Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Re. Vitamin D: Today, the FNB has failed millions...

When I read today's news and saw the FNB's recommendations re. Vitamin D, it seemed like just more ignorance being sent our way by the "establishment."  In a way, these so-called "protective" agencies are trying to keep us in a stone-age understanding by ignoring the thousands of studies made in the last 10 years that prove higher doses of Vitamin D have helped in so MANY cases of dis-ease! (See paragraph #4 in the article below for a listing of them!)  Read the article for truth on this subject -- so important to all of us.

 

Today, the FNB has failed millions...

3:00 PM PST November 30, 2010
 
 
After 13 years of silence, the quasi governmental agency, the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Food and Nutrition Board (FNB), today recommended that a three-pound premature infant take virtually the same amount of vitamin D as a 300 pound pregnant woman. While that 400 IU/day dose is close to adequate for infants, 600 IU/day in pregnant women will do nothing to help the three childhood epidemics most closely associated with gestational and early childhood vitamin D deficiencies: asthma, auto-immune disorders, and, as recently reported in the largest pediatric journal in the world, autism. Professor Bruce Hollis of the Medical University of South Carolina has shown pregnant and lactating women need at least 5,000 IU/day, not 600.

The FNB also reported that vitamin D toxicity might occur at an intake of 10,000 IU/day (250 micrograms/day), although they could produce no reproducible evidence that 10,000 IU/day has ever caused toxicity in humans and only one poorly conducted study indicating 20,000 IU/day may cause mild elevations in serum calcium, but not clinical toxicity.

Viewed with different measure, this FNB report recommends that an infant should take 10 micrograms/day (400 IU) and a pregnant woman 15 micrograms/day (600 IU). As a single, 30 minute dose of summer sunshine gives adults more than 10,000 IU (250 micrograms), the FNB is apparently also warning that natural vitamin D input - as occurred from the sun before the widespread use of sunscreen - is dangerous. That is, the FNB is implying that God does not know what she is doing.

Disturbingly, this FNB committee focused on bone health, just like they did 14 years ago. They ignored the thousands of studies from the last ten years that showed higher doses of vitamin D helps: heart health, brain health, breast health, prostate health, pancreatic health, muscle health, nerve health, eye health, immune health, colon health, liver health, mood health, skin health, and especially fetal health. Tens of millions of pregnant women and their breast-feeding infants are severely vitamin D deficient, resulting in a great increase in the medieval disease, rickets. The FNB report seems to reason that if so many pregnant women have low vitamin D blood levels then it must be OK because such low levels are so common. However, such circular logic simply represents the cave man existence (never exposed to the light of the sun) of most modern-day pregnant women.

Hence, if you want to optimize your vitamin D levels - not just optimize the bone effect - supplementing is crucial. But it is almost impossible to significantly raise your vitamin D levels when supplementing at only 600 IU/day (15 micrograms). Pregnant women taking 400 IU/day have the same blood levels as pregnant women not taking vitamin D; that is, 400 IU is a meaninglessly small dose for pregnant women. Even taking 2,000 IU/day of vitamin D will only increase the vitamin D levels of most pregnant women by about 10 points, depending mainly on their weight. Professor Bruce Hollis has shown that 2,000 IU/day does not raise vitamin D to healthy or natural levels in either pregnant or lactating women. Therefore supplementing with higher amounts - like 5000 IU/day - is crucial for those women who want their fetus to enjoy optimal vitamin D levels, and the future health benefits that go along with it.

For example, taking only two of the hundreds of recently published studies: Professor Urashima and colleagues in Japan, gave 1,200 IU/day of vitamin D3 for six months to Japanese 10-year-olds in a randomized controlled trial. They found vitamin D dramatically reduced the incidence of influenza A as well as the episodes of asthma attacks in the treated kids while the placebo group was not so fortunate. If Dr. Urashima had followed the newest FNB recommendations, it is unlikely that 400 IU/day treatment arm would have done much of anything and some of the treated young teenagers may have come to serious harm without the vitamin D. Likewise, a randomized controlled prevention trial of adults by Professor Joan Lappe and colleagues at Creighton University, which showed dramatic improvements in the health of internal organs, used more than twice the FNB's new adult recommendations.

Finally, the FNB committee consulted with 14 vitamin D experts and – after reading these 14 different reports – the FNB decided to suppress their reports. Many of these 14 consultants are either famous vitamin D researchers, like Professor Robert Heaney at Creighton or, as in the case of Professor Walter Willett at Harvard, the single best-known nutritionist in the world. So, the FNB will not tell us what Professors Heaney and Willett thought of their new report? Why not?

Today, the Vitamin D Council directed our attorney to file a federal Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the IOM's FNB for the release of these 14 reports.

Most of my friends, hundreds of patients, and thousands of readers of the Vitamin D Council newsletter (not to mention myself), have been taking 5,000 IU/day for up to eight years. Not only have they reported no significant side-effects, indeed, they have reported greatly improved health in multiple organ systems. My advice, especially for pregnant women: continue taking 5,000 IU/day until your 25(OH)D is between 50-80 ng/mL (the vitamin D blood levels obtained by humans who live and work in the sun and the mid-point of the current reference ranges at all American laboratories). Gestational vitamin D deficiency is not only associated with rickets, but a significantly increased risk of neonatal pneumonia, a doubled risk for preeclampsia, a tripled risk for gestational diabetes, and a quadrupled risk for primary cesarean section.

Today, the FNB has failed millions of pregnant women whose as yet unborn babies will pay the price. Let us hope the FNB will comply with the spirit of "transparency" by quickly responding to our Freedom of Information requests.

John Cannell, MD
The Vitamin D Council
1241 Johnson Avenue, #134
 

 



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With Palin as President

In the Year 2025
By David Michael Green

A Message From Dear Leader Palin:

Comrades, your attention please. As we come now to mark a dozen years spent as your Dear Leader, I thought it might be worthwhile to take stock of our achievements. And as Thanksgiving time rolls around once more, I thought it only proper to take stock of our blessings, and give thanks to the Lord Jesus for all he has given us.

We should be thankful, to begin with, for our unity as a nation. Many of us remember well the ugliness of the democracy our parents suffered under, with all its messy dissent and nasty name-calling. That is now over for good. In our last election (which was, truly, our last election), fully one hundred percent of the population of God's chosen country voted in favor of making me Dear Leader For Life, an astonishing show of unanimity and national will. No more ugliness, no more division, no more worrying "Should I vote for Tweedledee or Tweedledum?" choice. We are one people now, with one Leader, as God always intended.

We must be thankful as well for our freedom from freedoms. I know I speak for all of those from my generation who can remind you younger patriots of how destructive it was to the national peace when anyone could say anything, when people could disrupt our family prayer hour with demonstrations on the street, when sexual deviants could undermine our wholesomeness by getting married or serving in our military, or when Muslims defamed the name of our Lord Jesus by their very presence in America. We are so much freer now without these infernal threats to our well-being and our perfectly rigid belief structure. And we are so much truer to what our blessed Founders had in mind when they wrote our Christian Constitution.

