Recent comments

  • Middle class Americans give larger share of income to charity than do the rich   13 years 4 hours ago

    Interestingly, so little of this goes to fellow Americans in poverty.

  • Are we seeing the end to the war on drugs?   13 years 4 hours ago

    I'd like to believe that logic and intelligent thinking will prevail in the "war on drugs" but greed and self interest seem to prevail each time an opportunity for change comes along. Private prisons who profit from the war on drugs will do everything in their power to keep things the way they are. Many police departments fear losing parts of their funding and even the DEA profits by receiving just over one U.S. dollar for each marijuana plant they destroy (even though nearly all of those plants are the male hemp plant and not the female marijuana plant). Worst of all is the fact that so many people blindly accept the propaganda against marijuana from these organizations rather than seeking out facts on their own and coming to their own conclusion. Online polls always show a majority support for legalizing marijuana but those apparently aren't the same people who vote on election day.

  • Middle class Americans give larger share of income to charity than do the rich   13 years 4 hours ago

    i never get anything from the local pbs station asking me for money in the mail.

    my tax accountant explained to me that i dont get flyers from local Detroit PBS stations because I make over $50k per year. apparently people who make almost nothing give to charaitable / non profit because they are so used to having nothing... if they have cash to spare they give it up.

    that's the way he explained it to me. i dont even know if its true. he's an accountant. I didnt think he was lying to me.

  • Middle class Americans give larger share of income to charity than do the rich   13 years 5 hours ago

    It's funny how these politicians...both Romney and Obama have increased their "charity" giving in an election year. It should also be realized that "charity" is useful in lowering taxes. So "charity" can also be viewed as a way to avoid paying the tax amount you otherwise would have had to pay anyway. And these people can really be creative in avoiding paying their taxes. Buy a painting, for example, at a flea market or auction house, for say $1000.00....hold on to it for a few years...then donate it to "charity" writing off the new "assessed" value of say...$50,000.

  • Middle class Americans give larger share of income to charity than do the rich   13 years 5 hours ago

    If I were very wealthy and belonged to the Church of Satan and were running for President...do you think that my donations to my church would count as charity...even if those funds were used to help feed people in need? Since I am atheist, I really don't even believe in Satan (or God)..it's all superstitious nonsense to me. But, I'm sure that a lot of people who fancy themselves as Christians don't believe that Romney's contributions to his church really amounts to "charities". Yes, it really all depends on weather those contributions goes to the poor and needy or helps to build another ridiculous cathedral somewhere. Oz-like cathedrals are architecturally interesting to look at but are really a misplacement of money that could go for feeding the needy. Same goes for the many other religions...especially Catholic...that waste tons of money on such things. And yes, the hordes of believers usually are the suckers who can least afford it give up the most to those bastions of superstition.

  • Middle class Americans give larger share of income to charity than do the rich   13 years 7 hours ago

    It would be interesting to know what kind of charities, how they define the word. Organizations that do good works, or to churches for church administration or political organizations?

  • Middle class Americans give larger share of income to charity than do the rich   13 years 7 hours ago

    How to infiltrate, inform on, and set up a radical organization to take the bait in their own demise:

    "The man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training – which preceded fatal shootouts with Oakland police in the turbulent 1960s – was an undercover FBI informer, according to a former bureau agent and an FBI report."

    "One of the Bay Area’s most prominent radical activists of the era, Richard Masato Aoki was known as a fierce militant who touted his street-fighting abilities. He was a member of several radical groups before joining and arming the Panthers, whose members received international notoriety for brandishing weapons during patrols of the Oakland police and a protest at the state Legislature."

    "Aoki went on to work for 25 years as a teacher, counselor and administrator at the Peralta Community College District, and after his suicide in 2009, he was revered as a fearless radical."

    "But unbeknownst to his fellow activists, Aoki had served as an FBI intelligence informant, covertly filing reports on a wide range of Bay Area political groups, according to the bureau agent who recruited him."

