Transcript:

Larry,

Your answer to solving our problems today is to continue to sponsor our governmental officials that are paid by multinational Corporations to increasingly rob American taxpayers?  This is nothing less then selling control over American citizens to foreign interrest. I took an oath many years ago to defend the Constitution of the United States of America.  I honor that oath more then most of our governmental employees even though I am no longer a governmental employee.  How much do you get paid to help shred our Constitution?

Hey Lawrence, I see you’ve resorted to returning to a tired old post for one last cheap shot against Dennis Kucinich at a time when everyone else has moved on the Sicko! and the fact that Michael Moore has recognized Kucinich as the only candidate who “gets it.”

Since I had so thoroughly demolished your ineffectual line of reasoning on so many previous occasions, I am not going to bother doing so again.

Sleeper, you and I are in essential agreement.  However, I would add that where, as here, there has been an “in-your-face” refusal by the executive to violate the solemn oath to see that the laws be faithfully executed, impeachment is not merely a right by a constitutional duty the framers imposed upon members of Congress who are supposed to be the guardians of the rule of law.  In stating that impeachment is “off-the-table,” Speaker Pelosi has taken democracy and the rule of law “off-the-table.”

I am not impressed with either party because of their willingness to sell out “WE THE PEOPLE” to the big money they bring in from Multinational Corporate interrests.  You can trace many of our deceptive foreign policy initiatives back to Corporate Personhood becoming accepted in America.  This Corporatism/Facism has our origional foreign policy upside down.

I am impressed with Dennis, Sen. Gravel & Ron Paul because they all do speak Truth to Power from somewhat different perspectives yet you do not see the conflicted rhetoric that is coming from all the other candidates who have sold themselves as mouthpieces for these multinational interrests. 

These other candidates have no problem stuffing their pockets with the Blood money from Iraq and the False Flag operation that brought us The Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act.  Impeachment is a Constitutional issue not a partisian issue.  Men of Honor will honor their oath of office.  The others are on the auction block and being bought by facist interrests.

Sleeper, rather impressive scientific video.  I have always felt there was a significant case for controlled demolition being the source of the collapse of WTC 7 into its own footprint, and this presentation provides a detailed scientific analysis in support of that thesis.  The problem I have always had is that even if it was controlled demolition, it begs the core question, “Who set the charges?” Was it al-Qaida or an inside job?

There is a separate video of a 9/11 interview of Giuliani in which he says that he was told the building was going to come down some 10 to fifteen minutes in advance, but he does not specify whether this was WTC 7 or one of the twin towers.

While I am deeply troubled by the effort to squelch further investigations of this issue and feel strongly that there are many questions that remain unanswered, I think those who advocate further investigation must be careful not to engage in premature conclusions. 

Like you, I am pleased that Mr. Kucinich has the courage to ask the tough questions.  I would hope that his willingness to take such a bold stand will not be lost on individuals such as yourself and that you will take a serious look at his campaign not only for this but for a host of other reasons that involve his willingness to speak truth to power.

Dennis is one of very few in Congress asking for an investigation.  His efforts focus mainly on WTC-Building 7.  It is the maost blatant lie of all the lies surrounding 9/11/2001.  The Building was not hit by an aircraft and did not fall with the shock waves from the two towers that were.  I have seen videos clearly showing squibs accending prior to the middle of the building collapsing pulling the outsides in.

These two videos have convinced me that it was an inside job.  This one is by BYU proffessor Steven Jones:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=964034652002408586

The next includes not only the WTC sham but content includes documents on the buildup to 9/11/2001 and infomation about the other aircrafts and sites:

http://www.loosechange911.com/

For those self-described “9/11 truthers” who continue to criticize him fro not doing so, please note that Mr. Kucinich has announced plans for a new 9/11 investigation beginning in September because “the 9/11 commission...never resolved some conflicting facts.”

Re comment #68334 by Lawrence McDonald.  The fact that Mr. Kucinich stands as a lone voice capable of confronting the fascists by upholding the rule of law via impeachment in the face of the lawless onslaught of the “Unitary Executive” that seeks to create a totalitarian America is a badge of honor, just as it was for former Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, who was reviled when he stood alone, opposing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, only to later be admired by history.

