http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqBkZaOMr4A This is a link to a youtube video entitled "WE HATE BLACKS AND HISPANICS". This video parody the reason why they skip the debate. It was to attend their Kolorless Kountry Klub

The only people that the republicans talk to are the stupid ones that watch Fox news, love war and killing and would rather give there tax money to make war and making sure the oil companies get rich with the tax brakes. Who cares about love, health insurance and the environment when you have stupid Republicans. Oh, I forgot. They have family values.

Immoral, Not Inept
by David Sirota
Friday, October 05, 2007 | 10:43 a.m.

The Bush administration and the Republican Party are often criticized for refusing to aggressively use the "soft power" of international diplomacy. But alas, the attacks are misguided. This crew is more than willing to use "soft power" — not in Iraq, but in Central America, and not in an effort to bring American troops home, but in a ploy unfolding this weekend to enrich its big campaign contributors through the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

CAFTA, you may remember, was lobbyists' biggest trophy in the last Congress. Its language gives corporations the right to:

*** Challenge American environmental and consumer protection laws in international courts;

*** Compel Central American countries to privatize public services;

*** Force American and foreign workers into a wage-cutting race to the bottom; and

*** Extend medicine patents allowing pharmaceutical companies to keep drug prices artificially inflated in the developing world.

This was a deal so inherently corrupt that when Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., offered a modest amendment to make CAFTA's worker and human rights protections as strong as its protections for pharmaceutical patents, he was voted down.

Just before the final CAFTA vote in the U.S. Congress in 2005, a nationwide Ipsos poll showed a majority of Americans opposed the deal. Unfortunately, the pressure to pass the pact from well-heeled lobbyists was too much and it was muscled through on a close vote.

That's when the diplomatic onslaught started.

As American textile companies started shuttering factories and preparing to head south of the border, the White House sprung into action on behalf of its wealthy donors, pushing CAFTA forward in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic — an easy task considering these countries have less than stellar democratic traditions and have become accustomed to being treated like Corporate America's exclusive plantations ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.

Costa Rica, by contrast, was the lone nation that refused to immediately ratify the pact. The pushback was a particularly damning commentary on the deal considering that, unlike its neighbors, Costa Rica is not some war-torn quasi-colony but a longstanding democracy, "Central America's most prosperous economy and a model of social stability for the region," according to the Los Angeles Times.

Opposition to CAFTA exploded from every part of Costa Rican civil society — labor unions, human rights groups, religious organizations, you name it.
The outcry was so intense that pro-CAFTA President Oscar Arias felt compelled to submit CAFTA to a national referendum, which will occur this Sunday, October 7.

Now fearing a humiliating rejection of lobbyist-written trade policy on the global stage, the White House has dispatched U.S. Ambassador Mark Langdale to spearhead a campaign of intimidation, all on the taxpayer's dime. This Texas telecommunications and real estate businessman was installed as envoy to Costa Rica after dumping tens of thousands of dollars into President Bush's political campaigns. And like the loyal corporate crony he is, Langdale has been touring Costa Rica threatening economic reprisals if voters there dare to send CAFTA down to defeat.

This kind of heavy-handed tampering is a potentially significant violation of longstanding international treaties. Nonetheless, Langdale is being encouraged by senior Republican lawmakers like House Republican Whip Roy Blunt, who originally helped lobbyists ram CAFTA through Congress and is now issuing press releases echoing the same promises of retribution against Costa Rica should it reject CAFTA.

The threats are not random. They seem eerily in sync with a secret memo that has recently leaked out of President Arias' office detailing a pro-CAFTA campaign "to stimulate fear" and punish local Costa Rican officials if their constituents vote against the pact.

Will Costa Rica this Sunday take the stand on behalf of workers, the environment and human rights that a bought-off U.S. Congress refused to take back in 2005? It is anyone's guess. Polls show the Bush administration's pressure has helped make the October 7 referendum in Costa Rica too close to call.

No matter what happens, though, the improbably tight state of the race is a reminder that, despite its billing from the Iraq War, the Republican Party is very willing and very able to play foreign policy hardball when it so desires.

