[I'm going to break my rule and give a ton of links. Sorry if it's too much info at once] This video clip is from the BBC documentary The Century of the Self, and it explains how the media allows itself to be manipulated and used to further the ends of those in power. They did it 50 years ago. They did it to sell the war in Iraq. And they're doing it today. The lobbyists are people they tell us are people we have to trust. For instance, former DHS Sec. Michael Chertoff who's going to get his very own post in this series or former DNI Mike McConnell, who happens to have made a bundle out of security contracts at Booz Allen

Ten years after leaving the government, McConnell was finally making real money -- two million dollars a year at Booz-Allen.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich appeared on CSpan recently. I found myself asking why Kucinich is in such a philosophical minority in Washington when everything he says addresses the serious economic and physical realities grinding down the American citizenry. Kucinich speaks with passion, clarity and empathy.

Kucinich admits that Obama received an “unmitigated mess” from George Bush. But he contends Washington is now too paralyzed to restore justice. He warns that we can’t afford to get gridlocked by partisanship. “The country is collapsing!” he declares. Kucinich maintains that health care is one of a three-pronged crisis. Our broken political system is not providing jobs, universal health care or saving homes for its citizens.

Our administration and Congress are not holding insurance companies accountable for the price gouging happening and even profoundly escalating right now. Kucinich believes the proposed health care bill has a CENTRAL FLAW. It is LOCKING IN PRIVATIZATION. There is no process for control of premiums. Kucinich’s rhetoric does not hold back. He calls this government a “cash cow” for corporations. It is providing corporations such as insurance companies with a “license to steal.” At one point he warns of us becoming “slaves on a health insurance plantation.”

video link

Over the last few weeks there have been a series of posts at different websites that have documented the latest variations of the conjunction of the military and anti-terror industrial complex with our government. I'm going to call it the Fear Industrial Complex because to be boxed in into the Military Industrial Complex would be inaccurate and wouldn't even come close to defining the collusion of 1) the military wing, with 2) the security wing, with 3) the Congressional wing, with 4) the Presidential wing and lastly 5) the media wing of the complex . There are so many links that if I tried to put them all in one post it would take several hours to put together and would shortshrift them all and be a disservice to the thought-provoking information.

With that, here's the first post by Frida Berrigan, with an intro by Tom Engelhardt in the link. I'm posting the entire thing because things like this have a way of disappearing

America’s Global Weapons Monopoly

Just when will the Department of Water Resources (DWR) declare that the "drought" is over? Will they wait until vast tracks of land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley are inundated with muddy, swirling flood waters so Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger can stage a photo opportunity in a boat as he declares a flood disaster for the besieged "farmers" - and proclaims that the only way to stop disastrous flooding is to build a peripheral canal and new dams and vote for the water bond?"

Governor Schwarzenegger managed to take a break from his relentless war on Central Valley salmon and Delta fish populations and fishing jobs and his campaign to build a peripheral canal and new dams to engage in yet another shameless photo opportunity to divert people's attention from his abysmal record on fish and the environment.

If anyone starts giving you a hard time about “not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good” and how important it is for our Congress people to go ahead and hold their noses while they vote for the President’s Trojan horse of a health care bill in the name of incremental progress, consider some serious warnings made by Dr. Marcia Angell (first woman editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and currently a lecturer at Harvard Medical School) in a recent Bill Moyers' interview.

Dr. Angell asserts this bill is a step in the WRONG, not right, direction. She laments the profound lack of leadership shown by the President for health care reform. She warns that this bill would pour hundreds of billions of dollars of public money into health care companies in the next decade. At the same time, our hapless citizenry will be forced to pay whatever exorbitant rates will be levied by avaricious, profit making insurers. Given the obscene, record-making profits 4 of the 5 largest insurance megacorporations made last year, in these very troubled times for the rest of us, Dr. Angell’s warning deserves serious consideration:

Dr. Angell:

Fighting for the wrong things and too little, too late. He [Obama] gave away the store at the very beginning by compromising. Not just compromising, but caving in to the commercial insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry. And then he stood back for months while the thing just fell apart. Now he's fighting, but he's fighting for something that shouldn't pass. Won't pass and shouldn't pass.

