Robert Reich: Why Romney and Ryan are Going DOWN!!

Unemployment is still above 8 percent, job gains aren't even keeping up with population growth, the economy is barely moving forward, and yet, according to most polls, the Romney, Ryan ticket is falling further and further behind. How can this be? Because Republicans are failing the central test of electability. Instead of putting together the largest possible coalition of voters, they're relying largely on one slice of America, middle aged white men, and alienating just about everyone else. Start with Hispanics, whose electoral heft keeps growing as they become an ever larger portion of the electorate. Hispanics now favor President Obama over Romney, Ryan by a larger margin than they did six months ago. Why? In last February's Republican primary debate Romney dubbed Arizona's controversial immigration policy, that authorized police to demand proof of citizenship from anyone looking Hispanic, a "model law" for the rest of the nation. Romney then attacked GOP rival Texas Governor Rick Perry for supporting in state tuition at the University of Texas for children of undocumented immigrants, and Romney advocates what he calls "self-deportation" making life so difficult for undocumented immigrants, and Romney advocates and their families that they choose to leave. As if all this weren't enough, the GOP has been pushing voter ID laws all over America, whose obvious aim is to intimidate Hispanic voters so they won't come to the polls, but they may be having the opposite effect, emboldening the vast majority of ethnic Hispanics, who are American citizens, to vote in even greater numbers, and lend even more support to Obama and other Democrats. Or consider women, whose political and economic impact in America continues to grow. According to polls, the political gender gap is widening.

Colin Todhunter: Next Stop Iran. Who will Save Us?

One of the most awe inspiring photographs ever taken was by a machine, not a person. The Pale Blue Dot is the name of the photograph. It is an image of the Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager spacecraft, some six billion kilometers away from our planet as the craft was about to leave the Solar System. The Earth appears as a miniscule dot, almost lost in the vastness of space. The blue marble is another image from space that also shows the Earth. It was taken by the US Apollo 17 spacecraft in 1972. The entire planet is a vivid, enchanting swirl of deep blue oceans, scattered white clouds and solid green land masses set in stark contrast against the apparent emptiness of space. To see the magnificent fragility of Earth hanging in a mind boggling expanse of blackness is as wondrous as it is humbling. The late astrophysicist Carl Sagan commented on the Pale Blue Dot by saying that from out there in in space, there is no inkling, no clue whatsoever, that there is life here. There is no possible comprehension of the intensity or magnitude of human joys and wonder, prejudices and sufferings. Beneath Earth's colorful blue mask from space,lies a sorry tale. It is a tale about the hundreds of millions of deaths due to pointless wars and conflicts that have taken place down the ages. We have had little compulsion in destroying living creatures in their droves, and gorging on and depleting finite natural resources, and we destroyed in a blink of an eyelid what took the Earth millions of years to nurture. Sagan once asked us to consider how much blood has been spilled by generals and emperors, just to become temporary masters of one part of this small blue dot, and how much cruelty has been visited time and time again by one set of the planet's inhabitants on a barely indistinguishable other set of inhabitants. Sagan is not alone! 

Stephen Lendman: The Eurozone's Rescue Fund!!

German High Court Capitulates to Bankers! As expected, the Court caved. On September 12, headlines reported it. The Financial Times said "German politicians declared the road clear for the creation of the euro-zone's rescue fund after the country's constitutional court rejected a petition to block it. At issue is does it matter? More on that below. Two Euro-zone rescue rescue schemes exist. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) is running out of funds. Germany's High Court approved the European Stability Facility is running out of funds. Germany's High Court approved the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Originally it was scheduled to take effect July 1. Germany's parliament was still debating it. Constitutional Court approval is required. It could have linked passage to constitutional law change. Doing so would have required Germany's first post war national referendum. It stopped short and approved what lacks legitimacy, and in the end won't work. On the other hand, countries are running out of resources. On the other, the ECB has few bullets left. Everything it tried so far has failed. Constitutional approval changes nothing. With it came conditions. The Financial Times said those imposed appear less onerous than feared. The Court ruled Germany's maximum 190 billion euro liability can't be increased without its ESM representative approving it. According to Court President Andreas Vosskuhle: No provision of this treaty may be interpreted in a way that establishes higher payment obligations for the Federal Republic of Germany without the agreement of the German representative.

Michael Moore: Scary Words! Why President Romney?

In two months Americans will go to the polls once again to decide who our president will be for the next four years. We will not be allowed to vote on those who wield the true power in this country! On November 6th we will not vote for the chairman of Exxon Mobile or JP Morgan Chase or Citibank, or the Premier of China. That day may come, but not this year. Now, I know there are a goodly number of you out there who believe there's not a snowball's chance in Kenya that Barack Obama will not be re-elected to the White House, and why would you believe otherwise? After the incredible Democratic convention this week, with the best rock em sock em speeches I've heard from a Democrat's mouth since I don't know when. You can't help but not have a contact high after this past week if you are of the sort who believes in economic justice, peace, and a five dollar latte. Right now, with the buzz on, you are sitting there thinking that your fellow Americans will turn out in massive numbers, either because they want to continue the Obama era, or because they're scared "shitless" of the barbarians at the gate, or both. You're convinced that the Republicans have blown it with all their talk of the lady parts they want to control, even though we now know that they have no idea where those parts are, what they are, or how they work. Yes, it certainly looks like the voters will reject this obscenely wealthy man called Romney, this man who will not explain exactly how all his wealth was obtained, where he keeps it, or how much taxes he pays on it. He wants to turn the clock back to the '50's, the 1850's, and he refuses to offer any specific plan about what he'll do about anything. He wants to run the country like a corporation, but he can't even control one 82 year old actor on his own convention stage, a Hollywood legend who, in the matter of ten and a half minutes went from good, walking on the stage, to Bad, talking to a chair, and then to Ugly, the chair started swearing?     

John Pilger: The Liberal Way to Run the World

What is the world's most powerful and violent "ism"? The question will summon the usual demons, such as Islamism, now that communism has left the stage. The answer, wrote Harold Pinter, is only superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, because only one ideology claims to be non ideological, neither left nor right, the supreme way. This is liberalism. In his 1859 essay, On Liberty, to which modern liberals pay homage, John Stuart Mills described the power of empire. "Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians," he wrote, "provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end." The barbarians were large sections of humanity of whom implicit obedience was required. The French liberal Alexis de Tocqueville also believed in the bloody conquest of others as a triumph of Christianity and civilization, that was clearly preordained in the sight of Providence. It's a nice and convenient myth that liberals are the peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers, wrote the historian Hywel Williams in 2001, but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its open ended nature, its conviction that it represents a superior form of life, while denying its self righteous fanaticism. He had in mind a speech by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which Blair promised to reorder this world around us, according to his moral values. At least a million dead later, in Iraq alone, this tribune of liberalism is today employed by the tyranny in Kazakhstan for a fee of $13 million. Blair's crimes are not unusual. Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations, 69 countries have suffered some or allof the following. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted and their people bombed. The historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions.