Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor who was belatedly appointed to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), has admitted that she pretty much can't "oversee" TARP, because the Treasury Department won't let her see anything. TARP, you may recall, was established in no time flat by the Bush-Cheney administration last fall, when in the course of mere days the nation's economy -- or, what we're told about the economy -- went from "everything's rosy" to "everything's a pile of crap and we need hundreds of billions of dollars and we need it now". I've suspected from the beginning that such a strategy based on fearmongering could never withstand the light of day. It just smells wrong. And it's becoming apparent that the Obama administration, like the Bush-Cheney administration, will do everything it can to prevent we the people from figuring out what that odor is.
[ McClatchy Newspapers ]
"Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe."
Noam Chomsky
Bill Black, a former S&L regulator, offers an insider's perspective on the bailouts, especially the bailout of AIG, and the conflicts of interest and the walls of secrecy that have surrounded those bailouts. "And they're deliberately leaving in place the people that caused the problem, because they don't want the facts." Or rather, they don't want us to know the facts. And chances are, we never will.
[ Crooks & Liars ]
Larry Summers, chairman of the National Economic Council and President Obama's top economic adviser, seems every bit as in the pocket of Wall Street as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. "Last year he reportedly earned more than $5 million from a hedge fund, D. E. Shaw, and collected another $2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street companies that received government bailout money. Altogether, Summers made 40 paid appearances in 2008, including speeches to Goldman Sachs ($135,000), J. P. Morgan ($67,500), Citigroup ($45,000), and the now defunct Lehman Brothers ($67,500)." Geithner and Summers are the brilliant minds that are going to solve America's economic problems? Their expertise comes from years and years of rubbing elbows and downing cocktails with the people who created the problems and now face no consequences.
[ allgov.com ]
Banks that received billions of dollars of taxpayer money to bolster their capital could place bets on the same toxic assets that got them into trouble in the first place -- and with government support. It is unclear whether US regulators will prevent banks receiving government aid from participating as buyers in the $1 trillion Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) designed to unclog credit markets and bank balance sheets. ... On Monday, Morgan Stanley Chief Executive John Mack told employees his bank may buy toxic assets and package them for sale to individual investors, according to a person who heard him speak, but was not authorized to comment publicly. Three days earlier, Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said his bank may join the PPIP as an investor. Each of these banks took $10 billion from TARP. So bailed out banks are considering buying MORE toxic assets. This is sick. --SirJ
[ Reuters News Agency ]
On Thursday, the Justice Department said it had negotiated an extension to a court deadline in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the ACLU seeking interrogation-related documents, in part, by agreeing to add the "torture memo" to other documents that might be released within two weeks. Drip, drip, drip, the evidence continues accumulating.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security project, said he "reluctantly consented" to the extension because acting US Attorney Lev Dassin said the package of documents under review would include the Aug. 1, 2002, legal opinion.
[ Consortium News ]
A Red Cross report on the Bush-Cheney administration's treatment of "high-value detainees" has been leaked, and perhaps more importantly, it's been summarized in the Washington Post. For folks unfamiliar with America's policies of torture under the Bush-Cheney administration, it'll be shocking, if they're brave enough to read it: "In addition to widely reported methods such as waterboarding, the report alleges that several of the detainees were forced to stand for days in painful positions with their arms shackled overhead. One prisoner reported being shackled in this manner for "two to three months, seven days of prolonged stress standing followed by two days of being able to sit or lie down." In addition to the coercive methods -- which the ICRC said "amounted to torture" and a violation of US and international treaty obligations -- the report said detainees were routinely threatened with further violence against themselves and their families. Nine of the 14 prisoners said they were threatened with "electric shocks, infection with HIV, sodomy of the detainee and ... being brought close to death," it said." The Red Cross's conclusion is that US officials should "investigate all allegations of ill-treatment and take steps to punish the perpetrators, where appropriate, and to prevent such abuses from happening again." The report is available in its entirety at this link (pdf).
[ Associated Press ]
Corporations own the news
Virtually all of US media is controlled by corporations and operated solely for profit. And that means that news that's controversial or expensive to cover often gets minimal coverage that's shallow, inaccurate, or slanted to favor big business.
America's mainstream political discourse is dominated by lies, insults, and general nuttiness from right-wing commentators and politicians. And there's really no left-tilted equivalent, since anyone who offers blunt criticism of the right-wing (even when it's warranted and true) is "outside the mainstream", by definition.
And then we have the cable blowhards, radio ranters, fake "watchdogs", and foundation-funded websites that appeal directly to the most ignorant and gullible Americans, with fictional facts, hate-mongering, hyperbole, scary assertions, and just plain nonsense.
Some of the lies and lunacy we've listed above is just silly, but some of it -- specifically Fox News and Michael Savage -- is downright dangerous and must be stopped. For all our adult lives we've been advocates for free speech. Without free speech there's no freedom, without censorship there's no tyranny, and we've always hated people who said "I'm for free speech, but ..." but now we're two of them. We're for free speech, but: When mass media "news" outlets spread blatant lies and fan the flames of misinformed fury to an audience of millions, that's a direct danger to democracy and it ought to be illegal.
And again, sure, there are left-wing commentators just as delusional as the right-wing's numerous nutballs. The difference is, left-wing nuts publish amateur blogs and zines, host cable-access shows, and can be heard muttering to themselves on buses ... while right-wing freaks and fibbers make a handsome living lying at professionally-published websites, writing factually-wrong but nationally syndicated newspaper columns, and airing their hokum and hysteria on big-budget radio and television shows. It's all brought to you by the same corporations and curiously well-funded foundations that control American industry, media, medicine, and politics. --H&HH
Today Seton Hall Law delivered a report establishing that military officials at the highest levels were aware of the abusive interrogation techniques employed at the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay (GTMO), and misled Congress during testimony. In addition, FBI personnel reported that the information obtained from inhumane interrogations was unreliable.
[ Seton Hall University ]
The records, artifacts, and gifts received during Dick Cheney's eight years as Vice President won't be housed at the George W Bush Presidential Library. Cheney wants to hang onto them "for now".
[ ThinkProgess ]
North Korea has been excoriated for launching a missile deemed as
threat, and it's in the headlines everywhere. Israel launches a little-noted missile it terms as defensive, and you've heard nothing about it. More double standards where Israel is concerned. --Wig
[ Ha'aretz (Jerusalem, Israel) ]
Walgreens has announced that the chain will offer free health care to the jobless and uninsured for selected illnesses in its in-store nurse clinics, through the end of the year. I'm sure that Walgreens has its business reasons for this -- perhaps its Take Care clinics aren't catching on as quickly as they'd predicted -- but I gotta say, I've been shopping at Walgreens occasionally for most of my adult life, and I've never had a positive thought about the company until today.
