Shundahai39 on Politics

Salmon Make a Comeback in Central Valley Rivers by Matt Weiser of Sacbee November 13, 2010

2010-11-13T15:13:00.000-08:00

Salmon make a comeback in Central
Valley rivers

mweiser@sacbee.com

Published Saturday, Nov. 13, 2010

Salmon are returning to Central Valley rivers and streams in impressive numbers this fall,
restoring hope that years of shortages and fishing closures are over.
It's a dramatic turnaround from last year, when the Central Valley fall chinook salmon run
hit a historic low. Scientists blamed poor ocean conditions and a century of habitat
degradation in freshwater spawning areas.
It got so bad that federal officials closed commercial fishing in 2008 and 2009, taking
California salmon off dinner menus for the first time ever.
Now the fish are surging back. The numbers are not nearly as robust as in decades past. But
ocean conditions have improved, and myriad small habitat projects are starting to bear fruit.
Bryon Harris, 26, saw the results. He was walking along Auburn Ravine in Lincoln recently
with a friend. The stream runs through Placer County before emptying into the Sacramento
River via the Natomas Cross Canal.
"We hear this flopping and it sounded like the rocks were crashing," said Harris. "We look
over and there's a big old salmon right there … and there's a few more trapped in there,
trying to make it. It was jaw-dropping, almost."
The salmon made it that far because this is the first year in decades that a number of small,
seasonal diversion dams have been removed from the stream. As a result, 3-foot salmon
have been seen thrashing upstream behind mini-malls and housing tracts in suburban
Lincoln.
The volunteer group Save Auburn Ravine Salmon and Steelhead persuaded landowners –
with a nudge from law enforcement – to remove the irrigation dams. Federal law requires
removal between Oct. 15 and April 15 so salmon can pass. But before they were reminded
this year, many owners either didn't know or forgot.
"I've fished the Auburn Ravine for 10 years at least, and I've never seen a salmon in there,
ever," said Harris. "I was shocked."
The Central Valley's major salmon hatcheries are reporting big increases in spawning fish
compared with last year. This includes hatcheries on Battle Creek and the Feather River,
among the biggest contributors to the population.
"We're very pleased with the run," said Brett Galyean, deputy manager at Coleman National
Fish Hatchery on Battle Creek, operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "It's just been
a good year."
Salmon make a comeback in Central Valley rivers - Sacramento Sports - Kings, 49ers, Ra... Page 1 of 3
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The Shasta County hatchery, the Central Valley's biggest producer, has spawned about
16,000 chinook so far. That compares with about 6,500 last year.
The Feather River hatchery in Butte County, operated by the California Department of Fish
and Game, had spawned about 2,600 salmon as of Nov. 6. That is about double last year's
count at the same time.
The Mokelumne River hatchery, a smaller producer in San Joaquin County, had spawned just
over 700 fish as of the same date, or five times more than in 2009.
Nimbus Hatchery on the American River opened just two weeks ago and doesn't have
comparative results yet.
"The run to date is encouraging," said Doug Demko, president and biologist at FISHBIO, a
consulting firm based in Oakdale that monitors the run. "We've seen improvements in ocean
conditions the last few years, so we expect next year we're going to see even more fish
back."
Scientists studying the salmon crash that began in 2007 placed blame largely on poor ocean
health. Salmon in the ocean that year found little to eat, and many died.
The problem was a shift in a Pacific upwelling current that normally drives deep water to the
surface, fertilizing a crop of tiny zooplankton at the base of the food chain.
That upwelling current is back, visible in the abundance of whales and dolphins that tourists
enjoyed off the Monterey coast this summer.
Scientists say poor freshwater habitat and inadequate flows also contributed to the salmon
crash. This, plus the abundance of homogenized hatchery fish, created a weak population
vulnerable to ocean changes.
Federal officials last year imposed new rules to improve water flows on rivers and in the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Efforts are also under way to restore creeks that are still
good habitat, but have not seen big salmon numbers in many years.
These small waterways include not only Auburn Ravine but also Dry Creek, which flows
through Roseville and North Sacramento and empties into the American River near Natomas.
The creek saw hundreds of spawning salmon in past years before their numbers plunged
with the rest of the region. Now it seems to be rebounding.
"We're hopeful," said Gregg Bates of the Dry Creek Conservancy, which coordinated a
volunteer salmon survey on Friday. "It doesn't look to me like we're going to reach the
numbers we had four years ago. But if we saw 50 to 100, that would be pretty exciting."
The salmon that Bryon Harris saw in Auburn Ravine was halted by the Lincoln Gauging
Station, an antiquated flow-measuring device that blocks the flow like a dam.
His friend, Carlos Hernandez, jumped into the creek and managed to grab one of the
exhausted salmon. He lifted it over the small dam, and it swam on.
"It's sad to see those fish get stuck right there," Harris said. "The fish was big, man. It was
bigger than a skateboard. It really opened my eyes."
The Nevada Irrigation District owns the gauging station and plans to begin modifications
next year so salmon can pass, said General Manager Ron Nelson. Then it plans the same at
Hemphill Dam, a larger structure upstream.
"It's pretty cool to be hearing about the possibility of fish being up there," said Nelson.
"We're kind of jazzed about that. This is a good deal, I think, for everybody."

Big Ag cries big tears; salmon run dries up

2010-11-09T21:12:00.000-08:00

Viewpoints: Big Ag cries big tears; salmon run dries up
By Larry Collins

Special to The Bee
Published: Saturday, Nov. 6, 2010 - 10:00 pm | Page 5E

I've been a California commercial fisherman for almost three decades. For most of that time, Chinook salmon constituted 70 percent or more of my business. Salmon gave me a prosperous living, and they supported the communities that I called home. They fed my family – and helped feed America. I'm proud to be a salmon fisherman, proud to be part of a venerable tradition based on a sustainable – and delicious – resource.
Then in the past few years, everything changed. California's 2008 and 2009 salmon seasons were closed following a catastrophic crash in the stocks. In the area where I fish, we were allowed eight days of fishing this year. Obviously, it's tough to make a living working one week a year.
For the first four days of this year's "season," weather kept our fleet on shore. In the remaining four days, I caught one salmon.
What caused this disaster? Lack of water. Diversions from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta south to corporate farms have deprived salmon of water they need in their spawning streams. Further, huge government-run Delta pumps that send taxpayer-subsidized water south destroy great numbers of young salmon trying to migrate downriver to the ocean.
The biological facts are bad enough. Even worse are the power plays of Big Agribusiness. Faced with modest restrictions on subsidized water deliveries to protect fish, Big Ag bleated like an old sheep, claiming economic ruin. Politicians rewarded their calculated hysteria, augmenting their supplies with "emergency" deliveries.
Foremost among the corporate crybabies is Westlands Water District, at 600,000 acres the country's largest irrigation district. Westlands is a junior water rights holder, meaning it's legally the last in line for water during drought. Only a few hundred corporate entities make up this agricultural empire – plus a battery of lawyers working to overcome their junior water right status.
From all the wailing, you'd have thought Westlands was in worse shape than the salmon fishing ports. But – surprise! Westlands not only had enough water for their crops – they had leftovers. In fact, they had a 2010 surplus of about 450,000 acre-feet, enough water to supply 1.8 million urbanites for one year. So, they decided to trade 150,000 acre-feet to the Metropolitan Water District and generate $30 million of benefit for themselves.
In other words, Westlands is receiving subsidized water at low rates, then peddling it to cities to generate a windfall. Meanwhile, salmon – a public resource – are going belly-up, fishermen are going bankrupt and the communities that depend on commercial fishing, recreational angling and seafood processing are hollowing out.
Wonder why west-side corporate farmers fight against reasonable water policy? While crying "wolf" over water, they continue to plant more orchard crops, which require plentiful irrigation. They then use these plantings to justify their demands for more water. But their real agenda isn't crop security: It's control over the water. They'd like to be middlemen in the transfer of subsidized water from the Delta to southland cities. They dream of the day when all they'll have to do is watch the water flow and listen to the "ka-ching" of the cash registers.
Salmon are resilient, but they can't live on sunlight alone. They need water, and we should give it to them. Salmon fishing is one of America's most regulated industries. Fishermen understand the necessity for resource protection – but we demand a level playing field. The regulations that apply to us must also apply to the westside's water buccaneers. It's a matter of law and fairness.
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee.

Whitman's Lack of Basic Humanity toward Her Maid Ought to Prevent Her from Being Elected Governor of the Great State of California

2010-09-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

Meg Whitman claims to have unknowingly hired Ms. Santillan and employed her for nine years ... for NINE years. And then, when she found out she was an undocumented immigrant, Whitman insensitively fired her and threw her out of the house. Hiring an undocumented immigrant is not what is so revealing about Whitman. It is the inhumane manner in which she disposed of a nine year employee without ceremony or sensitivity to the human being who had worked satisfactorily in her employ for nine years. What kind of a human being disposes of another human like a used Kleenex when her status is discovered and Whitman’s fear for her reputation was foremost in her mind?

What does this firing reveal about what kind of a person Meg Whitman is? It reveals Whitman is a person who puts self-aggrandizement above personal relationships, even relationships of a nine year’s duration. The rapid and uncompromising firing of Nicandra Diaz-Santillan reflects very poorly on the kind of person Whitman is. Whitman’s attack on this maid is the classic corporatist’s attack that seeks to blame the victim and shoot the messenger. She makes ad hominem attacks against Allred and Brown and alleges Brown’s campaign manipulation, admittedly without proof (appeal to belief). She did not come to grips with her own error by taking responsibility and suppressed the event and circumstances from voters because “it never came up”. The whole affair is truly shameful and a revealing performance by the ethically impaired Whitman.

Now she wants to take a lie detector test which proves her campaign knows this event is potentially lethal – she looks like a naive hypocrite and has, perhaps mortally, offended Hispanics.

In a state in which 33% of the population and 20% of the registered voters are Hispanic, Whitman’s actions reveal a lack of astuteness to the reactions of Hispanics to her action. Whitman’s awkwardness, to use a kind word, in treating her maid shows the potential for awkwardness in dealing with other segments of the general population of California if elected Governor.

If Whitman did not know her maid was undocumented, she definitely should have known. Because a large segment of the voters will clearly focus on and analyze her personal behavior toward her maid, Whitman has demonstrated a high degree of insensitivity and a lack of political savvy toward this group. Whitman's behavior here is already dominating the election.

A person who is asking Californians to elect her governor, ought to definitely have the insight and perspicuity to know that treating her former employee like a piece of trash to be jettisoned at will to preserve her tough on immigration stance with the Far Right will definitely hurt her electability with the general population.

If she lacks this insight, if she lacks this political acumen, then she should definitely not be elected Governor. Whitman's lack of essential humanity ought to deny her the Governorship of the great state of California.

The Lunacy Expressed by Some Republicans Like Glen Beck and Limbaugh is Viewed by Some As Acceptable Behavior for an Estranged and Alienated Minority

2009-11-10T19:48:00.000-08:00

The lunacy expressed by some Republicans like Glen Beck and Limbaugh is viewed by some as acceptable behavior for an estranged and alienated minority party. Some, however, within the party believe the paranoid fringe’s behavior is further evidence of a party in freefall.

Even many Democrats are concerned the Republican Party is so self-serving, the well-being of country has become secondary to the party. When the loyal opposition is no longer loyal to the country, there is no opposition and the party in power has no balancing check on it, and having no check, it actions may become extreme and the nation may suffer.

Even Democrats, again, want the Republican Party to once again to stand for something, assert itself and become something more than The Party of No, of Me at the Expense of the Nation, the Party of Whites and the Rich.

Even Democrats, Again, Want the Republican Party to Once Again to Stand for Something

2009-11-10T19:46:00.000-08:00

The lunacy expressed by some Republicans like Glen Beck and Limbaugh is viewed by some as acceptable behavior for an estranged and alienated minority party. Some, however, within the party believe the paranoid fringe’s behavior is further evidence of a party in freefall. Even many Democrats are concerned the Republican Party is so self-serving, the well-being of country has become secondary to the party. When the loyal opposition is no longer loyal to the country, there is no opposition and the party in power has no balancing check on it, and having no check, it actions may become extreme and the nation may suffer. Even Democrats, again, want the Republican Party to once again to stand for something, assert itself and become something more than The Party of No, of Me at the Expense of the Nation, the Party of Whites and the Rich.

The Greatest Enemy of the United States is the Republican Party

2009-09-27T06:57:00.001-07:00

As long as the Republican Party is the Party of No, the Party of Against, and as long as it is willing to allow publicity seeking attack dogs like Rush and Glen to become the spokesmen for the Party and, as long as the party has no internal leadership to steer it away from the unethical and the criminal, the Republican Party will continue to put the party before the country, and we will have aberrant behavior like that directed at President Obama, simply because he is not a Republican.

Many Americans believe that the Republican Party not Al Quaida or the Taliban is the greatest enemy of the United States because it undermines, smears and vilifies the normal, the American, for its own benefit. The Party was once a party of conservatives and now it is, at best, a party of radicals, and at worst a party of terrorists. It is a party so out of control it cannot even control itself. It is capitalizing on the general frustration and anger and diminished world standing foisted on the United States by the Bush Administration and that frustration and outrage is being harnessed into this radical and terrorist leaning party. The Republican Party is really scary because it is so out of control, so willing to go to any extreme to gain that nebulous something that MAY give it some legitimacy in its own eyes. It is consuming itself by its own lack of leadership, its radicalism and willingness to go to any extreme to once again achieve some legitimacy in its own eyes.
If the Republican Party was not so dangerous, it was simply be pathetic.

ONLY THE PEOPLE CAN HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE

2009-09-19T23:34:00.000-07:00

President Obama was elected to be President of the United States, and has a moral and legal obligation to uphold the law of the land, but he has so much to do that HE alone cannot hold the criminal Bush Administration accountable as well as clean up the catastrophic mess they left us.

The people, not the Obama Administration, must find a way to bring charges against the Bushites before the United Nations International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, and try them on a world stage. If they are innocent, then they will be so proven in a court of law. Many citizens of the world believe they are guilty and a trial will convict them or lift the cloud of suspicion. All meaningful change in government starts with the people so the people must begin this movement at the grassroots level.

If the rule of common law is to remain supreme, all people must be treated equally. The Bushites – Cheney, Rumsfeldt, Addington, Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft, Wu and the rest of the Neocons - are guilty of multiple felonies and crimes against humanity, torture, lied us into a war by manipulating intelligence resulting in the deaths of four thousand plus Americans and over two million dark-skinned people in the Arab world. They lied, orchestrated cover-ups, politicized government agencies, fired federal prosecutors who would not politicize their offices, outed CIA agents, violated basic civilized conventions and disregarded the Geneva Convention - the list of their crimes is endless - and behaved like a defiant mafia. A person who sells crack can possibly be sent to jail for his entire life. These elected officials are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and must be adjudicated in a court of law. President Obama must oversee the bringing to justice of these people; the people, acting judiciously and within the confines of common law, must see that justice is served.

The Charter of the International Commission of Inquiry on the Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, A Project of Not in Our Name Statement of Conscience states:

"When the possibility of far-reaching war crimes and crimes against humanity exists, people of conscience have a solemn responsibility to inquire into the nature and scope of these acts and to determine if they do in fact rise to the level of war crimes ."

Unless these politicians are tried in a court of law, then the US is no longer a nation of laws and the criminal element has destroyed our system of common law and assaulted the US Constitution. Only the people using the power of a free society can purify our system of government.

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TOP FIVE HEALTH CARE LIES AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT THEM.

2009-09-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!!!
The truth: These accusations—of "death panels" and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: "No 'death panel' in health care bill."1 What's the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans.2
If you'd like to read the actual section of the legislation that spawned these outrageous claims (Section 1233 of H.R. 3200) for yourself, here it is. It's pretty boring stuff, which is why the accusations that it creates "death panels" is so absurd. But don't take our word for it, read it yourself.
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Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!!!
The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama's reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.3 Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down.4 If you're happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them.5 But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can't afford health care now.
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Lie #3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing!!!
The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that.

Health care reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage.6 And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation.
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Lie #4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens' Medicare benefits!!!
The truth: Health care reform plans will not reduce Medicare benefits.7 Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care—in fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.8
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Lie #5: Obama's health care plan will bankrupt America!!!
The truth: We need health care reform now in order to prevent bankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals, families, small businesses, and the American economy. Right now, we spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care.9 The average family premium is projected to rise to over $22,000 in the next decade10—and each year, nearly a million people face bankruptcy because of medical expenses.11 Reform, with an affordable, high-quality public option that can spur competition, is necessary to bring down skyrocketing costs. Also, President Obama's reform plans would be fully paid for over 10 years and not add a penny to the deficit.12
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The Southern Strategy Used by the Right Is An Attack on Obama

2009-09-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

The Southern Strategy being used by the Republican Party to blatantly attacking President Obama’s Blackness is manifesting itself in many ways. Saying at demonstrations at Town Meetings, “Give us back our country” is an Atwaterism that really says give us back our country from a Black President. The despicability factor of the Republican fringes indeed has no lower limit.

The issue is that the entire Republican Party’s attack on President Obama is really an attack on the American people because he is trying to pass a health reform passage that benefits all Americans, stabilize our economy which was disabilized in large part by the Bush Administration appointing insiders to oversight committees and agencies which allowed Wall Street to pick the US Treasury and the people clean, and he is trying to re-establish the position of the United States in the world as a world partner not the neocons view that the United States has a responsibility to lead the world at any cost to any nation.

Most people can see clearly the self-serving, obstructionist behavior and further marginalize a GOP that is almost already over the horizon.

The GOP fringe behavior further weakens the effectiveness of our government because we need a strong, ethical GOP as the voice of the loyal opposition; the GOP obviously cares more about the party than it does about the country and its people.

Sacramento Bee Endorses Jennifer Montgomery for Placer County Board of Supervisors

2008-10-25T03:56:00.000-07:00

Montgomery for Placer Supervisor
Published: Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008 | Page 12A

Voters in Placer County's Fifth Supervisorial District have a clear choice in this election:
Do they want to re-elect Bruce Kranz, who, while highly engaged, has defied his constituents at times and has shown questionable judgment on numerous development and planning projects?
If not, if they want more productive representation in their county government, they should elect Jennifer Montgomery to the seat.
Montgomery hasn't held elected office before, but throughout this campaign, she has demonstrated the kind of temperament, vision and listening skills that would make her an excellent supervisor. The Fifth District needs that kind of leader.
The stakes couldn't be higher. This district includes many of this region's natural wonders – Lake Tahoe and Donner Summit among them – as well as numerous small communities, such as Colfax, Weimar and Bowman. In coming years, these communities will need to plan economic development with a sensitivity toward this district's heritage and delicate environment, and they'll need a supervisor who hears what they say.
The owner of a housecleaning service in Serene Lakes, Montgomery understands the challenges small businesses face, but she also is concerned about resort projects and other development that could be inappropriate for the area. She has an interest in improving transit and high-speed Internet service – two ideas that would help Fifth District residents become less dependent on car commuting.
Kranz, by contrast, too often seems seems deaf to constituent concerns. The most recent example is at Tahoe, where Kings Beach residents spent years on a transportation plan that would make their town center more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists.
Instead of supporting that plan or working to improve it, Kranz used his seat on the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency to push for a four-lane road with signal lights. Such a project would have served motorists passing through Kings Beach instead of the people living there.
Not only that, but Kranz defied his colleagues on the Placer Board of Supervisors after they voted 4-1 to support the pedestrian-friendly plan.
Kranz said he wouldn't take their support to the TRPA board. After he made that comment, the supervisors removed him from the Tahoe planning agency and appointed an alternate.
Kranz has shown a blind side on other issues. In a choice that seemed ripe for possible conflict, he appointed a Realtor, Michelle Ollar-Burris, to the county's planning commission. Only after The Bee revealed that she had split properties in possible violation of state law did Kranz remove her from the commission.
Kranz also refused to support the region's Blueprint planning principles with his vote on the Placer Ranch project. In addition, he has used his position to whip up unfounded fears that the Placer County Conservation Plan could result in "an increased risk of wildfire to the area."
Kranz hasn't earned a second term in office. That's why Bob Houston – whom we endorsed in the primary – is supporting Montgomery instead of Kranz. So are many other Fifth District leaders. Voters should join them on Nov. 4 to vote for Jennifer Montgomery.

Comment: 1
•
alcamus39 wrote on 10/21/2008 09:00:46 AM:
Jennifer Montgomery will shift the balance of power of the BOS from backdoor, good ole boyism to an enlighted view of the modern world and how to live in it. She is the best person to run for office in Placer County in the last fifty years. She is the real, the sterling, the true.

Proposition 8 Supporter Pervert Jesus' Teachings

2008-10-25T03:54:00.001-07:00

Voting to take away marriage rights from one segment of the population in the name of religious beliefs restricts the term “religion” to only those communities who wish to retain the power to preach to the world that the God they worship approves of their lives but not of the lives of others."
It is religious people who put their own narrow sguints above the public good and try to legislate from the pulpit that give fundamentalists such a bad name. They twist the teachings of Jesus to fit their own small-minded, tunnel vision.
Where in the Bible is one utterance by Jesus condemning homosexuality? Jesus embraced lepers and prostitutes; he certainly would embrace and love all his people. Only shallow, smug, self-serving people would ever dream of supporting an outrage such as Proposition 8. These people have the audacity and stupidity to call themselves Christians. Jesus would writhe in pain understanding what they are trying to do in his name. These people cheapen and bebase the teachings of Jesus Christ and constitute one of the sorriest offshots of Jesus' teachings and, more importantly, a perversion of his teachings.

Elect Jennifer Montgomery to District 5 Placer County Board of Supervisors

2008-10-25T03:49:00.000-07:00

Placer County is very close to being a true Paradise. Its major flaw is its extreme politics. Four simple actions could make Placer County that Paradise. If Jennifer Montgomery is elected to the Placer County Board of Supervisors, Elaine Rowen and John Vodonick are put on the Sierra College Board, and Charlie Brown is elected to Congress, then all minuses become pluses. They will bring to Placer County honesty, intelligence, balance and moderation, all virtues admired by the Ancient Greeks and the thinking people of Placer County.

What Will Drexel University Cost Placer County? Much.

2008-10-25T03:45:00.000-07:00

While we politicize Sierra College and allow it to deteriorate to a laughable state, the last thing we need is to allow another college, Drexel University, to be used as a ploy by Angelo Tsakopolous to allow him to develop hundreds of agricultural acres in Placer County to enrich himself. He is slowly advertising Drexel's Graduate School in Sacramento, he is smoozing our gullible Placer Board of Supervisors to change zoning so he can donate 600 acres to the university as the price of doing business in Placer County and developing the other thousands of acres he owns. People must wake up.
People must wake up and protect our beautiful county. Call the Placer County BOS and tell them not to allow AngeloTsakopolous to build this university on agricultural lands. This is a mega giveaway to a mega land speculator with the blessings of the BOS who have had an unpleasant history of dealing with Angelo Tsakopolous, who donates thousands of dollars to back Doolittle Stooge Jerry Simmons in a failed attempt to unseat Supervisor Robert Weygandt so he (Angelo) could more easily take control of Sierra College AND build his Drexel University, thereby controlling two colleges in Placer County.
First, the people must stop this land grab, and, secondly, get rid of Aaron Klein and Scott Leslie, Doolittle stooges on the Sierra College Board of Trustees, and elect John Vodonick and Elaine Rowen and then read Terry Davis's column in the AJ about all these nefarious machinations.

