Making the McCain strategy look even more ridiculous. MC
NY Times May 18, 2008 Editorial
Fixing the Military The United States’ military is the world’s best. It is also in need of substantial repair. Two wars — the war of necessity in Afghanistan and President Bush’s disastrous war of choice in Iraq — have worn out soldiers and equipment at an unprecedented rate. So alarming is the deterioration that many military commanders say the country is unable to sustain the current operation in Iraq let alone face down future threats
Jimmy Carter delivered this televised speech on April 18, 1977.
Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.
It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.
We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren. Read More »
Submitted by Digby on December 2, 2007 - 6:38pm.
American right-wing populism is an interesting phenomenon that's coming to the fore once again in its usual nativist and racist form, but also as smooth misrepresentation of "tax reform"; clever, misleading public relations messaging about fair trade; and some fairly outlandish paranoia about conspiracies to erase the borders. Various permutations of these fairly common right-wing themes abound among conservative politicians and thinkers alike. But conservative populism is an oxymoron.
As Phil Agree wrote in this much discussed article about the definition of conservatism, "Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy ... [it] is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world."
Modern conservatism's most successful strategy was to merge public relations and politics into a seamless operation in which it could use modern marketing methods to convince people to vote against their own interests. In that sense, right-wing populism is just another marketing campaign for the aristocrats. And it's working:
Read More »South Carolina has embraced foreign investment, with companies from BMW to Michelin transforming a state once dominated by the textile industry. Another aspect of the global economy hasn't gone down as well: immigration.
While an influx of money from overseas has made free trade palatable even as thousands of mill jobs have vanished, voters are growing increasingly hostile to undocumented foreign workers, polls and analysts say. As a result, illegal immigration is a top economic issue in the state's Jan. 19 Republican primary, a key test for the candidates since it's the first in the South.
"Trade is all right as long as everybody goes by the same rules," said David Robinson, 65, who recently retired from a job at a Michelin tire factory in Spartanburg and whose son works in a Hitachi Ltd. plant nearby. Illegal immigration, on the other hand, "is a big problem, and that's one you can get a handle on," he said.
Dear Friends,
Thanks to the positive press we have been receiving in the last 48 hours
about our exclusion from the parade, the City of Denver has interceded on
our behalf and ordered that we be permitted to participate.
We will NOT be required to "shut up" as suggested by Mr. Grieb of the UVC.
We can wear our shirts, carry our banners and signs, and chant slogans.
That said, I think that we can further enhance our image by making our
presence a dignified and respectful one. I am suggesting that we concentrate
our message by focusing our signage and verbiage on the theme: "Support the
Troops, Bring Them Home." This will express our difference of opinion with
those who support the war and at the same time let people know that opposing
war is not the same as disrespecting the troops (We ARE the troops.)
The one assurance that I gave on our behalf was that we would not "embarass
the city." So, PLEASE do not direct commentary at people on the reviewing stand,
and try to avoid references to extraneous issues.
The meeting arrangements will remain the same as planned: Corner of Colfax
and Broadway in front of the News/Post building at 9:30 tomorrow (Sat.) When we
find out exactly where our position is, we can walk over as a group.
My thanks to everyone who has worked in support of our cause. Please pass
this message along to your contacts, and I will see you all tomorrow morning.
Peace,
Frank
Education
Simply the best investment for the money in the history of speculation. My friend, CU Regent Michael Carrigan says that for every dollar Colorado spends on higher education, she gets back $40. Research and development in agriculture, engineering, medicine, mining, renewables, etc., makes this world a better, cleaner and more profitable place.
Transportation
Keep those rigs rolling, it costs money and time to slow them down. Big rigs are the biggest contributor to the accordion effect on urban highways, there is a better way and it's simple. We need to get the rail yards out of Denver, too many chemicals and too many people is an accident waiting to happen. Denver needs that land anyway, urban sprawl is a waste of precious energy, the days of cheap fuel are over until we start making our own. We don't need more highways or more lanes, we need smarter highways, smart and efficient rapid rail and centralized industrialization out to the east. Read More »
Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah's entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: "You have failed us miserably and we won't take it any more."
