The World According To Me

Aug. 29, 2005: The day America realized that Republicans don't give a shit about Americans

2010-08-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

Katrina, George Bush, John McCain, and Cake

This is what happened Monday, Aug. 29, 2005...the day Katrina hit, John McCain's 69th birthday...the day America realized that Republicans don't give a shit about Americans.

Hurricane Katrina:

I remember the radar images from the weather channel the night before landfall. I remember distincly watching it and thinking, "My god...that's going to be bad." I also remember thinking that the government had better be ready to get people out and to deal with the situation.

I was right...it was going to be really, really bad. I mean THIS bad:

While Mississippi and Louisiana were getting slammed by Hurricane Katrina and Americans were dying, THIS is what Bush and McCain were doing:

From CurrentTV comes this amazing footage from WITHIN Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans:

And what were George Bush and John McCain doing while New Orleans was being destroyed and Americans were dying:

Meanwhile, New Orleans was underwater:

And my friend from Mississippi tells me that Mississippi was hit even worse. Years later she was telling me her mother was still in shock from what happened in Mississippi...probably full blown post-traumatic stress syndrome, with minimal help from either insurance companies or the government.

These were the scenes in New Orleans for days after the hurricane: (graphic)

And Bush and McCain were doing this when Louisiana and Mississippi were struggling:

Meanwhile Al Gore, on his own initiative and at his own expense, was helping airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees:

And Barack Obama was equally active as a Senator trying to get aid to the victims and support the recovery.

And Jimmy Carter has been a leader in rebuilding housing for low income residents of New Orleans through Habitat for Humanity:

Why do Republicans hate America? Oh yeah...it is part of their philosophy to drown America in a bathtub. This is how Republican guru Grover Norquist put it:

"Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal," Norquist stated in May 2000. "If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050"

The death toll of Hurricane Katrina is a direct result of this Republican philosophy of drowning America in a bathtub. Many Americans drowned that day...and George Bush and John McCain ate cake while those Americans died.

And the neglect by Republicans continued. Eleven Repbublicans in the House of Representatives, the Katrina 11, who had no problem giving Halliburton no bid contracts despite incompetence and corruption, voted against aid to Katrina victims. I have been fighting to defeat the Katrina 11 and turn their districts blue ever since. Joe Barton in particular is a nasty, anti-science scrooge of a Republican.

And the neglect by Republicans continued. Even two years after Katrina, my friend from Mississippi wrote this about the situation victims found themselves in:

Most of the people who DID receive money from the insurance companies received only a fraction of what it would cost to replace what they lost. There was the on going battle of wind vs water issue. That even Trent Lott had to deal with. He sued state farm and they settle out of court kind of quietly... However, when Bush visited the coast he promised Trent that he would rebuild his waterfront house. I think it would be interesting to look into what really happened in that case. No one I talked to was happy with the insurance settlements that they received. Now premiums are so high that many people can only afford the basic coverage. Insurance companies were boasting at how much money they gained last year, mainly because they didn't pay the proper amount of money to the people who lost their homes in the disaster. Also, many people have not had the money to fix or rebuild their house and today is the 2 year anniversary.

And George Bush and John McCain did nothing... except eat cake:

See article...

Just what I've been saying all along. Actions speak louder than words.

'Happy Anniversary!'

Related...

"I think we ought to remember what Emerson wrote - The true test of civilization is not the census or the size of the city or the crops, but the kind of man (and I'd add women) the country turns out. The kind of national goal we ought to be thinking about is way beyond national product - it is how do we as a nation help our children be the best kinds of people they could possibly be?" - Paul Wellstone

Republicans don't care about jobless Americans

2010-06-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Some 1.2 million Americans will lose their jobless benefits if Republicans insist on blocking every bill the Democrats bring to the floor, even bills that they themselves sponsored. We do not count Americans who no longer qualify for unemployment benefits, yet are still jobless.

Have the Republicans forgotten they are the party who in eight years left us with this mess?

Trillions of dollars spent on two wars. Are Iraqis and the Afghanistan people more important than Americans? Is our dependency on oil and coal more important than the safety of American workers? Are our oceans and lands and thousands of jobs worth sacrificing to rich oil companies, leaving us poor at the pump as they get richer?

We bailed out banks that turned around and gave millions to their CEOs as raises and bonuses for tanking our economy. Now the Republicans want to give corporations a tax break! A tax break in this bad economy!

Republicans have lost their moral compass, they have sold there souls to the company store. They call us too lazy to work, “hobos” and just the other day, “spoiled.” I guess trying to keep a roof over our heads and food for our families has spoiled us. As Bush said, how uniquely American it is for Americans to work two to three to four jobs, just to make ends meet.

The Republicans are trying to turn Americans against Americans, they are the party of NO when it comes to helping Americans. You want to stimulate the economy? Then place our taxpayers’ money in the hands of more than 1.2 million jobless Americans.

CECILIA NALL
Chipley

See article...

Well said.

"Truth is treason in the empire of lies." — Ron Paul

Gulf Oil Spill: 7 Ways to Help

2010-06-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

Whether you volunteer, report oil-slicked wildlife, write to Congress, donate money, or boycott BP, there are several actions you can take in response to the unprecedented BP/Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Just how much oil is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico? Here are the stats.

"The time to repair a roof is when the sun is shining." - John F. Kennedy

Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich: Mavericks Extraordinaire

2010-05-07T17:39:00.000-07:00

A recent study published by Princeton PhD student Ben Lauderdale — flagged today by Aaron Wiener of the Washington Independent and picked up by USA Today — finds that the two most “Mavericky” House members are … drumroll … Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

This shouldn’t be much of a surprise; any such study would hardly seem legitimate if these two didn’t come out on top.

What’s striking is that Paul and Kucinich probably couldn’t agree on anything economically (Paul wants to slash government involvement in pretty much everything while Kucinich wants to use the full power government to help the working class).

At the same time, they stand together in staunch opposition to America’s penchant for war and military action — a concept average pols and traditional newspapers are afraid to seriously consider, and which both parties typically get behind when push comes to shove.

No surprises that Russ Feingold, who has a similar outlook as these two on war, was the top Maverick in the Senate, according to the study.

Wiener explains Lauderdale’s model:

Mavericks, he explained to John Sides, are members who vote “less on the basis of the political dimension that predicts all legislators’ behavior and more on particularistic factors unique to themselves.” In other words, their voting might seem erratic in the context of a rigid political spectrum, reflecting an idiosyncratic willingness to break ranks to support or oppose legislation on specific policy grounds.

In an age of growing partisan polarization where the Republican Party increasingly demands conformity and squashes dissent — and where Democrats (not Kucinich) have subdued their criticism of various Bush policies after Obama adopted them — voting on the basis of policy and principles, rather than conventional wisdom and partisan loyalties, is something people admire.

It’s why Paul and Kucinich are both marginalized often by their party leaders yet have among the most passionate supporters across the nation.

Also, in what should surprise no one at all, John McCain — long the standard-bearer of the term in Washington — has since 2008 moved into negative territory on “Maverickiness,” having plummeted particularly after he began running for president.

See article...

No surprises here...

"Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers." - Ron Paul

"I think it's inconsistent to tell the American people that you oppose the war and, yet, you continue to vote to fund the war. Because every time you vote to fund the war, you're reauthorizing the war all over again." - Dennis Kucinich

With Liberty and Justice for All...

2010-04-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

Who Can Afford It

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." - Thomas Jefferson

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Obama!

2010-04-04T09:21:00.000-07:00

By FRANK RICH
Published: April 3, 2010

NOT since Clark Kent changed in a phone booth has there been an instant image makeover to match Barack Obama’s in the aftermath of his health care victory. “He went from Jimmy Carter to F.D.R. in just a fortnight,” said one of the “Game Change” authors, Mark Halperin, on MSNBC. “Look at the steam in the man’s stride!” exclaimed Chris Matthews. “Is it just me, or does Barack Obama seem different since health care passed?” wrote Peter Beinart in The Daily Beast, which, like The Financial Times, ran an illustration portraying the gangly president as a newly bulked-up Superman.

What a difference winning makes — especially in America. Whatever did (or didn’t) get into Obama’s Wheaties, this much is certain: No one is talking about the clout of Scott Brown or Rahm Emanuel any more.

But has the man really changed — or is it just us? Fifteen months after arriving at the White House, Obama remains by far the most popular national politician in the country, even with a sub-50 percent approval rating. And yet he’s also the most enigmatic. While he is in our face more than any other figure in the world, we still aren’t entirely sure what to make of him.

Depending on where you stand — or the given day — he is either an overintellectual, professorial wuss or a ruthless Chicago machine pol rivaling the original Boss Daley. He is either a socialist redistributing wealth to the undeserving poor or a tool of Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs elite. He is a terrorist-coddling, A.C.L.U.-tilting lawyer or a closet Cheneyite upholding the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s end run on the Constitution. He is a lightweight celebrity who’s clueless without a teleprompter or a Machiavellian mastermind who has ingeniously forged his Hawaiian birth certificate, covered up his ties to Islamic radicals and bamboozled the entire mainstream press. He is the reincarnation of J.F.K., L.B.J., F.D.R., Reagan, Hitler, Stalin, Adlai Stevenson or Nelson Mandela. (Funny how few people compared George W. Bush to anyone but Hitler and his parents.)

No wonder that eight major new Obama books are arriving in the coming months, as Howard Kurtz reported in The Washington Post last week. And that’s just counting those by real authors, like Bob Woodward and Jonathan Alter, not the countless anti-Obama diatribes. There’s a bottomless market for these volumes not just because their protagonist remains popular but also because we keep hoping that the Obama puzzle might be cracked once and for all, like the Da Vinci Code.

The first of these books, out this week, is full of intriguing clues. Titled “The Bridge” and written by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, it portrays Obama as fairly steady in his blend of liberal and centrist views, however much they (like everyone else’s) may have evolved over decades. Even his cultural tastes combined the progressive with the cautious. In the apartment he shared with a roommate at Occidental College, the playlist at late-night parties ran the gamut from Bob Marley and the Talking Heads to “that not-so-great soft Grover Washington stuff,” a friend recalls with some disdain.

If Obama’s belief system was fairly consistent, his public persona was not. Remnick returns repeatedly to the notion that Obama is a “shape-shifter,” with a remarkable ability to come across differently to disparate constituencies. Some of that reflects his agility at shifting rhetorical gears when, say, speaking to a living-room gathering on Chicago’s Near North Side or at a black church — a talent not unknown to some white politicians, starting with Bill Clinton. But much of this has less to do with Obama’s performance style than with how various audiences respond to his complex, hard-to-pigeonhole poly-racial-cultural-geographical identity. As far back as 2004 — when Obama was still in the Illinois Senate — a writer at The Chicago Tribune, Don Terry, framed what remains the prevailing Obama takeaway to this day. “He’s a Rorschach test,” Terry wrote. “What you see is what you want to see.”

Last week, after I wrote about the role race plays in some of the apocalyptic right-wing hysteria about the health care bill, a friend who is a prominent liberal Obama supporter sent me an e-mail flipping my point. He theorized that race also plays a role in “the often angry and intemperate talk” he has been hearing from “left-liberal friends for the past many months about what a failure and a disappointment” the president has been. In his view, “Obama never said anything, while running, to give anyone the idea” that he was other than a “deliberate, compromise-seeking bipartisan moderate.” My friend wondered if white liberals who voted for Obama expected a “sweeping Republicans-be-damned kind of agenda” in part — and he emphasized “in part!” — because “they expect a black guy to be intemperate, impetuous, impatient” rather than “measured, deliberate, patient.”

Read more...

"The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people." - Theodore Roosevelt

A Ticket for Rush!

2010-03-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

Recently, a number of interesting things happened. First, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show that if the Healthcare Reform Bill passed, he would go to Costa Rica. Second, the Healthcare Reform Bill passed. As you can imagine, this has made a number of people very excited. We are among that number. We want to make sure that Rush is able to make good on his promise, and so we've made this website.

Here's how this is going to work:

We're accepting 1 dollar PayPal donations to buy Rush a one-way ticket to Costa Rica. We are currently accepting donations.
At the end of the donation period*, we will attempt to personally contact Rush, and offer to buy him a first-class plane ticket from Palm Beach International Airport to San Jose International Airport, Costa Rica.
If Rush does get cold feet**, and refuses to move to Costa Rica, we will instead donate all of the money to the Planned Parenthood Action Center.
Additionally, if we make more money than the cost of ticket, or if we don't make enough money for a ticket, everything will still go to Planned Parenthood.

*Donation period will run until April 30th, 2010. That's like, more than 4 weeks notice for the guy.
**Rush has publicized that he never said he would move to
Costa Rica. However, we still think it's a good idea.

See article...

Hey! First class!

"Let the revolution begin." - Ron Paul

Iraq Opens Up to Foreign Oil Majors

2010-03-05T08:59:00.000-08:00

Western producers like BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell are enjoying their best access to Iraq's southern oil fields since 1972

By Anthony DiPaola and Daniel Williams

(Bloomberg) -- BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. took the best deal they could get in Iraq last year when they won the largest oil contracts since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. Oil companies may wait a long time to get a better one.

Parliamentary elections may produce a weak or unstable government incapable of tendering new oil contracts, said Samuel Ciszuk, a London-based analyst at IHS Global Insight. He said he does expect the 10 technical-services contracts won by Exxon, BP and 20 other companies to be honored.

"One thing that's fairly certain is there won't be a strong coalition, so it may take time for the next government to get its act together," Ciszuk said in a telephone interview.

"Bottlenecks could hold up production increases" if no government forms by June.

Western producers haven't had access to oil fields in southern Iraq since 1972, when the country nationalized production including concessions owned by the companies now known as BP, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Exxon.

The contracts awarded in two auctions, which pay a per-barrel fee for development work rather than granting a share in the production itself, will cost the companies a total of about $100 billion to develop deposits, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said in December. Iraq, with the world's third-largest oil reserves, will earn about $200 billion a year.

Read more...

The article in BusinessWeek later states that,"Iraq is one of the most attractive oil markets in the world." Hmm. 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' may have been a bit of a misnomer. Thankfully, [sarcasm] the wars for all this oil have made that commodity better, more available, and more affordable.

I think they can more appropriately hang their "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner now.

Related...

"I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." - Thomas Jefferson

Obama Extends Patriot Act for Another Year

2010-02-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

If the Patriot Act hadn't been approved for another year, Sunday would have looked much different.

Sunday could have meant the government was no longer given permission to wiretap the phones of Americans and seize their records and property.

But since the bill was approved by Congressional Democrats earlier this week and signed into law by President Obama on Saturday, this Sunday is just another Sunday for Americans living with the Patriot Act.

To be fair, many Democrats asked for additional protections for the privacy rights of American citizens.

But Republicans said that would detract from the ability of the country's intelligence agencies to track down terrorists. Lacking a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate to pass the bill with the extra provisions, Democrats left them out.

Democratic Rep. Jane Harman opposed the House's approval of the extension, citing abuses during the administration of President George W. Bush.

"While I strongly support using the most robust tools possible to go after terrorists, Congress must revise and narrow -- not extend -- Bush era policies," Harman said.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com had the following to say of the overwhelming support of the law's extension:

"One of the strangest prongs of conventional Beltway wisdom is the lament that there is not enough bipartisanship. The opposite is true: many of the most damaging acts inflicted on the country by Washington are enacted on a fully bipartisan basis -- the most destructive political act of this generation, the invasion of Iraq, was fully bipartisan, as were most of the post-9/11 civil liberties abuses and other Bush-era initiatives-- and, at least in certain areas, the harmonious joining together of Republicans and Democrats continues unabated."

Most publications and politicians expected Obama to sign the Patriot Act.

See article...

So where's the change from Bush Administration policies?

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." - Thomas Paine

Another great email titled...

2010-02-22T21:27:00.000-08:00

A Lay-off letter from an excellent boss.

Naturally, of course, I can't let this slide. My responses are in blue.

Dear Employees: As the CEO of this organization, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama is our President and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way.

Really? Have they increased already? How much have they gone up? Because last I checked, they haven't. For anyone. In fact, just about everything else has drastically increased in price, except taxes. Furthermore, have you checked the tax rates historically and compared them with the current rates? According to taxpolicycenter.org, these are the rates for most of the past century for those who have been in the top tax bracket, which generally includes CEOs...

Also available as: PDF Excel

If you look at any particular period of time, you may notice that the lower the highest marginal income tax rate, the worse the economy. The economy crashed in 1929, then again in 1987, and 2008, not to mention the recessions of 1982, 1991 [pdf, pdf], and 2002. There sure are a lot of theories as to how and why these economic downturns occurred, however there are also a few common threads.

But more important to this discussion, note how the tax rate has remained the same under Obama. And though taxes were slightly lower at the end of the Reagan Administration, we all paid considerably more, on average, under the man forever revered in 'conservative' circles. Of course the great reduction in taxes enjoyed under the Reagan Admin. couldn't have been achieved without a record level of deficit spending. Interesting, too, since Ron Paul (R-TX) said and truly believes, "Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers." It appears that he is suggesting that the tax rate increase that occurred under the Clinton Admin. was a direct result of the unprecedented levels of deficit spending under Ronald Reagan.

