton of DU used on the battlefield results in the equivalent of 100 Hiroshima bombs worth of radiation released into the atmosphere. So, when it was reported that 2,000 tons of DU were dropped on Iraq from 2003 to 2006, we need to understand that what was released in the Iraqi atmosphere, and then spreading worldwide, was the equivalent of 200,000 Hiroshima bombs.

The total amount of DU the US has used since 1991 is approximately 4,600 tons (1,000 in the first Gulf War, 800 in Kosovo, 800 in Afghanistan and a further 2,000 tons in the second Iraq war.) This amounts to approximately 460,000 Hiroshima bombs, ten times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from all previous nuclear testing worldwide. And, it's important to note this calculation was three years ago. Since that time, we've had three more years of non-stop DU bombing...

Throughout the '60s, the US conducted numerous toxic and chemical weapons tests on its military personnel. In July 2008, Nic Maclellan, journalist, researcher and development worker in the Pacific, wrote...

"Under Project SHAD, the US Navy conducted six tests in the Marshall Islands and off the coast of Hawai’i between 1964-68. Pentagon documents released in 2002 show the US Defense Department sprayed live nerve and biological agents on ships and sailors, and sprayed a germ toxin on Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

"These Cold War-era experiments to test the Navy's vulnerability to toxic warfare involved about 4,300 US military personnel, mostly from the Navy. Most were never informed that the tests were being conducted, breaching all ethical principles about informed consent for test subjects."

It's time that we, as a nation, not only face the truth -- but come to grips with it. Those who serve with such trust and loyalty cannot imagine that they are, at best, "experimental animals" to be used and cast aside by ruthless corporate thugs.

How many generations of Anthony Guariscos must we lose before we realize that "support the troops" means protect the troops? Like Guarisco said, we must stand up, stand together and demand the abolition of all nuclear weapons if human beings on this planet are to survive.

It's time for the madness to stop. Before we are all atomic veterans.

Sheila Samples http://sheilastuff.blogspot.com/ is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@wichitaonline.net

They Still Don't Get It

by Mary Pitt
February 15, 2009

Just three weeks after Barack Obama was sworn in, we are barraged with complaints because he has not yet wiped out all the vestiges of the Bush administration from the environs of Washington, D.C. We are daily confronted by newspaper items, editorials, and blogs telling us of his shortcomings and failure to correct all the bad Department of Justice decisions, all the illicit Executive Orders, the no-bid contractors, to withdraw all the troops from Iraq, and to restore our country to a state of peace. And yet, the polls show an unprecedented approval by the people!

This is, above all, a man who is measured and prudent in his thinking and has established his priorities for action. He has chosen first to put right our economic state, no insignificant or simple task. Believing in our tri-partite system of government, he allowed the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives to write the necessary legislation, to offer it for a vote, and send it to the Senate where it was amended, passed, and sent to Conference. It moved through the process in record time and is within his recommendations as to the amount of money involved.

This is the way it should be done, people! Are we all so accustomed to the Bush system of change that we expect the President to issue an order and both parties match in lockstep to issue a blank check as they did in his request for authority to "handle" the aftermath of September 11, 2001? Now, that really worked, didn't it?

In the meantime, behind the scenes, there is a small army of people working feverishly; going through records and subpoena-ing those that are lacking, compiling data, uncovering facts, and putting information into presentation form that will be given his attention in the order of his pre-determined order of priorities. Buried in those piles of papers are things of which we, the people, have known nothing and we can expect to find several surprises there which President Obama will deal with as they arrive.

Meanwhile, the newly-appointed Secretary of State and the various Ambassadors are traveling all over the world, renewing acquaintances with foreign leaders and establishing bases for official talks to try to correct some of the ills of the rest of the world. Shifts have been made in the accents on the tasks of our troops around the world and in the personnel involved in directing them. There is much yet to be done there and it will be done in due time.

So, what are all the complaints about? Some of the Cabinet choices had to be withdrawn before being confirmed. Has that never happened before? The Vice-President has a bit of a mouth problem, not much of a surprise and at least, he is not running a sub rosa spy program from his basement! Health care and Social Security problems have not yet been solved. Again, not a surprise inasmuch as several administrations have failed in that effort and the President determined that the economy, (the number one concern of the voters), was the most important thing to do first.

The largest and loudest complaint is that President Obama has been unresponsive to the demands for investigation of the previous administration for their many instances of illegal actions and violations of the Constitution. His answers have not been sufficiently decisive for those who feel that this should be done as soon as possible. Suspicions are voiced that the President is "in cahoots" with the "Bush criminals"! Yet we have no knowledge of the tasks that have been assigned to the Department of Justice other than the fact that we have been told that, if and when the necessary information reaches his desk, he will be ready to respond.

And yet, when the Congress began to lag in the passage of the economic stimulus bill, he turned to the people. Not just to any people and not just to Democratic strongholds where he would be assured of support but the states where he lost to his Republican opponent. The audience was not vetted and there was no "protest zone". It was come-one-come-all and the cheers were as supportive as those on his campaign trail. It may not have caused the bill to pass but it certainly did not hurt the effort when Congress was exposed on the evening news to the faces of their own suffering constituents as they voiced their pleas for relief.

This is a different kind of President. He is probably the most intelligent and, so far, appears to be the most thoughtful and mentally-organized person to hold the office in a very long time. He can carry the weight of all the troubles of the world on his shoulders and yet be able to "put it away" and enjoy a fast game of basketball, take the kids to the beach, and treat his wife to a romantic dinner for Valentine's Day, and then come back to work refreshed and ready for action. He may not be Super Man but he comes close.

The point that the complainers still just don't get is that Barack Obama was not elected to the presidency simply because we wanted to get rid of the Bushes by changing the person in the White House. The "revolution" was not only against George Bush; it was against the "business as usual" of the Washington culture. We sat through eight years of watching the Democrats in Congress roll over and act in a "spirit of bipartisanship" while Bush and Company raped our nation and destroyed much of the world. Retribution can wait. First, the welfare of the people must be restored and the working class put back on their feet so that our neglected infrastructure can be restored and we can, once again, be a proud nation and a leader of the free world.

Let us give the man time, stop carping and nit-picking, and give him a decent amount of time to show progress. It is a Herculean job that cannot be done overnight. It's the least we can do, considering what he is trying to do for us.

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

The Truth About Your Income Tax

by Mary Pitt
February 8, 2009

As the spouse of a working man, often in remote areas and long before you would find an H&R Block firm within easy driving distance, the job of filing the annual income tax forms fell to me. As the rules changed, it was necessary to study the instructions every year to remain current and legal. While that may seem difficult to many, a bit of initial concentration should get one through it. I did it with a bit less than a high school diploma at that time.

As the result of this responsibility, I became aware of the evolution over the years and can see the pattern of the changes that occurred with the many "reforms" instituted during the Republican administrations. It has always been an article of faith within the party that taxes were a nuisance that should be visited only on the private wage earners and every effort at "reform" will demonstrate their efforts to shift the burdens to the working class. This was accomplished on the pretext of "simplifying" the reporting forms. In fact, it is now so "simplified" that you do not even know how much your tax really is or the means by which it has been increased.

While I make no claim to be any kind of an expert and am speaking only from personal experience, I will attempt to delineate some of these changes that have been made in order to deprive the working class of exemptions and deductions and how their loss impose the greater tax burden upon them while lessening that borne by businesses and the wealthy.

Exemptions:

In 1949, when I was first assigned this task, a family was allowed a personal exemption of $600 per year for the support of each child. Compare that figure with the allowance this year and then compare that figure to the deflated dollar and it will be obvious that this deduction has been radically cut.

