Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has been an outspoken critic of U.S. military action in Libya since it began six months ago, even saying President Barack Obama’s policy amounted to “an impeachable offense.”
Now, as Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime appears to be toppling, Kucinich is ramping up his criticism with the contention that NATO commanders in Libya should be tried in court for killing civilians, Politico reports.
“NATO’s top commanders may have acted under color of international law, but they are not exempt from international law,” Kucinich said in a statement issued today.
“If members of the Gadhafi regime are to be held accountable, NATO’s top commanders must also be held accountable through the International Criminal Court for all civilian deaths resulting from bombing,” Kucinich said. “Otherwise, we will have witnessed the triumph of a new international gangsterism.”
WASHINGTON -- With just three days left until the country is set to begin defaulting on its debt, the House rejected a debt proposal by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Saturday -- a move Republicans designed purely for theatrics to show the bill lacked the votes to pass.
The bill was rejected by a vote of 173 to 246. Eleven Democrats joined all of the House Republicans in opposing Reid's bill. The defecting Democrats included Reps. John Barrow (Ga.), Dan Boren (Okla.), Bruce Braley (Iowa), David Loebsack (Iowa), Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Collin Peterson (Minn.), Mike Ross (Ark.), Kurt Schrader (Ore.), Peter Visclosky (Ind.) and David Wu (Ore.).
Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) headed to the White House to discuss the state of play with President Barack Obama shortly after the bill went down.
House Republicans pushed Reid's bill through via a restrictive voting process: The measure was taken up on the suspension calendar, which requires a two-thirds vote to pass, bars amendments and limits debate to 40 minutes.
Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), who sits on the House Rules Committee, called the day's business "a joke," "a disgrace" and "an insult to the American people."
The effect of taking up Reid's bill on the suspension calendar -- a move typically reserved for noncontroversial measures -- is "a $2.5 trillion bill being brought up under the same process used for post offices," McGovern said.
President Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner are allegedly close to a $3 trillion deficit-reduction package as part of a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling before an Aug. 2 deadline. But the deal is coming under fire from both congressional Democrats and Republicans. Part of it calls for lowering personal and corporate income tax rates, while eliminating or reducing an array of popular tax breaks, such as the deduction for home mortgage interest. Some Democratic lawmakers expressed outrage on Thursday because the Obama-Boehner agreement appears to violate their pledge not to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, as well as Obama’s promise not to make deep cuts in programs for the poor without extracting some tax concessions from the rich. We’re joined by economist Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and author of "Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire."
My guess is that Helen could be Phoenician, a heritage that goes back thousands of years. In recent studies, dna samples indicated that one third of the Lebanese have the genetic signature of the Phoenicians.
I was fortunate enough to meet a Phoenician when I was in Beirut in 1965. We sit in a coffee house for hours as he explained his heritage. He told me that Beirut was sitting on Phoenician ruins going back to ancient times and all about it being the center of trade for the Mediterranean Sea.
I spent some time on Google this morning, and found Phoenicia.org, which re-enforces what he was telling me back then, but here I am, off subject as usual, so will close with a question. What color are Helens eyes? G%
US House defeats anti-terrorism powers extension
By Olivier Knox AFP – 1 day ago
WASHINGTON — The US House of Representatives rejected a nine-month extension of counter-terrorism surveillance powers at the heart of the Patriot Act adopted after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
With the three provisions set to expire February 28, lawmakers voted 277-148 in favor of legislation to renew them until December 8, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed under House rules.
The surprise vote came amid a bitter battle over how long to extend the intrusive powers at the core of the signature legislative response to the terrorist strikes nearly 10 years ago, and with what safeguards.
The provisions allow authorities to use roving wiretaps to track an individual on several telephones; track a non-US national suspected of being "lone-wolf" terrorist not tied to an extremist group; and to seize personal or business records seen as critical to an investigation.
US President Barack Obama, wading into the fray, pressed lawmakers to extend those authorities -- which supporters say fill key gaps in the fight against extremists -- through December 2013.
Obama "strongly supports extension of three critical authorities that our nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies need to protect our national security," the White House said in a statement.
As the frogwater becomes noticably warm, the AIPAC oriented congress along with a senate that is directly tied to the shadow government quietly acquiecse to eternal war and the invasion of Iran.
All this because of a war that was started based on a lie; weapons of mass destruction, the same reason that is being used for Iran. and implemented by accusations of terrorists in airliners flying into the World Trade Center buildings WTC 1 & WTC 2.
As many folks now believe the official story of the collapse of the buildings was fabricated and promoted by the NIST, it is important that there be an open and independent investigation to analyse the overly abundent evidence that there was more to it than airplanes, Al Qaeda, building fires and gravity.
