Leon Panetta, the Director of the CIA under Obama, believes that "following orders" is a fine excuse, good enough to get the CIA's professional torturers off any hypothetical hook. Is there any other way to interpret Panetta's words when he says, "I would not support, obviously, an investigation or a prosecution of those individuals involved in the interrogation program. They did their job, they did it pursuant to the guidance that was provided them, whether you agreed or disagreed with it." Those are words outrageously at odds with America's professed ideals, and utterly in keeping with the CIA's long tradition of savagely opposing those ideals.
[ Cable News Network ]
"We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights." Felix Frankfurter
The CIA destroyed almost a hundred videotapes that showed its torture tactics. Your tax dollars at work.
[ ThinkProgess ]
Guards at Guantanamo are still getting "their kicks in", and abuse at the concentration camp has actually increased since Obama took office, or so says defense lawyer Ahmed Ghappour. "The new report details the inhumane conditions at the base that persist despite President Obama's Executive Order of January 22, 2009, requiring humane standards of confinement at Guantanamo. These include ongoing, severe solitary confinement, other psychological abuse, incidents of violence and threats of violence from guards, religious abuse and widespread forced tube-feeding of hunger strikers. In contrast to the military's report, which appears to include very little testimony or reports from Guantanamo detainees themselves, CCR's report offers multiple cases of abuse in the last two months directly from detainees' experiences."
[ AlterNet ]
In one of John Yoo's infamous memos justifying all manner of unConstitutional acts by the Bush-Cheney administration, he wrote that "the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches are swept away" and "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully." The memos reveal "a theory of presidential dictatorship," says some professor at Yale, and that's pretty obvious -- but it's been obvious for years, with or without these secret-until-now memos. Question is, will anyone care enough to pursue punishment? And the answer sure seems to be, nope.
[ New York Times ]
Everything about the House Judiciary Committee's alleged investigation into the politicization of the Justice Department during the Bush-Cheney era stinks. And Karl Rove's deal to provide testimony behind closed doors is smelly as hell, too.
[ Legal Schnauzer ]
Fools and liars
Conservatives dominate the media and discourse in America, so lies, outrageous statements, and general nuttiness from right-wingers are utterly ordinary in mainstream media. And there's no left-wing equivalent in mainstream media, because anyone who criticizes right-wingers even half as harshly -- even when it's warranted and true -- is "outside the mainstream", by definition.
Most of the charges against Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman have been upheld on appeal, in a decision that strikes Legal Schnauzer and yours truly as an active endorsement of injustice. "These are dark days for American justice. And they just got darker on Friday." Scott Horton's explanation-- that the appeal considered the record from the first trial, but not most of the revelations that came after -- is helpful in preventing me from pulling my hair out.
[ Legal Schnauzer ]
A guy who used to be a prosecutor for the UN says that an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir provides a blueprint for how the UN could issue an arrest warrant for former American President George W. Bush. And I hope that typing the preceding sentence satisfies the half-dozen people who've sent us the link to this story, but of course, it's a daydream -- the UN is not going to lead the way toward justice by issuing an arrest warrant for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or any of the high-ranking members of the Bush-Cheney administration. If they're not brought to any form of justice inside America, they're never going to face justice, period. [ Raw Story ]
A court has rejected the Obama administration's attempt to blocking a lawsuit over illegal eavesdropping, which would have provided more protection for the Bush administration.
[ Associated Press ]
But in keeping with the wishes of the Obama administration, the Supreme Court has decided not to hear a case questioning the President's alleged power to detain legal American residents as "enemy combatants", without evidence or trial, just on the President's say-so. This is, I guess, a fairly trivial matter to the Supreme Court, something that doesn't much interest them?
[ Agence France-Presse ]
The Obama administration stands firm for complete immunity for the telecom giants that provided the Bush-Cheney administration's illegal wiretaps, and thus digs in its heels even more firmly, in opposition to your right to privacy.
[ Wired ]
An election tallying system from Premier Election Solutions (a.k.a. Diebold) comes with a button to instantly delete audit logs. Please, read that sentence a second time, or just stop and think about it. All it takes is a quick Google search to find Diebold's long track record of manufacturing vote-counting equipment that's absurdly easy to hack, so at this point, you have to assume that any election officials who buy Diebold's machines either don't give a fat freakin' dang in heck about democracy, or they're simply opposed. [ Wired ]
One of the Republicans' many attempts to suppress voting -- in Missouri, this time -- has been quashed by a court.
[ TPM Muckraker ]
In "vote caging", Republican operatives target likely Democratic voters for bogus challenges at polling places. Democrats in the Senate are pushing legislation that would make such voter-suppression tactics even more obviously illegal than they already are.
