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The truth, the whole truth, nothin' but the truth.

"God Told Me to End the Tyranny in Iraq" — George W. Bush

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." — Benjamin Franklin

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." — French philosopher Alexis DeTocqueville

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The Gross National Debt

Price of Addiction
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to Foreign Oil



"I've seen the future, I can't afford it." — Martin Fry



Just Foreign Policy Iraqi Death Estimator

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What is the "Wake-Up Wal-Mart" campaign all about?
Well, there are two visions for America: Wal-Mart's America, where profits come before people, and my vision, where people come first.

In Wal-Mart's America, workers are paid poverty level wages even when they work full-time.
In my America, workers are paid a living wage with proper health and retirement benefits.

In Wal-Mart's America, wealthy companies shift their health care costs onto taxpayers like you and your families.
In my America, corporations live up to their responsibility and provide their employees with adequate and affordable health care coverage.

In Wal-Mart's America, suppliers are forced to make their goods cheaper even if it means shipping U.S. jobs overseas.
In my America, we value U.S. jobs and companies that buy and sell "Made in America."

In Wal-Mart's America, women are paid less than men.
In my America, women and men are treated equally - fair pay for everyone.

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OBAMA/BIDEN: Wrong on the bailout.
OBAMA/BIDEN: Wrong on FISA.
OBAMA/BIDEN: Wrong on the endless "War on Terror".
OBAMA/BIDEN: Wrong on the endless "War on Drugs".
OBAMA/BIDEN: Wrong on continuing the Bush tax cuts.
OBAMA/BIDEN: Wrong on impeachment.
OBAMA/BIDEN: Wrong to not prosecute the Bush torture team.
OBAMA/BIDEN: Wrong to appoint the criminals who caused the financial crisis to positions responsible for fixing it.

See what blind hope will get you? I voted for Cynthia McKinney.

I pledge allegiance to NO FLAG. Certainly not one that stands for corruption, injustice, murder, genocide, torture, invasion of privacy and unlawful search and seizure. With liberty and the free pursuit of happiness for corporations and the criminals who run them. Bankruptcy, hunger and homelessness for the rest.

America: land of the deceived, home of the afraid. Fear level: ORANGE

Brought to you by so-called "democracy" from what was once described as "the greatest country in the world". Today we are the greatest polluters of the world, proclaimed proudly by George W. Bush at the G8 Summit on 7/10/08. By my count, we lost the moral high-ground at least as early as 1962. In that year, the United States began pouring Monsanto products over the globe, killing crops and foliage, poisoning habitats, and causing pain, suffering and birth defects yet today. Since then, we have also insisted on using depleted uranium munitions which have created environmental disasters that we take no resposibility for cleaning up. Chemical and radiation poisoning: the coward's gifts of death. And ones that keep on giving for generations to come.

I wish not to live in a failed fascist empire that roams the world MURDERING and TORTURING for oil.

GOD DAMN the Terrorist States of America!


"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." — Henry David Thoreau

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"To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor." — Martin Luther King, Jr.


"Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war...Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters." — Martin Luther King, Jr.


"Everyone knows that this country is being run by a criminal syndicate that has rigged elections, hidden its knowledge of the 9-11 attacks, lied the country into war, plotted to out an important CIA undercover operative and then obstruct a criminal investigation into that treasonous act, subverted most of the articles of the Bill of Rights, emasculated the Congress and the Courts (which it has also shamelessly packed with shameless hacks), betrayed veterans, surrendered a major American metropolis to the devastation of a hurricane, plotted to enable the declaring of martial law, tortured kidnapped and killed people in violation of international law and obstructed efforts to deal with the unprecedented crisis of global warming for an unconscionable seven years." — Dave Lindorff, award-winning journalist, former New York Times contributor, graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, two-time Journalism Fulbright Scholar, and co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of the book The Case for Impeachment.


I supported Dennis Kucinich in the primaries and caucuses


I supported Cynthia McKinney in the general


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Thursday, December 20, 2007

Feds Forbid California from Cleaning the Air

EPA to California: Choke on your smog.

