American Jewish Attitudes Towards Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

From Alternet, Attackerman (Spencer Ackerman) posts the findings of a J-Street poll with results that fly in the face of the neocon AIPAC agenda. This proves one crystal clear point: the AIPAC lobby and the neocon leadership of America (and Israel) are at odds with most Jews.

Poll on American Jewish Attitudes Finds They’re Liberal, Hate Bush and Want Israel-Palestine Deal

J Street, The pro-peace/pro-Israel/pro-Palestine Jewish lobby just released a monster of a poll on American Jewish political attitudes. The takeaway: we’re liberal as hell; we hate Bush; we know Bush has been a disaster for Israel; we’ll support any peace deal the Israelis make; and the only thing we’re uncomfortable with to that end is giving East Jerusalem back to the Palestinians.

Let’s go down the line. Seventy-four percent of us view Bush unfavorably and 83 percent of us disapprove of his job performance. While 76 percent of the country as a whole says the U.S. is on the wrong track, an astonishing 90 percent of American Jews say the same. Only 21 percent of us approve of the Iraq war and only 29 percent think Bush is good for Israel, and those are clearly the shmucks that kissed ass in Hebrew school and snitched when the rest of us used the synagogue phone booth and cloakroom to make out or get high.

When asked if the U.S. should or shouldn’t actively broker Mideast peace, it broke down 55 percent for U.S. involvement and 30 percent against. J Street, the menschen, took that a step further and examined support for the hard choices peace requires. “Even if it meant the United States publicly stating its disagreements with both the Israelis and the Arabs?” Yes — 75 percent; no — 25 percent. “Even if it meant the United States exerting pressure on both Israelis and Arabs to make the compromises necessary for peace?” Yes — 70 percent; no — 30 percent.

In terms of negotiating positions for an Arab-Israeli settlement, 59 percent agree that Israel will need to “withdraw from most of the West Bank and dismantle many of the Israeli settlements.” Another 58 percent agree that for full peace with Syria — and an abandonment of their support for Hamas and Hezbollah — Israel should get out of the Golan. Only 44 percent, though, endorse the statement that Palestinian East Jerusalem should be part of the state of Palestine. And while that’s the only non-majority position among American Jews for what can fairly be called the dovish line, 44 percent is still a substantial amount of support.

J Street’s poll supports its contention that the attitudes of most of us are far, far out of whack with what this country’s self-appointed Jewish leaders — the Joe Liebermans, the AIPACs, the Sheldon Adelsons, the Commentary magazines — say we’re about and what we’re actually about.

MPP-TV Profiles in Marijuana Reform with Jim Hightower

From Alternet:

Jim Hightower on Pot — Sharing His Thoughts on Pot, That Is

Marijuana Policy Project

Watch the Marijuana Policy Project’s Profiles in Marijuana Reform interview with author and national radio commentator, Jim Hightower in the video to the right. This is a project of MPP.tv.

Here’s more from the MPP; its quick FAQ –
Marijuana: Myths vs. Reality

Myth: There is no scientific evidence proving marijuana’s therapeutic qualities.

Reality: In a White House-commissioned 1999 report, the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine declared that “nausea, appetite loss, pain, and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting and all can be mitigated by marijuana.”

Myth: Marijuana’s potential health benefits are insignificant compared to the damage caused by smoking the drug.

Reality: Marijuana need not be administered by smoking: It can be taken in food, tea, or through a smokeless vaporizer. Furthermore, a 2006 study by a leading pulmonologist, Dr. Donald Tashkin, found that even regular and heavy smoking of marijuana does not lead to lung cancer.

Myth: Allowing the medical use of marijuana will send the wrong message to children and lead to more youths using the drug.

Reality: In the 10 medical marijuana states that have before-and-after data, studies have unanimously shown that not only has youth use of marijuana not gone up overall, it actually has declined since medical marijuana became legal.

Myth: Marijuana is a gateway drug to harder substances, and therefore medical marijuana use will lead to dangerous drug use.

