It’s par for the course for Obama and Biden, the men who promised “change” but in every step of their preparations for assuming office have pursued nothing but continuity, to acknowledge that they will protect criminals in the Bush administration from prosecution for authorizing torture, a complete violation of both the U.S. constitution and the Geneva Conventions.
When asked by ABC host George Stephanopoulos if top level Bush administration officials would be prosecuted for mandating prisoner abuse, Biden said that he and Obama would be “focusing on the future,” adding “I think we should be looking forward, not backwards.”
The prospects of a government rescue for the foundering American automakers dwindled Thursday as Democratic Congressional leaders conceded that they would face potentially insurmountable Republican opposition,” reported the New York Times last Friday.
Wow! The entire country is steamed up over the Republicans bailing out a bunch of financial crooks who have paid themselves fortunes in bonuses for destroying America’s pensions.
Why do Democrats want to protect Republicans from further ignominy by not giving them the opportunity to vote down a bailout for workers? Quick, someone enroll the Democratic Party in Politics 101.
GM’s divisions in Canada and Germany are asking those governments for help. It will be something if Canada and Germany come through for the American automaker and the American government doesn’t.
Conservative talking heads are saying GM is a “failed business model” unworthy of a $25 billion bailout. These are the same talking heads who favored pouring $700 billion into a failed financial model.
December 1 brought more disappointment but no surprises. Obama’s national security appointees (like all his earlier ones) aren’t “change to believe in” or what people expected for their votes. They’re recycled establishment figures. Their agenda is business as usual, and they’ll continue the same failed Bush administration policies at home and abroad. Washington’s criminal class is bipartisan. Obama was chosen to lead it and is assembling a rogue team that’s little different from the one it’s replacing.
For “security”, it means:
maintaining the “strongest military on the planet” and do it by outspending all other countries combined;
continued foreign wars;
possibly another against Iran;
permanent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – directly and with proxy forces; Obama saying he’ll withdraw all US forces from Iraq in 16 months (around mid-2010) is false and misleading;
a reinvented Cold War against Russia;
an “absolute” commitment “to eliminating the threat of terrorism (with) the full force of our power;”
inciting instability anywhere it serves US imperial interests with special emphasis on resource-rich Eurasia, including the Asian sub-continent; Exhibit A: the Bombay (Mumbai) terror attacks that Michel Chossudovsky explains have “the fingerprints of a (carefully planned) paramilitary-intelligence operation (and) are described as India’s 9/11,” or at least a mini version of it; the usual suspects are blamed; the purpose is to incite fear and more violence; the consequences – an internal hard line crackdown, increased tensions between India and Pakistan, and a military opening for Washington to intervene further in the region; and
additional North American militarization as evidenced by a disturbing December 1 Washington Post report – that (on the pretext of national security) the Pentagon will deploy 20,000 troops nationwide by 2011 “to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear attack or other domestic catastrophe;” three “rapid-reaction” combat units are planned; two or more additional ones may follow; they’ll be supplemented by 80 smaller National Guard units and will be trained to respond to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, high-yield explosive, and other domestic “terror” attacks or disturbances; in other words, homeland militarization and occupation is planned using combat troops trained to kill.
Economists continually try and sell the public the idea that recessions or depressions are a natural part of what they call the “business cycle”. This timeline below will prove that is simply not the case. Recessions and depressions only occur because the Central Bankers manipulate the money supply, to ensure more and more is in their hands and less and less is in the hands of the people.
This segment of Steven Colbert’s “The Word” on the Colbert Report (Comedy Channel) aired on September 26, 2006. Bracketed comments denote text which appeared on-screen as part of Colbert’s monologue.
Now listen folks. We all know about the big dust-up between President Bush and Senate leadership over his wanting to change the language of the Geneva Conventions, right? Well, on Thursday, they reached a compromise. And that’s not just a victory for Bush—it’s a victory for the country. Because basic human rights is something we all need to compromise on.
You see, his opponents are a group of rebels within the Republican party, John McCain, Lindsay Graham and John Warner who stood up and said “NO!” to the President’s plan. Meanwhile, the Democrats also stood up and said, “We’re just gonna wait over here. You tell us when you’re done.”
Which brings us to tonight’s word, “Opposition Party.”
F. William Engdahl
Global Research
November 24, 2008
On Friday November 21, the world came within a hair’s breadth of the most colossal financial collapse in history according to bankers on the inside of events with whom we have contact. The trigger was the bank which only two years ago was America’s largest, Citigroup. The size of the US Government de facto nationalization of the $2 trillion banking institution is an indication of shocks yet to come in other major US and perhaps European banks thought to be ‘too big to fail.’
Paulson demanded, and got from a labile US Congress, Democrat as well as Republican, sole discretion over how and where he can invest the $700 billion, to date with no effective oversight. It amounts to the Treasury Secretary in effect ‘spitting into the wind’ in terms of resolving the fundamental crisis.
The clumsy way in which US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, himself not a banker but a Wall Street ‘investment banker’, whose experience has been in the quite different world of buying and selling stocks or bonds or underwriting and selling same, has handled the unfolding crisis has been worse than incompetent. It has made a grave situation into a globally alarming one.
George Washington’s 1796 Letter of Farewell on the evils of political parties.
Let me now warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party. This spirit is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
Ralph Nader has came out on top in at least one Presidential contest this fall: for high school students at the Berkeley Carroll School in New York City, the choice was clear.
After hearing presentations from representatives of the five presidential candidates on their records and stances on Iraq, Afghanistan, healthcare, abortion, the bailout, gay marriage, drilling for oil, immigration, death penalty, public education, and Israel, the results were as follows:
Ralph Nader: 43%
Cynthia McKinney: 17%
John McCain: 4%
Bob Barr: 2%
Barack Obama: 29%
The vote, which was conducted on October 28 under the direction of teacher Taylor Black had a unique feature: the student voters made their decision based purely on the
candidates name, gender, race or party.
Chuck Baldwin, the 2008 Constitution Party candidate for president
October 10, 2008
When asked why they will not vote for a third party candidate, many people will respond by saying something like, “He cannot win.” Or, “I don’t want to waste my vote.” It is true: America has not elected a third party candidate since 1860. Does that automatically mean, however, that every vote cast for one of the two major party candidates is not a wasted vote? I don’t think so.
In the first place, a wasted vote is a vote for someone you know does not represent your own beliefs and principles. A wasted vote is a vote for someone you know will not lead the country in the way it should go. A wasted vote is a vote for the “lesser of two evils.” Or, in the case of John McCain and Barack Obama, a choice between the “evil of two lessers.”
Albert Einstein is credited with saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. For years now, Republicans and Democrats have been leading the country in the same basic direction: toward bigger and bigger government, more and more socialism, globalism, corporatism, foreign interventionism, and the dismantling of constitutional liberties. Yet, voters continue to think that they are voting for “change” when they vote for a Republican or Democrat. This is truly insane!
As someone who has literally “partied for a living,” (in special events) I claim this with absolute authority:
The. Party. Is. Over.
It’s time to turn off the music, turn up the lights, present the bill, “gather up your jackets and move to the exits” and if necessary–and it obviously is necessary–call the cops. And yeah, I remember the number. It’s 9/11.
The Republicrats need to go home, and don’t even get me started about a third party–because what this country really needs is a second one.