The Tao of Wha?

I almost...

2011-12-16T11:59:00.000-08:00

lost my blogs today.
OG not legendry!

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Via The Activists

2011-11-20T07:53:00.000-08:00

An Article Profiling Monsanto: A Company That Is Responsible For 500,000 Birth Defects Yet It Remains in Business

Monsanto corporation was founded in 1901 by a man with quite a peculiar history, John F. Queeny. Queeny was born in Chicago in 1859, not much else is known about his early years except for him being heavily involved in the early pharmaceutical industry and him leaving school at an early age due to the Great Fire. Count of Venice Don Vittorio alleged that Queeny was a member of the Knights of Malta, an order of Knights dating back to the 11th century.

Monstersanto

2011-07-15T04:38:00.000-07:00

via They Gave Us A Republic

One year ago, thousands of farmers covered the same march route to protest the import of a "gift" of seeds from Monsanto. The farmers burned some of the seeds, calling them a "death plan" for peasant agriculture.

Last spring, in violation of Haitian law, the Minister of Agriculture gave the agribusiness giant Monsanto permission to "donate" 505 tons of seeds to Haiti. The first shipment of 60 tons, reportedly of maize and vegetable seeds, arrived in May 2010. Some of the seeds were coated with a chemical (Thiram)[1] so toxic that the EPA forbids its sale to home gardeners in the U.S.. Monsanto announced its $4 million gift was "to support the reconstruction effort" in Haiti.

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Carl Bernstien on...

2011-05-15T09:25:00.001-07:00

The CIA and the Press

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How you 'feeling?'

2011-05-09T04:02:00.000-07:00

How are the Obama voters feeling?

Pretty good. Thanks for asking.

Feeling good about the massive run of major bank failures not seen since the 1930s that President Obama helped us avert.

Feeling good about pulling back from the second Great Depression that economists were 50-50 on the country sliding into after Bush's disaster. Thanks in part to the stimulus.

Feeling good about the stock market soaring from the level it was at when Bush left office. Stock market gains generally pre-sage hiring by about 9 months (historically), which we're now starting to see turn around. Feeling good about that.

Feeling good that 30 million people who would be walking into emergency rooms getting really expensive care that the rest of us would pay for are instead going to be on health insurance, where they can be treated more efficiently, more effectively and with less fear and suffering to them.

Feeling good about my country no longer being loathed and disrespected in the world in general.

Feeling good that the man who's been directing a terrorist network, but Bush bizarrely stopped caring about, has been found and neutralized.

Feeling good that we finally have a man in office not paid by oil interests and therefore able to talk honestly with Americans about the fact that we cannot drill our way out of foreign oil dependency.

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Obama killed Usama

2011-05-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

via Matt Parker at TP "Incredible that Republicans are falling over themselves ignoring Obama and instead offering obscene praise for George Bush and his "role" in taking out bin Laden. Bush's "role" was actually to delay this accomplishment by years because of his incompetence and obsession with the costly disaster in Iraq. Bush did nothing..."
www.sunstateactivist.org

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/03/thinkfast-may-3-2011/

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Bush Knew

2010-12-18T08:28:00.000-08:00

I ask you to imagine how much different our world would be if WikiLeaks had existed 10 years ago. Take a look at thisphoto. That's Mr. Bush about to be handed a "secret" document on August 6th, 2001. Its heading read: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." And on those pages it said the FBI had discovered "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings." Mr. Bush decided to ignore it and went fishing for the next four weeks.

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Chamber Myths Debunked

2010-10-29T06:29:00.000-07:00

See post below...

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US CHAMBER AND FOREIGN MONEY...

2010-10-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

HOW THE 'US' CHAMBER USES IT'S MONEY TO PAY PUNDITS, MANIPULATE GOOGLE, AND CREATE FAKES NEWS OUTLETS

via think progress:

– Manipulating Google And Blogs: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce retains public relations giant Fleishman-Hillard for much of their online communications work. Fleishman-Hillard VP Pat Cleary posts on the Chamber’s blog, and says he works closely with conservative bloggers through RedState. Other Chamber lobbyists collaborate routinely with conservative bloggers through the Heritage Foundation’s Bloggers Briefing to help get the message out for business lobbyists. As Cleary has told conferences of business lobbyists, he helps trade associations like the Chamber buy AdWords to promote the business lobby’s message. For example, when anyone Googles the words “US Chamber” and “foreign,” they see a link to the Chamber’s false response that it receives only $100,000 from foreign affiliates.

– Paying For Television Pundits: GOP lobbyist John Feehery has appeared on cable television to attack ThinkProgress’ reporting, taken to Twitter call President Obama a “business-hating socialist” for calling attention to this story, and even penned an article in The Hill newspaper to defend the Chamber and lie about our investigation. Feehery never mentioned the foreign corporate direct donations to the Chamber’s 501(c)(6). But more importantly, neither The Hill nor any of television outlets Feehery appears on disclosed the fact that Feehery’s public relations firm, The Feehery Group, counts the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as one of its clients. Shortly after our story broke, Feehery was hired by another public relations/lobbying firm, Quinn Gillespie, which is also a client of the Chamber. Moreover, Fox News’ parent company is an active member of the Chamber, and hate-talker Glenn Beck met with the Chamber’s second in command earlier this year to plot the 2010 election. While Fox hosts and Beck have endlessly defended the Chamber’s secret money, there has been no disclosure of the network’s financial ties to Chamber lobbyists.

click the heading and read more.

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Deposit

2010-09-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

via geronimo at c&l

Congressional investigators plan to examine how the FBI determined that one scientist was responsible for the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/investigat...

Wall Street Journal (2010) - The Anthrax Attacks Remain Unsolved
The FBI disproved its main theory about how the spores were weaponized.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274...

Cheney and his staff were given doses of the anti-anthrax Cipro right after the 9/11 attacks

"On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was "a precaution," according to one person directly involved."

"Let me put it this way," Bush said. "I'm confident that when I come to work tomorrow, I'll be safe."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline...

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TEA PARTY RACISM: What The Media Won't Show You About Teabagger Racism

2010-07-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

Kos has a l i s t.

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Americanstomach.com

2010-07-15T11:15:00.000-07:00

from Kaufmans editorial published in the BMJ.
snip:

Indeed, the dirty secret of world hunger is that the creation of a grain surplus is no solution. There is plenty of food on earth, more than double that needed to feed all 6.5 billion of us.4 The problem is not food availability, but price. People starve when the daily pay check doesn’t cover the daily bread.

Da south... just because

2010-04-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

Da South

Why is it the south was so easily pacified? I mean look at the world. Most people in the world get really angry and revolt when their land is occupied. The US has been occupying the south for a century and not a peep out of you. Well Wallace tried to stir things up I guess.

But seriously. The US beat you in a war and laid down the law and I must say I've never seen any people on the planet take it as well as you southerners do.

If only people all around the world could be pacified as easily as the Confederates!

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Abdulmutallab could not have blown up plane

2010-03-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

I called this false flag...Panty bomber.

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O'Keefe's mug shot, the face of modern conservatism

2010-01-27T23:45:00.001-08:00

via america blog

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Good Riddance, Aughts!

2010-01-04T08:21:00.000-08:00

via: Could Everyone Please Stop Pissing Me Off

Dear Aughts (00 – 09),

Wow, what a decade. Way to suck far more than not…

Way to lose nearly 10,000 Americans needlessly from a manufactured war (Iraq), a submerged city (New Orleans), and a possibly preventable terrorist act (9/11).

*But on the bright side, most of those Americans who died weren’t wealthy.

Way to systematically tighten the governmental grip on our freedoms; like talking on a phone and being illegally listened to, or protesting the lies of a president and landing on a “watch list”, or voting in an election and then having a hand-picked court step in to decide the outcome anyway.

*But hey, at least we’re doing all we can to keep the government from aiding us with our health.

Way to take the country’s media and turn it into one giant, biased, money-making scheme.

*Were it not for comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert speaking truth to power, we may have zero straight-forward bullshit detectors left.

Way to stay out of the violent quagmire that is Iraq / Iran / Afghanistan / Yemen, and the rest of what is the craziest, most unstable region on the planet.

*It’s not like there were consequences the last time we fucked around in the Middle East, back in the 80’s under Reagan.

Seriously aughts, WTF?! Many Americans were less upset by election fraud, Wall-street greed, and war-profiteering, than they were about Janet Jackson’s exposed booby!

*But again, on the bright side, we do now have Snuggies, 600 cable channels, and Twitter.

So now that your time is up, will you please disappear forever? Honestly, we’d rather have to stare at Ann Coulter’s adam’s apple than have to spend any more time with you.

Now go. And take your Florida recounts, and your Jon & Kate’s, and your Bluetooths, and your bin-Ladens, and your Viagra, and your baconaisse, and your regime-change, and your Jersey Shore, and your Arena Football, and your Enron, and your Transformers with you!!!!!

Go, we say…

Americans Who Know Better

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OK...Jaun Cole put it all together here at Informed Comment

2009-12-31T04:33:00.000-08:00

Top Ten Worst Things about the Bush Decade;
Or, the Rise of the New Oligarchs

By spring of 2000, Texas governor George W. Bush was wrapping up the Republican nomination for president, and he went on to dominate the rest of the decade. If Dickens proclaimed of the 1790s revolutionary era in France that it was the best of times and the worst of times, the reactionary Bush era was just the worst of times. I declare it the decade of the American oligarchs. Just as the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union allowed the emergence of a class of lawless 'Oligarchs' in Russia, so Neoliberal tax policies and deregulation produced American equivalents. (For more on the analogy, see Michael Hudson.) We have always had robber barons in American politics, but the Neoliberal moment created a new social class. At about 1.3 million adults, it is not too large to have some cohesive interests, and its corporations, lobbyists, and other institutions allow it to intervene systematically in politics. It owns 45 percent of the privately held wealth and is heading toward 50, i.e. toward a Banana Republic.

The List

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Grind the press...

2009-10-22T07:42:00.000-07:00

via Bob Cesca:

Let's recap.

Obama administration officials said Fox News Channel "isn't news."

Outrage ensues from everyone including Fox News, Joe Scarborough, Jake Tapper and Dana Perino who referred to it as something "dictators do."

The Bush administration, on the other hand...

-Used reporters to out a CIA agent, then sat by and watched reporters go to jail to protect their sources.
-Paying Armstrong Williams, Michael McManus, and Maggie Gallagher and others for favorable opinions about WH policies or to attack opponents of the WH.

-Planting Jeff Gannon to lob softball questions.

-Fed reporters misinformation about WMD in Iraq, then used those reporters stories as corroborating evidence of the existence of WMD in Iraq.

-treated Helen Thomas like a leper.

-waged a coordinated campaign against NBC.

-kicked all the NY Times reporters off of their planes.

-the Pentagon Pundit program, which sold the war by planting former military officers on networks. Uncovering this story earned a journalist the fucking Pulitzer.

-Staged mock press conferences with FEMA employees pretending to be reporters.

-allowed Ari Fleischer to tell everyone (but directed at journalists) they needed to “watch what they say and what they do.”

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Time-line: Bush-Wall Street Corrupt Housing Crisis

2009-10-07T03:46:00.000-07:00

Time-line: Bush-Wall Street Corrupt Housing Crisis

2002=Video: Younger Bush Pushing "EASY Loans" on Minorities
2002=Bush Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNqQx7sjoS8&feature=related
2002=Bush Enlisted Investment Banks issue "EASY SURE FAIL" Mortgages
2002=Bush Proclaims Enlisted Fannie/Freddie to buy Garbage Mortgages
2002 FED+Bush Admin=high priority on "financial innovation"+Bush"s "ownership society"
2002 FED=Used housing boom to prop up economy after 2000 market collapse
2002 FED governor=warned: lenders breeding fast-growing risky mortgages
2002 FED examiners=investigate mortgage lenders of WSBanks
2003+2004=FED analyst: deteriorating lending standards+higher defaults+ foreclosures
2003+2004=FED encourage development of alternative mortgages=sub-prime loans+ adjustable
2004=Comptroller Curr (OCC) used 1863Law=prevent enforcement state predatory lending laws
2004=OCC=prevent enforcing consumer protection laws against Big Banks
2004=Link:http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/02/spitzer-bush-administration-blocked.html
2007=FED+F DIC+OCC=is sue guide=No new loans to poor after 'teaser' rates expire 2-3 years
2007=FED+F DIC+OCC=Bl ock Half of Subprime borrowers from refinancing=Insure Casino Bets
2007=FED decisions=Help Banks win Casino Bets
2007-2009=20-30% Subprime didn't meet Refi thresholds,But 70-80% would without new rules
2007-2009=2Million teaser-rate loans expired without refi http://www.bloomberg.com
2002-2008=Graph of Housing Bubble showing straight up line 2003-2007 (below)

2007=Bubble fed by "Easy SURE FAIL" Mortgages BURST creating CRISIS
2008=Green span=saying FED ill-equipped to investigate deceptive lending=False
2009=Greenspan consulting gig PIMCO+asset manager GSE mortgages+senior bondholder
Graph=http://www.mortgagecalculator.org/images/us-subprime-mortgage-market-growth.png
Bush Ownership Society: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ownership_society

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driftglass

2009-10-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

yes he did.

