Let's remove Pelosi.

Thanks to Linda Milazzo at Smirking Chimp for posting these.





That is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, effectively admitting on Larry King's program that she is chummy with a mass murderer and dictator. That is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, dissing the mother of a soldier killed in her friend's war of choice, because she has "a day job."

And what job is that, exactly? Aiding and abetting tyrants -- war criminals -- as they continue to torture, wage illegal war, spy on us, and collapse our economy. And that's not even half of the list of crimes committed by the shrub-gargoyle regime.

http://www.shirley08.com/index.php

Shirley Golub is a Democrat challenging Pelosi for the California-8th District primary in June. She has the guts to say what no other member of the Democratic Party will: that the Speaker of the House is a craven coward. I think Pelosi is beyond cowardice; she is complicit -- an embodiment of evil, the very kind now doing so much damage to our country and our world.

http://www.cindyforcongress.org

Cindy Sheehan was the face of the anti-war movement in America as it helped propel the Democratic Party back into political power for the first time in over a decade. And when she reaized that the Democrats had simply used us to obtain power, that they had no intention of changing the status quo, she was compelled to act in the only way she could: campaign to unseat Pelosi.

I am urging each and every member of this web site to donate to these two Ladies, to make every effort to help them defeat Pelosi and send her sniveling back to the dog house she shares with Barney the Scottish Terrier. No one who professes friendship with the dictator who has wrought so much pain and suffering should be allowed to hold power. No one who so callously and arrogantly dismisses the mother of a slain soldier should be allowed to walk the halls of Congress. No one who so criminally undermines the duties placed upon her by the Constitution of the United States should be allowed to show her face in D.C.

Ms. Golub and Ms. Sheehan are the best chance we have of removing the biggest obstacle to impeachment, and the most prominent enabler of the occupation and the regime that is dismantling our democracy. Let's help them topple Pelosi.

No solutions to the economic crisis in this presidential race.

In a recent EENR entry I posted about Paul Krugman's blog entry regarding the real reason regulators have failed to reign in the excesses of Wall Street. Essentially, the failure was deliberate -- an effort to systematically remove any and all regulation. I guess causing one Great Depression wasn't enough to wake up the laissez-faire jerks into realizing that the days of unrestricted greed should have remained dead and buried; they've been working like hell to create another while making their money, and they appear to have succeeded.

But I digress. In today's New York Times column, Professor Krugman expands upon this failure to reign in Wall Street by bringing the discussion to the presidential election.

I don’t expect much from John McCain, who has both admitted not knowing much about economics and denied having ever said that. Anyway, lately he’s been busy demonstrating that he doesn’t know much about the Middle East, either.

Yet the McCain campaign’s silence on the financial crisis has disappointed even my low expectations.

And when Mr. McCain’s economic advisers do speak up about the economy’s problems, they don’t inspire confidence. For example, last week one McCain economic adviser — Kevin Hassett, the co-author of “Dow 36,000” — insisted that everything would have been fine if state and local governments hadn’t tried to limit urban sprawl. Honest.

If only Professor Krugman knew just how much lower a McCain dictatorship would sink things. But the Democratic prima donnas vying for their political party's nomination don't fare any better under Krugman's scalpel.

On the Democratic side, it’s somewhat disappointing that Barack Obama, whose campaign has understandably made a point of contrasting his early opposition to the Iraq war with Hillary Clinton’s initial support, has tried to score a twofer by suggesting that the war, in addition to all its other costs, is responsible for our economic troubles.

The war is indeed a grotesque waste of resources, which will place huge long-run burdens on the American public. But it’s just wrong to blame the war for our current economic mess: in the short run, wartime spending actually stimulates the economy. Remember, the lowest unemployment rate America has experienced over the last half-century came at the height of the Vietnam War.

Hillary Clinton has not, as far as I can tell, made any comparably problematic economic claims. But she, like Mr. Obama, has been disappointingly quiet about the key issue: the need to reform our out-of-control financial system.

Professor Krugman points out how the country came out of the Great Depression with a strong social safety net, which, given the monumental backlash against laissez faire economics in the wake of the economic crisis, is no surprise. The government bailed out the banks, but only so long as those banks accepted regulation. This meant that the party was over for unrestricted greed.

But, as Krugman goes on to explain, all that reform slowly deteriorated over time, and now we're right back where we were in 1929 -- and we're rapidly approaching 1930-level proportions as the current financial meltdown steadily approaches its peak. In short, no thanks to the Bush regime's continuation of deregulation of the financial markets (which began in earnest under Reagan and has continued unbroken), we're monumentally screwed. Krugman writes:

Now, the shadow banking system is facing the 21st-century equivalent of the wave of bank runs that swept America in the early 1930s. And the government is rushing in to help, with hundreds of billions from the Federal Reserve, and hundreds of billions more from government-sponsored institutions like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks.

Given the risks to the economy if the financial system melts down, this rescue mission is justified. But you don’t have to be an economic radical, or even a vocal reformer like Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, to see that what’s happening now is the quid without the quo.

Last week Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, declared that Mr. Frank is right about the need for expanded regulation. Mr. Rubin put it clearly: If Wall Street companies can count on being rescued like banks, then they need to be regulated like banks.

As the professor points out, Clinton and Obama have topped the other candidates from both major political parties for corporate campaign contributions (one example, in terms of corporate money from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, may be found here).

In short, Wall Street has not only destroyed the economy with happy assistance from the Bush-Cheney regime, it has ensured that no matter who becomes president (or dictator, if McCain manages to steal this one), nothing will be done to clean up Wall Street's mess.

