LowerCaseRepublican

The main usage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was to bust up union meetings, union protests, etc. The government could have used it to nail monopoly organizations but refused to use it that way when it was first created. Not everybody was involved with slavery but there is something to be said for the hypocricy of "slaveowners who wanted to be free". And the Lincoln war to end slavery, he even says in his own words [i've had to read a lot of his primary source stuff for my classes] he states that the goal of the war is simply preserving the union and if he could do that without ending slavery he would do that. The main reason he ended slavery was the economic impact it would have on the South and it could also get the North more soldiers. I can say that we were wrong in using short sighted foreign policy. With the declassified documents that the US government has released, Stalin's "troublemaking in the region" was that he was providing an example of capital accumulation in one generation and caused them to rise to the 2nd world instead of the 3rd world. With the capitalist reforms, it has again become a 3rd world nation for the most part. [Or says Noam Chomsky's analysis of the declassified documents that he goes into great detail with] We knew that Osama was a religious fanatic that hated all that were not fundamentalist Muslims. But the simple plan of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" blewback and kicked our ass. Hell, we even supplied the gas that he used to kill the Kurds [saddam] and then we did business with him AFTER that event in 1988. The Iranian hostage situation as well. There is a lot of evidence showing that the hostage situation...Bush was still heavily involved in CIA activities and even part of the government of Iran has come forward and said that the US gave them weapons as long as they kept the hostages hostage through the election. [You ever find it funny why they were released on the night of Reagan's inauguration?] This can be verified by eyewitness testimony at the time that said the Iranian diplomats were in the same hotel with Bush and other members of the CIA and the testimony of Iranians that Bush and the CIA armed the Iranian military. My social justice teacher from high school has a lot more info on this and I'd get in contact with him, but he is in Ireland right now. Canada does have a large bureaucracy but it is better than workfare that we have and HMO's will turn people away from surgeries because it is "cost effective" to keep costs down. Some hospitals do offer care but there is a definite problem when 44 million are without any health care in the "world's only superpower".

The RIAA fails to mention that independent bands whose music can also be found online too...their sales are INCREASING. They fail to mention that almost all the new CD's are like St. Anger in that they suck major balls. The RIAA doesn't want to make CD's affordable. After all, they were nailed for price fixing and then wanna go after kids who don't want to pay artificially high prices. :fyou The RIAA also doesn't want to focus on the fact that the music is less than quality and hence less CD's are being purchased. mp3 downloading is not a bane of the industry. If kids really like what they hear and like the band so much, they will support the band. I know I first heard a lot of bands because of mp3 and then purchased their CD's because I liked what I heard. And as Gash so aptly put before.... :fyou RIAA

