John Edwards Unveils 'One Democracy' Initiative

So today after work I switched off the rock stations over to CSPAN RADIO on the way to the public library, there of course to have a full two hours of blissful tax-payer funded internet access. Why the free? Or I should point out, I pay taxes, so why reduced to the free? Although I had a laptop, my poor baby fell mortally wounded to ad-ware over a year ago, and a federal employee's salary holds no room for even refurbishment. To my delight I recognized the voice of John Edwards, who yesterday held a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire. I admit to having spent the last few weeks feeling a bit uninspired about 2008, despite the overall outlook for Democrats and working stiffs like myself. Politics is a cruel addiction, providing neither cute animal team mascots or cheerleaders, or a never ending supply of muscled young men in sports-bars on a Saturday night. Especially when you don't have a million dollars squirreled away in your sock drawer. Edwards is right; we don't have elections, we have auctions.

"The American people are sick and tired of business as usual. Lobbyists and the special interests they represent are pouring millions of dollars into the system, corrupting our democracy and stopping the change we need dead in its tracks. With all the money flooding into politics, you'd think that instead of holding elections we were auctioning our leaders off to the highest bidders. Our founding fathers intended our government to do the will of the people, but regular people can't afford a voice in today's pay-to-play Washington.

"It's time to put an end to the special deals enjoyed by lobbyists and insiders at the expense of regular Americans. We must strengthen voting and campaign finance laws and curb the influence of campaign contributions from special interests, so that everyone has a voice in the political process and the people decide who leads this nation."

I'm tired of the hype that the measure of being American is dying in a foreign war. We used to have these two twin holidays as a people: Memorial Day and Labor Day. These holidays honored the two strengths of our citizens, both the defense and the work of democracy. Now, Labor Day is a holiday where shoppers get discounts and specials, and visit obscene levels of cruelty against the common worker stocking the shelf and cooking their meals because they have to wait in a line. Edwards was right to talk about the point of being American, instead of spending time talking about what he would do if only he had been elected instead of Bush. Whatever happens, January 2009 isn't going to look a whole lot like October 2007. What makes an American an American? What should be the purpose of our government, the pampering of the uber-jet-setters or the concerns of someone who would like public transportation to be available to the working poor?

A little math: For an hour's commute and errands, my gasoline bill is about $200 a month. So far this year, the upkeep of my car has included repairs at almost 2/3 of my whole 2006 federal tax bill, and way more than both state and local tax bills. There is a federal program that would cover the $170 a month cost for me to take the DC Metro and the Maryland commuter train to work. But.. the trains don't run on schedules geared for the working poor who need them most. They run on schedules built for the upper middle class: 6AM to 10PM, Monday through Friday. I work Saturday and Sunday, one of the lots of anyone whose working poor. Even then, the local Amtrak honors the government vouchers for those days. Even if I got a tax-cut of 25% of my tax rate now, that would still be only be about $1200. Which is gas for only half the year, if they don't rocket towards the sky yet again. If there was a train, I would save double the ammount in cash, before car maitenence. Why would I vote for a tax-cut again? In essense, the working poor don't need tax-cuts, we need good government spending on social programs.

The White House Intel Report blogged live on Edwards' speach:

I’m watching his New Hampshire speech right now. It’s live, it is a beautiful speech about Democracy, the American dream and moral leadership. The man stands for a lot of what I believe in and I can’t see why he isn’t one of the top two political players right now. After listening to all of the candidates, I really believe John Edwards is the best candidate to push forth the message of Democrats. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who many liberals believe has sold out, he is sticking to his Democratic roots, he is catering to “the people” and looking after the little guy rather than sucking up to the wealthy corporations.

