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Latest Articles: Opinions/Editorials
The Republican Wreckage
Post Date: 2011-07-26 12:34:32 by Brian S
1 Comments
House Republicans have lost sight of the country’s welfare. It’s hard to conclude anything else from their latest actions, including the House speaker’s dismissal of President Obama’s plea for compromise Monday night. They have largely succeeded in their campaign to ransom America’s economy for the biggest spending cuts in a generation. They have warped an exercise in paying off current debt into an argument about future spending. Yet, when they win another concession, they walk away. This increasingly reckless game has pushed the nation to the brink of ruinous default. The Republicans have dimmed the futures of millions of jobless Americans, whose hopes for work ...
Missing in action: debate on military spending
Post Date: 2011-07-26 11:52:55 by Skip Intro
5 Comments
As the president and Congress grind their way to a budgetary compromise that will do far more to further alienate the American public than solve our fiscal crisis, one thing - military spending - is all but overlooked. For all the strife over taxes and entitlements, the president and majorities in both parties agree on the following: Military spending is essentially off the table, even though it is far and away the most distorted part of the national budget, the most egregious mismatch between the country's rational needs and the commitment of national resources. Let's remind ourselves of a few basic facts. Since 2001, the nation has spent more than $1.2 trillion on the wars in ...
What Norway's Terrorist Has in Common With the American Tea Party and Right Wing
Post Date: 2011-07-25 14:12:05 by Brian S
1 Comments
The revelation by CNN that Norwegian right wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik kept a diary in which he obsessed about the dangers of cultural Marxism, multiculturalism, and the “Islamification” of Europe will remind many Americans of the tactics of our own right wing (only these themes have been taken up by people much more mainstream in the US than Breivik is in Norway!) The movement to ban the shariah, the castigation of a progressive income tax as “Marxist,” the condemnation of multiculturalism as a threat to Western values, are all themes commonly heard in the US Tea Party and in the right wing of the Israel lobbies. It would be wrong, of course, to ...
GOP myopia on ‘grand bargain’
Post Date: 2011-07-25 10:17:26 by go65
0 Comments
Republicans keep asking, “Where is the president’s plan?” for spending cuts. Well, Democrats can see the plan taking shape and they are hotter than last week’s weather. In addition to more than $1 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending, President Obama is willing to give Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) an additional $650 billion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. This is the political gamble of a lifetime. ---------- Now, in the middle of the Washington debt-ceiling drama, Obama has put Democrats in the perilous political position of taking responsibility for entitlement cuts. And last week, the White House began to feel the sting of opposition ...
Alleged Norwegian Killer's Anti-Obama Message Similar To That Of The Tea Party
Post Date: 2011-07-23 19:44:32 by Brian S
9 Comments
Alleged Norwegian terrorist and mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, had a lot to say about the threats he felt were facing Norway, Europe, and European descendants globally—for example in the United States and Australia. In a Youtube video, that has now been pulled and reposted a number of times, and which video has been reportedly confirmed by Norwegian police to be the suspect's political manifesto, Breivik describes a situation wherein Marxist multiculturalism and Islamic radicalism threaten the existence of "European cultures and tradition". Breivik includes a number of examples of these threats, including a picture of President Barack Obama, who is alleged in ...
The Neo-Con Aftermath
Post Date: 2011-07-21 20:51:57 by Brian S
15 Comments
Where are the neo-conservatives who brought on this economic and political mess? They are evidently hiding in their think tanks or taking asylum in academia. Anyway, they are in safe havens, satisfied that they achieved their stated goals of regime change by toppling their nemesis - Saddam Hussein. Though none of those neo-cons wore the country's uniform, they pushed others to get into the fight. It was the neo-cons who decided America should have an empire in the 21st century. Their design for the world has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths - not to mention the wounded and displaced. Many of the neo-cons may have been kicked out of top government positions, but their influence ...
