Progress Now Action

The fight to halt H.R. 6304 and Obama's change of heart are an important test of whether or not netroots has real political power on issues.  This issue of revising FISA to comply with the wishes of Mr. Bush and the long struggle to force a Democratic Congress to halt such legislative bills that would grant blanket retroactive immunity to telecom companies, toss out the Fourth Amendment, and the rule of law will be replaced by the rule of men which the internet powered grassroots outcry forced the hand of the Democrats.

As we now know that Speaker Pelosi's realpolitik which forced through a humilating defeat to all Americans and to the Constitution was based on the political calculus of elections.  In Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders own sentiments:

Stonewalling the Administration and letting the surveillance powers expire could have cost the Democrats swing seats they won in 2006 as well as new ones they have a chance to steal from Republicans this November. "For any Republican-leaning district this would have been a huge issue," says a top Pelosi aide, who estimates that as many as 10 competitive races could have been affected by it. . . .

Pelosi's centrist compromise doesn't just help House Democrats in the fall. It also gives the party's presumptive nominee for President, Barack Obama, a chance to move to the center on national security. "Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay," Obama said in a statement Friday. "So I support the compromise."

Glenn Greenwald states succinctly:

The only objective of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer is to have a 50-seat majority rather than a 35-seat majority, and if enabling the Bush administration's lawbreaking and demolishing core constitutional protections can assist somewhat with that goal, then that it what they will do. That's what they are saying all but explicitly here.

Now is the time to take action when your Representatives and Senators are home.  John Amato, Crooksandliars.com, writes:

You spoke and we listened. You donated intensely and we are taking action. We’ve run ads and now we’re hitting the phones. Blue America has just launched an interactive tool that will allow you to call your Senator and demand accountability on FISA.

Blue America Whip Count Call Tool.

Christy Hardin Smith, Firedoglake.com, writes: 

This first tool allows you to directly contact Senators to tell them to stand up for the rule of law and vote in favor of the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment.  (That's S.A.5064 to H.R. 6304 which will come up for a vote on July 8th, 2008.)  Not only will this tool help you phone your Senators -- including connecting your call -- but it also gives us the ability to track positions on FISA given your input on what you ascertain during your conversations.

We do not have the luxury of time.  The vote will come up on July 8th. 

Now I've written about Obama's run to the center on HR6304.  As many netizens know that Obama's reasoning is deeply flawed on why he would support such a bill that was, in part, written by the telecom companies themselves. 

What is heartening is that the Obama group, "Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right," is now the largest Obama network group with over 10,000 members.

mcjoan, Dailykos.com, writes:

This effort shows two things: the always-expanding power of the Internet for organizing. We knew at the outset what a powerful tool the tubes were going to present, but the new iterations that people create on a daily basis is fantastic (and another reason for the Net Neutrality fight to be rejoined full force when we have our new president and Congress).

It also shows that you can fully support Barack Obama and still disagree with him on issues. That being a supporter, particularly a netroots supporter, doesn't mean setting aside your own beliefs and principles. We're not supposed to just shut up when we disagree--if we do, we're setting a very bad precedent for our role in a potential Obama presidency. I keep going back to the Louis Brandeis quote:

The most important political office is that of private citizen.
-Louis D. Brandeis

You can support a candidate and fulfill your political office of a private citizen at the same time. A huge number of Barack Obama's supporters on his site are doing just that.

The wiki-hub for more action items.

On the local front there will be an action at Obama's Denver HQ early next week.  Check back for further information.  If you want to join send me an email (therebis@yahoo.com).

I have read the statement by Senator Obama on the FISA which is patent nonsense.  It is a capitulation to the Bush/Cheney/Pelosi/Hoyer view that the Constitution is a throw away document in the face of "national security".

Now is the time for his millions of followers to show that it is them who must lead Senator Obama.  He, in this moment, is not a leader but a follower of a mindset that refuses to believe in the Constitution in the face of danger.

Too many times have we come up short in meeting the strict standards of the Constitution in the our nation's history with regard to national crisis.  However, I will point out that this nation has been able to overcome the temporary set backs because we knew that a crisis was short lived.  What is different now is that Mr. Bush and his active enablers in the Democratic Party leadership is to fundamentally alter what the laws are and how the "rule of law" is now dependent on who is in charge of the executive branch.  

