African debtor nations, Chairman Conyers.

Shit.

Ron, we need to start drinking heavily.

It's been going on for a long time. George H.W. Bush has been in there for a long time -- he's been traveling the world for a long time -- ever wonder why?

"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," by John Perkins, illustrated his own personal role in economic "takeovers." How, largely, done through a guise of a company or entity, i.e., the United States National Security Agency, but "funded" and "promoted" by the World Bank or other entity (belonging to the U.S.), sought to engage impoverished nations by offering them "huge" loans to alleviate their country situations (knowing that they could never ever fulfill the payback obligations), and thereby, indebted them further, while at the same time, took over whatever "resources" that country might have had in "paybacks" -- enslaving them further to their impoverishment.

A few quotes:

"..... His job was to implement policies that promoted the interest of the U.S. corporatocracy (a coalition of government, banks, and corporations) while professing to alleviate poverty -- policies that that alienated many nations and ultimately led to September 1 and growing anti-Americanism."

More:

Perkins explains, for instance, "how he helped to implement a secret scheme that funneled billions of Saudi Arabian petrodollars back into the U.S. economy, and that further cemented the intimate relationship between the Islamic fundamentalist House of Saud and a succession of American administrations" . . . ."

At any rate, the point is that we are "filthy" in our behavior toward the poorest of nations, rendering them even poorer. Is it no wonder that we are "hated" the world over?

Linking does not work: please use: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8171.htm

Yes, I am proud to be an American, but I am no longer proud of America -- we have become a "monster" -- we "prey" on the most down-trodden of nations in the most insidious ways possible and practically "cripple" those nations who are struggling already and the least able to "defend" themselves. American international policy: "KICK 'EM WHEN THEY'RE DOWN."

We have become a "sick" nation and we may ultimately pay the price for "total lack of concern for the peoples of the world."

In my city you can be arrested for selling tickets to the Sonics, Mariners, or Seahawks above the original price. Scalping is against the law in my America.

====================================================
You aren't defending, protecting, preserving the Constitution of the USA
When you allow the usurpations of the Constitutional laws of the USA.

I appreciate you taking the time to do the interview, and for taking up this issue with Bush, as I posted in the last thread this morning.

As noted by Palast, Singer was a top campaign contributer to Bush; and as noted by you, if Bush were sincere about his statements regarding debt relief, he would publicly make note of the fact that he has power of comity.

While vulture funds are not "news" to those of us in the progressive community, I do think that the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee calling Bush on it is news.

Bush's entire approach to foreign policy is reprehensible.
And the OVP considers itself so outside of any oversight, I wonder how members of Congress intend to address that, as well.

I really hope that one day soon, three fourths of the Senate does some serious soul-searching.

Congressman,
I came here months ago because I believed in the rule of Congressional Law and Oversight. I was drawn here by your basement hearings. By your reports on the illegal activities that took us into this war.

AND NOW WHAT?(!)

Now that you are in the position to actually do something you don't want to do it?

I guess that means you support:

~ Wars based on fabricated evidence.
~ Felonious statements made to Joint Sessions of Congress.
~ Wiretapping U.S. citizen's phone conversations without warrants.
~ Opening U.S. citizens private mail.
~ Tracking U.S. citizen's E-mail activity.
~ Outing a CIA agent.
~ Kidnapping and rendition.
~ Human trafficking in the name of war.
~ Torture.
~ Ignoring International agreements and treaties.
~ Attempts to subvert Congress through signing statements.
~ Presidential violations of Oath.
~ Signing unconstitutional Bills into law.

Am I out of line here?
I'm sorry if I seem to be, but I am merely taking you to task.

PROVE ME WRONG, PLEASE!

Now that you have the job, DO IT!

===================================================
You aren't defending, protecting, preserving the Constitution of the USA
When you allow the usurpations of the Constitutional laws of the USA.

The thought of sleazy vultures preying on poor African counties is appalling!

The thought of BushCo preying on oil rich Middle East countries is appalling!

The thought of Big Oil companies preying on energy dependent consumers is appalling!

The thought of the Military Industrial complex preying on American taxpayers is appalling!

The thought of Congress appropriating funds for BushCo,s war budgets is appalling!

The thought of the Internal Revenue Service preying on the American middle class is appalling!

If Congress doesn't take corrective actions - I,m going to file an itemized, but "non-binding" 1040.

BushCo and his kind can (_x_)

12 PM Central Time TeamConyersBlog membership meeting - Supporting JC and ConyersBlog.

Newsletter: I sent a newsletter today to all Soapbox members.

