What Direction for America?

Will You Buy a Car That Runs on Air?

2008-11-12T11:56:00.001-06:00

Air Car! Runs on compressed air!

One day, in the near future, we'll have the opportunity to make driving safer for our health and environment with options like the pollution-free Air Car, being readied for market by Spain-based Moteur Developpement Int.

Based on proven technology used on the Space Shuttle, the Air Car runs on Compressed Air Technology, a pollution-free engine that burns compressed air stored in tanks made of carbon fiber. The only emission: Cold air that's used to run the car's onboard air conditioner.

The vehicle is built for city driving, as it gets about 100 miles per tankful. Why oil and gas companies are probably very worried about this latest innovation: The average cost of a fill-up is about $3.

Imagine Using Water Instead of Gas in Your Car

2008-11-12T11:52:00.001-06:00

Hopefully, one day in the near future, Americans won't be relying on greedy oil companies to power their cars, especially if a Florida inventor has anything to say about it in this fascinating video.
The scientist recently patented a device that can cut through metal at extreme temperatures like a conventional welding tool can, yet the heat remains cool to the touch. It's only when it hits metal or rock that it generates high heat. And it's powered by water broken down by electricity that's converted to a powerful hydrogen gas.
On his daily commute to his Clearwater office one morning, the inventor came up with a new idea: Converting a traditional gas-burning car engine to one partially running on water. He put his theory to the test on a 100-mile drive in which the hybrid engine burned just 4 ounces of water.

Lame Duck Watch - 11-11-2008

2008-11-12T10:07:00.002-06:00

Bush Lame Duck Watch - Spy Games

MSNBC.com: Politics/Politics — Nov. 11: Lame duck watch: With less than 70 days left until they leave the White House, the Bush Administration wants to implement more than 90 new regulations, including giving state and local agencies more “spying” power. Rachel Maddow is joined by The Nation’s Dave Zirin. (MSNBC)

Lame Duck Watch - 11-10-2008

2008-11-12T09:54:00.002-06:00

Lame Ducke Watch of the Bush Administration

No Peace in His Time

Worst ratings of any President in the history of the United States.

Lame Duck Watch - 11-7-2008

2008-11-12T09:38:00.002-06:00

Lame Duck Watch - Bush Environmental Changes

Bush is sneaking through laws that will make it very difficult or impossible for the next President to undo.

Phil Donahue talks about his movie which is out on DVD - A Body of War also shown on the Sundance Channel.

A Body of War - http://www.bodyofwar.com/

Lame Duck Watch - Rachael Maddow 11-5-08

2008-11-12T09:26:00.003-06:00

Lame Duck Appointment - Lee Greenwood

MSNBC.com: Politics/Politics — Nov. 5: Rachel Maddow explains what President Bush is doing before he leaves offices, including appointing a country singer to the National Council on the Arts.

Thomson Not as Infallible as many Hoped

2007-08-03T17:38:00.000-06:00

Thompson loses his sheen

Thomas F. Schaller

July 11, 2007

Don't look now, but the Republicans' 2008 savior-in-waiting, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, turns out not to be as infallible as some might have hoped.

At a time when the Bush administration's failures and low approval ratings are drawing comparisons to the dark days of the Nixon White House, it turns out Mr. Thompson has a direct and more damaging connection to the ugly politics of the Watergate era: It has been reported that as a young staff aide on the congressional committee investigating Watergate, he was secretly funneling information to President Richard Nixon and his henchmen.

Mr. Thompson first became a minor celebrity 34 years ago this week when, during a televised questioning session of the Senate Watergate Committee, he asked Alexander Butterfield if the White House aide was aware of any taping devices used in the Oval Office. Mr. Butterfield's affirmative answer was a key moment in a chain of events that led to Mr. Nixon's resignation.

In his book about Watergate, At That Point in Time, Mr. Thompson admits he already knew the answer to his fateful question, and that he gave White House counsel J. Fred Buzhardt warning that the committee was aware of the taping system after having questioned Mr. Butterfield privately.

Scott Armstrong, who was an investigator for Democrats on the committee, says Mr. Thompson repeatedly leaked information about the committee's activities to Mr. Nixon's team. "Thompson was a mole for the White House," Mr. Armstrong told the Boston Globe last week. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was."

Mr. Thompson's Watergate shenanigans are not his only image problem. He has at least two other background issues haunting him, the first of which is his murky record on reproductive rights.

During his long, lucrative but rarely mentioned career as a Beltway lobbyist, one of Mr. Thompson's clients was the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, a pro-choice group whose mission includes supporting "reproductive freedom for all."

Former Maryland Rep. Michael D. Barnes was a lobbying colleague of Mr. Thompson's at Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin and Kahn, the firm hired by the family planning organization to lobby against the "gag rule" that prohibits abortion counseling at federally funded clinics. "I talked to him while he was doing it, and I talked to [the group's president, Judith DeSarno] about the fact that she was very pleased with the work that he was doing for her organization," Mr. Barnes told the Los Angeles Times last week.

Also, his home state newspaper, The Tennessean, uncovered documents showing that Mr. Thompson indicated in a 1996 Christian Coalition survey that he opposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution "protecting the sanctity of human life," a position he clarified by writing that he did "not believe abortion should be criminalized."

Mr. Thompson's other problem is his lobbying behavior itself.

His close ties to former Senate Majority Leader Howard H. Baker Jr. - the fellow Tennessean was Mr. Thompson's mentor, and hired him for the Watergate committee - paid off handsomely for Mr. Thompson when the Republicans captured the Senate in 1980. Mr. Thompson later parlayed his connection to another Senate majority leader from his home state, Bill Frist.

And on behalf of what sorts of clients has Mr. Thompson used his savvy skills and partisan connections? The tobacco industry, a British reinsurance company fighting against asbestos lawsuits, and the Tennessee savings and loan industry. That's quite a trifecta.

Mr. Thompson, who has managed dual careers in Washington and as an actor in movies and on television's Law & Order, is rising in Republican primary polls. Though he has not officially declared yet, in some surveys, Mr. Thompson is ahead of all the announced candidates except former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

With a furtive Watergate legacy, some duplicitous behavior on abortion and a history of black-hat lobbying, he makes a perfect heir to the Republican Party mantle.

Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough

2007-07-30T20:07:00.000-06:00

Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough

SOLAR REVOLUTION - Solar Paint
Ted Sargent is a pioneer in solar science. He's working on solar technology that could literally be woven into every aspect of daily life, from our clothes to our roads, using what is known as a spray-on solar cell. The implications for our energy systems are profound. As Ted says, "Solar energy is not just an exciting science problem, but an incredibly important human problem."

Ted is working on solar nanotechnology with the potential to make solar energy very cheap and allow society to collect it on a huge scale. Currently, solar technology costs more to build and install than most people are willing to pay. Solar panels, for example, the technology most commonly associated with solar energy, are installed on your rooftop. The cost of collecting one kilowatt per hour of solar energy (about a third of the electricity an average household uses on any given day) is about $11,000.

Not only are panels expensive to install, they capture only the visible portion of the sun's rays so they work only on sunny days. Ted's focus is the infrared portion of the sun's rays which accounts for more than half of all solar energy. What's more, infrared energy is available to us even in cloudy weather.
A quantum dot is a semiconductor nanostructure that confines the motion of conduction band electrons, valence band holes, or excitons (bound pairs of conduction band electrons and valence band holes) in all three spatial directions. The confinement can be due to electrostatic potentials (generated by external electrodes, doping, strain, impurities), the presence of an interface between different semiconductor materials (e.g. in core-shell nanocrystal systems), the presence of the semiconductor surface (e.g. semiconductor nanocrystal), or a combination of these. A quantum dot has a discrete quantized energy spectrum. The corresponding wave functions are spatially localized within the quantum dot, but extend over many periods of the crystal lattice. A quantum dot contains a small finite number (of the order of 1-100) of conduction band electrons, valence band holes, or excitons, i.e., a finite number of elementary electric charges.

iPhone a Trojan Horse For Government Surveillance?

2007-07-21T15:14:00.000-06:00

Subject: Apple's new iPhone programs a Trojan Horse For Government Surveillance on users?

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2007/200707iphonesurveillance.htm

Backdoor spyware module allows state, corporations and hackers to listen in.

Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet

July 20, 2007 -- An alarming white paper concludes that the Apple iPhone contains a backdoor spyware module that allows hackers or the government to conduct secret surveillance of the user, part of an established trend of corporations and the state working hand in hand to eavesdrop on citizens via widely-used software and hardware products.

Earlier this week, a technology group in Russia released the results of their attempts to reverse engineer the iPhone, concluding that the product has "A built-in function which sends all data from an iPhone to a specified web-server. Contacts from a phonebook, SMS, recent calls, history of Safari browser - all your personal information can be stolen."

The module could act as a back door for trojan developers or AT & T, said the report, adding that "government structures" would have access to the information.

Since AT & T displayed no hesitation in handing over information about their subscribers to the U.S. government as part of the controversial and illegal NSA wiretapping scandal, it would be no surprise to learn that included in the trendy new must-have gadget is a spyware module that allows the government to listen in to your conversations.

AT & T was chosen by Apple as the exclusive service provider for the iPhone, at present all other cellphone companies are blocked from offering any kind of service compatible with the iPhone.

The revelation is also not without precedent - a plethora of companies now include backdoor access in both software and hardware products that allow the state to step in and conduct warrantless covert surveillance, a blanket violation of the 4th Amendment.

Digital cable TV boxes, such as Scientific Atlanta, have had secret in-built microphones inside them since their inception in the 1990's and these originally dormant devices were planned to be activated when the invasive advertising revolution arrived - 2006 marked that date.

The advent of digital video recording devices such as TiVo (Sky Plus in the UK) introduced the creation of psychological algorithm profiles - databases on what programs you watched, how long you watched them for, which adverts you liked or didn't like. This information was retained by TiVo and sold to the highest bidders - an example being Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction during the 2003 Super Bowl half-time show - TiVo were able to compile lists of how many people had rewound the clip and how many times they had replayed it.

Two way communications systems like OnStar also have the ability to tap into private conversations as Americans become increasingly conditioned, by means of the private sector, to having their every movement, web session and conversation tracked and catalogued by big brother.

Last year we reported on how Google were planning to use microphones in the computers of an estimated 150 million-plus Internet active Americans to spy on their lifestyle choices and build psychological profiles which will be used for surveillance and minority report style invasive advertising and data mining.

"The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that's adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject," reported the Register.

The report cites the inevitability that the use and abuse of this technology will eventually be taken over by the state.

"Pretty soon the security industry is going to find a way to hijack the Google feed and use it for full on espionage."

The Echelon program has collected information in violation of the 4th Amendment from American citizen's phone call conversations since the early 90's at least. In addition, a 2001 European Parliament report stated that "within Europe all e-mail, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted" by the NSA.

The fact that Echelon barely even merited a mention during the recent furore created by the original USA Today NSA spying piece goes to show how utterly useless our media are in recalling what has already been admitted and proven.

In 1999 the Australian government admitted that they were part of an NSA led global intercept and surveillance grid in alliance with the US and Britain that could listen to "every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission."

The use of the iPhone as another means of carte-blanch invasive surveillance underscores the fact that corporations and government are joined at the hip when it comes to their disregard of the right to privacy as enshrined in the 4th Amendment to the Constitution.

Why Impeach Cheney?

2007-07-20T20:45:00.000-06:00

Impeach Cheney First

Articles of Impeachment Draft

2007-07-16T22:10:00.000-06:00

Articles of Impeachment

of

President George W. Bush

and

Vice President Richard B. Cheney,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
and
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

URL: http://www.impeachbush.org/site/PageServer

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. - - ARTICLE II, SECTION 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have committed violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rights of the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States, by the following acts:

1) Seizing power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law; carrying out a massive assault on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening the United States, resulting in the death and maiming of over one hundred thousand Iraqis, and thousands of U.S. G.I.s.

2) Lying to the people of the U.S., to Congress, and to the U.N., providing false and deceptive rationales for war.

3) Authorizing, ordering and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilian facilities and locations where civilian casualties were unavoidable.

4) Instituting a secret and illegal wiretapping and spying operation against the people of the United States through the National Security Agency.

5) Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently changing its government by force and assaulting Iraq in a war of aggression.

6) Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secret and other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion of prisoners to obtain false statements concerning acts and intentions of governments and individuals and violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agents elsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

7) Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct of foreign governments and individuals and acts by U.S. government personnel; manipulating the media and foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to public discussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition to U.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks.

8) Violations and subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, both a part of the "Supreme Law of the land" under Article VI, paragraph 2, of the Constitution, in an attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in wars and threats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others and usurping powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejecting treaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroy any means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate the exercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community.

9) Acting to strip United States citizens of their constitutional and human rights, ordering indefinite detention of citizens, without access to counsel, without charge, and without opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the Executive of a citizen as an "enemy combatant."

10) Ordering indefinite detention of non-citizens in the United States and elsewhere, and without charge, at the discretionary designation of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense.

11) Ordering and authorizing the Attorney General to override judicial orders of release of detainees under INS jurisdiction, even where the judicial officer after full hearing determines a detainee is wrongfully held by the government.

12) Authorizing secret military tribunals and summary execution of persons who are not citizens who are designated solely at the discretion of the Executive who acts as indicting official, prosecutor and as the only avenue of appellate relief.

13) Refusing to provide public disclosure of the identities and locations of persons who have been arrested, detained and imprisoned by the U.S. government in the United States, including in response to Congressional inquiry.

