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POPSOnce Again The Animals Were Conscious of A Vague Uneasiness
It came then to pass that we received those tools. The Democratic president and Congress, and after some finagling even the sixty-seat majority in the Senate. I was advised to watch for the great change to come rolling over us like a flood; we would soon be awash in progressivism. Our boys would come home from foreign wars, we would close our illegal prison camps, abandon torture and rendition. The rich would again be taxed, environmental abuses rolled back, people put ahead of corporations. We would get universal health care. Some of this would happen immediately upon Barack Obama taking office. Much would be in place in a magical, marvelous "first hundred days." What great changes a year would bring. I don't have to tell you there is great and crushing disappointment among those who most fervently supported candidate Obama and his campaign for Change We Can Believe In. We are still wasting money and lives in Iraq. We are wasting money and lives in Afghanistan at the highest rate si
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POPSHey, (Cowering-In-The-)Barracks Forshame Obummer: If You Would Lead, Maybe We Would Follow Does this guy who seems to want, more than anything, for everyone just to be happy and sing along in the same key, still really believe in bipartisanship, at the very moment when the very people with whom he is negotiating are reinforcing the most absurd and inflammatory lies asserting the elder-cide intentions of his health-care bill? Sorry. Did I say "his health-care bill"? Problem number one here is that there's no such thing. As in just about everything else of consequence this administration has been involved in, he seems quite content to simply defer to Congress and allow the sausage-making process on the Hill to generate precisely the policy abomination one might expect, with all the political liabilities we've come to know and love from such a dispiriting collection of 535 (minus two or three) moral midgets.
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POPSThe Cheney Bullshit is beginning to clear up Olbermann is on to the truth about the lead up to the war and how Cheney's psychotic torture obsession caused the USA to enter the war in Iraq. The guy should be hung by his feet on the Whitehouse lawn.
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POPSPrezdint decides to "move on" Our feckless Prezdint has decided no prosecutions for either the torturers OR the enablers/authorizers like Cheney, Rove, Bush, Gonzalez...THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE and just one more reason I have come to despise Obama's policies...He has either sold out and/or stopped listening to the people who elected him! Shameful, Barry! Get real, man! This sends a very bad message on so many levels. WTF is he thinking? That the pain and sufering we as a nation can just be swept under the rug? What a wonderful world to be able to wield power to disapear and torture anyone and then just have the next guy in power ignore it. Grrrr.
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POPSObama's secrecy/immunity claims See link above for Olbermann video criticizing Obama's continuance, even expansion of secret programs. it is simply unacceptable -- no matter what else is true about him -- for Obama to claim for himself the very legal immunity and secrecy powers which characterized and enabled the worst excesses of Bush lawlessness. Yet in a short period of time, he has taken one step after the next to do exactly that.
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POPSThe Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace (?????) hahahahahahahahaha---this guy is so delusional...with all the damage Bush has done and is STIL tryin to do with his latest round of environmental deregulations designed to profit his cronies, I find it impossible to show him any respect whatsoever--He has no regard for people or the Earth! He should be prosecuted for war crimes and other felonies that he and Cheney have committed, not defended by this bozo.