[ Associated Press ]
The Obama administration is urging General Motors to declare bankruptcy, which would allow the company to jettison union contracts and dealership agreements en masse. I want to be angered by this, as it's almost certainly going to mean that a lot of ordinary people are screwed, but after decades of stupid management and stupid politicians stupidly allowing GM to evade anti-trust laws, it's hard to envision any other solution. Like the nurse says before she pricks you with a needle, this is gonna hurt.
[ Washington Post ]
Shortly before the first signs of the stock market collapse, the Bush administration made a crucial decision that has propelled an estimated one to two million workers into stock-heavy retirement funds. Many of the funds in which workers were automatically enrolled dropped more than 25 percent last year, while a more conservative investment strategy rejected by the Bush administration would have resulted in a gain of 4.7 percent. Bush and Cheney are gone, but the aftereffects of their criminality, incompetence, and cronyism continues.
[ Boston Globe ]
The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials. ... The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.
[ Crooks & Liars ]
The Justice Department has asked a court to vacate the conviction of former Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), and will not re-file the charges. To me this seems like a just decision. When police or prosecutors break the rules, the charges should be dropped. That's what should be done when cops plant evidence, when interrogators beat or torture suspects, and that's what should be done in this matter. Stevens was a fairly obvious criminal, but he gets off on a technicality -- his trial was thoroughly botched by prosecutorial misconduct. The obvious suspicion, of course, is that Justice Department under Bush-Cheney screwed up Stevens' prosecution on purpose -- they knew the evidence was going to convict Stevens, a Republican, so they mitigated the damage by making sure the conviction would be tossed. And tossed it is, because justice demands it, but justice also demands that Stevens' prosecutors be disbarred. The judge is thinking about sanctions, and Attorney General Eric Holder says that the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility "will conduct a thorough review of the prosecution of this matter." But I'm not holding my breath.
[ Associated Press ]
Misconduct won't be tolerated, right? Then someone explain to me why Alice Martin and Leura Canary are still US Attorneys? And someone also explain to me why Stevens is the priority? No really, not Don Siegelman, not Paul Minor, not Wes Teel, not John Whitfield, and not countless others. Ted Stevens apparently gets to go to the front of the line. Why?
[ At Largely ]
And it's hard to summarize this seriously, but Governor Sarah Palin and her Republican Party are asking Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) -- the guy who beat Stevens in last fall's election -- to resign, or to submit to a special election rematch against former Senator Stevens. Yeah, they're portraying Stevens as innocent, as vidicated. One can only presume that Republicans think many or most of their constituents are dumber than hatracks, and frequent evidence suggests that they're right.
[ Anchorage Daily News ]
Ten alleged Democrats in the Senate voted to protect the children of multi-millionaires from having to pay any semblance of a fair tax on their inheritance. The scumbags are Baucus (D-Montana), Bayh (D-Indiana), Cantwell (D-Washington), Landrieu (D-Louisiana), Lincoln (D-Arkansas), Murray (D-Washington), Nelson (D-Florida), Nelson (D-Nebraska), Pryor (D-Arkansas), Tester (D-Montana). If they run for re-election, none of them deserves a dime or a vote from any Democrat, progressive, or sane American.
[ ThinkProgess ]
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-My Ass) has announced that she will oppose the Employee Free Choice Act -- which would make it easier for workers to organize unions -- should it come up for vote in the Senate in its current form. She's up for election this fall, perceived as mildly vulnerable to a well-coordinated Republican attack, so she has to soft-pedal any principles she may have. Her opposition to EFCA pretty much dooms the legislation. It's a head-scratcher to me -- I understand that politics is different in the South, but as someone who generally votes Democrat, what's the point in voting for Blanche Lincoln if she's this weak-kneed and Republican?
[ ThinkProgess ]
Former Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-Illinois) has finally been indicted on 16 felony counts, including racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, extortion conspiracy, attempted extortion and making false statements to federal agents. I don't know whether he's guilty and neither do you, but Blagojevich was driven from office on innuendo and allegations leaked by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, whose behavior and continued presence in the Justice Department worries me more than anything Blagojevich is accused of.
[ Vanity Fair ]
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) is seeking a Presidential pardon for Jack Johnson, the first black to win the heavyweight boxing title, over his conviction for having consensual relations with a white woman. At last, McCain has found a black person he can give a damn about -- a guy who's been dead for 60+ years.
[ Associated Press ]
Robert "Moose" Cobb, the incompetent crony appointed by the Bush-Cheney administration as Inspector General at NASA, has finally resigned. Cobb "has been repeatedly accused of stifling investigations, retaliating against whistleblowers and prioritizing social relationships with top NASA officials over proper federal oversight."
[ Associated Press ]
The guy who seems to be Big Insurance's point man in the fight against health care reform "ran a company that ripped off the government of hundreds of millions of dollars". How un-surprising.
[ Washington Monthly ]
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), who proposed a "truth commission" to investigate the Bush-Cheney administration's criminal behavior -- with the ludicrous inclusion of immunity for everyone who testified -- now concedes that his silly proposal isn't going to happen, says Leahy, because "he couldn't get one Republican [in the Senate] to come behind the plan". Bear in mind that Democrats hold 56 of 99 Senate seats, plus the reliable presence of Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), and the pending arrival of Al Franken (D-Minnesota) will make it 58 of 100, so it would take a filibuster for Republicans to actually block Leahy's half-assed "truth commission". And bear in mind that the gutless Democrats routinely let Republicans faux filibuster by just saying the word, but Leahy won't even ask them to do that. And bear in mind that Leahy never even introduced his "truth commission" as legislation -- all he did was talk about it. Senator Leahy is mysteriously beloved by some liberals, but what he's done here amounts to driving the getaway car for the Bush-Cheney administration.
[ ThinkProgess ]
Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois) is pushing legislation that would allow check-cashing stores and low-life payday loan shops to eleventuple their rates for loans to military members, from the current outrageous 36% annual rate to 391%.
[ BoingBoing ]
The special election for New York's 20th Congressional district is very close, and the Republicans are already suing to try to subvert the count.
[ Talking Points Memo ]
People for the American Way is mobilizing political pressure to break the Republicans' logjam against confirming Dawn Johnsen for the Office of Legal Counsel at DoJ.
[ Talking Points Memo ]
When I saw the first reports that Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) had addressed Hispanics as "you people", I discounted it. McCain is ancient, and "you people" is a pretty mild slur. But in this later report it's added that McCain was angry as he said it. John McCain, as we learned with absolute finality in the 2008 Presidential election, is a man of zero integrity and zero human decency.
[ ThinkProgess ]
Senator Harry Reid (alleged D-Nevada) criticizes MoveOn for its ads pressuring moderate and faux Republican office-holders to adopt actual Democratic positions. In response to this criticism, MoveOn tells Sen Reid to suck it. Sometimes I really like MoveOn.org.