Bush’s Moral Decay Has Forced Us to Rely on Common Law to Protect Us From His Immorality

2008-08-20T19:38:00.000-07:00

When moral consensus fades, as it has in our time under the Bush Administration, we turn to law; when law falters, as it must when morality is no longer widely shared, society and culture teeter on the brink of chaos.

Bush’s attack on our moral system is most pointedly an attack on our common law. When morality dissolves as it has under Bush, people turn to the law and that is where they come into direct conflict with Bush. When law is altered for personal benefit as Bush has done, culture and society waver on the brink of chaos. Bush has cut down constitional law that protects us from our leaders and baser instincts.

Sir Thomas More, in conflict with another tyrant, Henry VIII, said, “God made the angels to show Him splendor – as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.”

Our minds then tell us that authority (Bush) is wrong, that we must rely on our sense of right and wrong to protect us from Bush’s immorality, in order to live morally with virtue and truth because Bush has comprised the law.

Our nation must regain its morality and re-establish the rule of law if the US is to survive as a nation and if we are to survive as a people.

"Tom McClintock is so far to the right that his own party has problems with him."

2008-08-19T04:39:00.000-07:00

His Record Doesn't Lie: Tom McClintock
Posted by: ThosPayne

The way in which a politician is viewed by the people he now represents indicates how he will perform in the future. Comments from Tom McClintock's District 19 constituents
reveals why his home turf in Ventura County - - known as Reagan country - - went from Red to Blue:
- "This district was unrepresented for 8 years under McClintock. McClintock is so far to the right that his own party has problems with him."
- "Conejo Valley residents are an educated bunch. A good number of us are employed by Amgen or Baxter, biotech firms... [we] are savvy about climate change and will discriminate between the good arguments offered by scientists and bad arguments offered by a few feckless politicians. McClintock has “consistently opposed sensible measures to protect our air, water and wild places.” He “opposed important measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles (AB 1493, 2002), to recycle toxic electronic wastes (SB 20, 2003), and to increase California’s supply or clean, renewable energy (SB 1078, 2002).”
- McClintock Attacks Gore, Conservationists; Disputes Global Warming Science (October 29, 2007) - In an October 12 speech to the Western Conservative Political Action Conference, California State Senator Tom McClintock mounted a persuasive, and yet poorly informed attack against Al Gore, conservation, and the most widely accepted scientific theory of global warming. This is fortunate: McClintock’s comments have assured his well-deserved fate of political irrelevance and ignominy. McClintock repeated well-worn Republican jokes about personal jets and Gore’s electricity bill. He mentioned several laughably out-of-date theories about the causes of recent climate change. He even proudly admits that his knowledge about climate change has its most profound roots in his grade school musings... This position is damaging to the Republican party and will cause it to lose votes in California and nationally."
Tom McClintock has long enjoyed a reputation for being a straight-shooting, principled conservative. You may not believe what he believes, but you usually get a sense that he knows what he's talking about. That's why people [here]were stunned when McClintock, in a speech to the Western Conservative Politcal Action Conference, called global warming a "farce." In a rant against environmentalists he blasted the state's new greenhouse emissions law, saying it would hurt industry and (get this) even cause starvation in the world.
Republican supporters said McClintock "seems to be in a time warp. The most recent PPIC poll shows that even 60 percent of Republicans see an immediate need to tackle global warming (82 percent of independents did too). McClintock didn't do himself any favors on this one. He's just handed Democrats and even his likely 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary opponent, Steve Poizner, an issue to campaign on, making it even easier to paint McClintock as an extremist out of touch with California values."
If voters in Los Angeles and Ventura feel McClintock is an anti-environment extremist, consider what he may do to our Auburn-Sierra-Tahoe area?

Proof that God Exists is Congressman John T. Doolittle is Not Seeking Reelection

2008-08-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

God Exists Because Doolittle Is Not Running for Re-election
Two great occurrences have happened in Placer County: 1) The Auburn Dam has been stopped permanently; and 2) Congressman John Taylor "Abramoff's Punk" Doolittle has announced he will not seek re-election.

On the national scene the serial felon George W. Bush will ride into his our private purgatory in January, 2009, with the deaths of over a million people on his soul and the guilt of the draining of the US Treasury into the pockets of his handlers. This born again Christian must know that the Bible says to take from the poor and give to the rich is a mortal sin, and Bush ultimately will pay a price he cannot now fathom. Watching Bush get his comeuppance over the years will be a great joy to the world.

Do Not Forget What Damage Aaron Klein Did to Sierra College and Incredibly He is Running for Reelection

2008-08-03T22:05:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Klein defends stance against education.

Now Klein takes on the elementary crowd.
Remember, Klein has absolutely NO experience in education. He's never even attended primary, secondary school or college. Fiscal responsibility? Does Klein know that California ranks 42nd in the nation in per student educational spending??

Politics at work in parcel tax?
Meadow Vista resident questions Republican opposition to Measure D

By: Ryan Sabalow, Journal Staff Writer
Sunday, March 27, 2005 11:52 PM PST

The recent political upheaval at Sierra College has moved from the hallways of the Rocklin campus to the rolling hills of Meadow Vista.

Meadow Vista resident Judy Creek, the wife of Sierra College Trustee Dave Creek, said Friday the Placer County Republican Party's choice to oppose a Placer Hills Union School District parcel tax is a direct result of meddling from Sierra College trustees Jerry Simmons and Aaron Klein.

Klein and Simmons sit on the Placer County Republican Central Committee and were part of the five-member endorsement committee that recently voted unanimously to oppose Measure D, a $48 annual parcel tax.

Proponents of Measure D say it would help the district ease a budget shortfall that could result in cuts to student programs and the layoff of at least 15 staff members.

"It's politics as a sport," Judy Creek said. "They just rampaged through Sierra College. Now they found the next school to go after."

The idea there's a correlation between the recent turmoil at Sierra College and opposition to the Meadow Vista tax is "silly," said Ken Campbell, chairman of the Placer County Republican Party.

"Come on," Campbell said. "Ask her if she sees black helicopters and G-men behind the trees."

Both Simmons and Klein deny any sort of political maneuvering, saying their party's disdain for taxes and the poor fiscal responsibility within Placer Hills motivated them to oppose the tax.

Klein, a resident of Colfax, whose family lives in Meadow Vista, said anyone who knows him is very much aware he's against raising taxes unnecessarily.

Klein said he was approached by Meadow Vista resident Ben Mavy, who was upset Placer Hills was trying to increase taxes after what he claimed were years of financial mismanagement.

He came to realize Mavy's concerns about Placer Hills had merit, Klein said.

"I'm a Republican," Klein said. "I've been opposed to tax increases a lot longer than I've ever been a trustee at Sierra College."

Judy Creek, herself a registered Republican and former Central Committee member, suggests ulterior motives are at work.

She said it was ironic that the adopted grandson of former Sierra College president Kevin Ramirez attended a Placer Hills school. Ramirez could not be reached for comment Friday to confirm Creek's claim.

"That's about as silly as her pal Rex Bloomfield's conspiracy theories in his editorial the other day," Klein said, referring to Wednesday's guest editorial in the Journal by Bloomfield.

Bloomfield alleged Klein, Simmons and Sierra Trustee Scott Leslie are part of ultra-conservative Republican conspiracy ultimately led by U.S. Rep. John Doolittle, R-Roseville, to take over Placer County.

This isn't the first time a rivalry between the Creeks and Klein has made its way into the public eye.

Judy Creek was Bloomfield's campaign manager in his November campaign for the Placer County District 5 supervisor seat. Klein was campaign manager for Bloomfield's opponent, Bruce Kranz, who won the supervisor race.

Dave Creek was also the first to call for Klein's recall after the newly-elected Sierra College trustee allegedly pressured Ramirez to resign.

After sending e-mails and speaking critically of Ramirez to faculty and staff, Klein filed a complaint with the Placer County Elections Department, stating Ramirez had used unethical means to fund facilities improvement bond measures at the college.

Ramirez denies any wrongdoing, and the complaint has been forwarded to the California Fair Political Practices Commission. The commission has yet to issue a ruling.

Close to a week after Klein filed, Ramirez announced he wished to retire. After nearly a month of closed-door meetings, Ramirez received a $405,000 retirement settlement from the board, along with potentially millions in State of California retirement benefits.

Ramirez is to remain at Sierra College receiving a full salary as president emeritus until this summer, as his replacement, Morgan Lynn, serves as interim president.

Dave Creek was the only Sierra trustee to vote against Ramirez's settlement, saying in earlier interviews it was ironic that Klein, who campaigned for trustee in November on the platform of fiscal responsibility, wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay Ramirez not to work.

Dave Creek declined to comment on the Placer Hills issue, saying he may bring it up at the next Sierra College board meeting.

But Judy Creek said Klein and Simmons are only using area schools to further their political ambitions. They don't care about the communities they serve, she said.

"We just had these guys make a decision that cost taxpayers a half a million bucks - now they're opposing a small, $48-a-year tax," she said. "These guys treat politics like it's a video game.

Aaron Klein and Scott Leslie are seeking reelection to the Sierra College Board of Trustees on November 4, 2008. Thankfully, Jerry Simmons is not seeking reelection. Klein and Leslie are absolutely unqualified for the Board and are on the Board simply because the Placer County Republican Central Committee, the group that even moderate Republicans disown, ponied up $40,000 to buy their seats which were unopposed. There chance of reelection is zero if the voters inform themselves of the backgrounds of these two.

Why I Am a Democrat II

2008-07-26T17:21:00.000-07:00

Excerpts paraphrased from Ted Sorensen’s book of the same name.

These are concise statements that can be used in conversations defining your beliefs as a Democrat.

I am a Democrat because I believe

…government should serve the public interest and not simply get out of the way of private interests;

…the federal government can help solve major national problems that are created by the unregulated market and protect states from their darker, less noble impulses;

… the federal government must address the stagnation and decline of wages and benefits, the failure of workers to receive their share of productivity gains, the growing gap between the rich and the rest of America, and the increasingly desperate conditions of the poor;

…an equitable balance among the federal, state and local governments can be achieved without splintering uniform national standards;

…mortgaging the future in order to fund tax cuts and corporate welfare while savaging social insurance and public education is not fair to the young, the poor, the elderly, the unskilled, or the infirm, because a civilized society is measured by how well is cares for its less fortunate members;

…true law and order requires attacking not only crime but its causes and enhancing gun control and providing equal access to the courts and respecting the constitution;

… in strengthening families by increasing their economic opportunities;

…America must honor its international obligations, participate in multilateral organizations and reject unilateralism and isolationism;

…government must give priority to the needy and not to those already sufficiently powerful and affluent to afford lobbyists

George W. Bush, Robin Hood in Reverse

2008-07-26T17:19:00.000-07:00

By every index available but one, George W. Bush has been an abject failure as a human being and as a President. For corporate America he is a shining star of success. Since he took office, the compensation for CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies has risen 54 per cent and the price of gasoline has quadrupled with Dick Chaney’s Halliburton and other friendly oil corporations enjoying obscene, manipulated profits.

Bush has finally achieved a level of success his family name provided him Where do the monies for these expenses come from? Does anyone not know?

Bush has succeeded in stealing from the poor and the American taxpayer and giving that pelf to the rich, a Robin Hood in reverse while the Republicans stand mindlessly on the sidelines and cheer his iniquities, watching silently while the children of middle and working class people die pointlessly in the Oil Field Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He is indeed a many colored Commander-in-Thief.

Why I Am a Democrat

2008-07-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

Excerpts paraphrased from Ted Sorensen’s book of the same name.

These are concise statements that can be used in conversations defining your beliefs as a Democrat.

I am a Democrat because I believe that
…government should serve the public interest and not simply get out of the way of private interests;
…the federal government can help solve major national problems that are created by the unregulated market and protect states from their darker, less noble impulses;
… the federal government must address the stagnation and decline of wages and benefits, the failure of workers to receive their share of productivity gains, the growing gap between the rich and the rest of America, and the increasingly desperate conditions of the poor;
…an equitable balance among the federal, state and local governments can be achieved without splintering uniform national standards;
…mortgaging the future in order to fund tax cuts and corporate welfare while savaging social insurance and public education is not fair to the young, the poor, the elderly, the unskilled, or the infirm, because a civilized society is measured by how well is cares for its less fortunate members;
…true law and order requires attacking not only crime but its causes and enhancing gun control and providing equal access to the courts and respecting the constitution;
… in strengthening families by increasing their economic opportunities;
…America must honor its international obligations, participate in multilateral organizations and reject unilateralism and isolationism;
…government must give priority to the needy and not to those already sufficiently powerful and affluent to afford lobbyists.

Finally, Americans Are Awakening to the Cancerous Aberration that is George W. Bush

2008-07-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

The great American journalist Walter Lippman wrote, ”The news and the truth are not the same thing.” Our news services are so controlled by big businessesm mainly Fox Noise, controlled by The Ultra-Right Winger Rupert Murdock, which are controlled by Republicans and multi-national corporations, it is very difficult to get a non-Republican slant, let alone the truth.

To get a different perspective on the Bush Abomination in Iraq and Afghanistan and his March of Lies, it is wise to use the internet and visit some global newspapers such as The New Zealand Herald, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Asia Time, The Manchester Guardian, and the London Times to name some. So much of Iraq coverage is misrepresented by our news services, it is shocking to learn the grim truth about the daily slaughter of Americans and Iraqis, the nightmare military life is, and the hatred that Bush’s self-serving, mean-spirited, sucking-up-to- the- rich, business- is- god administration has generated toward us Americans.

We Americans are slowly waking up to the Horror that is George W. Bush. We Americans are basically good honest people,formerly(pre-Bush)loved and admired by the world for our kindness and generosity and, when we wake up to the truth which is different from the news, we will do whatever is necessary to rid our beloved country of this Cancerous Aberration. We are continuing to awaken.

Bruce Kranz, the Ogre on the Placer County Board of Supervisors

2008-07-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

Kranz serves Kranz. The general public is aware of Kranz accepting large donations from developers, appointing Michelle Ollar-Burris to the Planning Commission, favoring a gravel company over the people of Meadow Vista, blocking the Homewood Ski Resort sale to the Forest Service and redirecting it to private developers, and his clearing the trail to develop Royal Gorge Ski Resort.

Kranz intimidates Placer County employees. Talking to several Placer County employees who obviously wish to remain anonymous, I have learned county workers fear retaliation from Kranz if their decisions or findings do not favor the person Kranz is currently piloting through the process. Workers feel intimidated, feel pressure to “go along” as opposed to doing what is right and proper. Kranz uses favoritism to bully workers into giving him and his “clients” what they want.

Kranz always tips the tables in his favor. When Kranz is involved, there is never a level playing field because if workers do not do what he wishes, he will find a willing worker, but never forgets the one who would not do his bidding. Policies are manipulated to suit individuals, and decisions are rendered unevenly in Kranz’ favor.

When Kranz is involved, fear is palpable among workers. With layoffs imminent in Placer County, fear of retaliation makes Kranz even more threatening because workers who do not go along fear reprisal.

People would be shocked to learn what type of vehicle demanded Placer County supply him for 24/7 use with a County credit card.

Kranz is like George W. Bush because favoritism always trumps policy.

Kranz is not an administrator so much as a manipulator, an intimidator, a person who ought never to be a Placer County Supervisor.

A Blue Wave In Changing the Political Landscape in the US and Placer County

2008-07-24T21:39:00.000-07:00

A blue wave is changing the nation’s political landscape, and Placer County is part of that wave. Congressman John T. “Demagogue” Doolittle has limped off into oblivion in order not to face “something” legal, leaving Bruce Kranz the most unpopular politician, who is on his way out the door also. Jerry Simmons has done the people an egalitarian service by not seeking re-election to the Sierra College Board of Trustee, which leaves just two disposables, Aaron Klein and Scott Leslie, two do-nothings who are running on a niggardly balanced budget claim while the College crumbles before our eyes and the College ranks 62nd out of 62 community colleges in the state or at the very bottom in the ratio of full-time faculty to part-time faculty. The ratio is unconscionable. Sierra College had three consecutive balanced budgets under President Ramirez, whom Klein and Leslie knifed. While these two are on the Board of Trustees, no bond will ever pass the voters, and Sierra will continue to stagnate. They must go.

But the biggest joke is Tom McClintock, scouring the State of California to try to find someplace that will give him a $169,500 sinecure to “cut taxes”; Doolittle’s old job looks like that place. McClintock is a professional hack, who moves around the state trying to pick off any available job, and he believes Ca-04 is ripe for the taking. In a county and state with infrastructure falling apart, the last thing the people need is an elected official whose only vision is to cut taxes, which are the means by which a civilized society remains civilized by providing for its people.

We need a complete elimination of these kinds of representatives in Placer County and in the US. Have the audacity to make the necessary changes in Placer County; defeat Bruce Kranz, Aaron Klein, Scott Leslie and Tom McClintock.

Voting Correctly Will Make Beautiful Auburn Beautiful Politically!

2008-07-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

Placer County is one of the most beautiful places on Planet Earth. We should have the best schools, the best welfare system, the best environmental protection, the best recreational facilities, the most egalitarian concerns for our fellows, and the best elected officials, but tragically we do not. With a little tweaking we can help those humanitarians already in office ( Robert Weygandt, Jim Holmes, Mike Holmes) become even better servants of the people.

We have too many citizens who are willing to trade quality of life for financial rewards, who put self-interest ahead of community-interest. We must start somewhere to make our personal concerns for our beautiful area our top priority.

We should all vote for Charlie Brown, a decorated marine and local resident, who lives in Roseville, to fill the soiled office (Ca-04) held by John “Demagogue” Doolittle and Jennifer Montgomery to replace his concierge Bruce Kranz on the Placer County Board of Supervisors, District 5.

A marathon must begin with a first step. Let’s make our beautiful area the kind of place the world will look to as the model of an egalitarian community.

How Long Can the US Constitution Withstand GOP Attempts to Destroy It?

2008-07-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

The greatest threat to the survival of the U.S. is not Iran, North Korea or even Al Quaida. It is the Republican Party. Bush’s policies have turned the last great super power into the world’s biggest joke … only no one is laughing. He has disregarded global warming, squandered the Treasury with lack of oversight and cronyism, destroyed habeas corpus and the integrity of voting, and the rule of law ... the list is endless. He has politicized all branches of government.

All Republican presidential candidates except Ron Paul are used fear to be a tougher Bush with no thought to the well-being of the US only the Republicans Party. Bush’s Orwellian doublespeak blinds Republicans to the destruction the GOP has caused, eliminating any desire to change it.

Bush has lost all credibility as a leader, and the U.S. is drifting aimlessly in a very dangerous world. For the U.S. to survive, it must elect a Democratic President (the worst Democratic candidate is many times better than the best Republican), and increase the Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. The U.S. cannot stand another Age of Republican Insanity. How long can the Constitution withstand the assualts of the GOP?

Placer County District 5 Supervisor Bruce Kranz Costs Placer Taxpayers Big Bucks

2008-07-15T21:45:00.001-07:00

District 5 Supervisor Bruce Kranz appointed Michelle Ollar-Burris to the Placer County Planning Commission. She and her husband donated money to his campaign. Michelle Ollar-Burris is being sued by Placer County for having “committed fraud, violated her fiduciary obligations as a planning commissioner and engaged in unfair business practices and alleges that Ollar-Burris and a group of her clients worked together to repeatedly split pieces of land while maintaining the appearance that they were acting independently.” The suit further alleges Ollar-Burris and her clients had committed civil violations of the Subdivision Map Act, which forbids a single person or group working together from splitting a piece of land more than four times without going through the county's subdivision review process.
Bruce Kranz either did not know of Ollar-Burris’ background or knew and did not care. Kranz’s actions are unconscionable; he must be held accountable, and for the millions of dollars he has cost Placer County, and should definitely not be reelected. He no longer has the integrity to be given a public trust. Ignorance or arrogance are not acceptable characteristics of an elected official. The people can send Kranz a message of rejection about his behavior at the next election

Republican Voter Registration in Placer County Dropped 18 % in First Quarter of 2008

2008-07-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

The alley catfight between two Republican carpetbaggers locked in a death struggle to replace a sulking Doolittle, retreating into the shades … MS13 graffiti on the Calgary Chapel, maybe a statement about our non-inclusiveness …million dollar lawsuits against Planning Commissioner Michelle Ollar-Burris … Bruce Kranz’s lack of oversight for her appointment and his developer dollars that buy access to our local landscapes their personal profit that are his lifeline … Kranz’s unwillingness to listen to the needs of his constituents:

Could all these behaviors be some of the reasons why voter registration for the Republican Party during the first quarter of 2008 has dropped 17% in California’s reddest county? Republican cannot even get along with each other so they cannibalize themselves and people are outraged by this stupidity.

Can’t we work together to make Placer County a kinder, more honest place to live, do business, raise and educate our children? Let’s start by electing someone other than Bruce Kranz, someone other than a Republican.

Every Vote Matters in Placer County

2008-07-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

How many Republicans officeholders in heavily red Placer County are Republicans because they believe in Republican principles or because they simply wanted to get elected? Everyone wants collaborative government.

Imagine what happens if Democrat Charlie Brown replaces Congressman Doolittle and Democrat Jennifer Montgomery replaces Supervisor Bruce Kranz. The Far Right stranglehold on local politics is immediately broken, which will benefit traditional Republicans and Democrats alike by giving us lower-decibel, collaborative government that serves the many not the few.

Democrat Charlie Brown would immediately gain clout for us in the new Democratic administration in Washington, D.C., benefiting us all. He would mature with the new administration and provide us years of honest representation.

If Democrat Jennifer Montgomery replaces Bruce Kranz on the Board of Supervisors, then the usual 5-0 Far Right votes immediately become 3-2 for traditional, and hopefully enlightened, politics. The two already elected traditional board members would not need to throw away their votes; the entire politics of the board would change.

Voters should wager a possibility of enlightened government against a self-serving certainty and vote for Democrats Charlie Brown and Jennifer Montgomery so the national purge reclaiming government for the people will be mirrored here at home.

The Death Penalty is Killing; Thou Shall Not Kill

2008-07-15T21:33:00.000-07:00

Every religion has a prohibition against killing: Thou shalt not kill. When a person is executed by a government, he is executed by the people i .e. citizens of the State of California. Each government carries out the will of the people when carrying out an execution. Each of us is one of the people. Whenever a government executes a person, each of us is responsible for that killing … we become murderers collectively and individually. Whether we kill as individuals or as a mob as members of a government, we are still killers. Every time a death penalty is carried out, we citizens are all responsible for that killing.

We have a code of law which is not a code of vengeance, which is quite difference from justice. A code of vengeance (revenge) has never been adopted, only a code of law; we must recognize they are quite different. If a person kills your sister, what you want on the animal level is vengeance … an eye for an eye. We can never teach people not to kill by killing. Vengeance is not justice and every citizen must know the difference.

Defeating Placer County Supervisor Bruce Kranz, Aaron Klein and Scott Leslie and Tom McClintock Will Liberate Occupied Placer County

2008-07-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

Freedom from neo-conservatism and international corporate tyranny is now possible if we act decisively. We must look at reality straight on: Republicans are pressuring Governor Schwarznegger to roll back emission laws; McCain pledges to continue Bush’s scorched earth environmental policies and his march toward American Empire. They together have temporarily divided the US from the world.

