NaTionS oF RuMi

Myth Exposed; Governtmnet regulation caused the economic crisis

2011-12-23T20:29:00.000-05:00

The audit over at the CJR has a great piece, honoring a great piece, the pionts out a handful of holes in the Republican myth that claims the federal governments bloated regulatory agenda caused the economic crisis, specifically via Fannie and Freddie, when they were forced to lend to those who could not afford to pay back loans.

The first thing I ever read to poke holes in this myth argued that the regulation did not force loans to be given out willy nilly, to anyone. The regulation merely said that after decades of banks refusing to go into low income neighborhoods causing them to further deteriorate and giving them no hope of rebuilding that the banks had to open up shop in those neighborhooods. But they did not have to give out loans to unqualified individuals. There are still many who qualify for loans in poor in communities.

Now to the audit for more proof.

here were contemporaneous housing bubbles in countries like the UK, France, and Australia, that are beyond the reach of Fannie, Freddie, and the Community Reinvestment Act.
It points to the gigantic commercial real estate bubble that inflated at the same time as the housing bubble, with no government aid, and collapsed worse than housing.
Blaming the GSEs is seriously problematic too. While they certainly contributed to the size of the bubble, it was on the margins of a private-securitization-driven bubble. Frannie-bought loans were also far better than private-sector loans, defaulting at about half the rate of private-sector loans.
The CRA thing is particularly funny since the Federal Reserve, of all bank-friendly places,found that “areas disproportionately served by lenders covered by the CRA experienced lower delinquency rates and less risky lending.”

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/bloomberg_takes_on_the_big_lie.php#comments

Regulatory Agencies

2011-05-03T09:00:00.000-04:00

It could be argued that our nations regulatory agencies hold more power than any branch of government. Congress can pass any laws they want but the regulatory agencies will pick and choose what it enforces.

For example you have individuals like Allen Greenspan who are in charge of the Federal Reserve Bank. Allen Greenspan has said many times he does not believe in regulating the market, yet a large role and responsibility of the FED is to "supervise and regulate banking institutions".

So is it illegal for the most powerful banking regulator in the nation to not regulate? Is it illegal for the President to even nominate someone to do a job who doesn't believe in doing said job?

Lets take this pattern and apply it to another situation. Imagine the police department hiring a drug enforcement agent who does not believe in regulating drug trafficking, or a homicide detective who didnt believe in enforcing our nations murder laws, or a traffic cop who didnt believe in enforcing our traffic laws. Sounds crazy right. That shit would never happen.

So how the hell does it happen with the largest most powerful institutions in our country, the one's that regulate Wall Street where our retirements are kept, the EPA who make sure our air and water is safe, the FDA who make sure our food supply is not poisoned.

Inside Look at DC

2011-04-28T11:05:00.000-04:00

Reading an article about the battle on capitol hill over the fee's credit card company's charge stores for credit card transactions when an anoynamous senator weighs in on how Washington really operates,

"The fights down here can be put in two or three categories:

The big greedy bastards against the big greedy bastards;

the big greedy bastards against the little greedy bastards;

and some cases even the other little greedy bastards against the other little greedy bastards.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/28/swipe-fees-interchange-banks-merchants_n_853574.html

The People's Budget

2011-04-27T11:54:00.001-04:00

The main Politcal battle right now in this nation is not what it should be.

If it was about the corrupt system on Wall Street that created a collapse and are now profiting off it without accountability, it would have been sufficient. (in honor of last weeks passover)

If it was about the future of our Nuclear Power Plant system around the country that is aging, and that has never created a way to safely dispose of the waste, and could lead to a disaster like we are seeing in Japan if not audited, it would have been sufficient

If it was about how millions of Americans are being illegally foreclosed on by a corrupt mortgage industry, it would have been sufficient

If it was about how we have a huge amount of unemployed workers fueling the cycle of decreasing demand which further fuels layoffs, it would have been sufficient

If it was about how we are involved in 3 wars right now costing us too many lives and too much money that we dont have, it would have been sufficient

If it wasabout how a 2010 Supreme Court decision now allows corporate american to spend unlimited amounts of undocumented money on political campaigns, but it isn't, it would have been sufficient

If it was about how corporate america has virtually taken control of our government by sponsoring elections with cold hard cash, by lobbying for laws to be passed in their favor, by lobbying for less regulation, by getting their own in top position of government regulation, and by giving million dollar jobs out to regulators and congressman once they leave the halls of government, but it isn't, it would have been sufficient

But none of these items are on top of the political agenda, instead its the budget. How much we spend.

Paul Ryan the Republican Congressman struck first with his idea of how to spend less money. He want to give out tax cuts to the rich, end medicare by having seniors go to private insurance ( we hope private insurance will take them), and cut all kinds of federal programs, that feed, educate, and cloth the poorest and weakest amongst us, which is exactly what Jesus would have done.

The President is willing to negotiate but refuses to end medicare.

But the third way that is not being discussed is the People Budget created by the largest coalition in the House, the Progressive caucus. And remember in 2010 when the Democrats lost many House seats, most were from the Blue dog (corporate sponsored) coaliton, and very very few from the Progressive Caucus.

The People Budget is the most rational thing to come out of Washington in years.
The plan calls for
-invests 1.4 trillion in education, and job creation
-ends bush tax cut
-increases taxes on millionaires to 49%,
-tax capital gains as income instead of less than income
-close corporate tax loopholes,
-end big oil subsidies
-start taxing the derivative market
-public option for health insurance, forcing competition
-every one pays into social security not just the first 100k of income
-nothing happens to medicare and medicaid
Resulting in a a surplus by 2021.

The only problem with this besides it making perfect sense, is that it will take money out of the pocket of those that run this country.

Minimum Wage

2011-04-26T12:06:00.001-04:00

Thom Hartmann points out that every single time except for once, the federal government chose to raise the minimum wage the result was a growing economy and job creation.
He also points out the example of Henry Ford, who started his company by paying employees a wage where they could not afford to buy the product they made, the ford car. His solution was to increase their pay, making it possible for his worker to buy his car.

Guess what happened? When the worker could afford the car they bought them, the increase in sales was enourmous where ford had to expand his business and hire more workers. Thus disproving the Republican myth that if you make the CEO spend more money he will automatically fire more workers. This is the reasont the modern coproration uses to stop new regulation, to stop new taxes, to fight for tax cuts.

Remember its just a myth that was proven by one Henry Ford, who spent more money on his labor and was rewarded with increased demand and sales and profits.

So next time you here this Republican myth I mentioned above, ask for an example, a real world example of their myth occuring, if they cannot come up with one, its just a talking point.

Corporate Power

2011-04-26T12:00:00.000-04:00

Just watched another great episode of Thom Hartmanns tv show, The Big Picture, on RT TV on youtube where he talks about the rise of corporate influence in this country. He said until the 1890's it was illegal for corporations to lobby politicians, or attempt to influence any election or law, the punishment was jail time and the corporation would be dissolved.

But starting will Abraham Lincoln, who gave out tons of free land to the Railroad barons, so they could built a trancontinental railroad, so the North could win the Civil War, corporate power grew among the barons to where a "small group of men became the wealthiest men on the planet."

"With that wealth they bribed a few members of the Supreme Court so they would rule that corporations had the same rights as people, so there money could influence elections and law."

In 1870's a Wisconsin State Supreme Court Justice warned his law students, basically saying corporate power is building, for economic and political power,

"The question shall arise in your day, which shall rule, wealth or man, which shall lead, money or intellect, who shall fill public stations, educated and patriotic free men or the fuedal serfs of corporate capital." Edward G. Ryan

The Railroad barons than gained citizenship status for all corporations when in a lawsuit that went to the Supreme Court, a court reported noted the citenship-like rights belonging to the corporation.

2010 citizens united Supreme Court officially allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the political process and not report who they donate the money to. The result was 300 million dollars was spent on the 2010 political campaign, up from 60 million in 2006.

State Banks

2011-04-20T09:39:00.000-04:00

"Not a single North Dakota bank has failed in more than 10 years. By contrast, in the other 49 states—all of which lack their own bank—nearly 300 banks failed in 2009 and 2010 alone. "

PBI Newsletter

Who/What creates job's

2011-04-18T11:41:00.000-04:00

One of the strongest arguments form the right is the cut taxes for the rich because they create jobs. It makes sense on the surface, if Joe Ceo has to pay an extra million in taxes he cannot use that money for other things like pay salaries for a few extra workers. But there is always more to the story.

Watching an interview with the president of the AFL-CIO reminded me of what really drives companies to hire employees, and while the CEO does hire and does help the economy out by hiring, this idea is just a reaction to other market forces. Mainly demand.

A company is only interested in hiring if they have an increase in demand that they cannot meet, so they hire someone knew, meeting the extra demand, thus making them more money. But when times get slow, demand slows, why do I, as a CEO need to keep extra people around. You can give me all the tax cuts and interest free loans in the world but why would I hire someone to make something that I cant sell? Why would I hire a new home salesman if homes are not selling?

According the AFL-CIO consumer buying makes up 72% of our economy. So to get our economy going we need to be buying things. If we don't work we cant buy. If you give corporations billions in tax cuts and free money they still will not hire anyone because no one is buying. But if you give everyone who is out of work billions they will buy and than companies will hire.

But our leaders are not interested in clever ideas that will actually work, and solve large issues of the day. They would much rather throw money at the leadership/wealthy class, than give it to the people that can fix this economy. The Federal Reserve Bank has already given the large banks and other large corporations access to trillions in interest free loans, yet they are sitting on the money, they will not invest it because there there is no demand.

Its almost like the middle class is the secret to fixing the economy but our political leaders cannot get them involved, because they do not support political campaigns in huge amounts. And the ones that do support the campaigns in large amounts are constantly whispering in our leaders ears, "give us more money, give us more tax breaks, give us less regulations", a steady drumbeat, a steady mantra, like the march into the Iraq war.

But after 30 years of tax cuts for the rich and less regulation for corporations we have a growing Oligarchy and shrinking middle class. We need strength from both of these groups to be strong nation.

The same thing happened with the economic crash of 2008. A bubble built around home mortgages and when it popped there was so much leverage on Wall Street that the stock market crashed, (leverage meaning companies would put up 1 million dollars as collateral and bet 100 billion dollars on mortgage stocks), when the banks crashed loans became hard to find and companies went under, jobs were lost and people did two things, stopped paying taxes and asked for unemployment benefits, this put a strain on our federal and state budget.

So how would you fix this? Would you create jobs? Bail out Wall Street? Ball out homeowners about to go under? Help everyone?

Our leaders chose to Bail out Wall Street and what they are doing now, cutting our spending.
Wall Street is now back on top making more money than before the crash and since no one went to jail for all their illegal activity it now says that even when you take our nation to the brink of collapse you will still highly benefit from it. They are sitting on trillions in interest free loans and refuse to loan it out, or help homeowners facing foreclosure. This has only helped part of our economy.

The plan I like that no one talked about in DC was to go to the point in the economic food chain where this whole mess started, the home mortgages. You give them the money, with some type of string attached, and they have to use the money to pay their mortgage. Since this started the collapse this will end it, because the money will make its way through the whole food chain.

The banks will get their money back in both scenarios.But, in the one chosen by DC we have the money starting and ending with the banks resulting in one part of the economy recovering and the rest not. In the other we have the money hitting every spot in the economic food chain and all areas recovering.

It reminds me of a nature channel documentary I saw about Yellowstone. When it was being populated with animals they wolf, the main predator of the landscape was left for last. And before they introduced them the rangers began to have problems with the landscape. Parts of the plant life were dying. This lead to other animals dying who needed the plant life. And wouldn't you know it was all because of the wolf. Once the wolf was introduced to the land they began to hunt the dominant herbivore, elk or something. When they elk were not hunted they stood in one area and ate all the plant life and moved on, but now that they were being hunted they grazed a little and moved on. This allowed the land to recover.

The Republican Party today would have been against the Wolf being brought back to the landscape, they would have argued that it is an aggressive hunter who would have further disrupted the landscape. And they would have benefited one animal to the detriment of the whole landscape.

Middle Class

2011-04-18T11:11:00.000-04:00

The middle class is definitely being attacked. They had to fight to become the middle class. And today they will have to fight to keep it.

A new chart has popped up showing how much pay rose for middle class and upper class workers, from two time periods, 1950-1980, and 1981-2008. The results are stagering,

Middle Class salaries rose 75% from 50'-80', while the upper 1% rose 80%. Pretty even. But from 80'-08'
Middle class salaries rose 1%, while the upper 1% salaries rose 400%.

This is pretty staggering and shows what is going on this country. This shoots a big whole through Republican ideology, that says if you work hard you will make your own way. This picture shows that its pretty damn hard to make your own way if you are not in the upper 1% of wage earners. Its pretty hard to earn your way if you do not make massive campaign donations.

There is no way you can make the argument that the upper 1% of wage earners just flat out works that much harder than the average joe to warrant 400% wage increase compared to 1%.

And its just plain unfair to label someone who addresses this issue someone involved in class warfare, or a socialist. These types of numbers are not going to create a strong America if they are kept where they are.

Weak Democrats

2011-04-13T09:35:00.000-04:00

The Democratic Party is so weak. The only discussion going on in Washington right now is about the deficit. We spend more than we take in, and it needs to be fixed now we are told. But who is pushing this policy? It looks like the Republicans are. So why are the Democrats falling over themselves to work on ideas the Republicans want to tackle when the Democrats still run the Senate and the White House.

A simple poll will tell you the American people want the economy fixed and they want jobs. God forbid any politician actually listen to the American people. How do the Democrats expect to win in 2012 running on cutting spending when no one is working.

Dean Bakers budget talk

2011-04-11T20:05:00.000-04:00

Ways to come up with money for our Government
1. Break up large banks who can now borrow at zero interest rate. How can anyone else compete.
2.Big Pharma's patent laws means we spend 300 billion a year on drugs that should cost 30b.
3.Give medicare vouchers with option of purchasing European healthcare.
4. Government should rewrite the rules of CEO's with the same furver they are attacking union workers.
5. Reign in military spending.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/its-time-for-representati_b_844411.html

and dont forget the others I have mentioned before;
Raise tax rates on corporations and millionaires
close tax loopholes
close offshore tax havens
Address big oil and big agriculture subsidies

What does the Republican party want

2011-04-11T17:59:00.000-04:00

Mike Lux tells us;

"The Ryan budget, Cantor's quote, and Scott Walker's war on unions are just the latest examples of radical conservatism's war on the American middle class. Conservatives want a country where the wealthy and powerful are free to do what they want when they want. They want unbridled capitalism with all restraints taken off, the way America was in the 1920s -- no, better make it the Social Darwinist 1880s, before Teddy Roosevelt came along and did too much trust-busting, food safety legislation, and national park creation. Conservatives want an America where there is complete "freedom" for the rich and powerful, but if you aren't in that category you are on your own. This battle is for the future of the American middle class, and we'd better win it. "

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/the-cal-coolidgepaul-ryan_b_845762.html

The budget

2011-04-11T17:37:00.000-04:00

Mike lux, over at huffington post, formerly of open left, has some great arguments about Paul Ryans budget proposal. Which, in a nut shell, is aimed at far rich, millionaire constituents.

"The Ryan budget is a remarkable document: all of its budget cuts hammer working class families, seniors, and students -- while all of its tax cuts go straight to millionaires. It does almost nothing to deal with the deficit, yet still manages to deal a death blow to virtually every member of the working middle class and everyone trying to work their way into it

The good news, for those who are millionaires? They get so many economic benefits it will be hard to keep track of them all.

