By Dave Lindorff

I haven’t lived in rural Pennsylvania or in rural Indiana, but I have lived in rural upstate New York, in towns where there are so few Democrats that on some local election ballots, not a single position, from town council to justice of the peace, has a contest. As in China, your option is to vote for the Republican candidate, or to leave that line blank.

And many of the people in these towns, uniformly white, when they talk politics, spend a lot of their time complaining about black people, immigrants (neither of whom can even be found in the vicinity) and the threat to their guns.

Barack Obama is exactly right.

Impeach Bush and Cheney for Torture - Sign the Petition!

On Friday, George Bush told ABC he personally approved of the approval of torture by Dick Cheney and his top cabinet officials.

"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC New s White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And, yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."...

Bush said the ABC report about the Principals' involvement was not so "startling."

Well perhaps Bush didn't find it startling, but torture happens to be boh a U.S. felony and an international war crime subject to the death penalty.

By Robert Greenwald

The cost of the Iraq War is a grave issue. At Brave New Films, we are committed to spreading awareness about the devastating financial toll the war is taking on each and every one of us let alone our economy.

$3 trillion. That is what Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates the war will cost our country. Make no mistake, this $3 trillion bill is crippling our economy and causing our Iraq recession. To put this colossal amount of cash into perspective, we've designed a game to help people really understand what $3 trillion dollars can buy. Get ready to go on a 3 Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree!

http://3trillion.org

By David Swanson

On Friday outside the gates of Stratcom, the strategic command center outside of Omaha, Nebraska, that controls U.S. nuclear weapons and military space technology and from which the next war of aggression will be run, a group of activists gathered from all over the world. A number of people gave speeches in the freezing bone-chilling wind and snow. This was mine:

Have you ever watched a sports team on TV win a game and then shouted "We won!" as if you had anything to do with it? Twenty percent of Americans sitting home in comfort still look at the ever worsening disaster in Iraq and exclaim "We're winning!" as if they are the ones losing limbs and having their brains scrambled by IEDs.

Jonathan Schwarz discovered a fascinating and as-yet unreported fact: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki has endorsed the Obama-Clinton plan for Iraq and rejected the McCain plan.

I believe the American forces can draw down. I don't believe the decision for a drawdown should be paused as long as Iraqi security forces -- based on the first agreement the more Iraqi forces move forward, the more U.S. forces move back until all security responsibilities are handed over and coalition forces remain in a support role. And in a support role, you don't need such a big number.

On January 1, will the U.S. occupation of Iraq become illegal? And if so, would it matter? Finally, is there anything Bush can do to stop it?

The answers, I believe, are Yes, Yes, and No. Which could be very serious - and make the whole issue of Congressional funding and Presidential withdrawal plans entirely moot.

Of course I'm not a lawyer, so I encourage lawyers to review my analysis and find the flaws.

1. The legality of the U.S. occupation

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was never legal under international law. Bush used immense diplomatic pressure (including wiretapping U.N. embassies) to win passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing a U.S.-led invasion, but Bush could not get a majority so he withdrew the resolution rather than face defeat.

Rightwingers really need to learn some basic history.

Clearly McCain was talking about a peace time standing presence ... Someone should ask the Democrats if they think we're still at war with the confederacy, the Germans, and the Japanese given all the standing American armies in the South, Germany, and Japan.

U.S. forces ended up occupying the South because it started a war with us at Fort Sumter. The occupation (a.k.a. "Reconstruction") ended after 11 years with Rutherford Hayes' stolen election of 1876.

Atrios nails it:

if Obama is the nominee by November a substantial portion of wingnuttia will assert that Obama is, actually, a terrorist. Not just a terrorist sympathizer, a supporter of terrorists, or looks like a terrorist, but is an actual capital 'T' terrorist.

So here's a challenge for progressive bloggers - what if we catalogued all of the positive things McCain and other Republicans have said about Obama? (Especially on video of course.)

A complete collection of such praise would be a great answer to capital "T" attacks when they come - as well as their kissin' cousins, like Obama being "un-American" (which is already widely used by Republicans).

T O W N H A L L M E E T I N G

with guest speaker nationally recognized journalist and peace & justice activist, David Swanson

Funding the Iraq War, Impeachment, healthcare?

Let your voice be heard, leave with a plan and a group to work with.

Wednesday, April 23 7:00 p.m.
Ludwick Center
864 Santa Rosa, SLO (corner of Santa Rosa & Mill)
suggested donation $10 /$5 students & seniors

Sponsored by Information Press, Earth Day Alliance, CodePink SLO,Progressive Democrats of San Luis Obispo County and Democrats.com.

For information call (805) 544-5135

"Are Peace and Impeachment Possible?"
April 24, 7-9 p.m., Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Avenue, Oakland
Reserve tickets: Grand Lake 510-452-3556. $10 at door; $8 advance (Black Oak Books, Pendragon Books) Sliding scale:unemployed, students, retirees.
Wheelchair accessible

Special Guest: Prominent Peace & Impeachment Activist David Swanson, afterdowningstreet.org & democrats.com

Speakers: Daniel Ellsberg, famed whistle-blower who helped end the Vietnam War; Elizabeth De La Vega, former Assistant U.S. Attorney, author "United States v. George W. Bush"; Norman Solomon, filmmaker,"War Made Easy"; Medea Benjamin, co-founder CodePink; Debra Sweet, World Can't Wait; Cindy Sheehan, Peace heroine; Phil Burk, Impeachment Procedure Expert.

By Dave Lindorff

During my six-year sojourn in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, one of the things I came away with was a sense of how generally un-nationalistic and non-patriotic the Chinese people were.

Caught up in the struggle first to simply survive and then, in the mid-90s, to try and grab onto the moving train that was China’s new Great Leap into Capitalism, average mainland Chinese, whether out in the remote farmlands of western Anhui Province or in the rundown houses lining the hutongs of Shanghai or Beijing, had no time for patriotic displays or nationalistic concerns.

When Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing would beat the drum of nationalism over Taiwanese independence efforts in the 1990s, it evoked mostly yawns among average Chinese people, and in fact, to Beijing’s embarrassment, a popular computer game featured a war-game in which Taiwan defeated the People’s Liberation Army.

By David Swanson

In case anyone doubted it, ABC News is now reporting that Dick Cheney authorized torture.

An impeachment hearing charging Cheney with authorizing torture would force John McCain to deal publicly and endlessly with his history of first trying to re-criminalize torture and then accepting Bush and Cheney's public and dictatorial authorization of torture with a signing statement and later applauding a veto of yet another re-banning of torture.

Do the Democrats who place making Obama the next emperor ahead of all other concerns want to aim for a narrow squeaker subject to theft, or would a landslide be acceptable?