Locally, we may begin by rejecting Bruce Kranz, the epitome of all that is bad in local government, a puppet of developers and their suppliers. His attempts to undermine Placer Legacy, to turn Meadow Vista over to a gravel company, his complicity in the blocking of Homewood Ski Resort being sold to the Forest Service for the peoples’ benefit, his appointment of Michelle Ollar-Burris to the County Planning Commission combine to show his contempt for us.

With their records of self-service and assassination of Kevin Ramirez, Aaron Klein’s and Scott Leslie’s bids for re-election to the Sierra College Board are laughable.

John Doolittle has sulked off in disgrace opening the door for carpetbagger Tim McClintock to seek his job at the peoples’ expense.

These people care not about our home. Nothing they have ever done has helped the people; reject them

Royal Gorge Developer Gives Money to Placer County Supervisor Bruce Kranz and Other Republicans to Develop Royal Gorge Cross County Ski Resort

2008-07-15T11:07:00.001-07:00

Political Contributions by Foster/Syme
Foster/Syme, Royal Gorge LLC, the proponents of the 'conservation' community of green buildings have made the following donations to political campaigns:
Summary for 2006 election:

The Superior California Federal Leadership Fund is the PAC that Rep John Doolittle (R) runs, and was under investigation by federal authorities. Dolittle's wife receives 15% from the fund which, in community property California, means Dolittle could be getting improper campaign donations. Doolittle has since resigned from most all of his federal committee posts, has become somewhat of a pariah in the republican party, and will not be seeking re-election in 2008. (Foster/Syme donations to this PAC in 2006- $7,500)
Richard Pombo (R), who ended up being defeated in the 2006 election, was on the House Resources Committee and was a zealous advocate of major environmental rollbacks -- among them, weakening the Endangered Species Act, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the outer continental shelf, selling off national parks and monuments, and changing mining law to allow thousands or even millions of acres of public land to be transferred into private hands. He was the Congressman for the central valley and did not represent the Summit, nor the areas where Foster/Syme live. (Foster/Syme donations in 2006 - $4,200)

Congressman John Doolittle (R) was the representative for the summit area. The League of Conservation Voters gave him a 0% rating on environmental issues, he forced the sale of Homewood Ski area on Lake Tahoe to developers rather than allowing it to revert to the Forest Service by slipping in an addendum to an unrelated bill, and currently has stepped down from the House Appropriations Committee due to ongoing investigations of his campaign practices and close ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramhof. He is the representative where Foster/Syme want to build but not where they live. (Foster/Syme donations to Doolittle campaign in 2006- $5,980)

State Senator Dave Cox (R) is the State Senator (1st district) for the summit. (Foster/Syme donations in 2006- $1,650)

Assemblyman Rick Keene (R) is the State Assemblyman (3rd district) for the summit area west of Soda Springs Rd (where 'Lake Camp' and 'Wilderness Camp' and associated homesites are proposed). (Foster/Syme donations in 2006- $1,650)

Assemblyman Ted Gaines (R) is the State Assemblyman (4th district) for the summit area east of Soda Springs Rd (where 'Ski Camp' and 'Summit Camp' and associated homesites are proposed). (Foster/Syme donations 2006- $1,650, 2007-8 $3,600)

Bruce Kranz (R) is the supervisor for district 5 (the Placer County side of the summit) of Placer County. He is the representative where Foster/Syme want to build but not where they live. Placer County will be the agency that will decide what development Foster/Syme can do. Kranz was unable to win a majority (he came in second) in the 2008 primary for the 5th district seat and will face a runoff with Jennifer Montgomery (she received the most votes) a local Serene Lakes homeowner. (Foster/Syme donations to Kranz- $10,000 in 2006 plus another $10,000 in 2007-08)

Ted Owens (R) is the supervisor for district 5 (the Nevada County side of the summit) of Nevada County. He is the representative where some of what Foster/Syme want to build (and where the summit's sewer plant is), but not where they live. Nevada County does not publish campaign donations so we don't know how much Royal Gorge has contributed.

Details:

Contributor: 2006 Contributions: Amount: Contribution to: 2007-8 contributions
Syme 9/22/06 $2,500 Superior California Federal Leadership Fund
Syme 9/30/06 $2,000 Congressman John Doolittle
Syme 10/25/06 $1,100 Richard Pombo
Foster 9/22/06 $5,000 Superior California Federal Leadership Fund
Foster 10/25/06 $1,100 Richard Pombo
Foster 10/24/06 $990 Congressman Doolittle
Royal Gorge LLC 10/25/06 $2,000 Richard Pombo
Royal Gorge LLC 9/30/06 $2,000 Congressman Doolittle
Royal Gorge LLC 10/24/06 $990 Congressman Doolittle
Royal Gorge LLC 10/12/06 $1,650 State Senator Dave Cox
Royal Gorge LLC 10/5/06 $1,650 Assemblyman Rick Keene
Royal Gorge LLC 2/17/06 $1,650 Assemblyman Ted Gaines another $1,800 on 3/6/07
Royal Gorge LLC Assemblyman Ted Gaines another $1,800 on 1/18/08
Royal Gorge LLC 10/5/06 $5,000 Supervisor Kranz another $5,000 3/29/07
Royal Gorge LLC 12/30/06 $5,000 Supervisor Kranz another $5,000 1/24/08

total $32,630 in 2006 $13,600 in 2007-8

The maximum personal donation to a federal candidate is $2,300, and the maximum personal donation to a PAC is $5000.

Our search did not reveal any other donations to federal candidates by Foster/Syme/Royal Gorge LLC in 2006.

Information on contributions to federal candidates available from http://www.fec.gov/disclosure.shtml and information on contributions to State candidates available from http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Campaign/Candidates/. County information was not available online but Placer County recently added http://www.placer.ca.gov/Departments/Recorder/Elections/Campaign%20Disclosure.aspx which contains the campaign contribution filings.

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Placer County and the US need a Complete House Cleaning -Kranz, Klein, Leslie and McClintock Must Go

2008-07-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

A blue wave is changing the nation’s political landscape, and Placer County is part of that change. Doolittle has limped off into oblivion in order not to face “something”, leaving Bruce Kranz the most unpopular politician, who is on his way out the door also. Jerry Simmons has done the people an egalitarian service by not seeking re-election to the Sierra College Board of Trustee, which leaves just two disposables, Aaron Klein and Scott Leslie, two do-nothings who are running on a fabricated balanced budget claim. Sierra College had three consecutive balanced budgets under President Ramirez, whom they knifed.

But the biggest joke is Tom McClintock, scouring the land to try to find someplace that will give him a $169,500 sinecure to “cut taxes”; Doolittle’s old job looks like that place. In a county and state with infrastructure falling apart, the last thing the people need is an elected official whose only vision is to cut taxes, which are the means by which a civilized society remains civilized by providing for its people. We need a complete elimination of these kinds of representatives in Placer County and in the US.

Placer County District 5 Supervisor Bruce Kranz Is a Manipulator, not an Administrator, and Must Not Be Re-elected!

2008-07-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

Kranz serves Kranz. The general public is aware of Kranz accepting large donations from developers, appointing Michelle Ollar-Burris to the Planning Commission, favoring a gravel company over the people of Meadow Vista, blocking the Homewood Ski Resort sale to the Forest Service and redirecting it to private developers, and his clearing the trail to develop Royal Gorge Ski Resort.

Kranz intimidates Placer County employees. Placer County employees fear retaliation from Kranz if their decisions or findings do not favor the person Kranz is currently piloting through the process. Workers feel intimidated, feel pressure to “go along” as opposed to doing what is right and proper. Kranz uses favoritism to bully workers into giving him and his “clients” what they want. Kranz negates expertise with pressure. Eight employees from the Building Department have just been laid off today, which is a department that Kranz frequents in his attempts to help his developer financial supporters get what they need and ignore regulations and law when convenient..

Kranz always tips the tables in his favor. When Kranz is involved, there is never a level playing field because if workers do not do what he wishes, he will find a willing worker, but never forgets the one who would not do his bidding. Policies are manipulated to suit individuals, and decisions are rendered unevenly in Kranz’ favor.

When Bruce Kranz, District 5 Placer County Supervisor, is involved, fear is palpable among county employees. With layoffs now a reality in Placer County generally and the Building Department specifcially, fear of retaliation makes Kranz even more threatening because workers who do not go along fear reprisal.

Voters would be shocked to learn what kind of vehicle Kranz demanded the County supply him for 24/7 use with a Placer County credit car.

Kranz is like George W. Bush because favoritism always trumps policy, regulations and law.

Kranz is not an administrator so much as a manipulator, an intimidator, a person who ought never to have been a Placer County Supervisor and definitely ought not to be re-elected.

Charlie Brown Leads Ose, McClintock Ca-04

2008-06-02T14:19:00.000-07:00

CA-04: Charlie Brown Leads GOP Challengers in New Poll

Benenson Strategy Group: Brown 38%, Ose 34% and Brown 42%, McClintock 40%

Posted at 06/02/2008 02:52:31 PM EST - #

Vote for Charlie Brown (CA-04) and Jennifer Montgomery for District 5, Placer County Board of Supervisors

2008-05-25T20:52:00.000-07:00

Let's Neutralize the Placer County Supervisor Bruce Kranz Slime Factor

2008-05-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

Actions speak louder than words. Kranz has been trying to shoehorn a 2,200 house subdivision into Foresthill. At political events, the paid representatives of the Forest Ranch project are right by his side and have contributed to his political war chest. In his literature, Kranz says he wants to stop excessive development and protect open space. So why is the Forest Ranch subdivision even being considered when it converts open space to thousands of new homes?

Kranz thinks that he can hide the fact that he's taken over $300,000in political contributions from developers. He thinks we're so gullible that we won't notice that he voted for every development project while on the board. Let's show Kranz we're smart enough not to believe his duplicitous campaign. It's time to Dump Doolittle's crony Kranz.

After he is dumped, Jennifer Montgomery will replace the Kranz slime with a new era of morning sunlight washing our area in freshness and clean government.

Placer County District 5 Supervisor Bruce Kranz and Lies, Lies and Placer County District 5 Supervisor Bruce Kranz

2008-05-22T13:32:00.000-07:00

Lies, lies, and more lies. I can't believe how stupid Kranz's thinks the voters are. In his mailers, Kranz says he's fighting excessive development and protecting open space. Is that why, he's taken $20,000 from one developer who plans to convert open space into 900 homes in Serene Lakes? We've had enough of lying politicians. It's time for Kranz to follow his political hero Doolittle out the door.
Jennifer Montgomery is the honest person to replace Kranz, the last vestige of the corruption foisted on our beautiful area by Congressman John Doolittle and his era of corruption. Vote of Jennifer to replace Kranz, the Kancer.

Placer County District 5 Supervisor Bruce Kranz Says Whatever He Thinks the Fools Who Vote for Him Will Swallow

2008-05-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

Before the campaign, Kranz supports tripling his salary to over $90,000. Now he says he..."will not vote for a pay raise for the board of supervisors at this time." Who believes Kranz won't go right back to trying to triple his salary after the campaign is over? Can anyone ever believe this man ... ever? kranz is the man without an ethic, without a shred of decency or honesty.

Vote for Jennifer Montgomery for District 5 Placer County Supervisor and return local government to the people.

Placer County District 5 Supervisor Bruce Kranz Plays the Voters for Suckers

2008-05-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

Kranz must think voters are stupid. Quoting from his campaign literature, Kranz says..."His political opponents say Bruce supports a large pay hike for himself, but that is simply not true." But it also says in the brochure that...."he (Kranz) will not vote for a pay raise for the board of supervisors at this time." Kranz supported the raise before the campaign and now says he won't raise his salary AT THIS TIME. How many voters really believe Kranz won't vote to triple his salary the moment the campaign is over? Kranz is all about serving himself not the people.

Return honest governing to Placer County by voting for Jennifer Montgomery for District 5 Placer County Supervisor. She is the Not-Kranz candidate, which in a just world ought to get her elected.

Placer County District 5 Supervisor Bruce Kranz is as Corrupt as Congressman John T. Doolittle

2008-04-27T18:27:00.001-07:00

Big developers have a strangle hold on Placer politics. The Donald Rumsfeld of the Developer Machine is the Supervisor Bruce Kranz, who strong arms county employees, intimidates businessmen to donate to his and Doolittle’s pet causes. He cost taxpayer over $4 million by appointing Michelle Ollar-Burris as a Planning Commissioner. He is the enforcer for the Development Machine in Placer County, Doolittle’s hatchet man. He is ruthless, callous and highly effective; however, he is the last remnant of the corrupt Doolittle machine.

Bruce Kranz was Doolittle’s enforcer at Lake Tahoe, strong-arming businessmen to contribute when Doolittle placed his infamous rider into legislation blocking the sale of Homewood Ski Resort from being sold to the US Forest Service to be enjoyed by the people in perpetuity.

Kranz is a hack, serving only his developer contributors. Kranz must be voted out of office. Placer County is at a crossroads. When Kranz is replaced as District 5 Supervisor, the 5-0 votes by the Placer County Board of Supervisors favoring developers will automatically become 3-2 votes against developers. Voting Kranz off the Board is the first step in giving local government back to locals. The Kranz Cancer must be removed from the Body Politic.

California Schools and Big Oil‏

2008-04-20T20:22:00.000-07:00

In Dubai, the people get free housing, free medical care and $5,000 per month. The people of Dubai share in their country's oil wealth. In Alaska, the people pay NO state taxes and the state government writes every state resident a check every year. The people of the state of Alaska share in their state's oil wealth. In California, big oil companies pump our oil from the ground for free, and then sell it back to us for huge profits. Right now these oil companies are reaping the highest profits of any industry ever in history, making a very few people immensely wealthy. But they are not sharing any of this oil wealth with the people of California. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) introduced a bill to make big oil do just that. The bill, which required a two-thirds vote to pass, was defeated on the Assembly floor after Republicans refused to vote for it. The people of California need to understand that a choice was made - by a few Republicans - to continue allowing California to be the only state in the nation that allows oil companies to pump oil from our land and pay us nothing for it. And instead of asking the rich oil companies to share a little, the Republicans want to cut the school budget by another 10%. Assembly Republicans said the Nunez bill was a publicity stunt; that Democrats know that no taxes can pass as long as there is a rule allowing a few Republicans to block the will of the vast majority of California's people. But do the people of California understand this? Do they realize that just a few Republican votes can allow big oil companies to pump oil from California for free - while California's children face ever-worsening schools and more school budget cuts? What is more important here - big oil or well-educated California kids?

Americans Sit Fat and Happy

2008-03-27T08:27:00.001-07:00

Americans ooze into their easy chairs, fat and happy.

Bush funnels hundreds of billions to bailout Wall Street while he leaves Main Street to boil in the juices Wall Street brewed for it by writing home loans deliberately designed to fail. Bush has turned the U.S. government into a World Multi-National Corporate Welfare Bank for the wealthy, financed by the U.S. taxpayer, while the people debate whether or not to legalize same-sex marriage or the proper way for the American Enterprise Institute to Swift Boat Obama. Billionaires can borrow billions at the new Fed Funds Rate of 2 1/2% while Main Street pays 7 % if it’s lucky enough to grovel and get a home loan from Wall Street.

Bush gives three trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money to the Corporate World to waste on a pointless war ($30,000 for each household in America) whose only known result is the loathing the world directs at the U.S

All the while, Americans sit lollygagging, fat and happy.

Placer County District 5 Supervisor Bruce Kranz Should Not Be Reelected

2008-03-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

Bruce Kranz never met a developer he did not serve nor an individual constituent he did not stiff. When he was running for Dictrict 5 Surpervisor, he listed on his flyer as supporters of his campaign Michelle Ollar-Burris and Wes Burris (Auburn). That support translated into Kranz appointing Michelle Ollar-Burris to the Placer County Planning Commission from which she was removed by a unanimous vote of the BOS including Kranz for questionable if not illegal transaction for her personal financial benefit.

Now Placer County is involved in legal proceedings with Ollar-Burris, which will cost the County hundreds of thousand of dollar. Kranz was eager to place a “friend” on the planning commission without the due diligence to examine her background. Because he appointed Ollar-Burris without proper ethical checks, the taxpayers in the County must pay for his laxness. Kranz does NOT deserve to be re-elected because he has violated the public trust.

McCain Needs More Than a Cain

2008-03-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

John McCain is what...117 years old this year? All I know is John McCain is so old that his Social Security number is 3.

He’s so old his favorite after-shave is still Old Spice.

He’s so old that his Secret Service code name is '"The Clapper." McCain looks like the kind of guy who brags that his new denture adhesive allows him to eat corn on the cob. Doesn't McCain remind you of a Wal-Mart greeter who lives in an RV?

He looks like the kind of guy who always asks the driver if he's on the right bus.

He's the kind of guy who is always early for the early-bird breakfast and stays for the senior special.

He looks like a mall walker, or maybe a guy on TV who sells those Rascal electric scooters.

He's the guy at the supermarket who gets confused by the automatic doors.

He looks like the embarrassing uncle who pretends to remove his thumb. After McCain swept the Republican primaries, he purposely stole a line from Barack Obama: 'I'm fired up and ready to go.' When Obama heard this, he stole one of McCain's famous lines; 'I'm old and not sure where I am.'"

John McCain hasa new campaign slogan; 'I will lead you into the 21st century.' I like it better than the old slogan; 'I will lead you into assisted living!"

Another new campaign slogan of McCain's is: 'Ready To Lead America Into The 21st Century.' This is an improvement over 'I've Been Around Since The 19th Century.'"

But the three major candidates have to be very careful when they criticize each other. You can't criticize Hillary because that's sexism. You can't criticize Obama because that's racism. And you can't go after McCain because that's elder abuse.

John McCain reminds me of the old guy who goes to the curb for the paper in his bathrobe and slippers and locks himself outside of the house - and then forgets where he lives when the police get there.

McCain looks like he should be riding a motorized shopping cart in the special quick-check out lane.

McCain looks like he just ate a gopher for breakfast and forget to chew it so he could not swallow it and has to talk around the gopher.

McCain should be running for Methuselah not for President.

Remember what McCain did to McAbel and vote for anyone but McCain.

John McCain's Pandering and Flip-Flopping Make Him Unfit to Be President

2008-02-18T09:15:00.000-08:00

There was a time when John McCain was moderate enough to garner votes from voters from both parties. Now he appeals to neither. Because McCain has lost all sense of integrity, having surrendered his dignity long ago. In 2001, McCain was one of just two GOP senators to vote against Bush’s destructive tax cuts. Now McCain makes a point of bragging about his support for making Bush’s tax cuts permanent. Recently McCain has been declaring that passing an economic package is at the very top of his agenda. But when the Senate voted earlier this month on a bill to provide assistance to seniors and veterans, McCain skipped the vote. The bill fell short by just one vote - McCain's. In the 2000 presidential campaign, Karl Rove launched vicious smear tactics against McCain on behalf of the Bush campaign. But McCain has now embraced Rove, saying that he has always respected Karl Rove as one of the great political minds in American politics. McCain as a serious presidential candidate has flipped and flopped like a hooked trout on a variety of issues from same gender marriage to the confederate flag. McCain led the battle against Dick Cheney on torture, even though it cost him donations, votes and endorsements. Recently, McCain was out pandering in force, supporting the torture of political prisoners (a de facto extension of support for these techniques to be used on American troops as well), so that his "principles" would not cost him a single "donation, vote, or endorsement."
When he found himself cash strapped, he even took money from the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, the same group he has called "dishonest and dishonorable." And McCain has done a complete about face on the religious right He once called the religious right "agents of intolerance." Recently he stooped to deliver the commencement address at the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. Pandering is what McCain does best.

This Matter of Trust

2008-02-15T20:23:00.000-08:00

No political party that nominated George W. Bush and did what they did to get him "elected" twice should ever again be charged with the public trust.

California, the United States and the world should never again be forced to pay such a price.

Huckabee and Romney - Faith-Based Politics and Science Fiction

2008-02-15T20:18:00.000-08:00

Romney and Huckabee bickering about religion is nothing more than faith-based politics running amok. After eight years of King George, who would have thought religion would have been so marginalized?

Baptist leader Robert Jeffress may have a valid point regarding Romney
when he said, "Even though Romney talks about Jesus as his Lord and
Savior, he is not a Christian. Mormonism is not Christianity; Mormonism is a cult."

According to Mormon scripture, God and Jesus (called Jehovah in the Old
Testament), appeared to Joseph Smith somewhere in New York. God told Joseph Smith that Christian teachings were all wrong, their creeds were an abomination in his sight, their ministers and theologians were corrupt charlatans. Clear enough. They're not Christians.

During a debate the Huckster asked the Mitten if Jesus and the Devil
were brothers. Huck later apologized for what was assumed to be a cheap
shot.

Being an observant devout Mormon, Mitt Romney knows full well that Jesus and Satan are indeed two of God's many sons. I should not have asked for or needed an apology. Yes. They are brothers. In fact, when God accepted his favorite son Jesus' divine plan for humankind rather than his other son Satan's divine plan, Satan went sour, revolted against Heaven and was hurled out to become the ruler of Hell.

Mitt also knows that a lost tribe of biblical Hebrews sailed to
America. Their descendants are known as American Indians (in Mormon dogma, they're called "Lamanites"- bad Jews). Romney knows that Jesus Christ once materialized in New York where he announced he would found his Heavenly Kingdom in Independence, Missouri. Mitt knows that obedient Mormon men can become Gods, with their own planet in outer space, just as the formerly-human God the Father does - on his own home planet of Kolob. Mormons believe there are three Gods; that God embraced integration in 1978 (before which people of black African ancestry we cursed by God). Mormons scripture says the Prophet Brigham Young visited the moon where he found kindly tall people who dress like Quakers, and where each day is 1,000 years long. Romney believes that God finally repudiated thousands of years of polygamy just so Utah could become a state. So God seems to serve the Mormons' cause not vice versa

This Mormon nonsense is not at all like the Huckster's rational, orthodox Christian beliefs. Huck knows that God, disguised as a ghost, raped a Palestinian virgin peasant girl, and then abandoned her to raise his son alone. And that son grew up to be a sort-of guru/faith healer who promised to make his country into a theology and kick out the
imperialist occupation forces, but instead was executed by the occupiers for being an insurgent, and then his reanimated corpse was seen eating some fish, visiting his former students and flying up into the sky saying, "I'll be back."
So what is the lesson to be learned from all this, the moral?
Real Christians are rational in the same way all science fiction fanatics are rational. Unchristian Mormons are gullible dupes of another version of the same science fiction dogma. Is this a big difference? One religion could just as easily believe in the Easter Bunny and the other religion could believe in the Easter Bunny’s brother.

Bush, the Teflon Coated Serial Felon

2008-02-07T22:56:00.000-08:00

Yeah, yeah... I know. Hey! Maybe the Demos think the Republicons will likewise ignore their felonies, too. Yeah, that's it! (Not).

I think it depends on how you define "felony" - and redefining rotten behavior is an avoidance scam the Bushites have nailed down to an art.

Remember, citizen - if you can't lie your way out of trouble or blame it on others, you can always redefine it so you are technically innocent. Torture? What torture? We don't do no stinkin' torture! Waterboarding is simply an aggressive 'harsh interrogation' technique. And please don't call it domestic spying. It's an 'increased homeland electronic security enhancement' cooperative program with our patriotic telecommunications allies. Sieg! Heil!

