do ya have kids? i do, 9—-four grandies—-i want them to live—-Carmel spoke truth that many know—-FYI, ‘Zogby’ was termed the most corrupt of all ‘pollsters’—-and who is happy in a nation of ‘war-crazed’ fools? ruled by ‘elites’? no easy thing—-one thing i’ve learned—-‘age’ often brings wisdom—-real fast—-

Hey Susan, perhaps you regard Susanne’s rhetoric too personally. The entirety of the past eight years has left many, many people more than a little chagrinned by the wanton pursuits of these meglomaniacs. Their assencion began before W’s selection, and they PLANNED very specifically what magnitude of event it would take to open the flod gates to their desired end. This is what I have believed since POPPY Bush first uttered “new world order” It’s never been about equity in the middle class of America. 6 billion people and only room for 1% to control the happenings. China infused in the african continental affairs, last week The Chinese Preeir visited across South America including Venzuela and Cuba. Serious stuff to contemplate and figure the ramifications. 19 individuals affected a hell on 911, last week 11 individuals devastated Mumbai, Tim McVeigh and a cadre of “AMERICAN” exteremists rattled our faith and dashed our hopes. The mind set of the past 8 years has been one of ” kill them”. Praying helps but your peaceful actions and active tolerence are going to do more to arrest the pending mayhem. I have had a beef with Hillary for supporting Bush on even a single issue. She had not impressed me with her aquiessence to that mobs aspirations!!!! She was playing the game Not leading her constituents. That is the simple reason Obama won and not her! As Sec of State She will possibly continue to be seduced by the narcicissm she has exhibited but I am hopeful that we can all continue to send the message to her, Obama, Gates andand the world at large that we understand that our global position is one of partnership and reasoned interaction. Susanne always brings so much clarity when she writes. She has been seriously active on this post for many months and makes her points from a consistent and well founded position. Some people seem overwhelmed with her capacity to advocate her points, but thin is the skin that charges her with personal attack I think. The world as a whole breathed a cataritc sigh of relief on 114 and you can bet HAPPINESS is a deep side effect and the hope carries on. now the real work begins. The shit storm that Cheney/bush leave behind is a global KATRINA and it’s gonna take a masterful conductor to orchestrate the repairs. E Pluribus Unum as in we only have one world, and this society cannot even get it together and agree on the most pressing issue facing humanity! writing commentary and critique is easy, and helpful and WOW is an enclave of some formidable thinkers which I have thoroughly enjoyed these passed 8 months. The rancorous exchanges are often just entertaining. So keep speakin you minds ladies, like that 100th monkey the air waves are waiting to hear you!

Susan, I’m only going to do this once, because I am not getting in debates with ill-informed people. “You are so harsh—do you know how absolutely mean and nasty you sound?” What sounds mean and nasty is the morally regressive idea that we are are 5% of the world population, create 25%+ of the environmental polution and destruction, have fomented two illegal wars that killed over 1 million innocents, created 2.4 million refugees that destablized the Middle East and put tremendous pressures on neighboring countries like Jordan, and with the facts that America is #72 in the world in health care and alone in Industrial nations in not providing health care for citizens, that America is #44 in the world in freedom of the press; # 55 in the world in literary, and # 48th in infant mortality, #1 in arming the world and in money laundering that shores up terrorists, #1 as a debtor nation {we owe $1 trillion to China and are even a debtor nation to Mexico} and in destablizing the world economy, and #1 in blocking important Internrational treaties like Kyoto, and #1 in flouting International laws and starting illegal wars based on lies. Was is rude, ‘mean’ ‘nasty’ is supporting the regressive ‘Bush Doctrine” of thumbing our nose at the rest of the world, the idea of American exceptionalism when all that’s been proven in the last 8 years is America’s power to destroy rather than build, America’s incompetence under Bush Inc. We were once a nation that could run world saving operations like the Marshall Plan. Since 2000: The NeoCons dictated every area of public and foreign policy, monopolized our media, privatized our military, militarized our police, endangered our security, flooded the world with arms, laundered the world’s dirty money to shore up dictators, terrorists, drug and arms cartels, destabilized and dehumanized the globe, engineered war for profit, poisoned our food, air and water, and threatened the survivability of the planet. Every week 245,000 children die from malnutrition and from the lack of clean water, 37.5 million people have died unnecessarily from hunger since 9/11. But we’ve not declared war against world hunger. In the summer of 2003 in Europe 40,000 people died from the effects of pollution, 30,000 will die in the US every year prematurely due to the Bush administration’s rollbacks on clean air protections. 