George W. Bush Belongs in Prison

Electing Barack Obama president was the first step in redeeming American democracy. The second step must be indicting ex-president George W. Bush, giving him a fair trial, finding him guilty of many criminal acts and putting him in prison. Forget revenge. Think rule of law and justice. I want President Obama soon after taking office to go on television and announce the formation of a special group of outstanding jurists and attorneys to make a recommendation whether or not the US Justice Department should bring criminal... Read article

Deadly Consumerism

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving Thursday in the U.S., when many Americans have the day off from work and use it to begin their holiday shopping, is generally considered one of the busiest shopping days of the year. The day gets its name from the prospect that the heavy shopping on this date will push retailers’ balance sheets out of the red and into the black. Despite the bad economy this year, countless American consumers still camped out for hours after Thanksgiving dinner outside their favorite shops in... Read article

New York Times Misleads on Taliban Role in Opium Trade

The New York Times reported this week that the Taliban have cut back on poppy cultivation and is stockpiling opium, grossly overstating the group’s role in the Afghanistan drug trade. “Afghanistan has produced so much opium in recent years,” the Times reported Thursday, “that the Taliban are cutting poppy cultivation and stockpiling raw opium in an effort to support prices and preserve a major source of financing for the insurgency, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations drug office, says.” Mr.... Read article

The Bailout Intensifies

Even through its muffled language, it was obvious that the typically non-alarmist New York Times was having trouble digesting the latest government announcements. On 11/26, the Treasury and Fed revealed it would spend 800 billion more tax dollars towards new “lending” programs. That day, the Times concluded that the government was “sending a message that they will print as much money as needed to revive the crippled banking system.”(!) Later in the article we learn that “the government has assumed at least... Read article

The Obama “Dream Team”

Rubin-clones And Other Fakers… Things are getting crazier by the day. On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced that the Fed would commit another $800 billion to fight the financial crisis which has spread to the broader economy and is causing sharp declines in consumer spending. The Fed plans to buy $600 billion of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and another $200 billion of Triple A bonds from non-bank financial companies that provide financing for consumers. There’s... Read article

India, Jihad’s Permanent Battleground

Teams of heavily armed terrorists carried out seven coordinated attacks in India’s financial capital Mumbai (Bombay) on Wednesday evening and early Thursday morning. At least 78 people were reported killed and over 200 wounded, with the final toll likely to rise. Similar attacks by Islamic terrorists occur with depressing regularity in India (see Timetable at the end of this article). The disputed province of Kashmir notwithstanding, militant Islam sees the second most populous country in the world as “unfinished business”:... Read article

America’s Perfect Storm

Transition to Survival After Peak Oil Hits… A “Perfect Storm” gathers on the horizon as Peak Oil, Economic Instability, Climate Change and Hyper-Population Growth collide within the United States. While Americans watch multiple breakdowns throughout their economic and environmental systems, a gathering citizen armada prepares for an uncertain future—that most assuredly looms on the U.S. horizon. Last night, Dana Miller, director of the “Denver Transition Movement” in Denver, Colorado, sponsored Michael Brownlee,... Read article

Your Wishes Can Change the World

This year, as we watch the world around us collapsing, we are learning that Christmas is not about money. Christmas is about loving each other, about gifts that have nothing to do with the green folding stuff, or even silver and gold. Our money is melting down into worthless goo. Stores are closing; cameras are going up at intersections across the country. This morning I received a call from a friend in Florida who argued for twenty minutes at her bank where she has done business for twenty years. The problem? They wanted... Read article

Advice to Obama

The New Adventures of the Old New Deal… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — this bailout crap is truly a bad idea. With housing foreclosures up 25%, bank failures a common occurrence, millions of Americans out of work and the nation’s unemployment rate hovering around 9%, then it’s obvious that our economy is in trouble and that something needs to be done ASAP to get the economy back on track. But why resort to giving billions of dollars to the very same people who have... Read article

Hardship Results in Thanksgiving

America is facing some perilous times. Confronting a worldwide financial tsunami that will affect us for decades to come, with increasing job losses and rising costs for all products and staples, Americans are tightening their belts. In the background still remains the threat of future radical Islamic extremists’ attacks on American soil. Yet, most Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving despite the uncertainty of the future. And so it was with the small band of people who arrived almost 387 years ago. The first real Thanksgiving... Read article

Race in the Third Millennium

Although the show was propaganda produced by leftist Norman Lear, no one could accuse “All in the Family” of not being funny. Its protagonist, blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker, is one of those legendary television characters, and one of his uproarious lines is apropos here. It was uttered during a scene in which his daughter, Gloria, passionately asked him, “Daddy, did you know that 65 percent of the people murdered in the last ten years were killed by handguns?” The curmudgeonly patriarch’s reply was classic:... Read article

The Price of Hillary

No secretary of state will come to that office with stronger pro-Israel credentials or closer ties to the Jewish community than Sen. Hillary Clinton, Douglas Bloomfield assures his readers in The Jerusalem Post. Good for them; but for the rest of us, Mrs. Clinton’s appointment as the third woman U.S. Secretary of State is hugely problematic. It heralds “the end of the world as we know it,” in many ways, although neither she nor her coterie necessarily know what they are doing. That dumb bliss may be their sole saving... Read article

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

“The problems we face today cannot be solved by the minds that created them” Albert Einstein Obama hasn’t even been sworn in yet, and already the Wall Street cheerleaders are celebrating his first great triumph. According the pundits, the stock market staged a surprise 494 point rally on Friday because–get this–it was announced that Timothy Geithner would be appointed Obama’s Treasury Secretary. Timothy who? What nonsense. The sudden turn-around in stocks had a lot more to do with short-covering... Read article

Absurd to the Insane

Muslim Immigration into the USA… “America: the world’s most powerful nation, bankrupt and armed to the teeth; flooded with diametrically opposing cultures–turning it into a balkanized third world country. Frightening! ” Rolando Our U.S. Congress signs America’s death warrant by the tens of thousands every month. While one in every six American children lives below the poverty line, Congress imports 200,000 immigrants every month that equal 2.4 million legal and illegal immigrants annually... Read article

U.S. Would Control Profits from Iraqi Oil Exports Under Agreement

There’s been no shortage of controversy surrounding what has been termed the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the governments of the United States and Iraq. After battling away for most of the year at what the terms of the agreement should be, the text was at last finalized this month. The terms of the agreement effectively allow the U.S. to continue to control billions of dollars of proceeds from the sale of exported Iraqi oil held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It also contains numerous loopholes... Read article

Growing Home

Perhaps you are too young to remember when childhood was safe; children played outside from the time they were small. We went trick or treating without thinking someone might hurt us. Doors were open in our neighborhoods; we accepted and trusted each other. Children learned most of what mattered at home and in their neighborhoods before ever starting school and old people were sources of amazing stories. I learned about the Pony Express from Mr. Black across the street who had, at 16, been a Pony Express Rider. His eyes... Read article

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