Courtesy Houston Chronicle

"Perhaps the biggest lie - the equivalent of smoking is good for you - is Obama's announcement that the US is leaving Iraq, the country it has reduced to a river of blood. According to unabashed US army planners, as many as 70,000 troops will remain 'for the next 15 to 20 years'."

"... It is not surprising that the polls are showing that a growing number of Americans believe they have been suckered - especially as the nation's economy has been entrusted to the same fraudsters who destroyed it. Lawrence Summers, Obama's principal economic adviser, is throwing $3 trillion at the same banks that paid him more than $8 million last year, including $135,000 for one speech. Change you can believe in."

John Pilger, Obama's 100 Days - The Mad Men Did Well

"He has tried to have it all on three fronts, and his administration is in serious danger of going bankrupt. He has blundered into a deepening quagmire in Afghanistan, has continued the Bush policy of buying off Wall Street hustlers instead of confronting them and is now on the cusp of bargaining away the so-called public option, the reform component of his health care program.'

 "But what is nerve-racking about Obama is that even though he campaigned against Bush's follies he has now embraced them. He hasn't yet managed to significantly reduce the U.S. obligation in Iraq and has committed to making a potentially costlier error by ratcheting up America's "nation-building" role in Afghanistan."

Robert Scheer, Obama's Presidency Isn't Too Big to Fail, Truthdig.com

Robert Scheer, John Pilger and I go back a long way. During the 1960s Scheer and Pilger reported from Vietnam on a rather unjust, criminal war enterprise, massively escalated on deceit... the Gulf of Tonkin incident that never happened. That was 1965, the excuse for Congress to give the President the green light to go to war on Vietnam without going to war in Vietnam... technically. It took 10 years from the Gulf of Tonkin non-incident to wind that one up. The war sold DuPont and Dow chemical a lot of napalm and Boeing a lot of military aircraft in the mean time. What is good for US defense contractors, is good for the American economy after all. Sells a lot of wars.

In the 1960s, I was a kid. I remember the name Hubert Humphrey in the summer of 1968. I remember when some train carried a Kennedy all the way from Los Angeles back to Washington. Seems somebody shot that Kennedy so now Humphrey was some big deal. I saw Nixon on TV. He reminded me of the typical school principal back in '68. Narrow pants, narrow tie, mean streak. Probably had a ruler in his desk drawer called the "board of education" he liked to beat kids like me with. That was legal and common in public schools in '68.

The Vietnam War was on TV every night. It had a score, like a football game. USA 223, NVA and Vietcong 3,450. Every week we would see the score. There were enough westerns on in the 60s that you knew if you were shooting 3,450 of the other guys... you were wining. Simple as that.

In the 1970s, Scheer covered politics including Watergate for Ramparts magazine and by 1976 the LA Times. I remember Watergate. Summer of '73, some old southern guy named Ervin going on and on about something. Now these guys like Haldeman and MaGruder, slick suit and tie guys, raised right hands and swore in. I had seen slick guys like this, usually selling insurance or stocks or something. 

Years Later

We had this moron as president for 8 years. He was installed through election fraud the first time. The supreme court was involved in what essentially was a coup. This guys old man was president. He got everything in life because of his family name. College, job opportunities, investments... real dunce. Of course it did not hurt that the other candidate was a bit condescending, picked a real douche bag as a running mate and lost his home state.

The dunce was installed a second time. Election fraud again in another state. Routing all the computerized voting tallies through a server in another state. Nobody ever looked into it. Not even the side that lost. Kind of ball-less. Of course it did not help the other candidate was a mumbler. When I was a kid, teachers told you not to mumble or things like this would happen to you. It did not help that this guy belonged to a secret club in college same as the dunce. The club is all knowing and all powerful. The other guy would not say what the club did. Gave you the felling the mumbler rolled over on command for the dunce, a club member...

Then this change guy starts running. Never heard of him. All these speeches. News reporters go on and on about him. But the ex presidents wife looks to be a shoe in. Every one knows her. But she voted for a war, he did not. And he made a big deal out of not voting for that war. He went on about that for a year. She voted for unjust war, he did not.