Remember that Bush's daddy was Reagan's uber-kommissar of the state security and loyalty apparatus, and the CIA's called its assassination program in Vietnam "termination with extreme prejudice." Really. You can't make this stuff up. But the CIA sure can.

Then, if all else fails, there's always the executive pardon. Think of it as a form of noblesse oblige. (Nice work, Scooter!)

Bushites commit felonies daily with Impunity? Damn! I didn't know that Sen. Daily W. Impunity (R-TX) was in on it, too. I'm shocked, SHOCKED! Have they no shame at all?

John Edwards' Bold EducationPlan Should be Enacted by the Next President

2008-01-26T21:03:00.001-08:00

Edwards Announces Bold Education Agenda To Restore The Promise Of America's Schools

Plan will radically overhaul No Child Left Behind, expand early education, support teachers and create a "School Success Fund" to help struggling schools
Des Moines, Iowa – Today, Senator John Edwards delivered a major education policy speech at Brody Middle School in Des Moines where he unveiled his plan to radically overhaul the No Child Left Behind Act and ensure that every child in America gets the quality education they deserve. Edwards' plan for Restoring the Promise of American Schools is based on three guiding principles: every child should be prepared to succeed when they show up in the classroom; every classroom should be led by an excellent teacher; and every teacher should work in an outstanding school.

"Education is an issue that's very personal for me," said Edwards. "I grew up in a small, rural town and my parents didn't have a lot of money. But I was lucky to have public school teachers who taught me to believe that somebody from a little town in North Carolina could do just about anything if he worked hard and played by the rules."

"Every child deserves to have the same chances I had," Edwards continued. "But today, millions of young people don't get these opportunities. More than a half-century after Brown v. Board of Education, we still have two school systems, separate and unequal. George Bush's No Child Left Behind law is not working, and Washington is simply not doing its part to invest in early childhood education, teachers, or support for struggling schools."

Edwards' plan for education reform will address the failures of the current system through focusing on the following principles:

Preparing Every Child to Succeed: As president, Edwards will launch a national "Great Promise" partnership to give a quality early childhood education to every four-year-old in the country â€“ starting with poor children in neighborhoods with struggling schools. To reach even younger children, Edwards will create a national "Smart Start" program that will improve child care and invest in child health.

An Excellent Teacher in Every Classroom: Teachers, not tests, are the single most important factor in successful schools. As president, Edwards will increase pay for teachers in successful high-poverty schools by up to $15,000 a year. He will also create a National Teacher University â€“ a West Point for teachers â€“ to recruit 1,000 top college students a year, train them to be excellent teachers, and encourage them to teach where they are needed the most. His plan also will give extra support to teachers in the first years of their careers, reduce classroom sizes, and train more excellent principals.

Making Every School an Outstanding School: No Child Left Behind used cheap standardized tests to measure our children's learning, failed to accurately identify struggling schools, and mandated unproven cookie-cutter solutions for our schools' problems. Edwards will totally overhaul it so it meets its goals of helping all children learn through accurately identifying and improving struggling schools. Based on North Carolina's successful education reforms, Edwards proposed a School Success Fund to allow teams of experienced educators to spend a year at struggling schools helping launch reforms. Edwards will also launch a "Great Schools" initiative to build or expand 1,000 successful schools.

In May, Edwards introduced an initiative to improve access to higher education by making college more affordable for millions of students. Edwards' College Opportunity Agenda includes a national "College for Everyone" initiative, which would pay for public-college tuition, fees, and books for any student who is willing to work hard and stay out of trouble.

For more information on Edwards' plan for Restoring the Promise of America's Schools, please read the fact sheet below. Excerpts from Edwards' education address are also included.

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Excerpts from Edwards' Education Address:
"Education is an issue that's very personal for me. I grew up in a small, rural town. My family didn't have a lot of money, but my parents worked hard to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. And they told me that if I worked hard in school, I could be anything I wanted to be. In the classroom, I had heroic public school teachers who taught me the same thing. I had teachers who cared about me, who took an interest in my life, and who taught me the skills I needed to succeed. My high-school English teacher, Ms. Burns, made me believe that somebody from a little town in North Carolina, where their father worked in the mill, could do just about anything if he worked hard and played by the rules."

"Every child deserves to have the same chances I had. But today, millions of young people don't get them. In America today, children who live in the right zip code get the best education our country has to offer, while children who live in rural and low-income communities face an uphill battle. In America today, two schools separated by a five-minute drive can be miles apart in the quality of education they offer their students. More than a half-century after Brown vs. Board of Education, we still have two school systems, separate and unequal."

"The 'American Century' was built on the skills and knowledge of American workers, trained by one of the best education systems in the world. If we want this 21st century to be an American century as well, our workforce will need the skills to successfully compete against rising global economic powers like China and India. And today, we are failing to equip them with those skills."

"There are three simple pillars to my plan: First, every child should be prepared to succeed when they show up in the classroom. Second, every classroom should be led by an excellent teacher. And third, every teacher should work in an outstanding school."

"When it comes to reform, a good place to start is by radically overhauling No Child Left Behind. NCLB is a case study in the broken system in Washington, D.C., a system that has looked the other way as its failed policies and incompetent leadership have broken our schools and broken the spirits of our children and their teachers."

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Restoring the Promise of America's Schools
As the product of public schools in a small rural town and the father of four children who attended public schools, John Edwards understands the importance of education. He believes every child should have the same chance to get a great education â€“ a commitment that is at the core of his plan to build One America where everyone has a chance to succeed. But more than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, we still have two school systems that are separate and unequal. No longer legally separated by race, our children are sorted by economics, often with a racial or ethnic dimension. At the same time, our children are preparing for unprecedented global economic competition.

Unfortunately, Washington is letting down our children. George Bush's No Child Left Behind law is not working for schools, teachers and â€“ most importantly â€“ our children, and it needs to be radically overhauled. And Washington is simply not doing its part to invest in early childhood education, teachers, or helping struggling schools. Our students are falling behind in key subjects like math and science, good teachers are leaving the profession, and our graduates aren't as prepared for the global economy as their peers in other countries. Students in poor rural areas and major cities often don't have the same chances as other students, and an achievement gap that falls along economic and racial or ethnic lines undermines the promise of equality.

Today, John Edwards outlined his vision for excellent American schools, based on three principles:

Every child should be prepared to succeed when they show up in the classroom.
Every classroom should be led by an excellent teacher.
Every teacher should work in an outstanding school.
Preparing Every Child to Succeed
Half of the achievement gap between children from poor families and their more fortunate peers exists before they start school. Quality preschools compensate for the learning opportunities some children miss at home, reducing remedial education, welfare, and crime. Its benefits are strongly supported by academic research and the experience of universal pre-K programs in Georgia and Oklahoma. Children from poor families benefit most from high-quality preschool, but less than half of poor children attend pre-school compared to two-thirds of other children. [Denton and Germino-Hausken, 2000; Aspen, 2007; PPI, 2004; RAND, 1998; Barnett, 1996; EPI, 2002; Education Sector, 2007]

John Edwards believes that quality preschool education should be as common as kindergarten. As president, he will lead the way toward universal preschool, starting with the children who need the help most. In addition to maintaining and expanding support for existing programs like Head Start and the child care block grant, Edwards will:

Offer Universal "Great Promise" Preschool to Four-Year-Olds
Edwards will provide resources to states to help them offer universal high-quality preschool programs for four-year-olds. Great Promise programs will:

Teach academic skills: Preschool is much more than babysitting; it is a unique opportunity to teach children the skills they will need in school. Great Promise will help develop children's language abilities and introduce them to early math, reading, and other academic concepts, as well as help develop their social and emotional skills.
Start in needy communities: The federal commitment will begin in low-income neighborhoods where schools are struggling and expand to serve more communities over time.
Be led by excellent teachers: Research shows that the most effective preschool teachers have at least a bachelor's degree. Lead teachers in Great Promise will have four-year college degrees and be paid commensurately.
Involve parents and their families: Research shows that preschool benefits children the most when their parents are involved. Parental involvement will be essential to Great Promise.
Be voluntary and universally affordable: Participation would be fully voluntary for families. Tuition would be charged on a sliding scale based upon family income and waived for children from low-income families.
Create National Smart Start
North Carolina's innovative Smart Start initiative promotes the healthy development of children under the age of five. It helps local partnerships make child care higher quality and more affordable, provides health services and supports families. Participating children show better cognitive and language skills and fewer behavioral problems. Edwards will help other states duplicate Smart Start programs, prioritizing children who are not served by other pre-K programs. Smart Start will:

Offer integrated services for young children: By linking together health care, child care, education, and family support services for children under five, Smart Start addresses all aspects of young children's development and helps them begin school healthy and ready to succeed.
Perform health care outreach: Smart Start makes it easier for young children to get screening for health problems related to hearing, speech, vision, dental, and learning disabilities.
Sponsor home visits to new families: Home visits improve prenatal health and the quality of caregiving after birth. Children receiving nurse visits are cognitively more advanced, have fewer behavioral problems, and are less likely to be abused or neglected. The Smart Start program will fund home visits by registered nurses to 50,000 low-income new parents. [AAP, 2004; RJWF, 2006; NFP, 2006]
An Excellent Teacher in Every Classroom
Nothing is more important in a school than the relationship between a teacher and a child. In a single year, a good teacher can raise student achievement by a full grade level more than a less effective teacher. Yet students with the greatest needs are more likely to have less experienced and effective teachers. Poor urban and rural schools in particular struggle to attract and retain excellent teachers. While pay for CEOs and other highly paid workers skyrocketed in recent years, teachers earn a fraction of the salaries paid to other educated professionals.

John Edwards believes we need to invest more in training and paying our teachers to help every child learn at high levels. As president, he will:

Raise Pay by up to $15,000 More for Teachers in High-Poverty Schools
Two-thirds of states do not offer any incentives of any kind for teachers to work in high-poverty schools, and many veteran teachers choose to teach in other schools. Edwards will fundamentally change teachers' incentives by helping states pay teachers in successful high-poverty schools as much as $15,000 more a year. The $15,000 raise includes:

$5,000 for all teachers in successful high-poverty schools: High-poverty schools with high academic performance, good student behavior, and high parent satisfaction could give up to $5,000 in bonuses to each of their teachers, encouraging a schoolwide culture of success. Bonuses will grow over time to reward continuing success and give teachers an incentive to stay. Successful schools will open their doors to share their experiences with other schools.
$5,000 for teachers with national certification for excellence in high-poverty schools: The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certifies excellent teachers, but few of these teachers teach in high-need schools. Teachers who have demonstrated high effectiveness in a national process, such as National Board certification, will be eligible for the higher pay.
$5,000 for veteran teachers who serve as mentors in high-poverty schools: Giving veteran teachers the opportunity to mentor new teachers creates opportunities for career advancement for longtime successful teachers, while providing much-needed guidance to new teachers.
To address other recruitment hurdles, Edwards will help states and school districts improve working conditions and increase time for teacher collaboration and planning. He will also address barriers for teachers moving between states by encouraging reciprocal credentials and studying ways to make pension plans compatible. [NCTAF, 1996 and 2002; Sanders and Rivers, 1996; Jordan, Mednro, and Weerasinghe, 1997; Peske and Haycock, 2006; Rural School and Community Trust, 2006 and 2007; NY Times, 8/27/2007]

Create a National Teacher University
While there are some successful education schools, many future teachers graduate without the skills and knowledge they need. In one survey, more than 60 percent of graduates said their education school did not prepare them. Because having great teachers is a national priority, Edwards will create a national teachers' university â€“ a West Point for teachers â€“ to recruit 1,000 top college students a year, train them to be excellent teachers, and encourage them to teach where they are needed most. The school will waive tuition for students who go on to teach in schools and subject areas facing shortages. It will also lead improvements at education schools nationwide by developing and sharing model curriculum and practices and serve as a forum to promote shared certification and licensing requirements across states. [Levine, 2006]

Help Teachers in Their Early Years
A third of all new teachers leave the profession within three years. Students in high-poverty and high-minority schools are twice as likely as other students to be taught by inexperienced teachers. Edwards will help states support teachers during their early years. He will encourage a transition year for rookie teachers with smaller class sizes, reduced teaching loads, and minimal extra duties. Resources will support structured mentoring programs pairing new teachers with successful veterans. Finally, he will support professional development based in actual classroom needs. [Ingersoll, 2003; Ed Trust, 2007; Levine, 2006; NCATF, 2006]

Reduce Class Sizes
Smaller classes help students learn more by allowing them to get more individualized attention from teachers. According to a Tennessee study, young students in small classes are less likely to drop out of school and more likely to graduate on time, complete more advanced math and English courses, and receive honors. Poor and African-American students gain the most from smaller classes. Edwards will dedicate federal resources to reduce class sizes, particularly for young children who are learning below grade levels. [Krueger and Whitmore, 2001, 2002; Smith, Molnar, and Zahorik, 2003; U.S. Department of Education, 2000]

Train More Excellent Principals
Principals can have a large impact on student achievement by setting high expectations and recruiting and supporting teachers, but many districts face principal shortages and the turnover rate for principals in poor urban and rural districts is as high as 20 percent a year. Edwards will help train excellent principals for high-need schools. Programs could be operated by schools of education, school districts, business schools, or other non-profits with a proven track record like New Leaders for New Schools. Establishing programs to train 3,000 principals a year will meet the needs of most of the country's high-need urban and rural schools. [Education Sector, 2007; Aspen Commission, 2007; Leithwood et al. 2004; Education Week, 9/12/2007]

Use Highly Qualified Teachers for Tutoring
No Child Left Behind requires schools that fail to make adequate progress for three years in a row to set aside up to 20 percent of their Title I funds to pay for "supplemental service" tutoring programs, often offered by private companies with unproven capabilities. Edwards will require that tutors be highly qualified teachers.

Making Every School an Outstanding School
Every child in America should have the chance to attend an outstanding public school that has high expectations for every child. Children need to master both basic skills in reading, writing and math and advanced thinking skills like creativity, analytic thinking and using technology. We cannot tolerate the benign neglect of our schools. No Child Left Behind has lost its way by imposing cheap standardized tests, narrowing the curriculum at the expense of science, history, and the arts and mandating unproven cookie-cutter reforms on schools. As a result, it has lost the support of teachers, principals, and parents, whose support is needed for any reform to succeed.

John Edwards believes that we need to overhaul No Child Left Behind to center our schools around children, not tests, and help struggling schools, not punish them. He will:

Overhaul No Child Left Behind
The law must be radically changed to live up to its goal of helping all children learn at high levels, accurately identifying struggling schools, and improving them. Its sole reliance on standardized, primarily multiple choice reading and math tests has led schools to narrow the curriculum. Its methodology for identifying failing school can be arbitrary and unfair. And it imposes mandatory, cookie-cutter reforms on these schools without any evidence they work. Edwards supports:

Better tests:Rather than requiring students to take cheap standardized tests, Edwards believes that we must invest in the development of higher-quality assessments that measure higher-order thinking skills, including open-ended essays, oral examinations, and projects and experiments.
Broader measures of school success: Edwards believes that the law should consider additional measures of academic performance. The law should also allow states to track the growth of students over time, rather than only counting the number of students who clear an arbitrary bar, and give more flexibility to small rural schools.
More flexibility: Edwards will give states more flexibility by distinguishing between schools where many children are failing and those where a particular group is falling behind. He will also let states implement their own reforms in underperforming schools when there is good reason to believe that they will be at least equally effective.
Launch a "Great Schools" Initiative to Build and Expand 1,000 Successful Schools
Across America, there are public schools that are helping children from all backgrounds succeed, including traditional public schools, public charter schools, small schools, and other models. Edwards will help 250 schools a year expand or start new branches. Federal funds will support new buildings, excellent teachers, and other needs. Among the schools he will support are:

Small schools: Small high schools create stronger communities, reducing adolescent anonymity and alienation and encouraging teachers to work together. At 47 new small high schools recently opened in New York City, graduation rates are substantially higher than the citywide average. Communities can establish multiple schools within an existing facility, build new schools, and reopen old facilities. [Aspen Institute, 2001; N.Y. Times, 6/30/2007]
Early college high schools: High schools on college campuses let students earn both a high school diploma and an associate's degree (or two years of transfer credit) in only five years. In North Carolina, Governor Mike Easley's Learn and Earn initiative raises rigor and aspirations, reduces tuition costs, and relieves overcrowded college campuses. [American Institutes for Research and SRI International, 2007; Easley, 2007]
Economically integrated schools: While income diversity is not a substitute for racial diversity, low-income students perform best when in middle-class schools where they are more likely to have experienced teachers and classmates with high aspirations. States can build magnet schools in low-income communities and create incentives for middle-class schools to enroll more low-income children. [Kahlenberg, 2007; Harris, 2006; NY Times, 7/15/05]
Create a School Success Fund to Turn Around Struggling Schools
Improving our worst schools is going to take more than federal mandates of unproven remedies; it will require a serious commitment of resources. A new School Success Fund will:

Let experts design and implement reforms: Based on North Carolina's successful reform, Edwards will ask teams of experienced educators to spend a year at struggling schools helping start reforms. These educators will tailor comprehensive solutions to each school, rather than adopting silver bullets or one-size-fits-all solutions.
Provide resources to implement them: Some schools need more resources to help their children succeed. The School Success Fund will target resources to the neediest schools. Resources will be available to recruit new school leadership and a core of excellent teachers, reduce class sizes, duplicate proven models, strengthen the curriculum, and other reforms.
Emphasize extra learning time: Due to our 180-day school year, American children spend much less time in class than their foreign competitors. Many other countries have 25 percent more instructional time, which adds up to more than two years by the end of high school. When combined with making better use of learning time and designed with educators, longer school days and years create new opportunities for children to master the basics and a broader curriculum. [ED in 08, 2007; Zimmerman, 1998; CAP, 2006]
Establish stronger academic and career curricula: The rigor of high school classes is the number-one predictor of college success. Even students who do not go to college need strong math and reading skills in the workplace. Edwards believes that all schools â€“ even those in small, isolated, and high-poverty areas â€“ should have access to challenging Advanced Placement courses. And he will support partnerships between high schools and community colleges to help high school students get the training they need for the good jobs where skilled workers are in short supply today. [US Department of Education, 1997; ACT, 2006; ED in 08, 2007]
More Resources for Poor and Rural Schools
Four out of five urban school districts studied nationally spend more on low-poverty schools than on high-poverty schools. Rural schools enroll 40 percent of American children â€“ including most children in Iowa, New Hampshire, and North Carolina â€“ but receive only 22 percent of federal education funding. Edwards will increase federal Title I funding and dedicate the increases to low-income schools and districts and rewarding states that distribute funding where it is needed most to increase learning. He will also invest in distance education and cutting-edge software to bring the promise of new learning technologies to remote areas. [NASBE, 2003; Rural School and Community Trust, 2007; Digital Promise, 2003]

Meet the Promise of Special Education
More than thirty years ago, Congress committed to fund 40 percent of the excess cost of educating children with disabilities, but it provides less than half that amount. George Bush has proposed a $300 million cut. Edwards opposes the Bush cuts and supports getting on a path toward meeting the federal promise. [Committee for Education Funding, 2007]

Raise Graduation Rates
Almost a third of all students drop out of school before earning a high school diploma, and rates among children of color or from low-income families are higher. At nearly 2,000 high schools nationwide â€“ called "dropout factories" â€“ more than 40 percent of students won't graduate. Edwards will create multiple paths to graduation such as Second Chance schools for former dropouts and smaller alternative schools for at-risk students. He will focus on identifying at-risk students and support the Striving Readers literacy program and one-on-one tutoring to keep them in school. Edwards will also fund additional guidance counselors in high-poverty schools. [Baron, 2005; Alliance for Excellent Education, 2007; Balfranz and Legters, 2004; NCES, 2004]

Support High School Service Programs
The energy and enthusiasm of high school students who want to make their community and their country a better place to live. One type of service program, service-learning, has been shown to have positive impacts on students' civic engagement, college enrollment, career development, and personal relationships. Nearly half of school-age children lack the activities and role models that are opportunities to make a difference through helping others. Edwards will create a Community Corps service programs for high school students. It will provide resources to high schools that choose to make community service a graduation requirement, helping them make service opportunities higher in quality and integrate them into the curriculum. [NYLC, 2006; America's Promise Alliance, undated]

Senator Dodd is a Genuine Hero of the People with Senator Reid Something Else

2008-01-26T15:06:00.000-08:00

More disruptions to the Cheney/Rockefeller plan caused by Senator Dodd are taking place as we write. Dodd may not have impressed enough people to gain the presidency, but he certainly has impressed the activists' wing of the Democratic Party while Senator Reid appears to be disgracing it.
-Shundahai39

-- Glenn Greenwald

Once again, the forces behind telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping powers were stymied in their efforts to ensure quick and seamless passage of their bill.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the FISA and telecom immunity conflict, there is something quite unique about how things have proceeded that I think is worth noting. Telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping powers are exactly the types of issues that normally generate very little controversy or debate. Identically, the bill advocated by Dick Cheney, Jay Rockefeller and Mitch McConnell is the type of bill that is normally passed, quickly and quietly, by Congress without any trouble. That isn't happening this time, and it's worth looking at why that is.

The establishment media has virtually ignored these matters from the beginning. Most establishment-serving pundits who have paid any attention -- the David Ignatiuses and Joe Kleins and Fred Hiatts -- have done so by advocating, as usual, the Establishment position: retroactive immunity and warrantless eavesdropping powers are the right thing to do. Although there is no citizen-constituency whatsoever crying out for telecom immunity or new warrantless eavesdropping powers, the forces behind those provisions are the ones which typically dictate what Congress does: namely, the largest corporations and their lobbyists, who have been working, as always, in the dark to ensure that the law they want is enacted.

That's typically the way Washington works -- the most significant laws are seamlessly enacted with little real debate or attention, driven by corporations and lobbyists working in secret with Senators, cheered on by the Serious media pundits, with bipartisan pools of lawmakers silently and obediently on board. And once those forces line up behind any measure, it is normally almost impossible to stop it -- not just stop it, but even disrupt it at all. That's the insulated Beltway parlor, virtually impervious to outside influences, least of all the opinions of the citizen-rabble.

* * * * *

All of those standard Beltway forces are squarely lined up behind telecom immunity and new eavesdropping powers, and yet, things are not proceeding smoothly for them at all. Back in December, Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller and Mitch McConnell scheduled just a couple of days for the FISA debate because they assumed that was all that would be needed to deliver quickly and quietly to the President everything he demanded.

But when Chris Dodd and others impeded that plan by obstructing and filibustering, Reid just cynically assumed that once Dodd was out of the presidential race, he would cease with the "grandstanding" and allow the Senate to function the way it is supposed to: collegially delivering to the Establishment what it wants, without disruption.

But Dodd's commitment to impede these corrupt and lawless measures is clearly authentic and was not grounded in cynical political concerns -- as was obvious to anyone uninfected by the jaded Beltway Virus. Dodd's willingness to join Russ Feingold in single-mindedly pursuing what are considered extreme and alienating steps in the Senate to stop this bill -- holds, filibusters and withholding of unanimous consent agreements -- along with Dodd's increasingly eloquent and relentless advocacy on behalf of the Constitution and the rule of law, has disrupted the Cheney/Reid/Rockefeller plan just enough so that it may now unravel altogether.