Firstly 1549, I apologize for my harsh language. I've had an intense personal situation going on and part of it boiled over into other things. Onto the ACLU part. This country would be vastly different if there were no advances by the ACLU. While not a perfect organization [no organization is], it does do things that are beneficial for all. I dislike our government because we are a nation that prides itself on democracy and human rights while nearly all of our history shows the opposite. ie slavery, Jim Crow, military interventions in Central and South America [and the rest of the world] etc. etc. I like the values that America is supposed to stand for. I dislike, however, how administrations have and continue subvert human rights. I think it is sickening and pathetic that Indonesian workers had to make Nike shoes just to increase Nike's profits. Not to mention the fact that they pulled a grant to a North Carolina school because they demanded Nike stop using sweatshops. Hell, little known fact that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was originally meant to bust up labor unions and not monopolistic corporations. I don't turn my cheek to the thousands of civilians killed in Iraq. I've been part of various campaigns to get them medicine, food, etc. and been part of numerous efforts to stop the occupation of Iraq and the needless killing by our troops of Iraqi civilians. And I don't turn a blind eye to the thousands tortured in Iraq. As many on the left may not like, I think Bush could have made a much better case for war if he accentuated the humanitarian issues that involved Saddam and the destruction of human rights. I don't think that Rumsfeld or Cheney could personally comment on the evil that is Saddam because they both PERSONALLY did business with him after the gassing of the Kurds in 1988. And Bush's daddy did help to sell weapons to Iraq that they used to oppress their own people. I have video of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam if you don't believe me. There were a lot of vying interests, many of them being that Cheney and Co. had partitioned Iraq into corporate sectors for US multinationals in March 2001 [can be seen on www.judicialwatch.org] and the no competition contracts given to Halliburton. The UN could have gotten behind, in my eyes, a more humanitarian based action rather than the WMD crap that we were all fed. I believe Karl Rove did a masterpiece in spin because most people don't care what goes on to people in the other half of the world, but a helluva lot of people would be scared of possible WMD that may or may not strike us. Granted many of the illegalities would still apply to the war, the US would have garnered more support instead of relying on uranium lies, WMD lies, Iraq involved with 9/11 lies, et al. Much of our nation's wealth was built on the backs of slaves then the backs of the urban poor when early union busting corporations smashed through labor. Take a look at the various labor strikes, the lives of Eugene V. Debs, Mother Jones, etc. These people undertook grassroots efforts to stop worker exploitation, get them weekends off, etc. They had to FIGHT the system that was in place in order to better it for all people involved. I know most people enjoy the typical 40 hour work week and weekends that were braught to us by labor unions. Our system is getting progressively better but it has been a long struggle to garner changes from the society unwilling to change. I mean, for example, look at the struggles of ending Jim Crow laws in this country. But there are still lots of changes to be made to the system. NAFTA moving jobs to Mexico and out of the US so corporations can get more profits and lose the labor restrictions etc. This is a major problem. Over 200,000 jobs have been lost in America. We have 40 million who cannot even get medical treatment for their ailments. We have HMO's that don't allow for people to have surgeries they need to stay alive etc. Our system is better than what we had in the past, but it can use MANY improvements and it is up to us, as the self proclaimed "world's only superpower", to constantly be on the watch for corporations and groups that subvert human rights and alleviate the suffering of those throughout the world without violence by simply weilding our vast economic strength. I have grown up in a lower middle class family with the luck of having some successful grandparents that valued my education. [Almost all the money for my college comes from a grant my grandfather had set up for me] And our system is not the best the world has seen. For example, Canada has proportionally almost as many gun owners etc. but there is no gun violence. Their medical system, *gasp* people can actually get to see doctors even if they don't have the money to pay and they actually like helping people that happen to need welfare. For the US to claim that we are the world's only superpower and have so many problems with our own infrastructure makes our claim much less valid. It is a constant struggle to better ourselves. We should never settle for the status quo when we can improve so much more. I'd like to see this country where people could actually get health care and every person was taken care of so we had 0 homeless people living in boxes on the street...and *gasp* kids actually get an adequate education in every school district. And remember, though we have a few differences in opinions, we can still agree that :sosasucks and :fthecubs

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...a_military_dc_1 The Argentine President is allowing the extradition of the main players in the "Dirty War" that happened from 1976-1983 in which 30000+ leftist dissidents against the US installed military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet were murdered. It's too bad that the sonofab**** Pinochet can't be imprisoned long enough for his crimes.

CW, stop it! You're thinking....and when you do that...the terrorists have truly won. There was a handful of guys in there with ak-47s...the fact that anybody believes it was a firefight between 4 people and the world's largest superpower is laughable.

The CIA had nothing to do with the 9/11 intelligence nor did the British "intelligence" [well as much intel as you can gather from a 12 year old school report ] NORAD had told Bush that the plane was off course and had been determined to be hijacked by the airline and NORAD. This was after the 2 WTC planes hit in the timeline It's apples and oranges comparing the two as equal intelligence sources. And my commentary like the "Clinton's cock was what got us in trouble" etc. wasn't aimed at you personally. It's more to the people on this board that believe it was all Clinton's fault that 9/11 happened and sweet little innocent Bush had nothing to do with it. You know, the one's that tow the Sean Hannity conservative party line and never deviate from it, then blame others for following propaganda. Now the argument can be made that if American planes and airline industry was like that of El Al airlines, 9/11 may not have happened. Their planes are built with reinforced cabin doors that only open from the inside, they are built to withstand a suitcase altitude bomb, etc. They have long waits to screen luggage and people but hey, they get you there in one piece. The lax attitudes of the security people at our airlines also played a part in the ease that the hijackers were able to get the weapons aboard the plane. There is a lot of information that shows that Bush and Co. could have done SOMETHING to prevent some of the death and destruction on that day especially the one in PA and the Pentagon...I just hope that Lee Hamilton doesn't cave like a prison b****.

University of Illinois @ Champaign Urbana.

