What does the occupation movement want?

The people protesting today want justice,
peace, freedom, liberty, health care, jobs,
and education.  And as Americans, they
have a right to speak out about the economic
emergencies facing this nation. 

Bailing out billionaire bankers who screwed
up our economy does not make any sense. 
If you think it does, you are brainwashed.

The occupy movement people and someone
to apply the rule of law and stop enforcing
corporate occupations with US troops.

Today's economic problems stem from the
largest transfer of funds in the history of
the planet. This occurred during the Bush years... 
And you are one of the 99& who got screwed
royally by these right wing thugs.

The occupation movement organizers 
have asked that we invest in American
roads, bridges, libraries, schools, hospitals,
and ports instead of investing in corporate welfare,
war profiteering, tax breaks for billionaires, and the misuse
of our troops to enforce corporate exploitation abroad.

When we throw the bums out and put in real leadership,
we will end the wars, prosecute the war profiteers, and spend
the savings and reparations on schools, parks, libraries, hospitals,
roads, bridges, seaports, airports, railroads, ships, space exploration,
scientific research, and other programs which provide for the good
of everyday people. 

And you, as always, will benefit from programs which build bridges
to a more prosperous, peaceful, and secure tomorrow. 

Organize for Issues!

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Has the Republican Party Become a Religion?

If the GOP is a religion
(I do not argue the premise),
then Obama is a convert.

The only rationale for voting for Obama
is the "lesser of evils" theory. But we
have evidence to contradict this notion.
The Obama presidency has been more
dangerous than the George W. Bush's legacy.
No hope or change. More war,
job losses, foreclosures, unemployment,
skyrocketing health care costs, etc.

Obama is a dyed in the wool, right wing Republican of the most
dangerous sort.  He talks the Democratic talk so he can walk the
Republican walk. And he walks on: crushing peace, health care,
effective schools, intact infrastructure, environmental
responsibility, and progress beneath his feet. And along with these...
we lose hopes, dreams, and aspirations he does not share.

Obama embraces wars of choice, executions of prisoners,
rendering Americans, wiretapping citizens, suspending habeas
corpus, taking nonprofit health care off the table, and virtually
every other item on the right wing agenda.

The choice between Eisenhower and Stephenson... did represent
two prudent, principled, and moderate traditions. But comparing
Obama to either is a false choice. Obama most closely resembles
George W. Bush. He believes in unrestrained executive power,
misusing our military to enforce corporate ambitions abroad, and
suspension or dismissal of constitutional protections,
habeas corpus, & basic civil rights.

He is an absolutely dangerous man. Even George W. Bush did
not refer to calculated assassinations in contradiction of US civil,
constitutional, and international law as "justice." But Cheney
would be on board.

We must find a more prudent and progressive vehicle in our
attempt to take back this nation. A second term for Obama
will guarantee four more years of increasing militancy, dilutions
of personal freedom, and corporate control of our government,
military resources, and economic future. We cannot afford
another four years of Bush family rule. We are already bankrupt.
We have zero credibility. Our infrastructure is crumbling, health
care costs continue to skyrocket, home foreclosures are increasing,
our schools are failing, and wars of choice sap our economic and
military strength while contradicting our most basic values.

Now is no time for compromise. Wishful thinking will not
transform the failed Obama presidency. Obama is a zealot, and his
recklessness and pure religious ideology of hellfire, brimstone,
and vengeance... will never allow pragmatism, civility or reason.
This is why he talks the talk and walks in the opposite direction.
His temperment and tone allow him a pretense of civility, while
he engineers a devastating corporate takeover which continues to
destroy this nation. If he defeats the Republicons next year, the
war is over. Everyday people will have lost and corporate cons
will be securely in control for generations to come.

We need real change and true courage to counter the corporate
con game. There is too much on the line to compromise with
corruption, carnage, and corporatism, We must choose peace,
freedom, and jobs with justice. These are not on Obama's agenda.
He has made this abundantly clear. We have extended our war-
based economy, lost more freedom, our jobs continue to move
overseas, and while we lose our homes and our children lose
their future, our wages continue to decline.