This kind of mindset is regal in heritage and certainly anti-Constitutional in it's very nature to place the individual above the law.

As Glenn Greenwald has written many times HR 6304 is rotten to it's core on the fact that it discards the Fourth Amendment while providing blanket  retroactive immunity to telecom companies that spied on you at the behest of Mr. Bush's word (and for profit).

As I wrote last week it is time to tell Senator Obama that his view from August 1st of '07 is the legitimate view:  The FISA court works.  There is no need for warrantless wiretapping.

I support Obama but this is the first major test of his willingness stand in opposition or to support the conventional Democratic leadership view per Pelosi/Hoyer/Reid of-

In other words, Democrats achieved a "significant victory" because -- by giving Republicans everything they demanded -- Republicans are no longer able to criticize Democrats on this issue. What a shrewd strategy: "if we comply with all their demands, then they can't criticize us for anything." That's the Democratic Party's plan for winning, according to Hoyer.

We, the people, who have given money and time for his campaign now need to teach the Senator from Illinois that his words to spark a movement of "change" means that he cannot become an impediment to change.  Because this kind of "change" meaning H.R. 6304 and his vouching for the bill is not in the interest of building a movement to change this nation from the disasterous conservative policies of the last twenty years.

When he incorporates Republican talking points on H.R.6304 (e.g., external threats trump criminal acts) then we should know that he is on the wrong track and needs a forceful reminder that a movement of change from the grassroots means that he is not indespensable to the long term goals of a new progressive movement in this country as he knows full well. 

Obama- 

Then:

We are not a nation that wiretaps without warrants.

Now:

So I support the compromise . . . .

Clear, first-hand whistleblower documentary evidence [states]…that for year on end every e-mail, every text message, and every phone call carried over the massive fiber-optic links of sixteen separate companies routed through AT&T’s Internet hub in San Francisco—hundreds of millions of private, domestic communications—have been…copied in their entirety by AT&T and knowingly diverted wholesale by means of multiple “splitters” into a secret room controlled exclusively by the NSA.

This is what the truth of "warrantless wiretaps" means.  Not just a handful of messages but every phone, text, and email sent from you to another person period.

So, Senator Obama it is time for you to take a stand.  We, the people, who you motivated into this movement for "change" will roll over you if you don't listen because whoever you are listening to now on H.R. 6304 is wrong.

Your colleague, Senator Chris Dodd, is correct.  You need to study his speech carefully (h/t to Christy Hardin Smith):

...And if I have needed any reminder of that fact, simply look to all those who have joined this fight – my colleagues and the many, many Americans who have given me strength for this fight. Strength that comes from the passion and eloquence of citizens who don’t have to be involved, but choose to be nonetheless.

They see what I see in this debate – that by short-circuiting the judicial process we are sending a dangerous signal to future generations. They see us establishing a precedent that Congress can—and will—provide immunity to potential law breakers, if they are “important” enough....

Mr. President, unwarranted domestic spying didn’t happen in a panic or short-term emergency, not for a week, or a month, or even a year. If it had, I might not be here today.

But that isn’t the case. What we now know is that spying by this Administration went on, relentlessly, for more than five years....

But that isn’t the case either, Mr. President. Indeed, I am here today because with offense after another after another, I believe it is long past time to say: “enough.”

I am here today because of a pattern—a pattern of abuse against civil liberties and the rule of law. Against the Constitution—of which we are custodians, temporary though that status may be....

So, why are we here? Because, Mr. President – it is alleged that giant telecom corporations worked with our government to compile Americans’ private, domestic communications records into a database of enormous scale and scope.

Secretly and without a warrant, those corporations are alleged to have spied on their own customers – American customers.

Perhaps, Senator Obama, you should study this carefully and reconsider your rash rush to support H.R.6304, by your colleague Senator Feingold states:

But Mr. President, this immunity provision doesn’t just allow telephone companies off the hook for breaking the law. It also will make it that much harder to get to the core issue that I’ve been raising since December 2005, which is that the President ran an illegal program and should be held accountable. When these lawsuits are dismissed, we will be that much further away from an independent judicial review of this program...