The GOP may be diplomatically immoral, but it is not diplomatically inept. Whether ensuring permanent war in Iraq or economic oppression in Central America, Republicans do, in fact, know how to get what they want.

It is what they want that is the problem.

Writer and political analyst David Sirota is the bestselling author of "Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government & How We Take It Back." His daily blog can be found at http://www.workingassetsblog.com/sirota. To find out more about David Sirota and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at http://www.creators.com.

http://www.creators.com/opinion/david-sirota/immoral-not-inept.html

The Republicans won't debate their fellow Republicans because they know their own weakness will show them enapt, "to use Martha's words"

She has it all wrong it's the other way around the Republicans have proved over and over again that the Republicans are extremely enapt.

The Republicans won't debate their fellow Republicans because they know their own weakness will show them enapt, "to use Martha's words"

She has it all wrong it's the other way around the Republicans have proved over and over again that the Republicans are extremely enapt.

The Democrats have proved it over and over that they have to clean up the Republicans mess for the first 4 years and then put in the laws and programs that the Republicans have canceled. It is always like it is now the Republicans run amock and Democrats gets prosperty going again for the rich, middleclass and the poor. And still the Republicans don't get it. What can you do or say to help them get it?

The Republicans won't debate their fellow Republicans because they know their own weakness will show them enapt, "to use Martha's words"

She has it all wrong it's the other way around the Republicans have proved over and over again that the Republicans are extremely enapt.

freeforall:

Those were not my words, but I find myself agreeing with nearly everything David Sirota has to say. You had better reread the post: No one has said Republicans are inept; far from it. Republicans aren't inept, based upon Bibical standards, they're immoral.

I just wish Democrats that accept moral standards of the Bible, who are literally suppose to represent the majority of the people, would find a way not to go along lock-step with the EXTREME immoral Republicans. Republicans know what they are doing, Republicans just don't care; whereas we live in hope that Democrats will come to their senses and start caring about the majority of the people in the United States. If Democrats ever do, they will see the need to impeach BUSH and Cheney and be doing their best to get it done.

NAFTA and CAFTA are the setup for the "have" and "have not" societies; and I pray that Costa Rica, unlike the United States, will have the will to stand up for Costa Rican people with their democratic Referendum Vote October 7th, and vote down CAFTA in Costa Rica. I pray, also, that the United States will have Referendum Voting, and that children in the United States will be schooled in the wiles of politics, which is leadership of constituents in their best interest and non-constituents against their best interest.

Against their best interest because the elite are a minority that the Republican Party represents; lying and deceit is their only way of retaining power; the Supreme Court has retained their right to lie. We the people just need a few Democrats who are moral and aware of their right to lie and will protect against their lies; instead of going along with them.

The Republican Party is not a party like the Democratic Party, although many of the majority think so, they have been deceived by the lie; the Republican Party ONLY represent the 10% elite capitalists at the top. The Democratic Party represents everyone else.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/334406_speech05.html

The Democrats Who Enable Bush
By Helen Thomas
Hearst Newspapers

Thursday 04 October 2007

Washington - President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party's leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.

Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.

Last week at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, and Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards refused to promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, at the end of the first term of their hypothetical presidencies. Can you believe it?

When the question was put to Clinton, she reverted to her usual cautious equivocation, saying: "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting."

Obama dodged, too: "I think it would be irresponsible" to say what he would do as president.

Edwards, on whom hopes were riding to show some independence, replied to the question: "I cannot make that commitment."

They have left the voters little choice with those answers.

Some supporters were outraged at the obfuscation by the Democratic front-runners.

On the other hand, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., are more definitive in their calls for quick troop withdrawals.

But Biden wants to break up Iraq into three provinces along religious and ethnic lines. In other words, Balkanize Iraq.

To have major Democratic backing to stay the course in Iraq added up to good news for Bush.

Now comes a surprising Clinton fan.

President Bush told Bill Sammon - Washington Examiner correspondent and author of a new book titled "The Evangelical President" - that Clinton will beat Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination because she is a "formidable candidate" and better known.

Sammon says Bush revealed that he has been sending messages to Clinton to urge her to "maintain some political wiggle room in your campaign rhetoric about Iraq."

