Police State In Republican Convention City

Does McCain Really Need Another Mansion? Giving Him White House Is One Too Many By Jared Bernstein, Huffington Post McCain's got eight houses and a level of wealth that insulates him from the real lives of 99% of Americans. That's dangerous for a president. Read more »

The Christian Right's Got a New Stealth Tactic to Smuggle Creationism into Science Class By Sandhya Bathija, Church & State Magazine A new law in Louisiana allows teachers to bring in "supplemental textbooks" about evolution, the origins of life and global warming to science class. Read more »

The Villains of the Housing Crisis Are Denying All Responsibility By Dean Baker, TruthOut.org The housing crisis is a result of reckless deregulation by specific individuals. Read more »

 

While Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama were rocking the Democratic convention in Denver, John McCain made his 13th appearance with Jay Leno to joke about his age.

But McCain's age is no joke. He will turn 72 on Friday and would be halfway to 73 if elected and sworn in on January 20. That would make him the oldest first-term President ever, two years older than Ronald Reagan.

McCain is two years older than his father was when he died suddenly of a heart attack at 70. He is 11 years older than his grandfather was when he died of "sheer exhaustion" at age 61.

The United States cannot afford the risk that McCain would die suddenly in the middle of an international crisis.

John McCain owes America a thorough test for Alzheimer's and cognitive impairment long before Election Day.

Sign our petition to the Corporate Media:
http://www.democrats.com/mccain-owes-america-an-alzheimers-test

 

 

Go here>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biCXQHexflY&feature=related

 

 

Go here>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7JKJTPMwdo&feature=related

 

 

Go here>   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4i6dUsEesU&feature=related

 

 

 

U.S. Economy: The Worst is Yet to Come By Mark Weisbrot, Huffington Post Nobody can predict exactly where the bottom will be, but it's clear that we're not even close to hitting it. Read more »

Indiana Jones and the Fridge of Nuclear Doom By Michael Dudley, City States The new Indiana Jones movie marks a new low in American cinema for its disturbingly casual use of nuclear weapons as a narrative device. Read more »

Voting Rights Lawyers Defeat Texas' Bogus Voter Fraud Prosecutions By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet Texas Attorney General agrees to settlement prior prosecutions. Read more »

 

Who Will Crash the Democratic and Republican Conventions?

By Michael Gould-Wartofsky, The Nation. Posted August 21, 2008.

At some point during the upcoming Republican National Convention, delegates will look out the windows of the Xcel Energy Center, or down from swank hotels and grand old after-parties, and there, past the security fences and the legions of taser-toting police and private security guards, they will see the other America spilling into the streets of St. Paul, Minnesota.

That is, if the Republicans even make it that far. From September 1-4, the RNC will be besieged by a panoply of protesters -- including antiwar activists, Iraq War veterans, Hurricane Katrina survivors, immigrant workers, labor unionists, anarchists, environmentalists, feminists and queers. At the frontlines will be America's young dissidents who will walk out of class, lock down intersections and dance in the streets to "Funk the War."

The view from Denver at the Democratic National Convention at the end of August will look a little different. That's because in the age of Obama many of these same movements, so united against the RNC, are deeply conflicted over the Democrats and the party system itself -- perhaps none more so than the youth movement. At issue, say organizers across the country, is not only their relationship to the Obama campaign and the presidential elections but the very meaning of democracy in 2008. Is true democracy possible inside the party system and on the campaign trail? Or is democracy to be found and made by the people in the streets outside? Will the two ever meet?

MORE HERE:  http://www.alternet.org/rights/95942/who_will_crash_the_democratic_and_republican_conventions/

 

McMafia: The New Face of Organized Crime

By Sandip Roy, New America Media. Posted May 30, 2008.

Editor's Note: If the idea of organized crime makes you think of The Sopranos or The Godfather, think again. The mob has had a makeover, says former BBC World News correspondent Misha Glenny, author of "McMafia: A Journey through the Global Criminal Underworld." Glenny was interviewed by NAM editor Sandip Roy.

Why do you say that the collapse of the Soviet Union is the most important event prompting the exponential growth of organized crime around the world in the last two decades?