TeamConyersBlog is now a separate entity from Soapbox and if you are a member of one, you can join the other by logging in and going to the other in the Directory link in the left menu.

Directory (left menu) > TeamConyersBlog or Soapbox > Join Site

After joining the second membership, both will appear under the Members link at the top left in the login area. One login account works for both memberships!

The Soapbox meeting will follow the TCB meeting.

TeamConyersBlog is devoted to supporting JC and ConyersBlog. Soapbox is a general activist group. You can belong to either or both.

I,ve been in a philosophical mood this morning. So, if you're not in the mood, please feel free to skip over this essay.

I,ve been feeling a lot of frustration with Congress in general and certain congress people in particular. So, I,ve found that when I get to that point of discouragement and frustration, it helps me to try to regain some perspective. FWIW, here are some of my thoughts, to be accepted, rejected, as each person sees fit:

I am as impatient as the next progressive to clean out the White House ASAP; to restore democracy and the rule of law to our government; to stop the torture sanctioned by our government; to replace Bush,s warmongering with world-class diplomacy; to fix the economy-decreasing the debt and stopping the disappearance of the middle class; etc, etc, etc. So much needs to be done.

Yet in the cold light of day, it must be apparent that the neocons may be down, but they are by no means out. They will continue to fight back, even more fiercely and savagely as they sense they may be losing some of their power. The will not "go gently into this good night", no matter how much we wish it to be so.

I want the troops out of Iraq immediately. As a military mom, there are times I feel so overwhelmed with grief when I hear reports of yet another death, or deaths, in Iraq that I want to scream at the warmongers. Yet I know we,ve only begun to make headway on putting a brake on Bush,s hellish war in Iraq. To say that I often get discouraged is the understatement of the decade.

So what are we to do at this point? I think the only thing we can do is to continue to plow forward, understanding that success will be accomplished if we don,t waver--but not as quickly as we hope it will. IMHO, there is a serious challenge ahead for progressives-the challenge is to keep moving forward, even if progress is in centimeters rather than in miles. I,ve been right there ranting with the best of them when I,ve seen Congress cave to BushCo when they should have stood firm. Yet, I understand logically that it took the neocons years to get their plans to the point that their boy king could begin to enact them. It took Murdoch years to build up his propaganda empire, slowly and methodically buying up the "liberal" & "objective" media, while the liberals watchdogs were apparently "out to lunch" during the media coup.

The republicans may be out of the majority in the house, and basically tied for power in the Senate-yet like a child who knows that they can gain a lot of ground by throwing tantrums, they will indeed continue to throw tantrums, hoping they can wear down the opposition, get their fellow tantrum throwers on board, and get their way by throwing major public tantrums.

We need to persevere, to continue to fight the good fight, even when it looks like we,re losing ground. We need to keep in constant contact with our Congress people & let them know when we support them or when we feel they need to be more aggressive in their opposition. Why? The stakes are too high not to. The cost of losing the fight is unthinkable. I guess what I,m trying to tell myself is: It,s ok to be discouraged at times, but it,s not okay to give up.

I just LOVE "Bankers' Arithmetic." There is the Nation that borrowed eight billion dollars fifty years ago, and having repaid forty-one billion dollars, still owes forty-two billion!!! And, when they decided to repudiate the debt, the bankers (IMF - WB) had heart failure!

Isn't there something WORNG with that??

Now is the time to bite the bullet and start to listen to the people who are interested in saving THE WORLD - not just the Banker$ - from the consequences of the greed of a few. It is quite true, Perkins delineated what is much of the problem, but what we need are solutions.

Only one organization in the World has definitive ANSWERS to the bind the entire Earth is in, and since it is squarely against the Multinationals, Bankers, Cartels, and Megafinanciers who own the world's political bodies, no-one seems to be willing to listen to it.

That is the LaRouche Organization.

Yes, Lyndon Hermille LaRouche is a supreme egotist. Yes, he has a number of cockamamie ideas, among which is the denial that there is any limit to growth; HOWEVER; his desire to return the US to its Constitution, America to the American System, and the World to the Bretton Woods "Fixed Exchange" policies are the ONLY viable ideas in a World gone insane with gambling fever.