The author said Bush contends that whoever inherits the White House will be faced with a potential vacuum in Iraq and "will begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy."

Bush ought to know about campaign rhetoric. Remember how he ridiculed "nation building" in the 2000 presidential campaign? Now he claims he is trying to spread democracy throughout the Middle East.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is another Democratic leader who has empowered Bush's war.

Pelosi removed a provision from the most recent war-funding bill that would have required Bush to seek the permission of Congress before launching any attack on Iran. Her spokesman gave the lame excuse that she didn't like the wording of the provision. More likely, she bowed to political pressure.

Is it any wonder the Democrats are faring lower than the president in a Washington Post ABC approval poll? Bush came in at 33 percent and Congress at 29 percent.

Members of Congress seem to have forgotten their constitutional prerogative to declare war; World War II was the last time Congress formally declared war.

Presidents have found other ways to make end runs around the law, mainly by obtaining congressional authorization "to do whatever is necessary" in a crisis involving use of the military. That's the way we got into the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

So what are the leading Democratic White House hopefuls offering? It seems nothing but more war. So where do the voters go who are sick of the Iraqi debacle?

-------

Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel

BREAKING: Obama Says He Will Vote for NAFTA Expansion

By David Sirota
Working Assets, 10/9/07

Hot off the presses from MSNBC:

http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/10/breaking_obama_says_he_will_vo.html

"Obama said he would vote for a Peruvian trade agreement next week, in response to a question from a man in Londonderry, NH who called NAFTA and CAFTA a disaster for American workers. He said he supported the trade agreement with Peru because it contained the labor and environmental standards sought by groups like the AFL-CIO, despite the voter’s protests to the contrary. He also affirmed his support for free trade."

The voter's "protests to the contrary" are exactly right. The AFL-CIO does not support the Peruvian agreement, and the labor/environmental standards leave enforcement up to the Bush administration, rather than empowering third parties to enforce them (like corporations have the power to enforce investor rights provisions in these same trade agreements).

Obama is the first presidential candidate to officially declare his/her support for the NAFTA expansion moving through the Congress. His announcement is not necessarily surprising, considering he was the keynote speaker at the launch of the Hamilton Project - a Wall Street front group working to drive a wedge between Democrats and organized labor on globalization issues. His announcement comes just days after a Wall Street Journal poll found strong bipartisan opposition to lobbyist-written NAFTA-style trade policies.

Trade has been known to be a huge issue in Iowa (remember Dick Gephardt in 1988), so this announcement could very well ripple through the 2008 primary.

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

Hey people, if you are a member of the 70% Majority Population, then you had better not vote for Obama, Hilary, Edwards or any DLC Republican Lite member of the Democratic Leadership Council. Any candidate that is for the N.A.F.T.A and C.A.F.T.A. Trade Agreements is not worthy to lead the 70% MAJORITY POPULATION.

One must remember that when a Republican Lite Democratic Leadership Council DLC Democrat talks about the middle class, it does NOT mean the middle class of the 70%, it is the middle class of the whole 100%.

Ten Percent (10%) Elite Capitalists + Twenty Percent (20%) DLC Middle Class Wannabe Elite + Seventy Percent (70%) Common Population = One Hundred Percent (100%) of the Entire Population of the United States.

These FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS are only free to Wannabe Republican Lite Elites, who cater to the Elite, and Republican Elites. The supposed FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS are a trope used to DESTROY democracy completely making TWO CLASSES, the UPPER CLASS, the 30% Elite & Elitist-lite Class and the LOWER CLASS, the 70% Working and Poor Class, the people who work for a living (ALL OF THEM). The 70% is ALL THE REST OF THE PEOPLE OF THE NATION WHO WORK FOR A LIVING AND DO NOT SUCK UP TO THE ELITE.

DO NOT SANCTION AND VOTE FOR ANY CANDIDATES THAT SANCTIONS THESE REPUBLICAN EXTREME TRADE AGREEMENTS THAT ARE AGAINST DEMOCRACY AND FAIR TRADE FOR ALL PEOPLE.

