Political leanings

[alan1chef]

I suppose you could choose Buchanan and Harding if you believe US News and World Report Magazine. You could also argue that the bigots Andrew Johnson and Woodrow Wilson were the worst. According to the Rasmussen Reports, Fillmore and Tyler get the bottom of the list.

Sorry Smut, but GW is not at the bottom of anyone's list. GW IS ahead of JC in the Rasmussen list however.

[smuttleydfs]

Why look at any report.....all you need to do is ask anyone in the world and they will tellyou the most despised and hated US president ever is dumbass dubya and the most respected are Obama and Clinton.

Keep in mind if it hadn't of been for the supremes dumbass dubya wold have never served one term

[alan1chef]

Your list of best and worst includes the last 3 Presidents only...??? The last 3 have been and are dull and boring at best and have accomplished nothing noteworthy to date. Perhaps if we combine all three they might be halfway down the list...a black President who was impeached for multiple affairs and who went to war to save face for his wimpy father. Even added together they make a pretty sad historical statement.

[Lefty]

(alan1chef @ Nov. 23 2009,05:26) Nope...Jimmy Carter is the worst President in US history...one term and done.

Seems to me like Geo HW Bush was also one and done? Why would you single out Carter other than Bush is a Rep and Carter is a Dem. It just has to be a Dem in your addled brain doesn't it?

Comparing Carter to Dubya, at least Carter didn't drag us into any major wars under false pretenses, at the cost thousand of lives and a sizable drain to the US budget.

No matter what you think, the harm Bush caused the USA is so far ahead of anything Carter did, it's not even in the same ball park. Not even the same sport. There are others worse than Carter besides Dubya too. Woodrow Wilson did a lot of really stupid things during his term, but at least afterward, in one major instance he had the balls to admit he made a huge mistake.

[Lefty]

(alan1chef @ Nov. 24 2009,13:42) Your list of best and worst includes the last 3 Presidents only...??? The last 3 have been and are dull and boring at best and have accomplished nothing noteworthy to date. Perhaps if we combine all three they might be halfway down the list...a black President who was impeached for multiple affairs and who went to war to save face for his wimpy father. Even added together they make a pretty sad historical statement.

So, in your combining the last three, to include Obama, you use the fact he is black?

The really sorry thing here is that you would even make such a post.


Also, if you really think the #1 reason Dubya got us into Iraq was to save face for his daddy, then you are sadly mistaken. As much as I despise the Bushes, I'd not call Geo HW Bush wimpy. At least he was no chickenhawk like Baby Bush, Cheney, and that ilk. GHWB actually was in active duty military during WW2, in the front, not hiding in some reserve unit like his despicable son did.

[Torurot]

Sarah and the Spiraling Sewer of Regressive Deceit
http://www.opednews.com/article....97.html
By David Michael Green January 16, 2010 at 23:14:35

I hope you're sitting down for this one. It's now been revealed that Sarah Palin is absolutely clueless about both international and domestic politics. Shocking, eh?

You remember Sarah, don't you? She's the one regressives gleefully championed just a year ago as the greatest thing since sliced bread, the person most qualified to be Vice President of the United States, just a step away from the presidency.

Turns out no one in America knew better how utterly bogus that claim was than the people who were making it. The latest revelations on this subject come from Steve Schmidt, the McCain-Palin campaign manager, and the guy who originally championed Palin for the VP nod after the ultra-right told McCain he couldn't have his buddy Joe Lieberman on the ticket after all.


Here's what Schmidt is now saying about Palin as she was being prepped for her debate appearance: "She knew nothing". A bit different from what we were hearing from him during the campaign, isn't it?

And when Schmidt says "nothing', he means NOTHING. She didn't know about World War I. She didn't know about that obscure event, World War II. She didn't know about the Fed. She couldn't tell you the difference between North and South Korea. She kept insisting that Saddam Hussein did 9/11. Her son in the military was about to be shipped off to Iraq, and she couldn't say who he'd be fighting there. She was so well acquainted with American politics that during rehearsals she kept referring to her debate opponent, a longtime prominent fixture in Washington, as a certain "Senator O'Biden", hence the real reason for the "Can I call you Joe?" ploy at the beginning of the debate.

Funny thing is, it was easy then to see what a complete and utter lie Palin was, from top to bottom. Easy, that is, if one was willing. But you took a lot of crap for stating the obvious. Emperors don't really like it so much when you point out that they're naked. But anyone who saw the Katie Couric interview, for example, could see how completely two-dimensional and absolutely false was the notion that this person was remotely ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States, especially when the heart in question belonged to an old man with some serious medical history.

How does this happen? How does a presidential bid based on a lie that is simultaneously so manifest and so magnificent in scale nevertheless manage to generate 59,934,814 votes amongst the supposedly sentient occupants of the richest and most powerful country of the world, here in the twenty-first century, no less?

It's quite astonishing, really. But there's a simple answer. The lie of Palin's competence could only be sustained (and only for some people) by piling it on top of a whole litany of other lies.

Welcome to the spiraling sewer of regressive deceit.

The most proximate lie to the one asserting that Palin was ready to be president was the one in which the McCain team assured us they knew what they were talking about. In fact, they had almost no idea who Palin was. Indeed, they were the first among us to learn what a disaster she really was. But only after they'd already picked her.

