The Guerrilla Campaign

By Sheila Samples November 24, 2009 If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. - Thomas S. Szasz, The Second Sin Several months ago, CNN published the results of a couple of disturbing polls about Americans and their religious beliefs. The first found that more Americans are rejecting religion and thus, according to CNN, America is becoming "less Christian." The second, a Pew survey of only 742 mostly white evangelical Protestants, revealed that more than six in 10 of them believe that torture is often or sometimes justified. More than six in 10? What this says about those claiming to be God's own is that perhaps they should use their Bibles for more than "thumping." Because not one in 10 -- not one in 10 thousand -- not one in 10 million -- Christians believes that torture can ever be justified. Ever. Anyone who has paid attention to the growing number of evangelical zealots over the past couple of decades must be aware...

By Sheila Samples November 1, 2009 Is there anything scarier than the New York Times' Halloween treat entitled, "Documents Detail Conditions Found at Secret C.I.A. Jails"? Pardon my Palinese, but -- You betcha! You damnbetcha! For starters, the "conditions" the Times mentions only briefly are, in reality, depraved, corrupt, immoral, inhumane torture. According to the Times... "F.B.I. agents who arrived at a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners “manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock,” and a C.I.A. official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including “How close is each technique to the ‘rack and screw'. . ." What is more frightening -- that the C.I.A. got its jollies by torturing, even murdering human beings in its secret sodomy frat-houses -- or that the F.B.I. took one look, fled the scene and remained silent for years? Perhaps it's the two-page memo President George Bush ha...

October 27, 2009 Mack answers questions about Obama visit news-press.com http://www.news-press.com/article/20091027/OBAMA/91027025/1075 Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fort Myers, held a phone conference this morning to answer questions about his position on President Obama’s visit to the DeSoto County solar power plant. He said the president is on a sales pitch to increase his popularity on the taxpayer’s dime. “Once again we see the president take a tour of the country in what appears to be a PR swing to move legislation and policies that the American people don’t want, don’t need — hurting the American people.” He specifically mentioned the bailout and stimulus laws, health care reform bills and cap and trade legislation, as examples. Mack said “liberal ideas” are destroying the “fabric of America.” On the issue of alternative and renewable energy, Mack said the issue is about encouraging more energy products. He is against a “tax and spend” philosophy and prefers “government getting out of the...

by Mary Pitt October 25, 2009　 The Democrats are terribly worried about their ability to gain the sixty votes required for cloture in order to vote for passage of their health plan in the Senate. There are many of us, particularly on the Progressive side who see the benefits of bringing the bill to the floor regardless of the pre-vote count and let the speeches begin! The Republicans are griping that the discussions regarding the content of the bill have not been open and transparent as promised by Candidate Obama. Committees have had meetings and administration officials have consulted experts in closed door sessions. Now it is time for the "transparency" for which they pine. Those bills should be brought to the floor in the state prepared by the respective committees and then allow the floor debates to be aired on C-Span. The benefits for the American people will be enormous. There in all their splendor will stand various and assorted "statesmen" in the very act o...

By Sheila Samples October 12, 2009 I didn't know Van Jones. I didn't know Van Jones was a friend of mine -- at least not until the stench billowing from the Fox Hate Channel became so foul I was forced to take a closer look at this terrifying creature. No -- not Jones, whom President Obama wisely had hired as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality -- but the sobbing, lying, deliriously insane Glenn Beck. According to Beck, who began his assault on Jones in a July 23 disjointed rant, wherein he claimed Jones is not only "a communist-anarchist radical," but a former black nationalist, avowed communist-anarchist radical. Or something. Anyway, according to Beck, Jones is really really dangerous -- a racist just like Obama, who has a "deep-seated hatred for white folks" and whose entire agenda is restructuring America into a land of reparations, social justice and jobs for minorities. The appalling thing about the intellectually ...