Bush "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." ---Funny, 1549, I haven't seen ONE WMD found yet. Bush "Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa." ---Lie! Tenet actually told them that the information was "dubious" yet Bush and Condie claim that from October to January, they never got a chance to read the memo. Bush "Iraq was involved with Al Qaeda" ---Despite the fact that Osama sent out a tape calling Saddam an infidel amongst other insults, the secular state of Iraq oppresses fundamentalist Muslims. And the Atta in Iraq thing was found to be a hoax as well. Bush "Iraq was involved with 9/11" ---He mentioned 9/11 and Iraq in every other goddamned sentence. A group of Saudi Arabians...training in Germany and the United States attack the US with planes...and by that I mean....WE WERE ATTACKED BY IRAQ! He even tried to prove it by fabricating that Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. Bush "Powell's speech was damning." ---This is the same speech that in a meeting the morning of, Powell was quoted in various new services as saying "I'm not reading this. This is bulls***." It was also lifted from graduate school work done in the US in 1991. Bush and Co. however didn't see any problem in using the lies of the Brits to further the cause even though they knew them to be lies. So, 1549....do me a favor and blow it our your ass you sanctimonious ivory tower sitting f***. Bush lied and our soldiers died. Plain and simple. And the ACLU? When the f*** did you get the fact that I am 110% behind everything they do? What have you been smoking??? I think some of what the ACLU does is good...like fighting the fact that there are closed tribunals for people that may or may not be terrorists, the PATRIOT Act f***ing with our civil liberties, the fact that people are being arrested without charges, searches without warrants etc. However, I do not agree with them all the time and am not even a member of the ACLU. Equality is the key to a successful America. We never have been, nor are we, nor will we probably ever will be equal. Hell, America was founded on slavery! And equality of all people...that sort of sounds like somebody is ascribing to communism to me.

Not saying that it was definite murder, but I do find it coincidental that as soon as Blair starts coming under heavy fire from the BBC with the help of their source [Kelly] about the "dubious" WMD evidence, Kelly winds up dead. It is a very suspicious death. The Rethuglicans jumped all over Vince Foster's demise and said that he was murdered. Turnabout is fair play...and hell, both of them may have been "coaxed" into suicide. We'll never really know most likely.

There are tons of timelines of what happened on 9/11. Here is one. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timelin...n/dayof911.html There are plenty of sources backing up what they have to say, CK.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A...anguage=printer

SS2k3 There was a report written called "Terrorism 2000" before 9/11 put together by a large group of law enforcement agencies and in this report it states that it is likely that planes will be used as bombs at national landmarks. Cheney never read the report. But I forgot, it was Clinton's cock that got us into all this trouble. Also, the morning of the event. Bush was told by NORAD that the planes had been hijacked. He told F-16's to stand down and LET THE TERRORIST CRASH INTO THE PENTAGON. He ultimately let a few fly but made them fly from the furthest base so there was no chance of them stopping it. It was not intelligence that Bush was using. He had clearly defined FACT that the planes were hijacked. Chimpy McCokeAddict simply didn't do anything about it. There was no CIA involvement the morning of 9/11. NORAD had told Chimpy that the planes were hijacked and Chimpy didn't do anything to stop Al Qaeda. Don't blame that on anybody else than Bush. He could have saved the lives of the people in the Pentagon that died but he didn't. It may help if you check out a chronology of the day's events and see the time schedule of when NORAD gave Bush the facts and he refused to act. Also, the CIA told Bush BEFORE the State of the Union that he should not rely on the uranium claim because there was not much backing it up. But Chimpy had it tossed in. Again, Bush doesn't have to take responsibility for his actions and he makes Tenet jump on the grenade. If you look at the Cheney energy commission papers that were just opened, the "f*** Saddam, we're taking him out" and the comments that Wolfowitz made that "WMD were just the cause that we could mobilize the most support around" as the reasoning for war in Iraq then that is the administration lying to us plain and simple. I guess it's just coincidental that Halliburton gets a huge no competition oil contract right after and we can't find WMD. Cuz of course, American motives are always pure.

Ah yes, attack their nationality because where they were born automatically dismisses their argument. Very nice statements, Rafa. The US claims to be the world's only superpower but we have the highest poverty rates, high unemployment, crappy health care for millions, etc. And it's un-American and "communist" to wanna change that. Our relationship with Saddam went south, that's why we f***ed him up. He used to be our business partner remember? Hell, we sold him the weapons that he used to quash rebellions and keep his people down. Right now, we have a business relationship with the Saud family because they let us get oil there and don't say word one because they know they would get their asses kicked if they did. I also believe that many members of the house of Saud are major stockholders in the Carlyle Group so Daddy Bush wouldn't let his son harm that. [Takes assumption that most may know what the CG is] You should see the newly opened documents of the Cheney energy commission after Judicial Watch successfully got a lawsuit through to get them opened. www.judicialwatch.org They have lots of paperwork about the different corporate opportunities that could happen...if we just controlled Iraqi oil.

