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Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
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NOW'S the TIME! Obama is perfectly positioned to USE THE POLITICAL CAPITAL from killing the boogie man to stand up to the military-industiral complex and the Republicans who fan the fear . Bring back the HOPE that elected you by making one of your clear, clean, logical speeches announcing the end of American military muscle. The whole world knows why we really send the troops overseas- they know if they're sitting on top of oil or rare earth minerals- and now the whole country knows we cannot have guns and butter - or jobs, schools, health care or green development.
USE YOUR POLITICAL CAPITAL FOR THE GOOD- if not now, when?
The wars will continue. America NEEDS a boogieman. We'll find a new one soon enough. Ghadafi will suffice for now, but there will soon be other bigger and badder ones than either him or Bin Laden. Remember how every time we killed a "top Al-Quaeda leader" another one popped up? Bin Laden has been irrelevant for a couple years now. There will be a new Bin Laden because being in a permanent wartime economy means just that, PERMANENT.
Our country cannot, and will not, do anything anymore except start and maintain wars and produce war materiel. The portion of the economy dependent on war, terrorism, anti-terrorism, "homeland secutiy", surveillance, imprisonment and various types of law enforcement (against individuals, not corporations) is growing and will continue to grow until it consumes everything and we collapse, just as did the USSR.
We are absolutely dependent on war and related activities. Stopping all our wars would be tantamount to pulling the plug on an ICU patient. Ain't gonna happen.
I bought and read this book many years ago but every time the term "Marshall Plan" is used I think of the following: Operation Golden Lily and there was another plan based on the gold from Germany as well but can't remember the name of the operation.
"Douglas Valentine reviews “Gold Warriors,” Peggy and Sterling Seagrave’s account of how gold looted from Asia by Japan was used to fund crime and covert operations by the US and its satraps"
“Gold Warriors is more than a book about Japan’s “serious, sober and deliberate” plundering of Asia’s treasure from 1895 until 1945, and its collusion after the war with American officials to recover and use the loot as a secret political action slush fund to promote right wing regimes: Gold Warriors:America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold is a journey into the darkest recesses of history and the human soul.
Authors Peggy and Sterling Seagrave not only unravel one of the greatest crimes and cover-ups ever, they reveal something new and startling about the depths of human depravity and barbarity, and the human capacity for deceit."
"...in order to share in the plunder, members of General Douglas MacArthur’s occupation army, along with US government officials and banks, connived to absolve Japanese corporations, war criminals and drug smugglers many prominent officials in the Post War government of responsibility for these ghastly crimes. How the Americans went about this is very interesting. To ensure his silence, General Yamashita was hanged by a military tribunal in February 1946, while his right hand man, Kojima, was tortured by a Filipino, Santa Romana, into revealing where the treasure vaults were buried in the Philippines. Romana then guided CIA officer Edward Lansdale to the loot. Lansdale did a quick inventory, and for the next 20 years supervised Romana, the unlikely front man for a number of slush funds. Thereafter the purloined gold was moved through 176 accounts in 42 banks in several countries, to people and organizations the CIA wanted to secretly support."
"....the Seagraves describe the devious means bankers have used to conceal the vast hordes of Nazi and Japanese gold in their possession."
"the Seagraves reveal how the banks use complex accounting methods, or claim that gold certificates are fake, or simply move gold to offshore accounts to conceal it."
"The reader will walk away from this book astounded and outraged at the immensity of the fraudulent activities that the world’s governments, banks, and spies are engaged in."
http://mindbodypolitic.com/2010/05/23/gold-warriors-how-plunder-from-asi...
"It remains unclear what, if any, role Pakistan’s military or intelligence forces played in the operation to kill bin Laden. US officials have said only that Pakistani intel aided the eventual operation. “We shared our intelligence on this bin Laden compound with no other country, including Pakistan,” said an unnamed senior administration official. “That was for one reason and one reason alone: We believed it was essential to the security of the operation and our personnel.” The fact that bin Laden’s compound was a stone’s throw from a Pakistani military installation in an urban area raises disturbing questions about how Pakistan’s military or intelligence services would not be aware of his location. As of this writing, the White House has not commented on this fact."
"Both President Bush and President Obama have reserved the right for US forces to operate lethally and unilaterally in any country across the globe in pursuit of alleged high value terrorists. The Obama administration’s expansion of US Special Operations activities globally has been authorized under a classified order dating back to the Bush administration."
http://www.thenation.com/blog/160332/jsoc-black-ops-force-took-down-bin-...