They didn't know that previously because Lie Number Three they hadn't vetted her anywhere near properly. As the new book "Game Change", by well-regarded mainstream journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann reveals, the campaign came up with her at the last moment, didn't interview her husband or her allies or enemies in Alaska before choosing her, and didn't even send someone up there to investigate her background before the selection. In short, they didn't do any real due diligence in the five whole days they devoted to the project.

Lie Number Four revolved around what happened to anyone who had the temerity to question whether Palin was anything remotely like what she was being presented to the American people as. Palin was a complete unknown to almost all of the country, and it was absolutely natural and proper that, at a very minimum, basic introductory questions should be asked of her. But that, of course, could rapidly turn problematic, as it did. I had the gut sense at the time that they had gamed this out in advance, figuring out how to turn this massive liability into an advantage. In any case, they immediately flipped the logic on its head, so that anyone who asked the most innocuous question of or about Palin became some sort of misogynist, anti-Alaskan, mom-hater, thus turning the whole affair into a story about the people legitimately checking out Palin, rather about than the candidate herself, and thus also scaring off a lot of the mainstream lackey wimps who call themselves journalists.

Couric's simple question about what journals Palin read was the classic example. Not only was it a common sort of query that candidates get asked all the time, but it was especially appropriate for anyone (like all of America, for example) who wanted to know what made this person who was completely new to them tick. As Schmidt himself now admits, it was in no way any sort of "gotcha' question, as she and her camp and her supporters angrily screamed at the time. Quite the opposite. She was asked some simple questions in order to get a sense of who this new face to most voters might be. But she was quickly revealed to be an idiot. Therefore the big lie had to be trotted out to change the story. Poor Sarah. Poor chief executive of one of America's fifty states. Poor ferocious hockey mom. Poor potential president who might one day have to take on Vladimir Putin or Hu Jintao or al Qaeda. Poor abused Sarah. Monsters like Katie Couric were brutalizing her by asking her outrageous questions, such as, "What do you read?"

Which brings us to Lie Number Five, that of regressive competence. Right-wingers love to tell us how pragmatically competent they are. Governor Palin mocked Barack Obama for being a mere "community organizer'. No doubt she preferred MBA president George W. Bush as a better model. You know, the guy who took more vacations than any other president in history. The guy whose administration did wrong everything imaginable that an administration could do wrong, all within eight years time. Lie Number Five is that these regressives are tough, pragmatic, business-hardened, smart, efficient managers who know how to get the heckuva-job-Brownie done. If the job were telling lies, I'd have to agree. Otherwise, the truth is it turns out that they're disastrously incompetent.

Lie Number Six is that McCain was "out of the loop' in the vetting process (as if that would exonerate him, anyhow). Matt Lauer pressed McCain on this question the other day, and the senator trotted out every ploy in the Politician's Master Manual for Epic Evasion, trying to avoid exposure of his crime. Here's how Politico reports that little tête-à-tête:

"Pressed by host Matt Lauer how the GOP presidential nominee wouldn't know about the vetting of his own running mate, McCain said: "I wouldn't know what the sources are or care.' Instead of addressing the charges in the book, the senator repeatedly said he was "proud' of Palin and his campaign -- the same refrain he's kept up since he lost the election as Republicans and even some top members of his own campaign team have criticized the polarizing former governor. But Lauer didn't drop the issue and, in continuing to ask McCain about Palin, drew a flash of the senator's famous temper. "I just spent my time, Matt, over where three Americans were just killed in Afghanistan,' McCain said. "OK?' he asked the morning show host. When Lauer tried to continue, McCain interrupted. "I am not going to spend time looking back at over what happened over a year ago when we've got two wars to fight, 10 percent unemployment in my state and things to do,' he said. "I'm sorry, you'll have to get others to comment.'

Why is McCain so testy about this? Why will he not comment on something he obviously knows about intimately? Why is he hiding behind three dead GIs to avoid the question? Why does he bully his interviewer? Why does the man who based his whole political life on his distant past refuse to talk about events from little more than a year ago?

The answer, of course, is Lie Number Seven, and it's a whopper. McCain won't talk because to do so would be for him to reveal that he committed an act of treason (and I choose my terms carefully here) in choosing Palin. The truth is, McCain willingly and knowingly endangered the country, purely for his own personal benefit. This man who never let up in reminding us all of the vital importance of national security issues put someone on his ticket who was so obscenely incompetent to run the country that she couldn't even pass a sixth grade history class, and he did it for one reason only: because he wanted the personal glory of being president, and he thought she could draw votes. If selling out your country for personal gain doesn't define treason, then I don't know what does. You don't get more obvious examples than this.

Ah, but it gets so much deeper as we descend through the regressive spiral of lies. Because what McCain did in this case is what regressives do all the time. Any honest assessment of contemporary American politics would immediately reveal that more or less everything the Republican Party (and now most of the Democrats as well) does today is treason of this sort. Lie Number Eight is that they actually care about security. Or freedom. Or religion. Or guns. Or who you get to sleep with or marry. The truth is that these are almost entirely diversionary ploys to make sure that you don't notice their real purpose, which is to abet the oligarchy in looting every dollar possible from America and Americans.

