We all need to go out, buy and wear orange polo shirts with the Aligator logo and Croc's to represent our loyalty to the Republican't party leadership and their Crocodile tears.

Boo hoo, the rich aren't allowed to enslave the common people out right, boo hoo, they still have to pay some taxes, boo hoo. Snnniiifff. Someone get me tissue and another Rusty Nail.

N

hahhh i would treat islam extremism and christian extremism the same!!! make 'em buddhists!!! until we as citizens come together and have a common bond towards shaming (sp?) on all sides those that promote hate in the name of "god" or any entity, we will fail. we have to daily create the groundswell necessary to defeat this crziness.

Quote; "I certainly wouldn't waste US blood and treasure making another country made (sic) at us for invading them!".

In a rather perverse way this pretty much nails the causation of the whole extremism phenomenon:

On the subject of US Treasure: nowadays the per capita share of the world's resources consumed by the US outstrips most of the rest of the world very substantially. This is because the major thrust of US foreign policy since WWII has been to make the world safe for capitalism and to maintain an economic imperialism.

Prior to 9/11 Noam Chomsky documented that 8 million people had died since the end of WWII as a result of political interventions fomented by the US. (The succession from Sukarno to Suharto for instance claimed 1/2 a million lives- and would not have happened without CIA intervention.) The number of US lives lost in maintaining the plunder of the rest of the world has been remarkably small. It is extraordinarily solipsistic to talk of US treasure and US blood in the face of this brutal realty.

The GOP has plenty of blood on their hands. They've killed more americans than bin Laden's al-Qaeda could ever accomplish in their fondest wet dreams. This is just one more way of destroying the middle class.

To listen to the wealthy and people who want to be wealthy or people who, operating on some philosophical objections to estate taxes, etc., and support the wealthy's objections to any objections by people opposed to the recent "Obama Tax Cuts" of 2010 ... you'd almost be left thinking that any, and I mean any, attempt to restore the estate tax rates to the pre-Bush 43 tax cuts, was nothing short of "Bolshevisim" and "confiscation of wealth."

The more I let a little lecture I received along that line from a close relative, not only had I become sadder and angrier about the depth of selfishness behind such thinking, the wiser I became as to the intellectual or philosophical lengths they'd stretch their arguments in favor of perpetually keeping all their wealth in their and their respective heirs' hands. Many people in my baby boom generation never had to worry about their health care costs being met thanks to their parents jobs in the government or through the unions if their parents worked in factories and other areas covered by organized labor.

As they grew up, many of them grew mentally old, cold, and selfish. "Hey, we're talking about my hard earned tax dollars!" They astoninshingly enough forgot what they benefitted so greatly from and turned inwards. Perhaps out of pure selfishness at first, but mostly out of fear, raw and oft-times manipulated fear...which later turned to simple raw selfishness.

Who are the enablers of this selfishness? The Right. I know because I was part of it. I interned at the National Journalism Center in the early 80s. But it was a different time and while the NJC is decidedly conservative, its leaders from columnist M. Stanton Evans and his staff were meticulous when it came to avoiding partisan biases and making sure we really put FACTS before sloganeering (i.e. "fair and balanced.") in whatever we covered and wrote about.

The Center however, could not control the other influences of a far greedier and more politically ambitious group of young conservatives then beginning to flex their ideological muscles. I even attended the Leadership Institute in the mid-80s but soon learned that for a young family guy trying to make his mark on Capitol Hill, wives and kids, especially infant sons, were a potential liability. So much for the family values crowd.

It wasn't until the rise of the Limbaugh brothers, Jack Abramoff and his ilk, and a lot of President Bush (43)'s hanger ons, the more ideologically virulent bunch of free-market conservatives, did the veil of ugliness really begin to fall in ways nobody could've predicted. Simply, who could have or would have publicly suggested that a generation of real "Mr. Potters" of Hollywood ill-fame were rising on Capitol Hill, along K-Street and doing all they could to encourage the professional dog-fighting that Wall Street had become after they received help from Bill Clinton's Bob Rubin and Alan "I love Ayn Rand" Greenspan. If you had written such a script or predicted this ten or more years ago people would've branded you as a conspiratorial nut-job, a paranoid walking time-bomb. I saw a lot of this coming, but I didn't want to believe it much less come right out and say so because I would've been laughed out of consideration for getting any of my writings published, on anything.

Economic terrorism isn't simply a bomb going off in a bank. It's not rigging a check kiting scandal or pulling off a Madoff. It's not even what we watch in the movies. If the banks were too big to fall and the whole edifice of all the capitalist institutions too massive to fall ... so the thinking went ... then it was too late to realize that we were looking at the equivalent to a nuke packed in the back of a minivan parked outside a bank and the ticker was down in the single digits.