14) Use of secret arrests of persons within the United States and elsewhere and denial of the right to public trials.

15) Authorizing the monitoring of confidential attorney-client privileged communications by the government, even in the absence of a court order and even where an incarcerated person has not been charged with a crime.

16) Ordering and authorizing the seizure of assets of persons in the United States, prior to hearing or trial, for lawful or innocent association with any entity that at the discretionary designation of the Executive has been deemed "terrorist."

17) Engaging in criminal neglect in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, depriving thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and other Gulf States of urgently needed support, causing mass suffering and unnecessary loss of life.

18) Institutionalization of racial and religious profiling and authorization of domestic spying by federal law enforcement on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious and political activity.

19) Refusal to provide information and records necessary and appropriate for the constitutional right of legislative oversight of executive functions.

20) Rejecting treaties protective of peace and human rights and abrogation of the obligations of the United States under, and withdrawal from, international treaties and obligations without consent of the legislative branch, and including termination of the ABM treaty between the United States and Russia, and rescission of the authorizing signature from the Treaty of Rome which served as the basis for the International Criminal Court.

What we need to do to keep our democracy!

2007-07-15T11:33:00.000-06:00

Actions people can take to insure a strong Democracy!

by Marc Doyle
July 15, 2007

What can you do to preserve our Constitution and thus protect your freedoms? Make no mistake there is only one Republican Presidential candidate (Ron Paul) and one Democratic Presidential candidate (Dennis Kucinich) who would defend and protect the Constitution. All other candidates are would take the powers and secrecy that Bush and Cheney have annexed for the Presidency and add to them thus pushing us further and further toward a totalitarian state. Here are some ideas for all of us to show our leaders we are serious about holding them to do their duty and follow the Supreme Law of the Land (Our Constitution) instead of usurping powers they were never intended to have or neglecting their sworn duty to follow. Here are some proactive measures we all can take.

Study the Issues

To remain a free people, we need a press and media who report the stories correctly. The press has failed miserably and thus forced Americans to look else where. We have multiple sources to learn about the Constitution and Why Impeachment is Necessary in this case. We need to tackle our press and media about their failure to adequately inform us, and I'll write about this in the future with specific ideas we can use.

Books - To understand why impeachment is both legal and necessary obtain one of the books below and read it. In fact, read several to get know why this is so important to our democracy. To find more books, you can do a search using a search engine. Links Below

The Impeachment of George W. Bush A Guide for Concerned Citizens by Elizabeth Holtzman
Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush by Center for Constitutional Rights
The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism by John Nichols
How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok by Glen Greenwald
Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency by Robert Byrd
The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindoff
Impeach the President: The Case Against Cheney and Bush by Dennis Loo
The 2007 Bush-Cheney Impeachments by Craig Leslie

Media Sources on Impeachment
Tough Talk on Impeachment - PBS Bill Moyers Journal July 13, 2007
The Media Gets Impeachment Wrong - By Salon
Blacked Out by the Corporate Media, Impeachment Advances by Dave Lindorff
Media Very Slow to Acknowledge Majority Want Impeachment by Impeach for Peace
Impeachment Fever and Media Politics by Norman Solomon

Internet Sources for Impeachment - A search on the internet using impeach and Bush or Cheney revels millions of places to get information about impeachment and these two leaders.

Impeach Bush: Vote Here
Los Angeles National Impeachment Center
Impeach Bush for Peace
Impeach Bush: Because We Love America
Impeach Bush Coalition
Impeach Bush and Cheney
Meet ups and Activists to Impeach Bush and Cheney
Reasons to Impeach Bush and Cheney
100,000,000 American Vote to Impeach Bush and Cheney
Vote to Impeach Cheney

Write and Call House Speaker Pelosi NOW

When you call or write; be polite, introduce yourself, explain that you are calling her office to ask her take action as the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Tell her aide that you want her to do her constitutional duty for the American people and to put impeachment back on the table for George Bush for (name several reasons) by drafting articles of impeachment for him and to throw her support behind Dennis Kucinich's Impeach Cheney Bill-H RES 333. Call (202) 225-0100 her direct line as speaker. She is under strong pressure from the American people to put impeachment on the table again.

SEND MAIL TO HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI:

Attn: Nancy Pelosi, House Representative/Speaker of the House,
235 Cannon H.O.B.,
Washington, DC 20515 ;
Pelosi's Fax # 202 225-8259

Send an email to her office from this site. http://speaker.gov/contact/

or

Pelosi's personal e-mail address :

Americanvoices@mail.house.gov or CC her at: sf.nancy@mail.house.gov

Please send her a pro-impeachment email and a specific call to endorse H Res 333. Note: On Saturdays/Sundays, Pelosi's office has a comment line at which you can leave a voicemail. Your message will be transcribed and relayed to her. Please do encourage your family/friends to contact the same number. Refer them to www.bcimpeach.com for the actual telephone #s & contact info.

Find out who your Congressional representative is and call that person. For toll free numbers to your Congress rep: (800) 828 – 0498; (800) 459 – 1887; or (866) 340 – 9281. You will be connected once you name your congress person. The staff aid should take detailed notes and provided to the Congressional representative.

Write and Call Your Representative NOW

Find Your Representative - http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Final Note: Please say "I support Impeachment based on ____. I'd like to know where "[representative name]" stands on this issue." Let's strike while the Libby fury keeps the iron hot! Please call and Act Now

Call the Members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Representative Capitol Phone Capitol Fax
Henry Waxman 202-225-3976 202-225-4099
Howard Berman 202-225-4605 202-225-3196
D. Watson 202-225-7084 202-225-2422
Linda Sanchez 202-225-6676 202-226-1012
L. Solis 202-225-5464 202-225-5467
A.G. Eshoo 202-225-8104 202-225-8890
L. Roybal/Allard 202-225-1766 202-225-0350

Call and write the Members of the House Judicial Committee asking them to impeach Bush and Cheney

Find Out Where the 2008 Presidential Candidates Stand on Impeachment and the Constitution

Write or contact the following Presidential Candidates and ask them where they stand on this issue. If they are vague, refuse to answer, or contradict their previous stands, you should not give your money or support to them. Call their Campaigns and ask where they stand!

2008 Democratic Presidential Candidates

Hillary Clinton for President 2008 *
Barack Obama for President 2008
Chris Dodd for President 2008
Joe Biden for President 2008
John Edwards *
Mike Graval
Dennis Kucinich **
Bill Richardson
Al Gore ***

* One reason why I am not for seeing any support for Hillary Clinton or John Edwards become a future President is the fact that they want to limit participation and any input by other candidates who are bringing a refreshing openness to the the debates that would be lacking if they lost their voice. If these two politicians could do this before they become President, I shudder to think what would happen if they became President. Very very scary. Further their attitude toward the constitution is weak to non existent.
** On record as supporting a stronger better America. Introduced Articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney. Has not stated position about Constitution so I will ask and report in a future report.
*** Not running as of 7/15/2007. Indicates he will not run.

2008 Republican Presidential Candidates
Rudy Giuliani
John McCain
Sam Brownback
Mike Huckabee
Duncan Hunter
Ron Paul *
Mitt Romney
Tom Tancredo
Fred Thompson **
Tommy Thompson

* Of all the Presidential candidates running for office, Democrat or Republican, Ron Paul would be the only one who would restore the US Constitution to the people and renounce the power that George Bush and Dick Cheney have taken for the executive office. Although we have many pressing social issues as well as financial woes, Ron Paul would still make the best President at this time of constitutional crisis because of his stand on the constitution.

** Fred Thompson is currently exploring the possibility of running for president.

Why we must Impeach Bush and Cheney!!

2007-07-15T07:06:00.001-06:00

by Marc Doyle

URL: http://usdirections.blogspot.com/
July 15, 2007

As of this writing, our Republic and Democratic ideals are in grave peril if not lost to us. All other issues pale in comparison to where we will go if we do not act - toward a Corporate Fascist state with a population who is oppressed and repressed or a free strong people who love liberty and freedom willing to fight for their freedoms. Unless we restore our lost freedoms, make our political leaders and law makers responsible for following the rule of law which is our US Constitution, we have lost our freedoms and will reap a life that will be too horrible to contemplate for us and our posterity thus undoing the sacrifices of our founders and all the brave and honorable people who dedicated their lives for the American ideal.

Senator Chuck Hagel tells ABC that impeachment is an option for a monarchy…

Download (4994) | Play (4428) Download (2070) | Play (2680) (h/t Scarce)

If ever there was a time for the American people to demand from our law makers that they indict and impeach George W. Bush and Richard 'Dick' Cheney, that time is now. The reasons for wanting these men impeached should not based on partisan reasons because Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Greens, etc. are all at risk from the actions these two men have for our country and the Constitution that they have trampled on. Why must we do this, because of the utter contempt that they show for our form of government and because they have subverted our democratic ideals, committed and hidden crimes by obstructing justice, sponsored acts of torture, broken national and international laws; used threats, lied and committed perjury in lawful investigations, practice fear and intimidation on the American people; ignored our rule of law, ignored the normal checks and balances that the American Constitution provides, have subordinates who swear allegiance to them and not the Constitution and the American people.

The US Constitution is the supreme law of America which is the guide about the duties, government, responsibilities, etc. of our elected representatives as well as insuring all of us liberty and freedom. It is clear that our elected representatives either have utter contempt or total ignorance about their duties. It is up to the people to remind them and get our Republic back on track.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the elected speaker of the US House of Representatives, took impeachment off the table, and she is wrong and in violation of her Oath of office where she swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. At this moment, Nancy Pelosi is in contempt of the law and should be compelled to do her duty, or we should demand she step down and let someone else who has an understanding about the Constitution prosecute George W. Bush and Richard 'Dick' Cheney for their crimes and violations against our country and all citizens. We need to tell Nancy Pelosi to do your job and put impeachment back on the table or resign!! Harsh, yes, but necessary if we are to preserve our country as we know it. Another important action we need to take is to educate our Congressmen and women about the constitution, they seem ignorant and clueless about how it works.

Write and Call House Speaker Pelosi NOW

When you call or write; be polite, introduce yourself, explain that you are calling her office to ask her take action as the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Tell her aide that you want her to do her constitutional duty for the American people and to put impeachment back on the table for George Bush for (name several reasons) by drafting articles of impeachment for him and to throw her support behind Dennis Kucinich's Impeach Cheney Bill- HR333. Call (202) 225-0100 her direct line as speaker. She is under strong pressure from the American people to put impeachment on the table again.

SEND MAIL TO HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI:

Attn: Nancy Pelosi, House Representative/Speaker of the House,
235 Cannon H.O.B.,
Washington, DC 20515 ;
Pelosi's Fax # 202 225-8259

Send an email to her office from this site. http://speaker.gov/contact/

Pelosi's personal e-mail address :

Americanvoices@mail.house.gov

CC her at: sf.nancy@mail.house.gov

Please send her a pro-impeachment email and a specific call to endorse H Res 333. Note: On Saturdays/Sundays, Pelosi's office has a comment line at which you can leave a voicemail. Your message will be transcribed and relayed to her. Please do encourage your family/friends to contact the same number. Refer them to www.bcimpeach.com for the actual telephone #s & contact info.

My next article will address what we as citizens can do to preserve our Republic and freedoms. I am also planning on doing two television shows one on the US Constitution - Let Freedom Ring and the second one called The Great Censor - News the Mainstream Media Refuses to Report.

The News You Didn't Hear: Congress Sells Out Americans for Pharmacy Dollars

2007-07-13T10:06:00.000-06:00

FDA tyranny to become law

HR.2900 analysis by Richards and Adams

by Mike Adams

On July 11, 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 2900, blocking debate on the law and preventing the introduction of any amendments that might have provided meaningful drug safety protections for consumers. This action demonstrates that the House of Representatives, much like the Senate, is utterly controlled by Big Pharma and has abandoned any responsibility to defend the interests of the voters. Drug companies now have complete control over the U.S. Congress, and through a campaign of intense lobbying and financial influence, they have managed to easily water down a law that once proposed to end the American monopoly on pharmaceuticals and ban advertising on new drugs.

Instead of placing new restrictions on Big Pharma and the increasingly dangerous power of the FDA, this new law (a combination of HR.2900 and S.1082, when it is hammered out in conference) grants more power to the FDA while deepening the financial ties between the agency and drug companies. The law effectively surrenders America to a system of medical tyranny under which a criminally-operated FDA will continue to promote pharmaceuticals, censor nutritional education and discredit alternatives that threaten drug company profits. Nothing in the new law protects consumers' access to dietary supplements or natural medicine.

Got a law? Make it weaker

The House version of the bill is stronger than the Senate version in terms of drug safety issues, but these differences could easily disappear in conference, leading to a final signing of a useless, watered-down "FDA safety" bill that is actually nothing more than an FDA corruption rewards program. (It's better than a frequent flyer program because the miles never expire and there are no blackout dates...)

While the House version would require the publishing of a clinical trials database (which shouldn't even be debatable, it should be full disclosure by default) and limit the number of bribed FDA officials who can sit on a drug decision panel to one, even these provisions are laughable in the fact that none of them actually require drug companies or the FDA to act with integrity or defend the health and safety of the American public.

