Well CY I understand priorities and I also know that many people(including myself) weren’t happy about that pardon and realize that perhaps that may have played a role in Ford losing his bid. However, isn’t it just like a righty to attempt to take Ford off the hook? And beyond corporate stooges, brainwashed sheep and the wealth of the nation, who actually supports George W. Bush? Priorities are all wrong when people sit back and do nothing. If so, we are just as guilty of the mess we’re in as the feckless politicians. When civil rights, preemptive warfare, privacy and torture are at stake, people better begin to understand what their real priorities are before it’s too late! In fact, perhaps it already is.

I don’t hear any of the major candidates saying they will roll back the Patriot Act or presidential unitary authority do you? McCain may not condone torture but his original bill turned into a way to remove habeas corpus. He says he’ll close down Guantanamo but he wants a hundred years in Iraq and sings songs about bomb bomb bombing Iran with old Beach Boy tunes. Romney on the other hand wants several Guantanamo’s and is too embarrassed to even mention his own health care plan from Mass. God forbid if we get that! Hillary and Obama say they will stop the war but they say nothing about civil liberties or relinquishing power. Under these circumstances what do you think our priorities should be? Having other priorities?

OK then where was the nation after the pardon? Where were the massive protests? There were none, so regardless of your interpretations of my comments, my points about the nation pardoning Richard M. Nixon were essentially correct. The same can be said today when we have lost our liberties and Bushco has broken every law in the book while he’s robbing us blind and most of the nation is content to sit back and allow him to get away with it. If every ordinary citizen had the chance I did when I lobbied congress over the Patriot Act and saw the corporate lobbyists laughing about the privatization of government while the Capital looked like Stalag 17, they’d be marching in the millions on Washington and Wall Street demanding all their heads! That is of course unless the game is on and there’s another six pack in the fridge!

You got it right. Last night after the state of the union when I saw Bush hug Barney Frank, then I knew whom the male prostitutes visiting the white house were for.  When the arch liberal is getting a reach around by the arch conservative you have to ask yourself why do we have political parties anyway.

I understand that Cy but by government I meant those in power and surely you knew that.

By John Hanks, Laramie, Wyoming, January 27: “The termites in every responsible sector of our society have demonstrated time and time again that they are nothing but frat. boy incompetents...”

Well, here is the return of another kind of termite, John Hanks - but is there some small chance of survival as a result???

Wolfowitz, War Architect, Named to Head US Security Panel - “The State Department announced Wolfowitz’s appointment as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s chairman of the International Security Advisory Board...” http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/25/6618/

Just couple that with this other piece of depressing news from this past week and you’ll see the urgency of the mess we are all now in........

Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told - “The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the “imminent” spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west’s most senior military officers and strategists....” http://www.guardian.co.uk/nato/story/0,,2244782,00.html

I don’t like Pelosi, but even a snake can be right sometimes.  Impeachment was meant to protect a crook, not get rid of one.  It was designed to be a fighting defense so that the impeachers could never get it done.  I favor just taxing the rich to death, which will mean a long hard almost impossible slog.  Partly because of crook media, most Americans are just stupid lazy cowards and they don’t even acknowledge that money is just another form of political power.  Agitation seems to me to me to be the way to go, combined with defending a simple punitive income and wealth tax, which can be used to cut the crook’s supply line.  Every bit of agitation is a little victory for progress, just like every dime spent at Walmart is a victory for crooks.

No one else seems to have the needed black hatred and physical courage, but I agitate every day with my car and sometimes holding signs along side the road.  My latest signs say, “Support our troops, put Bush in Jail”, Socialisms Shrink Big Crooks into Little Crooks”, “Vote Blind, There Has to Be a Pinata Somewhere” and “No Free Enterprise - Just the Same Marked Deck”.  I’ve been doing this ever since the Wellstones were murdered, and people look for me now.  If you use a variety of cynical messages, it is harder for the crooks to smear you.

Never try to convert.  Americans get 3000 lies and conversion messages every day.  Just comment.

Binge Economics...Well actually hetzer, that more describes Bush than it does Reagan, though Ronny boy got the ball rolling. Handing 12 dollars a week to average citizens for a year won’t save our economy or our dire straits any more than a band aid on a cancerous tumor would. Giving Americans livable wages would do more. Anyone who thinks a short term fix will get us out of this, is living in a dream world. Of course in this case, it seems both Reagan and Bush do have something in common, especially if he truly believes his economic package will work.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/23/recession

CY....  Excuse me?  Were you unborn, or asleep during this part of our history?.....

