"We've spent over $3 trillion on the war in Iraq and over $500 billion and counting in Afghanistan. In Libya, we'll soon hit $1 billion in spending - on a war that raises lots of questions, but has not received any debate, or authorization from Congress. The Pentagon now takes over half of the discretionary spending of our budget. And the United States is the largest exporter of arms in the world. That's not change we can believe in.

At a time when we have close to 15 million people out of work and we're cutting critical programs to the poor and unemployed, we're wasting money becoming a military juggernaut around the world.

But - somehow - the consensus in Washington is to just let this military industrial complex and the policies of fear and preemptive war continue. We simply should not accept, blindly, that war is always necessary and that our nation and our world must persist in a state of violence. "
(-Dennis Kucinich)

"Barack Obama should just go ahead and hire Colin Powell to do a reprise of his mobile chemical weapons labs story, this time with photos of a garage in the Libyan desert instead of the Iraqi desert. Meanwhile, United States allies in Bahrain and Yemen kill their citizens without fear of American reprisal. The hypocrisy is breathtakingly transparent and ought to immediately discredit Obama and his European partners in crime. Unfortunately it will do no such thing. Obama and Sarkozy and Cameron will survive and never pay a price for their criminality.

Obama won’t pay a price domestically either. Democrats will repeat their behavior of clinging desperately to one of their own, no matter what he does. American blood lust is always just below the surface, and scenes of missiles creating havoc and terror always gain a president greater popular support. So it goes, this time with a peace prize laureate.

Violence is as American as apple pie, and is loved just as much."
(-Margaret Kimberly)

"For decades, the liberal class defended all Americans against the worst excesses of power. But the pillars of this class — the press, the universities, trade unions, the Democrats, and the liberal church — have collapsed. In its absence, the needs of the poor, the working class, and even the middle class, no longer have a champion. 'Death of the Liberal Class' takes an excoriating look at the liberals who have abdicated responsibility and formulates a clarion call for reform.”
(-Chris Hedges)

"The United States has spent trillions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan thus far, with both wars having served to undermine our national and economic security. The war in Libya has reportedly cost well over $100 million to date, at a time when Congress is forced to decide between cutting funds for keeping our seniors warm in the winters, helping low-income pregnant and nursing women access basic nutrition, and helping struggling middle class workers stay in their homes. The costs are likely to mount, with the costs to operate F-15s and F-16s used by the U.S. to conduct this operation at approximately $100,000 per hour, including maintenance and fuel costs. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments states that the U.S. costs could “easily pass the $1 billion mark…regardless of how well things go,” and put the costs of the operation in Libya anywhere from $30 million to $100 million per week."
(-Dennis J. Kucinich)

"Obama relies, more than Bush, on deceptive propaganda and semantic trickery, although he is just as willing to use brute force and bald-faced lies. The President will have to employ all of his tricks to accomplish his current political project, which is to make 'humanitarian' warfare the signature aspect of an Obama Doctrine. The Libya 'crisis' is Obama’s opportunity to raise R2P – 'Responsibility to Protect' – from a shaky and highly controversial legal construct, to a broadly recognized justification for superpower intervention, a doctrine that expands, rather than restrains, American military options.

In the midst of a fluid international crisis, Obama’s challenge is to usher in his signature R2P Doctrine while distancing himself from the vocabulary of 'regime change' that has been so closely associated with George Bush – without actually forswearing regime change.

Obama’s real policy on Libya is regime change, as it must be for an imperial superpower. More than three weeks ago, he entered the arena of regime change when he declared that 'Col. Khaddafi needs to step down from power, and leave.' The U.S. military immediately began to facilitate Khaddafi's involuntary exit in coordination with its allies in Europe. Obama is dancing away from the vocabulary – but not the reality – of regime change, to establish a new Doctrine, that will widen the parameters of imperial action and augment his own presidential legacy.

So, pay no attention to Obama’s words, only to his deeds."
(-Glen Ford)

"He wanted to keep the finger forever and wanted to dry it out. He was proud of his finger."
(– friend of Pfc. Andrew Holmes, who murdered unarmed 15-year-old Afghan for fun and kept a trophy)

"I must report that Afghans do not believe this to be a story of a few rogue soldiers. We believe that the brutal actions of these 'kill teams' reveal the aggression and racism which is part and parcel of the entire military occupation. While these photos are new, the murder of innocents is not. Such crimes have sparked many protests in Afghanistan and have sharply raised anti-American sentiment among ordinary Afghans.