"While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss."
"You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law."
"You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation's history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder."
"We are here to tell you: We won't take it any more!"
Read More »
Campaigning in South Carolina earlier, Obama accused Hillary Clinton of giving voters "vague, calculated answers to suit the politics of the moment instead of clear, consistent principles about how you would lead America." And he subtly swiped at former President Bill Clinton by listing problems that "existed long before George Bush took office."
SIDE OF POLITICS
Sam Smith
[A talk to the recent Claim Democracy conference organized by the Center for Voting & Democracy]
I rise to interrupt your proceedings - logical, thoughtful, and well constructed though they are - to suggest something oddly subversive: that people only get involved in politics in large numbers when it becomes more than politics, when it is more than a logical, thoughtful and well constructed process, when it is more even than a ideology. They get involved when politics becomes a normal, convivial, exciting and satisfying part of their social existence. I want to talk for a moment about the non-rational, inefficient, even sometimes almost indescribable elements of a politics that works.
Come with me for a moment to the time of when politics was so much a part of New York City that Tammany Hall had to rent Madison Square Gardens for its meetings of committeemen - all 32,000 of them. . In contrast, when the Democratic National Committee decided to send a mailing to its workers some years back, it found that no one had kept a list. The party had come to care only about its donors.
We got rid of machines like Tammany because we came to believe in something called good government. But in throwing out the machines we also tossed out a culture and an art of politics. It is as though, in seeking to destroy the Mafia, we had determined that family values and personal loyalty were somehow by association criminal as well. Read More »
Rapture Rescue 911: Disaster Response for the Chosen
[from the November 19, 2007 issue]
The Nation
I used to worry that the United States was in the grip of extremists who sincerely believed that the Apocalypse was coming and that they and their friends would be airlifted to heavenly safety. I have since reconsidered. The country is indeed in the grip of extremists who are determined to act out the biblical climax--the saving of the chosen and the burning of the masses--but without any divine intervention. Heaven can wait. Thanks to the booming business of privatized disaster services, we're getting the Rapture right here on earth.
Just look at what is happening in Southern California. Even as wildfires devoured whole swaths of the region, some homes in the heart of the inferno were left intact, as if saved by a higher power. But it wasn't the hand of God; in several cases it was the handiwork of Firebreak Spray Systems. Firebreak is a special service offered to customers of insurance giant American International Group (AIG)--but only if they happen to live in the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country. Members of the company's Private Client Group pay an average of $19,000 to have their homes sprayed with fire retardant. During the wildfires, the "mobile units"--racing around in red firetrucks--even extinguished fires for their clients. Read More »
I am pleased to announce that I will be running for congress in the Colorado 6th Congressional District, please check out the website, a work in progress at www.collinsforcolorado.com
I am confident in victory as well as my ability to bring strong leadership to a congress that is in dire need of it.
John Nichols-The Nation
It was supposed to be the night Barack Obama took Hillary Clinton down.
But, when all was said and done, Obama was a bystander. Read More »
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18296908/
Rumsfeld flees France fearing arrest
Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of “ordering and authorizing” torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US military’s detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.
US embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush’s “war on terror” for six years.
Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.
According to activists in France, who greeted Rumsfeld shouting “murderer” and “war criminal” at the breakfast meeting venue, US embassy officials remained tight-lipped about the former defense secretary’s whereabouts citing “security reasons”.
Anti-torture protesters in France believe that the defense secretary fled over the open border to Germany, where a war crimes case against Rumsfeld was dismissed by a federal court. But activist point out that under the Schengen agreement that ended border checkpoints across a large part of the European Union, French law enforcement agents are allowed to cross the border into Germany in pursuit of a fleeing fugitive.
