Columnist – John Sammon
Obama’s long expected decision to escalate the Afghanistan War is based on the dubious conclusion that if decisive military victory over the Taliban isn’t possible, some kind of honorable (for us) chastisement of them is, by holding more ground, as well as retraining a corrupt regime in Kabul to be more honest.

It demonstrates a sad fact.

Some change in the status quo in the way America is, is possible. But not much. Not enough.

Obama ran his candidacy on a call for change. His supporters voted for him in part based on that promise. He was elected on that premise.

Unlike the war-making, torture-mongering wire-tapping crooks Bush and Cheney, Obama is a decent and honorable man. He is attempting to change some things, health care for one. But the public should understand that no matter who holds the office, the United States is not truly of and by and for the people, but a conglomerate geo-political-military-industrial ruling elite whose first priority is to maintain monetary power and influence, material and energy wealth.

Obama, nor anyone else, will be able to change these:

  1.  The US will continue to make war on or meddle in the affairs of much smaller, Third World impoverished countries, because of political differences, or we want their natural resources, those who lack a navy, air force, shoes on their feet and refrigerators. We’ve been in Afghanistan eight years, and killed a number of them, but it’s not enough, enough revenge. We have to triumph over them, or at least appear to. No attempt will be made to reach a political settlement until enough people have died. Just from the standpoint of size and firepower, the US comes off looking like an imperialist bully, but its people many of them nonetheless for some reason have great pride that we are sometimes able to defeat these impoverished pygmy countries.

  2.  The US will just as assiduously avoid military attack on small countries that have a nuclear capability, like Iran and North Korea. Any country, even a small one, that could strike back and cause us great harm, we will treat with caution and seek a political solution.

  3.  The US will continue to back Israel to run wild in the Middle East pushing Palestinians out, treating them like dogs, sometimes murdering them, and building new settlements on formerly Palestinian land, which over decades is what led to the anti-American sentiment and 9-11. There’s a huge difference between defending Israel’s right to exist, and equipping them with sophisticated weapons so they can expand at the expense of others who have also lived in the area for centuries. There is a very powerful pro-Israel lobby on Capitol Hill and championed by the likes of Joe Lieberman that makes any objective discussion of the situation impossible.

Anyone, including Obama, who criticizes Israel, is immediately branded an anti-Semite. Americans never look in a mirror when it comes to understanding how a problem came to be. They believe they are always innocent, noble, incapable of error, and that bad evil countries picked on them for no reason at all.

  4.  The US government and the priorities of the country will continue to be influenced by corporate lobbyists whose loyalty is to their industry and profits and not the American people. Thus, ruthless, dishonest corporations of the kind that nearly destroyed the economy will continue to hold sway. Money talks.

  5.  America will continue to be domestically the most violent country in the history of the world, a nation of child abusers, rapists, serial and spree killers, drive-by back shooters and gangs. Media will express shock and ask “why?” at each new atrocity, and then run the usual nightly shit entertainment programming glorifying violence, beautiful Hollywood models and cool-dude guys with their perfectly arranged hair pointing hand guns in prime time, acting tough and yelling “freeze!” Right before a Viagra commercial.

This is a sick country with twisted values, and will remain so.

  6.  Americans, using religion and the military, will continue to believe they are better than other people. You never hear a Frenchman say God bless France, or a Honduran say God bless Honduras, like you hear “God bless America.” This fantasy supposes that the creator of all life, the God of all people, would select for special reverence a nation above all others with an artificial border created by European immigrants who purchased or out-rightly conquered it from its former owners, while also performing the extermination of its original native inhabitants.

  7.  Racism will continue.

  8.  So will sexism.

  9.  There will be no standard flat and fair tax for Americans, but a system that bleeds the middle class and rewards the few richest.

10.  The destruction caused by global warming will race ahead of any president’s attempt to deal with it, and any president who does, will face the anger of the people who will call him a traitor.

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   Columnist – John Sammon
Who says you can’t learn anything from history. Certainly our leaders must think that, because they never seem to learn. They don’t study history. I want to point out the mistake Bush and Cheney made in the Middle East before their disastrous administration fades in the collective memory.

Nobody thinks of these kinds of things except me.

Bush made almost the exact, identical strategic mistake that George Custer made at Little Bighorn, and Hitler on the Eastern Front during the invasion of Russia.

Custer, a supreme egotist, fatally divided his men into three prongs (a fourth was bringing up supplies). The three prongs of the attack against the Sioux village at the Big Horn were far enough apart physically, that no prong could support the other prongs if the other prongs ran into trouble. In other words, the Indians could defeat each of the three prongs of the attack separately.

