The Stall Has Arrived Sunday, 06 May 2012 12:45By Robert Reich, Robert Reich’s Blog | Op-Ed The economy has stalled. Friday’s jobs report for April was even more disappointing than March. Employers added only 115,000 new jobs, down from March’s number (the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the March number upward to [...]
May 01, 2012 “Information Clearing House” – Chris Christie may be fat, but he ain’t Santa Claus. In fact, he seems unable to decide if he is New Jersey’s governor or its caporegime, and it may be a comment on the coarsening of American discourse that his brash rudeness [...]
On OWS, Anarchism, Labor, Racism, Corporate Power and the Class War Talking With Chomsky by LAURA FLANDERS A CounterPunch Exclusive Noam Chomsky has not just been watching the Occupy movement. A veteran of the civil rights, anti-war, and anti-intervention movements of the 1960s through the 1980s, he’s given lectures [...]
Reagan‘s economics heralded a fundamental shift in the distribution of wealth in the United States [GALLO/GETTY] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/201242271320671637.html San Pedro, CA - Karl Rove was infamous for the strategy of attacking the strengths of political opponents, rather than their weaknesses. The 2004 Swiftboat attack on John Kerry, a genuine war hero, was the classic example of this. [...]
. The Campaign to Privatize the World by David Macaray One of the biggest con games going on at the moment is the sustained attack on the U.S. public school system. It’s being perpetrated by predatory entrepreneurs (disguised as “concerned citizens” and “education reformers”) hoping to persuade the parents of school-age children that the only [...]
‘Big Government‘ Isn’t the Problem, Big Money Is By Robert Reich link http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30903.htm March 23, 2012 “The Nation” — Conservatives love to rail against “big government.” But the surge of cynicism engulfing the nation isn’t about government’s size. It flows from a growing perception that government doesn’t work for average people but [...]
Part of the strip which has been rejected by several papers. Photograph: Doonesbury Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau has defended his cartoon strip about abortion, which several US newspapers are refusing to run, saying he felt compelled to respond to the way Republicans across America are undermining women’s healthcare rights. The strip, published on Monday and scheduled to run all [...]
Poll: Overwhelming US Opposition to Afghan War War ‘Not Worth the Cost’ by Jason Ditz, March 11, 2012 | Print This | Share This | Antiwar Forum The regular Washington Post-ABC News poll on the war in Afghanistan is showing anoverwhelming popular opposition to the war, with some 60% of Americans now believing the [...]
Despite all of President Obama’s actions in support of Israel, and lack of follow through on any actions in support of Palestine, Republicans still accuse him of being anti-Israel [GALLO/GETTY] On a rare foray outside his native Texas, Governor Rick Perry accused US President Barack Obama of “appeasement” towards the Palestinians. Former New York City [...]
US Running on Myths, Lies, Deceptions and Distractions Republican Hypocrisy; Democratic Complicity; The Press’s Malfeasance; and Why You Don’t Have a Job and if You Do, Why it Doesn’t Pay Squat by John Atcheson The United States is headed for a plutocratic dystopia where a few gated communities sit like islands amidst a [...]
The Imperial Way American Decline in Perspective, Part 2 By Noam Chomsky Part 1 February 15, 2012 “Tom Dispatch ” – In the years of conscious, self-inflicted decline at home, “losses” continued to mount elsewhere. In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps [...]
. photo: Eric Lubbers Monkeys and Solons by Christopher Brauchli From an evolutionary point of view, man has stopped moving, if he ever did move. — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man Those who hated to see the primary come to an end in New Hampshire and, with it, the extensive coverage that small [...]
Photo Credit: todbaker Fracking on Shaky Ground: How Our Latest Fossil Fuel Addiction Is Linked to Earthquakes When the mayor of Youngstown, Ohio decides to buy earthquake insurance, you know we’ve got a big problem. January 9, 2012 | To what should be the surprise of no one, earthquakes caused by the junkie gas sector’s hydraulic fracturing process, [...]
AFP photo Rick Santorum won’t win in New Hampshire. The latest polls suggest the best he will do is finish third – but for a man voters struggled to identify just a few weeks ago, he has, through hard work and dogged campaigning, elbowed his way into the top tier of challengers for the Republican [...]
na Military Spending: Bang for the Buck? Bob Pollin: Military vs Education spending, how many jobs does one billion dollars create Fault Lines: Politics, Religion and the Tea Party As the race to be the Republican nominee in the 2012 Presidential election heats up, Fault lines follows the Iowa campaign trail Where is [...]
