BREAKING: Trump’s businesses received $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments during his presidency, according to documents released by Democrats on Thursday.
Most of the monies came from or through China which is, coincidentally*, exactly what the GOP is accusing Biden of. Oops!
* as in ‘no fucking way it happened’
also see: gaslighting, bullshit, propaganda, GOP and traitors
RECAP: Lindsey Graham tries to get GA AG to toss legal votes to help out Trump | AG rats out fellow Republican Graham | Graham, of course denies it all vehemently and recalls totally different convo | RUH ROH! Witnesses!
TL;DR: Linds is fucked.
Maybe Lady G DIDN’T win his recent race … hmmm … let the speculation begin.
Lindsey Graham (R-SC) seen here ‘working the problem’ for his constituents back home
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that at least two members of his staff witnessed Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) apparent effort to suppress the counting of legal votes in the state.
Raffensperger has told multiple media outlets that Graham had pushed him to throw out legally cast ballots.
“Sen. Graham implied for us to audit the envelopes and then throw out the ballots for counties who had the highest frequency error of signatures,” he explained to CBS on Tuesday.(RawStory)
Man, these clowns are like the Keystone Cops on crack. It’s just one shitshowtirefireclusterfuckapalooza after another. Thankfully this shit will be over in January.
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WITH ALL THE CHAOS, BULLSHIT AND GASLIGHTING THAT THE OUR FAMILY HAS GRACED THE WORLD WITH FOR THE LAST 5 YEARS, YOU ALL COULD PROBABLY USE A ‘SPA DAY’, SO WE HERE AT TRUMP INC. OR AS YOU LIKE TO CALL IT, THE WHITE HOUSE, OFFER YOU, THE PAYING CUSTOMER, THE FOLLOWING
PAY UP AND ENJOY!
“Rudy is such a crimefighter, always looking for corruption.”
– Donald Trump
Well kids, it’s Friday and you know what that means.
(man, time flies when you’re fighting off an illiterate, impotent dictator wannabe)
Yep, @realDonaldTrump is probably headed to Bedbugminster or Maralagofuckyerself, and it’s time for “Under The Bus Motherfucker!” with your host Fat Donnie Badtouch.
Who will he toss under the bus this week to save his aging, lying orange ass?
Will it be that pompous, prevaricating prick Pompeo?
Will it be Lindsey Graham boy toy, Jared ‘the daughter-wife-beard’ Kushner?
Will it finally be the always pious, never human, constantly condescending Mikey ‘the Russia Whisperer’ Pence and his boss M.O.T.H.E.R.?
Or will the dumb fuck just continue on with the whole “Hey everybody, look at me! I’m self-impeaching!” rant that has been on display for the last month or so and continue to incriminate himself at every opportunity?
Who will be this week’s Trump Covfefe BoyTM ?
Oh come on peeps … I’m not gunna waste yer’ time here with a wack of witty whining and weird, winding, wordsmithed alliteration … it’s not even close this week …
After yesterday’s presser at the Whiter HouseTM there can be no other winner except Mick “We did it! We did it all! Get over it!” Mulvaney …
I mean, c’mon, we haven’t seen a man get on a stage and admit to multiple serious crimes like that since, well, the day before, when his boss Dim Donnie did it on the lawn of the Whiter HouseTM … and at his oval office press avail … AND at his presser with the Italian leader.
The stupid runs deep with these guys.
Then, to lock down Mulvaney’s upcoming hit and run by Trump Bus-lines and Money Laundering Inc.TM, the Velveeta Raccoon himself told the press, when asked if he had confidence in Mulvaney, that he had a ‘lot of confidence.’ Trump also called him a ‘good man’ and said he ‘did a very nice job.’
Ruh Roh! – start packin’ Mickey!
Mick Mulvaney, c’mon down … and pick up that imminent pink slip. Take it like a man!
Some violence, nudity, gay penetrative but consensual sex, ‘water sports’, treason, doucherocketry, racism, really really bad spelling and strong language. 65+
Farce/Tragedy/Horror/SciFi/Adult
Warning: some pretty fuckin’ skeezy shit here, so set those PVR’s kids.
Rated ‘R’ for ridiculous | Ages 65 and up |
Is this the White House Y’all want in 2020?
WASHINGTON — The day after President Donald Trump fired James Comey, he became so furious watching television footage of the ousted FBI director boarding a government-funded plane from Los Angeles back to Washington, D.C. that he called the bureau’s acting director, Andrew McCabe, to vent, according to multiple people familiar with the phone call.
Trump demanded to know why Comey was allowed to fly on an FBI plane after he had been fired, these people said. McCabe told the president he hadn’t been asked to authorize Comey’s flight, but if anyone had asked, he would have approved it, three people familiar with the call recounted to NBC News.
The president was silent for a moment and then turned on McCabe, suggesting he ask his wife how it feels to be a loser — an apparent reference to a failed campaign for state office in Virginia that McCabe’s wife made in 2015.
McCabe replied: “OK, sir.” Trump then hung up the phone.
Read more: HERE …
face it peeps, the president is a fucking toddler on a good day, and I don’t remember any good days …
‘the corruption is strong with these ones’
….
CNBC is reporting:
Rupert Murdoch twice discussed CNN with AT&T CEO: Report
Time Warner’s Rupert Murdoch called AT&T’s Randall Stephenson twice within the last six months.
One source said Murdoch offered to purchase CNN both times.
Ars Technica has this:
Trump’s DOJ wants AT&T/Time Warner to sell CNN or DirecTV before merger
The Trump administration is asking AT&T and Time Warner Inc. to sell off either CNN or DirecTV in order to win government approval of their merger, multiple news outlets reported today. AT&T has owned DirecTV since 2015 and is now seeking federal approval to purchase Time Warner Inc., the owner of programming such as HBO, CNN, and Warner Bros.
Plus, we’ve had Hair Furor hating on CNN forever, which I’m sure has nothing at all to do with his friendship with Murdoch. And there’s just no way that any of this is related to the whole Sinclair News deal that rolling along with no questions asked … hmm …
ahh, okay, now this all makes sense …. “♫♪ It’s starting to look a lot like Fascists, Everywhere I go …♫♪”
I have no idea (and I’m sorry to say that) who H2O Man is but dude’s on it solid.
Props where due, and they’re due here.
p.s. the video was his pick. It fits perfectly. We made it through that ‘end’ and we’ll make it through this one too. Keep the faith.
Weird Scenes Inside the White House
The wilderness of Roman pain that Donald Trump & Co (and all his staff are insane) have inflicted upon the United States and civilized humanity around the globe appears to be coming to an end. This is, of course, a good thing. Yet, there are some risks associated with it. An obvious one is a constitutional crisis. But there are others that we should consider.
I’ve noted before that when a empire is suffering from internal decay and externally over-reach of military power, it creates fertile ground for the rise of a psychopathic “leader.” That leader tends to surround himself with two types of individuals: first, those who are corrupt, and have experience stealing from “the system, and second, military leaders who have rigid personality structures, with an emphasis on obedience to authority. Sound familiar?
This week’s news on the Mueller Team’s investigation of the Trump-Russian scandal shows that parts of the campaign-administration’s internal structure is crumbling. This is no surprise, considering the foundation that Trump’s rise was built upon was corrupt to its core, aided by the Russian intelligence-mob, and supported primarily by white nationalism. In their minds, once Trump took office, he could do anything, thus protecting the criminal behavior of his team.