And these diversionary tactics of the regressive elite work so well because of Lie Number Nine regarding those they readily manipulate. All the nice folks on the right will claim that their shock troops are rationally deciding what's best for America in determining their allegiances and their votes, just like the Founders intended. But this is nonsense. Sarah Palin has shown herself to be a boob of first proportions, an even bigger one than George W. Bush. In both cases, however, their supporters love them even more for it. These politicians play perfectly to the insecurities of right-wing voters, who respond intensely to the emotional content of their rhetoric. This is the politics of resentment, and political figures who are (or can appear to be) exceptionally ordinary are only more revered, not less, for the big finger they supposedly send to so-called liberal elites.

All of which continues to explain one of the biggest lies of our time, the notion that regressives/Republicans are serious about national security, while progressives/Democrats are not. Leave aside that WWI, WWII, the Korean War, The Vietnam War and the Cold War were all originally launched by Democratic presidents. Leave aside the fact the Barack Obama supposedly the great wimpy apologist for America abroad is massively increasing the American military presence in Afghanistan. And leave aside the crucial fact that belligerence does not necessarily equate to security in fact, it often produces quite the opposite effect. Even putting all of that to the side, the notion that someone whose mind is a complete blank slate on history and foreign policy to the extent that she didn't even know who her own son would be fighting in Iraq would be the right person to put in the White House is part of an enormous deceit that has been propagated for decades now. The latest regressive trope that there was never a terrorist attack on George W. Bush's watch recently articulated by Dana Perino, Mary Matalin and Rudy Giuliani is only the most recent and most astonishing part of this long-term big lie, Number Ten on the Hit Parade. The right will keep us safe. Except all the times it doesn't.

We could go on and on here. Palin said god wanted her to run for the vice-presidency, for example, just like Bush claimed that Ol' Big Beard told him to invade Iraq. My own conversations with Monsieur Yahweh are how should I put this? somewhat less frequent than are those of folks amongst the regressive ranks. But next time we chat, I'm definitely gonna ask him why he wrecks his own reputation by publicly backing such serious losers. After all, if Palin is right, her claim is that god wanted her to run for the vice-presidency ... and then lose. Well, at least Bush's Iraq adventure did less damage to the Big Guy's street cred, right? Oh, never mind.

The thing is, with the right, it's all lies, as deep as you go. It has to be, because, standing alone, each of these individual claims are nutty to the point of embarrassment. LOL!

Sustain them with a whole litany of supporting lies, however, and they become merely absurd.

Bolster them with all manner of deceit, and they're reduced to being only dangerous.

So what if a President Palin wouldn't know the difference between North and South Korea? She'd be surrounded by a bunch of really good advisors who'd make sure she dropped the nukular bomb on the right Korea, wouldn't she?

Uh, well... Remember the last time we heard that one?

Hint: The advisors were named Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell.

www.regressiveantidote.net
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles ([email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>), (more... <http://www.opednews.com/author/author210.html>)

[alan1chef]

....So, you think that the conservatives are regressive and the liberals are progressive...lol. David Green readily admits that it was the "progressive Democrats" who started Vietnam, started the Korean War, and started the Cold War...then failed to finish any of them or manage any of these events with any competence. Nixon ended Vietnam and the draft...Eisenhower got us out of the mess in Korea and Reagan ended the Cold War. Now that's progressive action in my book. Here's an article from The National Review....




January 21, 2010, 0:00 a.m.

Our Philosopher-King Obama
He doesn€™t mind pushing noble legislation that most people oppose.

By Victor Davis Hanson


In Plato€™s ideal society, philosopher kings and elite Guardians shepherded the rabble to force them to do the €œright€ thing.

To prevent the unwashed from doing anything stupid, the all-powerful, all-wise Guardians often had to tell a few €œnoble€ lies. And, of course, these caretakers themselves were exempt from most rules they made for others.

We are now seeing such thinking in the Obama administration and among its supporters.

A technocracy €” many Ivy-League-educated and without much experience outside academia and government €” pushes legislation most people do not want but is nevertheless judged to be good for them.

Take the Obama proposal for health care. A large percentage of Americans do not trust those who run the Postal Service to oversee the conditions of one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

No matter. Our philosopher-king president says of our fierce resistance: €œI . . . know what happens once we get this done. The American people will suddenly learn that this bill does things they like.€

How about energy policy? Unlike Obama, most Americans believe we should fully utilize our own gas, oil, and nuclear resources so that we don€™t go broke waiting for a promised solar-and-wind revolution.

In fact, on a number of other major issues, polls show more than half of all Americans are at odds with the Obama agenda: more federal takeover of private enterprise, gargantuan deficit spending, and €œcomprehensive€ immigration reform, for starters.

Why, then, does the Obama administration persist with such an apparently unpopular agenda?

Like Plato€™s all-knowing elite, Obama seems to feel that those he deems less informed will €œsuddenly€ learn to appreciate his benevolent guidance once these laws are pushed through.

Liberal columnist Thomas Frank once promoted similar assumptions in his book, What€™s the Matter with Kansas? Frank argued that clueless American voters can€™t quite figure out what their own self-interests are.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, another Obama supporter, also reflected the philosopher-king thinking in a recent column praising China€™s €œreasonably enlightened€ dictatorship. Unlike the messiness of American democracy, he argued, a few smart strongmen in China can ram through the necessary policies €œto move a society forward in the 21st century.€

President Obama has now apparently convinced himself that his old promises about a new transparency get in the way of giving the American people what they need.

