Political Junkies's topics - tribe.net

Palin v. Reality

2009-11-12T07:51:20Z

In some ways, the last year has unfolded for her like a reality TV show gone wrong: a governorship plagued by ethics investigations that ended with a shocking and widely mocked resignation speech, the repeated airing of sour grapes from former McCain campaign aides, a series of embarrassing scheduling mishaps at key Republican Party events, and a bevy of tabloid reports carrying insidious allegations about her personal life.

Just-released CNN polling confirms the last 12 months have taken a toll on the Alaska Republican's popularity. Her overall favorable rating has dipped to 42 percent and she trails former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in a hypothetical matchup for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 by 7 points. Moreover, Palin's unfavorable rating is 15 points higher than Huckabee's.

Palin has also made few of the conventional moves befitting a presidential candidate-in-waiting: She's rarely shown up at party events, has made virtually no public appearances since she resigned the governorship, or granted no national media interviews and retained no political staff.

What could be most troublesome for Palin at this stage: Most Americans can't seem to envision her ever being the commander-in-chief.

"Her biggest problem is the perception that she is not qualified to be president," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "Seven in 10 Americans, and nearly half of all Republicans, say she is not qualified. It's a problem that politicians have faced before, but one that few have been able to overcome."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/28/sarah.palin/

Palin backs Perry in Texas, but Cheney supports Hutchinson . . . so he's on the side of the moderates . . .

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/state/stories/DN-kbhcheney_29tex.ART.State.Edition1.4b892b9.html

Iowa Republicans upset over $100,000 speaker fee.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1009/Palins_really_odd_fee.html

You gotta admit, she's interesting to watch . . .

posted in Political Junkies - 21 replies

Mandatory sex lessons for every 15-year-old

2009-11-12T07:46:34Z

Sex education is to be made compulsory for all pupils, prompting fury from faith groups which said that the move would contravene the right for children to be educated in accordance with their parents’ beliefs.

All 15-year-olds must receive at least one year of sex and relationship lessons, Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said yesterday. Those whose religious or moral values prevent them from attending will be classed as truants and may be punished by the school. Until now parents could opt out of lessons about contraception, sexually transmitted diseases and homosexuality until their children were 19.

Roman Catholic and Muslim groups said they would strongly oppose the move. Shahid Akmal, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain’s education board, said he would challenge the laws, which he called an imposition. “It is always better for the parents to talk to children about sex rather than the school over which the parents have no control,” he said.

The Catholic Education Service for England and Wales said it was “disappointed” that the “blanket right to withdrawal” had been removed.

Mr Balls said that lowering the age to 15 was “the most balanced, most practical and legally enforceable way” to satisfy the rights of parent and children. The move is central to the Government’s attempts to lower the teenage pregnancy rate, which rose for the first time since 2002, according to the latest figures. There were 41.9 conceptions per 1,000 15 to 17-year-olds in 2007, up from 40.9 the year before. England has the highest rates of teenage mothers in Western Europe.

Yesterday’s decision, which is part of the move to put sex and drugs education on the national curriculum for the first time, comes after a two-year review and consultation.

The Government is pressing ahead despite its own research, which shows that the move is heavily opposed, with 79 per cent of the population backing the right of parents to exempt their children. One in three people in the survey of more than 6,000 said that this right should not be restricted by the child’s age.

Under current rules, schoolchildren must be taught the biological facts of reproduction, usually during science classes. Every school has a sex education policy, but at present there is no statutory requirement for teaching about relationships or the social and emotional side of sexual behaviour.

Under the new laws, to be enforced in 2011, schools will teach about the importance of marriage, civil partnerships and stable relationships in family life, as well as how to have sex.

Mr Balls said: “Sex and relationship education is a very important element and we see it as crucial to our drive to reduce teenage pregnancy.”

Gill Frances, chairman of the Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy, welcomed the new legislation.

“We believe this is the biggest single step that can reduce teenage pregnancy rates,” she said.

“Evidence shows that sex and relationships education helps young people delay early sex and make healthy choices when they eventually do become sexually active.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6905543.ece

posted in Political Junkies - 17 replies

Lou Dobbs resigns from CNN

2009-11-12T07:41:06Z

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111125152.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Anchor Lou Dobbs resigns from CNN

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 12, 2009

Lou Dobbs, the most opinionated and divisive anchor at a cable network that bills itself as a straight-news oasis, resigned from CNN on Wednesday night, saying in his final broadcast that he wants "to go beyond the role" of a television journalist in tackling the country's problems.

Framing his move as a response to the urging of "some leaders in media, politics and business," Dobbs struck a populist tone, attempting to position himself as a political leader who would mount a campaign "to overcome the lack of true representation in Washington, D.C." He said that public debate was now defined by "partisanship and ideology" and that he would continue to speak out "in the most honest and direct language possible."

Liberal groups such as NDN and Media Matters had mounted a "Dump Dobbs" campaign, and Latino organizations challenged such Dobbs declarations as his 2006 statement that about one-third of the U.S. prison population "is estimated to be illegal aliens"--which the anchor later acknowledged was way too high. But his position at CNN seemed secure.

The surprise announcement by Dobbs, whose fervent opposition to illegal immigration has come to define his career, stunned most staffers at the network he helped launch in 1980. He only hinted at disagreements with CNN President Jon Klein, saying that after extensive talks Klein had agreed to let him out of his multimillion-dollar contract.

In a statement, Klein praised the 64-year-old Dobbs for having "fearlessly and tirelessly pursued some of the most important and complex stories of our time, often well ahead of the pack." He added: "With characteristic forthrightness, Lou has now decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere."

Signaling his already apparent opposition to the Obama administration, Dobbs said that in the last six months "strong winds have buffeted this country." He vowed to "be a leader" in a "national conversation" about immigration, jobs, health care, climate change and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- as well as "our now-weakened capitalist economy."

Dobbs was once a conventional business anchor who hosted the program "Moneyline." He quit CNN in 1999 after clashing with his network's management over his Internet venture, Space.com, but returned two years later.

In recent years, the renamed "Lou Dobbs Tonight" has served as a forum for his strong and often controversial opinions, sometimes to the discomfort of the correspondents being interviewed. Dobbs drew fire earlier this year by urging President Obama to do more to prove that he was born in Hawaii, lending credence to unsubstantiated claims by the so-called "birthers."

The Southern Poverty Law Center asked CNN in July to fire Dobbs over what it called his "racist conspiracy theories." And it put Klein in an uncomfortable position, simultaneously insisting in a memo to his staff that the story about the president's birth certificate was "dead" and telling the Los Angeles Times that he trusted Dobbs to exercise his judgment on whether to keep pursuing it.

Last month, Dobbs said on air that shots had been fired at his New Jersey home while he and his wife were outside. On his radio show, which he plans to continue, Dobbs tied the shooting to his immigration stance, saying: "The national liberal media has chosen sides. And they have decided that they're going to focus on the liberal view, which is that they will embrace illegal immigration no matter who is harmed, no matter how many laws are broken, or how few consequences there are for breaking those laws. My wife has now been, and I have been, shot at."

An official with the New Jersey State Police played down the incident, telling the Huffington Post that a hunter was probably to blame and that the stray bullet hit the attic of Dobbs's house.

A Fox News spokesman said Wednesday that the network has had no discussions with Dobbs. After rumors last month that Dobbs might be headed to that network, Fox's Geraldo Rivera, a frequent Dobbs critic, said, "Lou Dobbs is almost single-handedly responsible for creating, for being the architect of the young-Latino-as-scapegoat for everything that ails this country," Rivera said.

Dobbs, whose 7 p.m. program had introduced him as "Mr. Independent," said he is "weighing his options" about his next move.

Kurtz also works for CNN and hosts its weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."

posted in Political Junkies - 3 replies

Israel is Not A Tolerant Society. .

2009-11-12T06:49:37Z

according to a US State Dept report. .

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126286.html

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

Pfizer abandons site of infamous Kelo eminent domain taking

2009-11-12T06:47:06Z

The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.

But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes' seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.

To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of "public use."

The Hartford Courant reports:

Pfizer Inc. will shut down its massive New London research and development headquarters and transfer most of the 1,400 people working there to Groton, the pharmaceutical giant said Monday....

Pfizer is now deciding what to do with its giant New London offices, and will consider selling it, leasing it and other options, a company spokeswoman said.

Scott Bullock, Kelo's co-counsel in the case, told me: "This shows the folly of these redevelopment projects that use massive taxpayer subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare and abuse eminent domain."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Pfizer-abandons-site-of-infamous-Kelo-eminent-domain-taking-69580497.html

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Fox News fact checks Sarah Palin’s ‘dollar conspiracy’

2009-11-12T06:41:05Z

In an speech to a Minnesota anti-abortion crowd last week, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin seemed to see a conspiracy in a decision to put "In God We Trust" on the edge -- rather than the face -- of new presidential dollar coins.

"She began her remarks with a puzzling commentary on the design of newly minted dollar coins," Politico wrote. "Noting that there had been a lot of “change” of late, Palin recalled a recent conversation with a friend about how the phrase “In God We Trust” had been moved to the edge of the new coins.

“Who calls a shot like that?” she inquired. “Who makes a decision like that?”

“It’s a disturbing trend,” she added.

Turns out, the decision was made by former Republican President George W. Bush, and approved in 2005.

Raw Story was the first to note Palin's "conspiracy theory" Monday. The story then traveled to the Huffington Post, and then to -- of all places -- Fox News.

And Fox fact-checked Palin's claim. In the clip below, Fox's Brett Baier notes that the decision to put the godly phrase on the side of the coin was made under a Republican administration, and not reversed until 2007 -- with the support of Democrats in Congress.

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/fox-news-fact-checks-sarah-palins-dollar-conspiracy/

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Purging the RINOs

2009-11-12T04:59:51Z

Right wing purists egged on by Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin fought to capture an upstate House seat Monday and electrify their drive to purge moderates from the Republican Party.

With Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman jumping to the lead in a new poll, the hard-core right smelled a chance to remold the GOP in the image of raucous town hall protests and "tea party" rallies of the summer.

"Moderates by definition have no principles," Limbaugh huffed on his radio show yesterday. He predicted that "RINOs" - a putdown acronym of "Republicans In Name Only" - "may become extinct."

Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava quit the race Saturday after relentless attacks by Hoffman backers, who called her too liberal.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/11/02/2009-11-02_limbaugh_palin_urge_right_wing_to_step_up_efforts_to_purge_moderates_from_republ.html

Many in the GOP, including their presumed leaders, have decided that it is in their best interest to destroy their own in the name of ideological purity. Tim Pawlenty, a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, spent his time on “Morning Joe” today trashing fellow Republicans, such as Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), for not measuring up to the ideological litmus test that he believes must be applied to determine who should –and who should not – be members of the Republican Party.

So much for the whole ‘big tent’ thing.

http://trueslant.com/rickungar/2009/11/03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-tea-party/

In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.

Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.

But their success in Tuesday’s upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined.

Activists predict a wave that could roll from California to Kentucky to New Hampshire and that could leave even some GOP incumbents — Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is one — facing unexpectedly fierce challenges from their right flank.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29057.html

Republicans have managed to become even less popular than they were under President George W. Bush. The party's favorability rating is at its lowest point in the most recent CNN/Opinion Research poll since the Clinton impeachment, with 36 percent of voters expressing positive opinions and 54 percent negative, versus 53 percent positive and 41 percent negative for the Democrats. In an even more historic drop, an anemic 20 percent of American voters identified as Republicans in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, the lowest percentage since 1983. The same poll showed Democrats leading 51 percent to 39 percent in a generic congressional ballot, numbers on par with Democratic blowouts in 2006 and 2008 and in line with a broader trend in the polls toward House Democrats after a brief dip over the summer.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-02/the-gops-election-day-schizophrenia/

The more the Republican Party sells its intellectual soul to the right-wingers, and the more it listens to those within the closed loop, the better the President's long-term political chances, whatever the ups and downs of today's polls.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/obamas-biggest-threat-is-his-countrys-future-not-its-ranters/article1348730/

In this country, you win elections by building coalitions, not purging heretics . . .

posted in Political Junkies - 12 replies

Mormons for Gay Rights

2009-11-12T04:57:37Z

It looked like a stunning reversal: the same church that helped defeat gay marriage in California standing with gay-rights activists on an anti-discrimination law in its own backyard.

On Tuesday night, after a series of clandestine meetings between local gay-rights backers and Mormons in Salt Lake City, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced it would support proposed city laws that would prohibit discrimination against gays in housing and employment.

The ordinances passed and history was made: It marked the first time the Salt Lake City-based church had supported gay-rights legislation.

The Mormon church - which continues to suffer a backlash over its support last year of Proposition 8, the measure banning gay marriage in California - emphasized that its latest position in no way contradicts its teachings on homosexuality.

But the action is one of the strongest signs yet that even conservative religious groups that oppose same-sex marriage might be willing to support legal protections for gays that fall short of that.

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20091111/4afa52e0_3421_1334520091111587671345

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Political Realignments

2009-11-12T02:10:31Z

Rather than a refuge for moderates who are tired of ideological bickering, recent third parties are more ideologically consistent - and many would say more extreme - than the two main parties. It is not a coincidence that Doug Hoffman in the 23rd congressional district in New York ended up on a third-party ticket. His party officials chose a moderate-to-liberal Republican to run for an open seat in Congress, yet Hoffman struck a responsive chord among conservative Republicans and also very conservative independents.

Many liberals have gloated about the fact that Republican self-identification is lower than that of Democrats. Curiously, conservative self-identification is far more common than a liberal one. Recent Gallup estimates put it at as high as 2:1 ratio. At the same time, a growing contingent of independents is mysteriously moving to the right. The most plausible explanation is that the Republican Party is leaking some conservatives to independents. This weakens the Republican Party, to be sure, but it also makes it harder for Democrats to win over independents.

In respect to ideology, Democrats are more satisfied with their own party than Republicans. To Democrats, ideology and party are, at this moment in history, largely interchangeable. They might assume that the same is true of Republicans or even conservatives, but it's not.

In our November 4 survey, we asked a pair of questions: "Do you think that the Republican Party is too conservative, or not conservative enough?", and "Do you think that Democratic Party is too liberal, or not liberal enough?."

It turned out that Democrats and Republicans have different views of their respective parties. Only about a third of Democrats think that their party is not liberal enough, with about 22% saying it is too liberal. Democrats appear to be delivering what most of their members want.

In contrast, almost 60% of
Republicans think that their party is not conservative enough, and only
15% think that it is too conservative. In order to meet the wishes of
a majority of its members, the Republican Party would need to move a
bit to the right.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20091109/cm_huffpost/351334

Putting it another way, disenchanted moderate Republicans became independents, without turning into Democrats, and the third parties have had little luck in winning them over. The Teabaggers are not disenchanted moderates, but super-conservatives, and they will always favor a Republican over a Democrat.

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Health Care Bill Saves $109 Billion

2009-11-12T02:09:04Z

After painstaking analysis, the CBO estimated that the House health care reform bill, known as the Affordable Health Care for America Act, would reduce the federal deficit by about $109 billion during the first 10 years after it takes effect. To repeat: The bill passed by the House Democrats on the evening of Saturday, Nov. 7, “would yield a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $109 billion over the 2010-2019 period.”

The CBO experts also costed out the Senate Finance Committee bill and found that it would cut federal deficits by more than $80 billion during that first decade.

Those reassuring conclusions derive from other basic facts about reform that tend to be ignored or concealed. Reform will reduce wasteful spending by hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and will depend for financing on excise taxes imposed on the wealthiest 1 percent of the population.

Much of the misinformation about the costs of reform comes from the belief—fostered by conservatives—that the government-run health plan known as the “public option” would impose a huge burden on the federal budget. So says Joseph Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut who has threatened to filibuster the bill.

Section 322 of the Affordable Health Care for America Act says clearly and concisely that people insured under the public option will pay premium rates “at a level sufficient to fully finance the costs of health benefits provided by the public health insurance option; and administrative costs related to operating the public health insurance option.” In short, the public option will involve no new federal expenditure.

http://uspolitics.einnews.com/news.php?nid=771273

posted in Political Junkies - 3 replies

Driver Forces Passengers To Pray On MARTA Bus

2009-11-12T00:39:12Z

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/21544521/detail.html

It seems to me a case could be made here for unlawful restraint. It would probably be a pretty weak case, though.

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

Massive Defense Spending Leads to Job Loss

2009-11-11T15:20:39Z

There is a major national ad campaign, funded by the oil industry and other usual suspects, to convince the public that measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and slow global warming will result in massive job loss. This ad campaign warns of slower growth and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, possibly even millions of jobs, if some variation of the current proposals being debated by Congress get passed into law.

In fact, standard economic models do show that measures designed to reduce GHG by raising energy prices will lead to some cost in terms of slower economic growth. And slower economic growth implies fewer jobs, although the impact will almost certainly be less than indicated in these scare stories.

However, the oil industry’s scare stories about job loss are never put it in any context. In these models, any government measure that interferes with market outcomes almost by definition reduces efficiency, leading to less economic growth and fewer jobs. Efforts to slow global warming fall in this category, but so does almost everything else and many items in the everything else category have a much larger impact.

For example, defense spending means that the government is pulling away resources from the uses determined by the market and instead using them to buy weapons and supplies and to pay for soldiers and other military personnel. In standard economic models, defense spending is a direct drain on the economy, reducing efficiency, slowing growth and costing jobs.

A few years ago, the Center for Economic and Policy Research commissioned Global Insight, one of the leading economic modeling firms, to project the impact of a sustained increase in defense spending equal to 1.0 percentage point of GDP. This was roughly equal to the cost of the Iraq War.

Global Insight’s model projected that after 20 years the economy would be about 0.6 percentage points smaller as a result of the additional defense spending. Slower growth would imply a loss of almost 700,000 jobs compared to a situation in which defense spending had not been increased. Construction and manufacturing were especially big job losers in the projections, losing 210,000 and 90,000 jobs, respectively.

The scenario we asked Global Insight to model turned out to have vastly underestimated the increase in defense spending associated with current policy. In the most recent quarter, defense spending was equal to 5.6 percent of GDP. By comparison, before the September 11th attacks, the Congressional Budget Office projected that defense spending in 2009 would be equal to just 2.4 percent of GDP. Our post-September 11th build-up was equal to 3.2 percentage points of GDP compared to the pre-attack baseline. This means that the Global Insight projections of job loss are far too low.

The impact of higher spending will not be directly proportionate in these economic models. In fact, it should be somewhat more than proportionate, but if we just multiple the Global Insight projections by 3, we would see that the long-term impact of our increased defense spending will be a reduction in GDP of 1.8 percentage points. This would correspond to roughly $250 billion in the current economy, or about $800 in lost output for every person in the country.

The projected job loss from this increase in defense spending would be close to 2 million. In other words, the standard economic models that project job loss from efforts to stem global warming also project that the increase in defense spending since 2000 will cost the economy close to 2 million jobs in the long run.

For some reason, no one has chosen to highlight the job loss associated with higher defense spending. In fact, the job loss attributable to defense spending has probably never been mentioned in a single news story in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, or any other major media outlet. It is difficult to find a good explanation for this omission.

If we want to have a serious discussion of the economic impact of efforts to reduce greenhouse gases then the economic impact must be put in context. We know that the oil industry is interested in preserving its profits, not informing voters. However, if the media discuss projections of job loss from efforts to contain global warming without putting them in any context, then the public would be right to question their motives as well.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/defense-spending-job-loss/

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Ft Hood shooting

2009-11-11T06:41:26Z

Fort Hood Rampage Suspect Sill Alive http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/05/national/main5543071.shtml

Army Spokesman: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan Not Killed By Authorities Responding to Attack; In Custody

(CBS/ AP) Updated at 9:45 p.m. EST

A military mental health doctor facing deployment overseas opened fire at the Fort Hood Army post on Thursday, setting off on a rampage that killed 12 people and left 31 wounded, Army officials said.

Authorities said immediately after the shootings that they had killed the suspected shooter, but later in the evening they recanted and said that he was alive and in stable condition at a hospital, watched by a guard.

“His death is not imminent,” said Lt. Gen. Bob Cone at Fort Hood. He offered little explanation for the mistake, other than to say there was confusion at the hospital.

A law enforcement official identified the shooting suspect as Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

'Good American' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA9nHhSgZA4

posted in Political Junkies - 46 replies

It only happens rarely,

2009-11-11T06:39:41Z

but I am one to give credit where it is due. The New York Times actually printed an editorial with some good old fashioned common sense in it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/opinion/10brooks.html?th&emc=th

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Worldwide poll: Vast majority say capitalism not working

2009-11-11T01:58:31Z

Dissatisfaction with capitalism is widespread around the globe 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall that heralded the demise of European communism, a poll released Monday showed.

Only 11 percent of people surveyed across 27 countries thought free market capitalism is working well, while nearly a quarter -- 23 percent -- said the system is "fatally flawed." A bare majority, 51 percent, believed its problems can be solved with more regulation and reform, the poll said.

In only the United States (25 percent) and Pakistan (21 percent), did more than one in five people agree that capitalism works well in its current form, the poll conducted for BBC World said.

The survey of 29,033 adults comes after the worst global financial crisis since the 1930s Great Depression and amid celebrations of the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which abruptly ended the Cold War.

And it reflects growing concerns among the public and politicians that the world's economic system has failed to live up to its promises. In Europe's post-communist eastern bloc, where residents have lived through both communism and capitalism, a poll released last week suggested capitalism is losing favor with the public.

Research by the Pew Research Center showed the percentage of people approving of democracy was markedly lower in the former Soviet bloc compared to a similar 1991 poll.

Eighty-five percent of respondents in East Germany supported the change to democracy, but even this was down six percent from 1991. The figure dropped 24 percent in Bulgaria, 20 in Lithuania, 18 in Hungary and eight in Russia.

Japan's recently-elected center-left prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, launched a broadside last month against the excesses of capitalism in his first parliamentary address since taking office.

Speaking on his vision of a kinder, gentler society guided by the spirit of "fraternity," Hatoyama said market forces were useful for a country but must be tempered in order to create a livable society.

"It is self-evident that free economic activity in markets invigorates society," said Hatoyama, 62, who swept to power in August elections, ending more than half a century of almost unbroken conservative rule.

"But it is also obvious that the idea of letting markets decide everything for the survival of the strongest, or the idea of 'economic rationalism' at the expense of people's lives, does not hold true any more."

Doug Miller, chairman of polling firm GlobeScan, which co-conducted the BBC survey, said: "It appears that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 may not have been the crushing victory for free-market capitalism that it seemed at the time -- particularly after the events of the last 12 months."

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/survey-capitalism-not-working/

Is it time to replace Capitalism?