If you put the question of whether the Vice President and the President should be impeached to the American people, I suspect you would find support for impeachment overwhelming.  Odd how the otherwise poll-mad, conglomerated corporate media avoids that question altogether.  But since they won’t, I’ll make my own attempt within the confines of the Truthdig community.

Should Cheney be impeached, yes or no?  Please weigh in.

re comment #67762 by Lawrence McDonald.  So you actually believe that the “always low prices” scheme of the company Jim Hightower aptly described as the “Beast from Bentonville” benefits working class America!

The “always low prices” translates into “always huge profits"--some $7 billion per year--profits that have placed five members of the Walton family amongst the world’s top ten richest people, with a combined personal worth in excess of $100 billion.  This enormous wealth at the top is punctuated by the poverty level wages of Wal-Mart’s own employees, the more fortunate of whom receive $15,000/year for full time work.  But for 70% of the Wal-Mart workforce, the company defines “full-time” as 28 hours per week--$11,000/year.

The Scrooges at Wal-Mart are not satisfied with simply paying minimum wage.  At home, they devised an “off-the-clock” scheme in which employees are instructed to clock out, then assigned extra tasks for which they receive no compensation--a practice which netted Wal-Mart $30 million per year in Texas alone.  Abroad Wal-Mart has aligned itself with sweatshop labor and has become the world’s largest purchaser of goods made in China.

Wal-Mart represents imperialism come home to roost--a trend, which if left unchecked--would render permanent the growing divide between a minute class of wealthy elites and every one else.  Wal-Mart, Hightower concludes, “is now the world’s most powerful private force for lowering labor standards and stifling the middle-class workers everywhere"--a point that was underscored during the 2003 strike/lock out involving three major Southern California grocery chains where Safeway CEO Stephen Burd cited competition from Wal-Mart as a prime reason why Von’s unionized workers had to accept major cuts in their health coverage.

Academic studies reveal a net loss of jobs when a Wal-Mart is opened.  Hightower notes that a Wal-Mart hits a community like a “neutron bomb, leaving buildings standing, but sucking all the economic and democratic vitality.” It isn’t just size.  Wal-Mart’s predatory pricing techniques force closures of local small businesses, with a concomitant loss of the income and tax base those business had meant for the community.

The cost of your “always low prices,” Mr. Big Mac, is too steep for me and no doubt to steep for any American with half a brain.

Monkey business.......

“For in every city these two opposite parties [people vs aristocracy] are to be found, arising from the desire of the populace to avoid oppression of the great, and the desire of the great to command and oppress the people....For when the nobility see that they are unable to resist the people, they unite in exalting one of their number and creating him prince, so as to be able to carry out their own designs under the shadow of his authority.” (Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. IX)

The stock in a Kucinich/Gravel ticket in 08 just went up.

I was uncertain about Kucinichs’ appeal, he proved more matured and more confident than last I viewed him.

If his momentum picks up and he allys with Gravel he could beat Gore who I have and would vote for.

In arguing that obscene corporate profit is the source of job creation in comment #66973, Lawrence J. McDonald displayed his upside-down reasoning for all to see.

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.  Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.  Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much higher consideration.” President Abraham Lincoln, 1861.

In “The Great American Job Scam,” Greg LeRoy documents how, over the past fifty years, corporations have obtained massive subsidies, outright gifts of land and property and enormous tax breaks from city, county, state and regional governemental entities by enticing bidding wars between them through empty promises of job creation that are most often never fulfilled and which, from a national perspective, do not create jobs but instead merely shift them from one region to another.

A classic example of the subsidy swindle at work involves Sykes Enterprises, Inc., a Tampa-based operator of call centers, which, like a roving band of gypsies, enters small town America, promising jobs if the country bumpkins would just fork over land and incentives, only to run off with the loot.  A Sykes VP was so bold as to declare:  “If a community is inviting Sykes to build a call center, they are expected to deed the land for two call centers to us, and give incentives worth at least $2.5 million.”

