The Pacific Northwest Economic Region's Energy Horizons project today released a report by Idaho National Laboratory entitled The Cost of NOT Building Transmission. According to the study, if the top 5 projects are not built, it could lead to $55-85 billion in lost economic activity annually, and up to 60,000 jobs annually.

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - Counterpunch

I say this as a person who has done as much for the Republican Party as anyone...If I could have looked into a crystal ball and seen that under a free trade banner, Republicans would enable corporate executives to pay themselves millions of dollars in “performance pay” for deserting their American work forces...I never would have helped the Republicans...Republicans have run roughshod over the US Constitution, Congress, the courts and civil liberties...Republican disregard for human rights ranks with that of history’s great tyrants...The Republicans have put in place the foundation for a police state...We must get the Republicans totally out of power, or we will have no country left for the Democrats to mess up.

Along with other past and present administration officials, Attorney General Michael Mukasey supports lawlessness and police state justice.

By SAUL LANDAU - July 19/20, 2008

Carlin (71) and Helms (86) -- polar opposites of US culture -- died within weeks of each other. Carlin taught critical thinking through stand-up comedy. Helms represented unquestioned authority -- of the past. Lest anyone think Helms was always dour and serious about his love for all things reactionary, those who knew him told stories of his inventive sense of humor. This included the “good old boys” sense of humor.

The American Antiterror War: The Home Front

After 9/11, the U.S. government decreed the necessity of “thinking anew” the nation’s domestic security. After having thoroughly examined the measures it takes for channeling America’s civil domestic life into legal lines and controlling it, it has come to the conclusion that the institutions responsible for these tasks have performed as poorly as has the network of agencies responsible for top-secret data collection and the supervision and suppression of anti-American machinations on American soil. The government has deemed all instruments of inner security no longer adequate; they are to be modified, supplemented and perfected.

Fwd -

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
5:00pm
Vancouver Art Gallery

Tell Stephen Harper:
Bring Omar Khadr Back to Canada!

By Ryan Singel; June 27, 2008 - Wired Blog Network

Mark Klein, the retired AT&T engineer who stepped forward with the technical documents at the heart of the anti-wiretapping case against AT&T, is furious at the Senate's vote on Wednesday night to hold a vote on a bill intended to put an end to that lawsuit and more than 30 others...[Wednesday]'s vote by Congress effectively gives retroactive immunity to the telecom companies and endorses an all-powerful president. It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution.

"Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them."

- Ryan Lizza, July 21 2008

George Carlin, comic, anarchist, 1937-2008: Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits [otherwise known as "The Seven words you must never say on television"].

by Ted Rall - Common Dreams

When [Republican Presidential candidate and Senator John] McCain was shot down during his 23rd bombing sortie, he was happily shooting up a civilian neighborhood in the middle of a major city. Vietnamese locals beat him when they pulled him out of a local lake; yeah, that must have sucked. But I can’t help think of what would have happened to Mohammed Atta had he somehow wound up alive on a lower Manhattan street on 9/11...Maybe he would have made it[?]...But I do know this: no one would ever have considered him a war hero.

By Derrick O'Keefe - July 19, 2008

I find it refreshing and hopeful that there can still be popular oppositional campaigns that actually call things by their right names. Faced with an in-your-face capitalist as president, the French people have picked an in-your-face anti-capitalist as their favourite politician from the opposition camp.

The food chain is under attack these days. Seems all the experts are clueless as to the reason. Maybe the answer is under their noses.

America's darkest hour under George W. Bush.

By Andrew G. Marshall - July 10, 2008

...[W]hy [was] Iraq...occupied[?]...If the answer is...to spread democracy and freedom and rid the world of tyranny and terror, then it doesn’t make sense that the British or Americans would orchestrate terror...However, if the answer to the question...was not to spread democracy and freedom, but to spread fear and chaos, plunge the country into civil war, balkanize Iraq into several countries, and create an "arc of crisis" across the Middle East, enveloping neighboring countries, notably Iran, then terror is a very efficient and effective means to an end.