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Fed Court Rules Against Carolina’s ‘Christian’ License Plate

2009-11-10T23:35:53Z

Federal District Court Rules Against South Carolina’s ‘Christian’ License Plate

Americans United Says Decision Reminds Officials Of Their Duty To Uphold Separation Of Church And State

November 10, 2009

"A federal district court ruled today that a special Christian license plate mandated by the South Carolina legislature violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie held that the plate, which was to feature a large yellow cross, a stained-glass window and the words “I Believe,” clearly gives favored government treatment to one faith. In a summary judgment ruling, she ordered state officials not to issue the plate.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which served as counsel in the case, praised the decision.

“This is great news,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “Government must never be allowed to express favored treatment for one faith over others. That’s unconstitutional and un-American."

http://www.au.org/media/press-releases/archives/2009/11/south-carolinas-christian.html

Join the Separation of Church & State tribe
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

;

posted in Political Junkies - 1 reply

Palin sees conspiracy in new dollar coins

2009-11-10T18:46:13Z

It now seems clear why the staff to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin didn't want anyone to bring recording devices or cell phones to her speech Friday night.

Even news outlets like Politico -- which have prominently featured Dick Cheney's terror jeremiads -- would have been likely to lampoon her.

But the ban on recording devices didn't stop them. Politico says they bought three tickets to Palin's Wisconsin speech and then penned a write-up. Their review was somewhat grim, taking aim at Palin's frequent use of the words "bogus" and "awesome" and delivering a strange anecdote about dollar coins.

"Palin had remarks prepared but frequently wandered off-script to make a point, offering audience members a casual “awesome” or “bogus” in discussing otherwise weighty topics," Jonathan Martin wrote in his review.

He quotes Palin as saying, “It is so bogus that society is sending a message right now and has been for probably the last 40 years that a woman isn’t strong enough or smart enough to be able to pursue an education, a career and her rights and still let her baby live.”

"Other Palin touchstones included: praise for the military, jeers for the “the liberal media” and a general manner of speaking that often veered into rhetorical culs-de-sac," he continued.

Palin didn't draw supporters to their feet: "While she drew applause during her remarks, Palin’s extemporaneous and frequently discursive style was such that she never truly roused a true-believing crowd as passionate about the issue at hand as she. Not once during her address did they rise to their feet."

They did stand at the end, however.

She then got a standing ovation from most of the crowd, but a few had begun to leave before she even finished and within seconds of her concluding, scores more got up and put on their jackets as they walked away.

In addition to the suggestion that government officials would consider hastening the death of the infirm or handicapped, she began her remarks with a puzzling commentary on the design of newly minted dollar coins.

Noting that there had been a lot of “change” of late, Palin recalled a recent conversation with a friend about how the phrase “In God We Trust” had been moved to the edge of the new coins.

“Who calls a shot like that?” she demanded. “Who makes a decision like that?”

She added: “It’s a disturbing trend.”

The decision to put "IN GOD WE TRUST" on the edges of presidential dollar coins has received little attention from the press, but was reversed in 2007, before President Barack Obama took office. Sens. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) sponsored legislation to move the motto back to the front face of the coins.

"It is important that our national motto, 'In God We Trust,' is prominently displayed on all of our currency," Brownback said. "We should not relegate our heritage to the side."

Some of Palin's recent speeches have also received lackluster reviews. At a recent speech in Hong Kong (which also banned the press) some delegates purportedly "walked out in disgust."

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/palin-speech-abortion-opponents-mocked-describes-weighty-topics-bogus-awesome/

posted in Political Junkies - 8 replies

Buddhism in prison - a good idea?

2009-11-10T18:08:24Z

Buddhism in prison - a good idea?
http://www.examiner.com/x-17009-Freethought-Examiner~y2009m11d8-Buddhism-in-prison--a-good-idea

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posted in Political Junkies - 8 replies

Ft. Hood? (See Also: Ft. Carson!!)

2009-11-10T07:24:59Z

Here's another shining example of PTSD, the mental stability of many returning from undefined wars (see my comment on the post re: Ft. Hood for a better explanation of what I mean by that)...

Please note - this is a snippet from page two of a SIX page long article:

<snip>...
On July 28th, Bastien and Bressler had fired three shots at a man walking to get gas for his truck, hitting him once in the shoulder. A week later, on August 4th, they executed Robert James, a fellow private from Fort Carson, as he begged for his life in a parking lot. On October 27th, Bressler ran over a 19-year-old nursing student in his Suzuki; Bastien then stabbed her six times with a combat knife. A drive-by shooting in which no one was hurt rounded out the charges. "Those are just the attacks we know about," says Derek Graham, a homicide detective who served as a lead investigator on the case. "My gut feeling is that they were involved in more."

In the six years since combat operations began in Iraq, Fort Carson — the country's third-largest Army base, with 22,000 active soldiers on duty — has become its own kind of killing field. Before Kevin Shields was gunned down, at least three other Iraq War veterans from the base had been arrested for murder, and a fourth had committed suicide after killing his wife. Since then, at least five more GIs at Fort Carson have been arrested in connection with murders, attempted murders or manslaughter. All told, the military acknowledged this summer, 14 soldiers from the base have been charged or convicted in at least 11 slayings since 2005 — the largest killing spree involving soldiers at a single U.S. military installation in modern history.

Spurred by public outrage, the Army conducted a six-month study into the Fort Carson killings, examining the medical and combat histories of the 14 accused soldiers. Like Bressler, nine of the vets served in the 4th Brigade Combat Team, which suffered a casualty rate in Iraq eight times higher than other Fort Carson units. The Army's 126-page report, released in July, marked the first time the military has ever acknowledged the significance of combat in the behavior of returning veterans. There is, according to the report, a "possible association between increasing levels of combat exposure and risk for negative behavioral outcomes." But in classic bureaucratic language, the study fell short of calling for any real specific action beyond a need for more studies.

</end snip - article continues through end, page 6>

Entire article can be found here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30794989/the_fort_carson_murder_spree/

Odd how this hasn't made it to the MSM... Perhaps killing by onesies or twosies just isn't bad enough to merit the public's attention to the problem our soldiers - indeed, our very populace who lives with and around these soldiers when they return from war - face every day. (please note dripping sarcasm about "killing onesies or twosies").

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

Tea Baggers Turn Against GOP

2009-11-10T05:32:20Z

While the energy of the anti-tax and anti-Big Government tea party movement may yet haunt Democrats in 2010, the first order of business appears to be remaking the Republican Party.

Whether it’s the loose confederation of Washington-oriented groups that have played an organizational role or the state-level activists who are channeling grass-roots anger into action back home, tea party forces are confronting the Republican establishment by backing insurgent conservatives and generating their own candidates — even if it means taking on GOP incumbents.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28157.html

The struggle for ideological purity on the Right never ends . . . no one is "conservative" enough for these guys . . . not that they have much interest in governing the country, or have any clue how to do it . . .

posted in Political Junkies - 143 replies

Pox News

2009-11-08T23:10:58Z

'Sesame Street' Dig at POX News Draws Backlash, Rebuke From PBS

A 2-year-old skit on 'Sesame Street' that referenced a "trashy" news channel called POX News came under fire this week when conservative bloggers accused the long-running PBS series of a liberal bias. In the clip, Oscar the Grouch is a reporter for the Grouch News Network (GNN), but he bored one female viewer, who responds: "From now on, I'm watching Pox News. Now there's a trashy news show!"

Big Hollywood, the celeb blog founded by conservative writer Andrew Breitbart, called out the old skit (re-run this week) as a jab at the mega popular news network. "The message is clear," a blogger named Stage Right noted, "I can't even sit my kids in front of 'Sesame Street' without having to worry about the Left attempting to undermine my authority."

http://www.popeater.com/2009/11/06/sesame-street-dig-at-pox-news-backfires/

Gosh isn't it awful when the leftists at Sesame Street undermine the authority of anonymous bloggers . . .

The original skit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO-1j9T90-8&feature=related

posted in Political Junkies - 1 reply

Teen got life sentence for killing pimp who raped her at 13

2009-11-08T20:27:02Z

Supreme Court to rule on constitutionality of life prison terms for crimes committed by children

The case of a teenage girl who got life in prison for killing the man who raped her at age 13 and pimped her out for three years is drawing renewed attention to an upcoming Supreme Court decision on life terms for underaged felons.

A feature piece at Alternet.org tells the story of Sara Kruzan, of Riverside, California, who met a "father figure" at age 11. By age 13, he had raped her; for the next three years, she worked 12-hour days as a prostitute for her abuser.

When Kruzan killed her tormentor at age 16, the judge declared her actions "well thought-out" and gave her life in prison without parole.

Kruzan is one of 2,574 Americans "sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes they committed as children," according to a Human Rights Watch report.

'TEENAGE THUG' SENATOR TO THE RESCUE

This month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in two cases -- Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida -- in which it will rule on the constitutionality of sending underaged offenders to prison for life.

While those two Florida cases involve underage individuals who were sentenced to life in prison for crimes that didn't involve homicides, a Supreme Court ruling striking down life sentences for teenagers could have broad repercussions throughout the US justice system.

And advocates of a change to the law are getting help from an unlikely corner -- a former US senator who says he once was a "teenage thug."

Alan K. Simpson, who served as US senator from Wyoming from 1979 to 1997, has filed a "friend-of-the-court" brief (PDF) with the Supreme Court in advance of its hearings to argue that life sentences should not be applied to under-18s because their states of mind are still in development and jailing them till death could destroy potentially productive lives.

The brief describes Simpson's life as a juvenile delinquent, decades before he would go on to serve as a US senator:

One day in Cody, Wyoming, when Simpson was in high school, he and some friends “went out to do damage.” They went to an abandoned war relocation structure and decided to “torch” it. They committed arson on federal property, a crime now punishable by up to twenty years in prison if no one is hurt ... and punishable by up to life in prison if the arson causes a person’s death...

Simpson and his friends went shooting throughout their community. They fired their rifles at mailboxes, blowing holes in several and killing a cow. They fired their weapons at a road grader. “We just raised hell,” Simpson says. Federal authorities charged Simpson with destroying government property and Simpson pleaded guilty. He received two years of probation and was required to make restitution from his own funds.

Simpson's brief, on behalf of himself and a number of other petitioners, states:

Because [Simpson and others] were not sentenced to life imprisonment – because they ultimately were given another chance, in part because of the young age at which they had committed criminal offenses – they were able to make significant contributions to their communities and even, in some cases, the nation and the world. The life stories of [Simpson and others] show how much could have been lost by concluding too quickly that they were beyond hope.

An article in the Times of London describes the cases of Joe Harris Sullivan and Terrance Graham:

Joe Harris Sullivan was 13 when a Pensacola judge sentenced him to life without parole for raping a 72-year-old woman. The judge described Sullivan as “beyond help” and declared that he would “send him away for as long as I can”. He has already spent 20 years in jail.

Terrance Graham was 16 when he was arrested for armed burglary while on probation for a previous robbery. At the time Florida was cracking down on repeat offenders and in 2005 a different judge declared Graham “incorrigible” and imposed the maximum sentence.

"Numerous legal and medical associations are supporting Sullivan and Graham on the grounds that the courts should not judge teenagers in the same way as they judge adults, just as governments recognize the difference by placing certain restrictions on juvenile drinking, voting and marrying," the Times states.

The Alternet article on Kruzan -- who is black -- notes that race is also a factor in life sentences for juveniles.

"African American youth are serving [sentences] at a rate of about 10 times that of white youth," Alison Parker of Human Rights Watch told AlterNet. "In some states, the rate is even higher."

The "Free Sara Kruzan" campaign at MySpace can be found here.

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/teen-life-sentence-raped-13/

posted in Political Junkies - 9 replies

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.

2009-11-08T20:24:20Z

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/03/secret-copyright-tre.html

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

* * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/

posted in Political Junkies - 14 replies

Vivisecting Glenn Beck

2009-11-08T20:13:00Z

Yesterday Jon Stewart devoted an entire segment of his show to Glenn Beck's recent appendicitis and how the incident may be part of a larger Nazi conspiracy to takeover Glenn Beck's body. Beck stated that he laughed at the SNL parody done of him and one now wonders whether Beck will also laugh along with Stewart's imitation. Whether you consider the parody very close to the actual Beck or completely absurd it certainly does provide some good comedy.

Watch the clip yourself and notice the following themes from Beck's show:

(1) A condemnation of mainstream media and an accusation that they purposefully hiding something from you.

(2) A harken back to a better or purer time with the accompanying criticisms that these ideals have been forgotten in current times.

(3) The effective use of pause and a gradual buildup to climatic points of revelation.

(4) A ridicule of intellectuals and the well-educated who may contradict his thinking.

(5) A comparison of his opponents to an evil figure from the past. In Stewart's parody it is Hitler though Stalin, Mao, and Karl Marx are the preferred references of Beck.

(6) A blackboard illustrating a number of "connections" which combine to make an overall conspiracy of much larger proportions.

(7) An appeal to patriotism and an expression that the country may be in peril if he is not listened to.

(8) An outburst of emotion which contributes to the audience perception that he really believes what he is saying.

http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2009m11d6-Video--Jon-Stewart-hits-on-all-Glenn-Beck-themes-in-recent-spoof-on-appendicitis-conspiracy

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

This is really a "must see."

posted in Political Junkies - 11 replies

Report: 237 millionaires in Congress

2009-11-07T01:26:46Z

Talk about bad timing.

As Washington reels from the news of 10.2 percent unemployment, the Center for Responsive Politics is out with a new report describing the wealth of members of Congress.

Among the highlights: Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven members of Congress are millionaires. That’s 44 percent of the body – compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall.

CRP says California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is the richest lawmaker on Capitol Hill, with a net worth estimated at about $251 million. Next in line: Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), worth about $244.7 million; Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), worth about $214.5 million; Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), worth about $209.7 million; and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), worth about $208.8 million.

All told, at least seven lawmakers have net worths greater than $100 million, according to the Center’s 2008 figures.

“Many Americans probably have a sense that members of Congress aren’t hurting, even if their government salary alone is in the six figures, much more than most Americans make,” said CRP spokesman Dave Levinthal. “What we see through these figures is that many of them have riches well beyond that salary, supplemented with securities, stock holdings, property and other investments.”

The CRP numbers are somewhat rough estimates – lawmakers are required to report their financial information in broad ranges of figures, so it’s impossible to pin down their dollars with precision. The CRP uses the mid-point in the ranges to build its estimates.

Senators’ estimated median reportable worth sunk to about $1.79 million from $2.27 million in 2007. The House’s median income was significantly lower and also sank, bottoming out at $622,254 from $724,258 in 2007.

But CRP’s analysis suggests that some lawmakers did well for themselves between 2007 and 2008, even as many Americans lost jobs and saw their savings and their home values plummet.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gained about $9.2 million. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) gained about $3 million, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) had an estimated $2.6 million gain, and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) gained about $2.8 million.

Some lawmakers have profited from investments in companies that have received federal bailouts; dozens of lawmakers are invested in Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.

Among executive branch officials, CRP says the richest is Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary L. Schapiro, with a net worth estimated at $26 million.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is next, worth an estimated $21 million. President Barack Obama is the sixth-wealthiest, worth about an estimated $4 million. Vice President Joe Biden has often tagged himself as an original blue collar man. The CRP backs him up, putting his net worth at just $27,000.

He’s hardly the worst off.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), freshman Rep. Harry Teague (D-N.M.), Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), Rep. John Salazar (D-Colo.) and Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) each a net worth of less than zero, CRP says.

One caveat on those numbers: Federal financial disclosure laws don’t require members to list the value of their personal residences. That information could alter the net worth picture for many lawmakers.

Even so, Levinthal said, “It is clear that some members are struggling financially.

“Over a calendar year, one’s wealth can change drastically. Many peoples’ investments took a nose dive over night in the last year,” he said.

A number of lawmakers are estimated to have suffered double-digit percentage lossed in their net worth from 2007 to 2008. The biggest losers include Kerry, who lost a whopping $127.4 million; Warner lost about $28.1 million; Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) lost about $11.8 million; and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) lost about $10.1 million.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29235.html

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Calif. power company seeks higher rates for energy efficient customers

2009-11-07T01:14:57Z

Think it's keen to be green? Not if you're California's Pacific Gas & Electric, according to a recent report.

Utility provider PG&E, in documents filed with the state, is seeking a five percent rate increase for its most energy-efficient customers. The increase is reportedly so the company can give it's highest-volume customers a price break.

"[The] company, with profits up 4.6 percent in the third quarter of this year, said they’re just trying to be fair," California blog Mission Local noted.

“It’s necessary to avoid the continued shifting of costs associated with utility services to a limited set of residential customers,” PG&E spokesperson told blogger Heather Duthie.

That "limited set of residential customers" the company refers to are those who use between 131 and 300 percent of average customers, Mission Local added. Under the proposal, they can expect future savings between 2.5 and 5.7 percent on their electric rates.
Story continues below...

Meanwhile, the company is promoting energy efficiency through its residential Web portal, even launching a flash-based renewable energy promotion on the domain wecandothis.com.

If approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, the rate increases for energy efficient users would take effect on Jan. 10, 2010.

The Utility Reform Network, otherwise known to Californians as TURN, filed a protest on Thursday with the utilities commission, objecting to the rate increases.

When PG&E went bankrupt in 2001, the company was carrying over $9 billion in debt and had listed assets of up to $36 billion.

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/calif-power-company-seeks-higher-rates-energy-efficient-customers/

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Italy Convicts 23 Americans In CIA Terrorist Kidnapping Case

2009-11-06T05:01:21Z

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/04/italy-convicts-23-america_n_345274.html

MILAN — An Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty Wednesday in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect, delivering the first legal convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program.

Human rights groups hailed the decision and pressed President Barack Obama to repudiate the Bush administration's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture was permitted. The American Civil Liberties Union said the verdicts were the first convictions stemming from the rendition program.

The Obama administration ended the CIA's interrogation program and shuttered its secret overseas jails in January but has opted to continue the practice of extraordinary renditions.

The Americans, who were tried in absentia, now cannot travel to Europe without risking arrest as long as the verdicts remains in place.

One of those convicted, former Milan consular official Sabrina De Sousa, accused Congress of turning a blind eye to the entire matter.

"No one has investigated the fact that the U.S. government allegedly conducted a rendition of an individual who now walks free and the operation of which was so bungled," she said, speaking through her lawyer Mark Zaid.

Despite the convictions capping the nearly three-year Italian trial, several Italian and American defendants – including the two alleged masterminds of the abduction – were acquitted due to either diplomatic immunity or because classified information was stricken by Italy's highest court.

The case has been politically charged from the beginning, with attempts to mislead investigators looking into the cleric's disappearance and derail the judicial proceedings once the trial was under way. But the Italian-American relationship, conditioned on such issues as participation in the Afghan campaign, is unlikely to be hurt by the convictions.

Three Americans were acquitted, including the then-Rome CIA station chief Jeffrey Castelli and two other diplomats formerly assigned to the Rome Embassy, as well as the former head of Italian military intelligence Nicolo Pollari and four other Italian secret service agents.

Only two Italians were in the courtroom to hear the verdict, including Marco Mancini, the former No. 2 at Italian military intelligence, who embraced his lawyer outside the courtroom after he was acquitted.

Former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady received the top sentence of eight years in prison. The other 22 convicted American defendants, including De Sousa and Air Force Lt. Col. Joseph Romano, each received a five-year sentence. Two Italians got three years each as accessories.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the Obama administration was "disappointed about the verdicts."

The State Department is being sued by De Sousa, a former State Department employee who denies she was a CIA agent and who believes she should have been granted diplomatic immunity by U.S. officials. The judge's verdict, however, did not extend diplomatic immunity to consular officials charged.

Zaid, De Sousa's American lawyer, told The Associated Press in Washington: "The Italian conviction merely confirms the U.S. government's betrayal of our diplomatic and military representatives overseas."

Romano, who was one of only two Americans who received permission to hire his own lawyer, had tried to have the jurisdiction moved to a U.S. military court in the last weeks of the trial.

"We are clearly disappointed by the court's ruling," Defense Department press secretary Geoff Morrell told a Pentagon press conference Wednesday.

The Americans, all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents, were tried in absentia as subsequent Italian governments refused or ignored prosecutors' extradition request – a position that casts doubts on the Italian government's political will to enforce the sentences.

Prosecutor Armando Spataro said he was considering asking Rome to issue international arrest warrants for the fugitive Americans on the strength of the convictions. The government of Silvio Berlusconi, a close ally of President George W. Bush, has previously refused.

The Americans and Italian agents were accused of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003, in Milan, then transferring him to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany. He was then moved to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. He has since been released, but has not been permitted to leave Egypt to attend the trial.

Spataro had sought stiffer sentences ranging from 10 to 13 years in jail, citing a conspiracy between U.S. and Italian secret services to abduct Nasr, who was under surveillance by Italian investigators building their own terror case against him. Nasr was suspected of organizing the movement of would-be suicide bombers to the Middle East, and Spataro noted in his closing arguments that the timing of his CIA-led abduction, as the United States was preparing to invade Iraq, indicated his potential importance.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said at his confirmation hearing in February that the administration would continue the practice of rendition for prisoners captured in the war on terrorism, but promised to get assurances first that prisoners would not be tortured or have their human rights violated once transferred.

The CIA declined to comment on the convictions.

____

Associated Writers Pamela Hess in Washington and Luca Bruno in Milan contributed to this report

posted in Political Junkies - 3 replies

Letter to Reid on healthcare from former Surgeon General Koop shuts Senate

2009-11-06T01:07:54Z

A letter about healthcare reform to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) from former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop triggered a security scare that briefly shut down much of the Senate on Wednesday.

Koop wrote Reid a typed letter, tucked inside a hand-written business envelope, that appeared in Reid’s office without postage and without going through a security screening process. A Senate postal clerk noticed the envelope and alerted a Reid staffer, who in turn notified Capitol Police about 2 p.m.

A small swarm of officers responded, first shutting down the hallway outside Reid’s office and then taking the even rarer step of shutting down the wide Ohio Clock corridor that senators use for press conferences outside the Senate’s main entrance. Mindful of the ricin and anthrax attacks in 2001, teams of hazardous materials technicians were called and tested the envelope before opening it and discovering Koop’s letter.

Koop, 93, the Reagan administration’s surgeon general from January 1982 to October 1989 and now a professor at Dartmouth Medical School, told The Hill he gave the envelope to Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-Utah) to deliver to Reid. A Hatch staffer then apparently dropped the letter off in a mailbox bin inside Reid’s second-floor suite, just steps from the Senate chamber. Hatch's office did not have an immediate comment.

“I did write it, but I didn’t mean anything nefarious and I’m sitting here smiling because it all seems to be a big buzz about nothing,” Koop said by phone from his home in Hanover, N.H.

