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Latest Articles: Opinions/Editorials
Buchanan: The Democracy Worshipers
Post Date: 2011-09-16 19:20:23 by Brian S
1 Comments
"Your people, sir, is ... a great beast." So Alexander Hamilton reputedly said in an argument with Thomas Jefferson. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Hamilton explained: "Real liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of dictatorship." In his column, "Democracy Versus Liberty," Walter Williams cites Hamilton, James Madison and John Randolph, who wrote of "the follies and turbulence" of democracy, and John Adams: "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a ...
What was Hitler’s Unforgivable Sin?
Post Date: 2011-09-15 19:41:10 by Brian S
38 Comments
Behind the Holocaust var addthis_product = 'wpp-261'; var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};Editorial Board Review: This article is controversial and contains strong racial tones. It can upset some readers. This article reflects the view of the author exclusively and does NOT reflect the views of VT or any other VT authors, affiliates, sponsors, advertisers or partners. After extensive Editorial Board review, the board has deemed this piece something readers should read, investigate, study, and discuss. Be advised that VT stands for justice, equality, truth, ...
Clueless Republicans Demand More Militarism
Post Date: 2011-09-15 19:00:07 by Brian S
7 Comments
While the Republicans who are running for president seem to have grasped the truth about the economic abyss that the country is peering into, there continues to be an air of unreality whenever the discussions turn to foreign policy and national security issues. Perhaps it is fortunate that the leading candidates rarely venture into those uncharted waters except in the form of simplistic slogans that could well be placed on bumper stickers. Sen. John “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” McCain has been expending most of his strangled rhetoric on defending the indefensible by talking up the “success” of the Libyan adventure, so he has left it to his colleague from Arizona Sen. ...
Head In His Ass James Carville Has Some Advice For Obama
Post Date: 2011-09-15 07:41:04 by A K A Stone
6 Comments
(CNN) -- People often ask me what advice I would give the White House about various things. Today I was mulling over election results from New York and Nevada while thinking about that very question. What should the White House do now? One word came to mind: Panic. We are far past sending out talking points. Do not attempt to dumb it down. We cannot stand any more explanations. Have you talked to any Democratic senators lately? I have. It's pretty damn clear they are not happy campers. This is what I would say to President Barack Obama: The time has come to demand a plan of action that requires a complete change from the direction you are headed. I don't know how else to break ...
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
Post Date: 2011-09-14 18:45:23 by Brian S
1 Comments
1. Twin Towers Two years from now the staffs of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker will move into the most haunted building in the world. There, the elite of American celebrity photographers, gossip columnists, and magazine journalists may meet some macabre new muses. Aloft in the upper stories of 1 World Trade Center (where Condé Nast publishing has signed the biggest lease), they will gaze out their windows at that ghostly void, just a few yards away, where 658 doomed employees of Cantor Fitzgerald were sitting at their desks at 8:46 AM, September 11, 2001. Not to worry: The “Freedom Tower” -- the boosters reassure us -- will be an enduring ...
Nader: Americans Ignore The Cause Of 9/11
Post Date: 2011-09-13 20:06:12 by Brian S
20 Comments
After attending a 9/11 panel in northwest D.C. on Monday, Ralph Nader told The Nation‘s George Zornick that Americans had mostly ignored the reasons that the terrorist attacks occurred. “All we want to say is that it was a terrorist attack, it was evil, don’t talk about what caused it,” he said. “What really lead to it was, one, we back dictators over there that repress and kill their own people with American arms. Two, we support the Israeli position against the rights of the Palestinian people to have their own state. And three, we have repeatedly failed — no matter how much money we spend — to defend our own country.” “The folly of the ...
Hey GOP 2012ers: You Lie!