Obama campaigned against lobbyists in government. But lobbyists in government are now necessary to accelerate the Obama hope-and-change agenda.

The president on several occasions promised to air the health-care debate on C-SPAN. But now negotiations take place behind closed congressional doors. That must be a necessary price if the people are going to get the health care they must have.

Obama, in addition, once ridiculed John McCain€™s idea of taxing €œCadillac€ health plans. He promised not to raise €œany€ taxes on those who make less than $250,000 a year. And he lectured President Bush on his foolishness of pushing Social Security reform when only 35 percent of the people were in favor it.

But now our philosopher-king has determined that he really needs to tax some premium health-care plans €” even if that means additional costs will be passed onto those who make less than $250,000. And he certainly doesn€™t mind pushing noble legislation that most people oppose.


Other past declarations €” like the pledge to close Guantanamo within a year of taking office or the deadlines for the Iranians to stop work on their nuclear program €” are noble sorts of lies. They at least show us the president€™s good intentions and his care for our welfare €” even if he can€™t follow through on them.

There is one other trait of this administration similar to those of utopian philosopher-kings. Our elite must have the leeway to be exempt from their own rules.

Higher taxes must be levied on many of us. But the Guardian of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, now and then can cheat a little. So can the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel, who oversees the writing of tax law.

An evil Wall Street makes obscene profits and flies on private jets. But from time to time, Wall Street campaign donations and private-jet travel are permissible for our wiser Guardians if they are properly to plan for the people.

There is, however, one difference between Plato€™s thinking and the Obama administration€™s agenda. Plato at least assumed that philosopher-kings were fantasy ideas and his utopia unachievable.

Our president and his modern-day Guardians in contrast haven€™t quite figured that out yet. Perhaps after this week€™s election in Massachusetts they will.





€” Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. © 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=

[Torurot]

Earlier I said that US politics was as corrupt as any in the so called third world with 'bribery' rampant and out of control. Here's an article that puts some numbers on it.

Lobbyists Buy Congress
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-sto....ongress

in Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010

Source:
Open Secrets.org
Title: €œWashington Lobbying Grew to $3.2 Billion Last Year, Despite Economy€
Authors: Center for Responsive Politics

Student Researchers: Alan Grady and Leora Johnson
Faculty Evaluator: John Kramer, PhD
Sonoma State University

According to a study by The Center for Responsive Politics, special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008€”more than any other year on record. This was a 13.7 percent increase from 2007 (which broke the record by 7.7 percent over 2006).

The Center calculates that interest groups spent $17.4 million on lobbying for every day Congress was in session in 2008, or $32,523 per legislator per day. Center director Sheila Krumholz says, €œThe federal government is handing out billions of dollars by the day, and that translates into job security for lobbyists who can help companies and industries get a piece of the payout.€

Health interests spent more on Federal lobbying than any other economic sector. Their $478.5 million guaranteed the crown for the third year, with the finance, insurance, real estate sector a runner up, spending $453.5 million. The pharmaceutical/health products industry contributed $230.9 million, raising their last eleven-year total to over $1.6 billion. The second-biggest spender among industries in 2008 was electric utilities, which spent $156.7 million on lobbying, followed by insurance, which spent $153.2 million, and oil and gas, which paid lobbyists $133.2 million. Pro-Israel groups, food processing companies, and the oil and gas industry increased their lobbying expenditures the most (as a percentage) between 2007 and 2008.

Finance, insurance and real estate companies have been competing to get a piece of the $700 billion bailout package Congress approved late last year. The companies that reduced lobbying the most are those that declared bankruptcy or were taken over by the federal government and stopped their lobbying operations all together. €œEven though some financial, insurance and real estate interests pulled back last year, they still managed to spend more than $450 million as a sector to lobby policymakers. That can buy a lot of influence, and it€™s a fraction of what the financial sector is reaping in return through the government€™s bailout program,€ Krumholz said.

Business and real estate associations and coalitions were among the organizations that ramped up their lobbying expenditures the most last year. The National Association of Realtors increased spending by 25 percent, from $13.9 million to $17.3 million. The American Bankers Association spent $9.1 million in 2008, a 47 percent increase from 2007. Other industry groups that spent more in 2008 include the Private Equity Council, the Mortgage Bankers Association of America and the Financial Services Roundtable.

The US Chamber of Commerce remained the number one spender on lobbying in 2008, spending nearly $92 million€”more than $350,000 every weekday, and a 73 percent increase over 2007€”to advocate for its members€™ interests. Pro-business associations as a whole increased their lobbying 47 percent between 2007 and 2008.

With record spending on lobbying, some industries face serious cut backs and have put the brakes on spending, but have not discontinued the practice. Automotive companies decreased the amount they paid lobbyists by 7.6 percent, from $70.9 million to $65.5 million. This is a big change from prior years; auto manufacturers and dealers increased lobbying spending by 21 percent between 2006 and 2007. Between 2007 and 2008 the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which testified before Congress with Detroit€™s Big Three last year, decreased its reported lobbying by 43 percent, from $12.8 million to $7.3 million. Of the Big Three, only one company, Ford, increased its efforts, though not by much: it went from $7.1 million to $7.7 million, an 8 percent increase.

