Last week Thom asked for links to info on South America, may I suggest the work of Mark Weisbrot?

As it turns out, and I hadn't realized when I posted earlier, Oliver Stone's new film, South of the Border was:

Written by eminent UK historian Tariq Ali (who had songs written in his honor by John Lennon and Mick Jagger) and Mark Weisbrot, a leading progressive authority on Latin America,

Oliver Stone and Tariq Ali were interviewed today on Democracy Now!

@DRichards:

This, also from the article you linked:

JAY: So a lot of these things get dressed up as ideological positions like "we believe in the power of the free market". The war in Iraq is "we believe in democracy". But a lot of this is just about money-making."

WILKERSON: It is about money-making. It's about commercialism. I had a student at George Washington University who wrote a great paper about Colombia. Why have we been putting $750 million, roughly, a year, about $1 billion a year, some $6.8 billion overall, I think, into the Andean region, into Plan Colombia? Why have we been doing it? Has it really been to fight drugs? Has it really been to fight drugs? Is that what we're really interested in?

Well, if you look at where we're talking about building our military bases, they're not near the FARC, the group that is involved in narco-trafficking. They're not near the coca fields. The bases are near the pipelines, the pipelines in Colombia, the oil pipelines. Where are we laying down our troops in Afghanistan? Near the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India proposed pipeline. It's all about commercial interest in the long run. And I don't fault the country for that; I don't fault our leadership for that. We do have to have a sound economy, and we do have to be competitive in the world. But I do fault them for making this less than transparent to the American people, and even to lying about it at times. (This doesn't want to italisize for some reason, third edit try.)

JAY: Well, it's also a little difficult to get young Americans to go give up their lives to defend somebody's oil pipeline.

WILKERSON: Absolutely.

Well, Golly - Wilkerson doesn't bemoan the actions themselves, just the duplicity. A card-carrying Republican, indeed.

Remember when There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea was just a kid's song?

God Knows Best

I have tried to give you a picture of a loving and a merciful God but God can also be a punishing and a vengeful God. I have also tried to say that God does not work in mysterious ways but God does work in mysterious ways. I have also tried to say that God is also a patient God but God is also an impatient God.

The hell hole and the rat hole that is evolving in the United States of Hell is God’s will. I must accept God’s will. The evil and sinful America must now pay for her sins. God’s punishing and vengeful ways may take another two or three generations. Unless the United States of Hell repents the punishment and the vengeance may take four or five generations. America’s misery, pain, and suffering may last until 2100. America and Americans have created their hell and hell they will have.

What is happening is God’s will and God knows best. I would feel more confident if I believed that Americans can learn from their mistakes but Americans are too stupid to change the course of their manifest destiny of remaining in hell for this entire century.

I must learn to relax and accept God’s will because He really does know what is best. Maybe the misery, pain, and suffering now will ease or have us escape damnation as a people upon our death. Only time will tell. Let us accept God’s will because God does know what is best for you and me.

What is happening in the United States of Hell is God’s will and He knows what is best for the American people.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire: Gulf turtles

Rahm Emanuel is an idealist . . . The ideal is Democrats Loving Corporations . . .

“Democrats have not stood behind the president in the way Republicans did for George W Bush, and that was meant to be Rahm’s job.” Alex Spillius,London Telegraph

President Obama has not stood behind Democrats.

If, as Mike Papantonio so aptly noted, Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are bottom feeders, maybe they'll both lose some weight, since BP has effectively killed off their food supply!

Peter Ferrara screams like a banshee. Or maybe like a 2 year old. That's what kid's do--keep talking and screaming and can't understand any other point of view except their own.

Rahm Must Go There is blood in the water folks. Let's get on the horn to the Whitehouse, now is our chance. Get rid of that bastard.

re: 22: yeah, when they are seven...

Those Anthony Borowitz comments crack me up

The GSE Lie

Hey Tom and Louise. I'm a Canadian trading (among other things) US mortgage debt. The Fannie & Freddie cause subprime lie is proof of how stupid the banksters and Republicans think the American people are.

As you said subprime began as a business with non-bank companies. Even if Fannie and Freddie wanted to get into the business, they couldn't because Congress slapped a moratorium on them after the accounting scandals of the early 2000s. They did it so the banks could own the mortgage business and GSE share of mortgage origination fell dramatically. The GSEs were ultimately felled by their own shareholders' desire for higher margins when they began buying subprime mortgages originated by someone else. In the end, less than $700 billion in subprime paper of the nearly $6 billion in total mortgage debt the GSEs owned and guaranteed are what did the GSEs in.

Thom. Please. Encourage your citizenry to read more. None of these facts are hard to find!

Prosecute Massey Sign Petition

http://www.prosecutemassey.org/

This is not a canned petition. This is a petition that will go directly to the prosecutor looking for support. Bobby Kennedy Jr. Interviewed Russel Malcharver (spelling) on Ring of Fire Radio.com this weekend. Malcharver says the prosecutor told him that if there is enough of a political climate in the country as evidenced by signatures on the petition and calls etc, the prosecuter may feel supported enough to take Blankenship on. Malchiver has put together The CorporateCrimeReporter.com for about 20 years.