Here is but one example LeRoy provides from the thirteen small towns who fell victim to Sykes’s hit-and-run tactics.  “The farm town of Milton-Freewater, Oregon, borrowed $2.2 million in 1998 to make a $2.7 million cash grant to Sykes for 400 projected jobs.  The city also provided free land, utility services and tax credits, plus $1 million in state funds for road improvements.  The facility eventually employed almost 500 people, but by May 2004 Sykes had closed it and terminated the 264 remaining jobs.” Sykes did go on to create workstations, some 10,0000 of them in low-wage overseas countries at the same time it closed and abandoned its facilities in small town USA.

[My problem with LeRoy is he never states the obvious.  If local governments are going to invest in a call center to create jobs, why pay a private company?  If the business were owned by the local public, it’s not going to skip town, leaving the employees high and dry.  Oops, Socialism!  I’m sure MacDonald will be down my throat for that one.]

As America’s manufacturing base fled overseas in search of cheap labor under NAFTA and the WTO, some states offered massive subsidies to foreign corporations to open factories here.  In early 2006, Georgia Gov. Sunny Perdue offered Kia $400 million in subsidies to open a plant that would employ 2,500 at a cost of $160,000 per job, and Mississippi reportedly offered $1 billion in incentives at approximately $400,000 per job.  Then, of course, there is Wal-Mart.

Well L.J. McDonald I guess you just couldn’t find the time to read about the Hidden history of Corporations in America.  Corporation have existed since the beginning of this nation.  They just had a number of controls placed on them by our Founding Fathers for “We The People”.  Now multinational Corporations own other Corporation while they generate enough money to severly influence our media and the politics of this country.  “We The People” have been removed from the picture.  We are bombarded with untruths which remain mostly unchallanged and when they are challenged with TRUTH those who make the challenge are made out to be crackpots.

Duty To Impeach

There has never been an executive duo more deserving of Impeachment then George W. Bush & Dick Cheney. They have sponsored a campaign to deceive Congress and “We The People” not only into an illegal War of aggression, but they have systematically embarked on a campaign to shred the very Constitution that they took an oath to defend. There is strong evidence of unethical if not illegal behavior by multiple staffers and appointees who carry out the wishes of these two executives.

I agree with the premise of Maj. Gen. Smedley Butlers book “WAR IS A RACKET” and these two have exploited every facet of that Racket. Maj. Gen. Butler contends that as long as a few can make huge profits from War then we will be subject to continual War. Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler was a two time Medal of Honor Recipient and is well known by all United States Marines.

Our servicemen and women are dying in Iraq so that private oil companies can obtain rights to Iraqi oil. The American taxpayer is not only financing this quest for private profit, but also paying extremely high costs for this energy at home. We are being robbed by those whose oath means nothing to them.

Impeachment is the only answer. It is the duty of those who honor the oath they have taken.

re comment #66481 by Douglas Chalmers. 

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” President Franklin Roosevelt.

“The greatest challenge we face is the growing gap between the rich and poor people on earth.” President Jimmy Carter.

“More than anything else, I want to see the United States remain a country where someone can get rich.” President Ronald Reagan.

The problem occurs when corporate interests intrude into the public sphere.  The purpose of a corporation, as you have identified, is to secure profits, especially for the CEOs at the top.  The purpose of government is set forth in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, “to promote the general welfare.” That purpose has been corrupted so that, rather than serve the many, government has become a tool of a gaping inequality that threatens to move all but a handful of Americans into eternal subjugation.

Paul Krugman’s 4/27/07 New York Times column, “Gilded Once More,” touches on this.  He notes that the top 25 hedge fund managers made a combined total of $14 billion last year.  “How much is $14 billion?  It’s more than it would cost to provide health care for a year to eight million children--the number of children in America who, unlike children in any other advanced country, don’t have health insurance.”