California, 17 other states denied Clean Air Act Waiver to cut automobile global warming pollution

Originally posted at http://ed.org/pressrelease.cfm?contentID=7471
(Washington DC – December 19, 2007). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stunned the nation today by denying California and 17 other states the right to proceed with regulations that would reduce global warming pollution from new automobiles.

“EPA is not following science or the law,” said Jim Tripp, general counsel for Environmental Defense.

“This decision is like pulling over the fire trucks on their way to the blaze,” said Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense “For 40 years, EPA administrators have recognized the important role that California plays in innovating new standards to fight pollution.”

The Supreme Court ruled decisively in April 2007 that EPA does have the authority and the obligation to regulate global warming emissions. Two other federal courts – the 2nd district court in Vermont in September and the 9th district court in California earlier this month – also enforced states’ rights to proceed with clean car rules. The federal courts also dismissed automakers’ claims that they did not have the technology to meet such standards.

EPA denied California’s waiver, saying that new CAFE standards in the recently authorized energy bill would suffice to reduce global warming emissions from new automobiles.

“The administration is putting the brakes on state action to address the global warming crisis,” said Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel for Environmental Defense and a former attorney in the EPA’s General Counsel’s office. “The Administration’s first bold act on global warming – and it’s to stop the states who are trying to do something about the problem. It is just plain shocking.”

“New CAFE standards, if they go into effect, do not fully phase in until 2020,” said Jim Marston, general counsel for Environmental Defense. “The California greenhouse gas limits will occur earlier - beginning in 2009 and fully phased in by 2016. With the mounting evidence of climate change impacts occurring now, it is imperative that we are take action immediately.”

Nationwide 17 states have awaited a decision by EPA to move forward with clean car standards modeled after California’s including: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Washington. California and these states account for nearly 50% of the total U.S. population and account for approximately 45% of new automobile sales in the country. Implementation of the Clean Cars program in these states would lead to groundbreaking reductions in global warming pollution. By 2020, the program would prevent annual emissions equivalent to 100 million tons of carbon dioxide, a principal heat-trapping greenhouse gas. These savings would be equivalent to closing over thirty 500 megawatt coal-fired power plants or removing 20 million cars from the road.

Background information:

In 2003, California used its special authority under the Clean Air Act to pass legislation requiring the state's air agency, the California Air Resources Board, to issue regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars. The Clean Cars law, also known as the Pavley law, will reduce carbon emissions by 22 percent by 2012 and by 30 percent by 2016.

On December 21, 2005, California submitted a request for the EPA to waive the Clean Air Act’s preemption bar to cleaner car standards – an action EPA has consistently taken more than 50 times during the past 40 years. EPA initially argued that it did not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act until the April 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts vs. EPA found otherwise.

The Pavley/Clean Cars standards were developed over four years (Legislation: 2002, Regulation: 2003, 2004, Administrative law review: 2005) with careful and measured technical review and public input. In contrast, the waiver denial seems to have been developed during the course of a couple of weeks, once the White House directed EPA to deny the waiver. The decision doesn’t appear to have any connection to the testimony and public comment received, in which EPA received a record-setting number of comments, and heard from some of the world’s leading scientists, engineers, government officials and even former EPA administrators. Only the auto industry opposed granting the waiver.

The State of California, under the auspices of Governor Schwarzenegger and the Attorney General’s office, filed a lawsuit against the federal EPA to force a decision on the state’s waiver request to implement its clean cars law, AB 1493. Please go to our website (http://www.environmentaldefense.org/page.cfm?tagID=15503) for more detailed background.

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Environmental Defense, a leading national nonprofit organization, represents more than 500,000 members. Since 1967, Environmental Defense has linked science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships to create breakthrough solutions to the most serious environmental problems. www.environmentaldefense.com
This is What Democracy Looks Like in the Fascist States of America

Police, protesters clash in New Orleans

Racist and shameful.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

happy holidays

My heart is heavy this holiday season. From the profiteering off of war, death and destruction to the profiteering from child-slave-labor to the refusal of our government to provide equal protections for our citizens whoever they are, to the lack of concern shown by our government to our war veterans and to victims of rape and disaster alike, to the loss of our privacy rights, we are a country that has lost its moral conscience.