On top of all this, we are considering granting immunity when more than 70 members of the Senate still – still – have not been briefed on the President’s wiretapping program. The majority of this body still does not even know what we are being asked to grant immunity for.

ACT NOW to persuade Senator Obama:

Call 866-675-2008 option 6 to speak to someone.

866-675-2008 option 6

If you want to defend the Constitution and give a good kick to the Democratic Party leadership then I would check out Christy Hardin Smith's Firedoglake's post: FISA: Anyone Up for a Bit of Action? 

The one consistent thing I've noticed about the FISA issue is this: people are disgusted by insincerity. More than anything, they want a way to channel that frustration into an action that could make a difference.

For some reason, elected folks inside the Beltway don't seem to understand this. They have miscalculated on how many people in America are paying attention to civil liberties concerns these days. And it is our job to make certain that they learn just how badly they have misjudged this....

UNAFRAID is the title of my latest book. Its subtitle is A NOVEL OF THE POSSIBLE, and it's my effort to lift up our absurdly low level of expectations about politics. It's possible, and if we don't we are NOT going to take our country back, no matter how many campaigns and candidates say we will.

What do I mean? Well, for starters, please spend a minute sampling the book. You'll get it in an instant. Then tell me what you think...

I met Dee at the Washington Park Rec Center weight room a number of years ago.  He was a gregarious man of imposing height.  We soon knew that we had a common interests in lifting and in politics.  He was passionate about liberal and progressive causes that would lift the poorest and most in need in society up to where most people would live at. 

Inbetween sets at the gym we would talk about local politicians and national politics.  I remember us talking about the '04 Democratic Convention and joking that we should make a run for delegates to the next Convention.  When '06 rolled around and the Colorado Democratic Party was making a serious bid to be host for the '08 Convention we still talked about it.  Sadly Dee won't make it to the '08 Democratic National Convention.

Bill Vandenberg, former CEO of Colorado Progressive Coalition, had the honor of speaking at Dee's funeral.  Dee worked and volunteered for Bill and CPC the last twelve years of his life.  Bill gave a moving speech about Dee's fierce committment to the dispossed and minority communities.  He spoke of Dee's passion for basketball and his work life as a miner and union leader.  Bill was honored to be Dee's pallbearer.

Dee will be remembered by all who are committed to social justice and community activism for liberal and progressive ideals in Denver, just as he will be honored by those at the Washington Park Rec Center, and by his family and church community.

Memorial contributions may be made to a Memorial Fund established in his honor in care of Central Christian Church or to Colorado Progressive Coalition. 

There should be a top down investigation into how drug companies are bending, if not breaking, ethical rules on human studies testing of new drugs.  If drug company officials are liable then they should be criminally prosecuted for their use of dangerous drugs that harm their unknowing human subjects.  Withholding information on such side effects is outside the boundaries of human subject testing.  Congress should begin investigations immediately especially with the use of our veterans for such studies is simply wrong.

Brian Ross and Vic Walter, ABC News journalists, write:

Mentally distressed veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are being recruited for government tests on pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side effects, an investigation by ABC News and "The Washington Times" has found...

"This didn't justify an emergency warning at that level," said Dr. Miles McFall, co-administrator of the VA study...

Dr. McFall says the VA decided to continue the Chantix study because "it would be depriving our veterans of an effective method of treatment to help them stop smoking."

Caplan, one of the country's leading medical ethicists, said he was stunned by the VA's decision to continue the Chantix experiment.

In order to make a profit the drug companies are willing to place veterans in harm's way.  This is immoral and the study using our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans should be halted immediately.  The people who run the Veterans Administration should safe guard our veterans and not place them in danger for the bottom line of drug companies.  Our men and women who have served our country should not be our drug companies frontline human experiments. 

From the DenverPost.com:

Despite a recent spike in the nation's unemployment rate, the danger that the economy has fallen into a "substantial downturn" appears to have waned, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Monday.

