Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

How someone becomes an expert by saying things people with power want said.

This is incredibly sad.

http://exiledonline.com/failing-up-with-joshua-foust-meet-the-evil-geniu...

Don has

Stephen Zunes lays it out well: Why Egypt Will Not Be Another Iran

There is no "international community". There are governments, there are people who give a damn, and there are people in Haiti fighting to survive. We need to get resources directly to people in Haiti, not let our government try to maintain its control over Haiti's destiny that has been so disastrous for Haiti. Bill Clinton and George W.

So i'm about a year behind on this, but i hadn't heard the details before... Van Jones resigned so that his presence would not distract from getting health care and clean energy legislation passed (where the Republicans are trying to block everything anyway). His controversy? Having signed a petition asking for an investigation into the Sept 11 2001 attacks to include looking at what some U.S. officials may have known in advance. Asking for an investigation. And apparently at some other point he said something mean about Republicans.

Helen Thomas is more than politically savvy enough to know that resigning now and letting Israel's right-wing lobby take credit for forcing the end to her career does far more damage to their cause of Uncriticizable Israel than anything else she could do.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me."
As spoken by someone like G.W. Bush or Supreme Leader Khamenei: "I name thee Terrorist-who-should-be-beaten-with-sticks-and-stones."
"OK, there's a gray area."

To anyone who thinks that killing more and more people, and destroying more and more of people's homes and hospitals and businesses and infrastructure, is any kind of solution – short of total genocide – to rockets and occasional suicide bombing attacks, I have one question:

Have you ever been in a fight?

Even if the guy attacking you weighs over 200 pounds and you weigh 100 pounds, you are going to try to fight back.

Note that, on the other hand, you are much less likely to start or re-start any fight.

A friend asked, "are you ready for obama 09"?

And I launched right into what I expect to see...

"the media is going to go into right-wing attack machine mode soon enough... i mean have people forgotten the Clinton years? You couldn't be more corporate and centrist and good for the rich
but he wasn't part of their oligarchy, and so was piled on constantly
Obama is a lot smarter and tougher, but also likely to be more progressive, and so alienate even larger and more entitled and angry sectors of those who believe they rule us
I hope he's ready for the living hell that's coming."

More than two percent of otherwise eligible-to-vote citizens of the United States of America are denied the right to vote for felony convictions.

In total numbers and in the political tendencies of the disenfranchised, that's about the same as denying Jews the vote in the U.S.

in 1998 "an estimated 3.9 million U.S. citizens are disenfranchised, including over one million who have fully completed their sentences."

http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/usvot98o.htm