[ TPM Muckraker ]
The Obama administration has named John Berry to lead the Office of Personnel Management. If confirmed, he'll be the highest-level openly gay official ever, and based on his track record he'll make some serious improvements in the federal government's human resources department.
[ The New Republic ]
Dean Hara, the widow of Rep Garry Studds (D-Massachusetts), doesn't qualify for a Congressional Pension, because like Studds was, Hara is gay. He's among the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), challenging the government's policy of discrimination against gays by denying spousal protections in Social Security, federal income tax, federal employees' and retirees' benefits, and in the issuance of passports.
[ ThinkProgess ]
Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard meekly suggests, good golly, Mexico would have a lot fewer murders if marijuana was legalized. Of course he's right, and of course America would also have a lot fewer murders if people were legally allowed to grow, smoke, and sell the herb of their choice. But Goddard isn't brave enough to say that, or even to say that he'd favor legalization, no doubt because he knows that Republicans and their corporate-controlled media would react to such obvious common sense by painting Goddard as salted nuts.
[ Raw Story ]
US District Judge William Sessions (appointed by Clinton in 1995) has ordered a man charged with possession of kiddie porn to provide the encryption key to would let prosecutors view files on his computer. The ruling strikes me as absurd and unConstitutional -- is the Fifth Amendment dead and gone, Judge Sessions?
[ CNet News ]
A Maryland court has agreed with common sense, that a website where people posted anonymous comments critical of a donut shop can't be forced to reveal the posters' identities.
[ arstechnica.com ]
Israeli Minister of Religious Affairs Yitzhak Cohen thinks the solution to Israel's "Gaza problem" is a series of assassinations, killing the leadership of Hamas. The Israelis never seem to acknowledge that they provoke "tit for tat". The cry that Israel is always the innocent victim of Arab terrorists is growing old. --Wig
[ Arab News (Saudi Arabia) ]
Dennis Ross has been appointed "special adviser" on Middle East issues to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The appointment of Ross to have anything to do in the Middle East is the dumbest move yet by the Obama Administration. Ross' reputation as an Israeli puppet is so widely known it's hard to believe Obama is serious about a change in direction regarding Iran. --Wig
[ Inter Press Service ]
It made me stop and think
"It is a sad commentary on the pinched and strictly censored level of political discourse in this nation that any serious consideration of Canada's successful approach to health care is simply out of bounds in America. It is nothing short of absurd that even though the nation that is closest to the US geographically, culturally, linguistically and economically has, since 1973, had a system of provincially administered single-payer government-run health systems which have kept the country's health costs at about 3/5 of what they are in the US as a percentage of GDP (9.7% vs. 17% for the US), at the same time serving all people and (not surprisingly) achieving better health statistics than the US, no one in Washington has talked about inviting Canadian health authorities down to explain how their system works and whether it might make sense here."
[ Dave Lindorff ]
"About a half-century ago, actor John Wayne, who was very conservative, was asked for his thoughts after JFK defeated Richard Nixon in 1960. 'I didn't vote for him,' Wayne said, 'but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job.' It's the kind of sentiment that seemed obvious up until about, say, a month ago."
[ Steve Benen ]
"We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it."
[ Scott Horton ]
Apparently, high-level Wall Street executives have a special "hotline" to the Securities & Exchange Commission, to have investigations slowed or stalled.
[ TruthOut ]
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says that nationalization of bankrupt banks is "the wrong strategy for the country, and I don't think it's a necessary strategy". Further evidence (though no further evidence is needed) that Geithner is utterly over his head and absolutely the wrong person for the job he's got.
[ ThinkProgess ]
56% of Americans support nationalization of failing banks, and are thus brighter than Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
[ Newsweek, distilled by Huffington Post ]
The bankrupt corpse of Bank of America, which owns the bankrupt corpse of Merrill Lynch, is arguing in court that it would suffer "grave and irreparable harm" if the Merrill Lynch employees who received billions in bonuses were publicly named.
[ Bloomberg News Service, distilled by Crooks & Liars ]
Attorney General Eric Holder says that the Department of Justice will no longer conduct raids on legally-established medical marijuana clinics. Thank you, Atty Gen Holder.
[ Huffington Post ]
The Internal Revenue Service will end its ugly and inappropriate program of using contracted debt collectors to go after tax deadbeats. Thank you, President Obama.
[ Associated Press ]
The Pentagon will no longer block journalists from photographing the coffins of dead soldiers from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thank you, President Obama.
[ Associated Press ]
There's no official announcement here, but The Guardian sees a Spring thaw coming in American relations with Cuba.
