Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
March 22, 2019
“You’re going to have to shut up or I’ll call the police…Get out of here you low-life scum.” — John McCain’s statement to peace activists calling for the arrest of epic war criminal Henry Kissinger, January 29. 2015
Yes, Trump is Disgusting
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Sputnik
August 27, 2018
The death of Senator John McCain has provoked the predictable outpouring of mawkish and mendacious “tributes” from across the American political and media establishment.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the videos below
Updated: Aug. 15, 2018
by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Sputnik, Aug. 12, 2018
August 14, 2018
American politicians provoke a slew of emotions, from tears of rage to tears of laughter. But perhaps the uppermost emotion is one of pity.
With a few honorable exceptions, it is such a pity that the American people are misled by such buffoons. It is such a pity that the American and Russian people — who have so much in common as human beings — are nevertheless being driven towards a state of war by these buffoonish politicians.
by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from PressTV
September 6, 2013
Image by Xizi (Cecilia) Hua @ Neon Tommy via Flickr
Poker seems to be an apt metaphor as international tensions mount over Washington’s plan to launch military strikes against Russia’s ally Syria.
There’s other players at the table too. The players are holding cards close to their chest, eyes are flitting to see who’s bluffing, and the stakes seem to be getting higher and higher. The latter is certainly not an empty bluff, given the powder-keg state of the Middle East and the danger for not just an all-out regional war, but a global conflagration involving nuclear weapons.
by Rick Rozoff
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
July 23, 2013
John Robles
Voice of Russia
July 23, 2013
The dressing down and attempted humiliation of General Martin Dempsey, the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by superannuated life-time bureaucrat John McCain, was another in a long series of attempts to push the U.S. military into another act of aggressive war by those controlling Washington. With the amassed U.S. and NATO military forces and hardware around Syria and the advancements made by the Syria Army, the likelihood that the U.S. will invade and commit another act of aggressive war against yet another country they have helped to destabilize and tear apart seems very likely. Regular Voice of Russia contributor Rick Rozoff spoke to the VOR about these matters and more.
by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
crossposted from Al Jazeera
October 31, 2010
“The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts.”
—Eugene J. McCarthy, 1978
If John McCain were president, we can never be exactly sure what would be happening, but I think we can make some educated speculations.
First of all, the “banksters” would be receiving their carte blanche bailouts and Ben Bernanke would have been re-appointed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
July 24, 2010
I just saw “Inception” — a great, highly imaginative movie about the alternate reality of dreams. And so I got to thinking. Suppose the barons of the Fed and Wall Street had been able to do just a bit more of their behind-the-scenes legerdemain (which, we continue to find out, goes on all the time) and postpone the September 15, 2008 Lehman Brothers meltdown until, let’s say, November 7, 2008. That would have been a couple of days after the 2008 election and, funnily enough, on the Gregorian calendar the 91st anniversary of the Russian Revolution. As it happened, McCain had overtaken Obama in the polls by mid-September 2008, when the bankruptcy did occur, with the subsequent collapse of the real estate bubble, the subsequent collapse of the economy, the Paulson/Bush first bank bailout, and so forth and so on.
But if the collapse had not occurred then, if it had somehow been postponed until after the election, if McCain had maintained the momentum that he had had in mid-September, Obama’s best rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, the aging cancer survivor might actually have become President. (And guess who would have been Vice-President.) And so, let’s look at a list of what might have happened in that alternate reality of a McCain Presidency, comparing it to what has really happened under the Obama Presidency. Has to be a big difference, no? After all, the (remaining) Obama supporters and the Democratic Leadership Council (http://www.dlc.org/) tell us so.
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By Robert S. Becker
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
rbecker@cal.net
April 19, 2010
Holden Caulfield, the self-described if suspect expert on phoniness in The Catcher in the Rye, would have a field day. Phoniness abounds, shredding a sense of fair play, from predatory lending, Ponzi schemes, gouging credit card companies, greedy medical insurers, insider trading, egregious campaign betrayals, sports steroid usage, mock journalism, doctored government agency reports or disgrace for the west’s most durable institution, the Catholic Church, inadvertently teaching by negative example – how not to deal with its own pedophilia.
Every week breaks new thresholds for backsliding, subterfuge, and hypocrisy. Phoniness undermines hope, especially remaining correlated with wealth and fame. Karl Rove, the master of guile, is revered, with his own soapbox; W., who mouthed his every deception, is a well-heeled stage monkey; and my favorite, one Alberto Gonzales, the amnesiac attorney general who infected our Justice Dept. with criminal schemes, well, okay, he’s a shyster lawyer having trouble finding work.
