Underwear bomber OR Package perpetrator . . .

LOVE that Jeremy Scahill. I sent his ground breaking report home to my father who suspected our entire invasion of Iraq was illegal before we even did it and became an activist for the first time in his life. Jeremy's article vindicated my father, Sergeant in the Korean War and Bank Examiner.

Would not it be too cool to have the Germans rise and join with the liberal and smart conservatives to put Cheney Darth Vader on trial as the war criminal he is? And his smirky daughter and porn writing wife.

You know, these transnationals want to play in a world wide market and open it all up? Then, you watch what happens when Americans decide to unite with the heavy duty activists of Europe. Surely Europe is more appealing than Somalia.

Yes we are a third world country. The same traitors and criminals who have been exploiting countries all over the world for decades have now turned on us.
Where we need to go and where the power elite have accrued, possibly, the means to keep us from going, is to a world wide (voluntary) "resource based economy." Capitalism is and always will be a failure. All we need to do is work together as a world community, sharing the world's resources while we protect the environment. We should begin by investing in techology which cjould truly provide the best environment for all of humanity. It is possible for all of us to live better than most of us in the U.S. are living now.
These ideas are those of Jaque Fresco, of the Venus Project, which works in cooperation with the Zeitgeist Movement.

It's that he opened the doors for the genocide/ethnocide of hundreds of peoples and allowed the American people to participate in the greatest screw up in human history: Conquest.
He didn't mean to of course. He wanted the natives and Americans to live side by side in peace. But what seemed at first an exploration of science turned in to an excuse for Manifest Destiny.

RE Caller on Bank of N Dakota - there is a Republican banker running for Senator there with l thought I heard from Ed S himself had an 80% approval rating - is this a banker from that bank? Does anyone have time to research this? I am at work. Ed S in part took this into consideration when deciding whether he should run for Byron Dorgan (sp) seat.

We live in a morass caused by shellshock. The minds and souls of the American people were/are under constant assault. We wander about in a continuing PTSD haze which keeps us from action. The continuous flow of propaganda initially designed to keep us afraid, now, only keeps us numb.

Congress does not have to change as long as they keep us beat up.

Hi, as I'm cleaning old emails, I found this one from my cousin in Colorado. It fits.
Peace,
Mena

What happened?? Why does our Economy SUCK?

Joe Smith started the day early:
having set his alarm clock
(MADE IN JAPAN)

for 6 a.m., while his coffeepot
(MADE IN CHINA)

was perking, he shaved with his electric razor
(MADE IN HONG KONG).

He put on a dress shirt
(MADE IN SRI LANKA),

designer jeans
(MADE IN SINGAPORE)

and tennis shoes
(MADE IN KOREA)

After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet
(MADE IN INDIA)

he sat down with his calculator
(MADE IN MEXICO)

to see how much he could spend today.
After setting his watch
(MADE IN TAIWAN)

to the radio
(MADE IN INDIA)

he got in his car
(MADE IN GERMANY)

filled it with gas
(from Saudi Arabia)

and continued his search
for a good paying AMERICAN JOB.

At the end of yet another discouraging
and fruitless day checking his computer
(Made In Malaysia),

Joe decided to relax for a while.
He put on his sandals
(MADE IN BRAZIL)

poured himself a glass of wine
(MADE IN FRANCE)

and turned on his TV
(MADE IN INDONESIA),

and then wondered why he can't find
a good paying job
in AMERICA.

I must say, with respect to global trade issue, I do love this statement: 'live simply on the planet, so that others can simply live....' -Those of us in the USA COULD consume less. Environmental textbooks say that if the rest of the world lived at Americas standards of material wealth that we would need more than 4 planets to accomodate all of us! But is this simply being used against us by that fat cats who play us all for puppets. Naturally, we want the children dying of hunger to eat daily. But as long as the fat cats own 90% of all the resources, we need to see more from them and perhaps Ralph Nader is right - only the Super Rich can save us? Bah- localism will save us- that is what we need to do- what Gandhi did.

Since the '92 campaign the world is a better place, standard of living is better? Am I missing something or is Mr Easterbrook severely deluded?

Thom keeps insisting that progressives and the tea party folks have more in common than they think, at least on economic issues. As I have said before, I believe this to be untrue.

First the Tea Party folks are upset because the Republican Party isn't far enough to the right. You have to ask yourself, what kind of person would think this?

The answer is Authoritarians. They have highly compartmentalized thinking among other things:

"The studies explain so much about these people. Yes, the research shows they are very aggressive, but why are they so hostile? Yes, experiments show they are almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence, but why are they so dogmatic? Yes, studies show the Religious Right has more than its fair share of hypocrites, from top to bottom; but why are they two-faced, and how come one face never notices the other? Yes, their leaders can give the flimsiest of excuses and even outright lies about things they’ve done wrong, but why do the rank-and-file believe them? What happens when authoritarian followers find the authoritarian leaders they crave and start marching together?"

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

I really would like to see Thom have John Dean on to talk with him about the Tea Party movement for a couple of reasons. He is a conservative and he wrote "Conservatives Without Conscience" which is about the authoritarians.

I think it would be enlightening.

So what are the Democrats doing about it Thom? Most of them seem to be all about empowering the Republicans.

Feeding from the same corporate trough? That's some kind of change? This mandate to purchase corporate health insurance?

From today's Democracy Now! - http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/11/headlines#12
UBS Whistleblower Begins Jail Sentence
A former banker for the Swiss giant UBS who blew the whistle on the biggest tax evasion scheme in US history has begun serving a forty-month jail sentence. In 2007, Bradley Birkenfeld came forward to US authorities and began providing inside information on how UBS was helping thousands of Americans hide assets in secret Swiss accounts. On Friday, Birkenfeld spoke to reporters before reporting to prison.

Bradley Birkenfeld: “I’d like to say how proud I am to be courageous enough to come forward. I do what I did to expose the largest tax fraud in the world. And the Bush Department of Justice didn’t expose this. I did. But I’ll tell you what the Bush Department of Justice did do. What they did do was give the kingpin, Martin Liechti, immunity after he pled the Fifth in front of the United States Senate and let him go back to Switzerland uncharged. Additionally, they gave international clients amnesty so they wouldn’t be charged. They also gave the largest bank in the world, UBS, they rewarded them with a deferred prosecution, and they are still withholding 15,000 client names from our government. The American taxpayers should be outraged."

Bradley Birkenfeld’s lawyer Stephen Kohn criticized the Justice Department for prosecuting his client after he blew the whistle.

Stephen Kohn: “To take the whistleblower who is responsible for the single largest recovery ever for the American taxpayer, who has already saved and recovered for the taxpayers at least two to three to four billion—it will be much more—and to put him in jail is a travesty of justice. It is a miscarriage of justice. It is grotesque. But worse, it is sending a chilling effect. And maybe it’s fitting that we are here in the snow and in the cold, because this is the type of chilling effect it will have on the willingness of other bankers to step forward and do the right thing.”

*************

So what is Eric Holder's Justice Dept. doing to restore any form of justice? On any meaningful issue? Wiretapping? Torture? Rendition? Banking fraud? Xe? ANYTHING?