[ The Guardian ]
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) was a major investor in a group that sought to build a business park at an abandoned Air Force base, and helped funnel $66 million in federal funds for the project. Gregg was perhaps the worst of Obama's cabinet nominees, even without this scandal, though he withdrew his name from consideration as Commerce Secretary a few weeks ago.
[ Associated Press ]
An alleged charity established by Sen Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who's long been Big Pharma's best friend in Congress, received $170K in 'donations' from AstraZeneca, Barr Pharmaceuticals, Eli Lilly, and PhRMA in 2007. How un-surprising.
[ Raw Story ]
Why is the US Postal Service buying a low-level manager's house for $1.2-million?
[ Cable News Network ]
Courtney Stadd, one of the Bush-Cheney administration's top guys at NASA, has been indicted for allegedly nudging $9.6-million in federal contracts to his good buddies.
[ Associated Press ]
Fraser Verrusio, who worked as an aide to corrupt Congressman Don Young (R-Alaska), has been indicted for his minor-league crookedness.
[ Associated Press ]
Look, ma, it's more evidence that Senator Roland Burris (D-Illinois) is a slimeball, and like all the previous evidence it'll be ignored.
[ Chicago Sun-Times ]
Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana who's frequently touted as a front-runner for his party's 2012 Presidential nomination, made his debut on the national stage with the televised "response" to Obama's big speech to Congress on February 24. We missed Obama's speech, but happened to have the telly on for Jindal's response, and it was a phenomenally comical performance. Really, my jaw was open for fifteen minutes -- Jindal's voice, presentation, and about a third of the things he said were just flat-out ludicrous. At this link, Max Blumenthal provides the context for better understanding the weirdness of Piyush Jindal, who started calling himself 'Bobby' after the youngest boy of The Brady Bunch, and participated in the exorcism of demons from his college sweetheart.
[ The Daily Beast ]
Two Brits have been indicted in the matter of Halliburton's bribery policies during the time Dick Cheney was the company's President.
[ The Public Record ]
Google has taken a relatively strong pro-privacy position regarding its new "friend finding service", Latitude, which tracks user locations. They won't turn over data on user locations without a warrant. Sadly, that counts as a strong pro-privacy, though to my mind that's the bare minimum that should be expected from any company that holds personal details about the lives of customers or users.
[ Electronic Frontier Foundation ]
This is a comprehensive list of the projects underway or about to get underway with President Obama's stimulus funding. I whittled it down to my home town, Madison WI, and saw several projects listed that are indisputably needed. Don't dig too deep, though -- the "comments" are all reader-written in the Wiki format.
[ stimuluswatch.org ]
They've got the TV transition converter box program up and running again, finally.
[ CNet News ]
Craigslist is being sued by the Sheriff of Cook County (Chicago) for "erotic services" ads that the sheriff thinks amount to solicitation for hookers. I'm not sure why the sheriff is making this a civil instead of a criminal matter -- it's absurd that prostitution is illegal, but it is, so isn't it also illegal to run ads for prostitutes' services?
[ Associated Press ]
After gently criticizing Republican elder liar Rush Limbaugh, Republican Chairman Michael Steele apologized profusely, received so much hate mail from Republicans he's had to take down his blog.
[ ThinkProgess ]
The Congress Party, which controls Indian government, has paid about $200,000 to buy the rights to "Jai Ho", the Oscar-winning song from Slumdog Millionaire. The song's title means, literally, 'victory'.
[ BBC News ]
Please send your news tips, comments, and criticisms to <unknownnews at inbox.com>. If that address ever fails, check our contact page for our alternate email addresses.
Note from Helen & Harry --
We were off-line for almost two weeks due to an emergency. We're working hard at going through the in-box in chronological order, but we're still about four days behind on incoming emails. Your patience is appreciated, and if your dialogue isn't included today it'll probably be in our next update, which should be Wednesday. Peace on earth and prosecute Bush and Cheney, H&HH
#
The story is slowly being released to the public:
For the politicos to go after these guys, there must be public hue and cry, because
a) the Obama administration has its hands WAY full
b) politics-as-usual requires that Obama's people be able to say, 'Sorry, Mr. Fat Cigar, I know we're supposed to let you slip away but the people are forcing our hand, and that's an offer we can't refuse, capisch?'
I think the next decade will be dizzy history like that our parents experienced in the late 20s through 1945.
