Red herrings are absolutely delicious.

And if you understand that the United States is motivated by the exact same values as any other empire - hegemony and maintaining geopolitical stability - everything makes sense.

Total bullshit. Al Qaeda targeted the United States because of our military presence in the middle east. If we hadn't been manipulating governments in the middle east since we divided up the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI, 9/11 would have never happened.

The United States government has only once invaded a nation to protect their sovereignty since WWII. And according to many sources, the USG allowed Iraq to invade Kuwait in order provide a pretext for war to balance power between Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia after the end of the Iran-Iraq War (which we helped Iraq wage.)

The USG has never invaded a country solely to support a democracy.

WikiLeaks can never be responsible for the actions of the State Department.

The reason aspirin pills are $10 in hospitals is because of massive inflation of prices to cover the high ratio of emergency room visits that cannot be paid for by the person in the emergency.

Single payer healthcare of course costs money. It's your choice to decide if some person in an accident needs to 1) have health insurance and 2) prove that before they are allowed to be treated. It's your choice to deny someone health care for some treatable illness that is not life threatening until it is life threatening enough to warrant an emergency room visit. Basically, you'd like people without insurance to be put down like dogs, that's fine. Just remember being patriotic used to mean giving a shit about your fellow citizens, not throwing their lives away to reduce your taxes slightly.

Hopefully you will lose your job, run out of savings, and get into a car accident and die in a hospital parking lot. It's too bad that sort of awesome justice doesn't happen very often.

That maybe, just maybe, there are times when making something public is *worse* than keeping it secret.

For any American to believe that the US cares about democracy in Zimbabwe, all you need to do is read the CIA report, now declassified, about its first election:

http://www.foia.cia.gov/browse_docs.asp?doc_no=0000462682

The newly elected government in Rhodesia will press the US and the UK to recognize it and lift economic sanctions. It will argue that the election meets the demands of the US and UK for a transfer of power to a black government on the basis of one man, one vote. Recognizing the new government and lifting sanctions certainly would strengthen it. There would be greater white resolve to support the black-led government and a greater willingness among whites in themilitary to defend it. Government prospects for attracting large numbersof guerrilla defectors could also be enhanced if the economy improved sufficiently to allow the government to improve social services for the blacks.

The lifting of sanctions would improve the chances of stemming Rhodesia‘s economic decline and would provide substantial economic benefits and give a major psychological boost to the internal regime. Worldwide demand has been increasing for many goods produced by the Rhodesians such as copper, gold, and chrome.

At the same time, such a decision would seriously erode the "special relationship" the US has fostered with black African leaders -- particularly Zambian President Kaunda, Tanzanian President Nyerere, and Nigerian President Obasanjo. They would conclude that the US and the UK had chosen to support the "enemy" and thus would come under increasing pressure from the guerrillas and the Soviets to pursue a military solution in Rhodesia. Such a basic policy shift would also weaken the credibility of western support for the UN transitional program for Namibia in the eyes of both the Africans and the white government in Pretoria. In fact, the South Africans probably have already interpreted moves to send US observers to cover the Rhodesian elections as evidence of a general weakening of US determination to pursue the UN transition program for Namibia, giving them more room to push a final settlement on their own terms. While some African leaders might support lifting sanctions if it were followed by US and UK efforts to include ZANU or ZAPU in the new government, the frontline African leaders would be further antagonized by such a strategy. A call for a new constitution -- providing for a more rapid transition to full black rule and approved by both blacks and whites--might dispel some of the frontline president's resentment but it would still leave the US and the UK very much in disfavor.

Unsurprisingly, the principle of supporting a democracy doesn't seem to appear in their analysis. And maybe some part of the State Department - not the part that pays public lip service for PR purposes - did support democracy. Unless Assange is successful in helping to usher in a new era of government transparency, I will never know what my government did on my behalf with my money.

Sure, they can fuck up. But they would have to kill millions of people and subvert dozens of democracies to start to match the misery caused by secret dealings by the State Department and the Executive Branch.

There's some parable involving removing the speck from someone else's eye while you ignore the log in your own, but since most Americans are Christians, they've probably never heard of it.

Too bad all of the "anti-government" Tea Party wusses don't have the balls to actually fight government corruption. Perhaps one day they will step outside of the propaganda they swallow up willingly (even pay for) and actually do some good for the common man. But until the cycle of corporate-generated propaganda is broken, there will have to be Nazi-style crackdowns for there to be a chance of the US populace putting down the remote and going outside.