Love him or hate him, the man is the SOLE Economist in the World whose Economic forecasts have been one hundred per cent correct! If you have a neighbor who is an arsonist, and another who is a fireman, which will you trust to house-sit for you? LaRouche has fought a long battle against the forces of Economic Fascism that have infested the world since the twenties, and possibly before. He was railroaded into prison in Virginia on the basis of false charges that had already been dismissed in Massachusetts as fraudulent, because he had two heavy hitting enemies named GHW Bu$h and Heinrich Kissinger. He was released from prison because multitudes of international figures demanded that release. Ramsey Clark, a former Attorney General of the US said that the charges against LaRouche were "The greatest Fraud on the Court" he had ever witnessed. HOWEVER; the mere fact that LaRouche had some jail time makes people think he is a crook, while the greatest criminals of our time, Nixon, Bu$h I & II, Cheney, Rumsfeld - spent NO TIME in Prison AT ALL!

LaRouche has a large corps of loyalists who fervently believe he walks on water. I am not one, although I do recognize that in Economics and practical politics he is probably the sanest voice in a wilderness otherwise composed of a cacophony of noise ranging from vicious to stupid.

It is time to start listening to him; his policies are at least aimed in the right direction, something which cannot be said of Greenspan, Bernanke, Bu$h, or BlIAR.

Had we listened to him we would never have been involved in Viet Nam or Iraq, and the World would have been a much safer place. It is, I think, high time that we pay attention to what the man has to say.

We are in a hole. All Bu$h can do is ask for more shovels, while LaRouche offers a rope. Think about it - and then go to www.larouchepub.com and see what he has to say. You may be impressed. Remember, not EVERYTHING the man says is gospel, but he certainly has a higher truth coefficient than any other economist out there, besides being more learned in Ancient and Modern History and Mathematics than many professors of the subjects, and certainly far more cognizant of political science than most politicos. The only reason he was never elected President is that he was never willing to sell himself to enough financiers to get the money to buy the election. He is a TRUE Democrat, which many "Democrats" are not, being, with malice aforethought, Republicans in a Donkey suit (I speak, of course, of the DLC, which is a gang of traitors to the FDR ideals.)

But, I repeat, LOOK at what LaRouche has to say; at least he has a program to save the world from the greedheads, which no-one else has, and unless we accept it, or something very like it, there is little hope for the world to escape the looming catastrophe.

What: Town Hall Meeting
Where Central United Methodist Church on Woodward at Adams
When Saturday, Feb. 17 at 1pm

What a great event yesterday! JC, you looked well and rested.

I can report that the people are ready to take back what was taken from them and continues to be taken from them. They are tired of the hypocrisy, of funding and illegal immoral war, and not giving a damn about the people. Thousands of empty homes owned by the city with thousands of homeless walking the streets. Hundreds of sick stay home or stand in long lines at the hospital emergency facilities while hospital beds remain unfilled. Local schools are closing their doors while those that stay open are overcrowded. Jobs are leaving as they outsourced and Michigan's economy contracts. The State is facing a $3.5 billion dollar deficit that cannot be covered, unless structural changes are made. Companies are eliminating pension plans, changing pension retirement formula calculations, eliminating employee savings plans, and reducing health insurance benefits while raising costs. There are tens of thousands of people underemployed. There were 1000 people recently lined up to apply for a handful of near minimum wage jobs at a Walmart Super Store.

Look folks, Michigan is bleeding and it is only predicted to get worse. Currently Michigan is ranked dead last among states in the latest index of economic momentum (quarterly changes in personal income, employment, and population). Michigan has lost 246,000, or one in four, manufacturing jobs since 2000 (Bureau of Labor Statistics). As news goes, it gets even worse, because recent history has shown that Michigan is usually the first state to become effected by economic trends. This does not bode well for the rest of the nation.

Most recently, Daimler-Chrysler has announced that it wants to divest itself of the US Chrysler business and concentrate on German Mercedes-Benz business. Thus they have entered into negotiations with GM to sell that business. Looks to me like the German's are fed up with the US.

We need to take our country back! I say not one red cent needs to go to fund this hypocritical, illegal, immoral war; not one red cent needs to go overseas, while people at home are left homeless; not one red cent needs to buy more bombs that kill and maim Iraqi children and families: not one red cent. Not my money. I will not endorse that check. Those monies are needed here at home. Those monies are needed now.

We need to support our troops and bring them home. We need to bring them home alive. I will not pay one dime to send more boys (and girls) over to Iraq when their job is done. They have no more business there, placing them in harms way is reckless and grossly negligent.

Thank you JC for making my day. Godspeed.

The current occupant of the White House claims Iraq is the main battleground in the war on terror. That is a despicable lie. Our troops are not fighting terrorists in Iraq, they are dead men walking in a bloody Muslim civil war. They cannot fight roadside bombs, they cannot defend America by getting blown up in unarmored Humvees, they cannot defeat multiple insurgent groups and shadowy militias when it is impossible to identify their members or determine where they will strike next.