And Mushariff is now claiming that the US violated their air space and sovereignty. My question is if we can send our hit men into other countries, with impunity, to kill people we believe are "high value terrorists" then does that mean that other countries who consider US officials "high value terrorists"...like Bush, Rummy, even now...Obama....that the other countries can send in elite forces to take out our "terrorists"? Of course, our disgusting weasel politicians will try to say "the terrorists" are out to get everyone, and anyone, in America when they may only be trying to protect their own sorry a$$e$.
If people don't have very serious reservations about the "official 911 conspiracy theory" and don't have a big red flag flashing before their eyes, they are not, and most probably will never see the real truth behind the 911 attacks. They are not really paying attention nor do they want to look at any evidence that would contradict the official conspiracy theory....as full of holes as it has. They will always bury their heads in the sands of ignorance and hide in their cellars of "lets believe what we are told". They will find any excuse not to really look into all of the evidence and see the overwhelming non-sequiturs and "coincidences" of 911. There are so many that I won't bother to try to post any here...many people's eyes and minds would gloss over anyway. Yes, there are a lot of kooky conspiracy theories but some of those are done by our own government as a psyops propaganda ploy to confuse people and get them to associate the nuttiest conspiracy theories with all theories...except their own...of course. And others are done by...well, kooks who either sincerely believe in their concoctions despite any really believable evidence to back them up....and rely on stretches of the imagination...and who are motivated by $$ and attention. But there are very prominent organizations made up of hundreds or thousands of prominent clear-headed thinkers...of scientists, engineers, architects, pilots, law-enforcement, firefighters, and many more who have been convinced that the official conspiracy theory is a lie.
I am absolutely not a Republican and hate those criminal greedsters and I am more of a Democrat....except I am finding that institutional Democrats are not really our friends either...as evidenced by their false promises and rhetoric and "sell out to the rich" actions. Some of those institutional Democrats will try to paint people like me as some kind of Republican detractor of Obama's re-election. They will do the same thing that the JDL and AIPAC do to people who see, and understand, how the world (and specifically, here in America) gets accused of anti-semitism, anti-israel, insensibilities even with the most sincere and honest opinions of those being accused. There are a lot of Jews, in Israel, and elsewhere in the world who hate what the zionistas have done in their name. There are, of course, blatant haters and xenophobes, and religious zealots that go to extremes to name-call and make evidence-lacking accusations against these, once victims. But they started becoming less of a victim as soon as they opened their own torture and death camps in Poland after the war. (read John Sack's "An Eye for an Eye"). And they are far from being victims for many, many years now....evidenced by their unprovoked and criminal attack on the USS Liberty and their continual subjugation and criminal actions against the Palestinians.
This happens with other groups that want to play their upper hand and force people to abide by their will as well. They will try to back you into a corner and ply their psychological thumb-screws to either make you back down or make everyone else believe that you are the one to blame for "slandering" poor innocent people who had to endure the holocaust or slavery. I am not anti-black, anti-latino, anti-Jew, anti-WASP, or anti-WASA, or anti anything except anti exploitation of the rich against the poor. I am not even anti rich. I am not anti capitalism (if it has the necessary and appropriate checks to keep it from running rampant...as it has been doing...against others). So yes, I am virulently anti-laissez faire capitalism. So I am hardly a Republican...keep that in mind tomorrow when Thom claims that Republicans are using the same kind of language I have expressed about Obama. I am not an Obama hater and wish him well but he is just not cut out to be President any more that Little Bush was. We need someone who can kick Republican a$$ and not get constantly pushed around by them.
According to Tariq Ali, on the Laura Flanders show, I believe I heard him say that it was really unclear just who got OBL, the Pakistanis or the Americans...and that it was not believable that OBL was living their, in that compound without many high up Pakistani officials knowing about it. That they finally sold him out. Was the price that America paid, in the relative eve of re-election high enough for the Pakistanis to finally sell OBL out. Was it even OBL? They wasted no time destroying the evidence. Like, you are going to believe photographs...in today's technology, you just cannot believe photographs (digital or otherwise). This all smells very fishy...really!
