Flint Michigan February 11, 1937 = let us never forget America!!! The Battle for who OWNS America rages on...

The middle class and the American Dream were born 75 years ago today, on February 11, 1937, the day the Flint workers won their struggle. And for the next 44 years, working people everywhere got to own their own homes, send their kids to college and never worry about going broke if they got sick. That belief, that life would be good if you were a good citizen and a hard worker, now seems out of reach for nearly half the country which is either living in or near poverty. Perhaps people wouldn't mind it as much if the burden were being evenly shared. But everyone knows that's not the case. In a time of record personal bankruptcies, record home foreclosures, record family and student debt, there are a group of people having the best years of wealth and profit ever recorded in human history. And it is those very people who have made the decisions to export our jobs, to decimate unions, to make college unaffordable, to start wars and to pay themselves with gluttonous joy while paying little or no tax -- this is the 1% that has created the burden so many Americans (and people around the world) now share. 

And so, 75 years after the victory in Flint, the battle is now being fought all over again. But this time it's not just about getting paid a dollar an hour, or having Sunday off, or reducing the chance of your hand being crushed in the metal stamping machine. This time, the stakes are even greater: Who is going to own America and control the basic functions of our democracy -- the richest 1% who buy the politicians to get what they want, or the 99% who don't have much these days and live in anxiety or fear of what's around the bend.

USA: 13 Beliefs (including Atheism), 51% Female, 37% Non-White

People under 20 years of age made up over a quarter of the U.S. population (27.3%), and people age 65 and over made up one-eighth (12.8%) in 2009. The national median age was 36.8 years

------------>Fascism is fascism; hate is hate; fear is fear; call it CPAC or National Socialism (NAZIs) it's all 

                   the same bullshit.

Today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Republican leaders attending CPAC join with another panelist, Peter Brimelow, founder and head of the White Nationalist hate website VDARE.

In 2009, Brimelow called on the Republican Party to start focusing on becoming the party of white voters by attacking “ethnic lobbies,” affirmative action, bilingual education and “taxpayer subsidies to illegal aliens.”

Brimelow warned that multiculturalism and bilingualism were “diseases” that could wreck American society as they empower minorities and suppress white groups.

With the blessing of a leading Republican congressman, it looks like Brimelow’s dream of having a conservative movement which focuses on challenging cultural diversity may finally be coming to fruition.

The Bull Market Defined...

The MSCI All-Country World Index of shares in 45 nations completed a 20 percent rally from its October low yesterday, meeting the definition of a bull market. The S&P 500 yesterday closed 1 percent away from its peak nine months ago of 1,363.61, which was the highest level since June 2008. It had risen 7.3 percent this year through yesterday amid better-than-expected economic data and corporate profits.

Russia sells Syria weapons and has its only military base outside the former Soviet Union in the Syrian port of Tartus.

“The Russian government is not only unapologetically arming a government that is killing its own people, but also providing it with diplomatic cover,” Philippe Bolopion, UN director at Human Rights Watch in New York, said after the UN vote.

Russia’s alignment with Syria may put at stake the country’s relationship with oil-rich Gulf States led by Qatar that asked the Security Council to endorse their plan to convince Assad to delegate his powers to a deputy to pave way for elections.

“The Russians are doing this to help preserve their navy base in Tartus, their arms trade with Syria and their strategic position in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Sullivan said. “In the end Russia will lose its base. Russia has also in many ways lost the Arabs on this.”

Keystone XL: Republicans want to bisect our country with a pipeline, bypass our laws and then bypass our citizens to send the oil abroad.

A Republican-backed bill giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission power to approve TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL pipeline would remove two federal agencies from oversight, officials of the Interior Department and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said.

The Interior Department is responsible for monitoring construction and maintenance of pipelines on U.S. land, and the legislation makes FERC the “sole federal agency responsible for the project,” Mike Pool, deputy director of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, said today at a House subcommittee hearing in Washington. The Corps would lose its permitting authority for the pipeline, an official said.

The bill strips the Corps of Engineers of its role in reviewing and approving pipelines, Margaret Gaffney-Smith, chief of the Corps’ regulatory program, said at the hearing. It also poses jurisdictional and legal issues, officials from the State Department and FERC told the House subcommittee Jan. 25. FERC doesn’t have the authority to site oil pipelines.

Keystone XL will endanger Nebraska’s water supplies, and lead to oil exports.

House Democrats led by Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts today introduced a measure that would prevent exports of the crude transported by the pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast.

“Other countries shouldn’t be allowed to bisect our country with a pipeline and then bypass our citizens to send the oil abroad,” Markey said in a statement.

The legislation “gives the pipeline an unprecedented regulatory earmark,” Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who has led opposition, said. It directs FERC to approve the pipeline “even though we don’t yet know what route it will take through the state of Nebraska.”

Koch Industries Inc. of Wichita, Kansas, may benefit from the pipeline’s construction, said Waxman, who criticized Republicans for not inviting company executives or officials from Calgary-based TransCanada to testify.

al-Assad must go! NOW

The U.S. will “redouble efforts”and work with “partners outside the United Nations” to put“immense pressure” on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to end bloodshed and step down, after the U.N. Security Council failed to deliver global condemnation of Syria giving the regime room to continue its 11-month crackdown on protesters, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters in Sofia today.