Rep. Alan Grayson on the Situation Room

2009-10-01T07:35:00.001-07:00

3 of 3

"The Grilling."

Rep. Alan Grayson's apology

2009-10-01T07:34:00.001-07:00

2 of 2

"The apology."

Alan Grayson on the GOP Health Care Plan: "Don't Get Sick! And if You Do Get Sick, Die Quickly!"'

2009-10-01T07:33:00.001-07:00

1 of 3

ACORN in a government fraud perspective

2009-09-29T11:50:00.001-07:00

click on pic for full view...

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Maddow Puts ACORN Scandal In Perspective!

2009-09-26T08:40:00.001-07:00

Where IS the outrage?

Racisim Code Words

2009-09-25T13:31:00.001-07:00

Great Post via Andrew Sullivan:

Of course they are screaming 'socialism'. They've been doing that since the 50s at least. They're not talking about economic redistribution of wealth - they never have been. They've been talking about redistribution of privilege this whole time. They called MLK a communist because he wanted blacks to have the same rights as whites, and to them that was a redistribution of the privilege that whites had 'earned'.

In their view, white, Christian, heterosexuals have earned something that gays, non-Christians, and non-heteros have failed to work hard enough at. It's been a class war from the outset, just not one based around income or net worth - mostly because the whites in the south were economically pretty bad off and blacks in the north were catching up to them.

This picture shows they were pushing the same buttons half a century ago that they are today. Anti-christ, communism - it's all the same as it is today and is well known code. It's why the protesters will decry socialism today but wouldn't have under Bush - it's all tied to race and other social objectives and has nothing really to do with taxation, deficits, and big government. You probably missed it when you came to the US, but this is pretty old game - particularly to guys like Carter that grew up around it.

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driftglass...

2009-09-24T11:38:00.001-07:00

click pic for full view

Oh yes she did!

she went to a foreign country and criticized the Prez during WARTIME...on foreign soil!

driftglass takes it from here...

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The Return of McCarthyism

2009-09-21T09:47:00.001-07:00

A juxtaposition of the past and current use of McCarthyism.

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Joe Conason Calls Right-Wing Filmmakers' ACORN Screed "Propaganda" NOT "Journalism"

2009-09-19T20:04:00.001-07:00

sexiest voice in politics

Shoeman Speaks...

2009-09-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

via NewsHoggers:

Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George W. Bush, is free and talking.

I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.
Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.

Iraq before and after the invasion.

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade.

Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbour from neighbour. It turned our homes into funeral tents.

And he remains unapologetic:

As soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies, while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the blood that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.

The opportunity came, and I took it.

I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.

I say to those who reproach me: do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw had entered? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.

When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.

He is a hero in Iraq because a vast majority feels just as he does. Is this the success of the surge that the neocons are crowing about? And this is the very same "success" we are creating in Afghanistan.

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Virginia Organizing Project Executive Director Arrested at Anthem for Asking About Insurance Rates

2009-09-18T17:17:00.001-07:00

How dare he ask the corporate fascists why his rates were raised!

he was removed reprogrammed and then released.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow - Frank Schaeffer: GOP sub-culture is "a fifth column of insanity"

2009-09-18T04:49:00.001-07:00

we have a subculture which is literally... bred from birth to reject facts as a matter of faith....Bleckkkkk spit.

a fitting follow up to the 40 mil 'Murkins that are functionally illiterate.

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Michael Moore Says Capitalism Killed Newspaper Industry

2009-09-17T05:49:00.001-07:00

40 million functional illiterate 'Murkins....Yakkkkk!

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Corporate Teabaggers Protesters Protest D.C. Metro Service

2009-09-17T02:15:00.000-07:00

*Shakes Fist*

Keep the government out of my public transit system!

oy.

Protesters who attended Saturday’s Tea Party rally in Washington found a new reason to be upset: Apparently they are unhappy with the level of service provided by the subway system.

Rep. Kevin Brady called for a government investigation into whether the government-run subway system adequately prepared for this weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.

Seriously....

The Texas Republican on Wednesday released a letter he sent to Washington’s Metro system complaining that the taxpayer-funded subway system was unable to properly transport protesters to the rally to protest government spending and expansion.

“These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration,” Brady wrote. “These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them.”

A spokesman for Brady says that “there weren’t enough cars and there weren’t enough trains.” Brady tweeted as much from the Saturday march. “METRO did not prepare for Tea Party March! More stories. People couldn’t get on, missed start of march. I will demand answers from Metro,” he wrote on Twitter.

Brady says in his letter to Metro that overcrowding forced an 80-year-old woman and elderly veterans in wheelchairs to pay for cabs. He concludes that it “appears that Metro added no additional capacity to its regular weekend schedule.”

Link

latteliberal said:

"The DC Metro is not funded by tax payers in Texas. Perhaps the local community could fund more train service had the Republicans not destroyed the economy, spent trillions on an unnecessary war and give the wealthy one percent tax cuts."

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The Word - Let Freedom Ka-Ching

2009-09-16T17:52:00.000-07:00

a must see Colbert Word segment on "corporations."

silent observance

2009-09-11T07:37:00.000-07:00

Click on the pic for full view.

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Rumsfeld 2.3 Trillion Dollars missing Pentagon 1 DAY b4/9-11

2009-09-11T06:20:00.001-07:00

Just a warm up for the Iraq quagmire.

Iraqi shoe thrower being showered by ‘offers and gifts’ upon his anticipated release from prison.

2009-09-10T19:22:00.000-07:00

via Think Progress

Last December, Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi made headlines across the world when he hurled his shoes at President Bush during a press conference in Baghdad. Although al-Zaidi was originally sentenced to three years in prison, Iraqi courts recently decided to release him on Sept. 14 for “good behavior.” Now, the Guardian is reporting that al-Zaidi is being inundated “by offers and gifts” from all over his country:

From his prison cell, Zaidi has a sense of the gathering fuss, but not the full extent of the benefactors and patrons preparing for his release.

A new four-bedroom home has been built by his former boss. A new car – and the promise of many more – awaits.

Pledges of harems, money and healthcare are pouring in to his employers, the al-Baghdadia television channel.

“One Iraqi who lived in Morocco called to offer to send his daughter to be Muntazer’s wife,” said editor Abdul Hamid al-Saij.

“Another called from Saudi offering $10m for his shoes, and another called from Morocco offering a gold-saddled horse.

For his part, al-Zaidi has told the press that he plans to leave journalism and open an orphanage upon his release.

He can call it "The George Bush I'm Lucky to be Alive Orphanage"

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The FBI and a 14 year-old Phone Phreak

2009-09-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

a fascinating tale.

via Rolling Stone:

The Boy Who Heard Too Much

He was a 14-year-old blind kid, angry and alone. Then he discovered that he possessed a strange and fearsome superpower — one that put him in the cross hairs of the FBI

By 14, Weigman was conning his way through AT&T and Verizon, tricking them into divulging insider information — like supervisor identification numbers and passwords — that gave him full run of the system. If he heard a supervisor's voice once, he could imitate it with eerie precision when calling one of the man's underlings. If he heard someone dialing a number, he could memorize the digits purely by tone. A favorite ploy was to get the name of a telephone technician visiting his house, then impersonate the man on the phone to extract codes and other data from unsuspecting co-workers. Once he called a phone company posing as a girl, saying he needed to verify the identity of a technician who was at "her" door. Convinced, the operator coughed up the technician's company ID number, direct phone line and supervisor — key information that Weigman could later put to nefarious use, like cutting off a rival's phone line.

There seemed to be no limit to what he could do: shut off your phone service, dig up your unlisted cellphone number, even listen in on your home phone — something only a handful of veteran phreaks can pull off. Celebrities were a favorite target. Weigman claims to have hacked and called the cellphones of Lindsay Lohan ("She was drunk, and my friend tried to have phone sex with her") and Eminem ("He told me to fuck off"). Last year, during the presidential campaign, Weigman heard a YouTube video of Mitt Romney's son Matt dialing his dad. Weigman listened closely to the touch tones, deciphered the candidate's cellphone number — and then made a call of his own. "Mitt Romney!" he said. "What's going on, dude? Running for president?" Weigman says Romney told him to shove the phone up his ass, and hung up.

read on...

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HypnObama

2009-09-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

via Zaius Nation

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Smart Dog Shoots Pool

2009-09-07T19:59:00.000-07:00

don't let him drink more than one beer!

Watch it here.

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Speaking of Dim Some

2009-09-02T00:07:00.000-07:00

via SJones at politicususa: Hong Kong Palin: Sarah's Latest 2012 Gimmick

In what’s been described as the "American Ding Dong goes to Hong Kong" by astute international posters, Mrs. Sarah Palin (failed beauty contestant, failed VP candidate, and aborted first term Governor) has been asked to speak at the CLSA Investment Convention in Hong Kong, where she will give a speech on a topic such as geopolitics.

Let that sink in for a few minutes, and if you're not cringing yet, here's some Sarah Speak to jog your memory:

“Oil of coal, of course, is a fungible commodity and they don't flag, ya know, the molecules where, where it's going to, where it's not, but and in the, in the sense of the Congress today they know our very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first. So I believe that what Congress is going to do also is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it's Americans who get stuck holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here; it's gotta flow into our domestic markets first.”

That, of course, was her “answer” to a question regarding ….oh, well, it doesn’t really matter what the question was, does it? Wink, wink. It’s worthy of a luminary, no? That person can talk about geopolitics, sure, no problem, you betcha!

“Our keynote speakers are notable luminaries who often address topics that go beyond traditional finance such as geopolitics,” CLSA company spokeswoman Simone Wheeler said in a statement.

However, The Asia Sentinel wasn’t quite as generous:

“Former US Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who is viewed with equal fervor as an ignorant fool or the voice of the common man by those who either loathe or love her, is coming to Hong Kong to seek international street cred.

The decision to bring in Palin as keynote speaker has been met with incredulity from many among the business community in Hong Kong.

"Honestly? This isn't a hoax?" asked the managing director of a Hong Kong business chain. "It's entertaining perhaps, in a road accident sort of way! Now I've seen everything."

in case you need some signs

2009-08-29T05:28:00.000-07:00

Republicans Are A Disease

Download these ANTI REPUBLICAN signs. Print them out. Hand them out. Put them in your car's back window, or you home's windows. Put them up on telephone poles. Tell your neighbors how you feel about the criminals in the GOP who have been running our country into the ditch for all these years! - Reaganomics Has Failed Big Time!

Tell everyone you know about RepublicansAreADisease.com. Let them, and their friends get their signs here too! The more we are in "their" face the better. Republicans are a disease AND THEY KNOW IT. If any Reublicans don't like your sign(s) tell them to go make their own country. Call it Torture-Land.

RepublicansAreADisease.com

WE are all torture victims now....

2009-08-15T05:02:00.000-07:00

I'm somewhat thankful I live in a state that doesn't allow officers to carry tasers ...

a frightening but worthy read on the "Cult" of Law Enforcement via Digby at Glenn Greenwald:

Like Glenn, I write a lot about civil liberties, which have been at the heart of the national conversation since the beginning of the War On Terror and the expansion of the national security state. But my interest in civil liberties predates 9/11 and until then was usually pointed at the far more prosaic issues of police and prosecutorial misconduct (and the inevitable conclusions any study of those things brings to the issue of the death penalty). Nowadays, the theme of civil liberties seem to be a sub-plot to a James Bond flick rather than "To Kill A Mockingbird." And yet, I think the two are intertwined much more closely that we think. In our apparent acceptance of torture as a legal method of interrogation, the bar of civilized official behavior has been lowered to the point where we are accepting torture in everyday life as if it's nothing. Indeed, we are using it as a form of entertainment.

I'm speaking of the ever more common use of the Taser, an electrical device used by police and other authorities to drop its victims to the ground and coerce instant compliance. The videos of various incidents make the rounds on the internet and you can see by the comments at the YouTube site that a large number of Americans find tasering to be a sort of slapstick comedy, the equivalent of someone slipping on a banana peel, with a touch of that authoritarian cruelty that always seems to amuse a certain kind of person. "Don't tase me bro" is a national catch phrase.
Tasers aren't benign however. They kill people. Nobody knows exactly why some people die from being tasered, and they certainly don't know how to tell in advance which ones are at risk. But there have been hundreds of deaths similar to the one below, which nobody can adequately explain:

read on.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

In related NJ News...Bob Dylan managed NOT to get tased in Long Branch for walking the streets without ID. PFFffffffttt.

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood.

Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood.

read the full report here.

