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POPSMake-Believe Maverick--McCain's true nature EXCELLENT article Highly recommend if you are wavering or undecided...Dramesi continued: "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."
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POPSThe Eight Year Bailout
Swanson nails it in this excellent article--see link for all of it, but here's some: For at least two years as vice president, Cheney received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Halliburton in "deferred compensation." Of course, that was justifiable in terms of the public good: society might have collapsed had Cheney not piled up more riches. But his riches and Halliburton's were a little crumb off the loaf of large-scale looting that has been the primary focus of our government all these years. While Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes called their book about Iraq "The Three Trillion Dollar War," they were being very conservative. If you read their book, you find that incredibly conservative calculations place the amount of money wasted at no less than five trillion dollars, and mounting, with no end in sight. And who gets that money? Well, certainly not "the troops" so cynically used to squeeze it out of those gelatinous masses of spineless goo that go by the name "House" and
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POPSOllie North And That Afghan Airstrike As my colleague Anderson wrote at Newshoggers: It is entirely unclear just what North did to “corroborate” US military claims of Taliban deaths, but his efforts to bolster the military stance appear about to go down in the same flames that killed 90 Afghan civilians. While doubtful, perhaps the US military should rethink their reliance on the fantastical stories of a known bullshit artist and pathological liar, someone who by all rights ought to be in prison. I wonder if we’ll see North answer questions about what he said and why he said it on FOX? Somehow, I doubt it. Keith Olbermann covered the airstrike massacre during his Bushed! segment, its disastrous diplomatic aftermath and North’s involvement on Monday: “Realising that a) he’s not a journalist b) he’s not independent and c) his eye-witnessing includes seeing things that aren’t really there, the US military has now reversed its stance…”
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POPSThe Bush Crime Family Thrives on. Amazingly, Bush Sr. completely insulated himself from any personal consequences regarding Iran-Contra. Like a good mafia don, he had layers and layers of loyal "button men" willing to shut up and take the fall for him. His good friend Bill Clinton, who by many accounts protected the gun export and cocaine importation leg of this trade as it was conducted out of Mena, Arkansas, ran against Bush for president in 1992, won, and promptly discontinued all further investigation into the Iran-Contra affair. If you want to take this a little deeper, the folks who were incinerated at Waco by Clinton and Janet Reno very early in Clinton's presidency, had a thriving business converting semi-automatic rifles to automatic ones. It's never been made clear who the customers for these weapons were, but if you look at a map, Waco, Texas is not that far from Mena, Arkansas. Bill Clinton's representatives in the ATF office in Little Rock started feverishly developing their case against the Wac
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POPSWill there really be any change? Would Obama be as bad or worse? Likely not. Just the lesser of two evils or what Ralph Nader calls the "evil of two lessers." No choice to settle for in his judgment. Especially when both candidates support global militarism, backing Israel and the Christian Right against Iran, unilaterally attacking Pakistan, staying in Iraq for the duration, upping the ante in Afghanistan, and risking a dangerous Eurasian confrontation with Russia. Both conventions are over. It's Obama v. McCain, and expect the winner to disappoint like always and on what voters say matter most - ending aggressive wars and addressing long-neglected social needs, made all the worse given capitalism's global crisis and both parties' commitment to privilege. After the Democrat convention ended, author, media activist, critic, and independent filmmaker Danny Schechter wrote: "You won't hear a call for a national crackdown on the corporate crime, fraud, and abuse that, in just the last few years, have robbed trilli
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POPSGOP Convention Schedule Leaked! 11:00 pm – President Bush performs his hilarious comedy routine where he looks for Iraq's fictitious WMD's under guests tables. 11:15 pm – Governor Mike Huckabee does his famous uncanny imitation of Gomer Pyle. 11:20 pm – Group intervention to get Rush Limbaugh back into drug rehab 11: 45 pm – Go up on rooftop and throw rocks down at homeless vets sleeping in alley. 12:00 am – Live satellite feed from Federal Prison – California Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham 12:20 am – Convicted felon/Fox News analyst G. Gordon Liddy – "Lock Picking Secrets" 12: 40 am – Guest speakers Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – "How to Lie Your Country Into a War" 1:00 am – Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay – "Tips on Money Laundering" 1:15 am – Hookers arrive for after-party http://www.StopMcCain08.com
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POPSDon't Look Now--but the Surge is About to Backfire as Iraq poised to Explode The first is the brewing crisis over Kirkuk, where the pushy Kurds are demanding control and Iraq’s Arabs are resisting. The second is in the west, and Anbar, where the US-backed Sons of Iraq sahwa (”Awakening”) movement is moving to take power against the Iraqi Islamic Party, a fundamentalist Sunni bloc. And third is the restive Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is chafing at gains made by its Iranian-backed rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) The final crisis-to-be is the Sadr vs. Badr one. The Times today suggests that Sadr is weakening: The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq. Don’t believe it. Sadr’s rivals, ISCI, don’t have anything like the popular base that Sadr has. And underneath Sadr is a volatile mix of neighborhood, local and regional militias, mosques, and econom
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POPSMcCain Jokes about Killing Iranians ... AGAIN McCain reminds me of a cross between Yosemite Sam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNFsnZdn1Ho and Peppermint Patty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGQ2WvjvTHA . Yosemite Sam being the gunslinger on the Bugs Bunny cartoon with a bad temper and Peppermint Patty the dim-witted, D-minus grade-getting talkative character on the Charlie Brown show who was always putting her foot in her mouth. I think those two cartoon characters had a kid and named him John McCain.
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POPSWhat did I say last year? The really sad and outrageous thing is, for the troops anyway, and innocent Afghanis, is that they all will be sent to Afghanistan to continue the war. And Iran?
