Non-Partisan Group Says Obama is a War Criminal

Obama's death drones

May 17, 2013 - Closing Guantanamo and ending torture of detainees was one of his campaign promises in 2008. In 2013, of his former supporters on the Left say Obama is worse than  President George W. Bush in the way he has continued to detain Guantanamo inmates.

In fact, Obama has authorized, condoned and/or covered up torture, drone killing of civilians and other crimes -- and should be indicted. That's the conclusion of The Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, in its "Report on Detainee Treatment."

Petitioning Obama (change.org)

The charges are detailed in a report and video from The Western Center for Journalism (watch the video below). The New York Times reported the story on its front page on April 16, but it received secondary attention because of the massive coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing.

A NY Times opinion piece on April 16 said that the Constitution Project's report "is also rightly critical of the Obama administration’s use of expansive claims of secrecy to keep the details of rendition and torture from becoming public and to block victims’ lawsuits."

"A nonpartisan group, The Constitution Project, in their mammoth 600-page report, has concluded that Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th President of the United States, should be indicted for war crimes in the authorization or coverup of the use of torture during interrogation on detainees at Guantánamo and CIA 'black sites'," according The Western Center for Journalism today.

The report is also critical of the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

GULAG Guantanamo

Hope and Change? "Obama originally said when he ran for office that he would close the Guantanamo Bay prison," wrote Rachel Alexander for Town Hall on May 13, "and after being elected in 2009, publicly instructed  the military to shut it down within one year. It is now over four years later, into his second term, and the prison is still open. Most of the prisoners have been there for over 11 years without a trial. Nine have died since it opened in 2002. The scrutiny has intensified in recent months as a majority of the 166 inmates, down from a high of 684 in 2003, have gone on hunger strikes, and at least 21 of the men are being force-fed twice daily. The administration has approved 86 detainees for release, but curiously none have been released so far this year."

Also See:

• U.S. Torture of Detainees 'Indisputable' World Net Daily
• Is Obama continuing Bush-Cheney torture? The Star Democrat (newspaper)
• Transcript: What’s Going on at Gitmo? ProPublica
• A ‘terrorist’ is no ‘enemy combatant’ Reuters
• President Obama: Close Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay Change.org
• Nader: Obama’s Drone Warfare Violates U.S. and International Law Between The Lines
• Nader: Reining In Obama and His Drones The Nader Page
• The Left Turning on Obama Over Military Policy Town Hall

UPDATED Gaddafi On Way To Venezuela? (No)

February 21, 2011 - The BBC is seems to have put to rest the rumors about the Libyan dictator fleeing to Venezuela. BBC News Africa reports late today that Moammar Gaddafi appeared "on state television" to deny the rumors of his departure. According to BBC, Gaddafi spoke on TV "from outside a ruined building," and said, "I am in Tripoli and not in Venezuela." CNN has posted a video of Gaddafi's television statement. Rumors flew today that Gaddafi was on his way to Venezuela. Deutsche Presse Agentur reported that, for example, according to Newsmax.com. There was much confusion about this. Other news sources, such as Rianovosti, said that rumors of Gaddafi fleeing to Venezuela "were dismissed by Venezuelan diplomats and Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid Kayem." Perhaps Venezuela feels that they already have one too many crazy dictators. But... The Express (UK) reported that "Gaddafi was believed to be on the run last night after fresh bloodshed and violence across Libya." The article goes on to say that he "is believed to have travelled first to his desert hometown before seeking a flight out of the country, possibly to Venezuela. News of his apparent departure came from British Foreign Secretary William Hague who said he had seen information to suggest Gaddafi was on his way" to Venezuela. One thing seems certain: Libya is headed for civil war and Gaddafi's too-long reign is over.