Nowhere is the conflict between the public interest and corporate profits more acute than it is in the media, where a shrinking number of corporations have been granted monopoly licenses to operate on the “public” airwaves.  As Normon Solomon noted in “War Made Easy,” “NBC’s owner, General Electric, designed, manufactured, or supplied parts or maintenance for nearly every weapons system used by the United States in the Gulf War--including the Patriot and Tomahawk cruise missiles, the Stealth bomber, the B-52 bomber, the AWACS plane and the NAVTAR spy satellite system.  In other words, when correspondents and paid consultants on NBC television praised the performance of U.S. Weapons, they were extolling equipment made by GE, the corporation that pays their salaries.”

http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountab ility/history_corporations_us.html

“Our Hidden History of Corporations in the United States”

Corporate history in the United Statess has evolved through time and the motivations for these changes undermines controls put in place by our Founding Fathers.  The worst misconception is the acceptance of “Corporate Personhood”.  It was not a decision of the supreme court but never the less became an unchallanged and accepted premise of laws in force today.

Re Dennis Kucinich’s willingness to speak out, including his bill to impeach Cheney, the impeachment of Cheney is the first priority even though Bush is also culpable; for we do not want to remove Bush, resulting in a Cheney succession to the presidency. Years ago, I would have doubted that an administration could commit so many abuses of power, tell so many blatant lies, cause so many unnecessary deaths, and harm so many people without being at least removed from office. That the opposition party still balks at removing the worst perpetrator, the malevolent Cheney, strains credulity. I would usually say that impeachment proceedings are too disruptive and divisive, even though this didn’t stop the anti-Clinton elements. In the time that remains in the Bush term, much damage can be done, so it would be wise to weaken and remove the would-be despots before the worst happens. I’m afraid that Mr. Kucinich cannot win the Democratic nomination, but he is one of a very few representatives of the people who has the courage to speak the truth rather than equivocate as Hillary has the tendency to do.
My hat’s off to Dennis.

At long last, Mr. Kucinich will be provided the opportunity to demonstrate why, if judged by where a candidate stands on issues that truly matter to the vast majority of Americans--the middle and working classes--Mr. Kucinich should be seen as the only candidate in the running who deserves the label, “Democrat.” The first Presidential debate will take place tomorrow night at 7 p.m. on MSNBC. 

Typical of the corporate media, if you go to the MSNBC web site, you will find the photos of only three candidates displayed with respect to the event--Clinton, Obama and Edwards.

#66453 by Marshall on 4/25 at 10:02 pm: “...Withdrawal would result in kaos that no peace keeping force could put a lid on...”

Rubbish! Iraq was a civilised country before even though under the heel of a dictator. After 1,000’s of years of civilisation, you think they need the USA to tell them how to live?

Its not “like Afghanistan”, either. The simple point is that they don’t need the US there since Saddam was deposed. They have enough oil still to buy whatever assistance they need.

They were already a democracy before the CIA interfered. What should be forthcoming now is the USA paying compensation for the damage and loss of life it has so wantonly caused. When will that happen???

Democrats and Congress need to find a viable way to leave Iraq without it being in ruins. Simply leaving without planning would be a disaster, another Afghanistan. I don’t agree with Kucinich at all on a lot of his policies. They may sound like the right thing to do, bu they are ill-conceived. The US needs to join together with the rest of the world leaders in figuring out a multilateral way of ending terrorism and Mid-East tensions without engaging in war.  The protest by Shiites and continued attacks should serve to warn our government that there will continue to be resistance, and soon a collective against American occupation.

To really get at the root of terrorism, global poverty needs to be addressed. Our leaders need to not abandon Iraq, but support its growth and the growth of other undeveloped countries by funding the UN Millennium Development Goals. According to the Borgen Project, just 0.16% of out federal budget is spent on poverty reduction while $340 billion has been spent on the war. We need to redirect our funds to programs that will work to combat the conditions that enable extremism to exist. We can’t fight terror with terror in a country we are espousing peace to; there needs to be an alternative.

re comment #66067 by Lawrence McDonald.  The name is “Canning,” Mr. McDonald, not “Canfield.” The question is where candidates stand on the “issues” that truly matter to the vast majority of the American electorate.  You did not address the link between candidates and “issues” in your previous comments, and you still have not addressed them in any of your later comments. 

