Looks like foreign ears are picking up on the right wing...sm

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As a nonbeliever what do you think it is that makes you feel good inside when you do something good? I don't know much about atheists, always thought there wasn't much to know, except they don't believe in God and so I would assume when they die they believe that everything stops right there. I feel that there has to be a better life in the world to come so I am asking a sincere question which is thought provoking at least to me. If a loved one dies, how do you deal with it? What happens to them. When you die what happens to you?

Remember these are the family members/survivors not the so-called lefty wacko conspiracy theorists.

On 5th Anniversary of the Attacks, Victims' Relatives to Challenge Credibility of 9/11 Report -- Say Case Merits New Investigation

National Press Club
Zenger Room
529 14th Street NW 13th floor
(corner of 14th and 'F' Street)
Washington, DC

9/11 families and speakers TBA will join producers of a recently-released feature-length documentary 9/11: Press for Truth at a press conference at 11AM on September 11th at the National Press Club in Washington D.C.. Participants will cite a growing body of evidence calling into question the credibility of the 9/11 Report and demand a new investigation into the attacks of September 11th.

Producers of 9/11 Press for Truth to be released on September 5th and broadcast on international television over the anniversary will report on the reception to the film following screenings in NYC, Washington DC, Chicago, Oakland, and over 20 other cities nationally over the 9/11 memorial weekend. Paul Thompson, author of The Terror Timeline (Harper-Collins), 9/11 family members and special guests will be in attendance to make brief statements and answer questions from the press. C-SPAN and other media outlets are invited to participate.

To confirm your attendance please contact:
Kyle F. Hence
401-935-7715
kylehence@earthlink.net

[Also of NOTE -- NYC (Sept. 7th 6PM ) & DC Premieres (Sept. 10th/11th 6:30PM): Producers, Paul Thompson and family members will also be available to the press immediately preceding the World Premiere in NYC on September 7th at an informal Press availability beginning promptly at 6PM at The Two Boots Pioneer Theater located on East 3rd Street, NYC (Just east of Avenue A) and again in D and in Washington, DC at the Landmark's E Street Cinema at 6:30PM, Sept. 10-11.]

I've seen a lot of the video clips and pictures also. You know there is so much hoopla about everything in politics, it's really hard for me to believe anything I see much less anything I hear. I think we've sunk so low in our politics that the one who can throw the most mud is the one who will win. I don't care about Obama's association of 40 years ago. I do care about his recent so-called church affiliation. I do not care if Palin fired the guy for not firing her ex-brother-in-law (of course she did). I do care that all she can talk about is how "bad" Obama is and how "saintly" John McCain is. Pull the string and see what Sarah says.

The common sense side of me tells me that most of the garbage we hear from both campaigns is stuff dug up by the other side trying to discredit the other candidate.

A MOST aggravating thing happened this morning.......a REPUBLICAN acquaintance stopped by to see us this morning. The unexpected call was to campaign for John McCain. He got ANGRY when I told him I wasn't voting for either candidate. Pretty much called me a redneck hillbilly for not agreeing with him. LOL

AN AMERICAN FOREIGN LEGION: IS THE US MILITARY NOW AN IMPERIAL POLICE FORCE?

A leaner, meaner, higher tech force - that was what George W. Bush and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised to transform the American military into. Instead, they came close to turning it into a foreign legion. Foreign as in being constantly deployed overseas on imperial errands; foreign as in being ever more reliant on private military contractors; foreign as in being increasingly segregated from the elites that profit most from its actions, yet serve the least in its ranks.

Now would be a good time for President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to begin to reclaim that military for its proper purpose: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now would be a good time to ask exactly why, and for whom, our troops are currently fighting and dying in the urban jungles of Iraq and the hostile hills of Afghanistan.

A few fortnights and forever ago, in the Bush years, our "expeditionary" military came remarkably close to resembling an updated version of the French Foreign Legion in the ways it was conceived and used by those in power - and even, to some extent, in its makeup.

For the metropolitan French elite of an earlier era, the Foreign Legion - best known to Americans from countless old action films - was an assemblage of military adventurers and rootless romantics, volunteers willing to man an army fighting colonial wars in far-flung places. Those wars served the narrow interests of people who weren't particularly concerned about the fate of the legion itself.

It's easy enough to imagine one of them saying, � LA Rumsfeld, "You go to war with the legion you have, not the legion you might want or wish to have." Such a blithe statement would have been uncontroversial back then, since the French Foreign Legion was - well - so foreign. Its members, recruited worldwide, but especially from French colonial possessions, were considered expendable, a fate captured in its grim, sardonic motto: "You joined the Legion to die. The Legion will send you where you can die!"

Looking back on the last eight years, what's remarkable is the degree to which Rumsfeld and others in the Bush administration treated the U.S. military in a similarly dismissive manner. Bullying his generals and ignoring their concerns, the Secretary of Defense even dismissed the vulnerability of the troops in Iraq, who, in the early years, motored about in inadequately armored Humvees and other thin-skinned vehicles.