    "That agent, Burney Threadgill Jr., recalled that he approached Aoki in the late 1950s, about the time Aoki was graduating from Berkeley High School. He asked Aoki if he would join left-wing groups and report to the FBI. "

    "M. Wesley Swearingen, a retired FBI agent who has criticized unlawful bureau surveillance activities under the late Director J. Edgar Hoover, reviewed some of the FBI's records. He concluded in a sworn declaration – filed in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records on Aoki – that Aoki had been an informant."
     
    "Swearingen served in the FBI from 1951 to 1977, and worked on a squad that investigated the Panthers." 

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=32420

  • No new nukes!... at least for a little bit   13 years 8 hours ago

    I continue to be amazed at the ignorance shown by those who have taken this negative stanch toward nuclear power. First of all, the French and Chinese recycle 90% of their waste. Nuclear power is a safe and pollution free means of satisfying the worlds power needs. 80% of Frances power comes from nuclear plants. The stupids of germany had decided to shut down nulcear power plants only to laughed at by the French as Germany will be buying power for the nulcear supplied power grid of France. China ,India & Tiawan are buildling new plants that are designed by US companies. THree mile Island did not produce any hazard because the cooling valve stuff open and only released cooling water with harm to the nearbye public. Russians were performing a test they had been told not to perform. The recent Japanese was a result of the Tsunami washing out the emergency backup power generator. THe plant itself withstood the quake and tsunmai. More power plants will be build. Keep in mind, those think the wind and solar are so marvelous will still need backup power generation which will be nulcear unless you think that biggest polluter, our coal plants are still OK. So far, I am 100% right and you don't have it figured it !!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Julian Assange & The US War on Whistleblowers   13 years 8 hours ago

    Eight BIG PROBLEMS with the “case” against Assange (MUST-READ by Naomi Wolf)

    Something Rotten in the State of Sweden: 8 Big Problems with the ‘Case’ Against Assange
    by Naomi Wolf

    Exclusive to News from Underground

    "Now that Andrew Kreig, of the Justice Integrity Project, has confirmed Karl Rove’s role as an advisor to the Swedish government in its prosecution of Julian Assange on sexual misconduct charges, it is important that we note the many glaring aberrations in the handling of Assange’s case by the authorities in Sweden.

    Dr. Brian Palmer, a social anthropologist at Uppsala University, explained on Kreig’s radio show last month that Karl Rove has been working directly as an advisor to the governing Moderate Party. Kreig also reported, in Connecticut Watchdog, that the Assange accusers’ lawyer is a partner in the law firm Borgström and Bodström, whose other name partner, Thomas Bodström, is a former Swedish Minister of Justice. In that office, Bodström helped approve a 2001 CIA rendition request to Sweden, to allow the CIA to fly two asylum-seekers from Sweden to Egypt, where they were tortured. This background compels us to review the case against Assange with extreme care.

    Based on my 23 years of reporting on global rape law, and my five years of supporting women at rape crisis centers and battered women’s shelters, I can say with certainty that this case is not being treated as a normal rape or sexual assault case. New details from the Swedish police make this quite clear. Their transcript of the complaints against Assange is strikingly unlike the dozens of such transcripts that I have read throughout the years as an advocate for victims of sex crimes.
    "

    Specifically, there are eight ways in which this transcript is unusual:
    1) Police never pursue complaints in which there is no indication of lack of consent.
    2) Police do not let two women report an accusation about one man together.
    3) Police never take testimony from former boyfriends.
    4) Prosecutors never let two alleged victims have the same lawyer.
    5) A lawyer never typically takes on two alleged rape victims as clients.
    6) A rape victim never uses a corporate attorney.
    7) A rape victim is never encouraged to make any kind of contact with her assailant and she may never use police to compel her alleged assailant to take medical tests.
    8) Police and prosecutors never leak police transcripts during an active investigation because they face punishment for doing so.

