Turns out Bush and his Republican cohorts managed to do something about immigration after all. By destroying the economy, they’ve made America a less desirable place to work, which in turn has decreased the amount of immigrants venturing into the U.S. However the Republicans didn’t stop there. They’ve screwed up the economy so royally that immigrants already working in this country are going home, as opportunities are drying up, an article in Time Magazine finds.

Isn’t it ironic that while Bush has always been a proponent of exploiting immigrant labor (as it is one of the 3 fundamental components of capitalism), against the will of his party, mind you, his policies damaged capitalism and therefore achieved the desire of his party to put a stop to immigration. It came at the expense of our economy and, perhaps, damaged his party beyond control, but who can argue with success right?

It’s especially ironic since Bush was unable to get his way on immigration reform. Of course, by then, Bush had spent most of his political capital on Social-Security and Iraq like a jittery gambler at the …

The times they are a changin’, a famous prophet once said. And while this statement is almost always true, its utterance is often a signal of its significance. That the winds of change are blowing in the mind (to quote the prophet again), or minds I should say, of millions of angry people all across this great land. With the events that are occurring and unfolding right before our very eyes, change is no longer a hope, it’s a reality, one that will rattle and unsettle and even uproot the systems of the past, the grand institutions of the present and our very belief in the future. Prepare yourselves my fellow countrymen, for the battle for control is drawing to a close.

I know it’s been hard to look around these days at the state of the world. The reality is often to grave to discuss. Disasters at home and abroad, two wars we are unsuccessfully waging, famine and hunger, global warming, recession, the list goes on and on. However there are seeds of very positive things to come sprouting in a very fertile field.

George W. Bush has been badly …

Despite the corporate-owned media’s obsession with polls, controversy and the horse-race, last night Barack Obama blew Hillary Clinton out of the water and officially ended any realistic chance of her becoming America’s next President. Not since Woodrow Wilson has 14 points meant so much, and by 14 points, I mean the blow-out in North Carolina which was, as recently as Monday, being paraded as Obama’s last stand.

Hillary’s chances for the Presidency are effectively statistically impossible. It’s essentially to a point where Obama could come out and announce he was a hooker-loving, Muslim terrorist or something and Hillary may STILL lose. The sense that the race is over is stronger than ever and even Hillary supporters like George McGovern have announced that he would take his pledged super-delegate status and switch it to Barack Obama. In other words Hillary’s run for the President died on that fateful Tuesday night.

Can she be productive though? Will she go out strong and with dignity, or will she pull a Jerry Brown and look like a rebel rousing spoil sport at her party’s convention? I’m sure she will choose the former. When …

It is absolutely hilarious the uniform reactions I’m hearing from the Republican punditry. It’s almost like hearing a talking wind-up doll, pull the string and listen to some pissed off Rightie Wightie loud mouth regurgitate a line on how Obama failed to reach the lower class White vote. It usually comes out sounding something like this:

“While Obama’s speech was very ELOQUENT, he failed to change the minds of middle-class White people.”

Nothing TOO shocking, however let’s examine this a little closer.

Firstly, even the compliment is designed to be an insult. After the infamous Joe Biden debacle, in which Biden called Obama “articulate,” it became widely known to White Righties that African-American men see such comments as an attempt to put them in a second-class bracket (oh he speaks so well… for a black guy). By the way, articulate is the third word for eloquent in the thesaurus, This is not apples and oranges, especially since Republicans are so obsessive about semantics.

Secondly… Where do they get off thinking they know what middle and working class people are thinking?! Most of these Right-Wing Pundicrats have never suffered a day in their …

The degradation of the Presidential race may have finally bottomed out. While the media, eager to prove that it’s being “tough” on Obama, pounced on some remarks Obama’s pastor Rev. Wright made recently, the clever and daring politician fired back with a speech as daring as John F. Kennedy’s famous speech on religion in 1960, and, much to the surprise of many, he succeeded.

While Hillary Clinton managed to avoid addressing the fiery and naïve remarks made by campaign aide and former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, Obama attacked this issue head on. While it seems fairly irrelevant to me that Obama’s Pastor got angry at White America nearly 20 years ago, it was wise of the Illinois Senator to take swift and decisive action, as opposed to the slow and divisive tactic Hillary Clinton choose on her gender/race issue.