Bush,s lies sent our soldiers into this cauldron of barbarity, and now he is sending more. This escalation is not a policy, it is a temper tantrum, an exhibition of juvenile defiance by a 60-year-old adolescent who has had his ass kissed all his life and has never been held accountable for any of his reckless blunders. A competent American president would have destroyed al Qaeda by now, stabilized Afghanistan, and forged from the world,s sympathy after 9/11 an era of global unity.

But we do not have a competent American president, we have a smirking travesty of a president. Bush,s criminal incompetence has killed more than 3,000 of our soldiers, has wounded and maimed more than 20,000 of them, and has torched $400 billion of our taxpayer dollars to ashes in that wasteland of Sunni-Shi,a hatred. After four gruesome years, what has Bush,s squandering of young lives and national treasure in Iraq gotten us? A besieged Green Zone in Baghdad and a shattered Army, that,s what it,s gotten us. What has it gotten Iraqis? Torture chambers. Death squads. Executions. Endless chaos. Endless fear. Endless death.

Never in the history of American warfare has there been such a degrading fiasco as this bloodbath in Iraq. Never in the span of 43 American presidencies has there been such a shameful spectacle of a commander-in-chief such as George W. Bush. Never in more than two-centuries of American politics have so many pathological liars, moral cowards, brazen hypocrites, and brutally ignorant partisan hacks created such a hellish mess of corruption, squalor, and betrayal.

Bush has been an imminent threat to America ever since the Republican Supreme Court handed him the keys to the White House in 2001. He is a clear and present danger, he is a walking, talking, smirking mushroom cloud over every American city. It,s time for regime change here, Congress. It,s long past time. It,s time for every one of us to take action. We are the heirs of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, we are Americans, and it,s time we all started defending the democracy they gave us instead of watching silently while an alcoholic from Texas destroys it.

Write a letter to the editor asking other Americans to demand Impeachment hearings.

Call your representative in Congress and demand Impeachment hearings.

Call Chairman Conyers and demand Impeachment hearings.

Call Speaker Pelosi and demand Impeachment hearings.

Do it. Then do it again. Don,t stop doing it until Impeachment hearings begin.

A farmer in Louisiana witnessed the crash of a huge aircraft in his south forty, so he took his back hoe out and buried all the dead. In a matter of hours, a large contingent of federal cops arrived, and wanted to know what happened to Air Force One. "Way - ull," the farmer said. "Ever'body wuz dead, so I buried 'em all."

"All? The President, too? He was dead?"

"Way-ull, he kep' sayin' as how he wuz not dead, but hell, y'awl know whut a liar he wuz!"

(We needed a bit of comic relief)

When asked what should Congress do now that the Democrats have the majority, people usually say, impeachment hearing, end the war, save the environment, universal health care, education, women's rights, LGBT rights, and a whole host of others.

It is generally agreed that the November 2006 election was a referendum on ending the war in Iraq and bring the troops home. Now going against all advice, demands, and suggestions from generals, the Iraq Study Group, the recently released NIE, and We the People; Bush is moving more American military forces into positions which, upon command, can strike Iran within minutes and hours.

The original framers of our Constitution left congress with very little say in, How to fight war and very little say in foreign diplomatic relations. There was an assumption that American Forces would never be used upon foreign soil. Needless to say, the only way Congress can compel Bush to bring home the troops is by stopping funds or by removing Bush from office.

Having the troops in the field and impeaching Bush sets the Democrats into a precarious position. Should any number of unpredictable disasters or battlefield losses occur while Bush and Cheney are being impeached, the Repugs will immediately declare the Dems at fault because the President was distracted and the troops were demoralized because their leader was under assault from those nasty liberals at home.

This leaves only one other option, stopping funds. Yes the GOP can scream in the media, you don't support the troops, but frankly, I think it is a battle they can win in the media. The great thing about stopping the funding is what the House has to do to stop the funding. Do they need a resolution pulling back funds? No, all they need to do is......wait for it......nothing!

The current allocation will run out and there is nothing the Senate or the President can do to put an appropriations bill into the House. The House can block anything the Senate or Bush want to do by doing nothing and acting like the GOP did when they had control of the House. (Thanks Constant and Thanks again)

However, this abused-in-chief may (against the will of practically the entire planet) decide that Iran (after a night of partying with Gannon and/or Condi) that attacking Iran would be fun to watch on his TV (much better then watching John Wayne in "The Green Berets). So maybe they should tell him anything that stupid and impeachment is back on the table. Only by putting a personal consequence in front of these two sociopaths, will they feel compelled not to attack Iran.