LowerCaseRepublican

Nuke, according to the historical document record, Hirohito was actually brokering a surrender but Truman wouldn't accept Hirohito's requests for a peace pre-nuking but if Truman did then the Japanese army wouldn't have lost millions. But nice dodge, asshole. Nuke, wars have always made the corporate class rich. They get lots of money. I'm not saying it's the only factor. But as the old addage says, money makes the world go round...and corporate interests are always liked by the White House because the corporate whores in the Oval Office are filled with their lobby money. Essentially it's like a hooker turning a trick for the John. 1980s, we actually did give the Islamic Moujhadeen weapons, training and money. And at the time we knew that Islamic fundamentalism was an enemy of the US [think Iran hostage situation] but we went through with the short sighted 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' mentality and it blew up in our face. Even Reagan's son says that a lot of the terrorism problems we are facing now are a direct result of his dad's short sighted policies. But who needs facts when we have knee-jerk anti-communist ranting?

The RIAA has already been nailed for price fixing...found criminally guilty for that. If more money went to the actual ARTIST then I'd be willing to pay those prices, but the fact is that the artist sees almost no money from that high price. It's essentially a racket for the producers to make money hand over fist while screwing the artist. And PS, Brando. I download a song or two of a band I like and then go out and buy that CD. As for prison time, as long as we as an American society don't put guys like Ken Lay in prison for bilking billions of dollars out of Enron then a kid downloading music does not need to go to jail for some mp3s.

This is not a great picture of me. It was taken about 7:30 am in Chicago in June when I was there visiting some friends and I had been up for maybe 8 minutes.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...9&category=1467 Remember, it's not to be smoked.

8,873,052 But the ideas of their social programs can be implemented here.

I guess Moore missed the memo of "Thou shalt listen to the higher courts when they tell your ass to do something."

So no compete contracts are justified? That's insane. At least allow the possibility for companies to bid. But maybe the $400,000 Halliburton gave Cheney influenced the administration's decision. And I'm sure you've seen the reports that Halliburton is charging over double what is necessary per gallon and raking in tons of money. Actually the reports from Hussein Kamal that the Clinton/Bush people used to justify war say in them that Iraq destroyed their weapons of mass destruction and Hussein Kamal was the head of the weapons programs so I think he'd be an authority on it. And Clinton is no innocent person either. Just think back to the firing of the 22 cruise missiles into Iraq that killed 6 innocent people because there was the supposed assassination plot against Dubya's daddy which never materialized and was never true. So f*** Clinton too. The guy is an asshat. The Bush administration lied when May 1 AWOL flightsuit boy landed on the USS Lincoln and said "Mission Accomplished" and declared combat over. Then they changed it to say 'Major Combat' like nobody would remember his original statement. Rove has a plot to get away with it...and in my eyes, they are getting away with it because 50% of the public still believes that Iraq had WMD when we couldn't find any and we still can't. And a CBS report shows that the morning of 9/11 Rummy had actually drawn up plans to invade Iraq. And let's not forget the March 2001 energy conference documents from Cheney's conference that show Iraq's oil fields partitioned to Halliburton, Bechtel, and the companies in there right now. There was no need to invade Iraq. As for what I'd do, I believe exactly what former State Department member William Blum has said on the subject: "If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and impoverished, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce, in all sincerity, to every corner of the world, that America's global interventions have come to an end, and inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the USA but now -- oddly enough -- a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims. There would be more than enough money. One year's military budget of 330 billion dollars is equal to more than $18,000 an hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated." We supported Saddam as well as Pinochet. We gave him the weapons and knew that he gassed his own people. Then we blame him for doing that after giving him the weapons and praising him for doing it when it happened in the 1980s? As for political affiliation, I am a democratic socialist wanting something along the lines of what they do in Sweden with social programs etc. The two parties here in America are so corrupt and so beholden to special interests that donate to their campaigns that the voting public gets f***ed either way. For f***'s sake it was Bush vs Gore in 2000. If that's the best the two parties have then we are f***ing screwed as a country.