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POPSHas Sarah Palin Been Picked as the Titular Head of the Coming Police State? Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. The strategy became clear. Time magazine reported that Rove is "dialed in" to the McCain campaign. Rove's protege Steve Schmidt is now campaign manager. And Politico reported that Rove was heavily involved in McCain's vice presidential selection. Finally a new report shows that there are dozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating her every move. What's the plan? It is this. McCain doesn't matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years. I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the ta
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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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POPSVFP Calls for U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan and the Prosecution of Dick Cheney and George Bush fo This same resolution calls for the U.S. government to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan, in non-coercive forms, to help them rebuild their own nation and their lives in cooperation with other nations in the region; and to allow the people of Afghanistan to freely determine their own government without interference by the U.S. "These three statements from our membership represent many of the core values of our organization. We believe that service members have the right to re-evaluate their decision to kill and change their mind. We know that after all the killing is done the individual soldiers must live with themselves and make sense of what they have done. We believe that our political leaders must be held accountable for their actions. This is a critical to a healthy and functional democracy. We realize that to survive the challenges we face today, like global warming, we must find ways to work together and war is not viable." To read full text of the resolu
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POPSNo one in "murrika mourns for the "Collaterals" In the spirit of Dr. King, I too have a dream. I have a vision of a Truth Commission in the United States that will create a process of accountability for the war crimes and human rights violations committed by the Bush administration during these past eight years. I see a campaign that will enable our citizens to eventually cast a vote for the principles of the Hague and Geneva Conventions that protect the rights of prisoners of war and of civilian populations. I see a growing movement of citizens empowered to bring Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others into a process of justice for their commissioning of illegal wiretapping, torturing prisoners, and killing innocent civilians.
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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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POPSWarning to Obama on the New Cold War by Tom Hayden • McCain has traveled to Georgia, nominated his close friend Saakashlivi for a Nobel Prize in 2005, and was the first American leader to blast Russia last April, when Vladimir Putin issued a sharp warning against NATO membership for Georgia and the Ukraine, supported by the United States. • The Bush Administration was divided along familiar lines, with the foreign policy "realists" around Condoleezza Rice opposite the pro-Georgia hawks centered in Dick Cheney's office and allied with McCain--enthusiasts for spreading "democracy" from Iraq to the Russian border. • Randy Scheunemann, McCain's foreign policy adviser, was a registered foreign agent for Saakashlivi's government from at least 2004, when Saakashvili came to power, until May 15, 2008, when he technically severed his ties to Orion Strategies, his lobbying firm. At that point, Orion had earned at least $800,000 in lobbying fees from Georgia. • Saakashvili, with Scheuneman advising him, campaigned on a platform of taking
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POPSAmerica in the World: Silenced by Bush Such Bushian doublespeak, expressed with total "sincerity," has regrettably defined America's relationship with our fellow human beings in this new century. As a result, even US critics of the administration's policies are reluctant to condemn aggression by other countries because they do not want to be accused of what the Bush regime, worldwide, will perhaps be most remembered for -- hypocrisy.
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POPSPelosi confronted at book signing Madam Speaker was so flustered by our efforts that she barely made a cogent remark for her whole "Know Your Power" talk. Our peaceful action had impact. The truth is a powerful tool. But if only our actions weren't necessary. If only, as Jodie Evans suggested, Madam Speaker would do her job! Saddest of all is the contrast of who Pelosi once was to who she his now. For a woman who was once at the cutting edge of social progressivism, Nancy Pelosi has lost her way. She has strayed from her former social consciousness into the malaise of power. A sorry state for a woman who 32 years ago was a pivotal player in the 1976 Presidential campaign of radically progressive California Governor, Jerry Brown.
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POPS"President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up Your Oily Mouth?" The neoconned Bush Regime and the Israeli-occupied American media are heading the innocent world toward nuclear war. Back in the Reagan years the National Endowment for Democracy was created as a cold war tool. Today the NED is a neocon-controlled agent for US world hegemony. Its main function is to pour US money and election-rigging into former constituent parts of the Soviet Union in order to ring Russia with American puppet states. The neoconservative Bush Regime used the NED to intervene in Ukrainian and Georgian internal affairs in keeping with the neoconservative plan to establish US-friendly and Russia-hostile political regimes in these two former constituent parts of Russia and the Soviet Union. The NED was also used to dismember the former Yugoslavia with its interventions in Slovakia, Serbia, and Montenegro. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, told the Washington Post in 1991 that much of what the NED does “today was done covertly 2
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POPSRevoke EPA’s Licenses to Pollute Behind the veil of “clean skies,” however, smog and soot and very small toxic particulate matter are still pouring out of the pipes of cars, trucks, the containerized shipping industry that drives global commerce, airplanes, incinerators, large farms and factories. These microscopic particles cause inflammation and injury to the lungs and the blood, killing thousands and condemning many more to life with asthma. Runoff from agribusiness, industry and suburban trophy lawns still flows through our (non-burning) rivers, creating dead zones off our shores and sickening swimmers on our beaches. This is happening because industries have become experts at delaying and manipulating the work of EPA through political pressure and legal tactics. And EPA analysts cut and paste corporate-generated studies and analysis into their findings. As a result, the EPA often acts as if it were protecting the earnings of regulated industries rather than the public’s health.