Well CY all you’re doing is mincing with words(nation/government) and yes I was very much alive and awake. Even felt like I was screwed which of course I/We were! I also note we didn’t get to vote on that decision, a decision that anyone who was awake knew was intentional. White washing Ford’s role as a junior idiot is just as inexcusable as the pardon itself and the results are plain to see.

It opened the doors to the greatest political lawlessness in our nation’s history. The chant back then was “it wouldn’t be good for our country to impeach a president.” “It would embarrass us” to the rest of the world. Lastly came, “he served his country” let’s feel sorry for him! And many mindless twits actually did!

Nixon’s ass should have been jailed, right along with the rest of his entire administration! If it had been, we would have gained the respect of the rest of the world, as well as a reassurance to our people that the system really works and that we really do have a government of we the people. What we’ve gotten instead is the exact opposite.

Also funny how it didn’t stop Gingrich and company from impeaching Clinton for the absurd. In fact just as Ford’s clemency, this too was a deliberate, orchestrated act which enabled the most lawless, corrupt and dangerous administration in our nation’s history. Moral majority my ass! Immoral minority is more like it!

Voting is vastly overrated.  It is necessary of course, but speaking up and agitating in public settings is vastly more important.  Voting is not a moral choice.  You are not responsible for the lousy menu. Of course it is always a choice between two evils.  Man is evil.  He is even more evil when he runs in political packs.

Reaganomics is binge economics.  Just one more shot of shopping.  The way to control the rich is to tax them out of existence.  The worst should be tied to lamp posts with funny signs and hats.  They should also spend the rest of their lives telling their crook stories in schools.

Actually hetzer this is what I was thinking about.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/20/5373/

It had to do with crucifixes the church claimed came from Italy when they in fact came from China.

hetzer I accidentally hit the report button instead of reply on your post. Sorry about that!

Actually I read another story somewhere about the idolatry sales from the Vatican. I think it came from the NY Times. There is a chain of shops that sell statuettes for the Vatican for an arm and a leg. I think they were manufactured in China using what amounted to slave labor and then sold for like 3000% profit. The story was based on so called tax exemption for non-profits. That and why a charitable organization would extract slave labor to turn a dime.

They need a 2/3’s house vote to begin impeachment proceedings. Do you think the crooks(Neocons/Blue Dog Democrats) on either side of the isle will allow that to happen? I don’t! Yes it should happen but no it will not. What else can we expect from a nation that pardoned a president before he was even prosecuted?

Well hetzer at least the environment is finally on the forefront and try though he might, even Bush can’t stop that now. The global warming impact is evident as are it’s causes from human activity and the president’s biggest argument against it, a corporate lawyer from Exxon-Mobile, exposed by the media on 60 Minutes of all places, has lost the battle with science. The problem is, oil(and the defense industry) do not wish to accept a smaller role. But even they will eventually have to. When they finally do, let’s hope it isn’t too late!

Hey Jojo, whose bull chips are you pushing? Seems pretty obvious. The next time you see LaRouche, Alex Jones, Piper and Bollyn, send them a great big Zeig Heil for me won’t ya?!? By the way you meant sheep herders, not shep herders. You schlep!

The diseases and the prescriptions are fairly obvious, but the political and cultural wherewithal seems to be wanting.  The media keeps us mastered with lies and confusion.

...the Chinese are making is economically. Ironic isn’t it that where they excel we fail and at our own game too! Even more ironic are the vast sums in money we borrow from them to maintain our own train wreck of a government. Also they only spend about 30 billion a year on their military, while we spend 800 billion. They are having a housing boom while we are having a housing crisis. They are a lender nation and we a debtor state. These are the things we should be more worried about than China taking out our satellites.

Our biggest problems are the dilemma of empire IE the use of the military to steal and control the world’s natural resources. The cost in maintaining this folly is what has caused this economic crisis(and most of our other problems, including 9/11). Seems pretty stupid to me that we spend so much money, time and effort to control and dominate an entity that is in fact destroying the planet. 

We don’t have to go in this direction. In fact we shouldn’t! We can say no, we do not wish to be an empire and spend our money wisely. This won’t make us any less safe. In fact, even more safe and the only people hurt by it would be the oil corporations and the defense contractors who serve them.