Similarly, now that we have finally cleared our airwaves of all the smut that used to clog them, we are so much happier as a society. Why would anyone require anything other than PaliFox, anyhow? It provides all the entertainment we need, and just enough news to remind you of your civic duties, but not so much as to make you worry anymore. Isn't that a relief? Let us be thankful for this blessing, and also for how much it has blessed your Dear Leader's personal Patriot Account.

I am happy to report that all of our wars are going swimmingly. And we don't even have to worry anymore about catering to wimpy fussbudget allies who were constantly complaining about torture this, and international law that, and all those other effete niceties Eurosissies love so much. We may be fighting clear across the evil Muslim world all by ourselves but, by golly, we don't have to worry. We are a great and exceptional nation, and our god kicks butt on their silly deity. We should be especially thankful now for all our men in uniform - the straight, the male and the many. They protect us from terrorists every day, and we join in thanks for their service, and for the way the country has rallied around our universal military service policy so necessary to fight all these wars at once.

We are not only more secure in the world now, but we are also more economically secure since our National Patriotic Readjustment Policy went into effect recently. Banning unions, the minimum wage, productivity-choking rules like the forty-hour week, and ruinous red tape from bureaucratic agencies like that old OSHA thingy, we've now created the model economy for our great nation. Our human resources are the best in the world, and our rich elites are therefore unsurpassed in their wealth. We have achieved one of the highest degrees of income diversity on the planet! You betcha. We're America! Everything we do is great.

To be sure, it took some doing to get where we are. The country I inherited was a mess. It got so bad that our last president wasn't even an American. Plus, he was a Muslim and a socialist, and he wasn't even white like presidents are supposed to be. But we rolled up our sleeves and got to work, and now it's morning in America again. Again.

Of course, we had to get rid of the dissenters and the whiners and the bleeding-heart evildoer coddlers, but that tough love is what it takes to have a healthy society. And I think the Liberal Reorientation Camps are working out pretty great, don't you?

Look at how much better off we are, too, now that we've re-learned the great lessons of self-reliance that long-ago generations had understood so well. Our seniors have toughened up since we got rid of those Social Security and Medicare albatrosses that made them so soft in the past. They no longer have to take care of their homes anymore, and every time I visit them in the Patriot Palaces we've constructed they all tell me how much nicer life is now. True, they don't live as long as they used to when they got health care and stuff, but believe-you-me the Ministry of Information is working on correcting those statistics even as we speak. Pretty soon America's seniors will be living longer than ever!

Same with the youngins. All that public education was making them weak at the same time it was draining our financial resources. Not anymore. I'm so proud of our country when I see our wee little Entrepreneur Scouts working in factories almost as soon as they can walk! Our education system is so much more suited to our needs today. No more Emerson for everyone, no more algebra for all. Now we focus our teaching like a laser beam, and our little worker bees learn just exactly what they need to be super productive at the factory - not a bit less, and definitely no more.

We are also able to produce so much more these days, having stripped away all that socialist environmental regulation. And none too soon, either! Now that Manhattan and most of Florida are nearly underwater, we can't be worrying about such trivialities as we man-up to build the barricades we need to keep the raging waters at bay.

One of our greatest achievements has been to finally tame the powers of the government, so that it can be as good as a great nation like ours deserves. We've moved the White House back to Wall Street, where Washington himself took the oath of office. It's so much better that way, since government officials no longer have that long commute to get to work anymore.

And renaming Congress as the House of Lords was such a great stroke. I want to thank Vice President Palin and Homeland Security Secretary Palin for that great idea, and for restructuring our legislative branch so that it has all the same powers as the British upper house. I hear every day from our great American citizens how much they appreciate the new system, without the messy checking and balancing that used to bog us down. That is, before the Great Crusade Wars that required us to suspend Congress, the courts, the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution. It's all so much easier now when I just decide. Doncha think?

America is back, my fellow citizens! Our people have assumed their rightful place and have learned once again the great qualities of respect and deference. We know, as we used to, that it is faith in what our superiors tell us - not the Devil's decadent belief in our own sadly mistaken observations - that brings us the good life. And God has rewarded us for our faith by returning to us, and bringing his gifts of obedience, order and really, really rich rich people, just like the Good Book says.

God bless the Christian Corporate States of America!

And God bless America's Dear Leader For Life!
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Thursday, November 25, 2010

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL

It's hard to be thankful this year, with the unemployment, home foreclosures and financial losses middle-class Americans are having to endure, but the rich are whooping it up. Bonuses on Wall Street are going to be fantastic this year!  Opulence is the word of the day for them!  The sky's the limit! One home or yacht isn't enough these days--let's buy two--or three--or four!  While the rest of the country hunkers down, licking their wounds, the 'elite' are partying hearty. 

Middle-class Americans have taken a big hit, and Christmas is not looking very merry for millions of us.  But...what the hell...since the rich are doing so well, we should all be happy!  Right?!!!  And we should vote in more right wingers to further reduce the regulations on fat cats/corporations, so they can increase their profits even more!  Right?!!  And vote in a president like Sarah Palin who will deliver exactly what the fat cats want: more deregulation, lower taxes, and more wars for them to profit on.  Right?!!!  And we should just keep praying that eventually...eventually...eventually...some of the largesse of the rich will...eventally...trickle down.  (Don't let the cobwebs grow on you while you're waiting.)

Try to have a Happy Thanksgiving, remembering that we still have many blessings -- one of them being that Bush and Cheney are no longer in the White House.

 

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Scathing review of Bush's book in New Yorker magazine

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/11/29/101129crbo_books_packer?currentPage=1

Every word of this review is right on in its assessment. Bush is a borderline-intelligence narcissist who, along with Cheney and their arrogant, tragic errors in judgment, plunged our country into needless war and recession--from which we may never recover. His book of lies should never have seen the light of day. As the review author says,
Here is a prediction: “Decision Points” will not endure. Its prose aims for tough-minded simplicity but keeps landing on simpleminded sententiousness. Though Bush credits no collaborator, his memoirs read as if they were written by an admiring sidekick who is familiar with every story Bush ever told but never got to know the President well enough to convey his inner life. Very few of its four hundred and ninety-three pages are not self-serving. ...Was Bush this rigid and incurious all his life? “Decision Points” records a notable lack of personal development...

In my opinion, Bush's memoirs will take their place beside him in the darkest parts of history's cellar. He is, without a doubt, the worst president this country has ever had to endure.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/11/29/101129crbo_books_packer#ixzz16JSzhCSg

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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Sarah wants us to "stand with our North Korean allies"

...oh, and our South Korean allies, too. 