You can easily balance the budget in less than 10 years, even including those interest payments, simply by cutting the waste in military spending, reforming the government contracting procedures, ending tax loopholes for investment bankers and offshore companies, ending subsidies to oil companies and big agribusinesses, taxing speculative financial trades, and having millionaires pay taxes at the same rate they did under Ronald Reagan.

You can easily balance the budget in less than 10 years, even including those interest payments, simply by cutting the waste in military spending, reforming the government contracting procedures, ending tax loopholes for investment bankers and offshore companies, ending subsidies to oil companies and big agribusinesses, taxing speculative financial trades, and having millionaires pay taxes at the same rate they did under Ronald Reagan.

The Ryan budget has nothing -- not a single frickin' thing -- to do with cutting the federal deficit. It is all about income redistribution"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/ryan-gop-budget_b_846907.html

What defecit?

2011-04-08T18:45:00.001-04:00

Read a great post on the openleft.org blog, that is sadley closing its doors. I really enjoy their writing. They always back up their arguments with real world facts, so it was a great place to learn from.

They are saying its not the deficit stupid. There is no deficit. The wealthy land owning aristocracy that built and still run this nation along with their apprentices in Congress are finally doing what they always wanted to do, take more away from everyone who is not a millionaire, and give more to millionaires. Makes perfect sense. If you dont think about it.

Watch my actions not my words.
We are told their is a war on terrorists and our nation is in danger, we get two wars in the middle east. But a contradiction is that we had no real investigation into the 9/11 attacks, or how 20 something levels of security all fell asleep behind the switch board, resulting in 9/11. Plus we have an extremely porious southern border that is not a concern to our leaders. This says to me we are not really in danger.

We have an economic collapse not seen since the Great Depression. We are told if we do not give trillions of dollars to the banks that caused the collapse, interest free, than our economy will be in trouble. But when millions lose their jobs, and are kicked out of there homes, and taxes cannot be paid, and the drain on social safety net services increases, we do nothing.
Now how can we be so concerned about one section of the economic model, and turn our shoulder to the other. It looks like our leaders could careless about the state of the economy, as long as they survive.

So call me crazy, but when i see our leaders in washington, whome all happen to be millionares, tell us our nation spends too much money and we need to conserve, right after they pass a tax cut, i have to burst out laughing.

You see where I am headed, no? So if you lost your job, and no one is hiring, and want unemployment, your probably not going to get it, because they tell us we have to tighten our belts.

You say your in a union and you want to negotiate as a large group to get better pay? Not in Wisconsin you can't. We need to tighten our belts.

Your a senior and you get medicare, sorry again, you will have to get less.

But if your a millionaire and you want a tax cut, you bet your sweet ass your going to get one. Because no millionaire should have to sacrifice in these times.

That article I read said if our leadrs claimed their was a dangerous green cheese on the moon they would argue the only way to protect the country would be by cutting medicare, union pensions, and tax cuts for the rich.

brooksley born

2011-04-05T17:01:00.001-04:00

Saw a great documentary last night produced by PBS Frontline, called the Warning, about one person in Government regulation who saw the economic collapse of 2008 coming way back in the Clinton administration.

Brooksly Born was a derivitive attorney for 20 years before being tapped by Bill Clinton to head up a financial regulatory agency that dealt specifically with Derivatives, the same items that caused or greatly enhanced the crash.

Her most reasonable argument, to make a law so the regulators would know the activity of hundreds of trillions of dollars of financial, derivative transactions was not only disagreed with by Clinton's other financial advisers but was vehemently attacked.

His other advisers were Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers, all of whom worked for and loved private enterprise, to the point that during Alan Greenspan's first meeting with Born, he told her he thought the markets needed zero regulation.

All the parties mentioned were brought in front of Congress to discuss the ideas of not only new regulation, but just to have this new market report in, as to see what was going on. Born was murdered, in Congress, by Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, and many in Congress. Her hands were tied.

Even after a hedge found imploded because Born's advise was not followed, she was still chased out of Washington for here crazy idea of wanted to watch over a huge unchecked area of the market.

Ten years later the entire market suffered a blow that would tsunami around the world, all because free market radicals who were in bed with corporate America refused to watch over or enforce any type of normal rules on a section of the market.

Its like street level crime, imagine some rapists were so organized that they lobbied for laws that would prevent anyone from calling the police when a rape was committed. It makes as much sense as that. Both wall street non-regulation and decriminilazing rape would hurt communities and people alike.

So every time you hear a story about deregulation regarding wall street or economic markets, substitute the word Rape for economic markets.

Example; We cannot regulate wall street after the crash it will hurt the markets
Substitution; we cannot criminalize rape just because many people are being raped, it would break of the family unit.
Did i convince you?
Watch the front line
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/

Deficit

2011-03-29T11:26:00.000-04:00

A lot of heat has been coming out of Washington DC and other states lately about the deficit. We need to cut spending is the mantra. So where do we cut from , a) everywhere as to be fair b)from the poor and middle class because they do not fund elections c) from the rich who got us into this economic turmoil and who are not suffering from it anymore. BBBBBBBB

Why would we stick it to the still suffering poor and middle class? The mantra on tv is because those damn unions. They are getting paid too much, they are taking advantage. Its bs.

Its bs because the first logical place to get money, in an economic crisis, is to see who caused the crisis, Wall Street, and the mortgage industry. Next lets see if any group has rebounded from the economic crisis, and once again we see Wall Street, hmm. Than I would look at those who dont pay any taxes, like the vast amounts of corporations.

Just to recap, we have one group who caused an economic meltdown, yet that same group recovered from the meltdown while most in the country have not, and we also have many corporations not paying their fair amount of taxes. We also spend more than we take in. So the answer to solve this should not be to take it out of the unions and middle class, by attacking pensions, social security, and medicare.

But attacking pensions, social security and medicare does fit in with 30 years worth of public policy to slowly whittle away the middle class, according to Dean Baker;

"And this upward redistribution (of wealth over the past 3 decades) was brought about by deliberate policy. We pursued a trade and high dollar policy that was intended to put downward pressure on the wages of manufacturing workers. The Federal Reserve Board deliberately kept unemployment higher than necessary in order to weaken workers bargaining power. We extended patent monopolies to allow drug companies to jack up prices, raking in hundreds of billions a year. And, we gave the Wall Street banks the benefit of "too big to fail" status so they can borrow with a government subsidy."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/the-deficit-hawks-target_b_841732.html

Fox news

2011-03-16T10:37:00.000-04:00

Some idiot on the news yesterday was talking about power plants, nuclear ones and said any problem that occurs in the US with them can be blamed on regulation, because what the hell does the government know about nuclear power plants. He went on to argue that the best regulation is self regulation by industry, because if there is a disaster only they will lose out in revenue and no company wants that, so that is there motivation.

This is the most laughable argument in the world.
There was no such thing as self regulation on Wall Street ever, which lead to the economic meltdown in 2008.
There was no such thing as self regulation on the Oil Rig in the Gulf.
In both instances industry took blatantly dangerous risk, knowing full well the worst case scenario would hurt many people even entire nations, no one cared.
Wall Street lost a lot of money but who cares because the individual CEO and his board made a killing, and the tax payer was forced to bail out the institutions.
With BP oil we see the same thing, billions in damages that they will fight paying for decades.

The Exxon Valdez never paid there lost lawsuit for there spill 20 years ago.

Microsoft lost an anti-trust lawsuit to the Clinton administration, and Bush came in and threw out the case, The case was already over. Microsoft lost. The only part left was to cut the check to the government. And Bush went all Brooklyn and sad fughetaboutit.

Corporations and CEO's and boards have zero obligation to the United States, if they could make a buck burning the country to the ground they would. As they have with my few examples.

Japan

2011-03-15T10:24:00.000-04:00

We think about our health all the time. Eating good food, drinking clean water, detoxing our system from the junk in the air that we cannot control, and now Japan is being flooded with toxic radiation. U.S. Navy helicopters have detected radiation 60 miles north of the site, and aircraft carriers have detected radiation 100 miles east.
on democracy now's website explains the situation like this;

"When the reactor shuts down, what that means is that the uranium atom doesn’t split anymore. But these pieces that are left behind are still radioactive, and they generate about five percent of the reactor’s heat. And you’ve got to dump that heat for as long as a year or two or three. So, what’s happened is that there has been no way to remove that heat, and that’s caused the nuclear fuel to hit 2,200 degrees. At that point, the nuclear fuel begins to suck up the oxygen atoms in water. Water is H2O. And that gives off hydrogen gas. So the hydrogen explosions that we’re seeing at two of these reactors are an indication that the water is being stripped of its oxygen and creating hydrogen. So, the cores are uncovered, and when the cores are uncovered, unfortunately, that’s what happens. Now, the problem in the long haul is that now that these cores have been uncovered and there’s no way to cool them, they will have to continuously vent these containments. And as the Times said, you’re not going to get back into these villages in the next week or two. It could easily be months, if not years, before these villages can be inhabited again."

Some information i have found posted on facebook by Earth Nourished Women;

"Nutritional support for radiation exposure - Turmeric, triphala, whole grains, sea vegetables, miso, dandelion root, sulfur rich vegetables like broccoli and dark leafy greens, medicinal mushrooms, spirulina & chorella, Rosemary." (from Barefoot Gardeners Organic Central Florida)

I wrote something on here about another energy disaster in Tennessee where a natural wall of earth containing a pool of toxic chemicals broke and flooded a small town. The very minimal regulations created by corrupt politicians who worked hand and hand with the industry they were supposed to be supervising were being minimally followed and no one took notice. Well actually activists took notice, locals took notice, but leaders and governments officials did nothing.

That article had me research and learn about the entire coal power plant industry and that from every stage in the process of removing coal from the ground, delivering coal to power plants, and burning the coal into the air, it is an unsafe and unhealthy process. Now we learn that the new technology that was supposed to replace coal is even more unsafe.

Maybe we need to rethink our whole energy paradigm. We have a Tennessee power plant disaster a few years back, Gulf oil drilling disaster last year, Japanese Nuclear disaster this year, once a year a coal mine collapses and a dozen souls die, this is all the direct things we here about. We can also include all the rivers and air and drinking water and bathing water that is being poisoned.

Maybe power plants should not be on the planet. maybe we need to switch to green types of energy, like solar, wind, and waves. Maybe everyone needs their own solar/wind generator at home and on their cars.

And to all the people that think this is unreasonable ask yourself this, would you like work in a nuclear power plant where the core is melting? Would you like to dig in a coal mine a mile deep in the earth, breathing in that shit, and being prone to mine collapses? Would you like to live in a community downwind of a coal power plant, breathing in that thick coal dust?

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/14/japan_facing_biggest_catastrophe_since_dawn

War on Terror 2011

2011-01-22T21:58:00.000-05:00

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2076-speech-pathology-rain-puddles-in-heaven-hellfire-on-earth.html

More drone strikes in Pakistan. Corporate run US media quickly notes militants were killed. Than, in the same article says the identities of the four killed men are unknown. But we know they are our enemies because....?

Wiki-leaks

2010-12-08T16:16:00.000-05:00

had to post this in its entirety, great writing

"I am Julian Assange.

I want information so that I can hold my government accountable. If my country acts improperly and in my name, I want the proof. I want to know if there actually is no evidence proving weapons of mass destruction. I want to know if America is working with Israel to overthrow Iran's leadership. I want data that has not been spun by reporters that work for publishers and broadcasters with political and business goals that conflict with the facts. I want to know.

I am Julian Assange because I know unfettered information is valuable to democracy and a peaceful world. I can make the best decisions with the most knowledge. I can vote for the best candidates. I can support the smartest policies to help my country and the world. I am not naïve; I know that not every operation can be transparent but I have a right to know its outcome and how it has affected my country and me.

I do not believe Julian Assange has done anything wrong. The cables that have been published have all been printed in newspapers and redacted to protect individuals at risk. I do not want my country to prosecute a man whose actions are changing the way we get information and how we make critical decisions. I now know that my president and my country's military have not been honest about the war in Afghanistan. I know that my country has killed civilians and that we have refused to acknowledge our mistakes. I have learned that our allies are secretly consorting with our enemies.

I am also Pfc. Bradley Manning. I know that if I saw the disturbing information come across my desk that I would have confronted the conflict between my oath of service to my country and the immorality of its behavior. I do not believe I would have been able to ignore American helicopters gunning down journalists carrying cameras. I believe I would have acted on my conscience and found a way to reveal the facts. There was a reporter at the My Lai massacre in Vietnam but there was only a gun camera on the US helicopter in Iraq. And the Internet. And Bradley Manning.

I believe that governments are out of control and citizens have a decreasing belief that they can influence decisions. WikiLeaks and the Internet are empowering individuals and groups with information. Julian Assange and Bradley Manning are the first two faces and voices in a crowd that will soon be too big to control. Their arrests and charges and even prosecution will only spawn a broader resistance against war and deception and corruption. The Internet is now the reporter. This is the way the world is. I do not want to hear that there will always be wars and spying and death. I want information to prevent them and to build peace.

I am saddened that Australia's government is once more acting as a lapdog for American interests and is not demanding sovereign rights for one of its citizens. I am also distressed that the president of my country who ran for office promising a transparent government is trying to find a way to prosecute a foreign national, and is preventing Pfc Manning from speaking with his family. WikiLeaks has shown there is an America in civics textbooks and an America that functions differently in the real world. Adequate information might move us closer to the ideal. I no longer trust my president. I do not trust my congress. I place my trust in facts and I do not get them from most of the media. But I still want to know.

I am Julian Assange. And if you care about the truth, you are, too."

James Moore

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/i-am-julian-assange_b_793583.html

Wiki-leaks

2010-12-08T16:14:00.000-05:00

So this guy who founded wikileaks,a place to dump classified information to blow the whistle on corruption, and abuse has just been placed on interpol's most wanted list in connection to a rape. The US government has been pressing hard, on Sweden, the nation where he lives, to send this guy to the US for prosecution. And now finally, the US military juggernot will get its way.

I thought interpol only deals with international criminals, some of the worst of the worst, since when do they deal with rape cases?

American Power

2010-12-08T12:36:00.000-05:00

"The United States simply hasn't figured out how to handle the enormous power it has. With each succeeding president, it seems to get more confused... The Strength of the United States limits its options, just as weakness limits other nations options."

George Friedman
www.stratfor.com

Wiki-leaks

2010-12-04T11:08:00.000-05:00

a great post about the leaks, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/wikileaks-and-the-myth-of_b_791740.html

some ideas to think about
-if journalism in american had been doing its job instead of focusing on the kardashians we would probably have know about all this information already,
-leaks have the opportunity to save lives, like the millions of iraqi's killed during our unwarrented, invasion. Leaks and good journalism could have exposed the bullshit story bush/cheney sold us.

Mid terms

2010-11-13T17:26:00.000-05:00

The conservative's are laying it on heavy, "this election is a repudiation of liberal values". But it seems its just another case of the country being fed up with the leadership. If you look at the Democratic losses in the House, most are blue dogs, conservative, corporate cheerleader types. The progressive wing of the party lost few seats.

Lesson-dont listen to anything Sean Hannity says.

Banks complain about Regs

2010-11-12T13:04:00.000-05:00

After tanking the world economy and ruining the lives of many average joe's, and recieving trillions from the US government with barely any string attached, the Bankers of the US are complaining about the one regulation that will force them to make the tiniest change to the way they do business. Have more cash on hand.

The banks are still living in the pre crash mindset (see what I did their) that they can do whatever they want, like continue the policy where they can lend out so many times the amount of cash (or assets) they have on hand. So now when the government tells them they have to keep more cash on hand they start crying about how bad its going to get, for the small business man.

But the logic is off. A goldman Sachs op ed states, if banks are forced to hold more capitol, the result will be larger rates on loans, resulting harder times for the small business. If they talk about the hardship on the average joe than everyone will support their perspective.