Now, I tell you this, not as a boast but as a kind of confession. Because in my view the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience -- a celebrity with a cause ... OH, DEAR!
Worse yet, is a singer with a conscience -- a placard-waving, knee-jerking, fellow-travelling activist with a Lexus, and a swimming pool shaped like his own head.
I'm a singer. You know what a singer is? Someone with a hole in his heart as big as his ego. When you need 20,000 people screaming your name in order to feel good about your day, you know you're a singer.
I am a singer and a songwriter but I am also a father, four times over. I am a friend to dogs. I am a sworn enemy of the saccharine; and a believer in grace over karma. I talk too much when I'm drunk and sometimes even when I'm not.
I am not drunk right now. These are not sunglasses, these are protection.
But I must tell you. I owe more than my spoiled lifestyle to rock music. I owe my worldview. Music was like an alarm clock for me as a teenager and still keeps me from falling asleep in the comfort of my freedom.
Rock music to me is rebel music. But rebelling against what? In the Fifties it was sexual mores and double standards. In the Sixties it was the Vietnam War and racial and social inequality. What are we rebelling against now?
If I am honest I'm rebelling against my own indifference. I am rebelling against the idea that the world is the way the world is and there's not a damned thing I can do about it. So I'm trying to do some damned thing.
But fighting my indifference is my own problem. What's your problem? What's the hole in your heart? I needed the noise, the applause. You needed the grades. Why are you here in Harvard Square?
Why do you have to listen to me? What have you given up to get here? Is success your drug of choice or are you driven by another curiosity? Your potential. The potential of a given situation. Is missing the moment unacceptable to you? Is wasting inspiration a crime? It is for a musician.
If this is where we find our lives rhyme. If this is our common ground, well, then I can be inspired as well as humbled to be on this great campus. Because that's where I come from. Music.
But I've seen the other side of music -- the Business. I've seen success as a drug of choice. I've seen great minds and prolific imaginations disappear up their own ass, strung out on their own self-importance. I'm one of them.
The misery of having it all your own way, the loneliness of sitting at a table where everyone works for you, the emptiness of arriving at Aspen on a Gulfstream to stay in your winter palace. Eh, sorry, different speech ....
You know what I'm talking about -- you've got to keep asking yourself why are you doing this? You've got to keep checking your motives.
Success for my group U2 has been a lot easier to conjure than, say ... relevance. RELEVANCE ... in the world, in the culture.
And of course, failure is not such a bad thing ... It's not a word that many of you know. I'm sure it's what you fear the most. But from an artist's point of view, failure is where you get your best material.
So fighting indifference versus making a difference. Let me tell you a few things you haven't heard about me, even on the Internet.
Let me tell you how I enrolled at Harvard and slept with an economics professor.
That's right -- I became a student at Harvard recently, and came to work with Professor Jeffrey Sachs at CID -- to study the lack of development in third-world economies due to the crushing weight of old debts those economies were carrying for generations.
It turns out that the normal rules of bankruptcy don't apply to sovereign states. Listen, it would be harder for you to get a student loan than it was for President Mobutu to stream billions of dollars into his Swiss bank account while his people starved on the side of the road. Two generations later, the Congolese are still paying. The debts of the fathers are now the debts of the sons and the daughters. So I was here representing a group that believed that all such debts should be cancelled in the year 2000. We called it Jubilee 2000. A fresh start for a new millennium.
Mike Gravel in his political campaign for President gave us a message, about philosophy, art, religion, & politics, that I haven't forgotton.
In our modern society,whether proposing marriage, seeking employment, applying for a loan, or seeking political office, we promise the Moon & stars without thinking of the reality of our intentions. As he walked away, the vibrations that he left there radiated through the waters.
What were his intentions? He didn't say, but I'm sure he knows that the road to Hell is paved with them.
Fmr Senator Mike Gravel On Pot, Palin, Obama & More
Petaluma, Calif. – The Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General (SBA IG) has released the latest in a series of investigations, which found billions in federal small business contracts have been diverted to corporate giants. The SBA IG investigation found that the SBA itself awarded federal small business contracts to large businesses. (http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/oig_report_10-08.pdf)
Report 10-08 uncovered that during fiscal year (FY) 2008 the SBA awarded more than 30 percent of its contracts to large businesses, and 92 percent of the contract actions contained blatant errors. Additionally, the report found that during FY 2009 the percentage of misleading data jumped to a record 97 percent.
Since 2003, more than a dozen federal investigations have found the SBA played a key role in the diversion of billions of dollars a month in federal small business contracts to large businesses around the world.