The great Congressional sellout

Congress had the potential to pass a really good law here -- one that would have ended direct-to-consumer advertising, banned conflicts of interest at the FDA, required the open source publication of drug trials and ended the U.S. monopoly on pharmaceuticals. Instead, Congress chose to do none of these things. It staged a song and dance about "FDA reform" while selling out the future of America's health to a tiny but powerful group of ultra-wealthy corporations that now virtually rule this country. There is nothing in the new law worth celebrating unless, of course, you are the CEO or major shareholder of a Big Pharma corporation, in which case you will like be stunned at just how cheaply and easily U.S. lawmakers can be bought.

Notice, too, that this sellout crosses party lines and involves both Democrats and Republicans. Only one Congressman, Rep. Ron Paul (a Libertarian-leaning Republican), was attempting to introduce meaningful amendments that would protect the interests of the people. His efforts were blocked by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat.

FDA reform legislation is not about Democrats vs. Republicans. It's about the wealthy elite vs. the People. Not surprisingly, the People have once again been screwed by the representatives they foolishly voted into office. If anything, this event proves that U.S. lawmakers have no interest in protecting America's future. They are only interested in the next election, the next career move or the next power play. In a nation devastated by degenerative disease and intoxicated by the chemicals being pushed to manage those diseases, there is no longer anyone left in power with enough sanity to reason with. The President is clinically insane, the FDA is criminally insane, and the Congress is for sale, cheap! The country has become an absurdity, where lawmakers actually bicker about how much bribery and corruption should be allowed in the FDA drug approval decision process rather than simply agreeing to ban all bribery and conflicts of interest, which is what sane lawmakers would do.

Stand back and watch the bonfire

Over the last few months, I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer worth attempting to stop American's self-destruction at the hands of Big Pharma, corrupt politicians and greedy fractional reserve bankers. America is destroying itself, and there is no one left who's willing to stand up and try to stop it (except, perhaps, for a few individuals like Rep. Ron Paul, but he's effectively censored by the powers that be).

My advice to readers is to start thinking very seriously about getting out of America. What's coming over the next 5 - 25 years will not be pretty, and I now believe the collapse of America as we know it today is inevitable. The 2008 elections will change nothing, as either party will only deliver a different form of tyranny in the end. America has devolved into a modern mirror image of the Roman Empire in its last dying days -- steeped in corruption, abandoning its citizens, arrogant beyond all reason, oblivious to the world around it and wholly committed to destroying itself from within.

Congress has become a circus, and the U.S. government, through agencies like the FDA, has become the leading threat to its own people. The nation is steeped in irreversible debt, diseased, terrified, bankrupt and addicted to oil that's running out. On top of that, thanks to Bush-contrived military imperialism, it has alienated every other nation in the world and has now become the most-hated nation on the planet. (If you don't believe me, just travel outside the U.S. and ask practically anybody you meet. Everybody hates the U.S.) It is now only a question of how long the current crippled facade of political power will last.

The passage of this FDA reform law is merely one more sign of how thoroughly committed the U.S. Congress is to creating a future of death, disease and bankruptcy for the American people. You gotta give 'em kudos on consistency, however. At least the lawmakers are predictable.

Welcome to the United States of Big Pharma.

Comments by Byron Richards

On Wednesday, July 11, 2007 the House passed HR.2900 without allowing the Ron Paul (R-TX) amendments to protect dietary supplements. Representatives Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), John Dingell (D-MI), Henry Waxman (D-CA), and others falsely proclaimed that they were doing America a favor by passing this sweeping FDA-supported legislation that grants the rouge agency more power and money, and even transforms it into a quasi drug company.

Both the House and Senate (S.1082) have made the fatally flawed assumption that the reason for so many deaths and injuries from drugs was due to the FDA's lack of resources. In reality, it is the INTENTION of FDA management that is the problem, combined with the simple fact that multiple drugs are extremely toxic and don't work as advertised. Giving the FDA more power and money will only cause the agency to speed more drugs onto the market faster with even less safety testing -- while abusing its power and actively stamping out competition to drugs.

FDA management is in bed with Big Pharma and this new legislation makes matters significantly worse through the creation of the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA. This new entity places the FDA in charge of drug design, drug patents, drug licenses, and the creation of new marketing entities/companies. Such a relationship with private industry is an unprecedented conflict of interest, totally at odds with drug safety. The current commissioner of the FDA, Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D. is little more than a Big Biotech sales rep with massive industry connections.

The House, like the Senate, will continue to allow direct to consumer advertising of new drugs with unknown risks -- a flagrant safety risk that will cost many people their lives. Congressional leaders said they couldn't prevent this advertisement for fear of violating the first amendment rights of drug companies. What a joke. The FDA routinely squashes the first amendment rights of American citizens to understand natural health options and the science that explains how they can prevent and treat disease. Thus, the first amendment argument is simply a matter of convenience. The FDA wants to actively suppress information that will help people, yet allow highly risky and misleading promotion of toxic substances often for untested uses. The FDA even wants to prevent citizens from suing drug companies when they are injured, thus protecting Big Pharma. FDA tyranny, based on this type of arbitrary and unrestrained exercise of power, is used to promote and protect the pharmaceutical industry while at the same time undermining the dietary supplement industry.

Both the House and Senate think it is completely fine that the drug industry pay the FDA fees so that the FDA can approve new drugs faster. Indeed, the FDA and Big Pharma met 112 times to work out their partnership before the FDA let Congress know what it wanted to see in HR.2900 and S.1082. This is like paying the mob for protection. A careful look at the history of the FDA shows it is little more than a bully that protects vested interests at the expense of human health. It is a pitiful agency. It is little wonder than the majority of Americans don't trust the FDA.

Big Pharma owns the FDA and Congress. The drug industry sees FDA management and Congressional leaders as a training pool for future Big Pharma jobs -- based on how well Big Pharma is supported. There will certainly be plenty of rewards to pass out after this legislation becomes law.

It is a sick situation that this new fake safety legislation provides the FDA with unprecedented new power to stamp out competition to drug companies as well as expose Americans to far greater safety risks than ever before. Provisions within the legislation that creates the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA will allow the FDA to remove any dietary supplement from the market based on its whim.

It is now only a matter of time and a formality before HR.2900 and S.1082 become law. There will be a little bit of haggling in the conference committee, as Big Pharma will takes its last chance at watering down any meaningful reform (of which there is very little). Big Pharma will whine that this legislation is too tough on them, which is a fallacy. This legislation is the Big Pharma dream come true. In a football analogy the only question is the final score. Will Big Pharma win by 28-7 or will it win by 42-7. Big Pharma has just cleaned the clock of Americans. We should not forget the gutless Congressional puppets that made it happen.

A new tone has been set. A new chart has been plotted. Congress has transformed the FDA into a quasi drug company with unprecedented new regulatory power to control all health options in America. How many deaths and injuries will it take for a comatose and medicinally-overdosed public to wake up?

About Byron Richards

Byron J. Richards, Founder/Director of Wellness Resources, is a Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist and nationally-renowned health expert, radio personality, and educator. He is the author of Mastering Leptin, The Leptin Diet, and Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America.

Richards encourages individuals to take charge of their health, stand up for their health rights, and not blindly succumb to propaganda from the vested-interests who profit from keeping Americans sick. As founder of Wellness Resources, Inc. of Minneapolis, MN, an independently-owned fine-quality dietary supplement company since 1985, he has personally developed 75 unique nutraceutical-grade nutritional formulas. www.wellnessresources.com

FREE Subscription to Byron's Health Newsletter, click here.

All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. Newstarget.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NewsTarget.com/terms.shtml

How many crimes have to be committed before congress does it's job?

2007-07-03T14:43:00.000-06:00

This is from the Aggressive Progressives at http://www.democrats.com/ If there ever was a time to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney as well as Alberto Gonzales.

Not to would be a further violation of our laws.

Marc

Ten Reasons to Impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney

I ask Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney for the following reasons:

Violating the United Nations Charter by launching an illegal "War of Aggression" against Iraq without cause, using fraud to sell the war to Congress and the public, misusing government funds to begin bombing without Congressional authorization, and subjecting our military personnel to unnecessary harm, debilitating injuries, and deaths.
Violating U.S. and international law by authorizing the torture of thousands of captives, resulting in dozens of deaths, and keeping prisoners hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Violating the Constitution by arbitrarily detaining Americans, legal residents, and non-Americans, without due process, without charge, and without access to counsel.
Violating the Geneva Conventions by targeting civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and using illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new type of napalm.
Violating U.S. law and the Constitution through widespread wiretapping of the phone calls and emails of Americans without a warrant.
Violating the Constitution by using "signing statements" to defy hundreds of laws passed by Congress.
Violating U.S. and state law by obstructing honest elections in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006.
Violating U.S. law by using paid propaganda and disinformation, selectively and misleadingly leaking classified information, and exposing the identity of a covert CIA operative working on sensitive WMD proliferation for political retribution.
Subverting the Constitution and abusing Presidential power by asserting a "Unitary Executive Theory" giving unlimited powers to the President, by obstructing efforts by Congress and the Courts to review and restrict Presidential actions, and by promoting and signing legislation negating the Bill of Rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.
Gross negligence in failing to assist New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina, in ignoring urgent warnings of an Al Qaeda attack prior to Sept. 11, 2001, and in increasing air pollution causing global warming.

What can you do?

Bush has now joined Libby and Cheney in the criminal coverup of the felonious outing a covert CIA agent.

The Busheviks think Bush can ignore the public furor. Tucker Carlson's rightwing dad demanded the pardon, saying "The president will take some heat for it. So what? He takes heat for everything."

Well this time the heat has to get hotter than the glowing tiles on a Space Shuttle - and we have to make it that way. Just last week, 72% of Americans opposed a pardon.

Email your Representatives to Impeach Cheney

Email your Representatives to Impeach Bush

Email the House Judiciary Committee to Start Hearings on H.Res. 333, Articles of Impeachment for Vice President Cheney

Organize a Honk to Impeach on July 4

Join your local Congressional District Impeachment Committee

Don't waste your time calling the White House (the switchboard is closed anyway). Call your Representative to impeach Cheney and Bush:

1 (800) 828 - 0498

1 (800) 459 - 1887

1 (800) 614 - 2803

1 (866) 340 - 9281

1 (866) 338 - 1015

1 (877) 851 - 6437

Lobbyist, Fred Thompson's Resume shows a Washington Insider's Connections

2007-07-01T12:19:00.000-06:00

His credentials do no inspire confidence except for someone who can be easily controlled.

Lobbyist, Fred Thompson's Resume shows a Washington Insider's Connections

from an article printed in SignOnSanDiego.com
By Travis Loller
ASSOCIATED PRESS
2:07 p.m. June 25, 2007

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Republican Fred Thompson, who likes to cast himself in the role of Washington outsider, has a long history as a political insider who earned more than $1 million lobbying the federal government.

As a lobbyist for more than 20 years, billion-dollar corporations paid Thompson for his access to members of Congress and White House staff. During that time he was close to two Senate majority leaders, both from his home state of Tennessee – his political mentor Howard Baker and, more recently, his former colleague Bill Frist.

During Baker's tenure, Thompson lobbied for a savings-and-loan deregulation bill that helped hasten the industry's collapse and a failed nuclear energy project that cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars.

More recently, while Frist led the Senate, Thompson earned more than $750,000 lobbying for a British reinsurance company that wanted to limit its liability from asbestos lawsuits.
That history as a Washington insider is at odds with the image Thompson has sought to convey to voters. When he first ran for the Senate in 1993, Thompson cast himself in the part of the gruff, plainspoken everyman, leased a red pickup truck and drove around Tennessee in his shirt sleeves.

Now, as he considers an expected run for president in 2008, the actor-politician continues to position himself as a political outsider.

However, lobbying has been a steady side gig for Thompson ever since the end of the Watergate hearings that brought him to Washington in 1973 as minority counsel for the investigative committee co-chaired by the GOP's Baker. Lobbying clients paid him about half a million dollars between 1975 and 1993, when he started his campaign for the Senate. He released 20 years worth of tax returns during the race.

When Baker became Senate majority leader in 1981, lobbying provided Thompson with about 80 percent of his total income.

One of his clients at the time was the Tennessee Savings and Loan League, on whose behalf Thompson lobbied for a bill to deregulate the industry. Experts say the final version of that bill played a large role in the savings-and-loan crisis of the late 1980s, opening the door to widespread fraud and mismanagement.

The fiasco ultimately led to about a $150 billion taxpayer bailout of the industry, said Robert Litan, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution and co-author of a 1993 report on the causes of the disaster that describes the influence of lobbyists as “pervasive, pernicious – and effective.”

Thompson defended his S&L lobbying in a 1994 interview with The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis, Tenn., saying that both parties agreed at the time that regulations limiting the industry's competitiveness needed to be relaxed.

Thompson's first and longest-running lobbying client was Westinghouse Electric Co., for whom he lobbied in favor of nuclear energy. In 1981, he received a little less than $54,000 from the company. At the time Westinghouse was receiving federal funds for Tennessee's Clinch River nuclear project.

A spokesman for Thompson, Mark Corallo, said the experimental reactor “was a local project focused on new kinds of energy at a time when the U.S. was going through an energy crisis.”
The reactor was never built and the project was canceled in 1983 after the government had spent $1.7 billion on it.

The spokesman said Thompson was unavailable to comment for this article.
Even after Thompson left the Senate in 2003 with a plum job playing District Attorney Arthur Branch on the NBC drama series “Law & Order” he continued to lobby, this time for Equitas, a British reinsurance company that handles billions of dollars of asbestos claims for Lloyd's of London. That earned him more than $750,000 over the past three years, including $300,000 in 2005, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The firm had complained it was being treated differently from American companies in a bill designed to remove the about 600,000 asbestos lawsuits from the courts and create a trust fund for victims. The bill was supported by companies facing lawsuits and opposed by many victims and their attorneys.

