John Kozy: Our Disintegrating Economic "Recovery"?

Our country is "riddled" with idiots who believe that one day, a "president", the one who reads us fairy tales from his "invisible teleprompter" tries to tell us that "all is well". Who, pray tell, is going to "get back" what has been brutally taken from him, when the economy "recovers". That successful, inveterate liars consistently use a specific group of practices has been known for ages. They, for instance, give long winded answers to question, distract, and confuse the questioner, make assertions that can't be easily easily refuted, and keep from saying very much that is specific, making it difficult to confirm or refute details. One prevalent way Obama has of doing this, is to speak metaphorically. Those of you old enough, like me, who served in Vietnam as advisory team leader, and who drank at least a six-pack of beer before taking my jeep down a heavily mined road, so that the rest of my could return safely to their families. Those who served in that war with me, remember that whenever General Westmorland was asked how the war was going, he replied that "there was light at the end of the tunnel". Of course there was, since it is well known that a tunnel receives light from both of its opposite ends, but is usually dug to lay tracks for a fast-moving freight train. At the same moment when I was serving in Vietnam, we were mortared many, many times, and I kept my team safe and sound despite that fact. Likewise President Obama is addicted to vapid metaphors, which were presented to him by an assistant: "The US still has a "big hole to fill", "There are going to be bumps in the road", and "we're on the right track". The latter remark made me visualize a freight train running over Obama's prone body, for all the world to see, and believe there is still hope in this world, before we go on to the next. Words, words, words: What have these to do with "recovery". "My neighbor has recovered from pneumonia" usually means his previously impaired lungs are now working normally!" The word recover always has the connotation of "getting back", but who or what is going to get back when the economy "recovers". You see, the word 'recovery' is just another vapid metaphor, and it means nothing!

Franklin Lamb: France Says NATO Bombing Has Failed.

One of the jokes heard at this week's massive pro-government Friday post prayer rally at Green Square is about how each morning Libya's leader, following early morning Fajr prayers dons his formal uniform, complete with huge epaulets, and salutes the small NATO flag he tapes to his bathroom mirror as he moves from place to place dodging NATO drones and assassins. "Our leader does this", one young lady informed me first with a wide smile and then growing serious, "because the NATO bombing of Libyan civilians, which the US/NATO axis claims Qaddafi is doing, has caused his popularity to skyrocket among our proud and nationalist tribal people. I am one example of this. Yes, of course we can use some new blood and long overdue reform in our government. Which country cannot? But first we must defeat the NATO invaders, and then we can sort out our problems among our tribes, including the so-calked "NATO Rebels". Since the beginning of the NATO operation (3/31/11), the alliance has conducted nearly 15,000 sorties, including close to 6,000 bombing missions according to NATO's media office in Naples, Italy. The most recent attacks reported on 7/9/11 included 112 sorties and 48 bomb/missile attacks, and that is about average. The two most active Embassies in Libya these days are the Russians and the Chinese. On 2/25/11, according to the Bulgarian Embassy staff, which was falsely rumored to be currently handing US consular services, since the US has no representatives in Libya, are extremely busy these days. NATO, Diplomatic, and Congressional sources confirm that the Obama Administration erred badly in thinking that Libya's regime would collapse "in a few days, not weeks" as Obama assured the American public which has to pay $ 5 billion thru July 31 this year! Obama's miscalculation will most likely cost him the presidency, unless, like JFK, an assassin does the job. As one student at Tripoli's Al Fatah University commented, "What your American government has done in this region to destroy yourselves since 9/11 is amazing to Libyans. Now you are going to fight us? Why? You already had your oil at bargain prices. We stupidly put our sovereign funds into US banks, and we did not even bother Israel much! 70 years ago, we sacrificed nearly one third of our population to expel the Italians. Doesn't anyone in the United States study HISTORY??? We are armed and will use our weapons. Among the errors our leadership has made, one of the worst is that we believed the US agreements we made in 2004. The Iranians and North Koreans laugh at us for trusting you and giving up nuclear and biological weapons. Believe me, if Qadaffi leaves power, you will miss him, because the Libyan people will be tougher against your projects than he has been!

Frank Rich: Obama's Original Sin

After 9/11, Rudi Giuliani went on Saturday Night Live to give New Yorkers permission to laugh again, but Mayor Bloomberg never did tell us when we could resume conspicuous consumption after the crash of 2008. So, as we stumble through the second year of the official "recovery", its time return to high-end carousing. A case in point was the late-May celebration of the centennial re-dedication of the New York Public Library. Surely, no civic institution could be a better occasion for a blowout. However, it was impossible to banish memories of the financial meltdown: Some two weeks earlier, the mayor had restricted the free and open access he now extolled. His fiscal 2012 budget called for slashing $40 million from the library system, a cut that would have mandated four day weeks and the shutdown of a dozen branches. There was also the awkward matter of the gala's "corporate chair", Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America. In the pageantry preceding Bloomberg's remarks, the slightly flushed Moynihan, looking like a nervous ring bearer in a stately wedding ceremony was among those singled out by the announcer while marching down the reading room's long center aisle in a processional of library trustees, but it was impossible to banish toxic trace memories of the meltdown.

Justin Raimondo: Pakistan-Ominous Signs Of a Major New War!