Last year, Vice President DickCheney offered another Legionnaire-worthy version of such dismissiveness. Informed that most Americans no longer supported the war in Iraq, he infamously and succinctly countered, "So?" - as if the U.S. military weren't the American people's instrument, but his own private army, fed and supplied by private contractor KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary whose former CEO was the very same DickCheney.

Fond of posing in flight suits, leather jackets, and related pseudo-military gear, President Bush might, on the other hand, have seemed overly invested in the military. Certainly, his tough war talk resonated within conservative circles, and he visibly relished speaking before masses of hooah-ing soldiers. Too often, however, Bush simply used them as patriotic props, while his administration did its best to hide their deaths from public view.

In that way, he and his top officials made our troops into foreigners, in part by making their ultimate sacrifice, their deaths, as foreign to us as was humanly possible. Put another way, his administration made the very idea of national "sacrifice" - by anyone but our troops - foreign to most Americans. In response to the 9/11 attacks, Americans were, as the President famously suggested only 16 days after the attacks, to show their grit by visiting Disney World and shopping till they dropped. Military service instills (and thrives on) an ethic of sacrifice that was, for more than seven years, consciously disavowed domestically.

As the Obama administration begins to deploy U.S. troops back to the Iraq or Afghan war zones for their fourth or fifth tours of duty, I remain amazed at the silent complicity of my country. Why have we been so quiet? Is it because the Bush administration was, in fact, successful in sending our military down the path to foreign legion-hood? Is the fate of our troops no longer of much importance to most Americans?

Even the military's recruitment and demographics are increasingly alien to much of the country. Troops are now regularly recruited in "foreign" places like South Central Los Angeles and Appalachia that more affluent Americans wouldn't be caught dead visiting. In some cases, those new recruits are quite literally "foreign" - non-U.S. citizens allowed to seek a fast-track to citizenship by volunteering for frontline, war-zone duty in the U.S. Army or Marines. And when, in these last years, the military has fallen short of its recruitment goals - less likely today thanks to the ongoing economic meltdown - mercenaries have simply been hired at inflated prices from civilian contractors with names like Triple Canopy or Blackwater redolent of foreign adventures.

With respect to demographics, it'll take more than the sons of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin to redress inequities in burden-sharing. With startlingly few exceptions, America's sons and daughters dodging bullets remain the progeny of rural America, of immigrant America, of the working and lower middle classes. As long as our so-called best and brightest continue to be AWOL when it comes to serving among the rank-and-file, count on our foreign adventurism to continue to surge.

Diversity is now our societal byword. But how about more class diversity in our military? How about a combat regiment of rich young volunteers from uptown Manhattan? (After all, some of their great-grandfathers probably fought with New York's famed "Silk Stocking" regiment in World War I.) How about more Ivy League recruits like George H.W. Bush and John F. Kennedy, who respectively piloted a dive bomber and a PT boat in World War II? Heck, why not a few prominent Hollywood actors like Jimmy Stewart, who piloted heavy bombers in the flak-filled skies of Europe in that same war?

Instead of collective patriotic sacrifice, however, it's clear that the military will now be running the equivalent of a poverty and recession "draft" to fill the "all-volunteer" military. Those without jobs or down on their luck in terrible times will have the singular honor of fighting our future wars. Who would deny that drawing such recruits from dead-end situations in the hinterlands or central cities is strikingly Foreign Legion-esque?

Caught in the shock and awe of 9/11, we allowed our military to be transformed into a neocon imperial police force. Now, approaching our eighth year in Afghanistan and sixth year in Iraq, what exactly is that force defending? Before President Obama acts to double the number of American boots-on-the-ground in Afghanistan - before even more of our troops are sucked deeper into yet another quagmire - shouldn't we ask this question with renewed urgency? Shouldn't we wonder just why, despite all the reverent words about "our troops," we really seem to care so little about sending them back into the wilderness again and again?

Where indeed is the outcry?

The French Foreign Legionnaires knew better than to expect such an outcry: The elites for whom they fought didn't give a damn about what happened to them. Our military may not yet be a foreign legion - but don't fool yourself, it's getting there.

--------

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), taught for six years at the Air Force Academy. He currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of "Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism" (Potomac Press, 2005), among other works. He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.

If they are cheaper it is because they are literally that....cheaper cars. You pay for what you get. I've seen so many American made cars throughout my family where they have put 200,000+ miles on vehicles and they keep going. I've driven so many different types of vehicles since my husband runs a car dealership and I have to say that American trumps foreign any day in my opinion. I will NEVER own a foreign car. Ain't happenin. You will more than likely see my happy butt in a Chevy of some type. I'm currently driving a Chevy Uplander and I friggin LOVE it! I have no problem telling someone their vehicle is a foreign piece of crap. In fact, I recently told my best friend's sister that was what her Honda was. LOL!

People in this country want them because they get better gas mileage. Like I said before, Toyota has plants here in America and they are doing good.

The problem with the big 3 is they sat back and forgot about the past (1970s gas crunch), not into the future. They got a winner with those big SUVs and decided, "Hey, let's concentrate on all the big SUVs, big V8s, etc. That's what the American people want" and they did want them.

Car dealers are falling by the wayside in large numbers because of the problems, too. Lots of them are closing because they can't hang on any longer.