CNN’s Cafferty on Pelosi: ‘What a Horrible Woman’ on her trip and the group she took with her to Copenhagen...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fNfzNqwaXk

And i guess our new commander in chief forgot this massage and goal of Osama Bin Laden..

FROM: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/01/binladen.tape/

Bin Laden: Goal is to bankrupt U.S.
Al-Jazeera releases full transcript of al Qaeda leader's tape...

Our new president is playing right into Osama's goal to bankrupt the USA by our fighting on their soil... Just as Russia was bankrupted by fighting in Afghanistan...

History does repeat itself.....

wadada

I guess the Industrial Military Complex that Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke about has truly taken over and is being funded by our debt/taxes..

And who said Obama was an anti war president?....

Pentagon Spending For War Exceeds That Of All State Governments

By Sherwood Ross- BLN Contributing Writer

The U.S. spends more for war annually than all state governments combined spend for the health, education, welfare, and safety of 308 million Americans.

Joseph Henchman, director of state projects for the Tax Foundation of Washington, D.C., says the states collected a total of $781 billion in taxes in 2008.

For a rough comparison, according to Wikipedia data, the total budget for what the Pentagon calls "defense" in fiscal year 2010 will be at least $880 billion and could possibly top $1 trillion. That’s more than all the state governments collect.

Henchman says all American local governments combined (cities, counties, etc.) collect about $500 billion in taxes. Add that to total state tax take and you get over $1.3 trillion. This means Uncle Sam’s Pentagon is sopping up nearly as much money as all state, county, city, and other governmental units spend to run the country.

If the Pentagon figure of $1 trillion is somewhat less than all other taxing authorities, keep in mind the FBI, the various intelligence agencies, the VA, the National Institutes of Health (biological warfare) are also spending on war-related activities.

A question that describes the above and answers itself is: In what area can the Federal government operate where states and cities cannot tread? The answer is: foreign affairs-..--raising armies, fighting wars, conducting diplomacy, etc. And so Uncle Sam keeps enlarging this area. His emphasis is not on diplomacy, either.

For every buck spent by the State Department, which gets some $50 billion a year, the Pentagon spends $20. As for the Peace Corps, its budget is a paltry $375 million-..--hardly enough to keep the Pentagon elephant in peanuts.

Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz and finance authority Linda Bilmes write in their “The Three Trillion Dollar War”(W.W. Norton), “defense spending has been growing as a percentage of discretionary funding (money that is not required to be spent on entitlements like Social Security), from 48 percent in 2000 to 51 percent today. That means that our defense needs are gobbling up a larger share of taxpayers’ money than ever before.”

And they add, “The Pentagon’s budget has increased by more than $600 billion, cumulatively, since we invaded Iraq.” With its 1,000 bases in the U.S. and another 800 bases globally, the U.S. truly has become a “Warfare State.” Today, military-..related products account for about one-fourth of total U.S. GDP. This includes 10,000 nuclear weapons. Indeed, the U.S. has lavished $5.5 trillion just on nukes over the past 70 years.

No other nation has anything remotely like this menacing global presence. The Pentagon strengthens its grip by running joint “training” exercises with the military of 110 other nations, including outright dictatorships that suppress internal unrest.

The U.S. spends more on weaponry than the next dozen nations combined and is by far the No. 1 world arms peddler. “The government employs some 6,500 people just to coordinate and administer its arms sales program in conjunction with senior officials at American embassies around the world, who spend most of their ‘diplomatic’ careers working as arms salesmen,” writes Chalmers Johnson in “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire(Henry Holt).”

Chalmers goes on to say the U.S. military establishment today is “close to being beyond civilian control” and that despite its ability to “deliver death and destruction to any target on earth and expect little in the way of retaliation” it demands more and newer equipment “while the Pentagon now more or less sets its own agenda” and “monopolizes the formulation and conduct of American foreign policy.”

How long will it be before this tyrannical, anti-..democratic, colossus that is sucking up as much money for war as all states, counties and cities spend on peace---and which straddles the globe, boosts dictators, and beats the war drums---turns on its own people?

#

(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations executive who formerly worked for major dailies and wire services. Contact him at sherwoodross10@..gmail.com)

Looks like we've attacked another country..

US Attacking Yemen After All
Cruise Missiles Hit Multiple Sites in Concert With Yemeni Govt
by Jason Ditz, December 18, 2009

Just one day after a very public denial that American forces were in the process of attacking sites in Northern Yemen, President Barack Obama ordered multiple cruise missile attacks on sites across the tiny, coastal nation.

The air strikes were coordinated with the government of President Ali Abdallah Saleh and the attacks left 120 killed, many of them civilians according to witnesses. President Obama called Saleh after the attack to “congratulate” him on the killings.

The Yemeni government denied any US role in the attacks, despite American officials’ admissions. This is largely in keeping with the Saleh government’s policy, as they angrily denied reports of Saudi attacks in the north as a myth even as the Saudi government was giving a press conference detailing the attack.

One Yemeni official however claimed that a local al-Qaeda “deputy” named Mohammed Saleh Mohammed Ali Al-Kazemi was slain, and that “scores” of al-Qaeda members were killed in the assorted attacks.

The conflict with al-Qaeda is just one of many conflicts currently going on in Yemen, including an enduring separatist movement in the south and an increasingly violent insurrection in the Shi’ite north. Technically Wednesday’s State Department denials appear to have been accurate, as the missile strikes were in a completely unrelated conflict from the one they were accused of taking part in.

USA TODAY: Gov't Salaries Skyrocketing During Recession

What recession?

If you work for the federal government, you might be excused for asking that question, according to USA TODAY.

Federal workers are enjoying a boom time -- in pay and hiring -- during a recession that has destroyed 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.

The number of federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent during the first 18 months of the recession.

And that's not even counting overtime pay and bonuses.

Further:

* The number of Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more has jumped dramatically -- from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009.

* The number of Transportation Department employees earning $170,000 or above jumped in 18 months from just *one* to... 1,690.

The trend to six-figure salaries is occurring throughout the federal government, according to USA TODAY -- in agencies big and small, high-tech and low-tech.

The cost of this trip could have been spent on any number of items to improve the lives of the residents of Los Angeles. Is he kidding??? How does this clown sleep at night? What does he think he accomplished in Copehagen? I wholeheartedly agree with Lindazilla that this whole conference could have been video conferenced, at less cost for travel and less cost to the environment.

The senate democrats passed something that had to do with healthcare yesterday and they really don't know what it is yet because they haven't finished writing it! Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein should have been against the bill too because the White House was bribing those who were against it in order to get their votes. At least California could've gotten hundreds of millions of dollars like the senator from Louisiana and the other senator who gave in today. I don't understand how they can spend so much money that they don't have. Oh wait! California is doing it too!

All these politicians including LA's "World Class" Mayor looked like fools, their collective "carbon footprint" would take decades to recover. This is typical of the hypocrisy where these elitist preach one thing to their working class constituents, but practice and live the opposite.

Lindazilla is right on the mark - this could have been done by video conferencing especially with today's technology. It could have saved them valuable travel time on top of all the jet and limo pollution.

Well, Copenhagen and Berlin are known as the sex capitals of Europe, maybe that's the real reason he went. Where's his next trip to . . . Thialand?

Eric:

The voters of Los Angeles should hold this arrogant mayor accountable for his travels. What did he accomplish in Copenhagen that required his travel?

Antonio...do us taxpayers a favor...STAY in Copenhagen!

you know .. if they REALLY wanted to be 'green' .. the entire conference would have had the option of video conferencing, etc.