With that in mind, please remind me who created this massive deficit. If you answer honestly, it was the George W. Bush Admin. And the bulk of what he didn't contribute was still there from the Reagan/GHW Bush Era. This after Bush entered office with a balanced budget and a tax surplus. Furthermore, from January 2003 to January 2007, when Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, this country collected more taxes than ever before, or so they bragged, while also amassing more debt than any other 4 year period in the history of this country. During this time, funds were also cut from public education, law enforcement, border enforcement, firefighting, public roads, and countless other domestic programs and institutions. Tens of billions of dollars are/were funnelled to the wars and their cronies for rebuilding the countries destroyed in these wars.

Sure Obama is on track to borrow about the same as Bush, but he is not enjoying the record high tax revenues Bush did. Bush will most likely retain his record on overall spending.

Ironically, many of the same so-called 'conservatives' are now complaining about the very spending they ALL championed just a couple of years ago. They're also complaining about the wars they insisted were necessary to our national security, the cronyism, the lack of government transparency, the consolidation of power, the trampling of Constitutional rights, etc. when it was ALL OF YOU republicans who made all that possible with your:

USA Patriot Act - A 342 page document presented to Congress one day before voting on it that allows the government access to your bank and email accounts, as well as your medical and phone records with no court order. They can also search your home anytime without a warrant.

USA Patriot Act II - This one allows secret government arrests, the legal authority to seize your American citizenship, and the extraction of your DNA if you are deemed a potential terrorist.
Military Commissions Act of 2006 - Ends habeas corpus, the right to an attorney, and the right to court review of one's detention and arrest. Without this most basic right, all other rights are gone too since anyone can be detained indefinitely. Now anyone may be arrested and incarcerated and nobody would know.
NSPD 51 - A directive signed by George W. Bush on May 9, 2007, that allows the President to declare martial law, effectively transforming the U.S. into a dictatorship with no checks and balances from the Legislative or Judicial Branches. Parts of this directive are considered classified and members of Congress have been denied the right to review it.
Protect America Act of 2007 - Allows unprecedented domestic wiretapping and surveillance activities with a reduction in FISA court oversight. Probable cause is not needed.

John Warner Defense Authorization Act - Signed by George W. Bush on October 17, 2007, this act allows the President to declare a public emergency and station troops anywhere in America without the consent of the governor or local authorities to "suppress public disorder."

Homegrown Terrorism and Radicalization Act - Passed overwhelmingly by the House on October 23, 2007, is still awaiting a Senate vote. This act will beget a new crackdown on dissent and the Constitutional rights of American citizens. The definitions of "terrorism" and "extremism" are so vague that they could be used to generalize against any group that is working against the policies of the Administration. In this bill, "violent radicalization" criminalizes thought and ideology while "homegrown terrorism" is defined as "the planed use of force to coerce the government." The term, "force" could encompass political activities such as protests, marches, or any other form of non-violent resistance.

Be careful what you wish for, now you've got it. Don't cry foul just because your candidates aren't the ones with all the stroke anymore.

Back to the email.....

To compensate for these increases, our prices would have to increase by about 10%. But since we cannot increase our prices right now due to the dismal state of the economy, we will have to lay off sixty of our employees instead.

So, you're sticking it to either your loyal customers who keep you in business or your dedicated employees in anticipation of your personal income taxes going up, when, even after a year of "socialism," you still pay the same exact rate you've been paying for seven years? No wonder this country is in the toilet.. with people like you making such 'brilliant' decisions and forcing everyone else to eat it for you. Could this all be avoided if you alone took a mere 5% pay cut?

This has really been bothering me since I believe we are family here and I didn't know how to choose who would have to go.

Yeah, I'm sure you're all broken up about it.

So, this is what I did. I walked through our parking lots and found sixty 'Obama' bumper stickers on our employees' cars and have decided these folks will be the ones to let go. I can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem. They voted for change...... I gave it to them.

Great! Now, not only have you crippled production at the company with selfishly poor, and illegal decisions, but now you have bankrupted it with the ensuing class action discrimination lawsuit from the 60 former employees you singled out. That decision just cost everyone their job because your candidate lost the election. Who would you have laid off if McCain had won and we're all exactly where we are now anyway?

I will see the rest of you at the annual company picnic.

Picnic is canceled. You've got a deposition to prepare for. By using your authority and punishing everyone who has a different opinion than you, you have broken the law and will stand trial. You have violated a fundamental right in this country. The right to free thought.

THE BOSS

Not anymore. Because he both subscribes to petty, partisan politics, flawed logic, and misinformation, AND allows it to dictate his actions, the company is now bankrupt and out of business. Go home.

Related...

"The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people. Ron Paul

What Do You Think The 'Tea Party' Movement Is About?

2010-02-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

By You Decide - FOXNews.com

How to define the Tea Party movement was nearly as big an issue last week at the National Tea Party Convention as the political issues discussed, from government fiscal responsibility to greater accountability of public officials. Some participants drew cheers for raising more controversial topics, such as President Obama's nationality, but others argued that those points were, at best, politically unproductive. Meghan McCain went further on Monday and called segments of the movement "racist."

So far, the results show...

Small government and fiscal responsibility 13% (29,345 votes)

Exposing Democrats' socialist agenda 1% (2,193 votes)

Voicing outrage at out-of-touch politicians 5% (11,106 votes)

Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories 80% (174,815 votes)

Other (add your comment) 1% (1,446 votes)

Total Votes: 218,905
This is not a scientific poll.

See article & take poll...

Haha! Love it!

"Truth is treason in the empire of lies." - Ron Paul

Fiscal Conservatives In Name Only

2010-02-11T17:14:00.000-08:00

For more information go here.

"Never separate the life you live from the words you speak." - Paul Wellstone

A Day in the Life of Joe Republican

2010-02-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It's noon time, Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republicans would still be sitting in the dark)

He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.

He turns on a radio talk show, the host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, "We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

See article...

Haha!

To be fair...

A Day in the Life of Joe Democrat

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana

No Joke: South Carolina Now Requires ’Subversives’ to Register

2010-02-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

Five-dollar registration fee for persons planning to overthrow US government

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions -- or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, states that "every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State."

There's even a $5 filing fee.

By "subversive organization," the law means "every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States [or] of this State."

A PDF of the registration form can be found here, courtesy of FitsNews.

Read more...

Hahaha! Wow.

"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?" - Thomas Jefferson

How Corporations Secretly Move Millions to Fund Political Ads

2010-02-04T22:02:00.000-08:00

By Brad Jacobson
Thursday, February 4th, 2010

The Supreme Court’s seismic January ruling that corporations are free to spend unlimited amounts of their profits to advertise for or against candidates may have been the latest shakeup of campaign finance – but gaping holes already allow corporations to spend enormous sums without leaving a paper trail, a Raw Story investigation has found.

Campaign finance experts confirmed that though disclosure rules remained intact in the new Supreme Court decision, there are effective methods to circumvent them.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an attorney and campaign finance expert at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, said corporations already effectively end-run campaign finance law by shuffling money through trade associations.

“One of their favorites right now is spending through trade associations,” Torres-Spelliscy said.
Trade associations are considered tax-exempt non-profit organizations under US law. While they must report contributions received from other corporations to the Internal Revenue Service, the document itself remains confidential and is not made available to the public.

“Money coming through the trade association doesn’t get disclosed,” Torres-Spelliscy explained. “You can’t tell if it came from particular corporations.”

For example, she said, “The disclaimer form is likely to just say, ‘This is brought to you by the Chamber of Commerce,’ with no extra ability to see behind that.”

The Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest trade association representing at least 300,000 businesses and organizations.

A fellow non-profit that works on campaign finance, the Center for Political Accountability, calls trade associations “the Swiss bank accounts of American politics.”

“What was the lesson from Watergate?” Torres-Spelliscy quipped. “Follow the money?”

Health insurers, pharmaceutical companies embrace loophole

Trade associations such as America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) have had an enormous impact on the health insurance reform bills pending in Congress. In fact, AHIP was recently found to have solicited $10 million to $20 million from leading health insurance companies -- UnitedHealth, Wellpoint, Aetna, Cigna and Humana among them -- and funneled it secretly to the US Chamber of Commerce to underwrite anti-reform attack ads.

Asked about the story, the Chamber's top lobbyist told the reporter, "No comment. We never disclose funding or what we're going to do." The Chamber of Commerce did not respond to a Raw Story request for comment.

Raw Story’s 2008 award-nominated investigative series The Permanent Republican Majority noted that, “Despite its seemingly bipartisan name, the Chamber of Commerce has operated as a pro-Republican powerhouse since the fervently anti-regulation Thomas J. Donahue became president in 1997.” Raw's Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane uncovered, for instance, that the Chamber, under Donahue's leadership, had an indirect role in the defeat and political prosecution of Governor Don Siegelman and in targeting sitting judges in contested state elections.

President of the Center for Political Accountability Bruce Freed told Raw Story that trade associations also use other trade associations in this manner as “blinds for ads” to “launder their money.”

“It’s a way for the industry to avoid responsibility for those ads,” Freed remarked.

Karl Sandstrom, the Center's lead counsel, noted that it isn't only the public that remains in the dark over the "Swiss bank" loophole. He said that when the Center surveyed boards of directors of companies, the majority of them just assumed their businesses' contributions supporting political ads were being disclosed.

“It’s just almost a working assumption,” Sandstrom said.

Most of the boards of directors, he said, were “shocked to learn there is no disclosure.”

While these types of contributions prior to the new Court ruling could only be used for “issue ads” -- political advertisements that do not expressly advocate for or against a particular candidate -- many such ads were often accused of blurring this line and having nearly the same impact as express advocacy ads.

Christian Hillard, spokesman for the Federal Election Commission (FEC), confirmed Tuesday that the FEC has “no authority over issue ads.”

Corporate funding of issue ads through trade associations has “no filing requirements with us,” he told Raw Story.

New ruling’s impact on the trade association loophole

Now that corporations, including trade associations, are free to spend funds on political ads – which cannot be coordinated with a candidate or political party but which expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate – the line between funding issue ads and express advocacy ads has been largely erased.

Campaign finance experts expressed grave concern in conversations with Raw Story.

Paul S. Ryan, an attorney and expert in federal election law at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., asserted that Congress did not contemplate this new Court ruling when it wrote the laws for disclosure related to independent expenditures or electioneering communications, because at the time such corporate spending was prohibited. Ryan said that it’s imperative that the FEC addresses disclosure requirements pertaining to this decision.

“Take hypothetically a group like the Chamber of Commerce,” he explained. “The Chamber collects money from lots of other corporations. So the question becomes: What kind of disclosure are we really going to get when the FEC gets around to promulgating rules to implement this Supreme Court decision?”

“Yes, the Chamber needs to file paperwork with the FEC saying we ran an ad saying Vote for Candidate Smith,” he continued. “But does the Chamber need to tell the FEC where it got its money to pay for that ad? And when the FEC adopts its rules to implement this new Supreme Court decision, the FEC will likely say, ‘Chamber of Commerce, you only need to tell us where you got your money if that money was given to you specifically designated to run election ads.’”

Ryan and other campaign finance experts told Raw Story this is a simple dodge.

“It’s child’s play to get around that type of disclosure,” Ryan said, adding, “It’s unclear whether the Court was being naive or disingenuous” when it touted disclosure provisions during its decision.

He explained that, for example, all the Chamber of Commerce has to do is tell other corporations, “Give us money and we’ll make sure it advances your business interests.”

“So as long as the donors don’t say to the Chamber, ‘We’re giving you this money to run political ads,’ as long as they refrain from saying that, then their identity can continue to be shrouded or hidden from the public.”

The Center for Accountability's Sandstrom agreed, saying this type of disclosure “is easily avoided” and adding, “As long as you don’t designate it, you won’t be disclosed.”

The Chamber of Commerce, in fact, argued against any disclosure in the Citizens United case.
“Their first brief filed in Citizens United is on the disclosure issue,” Sandstrom said. “They argued that they would raise substantially more money the more they could keep it anonymous.”

FEC spokesman Hillard said that the FEC was still examining the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision and would not comment on anything pertaining directly to that ruling, including disclosure provisions.

Brad Jacobson is a contributing investigative reporter for Raw Story.

Correction: The Chamber of Commerce represents at least 300,000 businesses and organizations, not three million. The figure was incorrectly put out by the Chamber itself, which revised its membership figure in 2009 but maintains the inflated number on its website.

See article...

This is a huge step backwards. Things are going to get worse.

Related...

"The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy." - Paul Wellstone

The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy

2010-02-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

By Noam Chomsky

Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline.

On that day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban corporations from political spending on elections—a decision that profoundly affects government policy, both domestic and international.

The decision heralds even further corporate takeover of the U.S. political system.

To the editors of The New York Times, the ruling “strikes at the heart of democracy” by having “paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.”

The court was split, 5-4, with the four reactionary judges (misleadingly called “conservative”) joined by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. selected a case that could easily have been settled on narrow grounds and maneuvered the court into using it to push through a far-reaching decision that overturns a century of precedents restricting corporate contributions to federal campaigns.

Now corporate managers can in effect buy elections directly, bypassing more complex indirect means. It is well-known that corporate contributions, sometimes packaged in complex ways, can tip the balance in elections, hence driving policy. The court has just handed much more power to the small sector of the population that dominates the economy.

Political economist Thomas Ferguson’s “investment theory of politics” is a very successful predictor of government policy over a long period. The theory interprets elections as occasions on which segments of private sector power coalesce to invest to control the state.

The Jan. 21 decision only reinforces the means to undermine functioning democracy.

The background is enlightening. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledged that “we have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment”—the constitutional guarantee of free speech, which would include support for political candidates.

In the early 20th century, legal theorists and courts implemented the court’s 1886 decision that corporations—these “collectivist legal entities”—have the same rights as persons of flesh and blood.

This attack on classical liberalism was sharply condemned by the vanishing breed of conservatives. Christopher G. Tiedeman described the principle as “a menace to the liberty of the individual, and to the stability of the American states as popular governments.”

Morton Horwitz writes in his standard legal history that the concept of corporate personhood evolved alongside the shift of power from shareholders to managers, and finally to the doctrine that “the powers of the board of directors “are identical with the powers of the corporation.” In later years, corporate rights were expanded far beyond those of persons, notably by the mislabeled “free trade agreements.” Under these agreements, for example, if General Motors establishes a plant in Mexico, it can demand to be treated just like a Mexican business (“national treatment”)—quite unlike a Mexican of flesh and blood who might seek “national treatment” in New York, or even minimal human rights.

A century ago, Woodrow Wilson, then an academic, described an America in which “comparatively small groups of men,” corporate managers, “wield a power and control over the wealth and the business operations of the country,” becoming “rivals of the government itself.”

In reality, these “small groups” increasingly have become government’s masters. The Roberts court gives them even greater scope.

The Jan. 21 decision came three days after another victory for wealth and power: the election of Republican candidate Scott Brown to replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the “liberal lion” of Massachusetts. Brown’s election was depicted as a “populist upsurge” against the liberal elitists who run the government.

The voting data reveal a rather different story.

High turnouts in the wealthy suburbs, and low ones in largely Democratic urban areas, helped elect Brown. “Fifty-five percent of Republican voters said they were `very interested’ in the election,” The Wall St. Journal/NBC poll reported, “compared with 38 percent of Democrats.”

So the results were indeed an uprising against President Obama’s policies: For the wealthy, he was not doing enough to enrich them further, while for the poorer sectors, he was doing too much to achieve that end.

The popular anger is quite understandable, given that the banks are thriving, thanks to bailouts, while unemployment has risen to 10 percent.

In manufacturing, one in six is out of work—unemployment at the level of the Great Depression. With the increasing financialization of the economy and the hollowing out of productive industry, prospects are bleak for recovering the kinds of jobs that were lost.

Brown presented himself as the 41st vote against healthcare—that is, the vote that could undermine majority rule in the U.S. Senate.

It is true that Obama’s healthcare program was a factor in the Massachusetts election. The headlines are correct when they report that the public is turning against the program.

The poll figures explain why: The bill does not go far enough. The Wall St. Journal/NBC poll found that a majority of voters disapprove of the handling of healthcare both by the Republicans and by Obama.

These figures align with recent nationwide polls. The public option was favored by 56 percent of those polled, and the Medicare buy-in at age 55 by 64 percent; both programs were abandoned.

Eighty-five percent believe that the government should have the right to negotiate drug prices, as in other countries; Obama guaranteed Big Pharma that he would not pursue that option.

Large majorities favor cost-cutting, which makes good sense: U.S. per capita costs for healthcare are about twice those of other industrial countries, and health outcomes are at the low end.

But cost-cutting cannot be seriously undertaken when largesse is showered on the drug companies, and healthcare is in the hands of virtually unregulated private insurers—a costly system peculiar to the U.S.

The Jan. 21 decision raises significant new barriers to overcoming the serious crisis of healthcare, or to addressing such critical issues as the looming environmental and energy crises. The gap between public opinion and public policy looms larger. And the damage to American democracy can hardly be overestimated.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.

See article...