But come on. Its bullshit. No one is forcing banks to raise rates. Banks are punishing small businesses on their own. Its like a 12 year old saying to their parents, if you don't raise my allowance i will beat up my younger sister. Who's fault would it be when the younger sister gets beat up?

These banks deserve a lot more oversight, regulation, rules and supervision, for without us, the great American taxpayer they would have died in bankruptcy.

The government should hit back and say for every rate increase you place on small business, we the government will place that tax on you, than a tax deferment would be given to the small business, to the right the wrong,

Deficit Commission

2010-11-11T14:53:00.001-05:00

I am fuming right now. The President created a deficit commission to address the deficit, they are stacked with congressman, and wall street insiders. Their preliminary recommendations, surprise surprise, is to attack the middle and low class. Increase the age you can get Social Security, decrease the benefits, decrease the benefits of medicare, and end middle class tax deductions. Awesome buddy. way to attack those who are hurting the most. The only people they left out are the soldiers. The fact that their is even talk of cutting the deficit at the same time we are hearing Obama has caved in and will support the bush tax cuts!! Are you joking? Almost a trillion dollars in new spending? Mostly for the Rich? If they pass that bush tax cut extension than there is no factual way they care at all about the deficit and so scrap the commission. And if they care about the deficit, than the first thing that should happen is to not spend a trillion dollars on tax cuts. This is one of the craziest things I have ever heard. Its like saying I am going to start saving for a house, but after I open and max out ten credit cards, and damn, why cant i ever save enough to buy the house.

Economy Stupid

2010-11-10T14:58:00.001-05:00

Economist talking about the economy, busting some myths.
-most of the deficit is not from government spending or the bailouts, James says those account for 10% of the deficit, the rest is from a the huge decrease in tax revenue, this coming from an IMF report.
-The way you fix a deficit is by spending to spur business. Either, like WWII, with government spending, or like the 90' internet boom, with private bank spending. Both time periods saw credit driven economic growth, and there was no public sector cuts.
-"Entitlement cuts, no matter how sever can never result in deficit reduction"

http://www.newdeal20.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/deficitcommissionrv.pdf

Obama blew the Election

2010-11-09T11:14:00.001-05:00

The commentators are saying the 2010 election was all about the economy and Obama blew it. Just create jobs is all he had to do. Stimulate the economy. And he had a great Democratic model to follow, FDR. Our infrastructure need renovations, and one idea Obama even ran on, we need a green revolution in this country. Wind power, solar power, wave power. We could create a whole new industry in this country which would bring a ridiculous number of jobs. We could be world leaders in something besides war again. We could rebuild the manufacturing base that once made this nation great, thus rebuilding the power of unions.Maybe we should get the unions to push for this, they have the power, and they need more power as theirs has been dwindling since the 80's.

Why we wow the world anymore. Why can't we build a train that goes from New York to California in one hour damnit.

Pension investments

2010-11-06T22:26:00.001-04:00

The original purpose of the stock market, so i have read, was for companies to go public to raise money for the future. Say i own a car company and i want to build a second manufacturing plant. I know the plant will mean more money but i can't afford to build it. So i sell stock, raise money, build the new plant, make more money, stock prices go up, investors make money. So the original intent was to fincance industry. Today its not the case, most money in the stock market goes into speculating, like gambling, investors care little about aiding industry. They just want that quick buck.

After that set up, my thought is about pension funds. When i think of a pension, i think of industry, electrical unions, autoworkers union, teachers unions. And i am sure these pensions are invested in wall street, not in the old way, to fund industry, but in the new way, to speculate and make a quick buck. I even read a story about the mortgage crisis of a school who used its pension funds to by mortgage securities, that turned out to be worthless.

So I'm thinking, why not use pension funds to buy local stocks. Say I am in the NYC teachers union, I would want my money invested in NY companies, companies that will invest and build in NYC, to create a future crop of new yorkers that will join my union. But i bet this is not happening.

Hudson on the Economy

2010-11-06T21:06:00.000-04:00

" The xenophobic idea is that China is taking away American jobs, not that America’s pro-financial policies are responsible for de-industrializing the economy and shrinking domestic markets and employment here.'

"So what will emerge is a new multi-lateral financial system after all. But there will be two financial systems: one centered on the BRIC countries with strong trade balances and currency values, another system centered on the U.S. dollar. Europe is likely to be left out, and may become an economic backwater, because so much of its politics are run by U.S. aficionados. So I see a dual world monetary system and a dual world trade system operating under a different set of trade and financial rules.

U.S. diplomats no doubt will call this socialism. Other countries can reply, “What we’re doing is just what the French Physiocrats, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and the other major classical free-marketers wanted: no free lunch. If we’re socialists, what are you guys? We’re too polite to use the word, but it was used in World War II

Russian Politics

2010-11-06T17:10:00.002-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/opinion/03iht-edkhodorkovsky.html

A speech by a Russian Oligarch who was arrested on trumped up charges because he dared to speak out againt the Putin regime.

On the Hudson (professor) in Fall

2010-11-05T23:42:00.000-04:00

Professor Michael Hudson is saying things no one in the Economic realm is saying, here in American, The Federal Reserve Bank is doing whatever it can to save the big banks in America, the big banks that tanked the economy by first tanking the real estate industry.

He says Bernanke is buying US bonds, which is like flooding the country with US money, making our money cheaper, forcing our banks to go abroad to buy foreign money and foreign assets. At the same time our politicians are calling for China to raise its money value, which would make our bankers rich overnight, (because our bankers own foreign currency, if the value on foriegn currency is raised billions are made), some are calling this a currency war by devaluing the dollar. The president of Brazil said, " the last time there was a series of competitive devaluations, it ended in world war two"

Hudson says because of this currency war other nations like brazil china and russia are forming economic blocks where US currency is not being used. Some might say so what. But this is causing a further weakening of the dollar. Instead of putting the criminals in jail, America is battling the world to save its banking class.

Joseph Stiglitz " the money that was meant to be used to rescue America from its banking class is instead being used by its banking class to attack the World economy. To grow stronger we are trying to make everyone else weaker"

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/5/new_600b_fed_stimulus_fuels_fears

Midterms - 2010

2010-11-03T15:56:00.000-04:00

The stories to watch
-The Republicans won back the house
-But, as pointed out by David Sirota, conservative ballot measures were denied nationally,
-Thanks to the supreme court ruling on corporate donations toward campaigns, secret money is now allowed, the republicans are now following money through two large slush funds, the Chamber of Commerce, and Karl Roves PAC
-This is the first time corporate donations went largely to the non-incumbents. Meaning, while the Democrats dominated the House, Senate, and Presidency, corporate donors supported the minority party.

Economic conquest

2010-11-03T13:30:00.000-04:00

Some great lines from prof hudson on what is really going on with our fed and the world economy.

-"Financial conquest is seeking today what military conquest did in times past: control of land and basic infrastructure, industry and mining, banking systems and even government finances."

-"the US wants to inflate the rest of the world, while the latter is trying to deflate the US. The US must win, since it has infinite ammunition: there is no limit to the dollars the Federal Reserve can create. What needs to be discussed is the terms of the world’s surrender: the needed changes in nominal exchange rates and domestic policies around the world"

-"The major international economic question today is how such national economies can achieve greater stability by insulating themselves from these predatory financial movements."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21716

The rich get richer

2010-10-25T20:50:00.002-04:00

The number of Americans making $50 million or more, the top income category in the data, fell from 131 in 2008 to 74 last year. But that’s only part of the story.

The average wage in this top category increased from $91.2 million in 2008 to an astonishing $518.8 million in 2009. That’s nearly $10 million in weekly pay!

The total income brought home by the over-$50 million club more than tripled from 2008 despite having fewer members. Those seventy-four people brought home more money than the bottom 19 million American workers combined

http://www.cjr.org/economic_crisis/the_50_million-a-year_club_boo.php

Foreclosure

2010-10-17T22:54:00.000-04:00

Banks are in a pickle at the moment over foreclosures. They were cheating the system, those banks were. They were not even taking the time to read the paperwork, just signing foreclose after foreclosure. One bloak is said to have paid for his house in cash, and never had a morgtage, yet the banks would not be stopped and foreclose on his home they did.

One of the problems is that when the mortgages went to wall street they were chopped up to distribute risk. So 1000 individuals owned part of the mortgage. An article came out some time ago argueing that the banks would have a hard time foreclosing, because by law banks need the deed on the house to foreclose. Because of the complexity of the securitization process of these mortgages they were lost in the wind. Good for the screwed masses, bad for the banks. Great news right?

But this puzzle can reverse the winners and losers, as i was just reminded by a commenter on a post i read. What happens when a homeowner doing the right thing, finally pays off his mortgage, does he get the dead of the house? How can he if it is lost in the wind?

Sometimes the comments from an article have more information than the original article.

War

2010-10-17T00:14:00.000-04:00

"Indeed, Robert Baer – a former senior figure in the CIA – says the agency now prefers to kill a suspect than capture them and assess their guilt or find out what they know. "Targeted killings are easier for the CIA or for the military to deal with than taking someone prisoner," he explains. "No one really ever questions a killing, but when you take someone prisoner, then you are responsible for the person and then the headaches come. We have a logic which leads to more and more targeted killings."

Another shame of humanity.

http://www.johannhari.com/2010/10/15/obamas-escalating-robot-war-in-pakistan-endangers-us-all

New drilling rules in effect

2010-10-13T11:28:00.000-04:00

Thats just wonderful, new rules for offshore drilling rigs to ignore. If they ignored the last batch of rules and no one was held accountable what the bleep are new rules going to do?

Welfare State

2010-10-06T11:40:00.000-04:00

If you cry about the welfare state here in the USA you better check yourself. Many people i meet love to cry about the welfare state, but they only cry about half of the welfare, the part that goes to low income families for say rent control or food stamps or Medicaid, or to illegals, who people say "are draining our system.

If you listen to these people you are hearing only half or a third of the story. The other two thirds is the welfare that rich people get. Rich people get by far more welfare than the poor. While the rich pay more in taxes they also get a ridiculous amount of write offs. I was just reading yesterday about one government program that gives back 400 billion a year to encourage home buying and business spending, and 40% of this money is given to the richest 1%, clearly uneven distribution toward the top.

But its really no surprise that the story is the told the way it is. That the rich worked hard for theirs, while the poor or sucking the system dry. The story is always told by the winner. Think about it. All the owners and lead anchors for every major news outfit in America is rich. Every Senator and President is rich, and so is most of Congress. So why wouldn't they govern from what they know, the rich. The rich fund their compaigns, and the rich get more beneficial laws passed.

So next time someone tries to feed you garbage about the welfare in this country being out of control yet they only mention the story of those damn poor people on welfare you will know they only have part of the story.

Home burns down, Fireman watch

2010-10-06T10:47:00.000-04:00

Have not written in awhile, because its the same old news, the 50 Rich guys that run American and own congress pass laws to funnel more money and power to themselves thus taking it away from all of us, and somehow the public fights of the scraps and yells at the other political party with name calling like your a socialist or your a fascist.

So socialist, everyone calls President Obama a socialist. His damn socialist healthcare. Our damn socialist fire department. Well a town in Tennessee did something about their damn socialist fire department and now the everyone home in town pays a fee to get fire service, no fee no service. Well this played out beautifully this week. Better than any poet could have spoke about, when a home burned down as the fire department stood by and watched. You see the home did not pay their 75$ fire fee, and were thus added to a list of homes the fire department was to not service. So they showed up of course, to protect the homes of the neighbors who paid their fire tax. This is pretty crazy. What if someone died? What if a baby died in that home? Thats OK with everyone? Everyone is cool with this? This is what this town in Tennessee had in mind when they made this law? This sounds like perfect community to raise a warm loving family. Where everyone is on their own. Kids have to learn sooner or later right? We might not be able to provide you with a job, we might not be able to lend you money to go to college, we might not be able to fix your roads or bridges, we might not be able to heal you if you get sick, we might not be able to ensure the safety of your water or food, or anything that you buy, your on your own good luck,

Sincerely
The United States of America
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/firefighters-let-home-burn-after-finding-owner-didnt-pay-annual-fee/19662595?icid=main|main|dl1|sec1_lnk3|175641

Greg Palast on Ground Zero Mosque

2010-09-16T22:47:00.001-04:00

My own view? I don't want a mosque near Ground Zero; I want it right on top of Ground Zero, in the new tower, so when we go down again, we all go together.

Burning the Koran

2010-09-13T19:04:00.000-04:00

In honor of the terrorist attack on America on September 11, 2001, by a bunch of terrorists, who falsley claimed to be Muslims, an American preacher would like to burn a Koran, in a ceremony at his Church.I just will never get the logic. They hate us so we are going to hate em back? But terrorists hate us, not Muslims, no matter what fox news entertainment says. All one billion Muslims around the world do not hate us. It's hard for some of you to believe, but its true.

Chris Floyd also makes a great point, that General Petraus has spoke out against the burning of the Koran for fear it will make our troops more vulnerable to attack in foreign lands. Yet the General and his friends never thought about that when they invaded a few countries and laid waste to it, never thought that might incite violence and revenge did ya General? Burning one Koran, no good, killing millions, hey gotta do it.

Bp Oil Spill

2010-05-18T12:11:00.000-04:00

From Iraq to Wall Street, to the Tennessee sludge spill, we now have the BP mess in the Gulf. The Pattern is the same. Corporate American attempts to make as much money as possible with little thought or concern for everyone else, Governemt regulators and officials have been sponsored (bought) by Corporate America, so they choose not to regulate or keep CA to any kind of standards, until CA becomes so lax that we have a disaster effecting untold amounts of people with no end in sight.
This time we have gasoline pooring into the Gulf of Mexico, ruining the lives of the fisherman, and heading for a current that could take the oil up the east coast to towards Europe.

Rob Kall makes some great points over at, http://www.opednews.com/articles/Coverup-Govt-Denies-Any-O-by-Rob-Kall-100518-4.html

If this was done by an Arab or Persian this would be an act of terrorism. So why do we treat terrorist acts differently when done by different people.

Wall Street committed a terrorist act in 2008 when the ecomony crashed, the TVA in Tennesse committed a terrorist act when there shotty damn broke and flooded a town with poison.

Just like Howard Stern said in his movie, "a kill is a kill is a kill", a terrorist act is a terrorist act is a terrorist act!"

Also check out Greg Palast, one of the greatest reporters of our time, tells us how the Exxon Valdez spill 20 years ago in Alaska was BP's doing.

Corporate (fill in the blank)

2010-05-05T12:19:00.000-04:00

Once again we have a national disaster thanks to the single minded greed of corporations like BP oil to cut corners and not spend extra money on extra layers of safety protocals. And once Again we have a corporate sponsered US Government that does not create reality based safety laws or enforce existing safety laws for fear they will lose their corporate sponser. Just picture Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant, getting busted for cheating and going on tv to apologize to the fans (corporate sponsers). Tiger and Kobe in this scenario represent 99% of the officials in the US Government, true leadership.
The list continues; Katrina, Housing Market, Wall Street, Gulf Coast,
Lets play the game what cant they f--k up.

C. Floyd

2010-04-24T01:13:00.002-04:00

"the false narrative that is drummed into every American from birth until it becomes an integral part of their own self-image and their understanding of the outside world: the false narrative of righteous exceptionalism that underpins and "justifies" the monstrous violence of empire. This myth performs a kind of psychic and moral alchemy in the minds of Americans, transmutating the reality of bloodsoaked murder, repression and suffering into benign acts of "liberation" and "humanitarianism."

Tim Geitner

2010-01-08T10:54:00.003-05:00

So Tim Geitner, the man running the treasury department, the watchdog over the economy of the United States of America, during the worst time for our economy in 80 years. Must be a fun job.