While they are raking in record profits and bonuses as the rest of the nation sinks further into poverty, they aren't going to willingly give up the police state that allows their quarterly reports to look so good.

I always get them confused. Long story.

Joe Biden means doing business, like selling 60 billion dollars worth of advanced military technology to the country that funds the vast majority of the world's active terrorist groups: Saudi Arabia. It means keeping it a secret that oil companies have infiltrated African governments so the oil companies can continue to rake in money while they avoid paying for environmental damage, or indeed even taxes in the United States. It means that the market is warped all over the world to benefit people who are already rich at the expense of the people they are driving into poverty.

So, as I am so fond of saying, go fuck yourself. If your wife is a whore and she's spreading lupus and crabs, the only people the truth hurts are the people who deserve to be hurt.

Bangladesh. Indonesia. Saudi Arabia (again). Mauritania. Pakistan. India. Turkey.

I could, of course, go on. This doesn't even touch honor killings that aren't part of State-backed mistreatment of victims of rape. I don't believe the United States should be dumb enough to think it can make people change their minds on women's rights through violence, but I also don't think we should be allies with nations that ignore this type of behavior.

I was stating the fact that proselytizers face prosecution in Saudi Arabia all the time. And in fact, if a woman is raped, she can be punished:

The couple was sitting in a car when a group of seven Sunni men kidnapped them and raped them both, lawyers in the case told Arab News. The former boyfriend was also sentenced to 90 lashes for being with her in private.

A review of the sentence was ordered after condemnation from the international community and human rights groups.

However the Saudi Justice Ministry today maintained that the ruling was legal and followed the "the book of God and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad".

The Justice Ministry's account of the incident differed substantially from that given by the woman and her lawyer.

It largely glossed over her rape, focusing instead on her plan to meet her lover in his car "in a dark place where they stayed for a while".

"Then they where spotted by the other defendants as the woman was in an indecent condition as she had tossed away her clothes, then the assault occurred on her and the man," the statement said.

Yeah. If I dared to tell anyone that I didn't think Mohammed was the last messenger from God while I was in Saudi Arabia, and they jailed me for it, oh well. Gotta respect their laws while you're there.

Of course that's absolute bullshit. Any law that denies a person a right to defend themselves from undue process of law is unjust, period, unless it's putting away someone you don't like. I've read through the document, and I do think Assange should submit himself to further evidentiary proceedings once he is assured of receiving the same treatment as someone who isn't on the shitlist of half of the world governments.

Let's all remember why the authorities have decided that he doesn't deserve equal rights:

"He's made it more difficult for us to conduct our business with our allies and our friends." -Joe Biden

No. You're a fucking idiot.

Again, you're a fucking idiot. Telling you facts is like showing a dog a card trick.

It's not hard. Article 4, Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

The issue is that you're so unbelievably ignorant that you think Republic means Republic. Actually, it means that the state is ruled by the public. Which means they vote for representatives to control their government. Which is a representative democracy. Which does limit democratic power to abridge minority rights, but even those rules can be removed by democratic action through a 2/3 vote in the Congress and Senate, or in a Constitutional Convention.

Does this mean you're missing a Klan rally somewhere? In what universe is not counting people as people a good thing? Because it allowed the North to retain power while they allowed the south to own slaves? The rest of the civilized world considers that a mistake.

You're probably not aware of this, but about 30,000 children die every day in Africa from preventable diseases. In developed nations with strong social infrastructure, the rate is pretty close to 0.

You know, details details. If you really hate government that much, I'm sure they could use a few more bodies in the Congo. Hop to it. I'm begging you.

No, you fucking idiot. The Constitution can be changed and amended at our whim. That's why we have amendments. That's why black people are no longer 3/5 of a person and have the right to vote.

Republic is derived from the latin "res publica" and only means that there is no religious or blood rule.

Yes, they can, and they do. The question is whether you want your child to die and then sue some company instead of having a government agency preventing those deaths before they happen.

What point? You falsely claimed the US wasn't a democracy. Then you equated levying taxes with stealing. Which would make the US military the biggest gangster in the United States.

Right. So if a pacifier company is putting arsenic in their products, they can't be stopped without violating shareholder rights? You can't possibly be that stupid and still have the ability to read and write.

nor can a government try and steal money since government's only legitimate powers are those which are derived from the people

And if the people decide progressive taxation leads to a better society, they are free to impose it, and you are free to leave if you don't like it.

No one is talking about stealing savings. What we are talking about is taxation of income earned in the United States. Try to stay on this side of reality.