“There’s no law about how to deliver a letter. I can appreciate all of the security that surrounds the leader, but this all could have been settled in a few minutes.”

Senate Sergeant at Arms Terry Gainer said Senate officials take unscreened mail particularly seriously after the 2001 terrrorist attacks.

“The staff in the Capitol in particular and on the Hill in general are very sensitive to mail that ends up in an office and hasn’t been cleared,” Gainer said.

Gainer said Senate officials have not yet contacted Koop to verify that the letter was his, but said the letter did discuss healthcare reform. Gainer described the letter as typed and well-written, and addressed to Reid as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Some Senate business continued as usual during the hour-long security scare, as senators continued with scheduled floor speeches. The closed hallways prevented many aides and staffers from reaching or leaving their offices, however, and much of Reid's own staff was apparently cooped up inside the second-floor suite.

Asked what his letter communicated to Reid and Pelosi, Koop said he was frustrated that Democratic leaders and the Obama administration are crafting healthcare reform without talking to enough experts.

“My mood about healthcare is that it definitely needs reform,” Koop said. “But the whole thing is being discussed by people who don’t understand it. I mean, this isn’t something that happened yesterday. I’ve been working on it for 25 years.”

More specifically, Koop said he did not necessarily oppose the Democratic-written healthcare bills, but does believe that congressional leaders and the White House have been too secretive.

“I don’t favor any one approach, but I do think we’ve been misled by the president about transparency,” Koop said. “We were told it was all going to be an open process. And this isn’t a dumb country — I know there are a lot of very smart minds about healthcare out there, but those aren’t among the names that Obama seems to be leaning on.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/66363-letter-to-reid-from-former-surgeon-general-shuts-down-senate

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Muslim 'honor killings' in U.S. on the rise

2009-11-05T22:49:02Z

Muslim 'honor killings' in U.S. on the rise

"Oh dear - how dare the New York Post report on Muslim "honor killings" in the United States! Don't they know that to say one bad word about Islam - the 800-pound gorilla in the room - is to be an "Islamophobe," "racist" and "Zionist?" Why aren't they ignoring Islam and complaining endlessly about Christianity and the Jews? Get in line, NYP! You are not politically correct, and you will be harassed by vicious, mentally ill cyberstalkers from now to eternity for daring to expose these horrible crimes in America!

1. There is so much in-your-face atrocity with Islam that it's impossible to ignore. Every day I receive news alerts on a variety of subjects, including Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, atheism and so on. Unlike these others, the news about Islam is an endless stream of atrocities. And these news alerts are from all over the world, not just the U.S., so cries of "Faux News" are fallacious and ignorant.

2. In its most basic ideology, Islam foments hatred of everything outside of Islam, including all non-Muslims and especially women. The entire cult seems to be based on the enslavement of women - an assessment agreed with by ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others. I am a woman, and I am highly offended by the Islamic treatment of women. I don't want to see it, have it anywhere near me or be a victim of it. And I don't want others to suffer from it either, because I am an empathetic person........"

read the full article

http://freethoughtnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=140:muslim-qhonor-killingsq-in-us-on-the-rise&catid=36:islam

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posted in Political Junkies - 5 replies

House Excludes Spiritual Care from Health Care Reform Bill

2009-11-05T22:46:32Z

House Excludes Spiritual Care from Health Care Reform Bill

"The Secular Coalition for America is thrilled that the House of Representatives has decided to remove language found in all three draft bills that would require private and public plans to cover the spiritual care of individuals with religious objections to medical care.

Today the House released their version of the health care reform bill that did not include language requiring private and public health plans to cover spiritual care for any person. This "spiritual care" includes reimbursements for payments that Christian Scientists make to members of the Church who pray for them when they are ill.

"Requiring American taxpayers to reimburse Christian Scientists and other religious sects that deny themselves and their children necessary medical care would have been incredibly unethical in addition to a violation of church state separation," said Sean Faircloth, Executive Director of the Secular Coalition. "I am thrilled that the House of Representatives has chosen to remove language that would have required Americans to foot the bill for religion-based care. Their actions demonstrate that common sense secular values are being heard in the halls of Congress."

If this language had been included, tax payers would be forced to help foot the bill for this religion-based "care" -- "care" offering no scientific evidence of effectiveness. "Care" which, in fact, endangers lives by placing government approval on non-scientific practices."

http://www.secular.org/news/health_reform_bill_excludes_spiritual_care091028.html

* Join the "Separation of church and state" tribe
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

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posted in Political Junkies - 20 replies

Huckabee v. Tea Baggers

2009-11-05T20:18:10Z

Huckabee: GOP tent can ‘be big,’ but NY-23 was a ‘train wreck’

Huckabee, a 2008 GOP presidential candidate and social conservative, criticizes the selection process in NY-23 race, but sees room in party for liberal Republicans.

In the wake of Tuesday’s elections, what’s the future of the Republican Party – big tent or conservative enclave?

Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and Republican presidential candidate in 2008, says there’s room in the party even for people like Dede Scozzafava, the liberal Republican who was effectively run out of her House race in New York’s 23rd District by conservatives. The Democrat ended up beating the Conservative candidate there.

“Oh, I think it’s fine to have them in the Republican Party,” Mr. Huckabee told reporters Wednesday at a Monitor breakfast. “It doesn’t mean I have to support all of them equally.”

http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/11/04/huckabee-gop-tent-can-be-big-but-ny-23-was-a-train-wreck/

Huckabee can afford to disagree with the Tea Baggers, he's at the top of the polls:

The election may still be three years away, but it seems it’s never too early to speculate: A USA Today/Gallup poll sizing up the potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates was released today. Taking the top spot? Former Arkansas governor (and 2008 presidential hopeful) Mike Huckabee.

The poll found that the top four Republican contenders for the presidential nomination are Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich. Seventy-one percent of declared Republicans would "seriously consider" voting for Huckabee, 65 would consider voting for Romney and for Palin, and 60 percent would consider voting for Gingrich.

Among Americans overall, the order remains the same: Huckabee leads, with 40 percent saying they would seriously consider voting for him. Romney closely follows with 39 percent. He’s followed by Palin with 33 percent and Gingrich with 29 percent.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/05/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5537317.shtml

Huckabee is a social conservative but economic populist and was denounced by Limbaugh as no true conservative.

http://www.nationalledger.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=21&num=18017

Of course, Limbaugh didn't like McCain either . . .

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Capitalism Has No Shame.... Or is it "Christianity Has No Shame"?

2009-11-05T19:06:05Z

I'll Karate Chop Your Christian Book if You Don't Stop Pimping My Culture (As Posted on Mother Jones' website - see link below)

— By Marian Wang | Wed November 4, 2009 4:30 AM PST
—Art from Deadly Viper's Facebook fan page. {MY COMMENT: which you really MUST see. Stunning. Use the link below to see it!)

Zondervan, the world's leading Bible publisher, just released a book called Deadly Viper Character Assasins: A Kung Fu Survival Guide for Life and Leadership.

I'll let that name sink in for a moment. A KUNG FU SURVIVAL GUIDE. It's written by Mike Foster and Jud Wilhite, two people who must understand a form of Chinese even Chinese people can't make sense of, because the cover and website of their book features Chinese characters that read like total gibberish... because they are. They were selected because they "looked compositionally cool."

Seriously? At least the kids at the mall who get various Chinese characters tattooed on their ankles still want to know what the words mean. To me, there's just a total lack of recognition that Chinese characters are part of an actual language, and more than a pretty decoration. Or that the use of an stereotypical Asian ninja theme has little to do with the content of their book, which is Christian leadership. Or that this dubbed-over kung fu video made to promote the book is just downright offensive. Or that kung fu is Chinese and ninjas are Japanese, and those are two totally different cultures.

What's clear is that their target audience is not Chinese-speaking folks. If I picked up a book at Borders with random words on the cover like "Happy, Sister, Tree" I would PROBABLY put it down without buying it. So clearly, this product is not marketed to the people whose culture it so gratuitously portrays. But when North Park Theological Seminary professor Soong-Chan Rah reached out to the book's authors with his critique, he received the following response from co-author Mike Foster:

i realize you have an agenda.
i realize you see what you want to see.
im saddened that you are offended and angered by us shooting a video in a japanese garden.
not much i can do here except say good luck in life and what ever you may be trying to accomplish.

btw the kanji on the cover say ninja. warrior. assassin.

peace . . . m.

(What's going on with that last line, by the way? Is that some kind of fortune cookie speak?)

Now I have to admit that I was hesitant to blog this, because I was afraid it would heap more hate on religion as a whole, and that refrain is a tired one. At the same time, it's really frustrating to see your culture pimped out in the holy name of Christian book sales.

So Zondervan, you really want your name on this? This isn't the first time that the Christian company has published racially insensitive materials. It's just that on the other occasions, the authors of the books had enough sense to apologize. Several Asian American bloggers have now written posts and open letters protesting the publishing giant's latest cultural faux pas. But so far, no response. If you feel so compelled, you can add your voice to the mix by contacting the authors or Zondervan's PR team. Just please... do it with a little more grace than Mike Foster's "good luck in life" signoff.

**************************
My first comment: Soooo, it's okay to promote assassination - (hmmmm, what's the not-so-hidden agenda THERE???) but their bible says "thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live" and the rabid followers desire a modern day Witch Hunt?

Secondly: Isn't it stunning that they are no respecter of the various cultures they try and pass off as "the same"? Really, guys... come on. This shouldn't have even been allowed to publish this way, nevermind market it...

~ Pseudonym

Article reposted from Mother Jones... See: http://www.motherjones.com/riff/2009/11/ill-karate-chop-your-christian-book-selling-business-if-you-dont-stop-pimping-my-cultur

posted in Political Junkies - 7 replies

Maine Gay Marriage ban going down in defeat.

2009-11-04T16:35:56Z

posted in Political Junkies - 1 reply

55 in Congress who should give-up their gov't health care

2009-11-04T01:02:53Z

55 in Congress who should give-up their gov't health care

Especially Joe Lieberman

"On Thursday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) called on 55 Republican adversaries of the public option to give up their government-funded health insurance. The congressman argued that it is hypocritical for Senate and House members receiving "government-administered single-payer health care -- Medicare" to oppose making such coverage available to the American public.

"Even in a town known for hypocrisy, this list of 55 Members of Congress deserve some sort of prize," Weiner wrote. "They apparently think the public option is ok for them, but not anyone else."

Weiner, a member of the Health Subcommittee and co-chair of the Caucus on the Middle Class, has been a strong advocate of the public option. In recent weeks, he has challenged his own party, as well as President Obama to ensure that the final health bill includes an affordable public insurance plan for Americans.

A press release from Weiner's office identifies the congressional recipients of Medicare that he thinks should give up their government-funded insurance plans. The list includes Senate Finance Committee members Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), part of the Gang of Six that helped shape health care reform."

Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/23/anthony-weiner-gop-public_n_331444.html

"The list of congressional recipients of Medicare who also oppose the public option is below:

Rep. Ralph M. Hall
Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett
Rep. Sam Johnson
Rep. C.W. Bill Young
Rep. Howard Coble
Sen. Jim Bunning
Sen. Richard G. Lugar
Rep. Don Young
Sen. Charles E. Grassley
Sen. Robert F. Bennett
Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch
Sen. Richard C. Shelby
Rep. Jerry Lewis
Sen. James M. Inhofe
Rep. Ron Paul
Rep. Henry E. Brown
Sen. Pat Roberts
Sen. George V. Voinovich
Sen. John McCain
Rep. Judy Biggert
Sen. Thad Cochran
Rep. Harold Rogers
Rep. Dan Burton
Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon
Rep. Frank R. Wolf
Sen. Christopher S. Bond
Rep. Michael N. Castle
Rep. Joe Pitts
Rep. Tom Petri
Sen. Lamar Alexander
Rep. Doc Hastings
Rep. Cliff Stearns
Rep. Sue Myrick
Rep. John Carter
Sen. Mitch McConnell
Sen. Jon Kyl
Rep. Phil Gingrey
Rep. Nathan Deal
Rep. John Linder
Rep. Kay Granger
Rep. John L. Mica
Rep. Walter B. Jones
Sen. Jim Risch
Rep. Ed Whitfield
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner
Rep. Virginia Foxx
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite
Sen. Saxby Chambliss
Sen. Michael B. Enzi
Rep. Elton Gallegly
Rep. Donald Manzullo
Rep. Peter T. King
Rep. Ander Crenshaw

http://weiner.house.gov/news_display.aspx?id=1364

These 55 and Joe Lieberman should lose all their government-funded health insurance i.e. government-administered single-payer health care -- Medicare!!! Let all these folks buy their own from the private insurance monopoly

;

posted in Political Junkies - 9 replies

U.S. Gov't Has No Idea Number of War Zone Contractors It Employs

2009-11-03T13:39:18Z

This... is positively STAGGERING. A stunning example that the proverbial right hand knows not what the left hand does. Or is it just simply that they don't WANT to know??

The US government has no precise figure for how many contractors are employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, inviting the risk of fraud and security threats, a US commission warned on Monday.

"It is both peculiar and troubling that eight years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime, in Afghanistan, and more than six years since the overthrow of Baathist regime in Iraq, we still don't know how many contractor employees are working in the region," said Michael Thibault, co-chairman of the commission on wartime contracting.

The independent commission found that "there is no single source for a clear, complete and accurate picture of contractor numbers, locations, contracts and cost," Thibault said at a commission hearing.

"How can contractors be properly managed if we aren't sure how many there are, where they are and what are they doing?"

Read the whole article here: http://rawstory.com/2009/11/commission-we-know-contractors-employs-iraq-afghanistan/

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

Wafa Sultan's message to America

2009-11-03T00:30:59Z

Wafa Sultan's message to America

http://www.examiner.com/x-17009-Freethought-Examiner~y2009m11d2-Wafa-Sultans-message-to-America

;

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

GOP Senator Dodges Rape Survivor's Queries re: His Vote

2009-11-02T23:47:19Z

I was horrified when I heard about the vote... I'm appalled this man didn't have the intestinal fortitude to stand for his vote on the matter. If you're going to do something revolting, have the strength to stand by the choice you publicly made, Vitter (et. al.). As a rape survivor, myself, I want the same questions to be asked of - and answered by - each of those who voted against this vital legislation as well. Disgusting corporate bed-fellows.

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/rape-victim-confronts-vitter/

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Book-based Movie Seeks Prosecution of Bush

2009-11-02T17:36:36Z

The author of a book calling for the prosecution of former President George W. Bush for murder has produced a documentary based on the book that will debut in February 2010.

The documentary draws on interviews with Vincent Bugliosi, whose best-selling The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder has sparked controversy and renewed discussion of recourse from Bush's critics.

The film's producers posted a nine-minute clip on YouTube late last week.

Bugliosi is a career prosecutor turned author, known for his prosecution of the Manson murders. The trailer highlights his success at trial, having secured numerous murder convictions.

"I would not be doing what I'm doing unless I'm very confident that under the law he's guilty of murder and should be prosecuted," Bugliosi says in the documentary trailer. "Unless this nation is about to be attacked, you don't go to war without telling the people whose sons and daughters are going to die in a foreign land why you're doing to do it."

His voice raised, Bugliosi shouts, "The American government believed that the guy responsible for 3,000 murders is at Tora Bora. Do you know how many soldiers George Bush sent them?

"Not one," he continues. "How do you justify not sending one single soldier after the person responsible for 3,000 murders. Not one soldier, but send 150,000 against someone who was as involved in 9/11 as you and I."

Strangely enough, the trailer includes praise from Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard University law professor who's previously said torture could be justified.

"There's no prosecutor I would want to have if I were innocent more than Vince, and there's no prosecutor I would fear more if I were guilty," Dershowitz says. "He will get at the truth."

Bugliosi has drawn praise for his objective and aggressive style.

"Before I read this book, I believed that prosecuting and convicting a U.S. President, regardless of the extent or heinousness of his crimes, would do more harm to the United States than good," penned one Amazon reviewer. "Now that I have read the book, my thinking has changed. Here we have a man who is personally responsible for putting tens of thousands of innocent people into harm's way for no other reason than his own, personal desire to wage war -- laughing and talking about how much fun he is having while all this is going on."

But even some Bugliosi fans were unimpressed by his latest work.

"I was thoroughly disappointed," one Amazon reviewer wrote. " I was expecting a professional document (although I knew it wouldn't be impartial; how could it be?), but it was anything but. Bugliosi resorts to name calling not only Bush and his aides, but his readers as well. How can he expect anyone to take him seriously when he calls the rest of us stupid?... A huge part of the book seemed to be an inflation of his own ego."

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Want prosperity? Index ranks Finland as place to be

2009-11-02T04:35:16Z

For those who value their freedom of expression as much as health, wealth, and prosperity, then Finland is the place to be, with an index ranking the Nordic nation the best in the world.

The 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index, published on Tuesday and compiled by the Legatum Institute, an independent policy, advocacy and advisory organization, ranked 104 countries which are home to 90 percent of the world's population.

The index is based on a definition of prosperity that combines economic growth with the level of personal freedoms and democracy in a country as well as measures of happiness and quality of life.

With the exception of Switzerland, which came in at number 2, Nordic countries dominated the top 5 slots, with Sweden in third place followed by Denmark and Norway.

The top 10 were all also Western nations, with Australia (6th place) and Canada (7th place) both beating the United States, ranked 9th. Britain came in at number 12.

In Asia, Japan was the region's highest ranked country at number 16, followed by Hong Kong (18th place) and Singapore (23rd place) and Taiwan (24th place).

Dr. William Inboden, senior vice president of the Legatum Institute, said the lower rankings for Asian nations were largely due to their weak scores for democracy and personal freedoms.

"Many Asian nations have good economic fundamentals, but the Index tells us that true prosperity requires more than just money," Inboden said in a statement.

"Democratic institutions and personal freedom measures are letting some Asian nations down. Furthermore, countries which have low levels of economic stability, such as Cambodia, finish even further down in the overall rankings."

Cambodia came in the 93rd slot while China, with its tight political controls, came in 75th despite booming economic growth.

And the world's least prosperous country? According to the Legatum Index, it is Zimbabwe, with Sudan and Yemen close runners-up.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091027/lf_nm_life/us_prosperity_index

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

What is the Proper and Beneficial Role for a Public Police?

2009-11-02T03:59:42Z

The San Francisco Supervisor got it right!

“Community policing gets lots of points at the conceptual level, but suffers at the implementation level. We are chronic sufferers of lack of community policing in San Francisco. Everyone talks a good game, but we have nothing policy-wise or practice-wise to prove we are actually doing it. ”

So said Ross Mirkarimi speaking at an August 17, 2009 meeting of the Public Safety Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

However accurate Mirkarimi was in his assessment, he got it wrong in terms of exactly who is the proper group to accomplish community policing. Public police are simply not equipped by culture or tradition to “make community policing happen,” as the Supervisor suggested. That’s so for three primary reasons.

First, public police and their organizational culture and language are hierarchical and alienating. To change or reorient an organizational culture that develops over many years takes time and money. If a viable alternative is available, then pursuing community policing by public police will surely waste funds sorely needed for social and educational programs.

Public police are particularly experienced, trained, and skilled in the exercise of persuasive authority to command compliance with their safety orders and needs. They are also trained and effective in the use of tactics such as undercover policing, arrest, use of weaponry to protect themselves and the public as needed, and investigation related to preparing cases for referral to the prosecutor.

On the other hand, public police must be taught ‘how to’ do community policing, a type of policing which requires an entirely different approach and language. It requires a different manner of speaking and a different choice of words from traditional policing. It requires a different mind set and attitude toward the public, and a different kind of leadership from the top down.

Community policing requires officers to stay put in one neighborhood and build long-term relationships with shoppers, residents, businesses, and employees. It requires officers to be much more proactive and friendly than normal, receptive to suggestions, and willing to use a participatory process to set at least some policing goals and priorities. It requires language that is not command-oriented and language that does not tend to escalate emotions or raise hackles of those being questioned and not in trouble, or those causing disturbances. It rarely requires arrest as the first resort. It usually requires conversation, negotiation, and mediation that moves both parties toward the center, and toward a mutually-satisfactory reduction of tempers and threats.

Second, the present economy will not support community policing. It takes time to accomplish and funds set aside for retraining, two luxuries a cash-strapped economy may well not have. Expenditures designed to retrain traditional police officers how to change their attitudes and behavior seem wasted especially where as Supervisor Mirkarimi noted, there is no political commitment or will to implement the concept of community policing to begin with.

Admittedly, since March in San Francisco there are some amazingly positive results regarding a small pilot project in one of ten police districts, regarding community policing, funded by post 9/11 federal funds. For 28 years I have resided in a neighborhood of this district. Arriving at his new assignment in January, 2008, within three months Captain David Lazar reorganized 125 officers and set up a community policing unit of 9 dedicated officers, each one assigned to a specific neighborhood in the district. I learned the name of an officer specifically assigned to my neighborhood and was amazed to note Captain Lazar’s daily email message included in his crime report, encouraging residents to communicate directly with that officer regarding safety questions or concerns.

Another first by Captain Lazar involved my renewed inquiry to him about the current status of an ongoing one-year old investigation of a serious and vicious attack on a beloved neighborhood market owner. Within one week Captain Lazar assigned an officer to answer. Six months earlier I had inquired about the case status via email sent to the prior district captain, and before that in a letter sent to the main San Francisco Police Department investigations unit, but as expected, I had never heard back from either.

Nonetheless, in an economy where ‘down less’ is the new ‘up,’ just how secure is funding for Captain Lazar’s new approach to community policing? Even more to the point, how likely is it that San Francisco will find funds to expand the pilot program to nine other police districts? How will other major urban areas find funds when the federal government is also in dire economic straights and most post-9/11 funding has not ended?

There well may be better, faster, and thus more cost-effective ways to accomplish the goals of community policing–and that’s where the policing model of the San Francisco Patrol Special Police comes in.

The San Francisco Patrol Special Police view their predecessor as the special constables established in 1847 during Barbary Coast Days in San Francisco prior to formation of the public police department in 1850. While the public police stumbled along for years hamstrung by mass resignations and illegal activities, a “special police” continued to serve until the present day, and became a noted force reporting to the command structure of the public police department. Today applicants are vetted by the San Francisco Police Department and officers are regulated by the civilian police commission, yet they have authority to solicit their own private clients and contracts in ‘beats’ that senior officers own. Over time, a special culture of care for not only their private clientele, but for the entire neighborhoods where they serve, has developed. Today the Patrol Special Police provide enthusiastic merchants, residents, and associations with a different kind of policing, one that they call “neighborhood policing:” www.sfspecialneighborhoodpolicing.org
http://www.sfspecialneighborhoodpolicing.org/issues.html

This is policing that is egalitarian and participatory from the start. The precise type and scope of services provided to private clients who pay a reasonably and competitive hourly rate around $50 per hour, arises out of the needs and desires of those clients. It is not derived from needs defined by politicians or delivered from the top down by civil servant public police who are not be motivated by the private marketplace to provide responsive policing. It is policing that is not as costly as expensive public policing provided at an enormous cost to taxpayers considering employee salaries and pensions paid for years after retirement.