545,000 die each year in the US from environmental-related cancers. Yet we’ve not declared a war for our lifetime against global warming and polluters.100,000 die in the US each year from medical mistakes, and 43 million lack health insurance, yet we haven’t upped the US health care budget to over $1 billion a day as we did defense, to protect Americans from what actually endangers them. Catholic Bishop, Robert Bowman a former U. S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew over 100 combat missions in Vietnam, wrote about the seeds of terrorism three years prior to September 11, 2001: “We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in the Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism….Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we shoul send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children…In short we should do good instead of evil….Who would want to bomb us? That is the truth the American people need to hear.” And General Smedley Butler, a decorated war hero wrote about his 34 year military career that helped sow those seeds in his book, “War as a Racket” penned, “I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism…I helped make Honduras ‘right’ for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico, specifically Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long.” Just as in Europe in the 1930s, the multinational corporations in lockstep with the current US administration, the IMF, WTO and big banks have consolidated control and nailed their dehumanizing ethos over our Constitution and Bill of Rights. “The centuries-old mercenary trade has morphed into an immensely profitable corporate enterprise complete with boards of directors, stockholders, and substantial returns on investment. And the post-cold-war period has spawned a slew of former military types with access to global arms bazaars. These latter-day soldiers of fortune [ie Blackwater, et al} are working for firms ready to roll, provided the price is right.” -Alan Miller, The Christian Science Monitor “We must make war obsolete, or it will make us obsolete.”-Albert Einstein Since 2000, hunger and homelessness in the US was up with over 40 million Americans in the worst poverty since the Depression. In Mexico 75% of the people are in poverty. In the 34 countries of Latin America, with nearly three times the US population, 44% are in poverty. In India, 1 billion people are under siege, 56 million alone are displaced due to corporate privatization of dams. The African continent is doted with civil wars, humanitarian crisis, widespread hunger and disease. The Middle-East is sitting on a nuclear powder keg with humanitarian disasters involving tens of millions created in our name, with our tax dollars. “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country…It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that…he fails in his duty to stand by the country.” -President Theodore Roosevelt “…The government is merely a servantù merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.” -Mark Twain Since 2000, More executive orders and laws amending the Constitution were excuted ever in US history, in violation of the Bill of Rights sealing public records, from public review. U.S. News & World Report wrote that from day one the Bush administration ‘dropped a shroud of secrecy’ over the government. Since 2000, more checks and balances fundamental to democracy, and more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans, were removed than ever in US history. The Patriot II Act grants presidential powers identical to the ones Hitler and Caesar claimed for themselves. Since 2000, America’s largest surplus ever was turned into the largest treasury and trade deficits in the history of the world. America experienced the most severe economic decline since the Great Depression, the greatest stock market percentage decline in US history, the most catastrophic stock market fraud in the history of the world: over $4 trillion was lost by investors and over $1 trillion was lost in pension funds and university endowments. Leading to the most personal bankruptcies, and the most real estate foreclosures ever filed. The worst energy crisis in the history of the US was created when the administration’s number one all time campaign contributor bilked California out of $9 billion, plunging the state into economic chaos, while the administration refused to intervene or investigate. Since 2000, more jobs were shipped overseas than in any time in America. Bush had the worst job creation record in 60 years, Federal revenues as a percentage of GDP fell to their lowest levels since 1950 according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pushing all 50 states near bankruptcy in the gravest financial crisis since WWII. Though 79% of Americans want taxes to stabilize Social Security, and not to be used for tax cuts, the military, or homeland security; hundreds of billions were borrowed at interest added to our staggering $7.006 trillion dollar national debt that is rising at $1,400 a second, to hand out multiple, massive tax cuts to the richest 2% who already control 40% of America’s wealth, and to award