Taxes to Other Entities:

Until recent times, the amount of income taxes paid to the State in which you lived was an allowable deduction as was the sales and local tax, based upon a chart which was tied to your total earnings. You were allowed to deduct state gasoline taxes based upon the mileage readings of your automobiles. This alone, is a large factor in any family budget.

Interest payments:

Another large tax deduction that has been lost to the interest of "reform" is the one that allowed people to deduct payments for interest paid. This included interest on your home, your car, credit cards, and store charges for major purchases such as furniture. You could either include statements from your creditors or use the chart on the sliding scale. This deduction, except in special circumstances, is now denied to the working class while businesses are still allowed to deduct it as a "cost of doing business".

Medical Expenses:

All medical expenses, including prescription medications and medical insurance premiums were allowed in excess of 3% of gross income. You could also deduct any medical equipment, appliances and supplies that were prescribed by a physician and any payments for disability received from privately- or employer-paid insurance were exempt from taxation. If your medical insurance was paid entirely by your employer, no accounting at all was necessary

I am sure that there are many other exemptions and deductions that may have existed that have quietly disappeared over the years but they do not come to mind at this time, (or perhaps I never had occasion to use them), but these alone would account for a major part of the expenditures of the average family and greatly their restoration would reduce the tax liabilities of the working class.

Where did these privileges of the working class go and why? It's simple. In effect, these "reforms", instituted on the pretext of making the tax report more simple, effectively increased the amounts of taxable income and thereby increased to taxes on the average wage earner while preserving the privilege of the ruling class. Even the deductions from our pay checks for Social Security reflect our second-class status. While most of us pay the same percentage of our entire income for this purpose, those who are paid amounts beyond our wildest dreams are allowed to stop contributing. This "cap" is possibly the only tax computation that is adjusted for inflation and that only after near-destruction of the system.

Do not listen to those calamity-criers who are bellowing for a "fair tax" which will further shift the "burden" from the backs of the wealthy, or even to those who tout a "value-added tax" which will radically increase the price of everything that we buy. They tell us, "This would be so easy that you won't even realize that you are being taxed", but what they mean is that THEY won't realize it because THEY will not be paying their fair share! This is their Valhalla and what they have worked toward for all these years, the total exemption of their own class from the burden of paying for our government, their privileges, and any wars into which they wish to send our children.

We have recently accomplished the task of returning to the people the privilege of running our own democracy as The Founders intended but we must not relax. We must hold that responsibility in our calloused fists and wield it wisely. We must get on the backs of our representatives and insist that they keep our welfare and our will constantly in mind if they want to keep their jobs. Any resistance must be met by a wall of voices, using the words of our new President, "WE WON!"

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

Democracy

by Leonard Cohen

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on ...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Whaddaya Gonna Do

by Mary Pitt
Sunday, January 18, 2009

Waddya gonna do when you've gone about as far as you can go? You want to open a window and yell, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!" But, where you live there is nobody to hear you. Go ahead, yell your fool head off but there are none to hear and, if anybody does, they don't care.

The preachers will tell you, "The Lord will provide" but, in all our years, we have never heard of a Great Speckled Bird flying over and dropping money on people. And you learned long ago to pray for nothing but the strength to bear the troubles that befall us in this mortal life.

You have simply lasted too long. You have lost dearly loved ones to death for first one reason or another; even nursing a dear lifemate through an illness that took years to claim them. You have worked, budgeted, and micro-managed to keep your family sustained and, due to your own age and illness, are now condemned to a life of poverty.

Your one source of income has become the Social Security check that appears in your bank account on a monthly basis.

Finally, you are notified that this amount will be increased by a bit more than you have received in the past. You silently say a whispered prayer of gratitude to whatever God you believe in. But wait! In the notice that you receive, you are told that, indeed, the amount IS added to your allotment, but then you learn that the "premium" for your Medicare Part B has been increased to $96.40 a month and, lower down, the "premium" for your Medicare Part D has increased to $87.70, leaving you an increase of a whole forty dollars with only a few dollars over a thousand to pay all the expenses necessary to your continued existence.

The problems do not end there. When you go to the pharmacy to have your prescriptions re-filled, you learn that the insurance company has increased the "co-payment" by $10.00 on each medication. If you take four medicines, there goes your $40.00 a month net increase! Right into the voracious gaping maw of an insurance company's bank account, just the way the insurance companies and President Bush intended.

So whaddaya gonna do? Is there any expense you can cut? Thanks to all those years of work and planning, you do own your own house, (such as it is and so long as you can keep the taxes paid), but the climate in which you live is intemperate and you must also keep warm in the winter and cool in the summer for fear of being overtaken by heat stroke or hypothermia. You already turn off the lights that are not in use. You have closed off part of the house, only heating or cooling the rooms you use but utility costs are rising constantly. (You are aware that you get just enough money to disqualify you for the assistance of LIEAPP, food stamps, or any other welfare assistance.) You must have your car due to the distance involved in obtaining the necessities of life, and you must keep the payments up until, at last, it is your own and all you must be concerned about will be repairs and insurance. You spend practically nothing for clothing inasmuch as you have all the things you bought to keep up appearances when you were working. You don't eat much, having lost your appetite but eating only because you know you must, and your food budget is only about $100 a month. Eating out? Fugeddaboudit!

There is only one thing that you can cut and you know it. That would be your "bundle" of telephone, television, and internet. The TV is your only source of entertainment and escape, the internet your only connection to friends and news that you can believe. Going without them could save some money, but the telephone is, literally, a lifeline, a means to call for help in case of accident or illness. That would cut the cost in half and leave you sitting alone and staring at the walls, a condition that is often a prelude to suicide.

If you have cared enough to read this far, there is one thing that we will ask of you. We won't settle for a breathy, "There but for the Grace of God go I." Think about it! You may think that you "have it made" and "it can't happen to me" but it can! Stock markets fail, banks go bankrupt, depression covers the land, nobody has money to buy your product, you become old and ill and, though you thought you were covered, you find medical bills sapping your tightly-hoarded savings. Your kids? Though you may think they're doing well, they are worried about their jobs, their homes, and their own kids' educations. There is not a pittance to spare for the "old folks".

Whaddaya gonna do? You're going to wish that you had heard, and heeded, the stories of the elderly impoverished and supported the establishment of a reliable and realistic safety net for your old age. You will pressure your Congressman to abandon the old partisan ideals and do what they must and you will pray that the new administration that is taking place in a very few days will succeed in their efforts to get our nation back on track so that the term, "safety net" will once again have real meaning.

So now, WADDAYA GOINNA DO?

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

The View From The Bottom

by Mary Pitt
January 15, 2009

The greatest problem as the new President and the Congress attempt to enact remedies to the very real problems of the poor, the disabled, and the laboring class, (not the much-broader "working class"), is that they do not know or understand exactly what it is that they are trying to "fix". With the exception of the President, none of them have ever wanted for food, clothing, or medical care, (and even he, Thank God, had grandparents of substance who were able to be of assistance.)

The trials with which we must deal every day are totally foreign to them. They do not know and never even visit in the homes in the tenements, the poor neighborhoods, or even the common homes in the small rural villages which dot the plains and the industrial areas of our nation. Those who knock on our doors during campaigns are college kids asking for our votes and will promise us anything in return for our pledges. Should our congresspersons come "home" to run for re-election, they will appear at a local watering hole where they can address a large number of people and those who get to speak to them personally are the local party officials.

