Make the essentials public

Lets globalize banks, airlines, car companies, the energy producers (oil, natural gas, wind, solar, nuclear, hydroelectric), food producers and the media. Yes, globalize - the same idea as nationalize but on a global level. The for-profit-above-all model is inhumane, has been forever and if it doesn't bury itself we'll have to.

Even while the world they created, profited from and now destroyed is falling to pieces, the free market ideologues, including American Republicans, still argue in favor of unfettered capitalism.

We should allow all companies that product non-essentials to remain private. Everything else, globalize it!

Cheney in wheelchair for inauguration

The dinosaurs will be leaving Washington D.C. today and the most backwards and dangerous of them will be straining his neck from the seat of a wheelchair as he watches Obama place his hand on the bible. Mr. Dick Cheney injured his back moving boxes as he prepared for his trip out of Washington, D.C. Can this inauguration get any better? Out with the old and in with the new.

Privatization gone wild

The United States government has been privatized. It is now a corporation, formed to conduct business. The takeover is complete.

Since Ronald Reagan, every single administration, with the help of congress, has chipped away at the institutions of government, in essence redefining the role of government. For over thirty years, both conservative and middle of the road politicians have pushed the concept that "big" government is bad, bureaucratic, a waste of money. It is an ideology driven by the radical "free market rules all" camp à la Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan.

We have witnessed the most radical culmination of this ideology under the Bush II era. Government hollowed out to the point that it can't fight its own wars, it has to use a privatized fighting force instead. Government gutted to the point that it can't respond effectively to natural disasters. Government so weak that it can't regulate important industries like banks. Government which no longer can govern.

In the past a revolving door existed between the private and public sector. In recent years, that door has been blown to pieces. Now there is a gaping hole. It is virtually impossible to differentiate between corporate executives, politicians and lobbyists. Hank Paulson? Dick Cheney? Rahm Emanuel? Erik Holder? Donald Rumsfeld? Who are they working for?

We are all now suffering the consequences of this dangerous merger of private and public. Former corporate executives run the government and former politicians run the corporations.

See here just one example of what happens when there is no one around to keep watch.

Throw a shoe at Bush

George W. Bush, a bad President. We all know how unintelligent the man is, but in the end, and at risk of insulting our President, he has a great deal of blood on his hands......and for what? Now you can throw a shoe at Bush. Good luck though, he's sneaky.

I love people who say that even though you disagree with Bush that this shoe thrower committed a great offense and this his actions were disrespectful. Are you kidding me? After all W. has done, why should anyone respect him?

GE loves war in Iraq

Now it's clear why at least one American media organization swallowed Bush's justification for war and helped sell the concept to the American people. General Electric, the mammoth company which pretty much makes and sells everything, including NBC Universal, has just won the largest single order in the company's storied history. Any guesses where? It has to do with a country in the Middle East.

You got it.....IRAQ! GE won an order to provide $3 billion in electricity-generating equipment and services to our new friends. Yes! Now that is imagination at work.

Pay close attention: This is how a good company makes tons of money.

Using your own network, NBC, you support an illegal war based on lies. Then you cover the run up to the war like a NFL pre-game show and the war itself like the game. Meanwhile, your GE Aviation department sells military engines for the F-16, the Apache and a number of other war making machines which will help America fight the war, kill innocents and completely destroy the infrastructure of the country.

Stay with me, this is when it gets good. Now that you've duped the American public into a war, supplied the military with their war machinery and destroyed the country, now it's time to go in and fix it. And that's where the big bucks come in. In this case, $3 billion.

Some would argue that there's no correlation between NBC's news coverage and its parent company's other business areas. Yeah right.

I can't say it better than Amy Goodman from Democracy Now. "The corporate media is an extreme media beating the drums of war," she says. "They offer us a monolithic view through a corporate lense. We need a media that covers power, not covers up for power."