Jenius Jots

Economic Fascism

2009-01-06T11:07:00.000-08:00

"Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines fascism as "a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized, autocratic government." This stands in stark contrast to the classical liberal idea that individuals have natural rights that pre-exist government; that government derives its "just powers" only through the consent of the governed; and that the principal function of government is to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of its citizens, not to aggrandize the state...

...The essence of fascism, therefore, is that government should be the master, not the servant, of the people. Think about this. Does anyone in America really believe that this is not what we have now? Are Internal Revenue Service agents really our "servants"? Is compulsory "national service" for young people, which now exists in numerous states and is part of a federally funded program, not a classic example of coercing individuals to serve the state? Isn't the whole idea behind the massive regulation and regimentation of American industry and society the notion that individuals should be forced to behave in ways defined by a small governmental elite? When the nation's premier health-care reformer recently declared that heart bypass surgery on a 92-year-old man was "a waste of resources," wasn't that the epitome of the fascist ideal-that the state, not individuals, should decide whose life is worthwhile, and whose is a "waste"?

The U.S. Constitution was written by individuals who believed in the classical liberal philosophy of individual rights and sought to protect those rights from governmental encroachment. But since the fascist/collectivist philosophy has been so influential, policy reforms over the past half century have all but abolished many of these rights by simply ignoring many of the provisions in the Constitution that were designed to protect them. " (Emphasis Mine.)

And here We have the central discourse of Our time: the confrontation of a growing government "elite" ripping the Constitution to shreds in order to "protect the U.S.", a thinly-veiled variant of "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

With this, I close Jenius Jots. What started as a personal forum to simply point out topics and events I don't cover in Gil The Jenius was quickly deemed a "citizen-journalism" effort by several people whose opinions I deeply respect. Even with that accolade, I have to end the effort, for I believe the effort--this experiment--has run its course.

Through no foresight or prescience of Mine, Jenius Jots has bracketed the most astounding and significant election of My lifetime, possibly of all time, and has seen the most dramatic economic crisis of almost 80 years unleashed as a result of almost two decades of unfettered greed. And it currently stands athwart a Middle East crisis that proves that no country, no religion, no group of people holds a monopoly on truth and righteousness.

Like many other blogs, this one disappears quietly, the narrow window of time it covered growing narrower with each passing day. But it remains as a record of observation and opinion, of choice and attention, of thoughtful time invested to tap you on the shoulder and say "Have you seen this?"

May you see much more.

Home schooling grows - USATODAY.com

2009-01-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

"The ranks of America's home-schooled children have continued a steady climb over the past five years, and new research suggests broader reasons for the appeal.

The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million in 2007, up 74% from when the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics started keeping track in 1999, and up 36% since 2003. The percentage of the school-age population that was home-schooled increased from 2.2% in 2003 to 2.9% in 2007. 'There's no reason to believe it would not keep going up,' says Gail Mulligan, a statistician at the center."

Okay, but despite USA Today's take on the subject, according to parenting/education blog Just Enough and Nothing More, when it comes the rise of home-schooling, the media doesn't care.

Could be both. Home-schooled kids number almost 2 million, close to the number of prisoners in U.S. of part of A. jails, and We know what kind of money that population moves. It's been proven time and again that home-schooled kids do better in practically every measure of academic evaluations, so the growth in their numbers bodes well for the future of the country.

So if the mainstream media ignores it, does that matter? Seems to me it's far worse that state and national government agencies are making it more difficult to home-school, in which case, mainstream media silence is a problem.

Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

2009-01-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

An Open Letter to the 111th Congress

"You'll continue to act quickly on things that should be acted on slowly, and you'll act slowly on things that should be acted on quickly. You'll insult our intelligence, waste our money (or, rather, waste our grandchildren's money since you spent ours and our kids' long ago), give plenty of face time to the rich and powerful, and collapse at the mere hint of a filibuster threat.

I know you want me to believe you'll do things differently, but that's like Lucy promising Charlie Brown that she won't pull the football away---for real this time. Uh huh. George Bush may be the worst president ever, but at least he was right when he stammered, "Fool me once shame on you. Fool me...can't get fooled again."

I know I'm being a tad negative, but can you blame me? You authorized the Iraq war, legalized warrantless wiretapping to make Bush's illegal wiretapping retroactively legal (that was a neat backflip), agreed that habeas corpus was disposable, wasted floor time condemning MoveOn.org for exercising its freedom of speech, took impeachment off the table, failed to notice the collapsing economy, and wouldn’t even allow the government to use its power to negotiate lower drug prices. You failed us and failed us and failed us. Collectively you're a bunch of irresponsible opportunistic whiny ether-sniffing assface sissypants bedwetters until such time that you prove through your deeds that you're not."

20 Forgotten Bush Scandals - The Daily Beast

2009-01-06T10:38:00.000-08:00

It's like a laundry list of hellacious times, a 20-item list that could have been longer, all under the mantle of "forgotten", simply because the murderous moron was so very disgustingly incompetent, if not downright evil.

Israel Commiting a War Crime in Gaza - allvoices.com

2009-01-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

"This war has caused a humanitarian crisis of the order not seen since Milosovic-led Serbians killed and maimed thousands of Bosnians in the 1990s. It is no different from Saddam Hussein bombing Kurds in Northern Iraq. Heck, it is no different from Darfur where Africans are being singled out and killed due to their ethnicity and religion. Will the world stand up and charge the Israeli Prime Minister with War Crimes in Gaza? Will we, as citizens of the world, have the strength to take him to International Court of Justice and make him pay for his actions against helpless and powerless Gaza citizens?"

Statment Of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) On The DHS Fiscal Year 2009 Budget

2009-01-06T10:14:00.000-08:00

"It’s interesting - I went through one of those symbolic checkpoints in the state of New York driving back here. It was about 125 miles from the border. In a car with license plate one on it from Vermont. With little letters underneath it that said US Senate. We were stopped and ordered to get out of the car and prove my citizenship. And I said “what authority are you acting under?” and one of your agents pointed to his gun and said “that’s all the authority I need.” Encouraging way to enter our country." (Emphasis Mine.)

Op-Ed Contributors - The End of the Financial World as We Know It - NYTimes.com

2009-01-05T11:14:00.000-08:00

"OUR financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this in today’s financial markets is immense. Obviously the greater the market pressure to excel in the short term, the greater the need for pressure from outside the market to consider the longer term. But that’s the problem: there is no longer any serious pressure from outside the market. The tyranny of the short term has extended itself with frightening ease into the entities that were meant to, one way or another, discipline Wall Street, and force it to consider its enlightened self-interest." (Emphasis Mine.)

I've long used a mantra to keep entrepreneurs from making huge mistakes: Avoid short-term gain that leads to long-term loss. But to do that, you have to be willing to look at the long-term options and consequences, so that your short-term decision is based on enhancing the long-term, not sabotaging it.

Our financial system took away long-term oversight in favor of "improved" short-term analysis, something akin to blackening the windshield while fiddling with the speedometer. Are We doomed? Here's the answer...and it is not pessimistic. An example that is well within reach (now):

"THIS could be fixed. Congress might grant qualifying homeowners the ability to get new government loans based on the current appraised values without requiring their bank’s consent. When a corporation gets into trouble, its lenders often accept a partial payment in return for some share in any future recovery. Similarly, homeowners should be permitted to satisfy current first mortgages with a combination of the proceeds of the new government loan and a share in any future recovery from the future sale or refinancing of their homes. Lenders who issued second mortgages should be forced to release their claims on property. The important point is that homeowners, not lenders, be granted the right to obtain new government loans. To work, the program needs to be universal and should not require homeowners to file for bankruptcy." (Emphasis Mine.)

1000

2009 Could Be Better Than You Think - WSJ.com

2009-01-05T11:06:00.000-08:00

It can be hard to raise your head above the rising waters of a drowning economy and the chaos of misguided, misinformed and miserable media, but here's an article well worth perusing. Remember that the greatest periods of average individual economic growth have happened in the decades after severe economic downturns.

Keep a level head and a keen eye: opportunities abound and while others are whining, wailing and winging it, you can find a solid future in the turbulent present.

Daily Kos: The I/P Conflict is Simpler than You Think [UPDATED]

2009-01-05T10:55:00.000-08:00

"The fundamental fact is that Palestinians are under the military domination of Israel. You can trace the history of this conflict back dozens--or, for that matter, thousands--of years, you can weigh competing historical claims to the land, you can try to figure out who was responsible for the failure of Oslo, but you will eventually arrive at this fact, and this fact should, if you're some kind of liberal, shape your position.

In the West Bank Israel's armed domination takes the form of an occupation, under which soldiers control the movement of Palestinians, seize their homes, and sporadically bombard them in the name of fighting militants. You know: an occupation. In Gaza the form of domination for the last couple of years has been a blockade that has reduced the area to, as Amnesty International put it, 'bare survival.' I'm sure some Gazans would prefer an outright occupation, what with the denial of lifesaving medical care and children eating grass. And that was before the latest attacks, which have killed hundreds...

...Yet obviously, if you're a progressive, the fact of Israel's military domination of the Palestinians has to dictate your moral math. It's the responsibility of the occupier to stop occupying. Or if you prefer, people have to the right to live free from military domination. If you're a progressive, a believer in universal human rights and international law, you likely accept these precepts. You should. In demanding self-determination, Palestinians are not relying on archaic or secondary principles. As Edward Said put it:

This Palestinian insistence is no unique, decontextualized aberration; it is fully supported by every international legal and moral covenant known to the modern world." (Emphasis Mine.)

It seems that, like religion, military domination depends on who's doing what to whom, for if it's "Our guy" doing it to them (the Crusades, Iraqi War, Gaza Strip), it's right, but if it's "Their guy" doing it (take your pick), well that's just damn wrong.

Here's the proper perspective: It doesn't matter who does it to whom; it's always--unfailingly--wrong.