Reality: In science, the distinction between cause and correlation is a crucial one. A White House-commissioned study by the Institute of Medicine found that marijuana “does not appear to be a gateway drug to the extent that it is the cause or even that it is the most significant predictor of serious drug abuse; that is, care must be taken not to attribute cause to association.” Moreover, claims about marijuana being a gateway make no sense in the context of medical marijuana: Patients often use marijuana instead of highly addictive prescription medicines like morphine and Oxycontin. Medical marijuana is a safe alternative for patients whose other options are not as reliable or effective.

Myth: Supporting medical marijuana is politically risky.

Reality: Across the country and with increasing frequency, public opinion polls show that support for medical marijuana is popular and steadily rising — and cuts across demographic and party lines. A 2004 AARP poll showed that 72% of seniors support medical marijuana, and a 2005 Gallup poll found that 78% of Americans support “making marijuana legally available for doctors to prescribe in order to reduce pain and suffering.” Compassion and relief from suffering are nonpartisan issues that all legislators can — and should — support.

I Met The Walrus

I Met the Walrus (an animated film with John Lennon)

Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films at Alternet

Back in 1969, 14-year-old Beatles fanatic Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto. Armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, Levitan convinced Lennon to do an interview.

38 years later, director Josh Raskin has created a hauntingly beautiful animated film using Levitan’s original interview recording. Using the “Yellow Submarine”-inspired pen work of James Braithwaite and digital illustrations of Alex Kurina, “I Met the Walrus” perfectly encapsulates Lennon’s prescient thoughts on politics and peace.

h/t Alternet

WTF Thursday: Obama Shows Where His Priorities Are

B’Man: And Barack’s priorities have ZERO to do with the American people… unless you consider Big Money the American People. I don’t know about you, but my obligation to Senator Obama is to hold that lying asshole accountable for stealing the votes with lies and deception. There is so little difference between McCain and Obama that I cannot believe that the Dems aren’t outraged at how they have been played by this man.

There is no amount of politcal maneuvering that makes this flip-flopping acceptable. There is no way that his indignant move to the right (he is not ‘center’ but has move hard right) is worth the flip-flop and the backstab to those who made him.

But Dems do not necessarily equal Progressives (which I consider myself and could never be a Democrat). It is totally unacceptable that this man is lying to us and shift-changing on the most important issue of the day. There is no amount of bullshit he can spew that will convince me that he simply did not cave on this and any asshole who wants to continue his defense is simply a fool.

He is screwing us, people. He has played America to the hilt. John Nichols lays it out well for us:

Obama Votes to Silence Debate and Pass FISA

By John Nichols, TheNation.com

Arizona Sen. John McCain did not bother to show up for Wednesday’s Senate votes on whether to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to absolve George Bush of responsibility for initiating an illegal warrantless wiretapping program and to provide retroactive immunity to the telecommunications corporations that violated the privacy of their customers in order to collaborate with a lawless president.

But that’s OK, because Illinois Sen. Barack Obama cast the votes that McCain would have.

In addition to joining the majority in a 69-28 Senate vote to pass legislation that the American Civil Liberties Union describes as “a Constitutional nightmare,” Obama voted to silence debate on the FISA bill.

While most Senate Democrats — including New York Sen. Hillary Clinton — opposed the FISA rewrite and voted to keep the debate open, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president sided with the Republicans in saying that the essential Constitutional questions raised by this legislation did not merit extended or thoughtful debate.

The cloture vote split 72 in favor of shutting down debate to 26 for keeping it open. Two senators — McCain and ailing Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy — missed Wednesday’s session.

The “no” votes on cloture were cast by Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders and 25 Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, Obama’s Democratic colleague from Illinois, and Clinton, Obama’s primary competitor for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Leading the fight to keep the debate about the FISA rewrite open were Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd and Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, the two senators whom Obama promised earlier this year to work with in an effort to block this assault on the Constitution and corporate responsibility.

Said Feingold, “I sit on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, and I am one of the few members of this body who has been fully briefed on the warrantless wiretapping program. And, based on what I know, I can promise that if more information is declassified about the program in the future, as is likely to happen either due to the inspector general report, the election of a new president or simply the passage of time, members of this body will regret that we passed this legislation. I am also familiar with the collection activities that have been conducted under the Protect America Act and will continue under this bill. I invite any of my colleagues who wish to know more about those activities to come speak to me in a classified setting. Publicly, all I can say is that I have serious concerns about how those activities may have impacted the civil liberties of Americans. If we grant these new powers to the government and the effects become known to the American people, we will realize what a mistake it was, of that I am sure.”