Dodd has been in the Senate for 24 years. As he is the first to acknowledge, engaging in filibusters and obstruction and defiance of his party's leadership are things he has almost never done. Dodd isn't Russ Feingold. He has been the picture of the establishment Senator in the party's "liberal" wing, rarely deviating and almost never standing alone to oppose the party leadership. So what has changed? Why has he been so willing so tenaciously to pursue this fight -- even in the face of overt though anonymous threats that he could alienate his party's leadership and lose influence as Banking Committee Chairman if he persists?

Dodd himself provided the answer in his Senate floor speech (h/t Kitt):

I've promised to fight those scare tactics with all the power any one senator can muster. And I'm here today to keep that promise.

For several months now, I've listened to the building frustration over this immunity and this administration's campaign of lawlessness. I've seen it in person, in mail, online -- the passion and eloquence of citizens who are just fed up. They've inspired me more than they know.

That is exactly what happened. When the administration first demanded retroactive immunity in the wake of the passage of the Protect America Act, nobody was talking about that issue outside of blogs and grass-roots and civil liberties organizations -- the roster of annoying citizen-groups that are typically ignored. But the pressure built; it became increasingly intense and relentless; it found a political official in Chris Dodd willing to ride it; and it unquestionably has altered the course of how all of this has played out.

As a result, even the three presidential candidates have become increasingly attentive to it -- not enough, to be sure, but more than before. Strictly in response to calls from blog readers, John Edwards issued a series of statements against telecom immunity this week, even sending out a mailing to his email list solely on this topic, despite the fact that he is in the middle of a critical primary fight in South Carolina. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have been making commitments to increase their involvement, with Hillary even vowing to speak out against it today. This week, Barack Obama also made his most emphatic statement to date: "I strongly oppose retroactive immunity in the FISA bill. . . . That is why I am proud to stand with Sen. Dodd and a grassroots movement of Americans who are standing up for our civil liberties and the rule of law."

The lead Editorial in The New York Times this morning is devoted to lambasting Harry Reid and Jay Rockefeller for their active efforts to ensure passage of the Cheney/Rockefeller FISA bill. After failing to do so the first time around, the House in November passed a decent bill that contains no immunity and has numerous safeguards on eavesdropping powers, and -- at least as of now -- appears unlikely to capitulate. The only reason any of that happened is because enough citizens were sufficiently intense and active to catapult this issue to the fore and prevent the quiet and easy enactment of telecom immunity and new warrantless eavesdropping powers. In the absence of that, this would have all been over with, easily and without trouble, back in December.

* * * * *

There is never any shortage of super-sophisticated cynics to come along and say how none of this matters, how it's so pitifully naive to think that any difference can ever be made, how the System is so Corrupted and the Deck So Stacked Against Us that everything is doomed and defeat is the inevitable option. And there is an element of truth to the premises of that defeatist mindset. The principal reason blogs exist, after all, is precisely because all other institutions intended to provide some adversarial check on what our government does -- the establishment media, the "opposition party," the Congress -- typically do the opposite: they serve as enablers of it rather than checks on it. That's all true enough.

But what incidents such as this one conclusively demonstrate is that it is always possible, if enough citizen intensity is mustered and the right strategy is formulated, for citizens to disrupt and defeat the best-laid plans of our corrupt political establishment. There's a comfort and temptation in denying that truth. Those who insist that defeat is inevitable and All is Lost are relieved of the burdensome task of trying. But defeat occurs because the right strategy isn't found, not because it is inevitable.

As always, the significance of what has occurred here shouldn't be overstated. The only reason Senate Democrats became angry on Thursday is because Republicans actually refused to allow Democrats to capitulate, as they were ready and eager to do. Senate Republicans blocked Democrats from caving in completely to Bush because they didn't want this issue resolved. They want to ensure that Bush, in Monday's State of the Union address, can accuse Senate Democrats of failing to act on FISA, and thus attack and mock them as being weak on national security and causing the Terrorists to be able to Slaughter Us All.

And, rather pitifully, some Democrats are shocked -- so very upset -- that, yet again, their demonstrated willingness to give the Republicans everything they demanded has not prompted a Good, Nice, Courteous Response. "We did everything you told us to do. Why are you being so mean and unfair?" That sad posture is what led even Jay Rockefeller apparently to announce that he will vote against cloture on his own bill.

Worse, even if Democrats prevent the Republicans' cloture vote on Monday, that will mean we'll just be right back to where we were before that happened: with a series of votes that will almost certainly end in the Senate with some form of retroactive immunity and vastly expanded warrantless eavesdropping powers. So it isn't as though there is some victory here yet that is complete or even all that meaningful.

* * * * *

Still, it is very worth doing what's possible to encourage Democrats to sustain a filibuster on Monday and prevent a cloture vote on the Senate Intelligence Committee bill, which will mean that there will be no new law in place before the Protect America Act expires (February 2). Bush will then have to choose -- at least as Reid is boldly promising -- between some short-term extension of the Protect America Act (with no immunity) or have the bill lapse altogether.

Even just a two-week or one-month extension will allow more time to marshall the opposition to telecom immunity and a new FISA bill and to do what's possible to encourage the House to stand firm behind their bill -- in exactly the way that the Dodd Delay in December prevented quick and easy resolution. The longer this drags on without resolution, the more possible it is to push the opposition to a tipping point, and sometimes unexpected developments or even some luck (such as McConnell's overplaying his hand on Thursday) can prevent it all from happening.

As the events of the last two months demonstrate, if citizen opposition is channeled the right way, it can make a genuine difference in affecting the course of events in Washington. Defeating telecom immunity will keep alive the lawsuits that will almost certainly reveal to some extent what the Government did in illegally spying on Americans over the last six years or, at the very least, produce a judicial adjudication as to its illegality. And, in turn, the effects from that could be extremely significant. Because victories are so rare, it's easy to get lulled into believing that none of these campaigns are ever effective and that citizens can never affect any of it, which is precisely why it's so important to remind ourselves periodically of how untrue that proposition is.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Edwards Can Take on the Moguls

2008-01-26T11:23:00.000-08:00

Corporations are running America. We know the story – send jobs out of the country while cutting wages and benefits at home. This needs to change.

The presidential campaign is under way. Republicans are owned by corporations so no help there. On the Democratic side, polls indicate that Sen. Hillary Clinton is leading with Barack Obama second and John Edwards a distant third.

What is wrong with this picture?

Clinton was once on the board of directors of Wal-Mart. She receives more health industry money than any other member of Congress. She was a cheerleader for the administration's push for NAFTA that lubricated the job flow out of the country. She is going to say no to corporate dominance? I don't think so.

Obama is a nice, intelligent, well-intended young man who may well become a great president. But he likely will be crushed by the corporate empire.
Wake up, peope. Edwards is the man.

A Simple Plan to Fix Education and By So Doing Fix America

2008-01-24T20:42:00.000-08:00

Peter Schrag wrote in The Sacramento Bee, “Tight Budgets Needn’t Halt School Reform Planning,” Jan. 23, 2007, on the Governor’s Education Budget cuts, “It might be nice for once to do some thinking before more money was spent.” John Edwards’ education plan has done that thinking on the national level, implementing large pay raises for teachers and creating a National Teaching Academy comparable to our military academies.

California needs a quick fix and data to validate the fix. So far the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on education have produced no quantum improvement or the data to indicate what is necessary for that improvement. With a combined sixty nine year of public school teaching, my wife and I have concluded that the millions of dollars spent on education should be spent to attract the very best, the most qualified teachers. Californians have constantly heard throwing money at education is not the way to fix education. Not throwing money at education will guarantee failure. The mistake is not throwing money at education, but the way that thrown money is used.

High pay usually guarantees quality workers. Let’s pay each teacher a starting salary of $100,000 with a top of $250,000 and see how long it takes for California to once again have our education the envy of the world. The total budget for California in 2006 was 67.1 billion dollars. For example, had we paid each of the 292,012 teachers $100,000 their salaries would have comprised 43 % of the education budget. High salaries will attract the brightest and the best – creating one educated generation after another. All the No Child Left Behind fixes simply waste money and precious time on unworkable innovations.

If a teacher is well-educated, loves his subject matter and strives to develop his teaching skills to maximal efficiency, then his expertise will follow. The prospective teacher will thoroughly prepare himself before he applies for a teaching job because the hiring with become extremely competitive. The morale of the hired teacher will rise because his skills are rewarded which is a societal validation of his professional worth. His students will have added respect for their teacher because society values him as evidenced by his large salary. His best students will want to become teachers.

Critics will say teachers do not deserve such salaries. Nothing else has worked so let us try this very simple idea for ten years. Let’s see if teachers indeed are worth the salary and the high trust the public places in them. Nothing that all the think tanks and the universities have come up with has worked so far. Let’s enjoy watching teachers earn their salaries by educating all our children. The results will be so exemplary the system will be used throughout the nation. All innovation begins in California; this one is long overdue.

Many will say that this idea oversimplifies the problem; this fix is too simplistic and therefore cannot work. Education however needs a simple fix now. Let’s call this idea the Simple Plan to Fix Education (SPFE). This idea is always discussed but never tried while hundreds of unsuccessful fixes have failed.

In my thirty-eight years of teaching, I observed that teachers who were well-educated in their fields, who loved their jobs because they knew they were qualified and were teaching their students successfully, who usually had other incomes to supplement their teaching salaries and were satisfied sacrificing pay for helping society were always the best teachers. Every teacher cannot afford a financial sacrifice for the luxury of teaching. Raising pay, guaranteeing teacher expertise and making teaching especially attractive as a profession, will return California to its former position as the world’s educational leader. California, the nation and the world will benefit from this transformation. Let’s have the courage to try to work out the devil in the details of this plan.

Only Improving Education Will Keep Us the World Leader

2008-01-24T19:39:00.000-08:00

The key to fixing America is education. Education prepares for the future and our future is imperiled. America must provide the world’s best education to keep America leading the world. John Edwards’ Restoring the Promise of American Schools is based on three guiding principles: every child should be prepared to succeed when he shows up in the classroom; every classroom should be led by an excellent teacher; and every teacher should work in an outstanding school.

"Education is an issue that's very personal for me," said Edwards.
" … I was lucky to have public school teachers who taught me to believe that somebody from a little town in North Carolina could do just about anything if he worked hard and played by the rules.”

Edwards will also create a National Teacher University – a West Point for teachers – to recruit 1,000 top college students a year, train them to be excellent teachers, and encourage them to teach where they are needed the most. His plan will give extra support to first year teachers, reduce classroom sizes, and train more excellent principals.

Edwards gives America a future through his education plan. Imagine the improvement if teachers were paid $100,000 a year.

Let's Usher Kranz Out the Door with Doolittle

2008-01-23T15:36:00.000-08:00

Lets' see if I have this right.

Placer County Supervisor Bruce Kranz and real estate developer Michelle Ollar-Burris (alias "Mary Smith") are two big supporters of - and contributors to - the disgraced John Doolittle, a pal of convicted felon Jack Abramoff. Bruce and Michelle are also old friends, so Bruce appoints Michelle to the county planning and zoning commission, stacking it with pro-Big Development supporters. Kranz and Michelle Ollar-Burris encourage building John Doolittle's Auburn Dam with taxpayers’ money so their developer friends will have enough water for all their planned communities located between Roseville and Lincoln.

But Michelle also has a checkered past as a realtor and has been suspended, something Kranz either forgot, overlooked or completely ignored when vetting her. So Kranz hires her anyway.

Soon, she gets caught doing illegal lot splits and avoiding rural conservation requirements. At first, Kranz defends her, but public pressure mounts as the investigation of her proceeds and a week later Kranz flip-flops, He asks her to leave. She refuses. She gets fired.

Now, thanks to Kranz's bad judgment in hiring her in the first place, Placer County is the subject of a rather nasty lawsuit from Michelle Ollar-Burris, which promises to cost taxpayers plenty.

It sounds like Kranz is a paid agent for Big Land Development and John Doolittle's chosen successor in the local office of the GOP Culture of Corruption. In appointing a friend who he must have (or should have) known was potential trouble, Kranz acted contrary to Placer County' best interests.

Of course the shepherd always tries to convince the sheep his interests and theirs are the same, but ask yourself one question; Do we really need another Big Developers For Doolittle clone running things around here?

Bush Lie #12, 007 - The Surge is Working! Or is it the Bribes Paid to Iraqis Are Working?

2008-01-21T20:15:00.000-08:00

No matter what the administration says, the troop surge didn't work and is not working currently. Dropping another 30,000 warm bodies into Iraq did not reduce the violence against U.S. troops.

So what did reduce American deaths? Bribery did. In May 2007, 126 U.S. troops were killed during the second deadliest month of the entire Iraq war. Gen. Petraeus was under pressure from Bush to reduce spiraling casualties in an increasingly unpopular war. So Petraeus "cut a deal" with enemy Sunnis and al-Qaida insurgents.

The military calls Petraeus' program "Concerned Local Citizens." We call it bribery, protection, ransom, tribute, or extortion. Petraeus implemented the policy that no one in Washington seems ready to praise or even talk about; that of paying the enemy money so they don't hurt us.

Some 70,000 former al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents are now being paid by the U.S. military, paid with TAXPAYERS' MONEY, YOUR MONEY. Did you or I authorize Bush to use our money for bribes to cover his failure? It adds up to about a quarter billion dollars ($250,000,000) OF YOUR MONEY a year.

How can we be sure that the bribery worked and not the troop escalation? You have only to look at the numbers. Violence in Iraq reached an all-time high during the initial six months of the surge. Payments, however, suddenly and dramatically turned al-Qaida insurgents into our erstwhile employees, on salary to not kill us.

Now that we're funding them, arming them and training them, they have become "concerned citizens." But these same people who were recently shooting at us are not our friends, they do not like us, they do not want us in their country, and they are still Islamic mujahadin, al-Qaida. That much is unchanged.

Who says OUR money can't buy Bush friends? Why not just give all Iraqis informants jobs with Blackwater so Cheney can make more money too and bring the troops home? The informants won't last long because their fellow Iraqis will kill them as traitors.

When An Irresistible Conqueror Meets an Unsuspecting People

2008-01-19T08:20:00.000-08:00

Imagine that a conqueror with an irresistible army invades your county. He institutes martial law, suspending the U.S. and California Constitutions. He replaces the Board of Supervisors with his Board of Directors, replaces the Sheriff Department with his mercenary companies, replaces the public school system with charter schools with arbitrary requirements for teachers, no set pay or graduation requirements, and privatizes all utilities and transportation. He replaces all city governments with his own people. He installs a multinational corporation to run the water supply. He commandeers all Tahoe lakeshores and the prime lands in all cities and turns them over to developers for hotels and casinos and displaces the original owners to temporary shelters.

All these changes are installed instantly while the people are in shock. All personal rights and freedoms are suspended. YOU, THE TAXPAYER, PAY FOR ALL OF THIS.

This Milton Friedman technique is called disaster capitalism under the Shock Doctrine of Bush and his neocons. If it sounds familiar, it is because it was done in New Orleans and Iraq and to a large degree to the U.S. after 9/11, with the creation of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. The conqueror awaits the next hurricane or 9/11.

Limbaugh is Despicable ... Again ... And Again

2008-01-17T18:55:00.000-08:00

"Obama is holding his own against both of them [Bill and Hillary Clinton], doing more than his share of the 'spadework,' maybe even gaining ground at the moment using not only the 'spade,' ladies and gentlemen, but when he finishes with the 'spade' in the garden of corruption planted by the Clintons, he turns to the 'hoe.' And so, with the 'spadework' and his expertise - using a 'hoe' - he's faring well."

--- Rush Limbaugh, January 14, 2008

________________________________

Can it be that Rush is making jejune racial references? I'm just shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you!

So the fat dope addict couldn't even find the cojones to come right out and say " he's a nigger."

'Spade' and 'hoe' - that's the American conservative message?

He's back in the oxycontin bottle again. He cannot even be a forthright racist. He has corrupted the Right as much as he has corrupted himself, and the Right does not even know it.

Romney and Huckabee Are Not Religious?

2008-01-17T08:08:00.000-08:00

Did you hear Romney and Huckabee bickering about religion? Their patter is faith-based politics running amok. After eight years of St. George W., who would have thought the madness would continue?

Although I hate to admit it, Baptist leader Robert Jeffress may have a valid point when he said, "even though Romney talks about Jesus as his Lord and Savior, he is not a Christian. Mormonism is not Christianity, Mormonism is a cult." Let's examine the evidence.

According to Mormon scripture, God and his son Jesus (called Jehovah in the Old Testament ), first appeared to Joseph Smith in New York in 1820. God told Joseph Smith that Christan teachings were all wrong, their creeds were an abomination in his sight, their ministers and theologians were corrupt charlatans. HIs words are clear enough. Mormons not Christians.

During a debate the Huckster asked the Mitten if Jesus and the Devil were brothers. Later, Huck had to apologize for the cheap shot.

Being an observant devout Mormon, Mitt Romney knows full well that Jesus and Satan are two of God's many sons. Yes. They are brothers. In fact, when God accepted his favorite son Jesus' divine plan for humankind rather than his other son Satan's divine plan, Satan went ballistic, causing the Great Sibling rivalry.

Mitt also knows that a lost tribe of biblical Hebrews sailed to America. Their descendants are known as American Indians (in Mormon, they're called "Lamanites"- bad Jews). Romney knows that Jesus Christ once materialized in New York where he announced he would found his Heavenly Kingdom in Independence, Missouri. Mitt knows that obedient Mormon men can become Gods, with their own planet in outer space, just as the formerly-human God the Father does - on his own home planet of Kolob.

Mormons believe there are three Gods; that God embraced integration in 1978 (before which people of black African ancestry were cursed by God). Mormons scripture says the Prophet Brigham Young visited the moon where he found kindly tall people who dress like Quakers, and where each day is 1,000 years long. Romney believes that God finally repudiated thousands of years of polygamy just so Utah could become a state.

This nonsense is not at all like the Huckster's rational, orthodox Christian beliefs. Huck knows that God, disguised as a ghost, raped a Palestinian virgin peasant girl, then abandoned her to raise his son alone. And that the son grew up to be a sort-of guru/faith healer who promised to make his country into a theocracy and kick out the imperialist occupation forces, but instead was executed by the occupiers for being an insurgent, and then his reanimated corpse was seen eating some fish, visiting his former students and flying up into the sky saying, "I'll be back."

The moral? Real Christians are rational? Non-Christian Mormons are gullible dupes. Look at the FACTS!

Christianity and the Republican Party Have Become Sanctuaries for Perverts

2008-01-04T16:17:00.000-08:00

What is it about folks on the Christian right who preach the Good Book but are really, really bad? You know, guys like Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggert and Ted Haggart, who never flinched at taking their pious flocks' money but always managed to set aside a little for some out-of-town sweet young stuff of either gender?

That got me thinking about other Christian conservative "holier-than-thou" folks. Their perversions have been routinely reported in various national publications so I don't have to make anything up.

Their commonality is that they are most often Republican Conservative Christian activists who have preached "Christian family values" while performing unspeakable acts of perversion, usually illegal, often with minors, frequently with their own family members. Is this behavior family values from the conservative Christian right?

Now, I am not saying that there aren't perverts who call themselves Democrats. But somehow the conservative Republican brand are true and certain holy hypocrites, along with being perverts. When a political party presents itself as the Party of God ("Hezbollah," in Arabic) - whether it is Christians in Georgetown or Shiites in Iran - you can be absolutely certain that there is something kinky being hidden underneath all of that religious puffery.

Consider the child rape scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church over the past few years and you will realize that this is an alarming national problem with attempted coverups by the church whose primary mission seems to be to protect its own not its children. The fact that child rape is even more common among Protestant clergy than among Catholic priests is truly horrifying.

When you count the number of Christian Republican anti-gay,anti-choice police that have been arrested and sentenced for perverse acts with children, you come to realize that Christianity and conservative Republican politics are truly a dark, moist hiding place for perverts and scoundrels of all stripes - perhaps in larger numbers than anywhere else. It just goes to show that the worst thing you can do with a dogma is provide it an empire.

A Guide for Christian Biblical Textualists

2008-01-04T08:04:00.000-08:00

For those folks who read the Bible literally and insist that all truth is Bible derived and the word of God, let me ask, " Are you drunk? You think more Bible is what the world needs?"

"... blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock."(Psalms 137:9) -

"Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered and their wives raped"(Isaiah 13:16). -

"Kill old men, young men, old women, young women, and children..." (Ezekiel 9:6)

"...take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the LORD against the sun..."(Numbers 25:3-4) -

" ...hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung and drink their own piss with you?"(II Kings 18:27) -

...Give thy son that we may eat him to day and we will eat my son tomorrow. So we boiled my son and did eat him..." (II Kings 6:28-29) -
I don't think any sane person would follow these biblical principles, but then we are talking about Christian fundamentalists.

That's just what perverts need ... like a serial killer needs a new chain saw. "

The Far Right's War on Christianity and Everyone Else Who Is Not Them

2007-12-29T07:39:00.000-08:00

Maybe Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he said; "There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity; it has made one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites"

In case you didn't notice, the fools are at war with Christianity in America.

While between 80 and 90% of Americans consider themselves Christians of one sort or another, there is apparently a widespread belief that American Christians and Christianity are being persecuted - despite their control of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of national government and many state and local governments.

Apparently,some people still think that in addition to churches and private homes and private organizations, the religion of the majority must be allowed to decorate government institutions (such as public schools and libraries) and pray in public secular venues, so that people of all faiths can be included (like it or not) in the celebration of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If they are not allowed to put their religious symbols in public spaces shared by those who do not follow their religious beliefs, they are "being persecuted."

This bigotted attitude reaches the very heights of wishful martyrdom and shows a fundamental ignorance of the US Constitution. Advocating a separation of church and state - the founding principal establishing true religious freedom by keeping religion and government apart - has now become the "War against Christianity."

The theocratic Christian right seeks to establish dominion over American society. And I don't make this stuff up. Rev. D. James Kennedy, Pastor of Coral Ridge Ministries, calls on his followers to exercise dominion over every aspect of human society. At a "Reclaiming America for Christ" conference in February, 2005, Rev. Kennedy sent fans into deliriums when he stated,

"Our job is to reclaim America for Christ whatever the cost(italics added). As the vice-regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors - in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."

Twenty-five years ago, Christian dominionists targeted the Republican Party as the vehicle by which they could politically empower their religious agenda. At the same time, a cabal of GOP strategists targeted Christian fundamentalist, Pentecostal and charismatic churches to expand the Republican Party power base. It was an unholy and unwholesome alliance.

But this is not about traditional Republicans or even about conservative Christians. It is about the manipulation of people of faith for political power. It is about the rise of dominionists in the U.S. federal government. And today's hard-corps Christian right seeks total dominion. It's packing the courts, changing the laws and rigging the rules. The target is not just the Democrats, but democracy itself. It doesn't get any more dominionist than this.

The fanatical Right is no longer satisfied with worldwide war on the Muslim world; it is now invading the world of the less fanatical American Christain.

As Barry Goldwater prophetically said,"Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives."

It is past time for decent Christians to "stand up".

What is it about folks on the Christian right who preach the Good Book but who are really, really bad? You know, guys like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert and Ted Haggart, who never flinched at taking their pious flocks’ money but always managed to set aside a little for some out-of-town sweet young tenderloins?