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POPSSeeds of Current Propaganda found in Reagan Era Enduring Skills Beyond these individuals, the manipulative techniques that were refined in the 1980s — especially the skill of exaggerating foreign threats — have proved durable, bringing large segments of the American population into line behind the Iraq War in 2002-03. Only now — with more than 4,100 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead — are many of these Americans realizing that were manipulated by clever propaganda, that their perceptions had been managed. For instance, the New York Times recently pried loose some 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents revealing how the Bush administration had manipulated the public debate on the Iraq War by planting friendly retired military officers on TV news shows. Retired Green Beret Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former analyst on Murdoch’s Fox News, said the Pentagon treated the retired military officers as puppets: “It was them saying, ‘we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’” [NYT, April 20,
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POPSFor sale: one used country - cheap The US news media didn't think this post 9/11 "mercy" flight for Bush's personal friends was worth investigating. ============================== How deep the connection goes "September 13, 2001 - Thousands of Americans were dead. They have been killed in a terrorist operation largely run by Saudis. Nonetheless the two men (Bush and Prince Bandar Of Saudi Arabia) each lit up a Cohiba cigar (on the Truman balcony of the White House)... Few Americans realized that these two dynasties had a history dating back more than twenty years. Not just business partners and personal friends, the Bushes and the Saudis had pulled off elaborate covert operations and gone to war together... They had been involved in the Iran-contra scandal, in secret U.S. aid in the Afghanistan War that gave birth of Osama bin Laden." From: House of Bush, House of Saud: The secret relationship between the world's most powerful dynasties by Craig Unger. Page 15
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POPSInsane ex-Ambassador to UN Bolton predicts Bombs “An Obama victory would rule out military action by the Israelis because they would fear the consequences given the approach Obama has taken to foreign policy,” said Mr Bolton, who was Mr Bush’s ambassador to the UN from 2005 to 2006. “With McCain they might still be looking at a delay. Given that time is on Iran’s side, I think the argument for military action is sooner rather than later absent some other development.” The Iran policy of Mr McCain, whom Mr Bolton supports, was “much more realistic than the Bush administration’s stance”.
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POPSAttack Iran? Cheney's Already Tried After he become head of the Central Command (Centcom) in March 2007, Admiral William Fallon also made his opposition to such a massive attack on Iran known to the White House, according Middle East specialist Hillary Mann, who had developed close working relationships with Pentagon officials when she worked on the National Security Council staff. Soon after, Adm. Fallon was fired...gee I wonder why? At least there are a few semi-sane generals opposing Cheney.
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POPSState of Emergency: The US in the Final Six Months of the George W. Bush Administration Despite time constraints, there are clear signs that the president, the vice-president and their neocon collaborators are not finished. The constant saber-rattling toward Iran, with strong support from Israel, should send a chill down the spine of any peace-loving American. Military chiefs who oppose the president are “retired,” as observed most recently with the March dismissals of CENTCOM commander Admiral William Fallon and 6th Fleet commander Vice-Admiral John Stufflebeem. Public opinion counts for nothing. In a March 24 interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz, vice president Dick Cheney responded to a question about the war weariness of Americans with a languid “So?”
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POPSMcCain Makes Stuff Up Still, when some of the U.S. broadcast networks – including NBC evening news – played the clip of McCain lashing out at Obama’s purported dissing of the Constitution, they didn’t correct McCain's falsehood. That fits with a long-standing pattern of the political press corps giving McCain a break when he makes statements at variance with the truth. Even in the rare moments when he is caught in an inaccuracy – such as accusing Shiite-ruled Iran of training Sunni extremists in al-Qaeda – the falsehood is minimized as an unintentional gaffe.
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POPS The End of U.S. Imperialism? Global hedge funds are not the only byproducts of U.S. policy that are turning on their creator. The International Monetary Fund (created by the U.S. largely at the end of WWII and controlled completely U.S. finance as the world’s capitalist currency was pegged to the U.S. dollar until the early 1970s, when the acquisition of dollars by European and Middle Eastern interests made that impossible to continue) is now openly criticizing U.S. deficits, trade policy, and for that matter, the lack of universal health care in the U.S. Additional coverage: Podcast #72 - A New Deal for America PA Editors Blog * No hobbits! * National Call-in Day on Diplomacy with Iran * C-SPAN Discussion of HR 676 Tuesday Night Subscribe to this Feed Headlines by FeedBurner As few U.S. politicians understand, and as the insurance and pharmaceutical company health care complex goes to great lengths to keep them from understanding, the private insurance based health care system here ma
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POPSSalt Lakers confront Preznut Bush Anderson helped organize the rally and not only denounced the war in Iraq, but spoke out against further military action. "There is a substantial risk, especially with the complacent citizenry, the president will order an attack against Iran, having continued the case for another illegal, tragic war of aggression against a people who largely stood in sympathy and solidarity with us on 9/11," he said. Some high school students who are not old enough to vote were there, believing their voices can still make a difference. Rose Nelson told us, "No matter how old you are, you can still exercise your First Amendment right, and that's the right to protest, to assemble. We've got to say something because we can."
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POPSThe Contrarian Nature of George Bush But recent events have led me to choose one of the movie's lesser characters -- Younger Bear, Little Big Man's nemesis within the Cheyenne tribe. In the course of the movie, Younger Bear becomes a "contrary," a strange phenomenon in Native American plains culture who says and does the opposite of what he actually intends. He rides his horse facing the rear, says "hello" when he means "goodbye," washes in the dirt and dries off in the creek. I came to this conclusion after Bush's recent speech in Israel, where he famously equated Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's willingness to hold talks with Iran with the appeasement of Adolf Hitler prior to World War II. Pretty inflammatory rhetoric anywhere, but in front of the Knesset? Really over the top.
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