Unfortunately, while Obama once promised to work with Feingold, he wasn’t listening on Wednesday when the Wisconsin senator explained to his colleagues that granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications corporations would effectively block the ability of Congress and the courts to address not just massive corporate wrongdoing but attacks on the privacy rights of Americans.

“If Congress short-circuits these lawsuits, we will have lost a prime opportunity to finally achieve accountability for these years of law-breaking,” said Feingold. “That’s why the administration has been fighting so hard for this immunity. It knows that the cases that have been brought directly against the government face much more difficult procedural barriers and are unlikely to result in rulings on the merits.”

Feingold was speaking the truth about a moment in which the ACLU said the Senate was on the verge of passing “an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance.”

But Obama did not want to hear it.

B’Man: So, when this man tells us one thing, then shifts 180 degrees, does that piss you off, or will you (just like a Bushie would do) just wave it off as some unknown strategic manipulation that will enable him to go after them after he is elected?

If so, I have a bridge in Jersey I’d like to sell you.

Let me tell you what this old redneck wants from someone who touts ‘change’ as his big “difference”.

I want FUCKING CHANGE!

Democrats: Covering Up For Bush’s Illegal Activites

Democracy Now! interviewed Mark Klein regarding the illegal wiretapping AT&T did (his former employee) and the hidden room that was a part of the whole setup. This dude is likely one of the most important witnesses to the illegal activity, but guess what? He is being shunned, not only by the right-wing Bush enablers, but also the complicit Democratic leadership in Congress.

These “saviors” of democracy who we elected in 2006 to bring change, are so corrupt and mired in the mess that it is obvious they care little for anything except covering up the law-breaking.

Ask yourself ‘why’ a Dem would cower in the corner when this is such a live-wire political opportunity? I cannot think of a single answer, except for one. They are a part of it. They, too, are guilty as hell.

In this world of political attacks and wedge issues, this is one for the books. The Dems are covering up this mess and will not even give this man the time of day.

When Amy asked him about his attempts to speak with the opposition party (thinking they would be chomping at the bit to get his knowledge) this is what he had to say about their interest:

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the Democratic leadership and Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, of course, of the Democratic Party, calling the bill that’s going to be voted on a compromise?

MARK KLEIN: Well, the Democratic Party and the Congress, in general, has been unfriendly to me for the last two years of my efforts. As I say, I’ve been trying to bring my information forward for about two years now. Even after the Congress went Democratic, they turned their back on me, except for a couple of individuals, like Senator Dodd was friendly and a couple of congressmen. No committee of Congress would invite me to testify; it’s never happened. My attorney sent letters, which were never answered. And they never—and they voted not to investigate. So it’s been clear for some time that Congress wants to help the President cover this up, and they were just looking for a way to do it.

And so, now they have a bill that claims to get some kind of concessions. In fact, they got no concessions. This bill would give immunity to the phone companies and thus would kill any hope of finding out what happened by the lawsuits against AT&T and the other companies. And so, Congress is intervening against the judicial process to kill the lawsuits and essentially protect the President.

And it’s kind of ironic, because, you may know, the FISA law itself originated when the Democratic Party in Congress discovered that Nixon was trying to spy on Democratic National Committee headquarters in the ’70s, and they passed this law to require that any domestic spying must go—must be approved by a secret court, a FISA court. And now, the Democratic Party is helping to basically destroy this law. If this bill passes, the law will become a toothless dead letter, as far as I can tell.

The message that will go out is that, on paper, the President is not supposed to do this, but everybody knows the President violated the law over and over, and now he’s going to get away with it. That’s the message if they pass this law: you can get away with it; we’re not going to enforce this law.

Rednecks: Understand this. Here is a man who witnessed the illegal activities and he has spent his time and money trying to explain this to our leaders. Yet, they care so little that they would not allow him to testify in congress. Why would they do that?

2 reasons come to me: 1- they consider him a bogus source or 2- they are covering up for their coffers. I’m open to other ideas.