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." - Thomas Jefferson

Angel of Death

2010-02-02T09:42:00.000-08:00

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson

Kucinich shreds Democrats for betraying the promise of change

2010-01-22T12:57:00.000-08:00

Slams health bill 'madness'

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) on Wednesday said the Massachusetts election was a "wake up call" for Democrats and that his party had better change course or it could suffer devastating losses come November.

"People elected Democrats in 2008 to change the country's direction," he told Raw Story in a nearly hour-long interview.

"And the same entrenched interests that George Bush could not shake, this current White House is having great difficulty in shaking. One could suggest they might be more entrenched than ever."

Kucinich staunchly defended liberalism but alleged that Democrats are not behaving like liberals.

"There's nothing liberal about the bailouts. There's nothing liberal about standing by and watching banks use public money to get their executive bonuses. There's nothing liberal about giving insurance companies carte blanche to charge anything they want for health care... Since when did that become liberal?"

"There's nothing liberal about letting coal and oil write climate change legislation," he added. "Are you kidding me?"

The 13-year congressman lamented the lack of change in economic policies, tying it to the major problems Democrats are facing.

"The minute the president appointed Tim Geithner and Larry Summers to key policy positions, and the minute that [Ben] Bernanke was named to head the Fed again, we're looking at people who participated in the decline of the economy," he said. "This group has done us a disservice."

"Every area of the economy is still about taking wealth from the great mass of people and putting it into the hands of a few. If you don't have an economic democracy, you don't have a political democracy."

"We have to be more defined as being on the side of the people and not on the side of interest groups that are so entrenched," said Kucinich, who is widely regarded as a champion on progressive issues.

Dems 'jumped in bed with insurance companies'

Kucinich said he's deeply disillusioned with what health reform has become, suggesting Democrats should "slow down" and "take a step back."

"Health care became too complex and too riddled with concessions to insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies," he said. "It's really time to take a new direction and that direction has to be back to the American people."

One idea Democrats are floating is to pass the Senate bill through the House, which would then allow the President to sign it into law.

"I don't think that's going to happen," he said. "The senate bill is so totally flawed that I don't think it can get the votes in the House to pass. I certainly wouldn't vote for it."

"It hits very sharply at people who gave wage concessions to get health care benefits," he said, citing the excise tax on health care benefits. "We're going to ask Americans to take a wage cut? Why?"

"We lost the initiative the minute that our party jumped into bed with the insurance companies. And soon they were looking at increasing taxes as a way of subsidizing insurance companies. It's just madness."

"We're redistributing the wealth of the nation upwards by giving the insurance companies 30 million new customers, $50 billion a year more in revenue."

Read more...

Well said, Rep. Kucinich. This is essentially the reason why I'm not and have never been a Democrat. They're nothing but gutless, spineless cowards who suck up to anyone that gives them the time of day.

And they wonder why they're blowing their majority at record pace.

My recommendation to the Democratic Party would be to grow a set before beginning your campaigns for [re-]election this year. Although, this may be a good year for third parties.

Related...

NOW: 'Kill the health bill entirely'

"The Democratic Party has lost much of it credibility with working class and low-income people. It retards progress toward presenting a genuine alternative." - Paul Wellstone

Republicans are Happy?

2010-01-21T18:53:00.000-08:00

Does anyone else find it funny or interesting that Republicans are rejoicing all across the country at Scott Brown winning the Senate seat left vacant by Ted Kennedy? I mean, are they really celebrating that now without the 60 seat Senate super majority, Democrats have lost their opportunity/ability to fuck up the country as bad as republicans did?

"As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do." - Andrew Carnegie

Cindy McCain Poses for NOH8

2010-01-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

Posted on Advocate.com January 20, 2010
By Advocate.com Editors

The NOH8 Campaign on Wednesday announced that Cindy McCain, the wife of former Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, has posed to demonstrate her support of marriage equality. NOH8’s Adam Bouska has photographed thousands of subjects since California passed Proposition 8 in 2008. All of the subjects are photographed with duct tape over their mouths to symbolize that their voices aren’t being heard on the subject of marriage equality.

Writes the NOH8 blog: “In the year since we’ve started the NOH8 Campaign, we’ve been surprised at some of the different individuals who have approached us showing their support. Few, though, have surprised us more than Cindy McCain — the wife of Senator John McCain and mother to vocal marriage equality advocate Meghan McCain. The McCains are one of the most well-known Republican families in recent history, and for Mrs. McCain to have reached out to us to offer her support truly means a lot. Although we had worked with Meghan McCain before and we were aware of her own position, we’d never really thought the cause might be something her mother could get behind.”

See portraits of both women at the group’s site.

See article...

Definitely a step in the right direction. And though I have been critical of the McCains in recent history, I like to give credit where it's due.

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression." - Thomas Jefferson

Brother Ali - "Tight Rope"

2010-01-12T20:12:00.000-08:00

Frigid frozen

Minnesota
Chip on his shoulder
Sick sleeping on a pissy sofa
Unwanted visitor in a different culture
Missing home and he can't go they're civil warin'
Listen solider

Forget getting over
Prison stay around the corner

Homless is even closer
Kids with similar skin color still dont even wantcha
Spit and insult ya cause they have been here longer
He leave his crib he guaranteed the pigs approach ya
Where ya going where ya from any weapons on ya?

Your family is stressed out your getting older
You dont live the way they did back in Somalia
It's extra difficult to be a daughter
Trying to keep it modest with the sinners all around you
Wear the wrong garment your parents get an ulcer
If you wrap it up the other children picking on you

Live in two worlds with your eyes closed
Tip toeing on a tight rope
Holding on for survival
Nobody to blame this is just how it goes

Holidays and you know what the business is
You get two birthdays and two Christmases
Older you get you resent how sick it is
They're trying to cover their guilt with the gifts they give
Bounce from his house to her house
Too bad that marriage didnt work out
Now you don't have a 'your house'
Daddy fighting mommy they both tell me they love me
If I get too close to one, the other one start acting funny
Ma went and had a baby with a different dad
You act happy to please 'em but you're really sad
Seeing first hand that family that you will never have
Plus you ain't no real brother, you're just a half
Got to pick up the pieces and move on
Bed time stories and greet them on the phone
Live in two houses and neither one is home
Wishing you were grown have the freedom to get gone

Live in two worlds with your eyes closed
Tip toeing on a tight rope
Holding on for survival
Nobody to blame this is just how it goes

Daddy was a preacher momma was a Sunday school teacher
Big brother a football squad leader
Now far be it for you to disappoint or displease them
You're just being what you feel you see in
That mirror every time you peer in
Swallow the tears inside that empty feeling
Her boy terrified to let the world in
He has girl friends but doesn't want a girlfriend
He retreats inside himself
Where he lives life itself in secret
Daddy says people go to hell for being
What he is and he certainly believes him
Cause there ain't no flame that can blaze enough
To trump being hated for the way you love
And cry yourself to sleep and hate waking up
It's a cold world, y'all, shame on us

Live in two worlds with your eyes closed
Tip toeing on a tight rope
Holding on for survival
Nobody to blame this is just how it goes

Live in two worlds with your eyes closed
Tip toeing on a tight rope
Holding on for survival
Nobody to blame this is just how it goes

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality." - John Lennon

Obama: Time To Keep Your Promises

2010-01-12T15:06:00.000-08:00

Do you want to have a Republican House - and possibly Senate - come November?

No?

Then you better put a stop to this crap.

The Fed is telling a bailout watchdog not to share documents requested as part of a House investigation into the bailout of failed insurance conglomerate American International Group Inc.

A letter from the special inspector general for the financial bailout to California Rep. Darrell Issa says, the Fed "has directed us not to provide you with the documents it has provided to us."

Your own party is having none of this:

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Edolphus Towns, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he will issue today a subpoena to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for documents related to American International Group Inc.

“This subpoena will provide the Committee with documents that will shed light on how and why taxpayer dollars were used for a backdoor bailout,” Towns said in an e-mailed statement. I know you didn't solicit my advice, but I'm good at providing unsolicited advice in this regard. I tried to warn John McCain prior to the election that his standing with the TARP/EESA "bailout nation" BS would cost him the election, and it did.

Most of the American people have no problem with anyone making an "unholy" amount of money provided they do so legally, without ripping anyone off.

I know few people who object to a farmer who works his entire life to provide for himself and his family, manages his crops, makes a lot of money, socks it away, and retires to enjoy his last years in comfort.

I know few people who object to the American who invents something new and never-before seen, like an automobile, an operating system for a computer or a new gadget that everyone wants and buys, becoming rich as a consequence.

But nobody, except for the criminal banking cabal on Wall Street and their paid shills, finds it acceptable to sell worthless trash as "money good" securities to states, retirees, pension funds and ordinary people simply trying to guarantee that they have a decent retirement income, whether those securities are bonds and CDOs backed by mortgages made to people who the sellers of the money knew couldn't pay or whether they're Internet bubble companies that never had a snowball's chance in Hell of being able to sell anywhere near enough product or service to cover their expenses.

Americans find it even more outrageous when, after doing the above, that very same criminal banking cabal got caught holding too much of their garbage and faced bankruptcy - so they forced the American people to bail them out while at the same time jacking up ordinary Americans' interest rates on credit cards to 29.9%, imposing new and outrageous fees, and then paid out tens of billions of dollars in bonuses!

One very small piece of this scam is in fact AIG and the role of the NY Fed in both the "regulation" of the banks under its purview during the time that AIG was selling what later proved to be worthless credit default swaps to those institutions under its regulatory umbrella and, later, "negotiating" a back-door transfer of funds from the US Taxpayer to bail out those very same regulated firms that bought worthless "protection" for the purpose of claiming that their risky "assets" were in fact money good.

For the NY Fed to now claim that Tim Geithner knew nothing of the negotiations, public filings and transactions between AIG and these institutions, both prior to the blow up and after it happened, stretch credulity. After all these institutions were specifically under the regulatory authority of the NY Fed in the years prior to this crisis and the NY Fed's charter explicitly includes oversight and management of systemic risk posed by these firms to the banking system as a whole.

You, President Obama, ran on the platform and claim that you were coming to Washington to, in part, STOP THE LOOTING AND START PROSECUTING.

Well Mr. President, there's a hell of a lot of looting that has taken place, and yet we've seen damn little prosecuting.

Millions of Americans have been dispossessed of their homes due to jobs lost in the economy during this mess, and there is no indication at all that the job problem is going to go away any time soon. Indeed, we are now back where we were in 1983 in terms of the percentage of the population that is employed and contributing to the Federal Tax Base, yet the total debt outstanding in the US is, as a percentage of GDP, twice as high.

Every American invested in the public markets has just completed a "lost decade" in which they have in fact lost money over a 10 year time, and that's without counting inflation. These are not small losses - about 35% if you were in the S&P 500, 35% in the DOW and more than half in the Nasdaq 100.

Pension plans, both public and private, have been decimated. Your core constituents, including organized labor of all stripes have taken it in the shorts as a direct and proximate consequence of the outrageous and pernicious fraud heaped upon the public debt and equity markets.

When you add all of this up Mr. President virtually every American has been touched by this mess. Lower-income earners have lost their jobs, middle-income workers have lost jobs, homes and retirement security and upper-income earners have suffered all of the above plus in many cases had their nest eggs literally stolen by scammers like Madoff.

Yet thus far you have focused your prosecutorial attention on Madoff, Stanford and a handful of others - all of whom attacked "high wealth" people.

Here's a hint Mr. President:

The rest of the nation is pissed off and tired of the excuses and lies, and we know who was responsible for all of the bogus securities and lending activity - and it wasn't Madoff.

Fraud is against the law Mr. President. It always has been. You need no new laws, you have plenty of existing ones.

It is my belief that there are literally tens of thousands of people and hundreds of companies, including some very large public ones, you should have under investigation if not indictment right here and now.

You can, right here and now, solve your flagging popularity problem. You need only give a speech that is roughly this:

My Fellow Americans.

The last three decades have been marked by outrageous scams and frauds throughout our financial system. This is not a partisan political issue and has consumed both Democrat and Republican administrations and Congresses alike.

As of today, that era has ended.

To those who believe that blowing bubbles, making homes unaffordable for the common man in this country or driving stock prices to ridiculous levels based on hype and false claims is a means to become wealthy, your days of being able to strip the wealth of the common American have come to an end.

Those federally-chartered institutions that promote a "bubble economy" based on unreasonable and unsustainable levels of debt will find that this administration will do everything in our power to revoke those charters. This includes but is not limited to The Federal Reserve.

To those who have ripped people off, including those who marketed and sold worthless securities, those who claimed to have "protection" against market events when they knew the person they bought from had no money to pay, or who worked together to make loans and sales to people through the use of various lies, such as falsely overstating incomes, you will soon be facing a jury of your peers.

I am today directing the FBI and Department of Justice to open and begin investigations, starting at the top. Each and every one of the large financial institutions in this country, including the banks, GSEs and their officials that operate under a federal charter or banking license will face a forensic audit. We will identify and bring to justice all of those who have robbed this economy of its vitality and stolen your futures. Where possible we will claw back every penny of these individuals and firms' wealth so as to provide you with whatever compensation we can recover. Those firms who have committed wrongdoing will be broken up and their officials barred from serving in the banking or securities industries in the future.

Our own administration and the people in it will be subject to this investigation, as will all members of Congress, the lobbying firms and interests that interact with our government. There will be no sacred cows and no rocks that will be left unturned.

We will investigate homebuilders, realtors, appraisers and mortgage brokers. We will look into the FHA, Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and determine exactly how all of these loss-producing loans came to be made. Where we can identify persons or corporate procedures that led investors, firms or people to be misled, we will bring charges.

The days of theft and fraud from the American public, followed by demands to be bailed out when these scams and schemes reach the end of their rope, are over. Civil and criminal penalties have and do exist for these offenses, and they will be enforced to the fullest extent of the law.

All Americans deserve to be able to invest with confidence and rely on the statements and publications put forward to them. Americans deserve to be told the truth. When Americans are ripped off, they deserve justice. Beginning today, every American will receive exactly that.

The days of the "Wild West" on Wall Street and K Street alike are over.

Thank you.

If you don't, and soon, you will have a Republican Congress come November, and in 2012, you will be headed home to Chicago, where you can live in the bankrupt State of Illinois - bankrupted, in no small part, by the same fraud and rip-offs that have infested the rest of this nation.

You've had a year to survey the landscape.

It is now time to keep your promises.

We, the voters and citizens of this nation, are not asking any longer.

We're now demanding you do so.

See article...

"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?" - Thomas Jefferson

Gay Marriage Goes on Trial in California

2010-01-11T12:59:00.000-08:00

Opponents and defenders of gay marriage geared Monday for an epic court showdown in California which could see the controversy go all the way to the Supreme Court.

At issue is so-called Proposition 8, approved by 52 percent of California voters in a November 2008 referendum, which annulled a state supreme court decision that had allowed gay marriage.

The court decision affected thousands of couples who had rushed to get legally married in the West Coast state after the state supreme court decision.

But just months later Proposition 8 amended the California constitution to state that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in the state of California."

Opponents argue that the amendment discriminates against gays, and therefore violates the US Constitution.

Federal court Judge Vaughn Walker has now agreed to hear the suit filed by supporters of gay marriage and said it was a constitutional issue that belonged in a federal court.

But the decision has angered those against gay marriage, who argue that Californians have already spoken on the issue.

"This lawsuit is an attempt by Judge Walker to put the voters of California on trial, and it's wrong. Walker has not dealt with this properly. He doesn't care about the law," Brian Brown, director of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes gay marriage, told AFP.

"I think our founding fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they heard that the constitution guarantees the right to redefine marriage. This is absurd," he said.

Whatever ruling Judge Walker eventually makes is likely to be challenged and the issue seems set to go all the way to Washington and the nine justices who sit on the nation's highest court.

Those who support gay marriage believe the court case, which at Judge Walker's request will be carried live on the video-sharing site YouTube, will be an opportunity to enlighten the public.

"Discrimination hurts us and doesn't help anyone. The trial will offer a chance for the public to listen to the expert witnesses on both sides and hear the cross examinations of those witnesses," said Jennifer Pizer, Director of Lambda Legal's national marriage project.

She added "people have so many misconceptions and misunderstandings about gay people and what sexual orientation is all about."

Pizer is also counting on the two star lawyers representing the plaintiffs: Theodore Olson and David Boies, who are teaming up here after being fierce opponents in the 2000 Supreme Court fight for the presidency between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Olson, who defended Bush, is a prominent conservative and Pizer believes "his advocacy and passion for equal treatment of lesbian and gay couples here will reach the ears and hearts of many people who have not understood this issue before."

But the stakes are huge for both supporters and opponents of gay marriage.

"No one in America thinks that this trial is going to end at this level," Brown said. "Eventually, it will go to Supreme Court."

A Supreme Court ruling would seal the fate of gay unions across the United States, without possibility for appeal by one side or the other.

The California court case follows several setbacks for gay marriage proponents. On Thursday, New Jersey lawmakers rejected a bill authorizing gay marriages, as did lawmakers in New York state a few weeks ago.

Only five US states today permit gay unions: Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire.

See article...

An interesting quote from the article: "I think our founding fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they heard that the constitution guarantees the right to redefine marriage. This is absurd," says Brian Brown.