Microsoft executives' thoughts on Windows Vista exposed.

Anyone who has had to endure the incompatibility issues, bugs, and gaping holes in software should get a kick out of this New York Times article.

Here’s one story of a Vista upgrade early last year that did not go well. Jon, let’s call him, (bear with me — I’ll reveal his full identity later) upgrades two XP machines to Vista. Then he discovers that his printer, regular scanner and film scanner lack Vista drivers. He has to stick with XP on one machine just so he can continue to use the peripherals.

Did Jon simply have bad luck? Apparently not. When another person, Steven, hears about Jon’s woes, he says drivers are missing in every category — “this is the same across the whole ecosystem.”

Then there’s Mike, who buys a laptop that has a reassuring “Windows Vista Capable” logo affixed. He thinks that he will be able to run Vista in all of its glory, as well as favorite Microsoft programs like Movie Maker. His report: “I personally got burned.” His new laptop — logo or no logo — lacks the necessary graphics chip and can run neither his favorite video-editing software nor anything but a hobbled version of Vista. “I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine,” he says.

It turns out that Mike is clearly not a naïf. He’s Mike Nash, a Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management. And Jon, who is dismayed to learn that the drivers he needs don’t exist? That’s Jon A. Shirley, a Microsoft board member and former president and chief operating officer. And Steven, who reports that missing drivers are anything but exceptional, is in a good position to know: he’s Steven Sinofsky, the company’s senior vice president responsible for Windows.

Their remarks come from a stream of internal communications at Microsoft in February 2007, after Vista had been released as a supposedly finished product and customers were paying full retail price. Between the nonexistent drivers and PCs mislabeled as being ready for Vista when they really were not, Vista instantly acquired a reputation at birth: Does Not Play Well With Others.

So Microsoft execs have been caught acknowledging that they shoved a piece of shit operating system on the public, knowing full well that it was actually inferior to their last piece of shit operating system. But it never would have happened, had somebody not been brave enough to sue Microsoft. According to the article:

We usually do not have the opportunity to overhear Microsoft’s most senior executives vent their personal frustrations with Windows. But a lawsuit filed against Microsoft in March 2007 in United States District Court in Seattle has pried loose a packet of internal company documents. The plaintiffs, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, bought PCs in late 2006, before Vista’s release, and contend that Microsoft’s “Windows Vista Capable” stickers were misleading when affixed to machines that turned out to be incapable of running the versions of Vista that offered the features Microsoft was marketing as distinctive Vista benefits.

Last month, Judge Marsha A. Pechman granted class-action status to the suit, which is scheduled to go to trial in October. (Microsoft last week appealed the certification decision.)

Given that one of the first actions as dictator by George W. Bush was to drop the anti-trust against Microsoft, I doubt this suit shall go anywhere this year. But it has served at least one purpose: to expose the true thoughts of those who push inferior, and often-times, lethal products on consumers.

U.S. February 2008 payrolls the lowest in five years.

Before I continue, if you haven't yet read Hair Club for Men's excellent entry at Political Flesh Feast, then now would be a good time. Some of those who write pro-Israeli apartheid diatribes at other web sites shall not get it, because to do so would force them to think of Rachel Corrie as human and, as well, the Palestinians. And if there's one thing that absolutely terrifies the far right, it's that others shall recognize what is being done in our name against human beings. It's simply easier to think of Palestinians and their Western sympathizers as mindless beasts, "its" rather than people.

But for those of you who refuse to buy into that mentality, HCfM's entry is eye-opening. You could do a lot worse than to read it. Anyway, on to today's entry. Reuters reports a loss of at least 63,000 American jobs in February. I say at least, because as with what seems to be almost everything coming out of the news, the actual numbers are probably under-reported.

U.S. employers cut payrolls for a second straight month during February, slashing 63,000 jobs for the biggest monthly decline in nearly five years as the nation's labor markets weakened steadily, a government report on Friday showed.

The Labor Department said last month's cut followed an upwardly revised loss of 22,000 jobs in January rather than the 17,000 reported a month ago. It also said only 41,000 jobs were created in December, half the 82,000 originally reported.

"This confirms the fears that have been lurking in the financial markets in recent weeks. The probability of a U.S. recession is at more than 50 percent," said Richard DeKaser, chief economist for National City Corp. in Cleveland.

Too many Americans still seem to think it's easy to get a job in this economy, that if one is unemployed for more than a few months, it must be something wrong with the jobless person. But numbers have a way of inserting pesky reality into the equation. The truth is that it's not that people who fall under in this country aren't trying to obtain work; it's that the work simply isn't there.

Department officials said February's job losses were the largest for any month since March 2003, when 212,000 jobs were cut.

During February, the national unemployment rate eased to 4.8 percent from 4.9 percent in January, but that was because fewer people were in the labor force. The department said the number of people in the workforce fell by 450,000 in February.

Job losses were widespread. Some 52,000 jobs were lost in the manufacturing industries, the largest decline since July 2003 when 92,000 jobs were cut. Construction businesses eliminated another 39,000 jobs on top of 25,000 that were cut in January, a reflection of the housing industry's deepening woes.

The department said that since the housing boom peaked in September 2006, construction businesses have cut 331,000 jobs.

Retail industries also shed jobs last month, dropping 34,000 people off their payrolls, a possible reflection of concern from businesses that hard-pressed consumers are likely to begin pulling back sharply on spending.

Just another stumbling block for those of us who've fallen through the ever-widening cracks. Except now those cracks are gaping fissures, and so many of us think that if we divert our eyes we can pretend the problem doesn't exist, just like the supporters of Israeli apartheid think that if they demonize their victims, then their hands are clean of human blood.