The how and why media conglomerates seek to impair the message of candidates, like Mr. Kucinich, involves a complex set of economic factors that I fear may be beyond your level of comprehension.  As Tim Robbins observed in the foreward to “Tragedy & Farce,” “The very structure of our conglomerated media system conspires against real journalism, and, hence, against truth.  And without access to truth, democracy withers.”

I suspect that you are more interested in attempting to score what you perceive is some hypothetical, yet thoroughly uninformed debating point than you are in acquiring knowledge.  I would be delighted to be wrong about that.  If so, in addition to “Tragedy & Farce,” I would recommend that you read “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media” by Professors Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky, follow up with Danny Schechter, “When News Lies: Media Complicity and the Iraq War,” Normon Solomon, “War Made Easy:  How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” and Amy Goodman’s two books, “Exception to the Rulers:  Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers & the Media Who Love Them” and “Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back.” You should also read Ms. Goodman’s article at this web site on the topic, and my early posting on that article.

If you read and actually comprehend all that, then return to your glib postings, you will be embarassed by the level of ignorance you have just displayed.

Patrick Henry wasn’t a Democrat.  He’s rolling over in is grave to know progressive liberal democrats of Orange County Calif. have used his name as an endorsement to raise money.

“The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun”.

This quote alone from PH would get him kicked out of their club but everyone likes the give me liberty or give me death quote so I guess they let him slide on this.

Kucinich is a man with many forward thinking ideas its just that he can’t sell them to his fellow members of congress.  It’s all about charisma and politics at his level, image.  We’ll see how he does in the debates.

He would be well placed in the green party which I would like to see get off the ground.

#65808 by Lawrence J. McDonald on 4/23 at 4:38 am: “...Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) continues to receive harsh criticism locally (in Cleveland) for his attacks on fellow Democratic presidential candidates for bowing out of FoxNews-sponsored candidate debates scheduled in Nevada and elsewhere. ...”

While all that is going on, something interesting happened at FoxNews (or rather, NewsCorp)over the weekend. That was an arranged visit by the Australian federal government opposition party leader and considering the Murdoch’s Fox New network in the USA has been an avid supporter of the Bush administration, that Murdoch laughingly anointed Australia’s Labor opposition party leader Kevin Rudd with a casual “Oh, I’m sure” as regards to his suitability as a future prime minister is quite some indicator of how much things have changed.

He is now following Arni Swarzenegger and other Republican state governors in loudly ignoring the Bush regime and getting on with local policies and issues and especially in regard to the falling US dollar and the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Dumping Howard is code for dumping Bush and accepting Kevin Rudd is the way has quietly chosen to do that. The Democrats are now a reality in the USA and Labor will soon be in Australia too.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/when-rudd-met-murd och-subject-menu-was-secret/2007/04/21/1176697161133.html

re comment #66000 by Lawrence J. McDonald.  Mr. McDonald confuses cause and effect.  He tells us that when “Kucinich’s name is even brought up by media political [sic.] which is rare, it’s usually...accompanied by comments critical of the congressman.” Citing the outcome, he concludes that the vast majority of the electorate rejected Mr. Kucinich.

While the “media” referenced by Mr. McDonald is not defined, it is obvious that he means the “corporate media” and the “elite” political pundits who have a vested interest in seeing that elections are decided on horse race questions that prevent the public from linking candidates to where they stand on issues that truly matter--the method through which the middle and working classes perpetuate a system that creates their eternal subjugation.  This creates what Noam Chomsky aptly refers to as a “democracy deficit” in which the so-called “leaders” we select work against the interests of the electorate.

As noted by John Nichols & Robert McChesney observed in “Tragedy & Farce:  How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections and Destroy Democracy,” “Nothing so undermines the legitimacy of a presidential campaign in the months before the caucuses and primaries begin as the denial of ongoing and throughful coverage.  Over time, the media sends the message that certain candidates are not to be take seriously.  And, in case anyone misses the subtle signal, it sometimes is delivered directly,” as occurred in December 2003 when Ted Koppel launched a direct assault, “How did Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun get into this thing?  ...Some candidates who are perceived as serious are gasping for air, and what littel oxygen there is on stage will be taken up by one-third of the people who do not have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the nomination.”