Since leaving the Senate Thompson has continued to have close contact with powerful Republicans, including members of the Bush administration. That includes acting as the president's point man in guiding Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts through the Senate confirmation process in 2005.

Thompson also helped run the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Fund Trust, an organization that set out to raise more than $5 million to help finance the legal defense of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, who was convicted in March of lying and obstructing Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.
“This is no political outsider,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for government ethics and campaign finance reform with Public Citizen. “He clearly gained a network of contacts in Congress though Howard Baker that he cashed in on and would represent anyone who would pay him.”

Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.

Republicans and Some Democrats Go BOOM!!!

2007-06-23T08:32:00.000-06:00

There is a dangerous trend from our Presidential hopeful politicians that should scare all peace loving people. They are all sounding like the Bush Administration when it comes to using nuclear weapons against other countries instead of negotiating and trying all other means to avoid using nukes. These people are unfit to be President and should lose all backing from their supporters. This won't happen, but it should.

All the major Republican candidates are unfit to be President because they all stated that they would use tactical nuclear weapons to attack Iran.

Republican debate goes boom

John McCain was silent on the issue but given his 'Hawkish' stance lately he would. In this case silence can be construed as acceptance considering his famous Beach Boy Parody on "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran" His lame excuse that this was just in fun doesn't cut it because he just apologized for the singing not the lyrics.

Although Senator Joe Lieberman is not a candidate, he would bomb Iran with nukes. Remember Lieberman being an orthodox Jew, in addition to being a US citizen also is a citizen of Israel, i.e. dual citizenship. So his stance is really not that surprising given that Israel would nuke Iran if given the chance.

Video: Lieberman to bomb Iran

Republican Constitutionalist Ron Paul would not use nukes. This is another reason for Republicans and others to consider him as President. Representative Ron Paul is a Libertarian but is running as a Republican so he can get more exposure and possibly elected.

The mainstream news media has been pushing for a war because they seem to be a propaganda arm of the current neo-conservative leadership that have taken over our democracy.

The Democrats have their war mongering cheerleaders, i.e. Clinton, Edwards, and Obama stated they would use tactical nuclear weapons if they had to which lead to the statement by Senator Mike Gravel saying they really scared him.

Mike Gravel, Bill Richardson, and Dennis Kucinich are opposed to using nuclear weapons in any case against any country at any time. This is a reason for Democrats to consider them for President.

The Pentagon's most likely next target is Iran.

Hillary Clinton says "no option can be taken off the table."

Barack Obama says that the Iranian government is "a threat to all of us" and "we should take no option, including military action, off the table."

John Edwards says, "Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons." And: "We need to keep all options on the table."

A year ago, writing in The New Yorker, journalist Seymour Hersh reported: "One of the military's initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites."

For a presidential candidate to proclaim that all "options" should be on the table while dealing with Iran is a horrific statement. It signals willingness to threaten -- and possibly follow through with -- first use of nuclear weapons. This raises no eyebrows among Washington's policymakers and media elites because it is in keeping with longstanding U.S. foreign-policy doctrine.
This year, with their virtually identical statements about "options" and "the table," the leading Democratic presidential candidates -- Clinton, Obama and Edwards -- have refused to rule out any kind of attack on Iran.

If you're not shocked or outraged yet, consider this:

On Feb. 22, the national leaders of MoveOn sent an e-mail letter to more than 3 million people with the subject line "War with Iran?" After citing a need to give UN sanctions "a chance to work before provoking a regional conflict," the letter said flatly: "Senator Hillary Clinton has provided some much needed leadership on this."

For those of you who are very involved in the peace movement be aware that the vast majority of front running Republicans and Democrats have openly come out and stated their use of tactical nuclear weapons are very scary and dangerous. They scare me and are not fit to be President. Don't be deceived by their 'peace' rhetoric and mouthing platitudes so they can get your vote. If push came to shove, they would disappoint this base as mushroom clouds appear that they would be responsible for.

Do we really want to see these fired off anywhere in the world by any of our leaders when we have not even started to negotiate with Iran? If we do fire these off against Iran we will have opened up the option for others to use nuclear weapons against us such as China or Russia. India and Pakistan has nuclear weapons as does Israel. The world is dangerous enough without our leaders even hinting they would use these. Once the nuclear Genie is let out of the bottle, it may be impossible to contain.

The Test for Electing an American President

2007-06-22T12:01:00.000-06:00

Marc Doyle

All Presidents swear to defend and uphold the Constitution, yet most really do not understand or follow it once they are in power and in the case of the Bush administration actually show utter and complete disregard for our supreme law of the land. This is why it is one of our most important duties is to support candidates who will not just mouth platitudes but actually follow the constitution as a guide in ruling our country.

Below are more ideas about what Ron Paul stands for and why he should be considered for President.

He is the only candidate who really stands for restoring the US Constitution and would work to see that our liberties and freedoms are safe guarded.

Ron Paul has been a breath of fresh air in the normally stuffy, Robot Republicans who don't have an original thought among them and are so ignorant about the Law of our Land that most could not even tell you what the Bill of Rights are much less how many amendments we have to our Constitution.

Throughout his career he has worked to safeguard the constitution and as such carefully studies everything that he votes on in that light so when he votes for or against something, it is always in line with the US Constitution. The reason he votes against these things is because they really do not stand up well when you use the US Constitution as the guide, and he fears intrusion into our fundamental liberties and freedoms or how it affects our government as guaranteed in that document. When he drafts legislation, he make sure to see that it is in alignment with the US Constitution.

It is regrettable that the vast majority of people in our country are so ignorant about the Constitution and do not consider it very important. If they were better educated about the constitution, they would back men like Ron Paul, and we would most definitely be better off even though on the surface it does not appear that way. This is how George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the Neo-Con Republicans conned us out of our freedoms and liberties - by playing on people's ignorance and fear.

On the Democratic side, most democrats have not spoken out in defense of restoring our constitution and have admitted they voted for striking the constitution down with the passage of the Patriot Act of 2001 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. All candidates except Ron Paul admit that they did not read the Patriot Act of 2001 and yet they passed it into law without having read it much less studied it. Ron Paul was the only and I mean only person who read and studied this horrible legislation then tried to give a warning about what was happening and how we would lose our freedoms if this were passed. In light of our current plight in America, he was right on.

Many of the things Ron Paul has voted against actually could be granted by individual states, there is nothing to prevent states from giving Social Security or other forms of retirement to their people, setting high environmental standards, encouraging alternative forms of energy with state grants, have universal health care for all state citizens, universial free education from elementary school to medical school, etc. What is not specifically listed in the US Consitution is actually a state's right!

I personally think that if we believe certain things such as social security, universal health care, great management of our resources, energy policy, etc. are so important to our survival or could put our democracy at peril, we have the mechanism to add amendments to the constitution that would grant all citizens

Universal Health care

Social Security or a retirement with dignity for all citizens

A balanced budget amendment and Not having a national bank like the Federal Reserve which really gives private banks the right to regulate and enslave our nation with huge debts.

Federalize, conserve, and regulate scarce resources such as oil, metals, water, etc. for the common good of the American people.

The right to a life time education from birth to death.

or Any other rights or help necessary to keep our country a strong Republic

If these were amendments, then men like Ron Paul would defend them to their death and fight against acts passed by congress to limit them.

The reason why he is against the income tax is because there is overwhelming evidence that the income tax amendment was not really ratified by all the states a fact that would nullify the IRS and make it obsolete. See video below on America: Freedom to Facism.

Unlike the majority of presidential candidates who vote with their eyes on the polls Ron Paul really studies the legislation and votes in line with the constitution something to be admired considering the present group of candidates we have now who are telling people what they want to hear, but rarely follow through.

America: Freedom to Fascism http://www.freedomtofascism.com/

Marc

Cheney says he's in government's legislative branch

2007-06-22T11:23:00.000-06:00

What does he want to hide except his criminal activity? One more reason to impeach Cheney. It is sad when you cannout trust your own officials.

Marc

The article is in response to the article that follows it.

Cheney says he's in government's legislative branch
Vice president argues he's not part of executive branch of government to avoid rules on classified information.

Cheney - I don't have to follow the law!

By Julia Malone

WASHINGTON BUREAU

Friday, June 22, 2007

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney, in resisting routine oversight of his office's handling of classified information, says that his office isn't actually part of the government's executive branch.

In a simmering dispute with the National Archives that heated up Thursday, Cheney has long maintained that he doesn't have to comply with an executive order on safeguarding classified information because, in fact, his office is part of the legislative branch of government.

Cheney, noting that his single constitutional duty is to serve as president of the Senate, holds that the vice president's office is not an "entity within the executive branch" and therefore not subject to annual reporting or periodic on-site inspections under the 1995 executive order, which was updated four years ago by President Bush.
The vice president has been refusing to cooperate with the National Archives office assigned to oversee the handling of classified data since 2003.

Rep. Henry Waxman, House Oversight Committee chairman, said he had learned that Cheney's office, in a move that "could be construed as retaliation," has even tried to abolish the Information Security Oversight Office, the division of the National Archives set up to enforce safeguards for classified information in executive agencies.
Waxman said the oversight office head, William Leonard, told congressional investigators that the vice president's staff hasn't been successful in the effort.
"I know the vice president wants to operate with unprecedented secrecy," said Waxman, D-Calif. "But this is absurd. This order is designed to keep classified information safe. His argument is really that he's not part of the executive branch, so he doesn't have to comply."

"We are confident that we are conducting the office properly under the law," vice presidential spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said.

Democrats took the opposite view. Waxman, in an eight-page letter sent Thursday to the vice president and posted on his committee's Web site, told Cheney it was "irresponsible" to reject security oversight.

"Your office may have the worst record in the executive branch for safeguarding classified information," Waxman wrote. He cited the conviction of former top Cheney aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby for lying in the investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., when asked about Cheney's claim to be part of the legislative branch, quipped: "I always thought that he was president of this administration."

Constitutional experts were startled at the notion that the vice presidency might not be in the executive branch.

"The vice president is saying he doesn't have to follow the orders of the president," said Garrett Epps, a law professor at the University of Oregon. "That's a very interesting proposition."

Epps said the lines haven't been drawn that clearly: "The vice president spans, in some ways, the branches of government."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino brushed off questions about what branch of the government the vice president resides in, saying she doesn't know enough about the issue.

Susan Low Bloch, a constitutional professor at Georgetown University Law Center, called Cheney's position a "novel claim."

She said that while most people think of vice presidents as executive officials, it's really "a bit of a hybrid" role.

As vice president, Cheney receives his paycheck from the U.S. Senate, which also pays the salaries of much of his staff. However, he also sits in the president's Cabinet meetings and has an office at the White House.

Cheney's lawyers have used his role as adviser to the president to fend off a lawsuit seeking the names of energy executives who advised him on an energy task force.
Paul Orfanedes, who leads litigation for Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan group that joined in that lawsuit, said the vice president's claim that his office is not an executive agency "seems most disingenuous."

The National Archives appealed its case for oversight of Cheney's classified information practices to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last January. Gonzales hasn't responded.

jmalone@coxnews.com.

Additional material from Washington Bureau writer Ian Lye and The New York Times.

Cheney refuses to cooperate with national security group

June 22, 2007
By Deb Riechmann Associated Press

WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Thursday denounced Vice President Dick Cheney's idea of abolishing a government office charged with safeguarding national security information — and criticized him for refusing to cooperate with the agency.Cheney's office — over the objections of the National Archives — has exempted itself from a presidential executive order that seeks to protect national security information generated by the government, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.Under the order, executive branch offices are required to give the Information Security Oversight Office at the archives data on how much material it has classified and declassified.Cheney's office provided the information in 2001 and 2002, then stopped. Henry Waxman, chairman of the committee, said Cheney's office claims it need not comply with the executive order because it is not an "entity within the executive branch."

"Your decision to except your office from the president's order is problematic because it could place national security secrets at risk," Waxman wrote in a letter to Cheney on Thursday.Megan McGinn, a spokeswoman for the vice president, said Cheney's office was not breaking the law, but did not elaborate."We are confident that we are conducting the office properly under the law," she said.The Information Security Oversight Office has asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resolve the legal dispute over whether the order applies to Cheney's office. So far, the Justice Department has not ruled on the issue.Waxman said J. William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, told the panel that after he sought advice from the Justice Department, Cheney's office recommended that the executive order be amended to abolish the ISOO. "I question both the legality and wisdom of your actions," Waxman said.

Waxman said Leonard also told the panel that in 2004, Cheney's office blocked the archives from doing an onsite inspection of his office to make sure classified information was being properly protected."To my knowledge, this was the first time in the nearly 30-year history of the Information Security Oversight Office that a request for access to conduct a security inspection was denied by a White House office," Waxman wrote.The eight-page letter asks Cheney to respond to a series of questions about why he believes his office is exempt, and what steps his office has taken to ensure that national security information is protected.

Congress Should Remove the President and Vice President From Office Now

2007-06-16T14:50:00.000-06:00

by Burt Hall consortiumnews.com
May 30, 2007

During the last six years, the President and Vice President have adopted a failing strategy to combat terrorism, have taken us to war unnecessarily, have ignored pressing domestic needs, and have changed our world image from the most-admired country to one of the least-admired. These top officials pose the greatest danger to our country in decades and would have been replaced long ago had a parliamentary-style system of government existed here.