    Each of these points have been violated by the Swedish system and each are much more detailed in the article.

    http://markcrispinmiller.com/2011/02/eight-big-problems-with-the-case-ag...

  • Middle class Americans give larger share of income to charity than do the rich   13 years 9 hours ago

    And you have avoided the fact that Obama has continued with what Bush started. So do you really think Obama is any better than Bush?

  • Middle class Americans give larger share of income to charity than do the rich   13 years 9 hours ago

    Not giving to charity is nothing compared to the overall scheme of financial fraud that will result in the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of people...and the criminal elite who have rigged the system by sneaking in, on New Years Eve, the NDAA laws that criminalize dissent.

    RT interview of Naomi Wolf on "US Instigating Violent Crackdown on Whistleblowers and Dissent"

    RT:Why hasn’t the NDAA story been a bigger story in American mainstream media? This was a huge issue. This bill was signed in when people were celebrating New Year’s Eve. And then, nobody heard about it on mainstream media. Why do think that is?

    NW: When I talk to journalists, senior people who are running major news sites and opinion sites, I would say, did you know that the due process clause was suspended on New Year’s Eve? And their like, “What? Surely not!” Because they did not see the coverage. Any coverage would be buried and obfuscated. And no one’s giving these people orders to not cover it. I was listening to these historic arguments of the American president’s lawyers saying he had the right to round up journalists. And there was no ABC, NBC, no NPR, no CNN, no Fox News, nobody was there. And the best explanation I have is denial. Maybe it’s such a huge story that no one can really believe that this is happening, so we can’t cover it, but I do think that what we’re seeing right now – and I predicted this would happen in November of last year – is a crackdown against Occupy Wall Street, the criminalization of dissent, the bullying of journalists. I think it’s a little to do with what we’re seeing in the news right now, this huge fraud being uncovered in the banking sector. HSBC, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Barclays, Bank of England, fraud, fraud, fraud. Not marginal fraud, but clearly systemic fraud. And I just wrote a piece about this for The Guardian. Tim Geithner finds out about this in 2008, writes an e-mail, doesn’t leak the news or call a press conference, and then becomes Treasury Secretary. So, it’s clear that there’s a small group of guys and girls who are in on massive fraud. So this Occupy movement, and journalism, threaten to uncover a lot of crimes if the books are ever opened. And in an electronic world, these crimes last forever. So that now is my working theory about why we’re seeing such a sudden and violent crackdown on reporting, on dissent, on whistleblowers.

    ....Naomi Wolf: My immediate take is a profound feeling of nausea and a sense that somehow, the United States has collapsed into the Soviet Union circa the mid-1930s.

    http://rt.com/usa/news/wolf-interview-039/

  • Middle class Americans give larger share of income to charity than do the rich   13 years 9 hours ago

    You hit almost all the memes... you forgot "Bush's fault". I give you an 8.5/10.

  • Will the Republicans get what they want & U.S. Post Office will be Privatized?   13 years 9 hours ago

    I made and posted these videos concerning the attack on Postal Employees and mail service for the public.

    I am a former Postal Employee.

    I understand that HR2309 will be on the House Floor sometime this August

    .Just because Issa made considerable profits as a business owner doesn’t qualify him to dictate how the Post Office should be run particularly when his solutions promoted as saving the Post Office, if enacted, would do the exact opposite.
    If Issa wants to save the USPS he should look at what expenses can be deleted without disrupting the service.
    #1. The Postal Accountable and Enhancement Act needs to be rescinded. In 2006 the PAEA ,signed by Bush, mandated that the USPS fund 75 years of retiree health benefits in 10. As the USPS was solvent before the PAEA (HR6407) was passed it stands to reason that the USPS would once again become solvent if this law was rescinded.
    #2. Overpayments the USPS has made to the Civil Service Retirement Service should be returned.
    #3. Overpayments the USPS made to FERS need to be retrieved.
    #4. Charge more for delivering UPS parcels that UPS has the Post Office deliver to places they don’t.
    #5. Adjust the ratio of managers to workers .
    But Issa, in HR2309 hasn’t proposed that any of these things .
    Issa’s solution is to cut the workforce by at least 100,000. Issa’s solution is to weaken the unions, so that Postal Workers’ wages and benefits would depend on a separate board when a contract wasn’t agreed upon by the USPS and a union.
    This is a case where Issa’s cure would cause the death of the USPS as a public service and have it revived as a business with lower paid workers, higher rates and less service.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09ybkkiH2Ho