That got me thinking about other Christian conservative holier-than-thou folks. Their perversions have been routinely reported in various national news media, so I don't have to make anything up. Their commonality is that they are most often Republican Conservative Christian activists who have preached "Christian family values" while performing unspeakable acts of perversion - usually illegal - often with minors - frequently with their own family members. So much for family values from the Christian religious right.

Now, I am not saying that there aren’t perverts who call themselves Democrats. But somehow the conservative Republican Christo-fanatics are true and certain holy hypocrites - along with being perverts. When a political party presents itself as the Party of God ("Hezbollah," in Arabic) - whether it is Republicans in Georgetown or Shiites in Iran - one can be absolutely certain that something obsessive or kinky is being hidden by all of that religious puffery.

Consider the child rape scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church over the past few years and you will realize that this is an alarming national problem. The fact that child rape is even more common among Protestant clergy than among Catholic priests is truly horrifying.

Then when one counts the number of members of the Christian Republican Anti-gay and anti-choice Police that have been arrested and sentenced for perverse acts with children, the observer realizes that Christian religion and conservative Republican politics are truly a dark, moist hiding place for perverts and scoundrels of all stripes - perhaps in larger numbers than anywhere else, a dark, moist place for growing vermin of indescrible evil.

The worst thing one can do with a dogma is provide it an empire - the empire of politics and religion in the Party of Fear.

Racism Revealed in Republican Candidates' Stand on Immigration

2007-12-26T07:05:00.001-08:00

The Republican Presidential candidates, like Tom Hudson of the Placer County Republican Central Committee, all believed they could employ Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy of playing the disguised race card using undocumented workers as their racial scapegoats to play to the basest part of the already very base core of the Republican Party ... pure racists.

However, the Southern Strategy did not work this time because many Republican businessmen are suppressing their racism in favor of their bottom line. They hate paying workers fair wages more than they hate Mexicans so they are rejecting their racist Presidential candidates in favor of having workers available they can exploit.

Long Live the Republican Party, America's current Nazi Party equivalent.

Are They Ready for Democracy?

2007-12-23T21:02:00.000-08:00

It's frequently said that Islam is poorly adapted for democracy. When you consider sacred verses, there does seem to be a good case for incompatibility.

"...totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys;" or,

"If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, 'Let us go and worship other gods,' don't give in or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must surely put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death and then the hands of all the people."

Any religion that believes that its enemies should suffer total destruction, family genocide and livestock eradication, or that anyone not following the faith not only should be, but MUST be killed by you certainly does not seem fit for democracy. The thing is those quotations didn't come from the Qur'an - they came from the Bible.

Anyone who doubts that Christianity can be just as violent and intolerant as Islam is ignorant of both history and current events. Christianity is filled with holy wars of conquest and the murder of innocent populations - and many of them not comfortably in the distant past.

Everyone who thinks the Ten Commandments should be posted in every school and courthouse ought to be reminded about God's Army, an armed Christian militia rebelling against the Buddhist military government of Myanmar. Under the Christian banner of establishing a "government based on the Ten Commandments," God's Army has killed more than a million people - far more than al-Qaeda has. God's Army is infamous for its forced conscription of child-soldiers.

For anyone building a case for the basic incompatibility of Christianity and democracy there are scriptures to prove it. You can find far more violence, far more intolerance, and far more destruction from God in the Bible than you will ever find in the Qur'an - if only because the Bible is longer.

But it's not that one religion is better. It's not that one religion is more violent. It's that theocratic democracy is an impossibility. That's just as true for Christianity as it is for Islam

Ninth Anniversary of the Fellatio Impeachment

2007-12-22T16:49:00.000-08:00

Nine years ago this week, in December of 1998, the House of Representatives - through a bill authored by serial adulterer Henry Hyde (R-Dead) during a lame-duck session of Congress where Speaker and serial adulterer Newt Gingrich* (R-Gadfly) - who started up with a mistress while his wife was in the hospital with cancer - had to hand over his speaker's gavel to Ray LaHood (R-IL) during a floor debate marred by the infidelity scandal and resignation of House Speaker candidate and serial adulterer Bob Livingston (R-LA) -voted to impeach the President of the United States over a blowjob.

Impeachment was initiated, insisted on and voted on by Republicans who now allow Bush's immoral and lawless administration free rein to run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution without a hint of oversight.

Won't some loyal American please perform oral sex on Bush so the Republicans will act? Larry Craig, David Vitters or one of the prostitutes Vitters used?

_____________________

*newt note: Anne Manning has confirmed "a relationship" with Newt while he was married to Jackie Battley. "We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" Kip Carter, Newt's former campaign treasurer, was walking Newt's daughters back from a football game one day and cut across a driveway where he saw a car. "As I got to the car, I saw Newt in the passenger seat and one of the guys' wives with her head in his lap going up and down. Newt kind of turned and gave me this little-boy smile. Fortunately, Jackie Sue and Kathy (Newt's daughters) were a lot younger - and shorter - then." In March of 2007 it was revealed that Gingrich was having an affair while serving as Speaker of the House. This affair occurred at the same time Congress was investigating President Clinton.

GOP Self-Interest Is the Greatest Threat to Survival of U.S.

2007-12-22T16:46:00.000-08:00

The greatest threat to the survival of the United States is not Iran, North Korea or even al- Qaida. It is the Republican Party.

President Bush's policies have turned the last great superpower into the world's biggest joke - only no one is laughing. He has disregarded global warming, squandered the treasury with lack of oversight and rampant cronyism and destroyed habeas corpus, the integrity of voting and the rule of law. The list is endless. He has politicized all branches of government.

All Republican presidential candidates (except Ron Paul) are using fear to be a tougher Bush-like president, with no thought to the well being of the U.S., only the Republican Party. Bush's Orwellian doublespeak blinds Republicans to the destruction the GOP has caused - eliminating any desire to change it.

Bush has lost all credibility as a leader and the U.S. is drifting aimlessly in a rapidly changing world. For the U.S. to survive, it must elect a Democratic president (the worst Democratic candidate is many times better than the best Republican) and increase the Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. The U.S. cannot stand another age of Republican insanity. How long can the GOP defy the Constitution?

Oop! They Did It Again!

2007-12-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

Britney Spears' 16-year old sister, high-school junior Jamie Lynn Spears, announced that she is 12 weeks pregnant by her boyfriend. It seems they've been going at their active relationship for 3 years, since Jaime Lynn was 13. He's a 19-year-old pipe layer; a deer-hunting, dirt-bike-riding, former high school class president.

Mom Lynne Spears is furious. Apparently, Jaime-Lynn sold the joyous announcement to OK! celebrity magazine for $10 thousand and Mom Lynn Spears' book on Christian parenting, due out in the Spring of 2008, has been indefinitely delayed. The loss to the abstinence only movement will be immeasurable.

You can't make this stuff up. So, Republican family values voters: how's that ' teaching abstinence only' thing coming along? Of course, if Mama Lynn were a TRUE Christian, she'd march Jaime-Lynn and her inseminator right out to the soccer field, tie a sack around them, bury them up to their necks and let the whole trailer park congregation stone them to death.

"I'm telling the kids Zoey 101 has been canceled." says Arden VanNatten of Schenectady, New York. "I hope Nickelodeon does the right thing and cancels the show. She is a role model for young girls."

Reverend Jedd Clampet of the Lewis Carroll Family Values Coalition announced, "Parents of really ripe, luscious teenage daughters like Jaime-Lynn are encouraged to lie with... er, lie to them."

Also, Rev. Clampet should probably be kept away form "really ripe, luscious teenage daughters like Jaime-Lynn" for their mutual protection. The frustrations of the abstinence only policy probably extend to the Reverend.

This Scapegoat Finds a Real Goat

2007-12-21T12:37:00.001-08:00

Republican candidates for president are at best an undistinguished lot. When the administration was deceitfully beating the drums for war against Iran, they outdid each other being the most bellicose. When the NIE report concluded Iran had stopped enriching uranium in 2003, they all concentrated on vilifying immigrants for destroying our health care system, trading one lie for another.

Now Bush and the Republican candidates are attempting to obfuscate the truth of the NIE report, as they did with Global Warming, by creating a faux-debate in people’s minds where no debate exists. They cannot refute the truth, so they create a debate around the truth.

If our health care system is broken, it is NOT by immigrants. Republicans have broken it by giving it to corporate America, whose goal is to increase profits not improve health care. Republicans’ goal to privatize the US for personal profit does no individual any good service ever because it enriches only corporate America.

Republicans, vilifying immigrants as the cause of our broken health care system, are laughably tragic. It is nothing more than Republicans employing Lee Atwood’s Southern Strategy of creating a scapegoat to take the focus off themselves, the real perpetrators.

GOP's Current Southern Strategy Will Fail

2007-12-21T12:35:00.000-08:00

The Republicans’ current Southern Strategy of creating hatred of undocumenteds by saying immigrants (Mexicans) come here for our health care system is beyond ludicrous. The Lie is if immigrants did not come here for our free health care, it would work beautifully and privatization would be legitimized. Our health care system is catastrophically broken primarily because it is privatized, a for-profit system run by corporations, that exist for profit not quality care.

Most immigrants have free, accessible health care at home; they come to the US not for health care but to work because Republican employers unlawfully exploit their labor by hiring while demonizing them. Immigrants do the dangerous and dirty work for a pittance and are here because of employer exploitation. Republicans’ Southern Strategy failed against Blacks; it will fail against hard working, reliable Mexicans.

The Party of Fear needs a new Lie with which to frighten voters into voting against their own best interests by supporting the vested interests of corporate America, represented by the Republican Party. Republicans exploit Evangelicals and Fundamentalists and Mexicans for their profit. So far the Republicans have been able to fool all the people all the time. Will the voters allow them to continue?

This Scapegoat Finds a Real Goat

2007-12-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

Right Wing Evangelicals Got It Wrong

2007-12-13T05:54:00.000-08:00

The racism and me-firstism of the religious right in their treatment of undocumented workers is an outrage against the teachings of Jesus. Every Republican candidate for president tries to outdo the other on discriminating against Mexican undocumented workers who are in the US because employers, mostly Republicans, want their cheap labor but not their fellowship.

Jesus said to love thy neighbor as thyself. He did not say to love only right wing Loonies like yourself, and hate those who are not as well off as you, who do not have the same color skin as you, who come from a country poorer than yours. He did not discriminate as conservative Christians do.

Jesus would vomit if he could see what conservatives have done IN HIS NAME. Jesus taught the prophets to teach us to love God unconditionally and to love thy neighbor as thyself ... no equivocation, no quibbling, no discriminating. Jesus was a straight talker unlike many of his current evangelical followers who do not seem to understand his teachings.

The US Constitution guarantees freedom of religion which includes the right not to believe, which many of the current band of intolerants have ignored or forgotten or never knew. Bigotry and racism have no place in the teachings of Jesus.

Republicans Gotta Have Someone to Hate

2007-12-11T19:29:00.000-08:00

Horace Mann wrote, "Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge."

Immigration is racism writ large - the "Southern Strategy" reanimated to stoke fear, resentment and loathing (not against African-Americans who are now protected from such rank hatred openly expressed)but against our brown American neighbors from the south.

Bigotry against minorities is not only acceptable, but is encouraged by the Republican base (and the basest of Republicans). The targets change as each previous target minority has won its civil rights. This season the attack is not only on gay Americans, but also even more against Mexicans, thinly veiled under the pretense of "illegal."

Gotta have some minority to hate! Gotta have have some group that supposedly threatens the White Christian Male social fabric of America by having the audacity to want to be treated like humans. The Cross has replaced the Lynching Tree as a symbol designed to create fear in the dispossessed.

But what if one of those (insert minority here) moves next door, or marries your daughter, or wants your dangerous low-wage job, or prays to a different God, or gets on the same elevator as you? How can the Constitution be amended to keep us secure from this terrorism? Let's use the Cross in place of the Lynching Tree.

Republicans gotta have someone to hate to prop up their eternal emptiness.

Bush Disregards the Truth ... Again

2007-12-10T14:45:00.000-08:00

It’s a shame the headline, “Stunning reversal on Iran,” in no way reflects the President’s words or deeds. Although he probably knew of Iran’s lack of an Iranian nuclear weapons’ program for months, his rhetoric has continued to reflect threats against that nation. His desire to attack Iraq is terrifying to me and all reasonable people. The only thing between this man and another war is whether or not he will impose his power as the “decider.”

It is not enough that the National Intelligence Estimate has revealed that Iran ended its nuclear weapons development program four years ago Our power hungry president wants to make sure that Iran does not have the knowledge to build weapons, His bombastic words even after knowing Iran had no program are more the words of a madman than a president. On Oct. 17 of this year he made the ominous statement: “I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” PREVENT THEM FROM HAVING THE KNOWLEDGE!!!!! Doesn’t he realize they already have the knowledge, as does anyone else with access to the internet? It is not enough to control Iran’s actions. We must also control their thoughts!

As far as I can see, the only way to avoid World War III is to elect a Democratic president and Congress rather than the rabid warmongers who echo Bush’s words.

Are You Saying All Mexicans are Lazy and Stupid?

2007-12-10T14:35:00.000-08:00

Are you implying that Mexicans are lazy and stupid and criminally inclined and lackadaisical about establishing honest government?

As for taking a stand for responsible government, haven't you heard about Mexico's overthrow of the French puppet Emperor Maximilian in 1867 and the ousting of the colonial Spanish government in 1821? Haven't you heard of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920?

Remember, that was the revolution that President Wilson sent Gen. Pershing to invade Mexico from the north and the US Marines to invade and occupy occupy Veracruz to secure American oil and Chase Manhattan and Brown Brothers investments? Remember that revolution? The revolution that killed more than 1 million women and men and children of a population of 15 million Mexicans? I'd call that self-determination in a quest for good government. Wouldn't you?

And what about the Zapatistas and their struggle for Mexico's indigenous people against the American-equipped, CIA-schooled federales? I'd say the Mexican people have fought quite a lot for their future - despite our best efforts to subvert them.

As for breaking another country's laws and ignoring national borders, you probably forgot that North American military forces have illegally invaded Mexico four times; in 1846, 1905, 1914, and 1917. It would be nice for Mexico if we stopped meddling in their politics and kidnapping their citizens from their own country. And I'd say you are terribly ignorant about American history. I'd say you know virtually nothing about our manipulation of Central America. I'd say you don't know what you're talking about. I'd say you should learn the subject before you shoot your mouth off again. Go smoke a cigar with Subcommandante Marcos. Learn.

George W. Bush Employment Resume

2007-12-08T10:50:00.001-08:00

This individual seeks an executive position. He willbe available in January 2009, and is willing torelocate. RESUME GEORGE W. BUSH 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20520 EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE: Law Enforcement: I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 fordriving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty,paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" andis not available. Military: I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. Irefused to take a drug test or answer any questionsabout my drug use. By joining the Texas Air NationalGuard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam. College: I graduated from Yale University with a low C average.I was a cheerleader. PAST WORK EXPERIENCE: I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil business in Midland Texas , in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn'tfind any oil in Texas. The company went bankruptshortly after I sold all my stock. I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in asweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money. With the help of my father and our friends in the oilindustry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was electedgovernor of Texas. ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS: I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oilcompanies, making Texas the most polluted state in theUnion. During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angelesas the most smog-ridden city in America. I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to thetune of billions in borrowed money. I set the record for the most executions by anygovernor in American history. With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida,and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, Ibecame President of the United States, after losing byover 500,000 votes. ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT: I am the first President in U.S. history to enteroffice with a criminal record. I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuingcost of over one billion dollars per week. I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankruptedthe U.S. Treasury. I shattered the record for the largest annual deficitin U.S.< face="Verdana" size="2"> history. I set an economic record for most private bankruptciesfiled in any 12-month period. I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a12-month period. I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in thehistory of the U.S. stock market. In my first year inoffice, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs andthat trend continues. I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are therichest of any administration in U.S. history. My"poorest millionaire," Cond oleezza Rice, has aChevron oil tanker named after her. I set the record for most campaign fund-raising tripsby a U.S. President. I am the all-time U.S. and world record -holder forreceiving the most corporate campaign donations. My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one ofmy best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over thelargest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. history,Enron. My political party used Enron private jets andcorporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S.Supreme Court during my election decision. I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburtonagainst investigation or prosecution. More time andmoney was spent investigating the Monica Lewinskyaffair than has been spent investigating one of thebiggest corporate rip-offs in history. I presided overthe biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refusedto intervene when corruption involving the oilindustry was revealed. I presided over the highest gasoline pri ces in U.S.history. I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminalsto be awarded government contracts. I appointed more convicted criminals to myadministration than any President in U.S. history. I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, thelargest bureaucracy in the history of the UnitedStates government. I've broken more international treaties than anyPresident in U.S. history. I am the first President in U.S. history to have theUnited Nations remove the U.S. from the Human RightsCommission. I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law. I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S."prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have refusedto abide by the Geneva Convention. I am the first President in history to refuse UnitedNations election inspectors (during the 2002 USelection). I set the record for fewest numbers of pressconferences of any President since the advent oftelevision. I set the all-time record for most days on vacation inany one-year period. After taking off the entire monthof August, I presided over the worst security failurein U.S. h istory. I garnered the most sympathy ever for the U.S. afterthe World Trade Center attacks and less than a yearlater made the U.S. the most hated country in theworld, the largest failure of diplomacy in worldhistory. I have set the all-time record for most peopleworldwide to simultaneously protest me in publicvenues (15 million people), shattering the record forprotests against any person in the history of mankind. I am the first President in U.S. history to order anunprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the militaryoccupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against thewill of the United Nations, the majority of U.S.citizens and the world community. I have cut health care benefits for war veterans andsupport a cut in duty benefits for active duty troopsand their f amilies in wartime. In my State of the Union Address, I lied about ourreasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies onour British friends. I am the first President in history to have a majorityof Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggestthreat to world peace and security. I am supporting development of a nuclear "TacticalBunker Buster," a WMD. I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bringOsama Bin Laden to justice. RECORDS AND REFERENCES: All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are nowin my father's library, sealed and unavailable forpublic view. All records of SEC investigations into my insidertrading and my bankrupt companies are sealed insecrecy and unavailable for public view. All records or minutes from meetings that I, or myVice-President, attended regarding public energypolicy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable forpublic review. I specified that my sealed documentswill not be available for 50 years. PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERY VOTER YOU KNOW! "Of course the people don't want war. But after all,it's the leaders of the country who determine thepolicy, and it's always a simple matter to drag thepeople along whether it's a democracy, a fascistdictatorship, or a parliament, or a communistdictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can alwaysbe brought to the bidding of the leaders. That iseasy. All you have to do is tell them they are beingattacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack ofpatriotism, and exposing the country to greaterdanger." -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials You forgot to mention:
The atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Bailing on the Kyoto Treaty
Massive wiretapping of US citizens without a warrant
Approval of Torture
The stolen 2004 election
Deliberately leaking Valerie Plame's CIA cover, an act of treason
Katrina and "Heck-of-a-Job" Brownie.
The gutting of the EPA
Taking National Guard troops from their jobs, families and the states they were supposed to protect in order to send them to combat duty in Iraq.
This resume needs touching up.

The GOP Must Be Voted Completely Out of Government

2007-12-07T12:47:00.000-08:00

The greatest threat to the survival of the U.S. is not Iran, North Korea or even Al Quaida. It is the Republican Party. Bush’s policies have turned the last great super power into the world’s biggest joke … only no one is laughing. He has disregarded global warming, squandered the Treasury with lack of oversight and cronyism, destroyed habeas corpus and the integrity of voting, and the rule of law ... the list is endless. He has politicized all branches of government.

All Republican presidential candidates except Ron Paul are using fear to be a tougher Bush with no thought to the well-being of the US only the Republicans Party. Bush’s Orwellian doublespeak blinds Republicans to the destruction the GOP has caused, eliminating any desire to change it.

Bush has lost all credibility as a leader, and the U.S. is drifting aimlessly in a very dangerous world. For the U.S. to survive, it must elect a Democratic President (the worst Democratic candidate is many times better than the best Republican), and increase the Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. The U.S. cannot stand another Age of Republican Insanity. How long can the Constitution defy the GOP?

Trent Lott Gossip

2007-12-03T21:49:00.000-08:00

I'm sure that by now you've heard the 'real' reason Sen. Trent Lott (R-MR) recently resigned. Lott is trying to avoid fallout from his very own gay boyfriend scandal involving a homosexual San Antonio "professional escort" named Benjamin Nicholas. There are rumors that Nicholas had even worked on Lott's staff (pun intended). In any case, it was a big surprise to everyone, straight or gay. I mean, OMG, what self-respecting homosexual would wear a rug as awful as Trent's?

But like 73% of the Florida Republican Legislative Caucus, and at least 68% of Republicans serving in the US Congress, Trent Lott was no self-respecting homosexual - he was a closeted, self-loathing homosexual. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Many Republican closet queens are way more motivated than heterosexuals when it comes to persecuting homosexuals. A look at the voting records of Trent Lott, Larry Craig, Mitch McConnell, Mark Foley, David Dreir, Ed Schrock, and Lindsey Graham give proof of that. But it makes Republicans look like hypocrites. The voters need to understand that although the GOP has many closet homosexuals in the party, they hate themselves just as much as the rest of the GOP hates them.

BTW, Trent Lott’s brother-in-law - millionaire Mississippi attorney Richard Scruggs - and Lott’s nephew have both been indicted on federal bribery charges. Again, Lott denied there was any connection between the family indictments and his decision to retire — just another coincidence, he said.

Bush's Abramoff Coverup Could Protect Him and the So Far Unindicted Congressman John Doolittle from Prosecution

2007-12-02T17:33:00.000-08:00

White House cites security

PETE YOST; The Associated Press
Published: December 2nd, 2007 01:00 AM

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is laying out a new secrecy defense in an effort to end a court battle about the White House visits of now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The administration agreed last year to produce all responsive records about the visits “without redactions or claims of exemption,” according to a court order.
But in a court filing Friday night, administration lawyers said the Secret Service has identified a category of highly sensitive documents that might contain information sought in a lawsuit about Abramoff’s White House visits.
The Justice Department, citing a Cold War-era court ruling, declared that the contents of the “Sensitive Security Records” cannot be publicly revealed even though they could show whether Abramoff made more visits to the White House than those already acknowledged.
“The simple act of doing so ... would reveal sensitive information about the methods used by the Secret Service to carry out its protective function,” the Justice Department argued.
“This is an extraordinary development and it raises the specter that there were additional contacts with President Bush or other high White House officials that have yet to be disclosed,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that filed the suit.
White House spokesman Trey Bohn’s response referred to the Secret Service, saying, “We have nothing to add to the USSS position as stated in the court filing.”
Sensitive Security Records are created in the course of conducting more extensive background checks on certain visitors to the White House.

Has Bush Decided YOU are a Threat Yet?