In the U.S., we remove high officials from office through impeachment, which is decided by a majority in Congress. Framers of our Constitution wisely included impeachment provisions for those officials who manage to evade our powerful checks and balances. They can be impeached for treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

There is a growing list of impeachable offenses being widely debated around the country, as well as among veteran groups and in government. The offenses include: taking the nation to war under false pretenses; diluting new laws; undermining legislative branch authority with signing statements, illegal wiretapping; and obstructing justice over firing of U.S. attorneys. This article adds another, a monumental disregard for extraordinary warnings of the 9/11 attack -- a grave breach of official duty.

For a full year following 9/11, the President opposed an independent investigation. Under pressure from 9/11 families, the Congress finally established the 9/11 Commission. The Commission was comprised of former politicians rather than experts. They were evenly divided politically -- five Republicans and five Democrats, but chaired by a Republican. During much of the Commission's existence, they suffered from lengthy delays, maddening restrictions, and disputes with the White House over access to sensitive documents and witnesses.

As the 2004 election approached, partisan disunity broke out among the Commissioners over presidential responsibility for 9/11. To maintain unity, they agreed to include only facts and leave readers to draw their own conclusions. This private agreement was not disclosed by the Commission in its report or in briefings to Congress and the media. The agreement contravened the Commission's statutory requirements for:

A full and complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding the attacks.
U.S. preparedness for the attacks.
Findings and conclusions for corrective action.

The facts in the Commission's report (along with those from other key sources) show that the Bush White House received unprecedented warnings of an impending attack and did not try to prevent it. By spring, "the drum beat" had begun; by summer the warnings had reached a "crescendo"; and by the end of July, the CIA director told the 9/11 Commission that the warnings "could not get any worse." Some predicted the actual method of attack -- the hijacking of commercial aircraft.

Intelligence reporting consistently described the upcoming attacks "as occurring on a calamitous level ... causing the world to be in turmoil". When the warnings reached a high peak of urgency in July, the CIA director rushed to the White House to brief the National Security Advisor about an expected attack in several weeks -- it "will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties and will occur with little or no warning ... this is going to be a big one."

Bin Laden's goal is "the destruction of the United States." He urged the White House to go on the offense and preemptively attack Afghanistan. He asked for covert authority to go after bin Laden and his organization -- the same request he had been made three months earlier. In late summer, the warnings continued:

The King of Jordan sent a message that aircraft would be used in a major attack inside the U.S. To make sure it got through, he sent the same message through another country. (After 9/11, the administration got Jordan to rescind the warning.)
Germany warned us that commercial aircraft would be hijacked for use as weapons.
President Putin of Russia warned of suicide pilots in training for attacks on U.S.
President Mubarak of Egypt warned that a bin Laden attack on America was in the advanced operational stages. Another Egyptian warning a month earlier reported that 20 al-Qaeda members had slipped into U.S. - four of them training to fly.
England warned us twice -- once about multiple airplane hijackings. Prime Minister Blair was involved.
Israel intelligence sent a list of 19 terrorists inside the U.S. planning to carry out an attack in the near future. Four were 9/11 hijackers.

Counterterrorism officials described the warnings as "the most urgent in decades." Two of the officials considered resigning in order to go public with their concerns. The Commission report does not discuss the specific warnings shown above or why the White House did not respond. The report did confirm that government agencies never mobilized a response, got direction, or had a plan. But, it didn't explain why.

According to the Commission report, CIA briefings to the President and Vice President addressed the al-Qaeda threat 40 times before 9/11. Headlines in these briefings included "Bin Laden threats are real," "Bin Laden Planning High Profile Attacks," and "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S."

Just before the 9/11 attack, the National Security Council placed on the President's desk a strategy aimed at eliminating al-Qaeda in 3 to 5 years. Such a strategy could not possibly confront an imminent threat, one where the CIA director said "The system was blinking red." Several months before 9/11, the President had rejected a national security commission recommendation to establish a Department of Homeland Security. Instead, he asked Vice President Cheney to oversee an effort to respond to domestic attacks. At 9/11 time, the Vice President had not established a capability to respond to domestic attacks.

Had the President tried to defend against the imminent threat, his role as Commander-in-Chief might still be in tact. Instead, he went on a month-long vacation in August. He did not put the nation in a crisis mode; he did not call a cabinet meeting; he did not pursue military options; he did not give the CIA the requested covert authority; he did not prepare for suicide hijacking of commercial aircraft; he did not strengthen passenger screening; and he did not shore up glaring aircraft vulnerabilities, such as cockpit doors. Time Magazine's The Secret History of 9/11 concluded that there was a systematic collapse in the administration's national security apparatus. The Terror Timeline book went further: "The public record reflects that the extreme focus on terrorism in place at the end of the Clinton administration dropped dramatically under the Bush administration. With few exceptions, little attention was paid to terrorism, even as the number of warnings reached unprecedented levels."

The official Commission report assesses blame across government and, therefore, holds no one accountable. The Commission report also claims that the most important failure was "one of imagination." But, how could this be true, when a host of foreign nations had pointed to the actual means of attack?

Commissioner Bob Kerrey said the President did "nothing as far as we can see." However, Kerrey did not make this remarkable statement until after the presidential election and well after release of the Commission report. (See film 9/11: Press for Truth.)

To comply with its statutory mandate, the Commission had no alternative but to assess the job done by the President and his national security team in preparing the country for unparalleled warnings of the upcoming attack. The report contains no such assessment. Instead, it focuses on bureaucratic mistakes at lower levels of government and misses the big picture. The Commission's leadership was given an opportunity to comment on this material and declined.

The Commission should have dealt with Presidential leadership and the President's duty as Commander-in-Chief. His leadership would have stimulated a new level of energy, creativity, and cooperation within and among federal and local agencies and strengthened protection of commercial aircraft. With reenergized government surveillance and public participation, the country would have been much better prepared to avert the horrible tragedy.

In the end, the measures taken by the President should have shown a government in action, anxious to protect its people, and determined to make it difficult for the terrorists to succeed. The critical issue is the President's lack of response to the warnings, his absence of leadership when it really counted, and the White House cover-up since then. It was this dereliction of duty that gave the President the excuse for the war in Iraq -- a war that Congress has been powerless to stop.

When our framers inserted the language "high crimes," they had in mind such things as grave breaches of official duties, criminal negligence, abuses of public office, great crimes against society, and great and dangerous offenses that subvert our Constitution. While most of these grounds apply here in one way or another, a grave breach of official duty seems to be the most relevant one: The President, as Commander-in Chief,
(1) did not respond to unprecedented warnings of the 9/11 disaster,
(2) conducted a massive cover-up instead of accepting responsibility, and
(3) exploited the tragedy to justify a misguided war and gain a second term.

Reasons for removal of the President and Vice President go far beyond impeachment issues. Both have become increasingly irrelevant and have lost public trust and confidence in their ability to command. To replace them, Congress should authorize an accelerated presidential election.

Since much of Congress acts more out of fear than conviction, there isn't much hope that the President and Vice President actually will be impeached. However, hopefully, the 9/11 issue will be aired sufficiently enough to hold them accountable for being irresponsible in the face of the greatest threat information in our history. Also, 9/11 families deserve the truth -- the President of the United States was in position to spare their loved ones and did not even try.

-----Burt Hall has served as Group Director on matters of national security in the U.S. Government Accountability Office and authored articles on 9/11, the war in Iraq and terrorism strategy. He co-authored, with Ed Asner, Misuse of Power. He recently published a 5-part series on our deteriorating democracy. It reinforces Al Gore's sweeping new book, The Assault on Reason. The series shows that our country has been on a destructive path, and Congress and the media have not served as checks and balances.

National Debt Looms at $59 Trillion Dollars

2007-06-15T15:25:00.001-06:00

NATIONAL DEBT on Lou Dobbs. It's much higher than you think!

It would take every US household to pay taxes of $517,000 a year to pay this off. Judging from this report our greatest threat after Bush leaves office will be make sure that the Republicans are held accountable for this horrendous debt load. This is why any person elected will have a major headache when the economy faulters and they blame the democrats for the great fall.

$760 Billion Deficit, $59 Trillion Debt
The very last thing we want to do at 5 o’clock on a Friday is start reading freakin’ budget reports from the Treasury, but this seems possibly horrifying enough to briefly consider before we turn to “Weekend Wilma,” which is a just-now made-up code name for being drunk until Monday.

Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee claims the real deficit is $760 billion, not $318.5 billion as claimed by the White House. And the national debt is actually $59 trillion, not $8.3 trillion.
More numbers-based fear-mongering, after the jump.

Last year, the U.S. paid $375 billion in interest alone … or, Washington paid $100 billion more in interest than last year’s $275 billion increase in federal revenue.

Scary numbers, but why even mention them? Because Cooper’s a Dem and he suspects the GOP will “reveal” the true numbers once the Dems win back the House and Senate … so that the Democrats will get stuck with the blame for the crazy debt and spending that have piled up since 2001.

The question for non-economists is, But what country is going to try to collect that debt when we can just blow up anybody we want for any reason at any time?

The answer, of course, is that Cinco de Mayo wasn’t originally a day when white people drank a lot of tequila. It actually commemorates the humiliating defeat of the French by the Mexicans … all because Mexico defaulted on its debt to France, so France decided to seize Mexico.

Bush is Hiding the True National Debt. It’s Worse than You’ve Heard. Much Worse. [BuzzFlash]
2006 Financial Report of the United States Government [U.S. Treasury}

Senate Begins Real Push on Habeas Corpus

2007-06-10T16:59:00.000-06:00

There is a vote to restore a fundamental right for all people from the constitution which the Bush Administration succeeded in gutting with the help of the Republican Controlled Senate. They also want to do away with the Military Commissions Act (Patriot Act II.)

Please contact your Senators about this telling them to support this important initiative to restore the Constitution.

Many Republicans and some foolish Democrats have decided to fight against this which means that they are really against Americans having any guaranteed rights or liberties as outlined in the US Constitution. They should be marked as traitors against the Untied States because they have sworn to uphold and defend the US Constitution not destroy it and our liberties.

Olbermann's Comment on Habeas Corpus Loss

Why is Habeas Corpus important?
habeas corpus

Lat. "you have the body" Prisoners often seek release by filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another's detention or imprisonment. The petition must show that the court ordering the detention or imprisonment made a legal or factual error. Habeas corpus petitions are usually filed by persons serving prison sentences. In family law, a parent who has been denied custody of his child by a trial court may file a habeas corpus petition. Also, a party may file a habeas corpus petition if a judge declares her in contempt of court and jails or threatens to jail her.

In Brown v. Vasquez, 952 F.2d 1164, 1166 (9th Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 112 S.Ct. 1778 (1992), the court observed that the Supreme Court has "recognized the fact that`[t]he writ of habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.' Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 290-91 (1969). " Therefore, the writ must be "administered with the initiative and flexibility essential to insure that miscarriages of justice within its reach are surfaced and corrected." Harris, 394 U.S. at 291.

Senate Begins Real Push on Habeas Corpus

Today the Senate Judiciary Committee passed an important bill to restore habeas corpus, the sacrosanct Constitutional right to challenge government detention in court, by a vote of eleven to eight.

Habeas corpus was revoked by last year's Military Commissions Act, which has been assailed as unconstitutional and un-American by leaders across the political spectrum. Today's habeas bill was backed by the Judiciary Committee's Democratic Chairman, Patrick Leahy, and its Republican Ranking Member, Arlen Specter. "The drive to restore this fundamental right has come from both sides of the aisle," said Sharon Bradford, an attorney at the bipartisan Constitution Project, in response to today's vote. "Restoring America's commitment to the rule of law is not a partisan cause; it is a patriotic one," she added.

Today's vote means the habeas bill can now be brought to the Senate floor at any time. One source with knowledge of the legislative plan said Majority Leader Harry Reid has committed to bringing the bill to a vote within the month.

Some Democrats are pushing Reid to go further, advocating more comprehensive human rights protections and a repeal of the entire Military Commissions Act. Senator Chris Dodd, the most aggressive defender of the Constitution in the presidential race, is pushing legislation that would not only restore habeas, but also ban the use of evidence obtained through torture and recommit the U.S. to the Geneva Conventions. "We must recognize that our security is enhanced by upholding our nation's historic legal principles as we vigorously pursue terrorists," he said in a statement today. Dodd is giving a major address about his proposal at the Cardozo School of Law Commencement exercises in New York on Thursday, part of a larger effort to prioritize Constitutional rights on the national agenda â€“ and in the presidential campaign. The Dodd Campaign has gathered over 10,000 "citizen cosponsors" for his bill, the Restoring the Constitution Act, while using YouTube, blog and netroots outreach to rally more support.

Obama, Clinton and Biden, the other Senators in the presidential race, have cosponsored the habeas legislation but not Dodd's bill, which currently has eleven cosponsors. The legislation faces an uphill battle in the Armed Services Committee, a much less hospitable venue for Constitutional rights than the Judiciary Committee. But there is one influential Armed Services member who opposed the Military Commissions Act and could jump start the effort to restore Constitutional rights: Hillary Clinton.