My Primary Vote

I just returned from voting in Ohio's primary. I cast my ballot for Dennis Kucinich, as my choice for both the presidency and the 10th Congressional District's representative. And thus my conscience is clean.

I know, I know. "You just wasted your vote," many of you shall say. To that I give you this simple response: Horse shit. The only votes wasted, dear readers, are those not cast and those cast for a candidate who doesn't represent you. Anyone who tells you differently is either lying to you, or doesn't know what he's talking about.

These are not things I write lightly. I know quite well that what I've just typed shall piss off a number of people. The truth, however, was never designed to make people happy.

Primaries are precisely the time when we as voters are supposed to stand up and vote our beliefs. Why in God's name would anyone vote for someone who doesn't represent him? "Pragmatism"? That's a bullshit excuse, one designed to justify keeping the status quo intact. And for far too long, far too many Democrats have succumbed to that argument. We voted "pragmatically" in 2004, cast our ballots for a candidate who wasn't worth the toilet bowl he shat into, and what did it get us? Nothing, except four more years of crap raining down upon our country. Four more years of craven capitulation -- two of them under a Democratic Congress -- to a boy tyrant who in a sane world would have been removed from office and convicted of treason during the first year of his reign.

Neither Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama have earned so much as a single Democratic vote. But for the desperation of Americans to elect anyone other than a Republican, the adulation and scorn of the corporate media, and the humongous egos of the two prima donnas themselves, they are the candidates we have been saddled with in this primary season.

There is an admonition against allowing the "perfect" to be the enemy of the "good". But really, how many people do you know who ask for or expect perfect? I and everyone I know is fully aware that nothing and no one is perfect. All we want are good policy and good representatives. Yet each and every election cycle, we're forced to accept the mediocre and the downright bad.

It doesn't, and shouldn't, have to be that way. However you intend to vote in the general election, is this or is it not the time to vote your beliefs -- to cast your ballot for the presidential candidate who represents you? Not Big Business, not the DLC, but you. Mr. and Ms. Average American. To hand your ballot to someone who doesn't represent you is to surrender it to the status quo, to send a message that, no matter how much you may complain about the way things are, you're perfectly content to leave it as is.

That isn't democracy, ladies and gentlemen. It's a monarchical system, one in which the will of the public is subjected to the greed and ambition of a political minority whose interests are to keep you beaten down and in service to the economic elite. And I don't know about you ladies and gentlemen, but I refuse to give in to that bullshit. Politicians are supposed to work for us, to be our voices in the halls of power. We are not supposed to subject our interests and political beliefs to those we employ.

Maybe your state's primary or caucus has already been held. Maybe it's today, or has yet to be held. For those of you who fall into the latter categories,ask yourselves if it isn't worth it to challenge this fucked up system by voting for the candidate who represents you, just to see what would happen.

The most important thing about being a Democrat: vetting our candidate.

Matt Gonzalez over at BeyondChron.org wrote a brilliant exposé on Barack Obama that must be shared. The hardest part of trying to get Democrats elected to power is vetting them, especially during election years in which people are so desperate for someone who can deliver on a promise of change that they fail to look past the campaign rhetoric to see the truth. I've explained on other blog sites that Barack Obama is a DLCer in progressive's clothing. Mr. Gonzalez hammers the point home.

It has been claimed by uncritical supporters that Obama's record in the U.S. Senate is progressive, but this is far from the truth (a fact easily verified by going to GovTrack.us and doing some homework). It is undeniable that the senator from Illinois has consistently voted to fund the Iraq war, with the sole exception being that he was shamed by Christopher Dodd of Connecticut into voting against last Summer's appropriations bill. Matt Gonzalez writes:

Since taking office in January 2005 he has voted to approve every war appropriation the Republicans have put forward, totaling over $300 billion. He also voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her complicity in the Bush Administration's various false justifications for going to war in Iraq. Why would he vote to make one of the architects of "Operation Iraqi Liberation" the head of US foreign policy? Curiously, he lacked the courage of 13 of his colleagues who voted against her confirmation.

The senator from Illinois has been less than enthusiastic in advocating for a full withdrawal from Iraq. Obama has also, as Gonzalez points out, voted to re-authorize the USA PATRIOT Act -- one of the more heinous attacks on civil liberties in this decade -- in stark contrast to his prior work as a civil rights attorney. Somewhere along the way, Obama was either corrupted on the issue of civil liberties, or else he has been fooling people on where he actually stands from the beginning. Either way, his record on the occupation of Iraq and on civil liberties are not consistent with his rhetoric on the campaign trail.

On class action lawsuits, Gonzalez writes:

In 2005, Obama joined Republicans in passing a law dubiously called the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) that would shut down state courts as a venue to hear many class action lawsuits. Long a desired objective of large corporations and President George Bush, Obama in effect voted to deny redress in many of the courts where these kinds of cases have the best chance of surviving corporate legal challenges. Instead, it forces them into the backlogged Republican-judge dominated federal courts.

And on credit interest rates:

Obama has a way of ducking hard votes or explaining away his bad votes by trying to blame poorly-written statutes. Case in point: an amendment he voted on as part of a recent bankruptcy bill before the US Senate would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Inexplicably, Obama voted against it, although it would have been the beginning of setting these predatory lending rates under federal control. Even Senator Hillary Clinton supported it.