We must shift our priorities in a new direction. Particularly environmentally. If we did this we would fill any void left by the farcical defense and oil industries and supply far more jobs to the general population then they do. This would only benefit our society and the world in general.

It is a massive and dynamic undertaking, precisely what we need to give our economy a shot in the arm and its precisely the kind of undertaking that created this nation in the first place and made it great. Good old American know-how! But we’re not doing that because we are controlled by the oil and defense industries, the biggest threats to our economic, environmental and international wellbeing.

No small wonder Bush suppresses the environmental impact studies in global warming yet emphasizes how dangerous the world is and that we must crush enemies before they exist! So he does nothing since doing something would be moving away from oil (the major culprit) and with it, the necessity in maintaining a large military to control, protect and police it. Oil dictates the world economy but the reality is, it doesn’t have to and in fact it shouldn’t. It’s seen its day and that day is over and if it doesn’t end soon, it will be over for all of us, even the corporate CEO’s who deem all this bullshit as important.

As for Formosa, she will return to China without firing a shot. Their people already wish repatriation. The only thing stopping them is the puppet state we’ve established. This too shall pass. If China waited a hundred years for Hong Kong, they will do the same for Taiwan.

I note you’ve read some Stan Goff IE Sowing the Seeds of Fascism. As he’s already mentioned, there are many skinhead types and racialists already a part of the military. These very types, along with other criminal elements were eventually empowered by Adolf Hitler. Add that to Blackwater USA who are now Blackwater International and the fact their CEO is a Christian Right wing fanatic/devout neocon stooge and what you’re suggesting is not improbable. In fact it’s likely. These private security groups aren’t even answerable to the congress and much of Blackwater’s membership are remnants of Pinochet’s fascist regime.

You’re welcome Maani. The main point is however that Reagan, knowingly or not opened the doors to the current debacle we’re in. Actually all the problems started with Santa Clara vs the Southern Pacific Railroad. The Rail road used the 14th amendment of all things to declare corporations as living persons, thus having the same rights as the individual. They fostered this notion as an act by the US Supreme Court, based on a hand written note on a court document by one of their attorney’s, a former railroad owner himself, that said, “corporations are living persons.” With the help of Randolf Hearst and other newspapers, this notion spread across the country. Front page news! Corporations are Persons! Once McKinley got in there, it took off and didn’t slow down until Teddy Roosevelt busted the trusts. The fact is the supreme court never ruled that corporations were living entities. In fact they settled on the judgment of the lower courts which in fact said they weren’t. This concept remained relatively stagnant until leading up to the Great Depression. Then it didn’t rear it’s ugly head till Reagan. Today this concept rules the nation and look where we’re heading! To another depression!

It is a Harvard and a Yale (without the crooks)

Michael:

Good points all.  Thanks.

Peace.

From what I can tell from the crook media, our military is now largely recruited from gangs, who have the crook experience to do all the slaughtering that we want.  When the upscaled gangs come back, they should make a good foundation for a Nazi SA.  They can work with our mercenary stooges too.

Actually Maani it depends in what terms of wealth you’re talking about. In overall wealth, your numbers seem right. 48.5 cents of every dollar in the GDP goes to 10% of the population. This has been going on for thirty years. 1% does owns 40-50% of our all around wealth. This includes land, stocks, properties and estates too, on top of the annual gross ripoff of the GDP.

Understanding the vast rights Canadians are giving up because of NAFTA, having the thumbscrews put on them by their wealthy neighbors to the south, I more than understand where you’re coming from Jojo. I also think we aren’t in a position to give anyone money, especially our own wealth who neither need it nor do any good by it.

Well CY the fact is we are the most advanced militarily. Our problem in warring is not in crushing a sovereign state, which we did rather quickly in Iraq, although the fact remains, we have never fought a major power since WW2. So your statements may have validity. But forgetting the fact Bush mismanaged the war, I think the real problem lies in maintaining control once the sovereign is gone, then getting our victims to agree with our idea of a free market society, or in other words, complete American corporate hegemony.

Of course in the case of Vietnam we never got Ho. We also didn’t have the technology back then either. The terrain was of course another factor. It’s harder to hide in a desert then a jungle. But one indisputable thing we proved in both wars is that we can inflict millions of casualties on the “enemy” without suffering anywhere near those kinds of losses ourselves.