If you want to guarantee this sordid decline, campaign for
Obama. He will deliver war, corporate hegemony, foreclosures,
unemployment, and a perverse form of indentured servitude...
while China, India, the European block, and transnational
economic cartels make us the largest third-world nation
on the planet.

We must locate and support a viable presidential candidate.
Register as a Democrat for the primaries, and afterwards
re-register as Working Families Party or some other alternative
to the corporate con game. At least this tactic keeps real issue
on the table and in the debates... Democrats Rep. Alan Grayson
(D-FL), Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), and Bernie Sanders (D-Vt)
(who refuses to run) are potential candidates who "would be far
and away a better choice than than President Obama." And other
candidates may emerge:

Keith Olbermannk, Al Franken, Sheryl Sandberg, Elizabeth
Warren, Thom Hartmann, Barbara Lee, Raul Grijalva, Lynn
Woolsey, Joe Sestak, Dennis Kucinich, Rachel Maddow,
Robert F.Kennedy Jr., Bill Moyers...  Any other ideas?

Identify the Enemy

We are now in six wars of choice to support corporate
ambitions abroad while Americans lose jobs, homes,
income, and hope.  The corporate parties are not responding
to demands for peace, jobs with justice, and rebuilding
infrastructure for a better tomorrow.  Since these clueless
legislators don't get it, 2012 will be a watershed election. 
Republicons and Demagogues have overplayed their hands. 

Corporatists in congress and the White house will be shown
the door. Everyday people intend to take back this nation. 
The delusions of the mean right wing spin machine will no
longer carry the day or deliver the votes.  And Democrats who
are willing to compromise ideas and ideals... are going to find
themselves without a shred of support.

Unrestricted Corporatism is our enemy.  We fought the good
fight against the military industrial complex after Eisenhower
warned us about the danger.  But they won.  We have to face
what has happened to America.  We are a divided nation.  All
of us know people who were foolish enough to vote for extremists
on the right. And these people are not, for the most part, bad,
or hateful people. What they are is afraid. They are afraid of
terrorists, gays, liberals, poverty, losing their jobs, change, and
a laundry list of bogeymen, ghouls, ghosts, and goblins. Progressives
and liberals are afraid for some of the same reasons, and also afraid
of big government, wiretapping, wards of choice, deteriorating
infrastructure, unending wars, bombs, corruption, and body bags.

Most everyday people just want to live their lives, according to
their own choices, and be left alone.  But more often than not, we
are forced to listen to someone else's standard being forced upon us.

Corporate media sells us Viagra, tells us Social Security is in danger,
pontificates about Muslim threats, and tells us to be very afraid. 
Transnational economic cartels move decent jobs overseas while
simultaneously accepting corporate welfare supplied by middle
class Americans. Large insurance cartels threaten to take our homes
when we cannot pay our medical bills.  And the Fortune 500
companies that deliver our "news," produce papers and magazines
which more closely resemble gossip rags than actual journalism.

And regardless of who we vote for, our government is run according
to the whims of corporate cartels.  People have lost control of our
government and of their own lives, fortunes, and future.  While we
lose our homes and send our kids to failing schools, too many of us
have turned on one another instead of facing the real enemy.

The people have lost control and they are afraid. There is a need
to blame someone. We as a people have turned on each other and
instead need to realize who the enemy really is.

The enemy is not capitalism, socialism, fascism, or communism....
The enemy is unrestrained and unregulated corporatism.
This trumps everything:  family, nation, religious beliefs,
and truth.

It's time we put hate aside, stop calling each other names
(left and right), and focus on the real enemy.
We can stand together, in courage,
and make a difference. 

Are broke or broken, or can be fight back!

The reason we are in debt is because speculators, unimpeded by meaningful 
regulation, destroyed our economic system... because they could.  And started
crippling wars of choice, because they chose to.    

And now, instead of ending corporate adventurism abroad, we talk about cutting
basic human services at home.  Absolute nonsense.  Not a statement of policy
but a retreat to delusion.  A bald-faced lie.

The debt or its ceiling is beside the point.  We must end regressive corporate welfare, 
reinvest in America, and remove lifetime congressional welfare workers.  