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am4wez1ShPY

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsPIY9bFFZY

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-chx0j3_8IU

  • Middle class Americans give larger share of income to charity than do the rich   13 years 9 hours ago
  • Middle class Americans give larger share of income to charity than do the rich   13 years 10 hours ago

    "...being holed up in your gated communities, driven around by a chauffeur, attending high-priced private education – it is often easy to overlook the plight of your fellow Americans."

    That's why, instead of creating such a fuss (and often damage) in "our" communities, the people should swarm to those "gated communities" and show those rich snobs what it is all about! All the snobs have to do now is turn off their wall-sized, hi-def TVs...or change the channel. They obviously don't watch RT or Free Speech TV.

    The people could swarm to major airports and really clog up their travels. Merely demonstrating in the streets of their own communities won't do much to change things.

    When MLK was killed, traffic was pretty much brought to a standstill on the beltway around DC.

    What could the police really do if all over the cities masses of people clogged business as usual by occupying banks?
    We way outnumber the police and even the military. This may be the reason why the government may have leaked the stories about the millions of rounds of hollow point bullets being ordered by TSA, SSA, and other agencies. They are trying to scare us into submission.

    I suspect, as the droughts worsen (due to global warming) and crops continue to dwindle and prices continue to skyrocket and when businesses continue to cause more unemployment by laying people off and then finally take away social security and medicare that people will finally be driven to really do something rather than rely on a corrupt democratic system. When loved ones begin suffering and/or dying off because of the criminally disastrous and rigged system they may decide there is nothing left to lose.....but their chains.

  • Is the Presidential election so corrupt that Romney has already won?   13 years 11 hours ago

    Being old school left (SDS) I will vote for the President. However. I prefer to do my voting in the streets. If you know what I mean. Power to the People!!!!

  • Ecuador has granted Julian Assange asylum   13 years 13 hours ago

    America is not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic

  • Is the Presidential election so corrupt that Romney has already won?   13 years 14 hours ago

    1. Not all disinfranchised voters are democrats, because not all republicans are wealthy, young etc. and voter suppresion laws will also effect their numbers and independents. 2. Not all states are getting hit with pack ads. I have not seen 1 yet here in Washington state. 3. Those states with the voter issues need a grassroots push to get as many voters' ID's as they can and help them get to the polls. 4. I really think the people are sick of corporate politics, and the best way to do something about it, is to keep a lame duck president with nothing to lose by going after the banksters and corporations. That may be what the GOP is most worried about.

  • Big victory for the Occupy Wall Street movement....   13 years 15 hours ago

    Sharpen the gate steel so the part will be cut cleaner from the sprue. Also adjust the ejector pin timing to eject the part before the sprue.
    If seperated as the mold opens, adjust the clamp opening. If ejection seperates the part from the runner, adjust the speed and pressure.

    automatic gates

  • Daily Topics - Friday February 17th, 2012   13 years 19 hours ago

    The American dream is difficult to attain these days. Why? Because of great financial crisis. Cutting corners and balancing expenses until payday has become a typical practice for many American employees since the Great recession. And according to a new report, 40 percent of full-time employees are in that boat, living paycheck to paycheck. But that is still less than it has been, and the figures are going down. Check this out.

  • Julian Assange & The US War on Whistleblowers   13 years 19 hours ago

    And the rape charges appear to be trumped up charges made only by the Swedish police.

