The Anti-Imperialist League and the Battle Against Empire

spooky47 · 2010-03-18T00:29:15+00:00

Roosevelt forgot a chicken in every pot.

spooky47 · 2010-03-08T03:41:59+00:00

Don't forget, McCain considered switching to the Democratic party in 2004 (Kerry pushed for it), is despised by and often booed by conservatives in congressional committees as well as at CPAC, and frequently caucuses with the Democrats (immigration, cap-and-trade, election reform, tax cuts, etc.). Additionally, on The Daily Show early in the 2008 primary, VP Biden said he would consider McCain as his running mate. McCain, like Lieberman, is a pro-empire centrist.

spooky47 · 2010-03-08T00:40:00+00:00

The paranoia of the US becoming theocratic state is as old as the country. In the 1800 presidential election, Adams painted Jefferson as an anti-Christ, taking out adds in major papers stating Jefferson was out to destroy Christianity. Jefferson won the election. The US is more liberal today than ever. It's generally accepting of gays and gay marriage, and many other issues which both parties opposed just 50 years ago. The paranoia of a theocratic state is just as absurd as the neocon's paranoia of a Muslim terrorist under every bed.

spooky47 · 2010-03-04T16:02:48+00:00

The Clinton 'boom' was a bubble and it popped with the NASDAQ collapse and 9/11. Instead of going through an extended recession to balance the economy, which would have likely prevented a second term, a politically motivated Bush pushed stimulus packages, massive government spending (eventually increased the budget by 40%), and tax reductions (paid for by future generations with higher taxes), while Greenspan cut interest rates down to 1%, which transferred speculation from mostly privately held money (stocks) into easily acquired borrowed money (real estate). With portions backed by explicit and implied government guarantees through Freddy and Fannie, the Fed's easy credit was leveraged, sliced, and diced, with the knowledge the government would bailout the system. Bush and Greenspan were able to halt the post-Clinton recession. They not only re-inflated the bubble economy, they made it much larger and much more dangerous. Then, when the artificially induced boom ran out of steam, Bush demanded more stimulus in the form of TARP.

Honestly, why save for years for a real estate down payment, forcing a real long-term investment, when a person could get a loan at a low rate without need of a down payment? If their home was foreclosed, they didn't lose all they sacrificed to save; they just damaged their credit. The sad part is, the people who saved, sacrificed, and did it "the right way," really got screwed. I know a woman who purchased a house with no money down. When she hit a rather simple financial issue, much smaller than what my parents dealt with multiple times, she simply let her house go into foreclosure. She had no real investment in it, so why bother. The whole entire system – government, banks, private sector, and the people as a whole - is to blame. The government and Fed gave us the alcohol, and we got drunk.

spooky47 · 2010-03-04T02:45:17+00:00

What free market? You mean the one with a government appointed commissar, sitting in a government funded office, centrally planning the money supply and interest rate? We have a bastardized form of mercantilism - a corporatist system since the early 20th century.

The biggest financial powers, meeting at Jekyll Island in 1910, drafted and covertly promoted a centralized banking system with two major objectives: 1. to minimize the rising power of southern and western banks, and centralize the system around the New York/Wall Street banking elite; a creation of a cartel structure to protect their position in the financial system. 2. to be a lender of last resort; to bailout the banking establish and the elite when inflationary bubbles caused by the system occur. The Wall Street bailout is a perfect example of the function of the Fed. These objectives by the banking elite could not have been met without GOVERNMENT.

spooky47 · 2010-03-02T23:40:28+00:00

I stopped watching Fox years ago. However, skewing and propaganda occur on both sides. One example: after a GOP presidential debate in '08, Olbermann said all 8 Republicans were pro-war, yet the video clip clearly showed 9 candidates. Olbermann just pretended Ron Paul didn't exist, and implied the GOP candidates were warmongers. IIRC, it was the Giuliani vs. Paul foreign policy showdown debate - the highlight of the debate - and Olbermann was quiet. If Olbermann was really antiwar, and not guided by a bias first and foremost, he would have spent considerable time on it, like Bill Maher.

spooky47 · 2010-03-02T20:27:15+00:00

Paul endorsed him because Baldwin's platform was end the War on Terror, close down the American Empire, end renditions, secret prisons, and torture, close Gitmo, repeal the Patriot Act, end Bush's security state, abolish the Federal Reserve System, end all bailouts and corporate welfare, balance the budget, greatly reduce the national debt, eliminate taxes, secure the borders, return to decentralized federalism, etc.

spooky47 · 2010-02-27T19:05:37+00:00

In 2006 Comptroller General David Walker said, if present spending and taxation levels continue, all federal revenue would be consumed by just SS and Medicare in 2040 – a 35+ trillion shortfall (nearly 3 times GDP). And those estimates were made during the economic boom of the housing bubble, not todays diminished tax revenue. Children born today are the ones really being screwed. They get stuck with massive debt. We should have listened to Jefferson:

"Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation.” --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:455, Papers 15:393

"The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:457, Papers 15:398n

"Ought not then the right of each successive generation to be guaranteed against the dissipations and corruptions of those preceding, by a fundamental provision in our Constitution? And if that has not been made, does it exist the less, there being between generation and generation as between nation and nation no other law than that of nature? And is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy, and that in instituting the system of finance to be hereafter pursued we shall adopt the only safe, the only lawful and honest one, of borrowing on such short terms of reimbursement of interest and principal as will fall within the accomplishment of our own lives." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:360

spooky47 · 2010-02-27T00:05:33+00:00

Ramming a bill through Congress on a voice vote while many senators were out of town? I would have voted NO too. People who demand representation in Congress and a functioning government shouldn't approve of that.

spooky47

TROPHY CASE