CNN Learns From ABC’s Censorship and Deletes All Ron Paul Comments

2007-06-07T06:02:00.000-06:00

VANISHED CNN COMMENTS ON RON PAUL IN THE DEBATECNN put up a comments page about last night’s New Hampshire GOP debateat CNN Political Ticker Who Won the Debate? The comments were overwhelmingly for Ron Paul.
CNN removed the comments and replaced them with a page ofcomments about the June 3, 2007 Democratic debate. SMOOTH. Unfortunately I was unable to get a screenshot this time because I had to get up early this morning. Ah, the middle class life, how it hinders the ability to micromange the media.
Here is a copy of the comments as they were before CNN removed them.
(Disclaimer: If you read all of these comments that they deleted you may get really pissed off and do something like… cry, boycott CNN and or want to cause a revolt.)
I will be providing a list of advertisers as soon as I get the chance, if anyone reads this and has some already please comment or e-mail and let me know. Many many thanks.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/missingcomments.php
When ABC did this very thing not a month ago-
MySpace Continues Censoring Ron Paul, ABC Deletes all Comments
ABC Allow Ron Paul Comments, Guardian Unlimited Calls Out the Neo-Cons, Cheney Connected to D.C. Madam- Ignored by Mass Media
Ron Paul Censorship on ABC, it’s Time to Step it Up, Boycotting the Advertisers- A Compiled List
Ron Paul On Tucker Carlson (06/06/07)

The Republicans Put in a Frenzied Call to Central Casting for a "Great White Dope" and Get Fred

2007-06-01T18:57:00.000-06:00

GOP Hypocrite of the Week (Buzzflash.com)

Fred Thompson Shown with his favorite Illegal Cuban Cigar.

Fred Thompson

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week. Well, the Republicans appear to have found their latest "Great White Dope" to field for president: Fred Thompson.Thompson may have been a senator and Republican counsel to the Watergate investigation, but his real asset to the GOP is that he's an actor.Ronald Reagan taught the GOP what a B-actor can do for playing the part of a candidate and then acting the role of president for 8 years. Then they got Arnie elected in California, even though his claim to fame was a movie role called "The Terminator" and his sexual harassment of women. Come to mention it, he also starred in a film that could be the Republican motto of sorts: "True Lies."So given a field of flawed candidates for the presidency, the fixers and money men behind the GOP one-party rule machine have made a casting call to -- Gasp! -- Hollywood.

They want that "Law and Order" guy to come to the rescue.Thompson has his "common man" PR stunts down to a science, including a made for press photo-op "red pickup truck." This is a guy who favors limos and a young second wife more than 20 years his junior. Just like Newt's third wife.In fact, the GOP field is so crowded with divorced men (Giuliani is on his third), they could form an alimony club.A short time ago, Thompson took a cue from Bill O'Reilly and started to beat up on Michael Moore for going to Cuba. In response, "Moore, seizing on a detail from a story in The Weekly Standard last month -- that Thompson's office features many boxes of Montecristo cigars -- wrote a letter to Thompson suggesting the former senator is a hypocrite for liking to smoke Cubans [which are illegal to import or possess in the U.S.]"

Thompson's shadow campaign then posted a YouTube attack on Moore, with Fred defiantly "chomping" on a cigar. Of course, Thompson didn't explain the little issue of breaking the law by buying and smoking Cuban cigars, nor did he address the hypocrisy of it all.Hmmm…. isn't it kind of ironic that the Republicans are always lambasting Hollywood -- but when they need a candidate to save the day for them, they place a call to central casting? Until next week, remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.Catch up with you soon.

Considering the feeling the majority of Americans have that have resulted in smoking bans across the nation, it is amazing that Fred Thompson chose this as one of his props. The video does not really show a man who is very presidential and just gives fodder for his republican and democratic opponents.
* * *
This is Fred Thompson's first HOTW Award. Welcome to the Club.

The Dopy Fred Thompson Hypocrite of the Week Award

Michael Moore's challenge - http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=208

Fred "Hypocrite" Thompson's Video Reply

Democrats Are Weak

2007-06-01T18:45:00.000-06:00

Cindy Sheehan hit the nail on the head.

Like the story of Judas, Democrats sell out their base, the troops, and the American people for the proverbial 30 pieces of silver.

That giant clucking sound we hear coming from the east is

THE GREAT CHICKEN LILLY LIVERED, YELLOW STRIPED, PANTYWAIST, FORK TOUNGED, GUTLESS WONDERS WHO CALL THEMSELVES - CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS are giving Bush everything he asks for.

Neville Chamberlain compromised with Hitler in the 1930's, and Chamberlain went home thinking he had appeased this madman dictator by declaring "Peace in our time.!" He learned that there was never enough appeasement for the voracious appetite of Hitler, and this strategy did not work except to draw utter contempt from his adversary and minions as well as his fellow countrymen. The Democrats were given a clear mandate at the polls and once again have failed us by appeasing our madman. They need to get a spine and dig in their heels.

Below is the Roll Call Vote for the Iraq Funding Bill that the Democrats Caved in on. This will show you who the scoundrels are so we can target them at the polls in 2008.

Thank those who took a stand and remember those who sold out the American people.

Our congressman Lloyd Doggett deserves praise for taking a sensible stand against compromising and not caving in. He gets it because this is what the majority of American people want. Edwards also spoke out. Only 11 senators had the guts to take a stand.

The funding bill was H R 2206.

House of Representatives Roll Call Vote
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll425.xml

Senate Vote for Iraq Funding with Not Limits
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00181

Cindy Sheehan, the face of the US anti-war movement, is calling it quits. In a rare live interview following her Memorial Day farewell message, she talks with Riz about why she is leaving the peace movement, her disillusionment with US policy and what lies ahead.

How many more have to die?

2007-05-30T16:45:00.000-06:00

“We don’t do body counts”General Tommy Franks, US Central Command

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

More Deadly Than Saddam
by Gwynne Dyer

URL:http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1016-20.htm

LONDON -- The final indignity, if you are an Iraqi who was shot for accidentally turning into the path of a U.S. military convoy (they thought you might be a terrorist), or blown apart by a car bomb or an airstrike, or tortured and murdered by kidnappers, or just for being a Sunni or a Shiite, is that U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will deny that your death happened. The script they are working from says (in Bush's words last December) that only "30,000, more or less" have been killed in Iraq during and since the invasion in March, 2003.
So they have a huge incentive to discredit the report in the British medical journal The Lancet last week that an extra 655,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion in excess of the natural death rate: 2.5 percent of the population.
"I don't consider it a credible report," said Bush, without giving any reason why he didn't.
"It is a fairly small sample they have taken and they have extrapolated it across the country," said a spokesman of the British Foreign Office, as if that were an invalid methodology. But it's not.
The study, led by Dr. Les Roberts and a team of epidemiologists from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was based on a survey of 1,849 households, containing 12,801 people, at 47 different locations chosen at random in Iraq. Teams of four Iraqi doctors -- two men and two women -- went from house to house and asked the residents if anybody had died in their family since January, 2002 (15 months before the invasion).
If anybody had, they then inquired when and how the person had died. They asked for death certificates, and in 92 percent of cases the families produced them. Then the Johns Hopkins team of epidemiologists tabulated the statistics and drew their conclusions.
The most striking thing in the study, in terms of credibility, is that the prewar death rate in Iraq for the period January 2002-March 2003, as calculated from their evidence, was 5.5 per thousand per year. That is virtually identical to the U.S. government estimate of the death rate in Iraq for the same period. Then, from the same evidence, they calculate that the death rate since the invasion has been 13.3 per thousand per year. The difference between the prewar and postwar death rates over a period of 40 months is 655,000 deaths.
More precisely, the deaths reported by the 12,801 people surveyed, when extrapolated to the entire country, indicates a range of between 426,369 and 793,663 excess deaths -- but the sample is big enough that there is a 95 percent certainty that the true figure is within that range. What the Johns Hopkins team have done in Iraq is more rigorous version of the technique that is used to calculate deaths in southern Sudan and the eastern Congo. To reject it, you must either reject the whole discipline of statistics, or you must question the professional integrity of those doing the survey.
The study, which was largely financed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, has been reviewed by four independent experts. One of them, Paul Bolton of Boston University, called the methodology "excellent" and said it was standard procedure in a wide range of studies he has worked on: "You can't be sure of the exact number, but you can be quite sure that you are in the right ballpark."
This is not a political smear job. Johns Hopkins University, Boston University and MIT are not fly-by-night institutions, and people who work there have academic reputations to protect. The Lancet, founded 182 years ago, is one of the oldest and most respected medical journals in the world. These numbers are real. So what do they mean?
Two-thirds of a million Iraqis have died since the invasion who would almost all be alive if it had not happened. Human Rights Watch has estimated that between 250,000 and 290,000 Iraqis were killed during Saddam Hussein's 20-year rule, so perhaps 40,000 people might have died between the invasion and now if he had stayed in power. (Though probably not anything like that many, really, because the great majority of Saddam's killings happened during crises like the Kurdish rebellion of the late 1980s and the Shiite revolt after the 1990-91 Gulf War.)
Of the 655,000 excess deaths since March 2003, only about 50,000 can be attributed to stress, malnutrition, the collapse of medical services as doctors flee abroad, and other side effects of the occupation. All the rest are violent deaths, and 31 percent are directly due to the actions of foreign "coalition" forces.
The most disturbing thing is the breakdown of the causes of death. Over half the deaths -- 56 percent -- are due to gunshot wounds, but 13 percent are due to airstrikes. Terrorists don't do airstrikes. No Iraqi government forces do airstrikes, either, because they don't have combat aircraft. Airstrikes are done by "coalition forces" (i.e. Americans and British), and airstrikes in Iraq have killed over 75,000 people since the invasion.
Oscar Wilde once observed that "to lose one parent . . . may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." To lose 75,000 Iraqis to airstrikes looks like carelessness, too.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
© 2006 The Japan Times

Breaking News - Cindy Sheehan Quits

2007-05-29T11:14:00.000-06:00

What a dispicable group the Democratic party leadership is. The have let their base down and sold out the American people, troops, and themselves for 30 pieces of silver by giving in to the President. They have also insured that many will leave their party and seek out better alternatives than a party of liars, scoundrals, and crooks who will say anything to return to power.

As they were voted in so can they be voted out of office. Cindy Sheehan has every right to quit a party that will not listen to the people.

Dear Democratic Congress
by CindySheehan
Sat May 26, 2007 at 07:03:16 AM PDT
May 26, 2007
Dublin, Ireland

Dear Democratic Congress,

Hello, my name is Cindy Sheehan and my son Casey Sheehan was killed on April 04, 2004 in Sadr City , Baghdad , Iraq . He was killed when the Republicans still were in control of Congress. Naively, I set off on my tireless campaign calling on Congress to rescind George’s authority to wage his war of terror while asking him "for what noble cause" did Casey and thousands of other have to die. Now, with Democrats in control of Congress, I have lost my optimistic naiveté and have become cynically pessimistic as I see you all caving into as one Daily Kos poster called: "Mr. 28%"

CindySheehan's diary :: ::
There is absolutely no sane or defensible reason for you to hand Bloody King George more money to condemn more of our brave, tired, and damaged soldiers and the people of Iraq to more death and carnage. You think giving him more money is politically expedient, but it is a moral abomination and every second the occupation of Iraq endures, you all have more blood on your hands.

Ms. Pelosi, Speaker of the House, said after George signed the new weak as a newborn baby funding authorization bill: "Now, I think the president’s policy will begin to unravel." Begin to unravel? How many more of our children will have to be killed and how much more of Iraq will have to be demolished before you all think enough unraveling has occurred? How many more crimes will BushCo be allowed to commit while their poll numbers are crumbling before you all gain the political "courage" to hold them accountable. If Iraq hasn’t unraveled in Ms. Pelosi’s mind, what will it take? With almost 700,000 Iraqis dead and four million refugees (which the US refuses to admit) how could it get worse? Well, it is getting worse and it can get much worse thanks to your complicity.

Being cynically pessimistic, it seems to me that this new vote to extend the war until the end of September, (and let’s face it, on October 1st, you will give him more money after some more theatrics, which you think are fooling the anti-war faction of your party) will feed right into the presidential primary season and you believe that if you just hang on until then, the Democrats will be able to re-take the White House. Didn’t you see how "well" that worked for John Kerry in 2004 when he played the politics of careful fence sitting and pandering? The American electorate are getting disgusted with weaklings who blow where the wind takes them while frittering away our precious lifeblood and borrowing money from our new owners, the Chinese.

I knew having a Democratic Congress would make no difference in grassroots action. That’s why we went to DC when you all were sworn in to tell you that we wanted the troops back from Iraq and BushCo held accountable while you pushed for ethics reform which is quite a hoot...don’t’ you think? We all know that it is affordable for you all to play this game of political mayhem because you have no children in harm’s way...let me tell you what it is like:

You watch your reluctant soldier march off to a war that neither you nor he agrees with. Once your soldier leaves the country all you can do is worry. You lie awake at night staring at the moon wondering if today will be the day that you get that dreaded knock on your door. You can’t concentrate, you can’t eat, and your entire life becomes consumed with apprehension while you are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Then, when your worst fears are realized, you begin a life of constant pain, regret, and longing. Everyday is hard, but then you come up on "special" days...like upcoming Memorial Day. Memorial Day holds double pain for me because, not only are we supposed to honor our fallen troops, but Casey was born on Memorial Day in 1979. It used to be a day of celebration for us and now it is a day of despair. Our needlessly killed soldiers of this war and the past conflict in Vietnam have all left an unnecessary trail of sorrow and deep holes of absence that will never be filled.

So, Democratic Congress, with the current daily death toll of 3.72 troops per day, you have condemned 473 more to these early graves. 473 more lives wasted for your political greed: Thousands of broken hearts because of your cowardice and avarice. How can you even go to sleep at night or look at yourselves in a mirror? How do you put behind you the screaming mothers on both sides of the conflict? How does the agony you have created escape you? It will never escape me...I can’t run far enough or hide well enough to get away from it.

