Since no Congressperson will vote to cancel a weapons program, the solution to cancelling weapons program is to form a commission, similar to the base closure commission which actually worked very well.
They can first get rid of Trident submarines and ICBMs and focus on effective box-cutter detector.

"'Peace Prize' President Submits Largest War Budget Ever"

- So, any of you still waiting on the sweet and lovable messianic Obama to END the WARS and bring Peace and Unity to the world?

Or have you all seen the reality, the glint of G.W. Bush's soul in the eyes of Obama. Or even really, since W was as much a puppet as O is, do you see the glint of the upper echelon elites, the Banksters, Fed Res, Government Subsidized corporate CEO's, the souls of the truly evil reflecting deep in the eyes of Obomber.

This man cares not for the little guy. Since before he was elected he was all over the Embezzlement scam aka the TARP Bailouts. Within his first two weeks of office, the same two weeks he was being nominated for the PEACE Prize, he was ordering DRONE Attacks on Pakistan, killing innocent civilians, bombing wedding parties, killing children.

Not to mention he is all about growing the Civil Liberties destroying Bills like FISA and the Patriot Act. Obama is a madman, working for the likes of even madder men.

These people use words like National Security, America's Interest, In the name of Safety, In the name of the good for ALL people, for Peace and Democracy - But everything they do is for them. They restrict us at every corner, taking away our Rights, watching us, recording us, and they say its for us, and so many people buy into the madness and Lies - They give the Billionaires more Billions and they say it is for the Benefit of the Main St. - But in reality it is only the Wall St. CEOs getting the Bonuses, and the Too Big to Fail Insurance companies and Banks are the only ones getting Bailed out - While we continue to Lose our jobs, our homes our life savings. The too small to save Local Businesses they go out of Business, get shut down repossessed etc.

People the Government is NOT here to help us, Not the Democrats Not the Republicans.

Then they tell us the economy is fine. It's a JOBLESS Recovery. What the heck is a Jobless Recovery? There is NO SUCH THING.

We gotta get smart people. We need to Wake Up. We need to Stop fighting each other -
We Need to Get All The Bums out of Office, keep the few good ones like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich and take back out government. De-Centralize the power and start creating more localized economies, businesses etc.

Obomber is NOT Our friend. Obomber is going to be the President of WWIII if we do not do something to stop this madness.

peace. love. anarchy.

Here's an idea: How about if a large group of us gets together and petitions the Nobel Committee to rescind the Peace Prize award to Obama? If we could get 100,000 or more to sign a petition like that, even if it didn't work, it would at least show that there are many in this country who don't think Obama deserves the peace prize.

Glad to see he's declared 'war' on the deficit.

History will record that Obama responded to the Nobel Peace Prize with all of the humility and grace that may be expected from a narcissist:

1.) I didn't ask for this award;
2.) I don't deserve this award;
3.) I'm keeping this award.

· Yr Obd't Servant

I liked the juxtaposition with this story with: "KABUL - Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest countries, is sitting on mineral and petroleum reserves worth an estimated one trillion dollars, President Hamid Karzai said Sunday." I'm sure there's no connection to this with our being in Afghanistan.

I also like the argument that there's no money for civilian trials of our detainees, no money for health care, no money for the unemployed, no money to feed and house the poor but man, we sure do need those drones. Drones I tell you, right away, more killing.

We must wake up as a people. Our ruling elite is bringing down our entire economic, social and political system. Use all peaceful means to stop them.

I can see why American banks don't want to cancel Haiti's huge debt. If the US banking community were to stop collecting interest from the third world countries whose dictators it does business with, how in the world could they afford to pay the army that helps them control these countries in the first place?

Once the rubble is cleared, US banks and MBAs will be back to being "smart" in Haiti.

The people that sit on the Nobel Committee must be suffering from terminal thought-disorders. They deserve what they're getting. Anyone here at CD could have told them not to give the Peace Prize to this demagogue and servant of Empire.

Let them thoroughly discredit themselves and the institution of Nobel Prizes.

Jeevee

It all boils down to the transliterated Sanskrit word "Lobha (greed), which our guruji reminds us, destroys knowledge.