So I listened to the speach today, and without the benefits of notes (which at 65 mph on an interstate is a tad unwise), these are my impressions: The Federal TIPS program that I am a part of, which matches what I save if I put away 5% of my paycheck towards either a mortage or college, or as a form of disaster insurance, is a great idea for expanding into the working class. Who could not love this idea? Given that the resulting nest-egg will go into the economy in ways that will boost the American economy, while increased national savings should help keep down long term interest rates. (Yes, I'm reading Greenspan's book.) There will have to be national laws slapping down this payday lending industry and the resumption of usury practices by the credit lending industry. Television ads for political office as approved by the candidate will have to be divided equally between candidates. They encourage as much thought as a Kit-Kat bar commercial. Federal political office should not be influenced by lobby donations, and should require canadacies funded without K Street. Personal donations should be topped at $1,000. At that point, it's time to stop buying television ads and start talking to your friends and neighbors. That's how a democracy surives.

Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain recognized John Edwards as "A Blue Collar Candidate for a Blue Collar America!" MyDD blogger TomP applauds, noting that "And that is just what we need. For too long the rich have ruled our country, trampling our rights, and screwing workers right and left. No more. It's a damn good thing, because unless you are an owner, an investor of real money, not a 410K, but real money, we're all blue collar now. That's what Two America means." The AFL has a point that Edwards also echoed in New Hampshire. Unlike Clinton and Obama, Edwards beat the Red State party machine and got elected to the Senate. Democrats true blue to liberal ideas sell themselves and American short with the idea that what we need is a measurement of bank accounts in the Blue States. We do live in a Democracy, and as Edwards points out, there are liberals in Arkansas.

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John Edwards, politics, current affairs, economics, poverty, health insurance, homeland security, war on terror, Iraq, moonbat

The Smoking Guns of Blackwater's Mercenaries

So today the world has a view into the lives of five of the innocent people gunned down by Blackwater's mercenaries in Baghdad's Nisoor Square on September 16th. Construction workers had just finished painting flowers on the walls of the square following reconstruction after a truck bombing. A banner reading "Creators of Life are Always Victorious" fluttered in the noon breeze. Ali Khalil was a 54-year-old blacksmith and father of six children, and had felt safe enough in the capital to reopen his shop three days earlier. Osama Fadhil Abbas was a 40-year-old car dealer on business. Mehasin Muhsin Kadhum, a 46-year-old doctor, and her twenty-year-old son Ahmed Haitham, were returning home with college application forms for Kadhum's daughter. At 25, Mahdi Sahib supported his whole ten member family on his taxi driver's salary of $480 a month, and while he could not replace the broken windshield wipers of his taxi, continued to nurse the hope that he would one day save enough money to marry. Fifteen minutes later, as Blackwater sped away from the smoking scene, their murdered victims would range from grandfathers to wives to schoolgirls to an infant.

On that day, the Blackwater convoy was responding to a bombing near a State Department convoy about a mile away. As the Blackwater armored vehicles entered the square, a heavily guarded area near Baghdad's affluent Mansour neighborhood, Iraqi police officers moved to stop traffic.

Kadhum, the doctor, and her son Haitham, who were in the flow of cars the officers were trying to stop, didn't react quickly enough. A Blackwater guard fired, striking Haitham as he sat in the driver's seat, three witnesses said.

"The bullet went through the windshield and split his head open," recalled traffic police officer Sarhan Thiab. "His mother was holding him, screaming for help."

The car, which had an automatic transmission, kept rolling. Another officer, Ali Khalaf, tried to stop the vehicle as another spray of bullets killed Kadhum.

Thiab fled first, then Khalaf, followed by bullets that struck a traffic light pole, a billboard and their police guard post. Then the Blackwater guards escalated their firepower, engulfing the sedan in flames.