Third, for the public police to let down their defensive stance or devote very many of their scarce resources to community policing, would seem foolish. The increasingly violent nature of crime, audacity of criminals, and development of new forms of crime such as American terrorism, require continuing careful attention to what Professor James Pastor calls ‘public safety policing.” Professor Pastor is a noted authority in privatized policing, and discusses the needs of policing in the modern world of crime in his new book, /Terrorism and Public Safety Policing: Implications for the Obama Presidency /(Routledge, August 2009). He makes the important point that private police can be the eyes and ears of the public police and provide routine order maintenance, thus allowing public police to protect the citizenry and the infrastructure from increasingly sophisticated crime having broad impact on major targets including sporting events, national monuments, and business centers.

In addition, citizens are not always in agreement that community policing by public police is wise, if it leads to diversion of policing resources away from law enforcement including arrest and efforts such as undercover work. Patricia Breslin of the San Francisco Hotel Council testified at the Public Safety Meeting on August 17, that while concern for the chronic homeless is a worthy goal for our public police, so too, is enforcement. She asked that the San Francisco Police Department and their new Police Chief Charles Gascon “balance service to chronic abusers with enforcement.”

Apparently San Francisco’s new Police Chief is in agreement. As lauded in an editorial in the October 5, 2009 /SF Examiner/ newspaper, the new Chief targeted the Tenderloin district drug market and the Sunset district marijuana growers for a “crackdown.” He utilized undercover stings, raids and anti-crime strikes, and made 302 arrests. Demonstrating an amazing failure to grasp even the basics of true community policing, the apparently clueless editor of the SF Examiner called this move a “promising new SF community policing push.”

As far as responsible scholars and writers define and describe community policing, none of it involves heavy-handed law enforcement, not to mention how undercover work can prevent crime or elicit input from citizens who can’t even tell that police are present in their communities!

Properly understanding, and then evaluating community policing as a concept and for a proper place to lodge it’s administration and development, and avoiding the repetition of possibly outmoded and “outmodeled” policing concepts as Professor Pastor calls them, seems more imperative today than ever. There’s not much time and certainly no spare financial resources that will brook mistaken choices made in policy and practice decisions regarding policing and public safety. Hopefully, wisdom will be increasingly demonstrated by San Francisco’s leaders as well as by other cities' leaders, as they address crime problems and public safety needs in the coming months and years ahead. Just as hopefully, policing choices made will keep many in the vanguard of what is not only creative, but logical, effective, and desired by the citizens.

Ann Grogan is a California attorney licensed since 1974. She practiced regulatory and employment law for 14 years for the State of California before leaving her last assignment for the Attorney General's Office in San Francisco to open a unique costuming and corsetry boutique in 1990. In 1995 she launched the first website and has become a preeminent authority on her specialty fashion garment. As a retail owner, Grogan was solicited to join in along with other neighborhood merchants in the Castro district who desired additional security to that provided by public police. She agreed to hire a privatized policing force known as the San Francisco Patrol Special Police. Currently she is a residential client of this unique police force in another San Francisco district known as Glen Park. As Grogan discovered through her business experience and research, the Patrol Special Police provide policing of an entirely different nature from public policing, and policing that is far more effective than "community policing." The latter concept was popularized as a vanguard policing trend starting in the early1970s.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15802

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

is obama backstabbing progressives on healthcare?

2009-11-02T03:56:25Z

ed schultz (among many others) say it's because of obama's fixation to haver a bipartisan bill.

i think that's a purposed stalking horse to provide cover for the real reasons ... money, money and money.

while the stink of rahm emmanuel permeates the white house dealings, obama seems firmly on board with it all and the intent appears to be to use the presidential pulpit not to get critically needed effective progressive legislation passed, but to use it to cajole progressives into going along with whatever watered down corporate pleasing tripe does get passed in their quest to fill the coffers from the same.

posted in Political Junkies - 8 replies

Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet

2009-11-01T04:31:19Z

People will need to consider turning vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

He predicted that people’s attitudes would evolve until meat eating became unacceptable. “I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,” he said. “I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.”

Lord Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank and now I. G. Patel Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, warned that British taxpayers would need to contribute about £3 billion a year by 2015 to help poor countries to cope with the inevitable impact of climate change.

He also issued a clear message to President Obama that he must attend the meeting in Copenhagen in person in order for an effective deal to be reached. US leadership, he said, was “desperately needed” to secure a deal.

He said that he was deeply concerned that popular opinion had so far failed to grasp the scale of the changes needed to address climate change, or of the importance of the UN meeting in Copenhagen from December 7 to December 18. “I am not sure that people fully understand what we are talking about or the kind of changes that will be necessary,” he added.

Up to 20,000 delegates from 192 countries are due to attend the UN conference in the Danish capital. Its aim is to forge a deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to prevent an increase in global temperatures of more than 2 degrees centigrade. Any increase above this level is expected to trigger runaway climate change, threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Lord Stern said that Copenhagen presented a unique opportunity for the world to break free from its catastrophic current trajectory. He said that the world needed to agree to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to 25 gigatonnes a year from the current level of 50 gigatonnes.

UN figures suggest that meat production is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions, including the destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds such as soy.

Lord Stern, who said that he was not a strict vegetarian himself, was speaking on the eve of an all-parliamentary debate on climate change. His remarks provoked anger from the meat industry.

Jonathan Scurlock, of the National Farmers Union, said: “Going vegetarian is not a worldwide solution. It’s not a view shared by the NFU. Farmers in this country are interested in evidence-based policymaking. We don’t have a methane-free cow or pig available to us.”

On average, a British person eats 50g of protein derived from meat each day — the equivalent of a chicken breast or a lamb chop. This is a relatively low level for a wealthy country but between 25 per cent and 50 per cent higher than the amount recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Su Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Vegetarian Society, welcomed Lord Stern’s remarks. “What we choose to eat is one of the biggest factors in our personal impact on the environment,” she said. “Meat uses up a lot of resources and a vegetarian diet consumes a lot less land and water. One of the best things you can do about climate change is reduce the amount of meat in your diet.”

The UN has warned that meat consumption is on course to double by the middle of the century.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece

posted in Political Junkies - 13 replies

San Francisco Mayor Drops Governor Bid

2009-10-31T20:56:50Z

You win some, you Newsom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/us/31newsom.html?_r=1

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: October 30, 2009

LOS ANGELES — There was only one official Democratic candidate for governor of California, and now, officially, there is none.

Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, who announced last spring on Twitter that he would seek the state’s highest office in 2010, said Friday that he was withdrawing from the race.

Mr. Newsom, most likely spooked by the rising popularity of former Gov. Jerry Brown, who has yet to announce his candidacy but is widely understood to be seeking the job, put out a statement Friday about his decision.

“With a young family and responsibilities at City Hall, I have found it impossible to commit the time required to complete this effort the way it needs to — and should — be done,” he said. “This is not an easy decision. But it is one made with the best intentions for my wife, my daughter, the residents of the city and county of San Francisco, and California Democrats.”

Mr. Newsom, short on cash and endorsements and viewed warily by the state’s business interests at a time of deep recession in the state, remains popular in his hometown but was gaining less traction statewide. His political views were unlikely to play as well across the far-more-conservative center of the state than they did in the Bay Area.

Mr. Brown, the state’s attorney general, served two terms as governor from 1975 to 1983, and is the former mayor of Oakland. He recently filed paperwork to form an exploratory committee to run for his old job in Sacramento.

Even without an official entry into the race, Mr. Brown has attracted more interest than Mr. Newsom for the better part of the last year. In a California Field poll early this month of likely Democratic primary candidates, Mr. Brown led Mr. Newsom 47 percent to 27 percent, with 26 percent undecided among 1,005 California voters. The poll had a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

On Friday, Mr. Brown released a statement that described Mr. Newsom as “a talented public official” with “a bright future.”

“I am sure this was not an easy decision,” Mr. Brown said.

Senator Dianne Feinstein is often mentioned as a possible Democratic contender for governor, but has done next to nothing to demonstrate serious interest. Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, also a Democrat, has said he will not run.

The Republican field is larger and more defined. Seeking to replace fellow Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor is Meg Whitman, the well-financed former chief executive of eBay who has stumbled often in the early stages of her candidacy; Steve Poizner, the state insurance commissioner; and former Representative Tom Campbell, the most socially liberal of the three but the one with far shallower pockets.

posted in Political Junkies - 5 replies

Schwarzenegger apparently tells legislator, ‘fuck you’

2009-10-30T20:39:26Z

A Democratic lawmaker who heckled the governor with a "you lie" outburst during an unscripted appearance at a Democratic fundraiser received the following statement from California's colorful Republican governor Tuesday.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger typically attaches a message to bills he signs or vetoes telling lawmakers why he took the action.

A Democratic assemblyman who heckled the governor during a recent event in San Francisco actually received two messages: the veto letter itself and a not-so-subtle rebuke creatively hidden within it.

Like a find-the-word puzzle, the second message was visible by stringing together the first letter of each line down the left-hand margin. It consisted of a common four-letter vulgarity followed by the letters "y-o-u."
Story continues below...

"My goodness. What a coincidence," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear. "I suppose when you do so many vetoes, something like this is bound to happen."

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/schwarzenegger-apparently-tells-legislator-fuck-you/

posted in Political Junkies - 8 replies

What's your Middle East peace solution?

2009-10-30T03:26:16Z

Well? What is it? I'm particularly interested in hearing those vehemently opposed to Israel on this.

posted in Political Junkies - 8 replies

Christian Broadcasting Network Warns Against 'Demonic' Halloween Candy

2009-10-30T03:20:54Z

Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network posted a blog by Kimberly Daniels recently that warns Christians to forgo celebrating Halloween because of its evilness. Daniels specifically calls out candy as a source of soul-molestation:

"During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches."

Obviously, we shouldn't be buying Halloween candy, but what about getting it by trick-or-treating?

"Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference."

Darn.

We wholeheartedly agree with Daniels and have put together a handy guide of outrageously demonic candy to stay away from this (and every) season.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/29/christian-broadcasting-ne_n_338738.html

posted in Political Junkies - 9 replies

Mind Your Tweets: CIA and European Union Building Social Networking Surveillance System

2009-10-30T03:17:28Z

That social networking sites and applications such as Facebook, Twitter and their competitors can facilitate communication and information sharing amongst diverse groups and individuals is by now a cliché.

It should come as no surprise then, that the secret state and the capitalist grifters whom they serve, have zeroed-in on the explosive growth of these technologies. One can be certain however, securocrats aren't tweeting their restaurant preferences or finalizing plans for after work drinks.

No, researchers on both sides of the Atlantic are busy as proverbial bees building a "total information" surveillance system, one that will, so they hope, provide police and security agencies with what they euphemistically call "actionable intelligence."

Build the Perfect Panopticon, Win Fabulous Prizes!

In this context, the whistleblowing web site Wikileaks published a remarkable document October 4 by the INDECT Consortium, the Intelligence Information System Supporting Observation, Searching and Detection for Security of Citizens in Urban Environment.

Hardly a catchy acronym, but simply put INDECT is working to put a human face on the billions of emails, text messages, tweets and blog posts that transit cyberspace every day; perhaps your face.

According to Wikileaks, INDECT's "Work package 4" is designed "to comb web blogs, chat sites, news reports, and social-networking sites in order to build up automatic dossiers on individuals, organizations and their relationships." Ponder that phrase again: "automatic dossiers."

This isn't the first time that European academics have applied their "knowledge skill sets" to keep the public "safe"--from a meaningful exercise of free speech and the right to assemble, that is.

Last year The Guardian reported that Bath University researchers' Cityware project covertly tracked "tens of thousands of Britons" through the installation of Bluetooth scanners that capture "radio signals transmitted from devices such as mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras, and using the data to follow unwitting targets without their permission."

One privacy advocate, Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, told The Guardian: "This technology could well become the CCTV of the mobile industry. It would not take much adjustment to make this system a ubiquitous surveillance infrastructure over which we have no control."

Which of course, is precisely the point.

As researchers scramble for a windfall of cash from governments eager to fund these dubious projects, European police and security agencies aren't far behind their FBI and NSA colleagues in the spy game.

The online privacy advocates, Quintessenz, published a series of leaked documents in 2008 that described the network monitoring and data mining suites designed by Nokia Siemens, Ericsson and Verint.

The Nokia Siemens Intelligence Platform dubbed "intelligence in a box," integrate tasks generally done by separate security teams and pools the data from sources such as telephone or mobile calls, email and internet activity, bank transactions, insurance records and the like. Call it data mining on steroids.

Ironically enough however, Siemens, the giant German electronics firm was caught up in a global bribery scandal that cost the company some $1.6 billion in fines. Last year, The New York Times described "a web of secret bank accounts and shadowy consultants," and a culture of "entrenched corruption ... at a sprawling, sophisticated corporation that externally embraced the nostrums of a transparent global marketplace built on legitimate transactions."

According to the Times, "at Siemens, bribery was just a line item." Which just goes to show, powering the secret state means never having to say you're sorry!

Social Network Spying, a Growth Industry Fueled by Capitalist Grifters

The trend by security agencies and their corporate partners to spy on their citizens has accelerated greatly in the West since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

This multi-billion industry in general, has been a boon for the largest American and European defense corporations. Among the top ten companies listed by Washington Technology in their annual ranking of the "Top 100" prime government contractors, all ten--from Lockheed Martin to Booz Allen Hamilton--earned a combined total of $68 billion in 2008 from defense and related homeland security work for the secret state.

And like Siemens, all ten corporations figure prominently on the Project on Government Oversight's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (FCMD), which tracks "contract fraud, environmental, ethics, and labor violations." Talk about a rigged game!

Designing everything from nuclear missile components to eavesdropping equipment for various government agencies in the United States and abroad, including some of the most repressive regimes on the planet, these firms have moved into manufacturing the hardware and related computer software for social networking surveillance in a big way.

Wired revealed in April that the FBI is routinely monitoring cell phone calls and internet activity during criminal and counterterrorism investigations. The publication posted a series of internal documents that described the Wi-Fi and computer hacking capabilities of the Bureau's Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit (CEAU).

New Scientist reported back in 2006 that the National Security Agency "is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks."

And just this week in an exclusive report published by the British high-tech publication, The Register, it was revealed that "the government has outsourced parts of its biggest ever mass surveillance project to the disaster-prone IT services giant formerly known as EDS."

That work is being conducted under the auspices of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British state's equivalent of America's National Security Agency.

Investigative journalist Chris Williams disclosed that the American computer giant HP, which purchased EDS for some $13.9 billion last year, is "designing and installing the massive computing resources that will be needed to analyse details of who contacts whom, when where and how."

Work at GCHQ in Cheltenham is being carried out under "a secret project called Mastering the Internet." In May, a Home Office document surfaced that "ostensibly sought views on whether ISPs should be forced to gather terabytes of data from their networks on the government's behalf."

The Register reported earlier this year that telecommunications behemoth Detica and U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin were providing GCHQ with data mining software "which searches bulk data, such as communications records, for patterns ... to identify suspects." (For further details see: Antifascist Calling, "Spying in the UK: GCHQ Awards Lockheed Martin £200m Contract, Promises to 'Master the Internet'," May 7, 2009)

It seems however, that INDECT researchers like their GCHQ/NSA kissin' cousins in Britain and the United States, are burrowing ever-deeper into the nuts-and-bolts of electronic social networking and may be on the verge of an Orwellian surveillance "breakthrough."

As New Scientist sagely predicted, the secret state most certainly plans to "harness advances in internet technology--specifically the forthcoming 'semantic web' championed by the web standards organisation W3C--to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals."

Profiling Internet Dissent

Pretty alarming, but the devil as they say is in the details and INDECT's release of their "Work package 4" file makes for a very interesting read. And with a title, "XML Data Corpus: Report on methodology for collection, cleaning and unified representation of large textual data from various sources: news reports, weblogs, chat," rest assured one must plow through much in the way of geeky gibberish and tech-speak to get to the heartless heart of the matter.

INDECT itself is a rather interesting amalgamation of spooks, cops and academics.

According to their web site, INDECT partners include: the University of Science and Technology, AGH, Poland; Gdansk University of Technology; InnoTech DATA GmbH & Co., Germany; IP Grenoble (Ensimag), France; MSWiA, the General Headquarters of Police, attached to the Ministry of the Interior, Poland; Moviquity, Spain; Products and Systems of Information Technology, PSI, Germany; the Police Service of Northern Ireland, PSNI, United Kingdom (hardly slouches when it comes to stitching-up Republicans and other leftist agitators!); Poznan University of Technology; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria; University of Wuppertal, Germany; University of York, Great Britain; Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia; X-Art Pro Division G.m.b.H, Austria; and finally, the Fachhochschule Technikum, also in Austria.

I don't know about you, but I find it rather ironic that the European Union, ostensible guardians of democracy and human rights, have turned for assistance in their surveillance projects to police and spy outfits from the former Soviet bloc, who after all know a thing or two when it comes to monitoring their citizens.

Right up front, York University's Suresh Manadhar, Ionnis Klapaftis and Shailesh Pandey, the principle authors of the INDECT report, make their intentions clear.

Since "security" as the authors argue, "is becoming a weak point of energy and communications infrastructures, commercial stores, conference centers, airports and sites with high person traffic in general," they aver that "access control and rapid response to potential dangers are properties that every security system for such environments should have."

Does INDECT propose building a just and prosperous global society, thus lessening the potential that terrorist killers or other miscreants will exploit a "target rich environment" that may prove deadly for innocent workers who, after all, were the principle victims of the 2004 and 2007 terrorist outrages in Madrid and London? Hardly.

As with their colleagues across the pond, INDECT is hunting for the ever-elusive technological quick-fix, a high-tech magic bullet. One, I might add, that will deliver neither safety nor security but rather, will constrict the democratic space where social justice movements flourish while furthering the reach of unaccountable security agencies.

The document "describes the first deliverable of the work package which gives an overview about the main methodology and description of the XML data corpus schema and describes the methodology for collection, cleaning and unified representation of large textual data from various sources: news reports, weblogs, chat, etc."

The first order of business "is the study and critical review of the annotation schemes employed so far for the development and evaluation of methods for entity resolution, co-reference resolution and entity attributes identification."

In other words, how do present technologic capabilities provide police, security agencies and capitalist grifters with the ability to identify who might be speaking to whom and for what purpose. INDECT proposes to introduce "a new annotation scheme that builds upon the strengths of the current-state-of-the-art," one that "should be extensible and modifiable to the requirements of the project."

Asserting that "an XML data corpus [can be] extracted from forums and social networks related to specific threats (e.g. hooliganism, terrorism, vandalism, etc.)," the authors claim they will provide "different entity types according to the requirements of the project. The grouping of all references to an entity together. The relationships between different entities" and finally, "the events in which entities participate."

Why stop there? Why not list the ubiquitous "other" areas of concern to INDECT's secret state partners? While "hooliganism, terrorism, vandalism, etc.," may be the ostensible purpose of their "entity attributes identification" project, surely INDECT is well aware that such schemes are just as easily applicable to local citizen groups, socialist and anarchist organizations, or to the innumerable environmental, human rights or consumer campaigners who challenge the dominant free market paradigm of their corporate sponsors.

The authors however, couldn't be bothered by the sinister applications that may be spawned by their research; indeed, they seem quite proud of it.

"The main achievements of this work" they aver, "allows the identification of several types of entities, groups the same references into one class, while at the same time allows the identification of relationships and events."

Indeed, the "inclusion of a multi-layered ontology ensures the consistency of the annotation" and will facilitate in the (near) future, "the use of inference mechanisms such as transitivity to allow the development of search engines that go beyond simple keyword search."

Quite an accomplishment! An enterprising security service or capitalist marketing specialist need only sift through veritable mountains of data available from commercial databases, or mobile calls, tweets, blog posts and internet searches to instantaneously identity "key agitators," to borrow the FBI's very 20th century description of political dissidents; individuals who could be detained or "neutralized" should sterner methods be required.

Indeed, a surveillance scheme such as the one INDECT is building could greatly facilitate--and simplify--the already formidable U.S. "Main Core" database that "reportedly collects and stores--without warrants or court orders--the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security," as investigative journalists Tim Shorrock and Christopher Ketchum revealed in two disturbing reports last year.

The scale of "datasets/annotation schemes" exploited by INDECT is truly breathtaking and include: "Automatic Content Extraction" gleaned from "a variety of sources, such as news, broadcast conversations" that identify "relations between entities, and the events in which these participate."

We next discover what is euphemistically called the "Knowledge Base Population (KBP)," an annotation scheme that "focuses on the identification of entity types of Person (PER), Organization (ORG), and Geo-Political Entity (GPE), Location (LOC), Facility (FAC), Geographical/Social/Political (GPE), Vehicle (VEH) and Weapon (WEA)."

How is this accomplished? Why through an exploitation of open source materials of course!

INDECT researchers readily aver that "a snapshot of Wikipedia infoboxes is used as the original knowledge source. The document collection consists of newswire articles on the order of 1 million. The reference knowledge base includes hundreds of thousands of entities based on articles from an October 2008 dump of English Wikipedia. The annotation scheme in KBP focuses on the identification of entity types of Person (PER), Organization (ORG), and Geo-Political Entity (GPE)."

For what purpose? Mum's the word as far as INDECT is concerned.

Nothing escapes this panoptic eye. Even popular culture and leisure activities fall under the glare of security agencies and their academic partners in the latest iteration of this truly monstrous privacy-killing scheme. Using the movie rental firm Netflix as a model, INDECT cites the firm's "100 million ratings from 480 thousand randomly-chosen, anonymous Netflix customers" as "well-suited" to the INDECT surveillance model.

In conclusion, EU surveillance architects propose a "new annotation & knowledge representation scheme" that "is extensible," one that "allows the addition of new entities, relations, and events, while at the same time avoids duplication and ensures integrity."

Deploying an ontological methodology that exploits currently available data from open source, driftnet surveillance of news, broadcasts, blog entries and search results, and linkages obtained through a perusal of mobile phone records, credit card purchases, medical records, travel itineraries, etc., INDECT claims that in the near future their research will allow "a search engine to go beyond simple keyword queries by exploiting the semantic information and relations within the ontology."