Dry Heaves and Sucker Ploys: Written by Chris Floyd Tuesday, 29 September 2009 00:03 http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1847-dry-heaves-and-sucker-ploys-the-great-new-iran-qcrisisq.html The new "Iran crisis" is such a sickening concoction of stupidity and lies that it almost defies comment. It certainly defies contemplation; even to think about it for thirty seconds is enough to bring on a bout of the dry heaves. Fortunately, several other writers -- with iron-clad innards, no doubt -- have boldly waded in and dismantled the deception behind the manufactured hissy fit over Iran's "secret nuclear facility." Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com gives a good overview of the case, which, shucked of all the warmongering frenzy, boils down to this little nubbin of reality: Iran was building a new nuclear enrichment facility, as it is allowed to do by international treaty. The United States and several other Western countries knew about the fa...

[…] We are living through a profound global financial crisis. That crisis has many proximate causes in the governance and deregulation of Wall Street. We have seen the astounding bailout of Bear Stearns using $30 billion plus in public money—Bear Stearns – an investment bank, an enterprise that prided itself on being in the business of cowboy capitalism, business without a safety net. But the real roots of the crisis do not lie on Wall Street. The cause of the crisis can be found in the long-term weakening of the real American economy in an era of globalization—in closed factories, outsourced high tech jobs and low wage jobs with no benefits, and in the unsustainable effort to maintain middle class living standards through borrowing. It is to be found in the reality of lives like that of Kimberly Somsel of Westland Michigan, a member of the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate Working America, an unemployed single mother of two battling breast cancer and facing foreclosure due to a ballooning...

by Mary Pitt July 29, 2009 While the Congressional "elephants" are straining at the gnat of Obama's health care plan, the Blue Dogs are busily gorging on the poisonous fat being spread before them by the voracious and monopolistic insurance and pharmaceutical companies, the citizens for whom they were chosen to protect are continuing to be victimized and destroyed. The handwriting is on the wall to tell us that nothing good is going to come of the enthusiasm with which the American people voted for the longed-for "change". Neither of these mythical creatures sounded an alarm about the trillions of American dollars that were simply strewn to the wind in the misguided effort to "bring democracy to Iraq". There was then no outcry about the state of the national debt, no discussion of deficit financing, only great glee at the prospect of all the pork that would be rained upon their constituents and campaign donors. There was no mention of anything resembli...

by Jeff Huber http://www.atlargely.com/atlargely/2009/07/cheneys-inferno.html I tend to regard Dick Cheney the way most of us divorced folks probably think of our ex-spouses. The ex-spouses are going to hell and revenge is already ours, so why waste our breath on them? It’s likewise with Cheney. He’s out of power, his next political post will be as Vice-Prince of Darkness; is he worth wasting a thousand-word essay on anymore? Then something happens to remind me that there’s a big difference between Dick Cheney and ex-spouses. Ex-spouses may have been bona fide bums and broom jockeys, but none of them was the first arch villain of the 21st century. Were any of us actually shocked by the recent revelation that Lord Cheney ordered the CIA to withhold information about a secret program from Congress for eight years? Given the galactic scale of his malevolence in the Office of the Vice President, ordering the CIA to lie to Congress amounts to a parking violation. Even before young Mr. Bush...

By Sheila Samples July 19, 2009 If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political monsters; you finally hand over your brothers - Albert Camus There is no subject more restricted nor more controlled in the United States than a critical discussion of Israel. Balanced argument is ignored while each word is parsed -- and condemned. It's strange that we are free to rant and rave and point out the war crimes of our own administration -- of all other administrations throughout the world -- but not those of Israel. The few who dare to question the damage Israel has wrought throughout the Middle East for decades are immediately labeled "anti-Semitic," and are in danger of losing their friends, jobs, their reputations and, if they persist, their country -- for America has zero tolerance for those who recognize Israel's brutality. Why is this? Are not crimes against h...

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 fro...

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, ...

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 ...

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...

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-h...