Bravo, Obama…bravo

Great job, Obama. You have managed to piss everyone off…the left is alienated by your antics, you continue to make life difficult for everyone except corporate power, and your insane environmental policies are nonsensical at best.

Tell you what…start concentrating on the true threats to our environment. Genetically modified foods and crops, for instance. Corporations continuing to abuse our earth. The list goes on and on.

You don’t care. As this article states, Ralph Nader was correct.

There are consequences to actions. Of course, I knew this would happen. Two party systems rarely produce intelligent discourse.

Thanks again. On behalf of the earth, the taxpayers, the animals…THANK YOU.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ralph_nader_was_right_about_barack_obama_20100301/

‘Just War’ Is Just Words By Ralph Nader

‘Just War’ Is Just Words

By Ralph Nader

12 December , 2009
CommonDreams.org

President Obama, the Afghan war escalator, received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, and proceeded to deliver his acceptance speech outlining the three criteria for a “just war” which he himself is violating.

The criteria are in this words: “If it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.”

After 9/11, warmonger George W. Bush could have used the international law doctrine of hot pursuit with a multilateral force of commandoes, linguists and bribers to pursue the backers of the attackers. Instead, he blew the country of Afghanistan apart and started occupying it, joined forces with a rump regime and launched a divide-and-rule tribal strategy that set the stage for a low-tiered civil war.

Eight years later, Obama is expanding the war within a graft-ridden government in Kabul, fraudulent elections, an Afghan army of northern tribesmen loathed by the southern and south-eastern tribes of 40 million Pashtuns, an impoverished economy whose largest crop by far is a narcotic, and a devastated population embittered by foreign occupiers and non-existent government services.

President Obama’s national security adviser, former Marine General James Jones, said two months ago: “The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.”

Since Mr. Obama repeats George W. Bush’s reason for going into Afghanistan-to destroy al-Qaeda-why is he sending 30,000 soldiers plus an even greater number of corporate contractors there in the near future at a cost stated by the White House of one million dollars per solider per year? Is this “proportional force”?

Always small in number, al-Qaeda has moved over the border into Pakistan and anywhere its supporters can in the world-east Africa, north Africa, Indonesia. The gang is a migrant traveler.

Is Obama pouring soldiers into Afghanistan so that they and our inaccurate, civilian-destroying drones can start fighting across the border in Pakistan, as indicated by The New York Times? Beyond the violations of international law and absence of constitutional authorization involved, this could so roil Pakistanis as to make the U.S. experience next door look like a modest struggle.

Obama has emphasized weakening the Taliban as the other objective of our military buildup with its horrible consequence in casualties and other costs. Who are the Taliban? They include people with different causes, such as protecting their valleys, drug trafficking to live on, fighters against foreign occupiers or, being mostly Pashtuns, protecting their tribal turf against the northern Tajiks and Uzbecks.

How many Taliban fighters are there? The Pentagon estimates around 25,000. Their methods make them unpopular with the villagers. They have no air force, navy, artillery, tanks, missiles, no bases, no central command. They have rifles, grenade launchers, bombs and suiciders. Unlike al-Qaeda, they have only domestic ambitions counteracted by their adversarial tribesmen who make up most of the Afghan army.

Robert Baer, former CIA officer with experience in that part of Asia, asserted: “The people that want their country liberated from the West have nothing to do with al-Qaeda. They simply want us gone because we’re foreigners, and they’re rallying behind the Taliban because the Taliban are experienced, effective fighters.”

To say as Obama inferred in his Oslo speech that the greater plunge into Afghanistan is self-defense, with proportional force and sparing civilians from violence is a scale of self-delusion or political cowardliness that is dejecting his liberal base.

For as President Eisenhower stated so eloquently in his 1953 “cross of iron” speech, every dollar spent on munitions and saber-rattling takes away from building schools, clinics, roads and other necessities of the American people.

The Afghan War and the Iraq war-occupation-already directly costing a trillion dollars-are costing the American people every time Washington says there is not enough money for neonatal care, occupational disease prevention, cleaner drinking water systems, safer hospitals, prosecution of corporate criminals, cleaner air or upgrading and repairing key public facilities.

Even the hardiest and earliest supporters of his presidential campaign in 2008 are speaking out. Senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus, such as John Conyers (D-MI) and Maxine Waters (D-CA) have recently criticized the President for not doing enough to help African-Americans weather the hard times.

In a stinging ironic rebuke to the first African-American President, Rep. Waters declared “We can no longer afford for our public policy to be defined by the worldview of Wall Street.”