Give a signature and please share this information.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/06/19/perry-textbooks/

Texas Can’t Afford To Buy New Far-Right Textbooks, But Rick Perry Still Resists Federal Aid

For the past year, far-right members of the Texas Board of Education have been overhauling the state’s textbook standards. The changes include “pushing for inclusion of more…Confederate glorification,” re-naming the Atlantic slave trade the “Atlantic Triangle Trade,” prioritizing “a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified,” and raising doubtabout climate change.

However, the Texas Observer now reports that the state can’t afford to buy the new books:

The state normally replaces textbooks on a rotating basis every 10 years. With Texas facing a budget shortfall of at least $11 billion in 2011, the money isn’t going to be there. Textbooks covering the new science standards would have cost $400 million, and the Legislature is already expecting a bill of $888 million for textbooks already ordered.

To ensure that students can still be exposed to “proof, supposedly, of evolution’s fallibility,” the Board is trying to secure funding for special “supplements for science classes from fifth grade through high school.” Social studies textbooks aren’t up for replacement until 2013 — by then, Texas might have enough money to teach their students about Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.

The lack of textbook funding underscores Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) constant compulsion to oppose federal funding that could help his state. At the beginning of June, he refused to let Texas compete for Race to the Top funding for education reform because he falsely claimed the program would weaken the state’s school standards. That allegation was even refuted by a fellow Republican governor, Sonny Perdue of Georgia. A Houston Chronicle editorial from earlier this week lamented Perry’s stubborn “grandstanding” while noting why Texas needs additional, federal education funding: “Of the 50 states, we’re No. 49 in the percentage of adults who’ve completed high school; and it’s estimated that a third of our Texas high school freshmen don’t make it to graduation.”

Texas faces a daunting $18 billion shortfall for the next two-year budget cycle, amounting to 20 percent of the total budget, but Perry misguidedly insists he can find enough spending cuts to create balance, and he is even blustering about rejecting supplementary Medicaid funding from Congress that would greatly help address the state’s fiscal woes. Last year, he tried to reject the stimulus money that proved key to balancing Texas’ budget, insisting, “We can take care of ourselves,” before the legislature intervened and secured the relief.

Perry’s serial rejections, both actual and attempted, evoke his flirtation with secession; of course, with more federal aid, he might be able to afford teaching Texan youth about “the ‘significant contributions‘ of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.” (HT:@DahliaLithwick)

- William Tomasko

Human race 'will be extinct within 100 years', claims leading scientist

By NIALL FIRTH
Last updated at 1:59 AM on 19th June 2010

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Professor Frank Fenner has warned that the human race can not survive

As the scientist who helped eradicate smallpox he certainly know a thing or two about extinction.

And now Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, has predicted that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.

He has claimed that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and 'unbridled consumption.’

Fenner told The Australian newspaper that 'homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1287643/Human-race-extinct-100-years-population-explosion.html#ixzz0rVrEaTo7

The human race will not be extinct in 100 yrs. Keith Riichards and the cockroaches will live on.

If there is a loving god ,why does he permit-much less create- earthquakes, floods, droughts, tornadoes and other natural disasters that kill thousands of men, women and children ever year?The people in the gulf are now praying to the sky-daddy for help. I suggest taking an eyedropper and filling a thimble up with oil. That a least would help.

President Reagan’s War on Eductation:

http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Reagan.html

Thom, it is your show and you are free to invite whomever you please to speak. I have noticed a pattern from the conservatives and they are trying to drown your comments out.

Yes, Thom, our middle class will be history.

Low tariffs for goods and products entering this country is desired by the elite so our wages will remain slave wages with some ability to purchase goods and products in order to have us believe that the money we make is enough for us.

Who Do You Say I Am

The New Testament in the Holy Bible has four gospels. In Mark’s gospel he is clear that Jesus is the Son of God. In Matthew’s gospel he refers to Jesus as a teacher. In Luke’s gospel Jesus is a physician and a reconciler. In John’s gospel he says that Jesus is the Word and the Word was God. Jesus refers to Himself as “I AM.” Jesus is claiming to be God. His words could come across as blasphemous or simply the truth, depending on what you believe. The centerpiece to Christianity is the Cross.

As Christians we cannot leave the naming of Jesus to others. We have to answer the question personally. Who do we say that Jesus is? For me I believe that Jesus is God.

The word cross does not appear in the earliar version of the New Testament in Greek I have a copy that has a literal translation in Engislh. The T or cross was a former pagan sign. It had to do with the celabration of Ishtar..Tamuzz was a god as well as Ishtar. I think Isthtar was the mother of Tammuz who was killed by a wild bore. To avenge his death we kill pigs and eat them on Easter as well as hot cross buns. The ancients baked bread and sliced a cross on it before baking. All in honor of Tammuzz. Christianity didn't replace paganism, it adoped it.

@moonb, with God all things are possible!!!