The rest is history. Custer and one-third of his men were cut off and annihilated while the other two-thirds (the other two prongs) took refuge on a hilltop until the Indians broke off the battle.

Hitler did the same thing. Hitler invaded Russia in three prongs. The Northern prong was to capture Leningrad. The middle prong was to capture Moscow, and the southern prong was to capture the Ukraine and the Caucasus with its oil. Each of the three prongs was just weak enough, not to be able to accomplish the mission it had been given.

Like Custer, Hitler fatally divided his force into three. Also like Custer, each prong was far enough away from the others that it couldn’t provide support to the others if the others got in trouble.

All three could be defeated individually.

Hitler wouldn’t listen to his generals’ advice and meddled in the plan. First, he changed his mind on capturing Moscow, and sent that force north to help take Leningrad. Then, he changed his mind again, and decided to bring that force back, and to send it against Moscow as originally planned. Months were lost in the shuffle.

The Russian winter came. The rest is history. Hitler, like Custer, fatally divided his forces, and bit off more than he could chew. He lost.

Here comes Bush and Cheney. They decided they could launch two wars at once, Iraq and Afghanistan, in this case, two prongs. Bush wouldn’t listen to generals who told him he didn’t have enough force on the ground, and fired them.

Hitler also fired his generals who told him things he didn’t want to hear.

Like Hitler, Bush, was a strategic blunderer. Rather than listen to experts, he listened to Cheney, who told him our troops would be greeted in Iraq as liberators and flowers thrown at their feet. It would be a cakewalk.

Bush put most of his push, men, equipment into Iraq, and reduced Afghanistan to a relative sideshow. Iraq turned out to be tougher than expected. This gave the Taliban in Afghanistan time to recoup and recover and re-take the initiative. Now, Afghanistan is a shambles, and Obama is trying to un-do Bush’s stupid mistakes, by withdrawing troops from Iraq, and sending them instead to Afghanistan, where they should have been sent in the first place.

Because of this bungling, a clear victory has been achieved in neither theatre.

What do Custer, Hitler, Bush and Cheney have in common beyond stupidity and arrogance?

Old Russian proverb. If you try to catch three rabbits at the same time (or even two), you wind up catching none.

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The US military were once proud men who fought with the Founding Father’s courage, determination and goals. The individual soldier still tries his or her best to do so today, but now the military-industrial complex (US Chamber of Commerce a/k/a Corporate America) has taken over and senior officers, like the members of Congress, are now just an extension of the long arm of lobbyists.

Since the Korean War, the American military has been used as corporate rent-a-cops. The consequence of this is showing up in the won/loss column, and it can be seen on many of our soldiers’ faces and heard in their voices. They’re like zombies, disinterested without liability or high merit. If ordered, or left to believe that torturing people is acceptable, they will do it calmly as if they had done nothing at all (Abu-Ghraib). After their military tours are over, there is a hopeless lack of resourcefulness in them which makes them some of the least determined people I’ve ever met. The Veteran Affairs hospitals and homeless shelters are overflowing with these once proud Americans.

When I arrived in Vietnam in 1968, the very last things on earth that a person needed in order to think clearly and calmly were in abundance. Cases of candy, soft drinks, and cigarettes were stacked from floor to ceiling. Then there were the bags of unmentionable stuff without labels. All of these things, void of one iota of concern, were provided free of charge by the corporate butt boys in our nation’s capital. We were delivered into the hands of our enemies for them to do as they pleased with us; and should we survive, we would return home to fight yet another war, a war of hostility, bureaucracy and self-loathing.

Watching the Iraq War and the soldiers returning is nothing but a rerun of the Vietnam War for me. To believe the Arabs in the Middle East are our friends is to believe Feisal adored Jemal. Every Arab in Iraq who is not trying to kill Americans is being paid by the Pentagon and the CIA not to kill them. It’s not the surge of soldiers; it’s the surge of U.S. dollars that has reduced American casualties. Every American in the Middle East has a price on his or her head. Stop paying the price, and off will come the heads.

"This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations." -Rutherford B. Hayes

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Amazon.com Widgets

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 Columnist – John Sammon
Here is the text of a speech given by the Republicans’ new chairman, the first Republican African American chairman, Michael Steele. Steele’s words are accompanied by translations explaining what he really meant.

(In other words, the truth).

“A great deal has changed since President Reagan left the national stage (collapse of the country under Republicans’ eight years). Our enemies have come to our shores (immigrants).

Reagan’s successes (failures) were in large part due to his ability to focus on those things that unite us (right wing fundamentalist extremism, and covert illegal operations in South America and the Middle East).

While our party has changed too, the core of who we are and what we believe has not (tax breaks and loop holes for big oil and corporations).