How, then, can we demonstrate to those whom we see on our televisions as they advocate for our right to "choice" that, in fact, our choices are few? They say that we have a choice where we get our medical care, not knowing that we must "choose" a physician or a medical facility that is near us or to which there is public transportation available or that, in the worst case, will accept Medicaid patients. Sure, we can go to the Emergency Room of the big, shiny hospital on the hill but, if they treat us, the bill that would follow us home would send us straight to bankruptcy court, (if we could afford the up-front fees for an attorney to file the papers that are necessary to allow that relief).

There is no "choice" as to where we work. With the true number of unemployed and under-employed at almost twenty per cent nationwide, it may be even worse on a given local level, and any job we can get that pays a subsistence wage is where we work. If that job involves working in a harmful atmosphere, we will breathe noxious fumes or dust for eight hours a day so the kids will not be crying from hunger. If our bodies ache from fatigue, disease, or just advancing age, we will endure it until we can go home to our leaking roofs or our noisy tenements and try to shake it off and rest so that we can do it again tomorrow.

We also have a "choice" as to which insurance company administers our health care. That's a laugh! We can't afford any of them. The premiums would require us to pay half our annual income! If that income falls below what the people in Washington think our family can live on, we might be eligible for Medicaid or, at least, S-CHIP for the kids, but Moms and Dada must still fend for themselves. So they burn out their bodies, aging before they are old and striving for the Holy Grail of Social Security and Medicare, if death does not come first.

There is not even a "choice" of where we live. We must go into the "sub-standard" housing in the lower parts of town or to Section 8 units for which we do not qualify unless we are on welfare or disabled. Otherwise they are even more costly than the run-down old houses that we rent. And, don't even go into our "choice of lifestyle". Our meager nutritional needs are met by purchasing the cheapest food at the market; potatoes, rice, pasta, and sometimes, hotdogs or hamburger. We do not even qualify for food stamps as some accountant in Washington thinks we make too much money. Yet we are blamed for our own illnesses, many of which are caused by the poverty that has fallen upon us by our lack of better-off family to help, education, or simple misfortune.

Our new President may understand us due to his own childhood poverty but, mostly, due to his work with poor communities in Chicago but it remains to be seen whether he can infuse all the congress and the bureaucrats with this understanding so that they can work effectively at solving some of the problems with which we are beset. Yet, the working poor, the disabled, and the handicapped are people to whom hope is a foreign concept. Our only ambition becomes merely surviving for another day so that maybe, just maybe, our kids will be able to find a way to have a better life.

President Bush has told us for eight years that we must take advantage of all our "choices" and pull ourselves up by our boot straps. Well, our boots have holes in the soles so that we must wear bread bags over our socks to try to keep our feet warm and dry. But we DO understand the political system and we understand the dire straits by which our nation as a whole is suffering. We understand that our national debt will be a burden upon the several generations not yet born. And, when we hear all the talk about needing to "cut entitlements" or to "adjust Social Security", we feel the dark hand of doom hovering over us like the Angel of Death and the bright star of hope becomes even further away.

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

Head Cases

History's Clear Answer to the Torture Debate
Written By Chris Floyd
January 13, 2009
http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1680-head-cases-historys-clear-answer-to-the-torture-debate.html

There has been much throwing about of brains on the subject of "what to do" about the Bush Administration's unabashed and openly confessed use of "interrogation techniques" that are, without question, classified under U.S. law as torture. There seems to be a ripening consensus among our great and good that nothing at all should be done about this perpetration of a capital crime by the top officials of the government -- although one does descry, here and there, a hint that there might be a ritual sacrifice of one or two middling-high figures if the issue gets too hot to brush aside completely. (If I were, say, John Yoo, I'd be looking at sabbaticals in Dubai or Saudi Arabia -- or Israel, maybe, where a man of his expertise in the rationalization of war crime could certainly find gainful employment.)

When the question of what to do about the torturers was put to Barack Obama on TV this week -- after it was voted the single most important question that viewers wanted the president-elect to answer -- he responded with his usual mealy-mouthed blather about a preference for "moving on" and "looking to the future not the past," etc., etc., while throwing in a couple of non-commital pieties about the rule of law and so on. He even refused to say whether he would direct his attorney general to make a specific inquiry into allegations of torture -- by anyone in government, much less top officials. Again, it seems clear that if it is at all possible, Obama will bury the issue several fathoms deep -- just as Bill Clinton thwarted and killed off several investigations into high crimes by the first George Bush and his crew.

In any case, the "debate" on this question in the rarefied climes of Establishment goes on, even as the principals -- George W. Bush and Dick Cheney -- openly confess their crimes in a series of self-justifying "interviews" with pathetic, bootlicking toadies; i.e., the nation's "media elite." Yet on the same day that Obama was waffling about "moving forward" from that little spot of bother about interrogations, Bush was also on national television, openly confessing to at least one clear-cut, indisputable war crime -- again, a capital crime under U.S. law: the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks. Bush said he authorized the use of a "list of tools" for interrogating KSM -- tools which included waterboarding, as Dick Cheney confirmed in yet another television confession.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the torture "debate" is that there is any debate at all over "what to do" about those who ordered the crimes to be committed. Scott Horton at Harper's explains what hundreds of years of Anglo-American jurisprudence clearly says about heads of state who order and countenance torture: they should be tried, and if convicted, executed. In fact, the verdict passed on the last head of state in this legal tradition who was found guilty of torture was that "he be taken to a place of execution, where his head was to be severed from his body by an axe."

What's more, this head of state -- King Charles I -- was specifically charged with the same crime that Bush and Cheney have confessed to: authorizing the "torture and brutal mistreatment of prisoners taken in wartime," as Horton notes. So where's the debate? Our laws, our traditions, all the long-held, deeply-rooted moral and civic principles to which our leaders loudly pledge fealty are clear: when a government official authorizes torture, he should be executed.

Personally, I'm against capital punishment. I would prefer to see Bush and Cheney sentenced to, say, a life term of emptying bedpans at a hospital -- in Sadr City. But in any case, the law of the land says unequivocally that leaders guilty of ordering torture must face the most severe penalties. All of the elite hand-wringing and head-scratching and admonishments for "moving on" are so much sound and fury, signifying nothing but their own moral cowardice -- and their true opinion about the "rule of law."

The Necessary Remedy

by Mary Pitt
Saturday, January 10, 2009

With an economy that is sadly in the tank, a stock market that cannot get its feet back under it, with record and growing unemployment, and with working class and poor people suffering with too little income and too many expenses, the economists and politicians are quarreling over what will be required to heal the ills of our nation.

One "stimulus" has been tried but it was too little and too limited. Since it went only to the very poor, it immediately disappeared by being used to pay bills that were already in existence rather than on consumer spending. When the massive funds were doled out to the major banks, it did not make a ripple in the marketplace as the companies tucked the money into their reserve funds rather than releasing it into new lending.

After eight years of seeing a government that was more intent on its own pet projects than on the welfare of the people; of begging a recalcitrant Congress to do something to stop the openly discussed war of choice without authorization and then the suspension all our civil rights; of viewing reports of the horrible torture which was inflicted on enemy prisoners; of seeing our beloved Constitution, the rules of law set down by our Founding Fathers, the one thing that is lacking sounds relatively simple. It, like the other things that are proposed to remedy out malaise, cannot be accomplished quickly but will take a long time.