If they consider him a bogus source, that is even more reason to interview him and check out his story, thereby proving him wrong. But what we have are actors carrying out a play that is set to cover up illegal activities. Activities in which if you are I were conducting would get us mucho prison time. Just wiretap an American citizen and watch the hypocrisy unfold.

Its ok for them to do so (and make money at the same time), but for you, a redneck in this country to do so would net you mega-time in the pokey.

We need to rid ourselves of every capitulating Democrat in congress. We need to clean house of illegal assholes with nothing but money and control on their minds. There is little to nothing they do which is honorable and we need to stand up and kick their asses out.

The Fascist State Is Among Us

You just gotta see this video…

We have heard countless stories about how the reTHUGlican asswipes continually use the police and Secret Service to form the crowds that are politically expedient for them. What this means is that if you decide to attend a local political rally in a public space, all the Secret Service has to do is ask the police to arrest you or escort you away so that only sycophantic butt buddies are allowed to be a part.

Of course, it isn’t ONLY the THUGS. I witnessed the liberal hero Bill Clinton tell a protestor “How Dare You?” when asked about 9/11 being an inside job. I have seen plenty of Dem candidates use the same tactics, when approached on the street to address the issues of illegality of the war and 9/11 investigations.

There isn’t a thimble-full of difference between the two.

But even more importantly, focused on this particular video, and just like the 61 year old librarian terrorist, Carol Krek asked, Why do the reTHUGlicans consider her message a bad one? One that needs to be shut up?

What was her message?

McCain=Bush

Now, explain, again, why McCain and his handlers has a problem with this easy to prove statement?

More importantly than that, why don’t more Americans stand up and say something about the fascist state we find ourselves in?

We have a Nazi America and it is all because of the fucking idiot neocons and the kowtowed congress. We have no real leaders. They are all complicit, with only a very few exceptions.

Change. Damn right, we need change. But we won’t get it from the White and Black ‘Big 2′ candidates. Time for real change.

Vote Nader

USA Drug Policy: Dismal Failure

Bruce Mirken at AlterNet provides some detail into the Drug War that is a dismal failure, espcially when comparing to the rogue “drug countries” such as Holland. Is it any wonder that Big Money is involved and that even this war is one that is based off of profit and no clear rationale for victory?

Just like our other policies in the world stage, we are full of shit when it comes to rationale and the numbers can’t lie. Only the idiots running this country are lying:

The World Health Organization Documents Failure of U.S. Drug Policies

The United States has some of the world’s most punitive drug policies and has led the cheering section for tough “war on drugs” policies worldwide, but a new international study suggests that those policies have been a crashing failure. A World Health Organization survey of 17 countries, conducted by some of the world’s leading substance abuse researchers, found that we have the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use.

The numbers are startling. In the United States, 42.4 percent admitted having used marijuana. The only other nation that came close was New Zealand, another bastion of get-tough policies, at 41.9 percent. No one else was even close. The results for cocaine use were similar, with the United States leading the world by a large margin.

This study is important because it’s the first time a respected international group has surveyed drug use around the world, using the same questions and procedure everywhere. While many countries have their own drug use surveys, the questions and methodology vary, and comparisons between countries are difficult. This new study eliminates that problem.

Some of the most striking numbers are from the Netherlands, where adults are permitted to possess a small of marijuana and purchase it from regulated businesses. Some U.S. officials have claimed that these Dutch policies have created some sort of decadent cesspool of drug abuse, but the new study demolishes such assertions: In the Netherlands, only 19.8 percent have used marijuana, less than half the U.S. figure.

Even more striking is what the researchers found when they asked young adults when they had started using marijuana. Again, the United States led the world, with 20.2 percent trying marijuana by age 15. No other country was even close, and in the Netherlands, just 7 percent used marijuana by 15 — roughly one-third of the U.S. figure.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy tried to dismiss the study, Bloomberg News reported:

Trying to find a link between drug use and drug enforcement doesn’t make sense, said Tom Riley, spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington. “The U.S. has high crime rates but we spend a lot on law enforcement and prison,” Riley said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Should we spend less? We’re just a different kind of country. We have higher drug use rates, a higher crime rate, many things that go with a highly free and mobile society.”