In the case of Iraq, we thought we could easily fill the vacuum once Saddam was gone. We were obviously mistaken. Also McCain is right when he mentions our military presence being forever in Germany and Japan and Korea. But he doesn’t convey the real reasons why. If he did, his idea of a forever presence in Iraq would be deemed absurd. And of course it is!

Beyond Korea, there really is no reason for an American military presence anymore. In fact there’s no reason for NATO. The Soviets are gone. “Let the Europeans pay for their own defenses,” as they say. The trouble is our defense industry makes so much money out of it, it has less to do with letting the Europeans pay for their own defenses as it has to do with the continued government financing that would disappear as a result.

As for China, they have the technology to shoot down our satellites and they an immense conventional army that dwarfs our own. This means the only way we could fight them and win would be via the use in nuclear weapons. Since they know they cannot defeat us in that arena, it is highly doubtful China would shoot down one of our satellites, unless it was spying over their territory. The recent and periodical showboating of the combined fleets in the sea of China is more than naval maneuvers or war games, it is a blatant show of force directed at China. Even if they one day acquire a nuclear arsenal comparable to our own, it will be the same as it was with the Soviets. Mutually assured destruction will guarantee the peace. The opposite is too horrific to imagine. More importantly it wouldn’t be profitable.

Welfare is not a moral problem.  It is a political and economic problem.  If you give money to a poor person (probably not a deadbeat), the money flows up.  If you give money to a rich person (inherently a crook) he will use that money to set you up and rob you.

And let’s not forget that Reagan virtually bankrupted the country in his (admittedly successful) attempt to bankrupt Russia via the arms race.  He put us a trillion dollars in debt for the first time in U.S. history.

As an aside, that debt remained (i.e., was only minimally paid down) until...Bill Clinton paid it down in full, and left the country with a multi-billion dollar surplus for the first time in history (which Bush squandered in less than two years!).

Peace.

I think the second article was more odd than anything else.  It is very sketchy and just raises questions.  I think that it is kind of odd that the Vatican gives a trade concession to Jews (only) to sell idolatry items.  Maybe it is like an old usury set up, where Christians couldn’t make money with interest.  Anyway, it is a mystery that is probably wrapped in centuries of lies.  Does the Vatican get a kickback?

Well CY starving and freezing is what’s happening. The number in homeless has doubled in my community in the past year. It may not be evident in Maine but it certainly is out here in California. I agree with your analogy of Bush and Clinton though. You’re also right that Reagan won sweeping victories, but the voter turnout was the lowest in US history. And how did he get in there? He asked America if we were better off today then we were 5 years ago. And of course that was in the middle of the oil embargo and the Iranian revolution. Then he did a good job in selling that welfare queen-Cadillac crap, blaming the poor(and unions) for all our woes and making even more poor as a result. He sold the idea that the poor were the real culprits, the so called welfare state, yet failed to mention the fact that corporate welfare was 100 times greater. Today it’s a thousand times greater.

And you’re right, we could fill volumes analyzing Reagan. The real question is are we better off today because of Reaganomics. The answer is, that beyond a GDP standpoint, no. In fact we’re far worse off. Now I don’t think that Reagan necessarily meant it to be that way, but that’s the way it turned out. You can never give the rich money and expect it to trickle down to the poor. Reagan began this socialist economy for wealth by taking away the so called nanny state to the poor and making it a nanny state for the rich. And if he were alive today, I doubt he’d recall that either.

John:

Re the second article, it is interesting (and suspicious) that the reporters does not even mention why the Vatican and Rome rescinded the licneses, much less provide any comment from them.  Talk about one-sided journalism!  For all we know, there was good reason to revoke those licenses.  I’m not saying there WAS; only that there MIGHT have been, but we don’t know because the reporter did not provide that info.

Peace.

In theory, the rich are easy to get rid of.  Just take away their money.  When you are facing a ruthless enemy you try to cut their supply line.

The rich always threaten to take their money somewhere else.  Good.  Let some other country be corrupted with their filth.

Rich people get rich through racketeering.  They are nothing but crooks.  They and their minions pollute anything they come in contact with, even when they think they are doing some good.

We will have to get out of Iraq and leave it to its own bad devices, which all countries share.  The U.S. is like the rich.  Anything we touch turns to garbage.  Even our reparations would probably be just another con.

Well the machinery of Diebold is notoriously well known. So much so they changed their name to “Premier Election Solutions.” Indeed they do, along with other corporations, represent a threat to distorting election results, but they are not the only perversion. The lobby system is even worse and the election “fix” is multifaceted.