Addressing a Fed conference in Chatham, Mass., on Monday night, Bernanke said a government report last week showing the unemployment rate rising from 5 percent in April to 5.5 percent in May—the biggest one-month jump in two decades—was "unwelcome." However, the Fed chief said other forces should "provide some offset to the headwinds that still face the economy."

The Fed's powerful doses of interest rate cuts, the government's $168 billion stimulus package, further progress in the repair of problems in financial and credit markets, a gradual ebbing of the drag from the deep housing slump and still solid demand from abroad for U.S. exports should help the economy over the remainder of this year, he said. 

What is he smoking? The intervention by the Fed to save Bear Stearns has set a dangerous precedent by signaling that your tax dollars will be used to save bankers who have recklessly used money on all sorts of financial gimmicks called siv's to gamble away the bank's money. But when it is time to pay the piper they come squealing for your money to save their behinds. If Bush really believed in the "free market" then Bear Stearns would have gone into bankruptcy. Isn't it time to tell Wall Street bankers that they will get no help from the government and let the "free market" cull out the "few bad apples"?

Topic of Jay Rockefeller is that what the Bush administration told him was so hush hush that he had to write himself a letter and store it in a safe deposit box to make sure that Dick Cheney would understand the import of the letter sent as I read about the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee about how the White House used the intelligence given to them from the intelligence agencies.  This kind of idiocy is what I would expect from a Marx Brothers film or Mel Brooks; to wit, Walter Pincus, WashingtonPost.com, writes:

It says that the panel did not review "less formal communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the Executive Branch."

More important, there was no effort to obtain White House records or interview President Bush, Vice President Cheney or other administration officials whose speeches were analyzed because, the report says, such steps were considered beyond the scope of the report.

Excuse me, Senator Rockefeller.  But you are the chairman of the permanent committee and as such you could have opened up the investigation into the different organs that the White House and the Office of the Vice President used to "sell" the war with Iraq, including the White House Iraq Group.  But no, you didn't do that, because it is to our shame that you didn't and to the fact that you have no sense of justice to the dead men and women in uniform of our armed forces because of Mr. Bush's illegal and unjust war of aggression.   Perhaps, Senator Rockefeller it is time for you to hand the chairmanship to a Senator who has a sense of justice like Senator Webb.

It is well within Pelosi's power to block legislation. She did it with Colombia free trade, she can do it with the Protect AT&T Act.

Update: Call Pelosi (202-225-4965, Fax: 202-225-8259) and Hoyer (202-225-4131, Fax: 202-225-4300) and tell them the Bond bill is unacceptable. Tell them that, if any action is necessary, it would be better to vote to extend the PAA for a year than to give up everything they gained in the bill they passed in February.

This is why I'm mad at the capitulation of a Democratic Party leader:

House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes says he's "fine" with the Republicans' FISA "compromise"...The House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat disclosed late Tuesday that he is ready to accept a Republican-brokered deal to rewrite the nation's electronic surveillance laws, signaling that a long-running congressional impasse could soon be coming to an end. . . . "It's about finding middle ground and we have middle ground," Reyes said of the compromise offered by Republicans. "It's not going to please everyone but let's get on with it."

Chairman Reyes does not understand the "rule of law" that it is a blatant breaking of the laws of this nation that the telecom amnesty bill will allow such law breaking to continue under the guise of presidential edict.

Speaker Pelosi must kill this bill immediately and it is for us to flood both the Speaker's phone with calls.  It should go without saying that Chairman Reyes phone should be flooded with calls of condemnation of his view that the Constitution is nothing in the eyes of this administration.

NO AMNESTY FOR TELECOMS!  Defeat the Bonds Bill immediately. 

CheneyCare -- We taxpayers pay 70% of guaranteed coverage for VP Dick Cheney and 2 million federal legislators and employees. 
Link: Bill Moyers' Journal 5/9/08 -- California Nurses' campaign for "CheneyCare" for all.  Read transcript or view program: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05092008/transcript1.html


Video "Who the Health Cares?" gets straight to the point: Presidential candidates will not determine health care reform -- the ball is in the court of Congress. http://www.moblogic.tv/video/2008/04/30/who-the-health-cares/


For-Profit Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industries -- scary statistics

1) Melody Peterson's book "Our Daily Meds" reveals that the benefit of medicines marketed by pharmaceutical companies "has become secondary to how much it will bring shareholders in profit"...due to constant pressure by Wall Street for drug companies to exceed profits made the year before; Big Pharma employs 2 lobbyists for every Congress member.