The decision to make a speech however, is only half the battle. Who could forget Romney’s speech on religion earlier this year that failed to energize his campaign? Romney could not reconcile his Mormon faith to the millions of evangelical voters and his momentum stalled, …

It’s been a long time since we had an Orange Alert huh? Remember those? Seemed like every time suspicions of the Bush Administration’s mishandling of 9-11 came up, or bad times in Iraq, or my absolute personal favorite, The Democratic Convention, we were all running to the store to buy duct tape and check our mail with anthrax proof gas masks.

An amazing coincidence?

Anyone with half a brain cell who actually paid attention to the Bush Administration’s complete and utter exploitation of the multi-colored Terror Alert Level System will not be shocked by accusations that Bush used it to his political advantage.

Keith Olbermann’s recent Nexus of Terror Timeline however, will still disgust you beyond belief. He lays down 17 minutes of Bush abuse on the issue of terrorism for nothing more than political gain. He reads off an overwhelming array of evidence, laid out in chronological order that details just how low the Bush Administration sunk to maintain political power in Washington.

Fear, fear and more fear will be one of Bush’s …

Everywhere I look I see the news media ready to put up victory flags and declare the so-called “surge” a success. Just a few months ago, the Iraqi government was on the brink of collapse, civil war was not only inevitable, it was happening and Sen. John McCain couldn’t walk down the streets of a Baghdad market without a whole battalion to protect him. So this must mean that the “Liberal Media” was lying the whole time about Iraq right?

It all seemed too good to be true to me. That simply putting in a few thousand more troops was turning the tide in Iraq. Turns out, most of the success has had nothing to do with military engagements, and been attributed more to the actions of Sunnis, tired of infighting and tired of war and the collapse of the Mehdi Army (Sadr’s military force). Much of the success, such as in Anbar Province, has had nothing to do with the Surge at all.

So what, if it works, it works right? However, the success itself is somewhat a myth. Attacks are not down as much as the military as led to …

One particular topic I take great interest in is our nation’s correctional facilities. I have had the opportunity to see what lies just beneath all the “tough-on-crime” rhetoric and law and order mumbo jumbo. Let me tell you, what I found when I turned over the bright, shiny polished rock of justice, was a colony of privatized leeches, bilking the tax payers and inmates out of as much money as possible. So when I read a BBC article last week that called America’s prison system a “costly failure,” I was not surprised. What did surprise me, however, is how little coverage it got here in the states. In fact, most of the links here are from outside of the U.S. Media. I knew that Corporate America had its greedy, money grubbing hands all over the prison system, but I had no idea that the story would be squashed so handily in favor of other stories that have already come and gone, with little resistance from the people or press. The fact of the matter is, America’s “tough on crime” bs, has cost them dearly, pretending it doesn’t exist cannot …

I did not watch last nights YouTube Republican Debate, nor have I ever really given a complete watch of any Republican Debate for that matter, however all the news that is pouring through the wires is electrified with bitter exchanges and other warlike moments of verbal vulgarity between Rudy “I was Mayor of New York during 9-11” Giuliani and Mit “the Morman” Romney. Both sides are locked in a pathetic display of “he started it” and “I’m the REAL victim” with Republican dark-horse Huckabee riding the degeneration wave to his highest crest yet. Unfortunately for all of the Presidential wanabees, the real loser of last nights debate was the Republican Party.

Republicans have a tradition of choosing, internally by right of power, the candidate they are going to push on to the rank and file Repubs. Rebels like John McCain have discovered that any attempt to cross this decision can be met with brutal force, as he did when Rove spread via push-polling, an untrue rumor of McCain fathering an illegitimate black baby in the South Carolina primary. The result destroyed McCain’s chances of besting our now infamously disastrous George “WWIII” …

These days, the doom and gloom about the American Economy seems to lie just beneath the surface. Many people are talking about the events that are shaking our sense of stability, however the implications of these events is largely kept silent. The “R word” has come up lightly here and there, yet most media outlets are remaining largely silent. They’re afraid to cry “fire” in the movie theatre, while the projection room slowly burns. Especially since a recession is not really a possibility at this point, it’s an inevitability, and it might get much worse.

I tend to stay away from economic stories here on Soapblox. It is very easy for one to get carried away with the tide of news, so I waited till the writing was on the wall, and boy is it ever on the wall now. Last week, Federal Reserve Chairmen Bernake announced that the economy was slowing, and what’s worse, he couldn’t lower interest rates any longer, as inflation is rearing it’s ugly head. Essentially that’s like George Bush telling Americans we’re losing the Iraq War. Sure we all know where this is …

I always get a bit of a kick watching black and white logic fall on its ass. It’s a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. Black and white logic tends to be the refuge of simple minded people, you know: “you’re either with us or against us” style thinking that dictates all decisions can be made simple when you see it as either black, or white. This logic is a staple of our own fearless leader, George W. “the W stands for War” Bush, and is struggling these days to make his stubborn theories on Democracy work.