Bill Richardson sounds good, but Bill Richardson is also a member of the DLC and has DLC values. Bill Richardson would have disclaimed the DLC publicly by now if he wasn't going to follow the DLC's plan. DO NOT BE SUCKERED.

This is highly important: The ONLY Democrats that are not DLC are Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich AND WE MUST GET RID OF THE DLC.

C.A.F.T.A. Voted Down By A Democratic Costa Rica Per Public Citizen

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 8, 2007
11:00 AM

CONTACT: Public Citizen http://www.citizen.org/

Close Tally on CAFTA by Costa Rica in First-Ever Public Vote on a NAFTA Expansion Shows That Bush Administration’s Continual Push for These Deals Hurts U.S. Foreign Policy in Latin America Even After US Threats Aimed at Stimulating Public Fear of Reprisal and Big-Dollar Campaign Pushing ‘Sí’ Vote, Result Is Marked by Razor-Thin Margin

WASHINGTON, DC - October 8 – The depth of public opposition to North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)-style pacts was demonstrated Sunday by Costa Rica’s massive “no” vote to CAFTA despite a intensive campaign led by the country’s president, months of deceptive radio and television advertising in favor of the pact, and a threatening statement issued Saturday by the White House, Public Citizen said today.

The strong vote against CAFTA likely will fuel growing opposition to another Bush proposal now before Congress to expand NAFTA to Peru. The Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA) contains the same foreign investor privileges, service sector privatization, agriculture and other provisions that fueled Costa Rican public opposition. “That nearly half the public in Latin America’s richest free-market democracy opposed CAFTA despite the intensive campaign in favor of it should end the repeated claims that pushing more NAFTA-style free trade deals is critical to U.S. foreign policy interests in the region or helps the U.S. image,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division.

“This vote also debunks the claim that these pacts are motivated out of U.S. altruism to help poor people in trade partner countries, given that many of the people in question just announced that they themselves don’t want this kind of trade policy. This policy, supported by the elite, will help foreign investors seize control of their natural resources, undermine access to essential services, displace peasant farmers and jack up medicines prices.”

Preliminary results showed that those opposing CAFTA garnered just over 48 percent of the vote and those for it garnered under 52 percent. The anti-CAFTA vote received the majority in most rural regions, where fears about campesino displacement drove opposition to the pact.

The pro-CAFTA vote won narrow majorities in most urban, populous regions, where Bush administration’s threats made Thursday and Saturday were widely covered by the media despite a legally mandated black-out on advocacy for or against CAFTA in the press.

As of Monday morning, the “no” campaign had not conceded and was awaiting a partial recount on Tuesday and an investigation into polling station irregularities.

Citizens of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic had no opportunity to voice their own views of CAFTA. Despite massive, long-running public demonstrations against CAFTA in those countries – which resulted in protestors being killed by the police in Guatemala and a legislature fleeing its own building to hold the vote in a downtown hotel in Honduras – legislatures in those countries ultimately ratified and implemented CAFTA by mid-2006.

In Costa Rica, the CAFTA debate coincided with that nation’s presidential election. With fair trade presidential candidate Ottón Solís running against CAFTA-supporter and Nobel-Prize winner Oscar Árias on a campaign focusing on the widely unpopular NAFTA expansion, CAFTA never came to a vote in Costa Rica.

Early in 2007, after Árias narrowly won, Costa Rica’s legislature passed a measure establishing a national referendum on whether Costa Rica should enter CAFTA.

That Sunday’s referendum resulted in narrow passage is not surprising given considerable intervention by the Bush administration and a massive, well-funded campaign for the pact led by Costa Rica’s president and pushed heavily by the corporate sector and much of Costa Rica’s media.

The Bush administration repeatedly threatened to remove Costa Rica’s existing Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) trade preferences if the public rejected CAFTA, even though the program was made permanent in 1990 and only an act of Congress could terminate it.

(A tiny percentage of Costa Rica’s U.S. exports enjoys duty-free benefits under a CBI add-on program that was approved in 2000. The tremendously popular program, which covers nearly two dozen countries and cannot be removed for rejection of an FTA, is set for renewal next year.)