Are you seeing anything to suggest that Obama is a progressive, yet? I'm not. I've written about this before, but it's worth repeating: health care "reform". Given Obama's record of gutting actual health care reform in the Illinois state senate, one can't help but nod in agreement when Matt Gonzalez explains:

Obama opposed single-payer bill HR676, sponsored by Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers in 2006, although at least 75 members of Congress supported it. Single-payer works by trying to diminish the administrative costs that comprise somewhere around one-third of every health care dollar spent, by eliminating the duplicative nature of these services. The expected $300 billion in annual savings such a system would produce would go directly to cover the uninsured and expand coverage to those who already have insurance, according to Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Obama's own plan has been widely criticized for leaving health care industry administrative costs in place and for allowing millions of people to remain uninsured. "Sicko" filmmaker Michael Moore ridiculed it saying, "Obama wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan-the same companies who have created the mess in the first place."

And as Gonzalez points out, Obama went to bat for Joe LIEberman for re-election in 2006 against challenger Ned Lamont (whom blog web sites such as Daily Kos supported) and referred to the turncoat as his mentor. Yeah, real "progressive" of Obama to try to prop up a party traitor who has consistently enabled the Bush-Cheney regime at every opportunity, and who endorses Republican John McCain for president.

I realize Obama supporters don't like to read the truth about their candidate, and who can blame them? After eight years of destructive Republican policies, the desperation for some actual change -- even if it is only an illusion -- is certainly understandable. But it is because desperation can lead to making serious mistakes in an election year critical to America's future that it is important for Democrats to know exactly who it is we're prepared to hand the nomination to. Barack Obama simply is not a progressive, he's just another DINO who has somehow managed to fool a lot of people.

Hope is not lost, however. We can and should focus our efforts to get true Progressives elected to Congress, so that a (we hope) Democratic president may be pushed in the correct direction on issues such as getting out of Iraq and passing true health care reform. It's still early in the year, and we still have a chance to be the change we want to see in this country. It's not enough to simply get Democrats elected to power; the failures of the last year have proven that. We must work to get the right Democrats -- Progressive ones -- seats in the Legislature and in state offices across the country.

Only then can we expect to succeed in pushing Barack Obama, should he win the nomination and become president, to achieve actual change.

In the interests of full disclosure, BeyondChron.org reports that Gonzalez has been chosen as Ralph Nader's running mate. Which means the Nader-haters shall dismiss anything and everything he has to say, no matter that it's true. But I thought it only fair, in the interest of telling the whole truth, to let you know about this.

Obama's Lobbyist Money

"Follow the money," Hal Holbrook said in the film, All the President's Men. That line was fictitious, of course; the real 'Deepthroat' never actually said it to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Nevertheless, this phrase has become ingrained in the American political psyche. And so we must force ourselves, regarding Barack Obama, to follow the money.

Many of his followers deny this, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. It's no secret that Barack Obama is one of the top recipients of corporate campaign contributions in this election -- in fact, he's number two in the U.S. Senate behind Hillary Clinton for payoff money from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries (which explains his successful gutting of health care reform while "serving" in the Illinois state senate).

But the blatant dishonesty and hypocrisy go a bit deeper than that. According to Corporate Crime Reporter, the senator has pulled a fast one.

Well, let’s take the law firm of Sidley & Austin. Sidley & Austin is a registered federal lobbyist. It cannot by law give money to federal candidates. But the lawyers who control the firm and profit from the firm’s lobbying activities can give to Obama. Some of those individual lawyers are registered lobbyists. Some are not. Guess who gives to Obama? Right. The ones who are not registered lobbyists. But they still control and profit from the lobbying activities of the firm. So, technically, Obama is not taking money from federal lobbyists. But only in the narrowest sense.

Sidley Austin, Skadden, Arps, Jenner & Block, Kirkland & Ellis, and Wilmerhale are all registered lobbyists. Lawyers at these registered lobbying firms have given Obama’s campaign $813,459 through February 1, 2008.

"Is it possible that Senator Obama does not know that corporate law firms are also frequently registered lobbyists?" asks Pam Martens, writing in the current print edition of Counterpunch. ("The Obama Money Cartel," by Pam Martens, Counterpunch). "Or is he making a distinction that because these funds are coming from the employees of these firms he's not really taking money directly from registered lobbyists? That thesis seems disingenuous when many of these individual donors own these law firms as equity partners or shareholders and share in the profits generated from lobbying."

I seriously doubt Obama is unaware that he's taking money from lobbying firms. A politician smart enough and slick enough to beat Hillary and Bill Clinton at their own game is smart enough to know where his campaign contributions are coming from. Let's take a look at how the bribe money (oops, I forget we're not supposed to actually call it that, even though that's exactly what it is) is broken down. From the link to OpenSecrets.org:

BARACK OBAMA (D)
Top Contributors

Goldman Sachs	$421,763
Ubs Ag	$296,670
Lehman Brothers	$250,630
National Amusements Inc	$245,843
JP Morgan Chase & Co	$243,848
Sidley Austin LLP	$226,491
Citigroup Inc	$221,578
Exelon Corp	$221,517
Skadden, Arps Et Al	$196,420
Jones Day	$181,996
Harvard University	$172,324
Citadel Investment Group	$171,798
Time Warner	$155,383
Morgan Stanley	$155,196
Google Inc	$152,802
University of California	$143,029
Jenner & Block	$136,565
Kirkland & Ellis	$134,738
Wilmerhale Llp	$119,245
Credit Suisse Group	$118,250

What Obama has done is pull a sleight-of-hand trick. By avoiding direct contributions, he manages to appear as though he is keeping his promise not to accept money from federal lobbyists. But in actuality, he is still taking it from the lobbying firms. He gets away with it by claiming that he is taking individual contributions from those not registered as lobbyists. Technically true, but it's a cheat: the money is instead going through middle men, employees of lobbying firms who can operate under the proverbial radar.