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/palin-weve-stand-north-korean-allies/   (If you thought it couldn't get any worse than Bush, think again.  Palin has no clue about history, geography, foreign affairs--about ANYthing!  She would be an even worse nightmare as president.  PLEASE GOD, SPARE US THAT!)  But many Republicans love her (weary head shake and eye roll).

EXCERPTS:
In a Wednesday interview on Glenn Beck's radio program, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin seemed a little confused about whether the US was allied with North Korea or South Korea.

Beck's co-host asked Palin about how she would respond to a recent incident where North Korea shelled an island killing at least two South Korean marines and setting dozens of buildings on fire.

"Sarah, you said in the last few days that you are considering a run for president, and the polls show that you would probably win the Republican nomination," the co-host noted. "How would you handle a situation like just developed in North Korea?"

Sarah:  "Well, North Korea, this is stemming from a greater problem where we're all sitting around asking, 'Oh no, what are we going to do?'" Palin said. "We're not having a lot of faith that the White House is going to come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea is going to do. This speaks to a bigger picture here that certainly scares me in terms of our national security policy. But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies. We're bound by treaty..."

"South Korean," the co-host corrected.

"Yeah," Palin continued. "We're also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes."

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Tom DeLay: FOUND GUILTY! ABOUT TIME!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/24/tom-delay-guilty-money-laundering_n_788325.html

DeLay is a weasel who has gotten away with WAY too much in his years in politics.  Finally, his dark deeds are catching up with him.  I hope the judge gives him life in prison -- but am not holding my breath on that. He probably will get the minimum sentence--or even probation.  Weasels have their ways....
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Interesting how Republicans blame Obama for Bush/Cheney errors

On and on it goes -- many Republicans refuse to own up to their responsibility for the disastrous Cheney/Bush years, which plummeted us into the hole we now must dig ourselves out of.  Often racially prejudiced, and blinded by the lies of their Pied Pipers, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, these Republicans fling invectives at Obama, blaming him for the wars, the terrorists, the stepped-up security measures at our airports, the recession, the national debt and God knows what else.  Not Once do they acknowledge the actions of Cheney/Bush that have brought us to this low estate.  Not once do they check back to Reagan where the regulations came off the corporations, where the taxes were cut for the wealthy, and the promises were made to the rest of us: "Oh, don't worry, as we 'elite' become richer, some of it will trickle down to you folks at the bottom."  (Hey, you Republican used-to-be-middle-class guys, how's that workin' out for ya'?)

So, on and on they go, now hitching their wagon to Sarah Palin, actually believing she would be a good president. (???!!!) They still defend Duhmbya Bush as a good president, proving thereby that they can't tell shit from Shinola.  And many of them vote -- unfortunately.  Plus, Sarah Palin and those like her (Michelle Bachmann, Sharron Angles, Christine O'Donnell, Carl Paladino, Joe Miller, etc.) are financially supported and encouraged by the Rupert Murdochs of their world.  Murdoch thinks it would be great for him to have tax cuts forever--actually, never to have to pay any taxes.  He wants the middle class to shoulder the load.  As he merrily counts his shekels, what does he care about the little people, on unemployment and desperately trying to get by?  Not a damn thing.  The middle class can disappear completely (it's happening as I write this), and Murdoch will be laughing all the way to the bank with his gold clutched tightly in his fist. Won't he be surprised when he finds he can't take it with him.

The Republicans in Congress are unwilling to extend the period of unemployment benefits to people who, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs and face bleak times for themselves and their families -- while the rich (many of them in Congress) add more and more opulence into their lives.  Of course, the Republican rich want to extend the tax cuts -- many of them don't pay taxes at all, having figured out how to work the system.  They don't seem to realize that we are all tied together -- and what happens to the middle class will impact them as well.  They are of the mindset: "I've got mine, and I don't give a damn if anyone else gets theirs."  They're against entitlements of any kind for the poor and disabled and elderly--(unless, of course, they or their relatives are the recipients). As they rail against entitlements for the poor, they need to look in the mirror and remember an ancient Roman quote: 
"Poverty wants much; but avarice, everything."  

Greed and pride always 'goeth before a fall.'  Unfortunately, this time we will ALL be taking the fall, the innocent along with those who caused the whole thing to crumble.



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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

NY TIMES -- too much radiation of our children at dentists

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/us/23scan.html?_r=1&hp

This is a very important article for parents to read. In our world today, we are constantly being bombarded with radiation of all kinds, and it has recently increased even more because of the more powerful airport scanners now in operation in many airports across our country (soon to be in ALL of them).  I refuse X-rays when I go to the dentist.  The dentists aren't happy about that, but I've been exposed to way too much radiation in my lifetime (we used to have X-ray machines in shoe stores when I was a kid. You would put your feet in them to see how shoes fit you. You could actually see the bones in your feet, and we would do it over and over again).  In my opinion, our brains and common sense have not caught up with our technology.  Grandparents, please pass this information along to your kids.

EXCERPT:
Because children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to radiation, doctors three years ago mounted a national campaign to protect them by reducing diagnostic radiation to only those levels seen as absolutely necessary.

It is a message that has resonated in many clinics and hospitals. Yet there is one busy place where it has not: the dental office.

Not only do most dentists continue to use outmoded X-ray film requiring higher amounts of radiation, but orthodontists and other specialists are embracing a new scanning device that emits significantly more radiation than conventional methods, an examination by The New York Times has found.



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Monday, November 22, 2010

Palin--our next President? OMG, PLEASE spare us THAT!

I know, I know -- the blood of every thinking American past 3rd-grade level runs cold at the thought -- Sarah Palin and her Alaskan hillbilly redneck "values" in the White House, running our country, representing us to the world at large. AAAACKKKKK!  But the truth is, millions in our country actually admire her because they identify with her.  They don't revere higher education; they fear the "intellectuals" and would rather throw in their lot with an abysmally ignorant redneck type with whom they would like to go huntin' and have a beer.  The abysmally ignorant George W. Bush was elected by the same people  (with the gigantic help of the Supreme Court) who wanted to throw one down with him at their local bar -- even though he was a member of the "elite." After all, he dressed and swaggered around like a cowboy and couldn't speak a straight English sentence --"Gollee, Molly, he's just like us'n!".  The Palin/Bush followers don't mind if their heroes are rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams -- they just don't want them to be smart (or black) like Obama.

If your blood hasn't run cold enough yet at the prospect of a Palin presidency, please read the following analysis of the subject by Frank Rich, and learn who is funding Palin and supporting her run.  Of course, the Murdochs of the world think they will be able to control her once they get her into office -- but Sarah has proven already that she has a mind of her own (such as it is) and will not be reined in by the masters who put her in a power position (Yoo hoo! Anyone remember John McCain?).  With her and the First Dude (Oh God, Please spare us!) at the helm of our ship of state, it will be like giving kindergartners the wheel, so they can steer us over Niagara Falls.  We barely managed to survive Cheney and Bush. If their job was to make us a second-rate nation in just 8 years, they definitely accomplished it.  If they further wanted to demolish the middle class and make us a nation of the filthy rich and devastated poor, they also achieved that goal.  I shudder to think of how quickly a Palin presidency could finish the job of killing us off completely. Read the following and feel your blood freeze...