Among Washington lobbing firms, Patton Boggs reported the highest revenues from registered lobbying for the fifth year in a row: 41.9 million dollars, an increase over 2006 of more than 20 percent. The firm€™s most lucrative clients included private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, confection and pet food maker Mars, communication provider Verizon, pharmaceutical manufacturers Bristol-Myers Squibb and Roche, and the American Association for Justice (formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America).

Update by Lindsay Renick Mayer
It seems like this should be a classified ad: €œLaid off and looking for work? The lobbying industry wants you!€ Since we posted this story on OpenSecrets.org in January, the lobbying industry has only continued to grow, even as industries across the board have continued to shrink, forcing hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work. This growth could be attributed in part to the economy itself€”many executives are looking for some help from the government to keep their businesses afloat. Others are simply taking advantage of the opportunities that a spate of government handouts has presented. But as long as there€™s a federal government calling the shots, lobbyists will be paid more and more each year to hold their clients€™ fire to lawmakers€™ feet.

Year after year we see increases in lobbying expenditures€”in fact, 100 percent over the last decade€”and the flurry of activity during the first three months of 2009 indicates that the trend won€™t come to an end any time soon. Based on records from the Senate Office of Public Records, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics found that from January through March, lobbying increased slightly compared to the same period of time last year, by at least $2.4 million. Unions, organizations and companies spent at least $799.7 million so far this year on sending influence peddlers to Capitol Hill, compared to $797.2 million during the same time in 2008. That might seem like a small increase compared to the billions spent each year on this activity, but in a time of economic turmoil, that€™s a hefty revenue stream for a single industry.

That said, the industries that have made the most headlines for the help they€™ve asked for or received from the federal government actually decreased the amount they spent on lobbying in the first three months of 2009 compared to 2008. Recipients of cash from the federal government€™s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) handed out less money to lobbyists than they had in any quarter of 2008, in part, perhaps, because they faced new rules restricting their lobbying contact with officials in connection with the bailout program. CRP found that TARP recipients have spent $13.9 million on lobbying so far this year, compared to $20.2 million in January through March of last year and $17.8 million in the last three months of 2008. With the government doling out billions of dollars, these sums pale in comparison to the benefit the companies are reaping.

To read more about how lobbying and influence peddling are shaping legislation, keep up with CRP€™s blog at http://www.opensecrets.org/news/.

[Torurot]

[The madness of endless & out of control "military" spending, but decent and affordable healthcare for "Americans". Nope too "commie"....]

The Untouchable Budget
Defense Department, Inc.
http://counterpunch.org/landau03052010.html
By SAUL LANDAU and NELSON P. VALDES Weekend Edition March 5 - 7, 2010

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life€¦. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

--Dwight Eisenhower, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953

President Obama called his $3.8-trillion budget a big step in restoring America€™s economic health. Last year he promoted TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program to bail out the financial sector at a mere $700 billion. Anyone €“ even billionaire bankers -- can make mistakes that wreak ruin on the rest of us!

Obama also declared as €œuntouchable€ the Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion (including hidden costs in other government branches), which dwarfs the rescue package for the financial oligarchs. Both payouts, however, used the same logic: Congress taking from the have-nots and giving it to the have-mores. Indeed, the economic, political and military potentates depend on the federal budget to transfer taxpayer resources to them.

This evolving military-industrial complex, a partnership of interlocking government and corporate networks, has used public wealth to enrich itself. The manufacturing part of this complex rarely produces anything people live in, wear, or eat. Despite National Rifle Association claims, armaments do not meet civilian needs. In fact, there exists a dramatic gulf between a healthy economy and a social order based on military spending. During the very period (1998-2008) when the US economy€™s share of global output dropped from 32 to 23%, the Defense budget doubled. (Loren Thompson, €œQDR Can€™t Solve Three Biggest Defense Challenges, Lexington Institute, January 28, 2010)

The Defense Department€™s eschewal of economic reality finds its counterpart in its disinterest in accountability. The dramatic admission of this statement of priorities came from Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who admitted publicly that that DOD could not find $2.3 trillion. The money is still missing. (€œThe War on Waste: Defense Department Cannot Account for 25% of Funds - $2.3 Trillion, CBS Evening News, January 29, 2002)

Future Defense chiefs won€™t face such embarrassment. On May 8, 2009 the GAO informed the House Subcommittee on Government Management that six executive agencies can prohibit audits and investigations by the Inspector General -- Defense, Treasury, Federal Reserve Board, Department of Justice, Homeland Security and the Postal Service and the CIA€™s infamous and classified €œBlack budgets.€ Accountability has now taken remote second place to €œnational security.€

Security, however, must include employment, and military industries do create jobs. They also get tax breaks from states competing for their business. But even without tax breaks, many defense corporations choose the patriotic option of overseas tax havens. A December 2008 GAO report, for example, disclosed that 83% of the largest publicly traded US corporations, doing business for the federal government, sought tax refuge via their foreign subsidiaries.