Worldwide Sawdust:: It's Not Too Late: Demand Obama Investigate Bush's War Crimes

2009-01-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

Go to Change.gov and click "Additional Issues" and check the top question to make prosecution of the murderous moron and his hyena cabal's war crimes at least a discussion-level priority in the coming Administration. Please, do it now. Thank you.

The Raw Story | Cheney: Bush's actions legal if not impeached

2009-01-05T10:45:00.000-08:00

"If you don't get punished, you didn't go anything wrong, right?

That's the message Vice President Dick Cheney gave in an interview with CBS' Bob Schieffer on Sunday, suggesting that a president's actions are legal if those actions didn't result in his impeachment.

Asked by Schieffer if he believed that anything the president does in time of war is legal, Cheney said there is 'historic precedent of taking action that you wouldn't take in peacetime.'"

Let's take this hyena's argument at face value. If an illegal action (or more than one) is taken and not prosecuted to resolution (dismissal or punishment), the action remains illegal (against the law), but its consequences--what the law needs to be and remain enforced--are nullified; therefore the law is also nullified. I could be splitting hairs here, but isn't a nullified law the same as acceptance of the once-illegal action(s) as legal, if only in the sense that no prosecution and/or punishment are to be attached to them?

So no, Dick, if you don't get punished, it's not that you "didn't do anything wrong": you most certainly did. What it does mean is that the will and integrity needed to enforce the law and punish your skanky-whore ass opted to pass rather than act. And that makes two wrongs, which We know--or should know--never make a right.

Probe Leads Richardson to Abandon Cabinet Bid - WSJ.com

2009-01-05T10:35:00.000-08:00

"The governor has said he is not guilty of any wrongdoing. But a source close to him said there was too much uncertainty about the investigation to go before potentially hostile Republican senators in upcoming confirmation hearings.

A federal grand jury is investigating how CDR Financial Products of Beverly Hills, Calif., won more than $1.5 million in work advising the state of New Mexico and its state bond operations after making contributions to two of Mr. Richardson's political action committees. The "pay to play" investigation seeks to determine whether the governor's office had any role in the contracting decisions."

Though honorable, it makes one wonder, seeing as how We're so used to filthy politicians clinging like smelly barnacles while screeching their (lost) innocence. And it is definitely the first major snag of the President-elect's run-up to the White House.

Igniting Change: The Future of the U.S.

2009-01-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

Pop!Casts

"No U.S. President has died under the same flag he was born under."

Will President-elect Obama be the first?

Could be he won't...

If Americans Knew - What every American needs to know about Israel/Palestine

2009-01-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

Statistics can lie; they often do. But sometimes the numbers have a truth that no one can deny. Read these and judge for yourself.

Then there are these, on the Iraqi civilian casualty count of the war damn lies built.

Chrysler gets $4 billion U.S. government loan | Reuters

2009-01-04T12:59:00.000-08:00

So "American" cars run on taxpayer money now, huh? I wonder what kind of crappy mileage numbers We'll get out of that...

THE MAPS TELL THE TRUE STORY

2009-01-04T12:56:00.000-08:00

What Really Happened.com

"How does a defensive action result in the total conquest of someone else's lands? The answer is that it does not. Israel is the aggressor. The maps of Israel then and now prove it. "

Just take a look at the changing maps of the last 60+ years. Then tell Me who the victim is.

Op-Ed Columnist - A President Forgotten but Not Gone - NYTimes.com

2009-01-04T12:54:00.000-08:00

Might I add, not gone soon enough?

"Another, far more elaborate example of legacy spin can be downloaded from the White House Web site: a booklet recounting “highlights” of the administration’s “accomplishments and results.” With big type, much white space, children’s-book-like trivia boxes titled “Did You Know?” and lots of color photos of the Bushes posing with blacks and troops, its 52 pages require a reading level closer to “My Pet Goat” than “The Stranger.”

This document is the literary correlative to “Mission Accomplished.” Bush kept America safe (provided his presidency began Sept. 12, 2001). He gave America record economic growth (provided his presidency ended December 2007). He vanquished all the leading Qaeda terrorists (if you don’t count the leaders bin Laden and al-Zawahri). He gave Afghanistan a thriving “market economy” (if you count its skyrocketing opium trade) and a “democratically elected president” (presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt governments). He supported elections in Pakistan (after propping up Pervez Musharraf past the point of no return). He “led the world in providing food aid and natural disaster relief” (if you leave out Brownie and Katrina).

If this is the best case that even Bush and his handlers can make for his achievements, you wonder why they bothered. Desperate for padding, they devote four risible pages to portraying our dear leader as a zealous environmentalist."

OpEdNews: The Sarah Palin-Like Presidency

2009-01-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

"In a recent article in Newsweek (excerpt posted below) top aides report that Bush was doomed with the American public after Katrina. But Bush handled Katrina the same way he did everything while President, displaying a total lack of care for people and a genuine disinterest in them and their situations. But unfortunately Bush is what passed as compassionate conservatism to the American people.

So just as Sarah Palin ignited much of the conservative base in this last election. Bush had previously ignited that same base by displaying the same characteristics that the Republican conservatives find so appealing. A leader that appeals to this base, like Bush and Palin, must display an alarming lack of intellectual curiosity, understanding, and creativity to go with an extreme lack of empathy or compassion. Unfortunately what the conservative base, and ultimately a great many of the American people, find so appealing contributed to a terrible catastrophe on the Gulf Coast. It has also contributed to our present economic Katrina.

In the future, the American people, for their own protection, should demand leaders that have genuine feelings for people while also displaying an intellectual capacity." (Emphasis Mine.)

Toward a Greater Separation of Power

2009-01-03T20:12:00.000-08:00

Nolan Chart.com:

"I propose that, instead of three branches of government, we adopt three (or more) completely independent and non-territorial governments. I make this proposal because it is not the concept of checks and balances that has failed, but the inadequacy of the particular system in place that is the source of our problems. I know this is a radical proposal, but no more radical than the constitutional republic that we live under now was when it was first proposed. A radical solution is called for because, in my opinion, attempts at incremental reforms have been no more effective than efforts to liberalize the mafia or the Ku Klux Klan would be. It is simply not in the nature of a territorial or monopoly state to relinquish its power or operate in a non-coercive fashion."

Not a good idea. As Ayn Rand pointed out in the 60s (yes, I'm quoting Rand: she wasn't totally loony), what do you get with "competing governments," which is what happens when you have governments seeking to increase their power base, i.e., population and commerce.

The Raw Story | Mukasey's recommendation of exec privilege to hide Cheney transcript revealed

2009-01-03T19:37:00.000-08:00

"The seven-page letter (pdf), dated July 15, argues that disclosure of such records would hinder future presidents' ability to receive guidance from their advisers because Cheney's conversations detailed internal White House deliberations. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested the transcripts along with other documents related to its investigation into the leak of former CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

A bipartisan committee report has already determined the claim was inappropriate, and a separate report (pdf), that the committee has delayed voting on recommends holding Mukasey in contempt of Congress. It's unclear if the committee will ever vote on that report; a spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday."

The time has come: Can Barack Obama really make a difference? - Americas, World - The Independent

2009-01-03T19:10:00.000-08:00

"Never, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, have so many invested so much hope in a single individual. Except that the object of their fixation is not a proven titan like Churchill. Barack Obama's career on the national political stage began barely four years ago. He has run nothing of note, except an admittedly brilliantly conducted campaign for the White House.

Now he must run everything. He will be ultimately responsible for a federal budget of three trillion dollars. He will lead the mightiest military on earth. Most important of all, he will be in charge of his country's government, at a moment when Americans look more intensely to government for solutions than at any time since the Great Depression.

This huge outpouring of hope moreover ignores a paradox. In 1945, the US stood at the pinnacle of its power. The Red Army might have been about to conquer Berlin, but America was far and away the wealthiest country on earth. It could create, and to all intents and purposes impose, a new global financial system. Singlehanded, it could promote international economic recovery, as it did with the Marshall Plan in a Western Europe that might otherwise have fallen under Communist control.

Six decades later, the biggest creditor nation on earth has turned into the world's biggest debtor. In a globalised age, the US is one economic power centre among several. The slump of 2008 may have started there, but the key to ending it is to be found in Beijing, Delhi and Brussels as well. Yet for now these inconvenient truths are forgotten in the euphoria over Obama. Can he do it? The deafening chant echoes back: Yes He Can."

BBC NEWS | Americas | Cuba offers direct talks with US

2009-01-03T18:59:00.000-08:00

"Speaking on state TV on Friday, President Castro repeated his previous assertions that Havana was ready for direct talks with the US 'without intermediaries, directly'.

'But we are in no rush, we are not desperate,' he stressed.

Mr Castro said Mr Obama, who is due to take office on 20 January, could 'do a great deal, could take positive steps'."

I predicted over in Gil The Jenius that Raúl, the semi-retard kid brother of Fidel, would feel the shoes he has to fill to be way too big. If he felt he could have filled them, he would have waited for Obama to make the first move. Mark My words: If Fidel croaks before the first formal meeting is set, Raúl will damn near fly to Washington on the first flight out of Havana.

Op-Ed Contributors - Four Ways for Detroit to Save Itself - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com

2009-01-03T18:50:00.000-08:00

Technology to the rescue? From an industry that very selectively chose technology to "boost" its position...and ended up bankrupt?

Brian Eno: Stealing Gaza

2009-01-02T17:10:00.000-08:00

Counterpunch.com

"The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every chance to allow that to happen. It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements. While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into which they are descending.

Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?

Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now 'under attack' you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation.

And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland."

Would They Be Planning to Use Troops Against Americans If They WEREN'T Stealing Our Money?

2009-01-02T15:15:00.000-08:00

Alex Jones' Infowars.com:

Here's the complete post (minus hyperlinks on every "this"):

"Political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso Charles Boehmer points out that “The military was not called out during the Great Depression….”