Well, it looks like, tomorrow, Thom's subject will be, possibly, doing the same thing against those of us Democrats who have seen through the hypocrisy of the institutional Democrat Party and try to counter our accusations that many of the members of the institutional Democrat Party are playing the people for all they can get. Like the Republicans, they are not interested in helping the poor, the working classes, or retired people. In my opinion, they are being doubly sneaky and pretending to be on our side while the rich continue to screw us all. They are being used as a smoke-and-mirrors, bait-and-switch, political pressure-relief valve that will buy yet more time to complete the job of complete slavery of all but those ruling elite. But their Pressure-relief valve is getting clogged up with people who no longer will buy into the ruse. I really hate it that, by my position, I might be aiding Republicans who might be doing anything they can to blight Obama and the Democrats but when the Democrat Party has carried on as it has, and has the attitude that "we have no other choice", then I will no longer be their "useful idiot". The pretenders deserve to lose their throne. Though our country back to the dogs that will rip the country apart in the light of day rather than letting the sniveling backstabbers pretend to be our buddies. At least in the first case, the country may see no other alternative but revolution against their oppressors.
I say that it would be really terrible if the Republicans took away the Presidency....but it is even worse when we have a proven useful-idiot for the wealthy ruling elite....war criminals...and blood thirsty capitalist vampires that pretends to be our friend but is stabbing us in the back. Again, I was fooled....I was Obama's and the institutional Democrat's, and ultimately the ruling elite's useful idiot in voting for Obama the first time. I won't vote for him again.
We desperately need to break our imprisonment by the two-party system, and elect someone different "for a change".
Incidentally, it was quite funny that Thom kept getting Obama and Osama mixed up. hmmmmm!!!
Geraid.
What is it like to give birth to starvation, to give birth to aids, to give birth to gross disfiguration ? To commit suicide rather than give birth ? Late term abortion is a medical problem not a social problem. Beyond that there is room for debate . It becomes more of a social issue. Poverty, starvation, disease, wars over resource, etc. etc. If sentience cannot deal with this humanly then nature will deal with it, notions of "humane" left asunder.
We must keep our eyes on the prize. Here is the prize for you and me.
Heavenly Greeting by Mattie Stepanek, March, 1996
Dear God,
For a long time,
I have wondered about
How will You meet me
When I die and come to
Live with You in Heaven.
I know You reach out
Your hand to welcome
Your people into Your home,
But I never knew if You
Reached out Your right hand,
Or if You
Reached out Your left hand.
But now I don’t have to
Wonder about that anymore.
I asked my mommy and
She told me that You
Reach out both of Your hands,
And welcome us with
A great big giant hug.
Wow!
I can’t wait for my hug, God.
Thank You,
And Amen.
Here is why I oppose abortion.
Touch of Heaven Mattie Stepanek, November, 1999
What is it like to have a baby
Fall asleep while holding your finger?
It is a soft, precious touch.
It is relaxing, yet exciting.
It is a feeling of trust and importance.
It is so soothing it makes me want to
Fall asleep.
It is a sign of peace and love.
What is it like to have a baby
Fall asleep while holding your finger?
It is a gift from Heaven.
Here is my response to people who denigrate human life.
Mattie Stepanek, 1999
No matter who you are,
Say a prayer this season.
No matter your faith,
Say a prayer this season.
No matter how you celebrate,
Say a prayer this season.
There are many ways
To celebrate faiths.
There are so many faiths
To celebrate life.
No matter who,
No matter what,
No matter how,
You pray.
Let’s say a prayer
This season,
Together, for peace.
In that there is no Osama it is easier to sort out the differance.
I think Thom was getting to but missed one critical point - this WAS NOT ABOUT BIN LADEN! If a criminal is convicted of murder and is given the death penalty, his body is still given the last rites of his professed religion. Similarly in Islam too, when any criminal is killed, he is given full last rites (except for very rare specific religious crimes).. By giving Bin Laden last rites, they respected this rule of Islam and in fact impressed many muslims around the world that US would actually take the time and make arrangements for a full burial (even though it was done at sea for different reasons).
Republican War on Education - Tom Corbett (R-PA) Hates College Campuses:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/pa_gov_suggests_universities_tap_into_shale_deposi.php
Republican War on Women - Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN) Wants Women to Die of Cancer and Their Children to Starve:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/daniels_to_sign_bill_stripping_federal_funds_from.php
File Under Why is This Dude Not in Prision?:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/yoo_president_can_slaughter_village_but_not_make_c.php
Republicans and Money:
Don Young (R-AK) Finds Funds . . .
