Women Give Dems Big Bucks, Get Little in Return

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3554/context/archive

"In the 2006 midterm elections, men gave 73 percent of individual hard money contributions to candidates, party committees and political action committees. In the same cycle, men gave 72 percent of contributions of $1,000 or more, a figure that has not changed in a decade, according to the Women's Campaign Forum Foundation."

Elections in America: Millionaires Accusing Eachother of Elitism

http://alternet.org/election08/82268/?page=1

"What were Bush's qualifications for being the Voice of the Common Man, you ask? For one thing, he cleared brush. As the Washington Post reported in 2005, "President Bush's idea of paradise is to hop in his white Ford pickup truck in jeans and work boots, drive to a stand of cedars, and whack the trees to the ground." Cue up the Toby Keith CD, baby, we got a real workin' man on our hands!"

Hilarious!

The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

A Submarine to Fight Al-Qaeda's Navy

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080401_a_submarine_to_fight_al_qaidas_navy/

"This is not about the waste of taxpayer dollars—already pushing a trillion—in funding the Iraq war, which, while reprehensible enough, pales in comparison to the big-ticket military systems purchased in the wake of 9/11. In the horror of that moment, the floodgates were lifted and the peace dividend promised with the end of the Cold War was washed away by a doubling of spending on ultra-complex military equipment originally designed to defeat a Soviet enemy that no longer exists, equipment that has no plausible connection with fighting stateless terrorists. Example: the $81-billion submarine pushed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, presumably to fight al-Qaida’s navy.

That’s the huge scandal the media and politicians from both parties have studiously avoided. But as the GAO’s authoritative audit details, the costs are astronomical. The explosion of spending on expensive weaponry after 9/11 had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of that day. The high-tech planes and ships commissioned for trillions of dollars to defeat an enemy with no navy, air force or army, and using $3 knives as its weapons arsenal, were gifts to the military-industrial complex that will go on giving for decades to come.

The Iraq war may end someday, but rest assured that major weapons systems, once commissioned, have a life-support system unmatched in any other sector of public spending. Rarely does the plug get pulled on even the most irrelevant and expensive war toy. Not while both Democratic and Republican politicians feed at the same trough, and when so much is at stake in the way of jobs and profit."

-peace-

Comcast Blocking: First the Internet - Now the Public

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2008/02/25/comcast-blocking-first-the-internet-now-the-public/

So it turns out, Comcast - one of the largest telecommunications corporations in the country - uses their financial might not only to put politicians in their back pocket but to pay people to fill up seats in public hearings in order to deny access to those who oppose the internet legislation they want passes. This is just ridiculous! The pictures of the Comcast "sleepers" are pretty funny though.

-peace-

Uncle Jay Explains the News

Hilarious!

Another Year, Another $300 Billion

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/16/7719/

So far the federal government has spent $600 billion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (government accounts make it hard to separate the two). However this figure is just the “burn rate” spent on combat operations, such as transportation, equipment, supplementary combat stipends, and paying the 100,000 contractors employed to support the war effort.

That $600 billion figure ignores four major costs. First, there are additional war-related costs buried in places such as the non-Iraq defense budget. That budget has grown by $500 billion cumulatively since the beginning of the war. An estimated one-quarter of that growth is indirectly related to Iraq, including the increased costs of dealing with manpower shortages - recruiting and retaining soldiers and Marines.