When the state collapsed, it created a vacuum. As the planned economy moved over to the free market, law enforcement decided what was legal and what was illegal. If you were a businessman, you had to have a protection racket to ensure that any contract that you entered into would be honored by the other party. So essentially you had mob rule for 10 to 15 years.

It's still completely wild in places like Bulgaria, where, even though it's a member of the European Union, there have been 120 murders on the streets of Sofia in the last four or five years.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, did these different groups carve up the former Soviet bloc among themselves?

Hungary became a center of the money markets. Bulgaria, Serbia, and Kosovo were central to the transit of heroin from Central Asia into the European Union. And everyone got in on the trafficking of women.

But there were new jobs such as the sending of untaxed cigarettes from obscure parts of the world into the European Union, where they were sold for $6 or $7 cheaper than you could get in the shops. The profits that were made from that trade were funding the paramilitary organizations in Yugoslavia who were doing the killings during the war.

During the Balkan Wars, we saw the former Yugoslav states unable to get along with each other. Did the underground mafias also have trouble getting along with each other?

Ironically, the same people who were exhorting their fellow citizens to indulge in this slaughter were actually thick as thieves across national lines. So Serbs and Croats, Croats and Albanians, Albanians and Macedonians, were all working together.

MORE HERE:   http://www.alternet.org/rights/86653/

 

 

I hope all the Democrats who supported cheese-eatin’ Joe Lieberman over the Democratic primary winner for Senate in CT, Ned Lamont, are proud of themselves. I really do. And that includes btw — our man Obama who initially supported Lieberman over a great candidate like Lamont. (After the primary, Obama offered tepid support to Lamont online while  avoiding appearances with Lamont in CT during the race.)

It just goes to show that the netroots is sometimes right on target and conventional wisdom — well, sometimes it ain’t. Democrats going to keep losing to the GOP if they aren’t willing to think outside the beltway box and maybe, just maybe pay attention to the electorate. Looking back — what an astonishing miscalculation on the part of Democratic leaders….nice work, jackasses! The desire to play both sides without strongly backing the better and in fact, the Democratic candidate as selected by the people has backfired big time.

Cuz unlike Joe who likes to pose with John McCain signs behind him, Ned supported Barack Obama before it was cool. Here’s a snip from his Daily Kos diary from January 2008:

J.L. A Republican in D-clothing!! When it looks like a Duck, quacks like a Duck....

Dear friends,

In just over 18 months, the Avaaz community has grown to almost 3.4 million people from every country of the world, an average growth of over 40,000 people per week! Working in 13 languages, Avaaz members have taken nearly 8 million actions, donated over 2.5 million Euro ($3.5 million), and told over 30 million friends about Avaaz campaigns. A wonderful new source of global community and democracy is being created, and we've started to win real victories to close the gap between the world we have and the world we want -- on human rights, environmental protection, poverty, global justice and more.

 

Campaign Update -- May-July 2008

Over the last 3 months, Avaaz members have helped to win the first global treaty banning cluster bombs, successfully campaigned for a ceasefire to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, prevented G8 summit leaders from spinning their failure to act on climate change, run a major global ad campaign in Chinese communities promoting a constructive dialogue with China over Tibet and other issues, and personally rankled the President of Sudan (indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court) with a campaign to help bring him to trial.

Below is a quick summary of campaigning developments on Israel and Palestine, the food crisis, Zimbabwe, climate change, China, Tibet, and the Olympics, Darfur, cluster bombs, and more. On all of these issues, much more remains to be done -- but we have all contributed in important ways. What we've done so far is just the beginning.

 

 

A HAND SHAKE for PEACE>  https://secure.avaaz.org/act/index.php?r=act

Take Action- Ask Your Republican Representative to Co-sponsor H.R. 1279 Representative Lee Terry (R-NE) Sends Dear Colleague to All Republicans, Urging Them to Co-Sponsor H.R. 1279 Take Action! Strengthen Representative Terry's Request by Sending a Your Own Letter Asking for Support   The Direct Support Professional Fairness and Security Act (H.R. 1279) now has 124 Representatives showing their support as co-sponsors. Representative Lee Terry (R-NE) has sent a Dear Colleague letter urging all 199 House Republicans to co-sponsor the bill.