*******************

_________________

Doctors Are Mad As Hell

2009-08-13T09:29:00.000-07:00

You CAN handle the Truth

There's no nice way to say it. The financial cost of health care is killing our citizens, hobbling our economy, crushing small business, and threatening the solvency of our government. In the meantime, the Health Care Industry is spending almost two million dollars a day lobbying Congress and manipulating public opinion to accept “reform” legislation that leaves a vicious, for-profit system intact. The "public option" is a trap. We need real reform that finds immediate savings, controls costs, and accomplishes the moral imperative of true Universal Access. A Single Payer plan is the only real path to a Health Care System that is socially, ethically and fiscally responsible. And yet, our elected officials refuse to even discuss the possibility of a Single Payer plan!

If that doesn't make you mad, we recommend checking your pulse.Link

Heh.

'Bout time and Welcome to the club.

___________________

20 largest cases of companies bilking the government.

2009-08-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

via skippy the bush kangaroo:

These are pikers, unrepentant white collar criminals.The same people who fuel the lunatic right wingnuts.

1) tenet healthcare -- $900,000,000 under the false claims act
in july 2006, tenet healthcare (formerly known as nme, see #9 on this list) agreed to pay the federal government $900 million for billing violations that include manipulation of outlier payments to medicare, as well as kickbacks, upcoding, and bill padding.

2) hca -- $731,400,000 under the false claims act
in december 2000, hca the healthcare company (formerly known as columbia hca), the largest for-profit hospital chain in the united states, pled guilty to criminal conduct and agreed to pay more than $840 million in criminal fines, civil penalties and damages for unlawful billing practices. ....note that the december 2000 agreement does not resolve allegations that hca unlawfully charged the u.s government for the costs of running its hospitals, and that it paid kickbacks to physicians to get medicare and medicaid patients referred to its facilities.

3) hca -- $631,000,000 under the false claims act
in june 2003, hca, inc. (formerly known as columbia/hca and hca the healthcare company) agreed to pay the united states $631 million in civil penalties and damages arising from false claims submitted to medicare and other federal health programs.

read on

______________________________

...a reminder from Naomi Klein via Buzzflash:

Republicans Use Chaos as a Shock Doctrine to Create Authoritarian Rule

_________________________________

Orlando Brewing Choir - Beer Parody

2009-07-31T09:00:00.001-07:00

Beerspit!

and even funnier via Mock, Paper,Scissors

How Do you plan to celebrate...

More "Beerisms" under "The Audacity of Hops."

___________________

.

2009-07-22T08:30:00.001-07:00

New 'shock' report into Irish church sex abuse

2009-07-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

A shocking new report has identified hundreds of victims of child sex abuse by Irish Catholic priests, officials said Tuesday, two months after a landmark study found "endemic" mistreatment.

A government-appointed commission of investigation headed by a judge has been probing allegations of abuse by priests in the archdiocese of Dublin -- the country's biggest -- since March 2006.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has warned that the report -- presented to Justice Minister Dermot Ahern on Tuesday -- would "shock us all."

raw story

Former CIGNA Executive Hails 'SiCKO' on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!

2009-07-21T05:58:00.001-07:00

“They Dump the Sick to Satisfy Investors”: Insurance Exec Turned Whistleblower Wendell Potter Speaks Out Against Healthcare Industry

read the entire transcript here

************************************************************

Tip of the iceberg...

"We think we make a fair and reasonable profit. I think people dramatically overestimate the amount of profit that we make. We make about 6 percent after tax, which we think is a fair and reasonable number. And we believe we can bring more people in -- that we can be more efficient -- and really offer them a product at a lower price." - Ron Williams

FierceHealthcare reports the following top 10 CEO salaries for 2008
* Ron Williams - Aetna - Total Compensation: $24,300,112.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/03/05/pm_aetna/

_________________

A Secret Exposed -- Medicare Works Better Than Private Insurance

2009-07-16T03:27:00.000-07:00

Nothing better symbolizes the corruption of the debate about healthcare reform than the rhetoric about "government-run" healthcare. Or, for that matter, the related argument that we need a "uniquely American" solution which precludes a public system like Medicare for all.

Two reports that notably received scant coverage from either the media or even those advocating the public plan "option" in Congress, reveal the seldom told truth.

Medicare is a "uniquely American" solution, and it works.

* National Nurses Movement's diary

As we approach the 44th birthday of Medicare July 30th, nurses, doctors, and healthcare activists will gather in Washington to celebrate its successes and lobby to extend them by expanding Medicare to cover everyone.

The rally, sponsored by the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare, is July 30, at 1 p.m. at Upper Senate Park across from Congress. Check here for more details:

Recent surveys, from the journal Health Affairs and from the Department of Health and Human Services, offer reminders of Medicare's success.

In a May study reported in Health Affairs, Commonwealth Fund leaders found that:

compared to people with private insurance, Medicare enrollees have greater access to care, fewer problems with medical bills, and greater satisfaction with their health plans and the quality of care they receive.

Those findings are especially significant, the report notes, considering that Medicare patients are in the very demographic that has the highest likelihood of poor health, and also tend to have lower incomes.

Yet, only 15 percent of Medicare beneficiaries reported such problems as not being able to pay a medical bill or being hounded by a collection agency, compared to 26 percent of non-Medicare enrollees who have employer-paid health plans.

And, 61 percent of those on Medicare reported they received "excellent or very good quality of care" in the past year compared to less than half those with private insurance.

One of the biggest misleading attacks on Medicare by the anti-government crowd is that it restricts "choice." But the study found that:

Only 10 percent of Medicare beneficiaries said their physician would not take their insurance compared to 17 percent of those with employer coverage.

Perhaps, most important,

"elderly Medicare beneficiaries were also significantly more likely to report being very confident that they could get high quality and safe medical care when needed, and very confident that they would be able to afford the care they need."

Dennis Kucinich Sets Dr. David Gratzer Straight

2009-07-10T06:35:00.001-07:00

Dennis delivers a nice hot cup of STFU to the Manhatten Ist. small fry ... gratzer.

I did not know....one out of every four INSURED Americans go without treatment due to high insurance and medical care costs!

Lying Liar and the Lies she tells me...

2009-07-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

via The Daily Dish:

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: A Round-Up

After you have read these, ask yourself: what wouldn't Sarah Palin lie about if she felt she had to?

Palin lied when she said the dismissal of her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, had nothing to do with his refusal to fire state trooper Mike Wooten; in fact, the Branchflower Report concluded that she repeatedly abused her power when dealing with both men.

Palin lied when she repeatedly claimed to have said, "Thanks, but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere; in fact, she openly campaigned for the federal project when running for governor.

Palin lied when she denied that Wasilla's police chief and librarian had been fired; in fact, both were given letters of termination the previous day.

Palin lied when she wrote in the NYT that a comprehensive review by Alaska wildlife officials showed that polar bears were not endangered; in fact, email correspondence between those scientists showed the opposite.

Palin lied when she claimed in her convention speech that an oil gas pipeline "began" under her guidance; in fact, the pipeline was years from breaking ground, if at all.

Palin lied when she told Charlie Gibson that she does not pass judgment on gay people; in fact, she opposes all rights between gay spouses and belongs to a church that promotes conversion therapy.

Palin lied when she denied having said that humans do not contribute to climate change; in fact, she had previously proclaimed that human activity was not to blame.

Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska produces 20 percent of the country's domestic energy supply; in fact, the actual figures, based on any interpretation of her words, are much, much lower.

Palin lied when she told voters she improvised her convention speech when her teleprompter stopped working properly; in fact, all reports showed that the machine had functioned perfectly and that her speech had closely followed the script.

Palin lied when she recalled asking her daughters to vote on whether she should accept the VP offer; in fact, her story contradicts details given by her husband, the McCain campaign, and even Palin herself. (She later added another version.)

Palin lied when she claimed to have taken a voluntary pay cut as mayor; in fact, as councilmember she had voted against a raise for the mayor, but subsequent raises had taken effect by the time she was mayor.

Palin lied when she insisted that Wooten's divorce proceedings had caused his confidential records to become public; in fact, court officials confirmed they released no such records.

Palin lied when she suggested to Katie Couric that she was involved in trade missions with Russia; in fact, she has never even met with Russian officials.

Palin lied when she told Shimon Peres that the only flag in her office was the Israeli flag; in fact, she has several flags.

Palin lied when she claimed to have tried to divest government funds from Sudan; in fact, her administration openly opposed a bill that would have done just that.

Palin lied when she repeatedly claimed that troop levels in Iraq were back to pre-surge levels; in fact, even she acknowledged her "misstatements," though she refused to retract or apologize.

Palin lied when she insisted that the Branchflower Report "showed there was no unlawful or unethical activity on my part"; in fact, that report prominently stated, "Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act."

Palin lied when she claimed to have voiced concerns over Wooten fearing he would harm her family; in fact, she actually decreased her security detail during that period.

Palin lied when asked about the $150,000 worth of clothes provided by the RNC; in fact, solid reporting contradicted several parts of her statement.

Palin lied when she suggested that she had offered the media proof of her pregnancy with Trig to "correct the record"; in fact, no reports of her medical records were ever published; and the letter from her doctor testifying to her good health only emerged hours before polling ended on election day, even though there was nothing in it that couldn't have been released two months earlier.

Palin lied when she said that "reported" allegations of her banning Harry Potter as mayor was easily refutable because it had not even been written yet; in fact, the first book in that series was published in 1998 - two years into her first term - and such rumors were never reported by the media, only circulated as emails.

Palin lied when she denied having participated in a clothes audit with campaign laywers; in fact, the Washington Times later confirmed those details.

Palin lied when asked about Couric's question regarding her reading habits; in fact, Couric's words were not, "What do you read up there in Alaska?" or anything close to condescension.

Palin lied when she mischaracterized the "$1200 check" given to Alaskans as the permanent fund dividend check; in fact, that fund had yielded $2,069 per person, and she claimed otherwise to obscure the fact that Alaskans also received a $1200 rebate check from a windfall profits tax on oil companies - a tax widely criticized by Republicans.

Palin lied when she claimed to be unaware of a turkey being slaughtered behind her during a filmed interview; in fact, the cameraman said she had picked the spot herself, while the slaughter was underway.

Palin lied when she denied having rejected federal stimulus money; in fact, she continued to accept and reject the funds several times.

Palin lied when she claimed that legislative leaders had canceled a meeting with her to hold their own press conference; in fact, they only canceled it after being told she would not participate, and the purpose of the press conference was very different from the meeting's.

Palin lied when she announced on the news that she never holds closed-door meetings; in fact, she had just attended a closed-door meeting with the legislature earlier that day.

Palin lied when she said that former aide John Bitney's "amicable" departure was for "personal" reasons; in fact, Bitney said he was fired because of his relationship with the wife of Palin's friend, plus a Palin spokesperson later claimed "poor job performance" for his firing - without elaborating.

Palin lied when she said she kept her running injury a secret on the campaign trail; in fact, her bandaged hand was clearly visible in photographs and the story was widely talked about.

Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska has spent "millions of dollars" on litigation related to her ethics complaints; in fact, that figure is much, much lower, and she had initiated the most expensive inquiry.

Palin lied when she denied that the Alaska Independence Party supports secession and denied that her husband had been a member; in fact, even the McCain campaign noted that the party's very existence is based on secession and that Todd was a member for seven years.

Thank you Andrew Sullivan, for keeping track of this shite.

____________________________

Republican'ts should never read ...

2009-07-07T16:37:00.000-07:00

d r i f t g l a s s

LMAO!

________________________

Weapons expert Dr David Kelly was writing a book ....

2009-07-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

at the same time he decided to off himself.Stink.

via the daily express:

WEAPONS inspector David Kelly was writing a book exposing highly damaging government secrets before his mysterious death.

He was intending to reveal that he warned Prime Minister Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq weeks before the British and American invasion.

He had several discussions with a publisher in Oxford and was seeking advice on how far he could go without breaking the law on secrets.

Following his death, his computers were seized and it is still not known if any rough draft was discovered by investigators and, if so, what happened to the material.

Dr Kelly was also intending to lift the lid on a potentially bigger scandal, his own secret dealings in germ warfare with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

US television investigators have spent four years preparing a 90-minute documentary, Anthrax War, suggesting there is a global black market in anthrax and exposing the mystery “suicides” of five government germ warfare scientists from around the world.

Director Bob Coen said: ‘‘The deeper you look into the murky world of governments and germ warfare, the more worrying it becomes.

“We have proved there is a black market in anthrax. David Kelly was of particular interest to us because he was a world expert on anthrax and he was involved in some degree with assisting the secret germ warfare programme in apartheid South Africa.”

Dr Kelly was found dead in woods near his Oxfordshire home on July 17 2003. His apparent suicide came two days after he was interrogated in the Commons over his behind-the-scenes role in exposing the flaws in the “sexed-up” Number 10 dossier which justified Britain going to war with Iraq.