2007-12-02T17:27:00.000-08:00

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004802.php

Congressional Report Assails Bush Executive Order on Iraq Insurgent Funding

By Spencer Ackerman

November 29, 2007 Over the summer, we reported on an under-the-radar executive order issued by President Bush allowing him to freeze or seize the U.S-based assets of anyone, potentially including U.S. citizens, he deems to threaten "the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq" or who "undermine efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq."The executive order was written so broadly as to alarm civil libertarians, who feared it was a back-door attempt at criminalizing the antiwar movement -- which Bush could conceivably argue posed a threat to Iraq by seeking to end the U.S. military presence -- or even unwitting donors to insurgent-linked charities. A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, Molly Millerwise, told us not to worry: "Be assured that the individuals and entities we add to this list are in full faith acting in an aggressive, violent and reckless way in financing the insurgency," she said.Earlier this month,the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said: actually, maybe you should worry. It released a report exploring "the contrast between the executive order's broad language and its narrow aim" and questioning why the Treasury Department hasn't released a list of eligible Iraq-related targets for the order.While CRS credits Millerwise with indicating that the order will cause the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to primarily go after foreigners, it criticizes the order's "piggybacking potential":The issue is whether the executive order's application to anyone who provides "support" for a designated entity might affect U.S. persons inadvertently involved in some form of assistance, such as arranging transportation for, selling consumer goods to, or providing routine legal assistance to an entity that becomes blocked under the executive order. Could U.S. persons find themselves designated under the authority of the executive order and thereby have all of their assets subject to blocking whether or not the assets have any nexus with the transaction of any blocked entity or with any foreign entity?The report says we can't answer that question until OFAC releases a set of regulations covering how to implement the order. Nothing so far appears to be forthcoming, despite Millerwise's comments to TPMmuckraker creating what CRS calls an "expectation" that OFAC will document its rules for implementation. It's also not clear whether interest from a particular member of Congress prompted the report -- and, if so, which member.(Via Steve Aftergood, who observes, "the potential application of the order appears to be technically unlimited since it includes a recursive clause that has no defined endpoint." In other words, you can be targeted under the order even if you're X Degrees of Kevin Bacon away from an insurgent-related financial transaction.)

Bush's Permanent Militarization of the U.S.

2007-12-02T17:21:00.000-08:00

While I was reading the debate about pulling out of Iraq, I remembered that back in 2003 there was much blogging about permanent military bases in Iraq. So I researched a bit and got some of the more up to date news about them. While congress and Bush are talking about pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, congress is spending billions of our tax dollars for fifteen "enduring bases." On three differenct occasion Bush or Rice have said the US had no plan to built permanent military bases in any country. Now Dana Perino says we are building them now in Iraq, which adds up to ONE MORE BUSH LIE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

Most Americans don't realize that we now have recently-built, city-sized, permanent military bases with swimming pools, multiple bus routes, neighborhoods, Burger Kings, Pizza Huts and other fast food restaurants, car dealerships, shopping malls, fitness clubs, bike trails, apartment complexes, golf courses and even more. Balad Air Base 50 miles outside Baghdad, handles the daily air traffic you would normally see at Chicago's ultra-busy O'Hare. Balad is, in fact, the second busiest airport, military or civilian, in the entire world. It even has its own airline for in-country routes, a fleet of 250 planes. And while you're waiting for your flight to board, you can grab a snack at Subway, Pizza Hut, 24-hour Burger King, Popeye's, or a Starbuck's knock-off called "Green Beans" that serves up triple lattes.

One of the bases is at the new U.S. embassy inside Baghdad's Green Zone, nicknamed by impious Iraqis, "George W's Palace." It's about the size of Vatican City, has its own apartment building complexes (six of them) and its own power generators, water wells, drinking-water treatment plant, sewage plant, fire station, irrigation system, Internet uplink, secure intranet, telephone center (Virginia area code), cell-phone network (New York area code), mail service, fuel depot, international food courts and supply warehouses, vehicle-repair garage, and workshops - and even it's own anti-missile system. This two billion dollar-plus project is the most imperial embassy on the planet, not exactly the perfect signal of a sovereign and independent Iraq or a temporary American presence. These are permanent mega-cities costing billions with populations of 50,000 or more. The average American should at least know that they exist.

Doolittle - The Last Corrupt Republican Left Standing?

2007-11-29T18:02:00.000-08:00

Rep. John Doolittle, the conservative California congressman who has been the focus of a widening corruption probe, has received just lukewarm support from fellow Republicans as he prepares to run for re-election.

“The only thing we know for certain is Doolittle is in trouble. The party leadership does not want to spend a huge sum of money to hold onto this seat,” Allan Hoffenblum, a GOP strategist and publisher of the nonpartisan Target Book that tracks political races, told the Associated Press He added,

“It's almost Doolittle versus the world.”Doolittle, who represents a swath of Northern California, is believed to be the only sitting member of Congress to be under active investigation for his strong ties to former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, now in prison on an array of fraud and conspiracy charges related to his work on behalf of his Native American tribe clients.Abramoff, who was a Doolittle campaign contributor, allowed Doolittle the use of a luxury sports box that he paid for, which the congressman did not initially report. More than that, federal investigators have been puzzled by monthly payments of nearly $5,000 that Abramoff's firm made to Doolittle's wife by way of her company, Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions Inc.Adding to Doolittle's political troubles, two of his congressional aides have been called to testify before a federal grand jury probing their boss. Doolittle, serving in his ninth term, has denied any wrongdoing. He has repeated he has no plans to relinquish the House seat he has held since 1991.“There is just too much dirt around Doolittle to think that he is going to survive,” said Bob Mulholland, a senior campaign adviser for the California Democratic Party, in an earlier interview.“Doolittle, of all the Republican incumbents, is in the worst shape,” Mulholland said from his Sacramento office.

In April, Doolittle's Okton, Va. home was searched by the FBI. A day after the search was revealed by the press, Doolittle relinquished his seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which oversees federal spending requests.

What One Must Believe to be a Republican

2007-11-29T16:23:00.000-08:00

To be a Republican you need to believe:

1. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

2. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's Daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

3. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

4. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

5. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational drug corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

6. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

7. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

8. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

9. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but providing health care to all Americans is socialism. HMO's and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.

10. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

11. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense, but a president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

12. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

13. The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record or his National Guard service record is none of our business.

14. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

15. Supporting "Executive Privilege" for every Republican ever born, who will be born or who might be born (in perpetuity.)

16. What Bill Clinton did in the 1960's is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80's is irrelevant.

17. Support for hunters who shoot their friends and blame them for wearing orange vests similar to those worn by the quail.

18. Inability to tell up from down.

The Europeans Have the Final Solution to the Republicans' Mexican Problem

2007-11-28T21:42:00.000-08:00

When author, pacifist and social critic Victor Hugo proposed in 1870 that the nations of Europe form a union based on principles of free commerce, peace and universal justice, the idea was ridiculed as naive, preposterous and economically undesirable. Now we have a healthy and growing European Union with the world's most vigorous currency.

Customs and passport checkpoints have been abolished at most national borders, resulting in a peaceful and free democratic zone for travel, work and investment. There are 20 official European languages spoken by a total of 460,000,000 souls, roughly the population of North America.

Of course, the EU is not paradise, but that isn't my point. If you (like the critics of Victor Hugo) think an American Hemisphere without borders is utopian, consider the problems of the border policy we are now planning; a 2000-mile wall with armed guards, an ultra-militarized barbed-wire border zone, and a ghettoized Mexican labor force who are potential criminals anywhere north of the border.

This system is a throwback to an age of runaway slaves or Jewish escapees. It is impractical. It is immoral. It is expensive and unsustainable. Mexicans arrive in our country - legally or not - as economic refugees looking for work, organically following the job market as it moves north. They are here because corporate US employers have put up several million Help Wanted signs and because NAFTA devoured any job opportunities they once had back home.

Open borders seem to work for Europe. Why not for America?

Are There No Normal Republican Perverts Left to Run for President?

2007-11-28T21:35:00.000-08:00

Rudy expensed Hamptons trips coinciding with his affair with Southampton resident Judith Nathan...In Hamptons every weekend leading up to 9/11... I'm shocked, SHOCKED, ... My God! Is there any Republican politician out there who is NOT a crook and who just has normal sexual relationships with many kinds of people? Anyone at all? No weird menage-a-trios trysts at an apartment overlooking the smoldering ruins of New York's ground zero, and no billing your secret mayoral booty calls in the Hamptons to the budgets of city agencies tasked with helping poor and crippled people? No gay airport bathroom propositions? No asking underage congressional pages to text you their penis size? No visits to prostitutes in multiple states to have your diapers changed? No divorcing your cancer-stricken, hospitalized wife to carry on an ongoing affair in good conscience? No meth-addicted gay sex while preaching about the abominations of drugs and gays? No calling your subordinate at night while you masturbate with a dildo up your wazoo and tell her how you'd like to loofah her in the shower? No shoving pictures of mangled fetuses in strangers' faces? No raping your own daughters while using the Heavenly Father to rationalize the incest? No more pontificating about the dangers of man-on-dog sex? Oh, and while I'm at it - I'm fed up with my tax dollars paying off Giuliani's Viagra bills, too. But only Rudy fits the Republican fiend prototype of his party's candidate for the persidency.

On Churchill

2007-11-20T20:33:00.000-08:00

Churchill’s immortal tribute to the Royal Air Force,“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”can be paraphrased with great shame to describe the Dubya administration:Never in the field of human conflict were so many lies told to so many by so few.

Churchill also wrote, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”

Bush's Reverse Midas Touch

2007-11-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

Bush’s attack on our country is unparalleled. He lies repeatedly. He has weakened our civil liberties, privatized government services, ignored global warming, politicized all branches of government while upsetting the balance of powers, and weakened our military by hiring over 176 mercenary companies that compete alongside our soldiers with no government oversight and much higher pay.

He has ruined the lives of people nearest to him by forcing them to lie publicly for him. He is a psychopath incapable of ever admitting he is wrong, and he is never right.

Most devastatingly, he has turned the US into a rogue regime running rampant over other sovereign nations, making the US the most loathed country on earth. His lack of government regulation has created the home loan meltdown and unbridled contractor corruption in Iraq. He has deliberately and repeatedly appointed incompetents to high positions in government to undermine and paralyze government oversight all the while directing government moneys to big-money-backers like Halliburton, Bechtel and BlackwaterUSA. Bush uses his presidency for personal gain, never for the good of the people.
Whatever Bush has touched - Hearken Oil, the Texas Rangers, the US government -is cursed with his reverse Midas touch. Bush is devoid of ability, morality or egalitarianism. He is always obviously self-serving, because he believes Americans do not have the ability or will to stop him. So far, he’s right and will be until Americans take action.

How can American stand by, grow fat and runup their credit card debt while Bush destroys the greatest country in the history of mankind? Will people one day look back and say of us as they said of the Germans under Hitler, how could the Americans have let that happen to them? And will another madman curse his people as Hitler did his?

Is Giuliani the Best the Pathetic Republicans Can Do?

2007-11-19T18:09:00.000-08:00

Giuliani is the best we can do? Cross-dressing, thrice-married Rudy Giuliani? The guy with the 'dream team' of consultants that includes David Vitter, a family-values, prostitute-visiting former New Orleans Congressman, and Thomas Ravenel, a cocaine-dealing, South Carolina ex-state treasurer? The same dream team that includes a suspended Catholic priest who also was the lawyer for a pedophile sex-ring? Priest and lawyer Alan J. Placa annulled Giuliani’s first marriage, baptized two of Rudy’s kids and was even the officiant at Rudy’s mom's funeral. Both Placa and Guiliani dated Regina Peruggi, Rudi's most recent wife. In 1982, Placa came up with a way to cancel Rudy's existing 14-year marriage. Since Peruggi and Giuliani were cousins, Placa decided they should have obtained a special dispensation from the church before marrying. This was ironic, because it was Placa who advised the couple before their wedding that they didn't need special dispensation. Placa was finally outed in 2002 in Newsday by victims as a member of a Catholic priest pedophile sex ring that posed as a 'counseling house.' Multi-million-dollar lawsuits were filed, criminal investigations began, and Placa was suspended from the church. Giuliani immediately hired Placa, and Placa has been on Rudy's payroll for six years. You’ve got to hand it to drag-queen Julie Annie - as one of the creepiest guys around, he still manages to surround himself with immoral monsters, crooks and liars. Take high school dropout Bernard Kerick, dubbed the "Baghdad Terminator," (whom President Bush nominated for Homeland Security Secretary, until it was revealed he had not paid taxes for his illegal aliens). Kerick has been indicted for bribes, tax evasion and mob connections as New York police commissioner, and it's also revealed he had simultaneous extramarital affairs with two women - one of whom is writing a book about it. With all that nasty mess, now we have to deal with a sanctimonious pedophile ex-priest? No, not Giuliani. I've had enough. The GOP needs to clean up its tarnished morality - not elect more crooks, liars and perverts. The Party of Fear is creating its own monsters and becoming the Party to Fear.

The Great Hypocrite's Greatest Hypocrisy

2007-11-16T21:19:00.000-08:00

Bush chastising Musharraf for suspending democracy and installing martial law in Pakistan is the greatest hypocrisy of the Great Hypocrite. How can this man look at himself in the mirror and, most significantly, how can Americans sit - fat, happy, and inert - while he dismantles everything that has made America the country that we were before the Great Hypocrite stole two elections? When will Americans stand up, do something and defend America? Are Americans not shocked, shocked to find out the destruction of the American Way is going on here, all the while being handed a dictatorship by the Great Hypocrite?

Bumper Stickers

2007-11-11T16:42:00.000-08:00

1. Bush: End of an Error
2. That's OK, I Wasn't Using My Civil Liberties Anyway
3. Let's Fix Democracy in this Country First
4. If You Want a Nation Ruled By Religion, Move to Iran
5. Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber
6.If You Can Read This, You're Not Our President
7. Of Course It Hurts: You're Getting Screwed by an Elephant
8. Hey, Bush Supporters: Embarrassed Yet?
9. George Bush: Creating the Terrorists Our Kids Will Have to Fight
10. Impeachment: It's Not Just for Blowjobs Anymore
11. America : One Nation, Under Surveillance
12. They Call Him "W" So He Can Spell It
13. Whose God Do You Kill For?
14. Jail to the Chief
15. No, Seriously, Why Did We Invade Iraq ?
16. Bush: God's Way of Proving Intelligent Design is Full Of Crap
17. Bad President! No Banana.
18. We Need a President Who's Fluent In At Least One Language.
19. We're Making Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them
20. Is It Vietnam Yet?
21. Bush Doesn't Care About White People, Either
22. Where Are We Going? And Why Are We In This Handbasket?>23. You Elected Him. You Deserve Him.
24. Dubya, Your Dad Shoulda Pulled Out, Too.
25. When Bush Took Office, Gas Was $1.46.
26. Pray For Impeachment.
27. The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century.
28. What Part of "Bush Lied" Don't You Understand?
29. One Nation Under Clod.
30. 2004: Embarrassed 2005: Horrified 2006: Terrified!
31. Bush Never Exhaled.
32. At Least Nixon Resigned.

GOP Suicide While Wide Awake

2007-11-08T21:41:00.000-08:00

We've been hearing for over a decade from conservatives that liberalism is the source of everything wrong with America. It seems at times that attacking liberals as "evil" is the entire raison d'etre of the whole conservative movement. Nearly everyone recognizes however, that racism is one of the truly foul and wrong things about America. While the Democratic Party was for years the primary home of ex-Confederate white supremacists, most people - especially minorities - are fully aware that this all changed in the 1960s and 1970s, thanks to the Republican's so-called "Southern Strategy." Republicans under Richard Nixon decided to embrace the very same voting white-power racists that the Democrats had just purged, and the Southern Strategy was born. Nixon used racist code phrases. Reagan used a symbolic trip to the murder site of three Mississippi civil rights workers to drop one of Nixon’s code phrases, "states rights," as he warned of fictitious unwed inner-city Negro welfare queens. The Southern Strategy worked, and so it was accepted by all the major GOP players. But now, America's increasing ethnic diversity is tearing the GOP apart. While Ken Melhman apologizes for the Southern Strategy, the people who the GOP has told for generations that non-whites are the cause of all their problems, are demanding that the Congress and the President act as if it were true. So the GOP is stuck pushing punitive anti-immigrant bills, GOP politicians are preparing to run on an anti-immigrant platform, GOP candidates snub non-white associations, and the angry, frightened white base is demanding its pound of flesh in the form of a militarized Mexican border and all-out war against the brown hordes. Considering the rapidly-changing demographics of America, this is political suicide. Many on the right still believe people of color are the enemy, and they intend to make sure the GOP supports their war.It is hard to stop dancing with the devil when he has helped you win so many elections. Meanwhile, the Democrats are laughing all the way to a new majority. Western and southern states are up for grabs, and the Republican Southern Strategy is practically gift-wrapping them for delivery to the Democratic Party.

A Desperate Plea to Inform Yourself of the Imminent Dangers of Bush and the Neocons

2007-10-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

I was born in the tiny ghost town in California in the ominous year Hitler invaded Poland and have always felt America was Paradise, truly the land of the free and the home of the brave. After Bush stole the second election, I truly fear for the survival of our republic. I read articles by his supporters which are so extreme I believe they would vote for Satan if he were the Republican candidate.

With any sort of research, they can inform themselves why he is so bad for the American people. But like him they are non-reading zealots who don’t need facts because their faith leads them to truth. Never has the middle class been so attacked, lied to and used by a US President. We are helpless to show people the truth when they don’t want to know the truth. These uninformed people will be responsible for all of us living in a police state.

Our republic is like Germany was in the late 1930’s when Adolph Hitler was lying to the German people while securing a stranglehold on the government. Like Hitler Bush believes if he repeats a lie often enough people will believe the lie. So far he is correct. People said that the German people, among the most educated and sophisticated on earth, were immune to the persuasions of a madman. Bush and his small circle of neocons are genuine madmen, concerned only with consolidating power and conquering the world through their policy outlined in Project for a New American Century. Like Hitler their dream is of world domination at any cost.

In a Labor campaign speech Bush blatantly lied to the people telling them Kerry will raise taxes on small business and that he will lower taxes. Kerry’s platform clearly states he will lower taxes on small business, but when people refuse to read and inform themselves firsthand they become easy dupes for to the lies of demagoguery. Bush lied about WMD’s, the link between Iraq and 9/11 attack, his service in the Texas National Guard, the cost of Medicare prescriptions for the elderly and succeeds with his lies because his supporters are blindly following him right or wrong.

A friend from the Midwest said all folks there must know is that he is a regular churchgoer. He may be a regular churchgoer, but true Christians do not send a thousand young Americans to their death in Iraq, hundreds more in Afghanistan and thousands of Iraqis and Afghans to the slaughter for a needless war of aggression that only makes sense to corporate America and the neocons - Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, DonaldRumsfeld and Dubya.

By every measure Bush’s imperialistic wars have made the world less safe for Americans and the rest of the world. Iraq under Saddam was not the center of world terrorism it has now become under Bush. Bush’s is the most hated regime on earth, and we Americans are feeling that hatred worldwide, and this hatred will only grow until we have the wisdom to rid ourselves of this regime. Osama Bin Laden could not have asked for more support for his terrorism than Bush’s policies. Osama is now an asterisk in history because Bush has so united formerly disparate factions into a united terrorism force against America.

Because Bush is so closely allied with the Saudi Royal family, he cannot admit that America’s great enemy in not Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and North Korea, any of the countries that the neocons plan to invade some time in the future. Bandar “Bush”, the Saudi Minister to the US, promised Dubya he would lower world oil prices before the November election. Not surprisingly, oil prices are coming down. Saudi Arabia will continue to work in harmony with Bush while their government continues to plan the destruction of America. Remember eighteen of the twenty terrorists involved in the 9/11 attack were Saudis – not one Afghan or Iraqi was involved.

Bush couples lies with fear to focus his power. How large must our national debt grow before people wake up? In three years he took our country from a five trillion dollar surplus under Clinton to a five hundred billion dollar deficit that our children and grandchildren must pay for with a diminish life opportunity.

How negatively must our lives and the lives of our offsprings be affected before we wake up? How many civil liberties must Americans lose before people wake up? Freedom of speech, freedom to assembly, freedom to enjoy the Bill of Rights? How many Americans must die in his wars of aggression before people wake up? How many lies must Karl Rove and Dick Cheney concoct for Bush to tell before the people wake up? How many corporate scandals can Bush brush under the rug until the people wake up?

Our only defense against Bush is to learn the truth … ourselves… through research. Will Americans inform themselves and wake up, or will we follow the path of Nazi Germany? Let’s hope that we wake up. If not, the rest, as they say, will be history.

The Real Axis of Evil

2007-10-25T19:58:00.000-07:00

Reposted from April 2005

Bush, in his mindless way, dubbed Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the axis of evil, which is a hackneyed phrase as all of his ideas are. The American Heritage Dictionary defines evil as “that which is destructive, corruptive, or fallible whether from natural circumstances, or by human ignorance, error, or design.” The word evil has religious connotations and is not usually used in secular areas such as politics. Since Bush has trouble pronouncing basic words, this subtlety is beyond his purview, and he purports to be a born-again religious person, no longer an alcoholic or drug user, so he uses words like evil.. The real axis of evil, the “human ignorance” part, is within the Bush administration. It is made up of Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft.
Bush is a Robin Hood in reverse. He takes money from the poor and gives it to the rich through tax cuts. He gave over 700 billion dollars to his political supporters through this method. He has already given them 1.3 trillion dollars of taxpayer money with his last tax cut. His generosity to his rich friend does not stop there however. Bushites are a cliquey group and love to take care of their own while punishing those who don’t fall in line such as, say, France, Russia and Germany. He used taxpayer money to force a war against Iraq, which no one in the world except America’s bootlick England really wanted. Backward countries such as Spain, Bulgaria, Albania and others supported Bush, knowing he was a vindictive and would throw them a bone for their support which he is currently doing. Not only did he spend about three hundred billion tax dollars destroying one of the weakest regimes on earth and killing over fifty- three thousand Iraqi men, women and children, which is hard to label any other way except to call it mass murder, but he then without competitive bidding gave the contracts to rebuild the country he destroyed to his friends in Bechtel, Schlumberger Ltd., KRW, a subsidiary of Halliburton and other chief political donors. Wasn’t Dick Cheney, the stealth VP of the US, who cannot stand up to the light of day, the same man that almost destroyed Halliburton when he was CEO with his asbestos contracts, yet was still able to rip-off millions and is still on the payroll before he left to “serve the people.”
By any definition what Bush did and is doing ought to be termed evil. Yet he continually cheerleads for more taxpayer money for his friends. Cheerleading is the only skill Dubya was trained for in school, and one must admit he does it well to get so many Americans to naively follow him as he makes his regime the most hated on earth, and the most hated regime in our country’s history, and we Americans the most hated people on earth. You got to hand it to Karl Rove, Bush’s Brain, to be able to shove Bush down the throats of the people. He has to be a good ole boy. He should be the Republican Man of the Century … what a distinction!

Then Bush drags out of oblivion a dinosaur from his Papa’s era with all the hate and meanness of an SS officer forced to leave Argentina to return to Post-War Germany and makes him the Attorney General of the United States of America, the head cop in the country. John lost his senatorial election to a dead man and that has really made him mad so he’s taking it out on the American people by implementing the Homeland Security Act, the infamous USA Patriot Act (which you can download from www.publicintegrity.org) and the incredible Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, all designed to strip the American people of their civil liberties under the guise of protecting them from the people that Dubya’s policies have rightfully made to despise his regime and by association the American people. It is not difficult to imagine the tight-jawed, mean- faced John Ashcroft wearing the uniform of the SS, with the skull and crossbones on his collar. That uniform is the most appropriate garb for a creature of his evil nature. Because he sometimes treats us like the enemy, it is easy to believe he is truly depraved.
Remember Julius Caesar’s warning;

“ And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.”