[ Washington Monthly ]
Kansas Gov Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday joined a list of cabinet nominees who were forced to pay back taxes because of errors in their returns. Sebelius' problems are relatively minor and already resolved -- she hired someone to doublecheck her taxes as soon as she was nominated -- but she's a big-league politician, so why didn't she get her taxes right the first time? And what does this pattern of tax evasion really mean? I can't seriously imagine that only Democrats have tax problems, and that Republicans who make their names by complaining about taxes never cheat. Have I forgotten all the media coverage of Republicans cheating on their taxes, or are tax questions only asked of Democrats?
[ McClatchy Newspapers ]
Despite four outbreaks of salmonella illness from peanut products in the past three years, the federal government has not changed the safety measures required of peanut companies or instructed its inspectors to test for the bacteria.
[ Washington Post ]
New York state Senator Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens) was caught on camera dragging his girlfriend down the stairs. Yet he remains beloved by Democrats, who held a fundraiser to help pay Monserrate's legal bills.
[ The Daily Beast ]
It made me stop and think
"There's a clear, common-sense connection between the paranoiac fearmongering that has passed for right-wing rhetoric since well before Obama's election (and has become acute since) and violence like that in Pittsburgh, or in Knoxville: horrifying tragedies, in which the sources of the criminal's unambiguous motives are that very same hysterical fearmongering -- whether it's about the evil socialists, stinking immigrants, or conspiring gun-grabbers who've taken over the country since Election Day."
[ David Neiwert ]
"The one ingredient that the wingnuts are missing is the personality cult. They simply have not found a charismatic figure to build a movement around. There is Ronald Reagan (a.k.a. St. Ronnie), who is good for mytho-historical legend building, but, being that he's dead, he cannot go out and campaign. What they need is a Barack Obama with a military/war hero background. Alas, the characters they have been trying to sell us have come across as caricatures of what they were supposed to represent."
[ MaikeH ]
"Every good brainwashed American knows that the government couldn't run a two-car funeral. Only the cleansing, invigorating winds of free competition can bring efficiency to large organizations. Without that what have you got? "The DMV, that's what. Overpaid, lazy, surly bureaucrats. Poor service, long lines, arrogant indifference, cronyism. Yatata, yatata. You know the drill, because you've heard it all your life from the corporate community and its fully-owned subsidiary, the Republican Party. "Now think back over all the times in your own life that you've been scorned, cheated, ignored, defrauded, neglected and otherwise screwed over by giant, faceless, impersonal, uncaring bureaucracies. Was it the Post Office? Was it the Social Security Administration? Was it Medicare? "Or weren't your most maddening experiences of all, now that you think about it, those losing battles with the power company, the cable company, the phone company, the insurance company, and the credit card company? "
[ Jerome Doolittle ]
The Iowa Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling Friday finding that the state's same-sex marriage ban violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples, making Iowa the third state where marriage will be legal. And it'll be hard for the right-wing to trot out their ordinary lie of "judicial activism" -- heard whenever judges rule against Republicans -- since the "judicial activists" who've made this ruling in Iowa, and earlier rulings in California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, were all Republican appointees. And while Iowa, like other states, will undoubtedly try to reverse this court ruling, that's a pretty big challenge in the Hawkeye state: "It will have to be approved by two consecutive sessions of the state legislature and then by a majority of the voters. Most likely, this means that Iowans won't vote on the issue until 2012." And by then it'll be pretty obvious to Iowans that the sky hasn't fallen because the queers got married.
[ Associated Press ]
Governor Jim Douglas (R-Vermont) has vetoed gay marriage legislation. Democrats control both houses of the state congress, and they're going to try but probably fail to override the veto. [Update: In Vermont, Democrats have a spine -- they've overridden the veto, making Vermont the fourth state to stop barring gay marriage.]
[ Burlington Free Press ]
In a blow to the Bush-Cheney and Obama administrations, which maintain that some humans don't deserve human rights, an American judge has ruled that at least some prisoners being held by Americans in Afghanistan have the right to habeas corpus.
[ New York Times ] And yet... The Obama administration decided Tuesday to seek a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, reversing a decision by the Bush administration to shun the United Nations' premier rights body to protest the influence of repressive states.
[ New York Times ]
The Obama administration formally adopted the Bush administration's position that the courts cannot judge the legality of the National Security Agency's (NSA's) warrantless wiretapping program, filing a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA late Friday. In Jewel v. NSA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is challenging the agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. The Obama Justice Department claims in its motion that litigation over the wiretapping program would require the government to disclose privileged "state secrets." These are essentially the same arguments made by the Bush administration three years ago in Hepting v. AT&T, EFF's lawsuit against one of the telecom giants complicit in the NSA spying. "President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration's cover-up of the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a 'secret' that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again."
[ Electronic Frontier Foundation ]
Unless his comments have been misconstrued (something there's sadly there's no reason to suspect), Attorney General Eric Holder says he's exploring ways to lower the minimum amount required for the federal prosecution of possession cases. Presumably not enough pot-smokers' lives have been ruined?
[ Daily Kos ]
A appeals court has ruled, quite correctly, that the state of Wisconsin is within its constitutional authority to deny a handgun permit to some schmuck who was convicted of beating his girlfriend.
[ Chicago Tribune ]
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has offered to begin housing some of the prisoners from the US's Guantanamo concentration camp. French President Nicolas Sarkozy says France will take one prisoner from Guantanamo, too, if it'll help shut that hellhole down.
[ McClatchy Newspapers ]
Senator Jim Webb (D-Virginia) is seeming very serious about his call for prison reform. Here he's penned a think piece for the widely-read Parade Sunday supplement, where he says, "With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different--and vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter."
[ Parade ]
It's been obvious for months, but it's becoming more and more obvious that comedian Al Franken (D-Minnesota) has won the Senate seat formerly occupied by Norm Coleman. Franken won a potentially decisive court ruling on Tuesday in his bid to replace Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican trying to hold on to his Senate seat. A three-judge panel ruled that only 400 absentee ballots -- far fewer than Mr. Coleman had sought -- should be examined for possible counting. If the ruling stands, it could be devastating for Mr. Coleman, who trailed his Democratic challenger by 225 votes out of some 2.9 million cast and had hoped that nearly 1,400 absentee ballots might be recounted.
[ Washington Monthly ]
Should President Obama have the power to shut down domestic Internet traffic during a state of emergency? Senators John Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) think so. On Wednesday they introduced a bill to establish the Office of the National Cybersecurity Adviser -- an arm of the executive branch that would have vast power to monitor and control Internet traffic to protect against threats to critical cyber infrastructure. That broad power is rattling some civil libertarians.
[ Mother Jones ]
In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department. Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging. (Upon perusing the blog, it appears that Pataky is a blogger there, but not the guy who runs the website, as it has continued publishing.)
[ Photography Is Not A Crime ]
North Dakota's state Senate, perhaps weary of all the bad publicity, has decisively quashed a bill that would have declared all fertilized embryos "persons" for the purposes of myriad laws. Our hats are off to you, North Dakota, seriously -- thanks for the common sense.