As for Gitmo/torture et al: sadly, the American people currently don't much give a sh*t because their MUNNEE is being hammered, and that's # 1. But as soon as they feel the situation has been address or, more likely, are so distraught they're in the mood for some public hangings, Team Obama will easily have all the public will to prosecute the torture-encouragers/constitution shredders. Meanwhile, the evidence grows and grows. Under such a climate, the very fact they burned those 92 vids, after the past 8 years, Rove's current above-the-law shenanigans, and the Republican party's inability to do anything but trip over its wide-stance dick and fall on its dull dull sword, will be enough to require political blood be shed.
Politics is a game; it must be played. We got played hard; not the players are gonna get played.
Please don't tell me how discouraged you are that in the short run Obama's Team is playing soft with these guys. When it comes time to get a full Congressional vote to pillory them, this will speak well for Obama and nicely refute the Orin Hatch whackos who will try to call this a partisan witch hunt.
I think we're going to see some of the most deft political handling since LBJ rammed the Civil Rights Act through Congress, FDR pulled four terms out of his ass, and Lincoln straddled a political nightmare to victory after being derided in the press as an idjut ape/rural bumpkin a la Double-Ought.
The Blue Rajah
I wouldn't say I'm discouraged -- I didn't expect much from Obama and he's already surpassed my pessimistic fears. But I'm dissatisfied and infuriated, and I'll remain both until Bush is behind bars... which means, for the rest of my life.
Helen & Harry Highwater
#
James Galbraith seems to line up 100% with my views, and I believe this point of view is in line with many others, like Rick Santelli who are apolitical and disagree with the bank bailout. This is really, really interesting:
Excerpt: Bad news has been outrunning the forecasts for months. Professional economists, working with the normal models, failed to predict the crisis. In many important cases, including high officials, they actively denied it could happen. Chairman Bernanke was typical: through July of 2007, he argued that the Federal Reserve Board's predominant concern was inflation; thus the Federal Reserve was unable to give Congress a foretaste of a crisis that was to erupt within days. And as the crisis has unfolded, events have repeatedly come in worse than expected or caught us by surprise. This should tell us something.
Second, we know that the origins of the crisis lie in a breakdown of the banking and financial system, following a breakdown in the regulation of mortgage originations, in underwriting, and in credit default swaps. This is something we have not seen in our lifetimes. We know that the actions already taken in response -- the TARP, the nationalization of the commercial paper market and the swap agreements with the ECB and other central banks -- are unprecedented. We know that these measures have, at best, only averted a deeper catastrophe. And we know that the baseline forecast, which is a mechanical procedure based on statistical relationships between non-financial variables, for the most part, takes none of this into account.
We therefore have no basis for confidence in the baseline forecasts, and we should prepare ourselves, as Churchill said to Parliament at the time of Dunkirk, "for hard and heavy tidings." ...
The bank plan appears to turn on a metaphor. Credit is "blocked" or "frozen." It must be made to "flow again." Take a plunger to the toxic assets, a blowtorch to the pipes, it's said, and credit will flow. This will make the recession essentially normal, validating the baseline forecast. Add the stimulus to a normalization of credit, and the crisis will end. That's the thinking, so far as I can tell, of the Treasury department in this new administration.
But common sense begins by noting that the metaphor is wrong. Credit is not a flow. It is not something that can be forced downstream by clearing a pipe. Credit is a contract. It requires a borrower as well as a lender, a customer as well as a bank. The borrower must meet two conditions ... [creditworthiness and willingness to borrow] ... The "credit-flow" metaphor implies that people came flocking to the auto showrooms last November and were turned away because there were no loans to be had. This is not true. What happened was that people stopped coming in. And they stopped coming in because, suddenly, they felt poor, uncertain and afraid.
In this situation, stuffing the banks with money will not change their behavior... [T]he bank chiefs have made it very clear, in testimony here and elsewhere: they will not return to ordinary commercial, industrial and residential lending until they can see a reasonable way to make money at it... More likely, they will hunker down, invest in Treasuries and prime corporate bonds, and rebuild capital for the long-term, as they did from 1989 to 1994. Only this time, with the yield curve as flat as it is and the insolvencies as deep as they are, it could take a decade or longer. ...
The Treasury plan, if put in place as described, would have a perverse effect on the distribution of wealth. To guarantee bad assets at rates above their market value is simply a transfer to those who hold those assets. It would enable them to convert those assets, sooner or later, to cash. The plan would thus preserve the wealth of bank insiders and financial investors, while failing to prevent the collapse of the wealth of almost everyone else. I cannot believe that the American public will tolerate this, for very long. ...
Further excerpt from article text: Galbraith sees no alternative to putting "several very big banks" that are "deeply troubled" into receivership, breaking them up, firing existing management, and selling them in parts or relaunching them as "multiple mid-sized institutions. While that happens, he says, there should be a publicly-run bank "to provide the loans to businesses -- small, medium and large -- sufficient to keep them running through the crisis," as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation did during the Depression.