According to Congressman Conyers, an upset Barack Obama called to ask why the Michigan lawmaker was “demeaning” him. Conyers has been increasingly turned off by the President’s policies-among them health care reform, the war in Afghanistan, slippage on Guantanamo and the extension of the Patriot Act’s invasive provisions.

The 80-year old Congressman spent most weekends in 2007 and 2008 tirelessly on the campaign trail trying to get Obama elected.

White House aides are not troubled by the rumblings from the moderate Left. They said they have all of 2010 to bring them back into the fold by the November Congressional elections. Besides, where else are they going to go?

Well, they could stay home. Remember 1994 and the Gingrich takeover.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book – and first novel – is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.

http://www.bushstole04.com/Obama_Presidency.htm/obama_nader.htm

Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama

*Email from the Nader campaign.*

Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words “hope and change,” “change and hope” have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not “hope and change” but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity– not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an “undivided Jerusalem,” and opposed negotiations with Hamas– the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored “direct negotiations with Hamas.” Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote “Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state.”

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League’s 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: “There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President.”

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, “of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. …Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli’s use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see http://www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli’s assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its ‘legitimate right to defend itself.’”

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government’s assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on “the heart of a crowded refugee camp… with horrible bloodshed” in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate– Uri Avnery– described Obama’s appearance before AIPAC as one that “broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama “is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future– if and when he is elected president.,” he said, adding, “Of one thing I am certain: Obama’s declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people.”

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled “Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama” (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled “Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque.” None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans– even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to “tumultuous applause,” following a showing of a film about the Carter Center’s post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on http://www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the “middle class” but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the “poor” in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke “change” yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the “corporate supremacists.” It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics– opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)– and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. “Hope” some say springs eternal.” But not when “reality” consumes it daily.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

Nader Presses McCain on Liberty Attack

*w00t!!!!!!!!!!!! GOOD FOR RALPH!!!!!!!*

Adding to his usual criticisms of the “corporate candidates” from the two major parties, independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader yesterday introduced a wrinkle, calling on John McCain to come clean about Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty.

“He doesn’t like to have his character impugned. I’m challenging his character on this point,” Nader said in a news conference at the Statehouse.

McCain was not involved in the incident, which killed 34 American sailors amid the Six-Day War between Israel and several Arab nations. Israel said the attack was a case of mistaken identity, and McCain’s father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., approved an investigation that determined the incident was a mistake.

Nader is among those who think the report was a cover-up. He’s dragging McCain into it because the senator wrote a positive note on a 2002 book, The Liberty Incident, that also concluded the attack was an accident.

“He has been asked again and again by these Sailors and their families to come clean,” Nader said. “Instead, he endorses a propaganda book that says it was accidental. That reflects on his character.”

The McCain campaign declined to respond.

http://www.military.com/news/article/nader-presses-mccain-on-liberty-attack.html?col=1186032310810

Nader vs Obama

*Nader doesn’t drive a car or own real estate…he has done so much for his country. Keep that in mind when you go into the voting booth, thinking that obama or mccain care about you or America.*
Ralph Nader for President 2008

October 16, 2008
http://www.votenader.org
http://www.officialnaderstore.com

Donate $3 to Nader/Gonzalez now.

Why?

Well, on three key issues last night — energy, health insurance, corporate crime — Obama stood with the corporations against the interests of the American people.

Compare Nader to Obama.

Last night, McCain challenged Obama.

Tell me one time you have stood up to the leaders of your party, McCain said.

Obama couldn’t name one time when he stood up to the corporations that control his party.

So, instead he named a couple of times when he stood with the corporations.

And against the interests of the American people.

I voted for tort reform, Obama said.

Wow!

Brave of you Barack.

You stood with the National Association of Manufacturers against injured people.

I support clean coal technology, Obama said.

Wow Barack, you stood with the polluting coal industry against people who suffer the consequences.

When McCain accused Obama of supporting a single payer, Canadian style national health insurance system, Obama said he didn’t.

And he doesn’t.

Despite the fact that a majority of doctors, nurses and the American people want it.

On national health insurance, Obama stands with the insurance industry and against the American people who are demanding single payer.

Over 5,000 U.S. physicians have signed an open letter calling on the candidates for president and Congress “to stand up for the health of the American people and implement a nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance system.” (Here’s the ad that ran in the New Yorker magazine.)

Obama says no.

McCain says no.

Nader/Gonzalez says yes.