2) Tests show that placebos often work as well as the drugs being marketed to the public.

3) 100,000 Americans die annually from taking prescribed drugs as prescribed (FDA reports).

4) U.S. experiences 75,000-100,000 preventable deaths annually, ranking 19 out of 19 nations. (Recent study, Ellen Nolte & Martin McKee, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine) 

Please join Be the Change-USA & Health Care for All Colorado
for an exciting, engaging and fun event May 31

Are We All Really Covered? Closing the Gaps in Health Care
12 noon - 7:30 PM, Sat., May 31, 2008

First Plymouth Congregational Church
3501 S. Colorado Blvd. (Hampden and Colorado Blvd)
Englewood, CO

Registration: Full program: $35; Dinner & evening speakers: $25; Evening speakers only: $10. Discount for Seniors, students, veterans, BTC and HCAC members: $5

Special program features:
1-3 PM Providers and Patients Panel: "How did we get into this mess, and how can we get out?"

3-5 PM Presentations by CO elected officials and candidates: "Will Colorado begin to close the gap?"

5 PM Dinner "Legislative Grill" -- Members of Congress and candidates and representatives of Presidential campaigns: "Will Congress or our next President begin to close the gap?"

6 PM Evening Keynote speaker: Elizabeth Kucinich

More info: www.BTC-USA.org or www.healthcareforallcolorado.org or call Dick Barkey, 303-808-8504, or Eliza Carney, 970-416-0636
To register online: www.BTC-USA.org  

From Slashdot.org comes this:

Regular speech is controlled by a section of the brain called Broca's area. Once the precise location is determined in the subject, a magnetic pulse can temporarily disrupt speech without impairing other cognitive functions.

One can only imagine what the Pinheads at the CIA are thinking up in terms of implementated this latest idea through the techniques of surgical implantation or psychopharmacological cocktail for their enhanced interrogation arsenal.

What I was reminded of was the classic scene in "The Matrix":

Neo : You can't scare me with this Gestapo crap. I know my rights. I _want_ my phone call.

Agent Smith : And tell me, _Mr._ Anderson, what good is a phone call...if you are unable to speak.

The question unnerves Neo and strangely, he begins to feel the muscles in his jaw tighten.  The standing agents snicker, watching Neo's confusion grow into panic. Neo feels his lips grow soft and sticky as they slowly seal shut, melding into each other untilall trace of his mouth is gone.

We have been, through the tactics of Big Brother, dragged backwards from the Age of Enlightment that placed human reason as the basis for authority, especially governing.  

This backwards movement has been abetted by the technologies of communication which enhances command functions of authoritarian governments.  I will point out that Mr. Bush's Total Information Awareness project was never killed but Phoenix like arose from the dead to become a Hydra headed colossus.  Part of which was exposed from the numerous lawsuits that have resulted from the illegal warrantless spying done by the telecommunications corporations at the behest of Mr. Bush's administration on U.S. citizens.

But what of other countries?  Well, I would point out that China is not sitting still they are implementing a program called "Golden Shield".  Again from Slashdot.org there is this:

This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces.

The notion that we, as individuals, have "privacy" is rapidly being eroded.  The notion of what privacy is as understood through the Constitution and through SCOTUS decisions that are based upon the Fourth Amendment is in a precarious position. 

Technology for better or worse will have a direct impact on how little privacy we will have in the future if left unimpeded.  Our privacy must be aggressively protected.  How?  It must come us, the citizens, who will be ever vigiliant and from those watchdog agencies like Electronic Freedom Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights who are at the frontlines between our right to privacy versus corporations who want unregulated control and the ever intrusive government organs who want to spy without judicial oversight on you and I on their whim that we must support.