Could She Reach the Top in 2012?  You Betcha'!
By Frank Rich

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/opinion/21rich.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage
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Lies, Damn Lies, Bush Lies

The Two Most Essential, Abhorrent, Intolerable Lies of George W. Bush's Memoirs
By Dan Froomkin

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/22/the-two-most-esssential-a_n_786219.html

EXCERPT:
These days, when we think of George W. Bush, we think mostly of what a horrible mess he made of the economy. But his even more tragic legacy is the loss of our moral authority, and the transformation of the United States of America from global champion of human rights into an outlaw nation.

History is likely to judge Bush most harshly for two things in particular: Launching a war against a country that had not attacked us, and approving the use of cruel and inhumane interrogation techniques.

And that's why the two most essential lies -- among the many -- in his new memoir are that he had a legitimate reason to invade Iraq, and that he had a legitimate reason to torture detainees.

Neither is remotely true. (Read on for truth)
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Sunday, November 21, 2010

People need to understand --Republicans don't care about the country

Republicans will NOT cooperate in any way to bring the country back into stability.  Their hatred of Obama, racially and politically, takes precedence over any concern they may have for America and its people in these dangerous times.  Yet, they love to call themselves "patriots."  Could anything be more hypocritical--and sad--than this?  They are willing to let us go down the tubes rather than help the president. Ever hear the saying "cutting off your nose to spite your face"?  We are seeing this in action in the halls of Congress.  Stupidity wedded to blind hatred = the Republican party.  And we are all suffering because of it.  The following article states the situation very clearly.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD
By Paul Krugman

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/opinion/22krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

EXCERPTS:
The fact is that one of our two great political parties has made it clear that it has no interest in making America governable, unless it’s doing the governing. And that party now controls one house of Congress, which means that the country will not, in fact, be governable without that party’s cooperation — cooperation that won’t be forthcoming.

On one side, Republicans oppose just about everything that might reduce structural deficits: they demand that the Bush tax cuts be made permanent while demagoguing efforts to limit the rise in Medicare costs, which are essential to any attempts to get the budget under control. On the other, the G.O.P. opposes anything that might help sustain demand in a depressed economy — even aid to small businesses, which the party claims to love.

Right now, in particular, Republicans are blocking an extension of unemployment benefits — an action that will both cause immense hardship and drain purchasing power from an already sputtering economy. But there’s no point appealing to the better angels of their nature; America just doesn’t work that way anymore.

These days, national security experts are tearing their hair out over the decision of Senate Republicans to block a desperately needed new strategic arms treaty. And everyone knows that these Republicans oppose the treaty, not because of legitimate objections, but simply because it’s an Obama administration initiative; if sabotaging the president endangers the nation, so be it.

How does this end? Mr. Obama is still talking about bipartisan outreach, and maybe if he caves in sufficiently he can avoid a federal shutdown this spring. But any respite would be only temporary; again, the G.O.P. is just not interested in helping a Democrat govern.


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Saturday, November 20, 2010

OH YES! OH YES! OH YES! Bob Herbert tells it as it is!

The saddest thing is we can't turn this around, until the corporate lobbyists cease and desist with their payoffs to our supposed "representatives." Our "representatives" represent Wall Street, not the common people. And Republicans are not about to make any changes to regulate the corporations. We are a country ruled and controlled by the rich -- and, for the most part, the American people are blind to the truth. Read the book "When Corporations Rule the World" by David C. Korten, if you are interested in understanding what has happened to us.

EXCERPT from the following article:
All we are good at is bulldozing money to the very wealthy. No wonder the country is in such a deep slide.

HIDING FROM REALITY
By Bob Herbert

However you want to define the American dream, there is not much of it that’s left anymore.

Wherever you choose to look — at the economy and jobs, the public schools, the budget deficits, the nonstop warfare overseas — you’ll see a country in sad shape. Standards of living are declining, and American parents increasingly believe that their children will inherit a very bad deal.

We’re in denial about the extent of the rot in the system, and the effort that would be required to turn things around. It will likely take many years, perhaps a decade or more, to get employment back to a level at which one could fairly say the economy is thriving.

Consider this startling information from the Pew Hispanic Center: in the year following the official end of the Great Recession in June 2009, foreign-born workers in the U.S. gained 656,000 jobs while native-born workers lost 1.2 million. But even as the hiring of immigrants picked up during that period, those same workers “experienced a sharp decline in earnings.”

What this shows is not that we should discriminate against foreign-born workers, but that the U.S. needs to develop a full-employment economy that provides jobs for all who want to work at pay that enables the workers and their families to enjoy a decent standard of living. In other words, a resurrection of the American dream.

Right now, nothing close to that is happening.

The human suffering in the years required to recover from the recession will continue to be immense. And that suffering will only be made worse if the nation embarks on a misguided crash program of deficit reduction that in the short term will undermine any recovery, and in the long term will make true deficit reduction that much harder to achieve.

The wreckage from the recession and the nation’s mindlessly destructive policies in the years leading up to the recession is all around us. We still don’t have the money to pay for the wars that we insist on fighting year after year. We have neither the will nor the common sense to either raise taxes to pay for the wars, or stop fighting them.

State and local governments, faced with fiscal nightmares, are reducing services, cutting their work forces, hacking away at health and pension benefits, and raising taxes and fees. So far it hasn’t been enough, so there is more carnage to come. In many cases, the austerity measures are punishing some of the most vulnerable people, including children, the sick and the disabled.

For all the talk about the need to improve the public schools and get rid of incompetent teachers, school systems around the country are being hammered with dreadful cutbacks and teachers are being let go in droves, not because they are incompetent, but strictly for budget reasons. There was a time when the United States understood the importance of educating its young people and led the way in compulsory public schooling. It also built the finest higher education system in the world. Now, although no one will admit it publicly, we’ve decided to go in another direction.

In New York City, for example, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s choice to run the public school system is Cathleen Black, a wealthy corporate executive with no background in education whose children attended expensive private schools. Mr. Bloomberg has asserted that Ms. Black’s management expertise will be a boon to the city’s public school children. But the truth is that Ms. Black, if she gets a necessary waiver for her new job, will be presiding over budget cuts that can only hurt the schools. As part of a proposed austerity budget, the mayor is planning to eliminate the jobs of thousands of public school teachers over the next two years. Take that, kids.

We’ve become a hapless, can’t-do society, and it’s, frankly, embarrassing. Public figures talk endlessly about “transformative changes” in public education, but the years go by and we see no such thing. Politicians across the spectrum insist that they are all about job creation while the employment situation in the real world remains beyond pathetic.

All we are good at is bulldozing money to the very wealthy. No wonder the country is in such a deep slide.

We don’t even seem to realize how deep a hole we’re in. If student test scores jumped a couple of points or the jobless rate fell by a point and half, the politicians and the news media would crow as if something great had been achieved. That’s how people behave when they’re in denial.

America will never get its act together until we recognize how much trouble we’re really in, and how much effort and shared sacrifice is needed to stop the decline. Only then will we be able to begin resuscitating the dream.

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Glenn Beck followers: WANT TO TRY TRUTH FOR A CHANGE?

It would be nice if some of the rabid right-wingers who get their "news" from FOX would lift their eyes for just a moment from the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and hear some real facts for a change.  I don't expect that to happen, and they will continue with their beliefs that communism/Marxism is taking over their "beloved" country under a black president whom they despise, racially and politically.  They refuse to see how their Republican Congressional representatives are obstructing economic help for the country--and for themselves.  Even the millionaires are telling Obama, "Please tax us at a higher rate."  But the Republicans, by-and-large tied and glued to corporate interests, won't give up the money they receive from lobbyists. Bought and paid for...and who gives a damn about the little people?  Certainly, not them. As one reader commented on Rachel Maddow's recent talk at Harvard's Kennedy School (you can hear audio of it at: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/bluegal/audio-rachel-maddows-theodore-h-white-lect ), Rachel is a gift. She is not afraid to point out the lies that the pols tell and their hypocrisy. No one in the mainstream media has been willing to do that. "Fair and Balanced" as the Fox motto claims is BS. Fair and balanced is to report the truth, and to point out the arguments that are total crap. To report in the vein that both sides are equally valid when one side is spouting total bullshit and lies and misrepresenting the facts is not good reporting. It is crap being fed to us by the truckload.

Here's a Rachel Maddow comment for them to hear, should the right wingers actually want to try truth for a change:

RACHEL MADDOW TELLS GLENN BECK TO LEAVE THE IAVA AND THE VETERANS ALONE
By Heather, www.crooksandliars.com (the video can be seen on this site)

Rachel Maddow asks fear monger Glenn Beck to leave the IAVA the hell alone. Glenn Beck painted the non-partisan veterans group as an evil union supporting, George Soros, radical, communist organization that is "duping" people into supporting our veterans returning home from war. It's just shameless what Beck did and Rachel who normally doesn't want to weigh into the fray of Beck's madness finally had enough of it and spoke out on her show this week.

MADDOW: Thank you so much for standing guard against these communists masquerading as a veterans organization, that are using you for their communist purposes. Thank you for standing guard against these communists who are duping you; these communists over at Iraq and Afghanistan's of America.

There are people all over America today who listen to Glenn Beck who know believe that IAVA is a communist front group because Glenn Beck said so. IAVA is not a communist front group. They do not feed veterans who march in parades with them as part of a communist plot to dupe veterans into becoming communists.

They do not take money from Move On or any other Fox News boogy men more boogiesh than me. But even if they did it would still be the patriotic equivalent of a mortal sin to do what Glenn Beck did this week when he randomly and at length and in totally made up tale, launched this 100% false attack on Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonpartisan group that does nothing wrong and does nothing like what all of Glenn Beck's listeners now think they do.

I generally try to be of good cheer when it comes to people being dumb in the media but this is more than dumb. This is disgusting. Leave... the... veterans... alone.

What's really pitiful is that the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing hate talkers are allowed to continue to pollute our airways instead with no push back so their listeners are aware that they're lying to them. I really believe we need some new form of The Fairness Doctrine out there that does not stifle free speech but instead points out the lies if that's possible in the age of media consolidation.

Better yet if our politicians actually cared about having something that resembled a free press in America, these media companies that control everything would be split up, and yesterday would not be too soon.


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You call this Bi-Partisanship? Republicans refuse to meet with Obama

Talk about fiddling while Rome burns! The Republicans are worse than Nero. They have shown over and over that they have absolutely no interest in working with Obama. Their deliberately planned and continued disrespect for him and for the people of our country is beyond disgusting. They are spitting on the president and on the intentions of our forefathers who formed this country and wrote its Constitution. I call it treasonous. Defiantly turning their backs on the needs of the people and our country in a time of such economic peril, these bastards have no agenda to help us out! Their only agenda is to make Obama look bad and defeat him and anything he proposes, in every way possible. They are worse than liars, they are traitors to the people and should be jailed immediately.

But that will never happen. The Democrats and Obama, with their "gentlemen, let's shake hands across the aisle" demeanor, never seem to take offense at anything the Repugs do to them. The Republicans are using We the people to wipe their shoes on, and our president is too gentile to deal with the saddest excuse for a Congress in the entire history of our country! It's gotten so bad, even the New York Times has finally awakened from their stuporous slumber and realized the disaster the Republicans are bringing to our doorstep. The following editorial, making a meager protest (when it should have been huge!) appeared in their paper today:

With All Disrespect, Mr. President

By The New York Times | Editorial

19 November 10

There was supposed to be a bipartisan summit at the White House on Thursday, but only the Democrats showed up. The Republican leadership of the House and Senate somehow couldn't find any time in their schedules to meet with the president of the United States. If this is what cooperation and mutual respect is going to look like over the next two years, then settle in for more trench warfare and far less progress.

It has been more than two weeks since President Obama issued a postelection invitation for Congressional leaders to join him for dinner on Nov. 18 to discuss "how we can move the American people's agenda forward." Republicans left him hanging, refusing to commit to a date even as the office of Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said he was encouraged that the president wanted to discuss areas of agreement.

On Wednesday, the Republicans, led by Mr. McConnell, said they just didn't have the time. They had discovered there was so much to do - new members to welcome and lots of other unspecified details. Besides, they said, the president should have asked for a mutually agreeable date instead of just inviting them. So the meeting was pushed back until Nov. 30.

As the Republicans know, that means less time to work out important compromises in the remaining lame-duck session on crucial issues like taxes, the nuclear arms treaty with Russia and extending unemployment insurance. So far, in fact, there has been zero interest in actual compromise on any of those issues, despite extended hands from the White House. On Thursday, House Republicans blocked a bill that would extend long-term unemployment insurance past the holidays.

Beyond the practical implications of this rudeness, there is an increasingly obvious lack of respect for the president and the presidency, with Republicans interpreting their electoral victory as a mandate to act with hubris. Steny Hoyer, the outgoing House majority leader, noted Thursday that he couldn't remember a single instance when Democrats did not change their schedule to accommodate a request to meet with President George W. Bush. Mr. McConnell has already made it clear that defeating Mr. Obama is more important than negotiating on legislation. Apparently, that also goes for snubbing Mr. Obama.