Trump, being a shallow man, has relied upon the most basic tactics of dictators: create an environment seeped in fear. He pointed to “dangers” that threatened his followers, both domestically and internationally. He appeals to the most ignorant and base instincts of the 30% …..for all tyrants know that if you can focus the group’s hatred of “others,” they will gladly forget their own low level of being. Trump went so far as to identify Nazi marchers as “pretty good people,” encouraging the mob-think that defines his grass roots followers.
However, the Trump administration has faced some unexpected opposition. And while part of this is found in the Democrats serving in the House and Senate, there are numerous other groups. The federal courts have largely put him in check per immigration. A coordinated effort by members of the intelligence community, both active and “retired,” delivered a series of leaks that the White House could not stop. And an intensely talented media – thanks to journalists on tv and in print – has stepped up to the highest level in decades.
Thus, we have Mr. Mueller leading an investigation that threatens Trump’s presidency. Trump isn’t just “under a cloud” any more. There’s a storm doing serious damage. And due to that storm, a number of those from his campaign and administration are recognizing the damage that being loyal to Trump – who is loyal to no one – can bring about. They know that Trump, much like Nixon, believes it is everyone else’s moral obligation to take the blame for him. We already see the results of one of the three identified on Monday not sacrificing himself. We’ll soon see more.
However, judging from history, this makes the upcoming time potentially dangerous. When Trump sees Putin, he sees himself ruling America in much the same way. He and his supporters will try to create a domestic or international “state of emergency.” In fact, many of his ilk are already attempting to do just that inside our country. They are feeding the rag of the mob with lies, including their nonsense about the dire need to “investigate” Hillary Clinton.
What we need to be doing is calmly focusing on that which is important. That includes preparing for the most important mid-term elections of our lifetimes. And we need to help the Mueller investigation and prosecutions in the public’s eye. And we need to make the old civil rights saying our mantra: “Keep your eyes on the prize.”
I’ve read a bit of the discussions on the DNC in 2016. That isn’t our prize. Arguing about it is a grand example of how to waste energy and divide people. It doesn’t matter if you liked or disliked the DNC in 2016. We have more important issues to deal with. And, as we all know, there are unresolved issues that a segment of the Democratic Party holds on to. Yet, we need to ask ourselves, isn’t it worth letting go of those, at least right now? Is there really a justification for the level of selfishness required to cling on to it?
We need to bring forth our best efforts. Our constitutional democracy – imperfect and battered as it is – actually does depend upon just that. The opposition, from the lowliest KKK member to the one in the White House, are definitely putting forth their absolute worst efforts. Let’s kick their asses.
Peace,
H2O Man
I can’t seem to turn on the TV lately without hearing either “they are all the same” or “Hillary, Uranium, Benghazi, Lock her up!”
So …
Let’s start with the first one …
They are all the same:
When comparing criminal indictments of those serving in the executive branch of presidential administrations, it’s so lopsided as to be ridiculous. Yet all I ever hear about is how supposedly “corrupt” the Democrats are. So why don’t we break it down by president and the numbers?
Obama (D) – 8 yrs in office. Zero criminal indictments, zero convictions and zero prison sentences. So the next time somebody describes the Obama administration as “scandal free” they aren’t speaking wishfully, they’re simply telling the truth.
Bush, George W. (R) – 8 yrs in office. 16 criminal indictments. 16 convictions. 9 prison sentences.
Clinton (D) – 8 yrs in office. 2 criminal indictments. One conviction. One prison sentence. That’s right nearly 8 yrs of investigations. Tens of millions spent and 30 yrs of claiming them the most corrupt ever and there was exactly one person convicted of a crime.
Bush, George H. W. (R) – 4 yrs in office. One indictment. One conviction. One prison sentence.
Reagan (R) – 8 yrs in office. 26 criminal indictments. 16 convictions. 8 prison sentences.
Carter (D) – 4 yrs in office. One indictment. Zero convictions and zero prison sentences.
Ford (R) – 4 yrs in office. One indictment and one conviction. One prison sentence.
Nixon (R) – 6 yrs in office. 76 criminal indictments. 55 convictions. 15 prison sentences.
Johnson (D) – 5 yrs in office. Zero indictments. Zero convictions. Zero prison sentences.
So, let’s see where that leaves us. In the last 53 years, Democrats have been in the Oval Office for 25 of those years, while Republicans held it for 28.
In their 25 yrs in office Democrats had a total of three executive branch officials indicted with one conviction and one prison sentence. That’s one whole executive branch official convicted of a crime in two and a half decades of Democrat leadership.
In the 28 yrs that Republicans have held office over the last 53 yrs they have had a total of (a drum roll would be more than appropriate), 120 criminal indictments of executive branch officials. 89 criminal convictions and 34 prison sentences handed down. That’s more prison sentences than years in office since 1968 for Republicans.
If you want to count articles of impeachment as indictments (they aren’t really but we can count them as an action), both sides get one more. However, Clinton wasn’t found guilty while Nixon resigned and was pardoned by Ford (and a pardon carries with it a legal admission of guilt on the part of the pardoned). So those only serve to make Republicans look even worse.
With everything going on with Trump and his people right now, it’s a safe bet Republicans are gonna be padding their numbers a bit real soon. (already 1 ‘guilty’ plea and 3 known indictments)
So let’s just go over the numbers one more time, shall we? 123 indictments for Republicans. 90 convictions, and 34 prison sentences.
Those aren’t “feelings” or “alternate facts.”
Those are simply the stats by the numbers. Republicans are, and have been for my entire lifetime, the most criminally corrupt party to hold the office of the presidency.
Those are the actual numbers.
They are NOT all the same.
So, let’s just stop the bullshit and false equivalency on this one once and for all.
Now, for the whole Hillary should be locked up fallacy …
Benghazi:
1. The Benghazi probe was the longest EVER by congress … yup, ever.
2. Congress held 22 investigations/probes into the 911 attacks and 21 on Benghazi.
3. The House Select Committee on Benghazi alone devoured over $6.8 million of taxpayers’ money, or nearly $8,000 per day. These numbers were obtained from reports published by the Committee on House Administration and includes expenses made by both Republicans and Democrats in the House Select Committee on Benghazi. The State Department spent $14 million and Department of Defense spent $2 million defending itself, according to press releases by the Benghazi Committee.
4. Most importantly, after all that money and all that time, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report, finding NO evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead. (let’s see if the GOP decides to look into the fiasco in Niger which recently left 4 Americans dead)
Uranium:
Allegations of a “quid pro quo” deal giving Russia ownership of one-fifth of U.S. uranium deposits in exchange for $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation are unsubstantiated and have been repeatedly shown to be so.
In the months leading up to the 2016 United States presidential election, stories abounded about the relationships between the Clinton Foundation and various foreign entities.
May 2015 saw the publication of a book called Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, an exposé of alleged Clinton Foundation corruption written by Peter Schweizer, a former Hoover Institution fellow and editor-at-large at the right-wing media company Breitbart.
A chapter in the book suggests that the Clinton family and Russia each may have benefited from a “pay-for-play” scheme while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, involving the transfer of U.S. uranium reserves to the new Russian owners of an international mining operation in exchange for $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation.