So why is the military planning on how to crush civil protest in regards to the current economic crisis (see this, this, this, this, this and this)?

Is it because the theft - via “bailouts” and other hanky-panky by Treasury, the Fed and others - of hard-earned taxpayer wealth isso obvious that the military expects Americans to revolt?

The other potential explanation is that the military has been told that this financial crisis could be much, much worse than the Great Depression.

So which is it? The obviousness of the theft or the severity of the crisis?

My guess . . . both."

Israel kills Hamas leader and his family with one-tonne bomb - World news, News - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

2009-01-02T10:23:00.000-08:00

"Medics say a total of 13 members of Rayyan's family were killed by the airstrike on the residential neighbourhood."

Bomb. Residential neighborhood. Thirteen dead. That's usually called terrorism.

"At least 420 people have been killed and 2,100 injured since Israel's aerial bombardment of the Gaza strip began six days ago."

Where is the army the Israeli Defense Forces are supposedly facing on "the battlefield"? How many enemy soldiers have been killed by this six-day foray into military tyranny? Is an overwhelming army in numbers and weapons bombing a house to kill 12 "collateral casualties" an act of bravery and legitimate defense, or is it a craven cowardly attempt to instill terror... the act of a terrorist?

The Worst Predictions About 2008 - BusinessWeek

2009-01-02T10:13:00.000-08:00

Worth looking at if only to note how utterly wrong some of these "experts" can be. (Note that the murderous moron of the Oval Orifice is included in the list, but he is not an expert on anything except failure, ducking responsibility and cronyism.)

Rootless Cosmopolitan - By Tony Karon: Understanding Gaza

2009-01-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

"Well, actually, as Avrum Burg has said so eloquently in his new book The Holocaust is Over, We Must Rise from its Ashes, it is precisely because of the Holocaust experience and the universal message of “Never Again” that the West today is engaged with human rights abuses everywhere, no matter who the victim and perpetrator — even when the perpetrators are Jewish." (Emphasis Mine.)

To allow the evil of something like the Holocaust to be perpetrated again is unacceptable, and at the risk of repeating Myself, no matter who the perpetrator is, whether a rapacious dictator like Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein or the Israeli Defense Forces.

The Iraq War Is Now Illegal - The Daily Beast

2009-01-02T10:04:00.000-08:00

"Bush allowed the UN mandate to expire on December 31 without requesting a renewal. At precisely one second after midnight, Congress’ authorization of the war expired along with this mandate.

Bush is trying to fill the legal vacuum with the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) he signed with the Iraqis. But the president’s agreement is unconstitutional, since it lacks the approval of Congress. Bush even refused to allow Congress access to the terms of the deal. By contrast, Prime Minister al-Maliki followed his constitution and submitted the agreement for parliamentary approval. While the Iraqi parliament debated its terms, leading members of Congress were obliged to obtain unofficial English translations of texts published by the Arab press...

...Indeed, it (the SOFA) goes far beyond any sensible interpretation of the president’s power as commander in chief. For example, the SOFA creates a joint US-Iraq committee and gives it, not the president, broad control over the use of American combat troops. It thereby asserts the authority to restrict President Obama’s powers as commander in chief throughout most of his first term in office. But under the Constitution, no president can unilaterally limit his successor’s authority over the military." (Emphasis Mine.)

Yes, you read that right: U.S. of part of A. troops under foreign command, while ostensibly on a U.S.-based mission. The murderous moron and his hyena cabal are up to their old tricks. Why he hasn't been taken out by public outrage is beyond Me.

Imprisoning Our Own: 8 Shocking Facts about American Incarceration | EcoSalon - The Green Gathering

2009-01-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

"For being the most prosperous country in the world, education spending in the United States ranks a paltry #38 in the entire world, lagging far behind Jamaica, Denmark and Cuba…which holds the top spot. Yes, Cuba."

Oh, and the prison system? It sucks, too. Here's why:

"You can bet someone is making money off of this: our government contracts management of prisons to private corporations. Corporations need to turn a profit, and the more prisoners they have, the more money they’ll get. It’s big business."

Think Progress---2008: Bush’s Last Year By The Numbers

2009-01-01T17:38:00.000-08:00

– Number Of U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq: 322.
– Number Of U.S. Troops Killed in Afghanistan: 151.
– Number Of Jobs Lost: 1.9 million.
– Number Of Banks Federal Government Now Owns Stock In: 206.
– Number Of Uninsured Americans: 47.5 million.
– Change In Housing Prices: declined 18 percent.
– Change In Health Insurance Premiums: increased 5 percent.
– Change In Number Of Delinquent Mortgages: increased 75 percent. (75%!)
– Change In Use Of Food Stamps: increased 17 percent.
– Change In Dow Jones Industrial Average: declined 35 percent.
– Change In Bush Approval Rating: declined 9 percent to 29 percent. (Emphasis Mine.)

How the hell can 29% of the people polled still support the murderous moron? Is there some way We can immediately euthanize them, or the murderous moron?

Top 12 Political Blunders of 2008 | Politicususa

2009-01-01T17:31:00.000-08:00

Do you want to elicit a 2008 guffaw of mocking glee in 2031? Just say "Palin."

Guantánamo: a hellhole where torture scandals shook the world’s trust in US justice - Times Online

2009-01-01T17:26:00.000-08:00

"Today, as the Bush Administration and the incoming Obama team join forces to try to persuade Britain and its European allies to help to close Guantánamo, it seems fair to conclude that the facility has been a disaster for President Bush and America. The very mention of its name has become shorthand for all the extrajudicial excesses, mistakes and torture scandals that have so sullied America’s once cherished reputation as a beacon of freedom and justice.

Opening the facility seemed a justified move to many Americans in the early days of the War on Terror. But the Bush Administration was creating a monster that has eroded America’s moral authority, and a prison full of foreigners – many of whom have been cleared for release but have nowhere to go."

Military intelligence... Postal service... U.S. justice... Oxymorons all, with emphasis on "morons"...

Images - In Pictures: Massacre of Gazan Children

2009-01-01T12:52:00.000-08:00

AllVoices.com

Does it matter who uses military personnel and might to indiscriminately kill unarmed civilians? Does it make it right when A does it to B? When a terrorist bombs a school? Or when Israeli troops blast parts of the Ghaza Strip?

Why Wall Street Always Blows It - The Atlantic (December 2008)

2008-12-31T19:31:00.000-08:00

Plenty of blame to go around and don't think it doesn't touch you 'cuz it does...

21 Dumbest Moments in Business 2008 -- FORTUNE

2008-12-31T19:26:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's one of those "click for a new page" deals that some sites use to pad their numbers, but here's a summary of the awful that's worth a few cringe-inducing, chuckle-releasing minutes.

All Spin Zone -- Alberto Gonzales Can’t Find a Job, Whines

2008-12-31T19:17:00.000-08:00

Seeing as how it is the holiday season and all, I'll limit Myself to a bland "Fuck you, Alberto."

Religion may have evolved because of its ability to help people exercise self-control | Science Codex

2008-12-31T15:18:00.000-08:00

Religion may have evolved because of its ability to help people exercise self-control | Science Codex:

"Self-control is critical for success in life, and a new study by University of Miami professor of Psychology Michael McCullough finds that religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts. These findings imply that religious people may be better at pursuing and achieving long-term goals that are important to them and their religious groups. This, in turn, might help explain why religious people tend to have lower rates of substance abuse, better school achievement, less delinquency, better health behaviors, less depression, and longer lives."

Cornell Chronicle: Pocket-sized therapeutic ultrasound device

2008-12-31T15:16:00.000-08:00

Cornell Chronicle: Pocket-sized therapeutic ultrasound device:

"Ultrasound is commonly used as a nondestructive imaging technique in medical settings. Sound waves, inaudible to humans, can generate images through soft tissue, allowing, for instance, a pregnant woman to view images of her baby. But the higher-energy ultrasound that Lewis works with can treat such conditions as prostate tumors or kidney stones by breaking them up. His devices also can relieve arthritis pressure and even help treat brain cancer by pushing drugs quickly through the brain following surgery.

(Inventor George K.) Lewis suggests that his technology could lead to such innovations as cell phone-size devices that military medics could carry to cauterize bleeding wounds, or dental machines to enable the body to instantly absorb locally injected anesthetic.

Lewis miniaturized the ultrasound device by increasing its efficiency. Traditional devices apply 500-volt signals across a transducer to convert the voltage to sound waves, but in the process, about half the energy is lost. In the laboratory, Lewis has devised a way to transfer 95 percent of the source energy to the transducer."

Miniaturized medical devices for greater effectiveness and efficiency in health care... We may be on the verge of a revolution of unheralded proportions for Our world's population.

Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption - The New York Review of Books

2008-12-30T20:57:00.000-08:00

"Perhaps the most egregious case exposed so far by Senator Grassley is that of Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, chair of Emory University's department of psychiatry and, along with Schatzberg, coeditor of the influential Textbook of Psychopharmacology.[2] Nemeroff was the principal investigator on a five-year $3.95 million National Institute of Mental Health grant—of which $1.35 million went to Emory for overhead—to study several drugs made by GlaxoSmithKline. To comply with university and government regulations, he was required to disclose to Emory income from GlaxoSmithKline, and Emory was required to report amounts over $10,000 per year to the National Institutes of Health, along with assurances that the conflict of interest would be managed or eliminated.

But according to Senator Grassley, who compared Emory's records with those from the company, Nemeroff failed to disclose approximately $500,000 he received from GlaxoSmithKline for giving dozens of talks promoting the company's drugs. In June 2004, a year into the grant, Emory conducted its own investigation of Nemeroff's activities, and found multiple violations of its policies. Nemeroff responded by assuring Emory in a memorandum, "In view of the NIMH/Emory/GSK grant, I shall limit my consulting to GSK to under $10,000/year and I have informed GSK of this policy." Yet that same year, he received $171,031 from the company, while he reported to Emory just $9,999—a dollar shy of the $10,000 threshold for reporting to the National Institutes of Health."