I seriously doubt he understands either the Constitution - the document itself - or the intentions of the founders of this country. Or that he has accused his opponents of what the movement he represents has done.

Ironically, it is the supporters of Prop 8 who have redefined marriage. If marriage had already been defined as being between one man and one woman, then the need for another law stating the same would have been superfluous.

Related...

"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." - Thomas Jefferson

Man sues Dickson judge for forcing a drug test

2010-01-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

A man is suing a Dickson County judge, the sheriff and a handful of deputies for allegedly violating his civil rights when the judge ordered him to take a drug screening.

The incident occurred in General Sessions Judge Durwood Moore's courtroom in January of 2008. Benjamin Marchant was a spectator in the courtroom that day, waiting to give a friend a ride home. Moore ordered a drug screening on Marchant, and had sheriff's office deputies escort him out of the room to administer the urinalysis.

Marchant's drug test came back negative. But even if it were positive, the Tennessee Court of the Judiciary ruled in May that Moore had no right to order Marchant to take a drug test. He was censured in May by the board, which is an extension of the Tennessee SuPreme Court, for the incident, and his actions were described as illegal and unconstitutional.

The lawsuit, filed Dec. 30 by Marchant, states that he was afforded no due process before or during his detention, search and seizure as evidence was taken from his body forcibly.

"Only a plainly incompetent officer or a knowing participant would have taken place in such unlawful and unconstitutional procedures," according to the lawsuit.

The suit also alleges that Moore has issued a written statement that he "routinely drug screens 'spectators' in his courtroom if he 'thinks' they may be under the influence of drugs."

Marchant is asking for $1.5 million in restitution for the six claims he brings against Moore, Sheriff Tom Wall and the deputies. The list includes violation of constitutional rights, outrageous conduct, violation of the Tennessee Human Rights Act, assault and battery, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

A trial date for the case has not yet been set, but a jury has been requested. It will be heard at the U.S. District Court in Nashville.

See article...

That is totally outrageous! Rather than suing the judge and sheriffs for $1.5 million, they ought to be seeking a more appropriate punishment that strips them of their citizenship and sends them into exile.

The reality is that this case will probably be thrown out of court, or it will be ruled in Durwood Moore's favor, not because of a lack of evidence, but for an abundance of the good ol' boy network among politicians and other high ranking government officials who never lay down the law on their own, just the rest of us.

Related...

"It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape." - Thomas Jefferson

Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which one has overcome while trying to succeed." - Booker T. Washington

BLACKWATER GETS AWAY WITH MURDER

2009-12-31T16:39:00.000-08:00

Judge tosses Blackwater case, cites gov't missteps

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – A federal judge dismissed all charges Thursday against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in a crowded Baghdad intersection in 2007.

Citing repeated government missteps, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed a case that had been steeped in international politics. The shooting in busy Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad. The Iraqi government wanted the guards to face trial in Iraq and officials there said they would closely watch how the U.S. judicial system handled the case.

Urbina said the prosecutors ignored the advice of senior Justice Department officials and improperly built their case on sworn statements that had been given under a promise of immunity. Urbina said the government's explanations were "contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility."

"We're obviously disappointed by the decision," Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said. "We're still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options."
Prosecutors can appeal the ruling.

Blackwater contractors had been hired to guard U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The guards said insurgents ambushed them in a traffic circle. Prosecutors said the men unleashed an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades.

The shooting led to the unraveling of the North Carolina-based company, which since has replaced its management and changed its name to Xe Services.

The five guards are Donald Ball, a former Marine from West Valley City, Utah; Dustin Heard, a former Marine from Knoxville, Tenn.; Evan Liberty, a former Marine from Rochester, N.H.; Nick Slatten, a former Army sergeant from Sparta, Tenn., and Paul Slough, an Army veteran from Keller, Texas.

Defense attorneys said the guards were thrilled by the ruling after more than two years of scrutiny.

"It's tremendously gratifying to see the court allow us to celebrate the new year the way it has," said attorney Bill Coffield, who represents Liberty. "It really invigorates your belief in our court system."

"It's indescribable," said Ball's attorney, Steven McCool. "It feels like the weight of the world has been lifted off his shoulders. Here's a guy that's a decorated war hero who we maintain should never have been charged in the first place."

The five guards had been charged with manslaughter and weapons violations. The charges carried mandatory 30-year prison terms.

Urbina's ruling does not resolve whether the shooting was proper. Rather, the 90-page opinion underscores some of the conflicting evidence in the case. Some Blackwater guards told prosecutors they were concerned about the shooting and offered to cooperate. Others said the convoy had been attacked. By the time the FBI began investigating, Nisoor Square had been picked clean of bullets that might have proven whether there had been a firefight or a massacre.

The Iraqi government has refused to grant Blackwater a license to continue operating in the country, prompting the State Department to refuse to renew its contracts with the company.
In a statement released by its president, Joseph Yorio, the company said it was happy to have the shooting behind it.

"Like the people they were protecting, our Xe professionals were working for a free, safe and democratic Iraq for the Iraqi people," Yorio said. "With this decision, we feel we can move forward and continue to assist the United States in its mission to help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan find a peaceful, democratic future."

The case against the five men fell apart because, after the shooting, the State Department ordered the guards to explain what happened. In exchange for those statements, the State Department promised the statements would not be used in a criminal case. Such limited immunity deals are common in police departments so officers involved in shootings cannot hold up internal investigations by refusing to cooperate.

The five guards told investigators they fired their weapons, an admission that was crucial because forensic evidence could not determine who had fired.

Because of the immunity deal, prosecutors had to build their case without those statements, a high legal hurdle that Urbina said the Justice Department failed to clear. Prosecutors read those statements, reviewed them in the investigation and used them to question witnesses and get search warrants, Urbina said. Key witnesses also reviewed the statements and the grand jury heard evidence that had been tainted by those statements, the judge said.

The Justice Department set up a process to avoid those problems, but Urbina said lead prosecutor Ken Kohl and others "purposefully flouted the advice" of senior Justice Department officials telling them not to use the statements.

It was unclear what the ruling means for a sixth Blackwater guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, who turned on his former colleagues and pleaded guilty to killing one Iraqi and wounding another. Had he gone to trial, the case against him would likely have fallen apart, but it's unclear whether Urbina will let him out of his plea deal.

Read the judge's opinion...

See article...

Scumbags. Not only are the guards traitors, but so are their attorneys, the prosecuting attorneys, and the judge who made the ruling. This is the kind of thing that makes me hope that there really is a hell.

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." - Thomas Jefferson

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-24T23:59:00.000-08:00

"The quality of an individual is reflected in the standards they set for themselves." - Ray Kroc

Just Want to Call Your Attention to...

2009-12-16T13:03:00.000-08:00

a great website I just discovered.

FoxNewsBoycott

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder." - George Washington

A Few of My Heroes...

2009-12-10T19:03:00.000-08:00

Dr. Ben Marble, Janine Boneparth, Jeremy Olson, & Alan Grayson

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive." -Thomas Jefferson

Obama Administration Continues to Have Bush-era Torture Architect John Yoo's Back

2009-12-08T20:36:00.000-08:00

White House wants suit against Yoo dismissed
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 8

(12-07) 11:33 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues.

Such lawsuits ask courts to second-guess presidential decisions and pose "the risk of deterring full and frank advice regarding the military's detention and treatment of those determined to be enemies during an armed conflict," Justice Department lawyers said Thursday in arguments to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Other sanctions are available for government lawyers who commit misconduct, the department said. It noted that its Office of Professional Responsibility has been investigating Yoo's advice to former President George W. Bush since 2004 and has the power to recommend professional discipline or even criminal prosecution.

The office has not made its conclusions public. However, The Chronicle and other media reported in May that the office will recommend that Yoo be referred to the bar association for possible discipline, but that he not be prosecuted.

Read more...

Shame.

Related...

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

Are Goldman Bankers Arming Themselves for Fear of a ‘Populist Uprising’

2009-12-01T14:27:00.000-08:00

Senior executives at Goldman Sachs are so afraid that they could be the targets of a "populist uprising" against banks that they have taken to arming themselves, says an unconfirmed report at Bloomberg News.

Citing only an unnamed "friend" at the New York-based investment bank, columnist Alice Schroeder alleged that "senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank."

"They're concerned about social unrest, they're concerned about the fact that we've got a country where a quarter of the kids are on food stamps and they've become a symbol of greed," Schroeder said in an interview at Bloomberg TV.

Schroeder, a former insurance analyst known for her biography of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, reported that the New York Police Department responded "preliminarily" to a freedom-of-information request by saying the names of some Goldman executives appear on the list of people licensed to carry firearms.

"I don't think this should lead people to think that there are a bunch of pin-striped bankers hunkered down with Uzis, protecting themselves from the populace," Schroeder said, adding that the trend among Goldman bankers started before the controversy over Goldman's huge bonuses exploded earlier this year.

Schroeder says she was half-joking when she wrote in her column that "this is the kind of foresight that Goldman Sachs is justly famous for. [Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd] Blankfein somehow anticipated the persecution complex his fellow bankers would soon suffer."

Schroeder also suggested that Goldman employees may well want to cultivate this sort of image, as gun-toting tough guys:

"Talk of Goldman and guns plays right into the way Wall Streeters like to think of themselves. Even those who were bailed out believe they are tough, macho Clint Eastwoods of the financial frontier, protecting the fistful of dollars in one hand with the Glock in the other. The last thing they want is to be so reasonably paid that the peasants have no interest in lynching them."

Dan Carter at Air America speculates that the alleged Goldman gun rush may be a sign that the company is preparing for another round of controversial bonuses:

"It seems patently obvious: Goldman is preparing to unload another monstrous round of bonuses. Instead of scaling back on their multi-million dollar end-of-the-year wads of cash in an effort to quell a bit of the outrage, Wall St. executives are challenging the public to pry their bonuses from their cold dead hands. The cowboys of finance have taken that title literally and are preparing--no daring--any would-be vigilantes to make a move."

"It’s never good when anyone buys guns, particularly not rich weenies with persecution complexes,"

Matt Taibbi half-jokes on his True/Slant blog. Taibbi is credited with focusing the public's anger over the bank bailout at Goldman Sachs with his Rolling Stone article "Inside the Great American Bubble Machine," which alleges that Goldman played a pivotal role in every asset bubble that has plagued the US economy over the past 80 years.

Taibbi sees some humor in Goldman employees' alleged gun frenzy.

"There’s even the impossible-to-resist image of a future accidental shooting of some innocent hot dog vendor on Park Avenue, followed by the inevitable P.R. response from Goldman in which the bank claims that the only thing its employees are guilty of is 'being really good at shooting people,'" Taibbi quips.

If the Bloomberg report is accurate, it would hardly mark the first time that America has seen armed bankers. "Before bank insurance, before the FDIC, a bank's vault cash was its sole source of funds to cover its customers' withdrawals," write Beverly and Curtis Wayne in the ABA Banking Journal:

"[In the 19th century] at the National Iron Bank in Falls Village, Conn., tellers were held accountable for the funds they handled. The bank took pains to help them protect those funds; bank robbers were mostly deterred by the elaborate bronze teller cages.

"Upon completion of his teller's course, each National Iron Bank teller was issued a Colt .44 revolver. Confronted by a robber, the teller was trained to reach forward into a specially made recess, grab the .44, and deter the
robber."

Watch Schroeder's interview at Bloomberg TV here.

See article...

Many of us have lost thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions due to the greed and intentionally bad decisions made by those in positions of power. All that money still exists somewhere, it didn't just vanish into thin air. Most of us worked hard and saved over many years only to have it taken away over night, and yet if someone went and got justice against the people who contributed to the economic collapse, or better yet, the person (or people) who now has the very money now long gone from our retirement accounts, home equity, etc., it would be that someone who would be charged as a criminal. What a world.

I do, however, disagree with that line of reasoning, if those scum bags get another round of obscene bonuses on the taxpayers' dime, I see no crime in any action taken against them by any citizen/taxpayer.

Related...

Bankers might be feeling public’s wrath — literally

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson

Fresh Air

2009-11-17T20:42:00.000-08:00

"Without trying, I'm different." - Paul Wellstone

If You've Never Been Funny, Is it Fair to Call Yourself a Comedian?

2009-11-14T17:27:00.000-08:00

An email I received this past week, with my response in blue:

Bill Cosby has a great way of "distilling" things. Looks like he's done it again! He certainly has!

AMERICA NEEDS A CANDIDATE WITH THIS PLATFORM! SO I HAVE DECIDED TO BECOME A WRITE-IN CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT IN THE YEAR 2012.

Why not put your money where your mouth is, funny man, and get your name on the ballot?

HERE IS MY PLATFORM:

(1). Any use of the phrase: 'Press 1 for English' is immediately banned. English is the official language; speak it or wait outside of our borders until you can.

While I tend to agree with this sentiment, there actually is no "official language" in this country. There is, however, a common language, English, and I firmly believe that it behooves all who reside here to be fluent. But the reality is that people who do not speak English will never even be able to compete for the work that I and most others in this country do here. Furthermore, as a nation that prides itself on individual liberties, the notion of imposing an official language on the people is a hostile act on those liberties. Would there be punishment for those who do not speak English? Would this apply in private as well as in public? Where do you draw the line?

English is our common language, and those who do not know it only hurt themselves and greatly reduce their own ability to achieve the American dream. Most don't even make minimum wage.

(2). We will immediately go into a two year isolationist attitude in order to straighten out the greedy big business posture in this country. America will allow NO imports, and we'll do no exports. We will use the 'Wal-Mart's policy, 'If we ain't got it, you don't need it.' We'll make it here and sell it here!

Ironically, just about everything sold at Wal-Mart is made in China, including American flags. And policies of isolationism have never worked in the past, so there's no logical reason to conclude that it would work now. George Santayana once said, and it is posted for all to see at the concentration camps the Nazis built, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

(3). When imports are allowed, there will be a 100% import tax on it coming in here.

Somehow that goes against so-called American Conservative ideology regarding government interference in and/or regulating the private market. If American companies can't even compete in their own country, why should there be, as people like you say, socialist protections for them? If you really wanted to make a difference, how about taxing American companies who exploit foreign third world and illegal domestic labor and who ship American jobs overseas?

The other issue is that if we impose tariffs on all imports, we ought to expect the same on all of our exports. It's only fair.

(4). All retired military personnel will be required to man one of the many observation towers located on the southern border of the United States (six month tour). They will be under strict orders not to fire on SOUTHBOUND aliens.

Haven't they already served and done their duty? And why not the northern border? The one that we share with a socialist country where the average citizen actually looks down on Americans, American culture, and the American way, unlike our southern neighbor who idolizes this country, our culture, and our ideals?

(5). Social Security will immediately return to its original state. If you didn't put nuttin in, you ain't gettin nuttin out. Neither the President nor any other politician will be able to touch it.

One out of five ain't bad.

(6). Welfare. Checks will be handed out on Fridays, at the end of the 40 hour school week, the successful completion of a urinalysis test for drugs, and passing grades.

Or better yet, redesign the system to NOT ENCOURAGE LAZINESS. Everybody needs a little help at some point in their lives, but the system currently rewards those who do nothing and punishes those who try to pull themselves up. WTF???

(7). Professional Athletes -- Steroids? The FIRST time you check positive you're banned from sports... for life.

While I agree with that in principle, why is it the government's responsibility to meddle in professional sports? It's already illegal to use these drugs without a legitimate prescription. Throw them in jail for breaking a law that already exists, that'll keep them from participating in any sports. And if you really wanted to hit them where it hurts, how about seizing all of their (athletes caught using steroids and other illegal, performance-enhancing drugs) assets made under false pretenses?

(8). Crime - We will adopt the Turkish method, i.e., the first time you steal, you lose your right hand. There is no more 'life sentences'. If convicted of murder, you will be put to death by the same method you chose for the victim you killed: gun, knife, strangulation, etc.

Why adopt the Turkish method here in America when one can simply move to the Muslim country of Turkey where it already exists?

(9). One export of ours will be allowed: wheat; because the world needs to eat. (Hey, that rhymes!) However, a bushel of wheat will be the exact price of a barrel of oil.

Wait, I thought there were going to be no exports until we got our shit together. But I like that way of thinking.. Trade a barrel of wheat for a barrel of oil with the Saudis. Sure there will be no more lip locks and hand holding between their King and our President, but nobody wanted to see that anyway! Maybe just a neck massage at the next G8 summit!

(10). All foreign aid, using American taxpayer money, will immediately cease and the saved money will help to pay off the national debt and, ultimately, lower taxes. When disasters occur around the world, we'll ask The American People if they want to donate to a disaster fund, and each citizen can make the decision as to whether, or not, it's a worthy cause.

Ironic.

(11). The Pledge of Allegiance will be said everyday at school and every day in Congress.

Just like in Nazi Germany if it's mandatory. What would be the punishment for not saying it? Another "Turkish method?"

(12). The National Anthem will be played at all appropriate ceremonies, sporting events, outings, etc.

See #11.

My apology is offered if I've stepped on anyone's toes... nevertheless... GOD BLESS AMERICA .