The bottom-line savvy CFO€™s of these companies do not, however, skimp on super-salaried lobbyists. War profiteering, they know, fits hand-in-glove with secured profits from €œdefense€ contracts! Such practices win bi-partisan support and keep well oiled Washington€™s ubiquitous revolving doors.
So what€™s new? US deficits approach $1.6 trillion per year, and Washington still looks to China and Japan to buy its paper albeit the US already owes them almost as much as this year€™s deficit. The US government will pay $250 billion of annual debt interest.

Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have already sucked up $1 trillion. €œExperts€ expect these €œdefensive engagements€ to cost an additional $250 billion this year; Obama€™s surge of 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan will raise the budget by $30+ billion, slightly more than Germany spends on its annual defense.

Is spending public money Washington€™s real €œdefense€? Unemployment remains officially around 10%, the economy has yet to recover, but the Pentagon prospers. Its budget equals about half of total world military spending. Ironically, with all its money, DOD still faces a serious manpower shortage. The empire dares not institute another unpopular draft €“ bad Vietnam War protest memories. Hence, it relies on the poor and on migrants seeking citizenship.

Military service offers poor youngsters possible upward mobility. But not enough of them feel desperate enough to serve. So, the Pentagon hires mercenaries €“ oops, contractors -- who cost more initially but don€™t get counted when wounded or dead, and don€™t run up future veterans€™ costs. The Pentagon hopes to meet labor shortage challenges through robotics, drones and computers -- machines with no ghosts.

The military also depends on €œworst case scenario€ dreamers, bad news Mandarins who fantasize threats to the empire. 19th century utopians imagined a peaceful industrialized and rational world. The new dystopians create future overseas foreign threats, and search for €œforeign Moby Dicks.€ (€œNovel Politics: Questions for Carlos Fuentes,€ Deborah Solomon, NY Times, April 30, 2006)

Their €œstudies€ appear inside special Pentagon offices for analysis. A December 2007 report was called €œA Nuclear-Armed Regional Opponent: Is Victory Possible?€; in July 2002, €œAfter Next Nuclear Use.€ Other studies have classified titles, but their authors come from (un)think tanks http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...drew_marshall/ like the Washington-based Hudson Institute, or belong to government consulting firms like Booz Allen Hamilton, or Scitor Corporation and IHS International.

Former Office of Net Assessment director Andrew Marshall epitomizes this breed of horror scenario script writers. People who the late C. Wright Mills called €œdefense intellectuals€ now postulate concurrent, and different, military strategies: nuclear battlefields, star wars, traditional warfare, irregular warfare, virtual warfare, counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, unconventional warfare, full spectrum dominance, homeland security (somehow different from Defense), stability operation, post warfare security, smart power, soft power, hard power, militarized humanitarian assistance, complex security challenges and "nation building".

Left critics misunderstood the new strategies when they screamed: €œThe Iraq War is about oil.€ Or the Afghan conflict is about €œnatural gas pipelines.€ As if decisions on going to war depended solely on a few large energy corporations profiting on the trillion plus spent on these wars.

A few right wingers €“ not liberals -- like Pat Buchanan and Congressman Ron Paul dare challenge the empire. €œOur situation is unsustainable. The steady expansion of global commitments, as relative national power declines, is a prescription for endless wars and eventual disaster,€ wrote Buchanan. http://www.hebookservice.com/product...?prod_cd=C5368 "It is my hope that the price in blood, treasure, and humiliation America will eventually be forced to pay for the hubris, arrogance, and folly of our reigning foreign policy elites is not, God forbid, war, defeat, and the diminution of this republic -- the fate of every other great nation or empire that set out on this same course."

After World War II US manufacturing stood as the foundation of economic power. Sixty five years later, manufacturing has become a US expatriate. Successive Administrations have paved the road for gonifs (bankers and investors) to usurp the economy. After manipulating other people€™s money for their own profits led to financial collapse two Presidents and Congresses nevertheless bailed them out.

What should be done? Charlie Cray and Lee Drutman call for converting all defense-related companies into publicly-controlled, nonprofit status entities and forbid them to lobby or contribute to campaigns? (Corporations and the Public Purpose: Restoring the Balance, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Winter 2005) Unlikely!

Obama, however, could propose a National Defense Medicare bill, lodged inside the Pentagon budget. Instead of the Pentagon fighting health care for the lion€™s share of the total US budget it would assume health care as just one more task in the unending challenge of defending our besieged nation.

Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. He is the author of A Bush and Botox World.

Nelson P. Valdes is Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico.

[alan1chef]

Torurot, it is easy to point fingers and to criticize what is wrong with the way American government is run. However, it is another story altogether to ask these same critics to come up with a viable alternative and to work within the system to enable change. Criticism without action is pointless.

[Torurot]

The "system" is broken. Change it. It's been analysed to death, but due to the lobby system (called bribery in most non US jurisdictions) nothing changes. Let's not talk about "democracy", and don't tell me you have a "republic"! Amerikkka only talks about "democracy" not "republic", and for non Americans the difference is semantics.

