July 31, 2011 journal, last call, the train is leaving the station and the sky is being rolled up. I feel sad for the poor people 99% of America being cut off from a decent living and canned. It is not the debt so much at these low nothing interest-rates, it is political power. I feel discouraged that there is no common sense in America especially inside Beltway. The cold hard chilling facts are that the rich verses the court and the rich has come out of top. They do not need to manufacture goods because they get subsidies to do nothing. But of course this system is not working but nobody in America want to admit that now. Duke Power is raising their rates again. One congressman said the debt reduction bill stinks' to high heaven and it does. A committee will meet to decide how to extract and other trillion dollars from the port. The rich are exempt from this bill. The president is being called Robin Hood, robbing the poor and giving it to the rich. The stock market is nose diving losing 500 in one day. Mubarak the ousted president of Egypt is now on trial for corruption and for killing his demonstrators. The $60 billion American subsidy went into his personal pocket and not to the people of Egypt. I am sure we are still pumping American money into Egypt. William Rivers Pitt | A President in Reverse- Truthout: "The United States of America is different today, different in a fundamental and dramatic way, and is a better place now only for a few thousand people who are rich enough to remain above the effect of this transformation. For the rest of us, the 99% who stay up nights worrying about health care bills, retirement, finding a job, keeping a job, and aging parents who now dangle above a deliberately frayed safety net, it is a colder and more dangerous country we call home." Jeffrey Kaye, Truthout: "In the controversy over whether torture, especially waterboard-ing, was used to gather information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden, former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld told Fox News' Sean Hannity recently that 'no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo by the US military. In fact, no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo, period.' In his memoir, 'Known and Unknown,' Rumsfeld maintained, 'To my knowledge, no US military personnel involved in interrogations waterboarded any detainees, not at-or anywhere else in the world.' But as we shall see, Rumsfeld was either lying outright, or artfully twisting the truth." Read the Article. Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch: "One American world, one Washington, is devouring th e other. Think of this as the half-hidden psychodrama of this American moment. Put another way, for months Americans have been focused on raising that debt ceiling, as onscreen countdown clocks ticked away to disaster. In the process, few have asked the obvious question: Isn't it time to lower America's war ceiling?" Paul Krugman | A Cult of Centrism, Poisoning the American Political System. Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.: "Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis in the United States - a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences - it's increasingly obvious that what we're looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system. And no, I don't mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, O.K., that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are." Martin Fackler, The New York Times News Service: "The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said Monday that it measured the highest radiation levels within the plant since it was crippled by a devastating earthquake. However, it said the discovery would not slow continuing efforts to bring the plant's damaged reactors under control." Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers: "Fascism is rising in America, this time calling itself 'compassionate conservatism,' and 'the free market' in a 'flat' world. The point of its spear is 'corporate personhood' and 'corporate free-speech rights.' The behavior of the Roberts Court in Citizens United eerily parallels the day in 1936 when Roosevelt said: 'In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for.' Even before the Citizens United case blew open the doors to a corporate takeover of American politics, the corrosive influence of corporations' having 'rights' was already evident. Now these 'unequal consequences' have been put on steroids." Jennifer Nerby, Council on Hemispheric Affairs: "Twenty Salvadoran soldiers await trial in Spain for crimes against humanity perpetrated during the Salvadoran Civil War.... The extradition of war criminals to be tried under the Spanish judicial system draws attention to profound weaknesses in Salvadoran trial.... A growing number of Salvadorans are beginning to show unease that the nation's moderate President Mauricio Funes will move the country beyond the social causes of conflict in the 1980s." Countdown With Keith Olbermann | Al Gore on Why Washington Is Broken (Video) Keith Olbermann, Countdown With Keith Olbermann: "As leaders make a final push late Monday to pass a final debt deal and cut federal