My contempt for this man increases by the day.

Nothing else need be said...

If the Democratic Party were to oppose wars of aggression, would not they be in power forever?

For our Empire would go bankrupt without wars to sustain that plunder of weak nations, and Republicans without the terror of wars would never be able to force the public into submission.

Once Obama put that stupid flag lapel on it was obvious where he was going. He then invited that idiot right wing preacher to speak at his inauguration and so he embraced the two most important institutions of repression in american society; the military and religious cults.

Practically speaking, there is no way that the U.S. can stop wars, pull our military out of foreign countries, or reduce the military budget. Think for a minute what that would mean:
1. The collapse of our military production industry (Haliburton, Dick Cheney, etc might go bankrupt)
2. Finding jobs for all of those people that we brought home from the wars and foreign assignments
3. Eliminating one of the most benign ways that we have of controlling our population and the unwanteds. Mostly poor people (blacks, hispanics, white trash) go to the front lines.
4. Eliminating one of the most effective ways that we have of controlling the worlds population, meaning more natural resourses for us. Whenever our military is in a country "collateral damamge" eliminates hundred of thousands of women and children (and their subsequent offsprings)
5. Ruin the health of countless politicians. The half trillion dollars that we spend on that effort annually will actually have to be spent on something worthwhile in the U.S. Think of the absoulte agony that the Washington politicians will experience in having to come up with reasons, other than "we don't have the money" for not supplying health care to the public, stabalizing Social Security, increasing funds to schools, providing grants and scholarships for higher education.
6. Eliminating one of the big reasons why people throughout the world hate the U.S. (so much that they are willing to commit suicide to harm us)

The bottom line, changing our country from a country of war to a country of peace would be uncivilized (not to mention that it would cost wealthy people billions of dollars)!

I voted for Barak, but giving him the Peace Prize proves that prize means absolutely. What a disgrace!

UPPER CLASS LOVE ---- LOWER CLASS HATE

20% country club class hand picked Obama.

40% intelligent middleclass campaign funded Obama.

50% laboring class did not even show up at the polls for their dictator Obama.

The war and related industries generate as much or more corporate wealth for politicians as most corporations. The corrupted government will not shut down the war machine. The one way to do it, though, would be to reinstitute the military draft and expand it to cover all loopholes.
Of course, the privatization of the wars would have to be discontinued, as well. With all America's youth serving in some capacity (not too much to ask of patriotic Americans), many who for some reason are not suitable for combat could perform the work done by most private contractors. The fighting would be left to the military...like in the wars we won.

I like that great idea of starting an online petition asking that the Nobel people take away their award of their 'peace prize' to Obomber. Common Dreams could start it going easily!

Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."

Meanwhile, yesterday, 1/31/2010, on NBC's Meet the Press:

GREGORY: "The question of spending and common sense steps that could
be taken, you heard [Obama top advisor & press spokesman] David
Axelrod say, 'Look, the Republicans voted against paying as you go.
They voted against a commission to control the debt.' They suggest a
spending freeze, the president’s budget will. And Speaker Pelosi has
said that should not exempt defense spending, it should include it.
What do you say? Should the spending freeze be a good start but be
expanded?"

REPUBLICAN SENATE MINORITY LEADER JOHN BOEHNER: "I think the
President’s proposal on freezing nonsecurity domestic spending is a
good first step, but it’s only $15 billion for each of the next three
years. I think we can do much better than that. I don’t think any
agency of the federal government should be exempt from rooting out
wasteful spending or unnecessary spending. And I, frankly, I would
agree with it at the Pentagon. There’s got to be wasteful spending
there, unnecessary spending there."

Now, when the second most vicious SOB in the GOP advocates Pentagon
spending cuts in this economy and the DLC Dimocrat president doesn't?
What's the matter with this picture? Boehner (pronunciation in German
is closer to "boner" than "baynor") may be using the typical
Republican trick of inoculating the GOP against criticism down the
line (if Obama proceeds without Pentagon cuts). The GOP can rely on
the corporate media these days not to blow up Boehner's quote into the
major issue it deserves to be. But if enough small "d" Democrats,
progressives and cable TV comedians pointed out Boehner's remarks it
might compel Obungle to wince into action.