[Torurot]

Expecting Gen. McChrystal to Protect Afghan Civilians is Like Hiring Ted Bundy to Combat Sexual Harassment in the Workplace
The War on Afghan Civilians
http://counterpunch.org/lindorff03172010.html
By DAVE LINDORFF St. Patrick's Day Edition March 17, 2010

Three months after it initially lied about the murder by US forces of eight high school students and a 12-year-old shepherd boy in Afghanistan, and a month after it lied about the slaughter by US forces of an Afghan police commander, a government prosecutor, two of their pregnant wives and a teenage daughter, the US military has been forced to admit (thanks in no small part to the excellent investigative reporting of Jerome Starkey of the London Times), that these and other atrocities were the work of American Special Forces, working in conjunction with €œspecially trained€ (by the US) units of the Afghan Army.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the US war effort in Afghanistan, is he is taking over €œdirect charge€ of Special Forces operations because of €œconcern€ that they were not following his orders to make limiting civilian casualties a €œparamount€ objective. McChrystal is quoted as saying the US military €œcarries the burden of the guilt€ for the €œmistakes€ made by those Special Forces.

This has to be a sick joke. These incidents were not mistakes; they were planned actions. It€™s all the sicker because we know that the US is busy training the Afghan Army to take over this kind of dirty work. And besides, even if McChrystal does assume direct command over Special Forces, that would leave unaccounted for the tens of thousands of private mercenary units hired by the US who are working completely in the shadows for the CIA or other organizations. (One such group hired buy the Defense Department, which posed as an intelligence-gathering operation, was recently exposed as actually being a privately run death squad.)

McChrystal, recall, was in charge of a huge and brutal death squad operation in Iraq before he was given his new assignment in Afghanistan, and at the time he was put in charge of the Afghanistan War, it was reported that he was planning to put in place a similar operation in Afghanistan, designed to take out the Taliban leadership in the country.

What we have been seeing in Afghanistan--and this goes way back to before the appointment of McChrystal, or even the election of President Barack Obama, and his subsequent escalation of the war--has been a vicious campaign of terror against the Afghan people.

It should be no surprise that this is so. It is the way the US has always done counterinsurgency. In a war in which the insurgents (or patriots, if you will--the people fighting against foreign occupiers, or in out case, the US) are a part of the people, and American forces are the invaders, the goal is to drive a wedge between those fighters and the rest of the population.

In Pentagon propaganda, this is referred to as €œwinning the hearts and minds€ of the people, but in reality, the US military doesn€™t give a damn about hearts and minds. It simply wants the people to become unwilling to hide or support the enemy fighters it is facing. If it can accomplish that by making people afraid, then that is what it will do, and making people afraid is much easier than €œwinning hearts and minds.€

How do you make people afraid of supporting or hiding and protecting enemy fighters like the Taliban? You terrorize them. You bomb their homes. You conduct night raids on their homes. You bomb their weddings and their excursions to neighboring towns or markets. You shoot them when they get too close to your vehicles.

Statistics show that the US has, in both Iraq and now Afghanistan, routinely killed more civilians than actual enemy fighters. That tells us all we need to know about what is really going on. America is fighting a war of terror against the people of Afghanistan.

No amount of feigned public hand-wringing by the blood-stained Gen. McChrystal, or of assertions that he is going to assume direct control (from whom? are we to assume that they were operating without direction before?) of the Special Operations troops in the country, will alter that fact. Civilians--including especially women and children--in Afghanistan will continue to die in prodigious numbers because that is how the US fights its wars these days.

The people of Afghanistan know this. That€™s why the majority of them want the US out of their country.

It€™s Americans who don€™t know the truth, and it€™s Americans who are really the target of statements from the Pentagon and from Gen. McChrystal claiming that the US is taking steps, nine years into this war, to €œreduce civilian casualties€ in Afghanistan. It doesn€™t help that news organizations like the New York Times propagate that propaganda, as the paper did today in a lead headline that said: €œUS is Reining in Special Forces in Afghanistan. General Takes Control. McChrystal has Raised Civilian Casualties as a Concern.€ It simply wouldn€™t do to tell Americans that their country is conducting a war of terror. We are supposed to be the good guys who are bringing peace and democracy to a benighted land.

So let€™s just face the facts squarely. The US is not the good guy in Afghanistan. It is an agent of death and destruction. Just check out the town of Marjah, largely destroyed over the last few months in order to €œsave€ it from a handful of Taliban fighters. Over 30 civilians died in that American show of force, and the message of those deaths was clear: allow the Taliban to operate in your town, and we€™ll kill you--not just your men, but your wives and your children, too.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is €œThe Case for Impeachment€ (St. Martin€™s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). He can be reached at [email protected]

[reppertour]

based on what i read and see on the Board - i am unique just like most other BM's

Fiscally Conservative & Socially Liberal.

[Torurot]

[MANY MANY links in here so if you want them you need to go to the site]

War milestones: 1,000 dead in Afghanistan, 4,300 in Iraq & 1 Trillion spent
http://www.opednews.com/article....50.html
Scott Baker - May 18, 2010

UNKNOWN soldier - New England Journal of Medicine
History is full of coincidences. Today, we learned that 1,000 U.S. soldiers have now died in Afghanistan. On GlobalSecurity.org, meanwhile, we can see the fatalities since the Iraq war began in March, 2003: 4,287. The "winding-down-war" is only producing 20 fatalities a month now, though over seven times that many wounded. We are supposed to believe this is good news, just as we are supposed to believe the disproportionate number of wounded to killed is progress. In Vietnam, the ratio was about 5.22:1 (58,169 were killed and 304,000 wounded).
Of course, we now have vets with injuries who would never have survived in the days of Vietnam. We must look askance at these "survival" rates then. Plus, as GlobalSecurity.com makes clear, even the casualty figures are highly open to interpretation, misleading, and plain absent.