I'm really tiring quite quickly of debates with Nuke where he spouts drivel and I have correct him him with facts then the thread dies.

http://news.com.com/2100-1026_3-5106684.html?tag=nefd_top A forthcoming copyright bill backed by key U.S. senators would place file swappers in prison for up to three years if they have a copy of even one prerelease movie in their shared folders. Yeah, we don't need prison cells for violent offenders. We gotta lock away the people that don't want to pay artificially inflated prices for s***ty products and throw away the key! Peter Jaszi, a professor at American University who teaches copyright law, said he is "deeply troubled" by the wording of the draft legislation, because it does not say any actual copyright infringement must take place--only that the file be available in a shared folder, Web site or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site. "It says we don't care if anybody got any of these copies," Jaszi said. "We're going to conclude that at least 10 people did. It relieves the copyright owner of having to prove that any violation of their rights actually happened."

They just tabled it but they BOT is now in an executive meeting for some reason and won't come out. Let's hear it for the spineless BOT. :fyou :finger

The vote goes down 8:30 am CST Thursday. This place may go insane given the outcome.

So, babies born in Japan were responsible for the troops pulling the trigger. Yeah, sure. And nice generalization that they were all fantatically behind it in Germany and Japan. You're talking to a person who had relatives in the Resistance movement inside Germany during WW II. As for the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as imminent, that's a false claim. The supposed nuclear race with the Nazis, thanks to the declassification of government documents, has been proven to be a farce. According to the British Secret Intelligence Agency, by mid 1943, their contacts provided enough evidence that the program did not exist. Leslie Groves' program Alsos during WW II actually helped to prove this claim. Truman's own daughter said that the main reason that they were researching nukes was that it would be an upper hand in foreign policy moves with Russia [not that it would save lives in an invasion] Author Marvin Perry even asserts that most analysts believe that Stalin and Russia was going to send the Red Army towards Japan but this was stopped by Truman because he didn't want them to develop a sphere of influence. And hey on June 15, 1945 the Joint Chiefs of Staff had a meeting and the Joint War Plans Committee had made a report at Truman's request saying an estimate of casualties for an invasion of Japan would be: 40,000 killed 150,000 wounded, 3,500 missing So you can take your statement about millions of lives saved and blow it out your ass because the government didn't even believe that. "I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives." - Dwight Eisenhower shortly after the Japanese surrender And analyst Hanson Baldwin states: "The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position...Such then was the position when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Need we have done it? No one can of course be positive but the answer is almost certainly negative. Even War Secretary Henry Stinson declared openly that the nuke was a diplomatic weapon against the Russians not that they wanted to save American lives. Smedley Butler was actually alive during the war with the Nazis and did do a lot of speaking about how Hitler was evil but that the US was intervening with the wrong intentions [i.e. not peace, democracy etc. but rather economic influence. Wait so Bush is going after Osama? Hmmm...I guess not catching him and having us invade Iraq instead is really catching him. It's been 700+ days and we can't find him...but we did get him a bunch more supporters in Al Qaeda. Yes, the Soviets invaded. It is a short sighted and ill brained foreign policy move to train and give weapons to a group that hates you as much as they hate the Russians. But then again, that's just me and common sense talking. And if we would like for the record, most historians and experts in Russian history actually claim that Russia was never actually communist, it was more of a corrupted dictatorship and not truly communist at all. War is indeed a racket. Just look at the $680,000,000+ Halliburton is making. The world's problems obviously aren't getting solved with blind aggression against a 3rd world dictator whose oil we wanted either. Look at the daily attacks and the spiked increase in membership of Al Qaeda. Your use of straw man arguments is quite proficient, Nuke. You're really good at avoiding topics like the Gulf of Tonkin and how the US government lied to the military to send them off to die but yet you consistently believe everything they say and do despite the government having the track record of being a bunch of lying cocksuckers.

Nuke, he wasn't on the prescription at the time. He had his housekeeper go to a Denny's parking lot and buy him pills ILLEGALLY. Nuke, you said people who use illegal drugs need to be punished. Having prescription drugs with no prescription is not LEGAL. Hence that's ILLEGAL. And if his back was in so much pain, why was he playing so much golf?