Yes, thank God we live in a country where we can all discuss ideas, disagree, and not be imprisoned for it. However that would cease to be the case if the above policies are implemented.

Sincerely,
Bill Cosby

Anybody ever notice that the types of people who buy into this disinformation put down celebrities in general when they make political statements saying that they are just elitist hollywood blah blah blah who aren't qualified to make political statements and should stick to what they know, except when they say this shit?

Please forward this to everyone you know, no matter which side of the fence they're on.

Now this I do have a problem with. Politicians make their careers and the mainstream media sell ad space by keeping us, the people, on opposite sides of the proverbial fence. I, personally, do not subscribe to any "side" regardless of how it may seem to some. Not one that benefits those in power anyway. Nor do I walk the line between the two sides. There is no "fence" where I stand.

"Divide and conquer." - Julius Caesar

Speaking of Disinformation...

2009-11-04T09:13:00.000-08:00

Al Gore denies he is 'carbon billionaire'

As he publishes a new book, critics say climate change has made him rich
By David Usborne in New York
Wednesday, 4 November 2009

Al Gore, the former American vice-president, yesterday hit back at critics who are labelling him the first "carbon billionaire" from his earnings as an investor in green technology, dismissing them as "global-warming deniers".

Since leaving office in 2001, Mr Gore has become a powerful advocate of government policies to limit carbon dioxide emissions. This week sees the launch of his latest book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, a sequel to his earlier work, which was also a successful film, entitled
An Inconvenient Truth. As the Copenhagen talks on a new climate-change treaty approach and the US Congress grapples with draft laws to curb emissions, Mr Gore's profile will only swell further. But as it does, so does the chorus asking if his advocacy for action on climate change is about self-enrichment as much as saving the planet.

Some of his green investments were outlined yesterday by The New York Times. Mr Gore is a partner in the Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, which has interests in companies developing alternative energy and energy-efficient technologies. He is also a co-founder of London-based Generation Investment Management, which has holdings in eco-energy companies.

He defended his business activities on ABC TV and denied he was on the way to becoming a carbon billionaire. "I am proud to have put my money where my mouth is for the past 30 years," he said. "And though that is not the majority of my business activities, I absolutely believe in investing in accordance with my beliefs and my values."

The new book reiterates the mantra that nothing will happen on climate change without political will. " We need to protect our national security, create more jobs, solve the climate crisis and do
right by our kids," he said on ABC. The book also explores numerous possible solutions to climate change, touching on such issues as forest management, geo-thermal energy and nuclear power generation, drawn from a series of "solutions summits" he held at his Tennessee home with experts.

It was almost inevitable that Mr Gore would become a target of those unconvinced by the alarm bells about global warming, particularly on the American right. "If you really want to save the planet, put down the cheeseburgers and pick up your veggie burger," Glenn Beck, the
conservative TV anchor, quipped recently, apparently referring to the dangers of methane emissions from the bovine species.

While the former presidential candidate is not a lobbyist in the traditional sense, he is a frequent visitor to Capitol Hill where he continues to press members of Congress to pass legislation to curb emissions. In April, he was famously put on the spot about his business interests in the industry by the Republican Marsha Blackburn. Mr Gore, who earns in excess of $100,000 (£60,000) for speaking engagements reacted testily to the implication in her question about a possible conflict of interest.

"Congresswoman, if you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed," he said, "you don't know me".

See article...

So Al Gore is a carbon billionaire. Ironic that neo-cons, who otherwise support an individual's right to get as rich as they want, criticize a man who has been dedicated to this issue since before anyone knew what it was, let alone cared about it, b ecause he is making a little money on a cause he has devoted his life to.

For decades, opponents of environmental regulation have argued that green energy and environmentally friendly lifestyles were not profitable, so somebody went out and made it profitable, and now they complain that people are making money off being more environmentally responsible. Unbelievable.

Most "new technology" investment is high risk, but can also be high reward, so if Al Gore has made money out of investing in green technology, good for him. His successor as VP, Dick Cheney, had vast quantities of shares in Halliburton (of which he used to be chairman), receiving dividends of about $1.5m annually (his tax return was published on the White House website). Halliburton was (along with Al Qaida and Iran) one of the main beneficiaries of the Iraq
war. So please spare me the diatribe on profiting off environmental responsibility.

I know which type of investment I prefer.

As to his receiving 100,000 per speech, in 2007, President Bush was quoted saying that he was looking forward to making a lot of money on the lecture circuit after he left office, noting that his father often made $50,000-$75,000 per speech. President G.W. Bush is now making far more than President George H.W. Bush. Recently, he spoke to nearly 15,000 people at the Get Motivated! seminar in Forth Worth, TX. He mostly focused on lighter topics such as picking out a rug design for the Oval Office that reflected his optimism.

The Dallas News reports that for this 28-minute speech, Bush received at least $100,000 a rate of $3,571.42 per minute: Bush, like other ex-presidents before him, was paid to appear at the motivational seminar. He will headline another in San Antonio in the near future.

It was a rousing, upbeat celebration of positive thinking and conspicuous success. Speakers were introduced with peppy music, confetti drops and bursts of pyrotechnics exploding from each corner of the stage (but not for Bush - Secret Service orders).

Bush is reportedly receiving $150,000 for other speeches, which doesn't include travel on the private jet he sometimes receives.

Personally, I would much rather hear Al Gore say something sensible about global warning than listen to "Dubya" blather on about carpets and "positive thinking."

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it." - John Lennon

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T12:45:00.000-07:00

"I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people." - John Lennon

From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden - Insider Connections and the Bush Family's Partnership with Killers of Americans

2009-10-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

FTW, Oct. 9, 2001 - Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, major media powerhouses and the increasingly influential alternative media alike have begun to focus attention on Bush family connections and a long history of arming and financing America's attackers in the months and years prior to the outbreak of war. Recent stories in the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 27 & 28, 2001), ABC News (Oct. 1, 2001), as well as a host of reports from so-called alternative news sources have begun to focus attention on the Bush family's profit-making role in creating and arming our enemies.

The following is a more comprehensive look at the documented history of these relationships that will also open some new avenues of inquiry for the press, Congress and the American people.

In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices, and chemical weapons like Sarin gas -- where there are people in many countries with reasons to oppose the United States -- the Bush Administration is following predictable strategies in a way that redefines the concept of brinksmanship. Human survival may depend upon the will and the ability of both the Congress and the press to focus on these relationships and to take appropriate action. Moreover - and I am not the first to say this - if a national security priority is to seize the financial assets of those who support terrorists, then perhaps we should start right here at home.
---
Adolph Hitler
Meticulous research, including U.S. government records from the era, along with contemporaneous news stories from the New York Times and other papers is presented in the 1992 book entitled, "George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography" by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Published by The Executive Intelligence Review and located at http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm. The following is sourced entirely from Chapter II of this essential work. [Note: Although FTW does not always agree with conclusions reached by the Executive Intelligence Review, or its founder Lyndon La Rouche, we have never found a single flaw in any of their factual research. History is history, no matter who presents it. And this history is essential to understanding our era.]

George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was the Managing Director of the investment bank Brown Brothers, Harriman from the 1920s through the 1940s. It was Brown Brothers, in conjunction with Averell Harriman, the Rockefeller family, Standard Oil, the DuPonts, the Morgans and the Fords who served as the principal funding arm in helping to finance Adolph Hitler's rise to power starting in 1923. This included direct funding for the SS and SA channeled through a variety of German firms. Prescott Bush, through associations with the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line, Nazi banker Fritz Thyssen (pronounced Tee-sen), Standard Oil of Germany, The German Steel Trust (founded by Dillon Read founder, Clarence Dillon), and I.G. Farben, used the Union Bank Corporation to funnel vast quantities of money to the Nazis and to manage their American interests. The profits from those investments came back to Bush allies on Wall Street. Thyssen is universally regarded as having been Hitler's private banker and ultimate owner of the Union Bank Corporation.

Early support for Hitler came from Prescott Bush through the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line -- also funded by Brown Bothers -- that funneled large sums of money and weapons to Hitler's storm troopers in the 1920s.

According to Tarpley and Chaitkin, "In May 1933, just after the Hitler regime was consolidated, an agreement was reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the U.S.A. The Harriman International Company... was to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States."

Furthermore, a 1942 U.S. government investigative report that surfaced during 1945 Senate hearings found that the Union Bank, with Prescott Bush on the board, was an "interlocking concern" with the German Steel Trust that had produced:

50.8% of Nazi Germany's pig iron
41.4% of Nazi Germany's universal plate
36% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate
38.5% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet
45.5% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes
22.1% of Nazi Germany's wire
35% of Nazi Germany's explosives

The business relationships established by Bush in 1923 continued even after the war started until they became so offensive and overt as to warrant seizure by the U.S. government under the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942.

In 1942, "Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s stock shares...

"... all of which shares are held for the benefit of... members of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals... of a designated enemy country."

"On October 28, the government issued orders seizing two Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank: the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation."

"Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father in law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942..." These seizures of Bush businesses were reported in a number of American papers including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Prescott Bush went on to become an influential Republican Senator from Connecticut who went on to be a regular golfing partner of President Dwight Eisenhower. His attorneys were the lawyers John Foster and Allen Dulles, the later became the CIA Director under Eisenhower.

Saddam Hussein
After becoming President in January 1989, Prescott Bush's son, George Herbert Walker Bush - father of our current President - authorized a series of programs that not only armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but also provided him with technology that assisted in his development of chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists for Bush (the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left the region unstable, he was just trying to establish a new balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies, including relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating the army the U.S. fought in 1991.

A story by Russ W. Baker, in the March/April issue the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), provided the most compelling overview of Iraqgate that I have seen.

"ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop ÔIt is becoming increasingly clear,' said a grave Ted Koppel, Ôthat George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy...

"Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage?" Baker poignantly asks.
" The result: readers who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile imagery like The Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm. In particular, readers who do not follow the story of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which apparently served as a paymaster for Saddam's arms buildup, and thus became a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S. history.

"Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI) increasingly define our times: yet we don't appear to be getting any better at telling them...
"Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential civilian uses as well as military applications. We've learned that a vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.

"And we've learned that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks like $2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.

"... In fact, we now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh [appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S. investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul to pursue the case...

"... As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, ÔIraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [The U.S., Britain, and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."

While Democrat Henry Gonzales, Chairman of the House Banking Committee during the period, stood as the lone voice from the wilderness in raising alarms about Bush's obvious corruption, the rest of the Congress sheepishly ignored all the signs demanding immediate action. Gonzales' voice reportedly fell silent after his empty car was machine-gunned in a Washington suburb in what passed for a drive-by shooting.

The CJR continues: "Meanwhile, The Village Voice published a major investigation by free-lancer Murray Waas in its December 18, 1990 issue... "That American troops could be killed or maimed because of a covert decision to arm Iraq,' Waas wrote, "is the most serious consequence of a U.S. foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without the advice and consent of the American public..."

The L.A. Times, on Feb 23, 1992, dug deep enough to find secret National Security Decision Directives by the Bush Administration in 1989 ordering closer ties with Baghdad and paving the way for $1 billion in new aid. The Times' series, co-authored with Waas, emphasized that, "buried deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece - that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loans guarantees to Iraq."

Baker's CJR report also noted, "On October 3, the [Wall Street] Journal reported [BNL official Christopher] Drogoul's assertion that the director general of Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Military Production had told him, ÔWe are all in this together. The intelligence service of the U.S. government works very closely with the intelligence service of the Iraqi government.' Three weeks later, the Journal reported that [Henry] Gonzales Ôproduced a phone-book-sized packet of documents' showing the involvement of U.S. exporting firms... The documents mentioned one... which designed parts for Iraq's howitzers and was financed through BNL..."
In the wake of highly suspicious anthrax outbreaks in Florida, just miles from where several of the WTC suicides pilots trained, we add one final note. In his 1998 book "Bringing the War Home" author William Thomas writes, " Under that same [weapons transfer] program, 19 containers of Anthrax bacteria were supplied to Iraq in 1988 by the American Type Culture Collection company, located near Fort Detrick, MD, the site of the US Army's high security germ warfare labs."

The Carlyle Group, the Bushes and bin Laden
The warnings about the Carlyle Group, the nation's 11th largest defense contractor, and the Bushes came long before the World Trade Center attacks. The Carlyle Group is a closely held corporation, exempt, for that reason, from reporting its affairs to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Little is known of what it actually does except that it buys and sells defense contractors. As of October 4, 2001, it has removed its corporate web site from the World Wide Web making further investigation through that channel impossible. Its Directors include Frank Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary of Defense; James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State; and Richard Darman, a former White House aide to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party operative.

On March 3, 2001, just weeks after George W Bush's inauguration, the conservative Washington lobbying group Judicial Watch issued a press release. It said:

"(Washington, D.C.) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, called on former President George Herbert Walker Bush to resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, while his son President George W. Bush is in office. Today's New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an "ambassador" for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year traveled to the Middle East on its behalf. The former president also helped the firm in South Korea.

"The New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to buy a stake in the Carlyle Group's investments, which include ownership in at least 164 companies throughout the world (thereby by giving the current president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former Secretary of State who served as President George W. Bush's point man in Florida's election dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help in the early 1990's when it placed him on one of its subsidiary's board of directors.

"This is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign from the Carlyle Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Any foreign government or foreign investor trying to curry favor with the current Bush Administration is sure to throw business to the Carlyle Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments abroad, foreign nationals could understandably confuse the Carlyle Group's interests with the interests of the United States government," stated Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel.

"Questions are now bound to be raised if the recent Bush Administration change in policy towards Iraq has the fingerprints of the Carlyle Group, which is trying to gain investments from other Arab countries who [sic] would presumably benefit from the new policy," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton."

Judicial Watch noted that "even the Clinton Administration called on the Rodham brothers to stop their business dealings in [The former Soviet Republic of] Georgia because those dealings started to destabilize that country."

Since the WTC attacks the Wall Street Journal has reported (Sept. 28, 2001) that, "George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm." The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice in the last three years - 1998 and 2000 -- as a representative of Carlyle, seeking to expand business dealings with one of the wealthiest Saudi families, which some experts argue, has never fully severed its ties with black sheep Osama in spite of current reports in a mainstream press that is afraid of offending the current administration.

The Nation, on March 27, 2000 - in a story co-authored by David Corn and Paul Lashmar - wrote, "In January former President George Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major paid a social call on Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah..." This story confirms at least one meeting between the elder Bush and Saudi leaders, including the bin Ladens. That the bin Ladens attended this meeting was confirmed in a subsequent September 27, 2001 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story. The January 2000 meeting with the bin Ladens was also later confirmed by Bush (the elder's) Chief of Staff Jean Becker, only after the WSJ presented her with a thank you note sent by Bush to the bin Ladens after that meeting.

James Baker visited the bin Ladens in 1998 and 1999 with Carlyle CEO Frank Carlucci.
The WSJ story went on to note, "A Carlyle executive said that the bin Laden family committed $2 million through a London investment arm in 1995 in Carlyle Partners II Fund, which raised $1.3 billion overall. The fund has purchased several aerospace companies among 29 deals. So far, the family has received $1.3 million back in completed investments and should ultimately realize a 40% annualized rate of return, the Carlyle executive said.

"But a foreign financier with ties to the bin Laden family says the family's overall investment with Carlyle is considerably larger..."

In other words, Osama bin Laden's attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, with the resulting massive increase in the U.S. defense budget have just made his family a great big pile of money.
More Bush connections appear in relation to the bin Ladens. The WSJ story also notes that, "During the past several years, the [bin Laden] family's close ties to the Saudi royal family prompted executives and staff from closely held New York publisher Forbes, Inc. to make two trips to the family headquarters, according to Forbes Chairman Caspar Weinberger, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. We would call on them to get their view of the country and what would be of interest to investors.'"

President G.H.W. Bush pardoned Weinberger for his criminal conduct in the Iran-Contra scandal in 1989.

Our current President, George W. Bush has also had -- at minimum -- indirect dealings with Carlyle and the bin Ladens. In 1976 his firm Arbusto Energy was funded with $50,000 from Texas investment banker James R. Bath who was also the U.S. investment counselor for the bin Laden family. In his watershed 1992 book, "The Mafia, The CIA and George Bush," award winning Texas investigative journalist Pete Brewton dug deeply into Bath's background, revealing connections with the CIA and major fraudulent activities connected with the Savings & Loan scandal that took $500 billion out of the pockets of American taxpayers. A long-time friend of George W. Bush, Bath was connected to a number of covert financing operations in the Iran-Contra scandal, which also linked to bin Laden friend Adnan Khashoggi. One of the richest men in the world, Khashoggi was the arms merchant at the center of the whole Iran-Contra scandal.

Khashoggi, whose connections to the bin Ladens is more than superficial, got his first business break by acting as middle-man for a large truck purchase by Osama bin Laden's older brother, Salem.

Another key player in the Bush Administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage, left his post as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration after a series of scandals connected to CIA operatives Ed Wilson, Ted Shackley, Richard Secord and Tom Clines placed him at the brink of criminal indictment and jail. Shackley and Secord are veterans of Vietnam operations and have long been linked to opium/heroin smuggling. The Armitage scandals all focused on the illegal provision of weapons and war materiel to potential or actual enemies of the U.S. and to the Contras in Central America.