Unfortunately for him, it comes at the expense of looking the fool.

Today Bush spoke about the difference between the U.S. hardline on Burma, and the relatively mute response to Pakistan President and military chief Pervez Musharraf’s seizure of power. Musharraf’s recent suspension of his nation’s constitution is the ultimate destruction of Pakistani democracy, and our support of this matter is the ultimate bastardization of Bush’s pledge to support the flowering of democracy abroad. Get this: Bush claimed the difference is that Pakistan had been on the path to democracy …

Monday’s story, Citizen Newt, demonstrates influential Republican, Newt Gingrich’s strategic shift on environmental issues. Apparently he’s not the only one who sees impending doom coming to the Republican Party.

Former W. Bush speech writer, Michael Gerson, is not only saying what the Newt is saying, he goes even further, claiming that if Republicans don’t embrace more compassion, environmental as well as humanitarian issues, they will not only lose big in elections, but they will deserve to lose as well.

He professed these ideas on a recent episode of The Daily Show.

While Gerson warns that the lack of progress in these areas is very frustrating, it is a clear indicator that the Post-Bush/Reagan Republican Party will look very different from the way it does now. I imagine that it will have the same solid heartless core that it has always had, a pro-business elite view on economics and the distribution of power to the masses. However, the whole religious rhetorical manipulation, as well as the hatred of all things left of fascism, seems …

The Era of Reagan is over!

Well it’s finally official. Break out your Champaign bottles and shake them till it hurts. The Republican juggernaut has broken down, and they are in such a state of confusion, they are facing an ideological crisis that is comparable to the intellectual collapse of the Democrats in the ‘70s.

A few days ago, well known conservative NY Times writer David Brooks, you know, that guy with the glasses and the annoying ties, wrote an article called “The Republican Collapse”. This comes one year after Tucker Carlson, from the more centrist wing of the Republican party, wrote a similarly themed article, although far less sympathetic. I took the opportunity after Carlson’s article to declare an official pendulum swing. I did not base that declaration solely on Carlson, the sea had changed, Carlson was merely the first sailor to jump ship, and therefore, a strong indicator that the ship was sinking. Today, on the heals of Brook’s article, we see not only the ship is sinking, it’s capsized!

Brooks’ public acknowledgment of the intellectual collapse of the Right, is long overdue. We over here …

You know, you really gotta hand it to good ol’ President Bush. Just when you think he can’t make any more of an ass out of himself, he tops his earlier efforts, each time, with actions that reach stunning new heights of idiocy.

In case you haven’t seen it, President Bush not only mistakenly proclaimed that Nelson Mandela was “dead", he attributed his death to Saddam Hussein!

You can see the bit on the Daily Show, the only news agency to cover the story. Check out the whole Daily Show clip over at ifilm.

Well, if John Stewart’s call did not convince you, lol, then check here at the Nobel Prize website, or this story, one of the few agencies to even cover the story (ironically the government owned Voice of America), in which the Mandela foundation fires back. Nelson Mandela was not indeed killed by Saddam Hussein, nor was he killed at all. He’s alive, old but still ticking, and still involved in political life, although he is retired. He …

This is too good for words. Vice President and potential war criminal Dick “the devil” Cheney is now claiming his office will not comply with a Presidential order requiring him to disclose the number of classified documents they generate because the Vice President’s office is not “within the executive branch". He is now claiming the Vice Presidency is part of the Legislative Branch, even though the office of the Vice Presidency is mentioned in the part of the Constitution that creates the Executive Branch.

Hell, maybe Congress can censure the bastard!

This is a dangerous argument as one, it undermines the executive orders of the President, and two, it undermines Congress’ right of oversight, while carving out an institution not mentioned in the Constitution, one that answers to no one.

What are you hiding Mr. Cheney? Is it information that will incriminate you for starting an aggressive war responsible for death in the hundereds of thousands? Is it information that proves you were in leagues with your former company and big oil, profiting from selling defective equipment to our soldiers at gouge-level prices? Or is …

As a hardworking, loyal, tax paying citizen, I die a little every day knowing that not only is my nation trampling over a foreign land with thoughts of imperial conquest, war economy and oil extraction, but the fact that I’m paying for it, like it or not, makes it all the worse. That soon to be trillion dollar war took money that could have been spent on improving our schools, creating mass transit, job training for our nation’s future economic hopes, improving our parks, building monuments and extending an economic hand to those who could use it. Instead we have blown our wad on the systematic destruction of a 3rd world country, killed 300,000-600,000 innocent people and set respect for America back 50 years.