When we end the war and restore congressional retirement benefits to 
the Social Security Trust Fund from whence they came, we will be on 
the way to becoming solvent. There is no good reason for public servants 
to give themselves raises and untenable benefits extending beyond their 
time in service. Simple extortion.  They need pay cuts and chill pills.  

As we rebuild the trust fund we can invest in job creation at home, 
rebuilding our infrastructure instead of paying corporate contractors
to exploit taxpayers at home and those they misuse our forces to 
occupy and expliot abroad. 

The Chickens have come home to roost.  And it has little to do 
with debt-ceiling rhetoric and everything to do with the bottom line.

We deserve justice, integrity, and competence. 
It is time we demanded accountability and reparations.
We are not broke or broken.  We are being robbed.  
It is time to restore the rule of law. 

tmf

On Flogging, Beating, Torture, Rape, Murder & other crimes and perversions.

Dear Mr. Moskos,
History has lessons for us. Violence begets violence. Murdering people
has never stopped people from murdering people. Beating people will 
not stop people from beating people. Abrahamic traditions agree the 
greatest commandment is love. Loving your neighbor as you would 
be loved, is the sum of wisdom. There is no defense for rape, torture,
brutality, or murder. Courage is the cure for fear, and faith is the bridge 
to freedom. A sad and cowardly surrender to violence, war, hatred 
and cruelty... is foolish, imprudent, criminal behavior which must 
not be condoned, ignored, or embraced. We can do better. 

Torture and brutality are slippery slopes toward rape, murder, 
perversity, and chaos. Fortunately, most people understand the 
difference between crude violence and creative reconciliation. 
We can all get along without wallowing in the gutter with criminals. 
Judicial homicide and torture are illegal, immoral, and ineffective. 
This is why all civilized nations have rejected capital 
punishment and torture. Perhaps if we join them we can 
all get along and build bridges to a better tomorrow. 


Those who encourage violence are part of the problem. 
If we want creative social change and a better future for 
our children, we will work together for peace, justice, 
and freedom.  


Values, principles, and truth matter. Those who embrace 
violence are wrestling with their own personal demons 
in a match they  are destined to lose. With love, we can 
make a difference. And our future may hang in the balance. 
When we choose to ignore history, we are doomed to repeat it. 

love always, Tim

Timothy Martin Flangan, editor of The Portland Alliance, 
"Speaking Truth to Power for 30 Years."
http://www.theportlandalliance... / 
Contact: editor@theportlandalliance.org
Box 14162, Portland, Oregon 97293-0162
Phone: (503)-327-8377 Fax: (503)-327-8949 
http://theissueslist.blogspot.... 
https://sites.google.com/site/...

What "The Left" Thinks About Oil Prices...

1. The oil companies set the prices to make as much as they can,
     regardless of what that may cost this nation.
2. Congress gets paid off and does not regulate the oil company
     behavior. (Like forcing them to pay taxes.)
3. The president can either use the bully pulpit to influence pricing
      or not.  Mostly not.
4. It is all about greed. The war in Iraq was all about oil. Libya is
     being bombed because they have lots of oil and are a weak
     nation we can easily attack, invade, occupy, and exploit. Since
     domestic oil companies are extracting a US taxpayer asset,
     FOR NOTHING, they are robbing us blind. They should be
     paying their share of our tax burden. (aka they should pay for
     the oil they steal and share the profits they make.)  If they did,
     we would not be closing schools, laying off police, and
     watching our infrastructure deteriorate beyond repair...

                  ...Oil is a pretty slippery subject.

Right Wing Claims To Care About US Troops

But progressive Americans and US Peace Movement members
want to secure the peace rather than waste American lives in
ill-advised corporate invasions and occupations overseas.

Anyone who thinks sending our military to die for Fortune 500
adventurism abroad has anything to do with caring about
military personnel...  has a problem with basic logic. Dick and
George lied us into a war which has cost millions of lives.  

This has been a disaster for everyone.  Obama, the closet
Republican, perpetuates this error.