Book Examines America’s Turn from Science, Warns of Danger for Democracy by Renee Schoof WASHINGTON — Americans have trouble dealing with science, and one place that’s especially obvious is in presidential campaigns, says Shawn Lawrence Otto, who tried, with limited success, to get the candidates to debate scientific questions in the 2008 [...]
George W Obama, looking pensive. Perhaps planning for the war after next George Ikners ikners.com gikners@gmail.com President Barack Obama is about to sign into law the National Defence Authorisation Act, which authorises indefinite detention in military custody of ‘terror’ suspects. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Here we are. More than 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, [...]
Newt Gingrich. (AFP) By Jason Lange MANCHESTER, NH (Reuters) — “I’m speaking as a historian.” It’s a common refrain in Newt Gingrich’s speeches, a not-so-subtle reminder of the image he seeks to build as a Republican presidential candidate: that of a serious thinker whose opinions are rooted in an appreciation of the past. [...]
For those of you who believe or would like to believe that capitalism is really amenable to fixes by putting more money into the system this is an article of interest. However, when you are dealing with an economy totally geared to stealing the money of the people from the general fund as well as [...]
It’s now clear that the Republican frontrunner in the race for the White House is Israeli Prime MinisterNetanyahu. Officially the two Republican frontrunners are Newt “the Palestinians are an invented people” Gingrich andMitt ”Obama has pushed Israel under a bus” Romney. Both are political whores locked in a competition of their own as well as with President Obama for Zionist lobby organized campaign funds and [...]
When in doubt, wheel on Teddy Roosevelt. It’s in every Democratic president’s playbook. TR was president from 1901 to 1909. He was manly, ranching in North Dakota, exploring the Amazon and nearly expiring on the River of Doubt. He was an imperialist con amore, charging up San Juan Hill, sending the [...]
The Merkley proposal could save $200bn by ending operations in Afghanistan two years early [EPA] It never ceases to amaze when you constantly read that ending murder and destruction is good even if most of the good is the saving of money. In one way the general fund so constantly looted and stolen from by [...]
US millionaires say ‘raise our taxes‘ A 138-strong wealthy group launches appeal to congress to “do the right thing” for the sake of the nation. See the video at http://www.aljazeera.com/video/americas/2011/11/2011111755511598900.html Nearly 140 millionaires have asked a divided US congress to increase their taxes for the sake of the nation. “Please do [...]
Image via Wikipedia The Not-So-Great Debaters How did the GOP candidates stack up on the first real foreign policy debate? On incoherence, bombast, and platitudes — pretty darn well, actually. BY MICHAEL COHEN | NOVEMBER 14, 2011 One of the chief complaints made about the Republican presidential debates thus far has been [...]
We Are Already at War With Iran and Failing to Struggle to End It By davidswanson - Posted on 14 November 2011 In this past weekend’s festival of idiocy known as the Republican Presidential Debate, one of the more idiotic of the idiots Newt Gingrich said that if he were president he would murder Iranians [...]
Herman Cain, as a black conservative, must be more radical than his rivals to break the waves [GALLO/GETTY] Everyone’s going after Ann Coulter – and rightly so – for her racist comments on the “Hannity” show. Asked why liberals and Democrats are up in arms over the sexual harassment allegations that have been levelled against GOP [...]
An ever-growing economy requires ever-growing supplies of natural resources – unfortunately, the planet we live on has a finite amount of resources [GALLO/GETTY] What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet’s life-support systems – its atmosphere, oceans and biosphere – goes hand in hand with [...]
Occupy Wall Street is “a refusal … to conform to an imposed script of appropriate citizen behaviour” [GALLO/GETTY] The Arab Spring initiated a jarring series of events in 2011 that illustrate the radical political possibilities of just being present. When the regime won’t listen, when being heard as an individual isn’t really a viable option, [...]
Barack Obama, the US president, said the vote was not the end of the fight for the measure The US Senate has rejected President Barack Obama’s job creation package, in a sign that Washington is unlikely to take major steps to spur hiring before the 2012 elections. The $447bn package of tax cuts and new spending failed by [...]
What’s Missing: Non-Electoral Politics By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/non-electoral-politics Lately, the phrase “public servants” has struck me as ironic, not because government officials fail to serve the public, but because much of the public serves them. The public is the servants. Activist groups and individuals devote themselves to bettering the fortunes of political parties or politicians, [...]
Barack Obama unveils $447bn jobs plan President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters President uses televised address to urge Republicans to end ‘political circus’ and approve American Jobs Act to bring down unemployment reddit this Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 September 2011 01.35 BST Article history Barack Obama used [...]