And once the scheme is perfected, "the use of expressive logics ... becomes an enabler for detecting entity relations on the web." Or transform it into an "always-on" spy you carry in your pocket or whenever you switch on your computer.

This is how our minders propose to keep us "safe."

CIA Gets In on the Fun

Not to be outdone, the CIA has entered the lucrative market of social networking surveillance in a big way.

In an exclusive published by Wired, we learn that the CIA's investment arm, In-Q-Tel, "want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates--even check out your book reviews on Amazon."

Investigative journalist Noah Shachtman reveals that In-Q-Tel "is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It's part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using "open source intelligence"--information that's publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day." Wired reported:

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn't touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what's being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords. (Noah Shachtman, Exclusive: U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm that Monitors Blogs, Tweets," Wired, October 19, 2009)

Although In-Q-Tel spokesperson Donald Tighe told Wired that it wants Visible to monitor foreign social media and give American spooks an "early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally," Shachtman points out that "such a tool can also be pointed inward, at domestic bloggers or tweeters."

According to Wired, the firm already keeps tabs on 2.0 web sites "for Dell, AT&T and Verizon." And as an added attraction, "Visible is tracking animal-right activists' online campaigns" against meat processing giant Hormel.

Shachtman reports that "Visible has been trying for nearly a year to break into the government field." And why wouldn't they, considering that the heimat security and even spookier black world of the U.S. "intelligence community," is a veritable cash-cow for enterprising corporations eager to do the state's bidding.

In 2008 Wired reports, Visible "teamed-up" with the Washington, DC-based consulting firm "Concepts & Strategies, which has handled media monitoring and translation services for U.S. Strategic Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others."

According to a blurb on the firm's web site they are in hot-pursuit of "social media engagement specialists" with Defense Department experience and "a high proficiency in Arabic, Farsi, French, Urdu or Russian." Wired reports that Concepts & Strategies "is also looking for an 'information system security engineer' who already has a 'Top Secret SCI [Sensitive Compartmentalized Information] with NSA Full Scope Polygraph' security clearance."

In such an environment, nothing escapes the secret state's lens. Shachtman reveals that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) "maintains an Open Source Center, which combs publicly available information, including web 2.0 sites."

In 2007, the Center's director, Doug Naquin, "told an audience of intelligence professionals" that "'we're looking now at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence.... We have groups looking at what they call 'citizens media': people taking pictures with their cell phones and posting them on the internet. Then there's social media, phenomena like MySpace and blogs'."

But as Steven Aftergood, who maintains the Secrecy News web site for the Federation of American Scientists told Wired, "even if information is openly gathered by intelligence agencies it would still be problematic if it were used for unauthorized domestic investigations or operations. Intelligence agencies or employees might be tempted to use the tools at their disposal to compile information on political figures, critics, journalists or others, and to exploit such information for political advantage. That is not permissible even if all of the information in question is technically 'open source'."

But as we have seen across the decades, from COINTELPRO to Operation CHAOS, and from Pentagon media manipulation during the run-up to the Iraq war through driftnet warrantless wiretapping of Americans' electronic communications, the secret state is a law unto itself, a self-perpetuating bureaucracy that thrives on duplicity, fear and cold, hard cash.

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

"Michael Moore's Action Plan: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now"

2009-10-30T00:52:26Z

Friends,

It's the #1 question I'm constantly asked after people see my movie: "OK -- so NOW what can I DO?!"

You want something to do? Well, you've come to the right place! 'Cause I got 15 things you and I can do right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken system.

Here they are:

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is H.R. 3200 -- but this bill is worthless without the amendment from Rep. Anthony Weiner that will bring us closer to the real bill that should be passed: H.R. 676. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand that they support this amendment, no compromises allowed.

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826. 4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)

5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!

FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:

1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent -- or even a candidate from another party -- if they don't do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes,click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!

2. Take over your local Democratic Party. Remember how much fun you had with all those friends and neighbors working together to get Barack Obama elected? YOU DID THE IMPOSSIBLE. It's time to re-up! Get everyone back together and go to the monthly meeting of your town or county Democratic Party -- and become the majority that runs it! There will not be many in attendance and they will either be happy or in shock that you and the Obama Revolution have entered the room looking like you mean business. President Obama's agenda will never happen without mass grass roots action -- and he won't feel encouraged to do the right thing if no one has his back, whether it's to stand with him, or push him in the right direction. When you all become the local Democratic Party, send me a photo of the group and I'll post it on my website.

3. Recruit someone to run for office who can win in your local elections next year -- or, better yet, consider running for office yourself! You don't have to settle for the incumbent who always expects to win. You can be our next representative! Don't believe it can happen? Check out these examples of regular citizens who got elected: State Senator Deb Simpson, California State Assemblyman Isadore Hall, Tempe, Arizona City Councilman Corey Woods, Wisconsin State Assemblyman Chris Danou, and Washington State Representative Larry Seaquist. The list goes on and on -- and you should be on it!

4. Show up. Picket the local branch of a big bank that took the bailout money. Hold vigils and marches. Consider civil disobedience. Those town hall meetings are open to you, too (and there's more of us than there are of them!). Make some noise, have some fun, get on the local news. Place "Capitalism Did This" signs on empty foreclosed homes, closed down businesses, crumbling schools and infrastructure. (You can download them from my website.)

5. Start your own media. You. Just you (or you and a couple friends). The mainstream media is owned by corporate America and, with few exceptions, it will never tell the whole truth -- so you have to do it! Start a blog! Start a website of real local news (here's an example: The Michigan Messenger). Tweet your friends and use Facebook to let them know what they need to do politically. The daily papers are dying. If you don't fill that void, who will?

FIVE THINGS WE SHOULD DO TO PROTECT OURSELVES AND OUR LOVED ONES UNTIL WE GET THROUGH THIS MESS:

1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union.

2. Get rid of all your credit cards but one -- the kind where you have to pay up at the end of the month or you lose your card.

3. Do not invest in the stock market. If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just buy your mother some flowers.

4. Unionize your workplace so that you and your coworkers have a say in how your business is run. Here's how to do it (more info here). Nothing is more American than democracy, and democracy shouldn't be checked at the door when you enter your workplace. Another way to Americanize your workplace is to turn your business into a worker-owned cooperative. You are not a wage slave. You are a free person, and you giving up eight hours of your life every day to someone else is to be properly compensated and respected.

5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she's right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, "Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants"). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like I've turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good hard look at Granny -- she's fit, she's rested and she knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without having to Google them. We might do well to listen to her. If we don't put our own "oxygen mask" on first (as they say on the airplane), we will be of no use to the rest of the nation in enacting any of this action plan!

I'm sure there are many other ideas you can come up with on how we can build this movement. Get creative. Think outside the politics-as-usual box. BE SUBVERSIVE! Think of that local action no one else has tried. Behave as if your life depended on it. Be bold! Try doing something with reckless abandon. It may just liberate you and your community and your nation.

And when you act, send me your stories, your photos and your video -- and be sure to post your ideas in the comments beneath this letter on my site so they can be shared with millions.

C'mon people -- we can do this! I expect nothing less of all of you, my true and trusted fellow travelers!

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15814

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

73% Believe Public Option Important

2009-10-29T23:44:08Z

Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe it is extremely or quite important to give Americans the choice between a government-run health care plan and a private plan in any final health care bill, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll out later today.

Some 73% said it was important to do so — 45% called it “extremely” important while 27% said it was “quite important.”

On the other end, less than one quarter, 22%, said it was either not that important (8%) or not at all important (15%) to create a health plan that would complete with private industry.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/10/27/wsjnbc-news-poll-public-attitudes-on-the-public-option/

On the other hand, Joe Lieberman is against it:

http://www.slate.com/id/2233743/

In hindsight, dumping Liebrman was a great idea . . . if only it had worked . . .

posted in Political Junkies - 5 replies

Video shows San Jose cops hitting, Tasing unarmed suspect

2009-10-29T23:08:05Z

Four police officers in San Jose, California, are under criminal investigation after grainy video footage shows two of then hitting and Tasing an unarmed suspect.

A two-minute clip of cellphone video obtained by the San Jose Mercury-News shows officers Tasing and hitting 20-year-old Phuong Ho as he lay on the ground in the hallway of the apartment he shares with roommates.

Although the video is not entirely clear, one of the hits appears to come after Ho was already handcuffed. If that is the case, then the officers may have committed felony assault, a legal expert told the newspaper.

San Jose police arrested Ho on September 3 after an argument between the San Jose State math major and a roommate turned heated. At one point, after his roommate put soap on his steak, Ho brandished a knife and reportedly told the roommate that, in his native Vietnam, "I would kill you for this."

While some of the people in the room reportedly laughed at that comment, police were nonetheless called to the apartment. Officers attempted to arrest Ho when he tried to walk into his room as they were inspecting it. Ho was pushed into the hallway and knocked to the ground. That's when roommate Dimitri Masouris began surreptitiously filming the altercation.

Masouris is said to have sold his cellphone footage to Ho's lawyers.

The Mercury-News points out several "disturbing" elements seen in the video:

-- Ho remains on the ground, moaning and crying, as he is repeatedly struck. He does not appear to offer significant resistance, suggesting the high level of force is not necessary.

-- The officer most visible in the sequence stands for much of the time in a casual posture, at one point with his legs crossed. He seems to show no concern that the situation is potentially dangerous — raising additional questions about why force was being used.

-- The final baton strike appears to occur after the handcuffs can be heard snapping onto Ho's wrists. That particularly troubled several outside experts.

According to the NBC affiliate in the Bay Area, at least one officer involved in the incident was unable to understand Ho's Vietnamese accent.

An editorial in the Mercury-News says that the incident is likely to heighten tensions between minority communities and San Jose police, particularly within the Vietnamese community.

The paper points to an incident earlier this year, in which a mentally ill man of Vietnamese descent, Daniel Pham, was shot by police. Community members say the investigation into the death has been kept from the public. That follows a 2003 incident in which a young mother, Cau Bich Tran, was shot in her home by police. In all three cases, including the most recent, police were responding to domestic disturbance calls.

"There is a question larger than whether what happened was legal," states the Mercury-News editorial. "It is: Was it right? Is this how San Jose wants its police to deal with an unarmed man? And could it be part of a pattern that explains the rising level of anger and distrust of the police in minority communities?"

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/video-catches-cops-baton-taser/

posted in Political Junkies - 12 replies

Lieberman Blows Hot Air, Promises to Blow More Hot Air

2009-10-29T21:58:02Z

Lieberman promises to join fillibuster of public option.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/27/health.care/index.html

Lieberman lies on Fox News about the evils of the public option.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rrcQ2Xu-fU

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

CIA Pays Karzai Brother

2009-10-29T09:38:36Z

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?_r=5

Uh, yeah, let's review that real good . . .

posted in Political Junkies - 5 replies

Why rich college kids can sell dope and you can't

2009-10-29T03:08:31Z

In the long-foundering, ever-festering war on drugs, there's just about zero truth to the idea of zero tolerance. As anyone who's studied the prison population can figure out, certain groups dealing in illegal drugs can be targeted for harsh punishment, while other groups trafficking in the same drugs are all but ignored.

And the safest place to be a dope pusher? Your local college dormitory, of course. Even if you're not very good at it. A new study by two California researchers concludes that campus drug dealers -- mostly white, affluent, and clueless -- continue to thrive despite shifting social mores and the sometimes heavy-handed enforcement efforts elsewhere.

"We were...taken aback by the lack of criminal justice and university administration attention paid these dealers, despite the brazenness, incompetence, and general dearth of street smarts that tended to characterize the dealers' daily practices," write A. Rafik Mohamed and Erik Fritsovold, authors of Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class.

Just released by Boulder-based Lynne Rienner Publishers -- the folks who brought you Guns, Violence & Criminal Behavior -- Dorm Room Dealers is a sober but intriguing look at dealing on several campuses in southern California. Not surprisingly, many of the badass connections interviewed by the authors turn out to be surfer-dude business majors who fell into the trade because they liked getting their own smoke wholesale, then found additional profits in cocaine, ecstasy and black-market "study drugs" such as Ritalin and Adderall.

This informal network deals openly, rakes in thousands of dollars a month (mostly on beaucoup weed, though cocaine has higher profit margins) -- and blows most of it on nice cars, gear and dinners. None of the kingpins profiled here seem to worry much about being busted, figuring their dads' lawyers or their own sense of entitlement immunizes them from serious consequences. And they are probably right.

Mohamed and Fritsvold puzzle over why these children of privilege get into the business so heavily. For the most part, they don't need the money. The authors postulate a combination of psychological motives, from seeking thrills and gangsta status to "warding off the emasculating force of privilege." One dealer admits, "I am almost as addicted to selling as I am to getting faded."

Oh, and don't call them drug dealers. Campus provenders prefer to think of themselves as "brokers." And it's just a passing thing. Once they're off campus, they'll settle into more socially acceptable forms of capitalism. But in the meantime, the ease of the campus drug trade -- the authors call the dealers "anti-targets," since campus police and local cops try so hard to look the other way -- raises big questions about the real aims of the drug war. When was the last time you heard of a major drug enforcement action on the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado (and no, we're not talking about those rinky-dink 4-20 arrests)?

Mohamed and Fritsvold claim they're not trying to sic the cops on campus dealers. Rather, they want to "spark a conversation about a more reasonable, equitable, and balanced set of domestic drug policies." But will that ever happen while the sons and daughters of the policymakers are thoroughly protected from the policy's nightmare effects?

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2009/10/why_rich_kids_at_cu_can_sell_d.php

"Once they're off campus, they'll settle into more socially acceptable forms of capitalism"

Like insider trading, front running, crafting of really great derivatives to stick pension funds and municipalities with. That kind of capitalism.

posted in Political Junkies - 1 reply

Oklahoma abortion law

2009-10-29T02:03:33Z

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

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

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

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

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

Davis is convinced the lives of Oklahoma women who receive abortions will be threatened by the law, which is known as the Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act.

"Women who have abortions are considered murderers by many people, and you are going to put the name of a town of 200 and the fact that the girl is 17 and it's her first pregnancy and she in the 10th grade. People are going to know who it is," Davis said.

Davis, along with former state Rep. Wanda Jo Stapleton, filed the lawsuit with the help of the Center for Reproductive Rights. The lawsuit seeks to have the law declared unconstitutional under the Oklahoma Constitution because it covers more than one subject.

Jennifer Mondino, a lawyer for CRR, told the UK Guardian that the law is designed to "make women more nervous about going to [abortion] doctors."

"The intent of this law is to further restrict access to abortions in Oklahoma," she said. "There are a number of states that have a reporting requirement but not as broad and detailed as in Oklahoma. It's very unusual to consider putting such detail about patients on a Web site."

The law has come under extreme criticism from social activists. The Feminists for Choice blog declares the law invalid under the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

"A major goal of the Privacy Rule is to assure that individuals’ health information is properly protected while allowing the flow of health information needed to provide and promote high quality health care and to protect the public’s health and well being," blogger Reyna writes. "This law does quite the opposite. Instead of protecting patients, this law puts these [women] in danger."

"Why don't we just tattoo a Scarlett "A" on their foreheads?" blogger Mike the Mad Biologist asks at ScienceBlogs.

According to CCR, nearly one-quarter of women in the United States have to travel more than 50 miles for an abortion. The number of abortion doctors in the US has declined 25 percent since 1992, and a full 87 percent of US counties don't have an abortion provider, despite the Supreme Court declaring the procedure legal in 1973.

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/oklahoma-abortion-law/

posted in Political Junkies - 76 replies

Police: S.C. state attorney caught with stripper

2009-10-29T01:13:45Z

A deputy assistant attorney general who said he was on his lunch break when an officer found him with a stripper and sex toys in his sport utility vehicle has been fired, his boss said Wednesday.

Roland Corning, 66, a former state legislator, was in a secluded part of a downtown cemetery when an officer spotted him Monday, according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.

As the officer approached, Corning sped off, then pulled over a few blocks away. He and the 18-year-old woman with him, an employee of the Platinum Plus Gentleman's Club, gave conflicting stories about what they were doing in the cemetery, Officer Michael Wines wrote in his report, though he did not elaborate.

Corning gave Wines a badge showing he worked for the state Attorney General's Office. Wines, whose wife also works there, called her to make sure Corning was telling the truth.

He then searched the SUV, where he found a Viagra pill and several sex toys, items Corning said he always kept with him, "just in case," according to the report.

Corning and the woman were let go without charges. Wines' wife reported the call to her supervisor, who told Attorney General Henry McMaster.

"We received credible information about inappropriate behavior Monday afternoon," McMaster said Wednesday. "And by the close of business, he was no longer working here."

Such a trip to the cemetery "would not be appropriate, at any time, for an assistant attorney general," McMaster said.

There was no answer Wednesday at a number listed for Corning, who was a Republican legislator in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was hired in 2000 by the attorney general's office, where he worked on securities cases.

South Carolina has had its share of scandal lately, most notably Gov. Mark Sanford's disappearance in June. His office told reporters he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, but he was really in Argentina visiting his mistress.

http://www.thesunnews.com/575/story/1138544.html

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Feingold may not support watered-down health care reform

2009-10-29T01:08:33Z

Kucinich: 'Will we stand for the people or the insurance companies?'

As evidence mounts that the public option faces an uphill battle in the Senate, its supporters are drawing a line in the sand and saying the Senate should not pass a watered-down health reform bill for the sake of drawing 60 votes.

"The mere fact that there's a bill on the floor is not enough for me to vote for it," Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) told MSNBC's Willie Geist on Wednesday morning. "It certainly wouldn't match the historical moment to do something that's just health care reform in name only. We need to do something real. We need to do something to stop the insurance companies' dominance over the checkbooks and health care of Americans. And that means doing something significant."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced on Monday that the health reform bill he will bring to the Senate floor will include a public option to compete with private health insurers. But no sooner had the Nevada Democrat made his announcement than reports began to spread that the public option doesn't have enough support in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster. All 60 members of the Democratic caucus would have to vote together to break a filibuster.

The likelihood of that happening was reduced on Tuesday when Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, announced he would support an expected Republican filibuster of Reid's bill.

On Wednesday, supporters of the public option raised the stakes, pressuring the Democratic congressional leadership to stand by plans for an alternative to private health insurers. House Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) issued a challenge to Democrats to stand up to the health insurance companies working to block reform.

"This is a moment of truth for the Democratic Party," Kucinich said in a statement. "Will we stand for the people or the insurance companies?"

Said Kucinich: “We compromised on [a] single payer [health care system] by backing a public option, and now we are being asked to compromise the public option with negotiated rates. In conference, we will likely be asked to compromise negotiated rates with a trigger. In each and every step of the health care debate, the insurance companies have won. If they get hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxpayer subsidies, they get to raise their premiums, and increase their co-pays and deductibles, while the public is forced to pay for private insurance, then the insurance companies win big.

“If this is the best we can do, then it is time to ask ourselves whether the two-party system is truly capable of representing the American people or whether the system has been so compromised by special interests that we can’t even protect the health of our own people," Kucinich stated.

Progressive activists joined the chorus of political pressure as well. Jane Hamsher, founder of the FireDogLake blog, said Reid will "pay a price" with his home-state voters in Nevada if he allows Lieberman to side with the Republicans and block the health care bill.

"It's never happened before that one party had -- technically, in the caucus -- a filibuster-proof majority and one of the members went to join over with the opposition party," Hamsher told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. "You have to ask yourself, 'What were they thinking when they let Joe into the caucus and didn't get him to agree to join with them on procedural votes?'"

But in his MSNBC interview on Wednesday, Feingold praised Reid for even managing to keep the public option alive in the Senate for as long as it has been.

"A lot of people thought we wouldn't even have a public option being discussed at this point," Feingold said. "It's only because of the courage of our majority leader, who I believe is doing this on principle."

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/feingold-health-reform/

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

93 killed in blast at crowded Pakistan market

2009-10-28T19:48:33Z

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33503576/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia?GT1=43001

93 killed in blast at crowded Pakistan market
Bombing at Peshawar bazaar coincides with Hillary Clinton’s visit to country

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A car bomb tore through a busy market in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 93 people as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited the country and pledged American support for its campaign against Islamist militants.

60 of the dead were women and children. More than 200 people were wounded in the blast in the main northwestern city of Peshawar, the deadliest in a surge of attacks this month. The government blamed militants seeking to avenge an army offensive launched this month against al-Qaida and Taliban in their stronghold close to the Afghan border.

The bomb destroyed much of a market selling bangles, dresses and toys that was popular with women and children.

It collapsed buildings, including a mosque, and set shops on fire in an old part of the city crisscrossed with narrow alleys and clogged with stalls. Wounded people sat amid burning debris and body parts as a huge plume of gray smoke rose above the city.

Crying for help, men grabbed at the wreckage, trying to pull out survivors trapped beneath. One two-story building collapsed as firefighters doused it with water, triggering more panic.

'Women and children crying'
"There was a deafening sound and I was like a blind man for a few minutes," said Mohammad Usman, who was wounded in the shoulder. "I heard women and children crying and started to help others. There was the smell of human flesh in the air."

Clinton, on her first visit to Pakistan as secretary of state, was a three-hour drive away in the capital, Islamabad, when the blast took place. Speaking to reporters, she praised the army's anti-Taliban offensive in South Waziristan and offered U.S. support.

"I want you to know this fight is not Pakistan's alone," Clinton said. "These extremists are committed to destroying what is dear to us as much as they are committed to destroying that which is dear to you and to all people. So this is our struggle as well."

Appearing with her, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said the violence would not break his government's will to fight back.

"The resolve and determination will not be shaken," Qureshi said. "People are carrying out such heinous crimes — they want to shake our resolve. I want to address them: We will not buckle. We will fight you. We will fight you because we want peace and stability in Pakistan."

City bombed three times this month
Peshawar, the economic hub of the northwest and the seat of the provincial government, has long been a favorite target of militants who control large parts of territory to the north in tribal regions near the Afghanistan border. Extremism has flourished there since it was used as a staging ground in the 1980s for U.S.-funded fighters preparing to battle the Soviet-installed regime in Afghanistan.

No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but that is not unusual, especially when the victims are Pakistani civilians.

Sahib Gul, a doctor at a nearby hospital, said 93 people were killed and more than 200 injured. He said 60 of the dead were either women or children.

Three bombs have exploded in Peshawar this month, including another one that killed more than 50 people, part of a barrage of at least 10 major attacks across the country that have killed some 250 people. Most have targeted security forces, but some bombs have gone off in public places, apparently to undercut support for the army's assault on the border and expose the weakness of the government.

The Taliban have warned Pakistan that they would stage more attacks if the army does not end a new ground offensive in the South Waziristan tribal region, where the military has dispatched some 30,000 troops to flush out insurgents. South Waziristan is a major base for the Pakistani Taliban and other foreign militants.