The mining company, Uranium One, was originally based in South Africa, but merged in 2007 with Canada-based UrAsia Energy. Shareholders there retained a controlling interest until 2010, when Russia’s nuclear agency, Rosatom, completed purchase of a 51% stake. Hillary Clinton played a part in the transaction because it involved the transfer of ownership of a material deemed important to national security — uranium, amounting to one-fifth of U.S. reserves — thus requiring the approval of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), on which the U.S. Secretary of State sits.
During the same time frame that the acquisition took place, Schweizer claims in Clinton Cash, the Clinton Foundation accepted contributions from nine individuals associated with Uranium One totaling more than $100 million. Among those who followed him in citing the transaction as an example of alleged Clinton corruption was GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, who said during a June 2016 speech in New York City:
Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20% of America’s uranium holdings to Russia, while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Trump’s campaign repeated the allegation in a September 2016 press release, and again in an October 2016 television ad stating that Clinton “gave American uranium rights to the Russians”
The Uranium One deal was not Clinton’s to veto or approve
Among the ways these accusations stray from the facts is in attributing a power of veto or approval to Secretary Clinton that she simply did not have. Clinton was one of nine cabinet members and department heads that sit on the CFIUS, and the secretary of the treasury is its chairperson. CFIUS members are collectively charged with evaluating the transaction for potential national security issues, then turning their findings over to the president. By law, the committee can’t veto a transaction; only the president can. According to The New York Times, Clinton may not have even directly participated in the Uranium One decision. Then-Assistant Secretary of State Jose Fernandez, whose job it was to represent the State Dept. on CFIUS, said Clinton herself “never intervened” in committee matters.
Despite transfer of ownership, the uranium remained in the U.S.
A key fact ignored in criticisms of Clinton’s supposed involvement in the deal is that the uranium was not — nor could it be — exported, and remained under the control of U.S.-based subsidiaries of Uranium One, according to a statement by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission:
NRC’s review of the transfer of control request determined that the U.S. subsidiaries will
remain the licensees, will remain qualified to conduct the uranium recovery operations, and will continue to have the equipment, facilities, and procedures necessary to protect public health and safety and to minimize danger to life or property. The review also determined that the licensees will maintain adequate financial surety for eventual decommissioning of the sites. Neither Uranium One nor ARMZ holds an NRC export license, so no uranium produced at either facility may be exported.
The timing of most of the donations does not match
Of the $145 million allegedly contributed to the Clinton Foundation by Uranium One investors, the lion’s share — $131.3 million — came from a single donor, Frank Giustra, the company’s founder. But Giustra sold off his entire stake in the company in 2007, three years before the Russia deal and at least 18 months before Clinton became secretary of state.
Of the remaining individuals connected with Uranium One who donated to the Clinton Foundation, only one was found to have contributed during the same time frame that the deal was taking place, according to The New York Times — Ian Telfer, the company’s chairman:
His donations through the Fernwood Foundation included $1 million reported in 2009, the year his company appealed to the American Embassy to help it keep its mines in Kazakhstan; $250,000 in 2010, the year the Russians sought majority control; as well as $600,000 in 2011 and $500,000 in 2012. Mr. Telfer said that his donations had nothing to do with his business dealings, and that he had never discussed Uranium One with Mr. or Mrs. Clinton. He said he had given the money because he wanted to support Mr. Giustra’s charitable endeavors with Mr. Clinton. “Frank and I have been friends and business partners for almost 20 years,” he said.
The timing of Telfer’s donations might be questionable if there was reason to believe that Hillary Clinton was instrumental in the approval of the deal with Russia, but all the evidence points to the contrary — that Clinton did not play a pivotal role, and, in fact, may not have played any role at all. (from Snopes.com)
Meanwhile, it can’t be denied that we are now watching what is without a doubt the most corrupt (and inept) administration in American history.
Between the complete disregard for the emoluments clause in the constitution, the constant and very deliberate lying from the ENTIRE administration, the ‘gaslighting’ that the president constantly perpetrates on the citizenry of the country, the rampant ‘insider dealing’ and pay for play appointments, the total disregard for the ‘nepotism’ rules and regulations that have been in place since the 1960’s and the willingness of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and the rest of the GOP to look the other way with regards to what is basically treason by their own party so that they can get even bigger tax cuts for their benefactors in the 1%, there is no doubt that multiple, serious crimes are being committed daily.
So, can we just stop it with the “they’re all the same” bullshit please? They are obviously not.
Also worth a look … if you’re still not convinced … List of Politicians Convicted of Crimes
I think the latest Manafort story might be a huge problem for the Trumpsters over the next day or three, and that this may very well cost Comrade Manafort his job … and by then this scampaign might very well be over and done … brb … popcorn run …
Trump campaign meltdown: Paul Manafort paid off by Russia, Roger Stone attacks Corey Lewandowski
Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
Koch Brothers Consider Purchasing First Democrat – Andy Borowitz reports
WICHITA (The Borowitz Report)—Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who have spent decades acquiring a world-class collection of Republicans, revealed over the weekend that they are considering purchasing their first Democrat.
“We’ve always bought Republicans, and our father bought Republicans before us,” Charles, the elder Koch, said. “They’re bred to be obedient, and they respond to simple commands.”
He said that he and his brother had considered acquiring a Democrat only after determining that none of the Republicans on offer this year was worth adding to their collection.
“It’s kind of a scary proposition for us, because we’ve never owned a Democrat before,” he said. “We don’t really know what we should be looking for.”
Koch said that he and his brother learned, after making some phone calls, that other oligarchs have bought Democrats in the past, and “had good experiences with them.”
“That was very reassuring,” he said.
But he bemoaned the absence of online consumer reviews that could help people who are, like him and his brother, interested in purchasing a Democrat for the very first time. “Yelp needs to jump on this,” he said.
While acknowledging the risk inherent in owning their first Democrat, Koch said that it would probably turn out to be a better investment than some of the Republicans they have recently purchased. “It can’t be worse than Scott Walker,” he said.
borowitzreport.com
In Obama’s Wall Street-Friendly Cabinet, A Clean Sweep for Finance
by Ryan Chittum
As was reported over the weekend, Obama’s outgoing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is heading to the world of private equity.The New York Times, covering the hiring of former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner by private equity giant Warburg Pincus, writes this:
Mr. Geithner initially seemed unlikely to join Wall Street.
Seemed unlikely to whom? Oh, yes, I recall this from January as Geithner announced he’d be leaving the Obama administration:
A regulator of Wall Street but not a creature of it, he will probably be the least likely former Treasury secretary to land there.
That mystifying sentence came from the Times, as well, which also let Geithner spin, uncountered, his dismal record on housing. How naive can you get?
That story was part of a dispiriting series of parting kisses from the press to five of the principle figures in the Obama administration’s Wall Street-friendly response to the financial crisis: SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami, Justice Department criminal division head Lanny Breuer, SEC chief Mary Schapiro, National Economic Council chair Larry Summers, and Geithner.
Here’s where they’ve ended up:
– Khuzami took a $5 million a year job at corporate law firm Kirkland & Ellis after a six-month wait. Kirkland & Ellis represents such Wall Street firms as Morgan Stanley, UBS, American Express, and Bank of America, the latter of which got a wrist slap from Khuzami and the SEC for lying to investors—one so light that a federal judge raised a stink over it.