But history speaks:  "In 1944, Democratic President
Franklin Roosevelt enacted the historic G.I. Bill,
initiating the Democrats’ longstanding commitment
to providing America’s veterans access to higher
education and the promise of success as a civilian
—a commitment that remains strong today."

The left wing cares about people first.
For the right wing mean extreme...

profits trump people.

We can do better.

In response to the conversation on Karylee's wall!

• Timothy Martin Flanagan Obama is a Republican... He was a better choice than McCain and Palin... but not by much. Hopefully we can find an actual progressive to run. Obama's embrace of the death penalty, the Bush agenda, wiretapping, and rendering Americans for torture, rape, and murder overseas... is only the short list of why we need someone on our side for a change...

  Saturday at 3:56pm ·
• |

  Doug Stanley

  Timothy. While I respect your right to your opinion, you frighten me. I sincerely hope, for the sake of the future of this country, that a candidate who embraces the things you espouse is never successful in attaining elective office. Esp...ecially as President of the United States.
  I'm pleased that you recognize that Obama was and is not the Messiah he was thought to be, and I agree that the selection of Sarah Palin was a horrible choice. However I also hope that this run at socialism is over. I do appreciate the dialogue, and thank Karylee for allowing it on her wall. God bless America.

Tim Wrote:  I did not "espouse" any of the sad realities which now exist.  I only pointed them out. I think that having a president who embraces the Bush agenda, wiretapping, and rendering Americans is frightening as well.  But what would be more frightening is to ignore the facts.

The linguistic acrobatics which are necessary to call Obama a "socialist" are ludicrous. Just more spin from the mean machine.   However, your claim that the Bush agenda is tantamount to socialism may, at some levels, be historically accurate.  Hitler considered himself a socialist. And the claim that we have a right to attack anyone, anywhere, anytime, for any reason... seems relatively Un-American to me. As for Obama... while his embrace of wars of choice is frightening... this stance has more to do with corporate fascism than socialism.  We are on a slippery slope...

Basically Obama's surrrender to the right wing does not bode well for everyday people.  Hopefully we will find someone to secure the peace, fix our schools, and get insurance companies off the table and out of our pockets. We need a Dept. of peace instead of endless war. And cutting social services to fund tax breaks for billionaires is insane.  We should properly care for our elderly, students, children, veterans,
and other Americans who have lost jobs, homes, and health.

We need universal nonprofit healthcare like the rest of the planet... functioning schools, intact infrastructure, constitutional integrity, and a return to the rule of law.  Today's progressives, in many ways, are the new conservatives.  We would conserve values, laws, the environment, and the constitution. Who could argue with this?  Healthy educated employed citizens can build a better tomorrow.

The mean right wing spin machine's vision of endless corporate occupations on the taxpayer dime is nonsense.  And it is unfortunate that Obama has surrendered to this view.  Most Americans have no idea what they have lost.  Legalizaed rendering, wiretapping, wars of choice, and the suspension of habeas corpus has set this nation back 400 years.  Congress is most to blame.  They suspended habeas corpus and made torture legal.  Their betrayal of the values my father defended in World Ware Two is a tragedy.  In my view.

But...  opinions vary...  And thanks Karylee for the space for the preceding conversation. Any who have opinions on these matters could send a letter to editor@theportlandalliance.org.... for 20 thousand readers!
http://www.theportlandalliance.org

Islamophobia: the efficacy of hate

Anyone
who calls
an entire
religion evil...
is sick.



Abrahamic
traditions
(Judaism,
Christianity,
& Islam)
have each
inspired a
variety of
nutcases
and wackos
who have
chosen to commit unfathomable atrocities.


But the idiotic and sociopathic behaviors
of individuals who claim one religion or
another... in no way provides reason to
indict all Muslims, Christians, and Jews
who share the same God and
spiritual foundations.

Abrahamic tradition holds that the greatest
force is love. The faith, hope, and courage
of these faithful has moved mountains
and ended wars.

Devout Christian, Muslim, and Jewish
people understand and agree that others
should treated with the same compassion
and kindness which all of us would hope
to receive.

Fortunately, the sane among us can keep
these things in perspective while
ignorant and hateful fear-mongers
recklessly spew violence and vitriol.