Damn, CW. You beat me to that.

And with things like that we have to wonder why terrorists hate us? And it seems that the killing just increased the attacks against our troops. I mean we could make tangible changes in our foreign policy, stop being so goddamned oil dependent, stop selling WMD to dictators and them blame them for using them when propping up their regime, etc. etc. But then that doesn't let us steal oil and kill American soldiers needlessly to boost the Bush approval rating!

233 Americans should not have had to bury their children either for Bush's lies....But I guess, Dubya just needed that oil really really badly. You should check out the documents made public from Cheney's energy commission in March 2001 after the Judicial Watch lawsuit forced them to be open. It explains a lot of corporate oil plans in Iraq if they have the oil. And we're going to bury them? Last time I checked, we're not over there fighting...just the last 10% of the high school classes and the testosterone crazed whackjobs that like murdering...and the kids who needed the educational grants that they get from the military. But Iraq caused 9/11 so all should be forgotten. The US government has lied to us numerous times before, so why is everybody so apt to lap up the bulls*** that they are spewing now?

Paulie pulling a Dorn!

The Boondocks strip is pretty damn funny. He's had a few about Kobe Bryant recently so this was his first Bush one in a few days. If you know where the Chicagoland Raceway is, I live really close to there.

I live in a stupid redneck hick area of Illinois about an hour and a half south of Chicago. And the Boondocks f***ing rules.

Goddamn the Boondocks keeps getting better and better.

Jackson is a writer for the Boston Globe. The "take the bone out of your nose" comment was made in 1977, I believe. FAIR [Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting] has verified the comment here http://www.fair.org/articles/limbaugh-color.html They also have other quotes of his compiled since he has been on the air. http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0716-10.htm is a copy of the Boston Globe article. I think neither the left or the right likes Rush a lot. He cuts people off that try to get a point in against him. It comes from the same guy who said that styrofoam is biodegradible and that smoking cigarettes doesn't cause cancer....Poor Rush.

On the day of the All Star game, Congressman Kucinich introduced a creative piece of legislation: "The Baseball Fan Protection Act." The Kucinich proposal, co-sponsored by several members of Congress, would amend a tax break given to team owners in 1967 in an effort to increase the availability of games to over-the-air TV broadcast stations. In some cities, only cable TV viewers have access to the games. Peace, justice, sustainability...and baseball.

I found this piece done by Derrick Jackson. The fascinating thing is that on the first day of the news about Limbaugh's hiring by ESPN, no straight news stories went out on a limb to remind readers about Limbaugh's past. The past would seem significant, since he is about to pontificate on the NFL, where well over half the players are African-American. Limbaugh has feasted off berating feminists, gay men and women, and people of color. African-Americans have come in for supercharged blasts of his hot air. In the 1970s, Limbaugh told an African-American caller, ''Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.'' Limbaugh has always had crime and black people on the brain. He once said, ''Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?'' He said, ''The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.'' When Spike Lee said that African-American children should be allowed to skip school to see his movie on Malcolm X, Limbaugh said: ''Spike, if you're going to do that, let's complete the education experience. You should tell them that they should loot the theater, and then blow it up on their way out.'' ...Limbaugh once complained about African-Americans: ''They are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?'' ESPN and Disney should be made to care about hiring someone to cover a majority black sport who does not care about black people." I'd pay anything to watch that Vulgar Pigboy tell Ray Lewis to take the bone out of his nose.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/...65p-91932c.html

Personally, I think there should be a uniform age for driving, alcohol consumption, purchasing cigarettes/porn and voting etc instead of having them be 16, 21, and 18 respectively. There is something f***ed up when kids can be drafted to fight in a war, but can't be at the age to drink alcohol. There are still people that drive like maniacs when they are older. Coming home one evening, there is a curve and a no passing zone near my house with a 55 mph speed limit. I am doing 60 and the car behind me passes me on a curve [illegal] and passes in a no passing zone [illegal] while going waaaaaay faster than I was [illegal] Turns out to be a squad car with no lights on. There is an adult that broke 3 different traffic laws and could have caused an accident. People drive like maniacs no matter what their age...some people can just get away with it and not get busted.