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Friday, November 19, 2010

Words of Truth from Michael Moore

Too few are listening (don't even try to talk to the Sarah Palin worshippers) -- as we all go off the cliff together...

How Corporate America Is Pushing Us All Off a Cliff ...a letter from Michael Moore

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Friends,

When someone talks about pushing you off a cliff, it's just human nature to be curious about them. Who are these people, you wonder, and why would they want to do such a thing?

That's what I was thinking when corporate whistleblower Wendell Potter revealed that, when "Sicko" was being released in 2007, the health insurance industry's PR firm, APCO Worldwide, discussed their Plan B: "Pushing Michael Moore off a cliff."

But after looking into it, it turns out, it's nothing personal! APCO wants to push everyone off a cliff.

APCO was hatched in 1984 as a subsidiary of the Washington, D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter -- best known for its years of representing the giant tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris. APCO set up fake "grassroots" organizations around the country to do the bidding of Big Tobacco. All of a sudden, "normal, everyday, in-no-way-employed-by-Philip Morris Americans" were popping up everywhere. And it turned out they were outraged -- outraged! -- by exactly the things APCO's clients hated (such as, the government telling tobacco companies what to do). In particular, they were "furious" that regular people had the right to sue big corporations...you know, like Philip Morris. (For details, see the 2000 report "The CALA Files" (PDF) by my friends and colleagues Carl Deal and Joanne Doroshow.)

Right about now you may be wondering: how many Americans get pushed off a cliff by Big Tobacco every year? The answer is 443,000 Americans die every year due to smoking. That's a big cliff.

With this success under their belts, APCO created "The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition." TASSC, funded partly by Exxon, had a leading role in a planned campaign by the fossil fuel industry to create doubt about global warming. The problem for Big Oil speaking out against global warming, according to the campaign's own leaked documents, was that the public could see the "vested interest" that oil companies had in opposing environmental laws. APCO's job was to help conceal those oil company interests.

And boy, have they ever succeeded. Polls now show that, as the world gets hotter, Americans are getting less and less worried about it.

How big is this particular cliff? According to the World Health Organization, climate change contributes -- right now -- to the deaths of 150,000 people every year. By 2030 it may be double that. And after that...well, the sky is literally the limit! I don't think it's crazy to say APCO may rack up even bigger numbers here than they have with tobacco.

With this track record, you can see why, when the health insurance industry wanted to come after "Sicko," they went straight to APCO. The "worst case," as their leaked documents say, was that "Sicko evolves into a sustained populist movement." That simply could not be allowed to happen. Something obviously had to be done.

As Wendell Potter explains, APCO ran their standard playbook, setting up something called "Health Care America." Health Care America, according to Potter, "was received by mainstream reporters, including the New York Times, as a legitimate organization when it was nothing but a front group set up by APCO Worldwide. It was not anything approaching what it was reporting to be: a 'grassroots organization.' It was a sham group."

Health Care America showed up online in 2007 (the year "Sicko" was released) and disappeared quickly by early 2008. You can still find their website archived here. As you'll see, their "moderated forum" allowed normal, everyday, in-no-way-employed-by-the-insurance-industry Americans to speak out. For instance, here's something Nicole felt very strongly about:

"Moore shouldn't be allowed to call his film a 'documentary.' It should be called a political commercial. We need to fix our health care system, but we shouldn’t accept a Hollywood moviemaker’s political views as the starting point."

Here's what Wendell Potter revealed about the insurance industry's media strategy:

"As we would do the media training, we would always have someone refer to him as 'Hollywood entertainer' or 'Hollywood moviemaker Michael Moore.' They don't want you to think that it was a documentary that had some truth."

Thanks for your perspective, "Nicole"!

Now, how big was THAT cliff? A pretty good size -- according to a recent study, 45,000 Americans die every year because they don't have health insurance.

And here we are in 2010. A lesser PR firm might be resting on its laurels at this point, content to sit back and watch hundreds of thousands of people continue to be pushed off the various cliffs they've built. But not APCO! Right now they've taken on their biggest challenge yet: leading a giant, multi-million dollar effort to help Wall Street "earn back the trust of the American people."

We may never know the size of this particular cliff. But we can be sure it's gigantic. According to the New York Times, one of the things Wall Street's recession gave us is "the crippling of the government program that provides life-sustaining antiretroviral drugs to Americans with H.I.V. or AIDS who cannot afford them." Internationally, organizations fighting AIDS and other diseases are "hugely afraid" of cutbacks in funding.

Of course, there are the 101 ways recessions kill quietly. For instance, children's hospitals are seeing a sharp 55% rise in the abuse of babies by parents.

And that's just the previous cliff. If APCO and its Wall Street co-conspirators lull us into turning our backs on them again, we can be sure the next cliff -- the next crash -- will be much bigger.

Anyway, this is all just a way for me to say to APCO: No hard feelings! My getting mad at you would be like a chicken who's still happily pecking away getting mad at McDonald's. Compared to the millions you've already turned into McNuggets, you've actually treated me much, much BETTER! Spying on my family, planting smears and lies about me, privately badgering movie critics to give the film a poor review, scaring Americans into believing they'd be committing a near-act of treason were they to go to the theater and see my movie -- hey, ya done good, health insurance companies of America. And, most important, you stopped the nation from getting true universal health care. Good job!

There's only one problem -- I'm not one of those "liberals" you fund in Congress, the ones who fear your power.

I'm me. And that, sadly, is not good for you.

Yours in good health,
Michael Moore

P.S. It seems to me that APCO's discussion of pushing me off a cliff should legitimately be part of their Wikipedia page. And why not something about their role in Wall Street's new PR offensive? So I'm asking everyone interested to write something up that meets Wikipedia's guidelines and help bring the APCO Worldwide entry up to date. Post it somewhere online and send a tweet about it to @mmflint. I'll award a signed copy of "Sicko" by noon Sunday to the best entry...and then deputize you to post it on Wikipedia for real and make sure APCO's minions don't take it down. Just be sure afterward not to walk near any cliffs!

P.P.S. The late, great comedian Bill Hicks had some thoughts about marketing and the people who do it.
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Thursday, November 18, 2010

Priceless audio of a 911 call by a little girl - STAY CALM, DAD

Turn your speaker on. This is priceless! A 5-year-old girl's Dad has
trouble breathing--he makes the phone call but then can't talk because
of his problem, and his little girl Savannah takes over.

http://www.maniacworld.com/stay-calm-dad.html

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Jon Stewart takes on the Palin Family Circus

Great video: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/18/stewart-palin-media-circus_n_785293.html

I love Jason Jones' Bayonne! (~.~)  It gave me my laughs for the day!