Conspiracy theorists have claimed he was murdered.

British author Gordon Thomas said last night: ‘‘I knew David Kelly very well and he called me because he was working on a book.

“He told me he had warned Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction. I advised him that as he had signed the Official Secrets Act life could get difficult for him.

“I gained the impression that he was prepared to take the flak as he wanted his story to come out.”

Anthrax War will be screened privately in London on July 17, the sixth anniversary of Dr Kelly’s death.

_____________________________________

Michael Connell said...

"There are things we will be doing on Election Day that haven't even been dreamt of yet."

Michael Connell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly implicated in the rigging of George Bush’s 2000 and 2004 elections, was killed last night when his single engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron airport. Velvet Revolution (“VR”), a non-profit that has been investigating Mr. Connell’s activities for the past two years, can now reveal that a person close to Mr. Connell has recently been discussing with a VR investigator how to tell all about his work for George Bush. Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that the George Bush and Dick Cheney would “throw [him] under the bus.

On October 31, Mr. Connell appeared before a federal judge in Ohio after being subpoenaed in a federal lawsuit investigating the rigging of the 2004 election under the direction of Karl Rove. The judge ordered Mr. Connell to testify under oath at a deposition on November 3rd, the day before the presidential election. Velvet Revolution received confidential information that the White House was extremely concerned about Mr. Connell talking about his illegal work for the White House and two Bush/Cheney 04 attorneys were dispatched to represent him.

read on

_________________

The Golden Boy Destroyer....

2009-07-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

...Who's middle name is Strange.No, it really is Strange.

Robert S. McNamara died in his sleep at his home in Washington early this morning, family members said. McNamara, who served as secretary of defense during the Vietnam war under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, was 93.

He was preceded in death by

58,000 US Soldiers killed

3,000,000 Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed

************************************************************

Apocalypse Soon
By Robert S. McNamara	May/June 2005
It is time—well past time, in my view—for the United States to cease its Cold War-style reliance on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. At the risk of appearing simplistic and provocative, I would characterize current U.S. nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous. The risk of an accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch is unacceptably high. Far from reducing these risks, the Bush administration has signaled that it is committed to keeping the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a mainstay of its military power—a commitment that is simultaneously eroding the international norms that have limited the spread of nuclear weapons and fissile materials for 50 years. Much of the current U.S. nuclear policy has been in place since before I was secretary of defense, and it has only grown more dangerous and diplomatically destructive in the intervening years.Read more.

undisguised documentary form

You need to hear McNamara's point of view and the lesson by todays standards, that was NOT learned. This should be shown in every history class.

a good summation via hufpo commenter Decipherer:

Robert McNamara was a tragic Shakespearean figure, who obviously was tortured to his dying day about the disastrous Vietnam war policies about which he was an architect.

Unlike George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and all the other neocons and their enablers, he at least had a conscience and the ability to acknowledge that he had failed utterly.

For that and that alone, forty years after leaving public office, he is entitled to our sympathy. We can only hope that our country will learn from the lessons of McNamara's life.

______________________

Glenn Beck Agrees US Needs Another Al Qaeda Attack To Protect Us From Immigrants?

2009-07-02T15:13:00.001-07:00

" The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. "

and a Happy Independence Day To You Too!

via Kos:

If this was said by a Democrat, Progressive or Liberal, or even an independant or moderate, that person would have been publicly tarred and feathered and then ran out on a rail by Fox News and the rest of the Right Wing leaning corporate media.
But instead, it was said on Fox News airtime, during the Glenn Beck show, and the only major media outlet to say peep about it was John Stewart's Daily Show.

Really, what a bunch of traitorous pikers.

_______________

Madoff Investor Received 1000% Return.?.

2009-07-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

Client Jeffry Picower allegedly withdrew $5.1 billion from accounts

It is rare these days to see Bernard Madoff's name in print unaccompanied by the word "Ponzi." Yet recent allegations raise the possibility of one key difference between Madoff's crimes and those of legendary con artist Charles Ponzi. While Ponzi's scam was under way, Ponzi himself was its biggest beneficiary. It now appears that the biggest winner in Madoff's scheme may not have been Madoff at all, but a secretive businessman named Jeffry Picower.
Between December 1995 and December 2008, Picower and his family withdrew from their various Madoff accounts $5.1 billion more than they invested with the self-confessed swindler, according to a lawsuit filed by the trustee who is trying to recover money for those Madoff defrauded.

In contrast, shortly after he confessed, Madoff declared his household net worth to be between $823 million and $826 million, according to court documents. While the Madoffs clearly lived opulently, no evidence has emerged that their combined assets and expenditures approached the amount the Picower family is alleged to have withdrawn from the scheme.

In an era when billions of dollars are being tossed about in financial collapses and government bailouts, remarkably little attention has been paid to Jeffry Picower's extraordinary success with Bernie Madoff. If Picower has penetrated the popular consciousness at all, it is as a Madoff victim. The victim narrative is buoyed by testimonials from the nonprofits who received funding from his charitable foundation — which quickly closed on the heels of the swindler's confession. For this reason, ProPublica decided to take a closer look at both Jeffry Picower and the complaint filed against him by Madoff trustee Irving Picard.

read on

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Pessimistic executives cash out of shares

2009-06-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

via FT:

Growing pessimism about the prospects for a global economic recovery sent stock and commodity prices tumbling yesterday while new data showed that leading US corporate executives were cashing out of their share holdings at a rapid pace.

US government bond yields followed equity prices lower, confounding analysts who had expected that Treasury rates would rise this week as the federal government auctioned off a record $104bn of debt.

Analysts said the market mood was captured by a World Bank report that said the global economy would contract 2.9 per cent this year, compared with a previous estimate of a 1.7 per cent fall. A White House spokesman said later in the day that the US unemployment rate was likely to rise to 10 per cent in the next couple of months.

The downbeat commentary reinforced the view that investors should be more worried about the impact of economic weakness on corporate profits than the possibility of higher inflation and interest rates.

"We have had a great run in equities, emerging market currencies, credit and other risky assets, now people are struggling to justify lofty valuations," said Alan Ruskin, strategist at RBS Securities. He added: "The 'green shoots' argument for the economy was very tentative to start with."

Executives in charge of the largest US companies sent a signal of their concerns by selling far more shares than they bought this month, according to data based on Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Share sales by so-called company insiders are outstripping purchases so far this month by more than 22 times. TrimTabs, the investment research company, said insiders of S&P 500 listed companies have unloaded $2.6bn in shares in June, compared with $120m in purchases.

"The smartest players in the US stock market - the top insiders who run public companies - are not betting their own money on an economic recovery," said Charles Biderman, chief executive of TrimTabs.

The S&P 500 index fell 3.06 per cent to 893.04 - its first close below 900 this month. Analysts noted that the index closed below its 50-day and 200-day moving averages. "This is evidence that the rally since March has been a correction and not necessarily the start of a meaningful multi-year rally," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell 10 basis points to 3.68 per cent. Crude oil prices fell $2.62, or 3.77 per cent, to $66.93 a barrel.

Earlier, the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index slid 2.6 per cent while London's FTSE 100 index fell 2.3 per cent. Emerging market equities also fell sharply, with Russia leading the retreat.

_________________

Mark Jacoby - Head of CA GOP Voter Registration Firm Pleads Guilty to Voter Registration Fraud

2009-06-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Mark Jacoby, another convicted Republican who received nothing more than a slap on the hand.

Read this juicy nugget from Brad Blog:

What's perhaps most interesting here is what isn't mentioned in this story, as written on the Los Angeles Times' "L.A. Now" blog. First, here's their entire blog item...

The owner of a voter-registration company pleaded guilty Tuesday to voter-registration fraud, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
Laguna Beach resident Mark Jacoby, who collects signatures for petition drives, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to three years' probation and 30 days of service with the California Department of Transportation.

Jacoby, owner of Young Political Majors, registered to vote at Los Angeles addresses that were not his own. State law requires petition circulators to be qualified voters. Jacoby will also be required to show proof he is registered at his correct address.

And what they didn't bother to mention in that story?...Amongst other things, the fact that Jacoby and Young Political Majors were hired by the California Republican Party to head up their voter registration efforts in the state. Jacoby had been arrested for Voter Registration Fraud last October, smack dab during the media's orgasmic heights of last year's phony GOP ACORN "Voter Fraud" hoax, even as Fox "News" (and the other news outlets who similarly fell for the scam) was going wall-to-wall with unsupported insinuations about voter fraud by ACORN, Democrats, and Obama.

I heard the news about the arrest of Jacoby just as I was heading out for an appearance on Fox "News," so I was able to break the news on-air in my own "Fox 'News' Alert." (Video originally posted here, reposted at bottom of this item.)

Given the way the LA Times blog "covered" the story of Jacoby's plea --- not even mentioning the fact that this guy and his group were hired by the California state Republican Party --- I'd say it's a fair bet Fox wouldn't even have bothered to mention the original arrest at all had I not been on air and forcing them to do so myself. Much as they are unlikely to bother reporting Jacoby's plea today.

Ya think if the head of ACORN had made such a plea (or even been arrested at all) it might have been covered just a bit on Fox "News"?

_____________________________

Here's the video from my appearance on Fox with inveterate GOP voter fraud hoaxster John Fund, on October 19, 2008. I broke the news of the arrest of the head of the CA GOP's voter registration outfit, which I had just received from the CA Secretary of State's office, in my own "Fox 'News' Alert"...

youtube fox/brad video

UPDATE: I hadn't noted it originally (though it's available in a number of the links in the story above), but though Jacoby pleaded guilty to the most benign offense, in fact, his company is alleged to have changed thousands of registrations from Democratic to Republican, assuring that those voters would not be able to vote, as expected, in the Democratic primary. When they didn't outright fake voter signatures on change of registration forms, they used tricks to get voters to give their signature, fooling them into thinking they were signing a petition against child molesters or for cancer hospital funding.

And since it's not clear to so many of the wingnuts linking into this post, allow me to underscore again that this was the head of the firm, which is also under investigation in three other states for similar activity. That all, of course, is a very different situation from ACORN where it was a handful of workers who were accused of registration fraud, and defrauding ACORN themselves, before being turned into official by ACORN themselves! Clear on that now, wingnuts? In the meantime, while voters were unable to cast votes at all thanks to Jacoby and YPM, there is not a single allegation of any actual voter fraud having been committed by, or at the behest of ACORN. They are, however, guilty of registering thousands upon thousands of low to middle income voters, who tend to vote Democratic, and thus, they continue to be the target of phony, baseless attacks from the desperate rightwing.

________________________

Here's another good take on this from Paul Lehto at Alternet:

Here's What Vote Fraud Really Looks Like

California Republican Party's sponsorship of the firm YPM is a voter fraud oak tree compared to the innocent ACORN.

Extensive national media coverage of alleged voter registration fraud by ACORN has fanned fears of "voter fraud" by Democratic forces. Given this fact, it's more than a little remarkable that the media has not seen fit to present more balanced coverage. The media could easily do so by reporting, at the same level as ACORN, the far more serious, documented and provable story of election fraud by Young Political Majors, LLC (YPM). YPM's owner Mark Jacoby was recently arrested in California on two felony counts of voter registration fraud and two counts of perjury, as reported in the LA Times October 20. But these 4 charges are the tip of the YPM iceberg. The omission of YPM from the national debate is helping to set the general election on a course of confusion and disfranchisement -- consistent with YPM's undisputed record of disfranchising voters in primary elections earlier this year. As with the case of Tiffany Hofstetter, YPM's activities even include wholesale forgeries of real voters' registration affidavits, that results in them losing their right to vote.

Unlike ACORN's issues (which are almost exclusively the rejection of submitted registration applications that never actually make it onto voter rolls), YPMs frauds are not scrutinized, remain on the rolls, and are therefore far more serious. YPM also differs from ACORN in the following other respects:

(1) YPM usually works directly for the Republican Party, usually in late summer and fall after the primaries are over, even though its main activity seems to be switching Democrats and Independents to Republican status;
(2) The California Republican party admits it knew of YPM's sordid history of alleged fraudulent practices when it hired them, which is available on the internet;
(3) YPM's un-scrutinized frauds continue to impact the voting rights of perfectly legal voters, limiting the ability of Democrats to Get Out the Vote of their own supporters.
(4) YPM in California has twice as many registrations accepted (70,000+) as ACORN has merely submitted (39,570 in California)
(5) YPMs registrations still affect the registration rolls, erroneously listing some voters as absentee who are not, changing addresses, and altering party statistics which influences fundraising for candidates, whether districts are considered "competitive" and influencing what election results mean or whether they are considered suspicious.
read more

a comment from alternet puts it into perspective:

"Why haven't we heard of this organization before? Why haven't we heard of this allegations (and prosecutions) before?

ACORN was completely vilified for incomplete and inaccurate voter REGISTRATION but they haven't been formally accused (as in, by any government law agency) of voter fraud.