Simply put your Zip code in the box HERE:  http://capwiz.com/ancor/issues/alert/?alertid=11670731&queueid=[capwiz:queue_id]

The REAL McCain is a multimillionaire who owns ten luxurious homes. The REAL McCain backs President Bush's tax cuts for big corporations. The REAL McCain empathizes only with the interests of our nation's wealthy minority, not its money-strapped majority. But far too many are buying into McCain's deceit because the corporate press won't present the whole picture, so we created this video to educate the public about the REAL McCain.

Watch the video and send it to everyone you know.

 

We at Meet the Bloggers are very pleased to tell you that Michael Moore, the Academy Award-winning activist filmmaker of SiCKO and Fahrenheit 9/11, will be our special guest this Friday, August 22 and again on August 29. The show starts at 1pm ET and we'll be joined by bloggers Liliana Segura (AlterNet) and Cheryl Contee (Jack & Jill Politics), as well as nationally syndicated author and blogger David Sirota. Watch Mike talk with host Cenk Uygur about issues he covers in his new book, Mike's Election Guide 2008. "With John McCain admitting that he has no idea how to use a computer," Mike said, "we'll be providing Sen. McCain a step-by-step tutorial on how to turn one on, log onto the internet, and send an e-mail."

Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Collapse of the Middle Class Under Bush

Posted by ZP Heller, Meet the Bloggers at 9:23 AM on August 17, 2008.

 

While the corporate press has been busy covering political mud-slinging and Paris Hilton ads, Meet the Bloggers focused on the real issue facing the majority of Americans: the economic crisis.  Not only is the middle class in our country collapsing, but Bushonomics have left us on the verge of stagflation.  Millions of Americans who can no longer afford health insurance, gas for their cars, mortgage payments, and credit card bills are sinking below the poverty line. 

As special guest Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) indicated, our country is in the midst of a class war, and both the politicians and the media need to wake up and look at the causes of this crisis, such as the Bush administration's war in Iraq, its no-bid contracts, tax cuts for the wealthy.    

Sen. Sanders was joined by show host Cenk Uygur, and bloggers Isaiah Poole (Campaign for America's Future) and Amanda Logan (Center for American Progress) for a must-see debate about ways to get us out of this crisis.  If you missed the episode, you can always watch it in full at http://meetthebloggers.org/. 

Meet the Bloggers airs live every Friday at 1pm ET, and next week's guest will be will be Michael Moore, the Academy Award-winning creator of SiCKO and Fahrenheit 9/11, and author of the forthcoming Mike's Election Guide 2008. Better get your questions ready!

VIDEO HERE>  Bernie Sanders on the Collapse of the Middle Class:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83mch9Zlro0&eurl=http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/95345/

SOURCE:  http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/95345/

 

NaturalNews) Ever really taken a slow walk through a supermarket? You can't escape the harsh reality that we are surrounded and bombarded by choices. It's at the point of being overwhelming in my opinion. Choices are good, but do we really need over a 150 brands of breakfast cereals? Apparently the answer is yes, if you care to inquire, the Food and Beverage industries who according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 2006 spent over $1.6 billion in advertising to market their products to children. That has almost doubled in less than two years.

It's very clear that with so many choices and the powerful advertising that influences us to buy, it can be difficult to make the right choice. Unfortunately, that leaves us drowning in a never ending sea of indecisions. So what do we do with all these choices? At times the answer can be fairly simple. I've found 'simplicity comes best', from the mind of a child. During a recent conversation about what foods are good for you and what foods are not, my youngest daughter laughed and said "But I love that food." My oldest daughter replied, "Yeah but does it love you back?" That one reply was simple but contained a wealth of wisdom.

Loving foods that love you back, a concept that is very broad in its scope, but very powerful when it comes to teaching ourselves and children proper nutrition. As humans we thrive and grow based on the relationships we choose. To cultivate healthy relationships, we take the time to learn as much about our potential partner before committing. Why? Simply, because we all share a common desire -- to be fulfilled. Whether cultivating a business or personal relationship, we want it to be complete in order to function at our best capacity. How is it that utilizing this same philosophy with the food we eat has slipped from our consciousness? Is it that difficult to embrace the fact that we should nurture a relationship with the foods we consume? In other words, the foods we love should reciprocate by truly supplying the proper nutrition to our body. This will only happen, if and only if we improve our knowledge and make the best choices.