Catholics Raise Questions on Bob Schaffer's Judgment
Applaud Enactment of Protections for Mariana Workers

Washington, D.C. - Catholics United today welcomed President Bush's signing into law of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008. This legislation includes a provision that will bring the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) under the protection of federal immigration laws, effectively putting an end to years of rampant human rights abuses within the territory. The Department of the Interior and Catholic advocates in the CMNI have documented extensive worker exploitation associated with an infusion of low-paid immigrant workers, including allegations of forced abortions.

Today's victory comes despite the work of former U.S. Congressman Bob Schaffer of Colorado, who has recently come under scrutiny for participating in a 1999 junket paid for by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Following this trip, Schaffer - who served on the House Resources Committee - led an effort to discredit the testimony of abused workers in the Northern Mariana Islands. His roadblocking ultimately delayed the passage of today's legislation for almost a decade.

In 2007, representatives from Guma Esperanza-House of Hope shelter of battered women in the Mariana Islands, including representatives of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd testified before a Senate committee on the rampant abuse of women on the island. One Catholic nun told explained that the then-existing labor and immigration regulation "effectively created a permanent underclass of disenfranchised persons."

"As Catholics, we believe that all workers have inherent human dignity, including a right to fair wages, humane working conditions, and respect on the job," said Sister Peg Maloney, RSM, a Catholics United member from Denver. "We are thankful today that the efforts of Bob Schaffer and Jack Abramoff to deny workers in the Northern Mariana Islands basic human dignity in the workplace did not prevail."

I seen this posted to other list serves on the longshore union staging a strike to shut down west coast ports.

However the media has not covered this important new alliance by unions with the anti-war movement in America.  This adds a powerful force to the anti-war movement.  The only newspaper that has covered the event from the anti-war reason for the work stoppage is the Seattle Post Intelligencer but only in the business section via Alex Veiga, AP business writer, reports:

LOS ANGELES -- West Coast cargo traffic came to a halt Thursday as port workers staged daylong anti-war protests to commemorate May Day, terminal operators said Thursday.

Thousands of dockworkers did not show up for the morning shift, leaving ships and truck drivers idle at ports from Long Beach to Seattle, Pacific Maritime Association spokesman Steve Getzug said.

This is how the DenverPost.com has edited the May Day strike by the ILWU:

SAN FRANCISCO, May 1 /PRNewswire/ -- The International Longshore and Warehouse Union today struck West Coast ports from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest, bringing cargo operations to a virtual standstill, as the Union's leadership defied orders from the independent Coast Arbitrator to "notify its Locals and members of its contractual obligation and direct all members to report to work as they normally do during the day shift on May 1, 2008."

The Denver Post has done a disservice to its readership by leading with a plain Jane headline "Longshore Union Strikes West Coast Ports" that is followed by a misleading opening paragraph.  One reads the corporate view until the fifth paragraph:

Today's action, which essentially shut down all major ports along the coast, culminates a series of events that began when ILWU members passed a resolution opposing the U.S. war in Iraq. After seeking permission under contract rules to stop work during the day shift on May 1st, ILWU leaders later retracted their request, and claimed that any decision not to work on May 1st would be made by individual workers.

The reportage is muddy for the reader to see a clear connection between the union action and the anti-war movement.  The impression is that the union is using the anti-war movement as a bargaining chip in typical labor-management negotiations.  Go to the ILWU website and read their statement for May Day.

A quick search of the Rocky Mountain News website shows nothing.  No mention at all using the search terms "West Coast Strike" and "ILWU".

So the Denver Post posits an anti-union spin by the management (the strike is for ulterior motives) that drives a wedge between the union and the anti-war movement.

The Rocky Mountain News leaves it readership in the dark about an important step in bringing unions into the antii-war movement.

Why don't you write a letter to the Rocky Mountain News? 

What happens when one market goes bust?  In a globalized market the effects will have an international impact that will force governments to intravene, but what happens if governments don't because of their economic belief in "free" market(s)?

We have seen that Mr. Bush and his cohort has a faux belief in free market (i.e., Friedman economic theory) by the action of Fed. Chairman Bernanke's federal loan guarantee to JPMorgan's buyout of Bear Stearns. 

But what would happen if a major economic power would allow that to happen to let the market work by itself without any "safety" net?