The American Small Business League (ASBL) has estimated that every year more than $100 billion in federal small business contracts are diverted away from legitimate small businesses and into the hands of some of the largest corporations in the world. The most recent data released by the Obama Administration indicates that firms counted as small businesses included: Xerox, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, British Aerospace (BAE), Ssangyong Corporation headquartered in Seoul, South Korea and Finmeccanica SpA, which is located in Italy with 73,000 employees.
In May of 2009, Congressman Hank Johnson (D-4-GA) introduced HR 2568, the Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act. If passed the bill would halt the flow of federal small business contracts to large businesses and redirect more than $100 billion a year in federal infrastructure spending to legitimate small businesses. Although the bill has bipartisan support with 19 co-sponsors, to date President Obama has refused to endorse the legislation.
You CAN handle the Truth There's no nice way to say it. The financial cost of health care is killing our citizens, hobbling our economy, crushing small business, and threatening the solvency of our government. In the meantime, the Health Care Industry is spending almost two million dollars a day lobbying Congress and manipulating public opinion to accept “reform” legislation that leaves a vicious, for-profit system intact. The "public option" is a trap. We need real reform that finds immediate savings, controls costs, and accomplishes the moral imperative of true Universal Access. A Single Payer plan is the only real path to a Health Care System that is socially, ethically and fiscally responsible. And yet, our elected officials refuse to even discuss the possibility of a Single Payer plan!
Health Money & Fear
If you have time this is an excellent presentation about the health care industries and the need for single payer as the only viable solution for universal coverage for the people of this Country.
I remember these words, stated during the presidential campaign, as Hillary pre-emtively mouthed the obvious. I trusted that Obama could speak for himself then, but I sure know better now.
Here's the latest Hillary statement on Democracy Now:
"As we put additional troops in, we want to have more civilians embedded with them. We want to have them right there on the ground when combat is over to begin the building process and partnering with their civilian counterparts."
Small business? Well, there's one thing that should be mentoned here. The defense industries are qualifying as "small business" and are being promoted as such. Anyone ever hear of the IPOA
Obama Administration Diverts $28.5 Million in Small Business Dollars to General DynamicsGeneral Dynamics Corporation (NYSE: GD) is a defense conglomerate formed by mergers and divestitures, and as of 2006 it is the sixth largest defense contractor in the world[1]. The company has changed markedly in the post-Cold War era of defense consolidation. .....Click the link for more informatio
Dec. 9, 2009 PETALUMA, Calif. -- The following is a statement by the American Small Business League: The Obama Administration has awarded a $28.5 million small business contract to Fortune 500 firm General Dynamics. As America's fourth largest prime contractor, General Dynamics did more than $29.3 billion in sales during fiscal year (FY) 2008 and maintains more than 92,000 employees. http://www.asbl.com/documents/20091202GeneralDynamics_Created_20091027.pdf
According to the most recent data from the Federal Procurement Data System The Federal Data Procurement System (FPDS) is a single source for US government-wide procurement General Dynamics is just one of hundreds of corporate giants that are currently receiving federal small business contracts from the Obama Administration.
The American Small Business League (ASBL) has estimated that every year more than $100 billion in federal small business contracts are diverted away from legitimate small businesses and into the hands of some of the largest corporations in the world. The most recent data released by the Obama Administration indicates that firms counted as small businesses included: Xerox, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, British Aerospace (BAE), Ssangyong Corporation headquartered in Seoul, South Korea and Finmeccanica SpA, which is located in Italy with 73,000 employees.
In May of 2009, Congressman Hank Johnson (D-4-GA) introduced H.R. 2568, the Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act. If passed the bill would halt the flow of federal small business contracts to large businesses and redirect more than $100 billion a year in federal infrastructure spending to legitimate small businesses. Although the bill has bipartisan support with 19 co-sponsors, to date President Obama has refused to endorse
Published: December 9 2009 02:00 | Last updated: December 9 2009 02:00
Barack Obama yesterday announced that some of the $200bn in lower-than- expected spending under its bank bail-out programme would go towards projects aimed at ensuring jobs growth "matches economic growth".
In a speech to the Brookings Institution , the US president laid out a series of initiatives to spur this growth . These included measures aimed at stimulating lending to small businesses, which have been hit hard by the drying up of credit over the past 15 months.
Mr Obama emphasised support for small business, infrastructure and clean energy: "These are areas in which we can put Americans to work while putting our nation on a sturdier economic footing," he said.
Yeh right?...Looks more like party time in San Diego to me.
Place: Coronado Island Marriott Resort 2000 2nd Street Coronado, CA
The National Defense Industrial Association San Diego Chapter periodic event is our monthly NDIA Luncheon meeting which takes place from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm every second Wednesday at the Catamaran Hotel and Resort located at 3999 Mission Blvd. San Diego, CA 92109.