And what was his last job that enabled Tim to be promoted to the top economic job in the land, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the supervisory body that watches of Wall Street investment houses and banks.

But wait, wall street crashes and the guy who was supposed to be making sure it didn't crash was not fired, or publicly tarred and feathered but was promoted? Sweet.

But was it really a promotion?

So far he has handed out tax payer money hand over fist to the corrupt banks that broke the law and tanked the economy, in a terrorist fashion. Than he has advised those same terrorist banks that should have been closed and who owe their life to the taxpayer not to share information with the public about what they are doing with the taxpayer money they obtained.

Wonderful. Isn't that like catching Osama Bin Laden and having the CIA advise Osama not to talk to the FBI about what he knows? I am sure that would go over real well.

This new story adds to the fire of last years story where Geitner actively worked to remove sections of a new banking bill that would have placed more restrictions on the terrorist banks to stop participating in economic terrorism and to stop rewarding the leaders of these terrorist banks with hug bonuses.

And with all this gross misconduct Tim Geitner still holds a job. So my thoughts are this, was he given this job because of all the power and prestige? On the outside it looks like a promotion and a reward kind of a job.

Or is this a punishment job. You will not pass go you will not collect 200 dollars, you will not be fired, but you will continue to screw the American public and be the public face of government corruption?

Chris Floyd

2009-12-31T13:19:00.001-05:00

The politcal writer Chris Floyd constantly hits home runs on his blog, empire burlesque, mostly about the abuses of the American Empire, this quote from his latest peice;

"I noted the grim irony that this principle of non-personhood had now been reintroduced into the law of the land by our first African-American president. (But this is only to be expected, given the law of opposites that so often governs American politics: only a lifelong Red-baiter like Nixon could make an opening to Communist China; only a supposed liberal like Bill Clinton could gut the federal welfare system. And only an African-American president could reintroduce the principle of slavery and get away with it. No doubt it will be a woman president who finally re-imposes a total ban on abortion."

Israel

2009-12-26T23:39:00.003-05:00

An interesting story i just read, about two women in Israel admitted into a psych ward, who used to be Massad agents (Israeli cia) , they had armed guards in the psych ward to insure that during treatment the ex-Mossad agents would not reveal state secrets, hmmm

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1888-insanity-offense-even-the-mad-must-not-speak-the-truth.html

The Economy

2009-12-21T11:36:00.002-05:00

two people I have talked to lately about the economy said we had to give the money to wall street or else the whole economy would have crashed and that Obama's economy team did a great job saving the economy. Lets break down these myths.

So maybe the first one is partially right, if we let all the wall street banks fold we might be in big trouble right now, all the jobs lost, all the stocks and retirement funds lost. But its the way we saved them that bothers me. A great headline on huffingtonpost.com today mentions how we let the arsonist (Ben Bernanke) put out the fire and we called him a hero. Ok, so the whole house didnt burn down, but there wouldnt be any freakin fire without Bernanke, Geitner, Paulson and the top executives at the big wall street, Goldman, Bank of America, Citi Group, Chase. They should all be in jail.

When rocky returned from Russia in Rocky 5 to learn his accountant was a crook and burned down his economic castle did Rocky rehire the same account to get his economic house back in order? Oh no, thats right, Rocky fired his ass.

Obama Drug Reimporation

2009-12-21T11:08:00.006-05:00

David Sirota talks about Obama's stance on drug importation from foreign countries. He campaigned in support of importing drugs for cheapers costs but recently changed his mind only to change his mind again with a speech this weekend from David Axelrod stating that the President supports cheaper drug reimportation from foreign countries.

Sirota points out how that support means nothing when the President has the power to change the law overnight,

"the president has the statutory authority right now to allow it via a

certification by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius."

So this brings up my favorite quote from John Kerry talking about George W. Bush during the Presidential debates of 2004, just because the President said something, I believe in drug importation from foreign nations, doesnt make is true. Show us through your actions Mr. President.

Oh and a side note, most of our drug manufacturers have their plants overseas, so when you here politicians talking about this issue of posibly allowing the importation of drugs from overseas, number 1 its already happening, "40 percent of medicines on the domestic market right now were manufactured overseas", David Sirota.

And number 2 the drugs Americans want to buy at a cheaper cost from overseas are made by American corporations not third rate pill chop shops. As Americans shouldnt we pay less for drugs made by American corporations and shouldnt the rest of the world pay premium prices?

Like state colleges, if you go to a New York state college but you are from out of state you pay more money in tuition. If that was the opposite and New Yorkers paid more, that would seem silly.

check out sirota;

http://www.openleft.com/diary/16601/white-house-recommits-to-pushing-drug-importation

Texas Pollution

2009-12-18T23:12:00.001-05:00

If Texas were a nation it would be in the top ten polluting nations.

Inside view of DC Politics

2009-12-16T11:05:00.001-05:00

"Defeating liberals, in as public a way as possible, has long been a central pillar of "moderate" Democratic strategy. Blue Dogs, Conservadems, the DLC and others believe that they must do everything possible to distance themselves from liberal Democrats in order to be successful. If they are viewed as regular old Democrats, and not as a new wave of bi-partisan, moderate Democrat, then they honestly believe they are screwed. Lieberman is just an especially spiteful version of this."

Chris Bowers @open left
http://www.openleft.com/diary/16508/if-progressive-want-to-kill-the-bill-they-should-support-it-as-hard-as-possible

Afghanistan for real

2009-12-13T23:19:00.002-05:00

"The US military is in Afghanistan for two reasons. First to restore and control the world’s largest supply of opium for the world heroin markets and to use the drugs as a geopolitical weapon against opponents, especially Russia. That control of the Afghan drug market is essential for the liquidity of the bankrupt and corrupt Wall Street financial mafia."

"More land is now used for opium in Afghanistan, than for coca cultivation in Latin America.”

Thanks war on terror.

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Afghanistan/afghanistan.html

Who would dare befriend us

2009-12-13T08:54:00.002-05:00

So right now we are allegedly fighting the evil Taliban and their supporters who reside in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet we built these terror groups decades ago. We trained Osama and his crew in Afghanistan and we set up networks in Pakistan to sneak in money and weapons to Osama in Afghanistan. And here we are 30 years later fighting and destroying the same networks we once built. So my thought is why would anyone want to help us when there is a good chance you will be our next enemy in 30 years? If Osama only knew than what he knows now, no what i mean.

Governer Patterson and the Uk

2009-12-12T00:48:00.002-05:00

Its crazy to watch the governer of NY on the news as he cuts services to the middle class again and again, schools, transportation, health, government jobs, because times are tough. And than you see the story of how in the UK bankers bonus' are being taxed at 50% because well, they are the reason the rest of the country is suffering. Why should the whole country be asked to give up their jobs, and to sacrifice so the banks can be saved first. That is one thing. But its a slap in the face of this sacrife for these bankers to grant themselves huge bonuses. Really guys. The public has such a short attention span. You couldnt have waited one year to start bonuses again? So lets step it up Patterson. If the Federal Government refuses to tax that banker ass you should. They shit on us all by tanking the economy, they gave us officially 10% national unemployement and unoffiacially 20% unemployment + underemployment, and they shit on us again when they begged us for money to save them only to pay out huge bonuses to their executives, for what i dont know. You know what my bonus was this year, about 1.5% of my yearly salery. Thank you State of New York. I am moving to the colder Dakota eh.

Exemptions

2009-12-12T00:45:00.002-05:00

I was just reading some financial shinanigans over at cjr the audit's website about how the too big to fail financial firms broke the law yet were not held accountable. They were given exemptions. So next time I am on the phone with my bank or credit card company or any other company for that matter and I hear the bs line, sorry sir there is nothing we can do, I will ask if i can have an exemption in this case, what is your official and unofficial policy for granted exemptions, what was the last exemption you granted and why.

Tennessee Coal ash spill

2009-11-05T21:56:00.004-05:00

Tennessee Coal Ash Spill-

"Coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet." – James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist

As Americans we buy things all the time without wondering the true cost. We buy items off the dollar menu from fast food chains yet we don’t ask about the quality of the meat, or about the treatment of the workers at the lower levels of our society producing that food. We buy affordable clothes from the mall without asking about those who made them, in other country with little to no labor laws protecting them. We go to the supermarket to buy the fresh fish on sale this week without knowing that if we continue to fish the oceans the way we do there won’t be any fish left in fifty years.

It seems our nation has a culture that lives with little or no concern of the impact our choices and decisions have on others, and on our future. And it seems the real cost of the things we buy is passed on to someone else or to the future, like the factory worker in china or our digestion systems in 20 years time, so that the American consumer can have what it wants at a reasonable cost right now.

The same is true for electricity. Our lights always turn on. Our computers always have internet. And we see a bill once a month. But do we ever ask ourselves where the electricity comes from? What is used to make it? Are we paying the real cost for it or is that cost being pushed onto someone else? Is someone else suffering so that I can enjoy my electricity, like the abused factory worker in making my new name brand sneakers?

50% of power plants in the United States run on coal. Every step of the process of removing coal from the ground to shipping it to burning it, has an outside cost that is passed on to someone else so that me and you can pay reasonable rates for electricity.

A town in Tennessee felt the true wrath of this “unseen cost” in December of 2008 when a wall containing a pool of waste from a coal burning power plant burst and flooded the town. The waste was just being piled up and piled up in a landfill. No one outside of the town housing the pool of toxins asked what was happening with the waste from the power plant. Out of sight out of mind. But when the retaining wall burst, and the town was swimming in liquid waste, everyone began to see a glimpse of big coals dirty secret.

It seems every step in the process of burning coal; from ground removal to burning it contains an unseen cost.

The most popular way to remove coal these days is known as mountaintop removal mining, where explosives are used to destroy mountaintops to remove the coal. The external unseen cost of this is a devastation of the landscape. On one level the landscape loses its beauty. But on another level without the proper landscape rains now create floods and mud slides, devastating homes and communities.

When the coal is shipped by rail car there is a dust of coal blown in the air which is unsafe to breath. And lastly when the coal is burned the waste was usually blown out of the smoke stacks into the air, polluting the air and lungs of the community. New technology and Federal laws have made it possible to grab some of the pollution before it is sent into the atmosphere. The new question that has not been asked is what to do and what is being done with the new pollution. A small town in Tennessee found out the hard way.

The flood rocked a small town in Tennessee in 2008 a few days before Christmas. A coal burning power plant turned against the town it helped create. While the power plant once supplied jobs and careers allowing a whole town to build up and flourish around it, now it polluted over 300 acres of land, contaminating the river that provides drinking water to the community.

Since the Federal Government has been promising to create regulations since 2000 (fly ash) but has not, and since state regulation is usually less aggressive than federal, power plants have been pretty much left on their own to store or dispose of the fly ash as they see fit. Many have chosen to mix the dry fly ash with water and store them in large walled in landfills. A toxic sludge pool, if you will. There are more than 1,300 of these toxic pools across the US. The dams holding up the pools are deemed a “high hazard” at 44 of the 1,300 locations, by the EPA. And 12 of the 44 most hazardous dams are located in North Carilina. These toxic pools are less regulated than household trash and while a 2007 EPA report learned that many of the pools of waste are contaminating groundwater and wells they have failed to act.

They are called toxic sludge pools because last I checked mercury, cadmium, arsenic, beryllium, and lead are toxic, cancer causing, birth defect producing substances. In fact some of the toxic sludge pools are known to contain radioactive elements.

Yet when the wall broke at the Tennessee power plant that held back a 60 foot pool of around a billion gallons of toxic sludge (40 times more pollution than what was unleashed from the Exxon Valdez spill), the Federal government was still classifying the toxic sludge as non hazardous material. It makes perfect sense, if you live in the twilight zone. Which is where our Federal Government is living these days, and it’s the only way to explain how mercury is toxic and hazardous ordinarily, yet when you mix it with water and other toxic chemicals and rename it sludge, it’s not hazardous. You get it right?

You see by creating a new name the Federal Government can say the item with a new name is safe until it’s tested to find out otherwise. Take carbon monoxide. Its deadly when you lock yourself in the garage and have your car running, yet when you rename it and spray it on beef (which is done in the USA) it’s perfectly safe (until tested), as I learned watching the FDA answering questions on capitol hill a few years back.

Thanks once again to the interests of the powerful in this country and their army of lobbyists we are now able to buy beef sprayed with poison that looks damn fresh even when it isn’t,, and we can officially call mercury non hazardous. These powerful forces have been able to stop the federal government from regulating anything that can cut into company profits. That could explain why the government body that regulates the environment, the EPA, has been on record since the 1980’s saying they have to create guidelines on how to store and dispose of toxic sludge while they have been doing nothing.

Even after a spill like this no one is held accountable. All the members of the board of the TVA still have their jobs, all the regulatory workers at the EPA still have their jobs, and no one has been publicly tarred and feathered. The only action taken has been from the EPA, who now says that by December they will issue their findings on whether to officially label hazardous waste uhh, a hazardous waste or not. I just hope it will be December of this year.

It seems once again, when looking for who is at fault, all signs point to Washington D.C. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) owns the power plant that had the spill. The TVA is a part public part private company. (We see where that got us with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac) The TVA boasts the title of the nation’s largest public utility. The board of directors that runs the company is chosen by the President of the United States. Our nation has a history choosing regulators who do not believe in regulation, i.e. appointing a coal executive to regulate air pollution, appointing a chemical company executive who has previously dumped toxic waste into rivers, to become a water regulator, or hiring Wall Street executives who helped crash the system to work at the Treasury Department to help fix the crash.

And while Reports are coming out showing that the retaining wall holding up the sludge pool had many problems in the past that were temporarily fixed, and fixed the cheapest way, or completely ignored , and how the management at the TVA really dropped the ball, it all seems part of a larger problem, that the drive for profits in all big business has lead to corners being cut with little concern for any future repercussions.

The fact that a large corporation cut corners is no surprise but it seems to becoming part of the normal business model. The economic crash we saw on Wall Street was driven by large corporations who were trying to make a quick dollar today while not thinking about or not caring about future consequences of things like making home loans to large numbers of people who have no job and no money in the bank. Wall Street cut corners for the quick buck while someone else was left holding the bag. Health insurance companies deny expensive operations to save money. But the question regarding the Tennessee coal sludge spill, the Wall Street crash, and the Health insurance industry is; where were the federal watch dogs? I think we know.

We all know that in capitalism greed will run wild if not put in check by Government. I think most people will agree that government has a role to play as far as watching over industry to make sure their search for profits does not leave a wake of destruction in its path. But once again it seems the Federal Government has not been playing that role, and does not look like they will be playing it any time soon. For the past hundred years (at least) people have been crying out that our Congress has been bought off to serve the interests of big industry at the expense of everyone.

And right now the town of Kingston Tennessee is worrying about the water they use to drink and shower with (that has been causing rashes and burning), the quality of the air they are breathing (which is causing lung ailments), and the water quality where the fish they eat live.(it might takes years for the chemicals in the water to work its way into the larger fish that humans eat. From the nation’s website,

“Meanwhile, a recent survey by Tennessee's state health department said that one third of the residents living near the spill are reporting breathing problems. Some residents have complained of a gray film in their tap water and of a burning sensation on their skin and in their eyes after taking a shower.”

One mother took her asthmatic child to the hospital and was told the toxins are on the ground all over town and you probably tracked toxic dust into your house, until the house is cleaned you should not take your son back there. The TVA gave the mother a hotel room. But the hotel was also housing workers from the cleanup who were tracking toxic dust into the hotel. Once again the TVA stepped up to help by buying the mother and child a home outside of town. But once again, not thinking things through, the house was upwind of the spill, and frequent winds carried toxic particles back into the child’s lungs.