Republicans are not conflicted by the ups and downs of elections (If that communist nigger gets elected president, I’m leaving the country), but rather by the very nature of conservatism in the post-Reagan era (God is white, and anybody who’s not with us is a bad American).

During these changing times, Republicans stand on the precipice of conservatism, ready to throw each other off because we feel as if we lost our grip on what it means to be a Republican (religious political extremism, intolerance and racism). But, we should never lose faith first in our belief in the power and ingenuity of the individual to create the legacy of a nation through hard work and self-discipline” (as long as he’s rich, white and a guy).

Conservatism must stand firm once again in our belief that government should be limited (wiretap spying on Americans and torturing prisoners), so that it never becomes powerful enough to infringe on the rights of the individual (as long as those individuals aren’t in countries we don’t like).

Republicans must promote business regulations that encourage entrepreneurs to take risks, so that more individuals can enjoy the satisfaction and fruits of self-made success (sour fruit, everybody losing their jobs and homes after de-regulated banking gangsters ran wild selling out the country).

Our party must always remain steadfast in its defense of a colorblind society (by failure to pass one piece of Civil Rights legislation in 150 years).

Conservatives now have a window of opportunity (to act as obstructionists), to demonstrate the truth of America, that every American regardless of his or her station in life (must be rich), upbringing or social status (just not queers, niggers, spicks, or liberal communist faggots), has the opportunity to turn their hopes into action and to realize the promise that is the American (fading) dream (current nightmare).

Ronald Reagan understood that, and he acted to lift a dispirited nation to become that ’shining city on a hill’ (Detroit is a ghost town).

Republicans must remind America once again that its (broken) promise is the promise of endless possibilities (ways to lose your house), and define for countless generations those values we hold dear (elitism, racism, sexism and religious intolerant extremism).

Let’s hold dear the value and soul of religious faith (except for Muslims), complete integrity (Scooter Libby), loyalty and truthfulness (weapons of mass destruction in Iraq). Let’s honor America with incorruptible public service (soliciting gay sex with an underage boy in the men’s room), a respect for economy in government (Republican record deficits of all time). Let’s stand firm for our patriotism (Republicans never serve in the military), real love of country (except for Mexicans and niggers).

The party of Lincoln is the party of ideas (the status quo) and leadership (Dick Cheney) that have made and will continue to make this country great. It is still a long and bumpy road to the White House this November (bumpier than you knew).

If we stick to those principles that have long united our party (keep niggers and women out); these are values that continue to empower, uplift and remind us that America will always be the one place on earth where possibility meets opportunity (where nobody anywhere else in another country is allowed an opportunity).”

Copyright 2009 Sammonsays.

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President George W. Bush consulted the Bible and neo-cons in formulating his foreign policy, and both the divine and the profane sources told him to bomb the hell out of Iraq as the first step in spreading democracy in the Middle East.

The king of the neocons, Dick Cheney, refuses to admit that his brilliant strategy succeeding only in emboldening Iran, strengthening al Qaeda, and turning the world against us.

Cheney is infuriated that Obama has promised to close Guantanamo within a year, and he is hopping mad that our combat troops will soon be leaving Iraq.

Cheney is no longer the power behind the throne, all he can do now is warn that the sky is falling. Cheney is punishing America for electing Obama to the White House by warning that we are in imminent danger of a horrifying terrorist attack.

“Dick Cheney isn’t finished scaring the bejesus out of America.

“The former vice president warned Wednesday that there’s a ‘high probability’ the U.S. will get nuked by terrorists during President Obama’s watch.

‘The ultimate threat to the country [is] a 9/11-type event where the terrorists are armed with something much more dangerous than an airline ticket and a box cutter – a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind,’ Cheney told Politico.com from his latest undisclosed location – his new Virginia office.

Cheney said that ‘perhaps hundreds of thousands of people‘ would perish in such a strike, and that ‘there’s a high probability of such an attempt.’” — [ READ MORE ]

It is irresponsible for Cheney to make such a warning without offering any proof. If there is a high probability of such an attack it didn’t materialize suddenly once Obama became president. Why didn’t Bush/Cheney deal with the imminent terrorist threat before leaving office?

If Americans don’t take Cheney seriously (and we shouldn’t), he will resort to issuing warnings about the Super Volcano under Yellowstone or an invasion of little green men from Mars.

I wish Cheney would stay in his undisclosed location, and stay way from civilized society.

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Olbermann: Cheney doing the work of terrorists — Feb. 5: In a Special Comment, Countdown?s Keith Olbermann accuses former Vice President Dick Cheney of using made-up statistics and nonsensical reasoning in an effort to extend the Bush administration’s reign of fear over Americans weeks after voters resoundingly rejected Cheney’s un-American worldview.

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