Osama died trying to flee from his truck when Blackwater turned their guns on it next. Khalil died within minutes of being brought to the hospital; when his wife arrived with bed sheets and water, she was sent to the morgue. Sahib died slowly over three hours from internal bleeding, while family members held his hands. The uncle of twenty-year-old Ahmed Haitham, had rushed to aid the shooting victims, and come upon Ahmed's and his mother's burned bodies in the hospital. He called Ahmed's father, who rushed to the Square, only to find the family's charred car missing it's license plate, but the number written next to it in the sand. Later in the hospital, Haitham Ahmed was able to recognize the bodies of his family by his wife's dental work and one of his son's shoes.

On the cab roof of Osama's white Volkswagon truck are bullet entry holes, with trajectories that indicate they came from fire from above. Although witnesses testify that Blackwater mercenaries fired out of their helicopters as people tried to flee for their lives, the company has denied this claim. Dr. Kadhum's white car still sits in Nisoor Square, and Haitham Ahmed is determined to see it remains there until there is justice for the deaths of his wife and son. Iraq's government has not responded to his inquiries.

"They have killed my beloveds. They were innocent," he lamented on Wednesday. "We don't have any contacts with any party, any side. We are all doctors."

"What I want is the law to prevail," he added. "I hope that this act will not go without punishment."

There were opportunities, he said, for his family to flee Iraq. But he and his wife believed in the promise of a new Iraq. "I feel pain when I see doctors leaving Iraq," he said.

His son was going to follow in his footsteps. In his third year of medical school, the soccer-loving, multilingual Ahmed planned to become a surgeon.

Now, he said, his two other children, Mariam, 18, and Haidar, 16, are concerned about his safety. "Enough of the pain, enough of death in Iraq."

Mariam was born in the last phases of the Iran-Iraq conflict. Her eyes filling with tears, she said she wanted to leave: "I was born in one war, I don't want to die in another."

Original plans for the FBI's investigation included Blackwater guards. It took a release to the press about these plans and pressure from Congress, and 24 hours, for the State Department to think it was wise to alter these arrangements so that the department's Diplomatic Security Services would be assigned to that task. The White House is meanwhile denouncing legislation passed by the House which would apply all regulations currently used to provide oversight and federal jurisdiction over Defense Department war contractors in Iraq, to those under contract with State, including Blackwater. The law in question is the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act. The bill passed 389-30. Via the Office of Budget Management is the claim that such equal jurisdiction in contracting would have "intolerable consequences for crucial and necessary national security activities and operations."

Questions continue to emerge on the conduct and operations of Blackwater on that day. Blackwater revamped it's website since the shooting, dropping press reports and news briefings, and reducing the publicly available information about it's company. However, you can still buy company apparel. The State Department's intial report on the Sept. 16th incident was written by a current Blackwater employee. Secretary of State Condollezza Rice exerted pressure on the Iraqi government to allow Blackwater to remain inside Iraq, creating the public perception that the government of Iraq cannot act with autonomy. Even the officials Blackwater guarded on September 16th highlight the need for impartial investigations:

A bomb exploded on the median of a road a few hundred yards away from the meeting, causing no injuries to the Americans, but prompting a fateful decision to evacuate. One American official who knew about the meeting cast doubt on the decision to move the diplomats out of a secure compound.

“It raises the first question of why didn’t they just stay in place, since they are safe in the compound,” the official said. “Usually the concept would be, if an I.E.D. detonates in the street, you would wait 15 to 30 minutes, until things calmed down,” he said, using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device.

But instead of waiting, a Blackwater convoy began carrying the diplomats south, toward the Green Zone. Because their route would pass through Nisour Square, another convoy drove there to block traffic and ensure that the diplomats would be able to pass.

CNN interviewed one of the Iraqi Police stationed at the Square, who stated that Blackwater threw water bottles at the police upon entering the Square and then proceeded to drive the wrong way around. The police officer Sarhan noticed that the guards looked nervous. When the traffic didn't immediately halt, the mercenaries opened fire with warning shots, and then began shooting vehicles. When Sarhan attempted to rescue Kadhum, after her son was shot dead in the driver's seat, he and another police officer were unable to halt the rolling car. Even in uniform, he too became a target:

"I wanted to get his mother out, but could not because she was holding her son tight and did not want to let him go," Sarhan said. "They immediately opened heavy fire at us."