Besides the 1.2 billion dollar estimated costs of cleaning up the toxic spill the TVA has also donated 43 million dollars to the town of Kingston, I suppose as some sort of apology. Yet the move looks disingenuous when word got out that a board would be set up to decide how the money would be spent, where half the board members used to sit on TVA’s board.

Non profit environment groups have also got involved. One environmental organization United Mountain Defense has raised money so they could come to Kingston to test for levels of toxins in people as well as in the environment. In one instance a few volunteers for the United Mountain Defense organization were detained by police for legally installing machines to test for air quality. Greenpeace began calling for a criminal investigation into the spill pretty much right after it occurred. A nonprofit, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy is suing the TVA under the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, for 165 million dollars, making up one of at least four lawsuits against the TVA. And the Sierra club has a movement building to move beyond coal as a form of energy. They recognize the hazards coal has on communities that dig for coal, that have coal shipped through them, that burn coal, and that store coal power plant waste, and they see the great potential green energy has to offer. Their four point plan from their website aims to;

slow and stop the construction of new coal burning power plants

Dramatically accelerate the retirement and/or replacement of existing plants

Reduce coal mining production a little each year, stop mountaintop removal, prevent new mining

Slow and end the use of high carbon fuels in the US

As for the question why wasn’t this a bigger news story considering it was over 40 times larger of a spill than the Exxon Valdez, one writer summed it up best,

“Primarily because it occurred in rural eastern Kentucky — and few people outside of those who live there really care about what happens to the land and people of Appalachia. If the impoundment failure had happened in California or New York, it would have been front page news in The New York Times and the Washington Post. Can you imagine emergency rooms in Los Angeles being shut down because of a lack of clean water? Instead, it was deemed “not really that important” by most of the mainstream media. When wildfires consume beautiful homes in the hills of California, it headlines the CBS evening news. But when creeks are fouled and thousands of people go without water for weeks in Appalachia, somehow it’s not considered “newsworthy.”

For more information check out these sites

http://www.tennesseecoalashsurvivorsnetwork.com/

http://dirtycoaltva.blogspot.com/

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rperks/

http://www.appvoices.org/index.php?/frontporch/categories/C570/

Health Care part....

2009-10-16T12:44:00.003-04:00

Found a last week, from Dylan Ratigan that the only business in the whole country that is legally exempt from the antitrust laws is the Insurance industry. hmmm.

The same anti trust laws that were passed by congress to stop one company from taking over too much of the market place, effectivly removing competition and granting the one company the ability to raise rates and cut service, exactly what we have right now running rampant in the Health Care Industry. ]

So why are Republicans still going on telivision and arguing that insurance companies are not the problem the real problem is out of control lawsuits. Sure it is.

So while the health inusrance industry basically threatened to raise rates this week if any type of public option was passed, the Democratic Leader in the Senate Harry Ried finally grew a pair, and threatened to cancel the anti trust exemption given to the health insurance industy. How do you like. Dems have somewhat of a spine after all.

Dylan Ratigan

2009-10-16T09:52:00.003-04:00

He is a new anchor on MSNBC, a channel you cannot watch if you subscribe to Verizon cable services because their competition have an exclusive contract,blah blah blah. Dylan has been tearing it on his show recently, introducing new ideas and ways to look at the recent economic collapse triggered by Wall Street.

He points that on Wall Street their are two mindsets. One is to gather money for investment in business, to drive business growth and innovation. This was the original idea behind Wall Street. A business begins to sell stock so they have some extra money on hand to build a second factory or buy more machines to increae output.

The second philosophy is to gamble like you do in Vegas. So hedge funds have popped up gathering large sums of money and placing huge bets, not on stocks but on things like risk. With the so called subprime mortgage crash we saw Wall Street gambling on peoples mortgages, would they be able to pay or not, there is also bets on credit card debt.

Dylan does not like the second philosophy because you taking large sums of money away from companies that would use that money to grow, to expand and to innovate.

Makes sense. Especially when you look at all the companies that were short on money when the crash happened. Also makes sense when you try to find our exactly what America makes anymore.

It must be an early april fools joke

2009-10-09T10:32:00.005-04:00

President Obama won the nobel peace prize today, yet there is nothing peaceful about him except for his rhetoric. This is a man who has continued two illegal wars on some of the poorest people of the world in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a man who continues the illegal Bush policies of rendition(shipping suspected terrorists off to countries that are known to torture prisoners). This is a man who continues the illegal Bush policy of keeping suspected terrorists locked up without rights. And to top it all off, we were informed this week that he bombed the moon. The moon people. Who wins a peace prize after they bomb the moon. What could anyone have against the moon. Whats next bombing the sun?

Living in the twilight zone people. Wake up. If this action does not say the whole world is Alice in wonderland than you will never see it.

Update;
Just listened to a Bill O'rielly segment where he told viewers his choice for the Nobel would have been General David Petraues. Thats right a General. The man in charge of the many deaths and abuses that have occured inside Iraq. Bills reasoning was that he did the groundwork for peace. No matter that he killed people and destroyed lives to do it. This way oif thinking is just mind boggling to me. In order to create peace its ok to kill. In order to stop a murderer we must murder. We must all become terrorists to stop the terrorists. Doesnt bill see a problem with this line of reasoning. Eventual the word terrorist just defines what side you are on. To Americans Osama is a terrorist. To the people of Iraq George Bush was the terrorist. Who is right who is wrong? Are both right. Both Osama and George killed people to create peace. Both say they are justified in their killing. I say both are wrong. I say peace cannot be built on top of murdered human. Call me crazy.

Al Franken vs. Rape supporting Republicans

2009-10-09T00:12:00.005-04:00

Al Franken passed his first ammendment this week as a Senator that will hold contracters working in war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan responsible for criminal acts, like say if 5 male employees working for haliburten decide to rape a female coworker working for haliburten, and when theh female employee tells her boss they lock her up and tell her if she ever wants to go home she shoudl shut up. Right now the five males who raped and basically kidnapped this women, holding her against her will, in a foreign land, are in a grey zone of the law. Al Franken proposes a law to punish Americans who rape and kidnap other Americans in a war zone, and some Republicans actually voted against this. Fucking amazing. I cant wait to read the spin they try to put on this shit. Links and names to follow

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/15/jon-stewart-takes-on-30-r_n_321985.html

We can do it too;

2009-10-09T00:11:00.002-04:00

If you dont support universal health care than tell us why you hate Americans?

PR blitz Vs. News

2009-10-07T23:33:00.003-04:00

David Sirota has a great column up at http://inthesetimes.com/article/4912/mad_men_2.0
where he discusses how hard it is to find real facts and information about issue in todays world beause for every scientists you have showing actual facts and data you have a team of corporate lawyers and lobbyists deny these facts.

In a related story Rachel Maddow of msnbc (which i cannot get on my cable tv service(verizon in NY) because it seems verizens competition, cablevision, and an exclusive contract), had a segment on the other day where she spoke with an industry expert who owns a well established PR firm, who has websites trying to convince us that transfats are not bad, there is no mercury in fish, sun tanning beds are safe, high fructose corn syrup is safe, and many many more, he does this all with a straight face.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/rachel-maddow-confronts-n_n_312334.html

And finally it seems in the face of untruthful corporate dominated cable news a real news castor working for America has snuck through the gates, who is doing real reporting but is beating up anyone who comes on his show who attempts to do an information for whoever they are working for. A sidenote, it seems every pundit, or expert that appears on corporate run cable news acts more like they are doing an informatial for whoever own them, instead of being a true industry expert who goes on the news trying to clarifying a complex issue. One of my favorite authors David Sirota has talked about the lack of transparency on these news shows so that you will rarely be told by say, fox news, that their military expert giving a supposed candid opinion on afghanistan is really a paid pr specialist hired by the pentagon, makes a difference to know this, eh?

Anyway Dylan Ratigan is kicking some major ass at msnbc and anyone interested in real, old school, muckraking journalist should check him out,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/ns/msnbc_tv-morning_meeting
anyone looking for the same old, canned talking points, with no substance, being yelled back and forth, and lies should check out Fox news, cnn, abc, nbc, and cbs.

Dont trust the balance sheets

2009-10-06T09:22:00.002-04:00

The FDIC, a branch of the US government responsible for the soundness of the banking industry has been doing internal tests of banks to test their stablility. This past quarter 416 lenders made the list for failing the FDIC's stability test, a 15 year high. Many of these lenders have superb financial statements. Which leads me to my point. Their are millions of ways to make a financial statement look sound when in fact the lender or business is not.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aHU4bso2L2aE

Tennessee

2009-10-03T21:59:00.003-04:00

I am currently writing something on the Tennessee coal power plant that kept a pool of toxic sludge called fly ash in a landfill, and when the wall to the landfill burst open toxic sludge flooded the town, this happened in december of 08' but 1)its still not clean yet and 2) it is the largest pollutiion disaster in the history of the United States.

Just wanted to share with you a highlight of the story so far. The toxic pool of sludge is not regulated by the EPA because it is classified as nto hazerdous, yet the sludge is pollution from the coal burning power plant that previoulsy was pushed into the atmosphere as smoke. So why isnt it still released as smoke you ask? Well the EPA called the smoke hazerdous and didnt want to pollute the air anymore. So bingo, lets grab the smoke and make it ash, add water and create a pool of toxic sludge called fly ash and call it, uhhhhhhh, not hazerdous. Because we both know mercury cadmium, asrsenic and lead dont count as hazerdous when they are in sludge form.

So the toxic non hazerdous sludge burst out of its home (pool next to power plant) and in an effort to be free it covers the town in sludge. So why is the TVA( tennessee valey authority, the owners of the power plant) spending millions buying out all the homes in the area and cleaning up the mess? It makes no sense. Why clean up toxic non hazerdous material. I mean non hazerdous is non hazerdous. If i spill a glass of water in the street I wouldnt clean it up like I would clean up glass, now thats hazerdous.

The other story i wanted to share was a child with asthma who was rushed to the hospital. You see him and his mother walked on non hazerdous toxins in the dirt in town and than walked all over their house. Kid plays on floor with dirt, kid gets really sick. Doctor blames toxins and poisons found in non hazerdous sludge and tells the mom she should not go back to her home until it is cleaned out or child will stay sick. The TVA being nice and understanding and wantin to help the town they have shit on decide to put the mother and child up in a hotel room. But the child is still sick. hmmm. Could it be the TVA got the mother and child a hotel room in the same hotel occupied by those workers cleaning up the spill sit, and who have been tracking in mud and dirt from the spill site all over the hotel? Yes it can.

So in the last brain dead move of the year, the TVA buys mom and child their own home, too bad it was upwind of the spill site, and dust and toxic non hazerdous particles are blowing into the new house. Thanks but no thanks.

Fed up

2009-09-18T00:19:00.002-04:00

Have not read in awhile and thus i have little to sum up for you. Politics in the US has reached such a level of elite corruption and the spreading of fear that it is hard to not want to give up. The American public wants health care reform but th elite powers have organized a campaign that makes it seem like we dont. The American public wants accountability on wall street but the corporate sponsored (owned) government refuses to oblige. The corporate media has yet to give the american public an honest debate.

I have not been in the mood to search out real news. my only area has been openleft.com , my only source of sanity. Real people with real ideas, fighting the long, slow struggle against the corrupt that seem to control every lever of power.

Health Care Debate V

2009-08-31T00:06:00.003-04:00

So lets say you own a monopolisitc, private, for profit, wall street driven, insurance company and your company makes 5 billion dolalrs last year. This year the President says we are going to pass a health care reform that will make your company obsolete in America. How much would you spend to kill that type of legislatal reform? 1 billion dollars? 4 billion dollars? Would you scare Americans into agreeing with your point of view? Would you by media time to scare them? Would you hire mobs and bus them into town hall meetings to cause a madhouse? Would you buy, i mean lobby congress especially business friendly republicans to support your perspective?

Welcome to the wonderfull world of American politics.

Just imagine if the American public could pool their resources, knowledge, leadership, and join together and actually fight back against the business/political alliance that dominated every aspect of America for the last hundred years, except our SOUL.

Health Care Debate IV

2009-08-30T23:51:00.002-04:00

A major flaw with the current health care model is there is no competition. Competition is key in a captilist system, giving consumers choice and forcing providers to offer the best and cheapest care. Without competition we get monopolies. A few big bullies who do what they like (charge a lot, offer a little) because there is no other choice.

The Democratic Party has mentioned they want a government option to compete with the monoply system currently running to force the monopolies into acting fair. The monopolies are crying foul, saying it would be unfair competition and would not be in the intereste of capitolism.

So lets remember that right now the government is already subsidizing the monopolistic private for profit insurance model. How you ask? Through medicare and medicaid, two government run insurance programs set up to help the poor and elderly have healthcare. The poor and the elderly are usually more unhealthy and costly to insure becuase the poor dont have access to better quality food, and more frequent preventative care, and its no secret that seniors bodies are aging and need more attention.

So right our of the gate, the monopolistic, private, for profit, insurance model does not have to worry about insuring the most costly customers. This is a golden ticket for any business. And yet this is stil not enough. They still find ways in their hearts of hearts to relieve themselves of the burden of the second most costly group to insure, those that use their insurance a lot and need costly procedures.

So quick recap, monopolistic, private, for profit, wall street driven, insurance companies love when the government gets involed in health care when it benefits them, yet they hate when the government gets involved when it benefits the entire country. So remind me again why we are lisening to and believing talking points from a group of people who would do basically anything to keep the stauts quo?

Remember how much money we are talking about here. If we switch to the canadian model of a single government run insurance option with no more private insurance companies, that meens some right now stand to lose billions of dollars, i cant even fathom a number 20 billion dollars a year? In a sense these executives are fighting for their lives. Do you not expect them to do whatever it take, to spend whatever it takes, to use any lie it takes, to convince us that changing the current monopolistic model will be horrible for everyone?

Health Care Debate III

2009-08-29T20:04:00.002-04:00

Big Business should be supporting a government run public option for all, like a medicare for all, where we pay taxes and get free care because this would benefit every company, every corporation, every small businessman.
How?
Right now corporations offer their employees health insurancea and it cuts into the corporate profit. If the government took over this role it would have two benefits. ONe being that corporations would be spending less money on overall pay to their employees because health coverage is a large portion of what employees get paid. And since the goal of any corporation is to make money, i cant see why every corporation is not on board with this idea.

The second reason is competition. Our corporations compete on the world scene with Canadian, European, Chinese and other foreign corporations. Right now since all those nations i just mentioned have their government pay for their citizens healthcare, they have an advantage over our corporations right out of the gate. If our government can take this expense off the books of our corporations we can compete better on the world scene.

Remember earlier this year when the American car makers were in serious trouble and the first thing that was mentioned was the workers pay. Everyone on corporate news agreed that the union would have to make consetions with pay, retirement and healthcare. Now imagine if the government stepped in and said we will pay for all your workers healthcare, maybe Gm doesnt need the governemnt bailout?

So in one sense you have the health care industry made of hospitals, insurance companies, and pharmacuetical companies who want to keep the current system, and then you have every other sector of private business who would beneift from change, yet for some reason the powers of this nation seem to have alighned against any fundamental change. I am confused.

Health care debate II

2009-08-28T09:55:00.003-04:00

A story in the new york times pointed out by a writer i read quite often David Sirota, sheds some new light on a myth used commonly when argueing against government run health care.

The myth is that the governmnet will ration your care, deciding for your and over your doctors decision what kind of procedure you can have.

As I pointed out in my long entry before this one, government run does not have to mean rationing care. The Canadian government currently uses a government run model that does not ration care. The rationing that will be done here has to do with unneccesary testing that is done so doctors can overcharge insurance companies to make some extra money. But if you trying to scare the nation about any changes to the current system so they would not support any changes you can talk about rationing emergency life saving care, because its scary.