hundreds of billions more in no-bid deals to administration campaign contributors. Burden upon burden was piled onto yet unborn generations, while simultaneously cutting services, and pushing unfunded federal programs back onto the bankrupt states. “Bank robbers are in charge of the bank…we are facing a challenge to our way of life, an internal challenge…irresponsibility that I donÆt think you can find before in American political history…dismantling institutions that do a lot to make America a more decent place….restrictions on individual freedoms…and irresponsibility and authoritarianism in the people running the country that I find very, very frightening.” -Paul Krugman, Princeton economist, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, New York Times columnist, author of ‘The Great Unraveling’ Since 2000, health care, public safety, disability and retirement benefits, veteran benefits, Federal civil service protections, environmental and consumer protection, education, after school programs, Social Security, employee rights and even job safety rules that were ten years in the making to help prevent the accidents that kill 6,000 and injure 6,000,000 workers a year, were eviscerated. Education was cut, the defense budget was raised to over 50% of our discretionary budget. While administration cronies like Halliburton other campaign contributors wallowed in boondoggles, their gold rush from Afghanistan and Iraq will cost the US over $3.1 trillion. “Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest.” -President Calvin Coolidge Since 2000: -Bush Inc has set an all time record for violating US law by retaining their investments in corporations being awarded government contracts. -More convicted criminals secured administration positions and government contracts than anytime in US history. -For the first time in US history, the illegal doctrine of preventative war, condemned at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals as the supreme crime, was invoked to attack and invade a sovereign nation that the administration knew posed no legitimate threat, and had no connection to 911. -For the first time America was removed by the United Nations from the Human Rights Commission. -For the first time ever UN election inspectors were refused access during the 2002 US elections, and America was removed from the UN Elections Monitoring Board. Since 2000, administration actions in the Middle-East have placed America in the top 4 of all countries in the world as likely to see another 911 scale attack within its border according to the Worlds Markets Research Center. While placing America in greater jephrody, in November 2001 it defeated a bipartisan initiative to spend $10 billion on security upgrades at vulnerable ports and nuclear sites, and in fact Bush Inc wanted to OUTSOURCE protection and operation of our ports to a Middle East country. -Rand Beers, a 20 year presidential advisor and National Security Council expert in counterterrorism, resigned saying that the Bush team ‘is making the US less secure, not more secure.Instead of focusing on the basic sources of terrorism ôthe humiliation and despair that exists in large segments of the Islamic population, ‘it is inflaming passions against America. -Global public relations firm Edelman polled Europeans and found that 64% were less likely to buy American brands because of Bush policies. And a Pew Global Attitudes project reported that Muslim rage at the US throughout the Middle-east, Nigeria, Morocco, Indonesia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Jordan is at a record fury. “Just as US companies will profit from both the destruction and rebuilding of Iraq at a cost of billions of US taxpayer dollars . They will also profit from the restoration of the US arsenal after the war, a war whose astronomical costs, at a time the US can least afford it, the Bush administration has worked hard to keep hidden.” -Candace Ward, Jamaica-Gleaner.com “If President Eisenhower were with us today, he would be suffering his own case of ôshock and aweö over the lengths this administration is willing to go to in using the military-industrial complex as a political tool to help its friends and grease the path to its re-election. ” -William D. Hartung, World Policy Institute Since 2000, more international environmental protections, human rights, arms control and other treaties have been denounced than in any other time in American history: -In 12/2001 the US withdrew from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. It was the first time in the nuclear age that the US abandoned a major arms control agreement. -In 7/2001 the US abandoned efforts to strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. In 1972 this agreement was ratified by 144 nations including the US. -In 7/2001 the UN Agreement to Curb the International Flow of Illicit Small Arms was approved by all nations except the US. The US is 5% of the worldÆs population, and provides 50% of the worldÆs arms. Major US banks are the worldÆs number one money launderers. Together money laundering and arms dealing perpetuates the cycle of more dictators, terrorists, drug cartels, arms runners, and civil wars. This combination perpetuates the worldÆs annual $5 trillion dollar gross