Yes to single payer.

Yes to solar and no to coal.

Yes to protecting the American people from corporate recklessness and crime, no to tort deform.

So, donate $3 to the candidacy that is not on the debate stage.

But that is right on the issues.

Nader/Gonzalez.

Politics is the Shadow Cast on Society by Big Business

*I am not necessarily voting for him, but at this point, any third party candidate is better than McSame or Obama. At least there are some people out there that have some integrity left. I WILL NOT VOTE FOR THE IDIOTS.*
Ralph Nader for President 2008

October 12, 2008
http://www.votenader.org
http://www.officialnaderstore.com

Mute the NFL on CBS.

And donate $17 now to Nader/Gonzalez.

Why?

It’s go time.

Today is D-Day.

We need to hit $250,000 today.

And we’re at $200,000.

So, let’s crank it up.

We are the only true political opposition left in America today.

Obama and the Democrats?

Don’t delude yourself.

As Noam Chomsky put it this week:

“The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats.”

And as the social philosopher John Dewey put it early in this century:

“Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.”

And that will remain true as long as power resides in “business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda,” Dewey said.

Nader/Gonzalez is churning.

Agitating.

Creating a force for change.

Against the shadow cast by big business.

Against all odds, we are optimistic about the future.

Because of you.

Our loyal supporters.

Yesterday, you came through, as usual.

And took us to the $200,000 mark on our way to our goal of $250,000.

Today, we have a heavy lift.

$50,000 on a holiday Sunday.

Here’s the plan.

We have 500 copies left of the hardcover edition of Ralph’s classic — The Seventeen Traditions.

We need to move these now.

Today.

Pronto.

To meet our goal of $250,000.

So, if you haven’t given yet, please donate $17 — or whatever you can afford — now to Nader/Gonzalez.

And if you donate $100 or more now, we will send you an autographed copy of Ralph’s classic — The Seventeen Traditions (HarperCollins 2007). The 150-page hardcover book details the seventeen traditions that Ralph grew up with and is the closest thing so far to a Ralph Nader autobiography. So, don’t miss out on this limited edition offer. (This offer ends October 12 at 11:59 p.m.)

We need to move 500 of you — our loyal supporters — to step up and snap up The Seventeen Traditions.

And we will meet our goal.

So, mute the NFL on CBS.

And drop $100 on Nader/Gonzalez.

And watch our widget as we close in on $250,000.

Onward to November

The Nader Team

Ralph Nader blasts Barrack Obama, John McCain on war in Iraq, Wall Street bailout

Perennial presidential hopeful Ralph Nader, who plans a rally in Amherst today, yesterday insisted he is the only candidate “who recognizes people’s necessities” and blasted the Democratic and GOP positions on the war and the economy.

Nader maintained his long-shot campaign persona as a populist gadfly, criticizing Friday’s financial bailout package, which was backed by Barack Obama and John McCain, calling it a bag of “freebies and goodies garnished with window dressing.”

The longtime consumer activist attacked both parties for their support of the package, charging it contains no criminal prosecution of the “corporate crooks who brought us this financial meltdown.”

“The government contributed to the panic,” said Nader in a phone interview with the Herald yesterday. “What a bailout should do is to create a wall to protect prudent investors and institutions.”

This is Nader’s third consecutive run for president. He received only about .3 percent of the national vote in 2004, but in 2000, he garnered almost 3 percent and was accused of costing Al Gore crucial votes.

This year, Nader does not appear to be a factor in national polls.

According to the Federal Election Commission, as of Aug. 31 Nader had taken in $3,084,038 in contributions and had $455,423 on hand, with $100,000 in debt.

Asked whether Obama, a freshman senator, and McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, were qualified to run, Nader said, “I disqualify candidates based on their positions, not on how long they’ve been in office.”

Although his campaign this year has garnered little press, Nader said people should vote for him because he is the only candidate “who recognizes people’s necessities.”

“They want a living wage and health care for everyone,” he said. “A vote for Nader is a vote for themselves.”

Nader, who will appear today at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, also attacked the Democratic and Republican positions on the war, touting his plan for a six-month, negotiated withdrawal from Iraq.

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/2008/view.bg?articleid=1123493&srvc=2008campaign&position=1

Banking Bill Bails Out China

During a time when most of the commentary and news “analysis” has been in favor of the Wall Street takeover plan, Rep. Brad Sherman of California was on Larry Kudlow’s CNBC show on September 30 to cite evidence that the legislation potentially “provides hundreds of billions of dollars of bailouts to foreign investors,” including those in Communist China.