So, in the new times article, an insurance company executive admits that they currently practice rationing care. So America, wake up. You dont want to reform healthcare and get the government involved because there is slim to none chance they will ration care that could cause you bodily harm, and you are furious over this idea of rationing care. But you do want to stick with the current system that currently rations care. America, you are schizophrenic.

health care debate

2009-08-27T11:31:00.003-04:00

Just like every political debate that goes on today in the United States the one for health care is less than honest. It would be nice to live in a world where politicians and the media held honesty and openness as their highest priority. Instead we live in a world of spin, lies, half truths, missing informations, skewed data, kindergarten arguments aimed at stirring up irrational emotional behavior.

For some healthcare in the United States is a problem. 47 million are uninsured and 25% of those with insurance are denied coverage or their insurance is cancelled when they go to use it. That is a fact. Another fact is the model for insurance in the States is private for profit insurance companies are the gatekeepers for getting care. These gatekeepers are driven by profit motives. The more they spend healing people the less they earn, dropping the stock value, making wall street mad. Wall street is king in the States. You do not make them mad.

An honest debate has to talk about this. Is this the model that most Americans like. Does it seem fair that to make money insurance companies have to deny care? As i quoted from Bill Maher, why does a health insurance model have to make money? Other countries run not for profit insurance programs why cant we.

19 or 20 of the richest nations on earth give their country free public health insurance, run by the government, without the need to make a profit, except the USA. But when we find out about this the opposition who would do anything to keep the current system has begin a dishonest dialogue, because they would lose everything if an honest dialogue was allowed.

And the scary part is, that its so hard to know who is having an honest dialogue. All sides look at their opposition and think how can they be so misinformed, how can they be so dumb, i can believe they are buying those bs arguments. And that is exactly what they want.

If we continue to yell, and scream at each other, and name call, if we continue to have a dishonest debate guess what happens? Nothing. Guess who wins? Those who want to keep the current system. Who benefits from the current system? The for profit insurance companies raking in billions every year.

Its a simple debate. The rest of the rich world does it. Citizens in other countries are not losing their homes because of large medical bills. Citizens in other nations are not going bankrupt because of large medical bills. Citizens in other countries are not getting charged outrageous bills for the medication they take and for their hospital visits.

The voices against a government administered option have very small basis for their beliefs. Lets take their reasons one by one.

They dont want the government running healthcare telling people what they can do and what they cant do as far as medical procedures. But in Canada right now, the Canadian government has rarely if ever become involved in medical decisions, the doctors are the one's that deny and approve care. Isnt that what we want? But right now we dont have that. In the States today we have doctors who ask private for profit insurance companies to approve procedures. So ask yourself who do you want to approve procedures. If you say doctors than you must want change because that might not be happening right now. If you say you want government to approve your medical decisions your crazy, no one wants this. Its such a false argument. Americans, do you really think the democratic party wants the government involved in deciding what care you are allowed to have?

One analogy i read is that the government run public option would run much like the fire department. The government foots the bill yet they don't decide what calls the fireman go on. They only foot the bill. The firehouse acts the way it sees fit. Just in case this is not sinking in, right now if their is a fire in your house and you call for a fire-truck the fire house does not call the government to get approval to put out your fire, they just put it out and send the government a bill. So, is everyone happy with the way the fire department is set up? Do you sit around questioning the government run fire-department, wondering whats the deal with that socialist,russian-esque institution? And if so do you wish we had a capitalist, for profit, fire department?

Think about it. The fire department would have a public stock that you could invest in, they would have a ceo with a 10 million dollar a year salary, because thats what ceo's make, and every-time they got a call of a fire in town they would have to decide the cost benefit analysis just like every other for profit corporation.

The more i write about this analogy the more it makes sense. The goal of both the fire department and the health industry is to save lives. So why set up one as a public service to the community paid for by the government, through tax dollars, and no matter how much or little we use the service we all pay basically the same % of our income to fund it, and with the other, health care, we refuse to leave the capitalist model of a profit driven, wall street driven, with a multi millionaire ceo salary.

People in the streets are saying we dont want government run anything. But is anyone complaining about the government managed interstate highway system? Do you wish you have a for profit corporation fixing up only the profitable roads? What about government run safety standards like home electrical codes or automobile safety standards to make sure your car doesnt burst into flames when you use the break, or safety standards at work so there is not a 50% chance of you dying on the job everyday.

What I am basically trying to argue is that every day we take for granted massive amounts of government run things that we use and that kept safe since we have been alive. It might not be so bad. The rest of the rich free world does it.

The "we don't want socialized medicine" argument is pretty much the same as the "we don't want government run healthcare. Since when did supplying healthcare for everyone become a socialist institution? Canada has a government run, so called socialist plan yet they boast more private doctors than we have under a free capitalist system. How can that be? Because our doctors here cannot afford to own their own practice anymore instead they are joining large corporate health corporations.

And what is the deal with seniors who all have healthcare, GOVERNMENT RUN no less, and government run social security, coming out in massive amounts against a government run option. The misinformation has been so strong that some on medicare, a government run program, are fearful their medicare will be taken over by the government?@?#!?#?

The last part of the misinformation campaign is to talk about how long the wait is for government run care in europe and canada. I am sure there are some waits, but the bottom line is people are not dying because of wait times. Those happy with the status quo will tell you about all the canadians and europeans that come here every year for healthcare and argue if its so good their why come here. And the answer is because of the wait time and because of money. Most foreigners that come here for care are wealthy individuals, and our system does work very well for the wealthy. And people that come here might not have a long wait in another country, but any wait at all could be cramping their style. With this point i am trying to point out that if you tried to change european or canadian healthcare from not for profit to for profit they would flip out.

The huffington post website has a great flow chart that showing the dynamic behind the push to drown out the real debate with misinformation and half truths. Most of the misinformation is coming from those with the most to lose, the private for profit insurance industry, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. They have been bribing, i mean making campaign contributions to business friendly congressman and senators for years to buy their support in times of change like today.

Also ask yourself where are you getting your news? Do you watch corporate funded cable news programs who's interests are aligned with the current model of healthcare, or are you reading stories from people of all walks of life who have seen the horror stories of our current system, or have you watched congressional testimony of insurance executives who quit because they could no longer stand to kill patients by denying coverage to them, or where a mid level insurance administrator who told her story of being promoted after denying a very large claim for surgery.

Its not easy to find a balanced honest debate these days. Our congress is made up of millionaires, our president is a millionaire, most news anchors on corporate run cable news every night are millionaires. Who is out there working for me and you, the middle class and the poor class.

If 47 million million people dont have health care why are they being so quiet and letting those with health care control the framing of the debate.

There are many things wrong with this country and the world. Why is it that anyone who cares and would like to talk about these things is labeled a communist or socialist? I thought the roots of those words come from community and society? If you are a party working to better community and society why is that made to seem evil and wrong? Why is it the corporate media hate people who try to discuss problems in this country. We can never grow if we only focus on our best attributes

Bill Maher;When did everything become about profit

2009-07-24T10:01:00.002-04:00

Bill Maher has a great column up on huffingtonpost.com asking the question when did everything become about making a profit.

He argues there was a time in America where things like hospitals were run by nuns, who were not in it for the profit, while today "In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans." These conglomorates now have publicly trades stock. So when they deny you care the stock goes up and someone makes a profit.

Prisons used to be run by the governemnt, not for a profit, not anymore."A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that's where all the real crime is happening anyway."

Every aspect of war used to be handled by the soldiers. Today there are more private contracters in our war zones than soldiers.

"Television news is another area that used to be roped off from the profit motive. When Walter Cronkite died last week, it was odd to see news anchor after news anchor talking about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it." "

"If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain.""

"And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-not-everything-i_b_244050.html

cheney Assissination Squads

2009-07-19T16:33:00.002-04:00

This past week in the news had stories about the previous Vice President Dick Cheney running an assassination ring out of his office. Jeremy Scahill writes a nice piece discussing how the W. Bush Presidencey was not the first nor the last to target people around the world for assassination.

http://original.antiwar.com/scahill/2009/07/15/the-democrats-selective-amnesia-on-assassination/

California nurses still on job after years of misconduct

2009-07-17T10:41:00.003-04:00

Doing some research this week for an article about the health care reform comming up in congress when I came across this article at propublica, a great research website.

The article talks about the problems facing California States Nursing Board, where a few board members were fired this week by the Governator.

The problem was;

" board charged with overseeing California's 350,000 registered nurses often takes years to act on complaints of egregious misconduct, leaving nurses accused of wrongdoing free to practice without restrictions, an investigation by The Times and the nonprofit news organization ProPublica found.

It's a high-stakes gamble that no one will be hurt as nurses with histories of drug abuse, negligence, violence and incompetence continue to provide care across the state. While the inquiries drag on, many nurses maintain spotless records. New employers and patients have no way of knowing the risks."

"Among the findings:

* The board took more than three years, on average, to investigate and discipline errant nurses, according to its own statistics. In at least six other large states, the process typically takes a year or less.

* The board failed to act against nurses whose misconduct already had been thoroughly documented and sanctioned by others. Reporters identified more than 120 nurses who were suspended or fired by employers, disciplined by another California licensing board or restricted from practice by other states – yet have blemish-free records with the nursing board.

* The board failed to use its authority to immediately stop potentially dangerous nurses from practicing. It obtained emergency suspensions of nurses' licenses just 29 times from 2002 to 2007. In contrast, Florida's nursing regulators, who oversee 40% fewer nurses, take such action more than 70 times each year"

I suggest you check out the full story. Scary Scary stuff.

http://www.propublica.org/feature/when-caregivers-harm-california-problem-nurses-stay-on-job-710

Inside look at Wall street

2009-07-13T10:00:00.002-04:00

Matt Taibbi is getting a lot of press over his new article in rolling stone about how Goldman Sachs has created every bubble in the stock market since the great depression. In an interview with Sam Ceder he talks about the recent housing bubble and tech bubble of the 90's.

One major issue that Matt touches on is a change in the culture of Wall Street beginning in the early 90's. He argues that that is the time when most investment banks went public with stocks. So the investment banks began to gamble with other peoples money and not so much of their own, as had been the case in the past.

With the tech bubble of the 90's, Matt argues the standard for taking companies public and selling their stock to the World was dropped. So that in the past when companies were taken public they had to meet certain criteria, you had to be around for 5 years, you had to be profitable for 3 years, and you must have great potential to be profitable in the future. In the 90's companies were created the day their stock went public. The world bought these stocks trusting in the investment banks that took them public. Who was the largest undewriter(who took them public), for these tech companies, Goldman Sachs.

Goldman's unfair market play

2009-07-11T23:36:00.003-04:00

A story came out this week that a worker at Goldman Sachs bank left for a new job but stole some code before leaving. The computer code that was stolen was for a computer program full of math algorithms that was used by Goldman to trade stocks. Two things are very interesting about this story.
The first is that Goldman called up the Justice Department to have the theif arrested because he would have an unfair advantage in the stock market by having this computer program. Yet Bloomberg news' Jonathan Weil asks, why is Goldman not getting any flack for having this unfair advantage to begin with? So only investment banks are legally allowed to have unfair market advantage.

Second is that this man was arrested within 48 hours of Goldman Sachs calling in the crime to the Justice Department. Talk about pull in the government. How long would it take for our calls to no even be acted on but just listened to?

Hondorus Coup

2009-07-06T23:05:00.003-04:00

Last week the Military in Hondorus walked into the presidents home, put him on a plane at gun point and flew him to Costa Rica with a warning, if you return to Hondorus you will be arrested. The military is making the claim that they are restoring Democracy, but that does not seem to be the case.

Their is war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, trouble brewing in Pakistan, a revolution in Iran. Over the past few years we saw Coup like shananigans in Georgia, Ukraine, and Venzuala, and Haiti. Do we still have to pay attention to all these coups? Is Hondorus any different. Im not sure yet.

But the one difference that I have seen in Venezuala lead by Hugo Chavez, and Hondorus lead by the former President Manuel Zelaya is the way they have actually delivered on their promise to give back to the poor everyday man and women in their nation. For example Zelaya of Hondorus increased minimum wage by 60%. And Venezuala's Chavez created such a good economic model that 60% of the population, the poorest members of society, saw their income grow by 130%.

This of course has the effect of taking away from someone. In Venezuala and Hondorus the losers were the rich, elite, businessmen. The elite of Hondorus owns 45% of the countries wealth. Does that seem fair?

I believe this is a problem for the American elite. They cannot sit by and watch the poor of Venezuala democratically elect leaders that will roll back centuries woth of Western elite philosophy, being that the rich should take a larger and larger share of the pie. Venezualians and Hondorans and Iranians are standing up and saying we are fed up with having small sections of our nation own almost everything, and who are able to have laws passed to legally make the rich a more important class. The elite in the US better wise up or they will be next to be chewed up by the working poor of America.

FDR gave back to the poor not because he was a kind hearted man but because he had to throw some scraps to the poor or else the whole scam being run by the American elite could have came tumpling down.

In the United States for example the richest 1% own more than the poorest 90%. This is not fair, this is not right, and this is not what the United States is all about. A cool teacher i had at Nassua Community said you cannot have vastly wealthy nations like the United States without having poor nations in her wake. Well the same goes for inside the United States. You cannot have the extremely rich owning it all without the extremely poor owning nothing.

This becomes a philisophical debate. Do you take away the wealth and redistribute it? How do you do that without sending a message that says, if you work too hard and become too much of a success the government will take away your shit. How do you also deal with the opposite message being sent, you can sit on your ass and do nothing and the government will provide.

Maybe Communism is best. Everyone gets the same. Im not so worried about the argument that says where is the incentive to work hard and innovate. For one, we can give bonuses, or set up some kind of system that turns innocators and hard workers into superstars, using the same system we have that makes movies stars and professional athletes the bees knees.

But what is the deal with working only for money. What happened to good old pride and work ethics. A coworker of mine is constantly saying, "well i wouldnt worry about it we dont get paid that much to go overboard". I just cant wrap my head around that line of reasoning. I work hard no matter what job or how little the pay. I do it for personal pride and ethics. I believe if you slack off in one area of life it will spread to others areas of your life.

And what about reputation. Would you like to be known as the worker people can call on to get things done or the worker that does just enough to get by who is rarely in his office, cannot be gotten on the phone and does not return emails.

What happened to the guy who goes to work to kick ass to make American and his neihborhood better. Am I the last one? I hope not.

Virginity Surgery in Iran

2009-07-05T23:33:00.002-04:00

I read an interesting article that i wanted to pass on about a surgery becoming very popular in Iran. The surgery is called Hymen repair. The purpose is for women who have had sex before marriage to have an operation that will repair a torn hymen. Googling hymen repair i found a site that says the hymen in that womens vagina is torn during their first sexual experience. The surgery repairs this tear, and will even insert red dye packets to simulate the women bleeding during her first time.

The author of the article quotes some young men in Tehran who dont mind sleeping around before marriage but would only marry a virgin. They also admit the surgery is so popular and sex so prevelant that their are no more virgins left in Tehran.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/12/virgin-hymen-repair-iran

how the US government works III

2009-07-03T00:40:00.002-04:00

The US Govnernment sets policy. Groups lobby the Government to get their policy ideas adoptoed by the Government. The more money and power you have the more pull you have when it comes to lobbying. Most groups, like say a health insurance company who wants to lobby will follow a few protocals. They will donate money to political campains. They will establish front groups to act like independent research outfits spewing out facts that support the health insurance companies stance. And the most imporant piece is for the insurance company to hire Grade A lobbyists, who are very powerful, retired politicians, who a) understand how policy is made, and b) have friends still making policy. Oh yea i forgot the other way is for the insurance company to promise to hire the politicians who help them put the policy into law, with very large salaries, after said law is made. Some call this a bribe.