– Breuer, two months after leaving DOJ, went through the revolving door to his old firm Covington & Burling and makes $4 million a year as the firm’s vice chair. Covington represents a Who’s Who of the Wall Street firms Breuer failed to prosecute. Do me a favor and watch this:
– Schapiro joined the board of General Electric, a company she wrist-slapped for accounting fraud in 2009, failing to prosecute any individuals despite finding that “GE, acting primarily through senior corporate accountants, engaged in knowing or reckless fraudulent activities resulting in numerous materially false and misleading statements or omissions.” Worse, Schapiro also joined Promontory Financial Group, a sort of shadow regulator that lets former SEC types cash in to help Wall Street “navigate” regulatory structures. Her pay is undisclosed but surely well into the seven digits.
– Larry Summers is back at DE Shaw, though no word if he’s still making $5 million a year for working one day a week. He’s also advising Citigroup, Nasdaq, Lending Club, and Silicon Valley biggie Andreesen Horowitz for untold pay.
– And now Tim Geithner becomes president of private-equity firm Warburg Pincus for an undisclosed pay package that will be in the many, many millions of dollars a year. Hey, at least, it’s not Goldman.
Even that was predictable, though. Here’s something I wrote in February on Geithner and the rash of resignations from the Obama administration:
As the exit profiles stop, the real fun begins: Watching where these guys end up next. Presumably, the days of waltzing right into Citigroup, say, from high public office, for $15 million-a-year gigs with no responsibility, are over for now. More likely: A six-month break to disinterest the press followed by a sinecure at Cadwalader or a return to Covington or some such.
I’ll end with former FDIC chief Sheila Bair, talking to American Banker editor Neil Weinberg earlier this year:
“The capture, a lot of people say, is bipartisan. And when I say capture, I’m talking about cognitive capture. It’s not so much about corruption. It’s just listening too much to large financial institutions and the people who represent them and not enough to the people out on Main Street who want this fixed.”
© 2013 Columbia Journalism Review
Ryan Chittum, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is deputy editor of The Audit, CJR’s business section.
reposted from common dreams
p.s. don’t think of it as good-bye …
if hillary wins, they’ll be back …
count on it …
if christie or some other gop stooge wins, it’ll be like they never left …
they have rigged the entire system …
they have restructured elections …
they have rigged government and the courts …
they have sold out the american people to big pharma, the insurance companies and big oil for campaign contributions …
they are killing the environment for profit …
they have purchased the media …
they have dismantled the constitution …
they have crippled investigative journalism …
they are working on total internet control …
they have implemented a surveillance state and a police state …
they have dealt blow after major blow to the social safety nets …
they have destroyed millions of pensions, savings accounts and property values …
all for their own profits …
they have dealt blow after major blow to unions and worker’s rights …
rights? … you have none! …
and they have impoverished millions for the economic benefit of their benefactors …
it’s our move I guess …
numbers is all we have left …
Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke
by matt taibbi reposted from taibbi blog @ rollingstone.com
If you’ve ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you’ve ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or “drug paraphernalia” in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and long-time Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.
Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who’s ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a “record” financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.
The banks’ laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC’s Mexican branches and “deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows.”
This bears repeating: in order to more efficiently move as much illegal money as possible into the “legitimate” banking institution HSBC, drug dealers specifically designed boxes to fit through the bank’s teller windows. Tony Montana’s henchmen marching duffle bags of cash into the fictional “American City Bank” in Miami was actually more subtle than what the cartels were doing when they washed their cash through one of Britain’s most storied financial institutions.
Though this was not stated explicitly, the government’s rationale in not pursuing criminal prosecutions against the bank was apparently rooted in concerns that putting executives from a “systemically important institution” in jail for drug laundering would threaten the stability of the financial system. The New York Times put it this way:
Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that the reasoning here is beyond flawed. When you decide not to prosecute bankers for billion-dollar crimes connected to drug-dealing and terrorism (some of HSBC’s Saudi and Bangladeshi clients had terrorist ties, according to a Senate investigation), it doesn’t protect the banking system, it does exactly the opposite. It terrifies investors and depositors everywhere, leaving them with the clear impression that even the most “reputable” banks may in fact be captured institutions whose senior executives are in the employ of (this can’t be repeated often enough) murderers and terrorists. Even more shocking, the Justice Department’s response to learning about all of this was to do exactly the same thing that the HSBC executives did in the first place to get themselves in trouble – they took money to look the other way.
And not only did they sell out to drug dealers, they sold out cheap. You’ll hear bragging this week by the Obama administration that they wrested a record penalty from HSBC, but it’s a joke. Some of the penalties involved will literally make you laugh out loud. This is from Breuer’s announcement:
As a result of the government’s investigation, HSBC has . . . “clawed back” deferred compensation bonuses given to some of its most senior U.S. anti-money laundering and compliance officers, and agreed to partially defer bonus compensation for its most senior officials during the five-year period of the deferred prosecution agreement.
Wow. So the executives who spent a decade laundering billions of dollars will have to partially defer their bonuses during the five-year deferred prosecution agreement? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s the punishment? The government’s negotiators couldn’t hold firm on forcing HSBC officials to completely wait to receive their ill-gotten bonuses? They had to settle on making them “partially” wait? Every honest prosecutor in America has to be puking his guts out at such bargaining tactics. What was the Justice Department’s opening offer – asking executives to restrict their Caribbean vacation time to nine weeks a year?
read entire article here …
Follow : @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Billionaires Warn Higher Taxes Could Prevent Them From Buying Politicians
as a follow up to a piece i wrote here some time back called goldman sachs steals entire countries, here is a great and must read piece by gjohnsit , reposted from dailykos …
The Goldman Sachs Project to take over Europe nearly complete
Sometimes a person or organization becomes so powerful and Evil that they appear cartoonish.
It might seem impossible to find a similar character outside of a James Bond movie or a cartoon about a mouse with an oversized brain. After all, who really wants to take over the world and has a plan to do it, right?
And yet, Goldman Sachs is on the verge of doing what Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Hitler and Napoleon tried and failed to do.
Carney, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who successfully helped to steer the Canadian economy through the global crisis, will succeed Mervyn King next year, Chancellor George Osborne told parliament.
"He is quite simply the best, most experienced and most qualified person in the world to be the next Governor of the Bank of England," Osborne said. The announcement sounds unthreatening until you put it into perspective.
For example, in July the Independent had a great graphic that displayed the New Reality in Europe.
Well now that graphic needs to be updated to this.
Everywhere that a nation has gotten into economic trouble, Goldman Sachs has moved into a position of power.
Most companies are usually content to pump-and-dump a stock to the public.
Goldman Sachs does it with nations.
The normal scenario usually involves helping a nation hide a problem and sell its debt until the problem blow up into a bubble that bursts in a spectacular way. Goldman Sachs makes money selling the overpriced debt, and by betting against the nation.
Goldman Sachs then puts their "man" into a position of power to direct the bailouts so that Goldman gets all its money back and more, while the nation’s economy gets gutted.
3rd world nations have seen this before, but Goldman Sachs have been sparing no one.
It was a Goldman Sachs man, Mark Carney, now head of the Bank of England, that helped tank Russia’s economy in the 1990’s.
These policies ended in a severe economic collapse, which just happened to profit Goldman Sachs tens of millions of dollars. In spite of their involvement in a 1.25 billion dollar bail-out of the Russian government, Goldman Sachs appears to have been betting against success. The fact that Goldman Sachs has felt it necessary to put one of their own in the Bank of England should raise alarm bells about what the future holds for Britain.