Barack Obama said the US would “always be a triple A country” despite its credit rating downgrade by S&P. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP Barack Obama has dismissed Standard and Poor’s downgrading of America’s credit rating and insisted the US remained an AAA country. In his first words since S&P’s decision on Friday evening, he sought to [...]
Pentagon lands extra $50 billion out of debt deal By Stephen C. WebsterTuesday, August 2nd, 2011 — 11:06 am Out of a bill that was supposed to cut government spending and waste wherever it is found, lawmakers managed to cobble together an additional $50 billion for the U.S. Defense Department‘s budget, using an accounting trick [...]
Barack Obama has not slept for a week because of worries over the US budget. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images ( Seems life for a warmonger gets tougher by the minute, perhaps he should play with the dog. Even war criminals feel the heat and need a rest, forget about the countless numbers that have suffered [...]
President Barack Obama has pinned his hopes on Senate leaders to reach an eleventh hour agreement to raise US debt ceiling. Photograph Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images Barack Obama cleared his diary for the weekend on Friday night to try to find a deal on the US debt crisis as Congress prepared to stay in session ready [...]
Fallout from the collapse of the housing bubble is the main reason US debt has increased so precipitously since 2008 [GALLO/GETTY] Policy debates in Washington are moving ever further from reality as a small elite is moving to strip benefits that the vast majority need and support. The battle over raising the debt ceiling is playing [...]
Debt ceiling talks between Barack Obama and John Boehner have broken down, throwing the US into economic uncertainty. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP The US is on the brink of a major economic crisis after negotiations between Barack Obama and Republican Congressional leaders over the national debt dramatically broke downon Friday. Obama, showing anger, passion and [...]
Boehner, the House speaker, said it is time for Obama to ‘step up’ his efforts to find a solution to the debt crisis [AFP] Watching the pretences of the political underlings to the elite pretending to have any real say in what will happen to the monster cancer of capital would be amusing if the effects [...]
Obama has proposed to slice trillions of dollars from social security programmes, but wants tax increase for rich [EPA] As an August deadline looms before his government to pay its debt, the US president has said “time is running out”. “We’re running out of time. That’s the main concern that I have at this point,” Barack Obama said on [...]
President Barack Obama and a bipartisan group of congressional leaders will meet on Monday to continue working on a deal to avert a looming US debt default. Obama and Republican and Democratic leaders met for roughly an hour and a half on Sunday in a bid to break an impasse on deficit reduction talks to [...]
Barack Obama looks up at a White House press conference in which he called upon Republicans to act in the interest of the country over borrowing talks. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters Barack Obama has warned of “significant consequences” for the US economy if stalled financial negotiations lead to Congress failing to permit more government borrowing and America [...]
When the Public Rises, We’ll Want an Ally in Congress By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/node/58303 For the majority of people in the United States — a majority does not vote, a majority believes the government is broken, a majority thinks our public policy is headed in the wrong direction — the fact that we call this [...]
Sally Kohn: “Don’t Believe the Hype About U.S. Debt” Share282 Vice President Joe Biden met with congressional negotiators last Thursday to discuss ways to curb the federal deficit and permit new borrowing after August 2, the day the U.S. government is expected to reach its $14.3 trillion borrowing limit. Democrats want to curb the federal [...]
All this may look good but think about the fact that they should not be there at all and that a mercenary army will have ti be there to protect their precious assets and it all comes to nought. Now how long ago was it that the great crawler Julia said we were there regardless? [...]
If a vote were held in Canberra do you think it would be anything other than extremely close to unanimous. That’s what you get for lovin’ the US. House Call to End Afghan War Suffers Narrow Defeat Massive Swing From 2010 Vote Shows Growing Antiwar Sentiment by Jason Ditz, May 26, 2011 Email This | Print [...]
Is Donald Trump the most bizarre US presidential candidate ever? With incendiary comments on Iraq, Libya and Obama‘s birth, the property tycoon has livened up the Republicans’ search for a 2012 candidate Share337 Comments (125) Paul Harris New York guardian.co.uk, Saturday 30 April 2011 23.30 BST Article history Donald Trump speaks to GOP women’s [...]
There has always been a factor of rot and decay in imperialism. Both of these influence what is usually a short lived, at least in historical terms, rise to ascendency by a particular group or country. Previously the course of imperial conquest could be measured or at least seen by the trail of war and slaughter [...]
A Twelve Year Plan From a Guy With Two Left By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/twelve-year-plan-guy-two-left Obama‘s speech on the deficit on Wednesday was a flop. He proposed to end no wars, make no serious cuts to the military, REDUCE corporate taxes, tax no estates or investments, raise no taxes on any billionaires, and give an unelected [...]