The one thing that has been destroyed by the foolhardy folks who have been running our lives is the faith that Americans used to have. Faith that candidates would at long last keep their promises, faith that they really care how painfully hard the national serfs must work and how their concerns about personal security weigh upon their minds. With those of us who are living on very restricted incomes it appears that we are the foreigners in their midst. We are not seen because nobody looks at us and, should they do so, nobody cares. There is absolutely no comprehension that there are actually people who must wear heavy clothing all winter because they can't afford to turn up the heat. They may know intellectually that the old and the handicapped still must choose between their medication and their food, despite all the programs that have been instituted but it does not reach their personal consciousness

When one becomes ill, the response is, "Gosh, no problem. You have Medicare, don't you?" They do not realize that checking into the hospital for day or two can leave one with over $1,000 to be paid upon release. They call that a "co-payment" and that is only after a "deductible" has been paid, but it is a month's Social Security income. Each year the gross Social Security check is "fattened" by a few dollars. However, fewer dollars reach the eligible person but most are gobbled up by increases in the premiums for Parts B and D. One who is dependent upon Social Security must develop an attitude of acceptance of the fact that their life is never going to get any better.

Those who find themselves unemployed must similarly resign themselves to acceptance that they will likely never get another job as good as the one that went to China, or Mexico, or Indonesia. It doesn't matter where it went. It's gone and it's not coming back. The President has been touting "entrepreneurship" over the years and encouraging us to go into our own businesses but only those with a good deal of money can afford to begin a new business. The gurus tell us that this should be done only if you have enough money to support your family for at least a year to give the business time to grow successfully. How many working people are able to save that amount of money when they have had to spend it to pay for their over-priced high-interest housing and the ever-increasing appetites of their growing family?

Everything that Barack Obama does and says and every one of his choices for Cabinet positions are scrutinized for authenticity and each choice is Googled and examined for indications of what we may expect from them. The organizations of which they are members are discussed at length along with the reputations of others who may be members. E-mails and blogs are full of charges and counter-charges until it is a case of Gloomy Gus vs. Hopeful Hannah. The debate is as heated as any that went on during the campaign for election.

For, you see, the "lower-class" American people have been betrayed and lied to, promised consideration only to have those promises reneged after election to the chosen post. Mis-treated and abused. We have sat powerlessly by while our children were sent to a totally unnecessary war to kill the children of other parents. Our national wealth and our entire lifestyle have been sacrificed on the altar of "The War President" and our national reputation has been destroyed. One of the current jokes that you may hear on the streets is that our economy is so bad that the Mexicans are going home because they can't make a living here.

Yes, Americans have lost faith. We no longer have faith in the dreams of our fathers; no faith in the promise of equality; and no faith that our government truly represents the people. No matter how much money is spent or how much effort is exerted by our leaders in Washington, the American people will be using any "stimulus" to pay our old bills and, maybe, stuff a few dollars on the old mattress in case things get worse. There will be no large binge spending, no purchasing of high-dollar homes, and no new cars until we are convinced that our leaders in Washington can be believed when they tell us that they represent us, understand our problems, and will do something constructive about it.

This is the largest task the Obama administration faces and we do wish him the best of luck. We want to believe, we want to trust our leaders, and we really want to believe once again in The American Dream.

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

Pictures of War

Pictures of suffering
Pictures of death

Some say this is holy
Some say this is good

Women burned alive
Children without heads
and heaps of corpses on the ground

Palestinians Will Never Forget

by susan abulhawa

How can anyone watching Gaza burn escape the bitter realization that history repeats itself? Many have compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to Apartheid South Africa. But not in their cruelest hour did the Apartheid regime wreak such wanton murder and destruction. Let us stop mincing words. What is happening to Palestinians now whispers of Warsaw and Lodz.

Schools, universities, mosques, police stations, homes, water treatment plants, factories, and anything that supports civil society, including the only mental health clinic in Gaza, have been blown to rubble from planes that rain death from clear skies without any resistance, because Palestinians have no opposing air force. Nor do they have an army or navy. No mechanized armor or heavy weaponry. Thanks to Israel, they haven’t even had continuous electricity or fuel for the past two years. Or food and medicine. Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza has prevented the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, including the import of the most basic goods necessary for survival.

A recent study by the Red Cross showed that 46 percent of Gazan children suffer from anemia. Malnutrition affects 75 percent of Gaza’s population, half of whom are under the age of 17. There has been widespread deafness among children due to Israel’s intentional and frequent sonic booms from low overflights. An alarming number have stunted growth and serious mental disorders due lack of food. The only way they have been able to survive thus far has been due to the tunnels that smuggle food and goods from Egypt.

Half of Gazan children under 12 have lost their “will to live.” Can anyone fathom the kind of oppression that leads small children en mass to lose their will to live?

This is what Israel has done to Gaza over the past two years. They ghettoized Gaza and turned it into an open air prison – a concentration camp of civilians with no way to earn a living, no way to defend themselves and no place to run from the slaughter bombarding them from air, land, and sea. From the white phosphorous disemboweling young and old alike. Hear eyewitness accounts

But Gazans dared to try to resist with pathetic homemade rockets that, until Israel’s barbaric attack, generally landed in open desert. The rockets were mostly symbolic of resistance, very much like the fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. But who would have called on a ceasefire there, in 1943, for “both parties” to “cease the violence”? Who would have blamed the Ghetto fighters for their ultimate fate? Who would say they had no right to resist? No right to fight back?

Just as Nazis gave Jews only the right to die silently, Israel starves and besieges Palestinians, giving them only that same right. Just as the Warsaw Ghetto was blown to rubble, Gaza is left to burn in an inferno, its hospitals bursting with the puss of death and unspeakable wounds. The entire population of Gaza is terrorized and traumatized. No one is spared the insecurity and fear. Imagine, please, that you are a Gazan.

What have Palestinians done to deserve such a fate? To be endlessly hunted like animals? To have their homes demolished, their ancient history and heritage cast into forgotten space? To languish in refugee camps and slums, while Jews from all corners of the earth flock to fill their confiscated homes and farms? To be tortured, imprisoned, and denied in every conceivable way?

What have we done that leaders will not speak against this massive and cold aggression against our people? With what logic do you call Palestinians terrorists when their streets flow with the blood of their own children? When they have been stripped naked of possessions, dignity and hope?

Why? Because they elected Hamas? Hamas has held power for less than two years. Yet, Palestinians have suffered this kind of slaughter for 61 years. Whether now in Gaza, in 2002 in Jenin, in 1947 and 1948 in Deir Yasin, Balad el-Sha, Yehida, Tantura, and the list goes on. Or 1982 in Sabra and Shatila.

Palestinians are killed as if insects not because of Hamas or Yasser Arafat before them. Not because of Qassasm rockets or hand thrown rocks. Palestinians burn and bleed because they are the non-Jewish natives of that land. There is no other reason. Just like Jews were killed for being Jewish. Palestinians are killed for being the Muslims and Christians who hold historic, legal and even genetic title to that land.

But unlike Jews of Europe, Palestinians are killed slowly over decades. Unlike Israel, Nazi Germany did not establish such an effective global propaganda machine that would demonize its victims and blame them for their own ghastly fate. But most importantly, like the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, Palestinians do not march like mice to their death. In six decades of enduring unspeakable oppression, their will has not been broken. Now is no exception.

Israel, and the United States with its unconditional support, will only succeed in radicalizing a whole new generation of its victims. Of revving world hatred and resentment against this unholy duo.

Palestinians will not forget this, as they have not forgotten the past 60 years. But what will you remember a week or a year or a decade from now, when a Gazan, who stood before the long rows of corpses and vowed vengeance, creates your 9-11? When one of those few million children without a will to live straps on a belt that rips through your daily routine? Will you remember what we did to them?

susan abulhawa is the author of The Scar of David, www.scarofdavid.com

Incident on the Palmetto Expressway

Jan 2, 2009 12:53 pm
Thousands of shoes tie up Miami freeway traffic

Thousands of shoes were dumped on the Palmetto Expressway causing significant traffic delays in Miami, Friday, Jan. 2, 2009. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

MIAMI (AP) -- State troopers are looking for a charity to take thousands of shoes that were dumped on a Miami expressway, tying up rush hour traffic. Lt. Pat Santangelo says the Florida Highway Patrol received a call about the shoes Friday morning.

Santangelo says he's not sure where the shoes came from. There were no signs of a crash and no one stopped to claim them. He says he hopes someone will take them because he doesn't want to send them to the dump.

Workers using a front-end loader and a dump truck were able to quickly clear at least one lane by sweeping all the shoes to shoulder, but delays were expected until they could all be removed.

goodbye 2008

Let's hope the new year is better.

Happy Hanukkah

Shock, Awe and Lies:
The Truth Behind the Israeli Attack on Gaza
Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 29 December 2008
http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1666-shock-awe-and-lies-the-truth-behind-the-israeli-attack-on-gaza.html

Here is a simple, stone cold fact. You cannot read or hear the truth about what is happening in Gaza from any corporate media in the United States. The only thing you will find there are regurgitations of Israeli spin, which are themselves only regurgitations of the kind of spin that American militarists have put on their own depredations -- for centuries now. Up and down the American media and political establishments, you will find nothing but bleatings about Israel being "forced" to launch its vicious blunderbuss attacks against heavily populated Gaza because of the "recent spate of Hamas bombings" since the end of a six-month ceasefire.

This is of course a damnable and deliberate lie. Papers in Israel -- in Israel, but not the United States -- are reporting the truth: the murderous assault on Gaza was planned not only before the six-month ceasefire ended -- it was planned before the cease-fire even took effect. Indeed, the cease-fire was part of the military plan to decimate the civilian areas of Gaza; it was a hoax, a scam, a deliberate feint to buy time for military preparations -- precisely the same strategy followed by the Bush Regime (and its bipartisan Establishment supporters) in "going to the UN" to seek a "peaceful solution" to the "Iraqi crisis" -- when the invasion was already in the works.

Haaretz reports on the Israel's deceit in the latest outrage, in the aptly titled piece, "Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about:

"Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public - all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces "Cast Lead" operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning. he disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike.

Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.."

The story also notes that the recent racheting of tension was sparked, deliberately, by a heavy-handed Israeli incursion into Gaza:

"The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops...."

While Barak was working out the final details with the officers responsible for the operation, Livni went to Cairo to inform Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, that Israel had decided to strike at Hamas. In parallel, Israel continued to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza Strip and that Olmert would decide whether to launch the strike following three more deliberations on Sunday - one day after the actual order to launch the operation was issued.

"Hamas evacuated all its headquarter personnel after the cabinet meeting on Wednesday," one defense official said, "but the organization sent its people back in when they heard that everything was put on hold until Sunday."

Not only did this deception lead Hamas to send its officials back to work -- it also meant that there was no general warning to the masses of civilians packed like sardines into Gaza's hellish confines. It meant that civilian casualties would be maximized -- especially when the initial assault was launched in the middle of the day, with thousands of schoolchildren out at their lesson.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, Israel's massive bombing of civilian areas -- even if couched in terms of "retaliation" for scattershot strikes on Israeli territory by a political faction -- constitutes "a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions." Greenwald also adroitly turns Barack Obama's campaign kowtowing to Israeli militarism on its head:

[Obama on the campaign trail]: "The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if -- I don't even care if I was a politician -- if somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

Can't the exact same mentality be deployed to justify everything Hamas has done and is doing, to wit: "if a foreign power were brutally occupying my country for four decades -- or blockading my country and denying my children medical needs and nutrition and the ability even to exit -- I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Palestinians to do the same thing"? But the last thing that our political class ever extends is reciprocal, two-sided analysis to this dispute.

What is the ultimate context of this carnage? The fact that the Arab inhabitants of Palestine had their land taken away from them by force -- not in some ancient, historic era, but within the lifetime of many thousands of Palestinians still living. I hold no brief for Hamas; like the Angry Arab, whose coverage of the conflict has been relentless and penetrating, I don't care for any party based on religious extremism. But as Greenwald notes, every action taken by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups could be characterized as "retaliation" for the theft of their land, not to mention the war crime of collective punishment and genocidal blockades visited upon the Occupied Territories for years.

But there is not a single peep of this perspective from America's ruling class and its media courtiers. Of course, it is a bit much to expect a nation which itself was built on land theft, repression and slaughter to see anything wrong or "disproportionate" in Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. What else are you supposed to do when those dang heathen savages come around with their war parties and tomahawks, trying to get back the land that God Almighty has granted to good white folk?

Meanwhile, here's what Israel's "Manifest Destiny" looks like on the ground in Gaza. From the Maan News Agency (via the Angry Arab, as was the photo above):

"Death shrouds the hallways of Gaza City's Ash-Shifa medical compound Saturday, its smell creeping in from all corners. Amputated bodies are strewn throughout hallways because morgues in the city can no longer accommodate the dead. In one corner a man stands with his seven year old son in a cardboard box because the hospital ran out of sheets to cover the dead with. This is how he will carry him home and bury him. Another man stands dazed, in shock after watching his son Mohammed killed during his graduation ceremony at the de facto police headquarters. The father of one of Mohammed's classmates stood next to his son as he was decapitated. The man is still screaming.

In the packed hospital waiting room a mother sits silently staring into the distance; her son was pronounced dead shortly after she brought him in... Forty-year-old mother Nawal Al-Lad'a did not find the bodies of her two sons in the medical compound, so she left to look amid the rubble.

Husam Farajallah, a university student, was at the hospital collecting the body of his relative. He called what happened in Gaza a "black day" in the lives of all Palestinians, and wondered how the world could watch and do nothing.

Medics in Gaza confirmed that the majority of those killed in the day's attacks were civilians, including men, women and children. Most were cut to pieces, making the job of doctors and medics difficult, and the task of giving bodies back to families painful and gruesome. The medics working in the field continue to dig up bodies from the densely populated urban areas of Gaza City.

The scenes remind many Palestinians of the images that came out of the Sabra and Shatila massacres from Beirut in 1982, when thousands of Palestinians were killed by the Lebanese Phalangist militia.

As the death toll climbs and no word on a halt to the attacks has come from Israel, Gazans fear for their lives and loved ones."

A New Wind Blowing

by Mary Pitt
12/22/08

The whole country is agog with the news of the Madoff Ponzi scheme and the billions he scammed from big investors, but nobody appears to realize that it is only the tip of a huge iceberg. There are other so-called legitimate institutions afloat in the private sector that are profiting from similar scams with the heartfelt approval of the raging capitalists in government as well as private individuals.

Foremost among these are the insurance companies as they have become established in America. Even the government social programs such as Medicare and Medicaid are administered by the accounting departments of insurance companies. The regulations regarding these programs were written in large part by the insurance companies and, as the result, even the very poor are not getting the services they need under their provisions.

Look at the case of a lady I will call Suzy, a middle-aged lady who, though mentally retarded, had worked as a bus person in a hospital cafeteria until her vision deteriorated so badly that she became qualified for Social Security Disability Support. Since she was not yet 65 years old, she was not initially eligible for Medicare and so became dependent on Medicaid for two years for her health care. At the age of forty years, she was found to have serious heart trouble and required a quadruple bypass surgery. Then she required a medical regimen that would last for all her life. Among the many medications upon which her life depended was the blood thinner, Coumadin, a patented and quite expensive tablet. She thrived amazingly well and recovered nicely.

Though her vision was her "primary disability", the coverage provided for her eyes was minimal and she struggled to pay for the necessary replacement of her lenses as that condition continued to progress. Eventually, a surgical procedure was developed which would help to recover a portion of her vision. She had become eligible for Medicare and the surgery was covered but the new lenses were something that she had to pay for herself from her limited income. Gone were the "Coke-bottle" glasses due to the addition of the implanted lenses. She could stop practicing with the white cane and see well enough to be able to cross a street without assistance.

Then Medicare Part D was instituted and she had to look to an insurance company for the medications. This became a near disaster which was to threaten her life. The insurance company would pay only for generic medications and so she had to exchange the highly successful regimen of Coumadin for the generic Warfarin, commonly known for its primary use as a rat poison. As her pharmacist later explained, Warfarin is not "dosage stable", meaning that the strength is known to vary from batch to batch and she was receiving a "bad batch"! She became covered with black-and-blue patches as the capillaries leaked under her skin and a medical examination disclosed the fact that she was also bleeding internally.

The Warfarin dosage was adjusted but, as she improved, she still complained of "floaties" in her vision. The ophthalmologic surgeons found that she had bled inside her eyes and the "floaties" were specks of blood and it would take time for them to resorb. Eventually this occurred. However, the implanted lenses had become permanently clouded and so a second surgery was necessary to replace them, and of course, new glasses were necessary since there was additional permanent damage to her vision. It makes one wonder whether the money saved by "buying generics" was equal to the cost of the second surgery and the after-care, not to mention the added suffering of the patient and the sacrifices for her to have to pay for the second pair of glasses.

This is typical of the quality of care that is provided by Medicare, which is merely a copy of the insurance company standards. The health of the patient takes a back seat to the pennies which are saved by the mandatory designation of which meds are covered. Suzy is not an anomaly but merely an example of the many shortcomings that are occurring on a daily basis. None of the plans are adequate to the needs. Mothers of young children who become ill are forced to wait until they have the money for the "co-payment" before taking them to the doctor. People who have survived surgery for life-threatening conditions are forced to delay or cancel appointments for after-care because they cannot afford the co-payments. The result is that they wait and become more ill, requiring more care than if they had been able to have their care directed by their physician rather than by an insurance clerk or by their need to pay their rent and utilities.

On the other hand, the insurance companies become more prosperous and even more greedy. They live by the bottom line, some even consolidating into "investment groups" that can later be saved from their own folly by government bailouts. One company had a CEO who embezzled a couple of million dollars but the newspapers have not carried a story about his punishment, if any. Perhaps they consider that the loss of his cushy, high-dollar job was sufficient. They live in an entirely different world from those for whose health they have assumed responsibility and about whose welfare they couldn't care less. It's all about the bottom line to them.

Now we are promised "change" which will "reform" the health care system. What we see discussed is a further subsidy to insurance companies or a plan to "assist" poor people in the payment of their premiums, all of which will only aggravate the problem. Even the computerizing of all medical records and the facilitation of their more rapid sharing will not cut much from the cost of health care delivery. It is only by the removal of power over our most personal care from the hands of the money-grubbing "private enterprise" that this can be accomplished. It is not "socialist" to propose a single-payer plan. The government would not own the hospitals and doctors would not be government employees. They would continue to do business as usual and they and the patients would still make decisions as to the necessary care and procedures. And they would save money by being able to follow a simpler billing procedure.

As the old war-protest song told us, "The answer is written in the wind". There is no way to remedy the problem of public health and its burgeoning costs other than to accept it as a public problem. The cost of health care is threatening all of America's industrial base, though the workers have the ever-increasing premiums withheld from their paychecks in varying percentages and still must cope with the omni-present "deductibles and co-payments". If the same amounts were withheld and paid into a public fund, health care would improve and the cost could be contained. Even those who presently carry individual health insurance would find the costs to be even less than they are currently paying. Physicians' costs would drop due to the lack of necessity to bill various companies and to comply with the pertinent and diverse forms and regulations of those companies. And, incidentally, the corporations would be relieved of the burgeoning costs of providing health care for employees and retirees.

A wise man, Henry Kaiser, once said, "It costs less to keep people healthy than to make them well." It is time for us, as a nation, to recognize that wisdom and to turn our attention to the provision of all types of health care to all our citizens, not just those who can afford to carry insurance or have the few dollars in their pockets to get past the front desk to obtain the care that they need. The dyed-in-the-wool capitalists will bellow that we would be killing the insurance companies. We can only reply that they are killing us, may they rest in peace. Our out-going President touts "responsibility" and indicates that "it is every man for himself". We see no acceptance of responsibility from the insurance companies and we are determined to defend ourselves from the many-tentacled monster that has us by the throat.

The citizens of the United States need universal health care and they need it now. What they do NOT need is yet another commission" of very important people who will sit around for a year or two listening to lectures and instruction by a crew of insurance company officials and announce at last another plan to lubricate those same insurance companies with more of the taxpayers' money. The predictable result would be to throw still more stumbling blocks between the American citizen and his physician.

We must allow the new wind to blow away the cobwebs of complacency and allow our leaders to consider the common sense in moving health care from the profit-making industries and place it where it belongs, in the hands of the health care professionals and the scientific community. Only with a realistic assessment from this point of view can we understand and find the best answer to the problem. We must allow no more low-income workers to fall through the huge cracks in our medical system and no more children to depend on the skillful manipulation of the family budge to provide the care that they need. No more must our elderly be required to subsist on meager rations in order to pay for their medications, becoming ever more frail as they march to a hospice. Only when these problems are faced head-on can the American Dream get back on the road to reality.

We have a nation that must be rebuilt; we have a democracy to be set back on the right track; we have a national debt that will be with us for generations, and an economy that is depleted of resources. This cannot be accomplished by a nation of ill, handicapped people with neglected children and working adults who are needlessly worried about the welfare of their families. For our nation and our own future, we must correct this situation and we must do it now.

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

Fearing the Frightful Filibuster

by Mary Pitt
Tuesday, December 16, 2008

The Republicans are already indicating their intent to use the same tactics that they used in the past two years in the minority to block many of the programs that are vital to the plans of President-elect Obama. They cling to the "sixty-vote cloture" rule as if it were the Holy Grail and intend to exercise it at every turn in the deliberations of the upcoming Congressional session.

Let them!

Let them filibuster! That can be done by refusing to sit back and whimper as has the past Congress under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid. The Legislature can pass all the programs of the President but the Democrats in the Senate need to grow a spine and stand up to the filibuster threat by pushing those programs despite them. What's the worst that could happen?

Under the rules of the filibuster, one speaker must continue to argue until the opposition surrenders and decides to let the bill in question die. This becomes a mental and physical marathon and I don't believe there is an orator in today's Senate who can sustain it. Over the years past, some very colorful characters have arisen who used the filibuster successfully and provided much entertainment for the public in the process. Some have collapsed in the attempt to block a vote but many have succeeded in continuing for a number of days and nights in standing on their feet and keeping up the flow of words. If the opposition surrenders, they are henceforth known as heroes but, if they fail, the bill goes to a vote and may become law.

Now, in a filibuster, it simply doesn't matter what the Senator says so long as he continues talking. History is replete with examples of these legendary orators who gave their all for the party. Senator Robert Byrd was noted for reading the Constitution aloud, over...and over...and over, until the opposition folded. Senator Everett Dirkson, he of the silver tongue, was an inspiration as he spoke about the values or lack thereof of the motion in question. However, I think it is time to discover whether there are any current Senators who are truly willing and able to engage in such physically and mentally grueling exercise in support of their political opinion.

During the last Congressional session, all the Republicans had to do was to threaten filibuster and Speaker Pelosi would not even allow a vote in the House because the Senate could not muster the required sixty-vote majority for cloture. She would announce that, "We just don't have the votes in the Senate", roll over like a spanked puppy, and pee on the floor!