Christian Zionists Embrace Those Who Call Jesus 'Hitler of Bethlehem'
Post Date: 2011-07-21 20:49:41 by Brian S
0 Comments
As many as 5000 Christian Zionists gathered this week at the Convention Center in Washington, D.C. for the annual conference of the organization CUFI, Christians United For Israel. The annual event is considered a key occasion when Christian supporters of Israel reassert their nearly hysterical embrace of the Zionist apartheid regime, including the policies of ethnic cleansing of non-Jews (Muslims and Christians), lebensraum, and even its genocidal designs. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu addressed the evangelical conference, telling the huge audience that "when you support Israel, you don’t have to choose between your interests and your values, you get both.." ...
It Sure Looks And Smells Like Apartheid
Post Date: 2011-07-20 19:15:02 by Brian S
3 Comments
The Israeli parliament’s vote last week making it a crime to support any boycott of Israel, including products from Israeli settlements in occupied Arab lands, has rightly generated considerable debate about what this means for Israel, Zionism and Israelis. The complex and larger-than-life tale of the modern state of Israel has always been seen by its two very different faces around the world. For Jews and many others, Israel has been about a vibrant nationalism miraculously reborn from the horrors of the European Holocaust and centuries of discrimination and subjugation of Jews by white Christian Europeans and Russians. For most Palestinians and Arabs, Israel has been about a ...
American Right and Limits of Logic
Post Date: 2011-07-20 12:40:51 by Brian S
2 Comments
As of late, Pat Robertson has been waxing apocalyptic regarding mankind’s imminent reckoning with wrathful divinity, while liberals have been sharing scary bedtime stories by the ghostly light of computer screens … telling sleep-banishing tales of Michele (“Crazy Eyes”) Bachmann, now stalking primary states, assailing common sense and chewing the scenery of sanity during appearances on the 24/7 Creature Feature Theatre, otherwise known as, Cable News programming. Granted, the sense of unease displayed by right-wing, fundamentalist Christians regarding the state of the nation is understandable; although, their attribution as to the origin and cause of the destructive ...
John Williams: ‘Wake up, America’
Post Date: 2011-07-20 02:43:15 by socalv8
5 Comments
To the editor: This is in reference to the column in the July 18 edition by Donna Brazile. The reference that President Barack Obama is the only adult in the room made me sick. If anyone can call a man who stood before the American people and boldly lied to everyone by telling America’s senior citizens that unless we raise the debt limit they won’t get their Social Security checks an adult, then I believe someone is seriously misguided. The fact is the only reason that seniors would not get their checks is because President Obama gave that directive for political gain. The truth is the money is there, and this whole mess is about politics. We either deal with this insane, ...
The Road Not Taken (GOP's grand fail)
Post Date: 2011-07-19 20:22:18 by go65
2 Comments
Over the past months, Republicans enjoyed enormous advantages. Opinion polls showed that voters are eager to reduce the federal debt, and they want to do it mostly but not entirely through spending cuts. There was a Democratic president eager to move to the center. He floated certain ideas that would be normally unheard of from a Democrat. According to widespread reports, White House officials talked about raising the Medicare eligibility age, cutting Social Security by changing the inflation index, freezing domestic discretionary spending and offering to pre-empt the end of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a broad tax-reform process. The Democratic offers were slippery, and President ...
Defense Spending Fuels The Debt Crisis
Post Date: 2011-07-19 16:49:05 by Brian S
1 Comments
Since the start of the 112th Congress, the U.S. House Republican majority –with its dozens of new Tea Party members – has been telling the American people our country is “broke.” During the budget debate, Tea Party Republicans argued the unprecedented fiscal crisis demands huge spending cuts to vital programs and investments that make our communities strong. Then, starting with H.R. 1, House Tea Party Republicans voted overwhelmingly for massive cuts to food safety, public safety, education, life-saving health research, roads and bridges, clean energy alternatives, and nutrition for hungry children and nursing mothers. Cut $650 million from emergency nutrition ...
The weird political philosophy of the President of the United States
Post Date: 2011-07-18 18:59:49 by A K A Stone
3 Comments
Who doesn't love a good rant?