What really grabs me by the jewels is the fact that not only do WE hard working citizens have to pay for it, the Oil companies, who stood to benefit the most, had Iraq worked, don’t feel they should pay into the American system. Thanks to Republicans, who blocked a measure Democrats hoped to pass that would force Oil companies to pay for green initiatives, today they can rest …

(Updates at bottom of article)

Today was not a good day for World Bank Chief Paul “the ware” Wolfowitz. His allies are walking away from him as if he was a dead man walking, and his enemies are salivating at his demise.

As you may have read, we’ve been keeping a close eye on this story. If your new to Soapblox, you can catch our early commentaries here.

Today however, the story has finally broken wide open.

First off, as reported today by the Wall Street Journal, of one of his top aides, Kevin Kellems, has resigned, citing the scandal as a interfering with his ability to work. Now Kellems is no ordinary top aide. He’s been linked to Wolfowitz since his days at the Defense Department, so in other words, his career and fate are linked to Wolfowitz as well. His departure is a signal that even his closest allies see the scandalized idea man as a lost cause.

Salon.com sees it as an even bigger symbol. The demise of the Neo-Conservative (neo-cons) movement.

Listen to this quote on the end result of their movement:
Now their worldview is in tatters. Their …

Solid evidence that Republicans are signaling an end to support for the Iraq War has emerged over this past week. Republican centrists and those in leadership positions have revealed serious discontent for the current war and are hinting at alternatives to long-term deployment.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that the beginning phases will begin this year that will begin a long and slow withdrawal from Iraq. There will be no escalation beyond the surge. The surge is not showing significant results today and will likely not show them tomorrow. Republicans, who are now signaling that a September report of the Iraq Generals will make or break their future support for the Iraq conflict. It’s the opening, those who don’t wish to see the Republican Party die a painful death, are looking for, and that would constitute most of the elected Republican officials in office today outside of the White House.

Dick Cheney may not care about the Republican Party’s future, but for damn sure the rest of the party does.

The future of their party depends on ending this war. Therefore, being cynical and realistic here, I …

Hookergate II (not to be confused with the CIA hooker scandal last year) is now in effect, and the D.C. madame and ABC News, who have her list, will be releasing some names. Once again, it is a laugh riot watching the media respond to any headline that has the word sex in it. It seems to me, that we live in a second age of yellow journalism, where anything that catches your attention, and sells advertising space, is news.

That being said, let’s bring on the hookers!

Get this: Ms DC Madame now claims, the REAL reason she squashed outed hooker consumer and former Deputy Sec. of State Randal Tobias, was to help smoke out potential witnesses to help prove her services are legal. I suppose next she’ll say that her hookers were giving the money they raised not having sex to fight poverty and fund education. Considering her services were primarily college girls, she may have a point. Especially since that’s the same schlock that college girls who work in the sex trade tell others and themselves while they whore themselves for material gain. There have always been hookers, it’s …

Everywhere I look now, I see the Republican movement faltering and in full retreat. It was not long ago that conservatives like Mary Matalin, high off their victory in 2004, proclaimed Liberalism is dead. Now, no more than a year later, it seems to many such as Tucker Carlson (YES TUCKER CARLSON) that the real proclamation is “What went wrong with the Republican Party?", as described in his Cato Newsletter entry “The Decline and Fall of the Republican Party.” Yes, it seems as if the era of far-right domination, ushered in under Reagan, carried forward during Clinton and the Republican congress and topped off with 6 miserable years under Bush, has finally run its course.

Of course many, such as your devoted muck racking writer, among many other more respected journalists have seen this coming for years. Hell, I’ve been predicting it for so long, many friends are angry at me for not seeing the prediction come to light. While it is still far too early to break out the champagne and celebrate, it is time to gather the dogs of war and encircle the …

Conservative anger grows over Bush’s foreign policy. Who wouldn’t be! Bush has led this country into one disastrous quagmire of a war in Iraq, another failing effort in Afghanistan, Somalia is now under al Qaeda backed Islamic control, Iran has nuclear capability, North Korea now has nuclear weapons with missiles, Israel has invaded Lebanon and the peace process is in ruins (decades behind) and the entire world hates us. Terrorism is much stronger today than it ever was before Bush came to office and the world is a far less safe place today than it was in 2000.