Armitage, a former Navy SEAL, who reportedly enjoyed combat missions and killing during covert operations in Laos during the Vietnam War, has never been far from the Bush family's side. Throughout his career, both in and out of government, he has been perpetually connected to CIA drug smuggling operations. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a 1995 Washington Post story, called Armitage, "my white son." In 1990, then President Bush dispatched Armitage to Russia to aid in its "transition" to capitalism. Armitage's Russian work for Bush has been frequently connected to the explosion of drug trafficking under the Russian Mafias, which became virtual rulers of the nation afterwards. In the early 1990s Armitage had extensive involvement in Albania at the same time that the Albanian ally, Kosovo Liberation Army was coming to power and consolidating its grip, according to The Christian Science Monitor, on 70% of the heroin entering western Europe. [See FTW Vol. II, No 2 - April 24, 1999]
Armitage and Carlucci are both Board Members of the influential Washington think tank, the Middle East Policy Council.

The connections continue with Vice President Dick Cheney. Amongst the multitude of oil pipeline construction running through the new war zone is one project - according to a Sept. 19, 2001 Wall Street Journal story - a joint venture in which the bin Laden family joined with the construction firm H.C. Price. A researcher named "Phoenix," writing for the Internet news site Rumor Mills News Agency located at www.rumormillnews.com, reported that Price subsequently changed its name to Bredero Shaw, Inc. and is now owned by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, Dresser Industries. It was Dresser industries that gave George H.W. Bush his first post war job in 1948. A check of the relevant corporate web sites has confirmed this.

Vice President Dick Cheney, who served as Secretary of Defense during Desert Storm, directing the campaign against Saddam Hussein, was Halliburton's CEO until last year's election.
And, according to a 2000 story from Harper's Magazine, in 1990 our current President, through a position as a corporate director of Caterair, owned by the Carlyle Group - at a time when the bin Laden's were invested in Carlyle - had additional connections to the bin Laden family. In addition, on March 1, 1995, when George W. Bush was Texas governor and a senior Trustee of the university, the University of Texas Endowment voted to place $10 million in investments with the Carlyle Group. As to how much of that money went to the bin Ladens we can only guess. But we do know that there is a long tradition in the Bush family of giving money to those who kill Americans.

Now, as the people of America are beginning to awaken to what is really being unleashed upon them, as a few brave souls are asking who's going to get all the money the Bush Administration is "borrowing" from government coffers and who's going to pay for it - the above history is more than ominous.

Considering that during the 1980s, under the pretext of fighting a Sandinista regime in Nicaragua that never once launched an attack on the U.S., these same people oversaw an explosion in U.S. cocaine consumption that went from 80 metric tons in 1979 to 600 metric tons in 1989 - considering that the CIA trained and equipped death squads that tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of people from Guatemala to Panama - considering that these same people have brutalized Iraq, leaving portions of it radioactively contaminated by depleted uranium for the next 4 billion years and causing a fivefold increase in the number of childhood leukemia cases amidst a starving population, one can only wonder what they will produce for the world now given the context of the World Trade Center attacks.

See article...

Related articles...

And if those don't do it for you...

The actual Federal Register from November 1942

"I don't think politics has anything to do with left, right, or center. It has to do with trying to do right by people." - Paul Wellstone

Grim Reaper greets Bush in Canada

2009-10-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

‘GWB, I am your biggest fan’

Ex-president gets standing ovation from paid crowd

During a visit to speak in Canada Tuesday, former president George W. Bush was met with signs, songs, screams and a black-clad Grim Reaper. And a little applause.

Protesters outside the speech carried signs emblazoned with such phrases as "Bush is a war criminal," "Bush lied, 1,000s died" and "Canada is not Bush Country," according to a Canadian press report. As a crowd mushroomed, police erected metal barricades.

Bush spoke at the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton where he led a talk, "A Conversation with George Bush." Tickets to the event ranged from $30 to $100. All 2,000 tickets sold out, and ticketholders were frisked and made to show their tickets twice upon entrance.

One protester carried a nine-foot tall Grim Reaper tagged with signs that said "GWB I am your biggest fan" and "Thanks for 8 great years."

"For the eight years that George Bush was president I was profoundly ashamed and alarmed and angry and now it seems so unfair that he's making a world tour trying to share his 'wisdom' and make a lot of money," Marilyn Gaa, who has both American and Canadian citizenship, told Metro in Calgary.

Read more...

Lol! That's a better reception than he deserved.

"No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it." -
Thomas Jefferson

What the...?

2009-10-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

Oklahoma abortion law ‘like undressing women in public’
By Daniel Tencer

A new Oklahoma law that forces women who have had abortions to post details of the procedure online is being sharply criticized by women's rights groups, and is now being challenged in court by two Oklahoma women.

As of November 1, doctors in Oklahoma will be compelled -- under penalty of criminal prosecution -- to post the details of each abortion they perform online. Among the details to be posted for every abortion is the patient's age, marital status and race; her financial condition; her education; and the total number of her previous pregnancies.

In all, 37 personal questions will have to be asked and answered, and posted publicly for the world to see, under the new law.

"A friend said it best: It's like undressing women in public, exposing their most personal issues on the Internet," Lora Joyce Davis, one of the plaintiffs suing to prevent the law from coming into effect, told ABC News.

While the abortion patient's name will not be published, "critics say the first eight questions alone could easily lead to the identification of a woman who lives in one of the state's many small communities," ABC reports.

Read more...

Are you fucking kidding me???

Apparently these neo-cons are worried about Obama releasing their medical information to the gov't, a bald-faced lie told through their media talking heads, but have no problem making womens' personal medical files public over a disagreement in policy. Why not just hang a scarlet letter around their necks while we're at it?

Scumbags.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson

Bush Administration Covered Up Global Warming Finding

2009-10-14T20:40:00.000-07:00

By The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

An e-mail message buried by the Bush administration because of its conclusions on global warming surfaced Tuesday, nearly two years after it was first sent to the White House and never opened.

The Bush administration, and then EPA administrator Stephen Johnson, refused to release the document when it was written in 2007, and labeled it "deliberative, do not distribute" to Democratic lawmakers. The White House instead allowed three senators to review it in July 2008, when excerpts were released.

The e-mail and the 28-page document attached to it, released Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency, show that back in December of 2007 the agency concluded that six gases linked to global warming pose dangers to public welfare, and wanted to take steps to regulate their release from automobiles and the burning of gasoline.

The document specifically cites global warming's effects on air quality, agriculture, forestry, water resources and coastal areas as endangering public welfare.

That finding was rejected by the Bush White House, which strongly opposed using the Clean Air Act to address climate change and stalled on producing a so-called "endangerment finding" that had been ordered by the Supreme Court in 2007.

As a result, the Dec. 5 e-mail sent by the agency to Susan Dudley, who headed the regulatory division at the Office of Management and Budget was never opened, according to Jason Burnett, the former EPA official that wrote it.

The Obama administration in April made a similar determination, but also concluded that greenhouse gases endanger public health. The EPA is currently drafting the first greenhouse gas standards for automobiles, and recently signaled it would attempt to reduce climate-altering pollution from refineries, factories and other large industrial sources.

In response, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Republican lawmakers have criticized the EPA's reasoning and called for a more thorough vetting of the science. An internal review by a dozen federal agencies released in May also raised questions about the EPA's conclusion, saying the agency could have been more balanced and raising questions about the difficulty in linking global warming to health effects.

The agency released the e-mail and documents after receiving requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Adora Andy, a spokeswoman for EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, said Tuesday that the draft shows the science in 2007 was as clear as it is today.

"The conclusions reached then by the EPA scientists should have been made public and should have been considered," she said.

See article...

Scumbags.

Related...

"The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy." - Paul Wellstone

Judge refuses to dismiss gay marriage ban lawsuit

2009-10-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

(10-14) 13:57 PDT San Francisco, CA (AP) --

A federal judge in San Francisco has refused to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to overturn California's same-sex marriage ban.

U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker also signaled Wednesday that the measure's sponsors will need to show that allowing gay couples to wed threatens traditional male-female unions.

Walker said significant questions remain about whether the voter-approved ban discriminates against gays and lesbians in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Before ruling, Walker grilled a lawyer for the measure's backers who asserted that Proposition 8 was legitimate because it fostered "naturally procreative relationships."

The judge demanded to hear how that goal would be undermined if same-sex marriages were legal.

Wile E. Coyote Catches the Roadrunner?

2009-10-12T18:36:00.000-07:00

“Congratulations, you have a sense of humor. And to those who didn't: Go stick your head in the mud.” - Jesse Ventura

Gingrich Named Porn Fan of the Year by Scorned Dinner Date

2009-10-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Newt Pornographer Strikes Back

Allison Vivas once thought she’d be spending Wednesday night in D.C. with Newt Gingrich. Then he stood her up.

Instead of getting mad, Vivas got even. So just as the Scandinavians were doling out the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama, Gingrich was being named “Porn Fan of the Year.”

Politics played a role in both awards.

From the top: Vivas was contacted last month by American So lutions for Winning the Future, Gingrich’s D.C.-based PAC, and was told the former Republican Revolutionary wanted to honor her as the group’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” for 2009.

At that time, Gingrich associate Joe Gaylord wrote to Vivas that “Newt’s Business Defense and Advisory Council” wanted to “dine privately” with her on the evening of Oct. 7 at the “historic Capitol Hill Club” in “recognition of the risks you take to create jobs and stimulate the economy.”

But then Gingrich found out about Vivas’ entreporneurial background: She creates all sorts of stimulus as president of Pink Visual, a California-based distributor of adult movies.

And given Gingrich’s presidential aspirations, he got clammy about spending quality time alone with the auteur behind such titles as Anal Devastation, Couples Seduce Teens, Brazen And Unshaven, Double Penetration Tryouts, Wife Switch Volume 7, Desperately Seeking Cock (stop me if you’ve heard of any of these movies before) Monster Cock Junkies, House Wife Bangers, Memoirs Of A Gusher, Teen Anal Pounding, Pure Cherry Girls, Teens For Cash, and Spit Swappers.

So Gingrich rescinded the invitation to Vivas about the same time Washington City Paper reported on the scheduled date. Gingrich spokesman Dan Kotman told me, “We have notified Allison Vivas that the notice she received was sent by mistake.”

I asked Vivas yesterday how she spent the time she would have spent dining with Gingrich at the Capitol Hill Club.

“I sat down with the executive team here and created a special honor to bestow upon Newt: “Family Values Porn Fan of the Year, 2009,” Vivas responded via e-mail. “We worked on the plaque design [seen above], an event schedule, a notification to fax to his office – and of course, a letter we’ll send rescinding the offer after he receives it.”

Vivas also prepared an excuse to give Gingrich when she retracts the Porn Fan of the Year trophy. She’ll say it was all a mistake, as he told her about the entrepreneur award, and add that the honor “was intended for members of our MilfSeeker.com Web site, and not for fans of our WifeSwitch DVD series.”

What possibly could she mean? Oh, right…

See article...

Lol! Newt Gingrich is such a scumbag.

"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it." - Thomas Jefferson

Happy Birthday!

2009-10-09T15:56:00.000-07:00

Today would have been John Lennon's 69th birthday. Happy birthday, John.

Your music has touched the world, and continues to touch the world, like none before or since. Imagine!

"Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one." - John Lennon

What We Believe

2009-10-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

According to Helen & Harry Highwater:

We believe in liberty and justice for all, so of course, we oppose many US government policies. This doesn't mean we're anti-American, redneck scum, pinko commies, militia members, or terrorist-sympathizers. It means we believe in freedom, as more than merely a cliché.

We believe you have the right to live your own life as you choose, and others have the equal right to live their lives as they choose. It's not complicated.

We believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while its opposite -- oppression -- leads to war, terrorism, poverty, and misery.

We believe it's preposterously stupid to hate people because of their appearance, their race or nationality, their religion or lack of religion, how they have sex with other consenting adults, etc. There are far more apropos reasons to hate most people.

We believe in questioning ourselves, our assumptions, each other -- and we especially believe in questioning authority (the more authority, the more questions). We believe obedience is a fine quality in dogs and young children, but not in adults.

Like America's right-wingers, we believe in individual responsibility, hard work to get ahead, and stern punishment for serious crimes. We believe big government should not be blindly trusted.But unlike most right-wing leaders, we mean it.

Like America's left-wingers, we believe in equal treatment under law, war as a last (not first) resort, and sensible stewardship of natural resources. We believe big business should not be blindly trusted.But unlike most left-wing leaders, we mean it.

Like libertarians, we believe it's wrong and reprehensible to arrest people for what they think, believe, look like, wear, eat, smoke, drink, inhale, inject, or otherwise do to themselves. But unlike many libertarians, we're not obsessed with the gold standard, we don't believe incorporation is humanity's highest achievement, and we don't believe everything in life comes down to dollars and cents. We've read and enjoyed Ayn Rand's novels, but we understand that they're works of fiction.

We're skeptical, and we're sick of so-called 'journalists' who aren't skeptical at all.

A reader asks, what are our solutions?

We propose no solutions except common sense, which is never common. We like the principles of democracy, and the ideals broadly described as 'American'. The US Constitution is a fine and workable framework for solutions, when it's actually read and thoughtfully understood by intelligent statesmen and women. So, no manifestos from us. We don't dream that big, and if there's one thing the world doesn't need it's yet another manifesto.

Our suggestion is: think.

A fact-based instead of faith-based approach leads to solutions for most of the recurring issues of our time, from abortion to global climate change, pollution to universal health care, careful but real regulation of industry and economy, hunger, war, terror, human rights for humans not for corporations, science not religious doctrine in public schools, equal protection and prosecution under law, etc. Approach problems without glorifying stupidity, without demonizing intelligence, and answers usually come into focus.

See statement...

Couldn't have said it better myself.

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive." - Thomas Jefferson

DOMA Repeal Bill Coming Next Week

2009-09-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Rep. Jerrold Nadler will introduce legislation to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act next week.
By Kerry Eleveld

The Advocate has learned that Democratic representative Jerrold Nadler of New York will be introducing legislation to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act next Tuesday. A Democratic aide confirmed that a press conference to announce the bill will be held September 15 at 11 a.m. at the House Triangle.

The source said the bill currently has just over 50 cosponsors, but Congressman Nadler’s office has not yet officially circulated a letter to his fellow House members.

Nadler told the Bay Area Reporter in July that the bill would amount to a full repeal of DOMA, including Section 2, which advises states to disregard same-sex marriages that have been legally performed in other states, and Section 3, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

President Barack Obama supported full repeal of the legislation as a candidate and has reiterated that support in the White House. “I believe it's discriminatory, I think it interferes with states' rights, and we will work with Congress to overturn it,” Obama said of the 1996 law during an Oval Office signing ceremony in June.

See article...

It's about fuckin' time! Although, we'll see if it actually passes.

"Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty." - Ron Paul

ACORN Turns in Florida Workers on Voter Fraud Charges

2009-09-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press
Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009 7:40 a.m.

Arrest warrants have been issued in Miami for 11 people suspected of falsifying information on hundreds of voter registration cards last year.

The FBI and state authorities were making arrests Wednesday. The workers being sought were hired to register voters by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

Prosecutors say they were first notified by ACORN about problems with workers in June 2008.

Republicans and conservative activists have accused ACORN of fraud in voter registration drives around the country. ACORN officials say the Florida case proves the organization is committed to an honest process.

The case involved nearly 900 fraudulent voter cards in the Homestead area.

See article...

Wait, I thought that ACORN was in favor of this fraud. Could it be that neo-cons have misled the American public through phony advertising campaigns?

Again.

"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." - Thomas Jefferson

Obama's Speech to Kids

2009-09-08T17:46:00.000-07:00

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

See speech...

What’s really sad is that there are school districts all over the country who opted not to show this to the schoolchildren. My wife is a teacher at a district in San Diego County where the school board voted 3-2 not to show it and sent out a mass phone call to everyone stating such. Fortunately, there was an overwhelming response from parents who were pissed off that this would be censored based on the partisan politics of a few. The speech has been recorded and after a “careful review,” they may show parts of it to the students tomorrow.

I find it interesting that past Presidents have done the same without the politicizing of the event and I am left to wonder what is so different about the current President. Is it because he’s a democrat? No, Clinton also made an address to the students without this level of attack, and according to republicans, he is a pervert. Yet they still allowed him to speak to their children without controversy. Bush Sr. And Reagan both did it.

The reality is that this is how racism is surfacing in this country. Because it is widely unpopular to just admit that some people don’t want the black President to “corrupt” their kids with his black ideas the way they think it has already been done with rap music, etc. There, I said it. No one else would be able to admit it. Certainly not the people who consistently point out Obama’s middle name as though it has any relevance to his political ideology, the notion that he is Muslim because he went to a Muslim school decades ago, or the conspiracy theory that he was never born in the U.S. and would therefore be ineligible to even serve as President who are fueling this partisan fight.

These are also the same people who show up at protests with semi-automatic rifles, rather than signs and intelligent talking points.