Post Date: 2011-09-13 15:16:53 by Brian S
4 Comments
Let's cut to the chase: The GOP presidential field is a pack of liars. That sounds like a rather intemperate assessment, the sort of statement that is motivated by bitter partisanship or blinding ideology. But taking a clear-eyed look at both the false statements hurled at Monday's Republican debate (brought to you by the odd merger of CNN and the Tea Party Express) and those deployed at other times in this still burgeoning primary race, it's difficult to reach any other conclusion. Most of these presidential wannabes are shoveling lies—and forcing fact-checkers to work overtime. Glenn Kessler, who writes the Washington Post's Fact Checker column, spotted numerous ...
Barack Obama Is President; So Why Does The World Hate Us Even More?!
Post Date: 2011-09-12 20:54:52 by Sebastian
4 Comments
In liberals’ frenzy to elect Barack Obama in 2008, no one was quite as far out to sea as Andrew Sullivan, a respected columnist for the Atlantic website. He served up his “Daily Dish” by the plateful. Here’s perhaps the hottest example of his rhetoric—quoted endlessly around the blogosphere-back then: “A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is ...
Ron Paul: Foreign Occupation Leads to More Terror
Post Date: 2011-09-12 12:55:00 by Brian S
4 Comments
Ten years ago shocking and horrific acts of terrorism were carried out on US soil, taking over 3,000 innocent American lives. Without a doubt, this action demanded retaliation and retribution. However, much has been done in the name of protecting the American people from terrorism that has reduced our prosperity and liberty and even made us less safe. This is ironic and sad, considering that the oft-repeated line concerning the reasoning behind the attacks is that they hate us for who we are - a free, prosperous people - and that we must not under any circumstances allow the terrorists to win. Though it is hard for many to believe, honest studies show that the real motivation behind the ...
Why We Don't Miss Rummy
Post Date: 2011-09-12 12:46:31 by Brian S
3 Comments
It was (literally) a blast from the past, a tableau of familiar faces from the last Bush administration, but the men on stage had less hair — except for Michael Medved’s wonderfully bold, black moustache. The author and talk-show host was the moderator of a discussion sponsored by the Jewish Policy Center, a think tank that seems to be so intertwined with the Republican Jewish Coalition that they share the same executive director. Held at the 92nd Street Y just days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the discussion was supposed to be about lessons learned and future challenges. Getty Images I learned a few things, alright. For one, Donald Rumsfeld, the former defense ...
New Blue Nightmare: Clarence Thomas and the Amendment of Doom
Post Date: 2011-09-11 10:15:51 by A K A Stone
26 Comments
Lord of the Rings aficionados know that the evil lord Sauron paid little attention to the danger posed by two hobbits slowly struggling across the mountains and deserts of Mordor until he suddenly realized that the ring on which all his power depended was about to be hurled into the pits of Mount Doom. All at once the enemy plan became clear; what looked like stupidity was revealed as genius, and Sauron understood everything just when it was too late to act. Jeffrey Toobin’s gripping, must-read profile of Clarence and Virginia Thomas in the New Yorker gives readers new insight into what Sauron must have felt: Toobin argues that the only Black man in public life that liberals could ...
Memo to Congress: Impeachment probe needed now!
Post Date: 2011-09-10 10:03:05 by A K A Stone
3 Comments
Barack Obama is indeed succeeding in his plans to "transform America," but not in the way voters expected on Election Day in 2008. The number of the president's actions that arguably qualify as impeachable offenses is staggering. The question before the country is what to do about it. True, Obama faces the voters in 14 months, and that will be seen by many as a reason to avoid the turmoil of an impeachment proceeding. But one process has nothing to do with the other. Elections proceed on an established calendar, but if he has committed acts that warrant removal by way of impeachment, that process should proceed independent of the election calendar. While impeachment must ...
With Freedom Under Assault, We're Told We Must Moderate?
Post Date: 2011-09-07 17:48:41 by CZ82
1 Comments
With Freedom Under Assault, We're Told We Must Moderate? RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I always go back and forth on whether to mention things said about me. Because it's inevitable that I will elevate whoever it is that's doing the talking about me. So it's something I have to judge issue by issue, knowing full well that I can turn a nobody into a somebody by mentioning them. You don't want to do that, but at the same time if the nobody says something that offers an opportunity to make a point to millions of people, then you roll the dice on elevating the nobody into a somebody. Now, the nobody in this case is a nobody to you. He is a somebody to the intellectual elite. ...