"Each of their four vehicles opened heavy fire in all directions, they shot and killed everyone in cars facing them and people standing on the street," Sarhan said.

The shooting lasted about 20 minutes, he said.

"When it was over we were looking around and about 15 cars had been destroyed, the bodies of the killed were strewn on the pavements and road."

Sarhan said no one ever fired at the Blackwater team.

"They became the terrorists, not attacked by the terrorists," he said.

"I saw parts of the woman's head flying in front of me, blow up and then her entire body was charred," he said. "What do you expect my reaction to be? Are they protecting the country? No. If I had a weapon I would have shot at them."

War is ugly, that much is true. But this was not war, this was murder, done by a company operating for profit committing acts of barbarity for which our own uniformed soldiers will face an accounting for on the streets of Baghdad. For how much longer will we tolerate having a military and a foreign policy held hostage to the profit margins of neoconservatives, who would see the power to make war and peace shifted to an auction? How does having the readiness of our forces undermined to create overpaid positions for at-will war contractors further American security? What does it say about the future of democracy as a government about humans that we allow senseless bloodshed for the mere sake of convenience? Who should be held accountable for the descent of the "war of the willing" into the "war of the billing?" How long will the burned out car of a woman doctor sit on the side of the road?

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Blackwater, war contractors, Iraq war, current events, politics, moonbat, liberal

Evict Blackwater and Get Your End to the War

So today five witnesses and one senior Iraqi police officer gave public testimony against Blackwater, attesting that the mercenaries opened fire without provocation in the September 16th shooting incident in Baghdad, which left at least eleven innocent civilians dead. Blackwater mercenaries involved claimed last Friday to ABC NEWS that they opened fire on a white car after if refused to give way to them in rush-hour traffic... even after they threw water bottles at it and gave the driver the finger. After an outraged Prime Minister Maliki announced his intention to hurl Blackwater out of his country, he was pressured by a phone call from Secretary of State Condollezza Rice. If Blackwater was gone the next day, the occupation would be shut down. Crying shame, really.

The horror continues... despite claims by representatives, Blackwater didn't kill those civilians in defense of any State Department officials. The timeline works like this: a car bomb went off near a place their "State" was visiting. Half an hour later, as they are leaving to go back to the Green Zone, Blackwater dispatches two other groups to help escort them back. TST-22, the first group of back-up finds the original group, and escorts them back to the Green Zone. TST-23, the second group gets "delayed," which given it's a group of men in SUVs read "lost and refused to stop for directions." TST-23 ends up in a crowded traffic circle, and gives in to a fit of bloody road-rage, then flees back to the Green Zone. TST-22 doubles back to provide protection for TST-23, and ends up in the traffic circle after they have left. At which point, TST-22 end up surrounded by a quick-reaction force from the Iraqi Army with it's large caliber machine guns. A US military QRF scrambled onto the scene to mediate before Blackwater got slaughtered, and TST-22 retreated to the Green Zone. You read me right, our "money-saving" mercenaries had to be rescued by the real deal. Yet another classic bail-out of a bad private investment scheme.

The State Department released a report yesterday detailing how in fact, Blackwater is quite trigger-happy.

"The officials said that Blackwater’s incident rate was at least twice that recorded by employees of DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, the two other United States-based security firms that have been contracted by the State Department to provide security for diplomats and other senior civilians in Iraq.

The State Department would not comment on most matters relating to Blackwater, citing the current investigation. But Sean McCormack, the department’s spokesman, said that of 1,800 escort missions by Blackwater this year, there had been “only a very small fraction, very small fraction, that have involved any sort of use of force.”

In 2005, DynCorp reported 32 shootings during about 3,200 convoy missions, and in 2006 that company reported 10 episodes during about 1,500 convoy missions. While comparable Blackwater statistics were not available, government officials said the firm’s rate per convoy mission was about twice DynCorp’s."

What is the State Department afraid of if it has to conceal this information? Accountability?

The Pentagon hurried to show their equal support for Blackwater with a $92 million dollar contract. The money goes to Blackwater's aviation subsidiary Presidental Airways... who killed three American soldiers by flying a helicopter into the side of a mountain. Right after one of the Blackwater pilots assured his passengers that "All we want is to avoid seeing rock at twelve o'clock" Yes, because you should give $92 million dollars to men who can't tell mountain from clear sky. Given the difference.

And despite the infusion of cash, there may be more blood in the water than people think. Just last Wednesday, "the North Carolina private military contractor canceled a $5.5 million deal to buy 1,800 acres of farmland near Fort Bragg, where it was going to set up a training ground for soldiers and corporate executives." Blackwater refused to officially comment to the press, of course. And in a little story from September 9th there's more innocent blood in Iraq that's on Blackwater's hands:

A clerk in the Iraqi customs office in Diyala province, she was in the capital to drop off and pick up paperwork at the central office near busy al Khilani Square, not far from the fortified Green Zone, where top U.S. and Iraqi officials live and work. U.S. officials often pass through the square in heavily guarded convoys on their way to other parts of Baghdad.

As Hussein walked out of the customs building, an embassy convoy of sport-utility vehicles drove through the intersection. Blackwater security guards, charged with protecting the diplomats, yelled at construction workers at an unfinished building to move back. Instead, the workers threw rocks. The guards, witnesses said, responded with gunfire, spraying the intersection with bullets.

Hussein, who was on the opposite side of the street from the construction site, fell to the ground, shot in the leg. As she struggled to her feet and took a step, eyewitnesses said, a Blackwater security guard trained his weapon on her and shot her multiple times. She died on the spot, and the customs documents she'd held in her arms fluttered down the street.

Before the shooting stopped, four other people were killed in what would be the beginning of eight days of violence that Iraqi officials say bolster their argument that Blackwater should be banned from working in Iraq.

So beyond a few dropping jaws, where is the liberal outrage? Rice was clear enough with her marching orders for people who want a change in Iraq. Get rid of Blackwater and it all comes tumbling down...

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Ending Poverty for the Average Federal Employee

So today let's note a rather unusual book out there in the slew of presidential hopeful pulp-novelas: Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream. The book contains only an essay by Democratic hopeful John Edwards, and the meat of the book at least isn't endless puffing about how he's going to fix everything that's wrong with you. Instead, it's a collection of essays by both liberals and conservatives, produced by the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity. These essays are scientifically based studies of the nature of poverty and both the successes and failures of recent American policy in creating a fair economy for all of us. The collection begins centered around a simple set of irrefutable statistics:

"In 2005, 37 million Americans- about 1 in 8 people- lived below the income poverty level, defined as $19,874 for a family of 4. Almost 13 million were children under 18... The income gap between the rich and poor is growing as well: in 2005 the top 20% of U.S. households received over half of all income, while the bottom 20% of households received only about 3% of total income. Wealth inequalities are also on the rise: in 2004 the top 1% of households by income held more than a third of all net worth and financial assets. Approximately 80% of stock is held by the top ten percent of wealthy households; the poorest 40% of households own less than 1% of all stocks... Over 46 million Americans (about 16% of the population) lacked health insurance coverage in 2005... over 27 million workers are employed with no health insurance."