    "As a recent episode of the Australian documentary show Four Corners states, there are only two semi-official complaints that were made, and both were apparently part of an effort merely to get Assange to get tested for STDs — and one of the women, when she saw that the Swedish police instead intended to arrest Assange on rape charges, was so horrified at being “railroaded” (her term) that she refused even to put her signature onto the testimony she’d already given:..."

    by Phoenix Woman in reply to the story: "Assange Accuser Named by Former British Ambassador on BBC Show"
    http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/08/20/assange-accuser-named-by-for...

    Four Corners transcript:
    http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2012/07/19/3549280.htm#transcript

    And video:
    http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/news/fourcorners/video/20120723_assange_288p...

  • Julian Assange & The US War on Whistleblowers   13 years 19 hours ago

    HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnamese police arrested one of the country's wealthiest banking tycoons for undisclosed financial crimes, triggering sharp falls Tuesday on stock markets in the economically troubled nation.

    The government has pledged to reform the banking sector, which experts say is laden with bad debt, poorly regulated and at possible risk of collapse.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120821/as-vietnam-arrest/

    Now if we can only get our government to do the same here!

    Instead they keep us distracted by going after Julian Assange.

  • Julian Assange & The US War on Whistleblowers   13 years 22 hours ago

    This leak is dynamite. Yes, one could agree that it is not the same as the outing of Valerie Plame, however, just as bad, could even bring out the practice or act of deliberately inflicting severe physical pain and possibly injury on prisoners, through psychological or animal torture like practice surfacing any that includes “Waterboarding”. Some military minds love to hate, these mongers have no boundaries. And, they maybe our own military, or worse, subcontractors. If waterboarding is in these messages, America has an obligation to bring Bush and Cheney to justice.

    Torture is a crime and against military code, the Constitution of the United States also of the Constitution of the United Nations and the International community. The struggle here is with the electromagnetic journalist, for addressing the first time in American history the possibility for a former President and Vice President to be tried and maybe found guilty of war crimes besides sacking the treasury. However we know Fox News will not cover such an issues.

    The Arabs are substantially invested in Fox News. That coupled with Bush Arab money ties far exceed what would likely be needed to condemn Bush for treason. But just as the Fox News medium will dance around the same fundamentals that characterize Romney as a “possible felon”. No ladies and gentlemen of America, bold as Laura Ingram keeps insisting, Obama did not call Romney a felon. No Obama, nor his staff, did not call Romney a felon; they said he could have committed a felon. Hannity, Medved, Bill Cunningham, Dennis Prager, and of course the political weasel Mark Levin, of course the famous Rush Limbaugh who claims to take a loan out from God for his talent all do the same rant in concert. They have no recourse but to lie like hell.

    A scandal such as this from Watergate to Waterboard might destroy a large proportion of the Republican Party forever. However, it’s still my opinion America will never have a Golden Age if George Bush and Dick Cheney never answer for their American leadership to hell, especially in the name of patriotism. As one watches Fox News, or even MSNBC and CNN telecast lies or twisted truths for years, then to have turn around to admit now they know the Bush administration is a total fraud would be a world class embarrassment of unknown proportions for the elite class of American electromagnetic journalism. So, what’s best to do?

    This is the moment, and to be sure, the one President Barrack Obama is struggling with. It will be very telling; If President Obama does not do anything to address this. America will slide further into the abyss of corruption, hate, and a deep, immeasurable scalar space profound unfathomable bottomless gulf we find that the free fall Bush handed off has no end but to destroy America. The Wahhabi plan then is a success, their Bush connection worked.

  • Is the Presidential election so corrupt that Romney has already won?   13 years 1 day ago

    Are the American people stupid enough to elect Romney? Probably...

    any 3rd party vote is a vote for Romney

    better a fake democrat than a real republican

  • Is the Presidential election so corrupt that Romney has already won?   13 years 1 day ago

    I live in Ohio and refuse to focus on loss. I believe we can win and save our democracy.

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