[ The Dickinson Press ]
The media will be allowed to cover the arrival Sunday of an airman killed overseas, the first such opportunity since the Obama administration overturned an 18-year ban on news coverage of returning war dead.
[ Associated Press ]
Mark Ciavarella, one of the judges who took kickbacks to order juveniles incarcerated at a private prison, is contesting lawsuits against him by reminding the court that he argues is immune from civil suits related to actions he took on the bench, even if those actions were done "maliciously or corruptly." Who ever thought judicial immunity was a good idea, and why?
[ Times-Leader ]
The monstrous bastards who run Pfizer have paid approximately $75-million for violating Nigerian and international law by using sick children as guinea pigs.
[ The Independent ]
Organizers and groups involved in the protest against the G20 summit in London have called for an independent public inquiry into the brutal policing of the demonstrations last week, following the death of a man on his way home from work on the evening of April 1.
[ World Socialist Website ]
Dozens of Iraq's Sahwa militia, which helped tame a deadly insurgency, have been arrested amid warnings from Premier Nuri al-Maliki that they have no immunity from the law, sources said on Friday. Smells like political genocide. Maliki on mission to cut down the opposition before the up coming elections? And the US is aiding the political action? --Wig
[ Agence France-Presse ]
Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which "legalizes" rape, women's groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.
[ The Independent ]
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is still spewing lies about Iran's alleged attempts to get its first nuclear weapons (Israel has at least dozens) and Iran's oft-cited (but never with any accurate attribution) desire to "wipe Israel off the map." Netanyahu says, "When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran." Actually, of course, according to sources that aren't inclined toward fanning the flames of war -- UN experts, etc. -- that's not at all what's happening in Iran. Seems to be what's happening in Israel, though.
[ Jerusalem Post ]
Seems the simple notion that Israel might do something wrong, or that someone might investigate whether Israel did something wrong, is inconceivable to Israeli officials. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor really goes off on the United Nations Human Rights Council, for their announcement that they'll investigate allegations of crimes against humanity by the Israelis during the most recent massacre of Gazans. Netanyahu isn't yet sure whether Israel will even cooperate with the investigation.
[ Daily Star (Lebanon) ]
In the wake of the accusation by Chas Freeman that his nomination to lead the National Intelligence Council was derailed by an "Israeli lobby," a forthcoming memoir by another distinguished ambassador adds stunning new charges to the debate. The ambassador, John Gunther Dean, writes that over the years he not only came under pressure from pro-Israeli groups and officials in Washington but also was the target of an Israeli-inspired assassination attempt in 1980 in Lebanon, where he had opened links to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
[ The Nation ]
Buried way, way down in the last paragraphs of this report about Monday's catastrophic earthquake in Italy, we read this: "Weeks before the disaster, an Italian scientist had predicted a major quake around L'Aquila, based on concentrations of radon gas found around seismically active areas. Seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani, who lives in L'Aquila, was reported to police for "spreading alarm" and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet. Civil Protection assured locals at the end of March that tremors being felt were 'absolutely normal' for a seismic area." I don't know anywhere near enough about earthquakes to know whether there's anything to this, and what little I think I know tells me this is bonkers -- there's no way to predict earthquakes, and the radon gas methodology has been debunked. But if I lived in Italy I'd be pretty pissed about this anyway.
[ The Independent ]
President Obama reminds the world that the US is not a Christian nation. "One of the great strengths of the United States," the President said, "is ... we have a very large Christian population -- we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." This will no doubt be the focal point for Republicans' hysteria over the next week or two, as many of the Republicans' loudest mouths and dumbest followers are theocrats at heart.
[ Washington Monthly ] Business Week gives a radio talk show host ample room to fallaciously explain why former GM CEO Rick Wagoner didn't deserve to be booted. It does seem like everybody in high places is hoping throwing just a couple rich bastards with fewer allies than others to the wolves, like this guy and Madoff, will slake the masses' thirst for vengeance. And thereby reduce pressures for real reform and lots more investigations and prosecutions. Similar scapegoating was done before by throwing Martha Stewart in jail for a little while, although her crime was miniscule compared to many of her contemporaries. --JR Mooneyham
[ Business Week ]
Barack Obama's plan to name yet another Goldman Sachs alum to his economic team is proving too much for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Sanders put a hold on the nomination of Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, effectively stopping the nomination process in its tracks. Sanders says Gensler, who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs and then joined the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton, played too big a role in deregulating derivatives in the 90s' to be trusted to re-regulate the market now. Bernie, you fool. Don't you know you can't buck the "who's who"? Bernie's the odd man out in the Senate and Kuncinch is the odd man out in the House when it comes down to the treatment of the ruling class in this country. --Wig
[ American News Project ]
Filmmaker and longtime political activist Michael Moore is ecstatic about President Barack Obama's historic decision to oust General Motors chief Rick Wagoner. I'm pleased, but miles short of ecstatic. Wagoner bears a hell of a lot more responsibility for GM's collapse than the boogeyman of union wages, and in a sane society he'd have been sh*t-canned years ago without any fraction of his $23-million golden parachute.
[ eurweb.com ]
Boosted by acquisitions of Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch, Bank of America's offshore operations have grown sharply in the past two years, exceeding 14,000 employees in India, the United Kingdom, Mexico, the Philippines and Costa Rica, documents obtained by the Charlotte Observer show.
[ Charlotte Observer ]
Economist Dean Baker thinks there'd be no dire consequences if China stopped purchasing US debt. Hmmm. That's a new one on me.
[ The Guardian ]
In what could be a potentially serious blow to Google's AdWords business, and to consumers' ability to find information about competing offerings on the Internet, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that a trademark owner can sue Google for trademark infringement for selling its mark as a keyword as part of the AdWords program. This is likely to have a chilling effect on Internet intermediaries generally, as they will likely fear the costs of trademark litigation if they use marks to help speakers find their audiences.
[ Electronic Frontier Foundation ] Rupert Murdoch says newspapers have to stop giving away news for free on the web. Of course, Unknown News would be seriously wounded if newspapers not owned by Murdoch took his advice, but that said, we're all aware of the problems facing journalism as newspapers fade away. This will sound so obvious it's silly, but if newspapers' websites had a tip jar, I'd put in a quarter or a buck when I saw solid journalism.
[ Reuters News Agency ]
In Pittsburgh, three policemen are shot dead by a lone gunman. "Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn't clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns." I'm sure that there was a lot more than that going on, in this particular crazed gunman's head. But he was at least in part motivated by lies told in last year's election by the National Rifle Association, which paid millions of dollars for ads to convince gun nuts that Obama would ban guns. It's a lie that remains everywhere in the national dialogue, a lie I see almost every time I'm surfing the internet, especially if I happen to land on a right-wing website, and it's fueling a big increase in gun sales. Lies have consequences, and in this case lies have names. "The three slain officers were Eric Kelly, Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo III."
[ Associated Press ]
To placate ultra-conservatives in Israel, the two female members of the Israel's new cabinet were airbrushed out of photos published in some newspapers.