“Right now, we see the same duplicity with the proposed NAFTA expansion to Peru, where proponents claim that implementing the Peru agreement is critical to building a positive U.S. image in the region,” Wallach said. “Yet if these agreements are good foreign policy, why did the Bush administration also threaten to remove existing Andean trade preferences to force the deal over the opposition of the Peruvian public as well as its religious, indigenous and labor leaders?”

The U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica, Mark Langdale, was slammed with a rare formal denunciation before Costa Rica’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal in August after he waged a lengthy campaign to influence the vote on CAFTA. As part of that, Langdale employed misleading threats and suggested there would be economic reprisals if CAFTA were rejected.

In response, Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.) who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in late September demanding the cessation of Langdale’s interventions. “Even the perception of such interference harms the U.S. image in a region already suspicious of our intentions,” Sánchez wrote. “If we are to be seen as respecting democracy, sovereignty, and economic development, we must not interfere in any way with the historic popular referendum on CAFTA in Costa Rica, the region’s oldest and strongest democracy.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in late September sent a letter to Costa Rica’s ambassador to the United States correcting Langdale’s false threats that Costa Rica would lose its CBI trade preferences if the public rejected CAFTA. “Participation in CBI is not conditioned on a country’s decision to approve or reject a free trade agreement with the United States, and we do not support such a linkage,” Pelosi and Reid wrote.

Despite this, Bush’s U.S. Trade Representative renewed the threats on Thursday, and the White House issued a statement repeating the threats on Saturday – just hours before the vote.

“Only two years after CAFTA squeezed through Congress on a one-vote margin, the narrowest margin ever for a trade deal, nearly half of Costa Rica’s public took a strong stand, in the face of campaign trickery and lies, against the damaging agreement,” said Todd Tucker, research director for Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division and author of the CAFTA Damage Report.

“No more countries should be subjected to the damaging policies imposed by overreaching ‘trade’ agreements.” For more about CAFTA and pending NAFTA expansions to Peru and other countries, visit http://www.TradeWatch.org.

Why doesn't the�GOP want�Ohio's voting machines tested?
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
September 11, 2007

Ohio Republicans have blocked a proposal to test electronic voting machines prior to the 2008 presidential primary.

By a 4-3 vote,�Republicans on Ohio�s State Controlling Board blocked Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's proposed $1.8 million unbid contract for voting machine testing.� Brunner had already set aside the $1.8 million for the test. Her specific request to the Controlling Board was a waiver for competitive bidding. Her office had hoped to complete all testing by November 30, 2007.

A former judge, Brunner is successor to the infamous J. Kenneth Blackwell, who helped engineer the theft of Ohio's electoral votes for George W. Bush in 2004.� Brunner won election as a reform candidate, vowing to guarantee the public access to the polls---and an accurate vote count---in 2008.

In California,�Democratic Secretary�of State Debra Bowen recently completed an extensive testing of that state's electronic voting machines.� She decertified many of them and is on course to rework how America's biggest state casts and counts its ballots.

Brunner has not been quite so aggressive.� When it was recently revealed that 56 of 88 Ohio counties illegally destroyed protected materials from the 2004 election, she showed little reaction.� She has also stated publicly doubts that the irregularities that defined the Ohio vote that year could have affected the outcome or that the illegal destruction of more than 2000 ballots could have been intentional.�

But�in attempting to carry out her promise to test Ohio's electronic voting machines, Brunner has followed through on public demands that the ability of Ohio's electronic machines to deliver a fair and reliable vote count be proven.� Tests and studies conducted by the federal Government Accountability Office, Princeton University, Johns Hopkins, the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Election Commission, John Conyer's House Judiciary Committee and others have all shown clearly that electronic voting machines are unreliable and easily rigged.�

The New York Times has now joined that consensus, calling for an outright federal ban.���"Electronic voting has been an abysmal failure," the Times said.� "Computer experts have done study after study showing that electronic voting machines, which are often shoddily made, can easily be hacked. With little effort, vote totals can be changed and elections stolen."

Apparently, the Ohio GOP is not anxious to have a state study add to such conclusions.� At a Monday hearing, Republican State Representative Matthew Dolan attempted to table Brunner�s request before she was allowed to speak. Only the procedural intervention of Controlling Board President Joe Secrest afforded Brunner the courtesy of presenting her controversial proposal.