Why Afghanistan is re-charred toast no matter what happens:
U.S. Geological Survey: Afghanistan's Geological Reserves Worth a
Trillion Dollars:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/01-6

"While Afghanistan is not renowned as a resource-rich country, it has
a wide range of deposits, including copper, iron ore, gold and
chromite, as well as natural gas, oil and precious and semi-precious
stones...Little has been exploited because the country has been mired
in conflict for 30 years..."

Foreign players are already cutting mining deals in there but I don't
see how any of the world's big resource extractors are going to secure
any of these facilities, let alone the old Unocal pipeline route they
still want to build.

The situation in Pakistan is rapidly getting out of hand and will blow
back into Afghanistan the more foreign interests try to move into that
region. Pakistan is the real nightmare coming to fruition. We need
to remove the Pakistani nukes and A.L. Kahn, get the hell out of
Pakistan and do a treaty to restrain India from taking advantage of
the situation AFTER we've removed the Pakistani nukes.

Our pressure on the Pakistani military to go after the Taliban plus
our growing presence there with drone missile strikes and incursions
are splitting the population in the spreading Taliban-infested areas
into what may become a civil war. Friends are turning on friends
because one family in the same village has family members maimed or
killed by the Taliban and another family has family members maimed or
killed by the Pakistani Army or U.S. missiles. The Taliban's
madrasses are proliferating in poor over-populated urban areas
around Pakistan and indoctrinating legions of child suicide bombers
for generations of conflict. There are already a million Pakistanis
displaced from the Tribal Agencies and the Swat Valley.

PBS Frontline World (ironically sponsored by Royal Dutch Shell oil
company) sent a female Afghani reporter fluent in all the dialects
into Pakistan and did a riveting and very grim report on the situation
in Pakistan. Every policy maker in the U.S. should watch this thing.
She went into areas no Westerner could get into. One of her
interviews was especially important: She interviewed a Taliban
fighter and asked him why the Taliban decided to stop focusing on
Afghanistan and begin fighting so much inside Pakistan. His reply
basically boiled down to 'We once thought the Pakistani Army were our
Muslim brothers, but then they started attacking us in our Pakistani
villages so we must do jihad."

The Pakistani ISI (CIA equivalent) used to train and equip Taliban and
there were several generals in the Pakistani military who were also
sympathetic with them. Many of these same figures held the old
Generalissimo/President Musharif as an enemy. I think they did this
to help impede Western ambitions in the region and also to inoculate
themselves against becoming future targets of the inter-wed Taliban
and Al Qaeda so they could focus on what they conceived of as their
primary enemy, India. Now the Taliban see the new Pakistani government as an
outright military puppet of the U.S. and this is why we should have
refrained from pushing the Pakistani government and military to
attack the Taliban in their home villages in the Pakistani Tribal
Agencies.

In other words, since the U.S. stupidly chose to treat terrorism as a war issue
instead of an international police problem, the war hawks and Pentagon
should control their military/foreign policy hubris
enough to sufficiently resolve one war with one country before we bite
off more than we can chew by igniting another major civil war next
door. That would, in turn, depend on following the Powell Doctrine of
overwhelming force and a coherent end game--which we jettisoned at the
front end of these wars. We needed a military draft regarding all
this mess years ago if we really had intentions of a decisive military
victory and successful rebuilding and democratization. By Gen.
Petraeus' own math we should have 600,000 troops in Afghanistan. We
would need somewhere between 2 to 3 times that many in Pakistan.

The Republicans, if they get into power again in 2012 may try for a
Draft and claim it's the only way to rebuild the U.S. economy out of a
second Depression. If these were just wars with coherent occupation
plans, then I'd agree with them to the degree that a Draft and full
economic mobilization around a Draft would be half of the economic
solution. But we still more urgently need a Green New Deal to
rebuild our peacetime manufacturing sectors or we will just be fiscally
accelerating the probably already inevitable decline and fall of our
economy. Big expensive war efforts like these cannot go on
forever, no matter how many social programs are cut and how many oil,
munitions and mercenary companies are enriched.