Mr. Kucinich offered a classic retort, to the sustained applause of the live audience:  “I want the American people to see where media takes politics in this country.  We start talking about endorsements, now we’re talking about polls and then talking about money.  When you do that you don’t have to talk about what’s important to the American people.”

Mr. McDonald’s many rants track this classic corporate line.  He talks about “Democratic elites” not liking Kucinich.  He talks about the political pundits in the corporate media who either ignore or deride him.  He talks about poll numbers.  He “never” focuses on where Mr. Kucinich, or any other candidate for that matter, stands on “issues” that truly matter.

re comment #65915 by Lawrence J. McDonald.  Mr. McDonald tells us that we must reject Dennis Kucinich because he has been “all but dismissed today by the House leadership and the Democratic Party elite.”

I am afraid, Mr. McDonald, that you have stood the meaning of democracy on its head.  Unlike a top down, Leninist Party, power inside a truly “Democratic Party” flows from the bottom up.  Since when are the electorate to take their cue as to who to vote for based on the preferences of the elite?

This so-called Democratic “leadership” derives its power from the consent of the governed--the middle and working class that make up the vast majority of the American electorate.  When these Democratic “leaders” betray the American electorate by supporting neoliberal devices like NAFTA and the WTO which permitted the “corporate elites” to outsource America’s manufacturing base in search of cheap foreign labor as the remains of American labor is Wal-Mart-ized, when these so-called Democratic “leaders” betrayed the voters by funding an illegal war of aggression (funding that goes primarily to Halliburton, Blackwater and the other war profiteers); when they betrayed our troops by enabling Geo. Bush to leave them in harm’s way, all the while insisting that the Iraqi government deliver that black sticky substance to the oil cartel on the cheap, when these so-called “leaders” betray democracy and the rule of law by taking impeachment “off-the-table” and when these so-called Democratic elites are exposed as the bought and paid for servants of the healthcare insurance industry, the military-industrial complex and AIPAC, it will be We the People who will tell your so-called Democratic Party elites just where to go.

Up with Kucinich!  Down with the elites!

I really don’t care how well he gets along with the democratic leadership.  The are happy to be in power and they don’t have what it takes for revolutionary change.  They are bought off by many of the same corporate entities as the republican hawks. 

Who speaks for “WE THE PEOPLE”?  Nobody has been speaking for us for decades.  Clinton may have been popular and he did remove our debt, but he also ushered in these free trade agreements.  We need a voice and we need to demand it by exposing all those who propose candy coated half measures.

Dawn - “...They share features of the behaviors of sociopaths:  glibness and superficial charm, manipulative and conning (they never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming but covertly they are hostile and domineering. They dominate and humiliate their victims.), grandiose sense of self, pathological lying, lack of remorse, shame or guilt, shallow emotions, lack of empathy, paranoid and secretive....”

Psychopaths in suits!!!

I am looking forward to Dennis Kucinich presenting articles of impeachment in the House this week. It is about time. Democratic constituents have been waiting for someone to put impeachment on the table—Cheney first . . . then Bush, and Gonzalez. Kucinich will be seen as the people’s advocate that he is.

George Bush has stated that the war in Iraq will continue as long as he is in office. If we have to remove this man from office to end the war—so be it.

Virginia Tach has been the catalyst for people to start discussing the issue of allowing mentally ill people to purchase guns and be in a position where they can harm others. We can see the derangement of Cho so clearly. Can’t we paint Bush and Cheney with the same brush of insanity? Their actions have actually caused the death and torture of so many more people.

Bush, Cheney and Gonzalez all seem to suffer from anti-social personality disorders. They share features of the behaviors of sociopaths:  glibness and superficial charm, manipulative and conning (they never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming but covertly they are hostile and domineering. They dominate and h