Sooooooo....we know that the Obama regime is NOT going to follow this advice, primarily for political reasons but also because foreign potentates have heavily invested in things like Citibank. Therefore expect harsh consequences before Obama wakes up to the fact that he will not be re-elected in 2012. Then things will really devolve into political mayhem with the GOP freakshow competing with Team Hillary for the spotlight ... but the corporate welfare WILL CONTINUE for the good of the country. Naturally.
Personally, I think a heavy dose of real populist socialism combined with a brief episode of authoritarian jackboots on the plump necks of the bankers would be Justice, except that we cannot expect Congress to punish itself like they deserve (as much as the bankers, the D.C. politicians created this mess and are guiding the "recovery".)
== == ==
Warren Buffett's shareholder letter for 2008 (pdf) says the economy is likely to remain a "shambles" for the remainder of 2009 and possibly long after.
But the king himself was nailed for billions in derivatives contracts he wrote -- something like 271 separate contracts amounting to tens of billions. This is shocking to me because he was the guy who called derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction" after he took over General Re.
Now we see Buffett as a bigtime speculator and probably past his prime... It is true that people become seduced and eventually addicted to behaviors which were previously rewarding. But really it is just sad to see this 78 year old guy losing billions of dollars not because his companies did poorly but because he made 271 multi-billion dollar wagers. Pathetic.
Speaking of which, I wonder if you noticed that Microsoft is dying? WOW. Stock is down to $16 and a single-digit price/earnings ratio.
I wrote MSFT an email suggesting that they release just one version of the new OS, in effect giving every customer the "expert" (expensive) version for the basic price. I figure this would be a tremendous PR gesture to try to make people stop hating them so much. I also made a few security suggestions. Someone there was polite and wrote back, saying that the email would be forwarded to the appropriate project managers...
So, that proves I can do a good deed even when I loathe a person/thing, not just my friends :-) I think they really need to get their sh*t together. It is totally unbelievable how badly Steve Ballmer has hosed over the company since Bill Gates decided to become a full time philanthropist (in effect, giving away the money he stole from Planet Earth...a software Robin Hood.
Billie Cavanaugh
#
Socialism? Delicious! I found these articles enlightening (my comments follow
the excerpts).
Excerpt: Can stimuli and bailouts of banks work? Of course not. With US housing having lost $7 Trillion in value to date, equities and other investments having lost an equal or greater amount, and financial institutions having lost virtually all of their assets, a mere few Trillion dollars of make believe money thrown to some insiders and those with the loudest pleas simply can not make more than a minor impact.
Politics dictates that politicians and those in charge try to make a difference. It is important that they be seen to be doing something ...whether it works or not. Otherwise they be deemed not to be doing their jobs. If the politician is of the elected version, regardless of the partisan brand, s/he has no choice but to talk confidently and with authority advocating spending programs. Of course they have no idea whether the borrowed money will achieve any discernable result, but at least they are demonstrating their version of political leadership.
The unelected bureaucrats, such as the Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Chairman along with their armies of economic, policy and administrative technocrats, see crises such as these as career possibilities and opportunities to exercise the levers of power. It is an exhilarating experience given that most of their respective professional lives are spent in anonymity toiling away on mainly mundane issues of little consequence.
The entire process is essentially political in nature. In large measure it is a public relations exercise designed to make the public feel good that their leaders are on call "fixing the problem." All the while insiders will use their connections to get their jar of the m/honey flowing from the federal treasury pipeline.
Excerpt: I described the common state of Wrongness in Marooned in the Quantum Wrongness Field (April, 2007). Today, the public is predictably being lured ever-deeper into Wrongness by propaganda about the economic crisis. Among other things, we are told that adding trillions of dollars in new federal debt and printing oceans of new money-from-thin-air will somehow restore prosperity.
Given that such behavior was the primary cause of the crisis, it would seem obvious that more of the same will not solve the problem. Debt doesn't create prosperity, but heavy debt can certainly vaporize prosperity, and the bailouts have so far added $27,599 in government debt for every US citizen -- $110,396 per family of four. (Yes, that's just new debt). Printing money non-stop doesn't create prosperity either, as anyone in Zimbabwe can testify (do not miss the video embedded in that link), but the human ability to passionately believe in Things That Are Wrong is apparently stronger than reality itself.
For a time, anyway. ...