Yet, verifiable examples of voter fraud by the republicans is covered up? Way to drop the ball, liberal media. Too bad it's this late in the game to really make a difference.'

:snort:

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Mission Accomplished!

2009-06-20T01:59:00.000-07:00

Iraqi Oil Minister accused of mother of all sell-outs

To public fury, the country is handing over control of its fields to foreign companies

Furious protests threaten to undermine the Iraqi government's controversial plan to give international oil companies a stake in its giant oilfields in a desperate effort to raise declining oil production and revenues.

In less than two weeks, on 29 and 30 June, the Iraqi Oil Minister, Hussain Shahristani, will award service contracts to the world's largest oil companies to develop six of Iraq's largest oil-producing fields over 20 to 25 years.

Senior figures within the Iraqi oil industry have denounced the deal. Fayad al-Nema, the director of the South Oil Company, which comes under the Oil Ministry and produces most of Iraq's crude, said on the weekend: "The service contracts will put the Iraqi economy in chains and shackle its independence for the next 20 years. They squander Iraq's revenues." Mr Nema is reported to have since been fired because of his opposition to the contracts, which he says is shared by many other officials in Iraq's state-owned oil industry.

read on

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The jokes are writing themselves...again.

2009-06-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

Judge to review Cheney interview in CIA leak case

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge said Thursday that he wants to look at notes from the FBI's interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan's decision to review the documents followed arguments by Obama administration lawyers that sounded much like the reasons the Bush administration provided for keeping Cheney's interview from the public.

Justice Department lawyers told the judge that future presidents and vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could become available to their political opponents and late-night comics who would ridicule them.

"If we become a fact-finder for political enemies, they aren't going to cooperate," Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith said during a 90-minute hearing. "I don't want a future vice president to say, `I'm not going to cooperate with you because I don't want to be fodder for 'The Daily Show.'"

Sullivan said the Justice Department must give him more precise reasons for keeping the information confidential than they had in previous court filings.

Cheney agreed to talk to FBI agents in June 2004 as they were investigating the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to reporters the year before. Her name was revealed after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, criticized the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The leak touched off a lengthy inquiry that led to Cheney's former top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, being convicted on charges of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators. During his trial, jurors found that Libby lied to the FBI and a grand jury about his conversations with reporters. Bush commuted Libby's sentence, and he never served prison time.

Libby was the only person charged in the case. No one was charged with leaking Wilson's name.

read more

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Great Pic!

2009-06-18T15:10:00.001-07:00

We can learn a lesson from the freedom loving Iranian people and ...d r i f t g l a s s

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UPDATE!

06/19/09 ...all reports agree...

tomorrow there will be blood.

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Following the Iran news through "Andrew Sullivan's - The Daily Dish."

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Bill O'Reilly 'Goes Nuts' On Joan Walsh of Salon.com Over Dr. Tiller Controversy

2009-06-13T08:35:00.001-07:00

That's the way ya do it Joan.

Watch till the end where he admits and apologizes for the Tenn. church shooter.

a little background on Dr. McHugh via hufpo blogger DrJulienArbor:

Joan may have a difficult time challenging Dr. McHugh, but I'd be glad to do it... and I also don't care how prestigious of a position he held or what university he was affiliated with. The following links are some examples of Dr. McHugh's work...

http://www.psycom.net/mchugh.html

http://www.beforeyoutakethatpill.com/index.php/tag/paul-mchugh-md/

http://www.dana.org/news/features/detail.aspx?id=13798

http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/paul-mchugh.html

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Bailey/McHugh/McHugh%20on%20Transsexualism.htm

This are some of the most outrageously irresponsible claims that I have ever seen by someone in the "mental health care" system. Not only is his agenda blatantly obvious... but he's DEAD WRONG regarding dissociation, repressed memories, the epidemic of child sexual abuse including ritualized abuse. And when it comes to Charcot... he either doesn't read French, is ignorant of Charcot's history... or he IS lying!

He's correct about one thing though... the number of psychiatric diagnosis in DSM should be reduced. As a matter of fact... the entire DSM should be ELIMINATED!

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Krugman on CONservative Driven Hate and Murder

2009-06-12T04:35:00.000-07:00

Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration” and label them as terrorists.

Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

Exhibit A for the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism is Fox News’s new star, Glenn Beck. Here we have a network where, like it or not, millions of Americans get their news — and it gives daily airtime to a commentator who, among other things, warned viewers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might be building concentration camps as part of the Obama administration’s “totalitarian” agenda (although he eventually conceded that nothing of the kind was happening).

But let’s not neglect the print news media. In the Bush years, The Washington Times became an important media player because it was widely regarded as the Bush administration’s house organ. Earlier this week, the newspaper saw fit to run an opinion piece declaring that President Obama “not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself,” and that in any case he has “aligned himself” with the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

And then there’s Rush Limbaugh. His rants today aren’t very different from his rants in 1993. But he occupies a different position in the scheme of things. Remember, during the Bush years Mr. Limbaugh became very much a political insider. Indeed, according to a recent Gallup survey, 10 percent of Republicans now consider him the “main person who speaks for the Republican Party today,” putting him in a three-way tie with Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich. So when Mr. Limbaugh peddles conspiracy theories — suggesting, for example, that fears over swine flu were being hyped “to get people to respond to government orders” — that’s a case of the conservative media establishment joining hands with the lunatic fringe.

read on

via a hufpo blogger:

"You don't see Democrats wanting to invade countries under false pretenses, diverting our national wealth to cronies at Haliburton, Big Pharma, the oil companies, trashing the constitution, corrupting the Department of Justice, demanding unrestrained capitalism that threatens our democracy.
To suggest that responsible government involvement, a return to its rightful place in governing is a move to Marxism is insane."

another:

"I was heartened to learn that 3 of the indictments of Rwandan war criminals in the Hague were for radio broadcasters. Not only did they gin up hatred toward the Tutsis, they coordinated the attacks by telling Hutus it was time to go and kill their neighbors. They were all convicted on various counts of genocide and conspiracy, though I don't know what happened on appeal.

Read about the convictions here:
http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/5622?show=full

The article below, about the original indictments, also mentions the fact that Streicher, publisher of Der Sturmer, which incited hatred of Jews in 1930's Germany, was sentenced to the gallows at Nuremberg.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/163/28824.html

It appears that something awful -- not just one murder here and there -- has to happened before people get called to account. It would be nice to nip it in the bud, for a change."

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RIGHT-WING VIOLENCE....

2009-06-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

via Political Animal

...In light of the shootings at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. this afternoon, allegedly committed by white supremacist James Von Brunn, Matt Yglesias noted, "I hope that everyone who mau-maued the Department of Homeland Security for expressing concern about this kind of thing feel appropriately ashamed of themselves."

It's hardly an unreasonable point. Two months ago, Richard Poplawski, a right-wing extremist, allegedly gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh, in part because he feared the non-existent "Obama gun ban." A few weeks ago, Scott Roeder, another right-wing extremist, allegedly assassinated Dr. George Tiller in Kansas. A few hours ago, Von Brunn, another right-wing extremist, allegedly opened fire at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

There are other recent examples that bear similar characteristics. This story out of Tennessee from last year continues to haunt.

Knoxville police Sunday evening searched the Levy Drive home of Jim David Adkisson after he allegedly entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two people and wounded six others during the presentation of a children's musical. [...]
Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday's mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of "the liberal movement," and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his "hatred of the liberal movement," Owen said. "Liberals in general, as well as gays."

Obviously, we're dealing with sick individuals here. There are key differences between violent right-wing radicals and mainstream Americans who happen to be conservative. Indeed, I'm not suggesting that conservative activists are necessarily dangerous, violent people.

I am suggesting that it makes sense of the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate and communicate with law enforcement agencies about potentially violent extremists -- of every ideological stripe -- to help prevent tragedies like the ones we've seen lately.

The DHS report specifically addressed the possibility of violence from anti-abortion radicals and anti-Semitic extremists. And in the last two weeks, Tiller was assassinated and a white supremacist opened fire at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The Republican hysteria over the DHS report -- which was, by the way, initiated by a Bush administration official -- was always based more on a partisan scheme than reality, but the incessant complaints look especially misguided today.

---------------------------

Sean Hannity interviews Sarah Palin

2009-06-10T06:32:00.001-07:00

Via...

d r i f t g l a s s

bottled water spit

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Suicidal behavior in the 101st on Fort Campbell is bad,"

2009-05-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

FORT CAMPBELL, Kentucky (CNN) -- The 101st Airborne's senior commander in effect ordered his soldiers Wednesday not to commit suicide, a plea that came after 11 suicides since January 1, two of them in the past week.

"If you don't remember anything else I say in the next five or 10 minutes, remember this -- suicidal behavior in the 101st on Fort Campbell is bad," Brig. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend told his forces. "It's bad for soldiers, it's bad for families, bad for your units, bad for this division and our army and our country and it's got to stop now. Suicides on Fort Campbell have to stop now."

Fort Campbell's suicide rate, the highest in the Army, "is not a good statistic," he said in remarks to one of four divisions he addressed during the day.

After nearly one soldier per week committed suicide at the post between January and mid-March, the Army instituted a suicide prevention program that "seemed to be having good effects" until last week, when two more suicides occurred, he said.

"Suicide is a permanent solution to what is only a temporary problem," Townsend said. "Screaming Eagles don't quit. No matter how bad your problem seems today, trust me, it's not the end of the world. It will be better tomorrow. Don't take away your tomorrow."

He urged anyone feeling hopeless or suicidal to "tell somebody."

"You wouldn't hesitate to seek medical attention for a physical injury or wound; don't hesitate to seek medical attention for a psychological injury."

Townsend exhorted any soldier who suspects that a fellow soldier may be feeling suicidal to act -- first by asking how the soldier feels, then by escorting him or her to help.

"Do not wait," he said.

Soldiers can turn to their leaders, chaplains, medics, social workers, teammates, family and friends, he said.

"Don't let yourself, your buddies or your families down," he said, ending his comments by repeating, "This has got to stop, soldiers. It's got to stop now. Have a great week."

But Townsend's message -- called a Second Suicide Stand-Down event -- is likely to be ineffective, said Dr. Mark Kaplan, a professor of community health at Portland State University in Oregon, who has researched veterans' suicide and served last year on a Veterans Administration blue-ribbon panel on suicide risk.

"It sounds like an order," he told CNN in a telephone interview. "I'm not sure that a command like this is going to alter the course of somebody who is on a trajectory of self-harm."

CNN link

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Greenspan as Inspector Renault: "I'm Shocked, Shocked"

2009-05-23T06:01:00.001-07:00

Alan Greenspan recently expressed his surprise that government strong-arming into lending institutions and low inflation caused a housing market collapse. Reminiscent of a scene from Casablanca,...

History of Weed

2009-05-22T23:13:00.001-07:00

kewel

Endemic Abuse At Irish Catholic Care Homes

2009-05-22T23:10:00.001-07:00

DUBLIN — After a nine-year investigation, a commission published a damning report Wednesday on decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at Catholic Church-run reform schools for Ireland's castaway children.

The 2,600-page report painted the most detailed and damning portrait yet of church-administered abuse in a country grown weary of revelations about child molestation by priests.

The investigation of the tax-supported schools uncovered previously secret Vatican records that demonstrated church knowledge of pedophiles in their ranks all the way back to the 1930s.

A government-appointed panel has paid 12,000 survivors of the schools, orphanages and other church-run residences an average of $90,000 each _ on condition they surrender their right to sue either the church or state. About 2,000 more claims are pending. Irish Catholic leaders cut a controversial deal with the government in 2001 that capped the church's contribution at $175 million _ a fraction of the final cost.

read more here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/20/irish-reform-schools-thou_n_205719.html

and here:
On the Net:

Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse report, http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/

...and you all thought Alphonse François de Sade was just kidding, tsk tsk.

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Photo of US soldier in pink boxers turns iconic

2009-05-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

click here for larger view

FILE - In this May 11, 2009 file photo, soldiers from the U.S. Army First Battalion, 26th Infantry take defensive positions at firebase Restrepo after receiving fire from Taliban positions in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan's Kunar Province. Spc. Zachery Boyd of Fort Worth, Texas, far left was wearing "I love NY" boxer shorts after rushing from his sleeping quarters to join his fellow platoon members. From far right is Spc. Cecil Montgomery of Many, La. and Jordan Custer of Spokan, Wash, center. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says American soldiers have more than their military might and training on their side in the war in Afghanistan. Some have pink underwear. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder, FILE)

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driftglass...

2009-05-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

click pic for larger view

Water Spit...

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Kafka for Dummies: the Absurd Debate over Torture!

2009-05-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

via TV News LIES!

Here we go again. After eight horrific years of lies and deceit and war and death, the American public once again has fallen into the abyss of self delusion. Tragically, just as we near the brink of reversal, we are about to abdicate any claim whatsoever to respect or honor anywhere.