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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Congress members got richer during recession

While the rest of us got poorer, our Congressional "representatives" were getting richer by double digits (who do you think they really represent?)...  Read about it at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2010/11/17/131389866/congress-rich-got-richer-in-recession-watchdog

Don't you wish we could take a giant bulldozer down to Washington and run it right through both houses of Congress?
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Michael Moore: Big Health Insurance said they would push me off a cliff

http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/272-39/3979-they-said-they-would-push-me-qoff-a-cliffq
This article by Michael Moore tells the chilling truth about what happens when corporations rule the world.  Which they now do.  For more info. on what has happened in our world while we weren't paying close attention, read the book When Corporations Rule the World by Michael C. Korten.  Prepare to be horrified as you realize what is described in the book is the exact world we all now live in.

EXCERPT: Yesterday, on the TV and radio show "Democracy Now" hosted by Amy Goodman, the former Vice President of CIGNA, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies, revealed that CIGNA met with the other big health insurers to hatch a plan to "push" yours truly "off a cliff."

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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Message to the Tea Party!

 

Message to the Tea Party – What took you so long to get angry?

I didn't write this. The actual author is unknown but he/she speaks gospel.  Read on:

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq .

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed by Cheney.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.   You didn't get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq .

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn't get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks. You didn't get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.

You didn't get mad when over 200,000 US citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.

You didn't get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.

No…..You finally got mad

When a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 are all okay with you, but helping fellow Americans who are sick…Oh, Hell No!!

 

 
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Security idiocy gone too far

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40214782/ns/travel-news/

Subjecting pilots to full body scanning or intrusive pat-down is insane.  Remember that old saying, "Going to hell in a handcart"?  That's a great description of our world today.  The terrorists have already won, just by way of what the rest of us have to endure as a result of the fear they have engendered in our government.

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Monday, November 15, 2010

GOOD FOR KEITH!

It's about time someone gave a "what-for" to the mainstream press that stood by and never said a word when Cheney/Bush attacked Iraq on lies.  Ted Koppel spoke out in derisive terms against Keith the other night -- and Keith is now telling Koppel what should have been said long ago.  We no longer have a mainstream press that we can count on giving us truth, but Keith is committed to telling it, without apology.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/15/keith-olbermann-ted-koppel-objectivity-news_n_784000.html
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Sunday, November 14, 2010

Author of Family of Secrets tells truth about Bush presidency

THE DIRTY TRUTH THAT BUSH'S BOOK TRIES TO COVER UP
By Russ Baker

In George W. Bush’s book Decision Points, the former president tells a story of his presidency based on his own say-so. In my book Family of Secrets, based on five years of research, hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, I reveal a very different one.

BUSH: Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld pushed him to invade Iraq. He portrays himself as a reluctant warrior who had qualms about resort to force.

BAKER: Bush was already looking forward to invading Iraq years earlier. Bush told his own contracted ghostwriter, back in 1999, when he was not yet even the GOP nominee, that if elected president he would invade Iraq. The reason? Score political points and secure high poll numbers. Bush confided his belief that successful presidents needed to win a war, and he thought Iraq would be an easy one.

BUSH: A religious conversion changed his life.

BAKER: In a way, yes; but not as Bush’s account implies. Bush’s “conversion” came after a key Bush family political adviser warned that it was impossible to win the presidency without embracing the sentiments of America’s huge bloc of fundamentalist Christians.

BUSH: He was mortified by the disaster that resulted from Hurricane Katrina (and takes some responsibility for the slow response)

BAKER: The incompetence of the federal government was the result of willful neglect of FEMA, the agency in charge of response. Bush and his team were interested in weakening and defunding agencies like FEMA, and outsourcing their functions and budgets to friends and supporters.

BUSH: His father did not have much influence with him, beyond being generally supportive offstage.

BAKER: Father and son were joined in the family enterprise from the start. Their respective ventures in the oil business were connected to covert intelligence operations. Most of the key figures in bringing Bush to power and keeping him there were associates of his father.

Those are just a few of the problems with the Bush narrative. But the principal failing of Decision Points is that it skips over so much that is crucial to understanding the man and his presidency. It is not accidental that, like his father, George W. chose not to write a full-bore memoir that would have brought this broader focus into play.

Here are a few examples of what Bush has chosen not to tell us:

-A Good Cleaning Saves a Presidency: Two generations of George Bushes, working together, used a simple dental exam to cover up the son’s disappearance from the military during the Vietnam War. The trick has successfully deflected inquiry for nearly four decades.

-“A Higher Father”: George W. Bush’s claim that he didn’t ask his father for advice on Iraq but rather turned to a “higher father” for guidance was a story most of the media found too good to check. Reporters also recited faithfully the supposed generational schism between father and son that cast George W. as a genuine rough-hewn Texan, unlike his father, whose political career was hobbled and re-election bid foiled in part because he could never shed his establishment trappings. In fact, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush were not just close—they were partners in complex political and intelligence operations that are to this day completely unknown to the public.

-Oil the Presidents Men: A close friend of George W. Bush helped provide cover for W’s disappearance from the Texas Air National Guard unit in which both served. He then was rewarded with a lucrative assignment as middleman between Saudi oil interests and the Bush family, that included financing of the illegal Iran-Contra operation and an alliance with a clan called Bin Laden.

-Land of Opportunity: One of the strangest companies ever to appear in the oil business, tied to the CIA, foreign dictators, money launderers, and illicit caches of gold, helped fund George W. Bush’s rise to the presidency.

-The Loan (ar)Ranger— A group of individuals seeking favor with the administration of Bush’s father subsidized George W. Bush’s stock holdings in the Texas Rangers baseball team. They created a lucrative virtual no-show job that associated him with a popular local sports franchise and also with a business success. Later, Bush sold his Rangers stock at a big gain to a man he enabled to profit off University of Texas pension funds—and who ultimately put the Rangers into bankruptcy.

- Back in the Saddle, Temporarily: The Crawford ranch was a favored venue for photo ops of a president supposedly more at home clearing brush than behind a White House desk. Yet George W.—a product of Eastern establishment pillars such as Philips Andover, Yale, and Harvard— bought the ranch shortly before he ran for president, and rarely visits it now that he’s back in Texas.

-Making (Up) The Grade: Bush’s future Education Secretary faked the Texas school performance numbers that helped persuade voters that Bush was the man to fix the nation’s schools.

- An Eye for Talent: Bush touted his environmental convictions during his presidential campaign. Then he turned the Environmental Protection Agency’s most polluted region over to a car dealer who had helped Bush earn a fortune off the Texas Rangers baseball team.

- Lemons Into Lemonade: The Bush forces went into the 2004 campaign with a major vulnerability – evidence that, after a plum position in the Texas Air National Guard enabled him to avoid Vietnam, he disappeared from the final third of his obligatory—if cushy—Guard stint. With Bush facing media inquiries from an aggressive CBS News and a daunting threat from John Kerry, a Democratic opponent with a bona fide war record in the jungles of Indochina, the then-president’s disinformation machine went into action. In the end, John Kerry was politically wounded and CBS anchorman Dan Rather professionally destroyed. News organizations abandoned intensive scrutiny of Bush, and he squeaked through to another term.