We certainly do, and as usual, Steve Wynn, the CEO of casino company Wynn Resorts, delivered on his company's quarterly conference call today.
Via Seeking Alpha, here's the crux of it:
I believe in Las Vegas. I think its best days are ahead of it. But I'm afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States. You watch television and see what's going on on this debt ceiling issue. And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President and nothing's going to get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress. But everybody is so political, so focused on holding their job for ...
Michele Bachmann’s Hazardous Love for Israel
Post Date: 2011-07-18 13:18:42 by Brian S
1 Comments
Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman and Republican candidate for president, is making a muscular showing in the polls. She is telegenic. She is clever. Some of her Republican opponents worry she may be unstoppable. But never fear, oh Republican opponents of Michele Bachmann: I’ve devised a fail-safe way to bring her to a state of cognitive paralysis. This method will require some travel on her part. Bachmann’s destination: the Tel Aviv gay-pride parade. Bachmann is unwaveringly opposed to what she refers to as the gay “lifestyle.” Her husband, Marcus, runs a counseling practice devoted in part to the straightening- out of gay people. Bachmann herself told an ...
Republicans turned off by size of Obama's package
Post Date: 2011-07-18 11:48:17 by go65
3 Comments
Republicans are not sparing the rod when it comes to beating up on President Obama’s economic stimulus package, but it’s clear they are unable to raise their membership to withstand the newly found vigor of his congressional muscle. President Obama’s massive $819 billion spending-and-tax-cut package was rammed through the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday without the support of a single Republican member. Even with 11 Democratic representatives opposing the bill, the 244-to-188 count reflected the bulging Democratic majority that has now swollen the House. Ever since the Republican fantasy of endless majorities began collapsing beneath a disgusting load of GOP lies ...
Does The US Government Want To Prevent You From Leaving?
Post Date: 2011-07-11 22:09:33 by A K A Stone
6 Comments
Can you imagine being trapped inside your home country, unable to leave? It may be closer to a reality than you realize. I’ll tell you a quick story to explain. This weekend I rented a car in Bulgaria with the aim of driving through Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and eventually into Greece. Now, I’m no virgin to land border crossings in the developing world and understand the corruption and incompetence that typifies customs checkpoints. But this weekend’s experience was much more. With documents in hand, I drove to my first border crossing in Strezimirovci, Bulgaria. After clearing customs on the Bulgarian side, the Serbian officers decided that they would not allow me to ...
The GOP’s False Fiscal Narrative
Post Date: 2011-07-11 17:14:59 by Brian S
0 Comments
Reading about the debt-reduction talks is painful. It’s painful because in analyzing them, the media frequently fall back on storylines that just aren’t true. Storyline No. 1: Republicans are desperate to balance America’s books. This is, to be sure, what Republicans say. But is there any reason to take them at face value? During the Bush years, after all, the GOP was anything but desperate to put America’s fiscal house in order. The Bush administration launched wars that increased the deficit, pushed tax cuts that increased the deficit, even pushed entitlement expansions—such as the prescription-drug benefit—that increased the deficit. At times, top White ...
The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism
Post Date: 2011-07-11 13:59:56 by Brian S
28 Comments
Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980’s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest in the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology’s 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate year after year. Moreover, output growth in the United States was not economically sustainable. With so much of US national income going to so few, growth could continue only through consumption financed by a mounting pile of debt. I was ...
Surprise, Surprise! Folks in Highly Taxed Countries Are Happier Than Americans!
Post Date: 2011-07-11 13:57:11 by Brian S
11 Comments
After the OECD created the Better Life Index to discern which are the happiest countries in the world an organization known as 24-7 Wall St. cherry-picked the list to narrow down those countries with the highest economic stability. Most likely, says MSNBC, "the happiest people in the developed world get loads of social services without having to work too hard." Or maybe these lucky folks not only don't have to pay for these services, more of them actually have jobs. With the exception of Canada and Israel, every country on 24-7 Wall St.'s list features a much higher top income tax rate than ours -- currently 35% -- and a value-added, or VAT, tax. What's more, despite ...