America consistently proclaims itself a nation of laws where justice is blind to privilege or class. And yet, as the world watches in disbelief, this country has become inextricably mired in non-stop debates that defy reason. It is absolutely insane to discuss the possibility that a crime has some Machiavellian validity simply because it ‘works.’ And it is equally incredulous to engage in discussions about the propriety of prosecuting those who have openly admitted their heinous actions.

Something is terribly wrong with this picture.

Here the facts. Check them out. They’re clear; they’re relatively simple to follow. Do the math.

Fact #1 - Torture is a crime under US Domestic, US Military, and International Law.

Fact # 2 – Photographs, video tapes and first hand testimony attesting to the use of torture have been documented

Fact # 3 – George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and the judge in charge of the military commission process at Gitmo all have admitted their roles in authorizing the use of torture.

Fact #4 - We have a crime, we have the evidence, and we have the confessions.

What the hell is left to debate?

Of course, the usual suspects across the complicit corporate media now echo the same dumb and distracting questions over and over, hoping they eventually will divert attention from the crimes themselves.

They ask: what is torture? We know.
They ask: Is water boarding torture? We know.
They ask: Who really is responsible for the torture, ? We know.
The ask: Should the photos be released? They’re already out there.
They ask: Does torture work? Irrelevant, it’s illegal.
The ask: Did some members of Congress know about the torture? Again, it’s irrelevant. Those who authorized the use of torture committed the crimes in question.

And finally, they put the most amazing question of all before the nation:

Should we prosecute those we know to be responsible for torture? Are they serious? Are they really serious? Should we, the nation of laws, actually prosecute criminals for breaking laws that define us as a nation? Understand that the legal precedent for prosecuting war crimes has been set for decades.
Do the research, -just Google a few of these events in recent history for their importance and their outcomes:.

1. In 1945, the war crimes trials of leading German officials opened before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.

2. 1946, Japanese war criminals were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo.

3. In 2001, former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević was arrested by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a UN committee for war crimes and tried in the Hague.

4. In 2004 – fourteen years after giving up the presidency – Augosto Pinochet was arrested by the Chilean government and charged with crimes against humanity, tax evasion and embezzlement.

5. In 2004, Saddam Hussein, former leader of Iraq, was brought to trial and ultimately hanged in his country for the killing of 148 people in a Shiite town

6. In 2009, Kaing Guek Eav, was charged n the Cambodian courts with crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions during the 1970’s,

7. In 2009, Congolese militia leader, Thomas Lubanga, became the first person to go on trial at the International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.

For heaven’s sake, go read the Magna Carta. No one is above the law.

Well, that’s not really true, - some people are; just ask George W. Bush. Way back in 2002, in a brilliant move to immunize his administration from international prosecution for war crimes, he withdrew the US from the International Criminal Court. Bush, Jr. knew, long before the invasion of Iraq, that war crimes were in the making, and he did this to cover his ass as best he could.

The good news is that Bush and his cronies are not immune from investigation and prosecutions elsewhere.

At this moment, a judge in Spain is considering opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials for violating international law by devising a legal framework to allow torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

And most important, the Bush cartel is not protected from investigation and prosecution within the United States. Dammit, we have the crime, we have the evidence, and we have the confessions. What we don’t have is the backbone.

In 2008, Vincent Bugliosi, the famed prosecutor of Charles Manson, clearly outlined the legal case against George Bush in his book, the Prosecution of George W. Bush, for Murder. Copies of the book were sent to every member of Congress, but the evidence compiled in this excellent indictment remains largely ignored by our elected ‘leaders’ as well as every one of the pretend news networks that refused Bugliosi on-air exposure..

And yet, there is hope, because the torture issue is so public, so undeniable, and so prosecutable, that justice in America may finally prevail.

Consider that Al Capone was as clever criminal as anyone in the Bush administration. He ruled the Chicago underworld for years, breaking every conceivable criminal law with impunity. But he was undone in the end by his own arrogance and carelessness – and was convicted of the only crime for which he left a paper trail – tax evasion. So let it be with George Bush, Dick Cheney, and all the other architects of torture.

I repeat: we have the crime, we have the evidence and we have the confessions. For our own sake, we must work together to grow the backbone.

For if we do not, we will remain the farce we became during the Bush years, and we will deserve whatever retribution and revenge is perpetrated against us - as it will. This is truly a defining moment for the people of the United States. Kafka would have loved it. He really would.

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Army suicide rate set to surpass 2008's record

2009-05-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

via Salon:

May 12, 2009 | The Army is on a pace this year to shatter the record suicide rate set among soldiers in 2008, according to data released by the Army to Salon. And the numbers, obtained a day after a patient at a combat stress clinic in Iraq killed five, suggest that combat stress may be contributing to the spike in suicides.
During the first four months of 2009, 91 soldiers committed suicide, including suspected suicides still under investigation. During all of last year, 140 Army soldiers committed suicide, resulting in the highest rate on record. If Army suicides continue at the rate recorded from Jan. 1 to April 30, more than 270 soldiers will be dead by their own hands at the end of this year. The large majority of suicides are among enlisted soldiers, privates, specialists and sergeants.

The only bright spot in the new suicide data is some evidence that Army efforts to improve suicide prevention -- among other things, implementing "chain teaching" among troops on suicide risk, hiring more mental health workers and releasing suicide prevention videos -- seem to be taking hold. While 31 soldiers committed suicide in January, that number dropped to 28 in February, then 22 in March and then to 10 in April. (The month-by-month chart of suicides that the Army released to Salon is reproduced in its original form on Pages 2 and 3 of this story.)
Previous reporting by Salon has established the connection between combat stress and suicide. According to the new data, among the active-duty troops who have committed suicide so far in 2009, 48 committed suicide after or during a deployment, while only 16 killed themselves without having gone to war. Two of the active-duty soldiers who killed themselves did so after deploying to war four times. Among National Guard and Army Reserve troops, 11 died during or after deployments while 16 killed themselves having never deployed. The figures for the National Guard and Army Reserve include an unexplained bubble of seven suicides among never-deployed troops that occurred in February.
The Army data does not show whether those Guard troops killed themselves after receiving an alert that they would be deployed. Paul Sullivan, executive director of the advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense, says his organization is investigating what appears to be a pattern of suicides following notices to deploy or redeploy.

suicide linked to antidepressants, antipsychotics

nothing to see here...just move along now.

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"The Fox TeeVee Family"

2009-05-08T07:40:00.000-07:00

They're Creepy and They're Kooky, Mysterious and Spooky, They're all together Ooky, The Fox TeeVee Family.
Click here for larger view

First row seated (L - R): Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck.

Second row standing (L - R): Joe the Quitter, Rupert Murdoch, Brit Hume.

via driftglass

From Time:

Republicans in the Wilderness: Is the Party Over?

Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, tells TIME he's so outraged by GOP overspending, he's quitting the party — and he's the bull's-eye of its target audience. But he also said he wouldn't support any cuts in defense, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid — which, along with debt payments, would put more than two-thirds of the budget off limits. It's no coincidence that many Republicans who voted against the stimulus have claimed credit for stimulus projects in their district — or that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal stopped ridiculing volcano-monitoring programs after a volcano erupted in Alaska.

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Cafferty File: Why are frequent churchgoers more likely to support torture?

2009-05-02T06:56:00.001-07:00

Friday, May 1, 2009
Cafferty File: Why Are Churchgoers More Likely to Support Torture?

The Religious Faithfull and Torture...just like Peas and Carrots

2009-05-02T05:38:00.000-07:00

(CNN) -- The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.

The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The survey asked: "Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified? Roughly half of all respondents -- 49 percent -- said it is often or sometimes justified. A quarter said it never is.

The religious group most likely to say torture is never justified was Protestant denominations -- such as Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians -- categorized as "mainline" Protestants, in contrast to evangelicals. Just over three in 10 of them said torture is never justified. A quarter of the religiously unaffiliated said the same, compared with two in 10 white non-Hispanic Catholics and one in eight evangelicals.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/

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FRANK RICH: The Banality of Bush White House Evil

2009-04-26T02:43:00.000-07:00

WE don’t like our evil to be banal. Ten years after Columbine, it only now may be sinking in that the psychopathic killers were not jock-hating dorks from a “Trench Coat Mafia,” or, as ABC News maintained at the time, “part of a dark, underground national phenomenon known as the Gothic movement.” In the new best seller “Columbine,” the journalist Dave Cullen reaffirms that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were instead ordinary American teenagers who worked at the local pizza joint, loved their parents and were popular among their classmates.

On Tuesday, it will be five years since Americans first confronted the photographs from Abu Ghraib on “60 Minutes II.” Here, too, we want to cling to myths that quarantine the evil. If our country committed torture, surely it did so to prevent Armageddon, in a patriotic ticking-time-bomb scenario out of “24.” If anyone deserves blame, it was only those identified by President Bush as “a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values”: promiscuous, sinister-looking lowlifes like Lynddie England, Charles Graner and the other grunts who were held accountable while the top command got a pass.

We’ve learned much, much more about America and torture in the past five years. But as Mark Danner recently wrote in The New York Review of Books, for all the revelations, one essential fact remains unchanged: “By no later than the summer of 2004, the American people had before them the basic narrative of how the elected and appointed officials of their government decided to torture prisoners and how they went about it.” When the Obama administration said it declassified four new torture memos 10 days ago in part because their contents were already largely public, it was right.

Yet we still shrink from the hardest truths and the bigger picture: that torture was a premeditated policy approved at our government’s highest levels; that it was carried out in scenarios that had no resemblance to “24”; that psychologists and physicians were enlisted as collaborators in inflicting pain; and that, in the assessment of reliable sources like the F.B.I. director Robert Mueller, it did not help disrupt any terrorist attacks.

The newly released Justice Department memos, like those before them, were not written by barely schooled misfits like England and Graner. John Yoo, Steven Bradbury and Jay Bybee graduated from the likes of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Michigan and Brigham Young. They have passed through white-shoe law firms like Covington & Burling, and Sidley Austin.

Judge Bybee’s résumé tells us that he has four children and is both a Cubmaster for the Boy Scouts and a youth baseball and basketball coach. He currently occupies a tenured seat on the United States Court of Appeals. As an assistant attorney general, he was the author of the Aug. 1, 2002, memo endorsing in lengthy, prurient detail interrogation “techniques” like “facial slap (insult slap)” and “insects placed in a confinement box.”

He proposed using 10 such techniques “in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique.” Waterboarding, the near-drowning favored by Pol Pot and the Spanish Inquisition, was prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II. But Bybee concluded that it “does not, in our view, inflict ‘severe pain or suffering.’ ”

Still, it’s not Bybee’s perverted lawyering and pornographic amorality that make his memo worthy of special attention. It merits a closer look because it actually does add something new — and, even after all we’ve heard, something shocking — to the five-year-old torture narrative. When placed in full context, it’s the kind of smoking gun that might free us from the myths and denial that prevent us from reckoning with this ugly chapter in our history.

Bybee’s memo was aimed at one particular detainee, Abu Zubaydah, who had been captured some four months earlier, in late March 2002. Zubaydah is portrayed in the memo (as he was publicly by Bush after his capture) as one of the top men in Al Qaeda. But by August this had been proven false. As Ron Suskind reported in his book “The One Percent Doctrine,” Zubaydah was identified soon after his capture as a logistics guy, who, in the words of the F.B.I.’s top-ranking Qaeda analyst at the time, Dan Coleman, served as the terrorist group’s flight booker and “greeter,” like “Joe Louis in the lobby of Caesar’s Palace.” Zubaydah “knew very little about real operations, or strategy.” He showed clinical symptoms of schizophrenia.

By the time Bybee wrote his memo, Zubaydah had been questioned by the F.B.I. and C.I.A. for months and had given what limited information he had. His most valuable contribution was to finger Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as the 9/11 mastermind. But, as Jane Mayer wrote in her book “The Dark Side,” even that contribution may have been old news: according to the 9/11 commission, the C.I.A. had already learned about Mohammed during the summer of 2001. In any event, as one of Zubaydah’s own F.B.I. questioners, Ali Soufan, wrote in a Times Op-Ed article last Thursday, traditional interrogation methods had worked. Yet Bybee’s memo purported that an “increased pressure phase” was required to force Zubaydah to talk.

As soon as Bybee gave the green light, torture followed: Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times in August 2002, according to another of the newly released memos. Unsurprisingly, it appears that no significant intelligence was gained by torturing this mentally ill Qaeda functionary. So why the overkill? Bybee’s memo invoked a ticking time bomb: “There is currently a level of ‘chatter’ equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks.”

We don’t know if there was such unusual “chatter” then, but it’s unlikely Zubaydah could have added information if there were. Perhaps some new facts may yet emerge if Dick Cheney succeeds in his unexpected and welcome crusade to declassify documents that he says will exonerate administration interrogation policies. Meanwhile, we do have evidence for an alternative explanation of what motivated Bybee to write his memo that August, thanks to the comprehensive Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees released last week.

