I always wondered that if I ever had the opportunity to meet someone like Obama...would I spit in his face...or shake his hand. I guess I will never know until it happens. Obama is, after all, effectively, the head baby-killer isn't he right along there with Baby Bush and Papa Bush?

By the way, DAnnemarc, wasn't Mayor Quan (please pardon me for not using the word 'honorable' but the thought is rather revolting) the one who sicked her gestapo Oakland police on the Occupy Wallstreet demonstrators?

Politicians always try to come off as your buddy but in the end stabbing you in the back...Just sayin'....

Kennon, to promote the idea that totalitarianism or "dog eat dog", predatory capitalism with oligarchic tyranny are the only - but mutually exclusive - possibilities is to promote a false dichotomy. Libertarianism is the valuing of freedom but rightist libertarianism is really about privilege for elites and business owners rather than freedom for everyone, business owners as well as those who work for someone else. By ignoring (willfully, it seems) the power relationships between those two groups - or classes - rightist libertarians preclude any possibility of genuine democracy and sacrifice it in favor of privilege for the elite - if not the aforementioned oligarchic tyranny..

As a libertarian socialist I believe that what is needed is not a redistribution of wealth but a redistribution of power. If you try to reditribute the wealth without redistributing the power - keeping all the power centralized - then you won't succeed in redistributing the wealth either but if you redistribute the power you won't have to redistribute the wealth, the wealth will then redistribute itself.

But I have no compulsion for the divine! As you know, I am not a fan of supernatural ideas even though sometimes I use words like evil. Well, nobody's perfect! And how do you forgive baby-killers anyway. I'm certainly not calling anyone specifically that term..just generally..because many in the US military are baby-killers aren't they...maybe they can live with that...maybe some really get off on that...but our propagandist system treats them all as brave heroes. It's time we call them what they really are. Not that everyone who have gone to war are baby killers...some are very much disturbed at what they learned about the killer organization they got attached to. Many have not actually killed anyone...but those who have, if they are not deeply troubled by it and continue to support the killer organization they once served, then they are obviously psychotic and are dangerous to the rest of us.

Marc, sorry to give ya a hard time, BUT... if you don't believe the above-mentioned wars were about freedom, then I have to ask, where do you get off praising the veterans of these wars for "defending" or "giving us" our so-called "freedom"? And how would you substantiate the claim that this "freedom" you speak of sets us apart from all other countries?! If I've heard that stuff once my friend, I've heard it a hundred thousand times, and it grates on me. Always has. It's over-stated and grandiose, has a sentimental facade and reeks of American exceptionalism. Like this "one nation under God" thing...

I know you better than to assume you're a jingoist, Marc! But you're way smarter than that. Most people who would say such nonsense simply know no better than to spout off knee-jerk cliches that always sound, to my ears, like thinly-veiled propaganda. Authoritarian regimes thrive on that stuff when there's nothing of much substance for them to fall back on.

By the way Marc, I think it's cool you had a visit from the mayor of Oakland! She sounds like the kind of American even I can be proud of. - Aliceinwonderland

Palindromedary ~ Yes, but as they say, to aire is human to forgive is devine. In any case we are stronger united, then divide. Although, I appreciate your perspective.

ken ware: I was in the US military for longer than the typical 4 year stint and I got an honorable discharge. But I can't say more than that because it's classified. ;-}

I was just lucky that I didn't get killed or maimed as so many at that time did...during the Vietnam war. Like so many of those sorry suckers, I too bought into the bullsh1t lies but then I was young and vulnerable and not very up on US history then (the real US history...not that propaganda we were all fed in school)... just as so many still aren't aware of our real history today. They don't know any better...their heads filled with nonsense about spreading freedom and democracy or fighting an enemy that is threatening our country. How many people were duped by lying politicians about mushroom clouds or WMDs or who did 9/11?

Now that we know about those many, many lies and manipulations and the millions of lives of innocent civilians they had some of us unwittingly (in many cases) murder (and luckily, I've never had to murder anyone). Note: those who got a kick out of murdering people then most likely still spout their allegiance to the Murder, Inc club they belonged to back then.

Sieg Heil! all you atavistic Nazi wannabe murdering morons out there und guten nacht. And remember arbeit macht frei and keep putting all those hard earned shekels into your fuhrer's casino gambling schemes for the long term. Have faith dear boys and girls. Your fuhrer wouldn't let you down, now would he?

Having been native to the S.F. Bay Area, Palin, I am very familiar with Diane Feinstein; more than I ever would've wanted to be. I always thought it would be kinda fun to take a nice long hit off a jumbo-size spliff, and blow it right in the face of that authoritarian witch!

So now Ms. F's all bent outa shape over the CIA snooping on her and her little colleagues! Well, well. Guess she doesn't like the taste of her own medicine. - AIW

Isn't Feinstein the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee? She was all in favor of NSA spying and wanted to fry Ed Snowden, Manning and Assange and everybody. Now they're spying on her, now she's outraged.

I believe she's saying she's a senator so she shouldn't be spied upon like the rest of us. Privileged nonsense, spy on her too! If she's a senator her act of treason would be worse than a common person's..

These days it is more fashionable to kill a number of people then kill oneself, skipping the whole trial and death penalty routine.

Then there are suicide mass-murderers, those with untreated personality disorders, and the insane. They are not deterred by consequences.

On the other hand, many people have spent years in jail, not necessarily for murder, but being innocent of charges, to have the best years of their lives taken away by authorities.

I think cases of wrongful conviction or unusual sentences are due to inequality in the justice system. The lawyers poor and middle class people can afford are C- student scumbags who know when they have someone over a barrel. They don't really care how the case comes out, just that the bill is paid before the hearings.

Your best tack is to ignore foolish comments. A lot of people use the term "conspiracy theory" in its now common pejorative sense. Those same people need to apply that approach to the government's conspiracy theory. Weighing the facts has in many cases brought people around to questioning the official theory.

Why is it that we have to be "fair and balanced" against people who aren't and never were and never will be? That's Obama...can't we all just, just, get along? Oh, yeah, that was Rodney King, my mistake. While the major news media, led by the likes of Fox News, make wild exaggerated claims and right wing propaganda...we have to be "fair and balanced". Yeah, right! We have to attack them in any way we can. We are not going to strap on backpacks, unless those backpacks contained lots of incriminating evidence against right wingers...like hacked Stratfor documents or wikileaks documents. But we are not as strong as the people who have all the money and own all the news media propaganda machines. We have to quit being so introspective, fair, and meekish. We need to attack those who attack us and it doesn't much matter how fair or accurate it is. It sure seems to work for the rabid right. It's time we grew a pair and fought back. I think there must be an awful lot of meeks who think that if they play fair they will get into liberal heaven triumphing over the evil conservatives. But, in reality, the meeks may "inherit the earth" but it will be after the greedy bastard one percenters leave it a burned out cinder after they move to some other corner of the Universe.