A history of evil
In England, Goldman Sachs was able to manage a sweetheart deal with the taxman, who decided they didn’t need to consult a single lawyer before letting Goldman walk on a failed tax avoidance scheme.
The IMF strategy chief in charge of working with Europe’s bailouts over the past year was a former Vice Chairman at Goldman Sachs International.
While a conflict of interest exists, that doesn’t make Goldman Sachs Evil.
What makes them Evil is that Goldman Sachs helped create the crisis.
Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country’s already bloated deficit. OK, so that’s underhanded.
But does that qualify as Evil? Not exactly. What makes it Evil is what Goldman Sachs was doing behind the scenes. While it arranged the swaps, Goldman also sought to buy insurance on Greek debt and engage in other trades to protect itself against the risk of a default on those swaps. Eventually, Goldman sold the swaps to the national bank of Greece. So they helped hide the Greek debt problem until it blew up, while betting against Greece, and when Greece finally imploded they put one of their guys in charge of "cleaning it up".
If that doesn’t sound shady, what does?
What it really sounds like is very familiar.
Life imitating art
A couple years ago Andy Borowitz published a short news spoof titled Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department. Like most humor, it was funny because it was true.
The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: "We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things."
Mr. Hestron said the only challenge facing Goldman in completing the merger "is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept. we don’t already own." By the time Borowitz published the article, the connections between Goldman Sachs and the Treasury Department were already well known to any member of the public that was paying attention. THIS summer, when the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., sought help navigating the Wall Street meltdown, he turned to his old firm, Goldman Sachs, snagging a handful of former bankers and other experts in corporate restructuring.
In September, after the government bailed out the American International Group, the faltering insurance giant, for $85 billion, Mr. Paulson helped select a director from Goldman’s own board to lead A.I.G.
And earlier this month, when Mr. Paulson needed someone to oversee the government’s proposed $700 billion bailout fund, he again recruited someone with a Goldman pedigree, giving the post to a 35-year-old former investment banker who, before coming to the Treasury Department, had little background in housing finance. All those connections come with benefits. Well-paying benefits.
While Goldman Sachs was getting bailed out by the Federal Reserve in 2008, Stephen Friedman was sitting on the New York Federal Reserve board AND was purchasing stock in Goldman Sachs.
When the Treasury Department was considering bailing out AIG, who was making "two dozen" personal calls to the Treasury Secretary? Why the CEO of Goldman Sachs, of course. And who benefited the most from the AIG bailout? Why Goldman Sachs, of course.
The biggest beneficiary of the AIG money was Goldman, which received $12.9 billion. That makes Goldman Sachs unethical, but not necessarily Evil. What makes them Evil is that they bet against the debt that they sold AIG. Goldman Sachs underwrote $17.2 billion of CDOs for AIG, more than any other firm
Knowing precisely the garbage it had underwritten (our assertion), Goldman bought billions in credit default swaps that would rise in value as AIG stumbled (fact)
AIG ultimately paid Goldman – with taxpayer dollars confiscated by many former Goldmanites in the Treasury – the full value of their default contracts: $14 billion.$2.9 Billion of the bailout money Goldman Sachs kept for themselves.
After these tax-payer funded bailouts filled their coffers, Goldman Sachs then handed out enormous bonuses to the thieves they employed, bonuses even larger than the bailout money they received,
Goldman Sachs made money on both ends of a bad trade.
A bit of Goldman Sachs news that fell through the cracks during the AIG bailout was Goldman being forced to pay Enron creditors $7 million for selling bad debt weeks before Enron’s collapse in 2001.
The year following the AIG bailout, a Goldman Sachs director was linked to insider trading.
Florida just ordered Goldman Sachs to pay $20 million for lying to investors.
Goldman is currently charged with securities fraud and it is linked to the company president.
Goldman Sachs is also being sued by pension funds for misleading statements (i.e. fraud) in regards to the bankrupt MFGlobal.
MFGlobal, run by former Goldman Sachs co-CEO and former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, declared bankruptcy Oct. 31, having sunk the majority of its investments into toxic European sovereign debt. Of course Goldman Sachs didn’t just knowingly sell bad debt to AIG. They did it to their own clients without disclosing that they would profits from their client’s losses.
When does a non-Evil company conspire to profit from the demise of its clients?
In a rare display of justice, the former director of Goldman Sachs just got sentenced to 2 years in prison for insider trading.
With so many criminal acts from one company, when does the world stop putting them into positions of power and start calling them what they are: a criminal organization?
There is nothing unusual about a company having too much power over local governments. It leads to a lot of abuse, but it can be dealt with easily. Having too much power over a federal government is a whole different animal, especially when the country is the major military power in the world.
Having too much power over multiple major governments of the world is unprecedented. The only comparisons are the East Indies Companies, and that historical lesson involved man-made famines that killed tens of millions in order to enrich stockholders.
They are transitioning away from their main business – fraud – and moving to something bigger, something new, something troubling that can only be compared to the Robber Barons of the middle ages.
In those days the Robber Barons stole gold and silver. One wonders what they will be stealing today, when people carry pieces of paper backed by nothing more than a promise to pay?
Goldman Sachs now operates as a global destabilizing force that is a danger to democracy. Their actions bring social unrest across continents, and they are getting worse.
Originally posted to gjohnsit on Mon Nov 26, 2012 at 09:22 AM PST.
Also republished by Occupy Wall Street.
Published on Nov 21, 2012 by unitedforchangetv
In this lecture, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges will examine how America has devolved, economically and politically, into a Third World country and the role that inverted totalitarianism plays in consolidating the control of rapacious elites over our political and economic systems. He will also discuss the implications of the current arrangement for the world and what are the steps necessary for the masses of people in this country to begin to push back.
Source: PoliticusUSA.com
(and reporter Rmuse)
It is absolutely true that Romney was looking forward to cutting his own tax liability to zero, privatizing the federal government, handing the Social Security Trust to Wall Street, and waging perpetual war, but with a plethora of investigations and allegations of corruption into his finances on the horizon,
appointing a friendly Attorney General was certainly a primary reason for seeking the presidency. To date, Romney’s legal troubles include fallacious FEC and SEC disclosures, an investigation into him and his son’s connection to an $8.5 billion Ponzi scheme, and concealing over $15 million from the auto-bailout, and now his surrogate’s malfeasance and perjury in the eToys bankruptcy case.
Exactly ten days ago, this column reported on a Delaware bankruptcy court’s failure to enter an Emergency Motion into the public docket that included Bain Capital and Romney operative’s perjury and corruption in the eToys bankruptcy case. At the time it appeared the judge was protecting Romney and Bain Capital by suppressing the Motion in expectation he would win the election and have the Motion tossed out of court leading to the question; “is Romney’s main impetus for seeking the White House to appoint an Attorney General who will guarantee that all charges against him will go away?” Well now that he lost the election, it appears the allegation had merit because on November 7, the day after his crushing defeat, the Delaware bankruptcy court judge entered the motion into the public docket and scheduled a hearing for December 4, 2012; all on the same day.
It was a victory for the whistleblower and eToys investors, and incriminating for the Delaware court and Willard Romney because although the judge received the Emergency Motion on October 24th, it was withheld from the public docket until after it was clear Romney lost the election and would not be appointing an attorney general to drop the case.