*** Comment deleted by site administrators for violating our Comment Policy. ***

see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy

Gore Vidal: "Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die."

Cosmetic (for media consumption) tweaks aside, all the economic and foreign policies being pursued by the Democratic & Republican two headed beast are now a full on direct assault on what's left of the middle- and lower middle-class. The only thing standing between them and an inevitable bleed-out of what is left of the bottom two thirds of the middle-class is the TARP-inflated stock market bubble. How long are the suckers in this TARP-inflated fantasy bubble going to buy the sustainability of these policies with respect to their own exposed necks? Many scream they should remain protected at all costs. I say the sooner these people have to try to find a real job the better. We won't get progressive change until enough of the middle-class gets its teeth kicked in by the very same effed up policies it voted for for decades. They have to have their noses rubbed in their own shit to get the concept. The rest of us on the downscale side of the economy are going to suffer whether they get their overdue ass kicking or not so they might as well suffer with us. Plenty of those fools have wiped their cozy asses for years using dividends from blood for oil and munitions investments. Screw 'em into the streets, I say.

Worst. President. Ever.

imagine if obama pulled all troops from iraq(because we had learned a few years ago that there were no WMDs and saddam hussein and iraq were not a threat to our security) and then explained to the american people that the cost savings would be used to either reduce federal spending( a big item on the republican wish list) or to help pay for a health care system overhaul. in a clear and simple story line he would regain the support of his base supporters and reduce the republican obstructionists into choosing between perpetuating the wrong war or being against reducing government spending and health care reform. seems like a win-win situation. but of course, the democratic party couldn't accomplish this act even if a republican laid it out for them! the democratic party doesn't know what it wants to do and thus can't talk to the american people coherently. the republican party only seems to misrepresent the facts and thus mislead the american people. what a quandary that leaves this country in!

It would seem that the weaker the U.S. gets economically, the more borrowed money its government throws into its military. Is this a mere coincidence or is there a connection between these two phenomena?

America is in the war business and Obomba is just the latest CEO! And it should not be called defense spending, because it has nothing to do with defense that canard,card has been played too many times and is getting really old. It should be called by its proper name: OFFENSIVE WAR BUDGET!

Somewhere in Norway, a Nobel committee is offering their resignation...

geez progressives, can you blame the GOP, Cheney, Bush, ect even though your man had a 60 seat supermajority? When does the GOP stop getting the blame. Cheney runs Obama? really? Face it, you progressives were suckered yet again.

Sioux Rose

What this article doesn't mention is the covert "numbers game," and by that I mean, judging from the pie chart that Glenn Greenwald shared in a recent CD article, a lot more than $600 billion is involved. The covert operations, the care of the returned broken soldiers, and God knows what else factors in.

It's EXACTLY the same with the "banker bailout." We routinely hear the number $700 billion tossed around, whereas some of the financial wizards beg to differ. They routinely speak about sums well over 2.4 trillion that have gone into the "Bail out the rich" boondangle... with lots more on the hook thanks to the way taxpayers have been tasked with backing the bankers' high stakes bets.

So while the public is led to believe that in each situation, the money is budgeted and represents a specific figure... in both instances the numbers are no where near the TRUTH about what is being spent, or should I say BLED from the PUBLIC'S treasury... while health care, green jobs, and the overdue task of rebuilding the nation's infrastructure are tossed quite readily aside.

Recipe for insanity, and/or depraved indifference as official state policy. It more or less goes with torture, after all.

As long we the sheeple continue to ignore the invaluable lessons of Vietnam and Iraq, we will continue to settle for more war spending and a broken military in return. When government spent less on the military, the military actually improved compared to spending more for less. America must wake up and connect the dots by comparing the spending vs the status of the military. It is with great dishonor that we criminally side with the definition of "defense" to mean more spending on weapons of mass destruction and less money to spend on green jobs, health care, public transportation to reduce foreign dependence on oil, and public education so that people can think properly. In short, more money for polishing the metal and less money to maintain our human sanctity. We are a sorry nation that has yet to recover from criminal insanity. We will never learn until everyone is forced to recognize that military spending is actually a noose around our necks.