By the end of September, we will be about 80 troops short of another bloody milestone: 4000, and MoveOn.org will hold nationwide candlelight vigils and you all will be busy passing legislation that will snuff the lights out of thousands more human beings.

Congratulations Congress, you have bought yourself a few more months of an illegal and immoral bloodbath. And you know you mean to continue it indefinitely so "other presidents" can solve the horrid problem BushCo forced our world into.

It used to be George Bush’s war. You could have ended it honorably. Now it is yours and you all will descend into calumnious history with BushCo.

The Camp Casey Peace Institute is calling all citizens who are as disgusted as we are with you all to join us in Philadelphia on July 4th to try and figure a way out of this "two" party system that is bought and paid for by the war machine which has a stranglehold on every aspect of our lives. As for myself, I am leaving the Democratic Party. You have completely failed those who put you in power to change the direction our country is heading. We did not elect you to help sink our ship of state but to guide it to safe harbor.

We do not condone our government’s violent meddling in sovereign countries and we condemn the continued murderous occupation of Iraq .

We gave you a chance, you betrayed us.

Sincerely,
Cindy Sheehan
Founder and President of
Gold Star Families for Peace.

Founder and Director of
The Camp Casey Peace Institute

Eternally grieving mother of Casey Sheehan

Ron Paul on dissent in a time of war

2007-05-29T09:18:00.000-06:00

Ron Paul Talks on Dissent

The true patriot is motivated by a sense of responsibility and out of self-interest for himself, his family, and the future of his country to resist government abuse of power. He rejects the notion that patriotism means obedience to the state. Resistance need not be violent, but the civil disobedience.

Impeach Bush Now - http://www.impeachbush.tv/

Impeach Cheney Now - http://impeachpac.org/node/976

John Edwards Memorial Day Message

2007-05-27T10:50:00.000-06:00

It is refreshing when a candidate takes a strong stand.

It is Congress' War Now

2007-05-27T10:46:00.000-06:00

Dennis Kucinich on Recent Vote to fund the war.

Bush Bongos

2007-05-27T09:53:00.000-06:00

I got the idea for this after thinking about how President Bush seems to have a reality disconnect with what is happening in America and how his actions show that disconnect. Seems no one else has thought of this so I made it.

Here is the original video as posted on YouTube for Anti Malaria Day

Congressman Ron Paul Gives Substance to the Issues

2007-05-27T09:34:00.000-06:00

Ron Paul's YouTube Vote for Ron Paul
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=VoteRonPaul08

Ron Paul's MySpace Account
http://www.myspace.com/ronpaul2008

Thank heavens for Ron Paul. Of all the candidates running for US president in the spring of 2007, Ron Paul has clearly done more than the rest of them put together to inject serious talk about real issues. Whether you agree with his outlook on any given issue, he's got a serious and well considered viewpoint that bears consideration.

For example, I was very glad to see him in the first debate hosted by Chris Matthews on MSNBC. At one point, he asked about national ID cards. Oh yeah, good idea, fine, prudent thinking. Then the question got to Ron Paul, who had a big ol' "hell no" answer, invoking the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Suddenly all these other Republican candidates are backpedaling as hard as they can. That was a valuable service to the public debate from Congressman Paul. I'm real glad he was there thumping that pesky Constitution.

I was also tickled with the early part of his performance in the second debate with Brit Hume on Fox. Hume came asking the candidates simply to name three programs they would eliminate to cut the budget. Tommy Thompson bragged on his 1900 gubernatorial vetoes, but couldn't come up with even one little specific tiny federal program that he'd publicly commit to eliminating. That was pretty much the deal with all the other candidates - except of course for Ron Paul. He had three whole cabinet departments that he'd be happy to shut down - education, energy and homeland security. Now THAT'S answering the question. And if you'd ask him, I bet he'd come up with at least a couple more whole cabinet departments we could eliminate.

Most of all though, he's a uniquely valuable presence in the Republican debates as the only anti-war candidate in the mix. He voted against the war in 2002, and he wants to shut it down NOW. It's highly valuable to the public debate to have a candidate on that stage willing to make a principled constitutional argument against not just the details of how the Iraq war has been conducted, but against the whole thrust of our aggressive military involvement all around the world. Ron Paul demands a basic re-examination of our whole approach to foreign policy.

This is a good thing. For a whole bunch of reasons, it surely behooves us to reconsider why we've got US troops stationed in over 100 countries. How much of that actually serves vital US national security interests, how much is just a waste of limited resources, and how much is it just an invitation to get caught in the middle of other people's conflicts and needlessly make enemies?

Ron Paul presents a strong classical conservative isolationist or libertarian point of view, demanding adherence to the letter of the US Constitution as the first prerequisite. That gives him a thoughtful and consistent point of view that is highly useful in debate.

The downside is that he's an ideologue. That's bad after a certain point. The defense is to say that he's principled. That's great, but adherence to ideology has a tendency to come at the expense of dealing with reality. As Robert Anton Wilson would say, the thinker part of the brain comes up with an idea, and the prover side proceeds to bend and twist and selectively cherry pick all the facts to prove their theory. As in the actions of the Catholic church in Kevin Smith's movie, even a really good idea blindly or stupidly followed out can become a highly destructive Dogma.

This brings us to Congressman Paul's famous dustup with Rudy Giuliani in the Fox debate. Ron Paul insists on applying the basic libertarian non-aggression principle to foreign policy - without regard to how that plays out in the real world. The basic point is that we'll leave you alone if you'll leave us alone. That's so simple and reasonable. Any half sensible person or country can see that.

But we're not even vaguely following the properly disentangled libertarian foreign policy, so obviously the reason people are attacking us is because we've been meddling in their part of the world. As he explained to Brit Hume, "Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years." This is an application of the basic "blowback" idea. "I believe sincerely in blowback. If we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and free. They attack us because we are over there."

But of course, that's turning a blind eye to the malicious and irrational nature of the enemies that we face. It's careful editing of facts to get the result you want. Yes, sometimes our enemies claim they are attacking us because we're in Iraq. But then they say a lot of things, don't they? Watch closely, and you can see our enemies parroting back our own left wingers, bitching about lax US campaign finance laws and absolutely quoting Noam Chomsky.

Paul's comments on the reasons they attacked us created something of an air ball in that debate, which Rudy Giuliani took for the easy layup. He expressed genuine and perfectly well justified resentment, and requested that the congressmen take back or modify his remarks that seemed pretty close to saying that we brought 9/11 on ourselves. He most certainly would not do that.

The other Republican candidates were all kicking their own asses that Rudy got to that loose ball before they did. But maybe Mitt Romney can get some of that next time they're together. He's obviously quite the brainiac, and a particularly smooth talker. Maybe he can ask Paul what he thinks would be the results of US flatly pulling up stakes in the Middle East as he wants and coming home. Would that soothe the Islamists heated hatred, or massively embolden them?

Also, is it a matter of principle that we would have no right to militarily prevent Iranian mullahs from getting a nuclear bomb? Also, would crazy mullahs with a bomb be better than violating our supposed principles? If your principles say that we don't have a right to aggressively defend our lives from people bent on killing us, then your principles are not valid moral precepts. You may need to re-examine your premises.

But he won't get any chance to make such an argument to Paul if the fixers have their way. By the end of the Fox debate, there was already grumbling coming back from SC locals that Paul should be excluded from future debates. Michigan party chairman Saul Anuzis said he would be circulating a petition to have Paul excluded from future debates.

Anuzis called the comments "off the wall and out of whack."

"I think he would have felt much more comfortable on the stage with the Democrats in what he said last night. And I think that he is a distraction in the Republican primary and he does not represent the base and he does not represent the party," Anuzis said during an RNC state leadership meeting.

"Given what he said last night it was just so off the wall and out of whack that I think it was more detrimental than helpful."

Anuzis said his petition would go to debate sponsors and broadcasters to discourage inviting Paul.

Mr. Anuzis is wrong. Paul's views are not just off the wall. He may be wrong, but it's not unreasonable to consider the possibility that we are exacerbating our problems by our foreign policy. Moreover, a lot of good patriotic Americans think just that.

As to detrimental, Ron Paul is the only character in the Republican primaries causing much of any actual debate at all, certainly in the critical area of foreign policy. The other candidates are largely all in agreement. Having someone with a clear and sharply different outlook on the stage is not detrimental, but absolutely essential to having any real debate at all. Basically, he's the one guy on that stage you know is saying just exactly what he really thinks, not just figuring on how to bump the boobs with some red meat.

Then there are those who choose to deal with Paul's challenge to our foreign policy by just making crap up by accusing him of advocating nutsy 9/11 conspiracy theories, which he most certainly does not. Nonetheless, according to Fox News John Gibson: "According to a recent Rasmussen Report poll, 35 percent of Democrats think President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The so-called 9/11 Truth Movement has already infected people like Rosie O'Donnell and one in three Democrats, and many other people, Americans evidently, including Congressman Ron Paul." Ron Paul has never said anything like that George Bush was in on 9/11. Gibson's talking out his hat.

Then you've got Michelle Malkin. I'm inclined to like her cause she's a hottie, and being all crazy radical only makes her hotter. Nonetheless, in regard to her leading the charge against Ron Paul, the most charitable interpretation of her comments would be to say that she's a lying bitch. She strains a half dozen different directions to portray Paul as believing that 9/11 was an inside job, but he simply does not. Look at the main quote from the debate that set this off about why they attacked US. "They" would clearly be referring to Islamic radicals attacking US - as opposed to the CIA or some other US government agents.

Ron Paul does not have great faith in government investigations generally, which point Malkin carefully tries to conflate with being a 9/11 conspiracist. She makes a point of highlighting this Ron Paul quote: "Too often investigations on almost any issue is usually a cover-up." So distrusting the government's investigations of itself marks you as a nutjob? She also highlighted this as proof of Paul's lunacy: "It will be a little bit better now with the Democrats now in charge of oversight." Wait now, Ron Paul thinks the opposition party might do a better job of oversight than the president's own party? That's just beyond the pale for public debate! Get this guy off the stage!

In short, Malkin wishes to insist that any position other than supporting the current foreign policy and complete trust in the integrity of the administration is the same thing as being a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist who thinks Bush was in on 9/11. Suspecting that administration backed investigations might go into CYA mode rather than delivering full truthfulness is absolutely not the same thing. Michelle Malkin knows better when she says it.

Meantime, they could thin out the ranks for the Republican debate. There appears to be little or no public support for most of these guys other than obviously McCain-Romney-Giuliani. What are any of the other six Republican candidates adding to the debate? Not much, and they have almost no public support. If they got lost on the way to the next forum, no one would much miss their input.

Ron Paul, on the other hand, has more than earned his place on the stage. The fact that his ideas so displease some Republican operatives is a pretty good argument for his continued presence right there.

On top of which, he certainly and unmistakably has quite a few supporters. Numerous Paul critics have complained or mocked the army of Paul supporters coming down on them. Paul has won or placed high in most polls on who won the debates, including those by the event sponsors. He doesn't make much impact so far in some of the polls, but then again he's not even listed as a choice in a lot of them. Apparently he's also currently #4 in Republican fundraising.

Personally, I regret that I can't support his candidacy. I was glad to vote for him as a Libertarian candidate in the 1980s. But we clearly could not in fact trust Ron Paul as commander in chief. For starters, we'd be crippled by a leader who has already conceded what Ayn Rand would call "the sanction of the victim." Hey, your own president says that you brought a lot of this on yourselves. How could we then even pretend to justify defending ourselves? Then we just start withdrawing our worldwide military presence wholesale. Whatever libertarian candyland the congressman may construct in his mind, in the real world we'd be chum in the water.

So let me wrap up then with one of the most unholy statements I've ever made. If it came down to a November 2008 match-up of Republican Ron Paul vs Democrat Hillary Clinton, I'd have to vote for Hillary. Rand forgive me, but I'd trust her as commander in chief over the sincere, thoughtful, consistent and blindly idealogical Ron Paul. All the groovy tax cuts in the world won't do US much good if we're getting eaten alive by evil bastards because we're too principled to protect ourselves. Even the dreaded Hildebeast gets that point. She knows she can't get more taxes out of US if we're dead.

But Ron Paul has a lot of valid points to contribute to the debate, and represents in parts the views of many people not otherwise represented in the presidential primary debates. In particular, most of the country is now against the Iraq war, and Ron Paul is the only candidate in the Republican primaries representing that view. For that reason alone, he deserves a seat at the table.

Kucinich Plan to Bring Troops Home

2007-05-20T19:10:00.000-06:00

Kucinich unveils comprehensive exit plan to bring troops home, stabilize Iraq

Dennis J Kucinich, Monday, January 8, 2007, New York City

In November of 2006, after an October upsurge in violence in Iraq, the American people moved decisively to reject Republican rule, principally because of the conduct of the war. Democratic leaders well understand we regained control of the Congress because of the situation in Iraq. However, two months later, the Congress is still searching for a plan around which it can unite to hasten the end of US involvement in Iraq and the return home of 140,000 US troops.

There is a compelling need for a new direction in Iraq, one that recognizes the plight of the people of Iraq, the false and illegal basis of the United States war against Iraq, the realities on the ground which make a military resolution of the conflict unrealistic and the urgent responsibility of the United States, which caused the chaos, to use the process of diplomacy and international law to achieve stability in Iraq, a process which will establish peace and stability in Iraq allow our troops to return home with dignity.