Russians Celebrate Birthday of Mass Murderer Stalin

Imagine, if you will, Germans celebrating Adolf Hitler's birthday by placing thousands of flowers on his grave. Of course, there is no grave for Hitler, and such a display of affection for such a monster would be considered as extremely offensive. Yet, today, in Russia, thousands gathered to celebrate the birthday of a dictator who was far more murderous, and reigned much longer, than Hitler. That would be Josef Stalin, of course. The Edmonton Journal carried this story by AFP today: Russian Communists placed 4,000 red carnations on Stalin's grave beside Kremlin walls Tuesday to celebrate what would have been the Soviet dictator's 131st birthday. Communist supporters raised 80,000 rubles (about $2,600) in a fundraising drive with the slogan "Two carnations for Comrade Stalin," organizer Igor Sergeyev told the Interfax news agency. Carrying a red flag and led by Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, they piled the flowers beside a bust of Stalin that stands on his grave and round its neck. Imagine "Two carnations for Der Fuerher." The AFP story continued... Zyuganov on Tuesday called for the "re-Stalinization" of Russian society in an open letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has frankly criticized the rights abuses of the Soviet era. The leader warned against a draft law, proposed by the presidential council for the development of civil society and human rights, which would ban the glorification of Stalinism. Full article at edmontonjournal.com... "Stalin ruled for almost 30 years," notes Radio New Zealand. "He led Russia to the status of a great power and defeated Germany in World War II. He died in 1953. Stalin was voted Russia's third most popular historical figure in a 2008 nationwide poll." What Radio New Zealand fails to point out, however, is that Russian - then the USSR - became a great power by means of brutal repression of its own people and the sometimes bloody oppression of the eastern half of Europe after WWII. While Russia was certainly an important ally in the fight against Hitler's Germany, Russia alone did not defeat Germany. Stalin was quite happy to maintain the Non-Agression Pact of 1939 with Hitler before he realized. RELATED: Russia Admits Stalin Ordered 1940 Massacre of Poles Wall Street Journal Josef Stalin statue removed from hometown in Georgia The Telegraph UK Film 'The Soviet Story' Reveals The Horror of Communism YouTube The Age of Totalitarianism: Stalin and Hitler HistoryGuide.org Famine and Genocide in Soviet Georgia faminegenocide.com

Obama's Iran Wimplomacy, Shades of Carter

Like Jimmy Carter before him, Barack Obama just doesn't get it. President Carter allowed - yes, allowed - the radical Islamic fundamentalist revolution in Iran to happen in the late 1970's. Then, Carter did nothing to prop up the Shah of Iran. Granted, the Shah was something of a bastard, but as the old saying goes, he was "our bastard." More importantly, the Shah was a far better alternative than the lunatics that replaced him. Now, in 2009, those lunatics and their successors still run Iran with iron fists, more repressive than the Shah ever was. Whereas Carter betrayed the Iranian people by allowing the lunatics in, Obama today has betrayed them by not speaking out soon enough - or with enough resolve - against the barabaric response to the protesters in the streets. About 20 are known to have been killed. Hundreds more have been badly injured, maimed, and imprisoned. Mark LeVine, Middle Eastern historian, wrote this for Al Jazeera: It took more than a week of intensified government repression against protesters in Iran before Barack Obama, the US president, moved from cautious commentary to describing the crackdown as "violent and unjust". LeVine hits Obama's Wimplomacy (my word) with no mercy: Rather than encourage Arab democrats, the Obama administration is improving ties with Libya and returning an ambassador to Syria, where today we are courting Bashar al-Assad as a "key player" in the region, despite his country's abysmal record on human rights and democracy. Obama, like Carter and so many other Democrats, seem to have a knee-jerk fear of offending dictators. They also have an instinctive love of them, such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Mao, and so on. You can walk down any city street and see Che Guevara shirts. It's extremely rare indeed to see anybody wearing a Benito Mussolino shirt. The Left loves dictators. LeVine continued by touching on why it's so important for an American president to do what Obama has not done, which is to give assurance to those longing for democracy: Consider what would happen if, instead of staying on the sidelines in Iran while playing softball with Israel and trying to woo other autocratic regimes into our orbit, Obama could look the Iranian leadership in the eyes and make the same demand of them that he should be making of all the leaders of the region: democratise and grant freedom to the peoples under your control. At least then the brave Iranians risking their lives for democracy, and the long-repressed peoples of the region more broadly, would know that the US stands up for them. While the vast majority of U.S. citizens would love to see true democracy take hold in Iran, the sad fact is that the U.S. has officially not stood up for the Iranian people. The top official to fail in that duty, the one who is symbolically and politically most important, is Barack Obama. At the end of LeVine's column, Al Jazeera added a post script. "The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera," it said. Here's my post script: The views expressed by Mark LeVine are in complete synch with those of Chicago News Bench. Leave a Comment... See Our Online Store Chicago News Bench RSS Feed We're on Twitter...