For some reason, we aren't handing the zillions of new dollars we are creating to just anyone. No, Our Leaders know what's best (despite their constant failure in the past) and they have decided to be picky, and to hand most (although not all) of those galactic-sized piles of your money to failed bankers (only some of whom may be guilty of teensy amounts of mortgage fraud), to failed automakers and other failed big-business honchos, to federal bureaucrats and heads of police-state agencies, and to other more-important-than-you über-humans who will spend the money better than you would. (Our Maximum Leader also knows how to spin this better than I do [or see here], making it sound positively sensible). Like crumbs trickling down from a banquet table to the mice and roaches below, some of this trillion-dollar largess will float down to the Little People, and then Americans can be happy and rich and smug once again, as we have every right to be. America ! Hell yeah!
But somewhere, in a dark and anxious corner of our minds, we know the truth: hard work and savings are needed to create and sustain prosperity. Constantly going into debt to spend more money than you actually have while closing down productive industries and shipping the work overseas -- living like parasites on the savings and labor of other nations -- is a sure-fire way to turn a prosperous nation into a poor one. Printing mountains of money from thin air doesn't work either, since each new dollar-from-nothing reduces the value of every existing dollar -- exactly why counterfeiting is illegal. For proof, Americans need only look at their own currency, which used to be gold and silver (as the Constitution still requires*), with a fixed rate of roughly $20 per ounce of gold. As this is written, it takes 50 times more dollars to buy an ounce of gold, at $1,000 per ounce. Imagine how much new money was created (and spent or given away by the government -- instead of being used by the people for what they might have wanted) to debase the dollar to such an extent, rendering each dollar now almost worthless.
It is worth saying again: Print more dollars, and each dollar loses value. A simple chart shows how this works in the real world ...
As you may recall, in 2015 or 2016 the Social Security Trust Fund will begin to be called upon to pay benefits because the outgo will begin to exceed the current income from FICA withholding. Unfortunately, the trust fund is in a virtual reality -- a different reality than ours and does not represent actual savings from your FICA withholdings, but is instead an IOU from Uncle Sam... more of a book-keeping device really. Therefore, the federal deficits will begin to increase even faster at that time.
So, with Obama's grandiose new budget combined with his inability to stop the wars and military spending, as well as the political consensus in favor of spending while refusing to raise taxes, the situation for the US treasury (and currency unit) is entirely bleak. Scary, really...
Thus, as the new "correction" in the price of gold and silver begins to deepen, it may be wise to consider GRADUALLY building up "savings" in these metals, assuming that you have savings. (The ETFs such as GLD, SLV, IAU and CEF work fine if you don't want physical coins -- which are more or less permanent purchases... (if you want post-Armageddon currency then Silver American Eagles are small enough to be spendable and not large enough to invite your murder :-))
In my opinion, the "correction" will last for a few more weeks (or maybe until Fall...???,) which will allow the market to vent excess enthusiasm for the precious metals.
This isn't just a US dollar story anymore. People all over the world are accumulating precious metal hoards as they see their government's printing press kick into high gear.
As usual, buy the dips, not the blips.
Hazel Burke
#
I have reached my limit. I don't care to hear any more about politicians and the economy or the US' permanent state of war. For a while anyway.
My opinion is now formed: Obama may have good intentions -- I harbor serious doubts about his moral qualities but who am I to judge? -- but, regardless of his talk-talk, his policies are failures. He is continuing the war in Iraq even as he promises to end it. He is escalating war with Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is doing nothing to prosecute the crimes of the previous regime, and in fact, defends their tactics in court. And his economic policies are rewarding the wealthy, esp. banks and Wall Street, while pretending to help "the people". His policies amount to a looting of the Treasury and will fail, I believe, because he is putting money into a black hole and even if the economy recovers the problem of inflation and dollar devaluation will severely hurt poor people.
The best way to understand the Obama style of leadership is to consider the elaborate goofiness of the Obama family's dog adoption policies. The dog is for the children, but must conform to both political correctness about adopting a mature "pound dog" and to quasi-scientific beliefs about "hypoallergenic dogs". The drama has continued for months and still no dog for the kids! WTF? Best to pick out a mellow puppy and raise it well instead of picking out a rare breed pound dog from somewhere which might be psychotic or have other bad habits -- that is reality based on experience... C'mon, the dog is for the kids not dad's career. Geez. But that is not the Obama way. Politics and political correctness override Reality. So we're all screwed.
Time for my vacation.
Mr. Chuckles
Can't argue with a word you've said here, and the dog melodrama is an apt illustration of the problem -- every action by the Obama administration is measured not for justice or wisdom, but for its political ramifications.