I can only wish that the people who were given this prize because they honestly deserved it, would send it back with a well worded letter explaining how ashamed they are to own a once honorable prize now that it has become a symbol of ultimate hypocrisy. If even just one person would do this, it’d be refreshing.

Is Congress going to grant the money for President Obama's proposed programs? And which programs will they fund fully and which proposals will they not fund fully or not fund at all.

Too many Americans hate freedom and have a taste for authority and force. They have a peculiar respect for measures carried out on a mass scale, thinking, "It's big, so it must be good."

This president, like the one before him, is not protecting us but is doing just the opposite, ratcheting up the chance of 1) a major act of terrorism against us on this soil and 2) another world war and 3) complete economic and moral ruin.

I'm not sure why people *care* who wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Look at their track record, giving it to such illustrious US "peacemakers" as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Gen. George Marshall, and Henry Kissinger. Obama fits right in!

There is a pattern. They either give it to imperialists like Kissinger or to safe peacemakers like the Dalai Lama, people who aren't interested in shaking up the system. Note that ML King got it before he turned dangerous and started suggesting that there was a link between the struggle of African Americans and the Vietnamese who were fighting the US.

Handy for us in Canada to see what weapons programmes are being phased out in USA.
It gives us a heads up on what our Department of Defence will be purchasing.

And this is totally bipartisan-supported, by the way. It's how Congress shovels federal money back home. The bloated military industrial complex pockets taxpayer dollars and enjoys cost overruns on contracts for military hardware that isn't needed.

Some jobs are created, of course, but it's all blood money.

Your Republicrat representative voted to rob you of your commonwealth in this process. That money might have been used for something useful, like single-payer healthcare for all, and even pay down the national debt, too.

The looting will only stop when you've all voted third party to smash duopoly control once and for all.

-TIA

After this one term President, then what?

BRING OUR MARINES HOME..the Second World War is Over.

by Patrick J. Buchanan, February 02, 2010
Email This | Print This | Share This | Comment | Antiwar Forum

A month after Germany surrendered in May 1945, America’s eyes turned to the Far East, where the bloodiest battle of the Pacific war was joined on the island of Okinawa.

Twelve thousand U.S. soldiers and Marines would die – twice as many dead in 82 days of fighting as have died in all the years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Within weeks of the battle’s end came Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Three weeks later, Gen. MacArthur took the Japanese surrender on the battleship Missouri.

That was 65 years ago, as far away in time from today as the Marines’ arrival at Da Nang was from Teddy Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill.

Yet the Marines are still on Okinawa. But, in 2006, the United States negotiated a $26 billion deal to move 8,000 to Guam and the other Marines from the Futenma air base in the south to the more isolated town of Nago on the northern tip. Okinawans have long protested the crime, noise, and pollution at Futenma.

The problem arose last year when the Liberal Democratic Party that negotiated the deal was ousted and the Democratic Party of Japan elected on a promise to pursue a policy more balanced between Beijing and Washington.

You never attack your enemy head on. That is where the armor is strongest. All the defenses have been set up for a third party. First people that wanted to change the system like independents and progressives supported Obama. Obama organized a grassroots organization to challenge the system.

Once the election was over, Obama disbanded the organization that helped to elect him figuring that he could get enough conservatives to replace the ones he knew would not like his policies on the banks, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. Because he is not a progressive, he is a centrist/neocon.

With the ability to organize opposition to his main policies, he couldn't afford to keep them organized. So withdrawing support effectively neutralized them. And the military industrial complex keeps grinding on.

Now the Tea Party has gotten around this problem by organizing outside the Republican Party. It doesn't make any difference what the Party does. The Tea Party isn't beholden to them. As a result they can push conservative fanatics and fund them.

It's too well defended to push a third party. But you can take back the Democratic Party by organizing outside the DNC and pushing progressive candidates and funding them. INSTEAD OF HAVING TO LIE THRU THEIR TEETH LIKE THE TEA BAGGED DO, YOU CAN TELL THE TRUTH, GET ELECTED AND TAKE BACK THE PARTY THAT IS THE PEOPLES PARTY.

