December 29, 2009
Canadians should not cage themselves in with Americans.
WRISEUP.COM
In recent days, senior members of the Stephen Harper minority Conservative federal government have again trotted out the sordid and story notion of Canada entering into a “security perimeter” arrangement with the U.S.
It would be the biggest mistake a Canadian government has ever made.
Contrary to the musings of former U.S. president George W. Bush, the reason America is the target of “terrorists” around the world is not that they “envy” the “freedoms” Americans “enjoy.”
It is because for more than 100 years – ever since it became a significant world power – the American government and American multinational corporations have raped, pillaged and looted almost every country that could not defend itself.
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December 22, 2009
The American president should not have caved in to Joe Lieberman.
WRISEUP.COM
Instead of celebrating the phony health-care-reform bill barely passed by the U.S. Senate Sunday night, United States President Barack Obama should have folded his hand a week ago – when Independent (so-called) Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman announced he would oppose any bill that included a public option.
Without a public option – at a minimum – the so-called health-care reform now headed America’s way is not worth the 1,500 pages it was written on. In fact, it’s a worthless sham.
When Lieberman made his final position clear, Obama should have vetoed any more concessions and let the bill – as it was then – go to a vote of the full senate.
He should have let the bill fail and pointed the finger very firmly at all the actors who played a role in denying 46 million Americans access to health care.
Obama could then have made true health-care reform – including at least a real public option – his mission for the 2010 mid-term elections.
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December 21, 2009
Quality health care will remain a dream for millions of Americans.
WRISEUP.COM
The United States Senate last night handed the corporate lobby a lopsided victory in the war over American health-care reform.
Yes, the Senate did nominally pass a so-called health-care-reform bill, but it was so watered down and emasculated by hundreds of amendments from Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats as to be almost meaningless in its import for the 46 million Americans who can’t afford health insurance.
The only thing the ultimate merged health-care-reform bill will do is assure a financial windfall for the health-insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the hospital industry and America’s overpaid doctors.
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December 14, 2009
The generous bailouts kept the greedy at the public trough.
WRISEUP.COM
United States President Barack Obama got together with an elite group of American bank presidents this morning so that he could beg them to start lending money again.
This is what is has come to since the biggest bailout of the banks, the corporations and the billionaires and mega-millionaires and the biggest transfer of wealth from the masses to the super-rich in history.
The obscene sums of money that have been lavished upon these criminal predators should have bought the taxpayers a little more consideration from the financial institutions. But it didn’t.
The United States has spent almost $24 TRILLION on its bailout – or almost 150 percent of this year’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Canada – which has gone relatively unscathed by the global financial meltdown – has spent $213 BILLION – $13 billion for the automakers and $200 billion to buy mortgages from the Canadian banks that supposedly were in good shape. This amounts to 16 percent of Canada’s GDP for 2009.
And what has the public gotten in return for its empathy and generosity toward the super-rich?
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December 10, 2009
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
The latest tally puts the United States of America’s 2010 military spending very close to three-quarters of a TRILLION dollars. That’s more than the military spending of every other country in the world combined and it’s the primary reason the U.S. Congress is balking at extending health care to some of the 46 million Americans who can’t afford health insurance.
Almost every day, the American TV news reports some congressperson’s doubts about the country’s ability to finance expanded health care. But nobody ever expresses any doubts about America’s ability to finance ever-expanding wars.
The United States has – for the past 60 years at least – tried to portray itself as the world’s “policeman.” But its record reveals “the world’s thug” hiding behind the facade of “policeman.”
Born into war, legalized slavery and corporate capitalism, America has almost always been either at war with someone(s) or threatening war against someone(s). read more »
December 8, 2009
Ottawa could greatly reduce Canadian joblessness.
WRISEUP.COM
United States President Barack Obama proposed today to redirect $200 billion (U.S.) of unused TARP bailout money to job creation. It’s not a bad idea: America’s masses have grown increasingly beleaguered every year for the past generation and the current recession is only worsening the devastation.
And it would not be a bad idea for the Harper-Ignatieff Conservative-Liberal government to now commit $25 billion (CAD) a year to long-term job creation in Canada.
There are currently more than 1.6 million unemployed Canadians and another 1.6 million underemployed or “discouraged” Canadian workers.
Canada’s official unemployment level has not dipped below one million in almost 30 years and then only for a brief period.
Underemployment has mushroomed as corporations have resorted to so-called “contract” and part-time employment providing only very low wages, few if any benefits and zero job security.
And the number of “discouraged workers” – who are not even counted in the official unemployment stats – has also soared.
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December 7, 2009
Is Mother Earth really getting warmer? If so, are we to blame?
WRISEUP.COM
Up until quite recently I had been inclined to credit the hysteria in the scientific community about global warming as legitimate.
After all, I believe in good science and I had no reason to doubt that these climate experts were rational, reasonable and responsible individuals. Moreover, my own observations about the global climate seemed to confirm what the scientists were saying.
Sure, there were some convincing climate-change skeptics. But they mostly seemed to be right-wing buffoons funded by corporate special interests. When the hand that feeds you requires contrary research, you produce contrary “research.”
But a couple of events of recent weeks and my own more recent experience of climate have given me cause to pause.
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December 3, 2009
Have fame and fortune doomed Tiger and Elin?
WRISEUP.COM
The mercurial rise of superstar golfer Tiger Woods and his imminent potential fall tell a tale that could only be realized under global corporate capitalism.
By the time Tiger burst onto the pro golf tour, he was already a legend – the greatest amateur golfer ever.
He would best all the established pros at the tender age of 21. He would make his first $100 million at the tender age of 21. He would become a world-famous phenom at the tender age of 21. And he would become both hero and role model to hundreds of millions at the tender age of 21. Moreover, he was baby-faced and squeaky-clean.
By the age of 33 he would be the richest athlete ever – a veritable billionaire – and be recognized by a majority of golf fans as the greatest golfer ever.
And everything seemed to come so easy. For all of his adult life, everybody had been telling him how special he was. Just as fans lined up to plead for his autograph, corporations would line up to pony up tens of millions of dollars a year to exploit his magnetic image.
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December 1, 2009
The American president chose the socioeconomic elite over the struggling masses again.
WRISEUP.COM
United States President Barack Obama tonight doomed his own re-election chances by sucking up to the right-wing zealots and ordering 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. Ultimately, Afghanistan will be Obama’s Vietnam.
The American president tried mightily to rationalize his wrongheaded decision and to deny any similarities between this invasion and America’s 1960s invasion of Vietnam. But try though he might, he was wrong on all counts.
In the first place, Barack Obama is intelligent enough to recognize that 9-11 was probably an inside job, orchestrated by the George W. Bush administration and the CIA. All they needed to do was find a score of demented Muslim fanatics to serve as their frontment and scapegoats.
Who are America and its allies supposedly fighting in Afghanistan? Well, of course, it’s the Taliban and al-Qaeda, two creatures nurtured and brought to terrorist power in the first place by U.S.-government funding.
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