So ask yourself, does the food you eat truly love you back? Sounds silly perhaps until you think about the times you've had heartburn, stomach aches or worse -- an allergy reaction. Here are 5 helpful tips to consider and foods that I know for certain love us and those that don't.

5 Simple Tips to Remember:

1. Read the ingredients of the food you buy and research what they are.

2. Know your vitamins and minerals and what foods have them and those that don't. (Yes, there are some foods that have no nutrient content.)

3. Don't be taken in by every discount and coupon special. Saving money may not be saving your life.

4. Eliminate or Reduce microwaving your foods. Those rays destroy nearly 98% of its vitamins, in reality killing your food. Now that's not love.

5. Eat live foods such as fruits and vegetables as much as possible. It's been proven that you acquire more nutrients from live foods than dead ones.

5 Foods and Drinks That Truly Love You  GO HERE:  http://www.naturalnews.com/023877.html

 

Doughnuts contain hydrogenated oils, white flour, sugar, and acrylamides. Essentially, they're one of the worst cancer foods you can possibly eat. Reader's Digest calls doughnuts "disastrous" as a breakfast food, and many experts agree it's probably one of the worst ways to start the day. Extracted from the article The Top Five Cancer Causing Foods (http://www.naturalnews.com/021808.html) .

For more information, visit these links and articles:

The Dangers of Sugar (http://www.naturalnews.com/023085.html)

Healing Water (http://www.naturalnews.com/003202.html)

Top Five Foods for Beating Depression (http://www.naturalnews.com/020611.html)

UK Health Secretary Orders Mass Fluoridation of England's Children

 

NaturalNews) The United Kingdom's Health Secretary says that fluoridation of the water supply is needed to fight tooth decay among poor children, a move opposed by many health advocates.

"Fluoridation is carried out by water companies in violation of their customers' human right to refuse consent to any medical intervention," said the National Pure Water Association, noting that "by presenting fluoridation as a means of preventing tooth decay, [Health Secretary] Alan Johnson confirms the practice is medication."

Such critics also argue that it is inappropriate to expose people to a medication without adjusting for their body's individual needs. Adding a drug to the water supply without being able to regulate how much water people drink, they say, is dangerous.

Johnson plans to tell health officials to fluoridate the water supply in areas of the country with high rates of tooth decay. According to Johnson, poor children do not brush their teeth regularly, and need the cavity-fighting boost that fluoridated water will give them.

"These children are already being identified and treated in more effective ways," the National Pure Water Association disagreed.

Fluoridation of public water supplies is widespread in certain parts of the world, with nearly 70 percent of the water in Australia and the United States supplemented with compounds of the highly reactive mineral fluoride. But the practice has attracted great controversy, with critics alleging that the benefits of fluoridation are not well supported, while the risks are better documented.

Long-term consumption of fluoride has been shown to increase the risk of tooth and bone mottling known as fluorosis, and may increase the risk of bone fractures and cancers. A Taiwanese study found that women living in areas where the water had a high natural fluoride content had higher rates of bladder cancer than women in other areas. It is also known to have neurotoxic effects.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies fluoride as a toxin and regulates the level that is allowed into water.

 

SOURCE:   http://www.naturalnews.com/023881.html

 

NaturalNews) As the internet is abuzz with talk about the latest Bigfoot hoax, little attention is being paid to another grand hoax in modern society: Big Pharma and the empty promises of prescription drugs. In the Bigfoot hoax, two hunters (Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer) claim they found a carcass of Bigfoot in the woods of Georgia, while in the Big Pharma hoax, drug companies claim to have found chemical treatments for diseases they totally made up! Bigfoot is to serious zoology as Ritalin is to real medicine.

But there's more in common between Bigfoot and Big Pharma than you might suspect. Here's a list of six more things these two hoaxes share...