Comparing the Great Depression With the Crisis of 2008 - InformedTrades

2008-12-30T20:50:00.000-08:00

Comparing the Great Depression With the Crisis of 2008 - InformedTrades

No snip; just go read it. It'll take about 4 minutes and leave you wondering about what happened then and what will happen now.

Cheney's Legacy of Deception

2008-12-30T20:45:00.000-08:00

The Nation.com

"That lame-duck Cheney was bellowing his claim of innocence in a series of friendly interviews should have been expected. For he, like the president he served, can use the self-proclaimed "global war on terror" as a convenient cover for eight years of treachery on all fronts: "If you think about what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War, what FDR did during World War II; they went far beyond anything we've done in a global war on terror."

Actually, neither of those presidents authorized the waterboarding of prisoners or the other explicit acts of torture approved by this administration largely under the vice president's direction. But the true absurdity of Cheney's self-defense is in placing the nebulous war on terror at the same level of threat as the civil war that tore apart this country or the Nazi military machine that rumbled unstoppable across most of Europe, augmented by the military might of Japan.

The invocation of a "global war on terror" is a big-lie propaganda device that has no grounding in reality. The proof that "terrorism" does not exist as an enemy identifiable by commonality of structure, purpose and leadership comparable to the World War II Axis or the Confederacy can be found in its use as a target to justify the invasion of Iraq. An invasion billed as a response to the 9/11 attacks, which had nothing to do with Iraq.

The Bush administration, with Cheney in the lead, did not so much fight the danger of terrorism as exploit it for partisan political purpose. The record is quite clear that the administration was asleep at the switch before 9/11, blithely ignoring stark warnings of an impending attack. But the hoary warmongering after 9/11 afforded a convenient distraction from the economic problems at home. As I asked in a column on June 26, 2002: 'Has the war on terrorism become the modern equivalent of the Roman circus, drawing the people's attention away from the failures of those who rule them? Corporate America is a shambles because deregulation, the mantra of our president and his party, has proved to be a license to steal.'"

Emptywheel: Turnabout Would Be Fair Play: US Seeks 147 Year Torture Sentence

2008-12-30T20:40:00.000-08:00

"U.S. prosecutors want a Miami judge to sentence the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor to 147 years in prison for torturing people when he was chief of a brutal paramilitary unit during his father's reign.
...
A recent Justice Department court filing describes torture — which the U.S. has been accused of in the war on terror — as a "flagrant and pernicious abuse of power and authority" that warrants severe punishment of Taylor.

'It undermines respect for and trust in authority, government and a rule of law," wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Caroline Heck Miller in last week's filing. "The gravity of the offense of torture is beyond dispute.'"

Ha.

No, really: Ha. For torture the moron should get more than 147 years. And so should Taylor fils.

The Existentialist Cowboy: The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism

2008-12-30T07:21:00.000-08:00

"In a 'manual' which is officially to be released only to 'students from foreign countries on a case-by-case basis only', the US Army outlines a program of what it now calls 'irregular warfare', in fact US state sponsored terrorism, insurgency, and PSYOPS.

1-21. Waging protracted IW depends on building global capability and capacity. IW will not be won by the United States alone but rather through combined efforts with multinational partners. Combined IW [Irregular Warfare, euphemism for TERRORISM] will require the joint force to establish a long-term sustained presence in numerous countries to build partner capability and capacity. This capability and capacity extends U.S. operational reach, multiplies forces available, and provides increased options for defeating adversaries. The constituent activities of IW are:

* Insurgency.
* COIN. (counterinsurgency)
* UW. (unconventional warfare)
* Terrorism
* CT. (counterterrorism)
* FID. (foreign internal defense)
* Stability, security, transition, and reconstruction (SSTR) operations.
* Strategic communication (SC).
* PSYOP. (psychological operations)
* Civil-military operations (CMO).
* Information operations (IO).
* Intelligence and counterintelligence (CI) activities.
* Transnational criminal activities, including narco-trafficking, illicit arms dealing, and illegal financial transactions that support or sustain IW.
* Law enforcement activities focused on countering irregular adversaries.

1-22. The above list of operations and activities can be conducted within IW;
...
--Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare, September 2008[PDF]" (Some Emphasis Mine.)

Read this list carefully. It defines what the U.S. of part of A. armed forces are now engaging in and will engage in to "fight" terrorism. With terrorism. With crime. With extensive violations of domestic and international law and open disregard for a foreign nation's sovereignty.

Is this the operations manual of a democratic country that purportedly stands for a moral and political high ground? Or is this the guidebook of a rogue state?

The U.S. of part of A. spends more on its military than the next 15 countries combined. What does that kind of money and a rogue state combined mean?

The Noose Tightens | Newsweek.com

2008-12-29T19:29:00.000-08:00

"But for those interested in tougher sanctions, one other possibility looms. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of 'The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld,' points out that over 20 countries now have universal jurisdiction laws that would allow them to indict U.S. officials for torture if America doesn't do it itself. A few such cases were attempted in recent years but were dropped, reportedly under U.S. pressure. Now the Obama administration may be less likely to stand in their way. This doesn't mean it will extradite Cheney and Co. to stand trial abroad. But at the very least, the threat of such suits could soon force Bush aides to think twice before buying plane tickets. 'The world is getting smaller for these guys,' says Ratner, 'and they'll have to check with their lawyers very carefully before they travel.' Jail time it isn't—but it may be some justice nonetheless."

Here's an idea for President-elect Obama: Send those 20 or so countries tons of foreign aid money (it's not like We give a damn about debt, do We?) and let them do Our dirty work for Us.

It's not like you're really going to do anything right about this, eh, Mr. President-elect? Why don't you surprise Me, okay?

Ex-aides say Bush never recovered from Katrina

2008-12-29T19:24:00.000-08:00

News.AOL.com:

"Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster.

'Katrina to me was the tipping point,' said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. 'The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter.'

Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: 'Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin.'"

Oh, and Let's not forget the thousands upon thousands of people who lost their homes, their livelihoods and some of them even their lives during Katrina. Okay?

The Raw Story | Report: Military may have to quell domestic violence from economic collapse

2008-12-29T19:08:00.000-08:00

"Deepening economic strife in the US could lead to civil unrest and violence that would require military intervention, warns a new report from the US Army War College.

'Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,' writes Nathan Freier, a 20-year Army veteran and visiting professor at the college.

A copy of the 44-page report, 'Known Unknowns: Unconventional 'Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development,' can be downloaded here. Freier notes that his report expresses only his own views and does not represent US policy, but it's certain that his recommendations have come before at least some Defense Department officials."

Have you noticed how the tone of the story has changed, from a sense of "WTF?" to "Here's a topic for discussion."

Here's My response: This is wrong, very wrong and absolutely wrong. There is NO justification for prepping and implementing a military force within U.S. soil to serve as a watchdog, an armed-to-the-teeth watchdog, whose sole purpose is to impose the government's will--it's will--on the people.

Webb Sets His Sights On Prison Reform

2008-12-29T19:06:00.000-08:00

Washington Post.com:

"In speeches and in a book that devotes a chapter to prison issues, (Senator James) Webb describes a U.S. prison system that is deeply flawed in how it targets, punishes and releases those identified as criminals.

With 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States has imprisoned a higher percentage of its population than any other nation, according to the Pew Center on the States and other groups. Although the United States has only 5 percent of the world's population, it has 25 percent of its prison population, Webb says.

A disproportionate number of those who are incarcerated are black, Webb notes. African Americans make up 13 percent of the population, but they comprise more than half of all prison inmates, compared with one-third two decades ago. Today, Webb says, a black man without a high school diploma has a 60 percent chance of going to prison." (Emphasis Mine.)

Oh, yeah, the system's fair. Of course it is. Uh-huh. Sure. No question. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. Now how about you sell Me some more of that swamp land in Lower Bumhole?

The Memory Hole -- The Anti-war Speech That Earned Eugene Debs 10 Years in Prison

2008-12-29T19:01:00.000-08:00

"They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.

And here let me emphasize the fact--and it cannot be repeated too often--that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why; Yours but to do and die. That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation. If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace...

You need at this time especially to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder. You need to know that you were not created to work and produce and impoverish yourself to enrich an idle exploiter. You need to know that you have a mind to improve, a soul to develop, and a manhood to sustain...

They are continually talking about your patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches." (Emphasis Mine.)

This speech, so sadly relevant today, was given by Eugene Debs on June 16th, 1918. For it, he was prosecuted under the Sedition Act, sentenced to 10 years in prison and stripped of his U.S. of part of A. citizenship.

Lest you wonder, the Sedition Act was repealed in 1921, but under the murderous moron's regime, you can be arrested simply under suspicion of anti-war activities (considered to be "domestic terrorism") and unlike Debs in 1918, you would now have no recourse to protection in a civil court... because habeas corpus no longer applies.

Happy New Year.

Robert Fisk: Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored - Robert Fisk, Commentators - The Independent

2008-12-29T18:49:00.000-08:00

"Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it. Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated 'terrorism'. So what was the reaction last night? The Israelis threaten ground attacks. Hamas waits for another battle. Our Western politicians crouch in their funk holes. And somewhere to the east – in a cave? a basement? on a mountainside? – a well-known man in a turban smiles."

If your actions--especially your attacks--are spitting images of apartheid, terrorism and fascism, you cannot, you simply cannot claim to be a different case. You are what you are: a bully, backed by a superior number of weapons, imposing your will by force. You are nothing but a thug.

Did Bush surround himself with demented people? -- Will Rhodes Portmanteau

2008-12-28T22:30:00.000-08:00

As My dad used to say, an idiot can always find other idiots to applaud and support him. In this case, too many of Us acted the part of "supporting idiots."

