Steven Pearlstein - Blue Dogs took up the fight for doctors' pay as poor lose health coverage

Steven Pearlstein - Blue Dogs took up the fight for doctors' pay as poor lose health coverage

Noam Chomsky: The Real Reasons the U.S. Enables Israeli Crimes and Atrocities | World | AlterNet

This is the most concise and explicit explanation of current Mid-East policies that I have ever read.
Thank you Mr. Chomsky.

http://soapbox411.blogspot.com/

Noam Chomsky: The Real Reasons the U.S. Enables Israeli Crimes and Atrocities | World | AlterNet

The 8 Most Absurd Excuses for Trying to Defeat Legal Pot | Drugs | AlterNet

The 8 Most Absurd Excuses for Trying to Defeat Legal Pot | Drugs | AlterNet

How a Lunatic, Racist Blogger Is Fanning Hate Against Muslims -- With the Help of Our Dumb Media

Anti-Islam groups created by extremists like Pamela Geller are on a crusade against U.S. Muslims.
August 22, 2010

Pamela Geller, the once-obscure right-wing blogger known for peddling hateful, wildly over-the-top rhetoric (she once claimed that Barack Obama was the bastard stepchild of Malcom X) and for pulling stunts like taping a harangue against Muslims while clad in a bikini, has parlayed the anti-mosque hysteria sweeping across America into mainstream media attention just in time to promote her new book, The Post-American Presidency.

Waging Peace from Afar: Divestment and Israeli Occupation

http://soapbox411.blogspot.com/

A growing grassroots movement is using the techniques of the anti-apartheid movement to challenge U.S. support for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

by Phyllis Bennis

When Israeli commandos launched their assault on the unarmed flotilla of ships carrying hundreds of humanitarian aid workers and 10,000 tons of supplies for the besieged Gaza Strip, killing at least nine activists and injuring scores more, part of the operation was "Made in the USA."

Decades of uncritical U.S. financial, military, and diplomatic support has ensured that Israel's military power-nuclear and conventional-remains unchallengeable. A U.S. pattern of using UN Security Council vetoes to protect Israel from accountability has ensured that Israel can essentially do whatever it likes with those U.S.-provided weapons, regardless of what U.S. or international laws may be broken.

Israel has long relied on the numerous U.S.-made and U.S.-financed Apache and Blackhawk war helicopters in its arsenal-it's a good bet those were in use in the May 31st assault in international waters. Use of U.S.-provided weapons is severely limited by our own laws: The Arms Export Control Act (AECA) prohibits any recipient from using U.S. weapons except for security within its own borders, or for direct self-defense. And no amount of Israeli spin can make us believe that an attack by heavily-armed commandos jumping onto the decks of an unarmed civilian ship in international waters has anything to do with self-defense.

Hamid Karzai: U.S. Taxpayer-Funded Private Contractors Engaging In Terrorist, Mafia-Like Activity

So not only is the money We The People paying the contractors not enough, but they are a source of corruption as well. Another Bush legacy that is F'ing up are relationship with the world, the current administratioin is continuing it.
BB

by Sam Stein

Afghanistan's embattled president Hamid Karzai said on Sunday that U.S. taxpayers were indirectly funding "mafia-like groups" and terrorist activities with the American government's support of private contractors inside his country.

In a rare U.S. media appearance, Karzai continued to press for the removal of the vast majority of U.S. private contractors by the end of this year. He argued that their continued presence inside Afghanistan was "an obstruction and impediment" to the country's growth, a massive waste of money, and a catalyst for corruption among Afghan officials.

"The more we wait the more we lose," Karzai said during an appearance on ABC's "This Week." "Therefore we have decided as an Afghan government to bring an end to the presence of these security companies... who are not only causing corruption in this country but who are looting and stealing from the Afghan people.

2nd Egg Recall Linked to Salmonella Under Way - US News and World Report

2nd Egg Recall Linked to Salmonella Under Way - US News and World Report

And there you have it.

Winston Smith: In accordance to the principles of Doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects. And its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.

This is quoted from "1984". The nature of the story has the ruling power constantly changing the enemy, to keep the masses in control. Which of you political geniuses believes that either party is anything but the manifestation of Big Brother? Keep on debating race, political affiliation, and how we should be against Muslims, Africans, Jews, Palestinians, Chinese, Koreans... Lemming over the cliff.

Fighting Toxic Oil Companies

More GRITtv

Last week, Mike Papantonio told us on GRITtv that there was no fund from BP to pay for the oil disaster, and raised some questions about Kenneth Feinberg, the administrator of the damages to Gulf residents. Today investigative journalist Greg Palast answers some of those questions--and raises a few of his own.

Palast has been investigating BP for years, and right now is working on The Amazon to Arctic Investigation (and could use your help). He's also got a bit of his own experience with Kenneth Feinberg, and he joins us in studio to lay out the history of cases like this, where the people hurt by corporate negligence end up getting doubly screwed when it comes time to get their benefits.

Behind Bush's Wyly Billionaire Burglars ... Hint: Beyond Petroleum

Greg Palast
From the Joker's Wild card deck

Sam Wyly is one of the planet's "Ten Greenest Billionaires," according to Forbes. And, the magazine should have added, the one that deserves the most prison time.

Yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged billionaire Sam and his billionaire brother Charles with a stock market fraud which sucked over a half billion dollars out of their victims' pockets. That's nothing. The SEC has only uncovered the rattling tale of the Wyly snake.

Separation of Church and Hate: The Kate Mosque Solution

by Greg Palast Special to BuzzFlash

Since everyone seems to have an opinion about the mosque near Ground Zero (and President Obama has two), I'd like to ask you all a couple of questions:

Given that white Christian supremacist Tim McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building, shouldn't we ban white churches from Oklahoma?

As New York City's indigenous Lenape Natives died at Ground Zero by the thousands when overrun by Christian colonists, shouldn't we ban Christian churches from their sacred ground?

If a mosque near Ground Zero is bad, then why not ban all Muslims from downtown New York? For this to work, should we require all Muslims in the city to wear yellow crescents?

Law and Order: AIG Richard Eskow's picture

Really Pres. Obama? The same non prosecution of the big white collar criminals? So much for change.
Plus c'est la change, plus c'est la memchose.


By Richard (RJ) Eskow

President Obama's Department of Justice announced last week that there would be no indictments in the collapse of AIG, an event which led to a worldwide economic collapse and cost the American taxpayer trillions. As someone who once worked for AIG I was shocked, but apparently that's how this mystery ends: Hundreds of millions of victims, smoking guns in every room, and not a perp to be found anywhere.

Yves Smith is disappointed that PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the auditors who signed off on AIG's financial claims despite mounds of disturbing evidence, escaped serious legal scrutiny. She observes that our "Potemkin" financial reform (her word) won't remove the barriers that prosecutors face in pursuing secondary parties like auditors (although I believe the Supreme Court ruling she cited only addressed civil suits.) Not only is the auditor protected, but that allows the fraudster himself to use the defense that he kept his auditor informed - kind of like Bush and Cheney using John Yoo's legal opinion to inoculate themselves from criminal prosecution.