What does a poverty statistic mean on a personal level? How accurate is this idea that passing over $19,874 will enable parents to care for two children? Heck, what about single young women working for the federal government to defend the nation against terrorism? Let's calculate the cost of living for one such employee: $9,600 Rent ($800 a month, 1 bedroom), $1,960 Food ($35 a week), $2400 Gas (1 hour commute), $740 Insurance USAA, $396 Work Parking Permit, $1,920 Retirement Savings, $1,440 Health Insurance Co-Pay, $140 Prescriptions (No Birth Control), $100 Emergency Room Co-Pay, $230 New Tires, $480 Cell Phone, $252 Internet Services, $60 Bank Fees, $370 Vet Bills for 1 Cat, $1,940 Car Repairs, $120 AAA, $60 (3 $20) Haircuts, $270 Plane ticket to see dying grandfather, $120 Contact Lenses, $180 Dentist plus x-rays, $380 Holiday Gifts (including Birthdays and Christmas). Not included: Thanksgiving Dinner, Booze, Christmas Tree, Easter Eggs, clothing of any kind, movie tickets, books or magazines, Starbucks, Halo 3, dating, make-up, cable television, laundry detergent. Yes, I need the Internet, as a college student. The cell phone serves as a stand in for a land line. Total Cost for 1 Year: $23,158.

Base Salary? $23,700. A cost of living adjustment raises the total to $27,100. After $3,523 in federal taxes and $813 in state taxes, take home pay would equal $22,764. Rumors on several job sites are that pay is $33,000 and that is not true. For those of you who are curious, the cost in salary and benefits of TSA for 2007 will cost $3.45 billion, at an approximate cost of $1.91 per passenger, and $1.65 per checked bag. The cost per passenger includes the cost of screening carry-on luggage. How interesting it would be to ask passengers how much they think it costs to screen them in terms of labor. The above recounting of expenses includes $26 in prescription co-pays for medication after needing four stitches for an on-the-job-injury, my second in as many years after surviving ten years in retail with a clean record.

Edward's book notes that "One in four people who work full-time, year round, still earn less than the amount of money needed to keep a family of four above the poverty threshold... The single parent with three children, working a full 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year, must earn $9.55 an hour to stay at the poverty line." So basically what you have here is the cold hard economic fact that a fighting the war on terror won't even allow you to provide for yourself, let alone a spouse and two children, without massive government assistance or going without health insurance. And several of my coworkers follow the later track in order to come up with money for their families, betting against the odds that all of their medical needs can be solved with extra sleep and Tylenol. Times I have required medical care in the past year? Three times with my family practice and one emergency room visit after an allergic reaction to a steroid inhaler in the middle of the night. Not that I am completely innocent, I agree, having twice had overdraft charges of $34 dollars for a total of $68 in the past year.

The Congressional Budget Office reports that between 1979 and 2000, the income of the top 1% of Americans grew 184%. Top 5th grew 70%. The real income of the bottom 5th grew only 6%. Edwards's book notes that inter generational mobility has stagnated to the point that "it would take a poor family of four with two children approximately 9 to 10 generations- over 200 years- to achieve the income of the middle-income four-person family... A son whose father earns about $16,000 a year has only a 5% chance of earning over $55,000 per year." Meanwhile, the CBO has just released two estimates of the cost of staying in Iraq. For the favored Republican scenario of continued combat operations, the estimated cost is $25 billion per year. For the favored Democrat scenario of non-combat peace-keeping operations, the estimated cost is only $10 billion per year. Both scenarios use conservative estimates on the necessity to replace equipment and armor. Some one's going to have to pay for all of this, and sorry to you war-mongers out there, but this federal employee is running in the budgetary red.

More voices are speaking up about what our money has been buying us in Iraq: Foreign Policy's Terrorism Index.

"The outcome of the war in Iraq may now rest in large part on the success or failure of the so-called surge. Beginning in February, the White House sent an additional 28,000 U.S. troops to Baghdad in an effort to quell the violence there. Securing the capital with overwhelming force is a key component of the anti-insurgency plan developed by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq and the military’s foremost expert on counterinsurgency tactics. It took until June for all the U.S. forces to be put in place, and the number of American troops in Iraq is now at its highest level since 2005. But is Petraeus’s plan working?