Reminded me of another "Peace" candidate. Lyndon Johnson. LBJ made this guy Goldwater out to be a war monger. Goldwater lost. I thought it had more to do with the black dork glasses and the fact he appeared mean even on TV. Once LBJ was in, he insisted he was not a peace candidate. The public dreamed that one up on their own. Uh-huh. No more "Peace" candidate. LBJ became a "Piece" candidate and escalated the war like he had campaigned on it. Told the people they were crazy if they thought he said otherwise...

Which brings us to:

Mr. Change -- The "Peace" Candidate

"I don't oppose all wars." Obama said, "What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war....What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income."

Mr. Change -- Federal Plaza in downtown Chicago, October 2, 2002.

By the way Mr. Change, uninsured up, poverty up, income down, right here right now on your watch. So, who is distracting whom?

"We should be more modest in our belief that we can impose democracy on a country through military force. In the past, it has been movements for freedom from within tyrannical regimes that have led to flourishing democracies; movements that continue today."

Mr. Change, speech, Nov. 20, 2006.

"If people tell you that we cannot afford to invest in education or health care or fighting poverty, you just remind them that we are spending $10 billion a month in Iraq. And if we can spend that much money in Iraq, we can spend some of that money right here in Cincinnati, Ohio, and in big cities and small towns in every corner of this country."

 Mr. Change at 99th NAACP Convention Jul 12, 200.

Those of us who listened to Mr. Change knew he was careful with words, a parser if you will. No where was he more careful not to get pinned down than on the illegal wars for corporate profit. From December 2007 before the Iowa caucus, Mr. Change went on long and loud about how Clinton had voted for the Iraq war and he had not. In fact, Mr. Change went on so long and loud about Clinton "Yes" and Mr. Change "No" that by every standard the implication was clear to the voting public.

Mr. Change opposed the foreign wars.

As Mr. Change began to put away Clinton-time, his parsing became more evident as did one of Mr. Change's greatest skills... the back pedal.

"Those who write of Obama that "when it comes to international affairs, he will be a huge improvement on Bush" demonstrate the same willful naivety that backed the bait-and-switch of Bill Clinton - and Tony Blair...as the American writer Mike Whitney put it succinctly, "bait-and-switch" Democrats, of whom Obama is the prince."

 John Pilger, "Obama, the Prince of Bait-and-Switch"

The US military is in Afghanistan because there are pipelines to be built for Eurasian oil and natural gas for US corporate profit. The US military is being used at tax payer expense to enforce corporate profit that does not benefit those who bear the cost. Mr. Slick is a corporate tool. Corporate tools make sure the public pays for private profit.

Mr. Slick -- The Piece Candidate

Artwork Courtesy Sam Green & Bill Seigel

"I was reporting from Vietnam when that buildup began, and then as now there was an optimism not supported by the facts on the ground. Then as now there were references to elections and supporting local politicians to win the hearts and minds of people we were bombing. Then as now the local leaders on our side turned out to be hopelessly corrupt, a condition easily exploited by those we term the enemy.

Those who favor an escalation of the Afghanistan war ought to own up to its likely costs. If 110,000 troops have failed, will we need the half million committed at one point to Vietnam, which had a far less intractable terrain? And can you have that increase in forces without reinstituting the draft?

It is time for Democrats to remember that it was their party that brought America its most disastrous overseas adventure and to act forthrightly to pull their chosen president back from the abyss before it is too late."

Robert Scheer, "Obama's Quagmire Looks a Lot like Vietnam"   September 11, 2009.

"America now has more military personnel in Afghanistan than the Red Army had at the peak of the Soviet invasion and occupation of that country. According to a Congressional Research Service report, as of March of this year, the U.S. had 52,000 uniformed personnel and another 68,000 contractors in Afghanistan -- a number that has likely grown given the blank check President Obama has written for what's now being called "Obama's War."