My friends, we have been well and truly snookered. The corporate media has successfully shut out the real Democrats running for president, so we are now stuck with two corporate-owned candidates who will not do anything to significantly change the status quo. It is well known that Hillary Clinton is beholden to corporate interests. And her efforts to omit her ties from her "thirty-five years of experience" spiel have largely failed. Every time I do digging on Obama, who preaches about making a change from the usual business of Washington corruption, I find more and more evidence that he is just another fraud, lying to people so he can obtain political power. He's playing us all like a harp from hell.

It is now more imperative than ever that Progressives take the opportunity 2008 presents to expand our presence in Congress, and weaken the hold Big Business has on our legislature. It's not enough to just elect Democrats; we have to get the right ones elected. Otherwise the lessons from 2006 shall all have been for nothing.



P.S.

LeftOfDayton at WordPress.com has posted his own take on this, helping to reveal that yes, Obama is just another DLC darling.

Help Dennis get his ad on the air!

From: Congressman Dennis Kucinich! UNOFFICIAL
Date: Feb 16, 2008 5:39 PM

Because of the abysmal approval ratings of Congress itself, there is a real groundswell of "throw the bums out" voting, as evidenced by the 24-point victory in the primary challenge this week by progressive Donna Edwards. But we need to very careful not to let the exceptionally good be swept out with the bad.

That is why we need everyone to see this new Dennis Kucinich ad, to protect his seat from a hostile primary challenge in his own district.

Thank You Dennis Video: http://www.usalone.com/thank_you_dennis.php

For weeks big money has been running terribly false attack ads against Dennis trying to smear him out of Congress. And Dennis needs your help to fight back by running the ad on the page above in his own district. So if you can make any kind of donation, please use the easy form on the same page above to do so.

And to thank you for your valiant support, Dennis wants you to have as his gift to you a copy of his special Kucinich commemorative edition pocket constitution, with your donation of $100 or more. And if you are one of the few who have not be blindsided by Cheney's gut-the-economy agenda, Dennis Kucinich will personally autograph your copy with your donation of $1,000 or more.

Please note that even if you had already donated the full legal limit to his brave presidential run, which had a real impact in shifting the debate, you can donate another $2,300 for his congressional seat defense.

But even if you can't make a donation right now, there is still something incredibly important you can do to help, and that is to send links to the video to anyone you can. So ask all your friends to
visit the page below too.

Thank You Dennis Video: http://www.usalone.com/thank_you_den...

So please do what you can to spread the word that this is a must win, must-keep situation. It is only because of the courage of Dennis Kucinich in standing strong to protect and defend the Constitution that we are where we are now, with more and more members of Congress clamoring for meaningful impeachment hearings, and the House still holding the line against that craven telecom immunity thing.

Let us not be complacent. Let us not take anything for granted just because Dennis is so amazing on every issue. We have to make sure that we empower Dennis to remind his constituents what a magnificent job he has been doing for them and for us all. And nothing would push impeachment forward more than the most clearcut victory for Dennis in his primary.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

What Romney's departure means for the general election.

With Mitt Romney now out of the Republican race for president, John McCain is much, much closer to locking up his political party's nomination. What does this mean for Democrats? Bad news, and here's why:

McCain now has less to worry about going into November. Mike Huckabee might yet pose a serious challenge, since he has the backing of the religious far right. But this assumes that Huckabee manages to win most states in the remaining primaries and caucuses. And there's no reason to think this shall be the case. The most likely scenario is that McCain continues to do well, and there will be no brokered Republican National Convention.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are essentially tied for delegates, both are likely to go to the Democratic National Convention to settle who shall be the party's nominee for president. Obama has a slight advantage of money; Clinton has had to lend her campaign money from out of pocket, and have her paid staff go without their salaries for a while. But since Super Tuesday, both Clinton and Obama have managed to raise roughly equal amounts of campaign money.

As reported by DHinMI, Howard Dean is trying to get the two prima donna candidates to make some sort of deal to avoid a brokered convention. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee knows why a brokered convention would be bad for the party; while McCain uses the time between now and his party's convention to shore up support, raise money, and form a general election campaign strategy against the Democratic nominee, we'll still be fighting the nominating process out until August. That means whoever the nominee is shall go into the general election exhausted from a drawn out primary fight, and having expended much of his or her financial resources.

So the advantage clearly goes to McCain, if Clinton and Obama insist on staying in competition for the Democratic nomination until convention. And this is where Dean's attempt to make the two prima donnas reach some sort of deal shall fail. Because their egos are so huge, neither Clinton or Obama is willing to accept second fiddle status as vice president. And the fierceness of the campaign so far has taken a publicly visible toll; at the shrub's last SotU liefest, Obama gave Clinton the cold shoulder as she moved to shake hands with Senator Edward Kennedy -- who endorsed her rival. Obama's latest 'Harry and Louise'-style attacks on Clinton's health care plan (which is pissing off a lot of progressives, including economist Paul Krugman), strengthens the likelihood that there will be no Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket.

So while many are cheering Romney's departure from the Republican race, it also presents a serious problem for Democrats. The opposition now has less of a reason to worry about its chances in November, while we have plenty to worry about. Howard Dean's attempts to get the prima donnas to shelve their differences and reach some kind of deal are a public acknowledgment of this problem.