But you have to work outside of the control of the corporate system

Oh, by the way. Check out utube http://www.youtube.com/user/mkdelta69#p/f/8/TILB9DaMRt4

After you watch this you will understand why our foreign and domestic policy is similar to fascism. And why we are pushing offensive space weaponry cloaked in defensive nomenclature.

To deny everyone access to space. And the ability to strike anywhere on the globe with impunity. In essence creating a prison.

And how do you counter the new high tech fascism? http://www.youtube.com/user/mkdelta69#p/f/0/rrkrvAUbU9Y

Drag the 20th century conservatives into the 21st century with the new science of motivation.

They gave the same prize to Kissinger.....can't get much lower than that...he has the blood of MILLIONS of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians on his hands.

Notice how Reuters fills the article with copious details about the USan DEFENZ budget. The idea is to place the reader into a fantasy role of "budget analyst" without an ethical/rational basis for such a gargantuan expenditure in the context of dying, starving, hopelessly oppressed people worldwide, and relentless fossil hydrocarbon plunder in the super-culture of "might makes right".

The "Nobel Prize lies in pieces"...

Piece of the Pie Prize

I wonder about the Space Based Infrared System Satellite (ala Lockheed)proposed expenditure. It may be a tool for the Haarp stations. H.A.A.R.P. is a WMD being used against Earth and all living things and is perfectly capable (see U.S. patents) of mass mind control(Sheeple Complex), controlling weather, and manifesting earthquakes. WeThePeople scientists and great minds need to provide info. on shielding ourselves from these insidious electromagnetic pulses. Beaming love is a good start.

In the spring of 2008 I was roundly ridiculed when I predicted that Mr. Obama would be an imperialist president. Today that is no longer a laughing matter. He is even more imperialist than Mr. Bush. It is not only the greatly expanded military budget. It is selling weapons to Taiwan which previous presidents have accepted as a province of China. Imagine Obama selling weapons to the German state of Bavaria and what would German Chancellor Merkel say in that case? It is dicking with Japan over a marine base (Pat Buchanan has argued that all marines should be brought home as WW2 ended long ago). It is threatening Iran with regime-change and then expanding our offensive capability in that Gulf. It is expanding the Afghan war into Pakistan which he promised to do during the presidential campaign. It is greatly expanding our military presence in Afghanistan which he also promised to do during the presidential campaign. It is threatening Venezuela and other unruly Latin American states with regime-change. The most frightening aspect is that the Congress and most Americans eats his imperialism lock-stock-and-barrel.
The reason why Mr. Obama is an imperialist is clear to me. In his world view imperialism is the sine-qua-non of Western capitalism. Abandon imperialism and our brand of capitalism will die because we cannot compete successfully with an independent third world which uses its own cheap labor for its own brand of capitalism. When our brand of capitalism dies American people will suffer even more than they already do and the whole rotten structure of our governance may come crashing down. Mr. Obama sees himself as the second coming of the rescuer of US capitalism. The first one was FDR.
Today imperialism is no longer the old form of colonialism which was stealing raw materials at a cheap rate and exploiting colonial people to produce agricultural stuff. Today it is also about making goods in the third world by American firms using cheap labor in that world. In order to protect this exploit Mr. Obama, his predecessors, and his successors must prop up rulers in these countries who accept our imperialism and propping them up or preventing them to go to war with one another (India/Pakistan!) more often than not is thought to demand military means.
The one great exception is China. There our firms can make cheap goods with cheap labor but the Chinese government does not need our propping-up. As a matter of fact, it is propping up Mr. Obama's government.

When did our Republic become this Fascist Dictatorship?

they should have posters for Barack Obama:

"BARACK...THE AUDACITY of LYING".

"BARACK OBAMA --- to SELL OUT is GOOD"

"BARACK OBAMA -- PROMISE Americans the MOON and EMPTY their pockets"

"

Sad. When the warmakers are consciously confronted with the absolute horror they have created, they will pass on from sheer dread, in one moment fully realizing the massive responsibility it will take for them to undo their horrid creation. Pray for their consciousness.

Pinche Peace Prize--pandering to the Pentagon.

Rename: George Orwell Peace Is War Prize