I am not surprised that the mainstream media in the US has been reluctant to publish these images of the soldiers who made sport out of murdering Afghans. General Petraeus, now in charge of the American-led occupation, is said to place great importance on the 'information war' for public opinion – and there is a concerted effort to keep the reality of Afghanistan out of sight in the US."
(-Malalai Joya)

"When I think about our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the way that our troops were used ... Because of this horrific violation of our American values, and of human values, we, the United States, need to go to the time out room. We really shouldn't be dropping bombs or invading anybody else, for some time to come."
(– Michael Moore speaking with Roseanne Barr on HLN, March 29th, 2011)

"Well, look, he spent $70 million to buy the office of governor in Florida. He wants a return on his money. He promised us that he would run state government like a business. What we didn't realize is he was going to run it like HIS business, like it's all his. And that's exactly what he has been doing. It's not only what you said. In addition to that, he wants to cut all state funding for health care clinics. There are 4 million people in Florida who can't afford to see a doctor when they're sick. They have to go to health care clinics. He's going to shut them all down so that they will be forced to go to Rick Scott's clinics."
(-Alan Grayson)

"Scott Walker may have what senior legislators refer to as “dictatorial” control of the executive and legislative branches of state government in Wisconsin. But he does not own the judiciary. That, of course, is precisely as the founders of the American experiment, and of the Wisconsin experiment, intended it when they established systems of checks and balances to prevent elected executives from assuming the abusive authority of the monarchs against which a revolution was waged and won."
(-John Nichols)

"In my state of Michigan, you've got the governor who wants to do a $1.8 billion tax cut for corporations, but raise the average worker's taxes – and he wants to throw in senior citizens and poor people into this mix – he wants to raise their taxes by $1.7 billion."
(– Michael Moore)

I threw my back out last Saturday, you can see it, an inch or two, above my waist-line, on the left side of the lower back, there's like, a muscle jutting out. Early in the week, I get some virus, that has reduced my voice to a hoarse, bullfrog croak-sometimes, I speak and nothing comes out. This has been accompanied by phlegm in the chest, having to blow my nose all the time, painful cough, itchy eyes, fever, body aches, and since I have to get up and down, all night long, to go to the bathroom, expel snot, etc., my aching back has been aggravated, by all the getting up and down, so my old lady convinces me to visit the physician, to get some antibiotics and pain pills. All our friends and families are basically, middle-class and upper class, so we wrongly, assumed this would be no trouble. After making me wait two hours, the yuppie, smirking, fifty something, doctor took one look at my long hair, and decided I was not worthy of receiving any prescription for any meds, that I should take fluids and let it all "run it's course". Now, the reason this infuriates me so, is because they've taken all the decongestants that actually provide any relief, off of the shelf, and every drugstore cowgirl middle class housewife with Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance, has a medicine cabinet that rivals Elvis Presleys'. When I need and deserve some real relief, desperately, the pharmaceutical gate-keepers have determined that I look too much like the shirtless, tattooed, guys in the trailer parks, that they watch, being dragged away by police on Fox, so I can just suck it up, and tough it out, with my Thera-Flu and Mucinex. What a racket. What a classist, fascist, pyramid scheme. This quack wouldn't even LOOK at my back, and anyone can hear how sick I am, I sound like Doctor John's been sharing a contagious cigarette with Tom Waits and caught his Bronchitis. If you were here, you could see my swelled-out lower back sticking out. I usually avoid doctors, ever since the surgeon sewed eleven sponges inside my Grandmother, because he'd scheduled too many surgeries the day before his ski-trip, and had other shit on his mind. Her lawyer was brother-in-law to the top hospital administrator, did not recues himself, it was a small town, with only one hospital, and she would not sue, because my dead Grandfather's brothers and sisters all had to go to that hospital. So that irresponsible prick is probably still thinking about Aspen ski-bunnies, and cocaine, when he ought to be thinking about proper operating procedures. Shit rolls down-hill. He just blamed the nurse.

Knew another guy, who was an Anesthesiologist, who self-administered Michael Jackson style drugs for fun. These guys have no problem denying poor people basic medicine, when they're undeniably sick. Yesterday, I read a story about a couple going to jail for growing pot to relieve her Pain from Cancer and Chemo-Therapy. Meanwhile, the boss of the international drug cartels sits on his throne, and laughs at the misfortune of the working poor, whom he profits from imprisoning. 'Has public relations teams, creating more honors for him to recieve, for his generosity and philanthropy, all while "deindustrializing" (firing) the U.S., and starting wars, all over the world. Pats himself on the back.