North West Frontier Province Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain blamed the militants for Wednesday's attack.

"We are hitting them at their center of terrorism, and they are hitting back targeting Peshawar," he said. "This is a tough time for us. We are picking up the bodies of our women and children, but we will follow these terrorists and eliminate them."

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Goldman Lobbies Senate, Says Full Transparency Sucks

2009-10-28T01:23:49Z

ALTERNATIVE TRADING PLATFORMS AND THEIR EFFECT ON LIQUIDITY

The equity markets provide perhaps the best example of a highly evolved complex ecosystem, where care must be taken to preserve the benefits that have evolved from competition and innovation…

Crucially, liquidity is what helps to solve this mismatch problem. Market makers that see large volumes are best positioned to match differing size transactions. In traditional exchange trading, bids and offers are public, and this transparency helps buyers and sellers to achieve the best price.

For some market participants, however, the openness and transparency of the equity market actually mean they are unlikely to achieve the best price. The risk, particularly for large transactions such as those undertaken by pension funds or large mutual funds (where most small investors have most of their equity exposure), is that other market participants will use this transparency to undercut the intended transactions.

From a Goldman Sachs lobbying document (emphasis mine)

effective-reg-part-4.pdf (application/pdf Object).

This is from a lobbying document Goldman has been passing around the Senate on financial regulatory reform in general.

There is a lot of crazy stuff in this document, but the most notable is probably this passage, in which Goldman pooh-poohs the notion that complete transparency in markets creates accurate prices.

Instead, the bank argues that an over-the-counter market in which big traders like Goldman get to do deals in the shadows in “dark pools” without the retail investor having any knowledge of what the hell is going on is somehow better for everybody, that this somehow produces better prices. Of course the reality is that the two-tiered system creates one pool of fools whose every movement is visible to every animal on the Serengeti, and another pool of giant bloodthirsty carnivores who get to walk around invisible, picking off the dik-diks one by one.

Everyone I showed this to had the same reaction — “I can’t believe they said this out loud.”

One friend of mine put it this way: say Goldman buys a big block of stock from a pension fund in a dark pool. Now they have shares they want to get out of and flatten out their risk. So where do they sell? Well, a big chunk of it might go to the retail schmuck who has no idea what’s going on. He’s buying 1000 shares of whatever at $28, not knowing that Goldman has another 50,000 shares to go. Next thing you know, the schmuck’s shares are at $27.

Goldman salutes this process, noting the magic of so-called “non-displayed liquidity.” What the rest of us would describe as “hiding shit from the rabble,” Goldman calls “separating liquidity from information about the transaction.” You almost have to admire the sheer balls of this sort of propaganda:

Alternative trading platforms – so-called “dark pools” of liquidity – have evolved to address this problem. They work by separating liquidity from information about the transaction – the participants, lot sizes and transaction prices. Through the process of “non-displayed liquidity”, information does become available to both regulators and the public market – but not until the transaction is complete.

God bless this company. They’re never boring, that’s for sure.

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/10/27/goldman-lobbies-senate-says-full-transparency-sucks/

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Torture charged in L.A.-area mortgage rescue case

2009-10-28T01:21:50Z

As Los Angeles housing advocates launched a campaign warning of mortgage rescue scams, a couple hit by foreclosure are charged with torturing two loan-modification agents they suspected of fraud, authorities said on Monday.

The couple, Daniel Weston and Mary Ann Parmelee, and three other people are accused of luring their two victims to an office where the men were tied up, held for hours and beaten, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney said.

Police were called after one of the victims managed to escape, said the spokeswoman, Shiara Davila-Morales. The incident occurred on Wednesday in the town of Glendale, just north of Los Angeles.

Weston, Parmelee and the three other defendants each were charged with two counts of torture, two counts of false imprisonment by violence and two counts of second-degree robbery, according to a criminal complaint filed against them.

Weston, 52, and Parmelee, 51, both arrested last week and jailed on $1 million bond, shared a house in the suburb of La Canada-Flintridge that is in foreclosure, authorities said.

"The two allegedly sought loan modification assistance from the victims but believed that nothing was being done and wanted their money back," a statement from the district attorney's office said.

Davila-Morales added that the couple, according to investigators, believed they had been swindled.

Weston and another man, who previously served time for assault, are accused of carrying out the beatings in front of their three co-defendants, who prosecutors say had prior business ties with the two victims by having funneled loan-modification referrals to them.

Each count of felony torture, defined as inflicting "great bodily injury" for the purpose of "revenge, extortion, persuasion and for a sadistic purpose," carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. Defense lawyers were not immediately available for comment.

The case became public as Los Angeles officials and community groups kicked off a national public-awareness effort urging homeowners to beware of bogus loan-modification programs and to report suspicious activity to authorities.

Los Angeles was selected to launch the campaign because the metropolitan region ranks among areas with the highest foreclosure rates nationwide, organizers said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59Q03Q20091027

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Health Care In Massachusetts

2009-10-28T01:11:31Z

Massachusetts reform mainly relies on a combination of regulation and subsidies to chivy a mostly private system into providing near-universal coverage. It is, to be frank, a bit of a Rube Goldberg device — a complicated way of achieving something that could have been done much more simply with a Medicare-type program. Yet it has gone a long way toward achieving the goal of health insurance for all, although it’s not quite there: according to state estimates, only 2.6 percent of residents remain uninsured.

This expansion of coverage has tremendous significance in human terms. The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured recently did a focus-group study of Massachusetts residents and reported that “Health reform enabled many of these individuals to take care of their medical needs, to start seeing a doctor, and in some cases to regain their health and control over their lives.” Even those who probably would have been insured without reform felt “peace of mind knowing they could obtain health coverage if they lost access to their employer-sponsored coverage.”

And reform remains popular. Earlier this year, many conservatives, citing misleading poll results, claimed that public support for the Massachusetts reform had plunged. Newer, more careful polling paints a very different picture. The key finding: an overwhelming 79 percent of the public think the reform should be continued, while only 11 percent think it should be repealed.

Interestingly, another recent poll shows similar support among the state’s physicians: 75 percent want to continue the policies; only 7 percent want to see them reversed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/opinion/26krugman.html?_r=1

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

Racism On GOP Blog

2009-10-28T01:03:25Z

This one even shocked me!

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/10/26/more-rnc-internet-follies-racist-images-on-fan-photo-page.aspx

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Statisticians reject global cooling

2009-10-27T15:17:11Z

An analysis of global temperatures by independent statisticians shows the Earth is still warming and not cooling as some global warming skeptics are claiming.

The analysis was conducted at the request of The Associated Press to investigate the legitimacy of talk of a cooling trend that has been spreading on the Internet, fueled by some news reports, a new book and temperatures that have been cooler in a few recent years.

In short, it is not true, according to the statisticians who contributed to the AP analysis.

The statisticians, reviewing two sets of temperature data, found no trend of falling temperatures over time.

2005 hottest year recorded
U.S. government data show the decade that ends in December will be the warmest in 130 years of record-keeping, and 2005 was the hottest year recorded.

The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It has been a while since the superhot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs?

In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.

"If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a microtrend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect," said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.

Yet the idea that things are cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, a BBC news story posted on the Drudge Report and in a new book by the authors of the best-seller "Freakonomics." Last week, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, down from 77 percent in 2006.

Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped — thus, a cooling trend. But it is not that simple.

Temps rising once more
Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.

The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA's climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.

Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers.

Identifying a downward trend is a case of "people coming at the data with preconceived notions," said Peterson, author of the book "Why Did They Do That? An Introduction to Forensic Decision Analysis."

Satellite data tends to be cooler
One prominent skeptic said that to find the cooling trend, the 30 years of satellite temperatures must be used. The satellite data tends to be cooler than the ground data. Key to that is making sure that 1998 is part of the trend, he added.

What happened within the past 10 years or so is what counts, not the overall average, contends Don Easterbrook, a Western Washington University geology professor and global warming skeptic.

"I don't argue with you that the 10-year average for the past 10 years is higher than the previous 10 years," said Easterbrook, who has self-published some of his research. "We started the cooling trend after 1998. You're going to get a different line depending on which year you choose.

"Should not the actual temperature be higher now than it was in 1998?" Easterbrook asked. "We can play the numbers games."

That's the problem, some of the statisticians said.

Grego produced three charts to show how choosing a starting date can alter perceptions. Using the skeptics' satellite data beginning in 1998, there is a "mild downward trend," he said. But doing that is "deceptive."

Conflicting data analyses
The trend disappears if the analysis is begun in 1997. And it trends upward if you begin in 1999, he said.

Apart from the conflicting data analyses is the eyebrow-raising new book title from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, "Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance."

A line in the book says: "Then there's this little-discussed fact about global warming: While the drumbeat of doom has grown louder over the past several years, the average global temperature during that time has in fact decreased."

That led to a sharp rebuke from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which said the book mischaracterizes climate science with "distorted statistics."

Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, said he does not believe there is a cooling trend. He said the line was just an attempt to note the irony of a cool couple of years at a time of intense discussion of global warming. Levitt said he did not do any statistical analysis of temperatures but "eyeballed" the numbers and noticed 2005 was hotter than the last couple of years. Levitt said the "cooling" reference in the book title refers more to ideas about trying to cool the Earth artificially.

Statisticians say that in sizing up climate change, it's important to look at moving averages of about 10 years. They compare the average of 1999-2008 to the average of 2000-2009. In all data sets, 10-year moving averages have been higher in the last five years than in any previous years.

"To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous," said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University.

Ben Santer, a climate scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Lab, called it "a concerted strategy to obfuscate and generate confusion in the minds of the public and policy-makers" ahead of international climate talks in December in Copenhagen.

President Barack Obama weighed in on the topic Friday at the Massechusetts Institute of Technology. He said some opponents "make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary."

Early this year, climate scientists in two peer-reviewed publications statistically analyzed recent years' temperatures against claims of cooling and found them invalid.

Not all skeptical scientists make the flat-out cooling argument.

"It pretty much depends on when you start," wrote John Christy, the Alabama atmospheric scientist who collects the satellite data that skeptics use. He said in an e-mail that looking back 31 years, temperatures have gone up nearly three-quarters of a degree Fahrenheit (four-tenths of a degree Celsius). The last dozen years have been flat, and temperatures over the last eight years have declined a bit, he wrote.

Oceans influence short-term weather
Oceans, which take longer to heat up and longer to cool, greatly influence short-term weather, causing temperatures to rise and fall temporarily on top of the overall steady warming trend, scientists say. The biggest example of that is El Nino.

El Nino, a temporary warming of part of the Pacific Ocean, usually spikes global temperatures, scientists say. The two recent warm years, both 1998 and 2005, were El Nino years. The flip side of El Nino is La Nina, which lowers temperatures. A La Nina bloomed last year and temperatures slipped a bit, but 2008 was still the ninth hottest in 130 years of NOAA records.

Of the 10 hottest years recorded by NOAA, eight have occurred since 2000, and after this year it will be nine because this year is on track to be the sixth-warmest on record.

The current El Nino is forecast to get stronger, which probably will pushing global temperatures even higher next year, scientists say. NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt predicts 2010 may break a record, so a cooling trend "will be never talked about again."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33482750/ns/us_news-environment/

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

How Did America Fall So Fast?

2009-10-27T13:07:04Z

In 2000, America was described as the sole remaining superpower - or even the world's "hyperpower". Now we're in real trouble (at the very least, you have to admit that we're losing power and wealth in comparison with China).

How did it happen so fast?

As everyone knows, the war in Iraq - which will end up costing $3-5 trillion dollars - was launched based upon false justifications. Indeed, the government apparently planned both the Afghanistan war (see this and this) and the Iraq war before 9/11.

And the financial system collapsed last year due to looting and fraud.

How Empires Fall

But Paul Farrel provides a bigger-picture analysis, quoting Jared Diamond and Marc Faber.

Diamond's book 's, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, studies the collapse of civilizations throughout history, and finds:

Civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power...

One of the choices has depended on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they reach crisis proportions

And PhD economist Faber states:

How [am I] so sure about this final collapse?

Of all the questions I have about the future, this is the easiest one to answer. Once a society becomes successful it becomes arrogant, righteous, overconfident, corrupt, and decadent ... overspends ... costly wars ... wealth inequity and social tensions increase; and society enters a secular decline.

[Quoting 18th century Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler:] The average life span of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years progressing from "bondage to spiritual faith ... to great courage ... to liberty ... to abundance ... to selfishness ... to complacency ... to apathy ... to dependence and ... back into bondage"

[Where is America in the cycle?] It is most unlikely that Western societies, and especially the U.S., will be an exception to this typical "society cycle." ... The U.S. is somewhere between the phase where it moves "from complacency to apathy" and "from apathy to dependence."

In other words, America's rapid fall is not really that novel after all.

How Consumers, Politicians and Wall Street All Contributed to the Fall

On the individual level, people became "fat and happy", the abundance led to selfishness ("greed is good"), and then complacency, and then apathy.

Indeed, if you think back about tv and radio ads over the last couple of decades, you can trace the tone of voice of the characters from Gordon Gecko-like, to complacent, to apathetic and know-nothing.

On the political level, there was no courage in the White House or Congress "to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions". Of course, the bucket loads of donations from Wall Street didn't hurt, but there was also a religion of deregulation promoted by Greenspan, Rubin, Gensler and others which preached that the economy was self-stabilizing and self-sustaining. This type of false ideology only can spread during times of abundance and complacency, when an empire is at its peak and people can fool themselves into thinking "the empire has always been prosperous, we've solved all of the problems, and we will always prosper" (incidentally, this type of false thinking was also common in the 1920's, when government and financial leaders said that the "modern banking system" - overseen by the Federal Reserve - had destroyed instability once and for all).

And as for Wall Street, the best possible time to pillage is when your victim is at the peak of wealth. With America in a huge bubble phase of wealth and power, the Wall Street looters sucked out vast sums through fraudulent subprime loans, derivatives and securitization schemes, Ponzi schemes and high frequency trading and dark pools and all of the rest.

Like the mugger who waits until his victim has made a withdrawal from the ATM, the white collar criminals pounced when America's economy was booming (at least on paper).

Given that the people were in a contented stupor of consumption, and the politicians were flush with cash and feel-good platitudes, the job of the criminals became easier.

A study of the crash of the Roman - or almost any other - empire would show something very similar.

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-did-america-fall-so-fast.html

posted in Political Junkies - 35 replies

Israel interested in two German war ships

2009-10-27T12:50:40Z

Israel would like the two warships, worth an estimated 400-500 million euros ($600-750 million), free of charge, the German daily Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung said on Friday, citing government sources.

The ships might be supplied by Hamburg's Blohm + Voss shipyard who confirmed an Israeli enquiry to German media without divulging any further details on the potential deal. The ships' weapons would be supplied by the United States.

The two state of the art corvettes, which are hard to detect by radar, are said to be larger than Israel's current flagship Hanit.

The Israeli navy wants to install a "Barak 8" missile defence system on the two vessels along with sophisticated radar so as "to be prepared for potential wars", according to the Israeli daily newspaper Ma'ariv.

The move would allow Israel to shift a part of its missile defense system to the sea, rendering it less vulnerable to potential rocket attacks.

Germany has previously helped equip the Israeli navy, delivering three submarines in the years 1999-2000.

Two further submarines are currently under construction in Kiel, costing at least 500 million euros apiece. Germany is to foot a third of that bill.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4820157,00.html

posted in Political Junkies - 27 replies

is fox news network anti-american?

2009-10-27T08:04:28Z

seen this in the news lately and it got me to thinking ...

posted in Political Junkies - 9 replies

They're giving away Palin's book on Tribe, FREE!

2009-10-27T06:52:53Z

Hey! Check out the slick new ad to the right of the topics list, WOW! No one's given me a free book since I took a personality exam for a free copy of Battlefield Earth (i failed it)!!
So what will y'all do with YOUR free copy, Train a puppy, Burn it at a North Carolina church, Or mulch it like I did with L. Ron?

posted in Political Junkies - 12 replies

Obama May be Skinny, but. .

2009-10-27T02:37:56Z

I like that. . .he says "its a socialist mop." a fun article. .

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59Q05Z20091027

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

RNC Mailer Appears Designed To Look Like Census Survey

2009-10-27T01:42:48Z

Michele Bachmann may be raising outlandish fears about the Census -- but Michael Steele's operation seems to be more than happy to associate its political efforts with the national survey.

The Republican National Committee is sending a mailer to GOP voters that aims to gather information and raise money. Nothing wrong with that. But the mailer appears clearly designed to mislead recipients into thinking that it's an official Census Bureau survey, which people are required by law to fill out.

You can see the mailer here. It's entitled, in bold, "2009 Congressional District Census." (The words "commissioned by the Republican Party" appear just below that, in much smaller and lighter type.) Above the recipient's address, it says: "Census Document Registered To." And it even includes a "Census Tracking Code."

The survey section includes questions about recipients' political leanings ("Conservative Republican," "Moderate Republican," etc.) and where they get their news. It also asks: "How much does it concern you that the Democrats have total control of the federal government."

One recipient told a Georgia news station that many of her neighbors might be duped into thinking the mailer was from the Census Bureau.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/rnc_mailer_appears_designed_to_look_like_census_su.php

posted in Political Junkies - 3 replies

Suppressing the "Innocence Project"

2009-10-26T22:09:25Z

Students in the Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University investigate claims of innocence and wrongful conviction by inmates. Over the course of a decade, the Medill project has helped secure the release of 11 innocent persons, five of whom were slated for execution.

Rather than applauding the students for their difficult and compelling work, prosecutors have hit them with a low blow. In a current case involving a claim of innocence by Anthony McKinney, Cook County prosecutors have served the Medill project with a shocking subpoena. According to the New York Times, the subpoena demands "the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students themselves."

The subpoena is highly inappropriate

The subpoena raises several red flags. First, the information the prosecutors seek is completely unrelated to the question of McKinney's guilt or innocence. Second, student grades are normally protected from disclosure by federal law. Third, the program is operated by the school of journalism and likely qualifies for protection by state journalism shield laws and the First Amendment. Fourth, the professor's course materials are possibly protected from disclosure by the concept of academic freedom -- which the Supreme Court has construed as a value secured by the First Amendment.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/26/journalism_students/index.html

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

Health Care. . Soul of the Nation. .

2009-10-26T22:03:40Z

interesting perspective. . .how does one assess the morality of a nation?

How does America measure up on how we treat the least of us., those in dire need, those who deserve compassion or forgiveness. .

http://www.mcall.com/news/opinion/anotherview/all-yv_berman.7061350oct24,0,3278149.story

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Percentage of Americans Med School in China. .

2009-10-26T21:33:57Z

What percentage of Americans could go to med school in China for the total cost of US Health Care spending??

posted in Political Junkies - 6 replies

Don't Visit My Country. .

2009-10-26T20:30:31Z

exiled minister of tourism of Honduras says. . .oh drat, there goes my vacation. . .I guess I'll have to go to Hawaii instead, sigh. . .

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1932100,00.html?iid=digg_share

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Fox’s Wallace compares White House to 1920s Chicago gangsters

2009-10-26T19:38:08Z

n a discussion of the war of words between Fox News and the White House, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace played a clip from the 1987 gangster movie The Untouchables to illustrate how the Obama administration operates.

Wallace went on to criticize the Obama administration for "trying to exclude Fox from interviewing pay czar Ken Feinberg" -- even though that claim has now been debunked.

In starting a segment whose premise was "Is the Obama administration creating a new enemies list?," Wallace played a clip of Sean Connery playing a police officer in 1920s Chicago, saying: "He pulls a knife -- you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way."

While it was not clear whether Wallace was accusing the White House of operating like an organized crime outfit or a gangland police squad, it was clear he was continuing the network's claim that the White House had tried to shut Fox out of a round of interviews with Kenneth Feinberg, the "pay czar" at the Treasury Department who is working to reduce bonuses at firms that took federal bailout cash.

Fox News reported last week that the White House had attempted to keep the network away from Feinberg by refusing to grant Fox an interview with him. But subsequent investigations have found that it was the Treasury Department, not the White House, that arranged the interviews, and that Fox was initially not listed for an interview because they hadn't requested one.

Wallace's gangster comparison follows other similar comments by the right wing echo chamber. The Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel was one of the first:

A White House set on kneecapping its opponents isn't, of course, entirely new. (See: Nixon) What is a little novel is the public and bare-knuckle way in which the Obama team is waging these campaigns against the other side.

The following day, Fox host Glenn Beck followed that script with a rant about the White House "beatdown" of its enemies.

That's the Chicago way and now we have it in Washington with Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama.

What was it that Obama promised on the campaign trail? Oh yeah, a "new kind of politics." America didn't think the "new" politics would be even worse than the "old" politics.

Agree with the administration? Fantastic. Dare to stand in the way of "reform"? Uh-oh.

No longer is it a gentlemen's disagreement that can be debated. No, you are going to play ball or get a beatdown.

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/white-house-gangsters/

posted in Political Junkies - 7 replies

Afghan crashes kill 14 Americans

2009-10-26T18:56:31Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8325362.stm

Afghan crashes kill 14 Americans

At least 14 Americans have been killed in a series of air crashes in Afghanistan, military officials say.

Four US soldiers died and two were hurt when two helicopters collided mid-air in the south, Nato-led forces said.

In a separate helicopter crash, in western Badghis province, seven US soldiers and three US civilians died.

The US said hostile fire was not believed to be to blame for either incident, but the Taliban said it was behind the Badghis crash.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmedi told the AFP news agency that militants had shot down the US helicopter in the Darabam district of the province.

Drugs operation

Another 12 Americans and 14 Afghans were also reported to have been injured in that crash.

Col Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for the Nato-led force in Afghanistan, said the authorities were still investigating the incident in Badghis, but "do not believe that enemy action was responsible".

He said the crash happened as troops were leaving an area where they had carried out an anti-drugs trafficking operation and killed 14 "enemy fighters".

"After they were flying away, that's when the crash actually happened," he said. "We did go... and remove an insurgent who was working with the drug trade in that particular area."

The three dead civilians worked for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, news agencies reported.

The deaths were the first for the DEA in Afghanistan since it began operations there in 2005, Associated Press reported.

Bad year for troops

The exact location of the crash in the south of the country has not been confirmed by the US military.

This year has seen the highest death toll of international troops in Afghanistan since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001.

There have been dozens of American soldiers among those killed, making up more than half the total foreign troop deaths in the country.

The worst single loss of US life in Afghanistan occurred in June 2005, when a Chinook helicopter was shot down in eastern Kunar province, killing 16 military personnel.

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

A debate club with only one member

2009-10-26T03:02:32Z

Dan moderates his own debate club.