Which makes it all the more sad that John Edwards and not Clinton or Obama was the one to call it quits. Had he won enough early states to be the likely nominee, all this would have been settled and we would be able to stand a chance in November. But now, with Obama and Clinton duking it out until convention, we have once again shot ourselves in the foot by sticking our party with a fundamentally weak candidate going into the general election. The Democratic Party, as usual, has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. And that is bad for all of America.

Breaking down the few truths in Smirky McStumbletongue's final (we hope) SotU

There were so many, many lies in the shrub's state of the union liefest that it is difficult to explain them all. In fact, it would take days to break them all down. It is far easier, in fact, to simply explain the few truths contained within what we all pray is the shrub's final speech on the state of the union. And so I shall. I leave it to far more talented writers than I to explain the multitude of deceptions. I shall point out the few truths. All technical, rendered utterly meaningless by the exaggerations, distortions, half-truths and outright fabrications. But truths nevertheless. Yeah, I know, it's hard to believe. Just remember that one can actually lie with the truth, and the shrub excels at that.

Seven years have passed since I first stood before you at this rostrum.

Technically true.

In that time, our country has been tested in ways none of us could have imagined.

Also technically true.

rising competition in the world economy, and the health and welfare of our citizens. These issues call for vigorous debate,

Again, technically true.

Yet history will record that amid our differences, we acted with purpose.

True, but not the way the boy indicates.

All of us were sent to Washington to carry out the people's business. That is the purpose of this body. It is the meaning of our oath. And it remains our charge to keep.

See? That's another truth right there.

The actions of the 110th Congress will affect the security and prosperity of our Nation long after this session has ended.

Again, true, but as pointed out before, not in the way the boy indicates. That's where the lie follows.

Wages are up, but so are prices for food and gas. Exports are rising, but the housing market has declined. And at kitchen tables across our country, there is concern about our economic future.

Another truth. He doesn't mention that wages are only up because Congress had to sneak a paltry minimum wage increase into a military appropriations bill, but who's counting? Beside the rest of America? And yes, exports are rising while the housing bubble has burst. And working Americans are worried.

I will issue an Executive Order that directs Federal agencies to ignore any future earmark that is not voted on by the Congress.

Given his track record for ignoring the law at his whim, I think we can all agree that the boy is telling the truth when he says he will order his lackeys to break the law.

Our shared responsibilities extend beyond matters of taxes and spending.

Another technical truth.

Six years ago, we came together to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, and today no one can deny its results.

Technically true. They did pass the act, and no one can deny that this unfunded mandate has failed miserably.

When the Federal Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787, our Nation was bound by the Articles of Confederation, which began with the words, "We the undersigned delegates." When Gouverneur Morris was asked to draft the preamble to our new Constitution, he offered an important revision and opened with words that changed the course of our Nation and the history of the world: "We the people."

As far as I am aware, this is true. Alrighty-then, there you have it. The shrub's (we hope) last SotU speech, with all the lies removed. There isn't much left, is there? See, if the boy had decided to leave out all those deceptions, he could have spared us -- give or take -- forty-five minutes of his deceipt.

Will this Bush-Cheney lie ever be fully exposed?

So now we have a nifty new catalog of outright deceptions told by the Bush-Cheney regime in the run up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. That's great, it really is, but it only appears to be one for "complete" fabrications. It does not, apparently, devote as much time to half-truths (which are still lies, just not direct ones). If you factor in the lies based on only half the truth, the list grows far beyond the nine hundred thirty-five compiled for our benefit.

One of the deceptions based on half-"truth" was over Halabja.

You may or may not have heard of Stephen C. Pelletiere. He was the CIA's chief analyst on the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s. Following George W. Bush's 2003 state of the union address, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times arguing that evidence of Iraq involvement in the gassing of Kurds in March 1988 was spotty -- and that evidence instead pointed to Iranian-used chemicals as the culprit.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

And more:

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent — that is, a cyanide-based gas — which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

In 1990 Pelletiere and colleague Douglas V. Johnson defended their analysis against challenges from those trying to pin the blame on Iraq.

The second alleged gas attack by the Iraqis against the Kurds occurred at Amadiyyah (in the far northern region of Iraq) after the war had ended. This one is extremely problematical since no gassing victims were ever produced. The only evidence that gas was used is the eye-witness testimony of the Kurds who fled to Turkey, collected by staffers of the U.S. Senate. We showed this testimony to experts in the military who told us it was worthless. The symptoms described by the Kurds do not conform to any known chemical or combination of chemicals.

Lacking any gassing victims, and given the fact that the testimony does not seem credible we were unwilling to say that in fact the attacks had occurred. At the same time, throughout the study we cited instances of Iraqi-instigated chemical attacks against Iranian military units. There is no doubt that these occurred; indeed the Iraqis have stated on occasion that they feel justified in using chemicals tactically under certain conditions. However, they deny using chemicals as a weapon of mass destruction, that is against civilians. What our study concludes is that those who claim they are doing so need to come up with some more convincing proof.

Here are a few more links, by the way, pertaining to the Iran-Iraq gas controversy.

http://www.wanniski.com/...

http://www.wanniski.com/...

http://www.wisconsinproject.org/...

http://www.cambridge.org/...

http://www.crimesofwar.org/...

Here's something worth reading.

The battle for Halabja began on March 15, 1988, when Kurdish rebels and Iranian Revolutionary Guards, equipped with chemical warfare suits, moved into the town, driving out Iraqi units in heavy fighting. Townspeople were then stopped from fleeing Halabja and forced by the invaders to return to their homes. This tactic was to cost thousands of lives.