Funny, ONDCP takes precisely the opposite line whenever a state considers liberalizing its marijuana laws. In a March press release, deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns railed against a New Hampshire proposal to decriminalize marijuana, saying such a move “sends the wrong message to New Hampshire’s youth, students, parents, public health officials and the law enforcement community,” and would lead to “more drugs, drug users and drug dealers on their streets and communities.”

Back in 2002, denouncing a proposed marijuana law reform in Nevada, ONDCP distributed a list of talking points to prosecutors specifically slamming the “extremely dubious” Dutch system of regulated sales, saying, “Increased availability of marijuana leads to increased use of marijuana and other drugs.”

In fact, ONCDP’s latest excuse for the failure of U.S. drug policies — that enforcement and penalties don’t really have much effect on rates of use — is probably just about right. But it also dynamites any justification for our current marijuana laws. The WHO researchers put it this way:

“The U.S., which has been driving much of the world’s drug research and drug policy agenda, stands out with higher levels of use of alcohol, cocaine, and cannabis, despite punitive illegal drug policies. … The Netherlands, with a less criminally punitive approach to cannabis use than the US, has experienced lower levels of use, particularly among younger adults. Clearly, by itself, a punitive policy towards possession and use accounts for limited variation in nation level rates of illegal drug use.”

For this we arrest 830,000 Americans a year on marijuana charges?

The Impostures of Pretended Patriotism

Happy Independence Day. Right?

But what are we independent from? Are we independent from Big Oil and Big Money control? No. Are we independent from a fascist state that cares little for personal freedoms and liberties? No. Are we independent from the fear the neocons have used against an unsuspecting and gullible public? No. Are we independent from the very kind of power structure that we decided to rebel from? No.

We live in a false grandeur… a self-assigned and brainwashed thought that we are morally better than the rest of the world and just because we have been lied to to convince us otherwise (it was easy to do) we forget that and do not want to hold those liars accountable, for we don’t hold our representatives accountable for anything they do, unless it is have a gay person suck them off.

We pretend that we are flag-waving, true patriots, yet we allow our government to attack and ruin other’s lives in search for oil and its control.

How soon we forget what our first true hero and president said about this. How quickly we turn our back on what is important and honorable. How quickly we allow these assholes to lie to us and us believe them. Mr Washington said in his farewell address:

“In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. …”

I read an article by Robert Scheer at Alternet called The U.S. Is Drowning in Pretend Patriotism and it caused me to think about this day in a different way.

We are drowning in the “impostures of pretended patriotism,” used to cover the lies that got us into Iraq, the defense of torture and the violation of our basic liberties. In the name of patriotism, we presume a God-given American right to reorder the world to our liking, masking the vice of unfettered greed as an obligation of national security.

Any doubts as to this later governing impulse of our imperial ambitions were shattered with the recent news that U.S. advisers to our puppet government in the Green Zone of occupied Iraq have worked out agreements for American oil companies to gain control of Iraqi oil fields. But, then again, what did we expect when we elected a Texas oil hustler, and a failed one at that, to be our president?

Only in an America dumbed down by constant propaganda about our innate moral superiority will anyone any longer believe that we didn’t invade Iraq for the oil, even though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to the Bush administration from the board of directors at Chevron, where they named an oil tanker after her. Like Vice President Dick Cheney with those Halliburton contracts, Rice has stayed true to her corporate sponsors. That’s what the U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished; for the first time in more than three decades after Iraq joined a worldwide trend of formerly colonized nations gaining control of their own resources, Big Oil is getting its black gold back. It was always about the oil — that’s why “we” invaded Iraq — only “we” aren’t getting any, at least not at a reasonable price. The oil companies are.

“Yeah, but now that we are there, what are we to do?” Or the even harder idiocy, “We went there to give them freedom, they owe us the oil and we should take it.”

Is there any question in a redneck’s mind that this illegal invasion was anything except a way to get control of the Iraqi oil? How stupid does an American have to be to still believe these THUGS like Cheney and Rice (not to mention Bush and the rest of the thieves and liars) when every issue points to their neocon, oil-driven, world-control agenda? I mean, REALLY.