The index’s experts don’t think so. More than half say the surge is having a negative impact on U.S. national security, up 22 percentage points from just six months ago. This sentiment was shared across party lines, with 64 percent of conservative experts saying the surge is having either a negative impact or no impact at all. When the experts were asked to grade the government’s handling of the Iraq war, the news was even worse. They gave the overall effort in Iraq an average point score of just 2.9 on a 10-point scale. The government’s public diplomacy record was the only policy that scored lower.

These negative opinions may result in part from the experts’ apparent belief that, a decade from now, the world will still be reeling from the consequences of the war. Fifty-eight percent of the index’s experts say that in 10 years’ time, Sunni-Shiite tensions in the Middle East will have dramatically increased. Thirty-five percent believe that Arab dictators will have been discouraged from reforming. Just 5 percent, on the other hand, believe that al Qaeda will be weaker, whereas only 3 percent believe Iraq will be a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. If true, the surge, or any other tactical shift for that matter, was probably already too little, too late."

Americans need to get over their love affair with movie stars and cowboys as Presidents. Certainly doesn't make the world safer, or fairer, or more democratic. As a democrat, I want a renewed commitment to the ideals of democracy, towards compassion and justice. I want to see America renewed in the beauty that democracies are able to produce, in their bustling cities and the equal allocation of riches to it's people, the wealthy and the worker. Instead of tax breaks for corporations, I want workers to have the right to show each other their paychecks without getting fired. Instead of private mercenaries used to secure oil reserves, I want trained and armored US soldiers deployed to end on-going genocide. I want to be able to travel to my job on public transportation, I want utility companies brought under control, I want spammers put out of business. And I want the American Dream for myself, to be able to put away money for a new car and use my tuition to reduce my tax-burden even though I don't itemize.

I want a President who believes in the noble endeavor that democratic government was created to bring about in the world, instead of being pledged to destroy it in the name of private profit. John Edwards saves his remarks until everyone else at his Center has been given a chance to contribute, and he makes a point of including everyone's good ideas towards creating a wonderful future for America... both conservatives and liberals. And it's a good vision, about us as a people... a way to give up terror and war, in exchange for hope and peace.

"The American people understand that no one who works full-time should live in poverty... Let us set a national goal-the elimination of poverty in America in 30 years. It will not be easy, but I believe in the unlimited power of the American people to accomplish anything we set our hearts and minds to acheive. If we do not rest until poverty is history, it will be."

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John Edwards, politics, current affairs, economics, poverty, health insurance, homeland security, war on terror, Iraq, moonbat

Open Call to Boycott China's "Genocide Olympics"

So today we will take a cold-hearted look at the 63% of Americans who would boycott China over product saftey and the fact that they eat dogs and cats. Moonbat herself flirts off and on with doing her best to avoid buying in China over the plight of Tibet, in homage to the fact that reading Tibetan Buddhism has done wonders for her temper. Yet the time has come for a concerted and public, liberal and conservative, all-American push to boycott funding China through our purchases, policies, and misplaced attempts to protect "the free market." Somewhere along the line, we fought a near fourty year Cold War to halt the global expansion of communism and the totalitarian states which embraced it's doctrine. Our White House takes a different view towards "the red scourge" these days because "It's not appropriate to interfere in the private decisions of Americans..."



Capitalism funding the expansion of the communist police state, funding by the capitalistic greed of US investors and the Republican Party Leadership. Say it ain't so! And yet, we have the bewildering knowledge before us that under the name of fighing terrorism, China is openly reaping hedge fund investments on Wall Street, in new forms of public surveillance that will allow it to hunt down democratic protestors at it's leisure... and anyone who stops to watch. China faces no threat of terrorism, let's be clear. But China does find itself:

...subject to strikes of workers who don't get paid; to revolts over deadly environmental conditions; to religious activists who worship gods other than mammon and the state (the two that are officially sanctioned); to Web surfers enamored of a free exchange of ideas; to Tibetans seeking autonomy; and maybe, someday, to another outburst of Tiananmen Square-like, pro-democracy agitation.