"The Foundation-run MLPAI process is corrupt and deceptive from top to bottom, and will be challenged in every way if left to stand," according to John and Barbara Stephens-Lewallen.

North Coast Enviros Blast MLPA as Evidence of Corruption Emerges

by Dan Bacher

John and Barbara Stephens-Lewallen, Mendocino County's leading environmental activist couple, demanded that the Schwarzenegger administration stop the corrupt, fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative during their testimony before the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the North Coast Study Region on March 1. Their plea to halt the process was made the same week that new hard evidence of corruption in the widely-contested MLPA fiasco emerged during a Fish and Game Commission meeting in Ontario, California.

"It is our duty to defend California ocean food sovereignty while we still draw breath," the Stephens-Lewallens stated. "Public access to fisheries is a Constitutional right in California (Article 1, Section 25). We will lose this right unless we unite and assert it this year."

GOP Lawmaker Demands Recall of Car That Drove Him to Gay Club

Calls Gay Car ‘Menace’

SACRAMENTO (The Borowitz Report) – Anti-gay California State Sen. Roy Ashburn today demanded a sweeping recall of the vehicle that drove him to a gay nightclub this week.

Sen. Ashburn, a Republican who has consistently voted for anti-gay legislation, said that the car drove him to the club “against my will.”

“If we are recalling cars for problems with their brakes and power steering, then surely we should be recalling vehicles that force their drivers to go to gay nightclubs,” Sen. Ashburn said.

The state senator said not only did the car drive him to the gay nightclub, but it forced him to enter the club and party there for hours, resulting in his later arrest for DUI.

Hella News Roundup

March 3rd, 2010 @ 1:53 pm by andy

Physics student Austin Sendek’s campaign to get “hella” designated as an official SI prefix (for 10 to the power 27) might be the media hit of the year so far. On Monday, the Sacramento Bee ran a story, followed by a nice piece from CBS-13’s Steve Large. Yesterday other local TV stations Fox 40 and News 10 followed up with their versions of the story, affiliates nationwide have picked up those local pieces and the story has been covered by news sites in the UK as well. The Guardian provides a handy Q&A for Brits to decode American English (”What’s a sophomore again?”).

Response to “The Start of the Second American Revolution?” by Paul Joseph Watson Issue 3 August 2009 The Sovereign – Hey “Tea Bagger” Twisted Dupes to the Plutocracy – Our Forefathers Are Not With You Nor Are “We” the People!
by Andrew H. Dral

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. Thomas Paine

A version of this article was published in Issue 17 January 2010 of The Sovereign -- a small New York monthly. It was written in response to an article written by "Tea Bagger" Paul Joseph Watson Issue 3 August 2009 of The Sovereign. You might find this updated version of interest.

I found Mr. Watson’s diatribe in the August edition of you paper completely misdirected and without merit. He ruthlessly attacked the U.S. government and President Obama, but what about the true enemy of working class America -- corporate America’s plutonomy -- the corporate aristocracy. Mr. Watson has been duped. He has been made a willing fool and a tool of the corporatists, along with those that would follow the will and policies that benefit the corporations and the plutocrats. Had Mr. Watson and his “tea-baggers” been around during our Revolutionary War times they would have sided with the British loyalists, the Tories.

Link

by Dan Bacher

Every time that you think that corporate agribusiness can't stoop any lower than they have already in their campaign to destroy imperiled fish populations and fishing jobs, they always manage to reach a new low in their race to the bottom.

In the latest surrealistic episode in the California water wars, Westlands Water District, the "Darth Vader" of California water politics, is now seeking a permit to pollute the drinking water supply for millions of Californians, according to a coalition of environmental, fishing and tribal groups.

End the Afghan War

On Thursday, March 4, Rep. Dennis Kucinich plans to introduce his privileged resolution to end the Afghan War. The resolution requires that the House debate the continuing war in Afghanistan, now the second longest war in American history. Let’s make our voices for peace heard!

Last night, March 2, Rep. Kucinich recorded a special message for PDA members. Click here to listen to the Message from Dennis Kucinich. (Select the second recording.)

Please contact your member of Congress

and ask them to be an original co-sponsor of the Kucinich resolution.