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/05/louisiana_family_almost_singlehandedly_funding_ala.php
Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) Can’t Make Ends Meet:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/23rd_richest_member_of_congress_denny_rehberg_says_hes_struggling_like_everyone_else.php
Piyush has a Path toward Poverty, too:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/ousted_administrator_has_doubts_about_jindals_priv.php
Ted Stevens (R-Dead) is being upstaged by Representative Hal Rogers (R-KY)
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/prince_of_pork_spokeswoman_says_helping_navigate_b.php
Florida. . . Sigh . . . JustFlorida:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/florida_job_center_fights_unemployment_by_spending.php
Mittens Proves He is a Republican after all:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/new-hampshire-dems-issue-fec-complaint-against-mitt-romney.php
I'm a sometime listener, not a reader of this blog, not a chat room poster. I tend to agree with nearly all of your positions. But I just had to sign up and log in to say that, as a professional broadcaster, you have no excuse for your repeated and repeated and repeated confusing of "Obama" and "Osama." It makes you look bad, makes the president look bad, help conspiracy nuts who say the president is a Muslim make their insane connections. You are a pro; find a way, stop making the mistake, there is no excuse.
I'm a sometime listener, not a reader of this blog, not a chat room poster. I tend to agree with nearly all of your positions. But I just had to sign up and log in to say that, as a professional broadcaster, you have no excuse for your repeated and repeated and repeated confusing of "Obama" and "Osama." It makes you look bad, makes the president look bad, help conspiracy nuts who say the president is a Muslim make their insane connections. You are a pro; find a way, stop making the mistake, there is no excuse.
I'm a sometime listener, not a reader of this blog, not a chat room poster. I tend to agree with nearly all of your positions. But I just had to sign up and log in to say that, as a professional broadcaster, you have no excuse for your repeated and repeated and repeated confusing of "Obama" and "Osama." It makes you look bad, makes the president look bad, help conspiracy nuts who say the president is a Muslim make their insane connections. You are a pro; find a way, stop making the mistake, there is no excuse.
The Osama opportunity. Clean up our back yard and set a better example.
Perhaps Stephen J. Hemsley has something to share on that issue. ?
Dear Thom
After reading your blog and listening to today's show. I find the need to comment.
All the while Afghanistan, Tora Bora and the hunt for bin Laden were in progress, before the invasion of Iraq. After the tax cuts had been enacted, right before we went into Iraq. George Bush said this will only cost a couple of billion dollars. I would like to know was it premeditated, in other words, do you think they were going to leverage this debt into a hostile takeover of our economy and federal government? The hunt for Osama was one thing, but the financial responsibility for these wars and his tax cuts coupled with deregulation and privatization, led to the worst economic period In history United States with the exception to the Great Depression. Its a big pictue . What you think? I am listening.
The past 10 years have proven that the defunding government organizations such as EPA are one of George Bush's favorite tactics in destroying the opposition. Was it premeditated, that a president going to war would underfund his own society to gain a political advantage?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7FbycDXxXk
It is not appropriate to blame the Son of Laden for the bad acts of the Bush Administration and the Republicans in Congress. While it may have been Bin Laden's blueprint, the thugs that stripped Americans of their Rights and Freedom are all home-grown.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15609
Hoo I forget... I hate BMW car and I prefer US car of course.. :) mostly a dodge challenger
décoration intérieur ~ faire de la décoration intérieur est divertissant parce que vous pouvez composer vous même l'aménagement de votre maison.
Here are three great articles to read.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/05/02/osama_and_chants_of_usa&source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29_7_30_110
Wrong response and wrong words!
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-bacevich-nonviolence-20110501,0,5646490.story
Reviewing our violent ways!
http://www.independent.org/blog/index.php?p=10392
It was not worth it!
Well Bin Laden was found in Pakistan, seemingly with the secret Patronage of its government. So are we to stay in Afghanistan, or will we just move them over to Pakistan. I wonder what excuse we'll be given to keep troops in the area, I suspect we'll hear arguments by the end of the week coming from the administration. I can only hope that there is enough push back that the demands from the American people to remove the troops is too overwhelming for the administration. If that is the case, I wonder if there will be unspoken regrets in the administration about their success, now that they have removed Goldberg...er ah... Bin Laden.
Also now that Bin Laden is dead, who's the default current head of Al Quaida now?
Either way it seems clear to me that having thousands of troops on the ground was not necessary to take out Bin Laden. It was a small elite group, it went in and surgically removed its target. It seems that when dealing with criminals such as terrorists, its best to do it in this manner. Either the war against terror is going to wind down or ratchet up, I can't see it staying the same.
N
It's strange but i prefer bmw production in USA than China..
But it strange because the german car is very special and the fabrication is so hard no?
grossesse~ être en période de grossesse est divertissant parce que vous pouvez manger ce que vous voulez on ne vous dira jamais rien.