Is Congress clueless to Pope's admonition?

Is it possible the 535 members of Congress who cheered at the Pope's admonishing of those who sell weapons of human destruction for blood money, and those who use such weapons to inflict criminal military slaughter, were incapable of comprehending the Pope was calling them out as the foremost practitioners of those despicable practices.  Here is the Pope's exact words, which could serve as a primary Congressional job summary: 

 

"Being at the service of dialogue and peace also means being truly determined to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed conflicts throughout our world. Here we have to ask ourselves: Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade."

J & J and VW: capitalism at its worst

Johnson & Johnson, the US drug health care giant, and Volkswagen, the world's largest car company, are poster companies for why capitalism must be regulated.

 Last week it was reported how Johnson & Johnson made $12 billion marketing Risperdal to young boys; a drug they didn't need but which caused 5% of them to develop breasts...really big breasts. That $12 billion J & J earned was after paying $6 billion in fines and male big breast settlements. I thought that form of insidious capitalism would keep top honors for awhile but it only took a day for Germany's Volkswagen to top it. How? They sold fuel efficient cars to us Yankees that got really good gas mileage. Problem was they could only get high MPG but tuning the cars to pollute American air. One glitch remained: how to get by our strict pollution testing facilities. Simple, they engineered in software that detected when the polluterwagon was being tested which triggered the engine to report: "NO POLLUTION HERE MR. TESTER."  VW just got caught and must fix all half million such cars attacking the ozone layer. A big fine will likely follow.

The next time you hear an extreme conservative legislator railing about getting government off the backs of business, ask them if they'd want their young son to grow grotesque breasts from taking J & J's Risperdal, or breath the foul air spewed out by their VW stink pot.

Iran deal done; now let's dismantle Israel's 80 nukes

With the 5 + 1 Iran nuclear deal a certainty, we can put to rest the warmongering for the past two decades about the need to obliterate Iran over their imaginary nuclear ambitions. We should now turn our attention to dismantling the real nukes Israel maintains in contravention of humanity's safety. Unfortunately, the US has again blocked efforts to enact a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East that Egypt and other Arab states have been seeking for 20 years. It's been even longer, 36 years, since the United Nations began calling on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), under which it would disarm and place its nuclear materials under international inspection. But these resolutions are nonbinding, and the leading Arab state’s calls to focus on Israel’s arsenal of approximately 80 nuclear warheads are routinely ignored by the US and its Western. Every US political leader and presidential aspirant claims Israel is America's best friend. They go along with the charade Israel has no nuclear weapons and is not required to join the NPT. That may keep the Israel Lobby donations flowing and prevent incurring their wrath at election time, but it does not further the prospects for Middle East peace. More simply, friends don't let friends possess 80 nuclear weapons.

Trib messin' with our heads again over Putin in Syria

Does the Trib Editorial Board ever tire of supporting failed and criminal regime change in the Middle East? Your editorial 'Putin in Syria: Another headache or a chance to engage' is a sterling example of justifying American meddling while demonizing Russian actions likely more helpful than you pundits will ever admit.

A little background: America's criminal Iraq war, which you supported, destabilized the region. Once we smashed Iraq, al Qaeda came in. Not able to completely defeat the Shi'ites we put in charge of our new protectorate, Sunni extremists moved into Syria and formed the Islamic State which now controls a large Sunni swathe of both countries and seeks to topple the elected leader Assad, incredibly, with our help. Amazingly, the US war party has declared both our enemy Islamic State and their enemy Syrian President Assad as dual US enemies. Much of the weaponry and training we gave Iraqi Sunnis to fight al Qaeda in Iraq are now being used to fight Assad in Syria. That is quite insane, but the Trib will never call Uncle Sam out on that.

Russia's Putin, on the other hand, deserves not demonization, but some thanks for brokering a deal with their ally Assad in 2013, which prevented Obama from launching a grisly and murderous bombing campaign over Assad's use of chemical weapons on the insurgents. That was wonderful because  we never proved Assad did it; the event may have been a 'false flag' attack by the rebels designed to goad the US war party, with Trib support, into another war. Now, you geniuses are tripping all over yourselves to find fault with Putin going to the aid of an ally, the only legitimate ruler in Syria. Did it ever occur to you how many Alawite, Shi'ite, Christian and secular heads will drop once Assad is gone and the truly bloodthirsty guys take charge over the failed state of Syria?  Probably not, because Syria, like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and Ukraine, are all playing fields for the US war party to play their deadly games with our national treasure and thousands of innocents' blood.

We just barely prevented the traitorous war party from goading Obama into war with Iran over Iran's non-existent nuclear program while pretending that Israel's 80 nukes, the real nuclear destabilizer in the Middle East, don't exist. Now the biggest challenge to avoid war in our lifetime, is the war party's lust to re-ignite the Cold War with Russia. You mention Putin's annexation of Crimea and meddling in Ukraine without reference to the US engineered coup last year of the duly elected Ukraine president, that initiated Putin's involvement. That is reprehensible. You fret about "the wily Russian: In President Barack Obama's head again, messing with America, teasing, threatening, complicating." That is bunk. Obama knows full well that it's not Putin, it's the war party that is messin' with his head. And his sensible response is to declare we'll talk with Putin about stabilizing Syria.

The Trib Editorial Board should cease its endless parroting of US war party lying and fear mongering over endless failed American intervention...today!  

Crazy talk key to rise in GOP polls

Crazy talk vaulted Donald Trump to first place in the GOP field where he continues to talk crazy and continues to lead.  Failed Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina took notice and went all in with crazy talk in the last debate. Voila, she rose to second place. I first noticed her crazy talk when she said she'd stop talking to Russian President Putin upon entering the White House. After snipping the hotline to Moscow, she promised to call Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and take his order for the finest Weapons of Palestinian Destruction (WPD) our Military Industrial Complex can produce. Then she claimed the key to foreign policy success was to spend the national treasure to vastly expand our gargantuan military which will make our imagined adversaries swoon in surrender. Fiorina promised to send the G-Men to end state controlled medical and recreational marijuana because she lost a child to drug abuse; omitting that she is childless and the 'child' in question was her husband's grown daughter who succumbed to alcohol and prescription drugs, two man made substances far more dangerous than pot. Don't even get me started on her lunacy about Planned Parenthood dissecting living babies on the table for profit. Sadly, the GOP (Grand Old Party) has become the CTP (Crazy Talk Party).