Founding Fathers Didn't Work Within The System. They Worked Outisde it with Cannons and Guns
Post Date: 2011-07-11 08:49:49 by A K A Stone
3 Comments
@drpageiv your statement against @crashjpmorgan is ridiculous, and it’s obvious that you don’t know what you are talking about. The founding fathers precisely DID NOT go and join the British parliament in attempt to influence the king by working their way through like snakes from the inside, no they stood up against an immoral tyranny, they DID NOT work within the system, they worked directly from cannons outside the system. If you are an American, you better wake, the AMERIKANS are coming. 70470863
LET’S END THIS DEBT CEILING DEBATE WITH A $1 OZ. $1T COIN [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2011-07-09 00:54:08 by lucysmom
102 Comments
A reader points out a very interesting loophole in the debt ceiling debate that would give the US Treasury the ability to tell the US Congress to take their fearmongering and shove it you know where. Reader “Beowulf” notes: “No, Tsy isn’t authorized to just “print” money, the Federal Reserve Act gives that power to the Fed, However, the Coinage Act grants the Secretary of the Treasury rather broad coin seigniorage authority. Geithner could sidestep the debt ceiling this afternoon by ordering the West Point Mint to coin a 1 oz. $ 1 trillion coin. Tsy can then present the jumbo coins at the NY Fed to buy back $1 trillion in Fed-held debt (the Fed has to accept ...
An Establishment in Panic (to raise taxes)
Post Date: 2011-07-08 13:53:27 by Hondo68
1 Comments
By refusing to accept tax increases in a deal to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans are behaving like "fanatics," writes David Brooks of The New York Times. Anti-tax Republicans "have no sense of moral decency," he adds. They are "willing to stain their nation's honor" to "worship their idol." If this "deal of the century" goes down, as he calls the Barack Obama offer, "Republican fanaticism" will be the cause. "The GOP has become a cult" that has replaced reason with "feverish" and "cockamamie beliefs," writes Richard Cohen of The Washington Post. The Republican "presidential field (is) a ...
You want liberty? This is what it takes…
Post Date: 2011-07-07 13:13:05 by Capitalist Eric
18 Comments
Brandon Smith of Alt-Market has generously contributed this missive for your reading pleasure and educational enlightenment. Somewhere along the way, no doubt with the help of Big Brother, our definitions of freedom and liberty have been lost in translation. The following article is a must-read for adults and teens alike, as it outlines ten critical ‘rules’ for liberty that have been forgotten or looked down upon for too long. The end result, of course, is a citizenry that is quick to point the finger at the first sign of trouble and one that has become dependent on government to solve basic problems. The Essential Rules Of Liberty There is nothing worse in this world ...
The Tea Party's Murder-Suicide Pact
Post Date: 2011-07-07 08:13:02 by go65
6 Comments
Congress cut short its July 4th recess and returned to Washington this week to try and reach a deal to raise the debt ceiling. Or, rather, some of its members are trying - a growing number of Republicans responsive to the Tea Party movement seem dead set again this. They not only claim that the United States won't suffer any negative consequences if it doesn't raise the ceiling, but that refusing will have the salutary effect of forcing the government to live within its means. A lot is at stake here. Just about everyone besides these Republicans believes that a debt default would be catastrophic. And most of them, including President Obama, would accept trillions of dollars in ...
Why U.S. Is Not A Christian Nation
Post Date: 2011-07-04 20:21:19 by Brian S
13 Comments
(CNN) -- As America celebrates its birthday on July 4, the timeless words of Thomas Jefferson will surely be invoked to remind us of our founding ideals -- that "All men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator" with the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These phrases, a cherished part of our history, have rightly been called "American Scripture." But Jefferson penned another phrase, arguably his most famous after those from the Declaration of Independence. These far more contentious words -- "a wall of separation between church and state" -- lie at the heart of the ongoing debate between those who see ...
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