BELIEVING IN THE TOOTH FAIRY CAUSES CAVITIES

[Orwellian_Ghost]

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

We must be clear about the following bitter realities:

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While Bush and Cheney remain in office, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan will continue. Bush's recent announcement of his (probably illegal) "agreement" with the increasingly unpopular, discredited, U.S.-puppet Maliki regime to continue Iraq deployment of U.S. troops indefinitely shows Cheney/Bush's absolute and total contempt for our Constitution and the wishes of 3/4 of U.S. citizens. As even Alan Greenspan admitted in his recently-published book: the Iraq War was largely about oil. The U.S. power elite, Democratic as well as Republican, wants those permanent U.S. bases in Iraq to protect access to, and control of, "our" oil, especially as China, India, and Europe become stronger economic and trade threats to U.S. global hegemony.

2. Why do BOTH major parties agree that the U.S. "needs" access to, and control of, this oil? Because, implicitly, most Americans believe that we "need" this oil to live the way we have become accustomed to living in 2007. The one, true religion of all Americans is Consumerism, and we all practice it daily via TV & radio, the Internet, and in our mega-cathedral of consumption, the shopping mall. We need to be honest with ourselves and face up to how much our consumptive (pun intended) U.S. lifestyle depends on maintaining our oil and other fossil fuels addictions, and how complacent, if not comfortable, we are about expecting that our political and military leaders will continue to secure these foreign fossil fuels to support our lavish "American Dream" lifestyle. Then we need to ask ourselves how much we are truly willing to cut back, and how we can make this a part of our activism.

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8. So the only sure way to stop the occupation and force Cheney/Bush to start withdrawing troops is to hold impeachment hearings. But Dennis Kucinich's HR 333 to impeach Cheney has been buried in the House Judiciary Committee for a month now, and will not be resurrected. Why is the Democratic "leadership" keeping impeachment "off the table," even after so much evidence of high crimes? Why did Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi take impeachment "off the table" as soon as she was sworn in as Speaker in January, 2007? See the next point.

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Right now, we DO NOT have a government of, by, and for the people of the United States. We have a government of, by, and for war criminals, by their enablers in the Congress, and by the corporate media which profits from the status quo. And it will continue this way, as long as the current bipartisan power structure, the Corporate-Military-Congressional-Media Complex (CMCM), continues. It's the 21st century. It's time for anti-war, social justice, environmental, human rights, workers' rights, feminist, gay rights, minority (racial, cultural, religious) rights, and immigrant rights groups and populations to join together to work for a truly better future for all of us and our children and grandchildren. As Native Americans put it, we must live with Seven Generations in mind.

Where and when we can work with Democrats or Republicans, we should, of course. But we must always be mindful that the current corrupt system of legalized bribery and influence-pedaling (lobbying) suits most members of Congress very well and very comfortably. Without massive, withering pressure from all of us, they will never agree to necessary reforms such as public-only campaign financing; the total end of all corporate financing & contributions (in spite of at least two infamous, shameful Supreme Court decisions, corporations are NOT "persons", so they are NOT entitled to the right of free speech, which the Supreme Court said equals money); free TV & radio airtime (on OUR airwaves!) for candidates; popular election of the President (elimination of the archaic, grossly inequitable Electoral College); paper ballots with paper records of votes for recounts; Election Day(s) as a paid but work-free national holiday or even a two-day weekend; and ending ALL organizational ("special interest) lobbying of politicians. In a true democracy, OUR representatives are responsible to US, THE PEOPLE, not to corporations nor lobbies.

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As 2007 ends and Election Year 2008 begins, let's keep these bitter, sobering, but ultimately liberating realizations uppermost and begin to act on them.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18856.htm