The Administration is preparing to escalate the conflict. They intend to increase troop numbers to unprecedented levels, without establishing an ending date for the so called troop surge. By definition, this escalation means a continuation of the occupation, more troop and civilian casualties, more anger toward the US, more support for the insurgency, more instability in Iraq and in the region, and prolonged civil war at a time when there is a general agreement in the world community that the solution in Iraq must be political not military. Iraq is now a training ground for insurgents who practice against our troops.

What is needed is a comprehensive political process. And the decision is not President Bush's alone to make.

Congress, as a coequal branch of government has a responsibility to assist in the initiation of this process. Congress, under Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution has the war-making power. Congress appropriates funds for the war. Congress does not dispense with its obligation to the American people simply by opposing a troop surge in Iraq.

There are 140,000 troops remaining in Iraq right now. What about them? When will they come home? Why would we leave those troops in Iraq when we have the money to bring them home? Soon the President will ask for more money for the war. Why would Congress appropriate more money to keep the troops in Iraq through the end of President Bush's term, at a total cost of upwards of two trillion dollars and thousands of more troop casualties, when military experts say there is no military solution? Our soldiers stand for us in the field, we must to stand for them in our legislature by bringing them home.

It is simply not credible to maintain that one opposes the war and yet continues to fund it. This contradiction runs as a deep fault line through our politics, undermining public trust in the political process and in those elected to represent the people. If you oppose the war, then do not vote to fund it.

If you have money which can be used to bring the troops home or to prosecute the war, do not say you want to bring the troops home while you appropriate money in a supplemental to keep them in Iraq fighting a war that cannot be won militarily. This is why the Administration should be notified now that Congress will not approve of the appropriations request of up to $160 billion in the spring for the purposes of continuing the occupation and the war. Continuing to fund the war is not a plan. It would represent the continuation of disaster.

The US sent our troops into Iraq without a clear mission. We created a financial, military and moral dilemma for our nation and now we are talking about the Iraq war as our problem. The Iraqis are forgotten. Their country has been destroyed: 650,000 casualties, [based on the Lancet Report which surveyed casualties from March of 2003 to July of 2006] the shredding of the social fabric of the nation, civil war, lack of access to food, shelter, electricity, clean drinking water and health care because this Administration, with the active participation of the Congress, authorized a war without reason, without conscience, without international law.

The US thinks in terms of solving our own military, strategic, logistical, and political problems. The US can determine how to solve our problems, but the Iraqi people will have problems far into the future. This requires an intensive focus on the processes needed to stabilize Iraq. If you solve the Iraqi problem you solve the US problem. Any comprehensive plan for Iraq must take into account as a primary matter the conditions and the needs of the Iraqi people, while providing our nation with a means of righting grievous wrongs and taking steps to regain US credibility and felicity within the world community.

I am offering such a plan today. This plan responds to the concerns of a majority of Americans. On Tuesday, when Congress resumes its work, I will present this plan to leadership and members as the only viable alternative to the Bush Administration's policy of continued occupation and escalation. Congress must know that it cannot and must not stand by and watch our troops and innocent Iraqi civilians die.

These are the elements of the Kucinich Plan:

1. The US announces it will end the occupation, close military bases and withdraw. The insurgency has been fueled by the occupation and the prospect of a long-term presence as indicated by the building of permanent bases. A US declaration of an intention to withdraw troops and close bases will help dampen the insurgency which has been inspired to resist colonization and fight invaders and those who have supported US policy. Furthermore this will provide an opening where parties within Iraq and in the region can set the stage for negotiations towards peaceful settlement.

2. .US announces that it will use existing funds to bring the troops and necessary equipment home. Congress appropriated $70 billion in bridge funds on October 1 st for the war. Money from this and other DOD accounts can be used to fund the troops in the field over the next few months, and to pay for the cost of the return of the troops, (which has been estimated at between $5 and $7 billion dollars) while a political settlement is being negotiated and preparations are made for a transition to an international security and peacekeeping force.

3. Order a simultaneous return of all US contractors to the United States and turn over all contracting work to the Iraqi government. The contracting process has been rife with world-class corruption, with contractors stealing from the US Government and cheating the Iraqi people, taking large contracts and giving 5% or so to Iraqi subcontractors.

Reconstruction activities must be reorganized and closely monitored in Iraq by the Iraqi government, with the assistance of the international community. The massive corruption as it relates to US contractors, should be investigated by congressional committees and federal grand juries. The lack of tangible benefits, the lack of accountability for billions of dollars, while millions of Iraqis do not have a means of financial support, nor substantive employment, cries out for justice.

It is noteworthy that after the first Gulf War, Iraqis reestablished electricity within three months, despite sanctions. Four years into the US occupation there is no water, nor reliable electricity in Bagdhad, despite massive funding from the US and from the Madrid conference. The greatest mystery involves the activities of private security companies who function as mercenaries. Reports of false flag operations must be investigated by an international tribunal.

4. Convene a regional conference for the purpose of developing a security and stabilization force for Iraq. The focus should be on a process which solves the problems of Iraq. The US has told the international community, "This is our policy and we want you to come and help us implement it." The international community may have an interest in helping Iraq, but has no interest in participating in the implementation of failed US policy.

A shift in US policy away from unilateralism and toward cooperation will provide new opportunities for exploring common concerns about the plight of Iraq. The UN is the appropriate place to convene, through the office of the Secretary General, all countries that have interests, concerns and influence, including the five permanent members of the Security Council and the European community, and all Arab nations.

The end of the US occupation and the closing of military bases are necessary preconditions for such a conference. When the US creates a shift of policy and announces it will focus on the concerns of the people of Iraq, it will provide a powerful incentive for nations to participate.

It is well known that while some nations may see the instability in Iraq as an opportunity, there is also an even-present danger that the civil war in Iraq threatens the stability of nations throughout the region. The impending end of the occupation will provide a breakthrough for the cooperation between the US and the UN and the UN and countries of the region. The regional conference must include Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

5. Prepare an international security and peacekeeping force to move in, replacing US troops who then return home. The UN has an indispensable role to play here, but cannot do it as long as the US is committed to an occupation. The UN is the only international organization with the ability to mobilize and the legitimacy to authorize troops.

The UN is the place to develop the process, to build the political consensus, to craft a political agreement, to prepare the ground for the peacekeeping mission, to implement the basis of an agreement that will end the occupation and begin the transition to international peacekeepers. This process will take at least three months from the time the US announces the intention to end the occupation.

The US will necessarily have to fund a peacekeeping mission, which, by definition will not require as many troops. Fifty percent of the peacekeeping troops must come from nations with large Muslim populations. The international security force, under UN direction, will remain in place until the Iraqi government is capable of handling its own security. The UN can field an international security and peace keeping mission, but such an initiative will not take shape unless there is a peace to keep, and that will be dependent upon a political process which reaches agreement between all the Iraqi parties.

Such an agreement means fewer troops will be needed.

According to UN sources, the UN the peacekeeping mission in the Congo, which is four times larger in area than Iraq, required about twenty thousand troops. Finally the UN does not mobilize quickly because they depend upon governments to supply the troops, and governments are slow. The ambition of the UN is to deploy in less than ninety days. However, without an agreement of parties the UN is not likely to approve a mission to Iraq, because countries will not give them troops.

6. Develop and fund a process of national reconciliation. The process of reconciliation must begin with a national conference, organized with the assistance of the UN and with the participation of parties who can create, participate in and affect the process of reconciliation, defined as an airing of all grievances and the creation of pathways toward open, transparent talks producing truth and resolution of grievances. The Iraqi government has indicated a desire for the process of reconciliation to take place around it, and that those who were opposed to the government should give up and join the government. Reconciliation must not be confused with capitulation, nor with realignments for the purposes of protecting power relationships.

For example, Kurds need to be assured that their own autonomy will be regarded and therefore obviate the need for the Kurds to align with religious Shia for the purposes of self-protection. The problem in Iraq is that every community is living in fear. The Shia, who are the majority fear they will not be allowed to government even though they are a majority. The Kurds are afraid they will lose the autonomy they have gained. The Sunnis think they will continue to be made to pay for the sins of Saddam.

A reconciliation process which brings people together is the only way to overcome their fears and reconcile their differences. It is essential to create a minimum of understanding and mutual confidence between the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

But how can a reconciliation process be constructed in Iraq when there is such mistrust: Ethnic cleansing is rampant. The police get their money from the US and their ideas from Tehran. They function as religious militia, fighting for supremacy, while the Interior Ministry collaborates. Two or three million people have been displaced. When someone loses a family member, a loved one, a friend, the first response is likely to be that there is no reconciliation.

It is also difficult to move toward reconciliation when one or several parties engaged in the conflict think they can win outright. The Shia, some of whom are out for revenge, think they can win because they have the defacto support of the US. The end of the US occupation will enhance the opportunity for the Shia to come to an accommodation with the Sunnis. They have the oil, the weapons, and support from Iran. They have little interest in reconciling with those who are seen as Baathists.

The Sunnis think they have experience, as the former army of Saddam, boasting half a million people insurgents. The Sunnis have so much more experience and motivation that as soon as the Americans leave they believe they can defeat the Shia government. Any Sunni revenge impulses can be held in check by international peacekeepers. The only sure path toward reconciliation is through the political process. All factions and all insurgents not with al Queda must be brought together in a relentless process which involves Saudis, Turks and Iranians.

7. Reconstruction and Jobs. Restart the failed reconstruction program in Iraq. Rebuild roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and other public facilities, houses, and factories with jobs and job training going to local Iraqis.

8. Reparations. The US and Great Britain have a high moral obligation to enable a peace process by beginning a program of significant reparations to the people of Iraq for the loss of lives, physical and emotional injuries, and damage to property. There should be special programs to rescue the tens of thousands of Iraqi orphans from lives of destitution. This is essential to enable reconciliation.

9. Political Sovereignty. Put an end to suspicions that the US invasion and occupation was influenced by a desire to gain control of Iraq's oil assets by A) setting aside initiatives to privatize Iraqi oil interests or other national assets, and B) by abandoning efforts to change Iraqi national law to facilitate privatization.

Any attempt to sell Iraqi oil assets during the US occupation will be a significant stumbling block to peaceful resolution. The current Iraqi constitution gives oil proceeds to the regions and the central government gets nothing. There must be fairness in the distribution of oil resources in Iraq. An Iraqi National Oil Trust should be established to guarantee the oil assets will be used to create a fully functioning infrastructure with financial mechanisms established protect the oil wealth for the use of the people of Iraq.

10. Iraq Economy. Set forth a plan to stabilize Iraq's cost for food and energy, on par to what the prices were before the US invasion and occupation. This would block efforts underway to raise the price of food and energy at a time when most Iraqis do not have the means to meet their own needs.

11.Economic Sovereignty. Work with the world community to restore Iraq's fiscal integrity without structural readjustment measures of the IMF or the World Bank.

12 International Truth and Reconciliation. Establish a policy of truth and reconciliation between the people of the United States and the people of Iraq.

In 2002, I led the effort in the House of Representatives challenging the Bush Administration's plans to go to war in Iraq. I organized 125 Democrats to vote against the Iraq war resolution. The analysis I offered at that time stands out in bold relief for its foresight when compared to the assessments of many who today aspire to national leadership. Just as the caution I urged four years ago was well-placed, so the plan I am presenting today is workable, and it responds to the will of the American people, expressed this past November. This is a moment for clarity and foresight. This is a moment to take a new direction in Iraq. One with honor and dignity. One which protects our troops and rescues Iraqi civilians. One which repairs our relationship with Iraqis and with the world. Thank you.

Welcome to What Direction Now

2007-05-19T15:31:00.000-06:00

Congressman Dennis Kucinich for President

Congressman Ron Paul for President

The United States of America is in dire trouble and has been for quite a while. Since 1999 our freedoms have been assulted and taken away from us at such an appalling rate that the Constitutional safe guards that protect us are all but gone.

This is why we need to elect men and women who will stand for the constitution and constitutional issues and who will refuse to talk about political partisianship, i.e. Democrats or Republicans.

As a result of this political assault upon our country, we have debts that total in the trillions of dollars ($49 trillion to be exact) and will tie up our future generations for up to a hundred years or so. We are fighting a war without end that was started to enrich oil and big corporations while shifting the wealth away from our country. Our military is all but depleted. We cannot trust what our leaders say or do. Millions of jobs have been exported out of our country.

Further, the Bush administration who have run our country have created a climate of fear and encouraged mistrust, racism, hatred, bigotry, and a culture of lying that has totally changed our country into a divided nation. Jim Hightower, a well known pundit summed them up in a book he wrote called, Thieves in High Places.

We need change from doing business as usual. The vast majority of presidential hopeful politicians who want to change the direction of our country are almost all part of the problem and many are fooling us or down right lying about what they believe. Many tell people what they want to hear instead of taking a stand. They have voted for war or covertly supported this administration and then tell us that they really did not mean what they were saying.

There are two men with integrity who have shown that they are for doing what is right in America. Unfortunately, the news media which is part of the problem has tried everyway to silence these brave men. They are Congressman Ron Paul and Dennis Kuncinich. Of the two, Ron Paul is a strict constitutionalist who would return America back on course. Dennis Kucinich would also do a great job with changing the terrible direction and predicament we find ourselves in.

What can you do? Support Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich for President. Watch the Democratic and Republican debates and vote for these honorable men.

Thanks.

M. Doyle