It is believable the Delaware court held up a legitimate Motion for 14 days expecting a friend of Bain Capital and Romney would head the Justice Department and dismiss the eToys case investigation, and the fact that the day after the election the judge granted a hearing certainly adds credence to the assertion. The good news, though, is that eToys investors and the whistleblower will finally have their day in court and without interference from Bain Capital’s lawyers, justice may finally prevail. However, it is bad news for Romney who told a mine owner facing a racketeering investigation that, “We get a lot of charges, this will go away,” because now that he is a regular citizen, this may not go away and he may face the same consequences as any other American. There are myriad implications stemming from Romney’s loss to President Obama last week, but for eToys investors and law-abiding citizens everywhere, the most important one may be seeing justice prevail.
read more here …
Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital are (apparently)
Source: Journalist Rmuse at PoliticusUSA.com
MoveOn.org filed a complaint with the DOJ over Romney’s disclosure claiming he was 100% stock holder and paid Bain Capital executive in 2002 despite his contention left active management in 1999. The period between Feb 1999 and Aug 2001 is when Romney, Bain Capital, and their corrupt operatives conspired to commit bankruptcy fraud guaranteeing Bain Capital could plunder a company they managed with impunity.
—–
A similar scenario unfolded when Bain Capital took eToys into bankruptcy. Bain Capital’s secret law firm, MNAT, colluded with Romney’s bankruptcy gang by committing perjury to represent the debtors’ counsel and creditor’s counsel to give the appearance of being on opposite sides and conceal the fact eToys was not broke. Controlling both sides, Bain Capital’s corrupt gang colluded to plunder the company’s assets without opposition, and give Bain Capital eToys for free.
A 2005 Wall Street Journal article explained that eToys creditor’s attorney lied by failing to disclose conflict of interest when he appointed his partner as CEO of eToys. The eToys bankruptcy trustee alleged the “failure to disclose is difficult to understand as inadvertent rather than deliberate,” and it transpired in other companies Bain Capital took into bankruptcy during the same period. Influencing the debtor and creditor’s counsel, Bain was assured their bust out scheme would be successful. However, when an eToys executive liquidating assets discovered the frauds, including the company may not be broke, he alerted eToys managers and attorneys who attempted to buy him off; he declined their offer and reported the corruption to the Department of Justice. It is about this time that Romney, fearing a Department of Justice investigation, fled Bain Capital by retroactively retiring back to February 1999 to conceal his involvement in the eToys corruption scandal.
Despite the fact that Bain’s secret law firms (MNAT and Paul Traub) admitted lying, there was no Department of Justice investigation into Bain Capital, Romney, or their surrogates’ fraud and perjury because in August 2001, George W. Bush nominated another MNAT partner, Colm Connolly, as Delaware United States Attorney. Consequently, as Bain Capital’s friend, he refused to investigate and/or prosecute the confessed acts of perjury and admitted intentional crimes.
read more here … from politicus usa
well, it’s that time again, we’ve had another week chock bloody full of scheming, lying politicians, incoherent, ass kissing, dog whistle blowing, windbag broadcasters and pointless, prevaricating pontificators, and it’s time to answer the question that needs to be answered kids …
just who took their act to the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst, the slimiest of the slimy? …
who was the king or queen of douchebaggery in the last seven days? …
a week that was full of some of the slimiest, sleaziest, slithering, scuzzball serpents the world of partisan politics, religion and big business has to offer …
and this week was as bad as every other lately, the norm these days it seems, with more than it’s fair share of douche bag dancing, mendacious manoeuvres, sleaze-ball slithering and out and out treasonous and treacherous tantrums … especially by the “1% is the only peeps that count” gang and their egocentric, self-centered and greed driven proponents …
in a week that gave us the implosion of mittens and the gasbag outrage and screams of betrayal on the right over it, all because his chief flunky inadvertently let it slip that mitt actually supports romneycare and that it might have been a good idea …
the there was the weekly anti-obama ads from rmoney …
as usual, completely based upon deliberate misinterpretations and “creative” editing of what obama really said …
this week it was all about “obama’s war against religion”, and the “supposed” “welfare reform proposals” by the obama administration …
this guy can’t help himself, he’s a compulsive, obsessive and sociopathic liar …
and we can’t forget the “welfare queens” diatribes from the righteous right that followed …
the continuing refusal by mittwit the twit to release his tax returns …
papa john schnatter bloviating about how his turd pie pizzas will have to go up 14 cents all because of that “job-killing, profit crushing” obamacare …
or how about that king of the walruses, rush limp bough AGAIN attacking sandra fluke …
and there was john of orange and cantor the ranter heading off for a months holidays because they didn’t want ANYTHING accomplished before the november elections …
plus we had mittens calling california and japan failed states, calling Sikhs “shieks” after the tragedy that took place at one of their temples and further insulting the jewish community with his asinine entrepreneur vs. kibbutz remarks …
yup, it was quite a week indeedy kids …
oh, the hypocrisy and douche-baggery abounded to be sure …
and trust me guys, even though there were a whole frign bunch more just as worthy ass-hat wearin’, d-bag contenders, we must get on with the show …
so, even with all the contenders, pretenders and surreality defenders for this week’s award, one still shone through the murky, vile and bile filled cloud that has become the norm recently …
there was still one semi-sentient and brazen manoeuvre that managed to out-douche the competition …
i know, hard to believe huh? … but true! …
so without further ado …
ladies and gentlemen …
the envelope please …
our latest winner …
of the sometimes coveted, always deserved …
golden d-bag award
and this weeks award goes to …
drum roll please …
those stooges and supporters of the pilfering, pillaging, plundering and purloining pirates of profit, …
those recalcitrant and rapacious, rip-off robber barons of the redesigned republic …
those enigmatic, elitist enablers of entitlement, embezzlement and extortion …
these abettors, adjutants, aides, allies, assistants and attendants of avarice …
the “lip-service” lieutenants of the lying, lascivious, larcenous and lecherous looters …
those deceitful, disreputable, double-crossing, double-dealing defenders of the dastardly defalcators …
the prevaricating pamperers and panderers of the patronizing, pompous and pretentious proletariat …
the united states justice department
in yet one more GLARING example of how the 1% runs/owns the show, the oligarchs and their anally attached minions have decided that after nearly destroying the economy with their greed and corruption, they are not responsible for any of it … and they’ve also decided to tell the american citizenry that everyone should just “move along, there’s nothing to see here” …
in what really amounts to nothing more than one giant “fuck you” to the american people, the “wail street kids” have just pretended to “investigate” and then call it a day …
how in the world, or any other universe for that matter, do these guys pull the biggest fraud in history (so far at least, still waiting to see how their libor ponzi scheme plays out), and then just call it a day because it’d be too much work to actually make any of these elitists mother f*ckers pay for their crimes? …
and when did the justice department drop the word justice from their now obviously oxymoronic moniker? …
if anyone ever needed any further evidence that the 1% banking elite and their “accomplices” on wall street were doing everything they can to just take ALL the money that’s left in the pockets of the working class, then this latest travesty should be the clincher …
and yet, mittens Rmoney and his cabal o’ clowns over at gop headquarters are still demeaning, denying and defiling anything that even remotely resembles fairness and justice …
how even a single american can vote for these elitist fuckers, or defend the actions of their obvious “shill company”, the justice department, is beyond a mystery to me …
i don’t care how much you hate obama, how mad you are that a “black man” is in yer’ “white house”, or how much of the trickle down theories you buy into, you are voting against your own interests and your own pocketbooks to vote to the right … and that of your children, grandchildren and probably even their kids …
and that ain’t “wealth or jobs” that’s been trickling down on you …
these guys are not the “job creators” unless you are talking about swiss bank tellers …
and the justice department is obviously their lapdog …
it’s like putting charlie sheen and lindsay lohan in charge of the medicine cabinet …
or mitt romney in charge of anything …
U.S. Won’t Prosecute Goldman Sachs, Employees Over CDO Deals
Source: BusinessWeek
The U.S. Justice Department won’t pursue criminal charges against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) or its employees for allegedly concealing that the bank bet against securities related to the housing market that it sold to investors.