“Rumsfeld must be feeling how Saddam Hussein felt when US forces were hunting him down,” activist Tanguy Richard said. “He may never end up being hanged like his old friend, but he must learn that in the civilized world, war crime doesn’t pay.”
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and the French League for Human Rights (LDH) filed the complaint on Thursday after learning that Rumsfeld was scheduled to visit Paris.
U.S.A. Section has more related reportsFrom Jim Hudson:
Two months ago, Bob Handy of Veterans for Truth, a California veterans advocacy and progressive political group requested that Colorado Veterans for America look into the case of Anthony Marquez, any Iraq War veteran charged with murder and pending trial in Colorado Springs. Several CVA members have begun researching the case. Over a month ago and a half ago, offers of help to ensure adequate medical diagnosis and treatment were made to the Public Defender (automated answering service) assigned Anthony Marquez's case without reply. A CVA member (attorney) provided information to Mrs. Hernadez (Anthony's mother) concerning certain matters. Congressman Ed Perlmutter's Veterans and Military Affairs Specialist is following the case closely. And other steps have been taken. Please read this news article and add your comments to those already posted. Note that in addition to reported PTSD and depression, the veteran was severely wounded, may have experienced a traumatic brain injury that may not have been treated, and may have lost enough blood to have affected his brain, compounding traumatic brain injury, all of this possibly complicated by medication and medication discontinuation effects. JH
Home couldn't harbor GI - By Erin Emery
The Denver Post
Anthony Marquez stood on a damaged leg in the drug dealer's home, clutching a Glock .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. View Full http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_7295077
http://www.denverpost.com
October 21, 2007
49 Militants Killed in Shiite Area of Baghdad, U.S. Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:48 p.m. ET
BAGHDAD (AP) -- The U.S. military said its forces killed an estimated 49 militants during a dawn raid to capture an Iranian-linked militia chief in Baghdad's Sadr City enclave, one of the highest tolls for a single operation since President Bush declared an end to active combat in 2003.
Iraqi police and hospital officials, who often overstate casualties, reported only 15 deaths including three children. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said all the dead were civilians. Read More »
NY Times
October 21, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Suicide Is Not Painless
By FRANK RICH
IT was one of those stories lost in the newspaper's inside pages. Last week a man you've never heard of -- Charles D. Riechers, 47, the second-highest-ranking procurement officer in the United States Air Force -- killed himself by running his car's engine in his suburban Virginia garage.
Mr. Riechers's suicide occurred just two weeks after his appearance in a front-page exposé in The Washington Post. The Post reported that the Air Force had asked a defense contractor, Commonwealth Research Institute, to give him a job with no known duties while he waited for official clearance for his new Pentagon assignment. Mr. Riechers, a decorated Air Force officer earlier in his career, told The Post: "I really didn't do anything for C.R.I. I got a paycheck from them." The question, of course, was whether the contractor might expect favors in return once he arrived at the Pentagon last January. Read More »
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Call for Bob Schaffer to Apologize for War Profiteering
Posted Jul 18, 2008 2:28pm
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Action Alert: Fri 7/25 House Juciary Committee Preliminary Impeachment Hearing
Posted Jul 18, 2008 9:43am
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An angry email from the....some part of the politcial spectrum.
Posted Jul 17, 2008 10:15am
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Michael Collins: Election Fraud & Tyranny - Part 2
Posted Jul 17, 2008 10:11am
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Obama leading McCain in . . . . Arizona???
Posted Jul 16, 2008 7:49am
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Mr. Schaffer can you please answer the question?
Posted Jul 15, 2008 12:33pm
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Interns wanted for Talkingpointsmemo
Posted Jul 15, 2008 8:01am
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Colorado Petition for Education Savings Account
Posted Jul 15, 2008 1:47am
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Bob Schaffer just makes stuff up (telling omission edition)
Posted Jul 14, 2008 6:58pm
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Amendment 47 criminal circulators
Posted Jul 14, 2008 2:21pm
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