The chemical attack began a day later at 6:20 p.m. and continued sporadically over three days. Wave after wave of bombers—seven to eight in each wing—attacked Halabja, a town of eighty thousand, and all roads leading to the surrounding mountains. They dropped a cocktail of poison gases: mustard gas, the nerve agents sarin, tabun, and, according to a well-informed Iraqi military source, VX, the most lethal of all, which Iraq had just begun to manufacture. Clouds of gas hung over the town and the surrounding hills, blotting out the sky and contaminating the fertile plains nearby.

The townspeople had no protection and the chemicals soaked into their clothes, skin, eyes, and lungs. At least five thousand, and probably many more, died within hours. Many were poisoned in the cellars where they had sought refuge—trapped by gases that were heavier than air. It was the largest chemical attack ever launched against a civilian population.

On the road out of the town, an estimated four thousand were killed near the village of Anab as they attempted to flee to Iran. Many flung themselves into a pond to wash off the chemicals but died within minutes. Their corpses lay undisturbed for months, deadly toxins from their bodies seeping into the earth and reportedly contaminating the water table.

And:

Many people are skeptical of the Pentagon evidence, not least the people of Halabja. I talked to many Halabjans during my visit who were present during the 1988 attack, and all agreed that Iraq alone was responsible. The Kurdish guerrilla armies who were allied to Iran at the time and fought in and around Halabja also concur, and that includes the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Masoud Barzani, whose current relations with the Iranians can only be described as hostile. Why would Iranian commanders whose troops were in Halabja at the time use poison gas against their own men? they ask. Their logic seems inescapable.

Here we use the principle of Occam's Razor, which tells us that the simplest solution is to be preferred. Since no one has suggested that Iranian bombardment was a deliberate act against civilians, and that Iranian forces were fighting what they thought were Iraqi military units, it is reasonable to conclude that in a battle in which both sides used chemical weapons the Kurdish casualties took unintended fire from their Iranian allies. Since the writer acknowledges that Iranian forces and Kurdish rebels supporting Iranian forces were indeed present in Halabja, it undermines the argument that this was not a battle during a time of war but a deliberate and punitive act of genocide. That the writer uses the accounts of people with a reason to lie about Iran's culpability in inflicting casualties is indicative of an attempt at anti-Iraqi propaganda based less on the facts and more on a desire to muddy the proverbial waters in order to justify questionable accusations.

Now lest you think I'm making excuses for Saddam Hussein, bear in mind that I am not claiming that my own interpretation of the facts at hand is necessarily the correct one. I offer this only because there is another side to the allegations of genocide against Iraqi Kurds that has not received the rigorous debate it deserves. It is not been settled conclusively one way or another, and we must take all sides of the debate with a healthy amount of skepticism. But, going according to the facts we do have, and the contradictions in the stories of those who claim Iraq and Saddam Hussein were the primary culprits, we may conclude one thing, at least, is true: the dynamics of the debate are fundamentally altered by the inclusion of this alternative side of the argument. If the deaths of Kurds were the result of crossfire in a battle during which both sides used chemical weapons, it weakens the accusation that Saddam Hussein deliberately tried to commit genocide against Kurds in Iraq.

It is important to keep this in mind when considering the new database cataloging the lies that led to war in Iraq. Not just the flat out lies, but the distortions of actual events.

Busting the Myth of Ron Paul, Part Three

The way he talks about going back to the Constitution, you'd think Ron Paul actually believes in it. And yet, when the time came for him to actually stand up for that venerable document, he was and continues to be strangely absent. Consider the case of HR 1955, which amounts to a thought crime bill. It was a sickening display of cowardice on the part of Democrats, voting for yet another of the shrub's unconstitutional police state measures. In ordinary times, no Congress in its right collective mind would be allowed to get away with such a thing. But we do not live in ordinary times. But where was Ron Paul, supposedly the champion of the Constitution, in the HR 1955 vote?

No Vote TX-14 Paul, Ronald [R]

Nay OH-10 Kucinich, Dennis [D]

For that matter, where has Ron Paul been on voting for any legislation that actually protects Americans and the Constitution? Here are a couple more interesting comparisons between Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

Ronald Paul missed 666 of 7012 votes (9%) since Jan 7, 1997.

Dennis Kucinich missed 345 of 7012 votes (5%) since Jan 7, 1997.

Ron Paul voted against a bill, HR 2517, which according to the summary:

Amends the Missing Children's Assistance Act to reauthorize through FY2013, and revise requirements for uses of, the annual grant to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children by the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention.

Why did he do that? And why did he vote against HR 3791, which would do the following:

Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act of 2007 or the SAFE Act of 2007 - Amends the federal criminal code to expand the reporting requirements of electronic communication and remote computing service providers (service providers) with respect to violations of child sexual exploitation and pornography laws. Requires such service providers, in reporting violations of such laws to the CyberTipline of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (Center) to provide: (1) information on the Internet identity of a suspected sex offender, including the electronic mail address, website address, uniform resource locator, or other identifying information; (2) the time child pornography was uploaded or discovered; (3) geographic location information for the offender; and (4) images of such child pornography. Requires the Center to forward each report which it receives from a service provider to a designated law enforcement agency.

Requires service providers to preserve images of child pornography for evidentiary purposes.

Authorizes the Center to provide images of child pornography reported to its CyberTipline to service providers to enable such providers to stop further transmissions of of pornographic images.

Grants service providers and the Center immunity from civil claims or criminal charges for complying the requirements of this Act, except for certain intentional or reckless misconduct.