Are you people still so ignorant and stupid that you still believe them? No matter what the evidence is? To me, that is down-right treasonous. If you still support these maniacs, then you are also a traitor, in my opinion… at the very least, the stupidest of the stupid and should get mental help.

Sorry, but that is the way it is. There is no longer any excuse for you people… you Bushie Fools.

As Robert says, it may be impossible for the oil money soaked congress to get the point, but the Oil Companies and the American public are not the same. When Haliburton can screw Americans by moving off shore, they are no longer American. Period.

As they get richer and richer, we are suffering by paying for their ultra-profits. Now, they have “negotiated” some sort of contract to pull the oil from under the sand for the Iraqi government and will reap 75% of the money, leaving 25% for the Iraqis.

Now think about that for a second. Our “war” was to be paid for by their oil money, but the Oil companies get 75% and we are to be repaid or they will finance the rest of our 100 year war with 25% of the oil proceeds. Does any other redneck think the math is screwed? How many other countries do you think would allow this? Saudi Arabia?

What we have done is certainly a humongous rip-off of other people’s resources. Period. And we (all of us Americans) have allowed it and actually chide it along because of our “imposture” of pretended patriotism. “Imposture” is the act or practice of deceiving by means of an assumed character or name. We assume a false patriotism, we pretend that this patriotism is honorable and warranted, but it is simply the catalyst that our leaders have used to brainwash us into believing our superiority to the rest of the world, especially a bunch of sand dwelling rag heads.

We have become precisely what our greatest hero warned us of.

So, today, as I gather signatures for Ralph Nader, don’t put your flag pin up in my face, unless you are ready to sign this thing and get rid of these lying SOB’s who are ruining our country.

Robert finishes with this:

So, take that American flag off your lapel and replace it with a button bearing the Exxon or Chevron logo. C’mon, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice, be straight about what it is you are really pushing here. ‘Fess up — it’s not the good old USA as represented by the sucker taxpayers conned by your patriotic blather. No sirree, what you would have Americans paying homage to is the majesty of the big multinational corporations that exploit American military power to rule the world.

But recognize that you have shamed the legacy of our first president. George Washington, who distinguished the promise of the new world from the corruptions of the old by shunning imperial conquest, said: “Our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing.”

If Barack Obama or John McCain was to offer such words of wisdom this Fourth of July, he would be vilified as “weak,” and that is a fit measure of just how far we have descended from the high hopes of our first president.

Bush: My Least Favorite Hemorrhoid

Brad Reed shares The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency over at Alternet. He explains that trying to pick the 10 worst things the idiot-in-chief has done is like trying to pick the 10 worst hemorrhoids one may have in a lifetime., which according to Brad (and I agree), “There are entirely too many of them, and taken together they all add up to a throbbing mass of pain.”

Yes, W is a pain-in-the-ass, but much worse, he is a tumor that is killing us. The entire neocon idiocy is killing us.

Please go read the entire article, but here is a cursory view at Brad’s picks:

10: Bush Gets Re-elected

9: Alberto Gonzales’ Congressional Testimony

8: North Korea Conducts a Nuclear Test

7: Colin Powell’s Bogus WMD Presentation at the U.N.

6: The Terri Schiavo Affair

5: Bush and Condi’s Excellent Gaza Adventure

4: “Brownie, You’re Doing a Heckuva Job”

3: Abu Ghraib

2: 9/11

1: “Mission Accomplished”

And Brad doesn’t stop there, he also gives a very nice “honorable mention” list:

Narrowing down the Bush administration’s various debacles to a mere 10 was no easy fete. In fact, I expect that many people will express dismay that their least favorite moment was left off the list. “How could commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence not even make the top 10??!!” I can hear some of you shrieking already. Well, I’ll tell you. Essentially, I tried to rate each Bush disaster by two main criteria: its body count and its damage to the country’s reputation. So while Bush’s awkward groping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel may be personally humiliating to everyone, it doesn’t have the same heft as, say, the Iraq War.