criminal product. US big banks make enormous, unregulated fees by laundering dirty money. -In 4/2001 the US was not reelected to the UN Human Rights Commission for withholding UN dues, including current dues of $244 million. As a percentage of GDP the US as the wealthiest country on earth, contributes the least to foreign aid, almost zero. 1% of the GDP of industrialized nations could eradicate the world despair that feeds terrorism. -In 3/2001 The Koyoto Protocol of 1997 developed over 10 years by 160 nations cooperating to control global warming was declared ôdeadö by the US Administration. US tax payers provide $400 million a year in federal R&D grants for profit rich oil companies. Clean alternative energy companies receive $24 million, which was cut to pay for printing costs for the 2003 boondoggle Cheney Energy Bill. -In 5/2001 the US refused to meet with European Union nations on economic espionage and electronic surveillance of phone calls, e-mail and faxes. -In 2/2001 the US refused to join the pledge of 123 nations to ban the use and production of personnel bombs and mines. -In 7/2001, out of the G-8 countries, the US was the only country to oppose the International Plan for Cleaner Energy. -In 10/2001 the US General Assembly resolution to call for an end to the US embargo of Cuba passed by 167 to 3. The US, Israel and the Marshall Islands cast the opposing votes. The US has failed to ratify: -The Land Mind Treaty. Bans land mines, signed by 122 nations. The US, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Egypt and Turkey refused to sign. The UN estimates that there are 500,000 mines in Chechnya alone. Millions of children who’ve been traumatized by war, seen their parents, siblings, friends and neighbors killed, lost their homes, and live in desparate circumstances, can’t even play outdoors for fear of unexploded ordinance. Mines hamper efforts to restore infrastructure, sanitation, and heal the results of war: lost limbs, eyes, hearing, rampant Hepatitis A, whooping coup, anemia, gastrointestinal disease, tuberculois, cancers, permanent traumatic stress disorders. What kind of future are we making, when millions of children see wildflower fields as places likely to explode beneath their feet? ‘The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The US and Somalia are the only nations that failed to ratify this treaty. -The Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This treaty seeks to end the death penalty, and execution of minors under18. The US refused to sign. The US, Saudi Arabia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran and Nigeria are the five countries that execute minors. -The International Criminal Court. Would try political leaders and military personnel for war crimes and crimes against humanity. 120 countries approved, 7 opposed including the US. -The Cairo Consensus. The US was the the sole dissenter from 40 nations in March 2004 at the Hemispheric Conference on Gender and Population in Santiago, Chile. The Cairo Consensus population goals were set and approved by 179 countries and the US at the 1994 International Conference on Poulation and Development. The Bush administration would not reffirm the US committment to the 1996 Beijing Platform of Action, a UN program set by consenus at the UN Millennium Summit of 2000 to advance women throughout the world. Instead of cooperating with the International community on paramount issues, Bush capitulates to his radical-fundamentalist base. -The 1979 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. Four countries have not ratified: the US, Afghanistan, Sao Tome and Principe. -The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: Signed by 164 nations. Signed by President Clinton in 1996, rejected by the GOP controlled Senate in 1999. In September 2003 the GOP controlled Senate approved BushÆs request to lift the 10 year ban on research, development and production of nuclear weapons. $5.8 billion of US taxpayer money will be spent on nuclear weapons in 2003. By comparison, the total annual funding for The National Endowment of the Arts is $1,109,000. (Bush proposed raising this by 15% in February 2004, to $1,139,000.) One F-17 jet fighter costs $1,120,000. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” -From the US Constitution “The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.” -Albert Einstein Finally, Obama supporters covers a broad base, including the most weathly and best educated. ie Nancy Pelosi’s #5 Congressional District is one of the richest and best educated in the US and it went 73%+ for Obama, etc. “Anyway, you don’t seem like a very happy person and I hope you find in Obama something that makes you happy.” Except for my brother’s recent death, I am an exceedingly happy person…and am very proud to have worked hard to get Obama elected. He will be among America’s best presidents” Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt FDR, JFK. I think you are mistaking contempt for the ill-informed who are destroying this country and the world…with unhappiness. I certainly have a brain and just not your opinion on things. Some of your argument may have validity, but not all. Just because our “fair” % of our GDP does not make us stingy. We still give alot—do you dispute that?