Brunner�s plan�calls for contracts with�testing companies that are preferred by the voting machine vendors like SysTest Labs and computer security experts from various universities to inspect the machines under the management of the Battelle Memorial Institute.

But Senator John Carey (R-Wellston) angrily reacted to Brunner's mention of the tests conducted in California, saying they were the work of��leftists and extremists.� Both Stivers and Carey questioned the independence and objectiveness of the academics from Cleveland State, Penn State, and the University of Pennsylvania listed in Brunner�s plan.

Cleveland State University Law Professor Candace Hoke, who witnessed the California tests of e-voting machines for hackability, told the Controlling Board that �Within ten seconds to two minutes . . . they found many different ways� to hack the machines.

Both Brunner and Hoke stressed the lack of security measures now used at Ohio�s polling places. The issues of so-called �sleepovers� used in some Ohio counties, like Hocking, were cited. This practice involves often untrained poll workers to take hackable�voting machines home with them the weekend before an Election Day.

Brunner repeatedly emphasized the need to establish a �chain of custody� concerning both the access and memory cards used in voting machines, the latter serving as an electronic ballot box. In recent elections, memory cards have gone missing for hours on election nights in both Toledo and Dayton.

State Senator Ray Miller (D-Columbus) declared that election security is �the most important issue that�s come before the Controlling Board.� He said, �It�s way beyond the building of buildings. It goes to the core of our democracy.�

But the�attack on Brunner�s testing contract was initiated by Ohio Speaker of the House Republican John Husted in the morning prior to the September 10 Controlling Board meeting. He sent a letter to Brunner demanding�she remove the requested contract proposal from the Controlling Board agenda.��At the present time, too many outstanding questions remain regarding the scope of this request and the intent of the study," he wrote.

Brunner responded by saying "our testing process allows for parallel independent testing of Ohio�s voting systems by both corporate testing entities and some of the nation�s best computer security research scientists, allowing them to collaborate as needed.

�I regret I cannot accede to your request to delay," she added, "as I need information to prepare for the early March 4 primary election so that Ohio�s voters can trust that we have done all possible to ensure the safety, reliability and trustworthiness of our voting systems in Ohio.�

Early voting will begin here�in late January.� But the GOP clearly intends to�delay the testing in Ohio and conduct yet another�election on eminently hackable electronic voting machines.

--
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, which is available via http://www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. Editor's note: Correction of sentence in paragraph 11 quote from - "they found many different ways" changed from "thirty different ways" and on 9/12/07 corrected the name of the person who tried to table Brunner's proposal to be Rep. Matthew Dolan from Sen. Steve Stivers.�

Preserving "A Tax Loophole the Size of A Mack Truck"

By David Sirota
Working Assets, 10/11/07

This week, congressional Democrats proudly hoisted the white flag of surrender when it came to tax fairness, officially shelving a modest proposal to force billionaire hedge fund managers to pay the same tax rates as the janitors who clean their offices. As the Washington Post reported, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) "told private-equity firms in recent weeks that a tax-hike proposal they have spent millions of dollars to defeat will not get through the Senate."

The capitulation is a triumph of the smallest and most well-funded special interests who are joining with congressional lawmakers of both parties to fight against all efforts to make the tax system more fair.

The Post noted that private equity firms "hired dozens of lobbyists, stepped up campaign contributions and lined up business allies to wage an unusually conspicuous lobbying blitz". As the Politico reports, top congressional leaders have been hosting "private meeting[s] of lobbyists and staffers opposed to the so-called carried interest bill, which would more than double the taxes paid by private equity firms and hedge fund managers."

To understand how sad it is for Democrats to be preserving this tax loophole, consider what private equity executive Leo Hindery said in the New York Times today: "A tax loophole the size of a Mack truck is right now generating unwarranted and unfair windfalls to a privileged group of money managers - to no one’s surprise, these individuals are driving right through this $12-billion-a-year hole.”