One thing is clear, we will be paying, and the families of our Veterans will especially be paying for years, decades, to come, not only directly, but indirectly in lost potential. Who knows how many inventors, entrepreneurs, or just plain good family men and women we've lost?

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote the Three Trillion Dollar War in September 17, 2008, counting just the Iraq war in his title, though internally allowing for $7 Trillion after borrowing costs (oh yes, we borrow from the Chinese for that too), and for Afghanistan. But already his figures have been eclipsed by the then unanticipated escalation in Afghanistan.
Perhaps it is better to check the other clock about to flip over a trillion (see, I said there were consequences), at the National Priorities Project. Dig a little deeper, and you'll find we are already past a trillion - the clock has to be sped up, you see - and they are only counting direct spending, not the big and little tricks to fund the wars that make liars equally out of politicians and accountants.

Here is what NPP says we could have had, had we not gone to war in 2001 (so long ago now that it represents the entire teenage years of most of our new soldiers):

Taxpayers in the United States will pay $1.05 trillion for total Iraq and Afghanistan war spending since 2001. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:
308,396,946 People with Health Care for One Year OR
22,599,968 Public Safety Officers for One year OR
17,944,326 Music and Arts Teachers for One Year OR
132,716,897 Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR
188,536,667 Students receiving Pell Grants of $5550 OR
8,139,680 Affordable Housing Units OR
461,193,337 Children with Health Care for One Year OR
143,595,239 Head Start Places for Children for One Year OR
17,188,969 Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR
1,083,271,391 Homes with Renewable Electricity for One Year

That's right, even by the National Priority Project's very conservative estimates, we could have provided healthcare for the entire U.S. population (only 20% of which are actually uncovered) for an entire year. If being wounded carries a lingering effect, then doesn't a year of free health care? Imagine all those healthy Americans walking around now, instead of all those crippled ones. Children are an even better bargain, and we could have provided healthcare to nearly all the uninsured children each year, every year, for less than the money we spent on the two wars.
Feel free to mix it up any way you want, or choose your state on the NPP site and see what you've lost. See, it is not, as we are told, just a distant war. Though Americans were told to get on with their lives, or famously, as George Bush put it, to "go shopping" we have sacrificed.
Not in the way our Vets have, but still, we have sacrificed. When forced to confront what we've done, we often don't.


I do not mean to say our allies - the Coalition of the Willing (or the coerced?) are any better. Wounded vets were literally thrown out of the pool in England, lest they "scare little children." Well, the children should be scared! They are next on the military conveyor belt that takes promising lives and returns them home brutalized, ravaged, and ruined. The children should run screaming from the pool and they, and their parents, if they really care, should rise up and say, "No! It is too much already! I will not sacrifice my son or daughter to your war machine!" Perhaps we should dare to dream a little bigger for our children as well. Could some of them, yet to grow, perhaps find a cure for our being "Addicted to Oil"? We will never know if we never stop the wars.

The "wars" - it still sounds strange to me to talk about wars, two at a time, especially when one of them, is now the second longest American war in history, and the other is the third. Are we aiming for a record?

Are we safe yet?



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http://newthinking.blogspot.com/
Scott Baker is a Senior Editor and Writer at Op Ed News, a Writer for DailyKos, and is the author of Neitherworld - a two-volume novel blending Native American myth, archaeological detail, government conspiracy, with a sci-fi flair. He has a (more...)

[Jake_Sully]

I don't fully agree with you tourot and here's why.

I think war was initially needed but would not be needed anymore if we hadn't bungled the job. Clearly when we go to war, we can't fight a politically correct war. It would be like fighting an enemy that has an ak-47 and is shooting at you but you are fighting with 1 hand and 2 legs tied behind our back because of how we appear to the outside world. We're never going to win a war that way.

The only way is a complete and utter destruction of the region in question. Put the people to the sword. Think the vietcong would think twice about this? How about the russians or chinese when someone had attacked them on 9/11? It may not be politically correct but its survival.. survival of the fittest.

But I will say this.. the iraq war was never needed. It was stupid. The afghanistan war could have, should have been dealt with in 4 weeks but now we have to deal with pakistan as well. Goes to show our lovely politicians don't have a clue. And young kids, americans of all walks of life, religion, skin color are dying and losing their limbs because our politicians are lost in a politically correct quicksand and bungling the job.

An analogy would be, a poisonous snake is trying to bite us. We (or in this case the US government politicians) are more concerned about how it looks on camera and are trying to fight it with our bare hands getting bitten and poisoned. Sounds dumb doesn't it to not use stilts and a cane?

This isn't dueling pistols at dawn, this is war. You never want to fight fair. You want to sneak up behind your enemy, and club 'em over the head.. If we are not prepared to do what is necessary to win a war, we shouldn't have gone to war in the first place. There's a reason why peace is desirable.

Oh btw I'm moderate socially liberal, fiscally conservative and I despise politicians for sending our jobs overseas.