From today's Utica (NY) Observer Dispatch--
NY State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, responding to NY Governor George Pataki's Jan. 4, 2006 State of the State speech:
"To those working families struggling to pay your bills in cities, towns and villages across this state, I ask you: Have twelve years of Republican leadership improved your lives? Your schools? Your communities?"
A question we can all ask ourselves at the national level: Have 5 years of Bush Republican leadership improved your lives, your schools, your communities? Will 3 more years of that leadership improve them? Will it improve anything you can think of?
Where's a good recall election when you need one?
The Republicans in Colorado appear to be having a major battle between themselves. On one side are those in lockstep with the current crew of national Republican leaders. On the other side are those who appear to have finally had enough of lockstepping with zealots and people who have an uncanny knack for allying themselves with people destined for indictment (read that as Abramoff, DeLay, and company). An editorial in todays Kentucky Post has had an enough of the congressional financial follies. After detailing which representatives from the Kentucky-Ohio area had received money from Mr. Abramoff, the editor has some appropriate words for the government leaders, and excellent advice on what they should tell their leadership (boldfacing mine):
"And here's some more advice for the tri-state delegation: Assert yourselves. Tell your leadership you want the bad apples cleaned out. And tell them too that your constituents are fed up with the stories coming out of Washington about lobbyists leading Congress around by the ring through its nose.
"We're fighting a war no one wanted and that we can't afford. We have a health-care system that's held together with bandages. We have a retirement security system that's showing gaping cracks in its foundations. And not only has Congress failed to address such matters, it has ceded power to the likes of Tom "The Hammer'' DeLay and, judging from the Abramoff disclosures, a regiment of lobbyists." No, this ain't about sports. Our pal Arianna over at Huffington Post says a good one about a news media out of control... In an article in the journal Chronicles dated last week, Pat Buchanan cogently reviews the evidence of how well America's current foreign policy is working for us, and concludes:
"America needs a new vision. America needs a new foreign policy."
Question: How much trouble are you in when Pat Buchanan makes 10 times as much sense as the president of the United States?
Answer: Soooooooo much trouble. Absolute kudos and a big tip of the old redneck ballcap to one David Letterman, who, had none other than Faux Noise's OWN Bill O'Really....and talk about fireworks!!!!!!!!........ In a 2003 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy President Bush said "With the steady leadership of President Karzai, the people of Afghanistan are building a modern and peaceful government." Since then, he has often mentioned democracy in Afghanistan as an example of success in the war on terror. In America, most people no longer talk much about Afghanistan, as if they, too, think that we have "won" there. In the midst of the battle to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq, the US military and government have often made mention of the new freedom of Iraqis to have cell phones, internet access and other indicia of modern day freedom to communicate. For example, Ambassador David A. Gross, the "U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy" said, in remarks made in March, 2005, that:
"Mobile phones, the Internet, and satellite TV and radio among other technologies can have a powerful impact in weakening repression, shaping how people relate to their governments, and sometimes even providing the means for organizing and sustaining movements for political change.....It is no mere coincidence, then, that we have seen in Iraq a great expansion in the number of cell phone and Internet users. Cell phone service was nearly non-existent under Saddam Hussein's brutally repressive regime. Today, there are about 1,600,000 cell phone subscribers in Iraq. Pre-war, there was limited Internet service with approximately 3,000 Internet and 8,000 e-mail only accounts. As of earlier this month, there are more than 130,000 active subscribers and a large number of unregulated users of Internet cafes."
Which makes it all the more heinous that the military has apparently begun to "crack down" on both soldiers and soldiers' families who want to communicate via the net.
Our much esteemed president has barraged the airwaves with claims that the horror of 9/11 made his domestic warrantless spying program absolutely essential.
Ignoring for the moment the fact that its "essentialness" says absolutely nothing about why the government doesn't want to be bothered getting a warrant, how would he explain the fact that the NSA commenced a domestic spying program (spying on its own employees and their contacts among the journalism and congressional worlds) before 9/11?
That's Wayne Madsen's claim in Alternative Press Review.
I feel like gloating. Gloat. Gloat. Gloat.
Okay, this from The New York Times, of all places.... |