Democracy v. the Greedy Rich
Post Date: 2011-09-07 15:01:34 by Brian S
2 Comments
As the rich get richer, the poor poorer and the middle class smaller, America’s most prominent “populist” movement, the Tea Party, demands more tax breaks for the rich and less help for the rest. Kevin Zeese says only a true populist movement demanding a democratized economy can save the Republic. By Kevin Zeese The Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero said “Freedom is participation in power.” By that standard Americans are not free. We do not participate in power. We do not have power over our own economic lives; our elected “representatives” ignore us and instead listen to the moneyed interests that are sending the ...
10 Facts That Prove Big Sis Is Wrong, Drudge Is Right
Post Date: 2011-09-06 22:09:22 by A K A Stone
1 Comments
Janet Napolitano’s contention that Matt Drudge is “just wrong” about privacy worries surrounding airport screening technology is completely at odds with the facts, which illustrate how the DHS has been caught time and time again lying about both privacy and health issues in a transparent ploy to undermine genuine concerns. “I think that what he means is we are watching too much—kind of an Orwellian view. He’s just wrong. I mean, he’s just wrong,” Napolitano told Politico, labeling privacy concerns “overblown”. A quick fact check however shows that it’s Napolitano who is “just wrong”. The DHS has repeatedly lied about the ...
Buchanan: How Capital Crushed Labor
Post Date: 2011-09-06 17:42:32 by Brian S
1 Comments
Once, it was a Labor Day tradition for Democrats to go to Cadillac Square in Detroit to launch their campaigns in that forge and furnace of American democracy, the greatest industrial center on earth. Democrats may still honor the tradition. But Detroit is not what she was, not remotely. And neither is America. Not so long ago, we made all the shoes and clothes we wore, the motorcycles and cars we drove, the radios we listened to, the TV sets we watched, the home and office calculators and computers we used. No more. Much of what we buy is no longer made by American workers, but by Japanese, Chinese, other Asians, Canadians and Europeans. "Why don't we make things here ...
Reagan's Party No More
Post Date: 2011-09-06 14:00:20 by Brian S
0 Comments
Ronald Reagan is the patron saint for Republicans, just as John F. Kennedy is for Democrats. But parties evolve, and just as a Democrat with Kennedy’s views on foreign policy (“pay any price, bear any burden”) couldn’t be nominated today, the late Reagan might not be able win a Tea Party primary. After all, he raised the debt ceiling 18 times during his eight years in office, signed one major tax increase into law, and let several other small tax increase take effect, too. And his tenure produced some of the most infamous examples of government waste, like the expenditures of the "star wars" program and the Pentagon's notorious $600 toilet seat cover. ...
The price of 9/11
Post Date: 2011-09-06 12:34:01 by lucysmom
3 Comments
The September 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaeda were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W Bush’s response to the attacks compromised the United States’ basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security. The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to al-Qaeda - as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive - orders of magnitude beyond the $60bn claimed at the beginning - as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation. Indeed, when ...
Bin Laden Fulfilled His One True Ambition
Post Date: 2011-09-06 11:09:48 by Brian S
5 Comments
Here is a bet about the decade since Sept. 11: Historians are going to be mystified by it. First, the U.S. won the Cold War -- or at least it appeared to. Then, like the U.K. initiating the Industrial Revolution at the height of its global dominance, the U.S. jump-started the Information Revolution. A decade after the Berlin Wall came down, the U.S. seemed poised for another century of global domination through a combination of hard and soft power. We could even afford an extended legal fight over who the next president was going to be. Now, another 10 years on, the U.S. remains the most significant superpower -- but its position looks increasingly shaky. Its hard power took a hit ...
Who Art Thou For America…Israel?