They argued that this was “mandatory” while the only place I ever saw the word, “mandatory,” was from them on their blogs and thread titles. There was never a “punishment” for not showing it. Schools across the country did not show this speech today, and yet somehow, despite the implication that they would all be rounded up and put in jail, nothing happened to them.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

So where does this leave us now? We have a country that is still brimming with racism, but when someone points it out, they are the ones accused of playing the “race card.” It’s like some bizarre, reverse political correctness is happening. I don’t think that the issue of race will move forward, let alone be resolved, anytime soon when the majority of people in this country can’t even be honest with themselves or anyone else.

Related...

When Your Insurer Says You're No Longer Covered

2009-09-08T17:33:00.000-07:00

Firms Defend 'Rescissions' as Fraud Control

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 8, 2009

LOS ANGELES -- The untimely disappearance of Sally Marrari's medical coverage goes a long way toward explaining why insurance companies are cast as the villain in the health-care reform drama.

"They said I never mentioned I had a back problem," said Marrari, 52, whose coverage with Blue Cross was abruptly canceled in 2006 after a thyroid disorder, fluid in the heart and lupus were diagnosed. That left the Los Angeles woman with $25,000 in medical bills and the stigma of the company's claim that she had committed fraud by not listing on a health questionnaire "preexisting conditions" Marrari said she did not know she had.

By the time she filed a lawsuit in 2008, she also got a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and her debts had swelled beyond $200,000. She was able to see a specialist by trading office visits for work on the doctor's 1969 Porsche at the garage she owns with her husband.

"I've had about 10 visits," Marrari said of the barter arrangement that has proved more reliable than her insurance. "The car needs a lot of work."

Rescission -- the technical term for canceling coverage on grounds that the company was misled -- is often considered among the most offensive practices in an insurance industry that already suffers from a distinct lack of popularity among the American public. Tales of cancellations have fueled outrage among regulators, analysts, doctors and, not least, plaintiffs' lawyers, who describe insurers as too eager to shed patients to widen profits.

Those sentiments have become central to the health-care debate, as President Obama tries to tap into dissatisfaction with the insurance industry to build support for reform efforts. Each of the bills pending in Congress would prevent insurers from rejecting clients because of preexisting conditions.

No one claims to know how often policies are canceled -- in large part, congressional investigators say, because insurance companies are regulated by a patchwork of state laws and policies. But the practice is common enough to spur lawsuits and state regulatory action.

In the past 18 months, California's five largest insurers paid almost $19 million in fines for marooning policyholders who had fallen ill. That includes a $1 million fine against Health Net, which admitted offering bonuses to employees for finding reasons to cancel policies, according to company documents released in court.

"This is probably the most egregious of examples of health insurers using their power and their resources to deny benefits to people who are most in need of care," said Gerald Kominski, associate director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the University of California at Los Angeles. "It's really a horrendous activity on the part of the insurers."

Insurance company officials say they need to be able to cancel policies to control fraud, which by some estimates reaches $100 billion annually.

"We do not rescind a policyholder's coverage because someone on the policy gets sick," said Peggy Hinz, a spokeswoman for Anthem Blue Cross, a subsidiary of WellPoint. "We have put in place a thorough process with multiple steps to ensure that we are as fair and as accurate as we can be in making these difficult decisions."

Much of that process was a condition of settlements with state overseers, who fined Blue Cross $11 million over the past two years and required it, and all other major insurers in California, to restore canceled policies. Insurers still face court challenges, including a class-action suit targeting Blue Cross on behalf of 6,000 canceled policyholders.

"These cases are very, very good in front of a jury," said Bill Shernoff, whose Claremont law firm has settled 90 cases and has 130 cases pending. "I wish I could tell you the amount of money they throw at us just to make it go away and keep quiet."

In the only case to go to trial in California, an arbitration judge awarded $9 million to a beautician who had to stop chemotherapy for her breast cancer after Health Net dropped her policy. Company officials declined to comment.

In a pending case, Blue Shield searched in vain for an inconsistency in the health records of the wife of a dairy farmer after she filed a claim for emergency gallbladder surgery, according to attorneys for the family. Turning to her husband's questionnaire, the company discovered he had not mentioned his high cholesterol and dropped them both. Blue Shield officials said they would not comment on a pending case.

Officials from three insurance companies told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee this summer they had saved $300 million by canceling about 20,000 policies over five years.

Critics charge that companies, rather than vetting applicants, wait until a claim is filed. "It only happens if you create this bill. Then they go back into your application," said Dev GnanaDev, president of the California Medical Association, which lobbied Democratic House leaders to include restrictions on cancellations in their legislation. "Costco doesn't let me take something back after 90 days," he said. "If they want to investigate, let them do it within 90 days."

Regulators say many omissions appear to be honest mistakes on forms that are needlessly complex. Others result from ambiguous conversations between patient and doctor.

Yvette Thomassian of Glendale, Calif., lost her Blue Cross policy because she did not declare a deviated septum. She questioned why a common misalignment of the nostrils would disqualify anyone but emphasized that her doctor never clearly indicated she had the condition. They spoke Armenian in the exam room, she said, where the physician's words were "You have a bone in your nose."

"It's been three years of hell," said Thomassian, whose suit over the $31,000 in bills is scheduled for trial in January. Blue Cross officials said they would not discuss specific cases.

For Teresa Dietrich, it was fibroids. The Northern California real estate agent was left to pay $19,000 after Blue Cross said she did not disclose a diagnosis of the benign uterine tumors. But Dietrich said the doctor who had written "fibroids" on her medical record never mentioned his suspicions to her. The bills destroyed her credit and cost her her home -- and, in a comically cruel twist, the surgery proved the doctor was wrong.

"They said I had a condition I didn't even have," Dietrich said. "And they canceled me."

If federal health-care reform bars companies from screening for preexisting conditions, insurers note that cancellations will no longer be an issue. But Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin, an economist at the Rand Corp., said that unless for-profit companies are compensated for taking higher-risk patients, the firms will continue to look for ways to unload them.

"They wouldn't be able to overtly kick you out, but that doesn't mean that they might not put, for example, more onerous preauthorization requirements on services that people who are at risk might need, and that might discourage you from re-enrolling next year," Buntin said.

She said one solution would be for Washington to subsidize insurers that take on higher-risk patients. The government does such "risk adjustment" for the private insurance provided through Medicare Advantage -- though Obama has called for ending those subsidies to finance reform.

"You can ban rescission," Buntin said, "but what we really want is a system under which insurers' incentives are aligned with treating all of their patients well, whether they're sick or healthy."

See article...

"This is no time for timidity." - Paul Wellstone

Justice or Another Incident of False Hope?

2009-09-08T12:50:00.000-07:00

Spain to Proceed With Torture Prosecution of Bush Lawyers

A Spanish judge has decided to go ahead with the prosecution of six Bush administration lawyers — including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — who were the architects of the legal framework for President George W. Bush “enhanced interrogation” program, according to a report in the Spanish newspaper Publico. (Original article here; Google translation here.)

The six Bush administration alumni targeted in the prosecution are former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, author of the “torture memos”; Douglas Feith, then a deputy defense secretary; Pentagon lawyer William Haynes II; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; and David Addington, a former chief of staff to then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

According to Andy Worthington at AfterDowningStreet.org, Judge Baltasar Garzon has rejected prosecutors’ request, made last April, to throw the case out. Prosecutors had argued the case was politically motivated.

But under Spanish law, criminal charges can be brought by anyone, not just prosecutors, and in this case it was private lawyers and civil-rights organizations that pressed the charges. The case is being brought on behalf of three former Guantanamo Bay inmates: Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes, both British residents, and Sami El-Laithi, an Egyptian national.

As RAW STORY reported in June, the case appeared jeopardized by the Spanish parliament’s decision to overhaul its human-rights laws.

Spain had adopted the principle of “universal jurisdiction,” allowing its courts to prosecute violations of human rights and crimes against humanity that occurred anywhere in the world. But an outcry from Israel over an attempted prosecution of Israeli soldiers for the Gaza bombing campaign last winter convinced legislators the law was too broad.

However, the judge appears to believe that Spain’s updated laws don’t affect the “Bush six” trial. Phillippe Sands, an international-law professor at University College London who has testified before Congress about torture, told Publico that “there is no legal barrier” to the case. (Original article here; Google translation here.)

Because cases like this are rare, it’s unclear what impact the Spanish trial will have on the Bush administration staffers who face prosecution.

Sands told Publico that he believes Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate CIA torture practices shows that the Spanish prosecution is on the right track.

However, Holder’s investigation will be limited to instances where interrogators overstepped the boundaries set out by Bush lawyers for “enhanced interrogation.” By contrast, the Spanish case challenges the legality of the entire program.

See article...

The United States of America War Criminals:

Bush
Cheney
Rumsfeld
Rice
Wolfowitz
Powell
Gonzales
Feith
Addington
Yoo

Indict.

Prosecute.

Convict.

Punish.

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” - Robert H. Jackson, chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials

September Clues Pt.1

2009-09-03T17:18:00.000-07:00

"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it." - Thomas Jefferson

The Five Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate

2009-08-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

According to Newsweek...

To the credit of opponents of health-care reform, the lies and exaggerations they're spreading are not made up out of whole cloth—which makes the misinformation that much more credible. Instead, because opponents demand that everyone within earshot (or e-mail range) look, say, "at page 425 of the House bill!," the lies take on a patina of credibility. Take the claim in one chain e-mail that the government will have electronic access to everyone's bank account, implying that the Feds will rob you blind. The 1,017-page bill passed by the House Ways and Means Committee does call for electronic fund transfers—but from insurers to doctors and other providers. There is zero provision to include patients in any such system. Five other myths that won't die:

You'll have no choice in what health benefits you receive.
The myth that a "health choices commissioner" will decide what benefits you get seems to have originated in a july 19 post at blog.flecksoflife.com, whose homepage features an image of Obama looking like heath ledger's joker. In fact, the house bill sets up a health-care exchange—essentially a list of private insurers and one government plan—where people who do not have health insurance through their employer or some other source (including small businesses) can shop for a plan, much as seniors shop for a drug plan under medicare part d. The government will indeed require that participating plans not refuse people with preexisting conditions and offer at least minimum coverage, just as it does now with employer-provided insurance plans and part d. The requirements will be floors, not ceilings, however, in that the feds will have no say in how generous private insurance can be.

No chemo for older medicare patients.
The threat that medicare will give cancer patients over 70 only end-of-life counseling and not chemotherapy—as a nurse at a hospital told a roomful of chemo patients, including the uncle of a NEWSWEEK reporter—has zero basis in fact. It's just a vicious form of the rationing scare. The house bill does not use the word "ration." Nor does it call for cost-effectiveness research, much less implementation—the idea that "it isn't cost-effective to give a 90-year-old a hip replacement."

The general claim that care will be rationed under health-care reform is less a lie and more of a non-disprovable projection (as is Howard Dean's assertion that health-care reform will not lead to rationing, ever). What we can say is that there is de facto rationing under the current system, by both medicare and private insurance. No plan covers everything, but coverage decisions "are now made in opaque ways by insurance companies," says dr. Donald Berwick of the institute for healthcare improvement.

A related myth is that health-care reform will be financed through $500 billion in medicare cuts. This refers to proposed decreases in medicare increases. That is, spending is on track to reach $803 billion in 2019 from today's $422 billion, and that would be dialed back. Even the $560 billion in reductions (which would be spread over 10 years and come from reducing payments to private medicare advantage plans, reducing annual increases in payments to hospitals and other providers, and improving care so seniors are not readmitted to a hospital) is misleading: the house bill also gives medicare $340 billion more over a decade. The money would pay docs more for office visits, eliminate copays and deductibles for preventive care, and help close the "doughnut hole" in the medicare drug benefit, explains medicare expert Tricia Neuman of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Illegal immigrants will get free health insurance.
The house bill doesn't give anyone free health care (though under a 1986 law illegals who can't pay do get free emergency care now, courtesy of all us premiumpaying customers or of hospitals that have to eat the cost). Will they be eligible for subsidies to buy health insurance? The house bill says that "individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States" will not be allowed to receive subsidies.

The claim that taxpayers will wind up subsidizing health insurance for illegal immigrants has its origins in the defeat of an amendment, offered in July by republican rep. Dean Heller of Nevada, to require those enrolling in a public plan or seeking subsidies to purchase private insurance to have their citizenship verified. Flecksoflife.com claimed on july 19 that "hc [health care] will be provided 2 all non us citizens, illegal or otherwise." Rep. Steve king of Iowa spread the claim in a usa today op-ed on aug. 20, calling the explicit prohibition on such coverage "functionally meaningless" absent mandatory citizenship checks, and it's now gone viral. Can we say that none of the estimated 11.9 million illegal immigrants will ever wangle insurance subsidies through identity fraud, pretending to be a citizen? You can't prove a negative, but experts say that medicare—the closest thing to the proposals in the house bill—has no such problem.

Death panels will decide who lives.
On July 16 Betsy Mccaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York and darling of the right, said on Fred Thompson's radio show that "on page 425," "congress would make it mandatory … That every five years, people in medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition." Sarah Palin coined "death panels" in an Aug. 7 facebook post.

This lie springs from a provision in the house bill to have medicare cover optional counseling on end-of-life care for any senior who requests it. This means that any patient, terminally ill or not, can request a special consultation with his or her physician about ventilators, feeding tubes, and other measures. Thus the house bill expands medicare coverage, but without forcing anyone into end-of-life counseling.

The death-panels claim nevertheless got a new lease on life when Jim Towey, director of the White House office of faith-based initiatives under George W. Bush, claimed in an Aug. 18 Wall Street Journal op-ed that a 1997 workbook from the department of veterans affairs pushes vets to "hurry up and die." In fact, the thrust of the 51-page book, which the va pulled from circulation in 2007, is letting "loved ones" and "health care providers" "know your wishes." Readers are asked to decide what they believe, including that "life is sacred and has meaning, no matter what its quality," and that "my life should be prolonged as long as it can...using any means possible." But the workbook also asks if readers "believe there are some situations in which I would not want treatments to keep me alive." Opponents of health-care reform have selectively cited this passage as evidence the government wants to kill the old and the sick.

The government will set doctors' wages.
This, too, seems to have originated on the Flecksoflife blog on July 19. But while page 127 of the House bill says that physicians who choose to accept patients in the public insurance plan would receive 5 percent more than Medicare pays for a given service, doctors can refuse to accept such patients, and, even if they participate in a public plan, they are not salaried employees of it any more than your doctor today is an employee of, say, Aetna. "Nobody is saying we want the doctors working for the government; that's completely false," says Amitabh Chandra, professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

To be sure, there are also honest and principled objections to health-care reform. Some oppose a requirement that everyone have health insurance as an erosion of individual liberty. That's a debatable position, but an honest one. And many are simply scared out of their wits about what health-care reform will mean for them. But when fear and loathing hijack the brain, anything becomes believable—even that health-care reform is unconstitutional. To disprove that, check the commerce clause: Article I, Section 8.

With Katie Connolly, Claudia Kalb, and Ian Yarett

See article...

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

WARNING! Content Advisory!

2009-08-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." -Isaac Asimov

“Thank God that the Bible cannot possibly be the word of God." - Donald Morgan

"Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business." - Jesse Ventura

"If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." -Anatole France

"Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of 10 things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these 10 things he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time...but he loves you. And he needs money." -George Carlin

"It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty." -Ilka Chase

"Well, I'm not a religious person myself. I'm an atheist. I think religion serves a lot of different purposes in people's lives, and I can recognize the value of that, you know, the value of ceremony, the value of community, or even just having a forum to get together and talk about ideas, about morals--that's a cool concept. But then, of course, institutional religions are so problematic." -Ani DiFranco

"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God." -Thomas Edison

"I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive." -Albert Einstien

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." -Benjamin Franklin

"The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it." -Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State, 1893

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -Galileo

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians, your Christians are so unlike your Christ." -Mahatma Gandhi

"If the Bible and my brain are both the work of the same Infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and my brain do not agree?" -Robert G. Ingersoll

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." -Thomas Jefferson

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." -Anne Lamott

"The Church says the earth is flat, but I know that it's round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church." -Ferdinand Magellan

"Religion is the opiate of the masses." -Karl Marx

"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -Delo McKown

"What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell. It's a business almost indistinguishable from that of a seller of snake-oil for rheumatism." -H.L. Mencken

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." -Napoleon

"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time." -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"--So you don't believe we have souls I guess?" and Legs laughed and said, "Yeah probably we do but why's that mean we're gonna last forever? Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning? — even if there's a time it goes out?" -Joyce Carol Oates, Foxfire

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." -Thomas Paine

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -Blaise Pascal

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car." -Laurence J. Peter

"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion." -Robert M. Pirsig

"You are never dedicated to do something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt." -Robert M. Pirsig, Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing, all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." -Gene Roddenberry

"Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power." -Salman Rushdie

"The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose." -William Shakespeare

"If God has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?" -Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion." -Jon Stewart

"How can we have confidence in the white people? When Jesus Christ came upon the earth, you killed him, the son of your own God, you nailed him up!! You thought he was dead, but you were mistaken. And only after you thought you killed him did you worship him, and start killing those who would not worship him. What kind of people is this for us to trust?" -Tecumseh, Shawnee

"Blasphemy? No, it is not blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if He is as little as that, He is beneath it." -Mark Twain

"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature." -Frank Lloyd Wright

"What was it that Adam ate that he wasn't supposed to eat? It wasn't just an apple — it was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The subtle message? Get smart and I'll fuck you over — sayeth the Lord. God is the smartest — and he doesn't want any competion. Is this not an absolutely anti-intellectual religion?" -Frank Zappa

"If the lord had meant us to have faith, he'd have given us lobotomies." -Zlatko

"If God doesn't like the way I live, let him tell me, not you." -Unknown

“If Stephen Hawking Lived in England” and Other Great Points the Left Doesn’t Want You to Know

2009-08-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer Epps

Fellow Patriots,

Here are some important things to keep in mind when those blood-suckers from the left try to spread their lies about health care!! Print this out so you can bring it to a town hall.