[ BBC News ]
The US Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former radio reporter and Black Panther whose conviction for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer sparked international controversy.
[ Bloomberg News Service ]
Controversial Professor Ward Churchill has won a dollar in his wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the University of Colorado. Presumably Churchill has to split his winnings with his lawyers. A lot of civil libertarians want me to get all excited about Churchill's "enormous victory for academic freedom and for the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech", but I've never been on board with "academic freedom" complaints. "Academic freedom" means that tenured college professors are free to say anything without fear of losing their jobs, and guys like Ward Churchill will go to court to protect that immunity for guys like Ward Churchill. And hey, congrats to Ward Churchill for winning. But it doesn't mean much to me or to the other 99.9999% of us who work in the real world, where it's perfectly legal for your boss to fire you if he doesn't like your letter to the editor or your opinions on John McCain or the war in Iraq.
[ Associated Press and KUSA ]
MSNBC has given Ed Schultz a TV show, and I've literally responded with a yawn.
[ Associated Press ]
Governor Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) let her daughter and her boyfriend shack up in a bedroom of the Palin family home. Of course, when your daughter is pregnant and engaged to marry her boyfriend, it's arguably smart to have them sharing a bedroom, and I certainly have no objections, but can you imagine how the right-wing loons would shriek if this was, say, Joe Biden's daughter?
[ US Magazine ]
Oh, and Gov Palin's sister-in-law has been arrested for burglary.
[ People ]
#
The more I read and learn and observe, I realize that this IS the America I grew up in. I was just pathetically sheltered; I could read every book in the local library, every issue of Life and Time, and several other mags, plus the daily LA Times and the Mirror. I still did not know what was going on around me. It took reading Mike Davis to reconnect with my old Southland and make better sense of what my assumptions had been (wrong) and how complicit most of the sources of information had been in keeping me that way.
We grew up in a vast conspiracy of silence.
It reminds me of the first part of the film The Matrix...
Siskiyousis
#
The US has de-legitimized itself globally. therefore the US rules and laws are a joke overseas (and at home to a great extent.)
And the sharks smell the empire's blood in the water. in particular, "illegal" drugs are now morally and ethically justified, especially as the regular economy goes south. at least with the mafia the main thing is victimless crimes -- which is why it is so easy to bribe cops, judges and politicians...most of them gamble, drink/toke or whore :-) what de-legitimized nation-states like the US provide us is NADA except war, taxes, prisons, vicious cop beatings, poisonous corporate food products and intricate white collar rip-offs.
#
These four articles are about US government criminality, which is pervasive at all levels. More articles could easily be found. Sometimes corporations "help", other times the government handles the work itself. Or just looks the other way while the corporations loot and pillage. We are so doomed if this mafia-style government is not halted -- and I include Obama as the newest "Don", or "Godfather" of the organization. If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.
Excerpt: In an explosive interview on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal, William K. Black, a professor of economics and law with the University of Missouri, alleged that American banks and credit agencies conspired to create a system in which so-called "liars loans" could receive AAA ratings and zero oversight, amounting to a massive "fraud" at the epicenter of US finance.
But worse still, said Black, Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama's Secretary of the Treasury, is currently engaged in a cover-up to keep the truth of America's financial insolvency from its citizens. ...
"Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?" asked Moyers.
"Absolutely, because they are scared to death," he said. "All right? They're scared to death of a collapse. They're afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we'll run screaming to the exits. And we won't rely on deposit insurance. And, by the way, you can rely on deposit insurance. And it's foolishness. All right? Now, it may be worse than that. You can impute more cynical motives. But I think they are sincerely just panicked about, 'We just can't let the big banks fail.' That's wrong."
Ultimately, said Black, the financial downfall of the United States in the wake of the Bush years is due to "the most elite institutions in America engaging in or facilitating fraud."
Excerpt: The key point is that neither the public, the Fed nor the Treasury seem to understand is that the CDS contracts written by AIG with these various non-insurers around the world were shams - with no correlation between "fees" paid and the risk assumed. These were not valid contracts as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Geithner and Economic policy guru Larry Summers claim, but rather acts of criminal fraud meant to manipulate the capital positions and earnings of financial companies around the world.
Indeed, our sources as well as press reports suggest that the CDS contracts written by AIG may have included side letters, often in the form of emails rather than formal letters, that essentially violated the ISDA agreements and show that the true, economic reality of these contracts was fraud plain and simple. Unfortunately, by not moving to seize AIG immediately last year when the scandal broke, the Fed and Treasury may have given the AIG managers time to destroy much of the evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Only when we understand how AIG came to be involved in CDS and the fact that this seemingly illegal activity was simply an extension of the reinsurance/side letter shell game scam that AIG, Gen Re and others conducted for many years before will we understand what needs to be done with AIG, namely liquidation. Seen in this context, the payments made to AIG by the Fed and Treasury, which were then passed-through to dealers such as Goldman Sachs, can only be viewed as an illegal taking that must be reversed once the US Trustee for the Federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York is in control of AIG's operations.
Geithner's "toxic asset" plan is Grand Theft. Proof here: bailed out banks considering buying each others' crap because the terms of Geithner's plan amount to a GIVEAWAY!!!
Excerpt: In other words, we're letting bargain-hunters pick up the "troubled assets" that are burdening a number of financial institutions for pennies on the dollar, and limiting their downside risk if it doesn't turn out well. It's a pretty sweet deal for those investors. And, as I wrote when Geithner first announced the plan, it's also pretty much the definition of "moral hazard."
Excerpt: But leaving aside for now the ever-thorny matter of divining the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, foreknowledge, exploitation, incompetence and fate involved in 9/11, we can say this as an established fact: It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the "Af-Pak" front to launch terrorist attacks.
Excerpt: 'The Obama Administration has launched an ever growing number of attacks in the FATA, generally aimed at Mehsud's training facilities in North and South Waziristan. In September, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden said the attacks were an attempt to "provoke a reaction" from the militant groups led by Mehsud. It appears that now, six months later, they have finally done so. [Hayden described this blood-soaked strategy as "tickling" terrorists into a response.]'
This is from the Moscow Times article in November 2001:
Excerpt: 'In [a Los Angeles Times] article by military analyst William Arkin... [comes] the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-intelligence support activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception." According to a classified document prepared for [Donald] Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization - the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" - will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by US forces.
In other words - and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan - the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people - your family, your friends, your lovers, you - in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.'
Hazel Burke
#Won't get fooled again: I am feeling pretty good today about doubling up on my China investments now that I see Great Minds Thinking Alike (see essay excerpt below).
Ideologically, investing money in a "communist" country is unpatriotic and not a freedom-loving thing to do -- to say nothing of the morality. Shouldn't Americans be investing in America? Should not each of us be asking "How many jobs did I help create today?"