Already, only the presidential candidates with enough money to buy television time are allowed to debate. The others having been labelled inconsequential by the monolithic mass media. Now the media have been allowed to consolidate further. And yet there is no outrage. No protests. Your daily newspaper will soon carry the same blather as Fox News, lots and lots of distraction with no substance.

Or is that just how you prefer it, America? Does it comfort you to look away? To pretend to be blind to the hypocrisy, the lies, the corruption, the death, the crippling, the torture, the murder? Who would Jesus kill today?

Does it comfort you to be blind to our soldiers' lifeless bodies arriving back to us daily? Our government "protects" us from the disturbing images and tells us that to shop is to be patriotic. Consequently, our soldiers receive no public recognition for their ultimate sacrifice. No public mourning or thanks. Is it more comfortable for you to watch Dancing with the Stars and America's Next Top Model and another OJ trial? Because these events have SO MUCH to do with how you will live your life, or not, as the case may be, in the years ahead, or how your children will live theirs.

I wonder how many will wish they could speak, when it is no longer allowed. I choose to speak now. While it is still allegedly tolerated. I am unafraid of the free trip to Cuba.

We send our sons and daughters to the other side of the world to die, or become disabled, or traumatized, and for what? To liberate Iraqis? You're a fool. To protect us from terrorism? Yeah, right. Because our pea-brain president likes to see stuff blow up? Remember, this is the man who on February 8, 2004 declared, "I am a WAR PRESIDENT. I make decisions here in the Oval Office on foreign policy matters with WAR ON MY MIND." So who knows?

And perhaps the sons and daughters who die on the other side of the planet have it better than the ones who will remain. The dead are thankfully free from the horrors of war, from the poisoned radioactive munitions they are forced to use and from other disabling injuries. Look at what we're leaving those who remain. A scorched, drained, polluted, wrecked planet. A battlefield in the Middle East that may be radioactive and uninhabitable for generations. A country without values that provides insufficient care for its veterans and their families. A huge bill for this foolishness that we've allowed to continue for the last 7 years. And a worthless currency with which to try to pay it off.

I am here to tell you folks, that unless YOU PERSONALLY are making a ton of money off of this war, you have been had!

There may have been "terrorists" who flew planes into buildings on 9/11. But a couple dozen guys living in a cave did not accomplish all of what happened that day on their own. The buildings did not vaporize because they were hit by planes. The buildings that took over 6 years to build did not disintegrate by themselves in 10 seconds like you were led to believe. Or is it acceptable now for me to refuse to go to work in a steel-frame high-rise building, for fear that it may suddenly vaporize?

How long before 9/11 were the explosive charges planted in World Trade Center buildings 1, 2 and 7? What insurance company accepted the liability for the tens of thousands of people who worked in those buildings daily, and where explosive charges had been planted?

Many of you believed the lies about 9/11. Many of you believed the lies about the war. Many of you said "SORRY EVERYBODY" after Dictator Bush stole the election again in 2004, yet we still have a spineless Congress that refuses to act, and a Neocon judicial branch that's going to be with us for a very long time.

And we have evidence that the election in 2008 is gearing up to have some of the same problems as the elections in 2000 and 2004. In Ohio and Colorado and Colorado and Ohio and Florida, just for starters.

So, yammer on about how Christmas is a wonderful American holiday while I prefer to wish you "happy holidays". Yammer on like Mitt Romney did about how I should accept his beliefs while he belittles mine. Or yammer on as Fox News did that every American president has been a Christian -- when in fact, 6 of them were not. What other lies do you believe that Fox News has told you? Yammer on about which Republican candidate will be strongest on "defense" -- excuse me, they're really talking about "offense", aren't they? Or about who will complete the Mexican-American Wall first, a concept as disgusting to me as the Berlin Wall or the Detroit/Grosse Pointe Park Wall.

Yammer on about everything other than bringing the criminals to justice, until you can't anymore. Because the criminals will no longer allow it. Because AT&T and Verison will not send your message if it is critical of the criminals. Because all of your rights will be gone. Given up willingly -- for absolutely nothing in return -- to your phony, fascist leaders. The ones who raped the United States Treasury and sent our sons and daughters to die, to make themselves and their friends rich.

The ones who will not be impeached by this Congress.