The Justice Department, along with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, had reviewed the possibility of prosecution after the Goldman Sachs deals were faulted in a Senate investigative panel’s report last year.
Prosecutors “determined that, based on the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution with respect to Goldman Sachs or its employees in regard to the allegations set forth in the report,” the Justice Department said yesterday in a statement.
The Justice Department said yesterday it conducted “an exhaustive review of the report and its exhibits, independently gathered and scrutinized a large volume of other documents and tenaciously pursued potential evidentiary leads, including conducting numerous witness interviews.”
the united states justice department
our golden d-bag award winner of the week
an interesting little video that explains the mess we’re in and how we got there …
and it’s affecting you whether you are american, canadian, a brit, an aussie, or from anywhere else …
give it a watch and pass it around …
“he who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither”
benjamin franklin
tl;dr / tl;dw …
the principle itself is still coming from the central bank to begin with …
this money is loaned out at interest and since the central bank prints and owns all the legal tender, the money can only come again from the central bank …
the only way for them to get around this is to perpetually increase the money supply causing inflation …
it’s essentially economic slavery because a government / society can never get out of debt with the system that is presently in place …
that’s the whole idea behind it …
the system is designed and operated that way …
it doesn’t matter if you are a democrat, a republican, a libertarian, a liberal, conservative or supporter of any other party, this is not a “left/right” or “red/blue” issue …
and while the answer is not in armed revolt, the solution is an imperative …
truth be told, the main difference between the results of the election of romney or the election of obama in 2012 is that romney would be the quick road to the banks total takeover, obama would be a much slower and more deliberate path, so obama’s election would buy more time for people to wake up …
and before the ron paul guys start dropping me emails …
while ron may have a few things right (kill the fed, rewrite the taxation systems), overall, he and his gang are just plain nuts … with a healthy dose of bigotry thrown in for good measure …
other than that, they really are all beholding to the same moneyed interests …
that’s why america doesn’t have “universal, single payer” health care today …
or an education system that works for the least among us …
or true freedom and privacy …
or, a say in how anything really works …
the enemies we truly face are consumerism, subliminal propaganda, disinformation, absolutes, blame, arrogance, “fake” impossibilities, laziness, corruption, greed and misguidance …
and while it is true that fox news is a "parade of propaganda, and a festival of ignorance", they are by no means alone in their game …
ALL the “main stream media” are owned by very large, agenda and profit driven corporate entities …
fuck the main stream media …
research the facts yourself, educate yourself …
and get as much information from as many sources as possible before you make up your mind as to what are “facts” and what is “opinion” or propaganda …
then, spread the word …
do the work …
note to my brethren on the left:
remember … it was a democrat, bill clinton, that started the demise of the social safety networks … sold the country to the bankers with the repeal of glass steagall … gave the world nafta … and signed welfare reform and the communication act of 2000 … and it was obama who upped the ante with his signing of the ndaa, expanded the wars that the country is now fighting, re-upped the patriot act, signed on to the trans pacific free trade deals, and gave the health care system to the pharmas and giant insurance conglomerates with the mandate and his unwillingness to fight for “single payer” …
in short, your government DOES NOT work for you, they control and own you …
and they profit enormously from you …
financially, and in terms of control and power over you …
citizens united will be the final nail in the coffin, unless the citizens unite …
and the american dream is quickly becoming just that … a dream …
note to canadians:
please wake the fuck up, and soon …
harper and his band of wannabe neocons and austerity whores are doing canada in, and selling it to the highest corporate bidders at an alarming rate …
from the environment to the social safety net to the actual sovereignty and resources of the country, harper and his cronies are selling it as fast as they can …
and i won’t even get into his whole secrecy thing … yet …
as randall l. wray, professor of economics at the university of missouri-kansas city put it:
As the Global Financial Crisis rumbles along in its fifth year, we read the latest revelations of bankster fraud, the LIBOR scandal. This follows the muni bond fixing scam detailed a couple of weeks ago, as well as the J.P. Morgan trading fiasco and the Corzine-MF Global collapse and any number of other scandals in recent months. In every case it was traders run amuck, fixing “markets” to make an easy buck at someone’s expense. In times like these, I always recall Robert Sherrill’s 1990 statement about the S&L crisis that “thievery is what unregulated capitalism is all about.”
After 1990 we removed what was left of financial regulations following the flurry of deregulation of the early 1980s that had freed the thrifts so that they could self-destruct. And we are shocked, SHOCKED!, that thieves took over the financial system.
Nay, they took over the whole economy and the political system lock, stock, and barrel. They didn’t just blow up finance, they oversaw the swiftest transfer of wealth to the very top the world has ever seen. They screwed workers out of their jobs, they screwed homeowners out of their houses, they screwed retirees out of their pensions, and they screwed municipalities out of their revenues and assets.
Financiers are forcing schools, parks, pools, fire departments, senior citizen centers, and libraries to shut down. They are forcing national governments to auction off their cultural heritage to the highest bidder. Everything must go in fire sales at prices rigged by twenty-something traders at the biggest and most corrupt institutions the world has ever known.
And since they’ve bought the politicians, the policy-makers, and the courts, no one will stop it. Few will even discuss it, since most university administrations have similarly been bought off—in many cases, the universities are even headed by corporate “leaders”–and their professors are on Wall Street’s payrolls.