What Big Pharma and Bigfoot have in common:

• They're both based on fabricated evidence. Both Bigfoot and Big Pharma rely on utterly fictitious evidence offered up by unscrupulous people with an ulterior motive. In the case of Bigfoot, the motive is publicity. With Big Pharma, the motive is profits.

• They both involve corpses. The Bigfoot discovered in Georgia was a corpse. Not coincidentally, so are most people who take dangerous prescription medications. That's because pharmaceuticals kill more people than they help, and the more medications you take, the greater your risk of death. (Bigfoot, in fact, might have actually been killed by an overdose of Viagra, which is why his feet are so big!)

• They both involve damaged DNA. DNA from the Bigfoot corpse was so damaged that it actually resembled possum DNA (go figure...). Pharmaceuticals, meanwhile, damage human DNA, leading to cancer, infertility and accelerated aging. That's why people who start taking a lot of meds suddenly seem to age more quickly and die sooner.

• They both involve a media frenzy. In the case of Bigfoot, the media frenzy involves skeptical journalists who don't believe a word that's said. In the case of Big Pharma and stories about pharmaceuticals, the media frenzy involves journalists who have zero skepticism and believe every word they read in a drug company press release.

• Both Bigfoot and Big Pharma are lost in the woods. Bigfoot was really lost, apparently, since he was last spotted in Washington state. Big Pharma is lost in the woods, too, desperately searching for chemical "cures" to big diseases that can only be cured by avoiding chemicals and turning to medicines from Mother Nature (nutrition, herbs, superfoods, sunlight, etc.).

• The Bigfoot hoax and Big Pharma are both run by crazy people. In the case of Bigfoot, the crazy people are blue-collar crazy. Y'know, Deliverance and all that. With Big Pharma, the crazy people are white-collar crazy: fat-cat CEOs being paid millions to market products that kill millions more. Bigfoot people are crazy and poor; Big Pharma people are crazy and rich. I don't know which is scarier...

 

MUCH MORE HERE:   http://www.naturalnews.com/023887.html

 

 

 

Posted: August 15, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

The conflict in Georgia is spinning out of control. Russian troops have moved deep inside the country in what looks not far short of full-scale invasion, and tens of thousands of civilians are in danger, with many becoming refugees overnight.

Diplomats are scrambling to find a solution, and the European Union has proposed a ceasefire and withdrawal of all forces to their previous positions. China has also called for an "Olympic Truce", an ancient tradition that asks all countries to cease hostilities during the Olympic Games.

A humbled Georgia has agreed to the ceasefire, now French and Finnish foreign ministers are bringing the proposal to Moscow. In the next 48 hours, a massive global public outcry would show Russian and Georgian leaders that the world wants a ceasefire, and continuing the invasion would seriously damage Russia's international reputation. Click below to sign our emergency petition and then forward this email to your friends and family. We'll publicize the petition in the media and deliver it to the UN Security Council and Russian government:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/georgia_ceasefire_now

 

Why My Family Quit Using Plastic

By James Glave, The Tyee. Posted August 13, 2008.

I said goodbye to a few old friends this morning.

I dropped Sabrina and Duncan at day camp and continued on down the road to my community's recycling depot. There, I walked up to the big green "mixed plastics" bin and tossed in my FridgeSmart stackables, Ziploc Twist n' Locs and, perhaps most painful of all, my beloved half-cup-size Rubbermaid Servin' Savers -- indispensable snack-stashers that fit perfectly inside my kids' lunch boxes.

 MORE HERE:  http://www.alternet.org/environment/94849/why_my_family_quit_using_plastic/

 

Voting Machines Can Never Be Trusted, Says GOP Computer Security Expert

Velvet Revolution. Posted August 13, 2008.

 

In an interview from October, 2006, that has only now seen the light of day, Stephen Spoonamore, one of the world's leading experts in cyber crime and a self-described "life-long Republican" destroys Diebold's already non-existent credibility.

Spoonamore lays it out for anyone to see and understand. If you care about America and it's survival as a democratic republic, you'll watch this interview.

The interviews are on YouTube and are being carried by a new site created by Velvet Revolution, RoveCyberGate.com.

Read below the fold for details and background.