I bought a GE cordless phone a few months ago and it is worthless: the range is only a few feet, sound quality is poor, calls are dropped, etc. This is the result, IMHO, of GE's reliance on corrupt government contracts (war and power plants) as its main source of income, requiring currying the junta's favor with servile propaganda, but not requiring quality customer service to any other customer. Consider also GM, Ford, Chrysler, and any and all corporate-industrial parasites, and the "quality" of their products.

These corrupt entities serve evil. The people who work for them serve evil. They bind our planet, our Mother, in destruction and death, salting the earth with radioactive bullets, using and abusing and torturing Her like the sociopaths they are.

I fear the Doom of them will also be the Doom of humanity. But life will go on, without us. She is fertile beyond our imagining.

1) Government nationalizations of banks and insurance companies to "stabilize the financial system";

2) Permanently imposing the Army against domestic civilians.

What's next? Revoking habeas corpus? Rounding up "undesirable" foreigners?

Oh, wait, these are items 3 and 4 in the creeping fascist state indicators!

AND OUR INTENTIONS ARE ABOVE REPROACH. OR Examination. Move on.

Alternatively,

"Our Lawyers said that whatever we were doing was legal. Only a few bad apples that didn't follow the SOP's and authorized 'enhanced techniques' need to be sanctioned." I think this is the defense the junta is relying on, and will offer up a few sacrificial sadistic dull-normals and morons. Backstopped of course by blanket pardons for everyone else.

Meanwhile the junta continues to arrest over 800,000 harmless potheads per year.

Can anyone, even the magic negro, unwind the Amerikan prison machine?

Can anyone, even the TV-brainwashed jingoists, believe that the Justice Department has other than an Orwellian association with "justice"?

Respect for the LAW is what sustains a democracy. When those charged with maintaining the LAW respect only power, all lose respect for the LAW. When the LAW is a ass, the free man must act or lose all dignity.

Observe that just 20 posts are on Drezner's blog on this topic and 375 on Glenn's; the level of debate is rarely descends to ad hominem on Glenn's and seems to be the first response from Drezner; and finally consider that Drezner is on the War Machine payroll ("official blogger" for "Foreign Policy").

Why expect reason or honesty from a camp follower? They just fellate whoever pays the bills.

He will rescue the saved and lay waste to the sinful. We should be grateful to Israel for providing an object lesson (with the sinful evil Terrorist Palestinians as object) of what is to come for the preterite.

Long Live our Jesus State Religion and death to all who reject Jesus! It's their own fault.

We're Ok. We're saved. Bombs away!

I'd be a self-unaware hypocrite to deny that my privileged position is partly the result of my ancestors' taking of someone else's land.

But I object to funding someone else's takings. Especially when it makes me enemies and gains me neither friends nor booty.

(Booty as a motive seems to elude the war machine of the baby-faced evil empire. Why are we taking the national treasure and setting it on fire in Babylon, again?)

Protection, acceptance, and advancement. And Profit.

Where's the profit in rocking the boat?

If you want journalism, why even consider the Toadies?

Thanks for calling them on their shit, Glenn.

(Incidentally, yesterday's post attracted some pretty scary commenters. Today is shaping up similarly.)

What happened to the people that less than 250 years ago stood up and fought an empire, and WON!? Devo? Evil genetic tinkering?

I mean, the enemy forces now comprise the same Tory authoritarian rent-seekers and befuddled dupes like groenhagen as in 1776.

A fools' paradise produces only fools. Reality TV is apparently an acceptable substitute for actual reality. And whining posts to Salon are apparently a substitute for actual action. (No projection here....)

And groenhagen - your choice of insult reveals what you fear most. Self-hating fag.

The first step in creating the authoritarian police state was Prohibition. After a brief respite with repeal, less than five years later, a new police state tool: prohibition of cannabis. This has not been a free country since.

Just as the private sexual activities of consenting adults are not the government's business, neither should the private medications of citizens be the government's business. Only actual crimes that harm another.

End Prohibition! Renew respect for the law!

An enlightened New Year to all who visit and post in the Greenwald zone. I have learned much and been much amused by your thoughts, illuminated by kind and wise spirits. And may He and She that begat us bless us despite our selfish ignorance.

A grumpy old fart named Groenhagen

Hates the Librul gay vegan pagans

He raves and he rants

Projects poo from his pants

And worships the Saintly Ron Reagan.

Be thou afraid of the wrath of the "Terrorists Who Would Harm US" (tm). Please please please Mr. Cheney, install my microchip and search my locker because I need protection from the wraiths and evildoers who I know from TV are out there.

This country actually had the guts to revolt? It must be a fiction.....

Irony hard to spot in a world where Fox News sets the agenda for so many.

One quibble - you let Hewitt's assertion that "Hamas brutally seized power" stand unchallenged; in fact, Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza.

Understandable, considering the barrage of half-truths and lies which comprise the corporatist/zionist/tv preacher-duped line you were facing. Hard to counter everything.