ben wells's List: politics

The impact of war on our soldiers, their families, their communities, and our country is just absolutely inconcievable. Lives lost, lives destroyed, sanity lost, relationships lost... all for a war we were lied into and whose true purpose is still unknown; a war ensuring that the next generation of soldiers will suffer fates worse than we're seeing now. We must stop the madness.

This is why I can't just shut up and be quiet. I can, however, find more proactive and constructive ways to help- and I'm on the path to doing that :)

The first step, though... talking about it. My current challenge is awareness without letting reality consume me in the personal, negative way I can let it.

This is an excellent example of how ridiculous our national media has become. All they care about is creating and sustaining controversy- it's just too good for ratings. Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous were an absolute embarrassement last night. It's THEIR JOB to correct misinterpretations and mischaracterizations- not to feed them and make them even worse. There are way too many real, life and eath issues that need that air time.

We have to be aware that we're getting a very one-sided interpretation of the news in the mainstream... and that interpretation is usually in line with whatever makes the most money. Specious gossip sells... Sad that we all pay the price.

Very interesting...

Ouch.

This is REALLY REALLY good stuff. Robbins was set to give his keynote speech but at the last minute was told he couldn't- his comments would be too controversial. He at first acquiesced, but then decided to go forward. Good thing there was audio since the officials killed the video cameras. Anything worth censoring is worth hearing.

He speaks to the media's responsibility to the nation- can you imagine what could happen if our national media outlets all collectively "grew up" and started reporting real news with real investigation? ...and if they sought to unite us with hope and our commonality rather than divide us with fear and our differences? ...and if we never heard anything about Paris Hilton ever again?

It's the stuff of dreams, and it's totally possible.

This is very telling.

No matter what he says, his policies will ALWAYS favor the wealthy. And it's those alternate-reality policies (that began with Reagan) that are causing our economy to go down the tubes right now.

Calling ours a "trickle-down economy" was a great little catch phrase, but its intent was to get us to allow them to shift everything toward the upper class under the false promise that we'd get ours. We're not getting ours. All that trickling got dammed up and is forming a beautiful lake of free money for the people who need it the absolute least.

We must re-invest in our own country and stop this calamitous march to globalization at the expense of our manufacturing industries, the working class - not to mention the foreign workers who are forced to work in sweat-shops for pennies just to get by because the United States refuses to set labor standards with a modicum of humanity for the companies that offshore their manufacturing to take advantage of the windfall of profit created by that very lack of standards. Read about the Mariannas Islands for just one gut-wrenching story depicting the real-life consequences of such disconnected-from-humanity policies.

McCain will leave everything as it is today and let it get much worse.

At least some people are calling McCain out for the absolute incoherence of his positions.

Keep scrolling down... a little more... a little more... a couple more lines... ah!! There we are!!

We're number #1!! (64) We're number #1!! (64)

This is heartening, but there are some who disagree:\n\n"Are we going to let the American people decide our defense policy, our trade policy, our immigration policy?" asked the incredulous lobbyist who obviously thinks that whole 'government by the people, for the people' is just a quaint little idea that has nothing to do with how 'the real world works'. \n\nBut what if we change the way the world works? Sure the details are complicated, but that defeatism is exactly what they count on and we can handle it. It's just too important to take the reins back from the moneyed interests who've gotten their way at our (and the world's) expense for 50 years.

This site and the book it accompanies are trying to break the 'myth of McCain' that is so pervasive in our media. \n\nJust consider: Last week McCain confused Sunni and Shia in Iraq/Iran like 4 or 5 times publicly. He was corrected each time and then he made the same mistake again. This is not the behavior of someone who really knows what he's talking about. \n\nBut what does the media do? "Oh, it's just McCain- he's a war hero and he wears this maverick mantle (however undeserved) - let's give him a break.. hey, it's just a senior moment!" \n\nWhat?! No. If Clinton or Obama had confused any detail about Iraq, they would have been tarred and feathered. Their campaigns would be over.\n\nWe have to break out of the 'common wisdom' on things like McCain's independence- at this point that narrative has long since lost it's relevance.

This is a must read!

A discussion of the true economic cost of the war. Note that nearly none of the spending for Iraq has been part of the annual budget- doing it that way would have made the enormous cost impossible to ignore and a political liability. No, it's much easier to obscure the tax dollar bonfire (or actually, the loans we're taking out with CHINA) by using "emergency supplemental" requests, intended for fast tracking money in emergencies. Circumventing the normal budget process, the adminstration can ram through their requests with many fewer obstacles.

The Bush Administration: Leaving no loophole unexploited.