More than one hundred defense industry leaders regularly attend this prestigious event. Because the NDIA luncheons provide a unique forum for local government representatives, San Diego defense company leadership, vendors, local media, and higher learning centers to share ideas and interact, the NDIA SD Luncheons are ideal events for your business networking opportunities.
Lieberman is the name and double cross is the game, but this should be no surprise to anyone who has, for the last eight years, watched this whiney little rat bastich stand up for the corporate government while disguised as a Democrat. That he is still in office, tells me that the corporate government still rules and that Obama, like any other POTUS, is the leader of this country in name only.
Holy Joe wouldn't give up his government health care for any thing, with the exception of maybe the excellent health care system of Israel, for which he qualifies.
Israel, in fact, has a superior health plan to the US. So here we are suffering the Health Care Lies of Lieberman while Israel is still collecting billions of dollars in aid. It was all put in place before Barack, (a good friend to Israel) Obama was officially in office.
U.S. President Barack Obama will not cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel, a senior U.S. administration official said Wednesday.
The $30 billion in aid promised to Israel over the next decade will not be harmed by the world financial crisis, the official told Israel Radio. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Obama Administration however expects the next government of Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu to continue peace negotiations with the Palestinians, he said.
Israel has been a pioneer in the contemporary concept and practice of Public Health and as a result has one of the world’s healthiest populations. The country's success in pursuing effective Public Health policies is reflected in the fact that a nation of immigrants, who have arrived during the past 54 years principally from North Africa, the former Soviet Union and Central Europe, has one of the highest average life expectancies in the world.
This has been accomplished despite the fact that Israel has absorbed Holocaust survivors and a large proportion of immigrants suffering from tuberculosis, malnutrition, heart disease and every type of cancer. At present, 25% of all cancer patients in Israel are newcomers from the former Soviet Union including tens of thousands from parts of the Ukraine and Belorussia who were exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear plant melt-down in 1987.
According to the Ministry of Health yearbook for 2001, the life expectancy for males (76.6) years) was topped only in Japan. Israeli women live longer than men, but do not fare as well in international statistical comparisons
What is public health?
Whereas medicine treats the health needs of an individual, public health (a discipline also known as public medicine or social medicine) deals with the health requirements of society as a whole. In fact, public health was a more popular concept in the 19th century when physicians realized that matters such as sewage amenities, cleanliness and a balanced diet would improve the health of the population . But as sanitary and dietary conditions improved and with such medical. discoveries as penicillin in the 20th century, much less emphaisis was placed on public health.
International community acknowledges importance of public health
Public health returned to the global agenda in 1975 at the WHO meeting in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan, in the former Soviet Union. Leading health officials from every country in the world signed a covenant proclaiming that the health of the people and the provision of medical services must be the responsibility of national governments. Only the United States refused to sign the covenant, insisting that individuals rather than their governments must be responsible for the provision of health services for themselves and their families.
Of course most nations simply do not have the necessary resources to offer their citizens adequate health services. Even in developed and relatively affluent countries like Israel, the essential challenge facing public health policy is effective distribution of limited resources.
Israel emphasizes public health
The Zionist Movement in pre-state Israel, which combined the traditional Jewish concern for all people with an emphasis on societal needs, regarded public health as a top social, political and economic priority. By the time Israel declared its independence in 1948, a national health infrastructure was already in place. Mother-and-child care centers (Tipot Halav) administered the necessary vaccinations to new-born babies and advised parents on proper care of infants. Health insurance funds (Kupot Holim) offered day-to-day consultations with doctors and specialists, and insured members for hospitalization.
The National Health Insurance Law
Despite Israel's commitment to providing health services for all of its citizens, by the early 90's some six percent of Israelis were not insured through one of the four existing health funds - Kupat Holim Clalit, Maccabi, Me'uhedet and Le'umit. In 1994, the National Health Insurance Law was enacted and it was implemented the following year, rectifying this situation. Since then, all citizens have their health insurance paid by a tax on income (up to 4.8%) while their employer's portion is collected by the National Insurance Institute, and passed on to the health insurance fund of the individual's choice.
National expenditure
Israel's national expenditure on health is typical for a western country. In 1999, the country spent 8.3% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health, down from a peak of 8.8% in 1994; the United States spent13.6% of its GDP on health care, Canada 9.5%, Japan 6.9% and the UK 7.6%. Of the Israeli expenditure, 41% was for hospitals and research, 39% for public clinics and preventive medicine and 9% for dental care. Israel spent $1,555 per capita on medicine.