Bernie's funda-mental defense

2008-12-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

New York Daily News.com:

"If you thought Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion investment scheme was audacious, get ready for his alibi. Lawyers for the accused scammer are exploring an insanity defense, we hear.

“Bernie’s family and his attorneys may argue that, somewhere along the line, he had a mental break,” says a Madoff acquaintance. “They may even say he has a multiple personality disorder.”

Madoff’s grip on reality does show signs of slipping. The 70-year-old financier, now a prisoner of his East Side penthouse, wore a weird smile when he was photographed shortly after his Dec. 12 arrest. He’s also said to be taking a heavy dose of anti-anxiety medication."

The guy takes investors for $50 billion, dating back to the 70s, and the defense is "He didn't know what he was doing?!"

Uh-huh. And the Queen of England is Xeno, the Scientology lizard-dork from outer space.

Kevin Drum - Mother Jones Blog: Nightmare on Main Street

2008-12-28T21:55:00.000-08:00

"AlixPartners LLP, a Michigan-based turnaround consulting firm, estimates that 25.8% of 182 large retailers it tracks are at significant risk of filing for bankruptcy or facing financial distress in 2009 or 2010."

How bad is this? Let Me quote from this brief article, again: "Lawrence Gottlieb, a New York bankruptcy attorney at Cooley Godward Kronish LLP says that only two retailers have successfully emerged from bankruptcy proceedings since the amendments to the code were passed."

Hmm... E-commerce, anyone?

In Sinaloa, the drug trade has infiltrated 'every corner of life' - Los Angeles Times

2008-12-28T21:52:00.000-08:00

"Yudit del Rincon, a 44-year-old lawmaker, went before the state legislature this year with a proposition: Let's require lawmakers to take drug tests to prove they are clean.

Her colleagues greeted the idea with applause. Then she sprang a surprise on them: Two lab technicians waited in the audience to administer drug tests to every state lawmaker. We should set the example, she said.

They nearly trampled one another in the stampede to the door, Del Rincon recalled."

Ah, politicians...the scum of the Earth...

CBS newsman's $70m lawsuit likely to deal Bush legacy a new blow | World news | The Observer

2008-12-28T21:49:00.000-08:00

"Eight weeks before the 2004 presidential poll, Rather broadcast a story based on newly discovered documents which appeared to show that Bush, whose service in the Texas Air National Guard ensured that he did not have to fight in Vietnam, had barely turned up even for basic duty. After an outcry from the White House and conservative bloggers who claimed that the report had been based on falsified documents, CBS retracted the story, saying that the documents' authenticity could not be verified. Rather, who had been with CBS for decades and was one of the most familiar faces in American journalism, was fired by the network the day after the 2004 election.

He claims breach of contract against CBS. He has already spent $2m on his case, which is likely to go to court early next year. Rather contends not only that his report was true - "What the documents stated has never been denied, by the president or anyone around him," he says - but that CBS succumbed to political pressure from conservatives to get the report discredited and to have him fired. He also claims that a panel set up by CBS to investigate the story was packed with conservatives in an effort to placate the White House. Part of the reason for that, he suggests, was that Viacom, a sister company of CBS, knew that it would have important broadcasting regulatory issues to deal with during Bush's second term."

Yup, there's a long tradition of shooting the messenger...in corrupt regimes...

The Economic News Isn't All Bleak - WSJ.com

2008-12-27T15:15:00.000-08:00

"First, we haven't seen war, revolution, the collapse of states and governments or massive demonstrations sweeping the globe. Crowds have demonstrated in China, Greece and Thailand -- for reasons sometimes related to the economic crunch and sometimes not. Pakistan is teetering for multiple reasons -- of which economics is only one. But major economic crises in the 20th century almost always led to those types of major breaks, especially during the 1930s. While no one can say whether they will come in the months ahead, for the time being we should be remarking on how relatively stable things are in light of what has happened.

Second, consumers in many parts of the world are in relatively good shape. That statement might strike many as absurd, given the mantra of 'consumers have been living beyond their means.' But it's not just the third of American households that have no mortgage, or the 50% savings rate in China, or the still massive wealth accumulation in the Gulf region, Brazil and Russia. It's that the credit system, even at its most promiscuous, didn't allow consumers to take on the obscene leverage that financial institutions did. Millions of people who shouldn't have been lent money were, either in mortgages or through credit cards. But they couldn't be levered 40-to-1 as investment banks and funds were."

The Cagle Post -- Column -- Susan Estrich -- The Old Media

2008-12-27T15:13:00.000-08:00

"The truth, whether you want to admit it or not, is that what drives public discourse today is still the work of the nation's top newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and, yes, even my much snickered about Los Angeles Times. If they can't do their job, they won't be the only ones who suffer. All of us who depend on their reporters and editors will suffer, and so will the public discourse about important issues.

Talking about the news is easy. Finding it, digging for it and separating what's accurate from what's not are laborious, time-consuming and often unrewarding tasks. Newspapers, even the best of them, make plenty of mistakes. I've been their target often enough to know that. But in this information age, we need them and the professional standards of reporting and editing to which they aspire, even if they do not always meet them." (Emphasis Mine.)

Scientists plan to ignite tiny man-made star - Telegraph

2008-12-27T15:09:00.000-08:00

"In the spring, a team will begin attempts to ignite a tiny man-made star inside a laboratory and trigger a thermonuclear reaction.

Its goal is to generate temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius and pressures billions of times higher than those found anywhere else on earth, from a speck of fuel little bigger than a pinhead. If successful, the experiment will mark the first step towards building a practical nuclear fusion power station and a source of almost limitless energy."

Hot damn!

For all of you small business owners, you can relate to this

2008-12-27T15:08:00.000-08:00

Five Million Dots.com:

"Here is what many of you (employees) don't understand ... to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate what runs the economy. Had suddenly government mandated to me that I didn't need to pay taxes, guess what? Instead of depositing that $288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have spent it, hired more employees, and generated substantial economic growth. My employees would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But you can forget it now.

When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don't defibrillate and shock his thumb thinking that will bring him back to life, do you? Or, do you defibrillate his heart? Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate it, not kill it."

Chycho.com - Analysis and discussion about the world we live in.

2008-12-27T15:06:00.000-08:00

"'A year ago, Homeland Security gave security clearances to nine New York City fire chiefs and began sharing intelligence with them. Even before that, fire department personnel were being taught ‘to identify material or behaviour that may indicate terrorist activities’ and were also ‘told to be alert for a person who is hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States.’”

Fahrenheit 451 is not a work of fiction anymore."

Is Cheney betting on Economic Collapse?

2008-12-26T10:28:00.000-08:00

InformationClearinghouse.com:

"Cheney has dumped another (estimated) $10 to $25 million in a European bond fund which tells us that he is counting on a steadily weakening dollar. So, while working class Americans are loosing ground to inflation and rising energy costs, Darth Cheney will be enhancing his wealth in “Old Europe”. As Blackburn sagely notes, “Not all ‘bad news’ is bad for everybody.”

This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the “Bush Economic Plan” is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation's wealth from one class to another. It’s also clear that Bush-Cheney couldn’t have carried this off without the tacit approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low-interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets." (Emphasis Mine.)

After the fact paranoid conspiracy theory crap? No. The post quoted is dated 07/04/06 and it quotes a Kiplinger Magazine interview with the Dick dated May 17th, 2006.

Your turn.

Press reports document criminality of US financial elite

2008-12-26T10:21:00.000-08:00

IntelDaily.com:

"Among the executives remunerated in the millions, even as many of their companies began to report losses from the subprime mortgage collapse, were:

* John Thain, CEO of Merrill Lynch, who was awarded $83 million. His firm, now merged into Bank of America, received $10 billion in TARP money.

* Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, who took home $54 million. Goldman Sachs spread around $242 million to its top five executives. It has received $10 billion in TARP funds.

* Richard D. Fairbank, the head of Capital One Financial Corp., who was paid $17 million. Capital One was given $3.56 billion in TARP money.

* Bank of New York Mellon CEO Robert P. Kelly, who was paid $8.6 million. His firm received $3 billion from TARP.

Another Associated Press article, published Monday, documents the refusal of the banks to reveal what they have done with the billions in taxpayer funds they have received. The AP put questionnaires to 21 banks that each received more than $1 billion in the government bailout, posing four questions: 'How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?'

According to the AP, not a single bank provided specific answers." (Emphasis Mine.)

From this same article:

"In a fundamental sense, the entire economy has become a gigantic Ponzi scheme. Now the vast edifice of paper values is collapsing, posing either a revolutionary transformation of economic life on socialist foundations, or the ruination of the working class and broad sections of the middle class.

The ill-gotten gains of the financial aristocracy must be confiscated and used to provide for the needs of the people. No rational and humane solution to the deepening economic crisis is possible without the working class politically settling accounts with the present-day "Ancien Regime" of Wall Street swindlers and their political accomplices." (Emphasis Mine.)

Obama, the military and the threat of dictatorship

2008-12-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

World Socialist Web Site - wsws.org:

"With his choice of Admiral Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence, President-elect Barack Obama has now named three recently retired four-star military officers to serve in his cabinet. This unprecedented representation of the senior officer corps within the incoming Democratic administration is indicative of a growth in the political power of the US military that poses a serious threat to basic democratic rights."

From this same article:

"The military chiefs of the Pentagon’s regional commands—CENTCOM, PACOM, SOUTHCOM and the new AFRICOM—have largely supplanted ambassadors and civilian officials as the representatives of U.S. interests and power around the globe.

Meanwhile, in prosecuting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military command has been tasked with running colonial-style administrations with virtually unfettered power over entire populations.

Finally, with the creation of military tribunals and military prisons, such as the one in Guantánamo, the military has usurped tasks that historically have been assigned to civilian courts operating under the rules of the U.S. Constitution."