These are very frightening words which are proving prophetic. Dubya wraps himself in the red, white and blue so he can reward his friends with taxpayer money and tax breaks. If you don’t support Dubya, you’re not supporting the troops and are therefore an evil un-American.

Completing the axis of evil is happy Donald Rumsfeld, the control freak who ruthlessly directed the slaughter of defenseless Iraqis using the greatest military might the world has ever known, smiling all the while, and then Dubya-like swaggered and smirked, as only an old, impotent men can do, and called the massacre a great victory. His war was very similar to the wars the US carried out against the helpless American Indian – the wars were called wars, but they were really massacres, which is what the Iraq war was in truth.

He did not need a plan to destroy Iraq because of our great unparalleled military might, and he did not have a plan. He did not have a plan to rebuild either Afghanistan or Iraq and that is why they are dangerous places with rampant anarchy and lawlessness, unfit for human habitation. He also lacks an exit strategy. Even though one of the several reasons of the week Bush gave for invading these countries was to “free the people”, when finding weapons of mass destruction did not fly, and still does not fly because none have been found nor will be found because there were none, they are less likely to have a future with the Bushites directing rebuilding because their primary concern is how they can corral the oil monies not with giving these people the right of self-determination or “democratic freedoms”. When people say that which is not true they are called liars; when they kill thousands of people they are called mass murderers; when they steal elections and money from the US Treasury, they are called thieves.

So then, the real axis of evil as defined by their actions is Bush, the cheerleader who robs the poor and gives to the rich, all the time using th taxpayers money as his own box of chocolates, while wrapping himself in the flag and peddling untruths to the American people.
Then there is John Ashcroft, the regime member in charge of repealing civil liberties while reforming torts out of existence so corporate America can further exploit the taxpayer.
And finally there is Rumsfeld, the smiling killer of dark-skinned people for the purpose of providing them with “democratic” freedoms.
These three combine to threaten the very foundations of American democracy while professing to bring democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq. These three have combined to made their regime hated by the world, and the American people the most hated society on earth. They feel that the American public is so benighted that they can act with impunity. The American public knows exactly what they are doing and will ultimately hold them accountable for their behavior. They cannot fool all the people all the time. Americans have the insight to discern truth from falsehood. These are three very likeable fellas if one does not have a mind, a conscience or a hope for the future of mankind.

Be the Person You Were Meant To Be

2007-10-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

Because Christians believe they are born depraved, they feel somehow unworthy of living a good life without the guidance of a higher authority. Christians therefore make themselves easy prey to the predators in society hiding in the trappings of politicians and clergymen, who tell them if they surrender their lives to them, if they follow their directives, if they vote for them, they will protect them and watch out for their well-being.

Christians are filled with fear, and fear prompts them to surrender their lives to people who lie to them and tell them they will be safe in their hands. Their faith in a supernatural being creates the blindness that allows other to take advantage of Christians. The Republican Party professes to have God on their side and uses fear to recruit the frightened and the confused. The party then uses their votes to enrich the life of the wealthy.

Thousands followed George W. Bush because he purports to be a man of God when nothing in his life except his words gave evidence that he was. He is just another exploiting snake oil salesman preying on the frightened. Millions turn their free will over to churches that make decisions for them and promise bliss on earth and heaven in the afterlife while fleecing them and taking advantage of them and their families, all for a price. Looked at straight on, church and politicians are really businesses that need income to survive.

Without the innate belief in their own depravity, without its accompanying paralyzing fear, these people could accept the responsibility for their own lives, see with their own eyes, understand and interpret with their own minds what is best for them and for humanity generally, and make very good, even enlightened decisions.
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No one needs a middleman, a broker to lead a good life. That is why we have a heart capable of compassion and love. Yet we see that the world needs changing.

Most agree that the world is a mess, and most fret that the individual can do nothing to make the world a better place, but they are misguided. Most believe that one person cannot make a difference. One person can make a difference. One person has always been the catalyst for change. Alexander the Great started as just a man and conquered the entire known world. Jesus changed the world without writing a word or traveling the world. . Mahatma Gandhi developed civil disobedience and gained freedom for his country and its millions. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Ami and George W. Bush instilled great evil on humanity. One person can make a difference. Cindy Sheehan is doing what no one else could do … awakening the nation to the evil that is George W. Bush and the lies and phoniness his Oil Field Wars are based on. Her only question to Bush is, “What is the noble cause my son died for?” And since he has no answer for her, he runs but he cannot hide. Cindy made a difference and so can you. How?

People look at the world and think the mess so overwhelming they become paralyzed and believe that nothing they do will make a difference. The world is changed one small act of love and compassion at a time. People must cooperate not compete for power over their fellows. We all live on the same planet, we all want to live the good live and the good life is a life of helping others. To the degree that we help others, we are correspondingly human. The only valid index of the good life is how much we help other people.

Each person must decide what kind of world he wants his children to live in and then do what he can to start shaping that world. Other people will start doing these small acts of compassion and love and shortly the world that the individual have influenced will become that better world. Then these small acts combine to create the most powerful force on each … an idea whose time has come, and then the world is changed for the better.

Cindy Sheehan has changed the world for the better and thousands are following her lead because they believe her behavior will make a better world by withdrawing from Iraq. She is one person. You are one person. You can make a difference but, to do so, you must act, you must do these small acts that you believe will make the world better for you, your children and your grandchildren and their grandchildren. The capitalistic culture of competition must give way to the older tribal culture of cooperation that for thousands of years has enabled indigenous cultures to create sustainable lifestyles that do not destroy the planet or their fellows. Capitalistic cultures can no longer be allowed to thrive at the expense of cooperative cultures and the natural resources of our planet.

The Iraq Oil War is one example of how the US has used its power for aggression by invading a weak sovereign state for its oil (despite the lies the Bushites will tell us) because the US consumes more oil than it can produce. Bush used the power of the US to depose the democratically elected leader of Haiti. He is threatening war with Iran because Iran may be building nuclear weapons which we possess by the thousands. Power cultures use violence to achieve their goals and destroy sovereign states and their people in order to get what they want. Power cultures’ morality is might makes right. Bush invaded Iraq not because the invasion was moral or legal, it was not, but because he had the power to.

People are not born depraved just because religion says we are. People are born good capable compassion and love. If they become evil, it is caused by the corporate power elite exploiting them, using them, enslaving them. If each person knows he is a creature with compassion and love, then he believes that others are like him, and he learns to cooperate, to share and not to violently strive for power over his fellows

Each of us must know that there is something so sacred within us that we cannot allow it to be trampled on by anyone and, when it is, we must resist with every ounce of our being and allow the love and freedom within to flourish and bloom.

People must rebel against the slavery that our society tries to impose on us. Rebel against a condition you feel is unjust and limiting. Camus’ words apply now more than ever, “What is a rebel? A man who say no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes, from the moment he makes his first gesture of rebellion.”
Become a rebel by living the thinking life.

Bush's Blood Lust Cult

2007-10-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

www.gwbush.com
QUOTE OF THE CENTURY: "If you don't think it's a gamble to put a man in the White House who believes we should have guns in church, who thinks the Taliban is a rock band, who was such a failure as a businessman that his company was nicknamed "El-Busto," who wants to turn our Social Security system into a Wall Street boiler room, who can't name a single thing he disagrees with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on, who smeared a bona fide hero named John McCain, and whose principle policy proposal is to give America's surplus to the idle rich in the form of a $1.3 trillion tax cut, you're either nuts or a Republican."... Equal Time co-host Paul Begala, shooting the bull.

Before you read the below article, think about the following: when the president first heard about the planes that crashed into the two trade center towers and the pentagon, instead of being horrified at the prospect of facing the survivors families and consoling them, he excitedly said: "I hit the trifecta" (this is a reference to a bet that you make at a horse race where you bet on the top three horses and they all come in.) This is a reference to the two planes that hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the one plane that hit the Pentagon.
April 22, 2003
by WAYNE MADSEN
George W. Bush proclaims himself a born-again Christian. However, Bush and fellow self-anointed neo-Christians like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, and sports arena Book of Revelations carnival hawker Franklin Graham appear to wallow in a "Christian" blood lust cult when it comes to practicing the teachings of the founder of Christianity. This cultist form of Christianity, with its emphasis on death rather than life, is also worrying the leaders of mainstream Christian religions, particularly the Pope.
One only has to check out Bush's record as Governor of Texas to see his own preference for death over life. During his tenure as Governor, Bush presided over a record setting 152 executions, including the 1998 execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who later led a prison ministry. Forty of Bush's executions were carried out in 2000, the year the Bush presidential campaign was spotlighting their candidate's strong law enforcement record. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen reported in October 2000 that one of the execution chamber's "tie-down team" members, Fred Allen, had to prepare so many people for lethal injections during 2000, he quit his job in disgust.
Bush mocked Tucker's appeal for clemency. In an interview with Talk magazine, Bush imitated Tucker's appeal for him to spare her life - pursing his lips, squinting his eyes, and in a squeaky voice saying, "Please don't kill me." That went too far for former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer, himself an evangelical Christian. "I think it is nothing short of unbelievable that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death," said Bauer.
A former Texas Department of Public Safety officer, a devout Roman Catholic, told this reporter that evidence to the contrary, Bush was more than happy to ignore DNA data and documented cases of prosecutorial misconduct to send innocent people to the Huntsville, Texas lethal injection chamber. He said the number of executed mentally retarded, African Americans, and those who committed capital crimes as minors was proof that Bush was insensitive and a "phony Christian." When faced with similar problems in Illinois, Governor George Ryan, a Republican, commuted the death sentences of his state's death row inmates and released others after discovering they were wrongfully convicted. Yet the Republican Party is pillorying Ryan and John Ashcroft's Justice Department continues to investigate the former Governor for political malfeasance as if Bush and Ashcroft are without sin in such matters. Hypocrisy certainly rules in the Republican Party.
Bush's blood lust has been extended across the globe. He has given the CIA authority to assassinate those deemed a threat to U.S. national interests. Bush has virtually suspended Executive Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter), and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the assassination of foreign leaders. Bush's determination to kill Saddam Hussein, his family, and his top leaders with precision-guided missiles and tactical nuclear weapon-like Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bombs is yet another indication of Bush's disregard for his Republican and Democratic predecessors. It now appears that in his zeal to kill Hussein, innocent civilian patrons of a Baghdad restaurant were killed by one of Bush's precision Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). Like it or not, Saddam Hussein was recognized by over 100 nations as the leader of Iraq -- a member state of the United Nations. Hussein, like North Korea' Kim Jong Il, Syria's Bashir Assad, and Iran's Mohammed Khatami, are covered by Executive Order 12333, which the Bush mouthpieces claim is still in effect. Bush's "Christian" blood cult sees no other option than death for those who become his enemies. This doctrine is found no place in Christian theology.
Bush has not once prayed for the innocent civilians who died as a result of the U.S. attack on Iraq. He constantly "embeds" himself with the military at Goebbels-like speech fests and makes constant references to God when he refers to America's "victory" in Iraq, as if God endorses his sordid killing spree. He makes no mention of the children, women, and old men killed by America's "precision-guided" missiles and bombs and trigger-happy U.S. troops. In fact, Bush revels in indiscriminate blood letting. Since he never experienced such killing in Southeast Asia, when he was AWOL from his Texas Air National Guard unit, Bush just does not seem to understand the horror of a parent watching one's children having their heads and limbs blown off in a sudden blast of shrapnel or children witnessing their parents burning to death with their own body fat nurturing the flames.
Bush and his advisers, previously warned that Iraq's ancient artifacts and collection of historical documents and books were in danger of being looted or destroyed, instead, sat back while the Baghdad and Mosul museums and Baghdad Library were ransacked and destroyed. Cult leaders have historically attempted to destroy history in order to invent their own. The Soviets tried to obliterate Russia's Orthodox traditions, turning a number of churches into warehouses and animal barns. Cambodia's Pol Pot tried to wipe out Buddhism's famed Angkor Wat shrine in an attempt to stamp out his country's Buddhist history. In March 2001, while they were negotiating with the Bush administration on a natural gas pipeline, Afghanistan's Taliban blew up two massive 1600-year old Buddhas in Bamiyan. The Bush administration, itself run by fanatic religious cultists, barely made a fuss about the loss of the relics. It would not be the first time the cultists within the Bush administration ignored the pillaging of history's treasures.
The ransacking of Iraq's historical treasures is explainable when one considers what the blood cult Christians really think about Islam. Franklin Graham, the heir to the empire built up by his anti-Semitic father, Billy Graham, has decided being anti-Muslim is far more financially rewarding than being anti-Jewish. Billy Graham, history notes from the Nixon tapes, complained about the Jewish stranglehold on the media and Jews being responsible for pornography.
Franklin Graham continues to enjoy his father's unfettered and questionable access to the White House. But in the case of Bush, the younger Graham has a fanatic adherent. Graham has called Islam a "very evil and wicked" religion. He then announces he wants to go to Iraq. Graham obviously sees an opportunity to convert Muslims and unrepentant Eastern Christians, who owe their allegiance to Roman and Greek prelates, to his perverted form of blood cult Christianity. Graham says he is ready to send his Samaritan's Purse missionaries into Iraq to provide assistance. Muslims and mainstream Christians are wary that Graham wants to exchange food, water, and medicine for the baptism of Iraqis into his intolerant brand of Christianity. In the last Gulf War, Graham could not get away with his chicanery. The Desert Storm Commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf, stopped dead in the tracks Graham's plan to send 30,000 Arabic language Bibles to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Today's Pentagon shows no such compunction to put a rein on Graham. It invited him to give a Good Friday sermon at the Pentagon to the consternation of the Defense Department's Muslim employees. To make matters worse, under Bush's "Faith Based Initiative," Graham's Samaritan's Purse stands to receive U.S. government funds for its proselytizing efforts in Iraq, something that should be an affront to every American taxpayer.
Bush's self-proclaimed adherence to Christianity (during one of the presidential debates he said Jesus Christ was his favorite "philosopher") and his constant reference to a new international structure bypassing the United Nations system and long-standing international treaties are worrying the top leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. Well-informed sources close to the Vatican report that Pope John Paul II is growing increasingly concerned about Bush's ultimate intentions. The Pope has had experience with Bush's death fetish. Bush ignored the Pope's plea to spare the life of Karla Faye Tucker. To show that he was similarly ignorant of the world's mainstream religions, Bush also rejected an appeal to spare Tucker from the World Council of Churches - an organization that represents over 350 of the world's Protestant and Orthodox Churches. It did not matter that Bush's own Methodist Church and his parents' Episcopal Church are members of the World Council.
Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs, and his constant references to "evil doers," in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations - the anti-Christ. People close to the Pope claim that amid these concerns, the Pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament. Before he became Pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel."
The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees it. Although we can all endlessly argue over the Pope's effectiveness in curtailing abuses within his Church, his accomplishments external to Catholicism are impressive.
According to journalists close to the Vatican, the Pope and his closest advisers are also concerned that the ultimate acts of evil - the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon - were known in advance by senior Bush administration officials. By permitting the attacks to take their course, there is a perception within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy that a coup d'etat was implemented, one that gave Bush and his leadership near-dictatorial powers to carry out their agenda.
The Pope worked tirelessly to convince leaders of nations on the UN Security Council to oppose Bush's war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they had not seen the Pope more animated and determined since he fell ill to Parkinson's Disease. In the end, the Pope did convince the leaders of Mexico, Chile, Cameroon, and Guinea to oppose the U.S. resolution. If one were to believe in the Book of Revelations, as the Pope fervently does, he can seek solace in scoring a symbolic victory against the Bush administration. Whether Bush represents a dangerous right-wing ideologue who couples his political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood cult (as I believe) or he is either the anti-Christ or heralds one, the Pope should know he has fought the good battle and has gained the respect and admiration of many non-Catholics around the world.
NEXT SEE BUSH AND TAXES
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Bush always chooses death over life.
We are now facing thefinal confrontation between the Church and theanti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel."The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler andStalin, knows evil when he sees it.
Bush executed 152 people during his tenure as governor of Texas, one of which was the execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, to to spotlight his strong law enforcement record. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen reported in October 2000 that one of the execution chamber's "tie-down team" members, Fred Allen, had to prepare so many people for lethal injections during 2000, he quit his job in disgust.
Bush mocked Tucker's appeal for clemency. In an interview with Talk magazine, Bush imitated Tucker's appeal for him to spare her life - pursing his lips, squinting his eyes, and in a squeaky voice saying, "Please don't kill me." He executed her.

He said the number of executed mentally retarded, African Americans, and those who committed capital crimes as minors was proof that Bush was insensitive and a "phony Christian."

Now with four million children lacking health insurance, Bush vetoes S-CHIP which is a form of execution for them.

He has given the CIA authority to assassinate those deemed a threat to U.S. national interests. Bush has virtually suspended Executive Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter), and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the assassination of foreign leaders.
Finally, it should be obvious to everyone what many already know. Bush’s blood lust puts no value on human life or suffering. If he did, he would withdraw our suffering troop from a pointless war, reauthorize executive orders prohibiting
He has given the CIA authority to assassinate those deemed a threat to U.S. national interests. Bush has virtually suspended Executive Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter), and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the assassination of foreign leaders foreign leaders, and provide health coverage for our poorest children. Any human being would do so.
He has given the CIA authority to assassinate those deemed a threat to U.S. national interests. Bush has virtually suspended Executive Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter), and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the assassination of foreign leaders.

Pope John Paul II said,”We are now facing thefinal confrontation between the Church and theanti-ChWe are now facing thefinal confrontation between the Church and theanti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel."The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler andStalin, knows evil when he sees it.urch, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel."The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler andStalin, knows evil when he sees it.

Bush's Shadow Army

2007-10-25T07:42:00.001-07:00

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/scahill

Impeach Bush

2007-10-25T07:30:00.000-07:00

Bush lied, Thousands Died.

Bush's Attack is on Our System of Common Law

2007-10-24T22:10:00.000-07:00

Bush’s attack on our moral system is most pointedly an attack on our common law. When morality dissolves as it has under Bush, people turn to law and that is where they come into direct conflict with Bush. When law is altered for personal benefit as Bush has done, culture and society waver on the brink of chaos. Sir Thomas More, in conflict with another tyrant, Henry VIII, said, “God made the angels to show Him splendor – as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.” Our minds then tell us that authority (Bush) is wrong, that we must rely on of our sense of right and wrong to protect us from Bush’s immorality, in order to live morally with virtue and truth. Our nation must regain its morality and the rule of law if the US is to survive. Bush must be resisted individually and collectively by Americans and the world.

Each Person Acting Individually Can Save Our Country from the Bush Nightmare

2007-10-24T22:06:00.001-07:00

Bush’s attack on the rule of law is a direct attack on the idea that is America. His attack is at the essence of democracy, that which makes us a free people, once admired by the world. His signing statements and disdain for our legal system as shown by creating his own laws for the treatment of those he terms enemy combatants will guarantee the permanent destruction of the American way of life. Bush must be removed from office immediately because his actions are also galvanizing the Muslim world to destroy America, while he undermines the fabric of our society.
Instead of protecting our country, his wars provide real motivation to unite our enemies against us. Bush has made us the most hated nation on earth. We must give the Democrats support and courage to impeach Bush by taking to the streets by the millions and demonstrating across the nation … like the French do to show that the people not Bush have the power. Not wonder Bush hates the French. When Bush fears the people of America … really fears the people … impeachment then can begin. Massive demonstrations are the only way the people can take back their power from this tyrant. The people took back their freedom from another mad King George in 1776; the people, individuals, howling their outrage in the streets like angry wolves is the only way to save America. The people must have the courage to leave their comfort zones and rage their anger in the streets one individual at a time until the streets are filled with millions of Americans who love their country. Only the people, one individual at a time, acting courageously, can save our beloved country from the Bush nightmare continuing

The People Must Take to the Streets and Demand Impeachment

2007-10-24T21:56:00.000-07:00

Bush’s attack on the rule of law is a direct attack on the idea that is America. His attack is at the essence of democracy, that which makes us a free people, once admired by the world. His signing statements and disdain for our legal system as shown by creating his own laws for the treatment of those he terms enemy combatants will guarantee the permanent destruction of the American way of life. Bush must be removed from office immediately because his actions are also galvanizing the Muslim world to destroy America. Instead of protecting our country, his wars provide real motivation to unite our enemies against us. Bush has made us the most hated nation on earth. We must give the Democrats support and courage to impeach Bush by taking to the streets by the millions and demonstrating across the nation … like the French do to show that the people not Bush have the power. Not wonder Bush hates the French. When Bush fears the people of America … really fears the people … impeachment then can begin. Massive demonstrations are the only way the people can take back their power from this tyrant. The people took back their freedom from another mad King George in 1776; the people, individuals, howling their outrage in the streets like angry wolves is the only way to save America. The people must have the courage to leave their comfort zones and rage their anger in the streets one individual at a time until the streets are filled with millions of Americans who love their country. Only the people, one individual at a time can save our beloved country. We must help the Democrats take advantage of this Republican madness by calling for impeachment with demonstrations in the streets across the nation -- like the French do. No wonder this administration hates the French. When the Bushites fear the people, impeachment really starts. Massive demonstrations are the quickest ways to take back the government. We took back our government from another mad King George in 1776; we, the people, can do it

Bush Steals from the People and Gives Their Money to the Rich

2007-10-24T21:53:00.000-07:00

Bush represents such an attack on our country it is impossible to focus on what is the worst. But one of the worst is his destruction of the US Treasury by privatization, which is simply the process of giving taxpayers’ money to cronies for their support. The military and most government functions have been privatized in Iraq with Blackwater simply the most obvious catastrophe. Halliburton and Bechtel have left Iraq with their billions for other US feeding troughs before the sleeping US public discovered their treacheries. Cronyism in Iraq is rampant.NCLB is another attempt to implement vouchers by taking over “non-performing public schools” and eventually closing them so more taxpayers money can be funneled to private (religious) schools. With a ten trillions dollar debt growing larger by the second, what wealthy person would not funnel contributions to Bush to continue his Rape of the United States by giving the taxpayers money directly to the rich? Then he provides a tax cut, which he is trying to make permanent, to the wealthy which costs the taxpayers 3.4 trillion dollars more. Bush represents the complete triumphs of the top 1% of the wealthy over everyone else. Long live the Republican Party.

Bush is the Most Successful Privateering President in History

2007-10-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

Bush’s privatization of just about everything in our government makes him the most successful neo-conservative president in history. Neo-cons want to turn the US into an empire to extend American domination over the world’s oil supplies for American corporate power and profit. Mussolini defined fascism as the union of government with corporations; Bush has achieved Mussolini’s vision by privatizing the Iraq War from those who wash dishes to Blackwater mercenaries who kill for money with impunity.
Bush drains the US Treasury while funneling taxpayers’ money to corporate America. Halliburton and Bechtel left Iraq with their billions before the sleeping American public discovered their treacheries. Blackwater has taken over $950 million in no-bid government contracts.No Child Left Behind is another attempt to privatize public education. "Non-performing public schools" will be closed and run by religious organizations and corporations paid for by the taxpayers.With a $10-trillion debt growing larger by the second, what wealthy neocons would not support Bush? For them he provided a tax cut, which he is trying to make permanent, which costs the taxpayers $3.4 trillion more while almost no American corporations pay taxes.Bush represents the complete triumph of the top 1 percent of the wealthy over everyone else, the triumph of American fascism.