An authoritarian government can never be sure how many of its citizens would relish its demise, which means the Chinese Communist Party has 1.3 billion potential targets for surveillance. Bradsher reports that 660 Chinese cities have begun installing high-tech surveillance systems. By one estimate, high-end surveillance will expand from a $500 million industry in 2003 to a $43 billion industry by 2010.

Of course, workers who don't get paid, people sickened by industrial pollutants, people who pray to foreign gods, liberal web-surfers, Iraqis seeking independence, and CodePink, are all foes of the White House as well. Perhaps it's not so unusual to find the Leader of the Free World playing footsie with the World Communist Regime. In the end, all radical Islamic terrorists have ever managed is to blow up a few buildings or airplanes. What could China do, when it's survelliance abilities we have paid for completely shut out our own CIA operatives and quash the last murmurs of democratic dissent? Given the spectacular web war launched against Estonia last spring that shut down its newspapers, banks, and government for days? Given that we are creating the worst border disaster of all with our open embrace of spammers and ad-ware programmers, who turn hordes of our own computers into digital zombie soldiers for sale? To the highest bidder? How can we defeat the enemy we arm to destroy us?

China's love for the world should be apparent, from their open funding of the genocidal regime of Sudan, to their conquest and brutal subjegation of the Tibetan people. China happens to be Sudan's largest oil customer. After the UN Security Council moved forward to with plans to deploy the largest peace-keeping force in the world to Darfur, China began it's manuverings to use it's suddenly enthusiasitc involvement to ward off high profile threats to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics. With this slight of hand, China continues it's own version of a Marshal Plan, buying into the regimes of other African nations, while the US remains bogged down in Iraq. China hurries its efforts to place it's troops inside Darfur before the rest of the UN peacekeeping force reaches Sudan. A force significantly larger than the few soldiers China has lent elsewhere, and likely they plan to outstay the UN.

And as for poor Tibet and her people? Richard Gere and the International Campaign for Tibet have called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics, but received little press. China just finished a train right through the center of Tibet to it's old capital, linking it to the communist state in a way that claims permanent ownership even to satellites in space.




Sacrifice is hardly popular anymore unless it's happenstance or something you were going to do anyways. China's grip on the lowest segments of America's economy makes it a formidle political opponent, as proven through it's growing alliance with Wal-Mart. Yet how impossible? How close do how many people have to be to create a watershed affect? What outcome do we seek? The answer: Tibet must be free, democracy must become something more than a means to inrease oil exploration, democracies must never again become hostage to the economic production of communism police states. Moonbat started with shopping at Target for her nephew's birthday party, buying Crayola "MadeintheUSA" art supplies over RoseArt's "MadeinChina." A few minutes effort also produced a means to hang pictures using supertape also "MadeintheUSA." And organic chocolate grown in Belize and melted into bars in Italy. So good.

Democracy finds itself too weakened by the siren call of profits and revenue to take heed of the warning signs. China will use American investors to create the means to survey and control it's urban polulations in a way only a global dark age could end. The arguement that allowing China into the World Trade Organization to use economic advancement to induce democratic change will have been defeated, under the combined efforts of communism and it's new capitalist backers. Green Fertility gives a compelling argument to still boycott over China's own internal human rights abuses. Yet liberals need to find a way to light a fire under the entire of our country, and it will not be to the cause of foreign gods or Chinese food.



We have in our favor the deciding point: things with China have gotten to the point where either democracy will decide the future of humanity in the world... or we will continue to sell away every part of our inhereitance to the resurgence of communism. When last democracy contested with communism, the USSR fell. Now there is no open contest, and our greed may yet fire the eternal shine of China.


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