It's the spending that fuels the booms. In the past, wars were merely the most easily used excuse for unusually large bouts of spending. However, we (should) know more about general economics now, and realize that the spending itself is the critical ingredient: not war. Indeed, as war often destroys much precious capital on both sides, as well as many potentially productive people, it's obvious that there's lots of more efficient ways to get economic stimulus out of spending, than doing it on war. Eisenhower's interstate highway infrastructure boosted US fortunes tremendously by making it easier for us to get around and move goods. Before that, national railways did something similar for our young nation.
Today, universal healthcare, a comprehensive mass transit system, and quite a few other civilian programs could make huge improvements in the nation's health, security, flexibility, well being, and productivity. Without any of the awful losses which would accompany such spending on war in their place.
Excerpt: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has relayed messages to Israel in the
past week expressing anger at obstacles Israel is placing to the delivery of
humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. A leading political source in Jerusalem
noted that senior Clinton aides have made it clear that the matter will be
central to Clinton's planned visit to Israel next Tuesday.
A glimmer of hope? A return to holding both sides to the fire?
Excerpt: However, an incident occurred last week at a crossing into the Gaza Strip
that gave a very different impression to a senior observer. When Senator John
Kerry visited the Strip, he learned that many trucks loaded with pasta were
not permitted in. When the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee
inquired as to the reason for the delay, he was told by United Nations aid
officials that "Israel does not define pasta as part of humanitarian aid -- only
rice shipments".
Unbelievable!
I don't remember any time in recent decades when both sides -- Israel and Gaza or Palestine -- were held to any "fire" by American officials, or any semblance of the same standards. Clinton's words are almost certainly empty piffle.
H&HH
Meanwhile, today, Attorney General Eric Holder, just back from Guantanamo,
told reporters
at a news conference, "I did not
witness any mistreatment of prisoners. I think, to the contrary, what I saw was a
very conscious attempt by these guards to conduct themselves in an
appropriate way."
Send Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). I'd consider an investigation of conditions by Dennis more
truthful than the ones we're getting from both sides now.
From the reports I've been reading for years now, it certainly seems like it would take a "very conscious attempt" for the guards and interrogators to stop their habitual abuse of Guantanamo's prisoners, but I'm sure they could stop it while Attorney General Holder is visiting.
H&HH
Excerpt: Toward the conclusion of what Jindal called "the tremendous battle between the Susan we knew and loved and some strange and evil force," Jindal and his friends forced Susan to read passages from the Bible. "She choked on certain passages and could not finish the sentence 'Jesus is Lord.' Over and over, she repeated "Jesus is L..L..LL," often ending in profanities," Jindal wrote. Finally, evil gave way to the light. "Just as suddenly as she went into the trance, Susan suddenly reappeared and claimed 'Jesus is Lord.' With an almost comical smile, Susan then looked up as if awakening from a deep sleep and asked, 'Has something happened?
Sounds like a common College binge party. However, that aside, I think if Jindal has the exorcism ritual down pat he may have what it takes to use it on the Republicans. They sure could use an exorcism.
Notwithstanding that I'll be called anti-Semitic, I have to wonder if creating museums to keep alive the brutal atrocities of the Nazi years is wise. The nursing of the horrors committed by man doesn't help heal the wounds. It only enables the continued festering of hatred. The history of the Israeli/Palestinian festering for over two thousand years should teach us something.
== == ==
There's some good in everything but sometimes it's difficult to harness the bad in everything.
Excerpt: "I have to stress that this is a lot different than getting a prescription
for MDMA. We don't see it ever working like that," Mithoefer added. "You'll
have to take it in specialized clinics. No one will get to take it home.""
LOL wanna bet -- if ecstasy is available on the black market now, it sure would be available to the clinic participants if they chose to look for it.
#
So now we're supposed to think that Iran has enough material for a nuclear bomb? Right. Sure. Let's pretend that the 5% enriched uranium was actually good enough for a bomb slightly more radioactive than your household smoke detector. They'd still need an effective missile delivery system, and what good are all those damned controversial missile shields if they couldn't take those out?
Y'know, even with all the highly inventive insinuations that have been made over the years, all evidence points towards Iran building a reactor rather than a bomb. I think I sent in my two cents on the arrest of some guy who sold software that was used to monitor the structural integrity of large buildings (possibly nuclear reactors) to a party that was hypothetically an Iranian front but there's quite a bit more out there.
I'm not overly fond of Iran in general -- they've done a lot of things that piss me off for reasons that piss me off even more -- but I can't stand listening to bullsh*t accusations. Let them have their damned nuclear reactor. Hell, America could probably profit from selling uranium for the reactors if it would just cut back on the production of nuclear weapons for a while.