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POPSShould Conyers Impeach or Write Another Book About Bush's Crimes? Three years ago, Conyers' staffers on the Judiciary Committee produced a book about Bush and Cheney's impeachable offenses. Some of us helped them do it. After all, they were in the minority and couldn't do much more than write books. But now? In the majority? Now, should they be accepting that Congress no longer has subpoena power? Now, should they be accepting that Congress no longer has the power to legislate? Now, should they be accepting that Congress has no power of the purse? Now, should they be devoting tax dollars to the pointless vanity of doing what anyone else can do: writing yet another book on Bush and Cheney's latest impeachable offenses
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POPSImpeachment Hearings: A Win Is a Win I go for the second interpretation of events. It is clear, as was beautifully laid out in an article published by Glenn Greenwald in Salon magazine on July 15, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership both in Congress and in the party organization, have been blocking any action on impeachment for fear of having their own complicity in Bush’s and Cheney’s crimes revealed. As Greenwald notes, the Washington Post has reported that Pelosi, along with Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) were briefed on the administration’s use of torture and not only didn’t object, but actively encouraged it. Rockefeller and Harman, who at the time were minority leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees at the time, were also briefed about Bush’s order to the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless spying on Americans. They didn’t object or publicly expose this blatant violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance A
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POPSinteractive guide: Who in the Bush administration broke the law, and who could be prosecuted Each scandal is represented by a colored circle that encompasses the people who are implicated. As it's easy to see, many of the players here are mixed up in two, three, or more of the alleged crimes. Hence all the overlapping circles (Venn-diagram heaven!). The best way to make sense of this legal tangle is to mouse over the title of an individual scandal, which will highlight everyone implicated. For example, the wiretapping bubble ensnares George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Ashcroft, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales. At the same time, Ashcroft and Gonzales fall into the overlapping circle for monkey business related to DoJ hiring. Mouse over a person's name for information on how each person is involved. Mouse over the title of each circle for specifics about the particular scandal. And if all else fails, fall back on this golden rule of wrongdoing in the White House: All roads lead to Gonzales.
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POPSGreen ‘Peace Party’ positions against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars compared to pro-occupation Clint “The occupation of Iraq will continue whether a Democrat or a Republican moves into the White House in January 2009,” said Jason Wallace, Green candidate for Congress in Illinois’ 11th District <http://www.electwallace.us> and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War <http://ivaw.org/index.php>. IVAW has announced ‘Winter Soldier’ (March 13-16), a four-day event bringing together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan <http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier>. “The ILWU action planned for May 1 is evidence that working people are impatient with vague promises to end these wars. Will Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama endorse the ILWU protest and pledge to call home all US military personnel immediately?” “By calling the Iraq War a matter of military preparedness and botched strategy, Democrats are sidestepping the premise of the war,” said Bob Kinsey, Green candidate for the US Senate in Colorado <http://www.kinseyforsenate.org>. “While it’s true that
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POPSNiether Dems or Rethugs Deserve or votes! He’s a politician in essence chosen by the mainstream corporate media marketing complex to be their puppet and appeal to the public’s desire for an anti-Bush. Unfortunately he’s not far enough removed from mainstream corporate media marketing complex to represent real “change”.
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