It's time to call their bluff. We all know that Republicans are bullies and will use any minor advantage they can find in order to advance their own agenda or to stymie that of their opponents. If they want to filibuster, let them! When their champion tires and falls over, they can then resume business as usual and vote on the measure in question. It is long and tiring but it is still possible and "possible" is what America needs at this time. The voters are tired of their very lifeblood being drained by the machinations of bullies and we should allow no more of it.

If the current occupants of the chairs in the Senate have not the courage and determination to stand up for us, then perhaps those chairs should be occupied by people with more of what we Americans call "guts". President Obama has been charged with performing nothing less than a series of miracles in order to restore democracy but he cannot do it alone. The Congress is going to have to reach deep down and discover the strength and the courage that is necessary to accomplish any of them. If they do not, the United States is doomed to become just another historic legend along with Athens and Rome.

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

more from Redneck City

I'm tellin' ya. Livin' here's a trip.

Hendry Sheriff Sells Car To Georgia Town
Transferring Assets To Keep New Sheriff From Getting Them Says Story
Don Browne
Thursday, November 27, 2008
http://swflorida.blogspot.com:80/2008/11/hendry-sheriff-sells-car-to-georgia.html

LABELLE, FL. -- A news story in the Cordele Dispatch in Georgia says Hendry County Sheriff Ronnie Lee is selling his 2007 Dodge Charger police cruiser to a Vienna, Georgia Police Department to keep Sheriff-Elect Steve Whidden from getting it. The issue came to light according to the story when the Vienna Mayor questioned the purchase at a city council meeting Monday.

According to the story Vienna Police Chief Jamey Reed bought the vehicle without notifying the Mayor. According to the story "Reed said a sheriff in Hendry County, Fla. had lost his bid for re-election and had a black 2007 Dodge Charger he did not want the new sheriff to get."

The Vienna Mayor was disappointed that he wasn't notified of the deal made by the Vienna Police Chief.

"Reed said the total price for the Charger was $18,950. He informed council that he had a quote, also from Brannen, on a new Crown Victoria like the ones currently in use by the department. The quote for the Crown Victoria was $28,285. The purchase of the Charger saves taxpayers almost $10,000 and payment for the vehicle is not due until January 2009 when it was originally approved for, Reed said."

The cruiser is already fully equipped with lights, siren, and radio and had been traded to Brannen Motor Company in Unadilla, according to the story. Although it is unknown from where the Dodge Charger police vehicle was purchased originally, Sheriff Lee's son Ronnie Jr. worked for a local LaBelle Dodge dealer. Nearly all of the other Hendry Sheriff's department vehicles are Fords.

more at: http://www.cordeledispatch.com/archivesearch/local_story_330203043.html

Through A Hole In The Air...

By Sheila Samples
11/28/08

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The recent blowout election that gave us President Barack Obama resulted in a flood of emotion that engulfed both parties. The one thing they had in common was that neither party could believe it. Political comedian Mort Sahl once said, "Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen." If we have learned nothing else about Republicans, it's that, with few exceptions, they are vindictive, immoral, blood-thirsty, and just plain power-mad. Republicans are so much better at destroying things than Democrats are. They say and do whatever it takes to win. And if that doesn't work -- they seize it anyway.

So we were braced for another disappointment -- not because we didn't share Obama's vision of change and his hope for a better life for all Americans, but because voting machines were frantically flip-flopping votes from Obama to John McCain, minority voters were purged, telephones jangling with robocalls smeared Obama as an alien terrorist -- and John King over at CNN kept ramming solid red "magic" maps in our faces as proof that McCain could not lose.

So, what happened?

We woke up. After snoozing through massive homicide, refusing to confront genocide, ignoring fratracide and the hopelessness that has driven an alarming number of our military to commit suicide...we woke up. We stood united against a national addiction to chaos, bloodshed and corruption. We voted for a leader who promised to break that addiction, and to heal this nation in the name of the people. By election night, we were giddy with relief. We clambered aboard that ship of state and rode the wave of long-lost hope -- free at last. Obama's win ripped a hole in the political air, and millions of us stood weeping as the blissful sound of Democracy wafted through every nook and cranny to swirl around this magnificent moment in our history.

But that was election night. Republicans, terrified of change, were in shock -- in total disarray. But the next morning, they were out in force -- maggots streaming from rotten turds whose blossoms had been stomped on. The Heritage Foundation warned against the danger of the Left's "radical agenda" of health care, education and energy. House majority leader John Boehner was either drunk or stupidly arrogant, or both, when he maintained that Obama may have won, but his "far-left agenda" was out of step with the majority of Americans. Boehner did concede, however, that House Republicans might work with Obama "when it is in the best interest of our nation," and only when it promoted "superior Republican alternatives..."

Boehner's predecessor, Dick Armey, was quick to point out that Obama didn't win -- Republicans lost. And they lost because they were just too damned compassionate. Armey is chairman of FreedomWorks, which advocates scrapping the Federal Income Tax, kicking older folks out of Social Security to keep from overburdening the young, and of course freedom -- such as that of network carriers to manage and control Internet content. According to Armey, Republicans have simply forgotten their principles.

Richard Haass, Council on Foreign Relations president, hissed, "The one thing I'm sure of is, events will test him. ...There will be coups. ...There will be genocide. ... There will be terrorism." Gee, Bush hasn't completed his sprint to the finish line yet, and those like Haass are already waxing nostalgic for the Bush Doctrine.

Georgia Congressman Paul Broun called Obama a "Marxist" who was determined to set up a jack-booted Gestapo civilian security force to use against citizens -- an ominious tactic taken right out of Hitler's playbook. In the ensuing flap, Broun refused to apologize, or to acknowledge that the "civilian national security force" proposed by Obama is, in reality, a two-year-old pilot program -- The Civilian Response Corps of the United States of America trained and equipped to "deploy rapidly to countries in crisis or emerging from conflict, in order to provide reconstruction and stabilization assistance." The State Department has already deployed members to Sudan, Chad, Haiti, Lebanon, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Intolerance, hate -- racism -- runs deep within the heart of this country. It's easy not to be racist, to support civil rights, equality -- but when confronted by a change so abrupt, so momentous as the election of an African-American president, many white Americans have problems calming their inner beast. William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, said when discussing the hundreds of threats against Obama since Nov. 4, that the election of a black president is "the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War. Racism is like cancer," Ferris said, "It's never totally wiped out, it's in remission."

Remission? Perhaps, except for those like the feral, all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling, all-concerned -- pretty much all-everything -- "Maha Rushie" Limbaugh, who has been in shrieking racist meltdown since the day Obama announced his candidacy. Referring to Barack Hussein Obama early and often, Limbaugh stoked racist fear by warning millions of Dittodeadheads they were being taken over by a "half-minority." In April 2007, he aired an insulting Paul Shanklin parody, "Barack The Magic Negro," and went from that to trying to whip up murderous riots at the Democratic National Convention.

Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and their gang of slimy supremacist clones inflame the fires of fear and hate on a daily -- hourly -- basis. They know exactly what they're doing. "The economic mess Bush has gotten us into is all Obama's fault! The Obama recession is in full swing! We will soon be in the throes of an Obama depression! Obama's going to raise our taxes! Obama's coming after our 401k retirement checks! Millions more will lose their jobs! Quick -- burn a cross -- hang a noose in your tree before it's too late!"

And Michael Savage warns that Blacks don't want just a foot in the door; they are poised to take over the entire nation. On his Nov. 18 broadcast, Savage said, "I am telling you that there's gonna be a wholesale firing of competent white men in the United States government up and down the line, in police departments, in fire departments. Everywhere in America, you're going to see an exchange that you've never seen in history..."