From the Independent's reporter Clifford Coonan writes:

It took just two years for China's blue-chip share index, the Shanghai Composite share index to register a 500 per cent gain, rising from 1,000 to 6,000 points but it has taken only around five months for it to tumble from 6,000 to below 3,000.

Will this lead to great internal unrest as China's rulers have to wrest with Tibet and a faltering global economy?  What will happen to the 150,000,000 million new investors in their stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen?  Those small investors will be hurt the most by the loss of over 1,000,000,000,000 dollars in valuation of corporations because they hold the view that "muscular government intervention to keep everything in the garden rosy ahead of China's big party to mark its emergence as a global economic and political power".  This has not been the case.

Do you think that the U.S. government would stand by if the Dow lost half it's value?

----------------------------------

There has been a remarkable lack of commentary on Hillary Clinton's willingness to spread the nuclear umbrella to countries in the Middle East.  Why is that?

Why would she say that if Isreal is attacked by nuclear weapons from Iran that we would respond with "massive retaliation"?  Why would she say that other Middle East countries would enjoy the umbrella of our nuclear arsenal too?  What countries?  Surely she would not have in mind the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia?

DailyKos.com writer Troutfishing writes:

George E. Lowe, who wrote the 1964 book "The Age of Deterrence" ( Little, Brown) and has won awards for his writing on nuclear deterrence as well, about WHY "massive [nuclear] retaliation" is such a loaded term and WHY the "Meet The Press" folks may have been taken aback by Clinton's "nuclear umbrella" idea...

"Who the HELL is she talking to ? Whose IDEAS are these", Lowe asked me, rhetorically, "Clark didn't seem to know anything about this, he was blindsided. So where did these crazy, dangerous ideas come from ? Look, I've been in this business for fifty years, I know nuclear deterrence. She had to have been talking to somebody like Doug Coe or his elite inner circle."

It was conjecture, and George Lowe would be the first to admit that, but he would also stick to his call pegging Clinton's "nuclear umbrella" as a fast track to global nuclear war. Nuclear weapons can't be used as "umbrellas". That's nuts, an idea one would have expected from SAC head General  Curtis LeMay, parodied in Dr.Strangelove. Today, one would expect it from a neocon.. if she talks like a NeoCon, if she cavorts with NeoCon, if she makes the same sort of mistakes  "NeoCon".

Remember that Iran, per the National Intelligence Estimate, has put a stop to it's nuclear weapons program(s) in 2003, but Hillary is still espousing the dangerous lie that Mr. Bush and the Neo-Cons like Cheney and Perle still hold a belief in- no matter what Iranian leaders and our own intelligence agencies say- Iran is developing nuclear weapons.  Hillary seems to have the same false belief and is commited to using any means to prevent that from happening.

What will happen if Hillary becomes president?   

"The pro-life movement will no longer give a pass to candidates like Bob Schaffer who look the other way when Chinese women are forced to abort their children," said Steve Curtis, spokesman for the group and former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

"At best Schaffer was negligent investigating coerced abortion in the Mariana Islands," he said. "Worse, he has voted for permanent normal trade relations with China, rewarding the regime that forces women to abort their children."

Schaffer, who visited the Marianas in 1999 while in Congress, said allegations of forced abortions were among the things he looked into on that trip.

"I absolutely did not look the other way on this issue," Schaffer said, saying he interviewed "dozens" of workers and met with local religious leaders about the topic.

A 1998 report by the U.S. Office of Insular Affairs found squalid living conditions for foreign workers in the Marianas.

A statement given to investigators from a Chinese woman showed what happened to workers who got pregnant.

"According to Miss Y, if the company found out a worker became pregnant, they would fire her and return her to China where she would be 'forced to have an abortion.' Knowing this, workers who became pregnant either tried to self abort or find someone in Saipan to perform the abortion. Some women ran away and hid so they didn't have to have an abortion."

According to Colorado Right to Life officials, Shiu Yon Zhou, a member of the group, was forced to undergo a forced abortion in China and later sought refuge in the U.S., where she eventually became a citizen.

She said Schaffer should "apologize for being part of the problem. He calls himself pro-life, but how can he be when he is not outraged by Chinese forced abortion?" she said.