Pragmatically speaking, America has been stealing money from us, something like $12 trillion since the credit crisis began, whereas China has not been stealing our money. They earned it fair and square. In fact, American corporations have invested hundreds of billions building factories and business ventures in China because of the favorable economic trends there. So, if there is an ideological difference between "investing" in a country like the US that claims "democracy" but behaves like the Mafia, like just plain old corporatists (i.e. "fascists"), and investing in a "communist" country, perhaps it is moot due to the hypocrisy in the American regime.
America seems to use "democracy" as a cover for its ongoing legacy of dirty deeds. As Cartmann explained in a South Park episode, foreigners shouldn't hate America as a whole because not every American agrees with what the government does. Barack Obama chastised Europe today for "anti-Americanism", presumably using that same rationale. And I fail to see how wonderful it is to have "free speech" when what the People say has little impact on Policy, and when Politics is a game that the elite play -- like Two Party Musical Chairs -- to obscure the fact that everything they do is for their own benefit and the pissants can go fark themselves if they don't like it ("America: love it or leave it.") Obama may be as smooth as a box of Ex-Lax, but as the song goes...
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around me Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again Don't get fooled again No, no!
It's almost like the Bible parable about the sons working in the vineyard! America claims to love peace, freedom and the pursuit of happiness but starts major wars every decade, whereas China claims to love itself and starts no wars. The only countries involved in fewer wars than China are Switzerland, Sweden and Norway.
The bankrupt USA is escalating its wars under Obama and is spending a trillion dollars a year of borrowed money to blow sh*t up while China spends a fraction of that sum and builds up its strength. The choice for investors is a lot simpler than you might think: a) invest in Fall and Decline of hypocritical and morally debauched old empire; or b) invest in smart, hard-working new empire?
Another point to ponder is the relative savings rates. Chinese peasants save as much as 50% of their income because the Chinese "safety net" is almost non-existent. American peasants spend every penny and then borrow even more ... to buy crap made in China -- and to obliterate their sensibilities with cheap mind-altering products like 40 ouncers, meth and mass media "entertainment". Americans are bankrupt while Chinese are getting rich, China has at least a couple of trillion dollars in the bank! No mystery about that.
Excerpt: Back in 2000, conventional thinking (including that of the Fed) was convinced the collapse of technology stocks equated to the bursting of the US Bubble. Similarly, today the bursting of the US Bubble is thought to correspond with bursting of Bubbles across the globe. Especially when one examines the horrendous numbers coming out of its export sector, it is reasonable to presume that China is intertwined in the US bust. It's my view that China is in fact a historic Bubble - and that it may have commenced what may prove a powerful new phase of inflationary excess.
It is commonly appreciated that China has about $2 TN in reserves to go with its population of 1.3 billion. This alone provides China unprecedented reflationary capabilities. China also maintains a tight relationship between its banking system and government policymakers, and it is worth noting that recent reports have Chinese bank lending posting another eye-opening month of expansion ($234bn!). China is also now aggressively using currency swaps and other financing mechanisms to drive exports and trade, especially in Asia. There is also increased talk of the Chinese government providing global vendor financing for its major industries, a potentially huge development from both China and global perspectives. Clearly, if Chinese industrial policy seeks to elevate the status of key domestic industries, current global tumult provides quite a rare opportunity to press decidedly ahead. Moreover, if China moves to develop its northern region as it has developed the south, there is really no bounds to the amount of "money" that could be spent.
On a short-term basis, the Chinese are (as always) fixated on maintaining social stability. As an analyst, I have to presume this is constructive to reflationary policymaking -especially considering the extraordinary nature of today's global financial and economic risks. To what extent longer-term ambitions of global power and influence also work to spur near-term Chinese stimulus is more difficult to gauge. But until I see something to convince me otherwise, I will assume that today's global backdrop provides China an opportunity to focus on -- and move forward with -- its long-term objectives. In the age of synchronized global stimulus, I don't see why China wouldn't "compete" fiercely in such endeavors as well. And I believe this dynamic could very well prove a powerful force in spurring global reflation. History may look back at this week's G20 meeting in London as a key inflection point. The "Core" is in shambles, yet the surprising development may turn out to be the Periphery Rising (inflating).
Lionel Reebenhoffer
That's never occurred to me before -- China does its quashing and killing or ethnic minorities, but off the top of my head I can't remember any genuine wars for China since it was the shadow enemy in Korea. And for all I know even that was just PR and lies told by American government.
The only investments I have to make or ponder involve groceries and occasionally clothes, but I very much believe in boycotts and the power of money in getting the rich and powerful to reconsider their evil, so it's depressingly easy to understand your desire to take your business elsewhere -- outside America. I'm sometimes bewildered that more people all over the world don't understand their power to do good or evil via their spending and investments, but if they did, dang me, it would be a different and better world.
Helen & Harry Highwater
#A fine line and a fine mess: I recently read that the new 'democratic' government of Afghanistan just tabled a law that would make it illegal for a woman to leave the house unescorted or say "Not tonight dear, I've got a headache." when her husband starts bugging her for sex.
Anything for a vote, huh?
There's a fine line between Democracy and mob rule and that line runs clean through the middle of two points:
First, the President/Prime Minister/Chucklehead-elect can never summarily override the desires of the clear majority of their citizens as the Bush Regime had done so many times over the last eight years.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, not even all the citizens of the country working together can vote to senselessly strip the rights of even one of their fellows. Especially not on such contemptible basis as gender, belief, or ethnicity.
Chris D.
I'd vote for you, Chris, but you're Canadian and it shows. Your note reeks of common sense and a respect for freedom and human rights, things that apparently have no place in the American political landscape.
Helen & Harry Highwater
#
Several commentators have pointed out that the recent decision by the Federal Reserve to begin to purchase treasuries was not intended to just reduce interest rates. No. They were *forced* to make up the difference between what Obama's Treasury is issuing ("borrowing") and what foreigners are willing and able to purchase!
So, there are two immediate problems with the Fed now "monetizing" (printing money to buy government debt).
First, the amount of Obama debt is set to explode during coming years. It may be exponential growth, especially if GDP fails to grow as predicted.
Secondly, by monetizing the debt the Fed may be destroying the MARKET for such debt. If foreigners are unwilling to keep bogarting huge quantities of the stuff at high interest rates, think how un-enticing treasuries will be at artificially low interest rates. At a certain point the only way to entice buyers will be a dramatic reduction in the price of the US dollar itself!
Excerpt: We believe that the objective of the Fed was two-fold; firstly, to put downward pressure on the long-term interest rates and stimulate the economy by squashing their recent gains, and secondly, to fill in the gap between a very sizeable increase in government spending and the demand for Treasuries at a time when traditional foreign investors are reducing their exposure to the dollar. They no longer have the same export surpluses, they need to invest domestically and support their own economies, and are truly starting to question whether the US government will ever be able to pay them back without significantly devaluating the dollar.
Excerpt: The foreign and domestic communities will simply not be able to soak up all of the Treasury issuance to come. And so here we now stand with the Fed as truly the buyer of last resort, in addition to being the lender of last resort. There will be no "next buyer".