Iran Protesters Braver Than "Tea Party" Protesters

The whole world loves Obama? Not quite. Iranians, upset back in January by Obama's failure to do anything substantial regarding Gaza, are not exactly fans of Barack Obama. More recently, many Iranians are dissing Obama for his gutless lack of any condemnation of the obvious election fraud there last week. Photos of the Gutless Appeaser were burned in January (click photo for link), others were made to look as though blood was dripping from his lying mouth, and still others were placed on the ground to be trampled upon. Today, hundreds of thousands of Iranian people are risking arrest or even being shot by police as they disobey anti-rally orders as they march through the streets. Most Tea Party protesters, in contrast, won't attend a rally if they can't be assured of a good parking space, a latte for the march and a nice place to grab lunch afterward. In most of the rest of the world, freedom is still thought of as something worth dying for - or at least risking latte deprivation for. Ironically and sadly, too many Americans no longer bother to get out of their easy chairs to stand up for their fundamental rights. Now, I ask you, when will the timid and so-far gutless Tea Party "protesters" start getting serious and doing this? "What?!?" you say, "how can you ask that?!? Are you suggesting that Tea Party protesters burn Obama in effigy?" Damned right I am. Democrats have burned effigies of every Republican president since Lincoln. And remember, folks, dissent is patriotic. Haven't you heard? While some Iranians were chanting "Death to Obama," I would urge people to NOT do that. It's not only illegal and stupid and wrong, it's also what Democrats and leftists have chanted about every Republican president since Lincoln. While I would urge adopting some tactics of the Left, we don't want to become too much like them. And while we're at it, let's ask ourselves why in hell the residents of Cook County haven't yet picked up pitchforks and torches and stormed Cook County offices. "What?!?" you might say, "how can you ask that?!? Are you suggesting that people storm the offices of Cook County government?" Damned straight. After all, the people of Iran are upset about an election being stolen. What the hell do you think Todd Stroger and the iron-fisted tyrants of the Cook County Democrat Party did in 2006? (In case you don't know, let Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica explain it to you in this video. You might want to invest in a pitchfork after watching it.) See Comments... Visit Our Online Store Chicago News Bench RSS Feed Hey! ChiNewsBench is on Twitter

Obama Has Bush "Stench": Hugo Chavez:

Gee, what will progressive nutjob Cindy Sheehan say about this? Or actor-appeaser Danny Glover? Sheehan and Glover, boot lickers of Venezuela's tyrannical leader Hugo Chavez, will have to choose between Barack Obama and their buddy the dictator. Obama has let it be known that he is not happy with the way Chavez disrespects democracy in Venezuela. Well, neither to Sheehan, Glover or a parcel of other Liberals. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday Barack Obama had the "stench" of his predecessor as U.S. president and was at risk of being killed if he tries to change the American "empire." To best illustrate how sick the socialist mind truly is, you need to hear it straight from their own mouths. Chavez demonstrates the collective mental illness with this: "I hope I am wrong, but I believe Obama brings the same stench, to not say another word," Chavez said at a political rally on a historic Venezuelan battlefield. "If Obama as president of the United States does not obey the orders of the empire, they will kill him, like they killed Kennedy, like they killed Martin Luther King, or Lincoln, who freed the blacks and paid with his life." Full Report from Reuters... That's how Hugo Chavez thinks. It's how Cindy Sheehan thinks. It's how some of your neighbors "think." RELATED: FOXNews.com - Hugo Chavez to Finance Danny Glover Movies ... Venezuela's Chávez: the New Hero in the Arab World Venezuela’s Chavez urges tear gas against protests Latin America Looks for a Fresh Start With Obama Subscribe to Chicago News Bench