In a word: Absolutely. I'd just add that those who perpetually shriek, contrary to all evidence, that Iran is building nuclear weapons are neither mistaken, misguided, nor misinformed -- they're simply liars.
H&HH
== == ==
Re Obama in general: Ugh. This is what I get for ever being optimistic.
The bright side? At least it was a fairly convincing act. He's smart, charismatic, and seemed good intentioned. Maybe he really is good intentioned, but he's not really that effective so far. I want to hope that he's putting aside the just desserts of the regime that raped the world for a later date, after the damage has been addressed, but it looks like he's just going to act like it never happened at all and keep the status quo for the sake of reducing the grumblings of Republicans looking to incite full-blown civil war amongst Americans just because they are a party of extraordinarily sore losers.
I can see some factual basis in the claims that Obama was trying to mimic Lincoln in his appointment of people so strongly opposed to the platforms he got elected on, but the major difference in Lincoln's empowerment of his political rivals was that Lincoln's enemies were sufficiently competent and often believed they had America's best interests at heart while Obama's appointees were just plain opposed to the very existence of their own positions and dead set on destruction.
Perhaps there's still room to show he's the man he presented himself as. Time will tell and we can only hope.
Reminds me when of I was working the graveyard shift at 7-11 for minimum wage.
As it turns out, the guy I replaced quit after being robbed at gunpoint. Just for giggles the guy duct-taped him to the counter and worked him over. He was not entitled to any compensation for being beaten over the head with a shotgun by a guy who already took all the money in the register.
It says right in the employee handbook that anything bad that happens to you is your own fault for not being compliant enough. Under the "In case you get raped" section it says to wet yourself and scream that you have AIDS.
Yeah, not the company's fault that they put you on ALONE IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT to deal with the crazies, drunks, junkies, and armed robbers.
Just like it's not McDonald's fault if the guy you eject from the restaurant for causing a disturbance (as standard policy outlines) returns with a gun because he is a d*ckless sack of sh*t and shoots you.
Chris D.
#
Rude Pundit came to the same conclusion that I did:
Excerpt: The Obama administration is, to some extent, misreading the zeitgeist of the election. When many, many people voted for "hope" and "change," what they were voting for was to punish those f*ckers who f*cked it all up. Americans like to punish. For good or ill, it's one of those things we're particularly skilled at. Take the economic crisis. What David Axelrod understood and what Tim Geithner misread was that the vast majority of Americans don't want the President of Wells Fargo handed a sh*tload of cash and be told to keep it above the waist. No, they want him set on fire on the steps of the Federal Reserve.
This idea of punishment is not a simple thing. Remember: the election in November was not the revenge. It was a vote to set up the comeuppance. Truly, if it were a different era and we were a different people, the Bush administration would have been hanged in toto sometime in 2006 or 2007. We're not that far removed from that savagery. At the end of the day, there's gotta be consequences for people's actions or there's gonna be chaos.
I turned on the Prez' speech on Feb. 24 but didn't listen to it after the first few minutes. I refuse to spend my time being lied to. Did you hear that the 16 month Iraq withdrawal plan it out the window? Now it is 19 months to leave behind 50,000 troops PLUS support staff (read mercenaries and civilian gov't employees... (read spies and assassins...))
Obama's agenda is founded on lies, constructed on incompetence and run by the same ass-clowns that created the problems we're facing now. Obama has no accountability in store for the people in government or Wall Street who created the problems. That is so wrong-headed. There simply has to be punishment for the responsible parties. At the very least the CEO's need to be fired and stripped of their bonuses and politicians/officials who knew about torture (etc) and voted to back Bush time after time must be prosecuted to the fullest extent or what we have here is selective prosecution of little people while criminals run the country.
If Obama refuses to prosecute the war criminals then he is in violation of the laws and treaties as well and he must be held to account. If there is no justice then the law is moot -- it just means don't get caught. We might as well have the mafia as our government in that case.
A nice video... the cops get overzealous during an arrest, needlessly beating a man, the soccer team tries to jump in to put a stop to it, then hundreds of fans swarm to their aid. The asshole cops never had a chance. :)
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Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution expressed a desire in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several states as Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures to be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the said Constitution. viz: Articles in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress and Ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution. The First Amendment
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No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
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"A mind-blowing mix of fact and fantasy, hard science and well-grounded speculation, with
concrete how-to info to top it all off -- resulting in some of the best and strangest stuff
on Earth..."
Of course not. Nobody will know the answers until there's an open and honest investigation.
But anyone courageous enough to think can see that the pertinent questions for any serious "investigation" were never asked, let alone answered, by the official investigators.