Don't care for "socialist rhetoric"? Okay, then take a look at this:

"At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans had an estimated 37 major military bases scattered around their dominions. At the height of the British Empire, the British had 36 of them planetwide. Depending on just who you listen to and how you count, (the U.S. has) hundreds of bases. According to Pentagon records, in fact, there are 761 active military "sites" abroad.

The fact is: We garrison the planet north to south, east to west, and even on the seven seas, thanks to our various fleets and our massive aircraft carriers which, with 5,000-6,000 personnel aboard -- that is, the population of an American town -- are functionally floating bases.

And here's the other half of that simple truth: We don't care to know about it. We, the American people, aided and abetted by our politicians, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media, are knee-deep in base denial."

The world already sees what We choose not to. Believe Me, they see it.

Economic crash has consumers paying cash | hometownlife.com

2008-12-26T10:08:00.000-08:00

Duh...but with a silver lining.

FactCheck.org: Who Caused the Economic Crisis?

2008-12-26T10:00:00.000-08:00

FactCheck.org: Who Caused the Economic Crisis?

"So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

++The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

++Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

++Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

++Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

++The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

++Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

++Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

++Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

++The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

++An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

++Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation."

Ruth Marcus Should Know Better | The LA Progressive

2008-12-26T09:45:00.001-08:00

"The whole point of war crime trials is not just punishing the guilty but also to expose truth, put banality on public display, shame perpetrators and the citizens who enabled them, and warn future generations against making the same mistake. Even today, people still look back on the Nazi and Imperial Japanese era and wonder, 'How could it happen? People must have known. Why didn’t they stop it?'

The world, but especially America, needs both the lesson and catharsis of all five of these in a trial following the eight years of Bush and Cheney’s rocky horror real life show. No future generation should have to look back on this time and ask the same question as it experiences a historical re-run." (Emphasis Mine.)

Why I Love Rachel Maddow | The LA Progressive

2008-12-26T09:43:00.000-08:00

"What (Dr. Laura) Tyson didn’t disclose – but blogger David Sirota discovered – is that she is a director of Morgan Stanley which received $10-billion from the Treasury Dept. Nor, did Tyson happen to mention that she earns $350,000 from the bank in director’s fees and owns 79,000 shares in the company.

When Sirota informed (Rachel) Maddow of this oversight, she did something that few, if any, hosts on cable news would bother doing. She not only admitted the oversight, Maddow chastised herself for not doing a better job researching Tyson’s background and current business interests. And she didn’t just mumble a hasty “sorry,” Maddow detailed her mistake, aired a response from Tyson and then apologised to her audience."

Okay you media pukes, all 99% of you: THAT'S how to handle your oh-so-frequent mistakes.

Political Irony › The absolutely worst moments of the Bush presidency

2008-12-25T15:42:00.000-08:00

"Brad Reed at AlterNet has distilled the Bush presidency into its top 10 most disastrous and embarrassing events:

10: Bush Gets re-elected using the most negative campaign in history
9: Alberto Gonzales’ Congressional Testimony
8: North Korea Conducts a Nuclear Test
7: Colin Powell’s Bogus WMD Presentation at the U.N.
6: The Terri Schiavo Affair
5: Bush and Condi’s Excellent Gaza Adventure
4: “Brownie, You’re Doing a Heckuva Job”
3: Abu Ghraib
2: 9/11
1: “Mission Accomplished”"

US economy posts worst results for 27 years - Business News, Business - The Independent

2008-12-25T15:40:00.000-08:00

"When the fourth-quarter GDP is calculated next month, it is expected to show the US economy contracted by about 1.5 per cent from the previous three-month period. Just a few weeks ago, the consensus was for a contraction of less than half that."

Oops.

FutureStorm: Why Is The U.S. Military Preparing For Massive Civil Disorder?

2008-12-25T15:38:00.000-08:00

"A new report from the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute says that the U.S. military must quickly prepare for massive civil unrest that could be precipitated by an “unforeseen economic collapse”.

The following is a quote from this stunning report: “DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States.'

This comes on the heels of a recent report that the Department of Defense plans to deploy 20,000 uniformed troops for operations inside the United States by 2011."

Here's an in-your-face look at this fascist trend: Martial Law -- Practice Makes Perfect Dictatorship.

Jonathan Freedland: Seasonal forgiveness has a limit. Bush and his cronies must face a reckoning | Comment is free | The Guardian

2008-12-25T15:33:00.000-08:00

"If Bush and Cheney are allowed to retire quietly, America will have failed to reassert that bedrock principle of the republic: the rule of law.

This is why there must be a reckoning. Bush will do all he can to avoid it: and it is wholly possible that one of his last acts as president will be to cover himself, his vice-president and all his henchmen with a blanket pardon. Even if that does not happen, Barack Obama is unlikely to want to spend precious capital pursuing his predecessor for war crimes.

But other prosecutors elsewhere in the world should weigh their responsibilities. In the end, it was a lone Spanish magistrate, not a Chilean court, who ensured the arrest of Augusto Pinochet. A pleasing, if uncharitable, thought this Christmas, is that Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush will hesitate before making plans to travel abroad in 2009. Or indeed at any time - ever again."

Donklephant--Bailout Hypocrisy: Banks Vs. Automakers

2008-12-25T15:30:00.000-08:00

"I do think it’s shameful that the unions have gotten lambasted in the past few weeks as anti-capitalist boogeymen, but CEOs have remained virtually untouched. Sure, a few executives have been raked over the coals, but nothing close to the anti-worker rhetoric that has been coming out of the Republican party.

It’s as if it’s a bad thing that manual laborers want to collectively bargain and make sure they’re taken care of if they get hurt or make sure they have access to healthcare upon retirement when their bodies are showing the wear and tear of decades on an assembly line.

Personally, I think our priorities are seriously out of whack in this country if we genuinely think it’s better to have private jets and millions of dollars in stock options than a good job paying a fair wage with access to good healthcare and pension benefits."

The Existentialist Cowboy: The Movement to Try George W. Bush et al for War Crimes

2008-12-24T09:37:00.000-08:00

"Wishing to rebuke the unpunished war crimes of dictators like Saddam Hussein, in 1996 a Republican-dominated Congress passed the War Crimes Act without a dissenting vote. It defined a 'war crime' as any 'grave breach' of the Geneva Conventions. It thereby advanced a global trend of mutual reinforcement between national and international law.

The War Crimes Act was little noticed until the disclosure of Alberto Gonzales's infamous 2002 'torture memo.' Gonzales, then serving as presidential counsel, advised President Bush to declare that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people the United States captured in Afghanistan. That, Gonzales wrote, 'substantially reduced the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act.'" (Emphasis Mine.)

From The Nation, Bush Aims to Kill War Crimes Act

Note the irony: the Act was passed to punish the likes of Hussein, and it may well serve to take down the likes of the murderous moron and his hyena cabal.

GOP Steals 7-Million Obama Votes; Mukasey Looks Other Way | The LA Progressive

2008-12-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

"John McCain lost the presidential election only because the Obama landslide was greater than Republican operatives anticipated and local GOP apparatchiks weren’t vigilant enough in preventing legitimate voters from casting ballots. And when informed by field offices of a potential voting rights problem, Attorney General Michael Mukasey reportedly chose not to do anything."

Eugene Robinson - A Hope That History Throws the Book at Bush and Cheney - washingtonpost.com

2008-12-24T09:26:00.000-08:00

"The Bush-Cheney record also includes the invasion of a country -- Iraq -- that had nothing whatsoever to do with Sept. 11. This misadventure has claimed more than 4,000 American lives, wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and grievously damaged our strategic position in the Middle East. In an interview with Martha Raddatz of ABC News this month, Bush claimed credit for vanquishing al-Qaeda's forces in Iraq. When Raddatz pointed out that there were no al-Qaeda forces in Iraq until after the U.S. invasion, the president answered, 'Yeah, that's right. So what?'" (Emphasis Mine.)

How unutterably, unforgivably and unbelievably STUPID is this walking bag of donkey shit? You can answer "So what?" to a whole slew of questions, but when over 4,000 of your own citizens' lives have been lost, many thousands more damaged, and hundreds of thousands of citizens in the country you ordered an invasion to are dead or injured--WITHOUT VALID REASON--and you are the faux president of the U.S. of part of A., you are not allowed, ever, to dismiss your own cretinous idiocy and the massive pain you have caused with a blithe "So what?"

Deterring Torture Through the Law : Information Clearing House - ICH

2008-12-24T09:18:00.000-08:00

Just read this.

Man Says Drinking Breastmilk Cured His Cancer - Strollerderby

2008-12-24T09:15:00.000-08:00

I'm not really sure what to think about this, but yay, Mom!

Murray Waas -- Exclusive: Cheney’s admissions to the CIA leak prosecutor and FBI

2008-12-23T20:47:00.000-08:00

"Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

Cheney denied to the investigators, however, that he had done anything on purpose that would lead to the outing of Plame as a covert CIA operative. But the investigators came away from their interview with Cheney believing that he had not given them a plausible explanation as to how he could focus attention on Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s trip without her CIA status also possibly publicly exposed. At the time, Plame was a covert CIA officer involved in preventing Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and Cheney’s office played a central role in exposing her and nullifying much of her work." (Emphasis Mine.)

Okay, the dick here has admitted to a war crime (torture) and treason. What the hell does he have to admit to before the people move to indict and prosecute his ass? Peeing in a baby's mouth?

Maybe We Should Try Stimulating Individuals Instead. THAT Would Stimulate the Economy. | Personal Finance Corner

2008-12-23T20:42:00.000-08:00

AllBusiness.com

"What if it was given to individuals? What if the government took the rest of the $350 billion from the $700 billion bailout and gave it to the people? They could give $50,000 to $100,000 tax free to households making less than $250,000 and remain under that $300 billion mark. They're going to give that money to people who made bad decisions anyway, it might as well be regular folks who made bad decisions. Besides, if there was a massive stimulus package for individuals, many of us who made good decisions would be rewarded.

