By Dave Lindorff

I’ve been getting some emails that refer to Barack Obama as a
“Manchurian Candidate,” a guy who is somehow hiding a secret radical
and/or Muslim jihadist agenda that will burst forth if he’s elected
president. There is a certain idiot factor at work here, since if Obama
were a closet Weatherman, who somehow learned of and adopted that 1960s
college dropout organzation’s creed at the tender age of 8, it would
have clashed badly with any Muslim teaching he might have picked up as
a student in an Indonesian public school at the same time (he attended
an Indonesian public schoolfrom the age of 6 to 8 before transferring
to a Catholic-run institution).

But since some low-wattage and conspiracy-minded people seem ready
to believe this kind of stuff, let’s consider John McCain’s early
background, and the possibility of his being a Manchurian Candidate
too. Fair’s fair, right?

By Dave Lindorff

Hold everything!

Talk about déjà vu. Remember when Bush and his cabinet officers were
running all over in late 2002 crying wolf about Iraq’s supposed nukes,
and threatening that inaction on a war resolution by the Congress would
leave them to blame when the “mushroom cloud” appeared over some
American city?

Well, now they’re doing it again, this time claiming that economic
Armageddon faces the US and even the global economy if Congress doesn’t
hand over all power over the economy to the Secretary of the Treasury
in absolute contravention of the most fundamental principle of the
Constitution, which establishes that the budget be in the control of
Congress. These guys are saying if Congress doesn’t vote to hand over
$700 billion or more of taxpayer money to the Treasury to dole out to
fat cat bankers, the resulting economic collapse will be on their heads.

By Dave Lindorff

With the government now having spent over $800 billion in less than
a year shoring up tottering financial companies that had become little
more than casinos (and rigged ones at that), America is looking
increasingly like China, a country where the state has been gradually
getting out of the business of directly owning companies.

At this point, with the US government owning 80 percent of the
world’s largest insurance company, AIG, and essentially owning mortgage
firms Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as well as bankrupt Lehman Brothers,
and with the nation’s two largest automakers in line asking for $25
billion in government loans, one would be hard-pressed to spot the
difference between the two systems.

By Dave Lindorff

I got an urgent email from an uncle of mine yesterday evening. A
sweet man, retired career military and very religious, he was genuinely
worried about an email he had received purporting to convey an article
said to have been written by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and
published on June 29, 2008 alleging that much of the Obama campaign's
"small donations" over the Internet had actually come from several Arab
sources overseas.

By Dave Lindorff

    American Secretary of War Robert Gates knows a real leader when he sees one.  “Clearly, as far as I’m concerned,” he said, Vladimir Putin, and not President Dmitry Medvedev, "has the upper hand right now."

     Well hell, Gates should know. After all, he deals on a daily basis with the same peculiar situation here in the US, where the president also is a figurehead and the real power lies in the hands of Vice President Dick Cheney.

So many diversions, so little time! That is part of the strategy, of course. Impoverish people so they must work harder to maintain their daily lives, while simultaneously overwhelming them with info overload and ersatz news. Decentralize the crimes themselves through a network of events and operatives over a time continuum, and choke off government scrutiny and regulation by reduced funding. Buy off the people's government. Throw in classic disinformation methods, and wrap it all in the cross (invoking religious endorsement) and the flag (inferring without actualizing authentic patriotism).

Blend, at a moderate but continuously increasing pace, with intermittent but increasingly harrowing instances of terror.

By David Swanson

Imagine being so angry that you couldn't find a job that you were able to decide, as a man in Tennessee just did, that the way to solve your problems was to attack liberals - the people who support (albeit ineffectively) workers' rights, union rights, and fair trade, who oppose NAFTA, oppose tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, support investing in job creation at home rather than wars abroad, and want to tax corporations and the super-rich rather than small businesses and working people.

If you want to see the most dishonest discussion of the Orwellian "Protect America Act," watch MSNBC's Alex Witt and Col. Jack Jacobs - neither of them has a clue what they're actually talking about, but they do a great job of promoting Republican lies.

Witt and Jacobs were key liars about Iraq and the fact that they are still promoting GOP lies on TV is a disgrace to MSNBC and its parent companies, GE and MSNBC.

[transcript below]

ALEX WITT, MSNBC: What has this wiretapping law been doing, and why did it expire?

 

Hiring Bill Kristol by the NYTimes should come as no surprise to anyone considering the way the mainstream media have surrendered to the Bush administration's autocratic policies. With the general election coming up in less than a year from now we have seen the Republican right wing operatives and propaganda machine methodically worm their way into every major media outlet.

When G. W. Bush named Kevin Martin to head the FCC the Republican media takeover plan was inevitable. With little or no opposition from the Democrats, media giants can now implement their monopoly in controlling whatever news is disseminated for public digestion.

They now have a green light to own entire television networks, radio stations and newsprint in major metropolitan areas, key factors in the Republicans' strategy to win the presidency and even take back both houses of congress.

All of our emails and calls are giving Democrats in Congress the backbone to say NO to Bush's demand for warrantless wiretapping power.

So to avoid defeat, the Busheviks are once again playing their ace-in-the-hole - the Big Lie - which is being stovepiped into Congress through Rupert Murdoch's lie-filled NY Post.

On May 15, Spc. Alex Jiminez (left) and six other soldiers were on lookout in the Triangle of Death when insurgents attacked, killing 4 and kidnapping 3, including Jiminez.

While U.S. troops began a highly-publicized manhunt, NSA lawyers struggled to find a top Justice Department official to get an emergency warrant for a wiretap (of what I don't know - did the insurgents leave behind a cellphone or their personal address book?).

But it took them 10-12 hours because

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was out of town; Deputy AG Paul McNulty had resigned already; Solicitor General Paul Clement "had left the building"; and the other responsible official, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein was not yet authorized to approve the emergency order.