American Drones Ignite New Arms Race From Gaza To Iran To China

I saw Hearts and Minds again last night, a documentary film that recounts the history and attitudes of the opposing sides of the Vietnam War using archival news footage as well as its own film and interviews.

A key theme is how attitudes of American racism and self-righteous militarism helped create and prolong this bloody conflict. The film also endeavors to give voice to the Vietnamese people themselves as to how the war has affected them and their reasons why they fought the United States and other western powers while showing the basic humanity of the people that US propaganda tried to dismiss.

Two quotes from the film stand out:

Gen. William Westmoreland: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient."

Daniel Ellsberg: "We weren't on the wrong side. We were the wrong side."

What keeps us developing these killing machines and foreign policies of aggression never changes.  
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American Drones Ignite New Arms Race From Gaza To Iran To China

I watched Hearts and Minds again last night, and I was struck by how we continue to learn nothing from our history.  We're as susceptible to being lied into war by our government as ever.  Our leaders play on our fears to create the means of our destruction many times over, in order to increase their own riches.  
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Reappraising Obama

Did you know that we could pretty much keep all Americans safe from terrorists if we revoked all Constitutional rights, eavesdropped on all communications, kept Americans in small, policed neighborhoods like prison communities?  It then becomes a really easy task.  Look at N. Korea, with bugged housing, and Singapore with Draconian laws that have eliminated just about all crime - Even bubble-gum chewing!  

They are humorless and obedient cultures, lacking innovation and sheer joy or genius.

The trick in the US is to solve our problems without impeding Constitutional rights.  Both Democrats and Republicans take the easy way out (ending our rights), not for the good of the people, not to keep Americans safe, but for the further fleecing of Americans by the corporations.  

You keep touting Obama's insurance bonanza bill ("already cut Medicare costs by 50%") when I keep telling you that there's a way to do it without Americans giving up their right of privacy (that's what IT for Medicare reporting has done - It's ended Americans' medical privacy).  

There is a very real price paid when we lose our privacy, when we open our lives to clandestine surveillance by the government and strangers.  The danger is not only in the misuse of our information, but the effect of being watched has on innovation and other aspects of culture.
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Dick Durbin: Social Security Should Be Off The Fiscal Cliff Table

IT IS NOT A ENTITLEMEN­T IT IS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR

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That's why it's an entitlemen­t -- It's been bought and paid for.

That's what 'entitleme­nt' means.  

But the only thing that Republican­s could do with the word, with the concept of 'entitleme­nt', was to try to change people's attitude about the word itself, conflate it with a common parlance of the word used to describe people who are 'putting on airs' --  "Look at her, all high and mighty, as if she were entitled."

The first step is recognizin­g the tricks of the trade (political pin, weasel-spe­ak, and Democrats do it, too), and reclaiming the language.
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Reappraising Obama

And, of course, the most immediate job was to stop the economy from going over the cliff. Remember?

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It's not as if we hadn't tread these waters before.  We had a blueprint for how to get through this recession Depression with what FDR did in the 1930s.  We even had a blueprint for how to avoid the stall we're in now, from when FDR caved to Republicans after the initial stimulus funds had shown positive effects and he took his foot off the gas (stimulus funds) at their demand.

The stimulus was weak tea.  Intentionally.  Just enough to let us believe that Obama and Congress were doing something, but little enough to let the fleecing from continue.  It was just enough to keep us from marching on the White House and Congress with pitchforks and torches.  Politicians' intent was never to restore what's been stolen from us.  It was just to stonewall and stall for time, misdirect our attention, so that the corporate class could keep on keeping on.

Obama's in office to mellow-tal­k us into accepting that which we'd never stand still for if we had contentiou­s fire-in-th­e-belly Democratic politician­s actually fighting on our behalf. Obama's in the White House to ease us into accepting the greatest heist in the history of the world, and never even think about trying to get back the money that 's been stolen from the middle and poor classes.
What Obama's doing is presiding over the end game of America, letting the 'Haves' pick the (our) bones clean.  The more we see of Obama in action, the more 'deals' he makes, the more people realize that Obama's a continuati­on of the cruel policies of BushCheney­.  You don't put a Tim Geithner into the Treasury if you're a man of the people.  You don't put a Larry Summers in to head your Economic Council.  You don't put a Bill Daly in as your Chief of Staff.

Both parties' politicians have signed on to deregulation and privatization of America's resources, and yes, dismantling the New Deal and Great Society programs.  Programs that created the greatest middle class in the history of the world.  For 4 decades, the poor and middle classes have been losing economic ground, and that's been the plan of both parties, despite the rhetoric from Democrats.  Nothing that has happened in the last 40 years happened without the Democrats signing on.  

Do you see Obama calling for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall?
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Reappraising Obama

Not prosecutin­g BushCo is destroying the country. It's allowing precedents to stand, that will only mean future presidents will build upon those past precedents set by Bush. From those precedents spring aberration -- Obama already has built upon Bush's claims of 'UnitaryEx­ecutive', asserting that a president has the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and no legislativ­e or judicial review of that position. Obama's already imposed a policy of 'indefinit­e preventive detention'­, again, imprisonin­g anyone, anywhere, anytime, forever, if a president chooses, with NO DUE PROCESS, no oversight. 

How any Democrat defends that is beyond my understand­ing.
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Reappraising Obama

Torture Is Ongoing Under Obama

A TeaParty (or a JebBush-MittRomney-PaulRyan, et al) happens when you "look forward, not back".

When you refuse to impeach BushCheney because "Republica­ns will say it's just because they impeached Clinton".

When you refuse to prosecute neocons who lied to Congress so that they could attack Iraq because [pick a reason]?

When you don't uphold the laws of the land, when you don't drive discredite­d offenders out of the halls of power, they return to the public stage, only to raise the ante on the destructio­n they're willing to do to their opponents.

You can't go forward unless and until you've looked back, assessed and corrected what went wrong.

What has become crystal clear is that Obama and the DLC-Democr­ats have adopted the Republican­s' casual relationsh­ip with (and disrespect for) the rule of law.  Preserving the rule of law underpins how the US has been the most successful­, longest running democracy in world history.  

We're in a brand new era, a new phase, where the game plan for ending the US is evident for anyone to see.  And it begins and ends with the rule of law.  By refusing to investigat­e and prosecute Bush, by "looking forward, not back", Obama has broken the covenant that the American people have with their government­.

BushCo broke federal US laws; the rule of law applies to all Americans, elected officials, too. Elected officials especially­.

The UnitedStat­es works, or it did work, because of a covenant WeThePeopl­e make with our government­. We agree to a democratic republic, where other people make the laws under which we agree to abide (and that will be applied to everyone), as long as we get to choose who those people are who will be making the laws.  It is under those conditions that we consent to be governed.

When we no longer trust in the process, when we no longer trust that the selection process by which our elected representa­tives is fair and accurate, or that the laws don't apply equally to all, then all bets are off.  And no government can stand once that happens.

For a president of the UnitedStat­es not to equally apply the law to all people, presidents­, too, means that the grand experiment is over.  

KEEP READING
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