Canadian Liberals In Disarray

Go figure. Last week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a Conservative, effectively staged a coup by dissolving Parliament. That should have rallied the Liberals, but no. The Liberals are eating their own now, in a cannibalistic frenzy to straighten things up. Jeffrey Jones reports from Toronto: Members of Stephane Dion's Liberal Party and editorials called for his quick ouster after Prime Minister Stephen Harper won a rare suspension of Parliament, allowing his Conservative government to avoid being defeated in a confidence vote. Concerns about Dion's ability to keep leading the Liberals -- and the multiparty coalition formed to defeat the Harper government over its response to the economic crisis -- intensified as Canadians gathered at raucous rallies across the country Saturday in support of both sides in the battle. Full Report from Reuters... RELATED: Bye Bye Canada: Piercing the Democratic Pretense CANADA'S HISTORY OF UNELECTED GOVERNMENTS Stephen Harper - Prime Minister of Canada - Biography... The Harper Dictatorship Harper as Hitler video becomes overnight web hit Canadians let down Liberal Leader Stephane Dion Knives are out for both Harper and Dion: pundits express outrage ...

Obama Supporter Mocks the Mentally Ill

Ah, gad, an email from local lunatic "RogersParkPlace" (RPP). He/she/it is one of those people who feels very brave while anonymously lurking and sniping in the comments of blogs and other web sites. If he/she/it had any testicular virility, he/she/it would use his/her/its real name. But that's a distraction. Let's get to the highly amusing email sent to The Bench today: You are officially no longer a journalist. Your insane rantings about Obama have done nothing but prove you have lost touch with reality, will print anything that anyone tells you and will, with any luck, soon be institutionalized. Will it be your first time in such a facility? You know. For a little rest? Now, let's break it down: "You are officially no longer a journalist," he/she/it wrote. News flash: In the United States, there is no official status for journalists, and RogersParkPlace certainly is in no position to grant or revoke such a status even it existed. As an Obama supporter and a Leftist, RogersParkPlace is comfortable with the notion of an official status for journalists and, by extension I suppose, writers in general. This fits well with the way Obama has been intimidating journalists nationwide. "Your insane rantings about Obama have done nothing but prove you have lost touch with reality, will print anything that anyone tells you..." Well, I printed what you told me. (Hmmm, perhaps I am a little bit crazy.) In fact, I don't publish everything I am told about Obama. I have rejected many "news" stories about Obama because, after checking them out, I found them to be untrue or from less than reliable sources. So, RPP, that is untrue. "...and will, with any luck, soon be institutionalized. Will it be your first time in such a facility? You know. For a little rest?" How kind, how compassionate of RPP, a "Liberal," to wish me such a fate. Gee, RPP, I wouldn't wish that on you, and I'm the mean conservative. You seem to be saying that mental illness is to be shunned, mocked, looked down upon. Now, how does that fit with your Liberal world view? It would, by the way, be my first time, but you seem to imply that people who have been institutionalized are bad in some way. Shame on you. Your view fits in with that of the Soviet Union and other places, where dissenters were locked up in mental institutions. Of course, since you are an Obama supporter and a Leftist, that doesn't surprise me. Thanks for your email, Comrade RogersParkPlace. If Obama wins on Tuesday, will you get a job with his new Department of Politically Correct Thought? Now, enjoy this little video:

SCARY VIDEO: OBAMA'S YOUTH TROOPERS

THIS VIDEO SHOULD SCARE THE CRAP OUTA Y'ALL. It shows 8 or 9 young men marching into a room, chanting in unison about the magikal godlike powers that Barack Obama has, and how he will improve everybody's lives, especially their own. Ever see old Hitler Youth propaganda films? How about Communist Chinese People's Army films, or any other propaganda films from dictators about their youth corps? As the video's info blurb states, "Republicans don't have this kind of thing. Who are the real fascists? This is scary. This was taken at the Urban Community Leadership Academy, a charter school for students in fifth through ninth grades in Kansas City, Mo. The teacher has been suspended as of OCT. 5th, 2008."

Obama Attacking Media, Free Speech

This just gets worse and worse. Like a bad nightmare, we have a presidential candidate working hard to suppress free speech. In this one of many examples, Team Obama lashes out against Chicago's own WGN Radio: DENVER -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is organizing its supporters tonight to confront Tribune-owned WGN radio in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air. "WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers." MORE at The Swamp... I see. But airing the rants of a left-wing hatchet man would be okay, huh? RELATED: LIKE NAZIS: OBAMA'S VICIOUS MEDIA PERSECUTION OBAMA SUPPORTERS SABOTAGING BLOG SITE

LIKE NAZIS: OBAMA'S VICIOUS MEDIA PERSECUTION

UPDATE: OBAMA'S THUGS ARE ALSO ATTACKING WGN RADIO. RELATED: OBAMA SUPPORTERS SABOTAGING BLOG SITE

THIS IS FRIGHTENING. The Obama Campaign is trying have people thrown in prison for a political ad (below). Can you say Soviet Union? Is this what we can expect from an Obama Administration: Gulags, purges, persecutions, paranoia? The Obama Campaign can't handle the truth, and they don't want you too, either. TO WIT: The Barack Obama campaign has resorted to a campaign of intimidation and legal threats to convince television stations and the federal government to force off the air an ad by the American Issues Project detailing the link between Sen. Obama and remorseless domestic terrorist William Ayers.

Furthermore:

The Obama campaign has been contacting stations running American Issues Project's ad in an unsuccessful attempt to compel them to pull the spot. The Obama campaign also sent a letter yesterday to the Department of Justice asking the government to investigate American Issues Project, its officers, board of directors, and donors. With no success on either front, the campaign has begun running its own ad in response. Notably, this ad fails to dispute a single fact in the American Issues Project's initial ad. [SOURCE: MARKETWATCH.COM] Needless to say, there is a lot of coverage of this bizarre behavior in both the big media and the blogosphere. One blog commenter noted: Legal action? Sheesh, it’s not like anyone involved with this ad set off a bomb or anything… well except for the featured pinhead Ayers. [Source: Sister Toldjah] Ed Martin, American Issues Project's president, said, "Having failed in its attempts to get our legal, factual and fully-supported ad off the air, Barack Obama's campaign now wants to put our donors in prison for exercising their right to free speech." [Source: Earth Times] Martin is rightly pissed off. "These over-the-top bullying tactics are reminiscent of the kind of censorship one would see in a Stalinist dictatorship, with the only difference being that those guys generally had to wait until they were in power to throw people who disagreed with them into jail."

Waiting for the Great Stumble Forward

Must-Read: Judgmental Jim

(You can also judge Jim to be mental.)

The Judgmental Spin
by Toni Duncan
Good ole Judgmental Jim! It’s very odd that he chose just one meeting to attend and it just happened to be the meeting where the alderman tried to change the councils pre-planned agenda to suit his agenda. It’s extremely strange that the flyer stating the point and purpose of the meeting sent to the ward office was changed. The prepared communication to the neighborhood by the council was more than ignored. The content of the ward email blast was altered, re-written and re-arranged with the exception of date, time and place. Those three items were left alone! FULL POST at North of Howard Watchers...

Savagery in Africa

Residents of Chicago's 49th Ward know political corruption and horror. But not even Alderman Joe Moore is as bad as Robert Mugabe, strongman of Zimbabwe. This African nation has been a hellhole for decades. It is a basketcase nation on a basketcase continent. The Economist writes today that "Zimbabwe needs its neighbours to help rescue its people from hell." One can only hope that the Zimbabweans don't hold their breath. African nations are not know for helping their neighbors. SINCE Robert Mugabe lost the first round of a presidential election at the end of March to Morgan Tsvangirai, he has stopped at nothing to steal the second round on June 27th.... Several million famished Zimbabweans depend on foreign aid to keep them alive, yet he has banned most foreign agencies from operating around the country, partly to prevent them witnessing the horrors he is inflicting on those he suspects of disloyalty, and partly to use food to coerce people into voting for him. Read this and the related article in The Economist. RELATED (from other sources):

• Zimbabwe activists' bodies found
• Zimbabwe opposition activists killed
• Zimbabwe Political Violence Intensifies As Four More Found Dead
• African rabbi in Britain tells of crisis faced by Zimbabwe Jews
• Intimidation of aid workers in Zimbabwe condemned

Joe Moore's Knot

Alderman Joe "Floppy" Moore got married, and it seems The Bench is the only blog in Chicago's 49th Mental Ward that cares. But bloggers outside the ward care! Funny the New York Times didn't cover the royal wedding. Maybe the next DevCorp North newsletter will give us details of the happy event? Chicago Ald. Joe Moore married today ...I was hoping for an invitation to this fabulous event that my pal Tom Mannis at The Bench disclosed to the world Friday afternoon... Local Axis of Evil Ties the Knot Is Moore tying the knot of respectability to aspire to higher office? Our local axis of evil. I'm all for true love but this is a let them eat cake alliance.

Soo Liquors Not the Problem

The arrogance of Alderman Joe Moore - and the willingness of the Commander Caluris to play along with Moore's dictatorial power trip with Soo Liquors - is disturbing.

Banning cheap small cigars will not curb the use of marijuana or other drugs in the neighborhood any more than the citywide ban on spray paint has stopped graffiti. Banning the local sale of "cheap booze" will not prevent boozers from walking to the next ward to get their fix.

Taken to its logical extreme, Moore's efforts would lead to a dry ward. We Chicagoans tend to laugh at dry counties, don't we? Yes, "those damned Christian fundamentalists, so righteous, always telling us what we can and cannot do."

49th Ward Alderdictator Joe Moore is doing the same thing. One step at a time, Moore and his gang of liberal fascists are curbing the rights of merchants selling completely legal merchandise. That unfairly takes money out of Soo Liquor's hands and only redistributes it to other liquor retailers. Problem not solved, but a business and its employees will suffer.

Soo Liquors is not the problem. The merchandise it sells is not the problem. The problem is the scum that hangs in front of the store, getting drunk and high. The problem is generational, scum raising scum begetting scum. You can ban alcohol in Rogers Park altogether, and problem of fatherless children with no moral guidance will remain. Cocaine, crack, marijuana, meth, and all the rest of it is illegal in Rogers Park, and there is no sign that the usage or sales of it is any less because it is not legal.

Joe Moore's hastily applied Band-Aid of curbing Soo Liquor's sales may give us a temporary psychological sigh of relief. But the wound, decades in the making, still festers. Soo Liquors did not cause the wound, and Soo Liquors did not infect the wound.

The wound was inflicted by the equivalents of Joe Moore, when the Great Society decided to - in effect - reward people for not working, for having more and more children out of wedlock, and to misbehave. Soo Liquors is, at worst, a pinch of salt on the wound. It stings, but that's it. What is really needed is for people like Joe Moore, Jan Schakowsky and the rest of the uber-Liberal crowd to get out of the way and stop coddling the criminals, stop rewarding irresponsible behavior, and face the reality of the consequences of the not so great "Great Society" of the 1960's.

Dictator of the 47th Ward

It is ironically fitting that a chunk of the Berlin Wall now sits in Chicago's 47th Ward. Like the former East Germany, the 47th Ward has a little dictator. The dictator of the 47th Ward is Comrade Alderman Eugene Schulter, Democrat. The dictator of East Germany was Eric Honecker, the First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany from 1971 to 1989. Honecker did not build the Berlin Wall. But he happily enforced it with bullets. For those of you who don't know, the Berlin Wall surrounded West Berlin. It was built by the Soviet Union, which controlled East Germany after Germany was divided at the end of World War Two. Berlin sits in the middle of what was East Germany, and was by treaty a free city and part of the nation of West Germany. That's why the Soviet Communists built the wall. Not to keep West Berliners in, but to keep East Berliners from entering West Berlin - and stepping into freedom. "Okay," you might be saying, "I don't get the connection to Schulter and the 47th Ward." Well, here it is. To build the Berlin Wall, the Communist dictatorship of East Germany used a little device called eminent domain to confiscate businesses and homes along the dividing line, upon which the wall would be built. 47th Ward Alderman Eugene Schulter is currently trying to use eminent domain to force business owners to sell to other, more favored private interests. As in the former East Germany, this is being done against the will of the current owners. Like the former dictators of East Germany and the Soviet Union, Alderman Schulter hates dissent. He threatens to sue journalists. He has shut down bloggers in the 47th Ward. Alderman Schulter is a petty thief, a party hack, and a man not to be fucked with. So The Bench happily reminds residents of the 47th Soviet Socialist Ward that there is now a chunk of the Berlin Wall sitting in the Brown Line Western Avenue station. Go look at it. Touch it. Alderman Schulter can't have you shot for disobeying him. Not yet. But given the history of his tactics to date, he is probably working on a way to do that legally. RELATED: Erich Honecker - Encyclopedia.com Alderman Schulter and Eminent Domain

While You're Snug in Bed Tonight...

...think about this. Presidential candidates in the United States talk about needed change. Yes, we could use some in all quarters. But talk of strife and hard times in the U.S. of A. ain't nuthin' compared with much of the world. To wit, one of Africa's many basket cases, Kenya, where rioting and rotting infrastructure threaten to keep it down, way down. From the Guardian Unlimited: Kenya's president, Mwai Kibaki, appointed half his cabinet minutes before an African Union mediator landed in Nairobi yesterday, enraging the opposition and ending hopes of a swift end to the country's political and social crisis. And you thought Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was a shit. Sure he is, but not like the Professional Shits in Charge in Kenya. There, "more than 500 people have died in violence since Kibaki was declared the winner of the election on December 30. Local and international poll observers said the presidential results were not credible because of large irregularities in the tallying of votes at election headquarters." FULL STORY... Tonight, when you lay your head down on your pillow, say a little prayer of thanks to God that you live in the United States of America.

Chavez, Loser

Hitler won in a similar bid for power. Hugo Chavez, thank God, lost his attempt to become President for Life of Venezuela. Chavez loses "president-for-life" vote CARACAS (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez crashed to an unprecedented vote defeat on Monday as Venezuelans narrowly rejected his bid to run for re-election indefinitely and accelerate his socialist revolution in the OPEC nation.

Two Nuts, Same Sack: Chavez and Kucinich

What do Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and U.S. wanna-be dictator Dennis Kucinich have in common? They both want 16 year old kids to vote, they both favor a heightened state role in the economy, they both love Danny Glover movies, and they're both widely hated in Cleveland. Roman Catholic church leaders and rights groups in Venezuela on Friday denounced sweeping constitutional reforms pushed by President Hugo Chavez as a threat to civil liberties that hand too much power to the state. Chavez's proposed amendments include removing presidential term limits; lowering the voting age to 16; boosting the state role in the economy; and allowing private property while also defining a new concept of social property. More at Breitbart.com... Cleveland.com recalls that recently, during a "nationally televised presidential debate between Democratic presidential candidates last night, Cleveland Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich said he backs a nationwide ban on public smoking, and opined that eighteen-year-olds should be allowed to drink legally, and that sixteen-year-olds should be allowed to vote." Full Story... Hitler and the Taliban both banned smoking, too.