Funny I never mentioned Bush anywhere in there in the previous post. And the corporate controlled and genocidal is true and was actually a statement made when Rage Against the Machine was still together in 1999, before Bush took office...but then again, little things like facts never mattered before to you. Tell me what the people at My Lai did to deserve getting massacred. Tell me what the innocent civilians in Dresden did to deserve what they got. Or how about the thousands of innocents at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I made a statement that even Smedley Butler [former USMC Commander] would have believed in that corporate interests have a vast influence in the White House and dictate heavily the foreign policy maneuvers that are made by our government. Nuke, may I interject some FACTS into your drivel? WW II. Bush's granddad, Prescott Bush actually was convicted under the Trading With the Enemy Act. But I guess Dubya using the remnants of Nazi fortunes to run for President is nice and Patriotic. And if we want to get into debates about our wars...let's go. The Munich Post as early as Dec. 9, 1931 had stories about the Final Solution. But the US corporations and governments envied the way that the Nazi busted unions [GM actually praised Hitler for his anti-union stance] And let's not forget the racial separatism that was going on in the military while we allowed the lynchings of blacks that tried to vote, race riots [Zoot Suit riots] etc. in America because minorities wanted civil rights yet we were 'making the world safe for democracy'? That's f***ing laughable. And what did we win in Korea? Oh wait, we just had the senseless killing of thousands of people in something that didn't do anything. Vietnam Nuke? 58,000 body bags and 2 million Vietnamese dead? That's what we got. Funny, you say that people should have free and democratic elections...but if they elect a government you don't like then you automatically have the "right" to go in and overthrow it. How does that work? How dare the Vietnamese throw off the French colonialism and declare their independence! Or a better idea, overthrow the democratically elected government of Chile and install a military dictator that tortures, multilates people and throws them out of helicopters for dissent! Yeah that'll make the world safe for democracy and freedom! And let's not forget the big shining lie from Vietnam: The Gulf of Tonkin incident. How can you blindly follow a nation that f***ing lied so 58,000 Americans could be shipped off to die using an event that NEVER f***ING HAPPENED. Gulf War I: The facts actually are that the Kuwaitis were slant drilling into Iraq and stealing Iraqi oil...but who needs things like facts to get in the way of a war, right? http://dir.salon.com/news/feature/2000/05/...ersh/index.html And let's hear it for US troops slaughtering Iraqis after the war is over. Yeah! That's some good patriotic Americanism of blowing away people after the war is over. Woo! Yeah Wait, seizing a large amount of the oil for a small cabal's control is evil, wrong and unacceptable. You might wanna let Bechtel and Halliburton in on that Nukey. I should introduce you to my friend Paul, Nuke. He served in Gulf War I. He is now the president of the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort because he saw through the US propaganda. Or Joe Miller...served in Vietnam and one of the many Vietnam Veterans Against the War. As for the war on terror: According to all reports, post-Saddam Iraq has made the world LESS safe, not more safe. And we've yet to find one WMD to justify the invasion. And if you said well Saddam was...well that's fine, we can't find him either. And Bush hasn't found bin Laden either. You rail Clinton all the time for failing to do that yet never say a damn word about Bush. And it was Reagan and Bush that f***ing trained and armed bin Laden but yes of course, it's the liberals fault. The violent foreign policy follies in the name of American empire that the Republican regimes of Reagan and Bush had absolutely nothing to do with the culmination of 9/11 The war in Iraq. Yes, it is for oil Nuke. $2.30 a gallon is what Halliburton is charging the US government. Really Nuke...attacks everyday. Bombings...people without power...yeah they sound like that are really well off. And 'stopping him from developing' According to Bush he had them. There are no WMD. f***, even Powell said the morning of the UN speech that the speech Bush and Blair wanted him to read was "bulls***" [his quote] Pre-emptive war smacks waaaaay too much of labensraum to me. But then again, that's because it is labensraum. Nuke the fact that you hold up the gun while the special interests and the corporate investers and lobbyists and PACs dictate foreign policy as to where you go is fine. You can be in the military. I am saying don't come off and justify all these wars as good and just because they f***ing weren't then, aren't now and never will be. People got used and abused and paid the ultimate price so some f***ing industrialist scumf***s could get richer. You should really read 'War is a Racket' Nuke. Hell you should just read any book. And that book is by a 33 year Marine vet. You may enjoy it.