When the elect ability of leading candidates is based on how much money they can generate, along with the fact that candidates from both party’s receive campaign finance from the same lobbies, fixing the electoral process in the voting booth may actually fall second to the lobbies, since even is a fair election, the probability in getting a guy in there that favors them over us is very likely.

Because of this, the American people have literally been forced to accept these candidates and basically try to vote for who they believe to be the lesser of two evils. Really there is only one evil. Campaign finance.

Candidates who have a real plan that might benefit all of us and sensibly put us on the right track are shunned by the corporate lobbies who always throw their support to those they believe are the most approachable and will produce the results they want. Of course so do we, but the bottom line is the bottom line. We can’t give them the money the rich can. We send in our contributions ten to twenty dollars at a time. They send in their contributions in the hundreds of thousands and millions.

Another point, candidates and politicians in general spend more time talking to the lobbyists then they do to the average citizen. Their political livelihood depends upon it. So while they listen to these representatives of wealth practically every day, hearing their problems and how they think things should work, the rest of us are basically silenced in the discussion and by the time we become a part of it(at election time), our issues are rarely if ever addressed and when they are, we’re merely spoon fed what we want to hear, promised the sky, then ignored till the next election. Along the way we hear words like “freedom” and “democracy” thrown around. And today, anyone with a notion realizes neither exist.

Well hetzer if you’ll note, none of the leading candidates beyond Edwards is addressing the lobby system which is the real problem. Also concerning the war, although all the democrats say they will end it, all of them suggest there will always be a military presence of some kind. Even though Obama said he meant that presence as a way of protecting our embassy, what it really boils down to is we’ve killed a million Iraqi’s to supposedly get one guy (and to steal their oil), so as Kucinich says, we don’t deserve to have an embassy there, we should have an international coalition(UN) to fill the vacuum once we’re gone, we must pay them in retribution to rebuild for the destruction we’ve caused in this unnecessary and illegal war and give them control of their own oil. It will never happen, even though this would be helpful in restoring diplomatic faith in us, not only in Iraq and the Middle East, but in the rest of the world.

The military machine is too profitable, as is stealing a nation’s resources. Also who needs diplomacy when you have the strongest, most advanced military on the planet? Shotgun diplomacy is far more lucrative and another 9/11, as noted by Tommy Franks, will only further seal our fate.

As far as the rich go, I don’t see a need to get rid of them, only muzzle the tremendous power and influence they have unconstitutionally acquired. Since they finance the entire political system, this too will never happen, until the American people wise up and demand it to happen. By the looks of things, they never will. Their lack in understanding how the system really works, along with the distractions in their own personal concerns won’t allow it to. Perhaps after millions are starving on the streets they will finally wise up. Until then expect business as usual regardless of which handpicked puppet gets elected.

I am one of those people who can remember facts exist, but I can never seem to find them when I need them.

I think that after a few years of forced and grueling campaigning, it wouldn’t surprise me that some of the candidates, including Obama, have lost their mind.  Otherwise his comment about Reagan was sincere, ignorant, or shameless pandering.

Direct voting, liars courts, and eliminating the rich are my modest proposals for changing the system.  But, I have confidence that in a nation of crooks, crooks will eventually find a way.  I would like just a few years of freedom from the shameless filth that think they run this country.

All:

Thought the following might interest you:

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk:80/index.php?storyID=12068

Peace.

Huge Diebold Disparities Uncovered In New Hampshire Recount

Memory cards missing as attorney voices concerns about transparency

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Friday, January 18, 2008

Huge disparities between votes cast on Diebold electronic voting machines and actual hand counted tallies are emerging during the New Hampshire recount, with Hillary Clinton gaining the most from over a hundred unaccounted for votes in one Manchester Ward.

The recount in Manchester’s Ward 5 revealed a disparity whereby establishment candidates received over a hundred ‘black hole’ votes between them that could not be tallied during the hand count.

Diebold Result Hand Count

CLINTON 683 619

EDWARDS 255 217
OBAMA 404 365

At the moment there is no indication of where these extra votes came from, but the figures again cast the accuracy of Diebold voting machines into severe doubt and provide further evidence of the need for a return to hand counted paper ballots only in all federal elections.

(Article continues below)

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2008/01180 8_diebold_disparities.htm