Some companies, ahem ahem, Goldman Sachs, Ahem, have so much power that they skip to the head of the line. Matt Taibbi, a reporter with the Rolling Stones Magazine has a great peice coming out about the power of Goldman Sachs, over the past hundred years. But more importantly, Goldman has slowly been placing its loyal worker bees throughout the halls of power, so that when Goldman wants policy made they just ask the Treasury and its done, no congress, no vote, no democracy.

Matt tells the story that in 2004 Goldman asked the Treasury Department (which was run by ex Goldman CEO Paulson), to allow them a loophole so they dont have to follow the regulations requiring 1 dollar to physically be in your bak for every 12 dollars the bank lends out. Paulson simply walked over the SCC, the bank regulaters, asked for an exemption for four banks and was granted it. The end result being that now these four banks were able to lend out money without having any money physically in their bank.

Some gig huh. Well at least for two of the banks. Because the other two are no longer operating, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Sterns. As Bruno would say, "Coincidence, I think not."

Must be sweet to have that much pull. What would you ask for with that much pull? I would ask for all these banking shmoes, all the oil company execs, all the health insurance deniers (of claims, not those who deny the existance of health insurance, that would be an interested Dave Chappelle skit), to be investigated and arrested along with all the government officials who act in a manner unbecoming of a US representative.

That would be a good idea for a movie. A few regular guys that have more pull with the government than anyone else. And anything they ask for they get.

What would you ask for?

Inside peak into how the US Government works

2009-07-01T09:18:00.002-04:00

The Republican party has a major philosophy that the government cannot run things, that private industry would do much better. So right now when President Obama is trying to sell his idea of universal healthcare to the American public that would be run by the government the Republican opposition has an easy sell to their supporters,"its a bad idea because the government cant run anything, they would just mess it up."

But an article by Thomas Frank highlights and idea that Democrats have been trying to discuss for years, that maybe when Republicans have control of the Legislative and Executive branches of the government they make sure the government fails to prove their point. Thomas Frank points out that all the time periods the Republicans point to and say look we told you so, the government failed, is a time period when Republicans controlled the branches of government.

As a response to the budget crisis going on now in California, the state had public meetings where any citizen could walk up to the microphone and talk to their local representatives, to tell them how the budget cuts are effecting them and their town. One lady stood up and yelled at the representatives, "if you dont believe in government step aside and let some one who does believe in government to step up and try to fix the problem.

When President Bush spent the nation into the largest deficit in the history of our country, many on the left argued it was part of a grande Republican strategy to spend all the money so when Democrats take back the reign of power they will have no money to impliment any of their ideas.

And when the Democrats are trying to spend their way out of this economic crisis as FDR did to save this country, what is the Republican response? How dare you spend so much money, the country can't handle it. It's hysterical, yet i know people who walk around repeating this mantra, "Barrack Obama is spending too much money, he is ruining this country."

check out Thomas Frank is a rare bread among political writers.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124640443679876503.html#mod=rss_opinion_main

Inside peak into how congress works

2009-06-30T18:31:00.002-04:00

The House of Representatives just passed an envirnmentally friendly energy bill that some are calling a huge step in combatting global warming. The vote was 219 for and 212 against, with 8 republicans voting for the democratic bill. The right wing media has been attacking the 8 Republicans arguing that if it weren't for them the Democratic legislation would never have passed. But that is not the case according to the Democratic party.

Democrats in washington are claiming (according to sam stein) that Nancy Pelosi allowed 44 Democrats to vote aganst the bill because she knew the bill would pass, making their votes not vital. And that if she did not have the votes to pass the bill these 44 would have supported the bill to get it passed.

The reason they voted against something they wanted to pass is classic Washington strategy. These 44 Democrats hail from conservative leaning districts. And in thinking of the next election, they want to show their constituents their conservative street credability. And in a a few years when we have the next election no one will remember this little strategy and these 44 Dems will look like they stood up to the envirnmental rights bill.

This also works the opposite way. Republicans that voted for the bill are hoping it won't pass the senate and become law. This way they get some street credablity for standing up yet they did not actually change anything and so cannot be held too accountable.

So once again America, we are last on our elected representatives priority list.

Equal right for the non rich

2009-06-25T23:38:00.002-04:00

Our country was founded on the principle that all men are created equal. The definition of all men has changed over time here in the US. When our nation was founded it really meant all white, educated, land owning men. Slowly over time other groups had to fight for their rights even though our laws supposedly guaranteed them.

In the early 1900's we saw women protest en mass for their equal rights. In the 1960's we saw black protest as well lead by the famous Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Preacher Malcolm X amongst others. Today we see gay people fighting for their right to legally wed.

For whatever reason, fear, hate, not wanting to give up power, the leaders of our nation did not want to give these equal rights away without putting up a fight. Right now I think its time for a new group to begin its march for equal rights. The poor and the middle class.

This group is constantly being stepped on by the leaders of the country. The uneducated. The immigrants. The home with two working parents just making ends meet. The person who is just barely staying afloat and gets sick and loses their job and home. The guy who retired ten years ago thinking he would be comfortable with his small retirement package from GM until they went bankrupt and decided to cancel all health insurance for those already retired.

Those people from the Michael Moore documentary Sicko who have health insurance but are getting squeezed by their Health Insurance Company who wanted to save money, so they had to decide, between which fingers to save after a machine accident, or having to decide between food or surgery.

Or the family's in one of the Carolina's who can't leave their home because they happen to live next to one of the world largest pig farms that is producing so much pig feces waste and not properly removing it, resulting in poisonous fumes that make it too toxic to go outside. Or those who chose to gamble on the stock market, who thought the game wasn't rigged, and found out it was and they lost a lot.

Or the poor in Californian who have no health insurance and use free clinics but will soon be told sorry we cannot help you anymore because of the crisis going on right now with the California budget. One Californian activist predicts people will begin to die on the streets of LA because there wont be enough free clinics and supplies to treat everyone. Or the teachers in California have to worry about their jobs after the Governator approved the firing of 1/3 of all California state teachers.

Millions and millions of us are falling through the cracks with out anyone coming to the rescue. Yet we see the richest of us being saved by the same government that is failing the poor. As a wrote in a previous blog after hurricane Katrina it tooks days to get water into Louisiana. Which was more time than it took for Congress to pass a bill to make trillions of dollars available to wall street thieves who stole it all to begin with, almost crashing the entire economy of United States in their wake.

To me, it may not be as obvious as having separate bathrooms for two people with different skin colors. But the size of my bank account definitely determines what laws I am asked to follow . Just ask OJ Simpson, and every corporation that ever dumped toxic waste into the environment who destroyed peoples health and were not responsible under the law. Just ask the people in Michael Moore's Sicko who lost a loved one because the insurance company refused treatment that would cost a lot of money, legally killing people. Just ask the government lawyers who sued Microsoft for monopolistic practices and who won while Bill Clinton was still in office and than when Bush took over he threw out the case, after the government won the case!?!?!?

The size of my bank account also determines what laws are passed. Rich banks too big to fail get trillions in cash to shore up their bankrupt tyrannosaurus rex size companies. The rich lobby of the health insurance gets laws written that favor their profit margin over the public interest. Just now being talked about in congress is a clean air act that will prohibit the regulating of power plants if they are related to global warming, because the regulation would effect the companies bottom line.

When did the bottom line become the new mantra of the nation. The bottom line is the rich in the country get laws passed, everyone else doesn't. Everyone in Congress as well as the past dozen presidents have been millionaires. If we having millionaires running the country are we surprised that laws are passed to benefit only millionaires.

I am merely saying it seems those laws are discriminatory in nature. If a jury is not made up of peers it is not a legal jury. If our government does not represent the people it might not be legal.

Any time someone on the corporate run news brings up any of these points they are jumped on for using class warfare. But i cant think of anything else to call it. If it walks like a duck, well you know.

If you begin to slowly crush me under you boot for over a hundred years than i quickly trip you to get you off of me how can anyone of reason believe i am the trouble maker.

So who is with me? Any lawyers in the house? Any ACLUers up in here? Could this be my calling in life?

Governor Sanford in Argentina

2009-06-25T19:36:00.005-04:00

Governor Sandford admits to having cheated on his wife by having an affair with a women in Argentina and the Republican establshment tells everyone to back off, its a private issue, they said we are all human and make mistakes, "he is in our prayors", "our heart goes out to the family".

So why weren't the Republicans this sympathetic when Bill Clinton cheated, they tried to impeach him right?
Thanks washington for being a model of true leadership.

Iran-summary

2009-06-25T15:37:00.002-04:00

So after a week of protesting after the election the Mousavi camp asked for a recount and was granted a 10% recount by the Guardian Council. The Council has determined some fraud in 50 cities where up to 140% of the registered voters voted. But since the extra votes amount to only 3 million in an election where Ahmadinejad won by 11 million some are saying nothing can be done. But Mousavi has powerful allies.

After the week of protests the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomenei gave his Friday sermon basically warning protesters that he has been reasonable and if the protesters are not reasonable the full strength of the law will be felt.

The next day Mousavi held huge rallies. The biggest since the Revolution and the army cracked down. Up to 20 dead, hundreds arrested.

But the most important part of the battle was being fought behind the scenes in Qom, the religious headquarters of Iran and the Shia world. A Mousavi ally, Rasfanjani took the battle to Qom to fight for the support of the powerful clerics. And it looks as if he succeeding according to the daily beast writer Reza Aslan, where some kind of power sharing agreement might be arranged.

Rasfanjani is one of the most powerful figures inside Iran. He was a close friend of the first Supreme leaders, and was crucial in the selection of the current one. He also leads a committee that has the power to oust the Supreme Leader if he fails to do his duty, the Council of Experts.

Palestine vs. Iran

2009-06-24T20:25:00.002-04:00

It's so odd that the American elites have so much concern for the freedom of the Iranian people who are living under a brutal regime. But when it comes to the Palestinian living in Israel, also under a brutal regime their seems to be no loved lost. Just one more picture of the hypocracy of the American ruling elite. Two groups of people in two different countries both throwing rocks, being arrested, lives being taken from them but an oppressive regime. One the American corporate media tells us to sympathize with. The other we are told deserve it.

I mean we just had an 8 year term of elites running an operation in the white house who overthrew a brutal middle eastern regime. We were told that America fights for freedom and democracy all across the planet. I am confused (sarcasm)

As my dad would say, " whats that old armenian saying, (the country of origin changes each time) your mama"

Arab world happy and not so happy about Iran

2009-06-24T12:34:00.002-04:00

RAMI G. KHOURI has an interesting piece up at;
http://tehranbureau.com/arabs-forlorn-envy-iranians/

The discussion is about how the middle east feels about the events in Iran. The findings are split. Many are happy that the people have the fight and will to stand up and fight the regime. Yet the leaders of the Middle Eastern Nations are worried. Could it happen here they think. Most Middle Eastern Nations are not ruled democracy and many fear the spread of grassroots uprisings taking their power.

And while many would like to see the the regime topple because of Iran's goals of exporting the revolution to places like Lebanon and Iraq, they also enjoy the way Iran stand up to the west, the US, Israel, and the UN.

You broke it you buy it

2009-06-24T11:03:00.003-04:00

Credit Suisse bank has chosen to reward its executives with bonuses. Not cash, not stock, but the toxic assets that are bringing down wall street and the economy. Its a great idea. While most banks have decided not to punish those who dealt in toxic assets many instead, have been rewarded with the usual bonuses. Thus sending the message what you do has no effect on your salary or your future here. On the other hand Credit Suisse, acting like a responsible leader is telling their workers you broke it you buy, teaching them in the process that they have responsiblities to shareholders, executives and the world.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/wall-street/2009/04/22/Banks-Buy-Toxic-Assets

Saudi Arabia blood money

2009-06-24T10:58:00.002-04:00

I just found this interesting blog from an American who live in Saudi Arabia. She wrote one entry about blood money, which is money one family pays to another when someone has been killed and the blame can be placed on someone, as an apology. The idea is based on Muslim law, and eye for an eye. The family who has lost someone has the right to have the killer publicly executed, but most times mercy is granted and payment is made.

According to the blog, http://americanbedu.com/2009/06/05/saudi-arabia-payment-of-diyyah/,the going rates for mercy is the following;
* 100,000 riyals if the victim is a Muslim man
* 50,000 riyals if a Muslim woman
* 50,000 riyals if a Christian man
* 25,000 riyals if a Christian woman
* 6,666 riyals if a Hindu man
* 3,333 riyals if a Hindu woman.

Wednesday/Thursday Iran

2009-06-18T14:21:00.006-04:00

As I have been reading more into the power structure of Iran the Revolutionary Guard has a very interesting story. At first they were charged with being a personal security force of the Supreme Leader they have morphed into an economical/political power player with operations in 20 countries, in an attempt to export the Iranian style revolution.

Ahmadinejad, the incumbant president, a former commander in the revolutionary guard has been slowly helping revolutionary guard commanders take over high levers of power in the government. Under Ahmadinejads, Revolutionary Guard commanders have been appointed to 14 of the 21 cabinet positions, and have taken over as mayors of 30 cities, as well as wining 80 of the 290 seats on the Iranian Congress(Majlis).

This growing power in the politcal halls has meant increasing advantages when the Revolutionary Guard's many front companies bid for government contracts. With their advantage the Guard has built one of the wealthiest empires in Iran with ties to more than 100 companies and control of more than 12 billion dollars in contracts.

The Guard has its hands in such industry as dentistry, travel, oil, and construction. But the pride of the Guard is their controversial uranium enrichment facility at Natanz which is not subject to the parliamentary budget process.(Kim Murphy la times)

As far as the protests go Rez Aslan of the daily beast.com has much hope for the protesters. Paraphrasing a Aslan interview on msnbc he said the last heavy protests of 99' by the students were brutally repressed by the state because the protesters were one group of society. Today they cannot happen because everyone is protesters.

He continues, “What's really fascinating about what's happening right now in 2009 is that it looks a lot like what was happening in 1979. And there's a very simple reason for that. The same people are in charge -- I mean, Mousavi, Rafsanjani, Khatami, Medhi Karroubi, the other reformist candidate -- these were all the original revolutionaries who brought down the Shah to begin with, so they know how to do this right."

Its very powerful to hear that the same strategy that caused the revolution in 1979 is being used today by the same men who organized the revolution in 1979, to put pressure on the current power structure. Under these conditions it seems the Supreme leader and his power base are in trouble and might have to flee the country, which leades to another irony. In 1979 right before the Shah was overthrown he also left the country, today the current president Ahmadinejad is in Russia. It seems to easy to say that he will never come back to Iran.

some of the most blatent abuse on video to date.

Tuesday In Iran

2009-06-16T23:17:00.007-04:00

More protests rock Iran today, after a night of Basiji security forces breaking into houses and terrorising the public. So if the election wasnt rigged why such force? If the election wasnt rigged why are you shutting down communication networks like internet, cell phones, and banning foreign media from reporting.

Reports during the day were that the police were watching the protests without interference and that only the basiji security forces and the Revolutionary Guard was still beating people up and shooting at them.

Monday night security forces ransacked Tehran Universtiy, destroying computers, killing many, and arresting hundreds maybe. Faculty have cancelled finals and resigned in masses.

On the twitter front government forces have set up fake accounts to spread false information. Twitter also pushed off their scheduled maintenance when they were asked by the State Department. Iranian users of twitter have also asked twitters users from arount the world to change their location to Tehran and time zone to gmt +3:30, this will help confuse the Iranina intelligence services who are looking for Iraninas twitters users so the accounts can be shut down.