Congress could even stipulate that $10,000 of the money has to be spend on consumer goods. Now there's something that would stimulate the economy. And do it quickly. And just imagine how many people would go out and buy a new car. Auto industry gets help to! Plus, such a large chunk of money would help individual personal finances as well:

--Debt reduction.
--Increased investment (would help the stock market).

--Make substantial payments on mortgages (reduce foreclosures).

If our politicians are bound and determined (and they are!) to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe they should abandon trickle down in favor of trickle up." (Emphasis Mine.)

Think about it: Your family and that of most everybody you know could have received something like $75,000 each, the government would have stopped its bleeding cash at just about $300 billion and what argument could there be against this as the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to jump-start the economy while also letting the current fat-cat idiots get their just desserts?

TARP This: Paulson's Bailout Plan Riddled With Deception | CommonDreams.org

2008-12-23T20:35:00.000-08:00

"A New York Times report from London explained:

'Some analysts said the idea that recapitalizing banks would repair the lending market was flawed from the beginning because it was contradictory. On the one hand, the policy was meant to make banks reduce risk. On the other, it pressured them to lend more which meant taking more risks.'

So instead they diverted some of the money to satisfy their internal needs. An Associated Press investigation found: 'Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year.' Many other banks would not disclose what they did with the money. Many of them have tightened credit, rather than loosened it." (Emphasis Mine.)

If Criminal Penalties Are Removed, What Will Deter Lawbreaking by Political Officials? | CommonDreams.org

2008-12-23T20:28:00.000-08:00

"Punishment for lawbreaking is precisely how we try to ensure that crimes 'never happen again.' If instead -- as (The Washington Post's Ruth) Marcus and so many others urge -- we hold political leaders harmless when they break the law, if we exempt them from punishment under the criminal law, then what possible reason would they have from refraining from breaking the law in the future? A principal reason for imposing punishment on lawbreakers is exactly what Marcus says she wants to achieve: 'ensuring that these mistakes are not repeated.' By telling political leaders that they will not be punished when they break the law, the exact opposite outcome is achieved: ensuring that this conduct will be repeated."

And from the same article, a statement from the 1920s by Justice Louis Brandeis:

"In a government of law, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."

Could We Uncover Watergate Today? - washingtonpost.com

2008-12-23T20:20:00.000-08:00

"In today's cacophonous media world, in which news, rumor, opinion and infotainment from every kind of source are jumbled together and often presented indiscriminately, how would such an improbable-sounding story ever get verified?

As newsrooms rapidly shrink, will they still have the resources, steadily amassed by newspapers since Watergate, for investigative reporting that takes months and even years of sustained work?"

Daily Kos: Health Care Series: 10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care

2008-12-23T20:18:00.000-08:00

"Those 10 Excellent reasons are:

1. It's good for our health.
2. It costs less and saves money.
3. It will assure high quality health care for all Americans, rich or poor.
4. It's the best choice - morally and economically.
5. It may be a matter of life or death.
6. It will let will let doctors and nurses focus on patients, not paperwork.
7. It will reduce health care disparities.
8. It will eliminate medical debet.
9. It will be good for labor and business.
10. It's what most Americans want - and we can make it happen."

Brad Friedman: Why aren't Americans outraged by Bush and Cheney's torture policy?

2008-12-22T17:16:00.000-08:00

"Noting the war crimes now known and admitted to by George Bush and Dick Cheney, George Washington University's highly-respected constitutional law professor Jonathon Turley asked MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last week: 'If someone commits a crime and everyone's around to see it and does nothing, is it still a crime?'

The discussion came in the wake of a new bipartisan US Senate report (pdf) that found that Bush was responsible for approving torture and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Cheney's admission during an ABC interview that he helped to approve torture and abuse in interrogations.

During the interview, Turley mentioned that it'll be up to the citizens whether or not any action is actually taken to prosecute those who committed these crimes. 'It will ultimately depend on citizens, and whether they will remain silent in the face of a crime that's been committed in plain view,' Turley suggested. 'It is equally immoral to stand silent in the face of a war crime and do nothing, and that is what the citizens are doing.'" (Emphasis Mine.)

It is immoral, cowardly and ultimately self-defeating to let crimes of this magnitude "slip away" into the past. Remember, people of the U.S. of part of A., you are judged by your actions--and inactions--much more than by your words. And the words you have trumpeted so proudly for so long are not even hollow, they are gone, product of the rampaging idiocy of your so-called leaders and your very own craven indifference.

There is still time to act. It is still within your power to set justice aright and show the world that though the leading democracy in the world may stumble, it can do what is right--because it has the will and integrity to place moral values above amoral expediency.

Forgetful: Former Treasury Secretary Says He "Forgot" That People Had To "Afford Their House"

2008-12-22T17:11:00.000-08:00

"Former Treasury Secretary John W. Snow has told the New York Times that he, along with the entire Bush Administration, simply 'forgot' that people had to be able to 'afford their house.'"

I swear, killing these insanely retarded, amoral mofos like the diseased dogs they are can't happen soon enough to suit Me...

Disease spotting cell phone! | FunTim

2008-12-22T17:05:00.000-08:00

Disease spotting cell phone! | FunTim

"...(Y)ou can test your blood and detect diseases like HIV and malaria as well. Stunned! Dr. Aydogan Ozcan at UCLA has developed a technique that converts a cell phone into disease detection equipment by attaching LEDs, plastic light filter and some wires to a Sony Ericsson w810i camera phone."

The future of health care and even of health itself in poor countries and amongst those without adequate access to health services is suddenly looking much brighter...

George S May Blog | Who will benefit from the Auto Industry Bailout

2008-12-22T17:01:00.000-08:00

"GM needs to be restructured, which means it must change the terms of its legal obligations to suppliers, bondholders and employees. The only vehicle to accomplish the needed changes is Chapter 11, which lets GM reject unfavorable contracts, renegotiate its debt obligations, defer interest and principal payments and gives it time to fix its business. Without a chapter 11 filing a government infusion of $10b cash will be gone in six months when GM uses the money in 2009 to pay bondholders and employees billions of dollars, payments which do nothing to help GM survive.

Chrysler, the stepchild of a distressed debt vulture fund, is also a prime candidate for Chapter 11. But Chrysler should be liquidated, not reorganized. A liquidating Chapter 11 case, expressly permitted by the Bankruptcy Code, can be used to keep Chrysler operating while its divisions are sold. With adequate Chapter 11 funding line workers can keep their jobs and benefits, and non-essential executives can be fired at minimal cost to the Chapter 11 debtor, known as the debtor-in-possession. Trade creditors will continue to ship to Chrysler because their post-petition claims will have a priority in payment. Chapter 11 also lets the Bankruptcy Judge appoint an examiner to conduct an investigation into the financial affairs of Chrysler and its equity owners, and to sue to recover any improper payments. Chapter 11 will also make it clear to Daimler and Cerberus (Capital Management) that their investment is worthless and they will not be able to use their position of control to improperly benefit." - Source

Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley - WSJ.com

2008-12-22T16:53:00.000-08:00

Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley - WSJ.com

How do you take the strongest economic engine in the world and turn it into a captive goose that lays golden eggs in someone else's yard?

Read about it here.

If you think creativity and drive can be micro-managed in order to avoid the occasional massive failure (not to improve the process, but to avoid a rare aberrant result) the take a look at how the government is destroying the commonplace good in pursuit of limiting the rare bad.

Blix reveals the threats made by Dick Cheney before the invasion :: www.uruknet.info

2008-12-22T16:44:00.000-08:00

"In an interview with Aljazeera today, former Chief of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq told the TV that he and the Head of the IAEA 'Mohamed Al-Baradei' were subjected to direct threats from Dick Cheney before the war.

(Hans) Blix said that Cheney threatened to defame both men’s reputations if they didn’t came with the 'required' answers.

Blix also added that he is ready to be a witness on the United States’ false allegations before an International tribunal."

Bush shoe-thrower 'tortured into writing letter of apology' | World news | guardian.co.uk

2008-12-22T16:42:00.000-08:00

It's a good thing, as a moral pedestal and as a comfort, to know that in the U.S. of part of A. no person is tortured while in custod---

Oh.

White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy, But That’s Not the Biggest Scandal | War On You

2008-12-21T17:03:00.000-08:00

"A new congressional report is belatedly confirming what many have long known: that the White House and in particular then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, lied to Congress in 2004 when he told them the Bush administration was not repeatedly warned by the CIA not to make the claim that Saddam had tried to buy uranium ore from Niger.

What is astonishing about this report, which documents that the CIA at least four times tried to prevent Bush and other top officials from presenting that lie to Congress and the American public in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, is not that it documents what has long been known, but that Congress and the corporate media are still pretending that the claim itself was an acceptable justification for launching a war.

Set aside for the moment the fact that the claim that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium ore (so-called yellowcake) from the desert nation of Niger was based upon forged documents which were almost certainly the work of Defense Department hacks in the Rumsfeld/Cheney-created Office of Special Plans (see my book The Case for Impeachment). Even if this fraudulent deal had been real, how on earth could it have been used as it was by President Bush and Vice President Cheney to justify an invasion of Iraq?...

...If Bush and Cheney had not been lying through their teeth, and Saddam had actually been buying yellowcake for the purpose of making a nuke weapon, he would still have had to obtain large numbers of centrifuges, would have had to power them up and run them for years, and would have then had to obtain the technology to build and test a bomb, none of which steps he was even alleged to have taken.

Yet Bush was claiming that there was an imminent threat to America posed by Saddam Hussein’s yellowcake purchase effort, and that an invasion had to be launched almost immediately. He used the term imminent because that is the legal requirement in the UN Charter, to which the US is a signatory and which is based upon the Nuremberg Charter established at the end of the Second World War. It states that no nation may invade another nation unless that nation poses an imminent threat to the would-be invader.