-Keyboard Kops: George W. affected a Bubba persona that the media generally bought, and that gained him slack for gaffes and incompetencies. But when it came to strategy and tactics, he actually was sly like a fox. He once confided to an adviser how naïve journalists are, and how easy to fool. His example: hide tactical information “in plain sight” for reporters to “find” and report as inside dope.

-A Bush In Your Future? Notwithstanding George W. Bush’s purported Texas isolation and his general silence since leaving Washington, the Bush family enterprise remains as viable as ever. Members of their circle work in the Obama administration, while his brother Jeb gears up for a possible national campaign of his own—raising the prospect of a third Bush in the White House. Meanwhile, through Decision Points, the upcoming George W. Bush presidential library/democracy “think tank”, and the active role of his lieutenant Karl Rove in orchestrating a GOP comeback, they are already rewriting past history—and defining history yet to come.
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Looks like McCain is putting his wife "in her place"

In Republican families, it's often not OK (and probably not wise) for a woman to speak her mind if it disagrees with her husband's.  Cindy and her daughter Meghan have spoken out about DADT and appeared to be in favor of repealing it.  Oops...Cindy's not allowed to have that opinion.  I wonder if McCain will be able to squelch Meghan as well.

Sure am glad I'm not a Republican. 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/14/cindy-mccain-dadt-gay-rights-john_n_783243.html
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Saturday, November 13, 2010

A Perfect Assessment of Bush the Younger, a walking disaster

This is probably the best assessment I have ever read about the worst president in U.S. history. I totally and completely agree with every word of it!

A SMALL FRACTION OF A MAN
By William Rivers Pitt

http://www.truth-out.org/a-small-fraction-a-man65077

EXCERPT:

George W. Bush was all over my television this past week, all over the newspapers, and the feelings inspired by his sudden reappearance are almost beyond my capacity to describe. There was the story about his hearty approval of waterboarding. There was the story that had him contemplating dropping Dick Cheney from the administration. There was the story that had him describing himself as a "dissenter" on the Iraq invasion. He did interviews, and excerpts of his new book dribbled out, and it was all too much to endure.

This is the guy, I thought to myself when I saw his face or heard his voice. This is the guy. 

This is the guy who took a massive Clinton administration budget surplus and gave it away to his friends at the top of the tax bracket, a move that laid the groundwork for our current economic calamity.

This is the guy who breezed past a pointed warning about Osama bin Laden, terrorism and airplanes on August 8, 2001, because he was on vacation and couldn't be bothered. ...(Read the rest at: http://www.truth-out.org/a-small-fraction-a-man65077)


READERS' COMMENTS:  (just a few of them to whet your appetite -- there are many more excellent ones at the end of the article)

The stolen election of 2000 marks the beginning of the final collapse of America. Many of us recognized the Bush/ Cheney cabal for the criminal evil doers they were. The 9/11 attacks were not a huge surprise to me because I instantly saw how they opened the door for Bush to do real, lasting damage...which he did.

I don't know that it's sufficient to identify Bush as the worst president in our history. He is most certainly that, but I frankly do not think Grant, Harding, Coolidge, prominently mentioned as prime presidential misfits, deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. Bush was far, far worse than any of them. Bush, Cheney, Rummy and all the other gangsters should be living out their lives in chains at undisclosed locations.
--Anonymous

And this is the president who has a larger-than-life portrait hanging in the main living room of the Yale Club of New York - smirking at you. I had to move my chair so I did not VOMIT on my wife at a recent gathering in that august institution of the equally august institution in New Haven. I did ask my local, independent book store to move the display of books to their crime section.
--Stephen Beck

My teeth are grinding too, but the memory of his carefree disastrous reign is painful to endure even for a nano second. Hurricane George, without conscience, playing the good ol' boy just isn't working any more. We know who he is, and he makes our souls shudder.
--Simone


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Palin's poll numbers

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/11/12/sarah-palins-unfavorability-numbers-hit-new-high-survey-finds/s

Although her numbers are slipping, it's astounding (frighteningly so!) that fully 80% of Republicans seem to think she's great.  Unbelievable! WHAT are they seeing when they look at her? -- and WHAT are they HEARING when she speaks?  It's something entirely different from what the rest of us see and hear, that's for sure!  But, then, these are the same people who voted for Bush and Cheney -- TWICE! -- and have now voted in some crazies from the Tea Party to serve in Congress and further obstruct any kind of helpful or meaningful changes in our country's plight (caused by Reagan, Bush, Cheney and their corporate pals).  Pathetically, this is what we have come to in the 21st century. When they founded our country, I'm sure our forefathers never expected such a drastic lowering of intelligence in the voters to take place over the years, which has brought us to the sad state we are in now in 2010.

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Friday, November 12, 2010

Bush's "memoirs" lifted passages from advisers' books

Too lazy to write his own book, Bush used passages from other books and claims them as his own ... why am I not surprised? The man is a dolt -- an idiot -- a moron -- a liar -- and now a thief/plagiarist. I could go on and on...but why bother? He is what he is -- a member of the Bush family, and that says it all.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/12/george-bush-book-decision-points_n_782731.html#s180908

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Thursday, November 11, 2010

INCREDIBLE STORY ON FRONTLINE: THE CONFESSIONS

http://video.pbs.org/video/1637166286
One not to be missed -- a grave miscarriage of justice with twists and turns that would make a best-selling crime novel.  Only it's all true.  Watch and be horrified at what can happen to innocent people when police investigators and courts do a rotten job and then refuse to back down, even when it has been proven they are wrong--and innocent lives hang in the balance.  Remember the case of the West Memphis Three (Paradise Lost)? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three   Those kids are still in a prison in Arkansas, with one of them still under a death sentence.  Well, this story has a resemblance to that case -- another southern court (this time in Virginia). 

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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

O'Reilly "jokes" about cutting off reporter's head

Knowing the mental calibre of some of the types that watch O'Reilly and take their action cues from him, Limbaugh and Coulter, I think this reporter has something to worry about.  The far right wing has many nutcases in their midst.  I would go so far as to say that O'Reilly himself is a nut case--a very dangerous one because of the influence he has over those who go to him for their daily "news."  As one of the article's readers commented: Bill'O was just joking when he repeatedly said "Tiller the baby killer" until some wacko right winger killed Dr. Tiller in cold blood.  Yeah, just a load of jokes, nothing to see here. Carry on with more statements that incite violence!

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/oreilly-jokes-cutting-reporters-head/

EXCERPT:

"I don't believe O'Reilly really wants to sever my head, but if only one of his millions of viewers interprets his message otherwise, that's still a problem for me," the columnist concluded.

And maybe Milbank has reason to worry. Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, was murdered after years of O'Reilly calling him a "baby killer."

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