If that's not enough to send us screaming into the night, our knees hitting our chins, Lisa Miller, former front-page religious writer for the Wall Street Journal, now Newsweek's Society/Religion editor, asks, in a shameful, code-word-laden piece -- "Is Obama the Antichrist?" Miller quotes several right-wing evangelicals, and she says conservative Christians believe a great battle is imminent. "After years of tribulation -- natural disasters, other cataclysms (such as the collapse of financial markets) -- God's armies will vanquish armies led by the Antichrist himself. He will be a sweet-talking world leader who gathers governments and economies under his command to further his own evil agenda." Miller says, given Obama's liberal positions on abortion and traditional marriage, it's no wonder that "Obama triggers such fear in the hearts of America's millennialist Christians." And, if we want proof -- one of the winning lottery numbers in Obama's home state of Illinois was 666 -- which Miller says everyone knows is the sign of the Beast, or the Antichrist.

The fascist lies and smears of Republicans and their doppleganger radio creeps should come as no surprise to those paying attention. However, the ripples of uneasiness and fear surging through Democratic ranks as a result of these assaults is a bit puzzling. Perhaps it's because after eight years of covering -- and uncovering -- deceit, lies, and monstrous war crimes perpetrated by George Bush, they are hesitant to trust another president regardless of his party affiliation. Or, perhaps they're afraid to have hope because they believe George Orwell's flat, no-wiggle-room assertion that -- "All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia."

Whatever the reason, each day brings a new rash of criticism about Obama's choices for his transition team, his economic team, his foreign policy team. His selection of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, probable selection of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, and his decision to keep Robert Gates as Defense Secretary for at least a year resulted in cries of betrayal throughout the left-wing blogosphere. For two Democrats to agree on any one thing would indeed be change. Everybody has his/her own views as to who should make up the cabinet. And, since I'm the most liberal Democrat I know, it seems obvious that Obama should have put the environment into the hands of the award-winning former vice president Al Gore, justice into the hands of Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, and Defense into the hands of former Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark.

Those on the left who complain that Obama is "loading up his administration with Clintonites" should pause and take a deep breath. Anybody old enough to serve -- who has the experience to serve -- would necessarily come from either the Clinton or the Bush era. Which would you prefer? We should remember it is Obama's policies, not theirs, that will be put into effect. Obama promised change -- to be honest and up-front with all the people. He is keeping that promise.

Last week, in three days Obama held three press conferences wherein he outlined policies that reach far beyond the immediate crisis, such as his plan to boost the economy by creating 2.5 million jobs. "We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children," he said, "and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead."

Millions of us who voted for Obama are weary of fighting our way through the tangles of an Orwellian world. We yearn to live in a Wellstonian world, one where "...politics is not about observations or predictions. Politics is what we create by what we do, what we hope for, and what we dare to imagine."

Obama is not perfect. The problems Bush is only too happy to dump on him are almost insurmountable and getting worse by the day. Obama will make mistakes, but he has promised that, with our help, the hopes of all Americans can be realized. Together -- we can change the direction of the country.

We will not jump ship. Come hate or high water -- we can do it.

Yes. We. Can.

Sheila Samples http://sheilastuff.blogspot.com/ is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@wichitaonline.net

Veterans Day

SockMonkey concedes.

Well, Johnny, (I can call you Johnny, right?) Anyway, don’t feel too bad. I got danced on Election Day too. You and Sarah (I can call you Sarah, right?) should do what me and Lumpy did.

We looked at each other at 3am, and said, “Well, that’s it. Let’s go get a banana”

And we did. Then we fell asleep on the pillow. And when we woke up, it was another day.

We’d like to congratulate President-elect Barack Obama on his historic victory, and remind him that we will always be available to help. We’d also like to congratulate the American people for their obvious wisdom and courage.

Oh yeah. We concede.

SockMonkey and Lumpy
http://tmars.iwarp.com/sockmonkey08/index.html

paid for by money we found in the sofa cushions

November 5, 2008

:-)

and, as they say, the rest is history

Worm's-Eye View of the Debate

by Mary Pitt

The most memorable points made in the McCain/Obama debate, from my lowly viewpoint, was the plight of poor old Joe, the Plumber The story was that Joe has worked for a plumbing company for twelve years, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Now he wants to buy the company and "give jobs" to other men. He is worried that, should he do well and earn over a quarter of a mil a year, he may have to pay a higher rate of taxes then he would now.

Having some experience in running a small business and having employed up to seven people at any given time, the efforts of both my husband and me never came close to turning that much profit in a year. For that matter, we never, by each holding separate jobs at the same time, our individual wages never matched the figure that Joe has been earning for the past twelve years. Let's do some math:

If Joe has truly worked twelve hours a day for seven days a week, if he was earning union wages, let's say conservatively, $25.00 per hour. Forty hours a week at that rate would garner a gross of $1,000 per week. The additional 44 hours per week would be paid at the overtime rate of $37.50 per hour for an additional $1,650, bringing the total to $2650 per week. Let's say the poor man became so exhausted with that pace that he took a liberal vacation, say four weeks a year, leaving him with 48 weeks per year for an annual gross of $127,200. Not bad, even after deductions for taxes and contributions to the medical plan, (the bulk of which would have been paid by the employer), and, oh yes, let's not forget the onerous Social Security contributions that would have ceased at about the $95,000 mark. Those of us at the bottom of the scale would tend to agree with Senator McCain when he said, "Congratulations, Joe, you're rich!"

But Joe is an ambitious man and he wants to buy the business and give jobs to people. I would suggest that he first consult with a good accountant who can explain to him the business facts of life. He will learn that all the wages he pays will be deductible, including any health insurance he provides for his employees as a perk of the job. Of course, he will be required to pay the Employer's tax for Social Security and other taxes and licenses but those are a part of the cost of doing business and are also deductible.. (Should he opt to forego employee health insurance, those same employees are not allowed to deduct the cost of the plan they will have to carry privately.)

At the end of the year, after the aforesaid accountant closes the books, making all adjustments to the books to be sure Joe gets all the deductions for depreciation on plant and equipment, as well as the rolling stock and finds all the loopholes that are legally allowed, the resultant figure will be the one on which Joe will pay income tax, under the Obama plan and assuming that he clears the magic figure of $250,000 a year, at about the same rate he is paying now on the lesser present-day income. It may compute to a slightly large amount than he is paying today but he would have double the income and could well afford to pay it.

Of course, all this is contingent upon his knowing more about the business than simply how to do the work he is performing now. Many a hard-working, ambitious man in the home service business has done well, decided to own his own business and failed miserably within the first seven years. Let's hope that Joe is not one of them.

But from the worm's-eye view of a worn-out old lady, Joe's attitude simply does not make sense. First, it appears to be stupid to deliberately earn less money because a higher income would result in more income taxes. You see, I am from the generation that learned early in life that being honest and paying taxes is the price for the privilege of living in a nation that allows one the freedom to gain wealth and to better the living standard for one's family. It is a matter of the ultimate expression of patriotism that one does one's duty to one's country whether that duty be serving in the military or simply paying the necessary taxes to sustain a free and democratic government. (Republicans are very big on patriotism these days but it does not extend to taxes.)

If Warren Buffet sees fit to complain that his tax rate is too low for all the privileges that he has enjoyed and the prosperity that he has had the opportunity to earn, surely old Joe the Plumber would be able to do the same. We can only hope that he will then be prepared to pay the proper homage to the nation that provided him with the chance to become truly wealthy and that his mindset can mature to the point that he will do it proudly.

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".