But for those of you who insist on seeing your least favorite moment get its due, here is list of every honorable mention I could come up with: warrantless wiretapping; Valerie Plame; Scooter Libby’s sentence commuted; Bush believes Rafael Palmeiro is innocent; soldiers face neglect at Walter Reed; signing statements; the Kyoto treaty ripped up; loyalty oaths; the fake turkey; a staged teleconference with troops, staged FEMA press conference, extraordinary rendition, support for junk science; endorsement of neo-creationist “intelligent design”; inaction against global warming; record oil prices; record budget deficits; record trade deficits; record number of Americans without health insurance; two recessions; no-bid contracts; bin Laden still at large; the Federal Marriage Amendment; stem cell research vetoed; waterboarding ban vetoed; “Last throes”; “Old Europe”; “It’s hard work”; “Bring it on”; “Yo, Blair!”; “I’m the decider”; “I’m the commander guy”; “I’m a war president”; “This is the guy who tried to kill my dad”; “So?”; “Let the Eagle Soar“; John Bolton; Kenny Boy; Harriet Miers; John Roberts; Sam Alito; Blair talks Bush out of bombing al-Jazeera; Cheney shoots some guy in the face; the Military Commissions Act; Jose Padilla arrested and held without charge or access to counsel; endless tax cuts for the rich; let’s waste a shitload of money by sending people to Mars and let’s hire some Heritage Foundation staffers to rebuild Iraq.

I know this will sound as if I am shrugging off Brad’s work, but wouldn’t it be easier to list the things that Bush has done well? Just how much bandwidth does NOTHING take up?

UPDATE: My Bro’ RawDawgBuffalo sums up W’s stint by pointing out the hard to discern… that W is actually a “uniter” in many ways:

Yep, GWB, his legacy will be an assorted one. But for me, I will always recognize for his inept outcome regarding the current state of political affairs. For me even with the war and stagflation, I will always remember him as the great unifier. Yep, for this one man in his eight years has managed to do what others, even Martin King Jr. could not do. He has managed to bring together, whites and blacks, men and women, gay and heterosexuals, natural born citizens and immigrants, republicans and democrats. For we all know he must go. He has done all of this believe it or not unwittingly. So George W. Bush, I toast to you, leaving office and unifying America, for with you, your folk and your policies, we would not have been on the verge of this new possibility, of a man of African descent, taking residency in the white House.

Yes We Can: George Carlin Tribute

h/t Alternet:

“Yes We Can” (The George Carlin 7 Dirty Words Remix)

Posted by Brave New Films, Brave New Films

Your Tax Dollar: Better Used for Iraq or Health care?

B’Man: Our illustriously Bush suck-up leadership in Congress is spending your money again. They are taking your hard earned dollars, stealing the “taxed” portion, then spending that money on Iraq and the Military Industrial Complex’s insatiable need for more and MORE.

I wonder if you rednecks could think of a better way to spend our money than on an illegal invasion that you were lied to to accept and endorse? How about health care?

If someone were to ask you how to spend the money you give the government, would you select Iraq as the beneficiary? Would you select any freaking country or military base that wasn’t in America?

Neither would I.

Norman Solomon has an excellent article in which he suggests that our piss-poor health care system, totally dependent upon and financed through profit-driven motives, is a better investment than Iraq. If you disagree, could you take the time to explain why?

Fund Health Care, Not War

By Norman Solomon, AlterNet.

Speaking in a time of war, Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Somehow this madness must cease.”

Forty-one years later, young soldiers are returning to the United States from terrifying zones of carnage. The old claims of a justified war have melted away. So have the promises of a humane society back home.

Statistics about the war dead tell us very little about human realities. And familiar downbeat numbers about health care — 47 million Americans with no health insurance, perhaps an equal number woefully under-insured — tell us very little about the actual consequences or other options.

“The shocking facts about health care in the United States are well known,” Yes! Magazine noted in the autumn of 2006. “There’s little argument that the system is broken. What’s not well known is that the dialogue about fixing the health-care system is just as broken.”

That’s an apt description. For all the media focus and political rhetoric on health care, the mainline discourse is stuck in a corporate-friendly rut. But there are signs that a movement for a rational, humanistic health-care system in this country is now gaining strength.