If Stephen Hawking lived in England, he'd be left to die. Thank God he's safe at the University of Cambridge in Massachusetts.
If the government was capable of ensuring health care for seniors, they would have done it decades ago.
If we didn't have a free enterprise health care system in America, then we would not be able to achieve all those advances in medicine funded by the National Institutes of Health.
When the people of oppressed countries like Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Israel, Australia and New Zealand finally get democracy, they can vote out their socialized health care systems.
England's capital is the ultimate proof that national health care kills free enterprise. That's why London has no stock exchange, no banking district, no tabloid newspapers, no big musicals, and no expensive real estate.
Even the World Health Organization agrees that "America has the best health care system in the world"; the WHO ranks the American health care system at the very top part of its list, right after the first part where 36 other countries rank higher.
Free enterprise is the greatest system ever invented and government can't even come close. What else but private industry could have split the atom, or gotten a man on the moon?
If you drove 100 miles on the interstate freeway you still couldn't come up with one good thing that government has done.
I'm writing an urgent letter to my Senator about the health-care issue. I'm explaining how the government never does anything right. I'm sure the Post Office will deliver it in a day or so.
The last thing anyone needs is a government official getting involved with health. I look after my own health. For example, I always make sure I eat at restaurants rated "A" in the window.
I really resent the government thinking I need any assistance from them. I buy my FDA-approved medication on my own.
If health care were available to all at government expense, people would over-consume, using it when they don't really need it. As in the common phrase: "It's Saturday night, honey. Would you rather go to a movie, or shall we have our gallstones removed?"
For some reason, the lunatic left can't understand that the most important thing in health care is consumer choice. When you're in a car accident and you've lost pints and pints of blood, what you really want to do is to sit down, think over how much you want to spend and where, and comparison-shop. And if you happen to choose an incompetent surgeon, well, he damn well won't get your business next time, will he?

Jennifer Epps is an L.A.-area political activist, writer, producer, and director who studied theatre and has written several hundred film reviews. She is currently developing an anti-war film.

See article...

"Above and beyond the question of how to grow the economy there is a legitimate concern about how to grow the quality of our lives." - Paul Wellstone

Arizona pastor's sermons call for execution of gays, Barney Frank and the President

2009-08-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona is a bible-quoting hellfire and damnation sort of guy. He calls for the execution of gays in numerous sermons that you can listen to here.

"The same God who instituted the death penalty for murders is the same god who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals, sodomites and queers"Jeremy at Good As You has some choice ones so you don't have to give that hateful cuss any hits.

Anderson, while he's memorized The Good Book, he is woefully underinformed about a few legal matters -- he apparently wants Barney Frank to sue his pious *ss off.

"The sodomites are recruiters and you know who they are after? Your children. They are being recruited by the sodomites. They are being molested by the sodomites. They recruit through rape, they recruit through molestation, they recruit through violation"

"Our country is run by faggots. You know who was the man who was the architect of the bailout? His name is Barney Frank, he is a pedophile..."

"That's who just sold our country into fascism. That's who just sold our corporations to the government. That's who sold out our country, a faggot!"Among other sin-filled people Anderson calls to be executed is the POTUS, for his stand on reproductive freedom.

"God Hates Barack Obama, I hate Barack Obama. I hate Him. God wants me to Hate Barack Obama." "Someone who commits murder should get the death penalty."Do you think he would be investigated by the Secret Service during Bush's terms in office? Did he think Bush deserved the death penalty for executing all those Iraqi citizens in his unnecessary military action? Just asking.

See article...

While I'm not defending Barney Frank, this religious fanatic, Steven Anderson, should be exiled from this country. Should someone else pop into his place, the same for them. These reptiles have ruined this country, they don't cherish liberty or democracy, only their own long outdated religious dogma.

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." -Susan B. Anthony

Republicans/Neo-Cons - The True American Traitors

2009-08-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

The term "terrorism" comes from Latin terrere, "to frighten." Terrorism has been defined by the U.S. government during the Bush Administration in the Patriot Act as threatening, conspiring or attempting to commit acts of violence on any "protected" persons, such as government officials as well as any crime committed with "the use of any weapon or dangerous device," when the intent of the crime is determined to be the endangerment of public safety or substantial property damage rather than for "mere personal monetary gain."

I would define it as the use of fear and violence, or threat of violence to attain a goal.

That said, I have been watching events go on since the last election that have further solidified my view that republicans are not only childish, ignorant, and violent, but also traitors to liberty, justice, and the American Way. They have traditionally claimed that they are patriots and that they support the President and this country regardless, however, their actions couldn't be further from the message in their words.

Last year, Rush Limbaugh prayed for riots at the Democratic National Convention so that America would "wake up" and see what the left is all about. He went on to say that "conservatives" have an obligation to see that it happens.

Guess what? It didn't. Unless you count the two right-wing white supremacists who plotted to assassinate Obama and went so far as to rent a hotel nearby where they brought the guns they planned to use in the attack.

Numerous other assassination plots have been uncovered and foiled since then while the right wing continues to claim love for country.

Fast forward past the election and inauguration of the new President and now at town hall meetings set up to discuss the issue of healthcare reform, there are people who are showing up and shouting down speakers and other citizens who feel differently than they do. It is absolutely their right to free speech, but they are infringing on others' rights by doing so in the manner they are doing it. And rather than present an intelligent rebuttal, they rely on fallacies and outright lies to express their opinions.

These lies include, but are not limited to, the absurd notion that the elderly will be cut off from healthcare at a certain point and either allowed to die or be euthanized against their will. And despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary as well as lack of evidence to support the claim, neo-cons across the country are lapping it up.

I won't even go into the utter ridiculousness of the birther movement any more than this single statement.

That brings me up to the alarming number of incidences of these kooks bringing guns to their protests against Obama and his policies. And while I'm normally a fan of civil disobedience, this is a scary situation going on. Because of these fringe lunatics, they are going to be the cause of further restrictions on the peoples right to bear arms including outright bans within a certain range of wherever the President is.

It's interesting that when "the left" protests the government and its policies, there are no arrests for waving guns around, yet Rush Limbaugh can, with a straight face, claim that the left is violent, but when "the right" show up with guns, threatening violence, committing acts of violence, he claims they are patriotic. And given the mindlessness of the clones that follow him, none of whom see the utter hypocrisy of their ways, it is no surprise that this type of treason is on the rise.

The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America states that the people have the right to both free speech and to "peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." And though they may have the right to bear arms, they do not have the right to force their beliefs on people at gunpoint, or even to use the fear of being murdered to attain their goals.

In light of these recent developments as well as the instability of the right wing, I am stating that Americans have the right to defend themselves aginst this tyranny and these threats. And because there is no telling what these people will do or when they're going to do it, it behooves citizens to be aware of the situation and to be prepared, in general, to defend themselves at any time. If anyone encounters these people at a protest or rally, it is safe to assume that they are armed and dangerous, and it behooves everyone not to wait until they pull their guns out and start shooting. Take them down first!

Related...

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson

A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

2009-08-07T18:06:00.000-07:00

JAMES A. HAUGHT
Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.
Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”
After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”
In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.
Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.
Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.
The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim “absurd.”
Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”
It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.
For six years, Americans really haven’t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn’t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil—or to protect Israel—or to complete Bush’s father’s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.
Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.
James A. Haught is the editor of the Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) and a Free Inquiry senior editor.

See article...

Credit Seebo at Seeboandherzen for showing me this article.

“The certainty with which a religious belief is held is usually in direct proportion to its absurdity” - Donald Morgan

My Favorite Artists

2009-07-08T19:55:00.001-07:00

Enlightening The Shadows

2009-06-29T14:25:00.000-07:00

911 Enlightening The Shadows

"Barrington Moore put it well: ‘Doing nothing remains the real form of mass action.'" - Paul Wellstone

'We dump sick people,' ex-health insurer admits

2009-06-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

A retired health insurance executive — in a shocking but not terribly surprising admission — confessed Wednesday that insurance companies deliberately confuse policyholders and attempt to dump sick patients to plump their profit margins.

“[T]hey confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors,” former Cigna senior executive Wendell Potter told senators at a hearing on health insurance Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
“Potter, who has more than 20 years of experience working in public relations for insurance companies Cigna and Humana, said companies routinely drop seriously ill policyholders so they can meet “Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations,’” Potter told the hearing, according to ABC News.

“They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment,” Potter added. “(D)umping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line.”

Read more...

Scumbags.

"Above and beyond the question of how to grow the economy there is a legitimate concern about how to grow the quality of our lives." - Paul Wellstone

My thoughts on the murder of Dr. Tiller

2009-06-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

This space is reserved for my upcoming thoughts on the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller.

Developing...

Related...

"Marcia Timmel said, ‘I'm so small and the darkness is so great.' We must light a candle." - Paul Wellstone

Federal Court Says Religious Monument At Oklahoma Courthouse Is Unconstitutional

2009-06-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

A unanimous federal appeals court yesterday ruled that county commissioners in Haskell County, Oklahoma unconstitutionally sought to promote their personal religious beliefs by erecting a Ten Commandments monument on the front lawn of the county's courthouse.

The decision by the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals comes in a challenge filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Oklahoma on behalf of a local resident.

"This decision is a victory for the cherished American value of religious freedom," said Daniel Mach, Director of Litigation for the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. "The government should not be in the business of promoting religious viewpoints. In our country, people should be free to express their faith – or to exercise their right to hold no belief at all – without government interference or favoritism."

In its decision, the court ruled that the monument violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution because a "reasonable observer would view the monument as having the impermissible principal or primary effect of endorsing religion." The monument is unconstitutional, the court ruled, because the proposal to erect the monument, its approval by the Haskell County Board of Commissioners, and the commissioners' expressly religious defense of the monument "strongly reflect a government endorsement of religion."

"This is a significant ruling for the citizens of Oklahoma," said Joann Bell, Executive Director of the ACLU of Oklahoma. "Religion should not be something that should be allowed to divide the citizens of this state, which is what happens when the government endorses one particular set of religious beliefs. All Oklahomans, of all creeds – and not just the beliefs of those in power – should feel welcome at the county courthouse."

The ACLU and the ACLU of Oklahoma filed a lawsuit challenging the display of the monument in October 2005, a little over a year after a Haskell County lay minister, who said "the Lord had burdened his heart" about having a Ten Commandments monument placed on the courthouse lawn, received permission from the Haskell County Board of Commissioners to build it.

Several days after the monument was put up, a dedication ceremony was held that included opening and closing prayers and remarks from several local pastors who talked about the religious significance of the monument. And in the months following the dedication ceremony, members of the Haskell County Board of Commissioners spoke frequently, publicly and often in expressly religious terms in defense of the monument, including statements like "That's what we're going to live by, that right there…The good Lord died for me. I can stand for him, and I'm going to."

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma ruled against the plaintiffs in August 2006, prompting an appeal to the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

A copy of yesterday's ruling is available online at: www.aclu.org/religion/public/39784lgl20090608.html

Additional information about the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief is available online at: www.aclu.org/religion

Additional information about the ACLU of Oklahoma is available online at: www.acluok.org

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression." - Thomas Jefferson

Are You This Good?

2009-06-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

If you can start the day without caffeine,
If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it,If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,
If you can overlook it when those you love take it out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can ignore a friend's limited education and never correct him,
If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can say honestly that deep in your heart you have no prejudice against creed, color, religion or politics,

Then, my friend, you are almost as good as your dog!

"Without trying, I'm different." - Paul Wellstone

US Democrats Overseas Pass Marijuana Resolution

2009-05-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

The Democratic Party Committee Abroad, otherwise known as Democrats Abroad, passed a resolution [Editor's note: not a joint resolution yet...) on April 25 recommending the legalization of marijuana in all 50 states.

The news appears to have gone completely unnoticed by all mainstream outlets.

The Democrats Abroad are considered a state party by the Democratic National Committee, which affords them eight elected, voting members. They help U.S. citizens who are traveling and living outside the United States cast ballots in national elections.

The DNC maintains a pool of 200 voting members divvied up by individual states’ populations.
The resolution was first put forward by the Japanese branch of Democrats Abroad. After only minor debate, according to Daily Kos diarist YoYogiBear who says he created the resolution, it passed, moving up for debate by the Democratic Party Committee Abroad, where it was met with some resistance.

“Once the resolution passed our country committee, it was put on the agenda with the rest of the DA resolutions for consideration at our global meeting in DC,” he wrote. “A couple of members of the leadership of DA seemed to think that this issue was not an area of ‘core competence’ for our organization and questioned vigorously whether we should be considering any resolutions that contradicted President Obama’s position at all. Our primary function as a part of the DNC, according to the opponents, was to support the President and his agenda and to help elect Democrats. Implicit in their argument was that this issue would somehow hurt the Democrats and Obama though no evidence was ever presented to backup that assertion.”

The resolution was put to a voice vote during the Democrats’ Abroad April meeting in Washington, D.C.. After two attempts, it was passed.

In the 2008 election, Democrats Abroad aided the votes of American citizens in 164 countries, according to Toby Condliffe, a Democrats Abroad superdelegate to last year’s DNC.
President Obama opposed, but…

Although President Barack Obama made light of a question about marijuana legalization repeatedly promoted on his Change.gov Web site, efforts to topple marijuana prohibition have reached a fever pitch.

The president’s position on the matter, however, is unclear.

Read more...

It's time to end the decades old prohibition on probably the most useful plant on the planet. The law makes no sense in this case. Legalize it NOW!!!

"You wanna get rid of drug crime in this country? Fine, let's just get rid of all the drug laws." - Ron Paul

The World According To Me

Aug. 29, 2005: The day America realized that Republicans don't give a shit about Americans

Republicans don't care about jobless Americans

Gulf Oil Spill: 7 Ways to Help

Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich: Mavericks Extraordinaire

With Liberty and Justice for All...

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Obama!

A Ticket for Rush!

Iraq Opens Up to Foreign Oil Majors

Obama Extends Patriot Act for Another Year

Another great email titled...

What Do You Think The 'Tea Party' Movement Is About?

Fiscal Conservatives In Name Only

A Day in the Life of Joe Republican

No Joke: South Carolina Now Requires ’Subversives’ to Register

How Corporations Secretly Move Millions to Fund Political Ads

The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy

Angel of Death

Kucinich shreds Democrats for betraying the promise of change

Republicans are Happy?

Cindy McCain Poses for NOH8

Brother Ali - "Tight Rope"

Obama: Time To Keep Your Promises

Gay Marriage Goes on Trial in California

Man sues Dickson judge for forcing a drug test

Happy New Year!

BLACKWATER GETS AWAY WITH MURDER

Merry Christmas!

Just Want to Call Your Attention to...

A Few of My Heroes...

Obama Administration Continues to Have Bush-era Torture Architect John Yoo's Back

Are Goldman Bankers Arming Themselves for Fear of a ‘Populist Uprising’

Fresh Air

If You've Never Been Funny, Is it Fair to Call Yourself a Comedian?

Speaking of Disinformation...

Happy Halloween!

From Hitler To Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden - Insider Connections and the Bush Family's Partnership with Killers of Americans

Grim Reaper greets Bush in Canada

What the...?

Bush Administration Covered Up Global Warming Finding

EPA Releases '07 Climate Document Rejected by Bush Team

Obama EPA releases Bush-era global warming finding

Judge refuses to dismiss gay marriage ban lawsuit

Wile E. Coyote Catches the Roadrunner?

Gingrich Named Porn Fan of the Year by Scorned Dinner Date

Happy Birthday!

What We Believe

DOMA Repeal Bill Coming Next Week

ACORN Turns in Florida Workers on Voter Fraud Charges

Obama's Speech to Kids

When Your Insurer Says You're No Longer Covered

Justice or Another Incident of False Hope?

September Clues Pt.1

The Five Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate

WARNING! Content Advisory!

“If Stephen Hawking Lived in England” and Other Great Points the Left Doesn’t Want You to Know

Arizona pastor's sermons call for execution of gays, Barney Frank and the President

Republicans/Neo-Cons - The True American Traitors

A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

JAMES A. HAUGHT

My Favorite Artists

Enlightening The Shadows

'We dump sick people,' ex-health insurer admits

My thoughts on the murder of Dr. Tiller

Federal Court Says Religious Monument At Oklahoma Courthouse Is Unconstitutional

Are You This Good?

US Democrats Overseas Pass Marijuana Resolution