The offensive provision is Section 112, “Coordination With Foreign Authorities and Central Banks,” which “Requires the Secretary to coordinate with foreign authorities and central banks to establish programs similar to TARP”―the Troubled Assets Relief Program.

In another strange twist, in order to get around the constitutional requirement that revenue raising bills must originate in the House, the Senate attached the Wall Street takeover plan to a House bill, the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007. The socialist-style bailout passed 74-25 with one senator (the ailing Senator Ted Kennedy) not voting. Of the 25 opponents, 15 were Republicans.

Presidential candidates Senators Barack Obama and John McCain both voted for it.

Obama, perhaps the most radical candidate to run for president on a major party ticket, is coming in for strong criticism from supporters of Ralph Nader, who is running for the presidency on a third party ticket. An article on the Nader-for-president website says Obama has been fronting “for the most vicious predators on Wall Street.”

Those Senators voting against the legislation, known as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, were Allard (R-CO), Barrasso (R-WY), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Cantwell (D-WA), Cochran (R-MS), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Dole (R-NC), Dorgan (D-ND), Enzi (R-WY), Feingold (D-WI), Inhofe (R-OK), Johnson (D-SD), Landrieu (D-LA), Nelson (D-FL), Roberts (R-KS), Sanders (I-VT), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Stabenow (D-MI), Tester (D-MT), Vitter (R-LA), Wicker (R-MS), and Wyden (D-OR).

During an appearance on the Fox News Channel, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he supported the legislation and cited a conservative Heritage Foundation study in favor of it. The Heritage study, however, acknowledged constitutional problems with the legislation and warned that it threatened “centralization of power” in the U.S. Government.

McConnell’s colleague from Kentucky, Republican Senator Jim Bunning, doesn’t buy McConnell’s reasoning. “Since Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson first came to Congress with this plan I have opposed it,” he said. “And while some of the language and the length of this bill may have changed in the last week, it is still the same old bailout for Wall Street with a few extra sweeteners intended to buy off votes. In the end, this bill still puts the taxpayers on the hook for Wall Street’s losses and takes America’s free market system down the path towards socialism. I cannot and will not support that.”

One of the most surprising votes in favor of the plan came from conservative Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who suggested in a statement that while the bill was not really so good, it was in line with other legislation passed by Congress.

“This bill does not represent a new and sudden departure from free market principles as much as it represents an emergency response to congressional actions that have ignored free market principles, and our Constitution, for decades,” he said. He vowed to “do everything in my power to ensure that this bill does not lead us down a slippery slope of European style socialism and slow economic growth.”

But the foreign bank bailout provision alarmed Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, who said, “The plan permits taxpayer dollars to be used to buy assets of foreign financial institutions that have a presence in the United States. If U.S. taxpayer dollars are going to be put at risk, those dollars should be used to shore up U.S. based companies.”

Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina alluded to this as well, saying in opposition that “It bails out foreign investors before American homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages.”

“It’s very clear,” Sherman explained on CNBC. “The Bank of Shanghai can transfer all of its toxic assets to the Bank of Shanghai of Los Angeles, its subsidiary, which can then sell them the next day to the Treasury. I had a provision to say if it wasn’t owned by an American entity, even a subsidiary, but at least an entity here in the U.S., the Treasury can’t buy it. That was rejected. The foreign markets are being told they’re getting the money.”

Sherman is a liberal Democrat. But the other guest on the show, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, who supported the bill, did not dispute what he said. “It’s on purchases before March 18, 2008, and the assets there,” Ryan said. “It is for―if you had a U.S. subsidiary―you could sell them [the assets] because that’s clogging up the U.S. financial system.”

In a Sunday morning September 21 exclusive report, Mike Allen of Politico had broken the story, reporting, “In a change from the original proposal sent to Capitol Hill, foreign-based banks with big U.S. operations could qualify for the Treasury Department’s mortgage bailout, according to the fine print of an administration statement Saturday night.” That day, appearing on ABC’s “This Week” program, Paulson confirmed the change, saying, “If a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution.”

Asked if the bill was socialism, he admitted it was “big government intervention” in the economy.

On Monday, when 95 House Democrats voted against the bill, joining 133 Republicans, it went down to defeat. But it could come back on Thursday or Friday for another vote.