The ones who could easily be pardoned by a President Clinton, or Giuliani, or Huckabee, or Romney, or McCain (or even a President Obama or Edwards or Paul). Dictator Bush and his cronies have committed WAR CRIMES and TREASONOUS acts, and I don't care what some phony Attorney General would prefer to call it. They are guilty of some of the SAME CRIMES that the Japanese were held accountable for after World War II, and more. And the ones who refuse to act, including to date much of the present Congress and several Presidential candidates, could be complicit in WAR CRIMES and TREASON.

So, we have a choice America, if it's not already too late. But, for what it's worth, we can try belatedly, to go after the criminals, the torturers, the illegal wiretappers, the murderers, and those who choose to shield them, and hold them to justice. Just like Dictator Bush said he would hold the terrorists and those who choose to shield them to justice.

Or we can allow them to carry on. We can make believe, as the Germans made believe that they were unaware of the contents of those railroad cars. We too can look away from the unpleasant truth. We can allow ourselves to be distracted by the bright shiny object in the corner. We can be complicit in the crimes of our government. And we can hang right beside them.

happy holidays


"To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor." -Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.


Disclaimer: The preceding comments may violate the Military Commissions Act of the Fascist States of America. To repeat these words, forward this message, or even materially support this website (PLEASE DON'T SEND ME A DOLLAR!) may cause you to be labeled an "unlawful enemy combatant" subject to imprisonment forever with no legal rights. Don't even think of trying to hold me responsible. I'll already be gone; even my attorneys won't know where to find me. Best to just kiss your ass goodbye.
MORE SHAME IN AMERICA

Gore Vidal on the Democratic Debate Debacle

Posted on Dec 18, 2007

See the original post, and photo of the invited candidates, at http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071218_whither_dennis_kucinich/

Hmmm ... something’s missing. What, or who, could it be? Six Democratic presidential candidates, sans Dennis Kucinich, line up on Dec. 13 in Johnston, Iowa, for the last debate before that key state’s primary.

I don’t know how many of you were as appalled as I was at the way that the presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich was totally erased from the last Democratic debate held in Iowa. This was a decision that was made, I can tell, jointly by the one-time voice of AIPAC, Mr. Wolf Blitzer, and, at the same time, The Des Moines Register—or whatever it is called—a paper of no consequence for the United States of America.

Elements of right-wingism are keeping his voice from being heard, even though there are many millions of us (Kucinich is ahead of both Biden and Dodd in the national polls) out here who like to hear his voice. He is in the great tradition of the original People’s Party of the 1880s; he is in the tradition of George Washington and of Thomas Jefferson, and to silence him with a bunch of political hacks who have made such a mess of our political system, pretending these were the only voices who could talk as presidential candidates ... is it because of their campaign budgets?
Now, I know, as all of you know, that people can come in with millions of dollars, like Romney and so on, and can buy time in Iowa and in the North Pole or wherever it is they are running. They can buy it, but to get an honest member of Congress speaking out for the people of the country is a great and rare thing.

I have listened to many political debates in my lifetime, if I may pull rank because I have been around longer than anybody else, and here is a voice not only against the war but the entire course leading us to it. I haven’t heard anybody who has ever listened to Kucinich who didn’t say, “Oh yes, yes, what he says is true, but nobody will ever take him seriously.”

Well, of course nobody will ever take him seriously, because they won’t let him on TV to stand side by side with the other candidates—some of them attractive candidates but whose roots are not as deep as his in what we may call “American life.” Dennis Kucinich was brought up in poverty, something the other candidates talk about but he actually lived through. He has known poverty in the richest country on Earth, a country that is constantly boasting, that seems to be out of control with self-love. Well, I say let’s have less self-love and pay some attention to our serious critics—and he is one—and his is a voice that’s showing us how to get to the exit from the box that we are all in.

It is so typical for CNN, a lousy network, and whatever that awful newspaper is called. Do we want to listen to them at the close of a primary campaign in a key state? They have nothing to say of any interest, and so they eliminate any voice that might say something intelligent. I have never felt more ashamed being an American than when I saw how this debate was handled.

* * * * *

I, too, was ashamed, Mr. Vidal. I have been ashamed now for as long as I can remember. It was theraputic to see that I am not alone. Thank you for sharing your views.
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