Thanks to Obama, our United States is once again in deep dudu (i.e.SHIT)! Suddenly, Islamabad is on the verge of being classified as part of the Axis of Evil, with the head of the joint chiefs, Admiral Mullen, openly accusing the Pakistanis of "sanctioning" the killing of a journalist, and allying with a faction of the Taliban (they're everywhere, they're everywhere). Since when does a military man, the titular uniformed head of the US armed force, no less - speak out on such sensitive political matters? Why, when he has the full backing of the White House, which obviously has plans for the Pakistanis. The new accusations add fuel to the fire, started by the "discovery"(or NOT) of Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad lair, where supposedly he has been hiding for years, or has he? The word is that Osama, not to be confused with "Obama", had been in ill health, and had to depend on many blood transfusions to survive in his cave. The new accusations claim that Osama had been "hiding" in Pakistan for many years, but I digress! The ultimate prize for US imperialism in the Middle East - the jewel in the crown of the emerging American empire is Iran, long the chief target of the "War Party's" attention, yet our country either lacked the resources or the political support for such an attack. First, we went after Iraq and Afghanistan, and now we are finally ready to destroy Pakistan. (Azerbaijan, to the north, has replaced Kyrgyzstan as the main way station funneling supplies to American troops in the region.) The plan is to fully integrate Pakistan fully into the American orbit, and thus Iran will be surrounded on all sides! While keeping the heat on for a direct attack on Iran, the powerful pro-Israeli Lobby, (the Israeli sinking of our SS Liberty is only a memory, and only the our Intelligence Operations people still remember that tragedy), but the Israelis know how far they can go in America - for them, all is always forgiven!

Mike Whitney: Memo to Obama: Create more jobs or Resign!

ABYSMAL! That's the only way to describe Friday's job report! On top of that, the unemployment rate has been heading higher for the last three months. Now, it's at 9.2%, a full two years into the "alleged recovery". Where are the jobs, Mr. President, and that's what everyone wants to know. Sending Americans into lethal wars, to return with serious wounds, is NOT the right answer. War is hell: When I served as Advisory Team Leader in Vietnam, I always drank at least six beers before I traveled the dirt road towards the 25th Infantry base, so that I would not feel very much pain when I would be destroyed by an enemy mine. In order to save my team from that folly, I took most chances by myself, and most of the time, I was "lucky". However, on one return trip, I noticed the huge motor of a 5 ton truck that had been thrown one hundred feet into a paddy dike. But I digress: Friday's job report, as you know, was MORE than abysmal. As you know, on top of that, the unemployment rate has been heading higher for the last three months. So much for a recovery. The stock market has regained most of the ground it lost since it touched rock bottom in March 2009, but the "real" economy is still stuck in the mud.
Here's a clip from economist Tim Duy, who sums it up perfectly: "the labor force fell, the number of employed plummeted, and the number of unemployed climbed. Private non-farm payrolls gained a paltry 57k, and the drag from government cutbacks pulled the overall jobs gain to just 18k. Far short of the numbers needed to even hold unemployment steady." Get the picture? It's ALL BAD! And guess what? Those "18,000 new jobs" falls within the Labor Department's margin for error, so there could actually be "no new jobs". Are you still awake, Mr. President? Probably NOT!

Alexa Olesen:China Says US Spends Too Much Money on Military!

The United States is spending too much money on its military in light of its recent economic troubles, said China's top general. The chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army, Chen Bingde, told reporters he thought the US should cut back on defense spending for the sake of its taxpayers. He was speaking during a joint news conference in which he traded barbs with visiting US counterpart Admiral Mike Mullen. "I know the US is still recovering from the financial crisis," Chen said. "Under such circumstances, it is still spending a lot of money on its military and isn't that placing too much pressure on the taxpayers? If the US could reduce its military spending a bit and spend more on improving the livelihood of the American people, wouldn't that be a better scenario?" he said. The visit by Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the first of its kind in four years. Mullen and Chen are trying to upgrade military to military ties after setbacks over the US arms sales to Taiwan, cyber-attacks traced to China and concern about Beijing's military plans. Chen made a similar trip to the US in May as part of efforts to improve often frosty relations between the militarys, especially as the economies of the countries become more codependent. The two sides announced future exchanges, according to a statement released through the official Xinhua News Agency, with the commander of one of China's seven military regions visiting the headquarters of the US Pacific Command in Hawaii later this year, followed by a return visit by the head of the Pacific Command.

Jack A. Smith: The True Cost Of America's Wars

During his speech on Afghanistan June 22, President Obama revealed that "Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war". Of course, he knew this to be a deceptive under-statement, to satisfy the morons who voted for him. However, few Americans have closely followed Washington's 21st century "wars of choice", so a trillion probably "sounds right" to them, but that amount in ten years, when the annual cost of air conditioning alone for the US in Afghanistan and Iraq amounts to $20.2 billion a year, is way off base! It's difficult to conceive of one trillion, so here it is: Sixty seconds is one minute. One million seconds comprises about 11.5 days, and a billion seconds is 32 years, but a trillion seconds is 32,000 years. The latest objective estimate for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, made public June 29, is between $3.7 trillion and $4.4 trillion (140,000 years), according to the research project "Costs of War" by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. The university assembled a team of economists, legal experts, political scientists, anthropologists, and a physician (probably for those who had passed out during the gruesome experiment). As they found out, the medical costs are "huge"! While we know that just over 6,000 US soldiers have died in our many wars, it is startling that we do not know much about the levels of injury, nor do these figures include the thousands of deaths and injuries among civilian contractors. There are about as many contractors as troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, $400 billion of our tax money went toward paying off past war debts as far back as the Korean War of the early 1950's. Our country will be paying war debts indefinitely, because Washington is always borrowing to plan for, or start NEW wars!!