Wingers like Cliff
wail and yell no matter who has the reigns of power.
We will let Cliff pay for our share of the outrageous debt the left wing
of the Democrat party is forcing on the U.S.

Ignore people issues - keep on ranting about Left-winger ideals.
Use up our bandwidth and make usnet just crap. I pay for this ? - I think Cliff
owes me for wasting my bandwidth and running off good members.

Martin

Cliff wrote:
On Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:23:29 -0700, Winston_Smith wrote:

You forgot "haters", "deniers", "wingnuts", and other derisive terms
the leftist wingers use when they don't have anything to use to rebut
facts.

First wingers would have to actually have facts instead of
stale old lies.
Will any of us live long enough for any of them to find any even by
accident?

http://www.conservativeblogwatch.com...ed-in-gay-bar/

December 2, 2009

The World's Least Powerful Man
The Obama Puppet

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
It didn't take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel
regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on
occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president
is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States
simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel's.
Obama also found out that he cannot change anything else either, if he ever
intended to do so.
The military/security lobby has war and a domestic police state on its
agenda, and a mere American president can't do anything about it.
President Obama can order the Guantanamo torture chamber closed and
kidnapping and rendition and torture to be halted, but no one carries out
the order.
Essentially, Obama is irrelevant.
President Obama can promise that he is going to bring the troops home, and
the military lobby says, "No, you are going to send them to Afghanistan, and
in the meantime start a war in Pakistan and maneuver Iran into a position
that will provide an excuse for a war there, too. Wars are too profitable
for us to let you stop them."
And the mere president has to say, "Yes, Sir!"
Obama can promise health care to 50 million uninsured Americans, but he
can't override the veto of the war lobby and the insurance lobby. The war
lobby says its war profits are more important than health care and that the
country can't afford both the "war on terror" and "socialized medicine."
The insurance lobby says health care has to be provided by private health
insurance; otherwise, we can't afford it.
The war and insurance lobbies rattled their campaign contribution
pocketbooks and quickly convinced Congress and the White House that the real
purpose of the health care bill is to save money by cutting Medicare and
Medicaid benefits, thereby "getting entitlements under control."
Entitlements is a right-wing word used to cast aspersion on the few things
that the government did, in the distant past, for citizens. Social Security
and Medicare, for example, are denigrated as "entitlements." The right-wing
goes on endlessly about Social Security and Medicare as if they were welfare
give-aways to shiftless people who refuse to look after themselves, whereas
in actual fact citizens are vastly overcharged for the meager benefits with
a 15% tax on their wages and salaries.
Indeed, for decades now the federal government has been funding its wars and
military budgets with the surplus revenues collected by the Social Security
tax on labor.
To claim, as the right-wing does, that we can't afford the only thing in the
entire budget that has consistently produced a revenue surplus indicates
that the real agenda is to drive the mere citizen into the ground.
The real entitlements are never mentioned. The "defense" budget is an
entitlement for the military/security complex about which President
Eisenhower warned us 50 years ago. A person has to be crazy to believe that
the United States, "the world's only superpower," protected by oceans on its
East and West and by puppet states on its North and South, needs a "defense"
budget larger than the military spending of the rest of the world combined.
The military budget is nothing but an entitlement for the military/security
complex. To hide this fact, the entitlement is disguised as protection
against "enemies" and passed through the Pentagon.
I say cut out the middleman and simply allocate a percentage of the federal
budget to the military/security complex. This way we won't have to concoct
reasons for invading other countries and go to war in order for the
military/security complex to get its entitlement. It would be a lot cheaper
just to give them the money outright, and it would save a lot of lives and
grief at home and abroad.
The US invasion of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with American national
interests. It had to do with armaments profits and with eliminating an
obstacle to Israeli territorial expansion. The cost of the war, aside from
the $3 trillion, was over 4,000 dead Americans, over 30,000 wounded and
maimed Americans, tens of thousands of broken American marriages and lost
careers, one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and a
destroyed country.
All of this was done for the profits of the military/security complex and to
make paranoid Israel, armed with 200 nuclear weapons, feel "secure."
My proposal would make the military/security complex even more wealthy as
the companies would get the money without having to produce the weapons.
Instead, all the money could go for multi-million dollar bonuses and
dividend payouts to shareholders. No one, at home or abroad, would have to
be killed, and the taxpayer would be better off.
No American national interest is served by the war in Afghanistan. As the
former UK Ambassador Craig Murray disclosed, the purpose of the war is to
protect Unocal's interest in the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline. The cost of the
war is many times greater than Unocal's investment in the pipeline. The
obvious solution is to buy out Unocal and give the pipeline to the Afghans
as partial compensation for the destruction we have inflicted on that
country and its population, and bring the troops home.
The reason my sensible solutions cannot be effected is that the lobbies
think that their entitlements would not survive if they were made obvious.
They think that if the American people knew that the wars were being fought
to enrich the armaments and oil industries, the people would put a halt to
the wars.

In actual fact, the American people have no say about what "their"
government does. Polls of the public show that half or more of the American
people do not support the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan and do not support
President Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Yet, the occupations
and wars continue. According to General Stanley McChrystal, the additional
40,000 troops are enough to stalemate the war, that is, to keep it going
forever, the ideal situation for the armaments lobby.
The people want health care, but the government does not listen.
The people want jobs, but Wall Street wants higher priced stocks and forces
American firms to offshore the jobs to countries where labor is cheaper.
The American people have no effect on anything. They can affect nothing.
They have become irrelevant like Obama. And they will remain irrelevant as
long as organized interest groups can purchase the US government.
The inability of the American democracy to produce any results that the
voters want is a demonstrated fact. The total unresponsiveness of government
to the people is conservatism's contribution to American democracy. Some
years ago there was an effort to put government back into the hands of the
people by constraining the ability of organized interest groups to pour
enormous amounts of money into political campaigns and, thus, obligate the
elected official to those whose money elected him. Conservatives said that
any restraints would be a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of
free speech.
The same "protectors" of "free speech" had no objection to the Israel
Lobby's passage of the "hate speech" bill, which has criminalized criticism
of Israel's genocidal treatment of the Palestinians and continuing theft of
their lands.
In less than one year, President Obama has betrayed all of his supporters
and broken all of his promises. He is the total captive of the oligarchy of
the ruling interest groups.
Obama seems destined to be a one-term president. Indeed, the collapsing
economy will doom him.
The Republicans are grooming Palin. Our first female president, following
our first black president, will complete the transition to an American
police state by arresting critics and protesters of Washington's immoral
foreign and domestic policies, and she will complete the destruction of
America's reputation abroad.
Russia's Putin has already compared the US to Nazi Germany, and the Chinese
premier has likened the US to an irresponsible, profligate debtor.
Increasingly the rest of the world sees the US as the sole source of all of
its problems. Germany has lost the chief of its armed forces and its defense
minister, because the US convinced or pressured, by hook or crook, the
German government to violate its Constitution and to send troops to fight
for Unocal's interest in Afghanistan. The Germans had pretended that their
troops were not really fighting, but were were engaged in a "peace-keeping
operation." This more or less worked until the Germans called in an air
strike that murdered 100 women and children lined up for a fuel allotment.
The British are investigating their leading criminal, former prime minister
Tony Blair, and his deception of his own cabinet in order to do Bush's
bidding and provide some cover for Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq. The UK
investigators have been denied the ability to bring criminal charges, but
the issue of war based entirely on orchestrated deception and lies is
getting a hearing. It will reverberate throughout the world, and the world
will note that there is no corresponding investigation in the US, the
country that originated the False War.
Meanwhile, the US investment banks, which have wrecked the financial
stability of many governments, including that of the US, continue to
control, as they have done since the Clinton administration, US economic and
financial policy. The world has suffered terribly from the Wall Street
gangsters, and now looks upon America with a critical eye.
The United States no longer commands the respect it enjoyed under President
Ronald Reagan or President George Herbert Walker Bush. World polls show that
the US and its puppet master are regarded as the two greatest threats to
peace. Washington and Israel outrank on the most dangerous list the crazy
regime in North Korea.
The world is beginning to see America as a country that needs to go away.
When the dollar is over-inflated by a Washington unable to pay its bills,
will the world be motivated by greed and try to save us in order to save its
investments, or will it say, thank God, good riddance.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan
administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good
Intentions.http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307396061/counterpunchmaga
His new book, How the Economy was Lost, will be published in January by AK
Press / CounterPunch. He can be reached at: