Regarding Tully's, they deserved to go bankrupt (or out of business altogether) long ago. They are easily the worst coffee in Seattle, although Peet's is a close second.

Seriously, we have many great coffee companies here: Seattle's Best Coffee, Lighthouse, Bauhaus, Caffe Vita, and a bunch of others I don't have room to mention. Tulley's sux.

“Staggeringly Ignorant”

That was the description a BBC commentator recently used to describe most Americans’ nonexistent knowledge of their country’s modern history and politics.

How very true.

Per their usual routine every presidential election, NPR interviews Republican voters who spew their nauseating ignorance bespeaking an utter lack of ethics and morality in their personal world views.

A review for the jackholes among us.

During the Eisenhower Administration, democratically-elected governments in Guatemala, Iran and elsewhere, were overthrown with the aid and help of the USA, causing much pain and bloodshed on those populations. (The World Bank, headed by John J. McCloy, also a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, refused loans to Guatemala because that government planned for equitable land reform and wages for its citizenry.)

During the Johnson Administration, American military aid and munitions helped overthrow the democratically-elected government of Brazil, leading to decades of brutal violence, both physical and economic, in that country. The Johnson Administration also ordered the US military occupation of the Dominican Republic.

During the short-lived Kennedy Administration there were only 16,792 advisors in Vietnam, originally sent during the Eisenhower Administration. President Kennedy fought against the advice of his military Joint Chiefs of Staff, and refused to increase the military presence in Southeast Asia, in fact, Kennedy had set in motion, with memos to the State Department and the Pentagon, plans for the full withdrawal of all advisors prior to Kennedy’s reelection campaign, with the first withdrawal planned for the end of November 1963, the month he was assassinated.

President Johnson would completely flip this, dramatically increasing the military presence in Vietnam to half a million troops, along with increasing the US military presence in neighboring countries.

Nixon and his administration continued the march of death in Vietnam, Chile, etc.

Later, the muddle-headed electorate of America would vote in Ronald Reagan, who began an unprecedented era of bloodshed and violence throughout South America, fully utilizing the military’s special operations forces --- not for counterinsurgency activities in pursuit of democracy, the purpose originally envisioned by John F. Kennedy and his administration which was responsible for resuscitating the Army Special Forces (Green Berets) and the creation of the Navy SEALs --- but to spread fear and violence through those lands on behalf of multinational corporations and the local oligarchs.

[This was around the time Romney’s Bain Capital sought financing from the benefactors of El Salvadoran death squads and Monsanto executives.]

Blowback happens, as Bill Clinton learned when China attempted to flood the gangs of California with cheap munitions and firearms during his administration.

Today, America has devolved, through years of militant ignorance, to the point where we are presented with the choice of rightwinger Barack Obama as opposed to the extremely radical rightwinger and criminal deviant, Romney.

Regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, imperialism will again be the winner.

(FYI on that US Supreme Court motivation: Kagan has recused herself so many times, she is consistently ineffective in the most important cases (not surprising, given that as the dean of Harvard’s law school, Kagan only appointed academics who belonged to the most neocon of outfits, the Federalist Society); while Sotomayor’s voting has been dismal.)

Sources:

Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy presidency, by Donald Gibson

Thy Will Be Done, by Gerard Colby with Charlotte Dennett

Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, by David Talbot

The Eagle and the Lion, by James A. Bill
The Yankee and Cowboy War, by Carl Oglesby

Wall Street Capitalism: The Theory of the Bondholding Class, by E. Ray Canterbery

John Kenneth Galbraith, by Richard Parker