The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.” As higher-ups got more “frustrated” at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, “there was more and more pressure to resort to measures” that might produce that intelligence.

In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.

But there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq, and the White House knew it. Torture may have been the last hope for coercing such bogus “intelligence” from detainees who would be tempted to say anything to stop the waterboarding.

Last week Bush-Cheney defenders, true to form, dismissed the Senate Armed Services Committee report as “partisan.” But as the committee chairman, Carl Levin, told me, the report received unanimous support from its members — John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman included.

Levin also emphasized the report’s accounts of military lawyers who dissented from White House doctrine — only to be disregarded. The Bush administration was “driven,” Levin said. By what? “They’d say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.”

Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.

Levin suggests — and I agree — that as additional fact-finding plays out, it’s time for the Justice Department to enlist a panel of two or three apolitical outsiders, perhaps retired federal judges, “to review the mass of material” we already have. The fundamental truth is there, as it long has been. The panel can recommend a legal path that will insure accountability for this wholesale betrayal of American values.

President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don’t need another commission. We don’t need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/opinion/26rich.html?_r=1

**************

Houston, We Have A Solution

2009-04-23T20:31:00.001-07:00

LMAO, Libertarian magic dust!

____________

I got more out of using cigarettes, medical care and food

2009-04-22T11:42:00.000-07:00

retired Col. Jack Jacobs

I've been in combat plenty of times, captured lots of bad guys and invariably got lots of information out of them using cigarettes, medical care and food. Most of the stuff that you're going to get when you give people a bad time, most of it is going to be information that they're going to give just to shut you up or to get you to stop doing what you're doing to them.

Last year, FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair that he did not "believe" that there had been a case where "any attacks had been disrupted because of intelligence obtained through the coercive methods." John Miller, a spokesman for Mueller, confirmed that position to the New York Times on Tuesday, saying, "The quote is accurate."

______________________

Pirates and Presidential HistoGraaaraphs

2009-04-20T06:13:00.000-07:00

click on this picture to see the full graph

Looks good, eh? but then again...

_______________________

Of Tea Bags and Meatsticks

2009-04-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

In the last 25 years, no sound in American politics has thundered louder than the smirking, conspicuous, complicit silence of the meatsticks on the Right during the Age of Bush as their Dear Leader presided over a historically unprecedented string of impeachment-grade lies, treason, failure, breathtaking stupidity, corruption, catastrophe and outright theft, all wrapped up in an open, snarling contempt for the United States Constitution.

driftglass

________________

10 Republican Lies for Tax Day

2009-04-16T04:28:00.000-07:00

via C&L:

The truth may set you free, but not if you're a Republican and the subject is taxes. After all, 95% of American families as promised received a tax cut from the Obama stimulus package. And while three-quarters of Americans support President Obama's proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 to their Clinton-era levels, it turns out that affluent voters, too, chose Barack Obama over John McCain. Making matters worse, a Gallup poll Monday revealed that Americans' "views of income taxes among most positive since 1956."

So as their furious followers head off to their April 15th orgy of tea-bagging, the leadership of the GOP and its amen corner in the right-wing media have instead turned to tall tales on taxes.

Here, then, are 10 Republican Tax Day lies:

President Obama will raise taxes on small businesses.
The estate tax devastates small businesses and family farms.
40% of Americans pay no taxes.
Tax cuts always increase revenue.
The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.
Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
FDR caused the Great Depression, or at least made it worse.
Obama's cap-and-trade plan will cost each American family $3,100 a year.
Obama's tax proposals will undermine charitable giving.
The rich pay too much in taxes already.

For the details behind each of the GOP's Tax Day deceits, continue reading.

_____________________

Working Class Hero - John Lennon

2009-04-16T04:27:00.001-07:00

Happy Tax Day !

From Driftglass...Yes, Spring is in the air my friends.

2009-04-09T06:30:00.000-07:00

Spring, 1994.

As Mr. Outside Rush Limbaugh and and Mr. Inside Newt Gingrich return once again to the business of getting rich chumming the political waters with the bloodiest gobbets of crazy they can find...

As 30 million pig people begin stretching their minority Party tantrum muscles anew, get up on their hind legs and learn to scream "Gummint! Destroy! Gummint! Destroy!" again after eight straight years of lockstep, synchronized chants of "How dare you question the Dear Leader!" ..

As bile-laced AM radio frequencies burst at the seams once again with hysterical, unhinged conspiracy babble, roared out in blunt, declarative "Democrats are Commies", "AmeriCorps could morph into "re-education camps", "Obama is the Anti-Christ" sentences...and received as Operating System Upgrade gospel by the ignorant armies of the Right...

As a centrist President elected to clean up Republican failures is once again immediately painted as History's Greatest Villain who must be stopped at all costs almost before his feet touch the ground...

As the fragile brains of right-wing gun nuts being snapping like twigs under the weight of their mindless fear multiplied by their stupid (Check out this terrific analysis of the subject by David Neiwert over at Crooks & Liars):

David Weigel of the Washington Independent was out at a gun show in Tennessee this last weekend. If you haven't gotten a look, you should.

It's real real familiar for me. Deja vu from 1994, when I was regularly attending militia meetings, all over again: The president-bashing. The gun fetishizing. The paranoia. The unstated old bigotry. And sometimes, all of them would come together at once.

......we welcome back the 1990s in all its bloated glory.

Because for Republicans, the last eight years never happened (From Andrew Sullivan, which, I know, I'm shocked too, but if we are to credibly administer ass-kickings when he's wrong, we must acknowledge when gets one right.)

The remarkable thing about today's partisan Republicans is their capacity to forget instantly and entirely anything that went on for the past eight years. And so suddenly we are rushing toward socialism, even though by far the biggest jumps in state power and debt occurred under a president they worshiped and worked hard to re-elect.

There were no tea-parties to protest the $32 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit. There was no Randian rumbling as Bush took over local schools. There was no defense of the Constitution as Bush and Cheney secretly suspended the fourth and first amendments.

But put a moderate Democrat in office tackling a historic collapse in demand - and spending must be frozen! Reading the partisan right blogs, this ability to disappear the past is striking, and it helps explain base GOP loathing of Obama

But this time around the track there are some important differences.

This time we have the eight years of 1,000-decibel insanity ginned up over fake scandals capped off with impeachment over trivia that was the Clinton Administration behind us.

This time we can look back and see what categorically does not work.

Playing nice? Doesn't work.

Trying to find compromise? Doesn't work.

Ignoring them? They only get louder.

Appeals to reason? Bwahahahaha! Are you fucking kidding me?

Appeals to the good of the country? Republicans don't give a shit about this country. They give a shit about their country: the The Caucasian Free State Of Jesusland. And to whatever extent the actual America and its actual constitution and history and plurailty and complexity frustrates and impedes to the implementation of New Confederacy of their dreams, that is the extent to which they will always despise the real America.

get more here...1990's 2.0

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"The Official George W. Bush Librarium"

2009-04-04T07:00:00.002-07:00

Click here for the mouse over magnification of this bittersweet hilarious interactive librarium.

SPIT/CHOKE WARNING! *swallow all liquids before viewing!*

From the authors of the New York Times bestseller Goodnight Bush.

_______________

2009-04-04T07:00:00.001-07:00

Atlas Sucked

2009-03-24T16:12:00.000-07:00

via Hey Jenny Slater:

So I've been reading at several different blogs how a small but vocal cadre of libertarian right-wing-authoritarian-masquerading-as-libertarian bloggers are threatening to respond to Barack Obama's cruel, Marxist attempts to make us all communist put the highest marginal income-tax rate back where it was in the late 1990s by "going John Galt" -- i.e. quitting work in protest and ceasing to make contributions to a society that supposedly only wants to suck off of them like leeches -- and I was prepared to write a long, withering rant about how stupid that is, but a) DougJ at Balloon Juice has already done a better and more succinct job than I would've done (and is named Doug to boot) and b) there's no empirical proof that anyone's actually done it yet.

So in lieu of that rant, I will simply say this: If you're basing your lifestyle, your belief system, or even the name of one of your pets on Atlas Shrugged or anything else written by Ayn Rand, you are a tool.

This isn't even the cranky asshole left-wing liberal in me telling you this, this is the cranky asshole English-lit minor: Atlas Shrugged sucks. It sucks as both a political allegory and a work of fiction. It sucks hard. Atlas Shrugged is not a novel, it is a pissy, monotonous political treatise disguised as a novel....read more.

driftglass takes on " The Authoritarian Mind"

"They [Native Americans] didn’t have any rights to the land,
and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights
which they had not conceived and were not using . . . .
What was it that they were fighting for,
when they opposed white men on this continent?
For their wish to continue a primitive existence,
their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched,
unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out
so that you will live practically like an animal,
or a few caves above it.
Any white person who brings the element of civilization
has the right to take over this continent."

-- Wingnut Oligarch Bitch Goddess Ayn Rand,
during the Q&A after her address to West Point, 1974

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March is the 6th Aniversary of the Iraq War...

2009-03-20T03:48:00.000-07:00

Think Progress has the sobering timeline.

The badly staged launch... .

look at that ghastly make up.

*********************************

Pfc. Jessica Lynch recovered by U.S. forces.

What the Pentagon framed as a heroic rescue was later revealed to have been staged.

****************************

Saddam Statue Toppled...

The Los Angeles Times later reported that the fall was “stage-managed” by the Army.

_________________

Funnys..haha...uhuh...PFfft.

2009-03-19T05:00:00.000-07:00

See the whole cartoon here.

_____________________

The Ocarina of Rhyme

2009-03-17T08:20:00.000-07:00

Interesting...Zelda - Hip Hip Mashup. Uhhh...give the pirate gangstas' a listen first.
(nsfw) I like it all but the last song = Slim Thug & Mike Jones - Still Tippin' (Great Fairy's Fountain) is trippin and my favorite...

OOPS!...almost forgot.

Happy Birfday Barbie!

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How to Blow Your Credit Limit -- Without Spending

2009-03-16T20:18:00.000-07:00

If you haven't had the credit limit cut on your credit card recently, count yourself lucky. Risk-averse card issuers are getting slash happy. And while many cardholders gripe that such cuts slice razor-close to their balance amounts, for an unfortunate few the cuts go far deeper: below what they currently owe.

Under different circumstances, David Chaplin-Loebell wouldn't have minded that American Express cut his unlimited credit line to just $5,000. Except that when AmEx reduced his line in October, he had an outstanding balance of $10,000. "I found out by having a business purchase declined," he says. Repeated calls to AmEx failed to yield an answer about why the cut was made. Chaplin-Loebell, who lives in Philadelphia, is now paying the balance under his regular card terms, and presumes the line will free up for new purchases once he's below the limit. "For now, they've essentially frozen the account," he says, leaving him to juggle business expenses on his personal cards. American Express did not respond to requests for comment.

Nasty as it may be, the practice of cutting credit lines below the balance is legal -- at least, for now, says Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney for the National Consumer Law Center, a consumer advocacy group. Federal Reserve rules requiring lenders to give cardholders 45 days notice before reducing a credit line to the point that it would trigger penalties won't go into effect until July 2010. "[Until] then, there are no federal protections," says Wu.

Congress is also hoping to rein in unscrupulous credit-card practices. In February, Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.), chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, reintroduced the Credit CARD Act, which among other things, offers cardholder protections like the ability to pay under the existing terms if an account is closed and requiring issuers to lower penalty rates within six months once a cardholder gets back on track with payments. Earlier this month, the House Committee on Financial Services chairman Barney Frank, announced a series of four hearings that will include discussions about credit card reform.

The motivation among issuers to make such deep cuts that they plunge below a cardholder's balance amount isn't very clear. Usually, issuers cut credit lines to reduce outstanding liabilities -- they sometimes may even chase the balance on riskier accounts with further limit cuts as cardholders pay down debts, explains Bill Carcache, an analyst with investment bank Fox-Pitt Kelton. But cutting below the balance doesn't reduce an issuer's liability: The cardholder still owes the outstanding debt.

One possibility is that this is yet another attempt by card issuers to get consumers to close their accounts (while bringing in a little fee income in the short term), says Dennis Moroney, research director and senior analyst for consulting firm Tower Group. "I can't rationalize in my mind what other motivation there would be," he says.

Paul Pensabene of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., received a statement from HSBC on Dec. 8 that said he had a $359.99 balance and remaining available credit of $8,640. But when he went online to pay the bill several days later, his online account showed that same balance put him over his newly-reduced credit line of $300. And that didn't include the $35 over-limit fee. Pensabene grappled with customer service until they agreed to remove the fee, and then paid the balance in full. "All I could think was, 'Good lord, what if this is happening to someone that couldn't pay their balance off in one shot?'" he says. "They'd end up in default with these fees piling up."