This is the direct result of what has been coined “Cowboy Diplomacy". It basically isn’t diplomacy at all. It is a declared statement of intent, followed by action. Sounds tough, but tell me what’s tough about rushing into a fight you know nothing about. Cowboy diplomacy also brought us indifference in the Middle East, allowing Israel to overplay its hand, and severe agitation among other world leaders, not to mention allowing Somalia to fall into enemy hands. How can anyone forget how Cowboy Diplomacy brought us a breakdown in dialogue with Iran and North Korea, which are free to …

Happy Birthday to Soapblox!

While we had a large 9 month or so preparation phase, the official launch of Soapblox.com was on the 4th of July. We may only be one year old and there is obviously more growing that needs to be done, yet so much has changed in that first year and a lot of progress has been made.

We are born on the 4th of July and I would like to point that out, as our roots are American as American can get. I speak not for my self when I say that here at Soapblox, we stand tall for our nation and celebrate the pride of the world’s first modern democracy. While it may have been first, and it may be powerful, it is not immune from sliding backward into past mistakes and above losing it’s true democratic essence. Democracy needs participation! Which is why Soapblox.com was created, under the belief that anything that can be done, must be done to keep our population from sliding into a veil of ignorance.

This site is devoted to the Progressive movement, one which will ultimately save this nation from the clutches of those wishing …

Last night, ABC news anchor Peter Jennings lost his battle with cancer. When the news broke, I was almost moved to tears. This wasn’t just the passing of perhaps one of the finest news anchors of his news generation (and perhaps one of the few that held high standards) this was the passing of the generation itself and a sign of decline for the major media.

I had heard Jennings interviewed a few years back by NPR interviewer Teri Gross (on Fresh Air), and he really impressed me. When asked who his hero was, the Canadian born Jennings responded by calling the whole concept of having a hero an American idea that is often overused, but if pressed for an answer he would choose his father. A fine answer I thought.

He was one of the few anchors to pull stunts like a prime-time news special on those annoying pharmaceutical ads and whether or not they were productive to the society at large. This was especially bold considering the nightly news is saturated with such ads. In an interview he referred to such a move as possibly “biting the hand that feeds you.” I never saw Brokaw or Rather …

So Bush apparently decided he had more “political capital” (as he calls it) than even Ronald Reagan. The current President went out on a spending spree and tried to buy himself a laundry list of expensive items. He quickly got himself into a serious debt and dragged his party along. He started out by increasing spending for the war profiteers (not our soldiers), then cutting social programs (including Medicaid which kept Terry Schiavo alive), continued by attempting to cram whacko conservative activist judges through the Senate, and topped it all off with a radical risky change to the Social Security System. Bush must have thought that his 1% mandate was enough political capital to force a weak opposition to lay down again and get ripped off. Unfortunately the Democrats didn’t lay down like he thought they would. Just like the Iraqi insurgency, he figured that brute force would force capitulation, and not galvanize the opposition. Bring ‘em on! He declared. And just like any group that has endured heavy-handed tactics, the Democrats began to bring it.

Yeeeah. I don’t even know what to say, except: fuck Middle America. And Wal-Mart soccer moms. And that guy who thinks Bush should be president because he “seems personable".

It’s like Revelations is playing itself out before us. How does it go again?

Then I stood on the sand of the sea. I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads. On his horns were ten crowns, and on his heads, blasphemous names. The beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like those of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. One of his heads looked like it had been wounded fatally. His fatal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled at the beast. They worshiped the dragon, because he gave his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” A mouth speaking great things and blasphemy was given to him. Authority to make war for forty-two months was given to him.
- Revelations 13:1-5

Terry McAwful sent me this email asking me to tell them how to be a better Democratic party.

As follows are my comments:

Please stop leaning into the center, don’t jump back to the left, drop the moderate nonsense. We need to make a new category, Progressivism. This whole idea of fighting over a couple upper-middle class votes when half the country doesn’t vote is obviously a failure. You need to speak to the people. This is the party of FDR, Woodrow Wilson and JFK not the party of Bill Clinton.

You are alienating the base of the party because you sound like Republicans. It’s time to sweep out the old party leadership, and get some fresh blood in there. The existing leadership looks like a bunch of wimps. Now the party has lost everything, what do we have to lose? Let’s be fighters, for God sakes, grow some balls! Take advantage of the republicans being the new party of religion, and concede those 20 million voters for the vast pool that’s out there now. Or point out to the religious that the Republicans do more to destroy family values by forcing 2 income households to be the standard, leading to unsupervised teens, …