He claims that an unsuccessful surgery performed on his spine in the mid-90s left him in dire back pain and that he opted to treat this pain with prescription medication. Despite suffering back pain so severe that it required tremendous doses of medication, Limbaugh happily bragged about his many golfing trips to his radio constituency. And buying pills in a Denny's parking lot isn't exactly a legal pharmacy. "Too many whites are getting away with drug use. Find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them, and send them up the river." -- Rush Limbaugh Do you think he regrets saying this now? Probably not. In his defense of himself, he was quick to point out that he was addicted to "prescription" medication, as though that somehow makes it better, which, considering that it wasn't HIS prescription, it doesn't. here's a misperception out there that being addicted to pharmaceuticals is somehow less immoral or less illegal than being addicted to "street drugs." Kind of like how robbing your employees' 401K plan is a "classier" crime than robbing a 7-11. But you know what? They are both robbery. And sending your housekeeper out to make illegal buys of prescription medication is still a crime. But in case you, like Rush, believe that the illegal pharmaceutical trade is somehow cleaner and more sanitized than other drugs, here's a few things that the DEA has to say about OxyContin (the pills Rush was popping). This is all from their own website -- just put in OxyContin in their search engine if you want to see for yourself. "With the abuse of OxyContin on the rise, law enforcement authorities throughout the United States are reporting an increase in the number of burglaries, thefts, and robberies of pharmacies and residences. According to authorities, homes are being robbed and individuals are being targeted for their supplies of OxyContin. In some pharmacy thefts, only OxyContin is stolen." "Illicit OxyContin distribution is not limited to localized distributors as it also includes polydrug trafficking organizations. In the northeastern United States, a gang operating in southern Maine and New Hampshire obtained controlled substances, primarily OxyContin, using forged, stolen, and altered prescriptions. The drugs were illegally obtained from local pharmacies using cash and insurance cards. Gang members redistributed the drugs throughout areas in the Northeast." "On December 9, 2001, nine armed individuals wearing masks stole over 30,000 bottles of OxyContin from a pharmaceutical distributor in Mexico City. Each bottle contained 30 tablets of the 20-mg dose." "In Portland, two armed men broke into an apartment and stole the tenant's legitimate supply of OxyContin. In the town of Millinocket, intruders broke into an elderly couple's home to steal their supply of OxyContin. The intruders fled without the OxyContin after the couple put up a struggle." "On January 7, 2002, the Cliff House Nursing Home in Winthrop was robbed by 2 armed men who held 6 nurses and 40 patients at gunpoint while demanding all of their OxyContin." And here's a few choice words from Asa Hutchinson, DEA Administrator: "OxyContin® has become the number one prescribed Schedule II narcotic in the United States. Increasing abuse of OxyContin® has led to an increase of associated criminal activity." "In the FY 2003 President's Budget, DEA is requesting $24,616,000 and 133 positions to strengthen its enforcement capabilities to prevent, detect, and investigate the diversion of controlled substances, particularly OxyContin®." "When, in a 6-month period, the Boston area experienced 36 robberies of pharmacies involving the forcible acquisition of stocked OxyContin supplies, our alarm increases." Well, well, well... So the abuse of OxyContin leads to an increase in criminal activity, huh? Thanks for the extra crime, Rush! Jeez, the theft of 30,000 bottles in Mexico City might have been for Rush ALONE, considering the rate he was chewing these things at. Maybe soon we'll see Rush in a series of commercials . . . I can just picture it now: "I helped hold up an elderly couple." "I helped gangs make money." "I committed the armed robbery of a pharmaceutical distributor." "I held up a nursing home at gunpoint." "I'm Rush Limbaugh and my OxyContin addiction helped support terrorism." As much as I despise Rush, however, I agree that he clearly has an addiction, and should be treated as such. And I'll even forgive him for saying all drug users should be locked up -- as long as he learns a lesson here and stops advocating throwing people in jail for the very crimes he is committing. An addiction is a medical problem, and not one that will be solved by locking a person in a cell. We all know that we should only lock people up for SERIOUS crimes, like say... selling bongs over the internet. Craig Schott Redlands, CA A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

I congratulate him on getting over his addiction but shouldn't he have to go through the harsh prison sentences etc. etc. etc. that he endorses on people who do drugs?

