Found this on youtube.  A very interesting topic and a very interesting and passionate speaker that being Dr. Cornel West.  

This was apparently a serious graphic from the Wall Street Journal, showing the poor people being affected by the results of the Fiscal Cliff negotiations.

I love Esquire's title above the image, so I'll use it as well:

Les Insufferables

A Christmas gift was Obama's War by Bob Woodward.

It's a boring read, the driest of detached reporting. It's also confusing, full of acronyms, names of people so numerous one can't keep track of them.

But, oh, it's chilling. Woodward does not comment. he simiply reports. But the picture that emerges is of a nation fighting (and losing) a war in Afghanistan - with no definition of what victory his defined - or defeat.

Establish a functioning democracy? It's agreed that;s fifty years away, at best.

I haven't have time to check news media across Canada. Are they getting the real story about GeneralPetraeus and his resignation as CIA chief?

It has nothing to do with two mistreses and a wife. (Nor is he a brilliant general who turned the war around in Afghanisant. How could he be? It hasn't turned around.)

The weeks from now to the election will come as close to world war three as can be imagined - and quite possibly will cross the line. Netanyahu is determined to attack Iran. The American emprie is falling into desperate disarray, especially in the middle east, Afghanistan and Latin America.

The US can no longer raise enough troops to fight a conventional war on so many fronts. It has to rely ever more heavily on varieties of technology and bombing that kill large humbers of civilians.

Why on earth would Canada cut relations with Iran? It has no significant effect on Iran or on Canada. The reasons that are given are absurd. Iran the worst threat to world peace?

The link is to a Globe and Mail report published Monday June 25, 2912.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/obama-jilted-canada-leading-us-journal-says/article4369527/

There's been a surprising lack of discussion of immense changes in American foreign, domestic and military policy in recent weeks.

1. Obama signs a bill enabling the army to arrest and detain people with no charge and no trial. That's stunning development in a country that calls itself a democracy.

2. He announces big cuts in the defence budget even as he also announces a switch in strategy to confront rising powers in Asia. He seems to be making the cuts by

  a) cutting down on the numbers of people in the mlitary.

This week, almost ignored by most of the news media except as a bare announcement, President Obama revealed he intended to raise a record one billion dollars for his next presidential campaign.

Can't discuss it right now. Children and wife demanding to be fed at a restaurant.

But think of the meaning of what he said. Hint- I said from the start Obama was bad news.

Remember the enthusiasm for Obama? Remember how he was going to introduce medicare, stop torture, get out of wars, Close Guantanamo,?

in fact, h e has followed Bush in just about every respect. He has massively stepped up the war in Afghanistan and exttended it into pakistan. Guantanamo is still a prison. And there are over a dozen such camps, mostly in Africa that our press never mentions. Congress just passed a blll authorizing torture - and obama will sign it.