Post Date: 2011-09-05 20:17:01 by Brian S
1 Comments
US, (Pal Telegraph)--Tick, tick, tick go the sounds of the clock or that of, at least in movies, a bomb getting ready to explode. The sounds we hear though are not of a wall clock or a Hollywood bomb, but those of discontent. Discontented people and a contented elite are definitely the ingredients needed to generate some sparks, but what will it take to cause an explosion to rival any 4th of July fireworks display? Are the death, destruction, genocide and torture of others paid by American taxpayer dollars and an unresponsive US government beholden to Israel and her policies of apartheid not enough? The US government and its elected officials refuse to cut the funding that pays for the ...
Why Are the Corporate Media In Denial About the Right-Wing Terrorist Threat?
Post Date: 2011-09-05 20:05:19 by Brian S
0 Comments
It was a little over a month ago that the Norwegian Islamophobic Christian fundamentalist Anders Behring Breivik, wreaked havoc in Norway, killing 77 and injuring many more, and more than seven months since a bomb planted along the route of a march honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was discovered. After the initial flurry of reportage, analysis, commentary and punditry, for all intents and purposes the Breivik story has disappeared into the ether that is the American mainstream media. Maybe it is thus because it happened in far off Norway, maybe it is because our attention span is disastrously truncated, maybe it is because - like in so many of these cases -- he has been too easily ...
Let Obama run for re-election based on the nonsense that ARRA has "worked" and the economy is growing.
Post Date: 2011-09-05 16:52:01 by A K A Stone
0 Comments
Let Obama run for re-election based on the nonsense that ARRA has "worked" and the economy is growing. The writer needs to get serious. Not even Obama could sell that the Recovery Act has "worked." The rest is lots of hot air with few results. Health Care depends on the Court upholding an unconstitutional mandate. The Consumer Protection Act has protected nobody, not even Elizabeth Warren. If TARP has made a profit, let's fund the Tooth Fairy Protection Act and the Creative Bookkeeping Act. Education cost has gone up at all levels while results have gone down at all levels. The lower and middle class are being priced out of a college education or being saddled with ...
Social Security Is No Ponzi Scheme (Note to Rick Perry)
Post Date: 2011-09-05 11:53:58 by Brian S
17 Comments
As Rick Perry campaigned in Iowa late last month, he made it clear that he doesn’t have much faith in Social Security, one of the most popular U.S. government programs. “It is a Ponzi scheme for these young people,” Perry said. “The idea that they’re working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie. It is a monstrous lie on this generation, and we can’t do that to them.” As we celebrate a holiday devoted to American workers, it’s worth asking whether, as the Texas governor and leader of the Republican pack claims, the retirement program created for those very workers is at risk. The ...
Neoconservatism - The Last Refuge Of The Scoundrel
Post Date: 2011-09-04 18:52:36 by Brian S
0 Comments
I got an e-mail the other day from one of my readers. He wanted to tell me that radio talker Mark Levin had been trashing me the night before on WABC. The reader suggested I call up the program on the internet and give it a listen. “I’ll have my dog listen,” I replied. “She’s the only one in the house who can hear that high-pitched voice.”My reader thought that was funny. It’s even funnier than he could imagine. There is, at the moment, a great debate raging between us traditional conservatives and the pretenders, such as Levin, who are known as “neo” conservatives. And somehow, I ended up in the middle of it.The debate centers on an article ...
Tripoli's In Libya! Who Knew? Not The Neocons
Post Date: 2011-09-04 18:37:30 by Brian S
0 Comments
I don't know what got into the formerly sane Gene Hoyas. It's a little late in history to be signing on to the nutty neocon cause. In any event he's embarrassing himself with stuff like his recent attack on Ron Paul: There is the uncomfortable matter of the Barbary Wars (conducted almost exactly two centuries before the War on Terrorism) that were directed against Muslim pirates operating out of – believe it or not – what is present day Libya. Believe it or not? Hasn't this guy ever heard the Marine Corps hymn? I knew it by heart by the time I was 6 thanks to my World War II Marine father singing it incessantly. It begins: "From the Halls of Montezuma, ...
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