Where was Representative Paul on HR 4136? And for someone who claims to stand up for the Constitution, where was he on HR 3773? Look at his voting record for last year, and you'll learn he didn't cast a vote. And where was Ron Paul on the impeachment of Dick Cheney, when Dennis Kucinich introduced the Articles of Impeachment in November last year?

Ron Paul joined his fellow Republicans in voting to table the resolution. Then, when the GOPers in the House decided to suddenly keep the bill alive in order to embarrass Democrats into voting against impeachment, he up and joined his fellow Republicans again. Finally, when the GOPers decided they'd had enough fun and allowed Nancy Pelosi to send the articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney to the Judiciary Committee to die, Paul voted aye.

When it comes to protecting Americans, and when it comes to protecting the Constitution, Ron Paul's record is at best spotty and at worst, indicative of someone who thinks it's a game. A game!

Busting the Myth of Ron Paul, Part Two

Part Two in a series.

It was January 28, 2000. Ron Paul was hellbent on killing "any expansion of OSHAs regulatory authority". [1] Giving his speech to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which falls under the House Education and Workforce Committee, he went on a tirade that might shock his more left-leaning supporters today. What was it, you might ask, that he stated?

Modern technology, such as e-mail and the Internet, allows employees to be productive members of the workforce without leaving their homes! The option of "telecommuting" is particularly valuable for women with young children or those caring for elderly parents. Using technology to work at home gives these Americans the chance to earn a living and have a fulfilling career while remaining at home with their children or elderly parents. Telecommuting also makes it easier for citizens with disabilities to become productive members of the job market. Any federal requirements holding employers liable for the conditions of a home office may well cause some employers to forbid their employees from telecommuting, thus shutting millions of mothers, persons caring for elderly parents, and disabled citizens out of the workforce!

It was a lie, of course, that last statement. To date, no one has been prevented from working out of his or her home because of OSHA requirements.

Paul was railing for the "Home Office Protection Enhancement (HOPE) Act, amending the Occupational Safety and Health Act to clarify that OSHA has no authority over worksites located in an employee's residence." In other words, a bill that denied home-based employees the same OSHA protections afforded to employees who work outside the home. Fortunately the bill, which Paul co-sponsored, never passed. Nor did two similar bills from that session of Congress, both designed to strip OSHA protections from home-based workers. [2] [3]

On the surface, Paul's objection to extending OSHA protections to home-based employees might seem valid. After all, employers cannot control conditions in an employee's home that might lead to sickness or injury on the job. But OSHA's web site explains the need thusly:

Even when the workplace is in a designated area in an employee's home, the employer retains some degree of control over the conditions of the "work at home" agreement. An important factor in the development of these arrangements is to ensure that employees are not exposed to reasonably foreseeable hazards created by their at-home employment. Ensuring safe and healthful working conditions for the employee should be a precondition for any home-based work assignments. Employers should exercise reasonable diligence to identify in advance the possible hazards associated with particular home work assignments, and should provide the necessary protection through training, personal protective equipment, or other controls appropriate to reduce or eliminate the hazard. In some circumstances the exercise of reasonable diligence may necessitate an on-site examination of the working environment by the employer. Employers must take steps to reduce or eliminate any work-related safety or health problems they become aware of through on-site visits or other means.

Certainly, where the employer provides work materials for use in the employee's home, the employer should ensure that employer-provided tools or supplies pose no hazard under reasonably foreseeable conditions of storage or use by employees. An employer must also take appropriate steps when the employer knows or has reason to know that employee-provided tools or supplies could create a safety or health risk.

An employer is responsible for ensuring that its employees have a safe and healthful workplace, not a safe and healthful home. The employer is responsible only for preventing or correcting hazards to which employees may be exposed in the course of their work. For example: if work is performed in the basement space of a residence and the stairs leading to the space are unsafe, the employer could be liable if the employer knows or reasonably should have known of the dangerous condition.

Paul, of course, dismissed this eminently reasonable logic. Why? Because his friends in the telecommunications industry were pressuring Congress to do away with even the minimal safety requirements OSHA had in place for home-based employees. (His contributors include AT&T, and between 1999 and 2001 he had received $2,500 in contributions from telecommunications companies.) Ron Paul is ever the champion of unregulated business. But that's not the only example of Ron Paul coming down on the side of business. Far from it. He has opposed increases to the minimum wage, despite there being no evidence that such increases have harmed the economies of states in which minimum wage increases have been passed.

Economic principles dictate that when government imposes a minimum wage rate above the market wage rate, it creates a surplus `wedge' between the supply of labor and the demand for labor, leading to an increase in unemployment. Employers cannot simply begin paying more to workers whose marginal productivity does not meet or exceed the law-imposed wage. The only course of action available to the employer is to mechanize operations or employ a higher-skilled worker whose output meets or exceeds the `minimum wage.' This, of course, has the advantage of giving the skilled worker an additional (and government-enforced) advantage over the unskilled worker. For example, where formerly an employer had the option of hiring three unskilled workers at $5 per hour or one skilled worker at $16 per hour, a minimum wage of $6 suddenly leaves the employer only the choice of the skilled worker at an additional cost of $1 per hour. I would ask my colleagues, if the minimum wage is the means to prosperity, why stop at $6.65--why not $50, $75, or $100 per hour?

Such nonsensical claims aside, there simply is no evidence to support claims that increasing the minimum wage would have any significant negative impact on jobs. Indeed, just the opposite. [4] [5] [6] [7]

These are but a few examples of Ron Paul's deference to corporate interests. Look past his rhetoric of favoring property rights and dig deeper into his sermonizing on the "virtues" of the free market.

Sources for Ron Paul's speeches: http://www.house.gov/...