There's a lot of activity there, but he is the only member.

http://tribes.tribe.net/dansdebateclub

LOL!

LOL!

LOL!

LOL!

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Midway

2009-10-26T02:28:35Z

Message from the Gyre

These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

http://chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11

Your reaction to the photos will define you.

posted in Political Junkies - 7 replies

Rush should try fact checking some time

2009-10-25T22:20:53Z

http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93122?fp=1

Rush Was Punked: “Obama Thesis” Hoax

by Claudine Zap

"It must have seemed so perfect. An obscure blogger unearths some pages of President Obama's college thesis. The report supposedly comes from big-time journalist Joe Klein of Time magazine. And the thesis has some real gems: like Obama's disdain for the Constitution.

The whole thing was nothing more than a satirical post on a humor blog. But Rush Limbaugh, who quoted from the supposed thesis on his radio show, sure wasn't laughing. Here's how it went down.

An unknown blogger picked up on a made-up post meant as a joke, which claimed that Joe Klein had gotten his hands on 10 pages of student Obama's college thesis. Rush Limbaugh jumped on it, which immediately sparked Web searches on "obama thesis."

Supposedly titled "Aristocracy Revisited," the excerpt revealed the president had "doubts" about the "so-called founders." Juicy. Except not true. Limbaugh discovered halfway through his show that he'd been had, but defended himself by saying basically the thesis felt true. Listen in to Rush's mea sorta culpa.

Joe Klein finally jumped in, and called the report "nonsense" on his Swampland blog, and the blogger who thought the hoax was real also apologized.

Let's hope someone kept their sense of humor in all this. Still, for a humble post to go from humor blog to major media outlet sure seems impressive. Someone ought to write their thesis on it. For real. "

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Vampires Demand an Apology. .

2009-10-25T05:12:01Z

Rep. Alan Grayson calls Cheney a vampire. .

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/24/rep-grayson-calls-cheney-a-vampire/

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

Yippies?

2009-10-25T03:00:08Z

Whatever became of them??

posted in Political Junkies - 6 replies

LAPD Riding High on Big Brother Ad. .

2009-10-25T01:56:27Z

video. . .George Orwell would be proud. .

http://trueslant.com/allisonkilkenny/2009/10/24/lapd-freaks-out-america-with-new-orewellian-ad/

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Inequities Justified by Increased Prosperity? WTF??

2009-10-25T00:14:15Z

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8upOpH5Q3Tw

In France they cut their heads off, didn't they?

posted in Political Junkies - 1 reply

Who served in the military?

2009-10-24T10:45:13Z

Prominent Democrats

* Rick Noriega, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Texas -- joined the U.S. Army in 1979; currently Lt. Colonel in Texas Army National Guard, served in Afghanistan. (1)
* Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) -- rifle platoon and company commander with the Fifth Marine Regiment in the An Hoa Basin west of Danang; was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals, and two Purple Hearts. (1)
* Representative Tim Walz, D-MN - Twenty-four years of service in the Army National Guard, retiring in 2005.
* Representative Joe Sestak, D-PA - 31 years of service in the Navy, rising to the rank of Vice Admiral.
* Representative Chris Carney, D-PA - Lieutenant Commander in the United States Naval Reserve, Carney served multiple tours overseas and was activated for Operation Enduring Freedom, Noble Eagle, and Southern Watch.
* Representative Patrick Murphy, D-PA - extensive career in the U.S. Army from 1993-2004; earned Bronze Star and Presidential Unit Citation.
* Representative Phil Hare, D-IL - Served in the United States Army Reserve for six years.

* Representative Jack Murtha (D-PA) - distinguished 37-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps, Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, retired from the Marine Corps Reserve as a colonel in 1990. (1)
* Former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt - Missouri Air National Guard, 1965-71. (1, 2)
* Representative David Bonior - Staff Sgt., United States Air Force 1968-72 (1, 2)
* Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle - 1st Lt., U.S. Air Force SAC 1969-72 (1, 2)
* Former Vice President Al Gore - enlisted August 1969; sent to Vietnam January 1971 as an army journalist, assigned to the 20th Engineer Brigade headquartered at Bien Hoa, an airbase twenty miles northeast of Saigon. More facts about Gore's Service

* Former Senator Bob Kerrey... Democrat... Lt. j.g., U.S. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam (1, 2)
* Senator Daniel Inouye, US Army 1943-'47; Medal of Honor, World War Two (1, 2)
* Senator John Kerry, Lt., U.S. Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, and three awards of the Purple Heart for his service in combat (1)
* Representative Charles Rangel, Staff Sgt., U.S. Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea (1, 2)
* Former Senator Max Cleland, Captain, U.S. Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam (1, 2)

* Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) - U.S. Army Reserve, 1968-1975.
* Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) - U.S. Army, 1951-1953. (1)
* Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) - Lt., U.S. Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74. (1, 2)
* Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) - U.S. Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91 (1)
* Former Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) - served as a U.S. Army officer in World War II, receiving the Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons. (1)

* Representative Leonard Boswell (D-IA) - Lt. Col., U.S. Army 1956-76; two tours in Vietnam, two Distinguished Flying Crosses as a helicopter pilot, two Bronze Stars, and the Soldier's Medal. (1, 2)
* Former Representative "Pete" Peterson, Air Force Captain, POW, Ambassador to Viet Nam, and recipient of the Purple Heart, the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit. (1, 2)
* Rep. Mike Thompson, D-CA: Staff sergeant/platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, U.S. Army; was wounded and received a Purple Heart. (1, 2)
* Bill McBride, Democratic Candidate for Florida Governor - volunteered and served as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam; awarded Bronze Star with a combat "V." (1)
* Gray Davis, former California Governor, Army Captain in Vietnam; received Bronze Star. (1)
* Pete Stark, D-CA, served in the Air Force 1955-57
* Wesley Clark, Democratic Presidential Candidate - 38-year career of public service in the Army, culminating as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.

Prominent Republicans

* Representative Patrick McHenry, R-NC - did not serve. Saw fit to endanger American troops' lives after a visit to Iraq by violating operational security and helping militias target their mortar attacks on the Green Zone.
* Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY - did not serve (1)
* Senate Assistant Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-MI - avoided the draft, did not serve.
* Senate Republican Conference Chairman Jon Kyl, R-AZ - did not serve.
* Senate Republican Conference Vice Chair John Cornyn, R-TX - did not serve.
* National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair John Ensign, R-NV - did not serve.

* House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-OH - did not serve.
* House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-MO - did not serve.
* House Republican Conerence Chair Adam Putnam, R-FL - did not serve.
* House Republican Policy Committee Thaddeus McCotter, R-MI - did not serve.
* National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Tom Cole, R-OK - did not serve.

* Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani - did not serve.
* Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney - did not serve in the military but did serve the Mormon Church on a 30-month mission to France.
* Former Senator Fred Thompson - did not serve.
* Senator John McCain - McCain's naval honors include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross. Why did the Bush campaign smear him so in 2000? At least Senators Cleland (D-GA), Kerry (D-MA), Kerrey (D-NE), Robb (D-VA) and Hagel (R-NE) defended him.

* Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert - avoided the draft, did not serve.
* Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey - avoided the draft, did not serve.
* Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay - avoided the draft, did not serve (1). "So many minority youths had volunteered ... that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself."
* Former House Majority Whip Roy Blunt - did not serve
* Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist - did not serve. (An impressive medical resume, but not such a friend to cats in Boston.)
* Rick Santorum, R-PA, formerly third ranking Republican in the Senate - did not serve. (1)
* George Felix Allen, former Republican Senator from Virginia - a supporter of Nixon and the Vietnam war, did not serve. (1)

* Former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld - served in the U.S. Navy (1954-57) as an aviator and flight instructor. (1) Served as President Reagan's Special Envoy to the Middle East and met with Saddam Hussein twice in 1983 and 1984.

* GW Bush - decided that a six-year Nat'l Guard commitment really means four years. Still says that he's "been to war." Huh?
* VP Cheney - several deferments (1, 2), the last by marriage (in his own words, "had other priorities than military service") (1)
* Former Att'y Gen. John Ashcroft - did not serve (1, 2); received seven deferment to teach business ed at SW Missouri State

* Jeb Bush, Florida Governor - did not serve. (1)

* Karl Rove - avoided the draft, did not serve (1), too busy being a Republican.

* Former Speaker Newt Gingrich - avoided the draft, did not serve (1, 2)
* Former President Ronald Reagan - due to poor eyesight, served in a noncombat role making movies for the Army in southern California during WWII. He later seems to have confused his role as an actor playing a tail gunner with the real thing.
* "B-1" Bob Dornan - avoided Korean War combat duty by enrolling in college acting classes (Orange County Weekly article). Enlisted only after the fighting was over in Korea.
* Phil Gramm - avoided the draft, did not serve, four (?) student deferments

* Congressman Ron Paul - active duty flight surgeon from 1963-65; Air National Guard from 1965-68. (link)
* Former Senator Bob Dole - an honorable man. http://www.bobdole.org/bio/wwII.php
* Chuck Hagel - two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, Vietnam. http://www.senate.gov/~hagel/Information/bio.htm
* Duke Cunningham - nominated for the Medal of Honor, received the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, fifteen Air Medals, the Purple Heart, and several other decorations Recently entered plea bargain on felony charges of bribery, etc. etc.
* Senator Jeff Sessions U.S. Army Reserves, 1973-1986
* Colin Powell. What are we to make of Powell? On the one hand, a long career as a military manager. On the other hand, accused of covering up the My Lai massacre. Back on that first hand, one of the seemingly sane voices in this administration when it comes to Iraq (or at least he used to be). On the other hand, a clear hypocrite ("I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units...")
* Representative Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD), served in USMC in Vietnam; wounded in action.

Here are a few more...
Democrats

* Chuck Robb, US Senator from Virginia, served in Vietnam
* Howell Heflin... Democrat... Silver Star
* George McGovern, famous liberal, awarded Silver Star & DFC, dozens of missions during WWII.
* Former President Bill Clinton - avoided the draft through student deferments; in the autumn of 1969, Clinton entered the draft but received a high number (311) and was never called to serve. (CNN article.) "...it was his doubts about the morality of the war and the Selective Service system that led him to abandon the ROTC idea and to subject himself to a draft lottery. Only the luck of the draw - a high lottery number - kept him out. " (Jeff Greenfield, ABC News, quoting Gov. Clinton.)
* Former President Jimmy Carter, most recent recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, seven years in the Navy. "Except for his fellow service-academy graduate Dwight Eisenhower, no President of the twentieth century spent more years in uniform than Carter." (New Yorker Magazine)
* Former Presidential Nominee Mike Dukakis - United States Army, 1955-'57 (1)
* Former Senator/Vice Presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen - B-24 pilot in WWII 1942-'45, Squadron Commander; earned Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters. (1)
* Former Vice President Walter Mondale, U.S. Army 1951-1953
* Former Senator John Glenn, D-OH (1974-1999) - Served in WWII and Korea; extensive military commendations include the Distinguished Flying Cross on six occasions, and the Air Medal with 18 Clusters.
* Congressman Tom Lantos, D-CA - Did not serve in the US military; did serve in the Hungarian anti-Nazi underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg, is the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress.
* Representative Bud Cramer (D-AL) - joined the Army as a tank officer in 1972; served at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and continued military service as a member of the Army Reserve from 1976 to 1978. (link)

Republicans/Conservatives
Political

* Senator Richard Shelby, did not serve (1)
* Senator Jon Kyl, R-AZ - did not serve (1, 2)
* Senator John Cornyn, R-TX - did not serve. (1)
* Senator Tim Hutchison, R-AR - did not serve (1, 2)
* Rep. Christopher Cox, R-CA, (formerly) fifth-ranking Republican in the House - did not serve. (1)
* Rep. John T. Doolittle, R-CA, sixth-ranking Republican in the House - did not serve.
* Rep. Mark Kirk, R-IL -- his website claimed he served in Operation Iraqi Freedom; in reality, he had to correct the record.
* Representative Saxby Chambliss, Georgia - did not serve (1, 2), had a "bad knee" (yet somehow feels he has a right to attack Max Cleland's patriotism)
* Rep. Randy Kuhl, R-NY - Did not serve. (1)
* Former Representative JC Watts - did not serve (1, 2)
* Jack Kemp, did not serve (1, 2) (was unfit because of a knee injury, though he heroically continued as a National Football League quarterback for another eight years - source)
* Former Vice President Dan Quayle, avoided Vietnam service, got a slot in the journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard when the unit was at 150% capacity (at least he showed up for his duty, unlike GW) (1, 2)
* Eliot Abrams, did not serve (1, 2) (however, played a key role in subverting democracy in South America)
* Paul Wolfowitz, did not serve (1, 2)
* Former Representative Vin Weber, did not serve (1, 2)
* Richard Perle, did not serve (1, 2) (is the current bloodshed in the Middle East a direct result of his treasonous meddling in Clinton Administrstion foreign policy?)
* Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy - did not serve. (1)
* Michael Bloomberg, did not serve (1, 2)
* George Pataki, did not serve (1, 2)
* Spencer Abraham, did not serve
* John Engler, did not serve (1, 2)
* Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) - website used to claim service as a "Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran." A current biographical website makes no such claim. In reality, was a National Guard lawyer who never left South Carolina during the Gulf War.
* Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-CA, did not serve (1)
* Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA/49th, there were some problems with his service.
* Rep. John M. McHugh, R-NY - avoided the draft, did not serve (1)
* Rep. Todd Platts, R-PA - did not serve (1)
* Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA Republican Governor - went AWOL from his Austrian army base to enter a bodybuilding competition
* Senator Joe Lieberman - did not serve.

* George Herbert Walker Bush, pilot in WWII. Awarded Distinguished Flying Cross. Shot down by the Japanese; was lone survivor out of airplane (link).
* Representative Sam R. Johnson, combat missions in both Korea and Vietnam, POW in Hanoi from April 1966 to February 1973 (1)
(don't ever run for president Sam, they'll spread rumors that you're crazy)
* Senator Ted Stevens, R-AK, WW II pilot, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Air Medals, and the Yuan Hai medal awarded by the Republic of China.
* Sen. John Warner, R-VA - Served in the Navy 1945-1946 as a RM3; reenlisted in the USMC 1950, 10 years service in Marine Corps Reserve, retired as Captain.
* Congresswoman Heather Wilson, R-NM, served in the Air Force 1978-1989
* Former President Gerald Ford, served in the Navy, WWII
* Former Senator Strom Thurmond - apparently believes, along with Trent Lott, that America should have been a segregated society. Still, he served.

Fighting Democrats

Back from the front lines, the veterans listed below ran for Congress in 2006. Why were almost all the veterans coming home from Iraq running as Democrats?

* Lt. Col. Charles Brown - California 4th District - 26-year career in USAF; jet and helicopter pilot; awarded Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery in the Mayaguez incident.
Website: http://www.charliebrownforcongress.org
* Eric Massa - New Yorks 29th District - 24 years service in the Navy; also served as aide to NATO Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark.
Website: www.massaforcongress.com
* Paul Hackett - U.S. Senate - Ohio
Website: www.hackettforohio.com
* David Harris - Texas 6th Congressional District
Website: http://followmetodc.com/
* David Ashe - Virginia's 2nd Congressional District
Website: http://www.davidasheforcongress.com/
* Andrew Duck - Maryland 6th Congressional District
Website at http://duckforcongress.org
* Tim Dunn - North Carolina's 8th Congressional District
Website: www.dunnforcongress.com
* Andrew Horne -- Kentucky's 3rd Congressional District.
Website: http://horneforcongress.com/

Punditocracy and Preacher-types (See also Media Whores Online)

* George Will, did not serve
* Chris Matthews, Mediawhore, did not serve. (However, apparently served in the Peace Corps.)
* Bill O'Reilly, did not serve
* Paul Gigot, did not serve.
* Bill Bennett, Did not serve
* Pat Buchanan, did not serve
* Rush Limbaugh, did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst' [see "The Rush Limbaugh Story" by Paul D. Colford, St. Martin's Press, 1993, Chapter 2: Beating the Draft.])
* Michael Savage (aka Michael Alan Weiner) - did not serve, too busy chasing herbs and botany degrees in Hawaii and Fiji
* John Wayne, did not serve
* Pat Robertson - claimed during 1986 campaign to be a "combat veteran." In reality, was a "Liquor Officer."
* Bill Kristol, did not serve
* Sean Hannity, did not serve.
* Kenneth Starr, did not serve
* Antonin Scalia, did not serve
* Clarence Thomas, did not serve
* Ralph Reed, did not serve
* Michael Medved, did not serve
* Charlie Daniels, did not serve
* Ted Nugent, did not serve
* Country Singer Toby Keith, did not serve. (1)
* Radio Host Phil Hendrie, did not serve.

* Ollie North - Convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, at least he served.
* Charlton Heston - served in WWII, but went AWOL when Michael Moore asked him some tough questions.
* Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association - did not serve (apparently pulled lottery #97 in 1969 as a campus radical at SUNY-Albany, but weaseled out by getting a family doctor to claim he had a nervous disorder).

* James Carville, a.k.a. "Corporal Cueball" - Served in the United States Marine Corps, 1966-'68. (1)
* Markos Moulitsas, a.k.a. "Kos" (leading liberal blogger) - Served in the United States Army, 1989-'92. (1)
* Randi Rhodes - enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1977 and worked stateside as a mechanic in Texas, achieving the rank of Airman First Class. (link)

Independents

* Gov. Jesse Ventura, U.S. Navy SEAL training, did UDT work
* Senator Jim Jeffords, U.S. Navy 1956-1959

And let's not forget the Coast Guard...

The brave men and women of the United States Coast Guard risk their lives every day to protect our nation and save thousands of lives every year. The Coast Guard is in fact a branch of the United States Armed Forces.

* Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MI) served in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve from 1971-1984. http://www.house.gov/genetaylor/biography.htm
* Congressman Howard Coble (R-NC) served in the U.S. Coast Guard (Active Duty)for 5.5 years. Served in the CG Reserve for 18 years. http://coble.house.gov/biography/
* William Delahunt (D-MA) served in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve from 1963-1971 http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/history/faqs/William_Delahunt.html

http://www.awolbush.com/whoserved.html

posted in Political Junkies - 11 replies

AIG’s Top Swaps Managers Kept Bonuses, Feinberg Says

2009-10-24T02:41:07Z

American International Group Inc.’s highest-paid executives in the unit blamed for pushing the insurer to the brink of collapse haven’t returned bonuses as they’d promised, according to the Obama administration.

Four of five managers in AIG’s Financial Products unit under the jurisdiction of pay master Kenneth Feinberg didn’t make good on pledges to return the retention bonuses as of August, Feinberg said in documents released yesterday. The fifth employee hadn’t made any promise, Feinberg said. The pay master rejected AIG’s proposal to pay the five executives a total of $13.2 million this year.

“The performance of AIG Financial Products has contributed significantly to the deterioration in AIG’s financial health,” Feinberg said. Compensation proposed by New York-based AIG for the staff doesn’t “adequately reflect the role of AIG Financial Products” in the decline of the insurer, he said.

AIG, which received a $182.3 billion U.S. government bailout, ignited a backlash after giving about $165 million in March to its derivatives staff. The insurer said the pay was needed to keep staff to unwind money-losing trades. President Barack Obama called the bonuses an “outrage,” and then-Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy asked employees getting more than $100,000 to return half.

Financial Products employees have returned $19 million of the $45 million they committed to surrender from the March awards, Neil Barofsky, the chief watchdog of the U.S. financial rescue program, said in a report last week. AIG officials told Barofsky that employees were waiting to secure agreements on a pending retention award before returning the March bonuses.

Deadline Approaching

“Employees have until the end of the year to fulfill their commitments to return a portion of their March 2009 payment,” Christina Pretto, an AIG spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview. The insurer expects the workers to honor their commitments, she said.

Feinberg, who has jurisdiction over the 25 highest-paid employees at AIG and other firms that got U.S. bailout funds, ruled that cash salaries at the insurer couldn’t exceed $500,000 a year unless “good cause” was shown. Compensation would also include stock units tied to four major AIG divisions that are paid out in three annual installments.

He said the changes resulted in a 91 percent decrease in cash pay from 2008. Thirteen employees that would have been under Feinberg’s jurisdiction have left AIG, he said.

‘Ongoing Discussions’

In an August report to the pay master, AIG suggested increasing the Financial Products executives’ base salaries to as much as $950,000 and awarding bonuses of as much as $2.6 million.

The executives should return the bonuses and will receive only their cash base salaries this year, Feinberg said. He is in “ongoing discussions” with AIG regarding these workers, he said.

The highest-paid workers who have left can receive their cash salaries through the date of their employment and up to $25,000 in other compensation, he said.

Feinberg approved a $10.5 million annual pay package for AIG CEO Robert Benmosche, according to a Treasury Department letter earlier this month. Benmosche will get a $7 million annual salary and as much as $3.5 million in long-term incentives.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aynr.OOkoPRg

posted in Political Junkies - 3 replies

House anti-abortion activists introduce ‘fertilized egg is person’ amendment

2009-10-24T01:03:07Z

While the state is coming down from its second temporary shut down in two years, ever increasing unemployment and unresolved budget issues, Michigan House Republicans this week introduced legislation to amend the state constitution to define life as beginning at fertilization.

The resolution to amend the constitution was introduced by Democratic Rep. Jim Slezak of Davison and Republican Rep. Paul Scott of Grand Blanc. There were a total of 23 co-sponsors for the bill.

That bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee which is controlled by East Lansing Democrat Mark Meadows, a staunch supporter of abortion rights. So it’s unlikely it will be rushed onto any legislative agendas or to the floor of the Democratic-controlled House.

In order for the state constitution to be amended, lawmakers must approve a ballot measure or voters must circulate a petition to gather enough signatures to put it on the ballot.

Scott has recently been urged by a faction of GOP activists to run for secretary of state.

The life begins at fertilization amendment would certainly play well to the right to life crowd, a core constituency in the Michigan GOP.

The so-called egg-as-person movement has been making appearances across the country. Last Nov. Colorado voters soundly defeated an amendment to its constitution. But as Ernest Luning over at Michigan Messenger’s sibling site in Colorado reported last November, that defeat, at 3-to-1 margin, was not a bad thing to organizers. They announced they would seek similar amendments in other states.

http://michiganmessenger.com/28587/house-anti-abortion-activists-introduce-fertilized-egg-is-person-amendment

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

God Given Coal

2009-10-23T22:57:37Z

Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) has announced that he is willing to support some form of climate change legislation, but only if the current Kerry-Boxer bill is overhauled to look a lot more like a traditional Republican program of energy independence.