By Robert S. Becker
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
rbecker@cal.net
February 9, 2010
I never trusted John McCain because he never struck me as stable or principled – plus his grasp of ideas and facts fluctuated like glare off water. My judgment focused not on his positions per se, nor successful charade to seem less Republican than his rightwing voting record proves. For years, he parlayed his mavericky shtick, though on a pinhead of issues, until caving hard to extremist leverage, fully visible this season.
Never has he wavered from shoot-first, jingoistic belligerence, using one bad neo-con war to launch another, and another. This never-say-die brawler would refight (and lose) Vietnam again. Still, it made sense that he took the GOP nomination, for those goofy rivals made McCain look nearly-normal: the craven panderer Romney or heart-felt fundamentalist Huckabee, the ex-minister more deep-fried, born-again than W. ever was.
by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
Oct. 29, 2009
Last week, we discussed why President Obama was heaven-sent for the GOP, pre-election. In my view (disagreed with by several commentators who made their cases very well I thought), he was the only prospective Democratic candidate who could have beaten John McCain. This was especially true if the Bush Administration had somehow been able to postpone the bursting forth of the economic crisis for less than two months. As is well known to BuzzFlash readers, it had of course been building for several years under Georgite economic policies. It is likely in retrospect that the “free-market” decision to let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt was, first, in their minds, the way to put things off. For if they had known what was going to happen both to the economy and their election chances, they would have done everything in their power to prevent that occurrence.
The Daily Show
Oct. 26, 2009
John McCain asks the government to stay away from the Internet with the Internet Freedom Act of 2009.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-october-26-2009/from-here-to-neutrality
see
MOC: The Easy Way To Win on Net Neutrality – Internet F*cking Freedom!!
by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
Oct. 21, 2009
It was likely the GOP would lose the 2008 election, although that was hardly a sure thing. If the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent chain reaction in finance capitalism had occurred on November 18 instead of September 18, McCain might have won. If Hillary Clinton had somehow been able to pull out the Democratic nomination, whether or not the financial collapse and the revelation of the new Great Recession that had actually started some months earlier came before or after November 5, 2008, McCain might well have won anyway. (Given the way that Clinton ran her primary campaign, relying more and more on racism as it progressed, it is highly likely that huge numbers of African-Americans would have stayed home on election day.) But the financial collapse did occur before Election Day and Barack Obama was the nominee and he did win.
Updated: Oct 2, 2009 added a talk by Max Blumenthal
talkingsticktv
September 25, 2009
Interview with Max Blumenthal author of “Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party”.
Find out more via Max’s website at:
http://www.maxblumenthal.com
by Cindy Sheehan
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
Sept. 5, 2009
“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part; and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers and all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop; and you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.”
Mario Savio, Sproul Hall, Berkeley, 1964
If John McCain were president, we can never be exactly sure what would be happening right now, but I think we can have a little inkling.
First of all, the banksters would be receiving their TARP money and Bernanke would have been re-appointed Fed Chairman.
Robert Gates would probably still be the Secretary of Defense and Sarah Palin would be offering late night comedians endless fodder for their monologues.
By Eva Golinger
Postcards from the Revolution
15 July 2009
• The Department of State had prior knowledge of the coup.
• The Department of State and the US Congress funded and advised the actors and organizations in Honduras that participated in the coup.
• The Pentagon trained, schooled, commanded, funded and armed the Honduran armed forces that perpetrated the coup and that continue to repress the people of Honduras by force.
• The US military presence in Honduras, that occupies the Soto Cano Palmerola military base, authorized the coup d’etat through its tacit complicity and refusal to withdraw its support of the Honduran military involved in the coup.
[…]
The Washington Lobby
Republican Senator John McCain, ex US presidential, helped coordinate the visit of a coup regime delegation to Washington last week. McCain is well known for his opposition to governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and other countries in the region considered “anti-imperialist”. McCain also maintains very close ties to the Cuban exile community in Miami. McCain is also Chairman of the Board of the International Republican Institute (IRI) that has funded the coup participants in Honduras. McCain offered the services of a lobby firm in Washington, closely tied to him, the Cormac Group, that organized a press conference for the coup regime delegation at the National Press Club on June 7th. McCain also helped set up several meetings in Congress with the traditional Cuban-American representatives and those general “Chávez-haters”, such as Connie Mack, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mel Martinez.
[…]
via Postcards from the Revolution: Washington & the Coup in Honduras: Here is the Evidence
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U.S. continues to train Honduran soldiers
Dandelion Salad 