spending, voters aren't exactly cheering". Orlando Florida arrested 28 people for feeding hungry people in the park but now the mayor has invited the mercenaries to feed hungry homeless people in front of the City Hall. The group feeding the hungry are doing it to draw attention that we are spending more money fighting our wars than feeding or taking care of our poor people at home. 1 million veterans are unemployed and most of them are homeless. Shame on America. The Republicans are getting blamed for crashing the stock market and rightly so because they demonstrated their protection for the rich and as having no compassion for the poor. The hedgefund managers must have been on the beach in 100 degree temperature because they did not kick in to purchase stocks with their floating flexible money to stop the roll of panic sell offs to fool all the world by keeping the stock market artificially stabilized. The only people that will make money on the stock market are the Zionist insider traders. The damnable stock market should go bust down 512 points in one day with crude oil dropped to $85 per barrel which proves the radical price of gasoline is more due to Wall Street greed than to the terrible oil companies. Suits me if crude drops to $10 per barrel. Imara Jones, Colorlines.com: "Default was the best option. The shameful and dangerous debt ceiling deal passed into law yesterday made that clear. It is rooted in the grand bargain that the political class made in 2008: to save Wall Street and allow those in the rest of America to drown Katrina style. The plan will suck money out of a shattered economy that can ill afford it and demand sacrifice from frayed and threadbare communities that will likely not be able to endure what's been asked. Yet, it will allow the wealthiest Americans to get off Scott free and - here's the kicker - profit from the misery that the plan exacerbates." "What if you were to obtain government information that is important to the public and then give it to someone to disseminate it widely? How should you be punished? If you are Bradley Manning, you will be thrown in jail, tortured, humiliated, deprived of even basic creature comforts and forced to sleep naked in an isolation cell. Can you even imagine this same thing happening to Rupert Murdoch? Ever? Let's com-pare these two men's actions. Manning made public some vital information that was necessary to help Americans know more truthfully about what is going on here and thus help us to be able to make better decisions based on correct facts. Murdoch made public some falsified information that caused America to get stuck with George W. Bush whether we wanted him or not, to get unnecessarily embroiled in several illegal and disastrous wars that cost America trillions of dollars we could ill afford and to support ghastly financial policies that stripped our economy to the bone. And where are Murdoch and Manning now? Bradley Manning is currently incarcerated at Leavenworth federal penitentiary -- and with no end in sight to his ordeal. And Murdoch? I'm not really sure where Rupert Murdoch is now -- probably in his 44-million-dollar apartment overlooking Central Park? Who knows for sure. But I betcha anything that there is gonna be no torture or jail time involved." The unbelievable heartbreak of 31 more American soldiers killed in Afghanistan today in a helicopter crash shot down by the enemy. The Pentagon is at war with the world but not mentioned in the debt crisis debate in Congress even though it is the largest expenditure. It is time to defund the Pentagon and bring our troops all home to save America from any more blood being spilled on the battlefield. Stop the killings by satellite predator drones. The figure pops up again that America is involved in fighting 70 wars from the Pentagon. America is sowing the seeds of war but the chickens are coming home to roost for U.S.. Standard & Poors have downgraded America's credit rating on bonds from AAA to AA+. The same rating as is carried by Belgium on their debt which is an excuse to raise interest. We're seeing the disintegration of America plain & simple as we enter the age of turmoil. 31 US Troops Killed in Afghanistan Helicopter Shootdown Hashim Shukoor and Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers: "Thirty-one U.S. troops, including more than 20 Navy SEALs, and seven Afghan soldiers died when their helicopter was shot down during an overnight operation against Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan, according to statement issued Saturday by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.... It was the worst single-day toll for American forces in Afghanistan since U.S. troops entered that country nearly 10 years ago, and one of the largest tolls in a single incident of either the Afghan war or the fighting in Iraq." Michael Moore | 30 Years Ago Today: The Middle Class Died Michael Moore, MichaelMoore.com: "Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to 'go for it' - to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves. And they've succeeded. On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work & declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just 2 days."