It is Sherman who is working hard to get other Democratic votes against the bill. Sherman’s number one concern, reported USA Today, “is that the bill would allow foreign banks to transfer toxic assets to their U.S. subsidiaries and unload them on American taxpayers. The bailout at first only applied to U.S. banks but was expanded to include foreign banks with U.S. operations.”

“Under the Bill,” Sherman explained in an October 1 release from his office, “the Administration can buy any asset from any financial institution for any price. Some think that only U.S. investors will be bailed out. Major foreign investors have already been assured that they can benefit from the bailout. Under the Bill, the Bank of China can sell a portfolio of toxic assets to a U.S.-headquartered investment bank on Monday, and that investment bank can then sell those same assets to the Treasury on Tuesday. The foreign financial press indicates that foreign investors are sure that they will get at least tens of billions of dollars.”

On the House Republican side, conservatives are attempting to persuade Reps. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor to come out against the bill after they had supported it previously.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the caucus of House conservatives, said that while Ryan and Cantor had helped improve the legislation by adding increased taxpayer protections and additional Wall Street accountability, “…mere improvement is not the test for support.”

He explained, “The test is whether, after weighing both the good and the bad, you believe that the plan ultimately leads America in the right direction. Using that test, I cannot in good conscience support this legislation.”

Hensarling had introduced the Free Market Protection Act (H.R. 7223) as an alternative economic plan.

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/banking-bill-bails-out-china/

Nader Calls For New 9/11 Investigation

*Good for Ralph!!!!!!!!!!!!*

Independent presidential candidate says he supports 9/11 truth movement

CINCINNATI, Sep. 11 (Infowars) — Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader pledged support for a new investigation into the events of 9/11 Monday, commenting that the 9/11 Commission was “flawed, right from the get go”.

Nader was questioned by members of We Are Change Ohio at a campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio earlier this week.

Asked if he supported the 9/11 Truth Movement and the efforts of activists and victims’ families to expose the lies surrounding the attacks, Nader responded;

“I was there when they were collecting signatures in the audience and I supported it.” Nader commented, referring to We are Change’s activities at the meeting.

“The 9/11 Commission, first of all, it took the members of the great families to push the administration even to have an inquiry, can you imagine an attack like that and the government didn’t even want to have an inquiry?” stated Nader.

“And second, the ground rules for the 9/11 Commission were that they weren’t going to name names, or hold anybody responsible, that’s a real investigation,” he added with irony.

“So right from the get go it was flawed and there needs to be another one, and the best place to have it is New York City.” Nader concluded.

Nader was also asked to comment on Blackwater and the immunity of mercenaries in Iraq.

http://www.rebelnews.org/politics/americas/nader-calls-for-new-9%1011-investigation-20080910388/

Nader Volunteer, State Party Official Beaten At GOP Convention

*Welcome to 1984…*

Ralph Nader volunteer, Peace and Freedom state official beaten, hospitalized at GOP convention; PF Party condemns ‘brutal’ attack
MINNEAPOLIS – A volunteer with the Ralph Nader for President campaign – and an official of the Peace and Freedom Party California State Central Committee – was beaten by police and hospitalized at the Republican National Convention here in what party leaders condemned as a “brutal assault on Barry Burgess and our liberties.”

Burgess, elected to the Peace and Freedom Party Contra Costa County Central Committee and state committee in June, was attacked distributing literature for the Ralph Nader for President campaign, according to Kevin Akin, California State Chair, Peace and Freedom Party. Atkins statement follows:

“Barry Burgess was handing out literature for Peace and Freedom presidential candidate Ralph Nader (and) was the subject of an unprovoked attack by club-wielding police, who inflicted head injuries and arrested him… he was treated at a hospital and released, and is now recovering at a Nader supporter’s home.

“Following similar but smaller attacks on demonstrators in Denver, the police attacks on peaceful demonstrators in Minneapolis, which have occurred without any criticism from leaders of the Republican and Democratic Parties, show how seriously our civil liberties have been eroded.

“The Peace and Freedom Party demands accountability from Minneapolis, Minnesota and federal authorities, and an investigation with appropriate consequences for those engaging in this mass brutality and intimidation. We also demand that all the trumped-up charges against those exercising their constitutional rights be dropped.

“We anxiously await further word on the condition of Barry Burgess, and hope that enough complaints are received by Minneapolis officials to restrain the savage excesses of their police tonight and tomorrow. We also hope that this brutal attack on Barry Burgess and our liberties inspires Americans to examine the real actions and positions of the presidential candidates on freedom of speech and free assembly.”

http://newsblaze.com/story/20080906000600zzzz.nb/topstory.html