The yellowcake story, now definitively shown to have been a deliberate lie, even if true, could not have constituted such an imminent threat.

Yet not once has this key point been addressed by any member of Congress who voted to authorize an invasion. Nor does the point get mentioned in mainstream journalistic reports on the matter." (Emphasis Mine.)

And We can add this, from IntelDaily.com:

"A high-ranking CIA official warned Condoleezza Rice in September 2002 that allegations about Iraq seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger were untrue and that she, as national security adviser, should stop President George W. Bush from citing the claim in making his case against Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to new evidence released by a House committee.

Nevertheless, the false Niger story showed up in Bush’s State of the Union Address on Jan 28, 2003, and Rice later joined other White House officials in blaming the CIA for failing to alert them about the dubious intelligence.

However, Rep. Henry Waxman, House Oversight Committee chairman, said in a Dec. 18 memo to other panel members that statements by Rice and former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales were contradicted by testimony and other evidence collected during the panel’s long investigation of the Niger mystery."

at-Largely: One of my sources died in a plane crash last night...

2008-12-21T16:47:00.000-08:00

"I don't usually reveal sources, but I think this is incredibly important. Michael Connell died in a plane crash last night. He was a key witness in the Ohio election fraud case that I have been reporting on. More importantly, however, he had information that he was ready to share.

You see, Mike Connell set-up the alternate email and communications system for the White House. He was responsible for creating the system that hosted the infamous GWB43.com accounts that Karl Rove and others used. When asked by Congress to provide these emails, the White House said that they were destroyed. But in reality, what Connell is alleged to have done is move these files to other servers after having allegedly scrubbed the files from all 'known' Karl Rove accounts.

In addition, I have reason to believe that the alternate accounts were used to communicate with US Attorneys involved in political prosecutions, like that of Don Siegelman. This is what I have been working on to prove for over a year. In fact, it was through following the Siegelman-Rove trail that I found evidence leading to Connell. That is how I became aware of him. Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened."

There's more: Michael Connell's family is requesting protection due to alleged Karl Rove threat. This on the heels of the stalled Ohio 2004 State Elections case, where Connell was a key figure, being reopened under the Corrupt Practices/RICO act. Significance? Ohio was the deciding state in the Kerry-Bush election, with extensive evidence--some of it provided by Connell--that the election results were rigged to favor Bush.

From The Free Press.org:

"Ohio Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell hired Connell in 2004 to create a real-time computer data compilation for counting Ohio's votes. Under Connell's supervision, Ohio's presidential vote count was transmitted to private, partisan computer servers owned by SmartTech housed in the basement of the Old Pioneer Bank building in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Connell's company, New Media Communications worked closely with SmartTech in building Republican and right-wing websites that were hosted on SmartTech servers. Among Connell's clients were the Republican National Committee, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and gwb43.com, that housed at one point Karl Rove's missing emails. Rove's email files have since mysteriously disappeared despite repeated court-sanctioned attempts to review them...

...At 12:20 am on the night of the 2004 election exit polls and initial vote counts showed John Kerry the clear winner of Ohio's presidential campaign. The Buckeye State's 20 electoral votes would have given Kerry the presidency.

But from then until around 2am, the flow of information mysteriously ceased. After that, the vote count shifted dramatically to George W. Bush, ultimately giving him a second term. In the end there was a 6.7 percent diversion---in Bush's favor---between highly professional, nationally funded exit polls and the final official vote count as tabulated by Blackwell and Connell."

Homeschooling As a Quiet Protest Against Public School -- Just Enough, and Nothing More

2008-12-21T16:44:00.000-08:00

"Is homeschooling simply a choice, or is it a refusal to participate in something that we’re “supposed” to do? This seems trite perhaps, but I wonder, is homeschooling any different than choosing Coke over Pepsi? Is drinking Coke a protest against Pepsi?

What if the government gave out free Pepsi? Would drinking Coke then be a protest against the government?

Homeschooling is only a protest against school if we’re expected to do it, if public school is the socially “right” choice, and if it’s the way people are “supposed” to learn. Is that what it is in our country? I thought that we lived in a country where choice, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness reigned? Is this not true?

So, if you think that I’m supposed to roll over and do whatever everyone else does because that’s what I’m “supposed” to do, then yes, I am protesting against public school. But I’m not making a big deal about it, because to me, public school is like Pepsi. And it should be like Pepsi. A choice. Just as I prefer Coke, other people prefer Pepsi. And that’s fine with me."

Extraordinary Observations: Economics of the News

2008-12-21T16:42:00.000-08:00

Rob Pitingolo.org:

"...(W)hat the internet has done is glut the market for editorials. Where it used to be that you had to be a hired columnist or get past the gatekeepers of the editorial page to get your work published; now anyone with a computer and some opinions can disseminate their thoughts instantly to the world. The market for editorials has indeed become a perfectly competitive market; and this in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The market for news, on the other hand, is a natural oligopoly. Even the best bloggers and citizen journalists simply don't have the resources to engage in investigative reporting or break news stories on a consistent basis. This type of operation has huge barriers to entry; it requires large amounts of capital, and it requires time to build credibility and gain access to places typically reserved for traditional media. For bloggers whose primary career is something other than full-time journalism, we can't ever expect them to fill in these gaps.

The problem , perhaps, lies with the fact that economists are still lumping these two markets together and trying to analyze it as such."

Marjorie Cohn: Cheney Throws Down Gauntlet, Defies Prosecution for War Crimes

2008-12-20T08:58:00.000-08:00

HuffingtonPost.com

"Under the doctrine of command responsibility, enshrined in U.S. law, commanders all the way up the chain of command to the commander-in-chief can be held liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them and they did nothing to stop or prevent it. (Note: The U.S.-led Nuremberg trials based most of their war crimes prosecution on this point.)

Why is Cheney so sanguine about admitting he is a war criminal? Because he's confident that either President Bush will preemptively pardon him or President-elect Obama won't prosecute him.

Both of those courses of action would be illegal.

First, a president cannot immunize himself or his subordinates for committing crimes that he himself authorized. On February 7, 2002, Bush signed a memo erroneously stating that the Geneva Conventions, which require humane treatment, did not apply to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But the Supreme Court made clear that Geneva protects all prisoners. Bush also admitted that he approved of high level meetings where waterboarding was authorized by Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey says there's no need for Bush to issue blanket pardons since there is no evidence that anyone developed the policies "for any reason other than to protect the security in the country and in the belief that he or she was doing something lawful." But noble motives are not defenses to the commission of crimes.

Lt. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, said, "There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Second, the Constitution requires President Obama to faithfully execute the laws. That means prosecuting lawbreakers. When the United States ratified the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, thereby making them part of U.S. law, we agreed to prosecute those who violate their prohibitions." (Emphasis Mine.)

Pew Research Center: Bush and Public Opinion

2008-12-20T08:53:00.000-08:00

"In a Pew survey conducted Dec. 3-7 among 1,489 adults, the American public paints a harshly negative picture of Bush's tenure. Nearly two-thirds (64%) say his administration will be remembered more for its failures than its accomplishments, and a plurality (34%) says Bush will go down in history as a poor president. Fully 68% say they disapprove of Bush's performance and most of those -- 53% of the public -- say they disapprove strongly. That is the highest rate of strong disapproval measured by Pew surveys in Bush's eight years in office.

As his second term ends, only 13% say Bush has made progress toward solving the major issues facing the country; 37% say he has made those problems worse and 34% say he has tried but failed in his efforts. Another 11% say he has not addressed the major problems facing the country."

Worst. President. Ever. Book it.

The Liberty Papers--A Primer on Money

2008-12-20T08:39:00.000-08:00

"The dangers of government control of the money supply:

There are two properties that make governments especially destructive:

1) Governments are able to seize resources by force and to compel people to do buainess with them allowing them to continue economically unprofitable activities for far longer than free market enterprises.

2) Governments, being controlled by people who have little incentive to take a long term view, and a great deal of incentive to use their offices for short-term personal gain

When governments seize control of the money supply, the result is usually disaster. They overproduce money, usually by debasing coinage. They force people to use the state approved currency to the exclusion of all else. In extreme cases they wreck the economy so badly that saving because impossible, and the economy reverts to a barter economy.

Today, the United States government has engaged in massive amounts of spending. They are not getting this money through taxation. Rather they are borrowing it, and a good porioin of what is being borrowed is money created by the Federal Reserve. The production costs of U.S. dollars being almost nonexistent, the Federal Reserve can continue to create money profitably through a Zimbabwe like hyperinflation. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were founded upon the ruins of nations whose economies had been strangled by government mismanagement of money. Will the United States similarly succumb to tyranny? Time will tell."

America Will Soon Owe More Than Its Citizens Are Worth

2008-12-20T08:36:00.000-08:00

Peter G. Peterson Foundation

Well, that's a bitch...

Mass. investor saw inside Madoff scam - Yahoo! News

2008-12-20T08:28:00.000-08:00

"His repeated warnings that Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff was running a giant Ponzi scheme have cast Harry Markopolos as an unheeded prophet.

But people who know or worked with Markopolos say it wasn't prescience that helped him foresee the collapse of Madoff's alleged $50 billion fraud. Instead, they say diligence and a strong moral sense drove his quixotic, nine-year quest to alert regulators about Madoff.

'He followed through on everything he ever did. He never let up,' said his mother, Georgia Markopolos, in an interview Thursday. 'Some kids just let it go if it's too hard, but he wouldn't do that.'

'He feels very sorry for these people that got taken,' she added. 'It wouldn't have happened if they would have listened to him long ago.'

Markopolos waged a remarkable battle to uncover fraud at Madoff's operation, sounding the alarm back in 1999 and continuing with his warnings all through this decade. The government never acted, Madoff continued his ways, and people lost billions."

Sigh...

Jenius Jots

Economic Fascism

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For all of you small business owners, you can relate to this

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