Three trillion spent killing millions in Iraq, another trillion in Afghanistan. No one knows how much the military is spending on the secret wars in Pakistan, and Yemen. Or Palestine. More U.S. soldiers committed suicide last year, than were killed by those resisting the occupations of their countries. Something like five thousand have been killed fighting these two wars. Not counting the mercenaries and special op's covert boots on the ground. Five hundred and fifty million spent in the first ten days of bombing Libya. Quadaffi was armed by the American military industrial complex, just like Netanyahu, Mubarek, Bin Ladin, and Hussein. How much reforrestation, teacher's salaries, green manufacturing jobs, college tuitions, solar panels, alternative fuel powered automobiles, or health care could that money have paid for, here, in the so-called "homeland"? The deficit hawks never discuss cutting the budget for bombing the brown people, or for spying on peaceful, tax-paying Americans. The rightwing think-tanks write "model-legislation", and pay lobbyists to buy crooked, cold-blooded, politicians, like Wisconsin's Scott Walker, NY's Andrew Cuomo, and this slimey low-life, Rick Scott, in Florida, to push it through, outlawing unions, and criminalizing dissent. All these guys are owned by the Koch family. The criminals are writing the legislation. A corporate owned government is even calling such acts as, linking to websites, chanting in public spaces, and writing on sidewalks, "terrorism", when, in fact, terrorism is ACTUALLY the murder of human beings, like in these Afghan night raids, on Afghan civilians, defended by Obama and the Clintons, who might as well be the Bush Family, so entwined are their political agendas. They're defunding schools and letting infrastructure crumble, Detroit's in ruins, and five years from now, kids will have to pay top dollar to attend private, for profit, charter schools, thanks to creeps, like Joe Lieberman and John Mccain.

This obscenely corrupt, Gov. Scott in Fla., owns a Drug-testing company called, Solantic, and now he's in office, he wants to force all public employees, and welfare recipients, to be drug tested(!!!) at his clinics, similar to the way that Patriot-Act co-author, Michael Chertoff, used his office as head of the DHS under Bush, to push for the porno-scanners that radiate paying passengers, to be installed in all our air-ports, at tax payer's expense. Who manufactures the porno-scanners? Chertoff's company, Rapiscan. Rape Us Scam. These should both be gigantic scandals, just disgusting conflicts of interest, similar to Halliburton's no-bid contracts under Cheney, but when the big-media is owned by the Machivellian elites, it's not a headline, it's not even discussed. This sinister Scott guy in Florida says all public service workers and people on welfare should be drug screened, "at least quarterly", and he's transferred all his Solantic (drug-testing clinics) stock to his wife's name: that's the "limited government" you always hear the rightwing saying they're in favor of. Piss tests, airplane gropings, backscatter x-ray vans, cop tasers, heat guns, raids on peace activist's homes, wiretaps, government monitoring of all your library books, and electronic communications, storing people's DNA, censoring news through their corporate filters, dumping shit out of planes in the sky. "Limited government"? Hardly. That's just code for cutting all the social safety nets, defunding every last social service program, not military related. Obama has halted all discretionary spending, which means, no government services to the poor, just funnelling trillions into a gargantuan, authoritarian police state, and a crazy military hell-bent on a one world-government, controlled by the bankers and elites. Exxon/Mobil, G.E., Bank Of America, Chevron, Boeing, Goldman-Sachs, Carnival Cruise-lines, etc., pay no taxes. Both slash-happy Obama, and these dispicable Republicans, love to moan, all day, about "the deficit" and staged "budget crisis" and need to outlaw collective bargaining rights, and cut all domestic spending on children, the elderly, the sick, and the poor. Meanwhile, the military contractors and weapons of war manufacturers, private mercenary armies, and domestic spying apparatus, get untold trillions. The wealthiest pay nothing. Wall Street and oil companies get tax refunds from the I.R.S. The faux Dems are totally complicit, which is why we've taken to calling them, "Republic-Rats": "Democrats indicated Tuesday they may be willing to accept Republican-backed curbs on the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal regulators, as part of an overall deal on spending cuts."

Ralph Nader and Daniel Ellsberg plan to participate in a major protest on Saturday in Washington, D.C., to mark the eight-year anniversary of the U.S-led invasion of Iraq. Ellsberg will risk arrest, by participating in nonviolent civil disobedience actions, by Veterans for Peace, among others, to protest the ongoing military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. “Innocents are being slaughtered,” Nader says. “Why don’t we say what’s on the minds of many legal experts? That the Obama administration is committing war crimes. And if Bush should have been impeached, Obama should be impeached." This is not change we can believe in!!!