When and IF that day comes, the US government will be unable to continue to deficit spend. That is because at that point, the faster they print money, the faster the value of the dollar will fall. And if the dollar craters and interest rates spike, budget deficits will skyrocket and tax revenues will disappear. We simply will not be able to import the necessities of the American Way of Life and the system will crash. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be *over* for us no matter what the facts on the ground.
Supposedly Bernanke, Geithner and Obama are well aware of these dangers and have the whole thing under control! Right?
Well ... surrrrrre, ho ho ho. Like always, they've got it figured :-)
Excerpt: At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained. In particular, mortgages to prime borrowers and fixed-rate mortgages to all classes of borrowers continue to perform well, with low rates of delinquency. We will continue to monitor this situation closely.
In other words ... our leaders have excellent rear view mirrors, but looking forward they are as blind as bats.
We are facing economic annihilation unless we act individually to prepare for the inevitable outcome. And it is inevitable:
Excerpt: The future is cloudy but the direction is clear. Government will spend trillions of dollars. Congress will increase taxes on the rich and secretly raise taxes on the masses by calling them cap and trade fees. The Federal Reserve will pull out all stops to create inflation. When you owe the rest of the world $11 trillion, inflation makes the debt less burdensome. The dollar will decline versus gold. With the enormous amount of currency creation and spending by the government, the economy will eventually pull out of this depression. The acceleration will take the Federal Reserve by surprise. They will be hesitant to raise interest rates. The inflation genie will get out of the bottle and will not go back. The hyperinflation that takes hold will lead to social unrest, rioting, and a drastic reduction in the American standard of living.
There is no solution that will not be painful to everyone in the United States. The only solution that would put America back on a path of sustainable prosperity would be a gold/precious metals backed currency that would force government and its citizens to live within its means. Congress would need to vote for something that would take away its power. With our current political system, this is impossible. Money is power. This leads to only one conclusion. The existing Ponzi scheme will have to collapse before we can adopt a rational financial system for America.
Excerpt: But there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests -- financiers, in the case of the US -- played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.
Excerpt: The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron - a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.
Sven Goldstein
#
When you look at the # of persons involved in Cheney-Bush's crimes, and how many are still in office, one sees this thing is thick and dense. Extraordinary rendition goes back to Clinton, after all, and torture was a hobby of the CIA et al since the gitgo.
The next 18 months or so should be interesting.
Yeah, 18 months seems about right. We'll know by then with certainty that we're screwed, though to me it looks pretty much certain already. After two months of enormous mistakes on human rights, rule of law, and the economy, Obama has dug himself a very, very deep hole.
H&HH
I know I'm crazy, but I don't see Obama as having screwed up much of anything but merely kept the most options in play.
I don't think America's played political hardball like this since the 30s.
But oh well. The past month has severely overhauled my head.
Obama's biggest mistakes so far, in my rushed opinion, are his administration's endorsement of the Bush-Cheney era's illegal eavesdropping programs, his attempts to block lawsuits over torture, and his continuation of the Bush-Cheney blank check bailout program that spends trillions of dollars to ensure that billionaires and the criminals who work for them face no consequences for their stupid and/or illegal acts. My impression is that he's unwilling to take the proper legal and moral positions if doing so would piss off America's insane but powerful arch-right wing.
He's done a lot of things right, too, and he continues to not be George W Bush, which is all I really expected. But I'm unable this afternoon to think of anything he's done that I'd characterize as 'hardball'.
H&HH
BY hardball I mean positioning himself and hitting hard when he hits. He doesn't hit often, now, except in rhetoric, for sure. But I really don't see him escaping the crises' aftermath and I don't see the crises mongers avoiding some hard smackdowns.
As for that telecom thingie, I'm curious to see what falls out down the road. He opened the freedom of Info Act and so gave the people the means to go after these guys. Hardball requires the will of the people behind the bat. So I remain optimistic, but then, when we've been down so long everything tends to look up.
Anyway, I reserve denunciative judgment until the first state of the union address, when his bully pulpit will be his in all respects, both advantage and liability. After that, roughly, we'll see what [yours truly] sees about all this. Hell, I'm so happy to have a cool prez and a rocking 1st lady. Yeesh. She is one boss chick.
There are definitely days when something the President or First Lady have said or done makes me happy, too. Like I've said to other folks, I can't bring myself to hate the Obamas, and I'm not trying to. They're becoming culpable in several of the Bush-Cheney administration's criminal acts, but still, Barack and Michelle Obama are a godsend, and I mean that seriously. After eight years when every Presidential policy on every issue was beyond wrong and utterly reprehensible, we're in a new, improved era where you can plausibly cross your fingers and hope for an intelligent decision on almost any matter. That's pretty dang terrific and nothing to sneer at. It's about the best we could hope for from any candidate bland enough to get a major party nomination for President, but I'm greedy -- I want better than the best we could hope for.
H&HH
Now this would be a great thing for Obama to slam an uncooperative Congress (Rep AND Dem) with anytime from next week to ??? Because for now at least, the bilge below will only rise as rats tunnel holes in the hull to escape going topside where the press will eat them:
== == ==
We now have an answer to the question, Where have all the good times gone?
'Torture memo' may finally go public
Quick question: What effect do you see as things like this continue occurring (which do seem to be the
trend)?
The Blue Rajah
As the evidence keeps leaking out, proof by outrageous proof of their crimes against humanity -- and it will, with another leak of Bush memos in a few weeks, and as more whistleblowers decide to tell the truth, and the headlines continue to accumulate -- the public groundswell for prosecution could eventually grow large enough that Congress and the Justice Department can't ignore it, even if they'd like to. It's the only hope for justice for Bush Cheney et al from anywhere in the US system of justice, but it's not much hope, really. We've seen that Congress and the Justice Department are capable of ignoring almost anything, and you can't expect any public outrage when the corporate-controlled media reports such news on page C-43 or a two-sentence summary on a so-called "news network".
To the extent that there's any real hope at all for justice, it'll come from overseas and international courts.
Helen & Harry Highwater
#
I think this shows just how thoroughly we have been ripped off -- more than $40000 per man, woman and child and there is now no WAY that the country can afford healthcare for the uninsured. Millions of people homeless, hungry and sick, and those evil bastards in Washington D.C. are continuing to pour trillions into the banks and Wall Street. Plus the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are escalating into Pakistan and maybe Iran, on top of everything else. This is tremendously worrisome to me.
Excerpt: The US government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.
New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from US banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the US and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation's gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008. ...
The combined commitment has increased by 73 percent since November, when Bloomberg first estimated the funding, loans and guarantees at $7.4 trillion.
I loathe Barack Obama and his thieving Democratic pals just as much as I hated Bush and his neocon slimeballs. May they all rot in Hell.
Time to attend a Tea Party, I think.