The tax wars do not end here, either. They bleed into every issue, including trade. As just one example, the same Democratic senators like Max Baucus who are helping scuttle the effort to close hedge fund tax loopholes are pretending they want to crackdown on offshore tax havens, all while they push a Panama Free Trade Agreement designed to reward one of the world's worst tax haven countries.

The shenanigans are so nauseating that even some principled Republicans are outraged. The New York Times notes that at the recent GOP presidential debate, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) voiced concerns about the "hedge-fund bonanza" saying that it represents a “transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy,” and adding that, in the current monetary system, “the money gravitates to the banks and to Wall Street. That’s why you have more billionaires than ever before.” Similarly, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) said, “The reality is that when you have the average C.E.O. salary 500 times the average worker, and you have the hedge fund manager making 2,200 times that of the average worker, you’re going to create a level of discontent."

Torture: What's in a Name?
By Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Saturday 13 October 2007

In 1594, Shakespeare wrote, "'Tis but thy name that is my enemy. What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." As it is with roses, so it is with torture. Physical abuse or extreme measures of interrogation conducted by trained professionals in the administration of a counterterrorism program is still, by all accepted international standards, torture.

For months, President Bush has tried to defend the extreme tactics being used by the CIA to interrogate individuals suspected of terrorist activities. This, in spite of recently released documents from the Justice Department indicating that in 2005, then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued a secret opinion authorizing physical abuse to extract information. According to The New York Times, "The new opinion ... provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures."

On Friday, October 5, President Bush said, "This government does not torture people." The problem with his statement is that it contradicts his attorney general's memos, Webster's definition of the term and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Webster's defines torture as "the infliction of intense pain." The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the UN in 1948, states, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." In my opinion, subjecting human beings to painful physical and psychological tactics is torture.

As further evidence of this contradiction, former President Jimmy Carter, when asked by Wolf Blitzer if President Bush's statement was accurate, said, it was not accurate if you use the accepted international norms of torture, as have been in place certainly in the last 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated. When asked if he thought the US had tortured individuals, former President Carter said emphatically, "I don't think it, I know it."

Carter went on to say, "You can make your own definition of human rights [... ] and you can make your own definition of torture and say we don't violate them." So, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." So it is with torture.

What are we to make of this and why does it matter?

* First, most experts will tell you that using techniques such as induced hypothermia, long periods of forced standing, sleep deprivation, and sound and light manipulation do not result in obtaining useful information. According to Newsweek, "US intelligence officers say they have little - if any - evidence that useful intelligence has been obtained using techniques generally understood to be torture."

* Second, because of policies such as extraordinary renditions and torture, America has lost its international moral authority as a protector of human rights and a defender of civil liberties. The September 11, 2001, attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and United Flight 93's crash in Pennsylvania, galvanized international sympathy for the US. Mainstream media and governments worldwide denounced the attacks and supported America, as evidenced by the headline of France's Le Monde newspaper: "Nous sommes tous Americains" as translated, "We Are All Americans."

Instead of taking the moral high ground and using this tragedy to unite international efforts to work towards peace, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the other "Chicken Hawks" in the Bush administration exploited the circumstance and imposed their corrupt and vile ideology of unilateralism and militarism on the world. Instead of using restraint, moral persuasion and diplomacy to find common ground, the Bush administration has become like the very people they called enemies. They have decimated habeas corpus, ignored the UN, used immoral and illegal tactics to invade a sovereign nation, and kidnapped and tortured people. This sounds more like the actions of a dictator than the president of a constitutional republic.

President Bush stated, "The American people expect their government to take action to protect them from further attack." This is true; the problem is, the tactics being used by this administration are not making American people safer; they are putting the American people in harm's way. As a direct result of the tactics used to execute the "War On Terror," The New York Times states, "The Iraq War has invigorated Islamic radicalism and worsened the global terrorist threat. The most recent National Intelligence Estimate, found that, rather than stemming the growth of terrorism, the war in Iraq helped fuel its spread across the globe." Is it any wonder why a majority of American's still don't feel safe, six years after 9/11? They are doing with the issue of torture what they have done with the invasion of Iraq and the so called "War on Terror": defend the indefensible.