That makes 120,000 American military personnel fighting in Afghanistan, a figure higher than the Soviet peak troop figure of 115,000 during their catastrophic 9-year war. Just this week, General McChrystal, whom Obama appointed to command American forces in Afghanistan, is talking of sending tens of thousands more American troops. At the height of the Soviet occupation ,Western intelligence experts estimated that the Soviets had 115,000 troops in Afghanistan -- but like America, the more troops and the longer the Soviets stayed, the more doomed their military mission became."

Mark Ames, AlterNet  Obama Is Leading the U.S. Into a Hellish Quagmire

Posted September 3, 2009.

"Since 1945, by deed and by example, the US has overthrown 50 governments, including democracies, crushed some 30 liberation movements and supported tyrannies from Egypt to Guatemala (see William Blum's histories). Bombing is apple pie. Having stacked his government with warmongers, Wall Street cronies and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, the 45th president is merely upholding tradition. The hearts and minds farce I witnessed in Vietnam is today repeated in villages in Afghanistan and, by proxy, Pakistan, which are Obama's wars."

John Pilger, Obama's 100 Days - The Mad Men Did Well

"In Afghanistan, the US "strategy" of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the "Taliban") has been extended by Obama to give the Pentagon time to build a series of permanent bases right across the devastated country where, says Secretary Gates, the US military will remain indefinitely."

John Pilger, Obama's 100 Days - The Mad Men Did Well

$1 trillion Iraq war WAS $1 trillion in Wall Street Revenue



A Newly Escalated $1 trillion Afganhstan War will be a NEW $1 trillion in Wall Street Revenue.

"Meaningless is the right term for the Afghanistan war, too, because our bloody attempt to conquer this foreign land has nothing to do with its stated purpose of enhancing our national security. Just as the government of Vietnam was never a puppet of communist China or the Soviet Union, the Taliban is not a surrogate for al Qaeda. Involved in both instances was an American intrusion into a civil war whose passions and parameters we never fully have grasped and will always fail to control militarily.

 The Vietnamese communists were not an extension of an inevitably hostile, unified international communist enemy, as evidenced by the fact that communist Vietnam and communist China are both our close trading partners today. Nor should the Taliban be considered simply an extension of a Mideast-based al Qaeda movement, whose operatives the United States recruited in the first place to go to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets."

Mark Ames, AlterNet  Obama Is Leading the U.S. Into a Hellish Quagmire

Posted September 3, 2009.

What the Corporate News Media DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE. GE: Owner of all the NBC's, the US 10th largest, most civilly fined, criminal charged military contractor. Watch "Today" with the idiot Matt Lauer... enjoy mindless fluff... ask no questions... buy idiot consumer products... be happy...
 

Watch CNBC...See gals with big boobs talking stocks... don't look here...
 

While You Are Shown Retards With "Death Panel" Signs



This is What is Done to Human Beings in YOUR Name for Corporate Profit
 

"They're probably going to be pretty much like the preliminaries a couple of months ago. Which showed that both Obama and McCain were getting the bulk of their financing from the financial institutions and for Obama, law firms which means essentially lobbyists.

The distribution of funding has over time been a pretty good predictor of what policies will be like for those of you who are interested, there's very good scholarly work on this by Tom Ferguson in Umass Boston, what he calls the investment theory of politics.

Which argues essentially that elections are moments when groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state and has quite the substantial predictive success. Gives some suggestion as to what's likely to happen. So that part's familiar."

Noam Chomsky: "What Next? The Elections, the Economy and the World"
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/24/noam_chomsky_what_next_the_elections
Democracy Now. November, 2008.

"It is time the Obama lovers grew up. It is time those paid to keep the record straight gave us the opportunity to debate informatively. In the 21st century, people power remains a huge and exciting and largely untapped force for change, but it is nothing without truth. "In the time of universal deceit," wrote George Orwell, "telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

 John Pilger, "The Politics of Bollocks"

I am not the only one hearing double talk. 

If you got this far, thanks for reading.