I read today that 60% of Americans support Obama's handling of the economy. As if that proves anything. Something like 60% supported the invasion of Iraq too. Goes to show that thorough saturation bombing propaganda can convince Americans that national suicide is the wise move. I am also galled that just as the useful idiots who supported Bush all the way down the rat hole have been replaced with Democratic imbeciles who support everything Obama does -- and will continue to do so all the way down the rathole -- in spite of the fact that there is no real difference between Bush's major policies and Obama's, just talk-talk differences, like the difference between "compassionate conservatives" who torture and "progressive" elitists who continue wars they promised to end.
Theo Lipschitz
I don't think I'll ever loathe Obama the way you're talking about loathing him, the way I hated and still hate George W Bush. Obama is still pretty much what I expected him to be -- a shrewd middle-of-the-road politician whose guiding principle seems to be absent. His easy-going middle-of-the-road politics won't let him see or admit the magnitude of the economic problems, won't let him really give a damn about the outrages against humanity committed by the Bush-Cheney administration, and won't let him make a genuine about-face on any of the wrong-headed policies of his predecessors.
So we're screwed, absolutely, but at least it's an accidental screwing, or at least that's what it looks like to me. Obama's a top-notch politician when the country desperately needs a statesman. But things could be worse. The President could be John McCain, Sarah Palin, or Joe Biden.
To a lot of people that's going to sound like good corporate citizenship. Sounds scummy to me, but I don't even like their greasy chicken. It was good when I was a kid, but they seem to have tinkered with the Colonel's recipe, and replaced several of his herbs and spices with grease.
LOL -- All good things come to an end. I used to like bakery pies and cakes but everything is imitation now and they just don't taste right anymore.
We live just a few blocks from what's laughably called a "bakery", a giant factory that manufactures Hostess Twinkies and other such yummies sold all across the midwest. But my understanding is that the last time a Twinkie was baked was about twenty years ago, and now it's all just a chemical reaction that engulfs the cream in foam. I stopped eating Twinkies long ago... but the factory bakery still smells good.
H&HH
Excerpt: "On Capitol Hill, outrage was palpable among Republicans who believe the case cost them a Senate seat. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters, "No question that, if this decision had been made last year, he'd still be
in the Senate."
Question : Last year wasn't the Bush Administration in control of the Justice Department?
Excerpt: "Under oath at trial, however, Allen testified that he was told by the friend to ignore a note Stevens sent seeking a bill for the remodeling work. "Bill, don't worry about getting a bill" for Stevens, Allen said the friend told him. "Ted is just covering his [expletive]."
Question : Did Stevens ever pay for the work done on his property?
Of course we know the sanctimonious Israelis are innocent of any
wrong doing in its policies. The fact that they consider themselves above
international laws gives them exceptions.
Wig
#
Glad to see you are still calling it like it is. I can't believe sh*t that it going on right now -- and I am quickly losing what "hope" I had after hearing Obama in his internet town hall meeting. The number one question asked was not about pot -- it was about the off shoring of jobs. The answer he gave to that left my jaw on the ground -- that the jobs being sent overseas are low-tech, low-skilled, low-paying and we would not want them anyway. Really??? Who the hell is he talking to?? Oh yeah, he did have that big meeting with all the head mucky mucks -- including Sam Palmisano, IBM's CEO. I know some of the folks at IBM getting laid off, and they have at LEAST a four year degree and many have masters degrees. And they earn GOOD money -- or did that is.
Other jobs being off shored include X-ray technicians, civil engineering jobs, architect jobs...and on and on. Low tech??? Low skilled???? And Obama has the nerve to say that unions are going to have to make huge concessions -- who the hell does he think voted for him, anyway??? NO ONE in big business, that is for sure!
I'm doing well, still working. Marched with a nice bunch last weekend pushing a 13 foot tall paper mache Lady Liberty. The group that has these great props and parades is found at backbonecampaign.net.
Heather G.
#
A technical paper about what appears to be un-ignited nanothermite in the World Trade Center dust has been published in a mainstream, peer-reviewed journal -- the Open Journal of Chemical Physics. I'm listed as a co-author.
This link takes you through the "front door" and "foyer" of the TOCPJ website. The article URL itself apparently can't be sent around. I've tried copying the link behind the Download button and it doesn't work. You just have to go there and click the appropriate links -- and have Adobe Reader installed.
Gregg Roberts
The link is here (pdf), and the easier reading abstract is here. I've read the latter and skimmed the former, and I'm intrigued enough to publish your note, but I'm miles from convinced and I have to confess that our interest has been driven down by so many years of so many kooks touting so many 9/11 theories. To a skeptic, it's not helpful that at the link you provided there's an annoying ad flashing a new image every three seconds, which brags of the "lowest open access fees for authors". I'm curious to know, does "lowest open access fees for authors" mean that someone paid to have your article published at Bentham Open Access?
Helen & Harry Highwater
#4/6/2009:
The material this article describes sounds like something which was routinely used on large construction sites back in the late 1970s, when I was involved in the industry. I saw it used to instantly fuse together very large/thick electrical leads I believe (It basically operated like a tiny super hot explosive). I wouldn't be surprised if something like that had been used in the original skyscraper construction, or later, in some sort of revamp or expansion of existing facilities. And so some traces would naturally be available for discovery later. --JR Mooneyham (www.jrmooneyham.com/)
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This author is a right-winger and hopelessly confuses socialism with fascism. I found only his first four paragraphs worthwhile. However, any movement that attracted H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Bertrand Russell has to be worth looking into.
Like the URL says, this website is about "unknown news". It's a round-up of reports we think merit more attention, from mainstream, professional journalists, or (rarely) other sources we trust entirely.
What we believe
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.
These pages are published by Harry and Helen Highwater, happily married low-income nom de plumes and rabble-rousers from Madison, Wisconsin (with a few friends scattered around the world helping out).
We try to spotlight news that hasn't gotten enough (or appropriate) attention in American media, along with our opinions and yours.
We bang our keyboards against the wall, because it doesn't hurt as much as banging our heads.
We assume our readers are well- informed before they click here, so we focus on news that's generally unknown or under-reported. We're generally disinterested in such non-news as reports on what politicians might do, may do, or should do, and we don't usually mention the murders, kidnappings, house fires, auto wrecks, celebrity crap, wacky fluff, and other nonsense that's pushed real news right out of the newscasts.
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If the news frustrates or angers you, please, contact your elected officials. Seriously. Perhaps it sounds hokey and futile, but someone on the other end will actually take your call or read your letter and pay attention to what you say — and if you say it well you can make a difference. A helpful hint: Sending a letter on paper or making a phone call takes more time and might cost a little more than sending an email, which is why a well-written letter or a well-rehearsed phone call is more effective than an email.
"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.
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
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The Second Amendment
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The Third Amendment
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
The Fourth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Fifth Amendment
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.
The Sixth Amendment
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
The Seventh Amendment
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
The Eighth Amendment
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
The Ninth Amendment
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The Tenth Amendment
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