Economic terrorism on the scale I'm writing about and Tom and Louise are concerned about here could've only succeeded in growing within an atmosphere of massive deliberate denial caused a constant drumbeat of "talking points" from various sources who had the most to gain from this campaign of distortion and warping peoples' (otherwise) better judgments. How else can we explain why so many people bought into the "Tea Party" line so easily when in fact, most Tea Party supporters were lied into voting against their best interests? Who is behind this? Right now we know it's Dick Armey, the Koch Brothers and other rightist cabals. No thanks to the Citizens decision by the Supreme Court last year, the next crop of mind manipulators may never even be disclosed at all. I've always been more "hawkish" on foreign policy, but when I think of what Julian Assange pulled off, we may need him or another person like him to pull down the curtain from the next wizards of ooze and Wall Street/K-Street and Capitol Hill slimy machinations. Because if we don't, they'll be able to cow us through a carefully concerted campaign of ideological half-truths and outright lies to get us into buying into the notion that opposition to Helen Walton, Queen of the Ozarks' $32B estate tax-avoidance windfall ... which we'll all wind up paying for ... is akin to calling for "confiscatory Bolshevik taxation measures."

Using ideological bullying tactics through sloganeering with labels like "Bolshevik" is terrorism. But you won't hear them admit so in a million years. But whose money, on a grossly disproportionate level is really being confiscated for Helen Walton and greed-knows-no-bounds-clan that's wrecked so many small businesses owners and ironically enough helped to put them in their graves much earlier due to stresses and heart attacks with less to pass on to their heirs? And have you heard the reposte to this concern? "Hey, if these losers couldn't compete with Wal-Mart, that's tough crappers." Believe it or not, I've heard remarks like that coming from some very devout Christians who were eaten alive by this supposedly "Christian/family values oriented" big box empire that outsources the manufacturing of Christmas creches to be sold for as little as five bucks over here and they come packaged in formaldehyde shrink wrap. How many American crafters of creches, of which I'm one, can "compete" with that. Zilch. But I don't try to. I DO TRY TO HELP LEAVE THE PUBLIC MORE INFORMED ABOUT THE FATAL THREAT OF ECONOMIC TERRORISM CAUSED BY CORPORATE INTERESTS WHO ARE MORE INTERESTED IN KEEPING THE PUBLIC UNINFORMED ABOUT THEIR PAST SINS, PRESENT SINS AND FUTURE MANIPULATIONS OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY AND PUBLIC TO COME.

I happen to be a social conservative/fiscal liberal. If that leaves you thinking I'm a rare bird, so be it. My views are guided by the principle that conservatism isn't a matter of conserving all the paper bills and coins one can amass. It's about conserving and protecting human dignity from the moment of our conception to our deaths (hopefully by natural causes.) And likewise, to do justice for those whose lives were cut short by others. Sometimes, though rarely done so deliberately, businesses will behave carelessly and people will die as a result of negligence or poor judgment. These victims, too, deserve to be given the justice of bringing the corporate and othe business criminals to justice and if found guilty, brought to pay an appropriate form of punishment either in terms of great fines, jail, both and certainly the disgrace which comes from a justly reached guilty verdict.

I also believe that if we can spend money to give tax breaks to foreign companies, we can help our domestic first responders without having to resort to weasel tactics and buck-passing down to states, which is what's happening with regards to the 9/11 First Responders It's a form of verbal and philosphical terrorism to treat millions of people as bums because they haven't found jobs after 99 weeks whereas in other industrialized nations they wouldn't be subjected to this abuse and keep on receiving UE checks. The same damn class of parasites responsible for creating so many job losses remains shameless in its willingness to blame the victims of their own greed. They were bailed out with TARP. But the vast number of their employees who lost their jobs are told, again, "tough crappers."

And like all terrorists ... the parasites at the top don't give a damn about the extent of the collateral damage they've caused, and will continue causing, so long as it doesn't show up on their books or cause their investors reasons to wring their hands.

I think who ever cries for war should suit up and serve! Regardless of age (must be older than 18 the only restriction), or any post one might hold - including Congresspersons!!! They must step down and serve by putting on the uniform. THAT would shut up these warmongers!

Get off the oil addiction, scrap our oil wells and stop invading and occupying their countries. That would:

1. Pull the rug out from under their recruiting propaganda and

2. Take away their war money

Stoneage, no wheel, no draft animals, no written language, yep, certainly ahead of their time.

The North American indigenous people were a stoneage people, and war like. The males represented a separate class of hunter/warrier. It is unfortunate that they were at such a technological disadvantage, but that is life. When you talk of Central and South America you are talking bronze age culture, but some of the most warlike peoples in the world. The Aztecs remind me of the Assyrians, and the Inca were pure conquest.

So how does Sen. Graham plan on paying for these bases? Isn't their agenda cutting expenses? Or do we cut things like education and give the military free rein?

First order of business. Build schools for the girls. Educate the girls and women in these countries. Once the females are educated progress is made.

Learn lessons from the past. Charlie Wilson realized too late what a mess he had made and it never got fixed. Duh.

Really sounds like more of the politics of fear. If they get everyone to concentrate on the threat of Islam, then no one will be watching them so closely and they can do what they want. You had better believe that I will be watching.

The best way to stop Islamic terrorism is to get our military out of Islamic countries and stop enabling Israel in its encroachments upon Palestine. Then, instead of sending soldiers, send teachers, engineers, physicians, and venture capitalists.

I heard Trader Joe's pays its employees 50% higher than union wages, which could explain why they are so friendly and TJ's is growing while other chains are shrinking. http://www.workforce.com/section/recruiting-staffing/feature/fostering-loyal-workforce-trader-joes/