The Guardian Counil, upon reviewing the election have decided to recount part of the votes, not making many protesters to0 satisfied.

The most influencial cleric in the nation Montazeri has declared the election results a fraud. Montazeri was once the chosen cleric to take the reigns from the first Surpeme Leader of IranGrand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini before he became pulblicy outspoken about the governement.

Articles around the web starting to break down the power structure in Iran, and they are saying the battle in the streets is just a proxy fight between the two powers that run the nation.

One power is the Supreme Leader, and Ahmadinejad, and the military and security forces like the basiji and the Revolutionary Guard. During Ahmadinejad's first time he put many Rev. Guard offices in charge of many levels of power, the first time in Iranian history where military figures held political posts.

The other power structure represented by Mousavi, is made up of the clerics, the university's the students, and it is lead by the ex president/billionaire Rafsanjani.
#IranElection

Iran day 3

2009-06-15T18:05:00.004-04:00

All the tweets coming out of Iran are hard to keep up with. And the fact that twitter has decided tonight to shut down for mainanence might be the biggest bonehead move of the decade next to George Bush invading Iraq who did nothing to provoke the attack.

But the biggest news today beside the huge protests was the declaration by the Supreme Leader of the nation Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all election results, that he will have a government body review the election results for irregularities. This is a suprising change considering over the weekend the Supreme leader on two seperate occasions publicly congragulated Ahmadinejad on his victory. Yet its still unclear what this review will lead to since the Supreme Leader on numerous occasions throughout the presidential campaign has shown his preference for Ahmadinejad becoming the new president. The governement body to review the election results also has been directly or indirectly appointed by the Supreme Leader.

The losing candidate Mousavi showed up in the capitol for a large demonstration today, the first time he has been seen in public since Friday, News reports are suggesting the protests today saw anywhere from a few hundred thousand to a few million Iranians flooded the streets, stretching 5 miles long.

Reports are also coming out that those who attended Ahmadinejads victory speech yesturday were government workers who had no choice and were forcably bused in.

The protest during the day was peaceful. Police and security forces were seen standing by and watching. When the crowds began to chant they were overwelmed by voices quieting them.

Yet violence erupted again as day turned to night. Many have claimed that Lebanese Hezballah forces have been brought in to beat up protesters. This has been done in the past. Protesters surrounded and burned the central building of Iran's hardline Islamic Basij militiamen. Twitter reports gun shots and protesters clashing with police and smoke plumes all over Iran.

The protesters have also turned to their favorite tool to strike back at the government, technology, as hackers around the country have been attacking and crashing governement websites throughout the day.

One idea that is circulating as a possible solution to this crisis is some sort of power sharing agreement between the two factions.

Iran, all hell breaks loose

2009-06-14T00:18:00.003-04:00

So Iran held a presidential election on Friday and the election was very popular this year. Many came out to support their candidates and the internet and text messaging were very widely used. This morning the election results came in and the world was stunned. No one is buying the huge win for incumbant Ahmdinajad. The students who supported the reform candidate took to the streets in protest, so the police turned violent. Next thing you know the internet and cell phone service around the country goes down, and buses go up, in flames.

Is this part two of the 79' Revolution? Part one being the overthrow of western infuence in the nation, part two being the instalation of complete democracy and the final ousting of a dictatorship? After the 79' Revolution removing the Shah the conservate and reform niche's of the nation battled it out on the streets to see who would lead the nation. The conservatives won. And everytime since, that the reform party has tried to make a dent in conservative power they have not been able to. Some say because they are unwilling to go violent and aggressive against the ruling powers. But maybe thats whats needed. and maybe now is the time.

One election official working in the Ministry of the Interier the governmetn body that counts the election results says their was no fraud because no votes were counted. The election was handed to Ahmidinajad. Other rumers are saying voting boxes filled with votes were being burned all around the country. Since the president, Ahmidinijad has limited power, many beleive the Supreme Leader, the real leader of Iran, has approved the election fraud.

Yet others are saying maybe not. Maybe Ahmidinijad has staged his own coup without the consent of the Supreme leader. But the fact that a coup was staged is pretty much undebatable. Juan Cole explains why, a few of his examples are, 1. the history of Iranian elections shows different ethnic areas vote more favorably for their ethnically related candidate yet in this election that did not happen, all areas voted the same. 2. In the past region and town voting habits were broken down and released publically, this did not happen this year.

Many on the street are saying Ahmidinajad's 63% of the vote is too much to be deemed believable. "if he got 51, 52% it might have seemed beleivable but not 63%."

Day one after the results were released was pretty insane, what will happen next is anybodys guess.

Biden threatens Lebanon

2009-06-04T20:41:00.004-04:00

Remember a few years back the Palestinians of Israel had a democratic election Hamas rose to power ousting the American backed PLO? And do you remember our governments response was to stop funding the official government and start fomenting a civil war? Well Vice President Biden basically just made the same kind of threat to Lebanon, who is set to have a democratic presidential election on June 7th.

The AP is reporting that Biden in a speach warned that all future United States government funding to Lebanon would depend upon the upcoming elections. Could we expect a civil war in lebanon if the rebels win?

Stupid things to say

2009-06-04T09:09:00.002-04:00

Talking about the new Supreme Court nominee,

“Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when [Sotomayor]’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.” – G. Gordon Liddy

California Supreme court upholds gay marriage ban

2009-05-26T23:43:00.004-04:00

One side says its a civil rights issue, the other side is saying "but the bible says we shouldnt".

The citizens of California voted for and passed a ban last year on gay marriage. The fight went all the way to the California Supreme Court. The court sided with the citizens vote to ban gay marriage. I have not read the official opinion, but the corporate news is saying the decision asked one question, Do the citizens of california have the right to ammend their constitution (which they did last year by banning gay marriage),the court ruled YES they do have the right.

But hold on a second. Shouldnt the court have asked a different question. The role of the court system is to measure the constitutionality of laws passed. For example if california passed a law saying only whites could vote next year the court would rule if this law was legal, or if it violates others rights, granted in the constitution. So far it seems the California Supreme Court sidestepped this issue completely. Why didnt they make a ruling on the question, Was the law passed last year to ban gay marriages in california, does this law infringe on citizens rights.

Right now the way they ruled, "yes , california citizens have the right to ammend their constitiution", means, to me, that any ammendment is automatically legal. Stealing on wednesday's is legal. Attacking people who look different than you is now legal. Kidnapping those who angered you only for a few days is legal. How far can we take this?

Ruling yes, they have the right to ammend the constitution completely sidesteps the entire role of the judicial system by not ruling on the constitutionality of the issue that is in disagreement.

But than again maybe the courts are just trying to live up to the example the congress has set, of sidestepping its role by giving up its right to declare war to the president, by giving up its right to coin money to the FED, by giving up its power of the purse to treasury (to fix this financial mess), and by giving up its power of oversight, by not having any.

What roles have you sidestepped today?

Reading into the official supreme court opinion the justice's did not rule on the constitutionality of the ammendment because they said they already ruled last year that same sex unions would enjoy all the same rights under the law and that this new ammendment would not alter any previous opinion, it would only. take out the word"marriage". And any changes to California's constitution to the definition of marriage would be left to the legislature not the courts.

Peru pics

2009-05-19T23:52:00.004-04:00

Dumb things to say

2009-05-01T09:36:00.002-04:00

Neal boortz said the other day,
"what better way to sneak a virus into this country than to give it to mexicans", and
"if you want to get the swine flu into the states get it going real good and hot south of the border than a spread a rumor that there are construction jobs in the states",

Of course they are republican, and these statements are as racist as they get. These are the same people that want us to take them serious in the torture debates?

Has the Revolution arrived?

2009-04-26T05:26:00.002-04:00

The constitution of the United States grants rights to its citizens to rise up and take back the powers of its government should it be taken over and become corrupted.

Many say it has been taken over by the wealthy elite. Families like the Bush's, the Clintons, the Rockefellers. Families that have been building dynasty's in this country and chipping away at all the laws that were set up by our foundations to prevent them, like the estate tax.

Industries like banking have grown so large, complex, and concentrated that their power stretches the globe and they have the ability to tear down nations when their leveraged gambles do not go as planned, as can be seen from the 2008 economic collapse around the world. And when the world is brought down to its knees the government responds by giving the banking industry money hand over fist to fix the problem while delaying to help most citizens at the center of the crisis.

Industries like oil have been able to make record profits last year, while raising prices on gasoline and home heating oil to the highest level ever seen, all during a time of war when everyone should be sacrificing. And lets not forget the oil industry is still getting government subsidies from a decades old law that was passed at a time when it was not so lucrative to go into the industry, yet has never been removed. The industry is so powerful that 1. as Greg Palast has just reported on his website, the exxon valdez spill from 20 years ago has still not been cleaned up, 2. its impossible to get congress to pass some kind of minimum standard on gas mileage in automobiles.

Its seems there is an overwelming theme that congress does the work of the rich and powerful in business. No longer are laws passed or the congress lead in a direction to strengthen and protect our people and the world. Instead our government fights only for the rich. Creates jobs and opportunities only for the rich. Bails out only the rich.

Katrina happened to the poor and the help trickled in. Wall street fell down and congressmen jumped over each other to help out the elite old boys network. A health care bill is passed to confuse consumers and create more wealth for the pharmacuetical industry who paid millions of dollars to congressman to get congress to listen to "their philosphy" on the issues.

It just doesnt seem fair. Bills are passed for those who can "lobby" with million dollar donations, or paid business trips in hawaii. It seems like the philosophy our nation was founded on is dead, sold off to the highest bidder.

Is it anyones fault? Can we blame big business for wanting and trying to grow bigger by "lobbying"? We lobby also by protesting. Yet is seems business gets its way 95 out of 100 times with their lobbying.

Im a little off track, but the reason i began this train of thought was because i was listening to the wacky Michelle Bachman, republican congresswoman from who knows where complaining about the recent announcement by homeland security that right wing extreme groups that hoard weapons cache's, live in the mountains off the grid, and are 15th cousins of timothy mcveigh in their hate of the governement, are now a national threat, or are growing into one.

My first thought was good, its about time we looked into some of these groups. Its not so wild to see them as a threat after timothy mcveigh blew up a government building in the 90's.

My second thought is to laugh that these right wingers are crying about this because the left has been persecuted and intimadated and spied on by all levels of the government since the civil rights movement, and they have never blew up any buildings. For gods sakes martin luther king jr. the opitimy of freedom hope and liberty, everything this nation was founded upon, not only was spied upon by the FBI for being a national threat but was most likely killed by the same outfit. Kent state saw police shoot and kill students protesting the Vietnam War. And when we come full circle to today, this police state is making it harder and harder to protest. Video taping protesters. Creating files on them. Mass arrests of protesters at politcal rallies for no reason only to be let go after the rally ends.

So part of me is saying finally the police state is sharing the abuse with the right wing groups who also refuse to take the governments bullshit sitting down. The right wing has been through waco, and ruby ridge. And now more publicly with the government anouncing they will be looking more into militia groups and people who like to collect lots of guns.

Now the right knows what it feels like to be under the stomping boot of the romper stomper police state. The government does not like anything that challenges them, or the status quo. A quote that comes to mind is that those elites running the show will die to protect their way of life. They will not change the abusive system that favors them until we threaten to tear it down.

So my final observation is, now that the right is feeling mistreated by the government as the left has for decades, i see an alliance of the most unlikely caliber forming. Left wing aclu types, teaming up with anti abortion nra toating militias, to take or rights back from the dominant elite fuedal class that has taken this country hostage. The elite have tried to divide us for too long. With this lates round of the government antagonizing the right wing, it is obvious to me how similiar we really are.

Revolution is allowed by law, the elites fired the first shots centuries ago, this week the battle lines have been drawn.

Maybe we can put our bickering on hold about the rights of unborn babies, and all those born babies can fight the fuedal lords ruling america to take our rights back.

Is it torture? Lets permanently keep the statue of liberties head dunked under water,

2009-04-22T23:05:00.003-04:00

Is it torture?

Fuck yea it is. Are they kidding me? How can people have the gaul to attempt to defend this? If it tastes, smells, and sounds like torture, its fuckin torture.

Is this still America? I am changing my blog's name to the fuckin twighlight zone.

Some great America In this great American book that i read part of, had this line about america if our nation is not strong enough to get through crises like 9/11 without selling our soul, without changing who we are, without becoming just like the terrorists, than maybe this nation is not worth saving.

Oh but it was only a catapillar.

Oh its only water, Do you get mad when you get wet at the beach, its the same thing at guantanimo.

But i can think of a million reasons why it would be valuable to torture.

Dick Cheney can prove it works.

We cant torture POW's, when you give them a different title you can torture.

It just aggressive techniques, we only slapped the guy a couple of times.

What should we do, hug them?

Bullshit, Bullshit, and more Bullshit. You have these weasels coming on tv agreeing to be waterboarded? Sure i bet its done with the same intensity. 15 seconds of waterboarding is pretty comparable to 150 times being waterboarded.

You have john mccaain, a man who was tortured saying it does not work.

Did you know we prosecuted japanese post wwII for torture, guess what they did, waterboarding.

This is so infuriating, that my fellow citizens can come up with a million and one good reasons to torture another human being. Could any of you weasils become the torturer?

And the news is reporting see, we told you, all those guys we tortured in guantanamo have went back to join the taliban. Really? It had nothing to do with us creating a terrorist, by, umm, what that word, oh yea, fuckin torturing them.

This is the true test of a nation. Will our elite let these lowest forms of life who approved these techniques breath free air, or will they throw them in jail where they belong.

You can cry all you want about how they want to kill us and our kids and grandma's and that this is the only way to stop them, but that is bs. and deep down you know it.

So thanks to the damn elites who run our nation. Now we are in a class along with North korea, Iran, Saddam's Iraq, all those cooks. No wonder why Bush found it so easy to find the axis of evil, it takes one to no one.

We shoudl hang the statue of liberty upside down, with her head submergerd, that would be a more acurate welcome sign.

Modern History of Somalia

2009-04-16T10:10:00.002-04:00

Chris Floyd is another amazing journalist i read on the web. He does amazing amazing work on issues you cannot find information on anywhere else. If you want to learn the back story of the Somali pirates go to Chris's blog.

Did you know that in 2006 the country was organized and stable for the first time since the 80's, and the United States decided to fund and arm the ethiopian army to overthrow this stable government? Nice.

I was going to summarize Chris but his words say it better than anyone, go check out archive of articles on the abuse, torture renditions, destabalization of governements in the name of the USA,

The United States was directly involved in the invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia in late 2006: a murderous "regime change" operation by forces funded, armed and trained by the United States. The invasion and occupation, which ended in January 2009, killed thousands of Somalis, ruined and dispossessed hundreds of thousands of others, and plunged the already broken country even deeper into chaos, civil war and ruin. American forces bombed fleeing refugees, launched missile strikes into villages, captured refugees and "renditioned" them to Ethiopia's notorious torture chambers, and, perhaps most chillingly,sent in death squads to "clean up" after missile attacks.

The savage Ethiopian-American invasion was "justified" under the usual rubric of "fighting terrorism." It was ostensibly intended to oust a broad coalition of Islamic groups which had given Somalia its first semblance of stability in many years. The results of this "counter-terrorism" operation were entirely predictable: it weakened or destroyed moderate forces, while radicalizing many Somalis and empowering the most extreme and violent groups, led by the al-Shabab faction. In the end, the Terror Warriors had to admit defeat; the hand-picked, American-backed interim government, which included former warlords in the pay of the CIA, collapsed -- and the leader of the ousted Islamic coalition government became the new president, with the West's reluctant blessing. The entire war had been for naught.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1741-emotional-rescue-praise-for-sea-victory-could-presage-carnage.html