HSBC declined to comment on individual cardholder accounts. Spokeswoman Cindy Savio says the issuer has tightened its credit standards based on the economy. "As we have previously stated, in an effort to reduce credit risk and refine strategies for our card business, we have tightened credit standards, reduced or canceled higher risk credit lines, and closed a number of inactive accounts," she says.

While the fees, frozen accounts and default interest rates resulting from credit-line cuts can sting your finances, they can do some serious long-term damage to your credit score. Your credit utilization ratio -- the total amount of debt you owe in relation to the amount of credit available to you -- accounts for roughly 30% of your score. A credit line cut has the potential to decrease your score by 50 points or more if you don't have much other available credit, says Craig Watts, spokesman for FICO, the company that calculates and issues the credit score that most lenders use.

Even cuts that are close to the balance have the potential to devastate if they're not caught quickly. Luckily for Carol Gressett of Decatur, Miss., she noticed the reduction in her Discover-branded Sam's Club card limit just days after it happened. The limit was cut to within $100 of her $3,000 balance. The official letter notifying her of the reduction arrived three weeks later. "We could easily have gone over if I hadn't been paying attention," she says.

(A Discover spokesperson says GE Money issues the cards, and so is responsible for managing credit lines. GE Money did not respond to requests for comment.)

source

Via Americablog:

You do the Math...

December 23, 2008: American Express Will Get $3.39 Billion in TARP Funds

March 16, 2009: American Express paid CEO $27.3 million in 2008

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Not to be out done by the bloodsucking, thieving credit card companies...

Pennsylvania Banks profit from unemployed customers

With about 434,000 unemployed statewide in December, about 200,000 Pennsylvanians use debit cards. In the seven-county Pittsburgh region, about 35,000 of 76,200 unemployed individuals use debit cards.

The state ~~handed over~~ negotiated with Affiliated Computer various fees attached to transactions. Users withdrawing cash from a PNC or Wachovia ATM get one free withdrawal per deposit. If the deposit is $1,000 or more, the person gets an additional free ATM withdrawal for each $500 deposited. After that, the cost is $1.50 for each successful withdrawal.

Surcharges are attached to most ATMs with the exception of those operated by PNC, Wachovia, credit unions belonging to the Alliance One ATM program and machines at 7 Eleven stores.

ATM balance inquiries cost 40 cents each, while ATM denials, following one free transaction, cost 50 cents apiece.

"We ~~took the ponzi scheme bait~~ negotiated reduced fees compared to what was being charged in other states," Smith said.

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Osama bin Laden aka Dick Cheney's opening act...speaks again.

2009-03-15T20:08:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, Al Jazeera TV broadcast Bin Laden’s 29th tape since 9/11, wherein the Al Qaeda chief branded Israel’s Gaza offensive a “holocaust”, condemned moderate Arab leaders and urged his followers to prepare for holy war....and then asked everyone to please give a warm welcome to Dick Cheney:

FREE rim shot!
______________________________________________________________________________

Dick Cheney takes the GOP lead to attack Obama

Former Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN's John King Sunday that he believed President Obama's decision to eliminate the use of many of the most controversial interrogation practices used under the former administration had put the country at risk.

Asked whether he thought those moves had made the United States less safe, Cheney said he did. "I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoy, of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11," he said on State of the Union. "I think it's a great success story. It was done legally, it was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles…"

Obama campaigned against those practices, said Cheney, "and now he's making some choices that in my mind will raise the risk to the American people of another attack."

via foxnewslite - CNN
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Alan Grayson Questions AIG Math: Let's Change the Length of Inches So I'm Shorter!

2009-03-14T07:41:00.001-07:00

via: Hufpo's Ryan Grim...

Regulator: Before Banks Collapsed, They Pleaded With Feds To Let Them Fudge Their Books

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Family Guy: Stewie Griffin Meets Wall Street

2009-03-13T07:15:00.001-07:00

Enjoy!....if only.

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Obama’s rejection of the Bush administration’s war on science

2009-03-10T04:01:00.000-07:00

"I am also signing a Presidential Memorandum directing the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making. To ensure that in this new Administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science; that we appoint scientific advisers based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology; and that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions. That is how we will harness the power of science to achieve our goals – to preserve our environment and protect our national security; to create the jobs of the future, and live longer, healthier lives."

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H - E - double hockey sticks

2009-03-09T18:54:00.000-07:00

via Slacktivist and (a place of recognition I recently arrived at.)

Carlton Pearson's church, Higher Dimensions, was once one of the biggest in the city, drawing crowds of 5,000 people every Sunday. But several years ago, scandal engulfed the reverend. He didn't have an affair. He didn't embezzle lots of money. His sin was something that to a lot of people is far worse: He stopped believing in Hell.

That didn't go over too well in the Pentecostal/evangelical circles in which Pearson used to be a rock star. It got him officially branded as a heretic by a Pentecostal bishops group. His congregation dwindled to a fifth of its previous size and its makeup changed to include all sorts of dubious types, like Episcopalians, homosexuals and Unitarians.
Wikipedia has a brief but useful entry on Carlton Pearson, the site for his New Dimensions church has a bit more information, and Selwyn Crawford of the Dallas Morning News fleshes out the story in his article, "The fall and rise of Carlton Pearson."
What I find most interesting in this whole saga is that Pearson was never condemned for his earlier heresies, which strike me as more extravagant. He began his ministry, after all, as a protege of Oral Roberts and for years taught a variant of Roberts' "prosperity" doctrines. Going around and telling people that serving Mammon is the same as serving God apparently doesn't get you in hot water with the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops. Denying the existence of Hell does.

That's curious, since the Bible spends much, much, much more time on the dangers of chasing money than it ever does on the subject of eternal torment. The Bible's priorities, however, have been inverted by evangelicals, for whom Hell has become a central, essential doctrine.
I'm not sure how that happened. St. Paul had precisely nothing to say on the subject of Hell. He had a lot to say about death, resurrection and the kingdom, but not one word about Hell. The Nicene Creed, similarly, mentions heaven three time, but never mentions Hell at all. The Apostle's Creed mentions it. Once. It says Jesus went there. (Yes, that Jesus).

Yet ask any evangelical Christian about their faith and Hell is one of the first things they'll mention. And they know all about the subject. They can describe Hell, earnestly providing details from Dante or Fantasia while dimly believing these come from the Bible (you know, the Epistle to the Ghibelines or something).
So let's take a quick look at what the Bible actually does have to say on the subject of Hell. Specifically, let's look at three passages that Carlton Pearson has been condemned for not "interpreting literally."
1. Luke 16:19-31 describes a soul in agony in "Hades." He is described as being "in fire" and "in this place of torment."
2. Matthew 25:31-46 says that the unrighteous "will go away to eternal punishment" sent "into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."
3. Revelation 20:11-15 describes the judgment of the living and the dead. "The lake of fire is the second death," it says. "If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."

That's three separate mentions of eternal, fiery torment. Sure sounds a lot like the Hell all those evangelical preachers love to talk about.
And yet this doesn't fully convey how deeply, deeply weird it is for such preachers to turn to these three passages and to come away from them with nothing other than a belief in hellfire and torment.
That's not what these stories are about. The preachers seemed to have latched on to the descriptions of hellfire and torment in these stories because those tangential details seemed less troublesome and dangerous than the central themes of the stories. Those central themes may be more threatening than anything Carlton Pearson has ever had to say.
read more

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ASHAMED...&%^&$#@!

2009-03-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

Via Mic Check:

After a thorough chastisement from lawmakers for lavish sponsorship of parties and concerts at a professional golf tournament, Northern Trust Corp. said it will pay back a $1.6 billion federal bailout loan as quickly as possible. Although government funds weren’t used for the events, lawmakers were outraged that a bailout was requested during such lavish parties.

Karl Rove Agrees To Testify

2009-03-05T06:31:00.000-08:00

Via Huffington Post:

A deal has been reached whereby Karl Rove will finally testify, under oath, before the House Judiciary Committee, according to chairman John Conyers' office.

Rove has long avoided and ignored subpoenas in the past by claiming executive privilege -- his deference now comes as a big victory for many Bush administration critics.

Read the press release here.

__________________________

From HufPo commenter bethea3:

Do not get excited about this victory too soon.
This process still has a very long way to go. The incriminating documents still require review prior to Rove being questioned. Then his testimony will be reviewed against those records. Then he will be questioned again. Considering the volumes of paperwork involved it will be months before the gavel is struck.
I am grateful the the two administrations did not have to go head to head at this time on the issue of executive privilege. It will happen in the future but right now I would rather have BHO focused on the major issues affecting us all right now and not distracted by the likes of Rove and his ilk. That would be akin to going to war with Iraq when bin Laden is in another country altogether.
Is it just me or does it seem strange that the State Department got the bin Laden relations out of the country shortly after 9/11 even while the whole US was a not fly zone? Could that have any baring on why we never really pursued Osama to the ends of the earth? Did we use the distraction of the war to placate the bin laden family and not kill their son? Did we spend billions of dollars and 4000 plus American lives as a diversion? Those are the questions I want answered. And prosecuting, believe it or not, Rove may be the first step. Think about it.

________________

The Tao of Wha?

I almost...

Via The Activists

Monstersanto

Carl Bernstien on...

How you 'feeling?'

Obama killed Usama

Bush Knew

Chamber Myths Debunked

US CHAMBER AND FOREIGN MONEY...

Deposit

TEA PARTY RACISM: What The Media Won't Show You About Teabagger Racism

Americanstomach.com

Da south... just because

Abdulmutallab could not have blown up plane

O'Keefe's mug shot, the face of modern conservatism

Good Riddance, Aughts!

OK...Jaun Cole put it all together here at Informed Comment

Top Ten Worst Things about the Bush Decade;Or, the Rise of the New Oligarchs

Grind the press...

Time-line: Bush-Wall Street Corrupt Housing Crisis

driftglass

Rep. Alan Grayson on the Situation Room

Rep. Alan Grayson's apology

Alan Grayson on the GOP Health Care Plan: "Don't Get Sick! And if You Do Get Sick, Die Quickly!"'

ACORN in a government fraud perspective

Maddow Puts ACORN Scandal In Perspective!

Racisim Code Words

driftglass...

The Return of McCarthyism

Joe Conason Calls Right-Wing Filmmakers' ACORN Screed "Propaganda" NOT "Journalism"

Shoeman Speaks...

Virginia Organizing Project Executive Director Arrested at Anthem for Asking About Insurance Rates

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow - Frank Schaeffer: GOP sub-culture is "a fifth column of insanity"

Michael Moore Says Capitalism Killed Newspaper Industry

Corporate Teabaggers Protesters Protest D.C. Metro Service

The Word - Let Freedom Ka-Ching

silent observance

Rumsfeld 2.3 Trillion Dollars missing Pentagon 1 DAY b4/9-11

Iraqi shoe thrower being showered by ‘offers and gifts’ upon his anticipated release from prison.

The FBI and a 14 year-old Phone Phreak

HypnObama

Smart Dog Shoots Pool

Speaking of Dim Some

in case you need some signs

WE are all torture victims now....

Doctors Are Mad As Hell

20 largest cases of companies bilking the government.

Orlando Brewing Choir - Beer Parody

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New 'shock' report into Irish church sex abuse

Former CIGNA Executive Hails 'SiCKO' on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!

A Secret Exposed -- Medicare Works Better Than Private Insurance

Dennis Kucinich Sets Dr. David Gratzer Straight

Lying Liar and the Lies she tells me...

Republican'ts should never read ...

Weapons expert Dr David Kelly was writing a book ....

"There are things we will be doing on Election Day that haven't even been dreamt of yet."

The Golden Boy Destroyer....

Glenn Beck Agrees US Needs Another Al Qaeda Attack To Protect Us From Immigrants?

Madoff Investor Received 1000% Return.?.

Pessimistic executives cash out of shares

Mark Jacoby - Head of CA GOP Voter Registration Firm Pleads Guilty to Voter Registration Fraud

Mission Accomplished!

Iraqi Oil Minister accused of mother of all sell-outs

The jokes are writing themselves...again.

Great Pic!

Bill O'Reilly 'Goes Nuts' On Joan Walsh of Salon.com Over Dr. Tiller Controversy

Krugman on CONservative Driven Hate and Murder

RIGHT-WING VIOLENCE....

Sean Hannity interviews Sarah Palin

Suicidal behavior in the 101st on Fort Campbell is bad,"

Greenspan as Inspector Renault: "I'm Shocked, Shocked"

History of Weed

Endemic Abuse At Irish Catholic Care Homes

Photo of US soldier in pink boxers turns iconic

driftglass...

Kafka for Dummies: the Absurd Debate over Torture!

Army suicide rate set to surpass 2008's record

"The Fox TeeVee Family"

Top Ten Worst Things about the Bush Decade;
Or, the Rise of the New Oligarchs