They keep the name 'Fighting Illini' but we eliminate everything regarding Chief Illiniwek

Rick Santorum is just about as big, if not a bigger douchebag than Tom 'Pansycrat' Daschle. Daschle is a f***ing moron. But on the point that Bush is trying a 'jobless recovery' is pretty funny. And a bunch of the corporations that got tax cuts followed that up by laying off workers. Yeah, that tasty tax cut. :finger

Here's the official wording of the resolution "Whereas, Chief Illiniwek has been a treasured symbol of the Urbana-Champaign campus since the inception of Chief Illiniwek in 1926; Whereas, many students have performed well and ably in the role of Chief Illiniwek; Whereas, Chief Illiniwek has been intended as a representation of the indigenous people who gave their name to this State and its Flagship University; Whereas, Chief Illiniwek has represented the dignity, strength, intelligence, and grace to which Illinois athletic teams have aspired; Whereas, The native Illinois people, the Peoria, requested by resolution on April 20, 2000, that the University discontinue the Chief Illiniwek tradition; Whereas, The continuation of the controversy centering on Chief Illiniwek would undermine the very unity of the Illini family that the symbol fostered so well for so long; and Whereas, The controversy also diverts critical attention and resources away from the core missions of teaching, research, service, and economic development; now, therefore, be it Resolved, That Chief Illiniwek be honorably retired at a time and in a manner to be determined by the Urbana-Champaign campus in consultation with faculty, students, staff, alumni, and other members of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign family, and with concurrence of the Board of Trustees; Resolved, That the University discontinue its use of the graphic image and likewise discourage others' use of that image; and Resolved, That at the same time we, the Board of Trustees, declare our full support for the name Fighting Illini for the athletic teams at the Urbana-Champaign campus. This is a part of our heritage. We take pride in the association that the University has through this name with the people of Illinois."

I want to write a book "Bring me the head of Antonin Scalia"

LOL! It's sort of weird that damn near nobody responded to the idea of teaching legitimate sexual education courses in schools and that may cut down on abortions.

The Anti-Chief movement on the UIUC campus was started by a Native American woman Charlene Teters and then picked up by the Progressive Resource/Action Cooperative. She makes appearances here to assist in the movement too from time to time because she has moved A native of Washington state, Teters moved with her family from Santa Fe. NM, to Champaign-Urbana, IL, to enroll as a graduate student in the University of Illinois' Department of Art. In 1988, she took her two children to the school's Fighting Illini basketball game. Just as it has been occurring for over 63 years, a student dressed as the team's mascot, the fictitious Chief Illiniwek, leapt and twirled in what was billed at the time as an authentic dance, as fans in mock war paint yelled war chants from the stands. Teters and her children cringed in their seats. "I saw my daughter try to become invisible. My son tried to laugh,". "Our people paid with their very lives to keep what little we have left.. .and that is what I am protecting. At home, we are taught to respect eagle feathers, respect the Chiefs, respect that paint is sacred, that dance is something sacred to us," Teters explains. "If you've never been taught to respect these things, it might not bother you, but if you've grown up in the community, where those things have meaning, it's going to have that impact on you."

November 11, is the anniversary of the Armistice which was signed in the Forest of Compiegne by the Allies and the Germans in 1918, ending World War I, after four years of conflict. At 5 A.M. on Monday, November 11, 1918 the Germans signed the Armistice, an order was issued for all firing to cease; so the hostilities of the First World War ended. This day began with the laying down of arms, blowing of whistles, impromptu parades, closing of places of business. All over the globe there were many demonstrations; no doubt the world has never before witnessed such rejoicing. Let's not forget that the origins of the celebration was that it was a peace holiday to celebrate 'the war to end all wars'. Kind of odd that we're celebrating a peace holiday during a time of militarism. I would say that the things our corporate controlled government has done are at best shameful and at worst genocidal but there's an incredible and permanent culture of resistance in the country that I'm very proud to be a part of. It's not the tradition of slave owning Founding Fathers, it's the tradition of the Frederick Douglasses, the Underground Railroads, the Chief Josephs, the Joe Hills, and the Huey P. Newtons. There's so much to be proud of when you're American that's hidden from you. The incredible courage and bravery of the union organizers in the late 1800s and early 1900s -- that's amazing. People get tricked into going overseas and fighting Uncle Sam's Wall Street wars, but these are people who knew what they were fighting for here at home. I think that is so much more courageous and brave. --Tom Morello

Happy Armistice Day everybody.

I never said it was okay to use the Fighting Irish. I think schools that have to have an ethnic mascot are pretty damn uncreative. http://www2.uiuc.edu/ro/lincoln/ Students for Drinkin Lincoln, see people can be creative with mascots The Irish were denied work. I know a lot of the hardships that they went through but America never decimated over half their population with disease on purpose. What the Irish went through was terrible with the xenophobic movements of the Know-Nothing party and the severe anti-Catholic sentiment in America is indeed horrible but it does not compare to the mass slaughtering of a people.