"There will be no climate change bill with my vote unless you have offshore oil drilling," Graham told Fox News on Thursday. "I won't vote for any climate change bill that doesn't allow a dramatic increase in nuclear power. I'm not going to vote for any climate change bill that doesn't allow us to use our coal deposits."

Graham said he doesn't see any chance of current proposals getting past a filibuster in the Senate because "there's nowhere near 60 votes for a cap-and-trade system that puts a lot of businesses out of business."

"Environmental policy has to be good business policy," Graham insisted. "What would happen in this country if you build a hundred nuclear power plants in the next thirty years? It would create millions of jobs. And we need to use the coal that God has given us."

"If we can do that," conceded Graham, "I'm also willing to help the planet be a cleaner, safer place by controlling carbon in a way that doesn't put us in the dark or out of business. ... There's a lot of money to be made from green technology ... but we need also to explore for fossil fuels that we're going to need for generations until we get to a carbon-free economy. So I'm trying to combine concepts. ... I'm trying to create a good business opportunity out of environmental policy."

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/graham-we-need-to-use-coal/

posted in Political Junkies - 16 replies

This Is How You Buy A Politician

2009-10-23T20:07:49Z

This Is How You Buy A Politician http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvEIzUutdrU

How Drug-Industry Lobbyists Won on Health-Care http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1931595,00.html

http://twitter.com/theyoungturks

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Congress Already On The" Public Option"

2009-10-23T17:21:27Z

A new study by Representative Anthony Weiner (D – Queens & Brooklyn), member of the Health Subcommittee and Co-Chair of the Caucus on the Middle Class, revealed that 151 members of the House and Senate currently receive government-funded; government-administered single-payer health care - Medicare.

On the list of recipients are 55 Republicans who have steadfastly opposed other Americans getting the public option, like the one they have chosen.

Weiner said, “Even in a town known for hypocrisy, this list of 55 Members of Congress deserve some sort of prize. They apparently think the public option is ok for them, but not anyone else.”

http://weiner.house.gov/news_display.aspx?id=1364

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

"Dan" revealed

2009-10-23T13:53:54Z

Here's one of many websites dicussing Robert Turkel, who is the real person behind the "Dan" troll.

There are many sites that reveal what a fraud the man is.

This one is amusing because it has his picture, which does not match the family photos that "Dan" uses in his profile.

http://the-anointed-one.com/hold.htm

Can we boot him now, or do we keep him just for entertainment.

posted in Political Junkies - 38 replies

"Going Rouge"

2009-10-23T08:40:49Z

For those unable to stomach Sarah Palin's forthcoming "mom's-eye view of high-stakes national politics" Going Rogue, small US publisher OR Books has announced that it will bring out Going Rouge, an alternative view of the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, on the same day.

Parodying the cover of Palin's memoir (subtitled An American Life), which sees a relaxed-looking Palin in front of a blue, cloud-strewn sky, Going Rouge (subtitled An American Nightmare) places Palin in front of thunderous clouds and lightning.

The book – the title is a reference to the US newsreader who mistakenly called the autobiography Going Rouge – will see a series of contributors examine Palin's origins in Alaska, her rise in the Republican party, and "the nightmarish prospect of her continuing to dominate the nation's political scene", OR Books said. It will be published as a paperback and ebook on 17 November, the same day that Palin's hardback Going Rogue is due out.

Another spoof, Going Rouge – The Sarah Palin Rogue Coloring and Activity Book by cartoonist Julie Sigwart and Micheal Stinson, is also out on 17 November. Featuring mazes ("Help Sarah find her way to the White House"; "Where in the world does domestic Alaskan oil go?"), puzzles and word games, the authors promise to "mercilessly lampoon and parody everything Palin in 48 pages of hilarity".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/21/spoof-biographies-sarah-palin-book

posted in Political Junkies - 5 replies

The Cheney Gene

2009-10-23T06:41:33Z

Liz Cheney, Debra Burlingame, and William Kristol have launched a new neocon site, Keep America Safe to "make the case for an unapologetic approach to fighting terrorism around the world, for victory in the wars this country fights, for democracy, freedom and human rights, and for a strong American military that is needed in the dangerous world in which we live." Among those associated with the group are Michael Goldfarb, Aaron Harison, and Justin Germany.

Numerous things are troubling about this group, but one stands out. None has ever served in the military. Just like Dick Cheney, when their nation called, they discovered that they had priorities other than military service; yet they have no problem with beating the war drums and sending other people's children into battle. The most well-known neocons also fall into this group. The only prominent neocon who has served in the military is Norman Podhoretz. Numerous members of Congress are also in this group, especially those in the Republican leadership. If you want to know who they are, go to the chickenhawk database.

I propose that all of these people be referred to as possessors of the Cheney Gene. It is an unidentified gene that turns the belly yellow when country calls. It is possessed by people who when called to serve say, Hell no, I won't go. People who possess this gene have given the word "conservative" new meaning. Historically it has meant save the status quo, the old regime. Now it means save my skin.

These people are experts on war from afar. Some of these people have held high diplomatic and Pentagon posts. Dick Cheney, James Schlesinger, Harold Brown, William Cohen, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John R. Bolton, Elliott Abrams, Doug Feith are some of the most prominent beaters of war drums who have never served. All are neocons who chose to save their own skins; all have the Cheney gene.

Historically it has not always been this way. The elite of nations have often led their armies into battle. The word "aristocracy" originally referred to young Athenians of the ruling class who led armies by holding up their swords from the front lines. This usage passed on to the European Middle Ages in reference to a similar class of military leaders, the nobility. Numerous national leaders led their armies into battle: Sennacherib, Suleiman, Xerxes, Darius, the Spartan Kings, especially Leonidas, Alexander the Great, some Roman Caesars, Henry II of England, Philip II of France, Richard I, Frederick I Barbarossa, Leopold V of Austria, Saladin, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, Gustav II Adolf, Henry VIII, and, of course, Napoleon. No longer! Today our leaders cower behind the rhetoric of super patriotism which is no patriotism at all, just bombast meant to save their own skins.

Americans should be able to silence these people merely by calling yellow yellow. Make the "Cheney Gene" into a common term. Let him go down in history just as Benedict Arnold and Quisling have. But if that doesn't work, the right kind of conscription will. All that's needed to reduce the world's warring is ensure that those who advocate and benefit from wars are the ones who fight them.

Just imagine conscription of the following kind: Persons of military age are to be conscripted from three groups. The first to be conscripted are the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of elected office holders and appointees to governmental posts. The second to be conscripted are the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of families whose assets are valued in the billions. The third to be conscripted are the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of families whose assets are valued in the millions. And finally, no one is to be conscripted from families whose assets are valued at less than a million. If this form of conscription were adopted, wars would be rare events indeed. They are only frequent today because those who advocate them are not the ones who fight them.

Does anyone believe that George Bush and Dick Cheney would ever have started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had they known that Barbara, Jenna, and Liz would have ended up on the battlefield?

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who blogs on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site's homepage.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15754

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Dan concedes that Dan = Robert Turkel = Holdings

2009-10-23T06:40:04Z

Dan
8 .new post
Re: debateToday, 7:34 AM
in response to: Re: debate
"Bullshit. You, Dan, Robert Turkel or whatever you are calling yourself today, constantly crow that you are the undefeated champion debater, which is quite a boast for someone who has never actually debated."

Yeah but the reason I don't lose is because I chose debate topics which handicap my opponents. Atheism, Jesus historicity, evolution myths, liberal loonie politics. I win these debates not because of a superior IQ or educational background, I win because I chose the right side of the argument, the proper world view.

I have never called myself anything other than my true name, Dan. It was awkward and Bill who decided it would be interesting to call me Turkel, a pseudonym of Holdings. Somehow they have deluded themselves into thinking that using a pseudonym is equivalent to being a liar. It is just a way of providing cover when won has no argument and it has been a long time since Billyboy had an argument of any kind.

Done anymore research about life on Mars Billy? What form are these creatures? Do they communicate with you at night? Every been abducted by them? What about your claim that corporal punishment is illegal in all 50 states billybob? Still sticking by that claim in spite of the fact you were shown to be wrong, by me? I think you should go back to working for Pat Robertson, you two deserve each other.

http://tribes.tribe.net/turkelfansunited/thread/8185389c-0c6c-4839-81e9-f43c5ed7a623

posted in Political Junkies - 9 replies

Franken: How Many Medical Bankruptcies in France?

2009-10-23T05:45:07Z

Al does an awesome job shutting down an opponent. .

http://ellipticalpress.blogspot.com/2009/10/whos-clown-again.html

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

Credit Card Rates Going Up?

2009-10-22T14:36:10Z

for one man they did. . .79%!!!

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/around-town/shopping/No-Youre-Reading-That-Right-64173667.html

posted in Political Junkies - 5 replies

Grayson in 2012!

2009-10-22T05:31:17Z

I think he gets it. .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/21/795506/-Grayson:-Bipartisanship-is-a-Weapon-of-Mass-Distraction-to-keep-us-from-doing-what-we-need-to-do

posted in Political Junkies - 1 reply

McCain’s Male Voters Suffered Testosterone Drop

2009-10-22T01:10:08Z

McCain’s Male Voters Suffered Testosterone Drop
By Psych Central News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on October 20, 2009

McCain's Male Voters Suffered Testosterone DropWondering why your man wasn’t interested in sex after McCain’s defeat in the 2008 U.S. presidential election?

A new study from researchers at Duke University and the University of Michigan found that young men who voted for the Republican candidate John McCain suffered from an immediate drop in testosterone when the election results were announced.

Men who also voted for Libertarian candidate Robert Barr in the 2008 presidential election suffered from a similar drop, while men who voted for the winner, Democrat Barack Obama, had stable testosterone levels immediately after the outcome.

“This is a pretty powerful result,” said Duke neuroscientist Kevin LaBar. “Voters are physiologically affected by having their candidate win or lose an election.”

Female study participants showed no significant change in their testosterone levels before and after the returns came in.

The men who participated in the study would normally show a slight night-time drop in testosterone levels anyway. But on this night, they showed a dramatic divergence: The Obama voters’ levels didn’t fall as they should, and the McCain and Barr voters lost more than would have been expected.

In a post-election questionnaire, the McCain and Barr backers were feeling significantly more unhappy, submissive, unpleasant and controlled than the Obama voters.

The findings mirror what other studies have found in men who participate directly in an interpersonal contest — the winner gets a boost of testosterone, while the loser’s testosterone drops.

Testosterone is a steroid hormone manufactured by the testes that is linked to aggression, risk-taking and responses to threats. Women have it too but in much lesser amounts and originating from different sources (their ovaries and adrenal glands), which makes them less likely to experience rapid testosterone changes following victory or defeat.
Men's Testosterone Changes on Election Night

Researchers in Durham and Ann Arbor had 183 men and women chew a piece of gum and then spit into a sample tube at 8 p.m. as the polls closed on Nov. 4, 2008. When the election results were announced at about 11:30 p.m., the subjects provided a second sample, and then two more at 20-minute intervals. Those spit samples were then analyzed for concentrations of testosterone and some related stress hormones.

It would appear that even vicarious participation in such a “macro-scale dominance competition” is enough to change hormone levels, said Duke post-doctoral researcher Steven Stanton, who is the first author on a paper appearing in the journal, PLOS One.

“Voters participate in elections both directly by casting their ballots, and vicariously because they don’t personally win or lose the election,” Stanton said. “This makes democratic political elections highly unique dominance contests.”

Stanton said the scientific consensus suggests the testosterone response to fighting and competition in males affects their future behavior in a beneficial way. The loser chills out a bit so he doesn’t continue to press his case and perhaps become injured. In contrast, the winner may be motivated to pursue further gains in social status. “The research on this extends beyond humans and other primates,” Stanton said.

The study also looked at levels of cortisol in the spit samples, a stress hormone behind the “fight or flight” response, and will discuss those findings in a forthcoming paper.

The college-aged men involved in this study would generally have more testosterone than older men, so perhaps the study provided a better opportunity to see the dominance response at work, LaBar said. “It would be interesting to see how this shakes out in older men.”

Hormonal shifts from vicarious competition are also likely to occur around hotly contested collegiate football and basketball contests, the researchers note.

To find out, they’re going to be repeating this kind of study on Duke and University of North Carolina basketball fans during one of their games this winter. “They’ll spit before the game and spit after the game, and we’ll just see,” LaBar said.

http://bit.ly/fwbel

posted in Political Junkies - 1 reply

A new book titled, Muslim Mafia exposes CAIR

2009-10-21T21:46:57Z

A new book titled, Muslim Mafia exposes CAIR

A new book titled, Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that's Conspiring to Islamize America
http://www.muslimmafia.com

"What follows is a bullet-by-bullet description of the major revelations unearthed from the boxes of CAIR files Gaubatz intercepted on their way to the shredder, including many documents marked “Not for Distribution—For Board Members Only.”

Ironically, the voluminous paper trail created by this notoriously litigious group may just be its undoing. Among the explosive revelations detailed in the chapters that follow:

http://www.muslimmafia.com/about/excerpts/

Foreword by Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina
http://myrick.house.gov/

http://www.youtube.com/suemyricknc09

Muslim Mob under the gun
http://www.freethoughtnation.com

;

posted in Political Junkies - 4 replies

Nobel winner slams Bible as ‘handbook of bad morals’

2009-10-20T01:10:07Z

A row broke out in Portugal on Monday after a Nobel Prize-winning author denounced the Bible as a "handbook of bad morals".

Speaking at the launch of his new book "Cain", Jose Saramago, who won the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, said society would probably be better off without the Bible.

Roman Catholic Church leaders accused the 86-year-old of a publicity stunt.

The book is an ironic retelling of the Biblical story of Cain, Adam and Eve's son who killed his younger brother Abel.

At the launch event in the northern Portuguese town of Penafiel on Sunday, Saramago said he did not think the book would offend Catholics "because they do not read the Bible".

"The Bible is a manual of bad morals (which) has a powerful influence on our culture and even our way of life. Without the Bible, we would be different, and probably better people," he was quoted as saying by the news agency Lusa.

Saramago attacked "a cruel, jealous and unbearable God (who) exists only in our heads" and said he did not think his book would cause problems for the Catholic Church "because Catholics do not read the Bible.

"It might offend Jews, but that doesn't really matter to me," he added.

Father Manuel Marujao, the spokesman for the Portuguese conference of bishops, said he thought the remarks were a publicity stunt.

"A writer of Jose Saramago's standing can criticise, (but) insults do no-one any good, particularly a Nobel Prize winner," the priest said.

Rabbi Elieze Martino, spokesman for the Jewish community in Lisbon, said the Jewish world would not be shocked by the writings of Saramago or anyone else.

"Saramago does not know the Bible," the rabbi said, "he has only superficial understanding of it."

The author caused a scandal in Portugal in 1992 with "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ."

The book depicted Jesus losing his virginity to Mary Magdalene and being used by God to control the world.

Saramago quit Portugal at the time and moved to Lanzarote, in the Spanish Canary Islands.

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/nobel-winner-slams-bible-handbook-bad-morals/

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies

Government scientist arrested on spy charges

2009-10-20T00:11:53Z

A Maryland scientist who worked for the Defense Department, a White House space council and other agencies was arrested Monday on charges of passing along classified information to an undercover FBI agent he believed was an Israeli intelligence officer.

Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, was charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to communicate, deliver and transmit classified information, the Justice Department said. The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf violated U.S. law.

In Jerusalem, where the story broke late at night, Israeli government officials had no immediate comment.

Nozette was arrested by FBI agents. He is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in Washington on Tuesday.

In an affidavit supporting the complaint, FBI agent Leslie Martell said that on Sept. 3, Nozette received a telephone call from an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The caller was an undercover FBI agent.

Nozette agreed to meet with the agent later that day at a hotel in Washington and in the subsequent meeting the two discussed Nozette's willingness to work for Israeli intelligence, the affidavit said.

Nozette allegedly informed the agent that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information, the affidavit said.

Nozette also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The agent explained that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, would arrange for a communication system so Nozette could pass on information in a post office box.

'They should figure out how to pay me'
Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information and asked for an Israeli passport, the affidavit alleged. It gave this sequence of events:

-- Sept. 4. Nozette and the agent met again in the same hotel. The scientist allegedly said that while he no longer had legal access to any classified information at a U.S. government facility, he could, nonetheless, recall classified information by memory. Nozette allegedly asked when he could expect to receive his first payment, saying he preferred cash amounts "under ten thousand" so he didn't have to report it.

Nozette allegedly told the agent, "Well, I should tell you my first need is that they should figure out how to pay me ... they don't expect me to do this for free."

-- Sept. 10. Undercover FBI agents left a letter in the designated post office box, asking Nozette to answer a list of questions about U.S. satellite information. The agents provided a $2,000 cash payment. Serial numbers of the bills were recorded.

-- Sept. 16. Nozette was captured on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. The next day, agents retrieved the sealed envelope and found, among other things, a one-page document containing answers to the questions and an encrypted computer thumb drive.

One answer contained information classified as secret, which concerned capabilities of a prototype overhead collection system. Nozette allegedly offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, and other major weapons systems.

-- Sept. 17. Agents left a second letter in the post office box with another list of questions about U.S. satellite information. The FBI also left a cash payment of $9,000. Nozette allegedly retrieved the questions and the money the same day.

-- Oct. 1. Nozette was videotaped leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. FBI agents retrieved it and found a second set of answers. The responses contained information classified as both top secret and secret, on U.S. satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy.

Security clearance
Nozette had worked in varying jobs for the Energy Department, NASA and the National Space Council in the president's office in 1989 and 1990.

He developed the Clementine bi-static radar experiment that purportedly discovered water on the south pole of the moon. He worked at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from approximately 1990 to 1999, where he designed highly advanced technology.

At the Energy Department, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department top secret and "critical nuclear weapon design information" clearances. DOE clearances apply to access to information specifically relating to atomic or nuclear-related materials.

Nozette also held top offices at the Alliance for Competitive Technology, a nonprofit corporation that he organized in March 1990. Between January 2000 and February 2006, Nozette, through his company, had several agreements to develop advanced technology for the U.S. government.

He performed some of this research and development at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Va., and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33386639/ns/us_news-security/

posted in Political Junkies - 0 replies

North Carolina church to burn ‘Satan’s books,’

2009-10-20T00:04:14Z

A Baptist Church near Asheville, N.C., is hosting a "Halloween book burning" to purge the area of "Satan's" works, which include all non-King James versions of the Bible, popular books by many religious authors and even country music.

The website for the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C., says there are "scriptural bases" for the book burning. The site quotes Acts 19:18-20: "And many that believed, came and confessed and shewed their deeds. Many of them also which used curious arts, brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed."

Church leaders deem Good News for Modern Man, the Evidence Bible, the New International Version Bible, the Green Bible and the Message Bible, as well as at least seven other versions of the Bible as "Satan's Bibles," according to the website. Attendees will also set fire to "Satan's popular books" such as the work of "heretics" including the Pope, Mother Teresa, Billy Graham and Rick Warren.

"I believe the King James version is God's preserved, inspired, inerrant and infallible word of God," Pastor Marc Grizzard told a local news station of his 14-member parish.

Grizzard's parish website explains that the Bible is the "final authority concerning all matters of faith and practice," for Amazing Grace Baptist Church. In the Parish doctrinal statement, Grizzard expounds that "the Scriptures shall be interpreted according to their normal grammatical-historical meaning, and all issues of interpretation and meaning shall be determined by the preacher."

The event also seeks to destroy "Satan's music" which includes every genre from country,rap and rock to "soft and easy" and "Southern Gospel" and" contemporary Christian."

David Lynch, a resident of nearby Asheville, N.C., told Raw Story "it's a little disconcerting how close this is to my home."

"They are burning so much stuff I've dubbed them the hypocritical Christian Taliban," Lynch said in a phone interview with Raw Story. "Just the scope of all the information they want to destroy is pretty disturbing."

Church leaders did not respond to Raw Story's requests for comment, but the website notes they will be providing "bar-b-que chicken, fried chicken and all the sides" at the book burning.

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/n-c-church-to-burn-satans-books-including-works-of-mother-theresa/

posted in Political Junkies - 21 replies

Defiant ‘birther’ lawyer laughs off fine for misconduct

2009-10-19T13:04:27Z

Orly Taitz, the unofficial leader of the "birther" movement trying to prove President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, says she won't pay a fine slapped on her by a federal judge for misconduct.

After being accused repeatedly by Taitz of compromising the judicial process in a motion challenging the president's authority to deploy soldiers overseas, on Tuesday Judge Clay Land of the US District Court in Columbus, Georgia, slapped Taitz with a $20,000 fine.

Taitz "knowingly violated" court rules preventing lawyers from filing frivolous or unfounded lawsuits, Judge Land wrote in his ruling. "Her response to the Court’s show cause order is breathtaking in its arrogance and borders on delusional. She expresses no contrition or regret regarding her misconduct. To the contrary, she continues her baseless attacks on the Court."

Last month, Taitz filed a motion with the federal court to stop Army Capt. Connie Rhodes from being deployed to Iraq. Rhodes had argued that President Obama was not born in the United States, and was therefore not eligible to be president, and did not have the authority to deploy soldiers.

Judge Land dismissed that suit and gave Taitz several weeks to explain why he shouldn't fine her for misuse of court resources. Soon after, Capt. Rhodes wrote to Judge Land, saying she no longer wanted to be represented by Taitz.
Story continues below...

But Taitz persisted even without her client. Instead of responding to the judge's request, Taitz filed a motion asking the judge to recuse himself from the case, accusing him of colluding with Attorney-General Eric Holder to deny justice in the case. To support the claim, Taitz filed an eyewitness affidavit claiming that a private citizen had seen someone resembling Holder in a Columbus coffee shop on the day a hearing into the case was held. Taitz's motion also compared the judge to Georgia's racist jurists of past eras.

It was all too much for Judge Land, who wrote:

When a lawyer files complaints and motions without a reasonable basis for believing that they are supported by existing law ... that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer uses the courts as a platform for a political agenda disconnected from any legitimate legal cause of action, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer personally attacks opposing parties and disrespects the integrity of the judiciary, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer recklessly accuses a judge of violating the Judicial Code of Conduct with no supporting evidence beyond her dissatisfaction with the judge’s rulings, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law.

Read the judge's complete ruling here, courtesy of David Weigel at the Washington Independent.

In a phone interview with TalkingPointsMemo's Justin Elliott, Taitz said she won't pay the $20,000 fine.

Asked if she would send the judge a check, Taitz said: "Are you kidding? Of course not. ... This is a form of intimidation."

Taitz said she plans to file another motion with the court, challenging the judge's decision, but, as Elliott pointed out, "it's unclear whether the court will even accept one."

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/birther-leader-fine-misconduct/

posted in Political Junkies - 2 replies