A few hours after writing these words, I’ll be at a large demonstration in San Francisco. The lightning rod for this historic June 19 protest is a national meeting of America’s Health Insurance Plans, an outfit that cheerily pitches itself as “a national trade association representing nearly 1,300 member companies providing health benefits to more than 200 million Americans.”

As it happens, this meeting of America’s Health Insurance Plans got underway just as news broke that the congressional “leadership” has devised a formula to fully fund more war. “Democratic and GOP leaders in the House announced agreement Wednesday on a long-overdue war funding bill they said President Bush would be willing to sign,” the Associated Press reported. The bill would “provide about $165 billion to the Pentagon to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for about a year.”

There’s a lot of profit in death. Under the guise of national security. And under the guise of health care.

Today, across the United States, people are dying because they don’t have access to health care. But policy solutions are available. In Congress, about 90 co-sponsors are backing H.R. 676, a bill to provide “comprehensive health insurance coverage for all United States residents.” Call it whatever you like — “single payer” or “improved Medicare for all” or “universal health care with choice of providers and no financial barriers.” What it adds up to is the policy option of treating health care as the human right that it is.

In the latest edition of “Health Care Meltdown,” author C. Rocky White identifies himself as “a conservative Republican who has always held an entrepreneurial ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’ free-market philosophy.” A longtime physician, White describes “the frustration I began to experience while trying to provide compassionate, quality health care in the context of a market in which the accustomed rules of business economics don’t apply.”

Dr. White immersed himself in research on health-care policy and finance. Then he pored through reams of the latest data on the tradeoffs of reform options. “No matter how I turned the cube,” he writes, “the answer never changed. That answer was nearly impossible for me, a free-market Republican, to accept.”

Here are Dr. White’s two key conclusions in his own words:

• “Until we remove the motive of profit from the financing of health care, we cannot and we will not resolve our current health care crisis.”
• “Any group that proposes reform policy that maintains the use of for-profit insurance companies in a so-called free market is being driven by one single motive — to protect the golden coffers of their share of the $2 trillion cash cow!”

Dr. White adds: “To continue down this road is paramount to suggesting that we privatize our fire and police services and turn them into for-profit organizations. You do that and people will die — just like they are dying now under our current health-care system!”

Grotesquely, the insurance and hospital industries at the center of health care in the United States are, in effect, profiting from priorities that condemn many people to death and many more to avoidable suffering.

Meanwhile, corporate enterprises continue to make a killing from U.S. military expenditures now in the vicinity of $2 billion per day.

During a wartime speech in 1969, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist George Wald said: “Our government has become preoccupied with death, with the business of killing and being killed.”

The preoccupation continues.

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people,” Martin Luther King observed, “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Still, somehow, this madness must cease.

Tim Russert: Where’s The Beef?

B’Man: OK, folks, don’t get angry because I’m going to talk about a dead guy.

I was never a fan of Tim’s. I was never a fan of Meet The Press or any of the NBC political team’s coverage of politics over the last 10 years, especially regarding the MSM’s (and Tim’s) complicity in allowing Iraq to happen without even much of a peep.

MSNBC went a long way to open up to progressives when they hired Keith, but it is evident that they were carrying the Idiot-in-Chief’s lying message all the way up through the illegal invasion of Iraq (and it appears they will say little in regards to the “Iranian threat”) which just so happens to mimic the non-existent Iraqi threat a few years ago.

But it is clear that Russert and all the other talking NBC heads were eagerly regurgitating each and every lie and intentional misleading diversion with hungry, master-satisfying abandon. I hold them just as much accountable for what America was duped into, as I do the actual criminal neocon reTHUGlicans who did this.

I have been hesitant to say much about Tim, because I do not want to attack the man… just the lie that was his on-air persona. Sure, he could ravage a guy over an issue that, in comparison to the lies of Iraq, was meaningless. But, this guy who has been dubbed royalty by NBC punditry, did NOTHING to ask the right questions leading up to this clusterfuck.

I thought that his mediating of the Presidential Debates was atrocious, to put it mildly.

This article below was presented at AlterNet (originally at The Nation):

Tim Russert Blew It on Iraq. So Why Are We Canonizing Him?

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