Just as there were no WMD's, no coordinated efforts between Saddam and Osama, and no attempt by Saddam to buy yellowcake from Niger, you can't make your own definition of human rights and your own definition of torture and say we don't violate them.

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Dr. Wilmer Leon is the producer/host of the nationally broadcast call-in talk radio program "On With Leon" on XM Satellite Radio Channel 169, a regular guest on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight," producer/host of the television program "Inside The Issues With Wilmer Leon," and a teaching associate in the Department of Political Science at Howard University in Washington, DC. Go to http://www.wilmerleon.com or email: wjl3us@yahoo.com.

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The congress needs to get some backbone. The more one researches the congress and history; the Democrats seem no better at governance than the republicans.
All the feuding, all the hearings and endless deficits, nothing gets done in congress on a timely basis. How much can one find out during a 5 minute round of questions? The Bush administration thumbs it’s nose at the Democrats and it seems all of the witnesses have lost all their memories.
I personally think that congress is outmoded to handle all of the needs of the nation be it Katrina, 911, or a bridge disaster. The economy is all smoke and mirrors, the education is going down the shitter, and the health care system is going to collapse like a house of cards.
All of our factories are in China and the response is: Americans have to get a better education. Well what about when China is the major power and we have to go to war?
Our jobs are being eroded from inside and outside by a no nothing congress that doesn’t have a clue about outsourcing or in sourcing except what industry lobbyist tell them. No studies done
Our Food is being tainted causing deaths and the FDA doesn’t have a clue about how to inspect the volume of food entering the country.
The military and intelligence services having failed before 911 wants to take all the privacy protection away from Americans and rule the political class by fear and intimidation. Bring on the cameras, wiretaps, implants, data mining, email, credit card lists, grocery shopping lists, Federal Express, UPS, telephone records, TSA watch lists, political protest lists and critical newspaper editorial lists, critical bog authors, Key loggers in every computers with links to NSA, satellite imagery of traffic, football games.
The CIA fails to prevent 911 and the head of the agency gets awarded a medal to keep his mouth shut.
Katrina exposes the plight of poor African Americans and nothing is done to help them get a better life, yet 911 victims got millions. Airlines got millions. No Republicans protested the federal handouts to Airlines, or Chrysler, yet Republicans have Welfare reform as a major campaign talking point.
The mainstream media is asleep at the switch as was seen in the run up to the war in Iraq. Instead of explaining the details to the American people, the press became a pawn of the administration in spreading the fear of weapons of mass destruction. Now the public has the Internet and is starting to come out of their Chlorine, fast food daze and become more active. Most Americans can’t save, are in debt, and rapidly losing their homes and pensions. Those at the top take and squeeze from the workers and, sell out the country to global interests and laugh all the way to the bank except for a few that get caught.
Did you every notice that local police forces and swat teams look like a military special OPS team. Are there special camps set up for all of the Americans that won’t comply?
Where does it end? Will America end up like Nazi Germany?
It seems the democrats are not smart enough or are complicit and are actually working for the puppet masters that actually rule the world.
That might be the military industrial complex and their money changers (Wall Street) are really running the country.

Democrats loose elections because of the white male vote. Since mostly everything is owned by white males, they are inclined to take a negative view of sharing the pie with minorities and others. They are super patriots because they rule the country. Against affirmative action, pro business, because they all dream of owning a business, raise hell as a young males and then find religion in their elder years.

Ask the Democrats these questions:
Do the congressional leaders actually read the bills before they pass them?

Do congressional leaders know what it is like for the average American, both black and white.

Why do the democrats shy away from the military? Many black families have a rich tradition of military service. You would never know that from democratic ads.

Do the democrats really understand what is happening to the blue collar and IT workers in this country? Has congress done a study of IBM that has stopped funding its pension plan?

How much of the war on terror is the folly of striking back at anyone or everyone that caused the pain and embarrassment of 9/11. The country that spends billions on stealth bombers, submarines, black programs, spy satellites while fooling the American public into believing it is all about protecting them and then to fail because a few radical islamist figure out a way to use airplanes as missiles. That was probably too much for the suits in Washington.

Like they say, money can't buy everything.

America is still about race, religion and class!