again, another week full of lying politicians and incoherent, ass kissing, windbag broadcasters …
a week that was full of some of the slimiest, slithering, scuzzball serpents the world of partisan politics, religion and big business has to offer …
and this week was even busier than usual, with more than it’s fair share of douche bag manoeuvres, sleaze ball antics and out and out treasonous behaviour, especially by the right wing and it’s bat shit crazy proponents …
in a week that saw indiana gop senate candidate richard mourdock double down on his empathy deprived belief that employers should not have to cover cancer or contraception in their insurance plans if they don’t want to; ex car thief, weapons law violator and arsonist darryl issa and his hyper partisan witch hunt to bring down eric holder no matter how many truths he had to ignore or lies he had to spew, the nra threatening congress so as to assist holder in his fiction fest fiasco; sarah “the wailin’” palin popping her hate filled head out from under her rock to call president obama a liar and spewing that “freedom died” because 30+ million people now have health care; new stories surfacing about gop presidential wannabe mittens RMoney and his spoiled and entitled rich-kid “pranks”, this time detailing his impersonation of firemen and armed robbers so as to scare the locals; faux noise and the gang over at the conservative news network (cnn) BOTH getting the results of the supreme court’s affordable health care act decision WRONG in their haste to obsessively bloviate and bullshit about obama; condy rice, former secretary of state, telling broadcaster charlie rose that the president’s foreign policy is “lacking,” and saying that the united states needs to be more “assertive” in global affairs – now there’s some serious psychological projection for ya’; the vile and bile filled, right wing’s attacks on chief justice roberts for daring to side with fact and the law in the health care act decision; the ever continuing voter suppression strategies being employed by the gop/teathuglican party in it’s desperate attempt to steal yet another election; the texas republican party’s attempt to repeal the 20th century with it’s newest party platform; the us coast guard setting up a “protest free zone” in alaska to protect shell oil from the truth, and allow shell to continue it’s rape of the north and the environment un-abated; and let’s not forget louisiana governor bobby jindal refusing to implement obamacare despite the supreme court ruling, just so he can desperately take his latest shot 15 minutes of fame …
yup, quite a week …
oh, the hypocrisy and douche-baggery abounds to be sure …
and trust me, there were a whole bunch more just as worthy contenders, but i’m getting a little carpal here, so on with the show …
even with all the contenders for this week’s award, and the obviously enormous impact many of them would have on the citizenry of the “good ole’ us of a” should any of them be allowed to put their ideas into practice, there was still one guy who managed to out-douche the competition …
and he’s a most deserving winner, if I do say so myself …
a tried and true master of douche-baggery, ignorance, bigotry, elitism and all out lust for power …
and without a doubt, a true douche bag to the core …
taking good ole’ boy, redneck bigotry, and self-serving bullshit and bloviating to a whole new level …
so without further ado …
ladies and gentlemen …
the envelope please …
our latest winner …
of the sometimes coveted, always deserved …
golden d-bag award
and this weeks award goes to …
drum roll please …
that union bustin’, cash ropin’, fuckwagon drivin’ hombre from madison …
a true interlocutor of ignorance,inanity,insanity and ineptitude …
a barefaced, blatant, bold and bald faced bard of bullshit …
that cheating, conniving,con-artist cretin of the coming confederacy …
the grovelling, grimacing governor of guile, grifting and graft …
that self serving, superficial, self aggrandizing, seller of senseless shiftiness …
a holier than thou, high handed hyper-whore for the high and mighty and hoity-toity …
the envoy of the entitled elite and their exaggerated, exclusivity enhanced elegance …
that bloviating and boneheaded blockhead and bumbling bagger for backwardness …
a truly malicious master of misogynistic misleading and mendacity …
lower than a snake’s belly in a cow pie …
slimier and sleazier than pond scum on a slough …
the man who can lie more than a lohan in litigation …
the man who obviously cares much more about sucking at the koch tit than he does about the health and well being of his own constituents …
scott “right power” walker
The governor insists the law will be repealed after Republican victories in November’s election
MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Scott Walker pledged again Thursday not to phase in any parts of President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform law ahead of November’s elections even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it is constitutional.
Walker, a Republican, has said he holds out hope the GOP will recapture the White House and gain full control of Congress and repeal the legislation. He reiterated his stance Thursday minutes after the court released its ruling.
"While the court said it was legal, that doesn’t make it right," Walker said at a news conference. "For us to put time and effort and resources into that doesn’t make a lot of sense."
The law’s next deadline isn’t until mid-November, after the elections. But Democrats insisted the governor needs to start work now.
"Ignoring federal laws in hopes that someday they will be repealed is ridiculous and irresponsible policy making," said state Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, D-Madison, who is running for Congress. "Walker, who falsely calls for increased bipartisanship, is once again pursuing his extremist policies at the expense of Wisconsin families."
The law will provide health care to about 30 million uninsured people by mandating all Americans carry health insurance and expanding Medicaid enrolment. Twenty-six states, including Wisconsin, filed a lawsuit challenging the legislation’s constitutionality, particularly the insurance mandate. The court ruled, 5-4, the mandate can stand because it can be considered a tax, but said the government can’t cut funding for states that opt out of Medicaid expansion.
Republicans blasted the ruling as a tax increase. They promised the ruling would energize conservative voters and help Republican Mitt Romney defeat Obama in Wisconsin. The state’s business and insurance communities lambasted the law, too, saying it creates uncertainty for employers and will increase costs for consumers and employers.
scott “right power” walker
this week’s golden d-bag award winner
..
this just in from the …
more treason from the gop …
more proof that the gop’s only plan is “gop first, america last” …
and that the baggers now completely own john of orange, and the gop …
following is a great post on what’s really going on with these gop/tp grifters …
and their true motivations …
John Boehner Is Deliberately Killing 3 Million Construction Jobs
from politicususa
by Rmuse June 18, 2012 see more posts by Rmuse
In the lead-up to the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans, led by John Boehner (R-OH) promised their highest priority was “jobs, jobs, jobs,” and despite offering no concrete plans to stimulate hiring, the nation anticipated some kind of sweeping legislation to get Americans back to work. It is now the lead-up to the 2012 General Election, and Speaker of the House John Boehner says the American people want to know; “where are the jobs?” It has been a year-and-a-half since Boehner and Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and besides not producing any jobs, Boehner has revealed himself to be the most incompetent House leader in recent memory. What Boehner has accomplished, is attacking women’s right to choose their own reproductive health, attempted to pass legislation purposely designed to kill millions of Americans’ jobs, as well as push the Keystone XL pipeline to enrich the oil industry and himself. If the American people want to know where the jobs are, they can look no farther than John Boehner’s desk.
In a rare bipartisan move, the Senate passed a highway and transportation bill that saves 1 million construction jobs and creates 2 million more, but led by Speaker John Boehner, the tea bagger extremists in the House are failing to hold a vote on the transportation bill to keep unemployment numbers high and damage President Obama’s re-election chances. What Republicans in the House did propose was an economically short-sighted bill that kills a half-a-million jobs next year alone. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, “It defies imagination that the Republican leadership and chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee would turn their backs on the needs of our country and pretend it is good government.” Even the ultra-conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce blasted the Republican version of the transportation bill as being “devastating to construction and related industries—materials, equipment, design, engineering. As important, in the long run, disinvestment results in a less competitive economy and a drag on GDP due to underperforming infrastructure.” In an even rarer letter to Rep. John Mica (R-FL), author of the Republican measure, two Democratic and two Republican representatives wrote, “Reducing investment in America’s transportation system at this time will have a negative impact on the construction, engineering, manufacturing and materials companies which are already struggling with high unemployment. Transportation infrastructure is one of the most cost efficient and effective ways to reduce unemployment and stimulate the economy. Studies suggest that for every $1 billion spent on transportation projects more than 35,000 jobs are created.” The Senate’s transportation bill, worth $109 billion creates 3,815,000 construction jobs and yet, Republicans like Speaker John Boehner are asking; “where are the jobs?”
They are sitting on your desk Speaker Boehner and you cannot see fit to hold a vote on helping the construction industry, the hardest hit by Bush-Republicans economic catastrophe, by creating over three-million construction jobs.
Republicans in the House are refusing to hold a vote on the Senate’s transportation bill for myriad reasons, but chief among them are bicycle lanes, the Keystone XL pipeline, and their incessant attempt to kill as many Americans’ jobs as possible to keep unemployment numbers high. It is obvious Republicans want to prevent construction workers unemployed because they are primarily union jobs, and their aversion to bicycle lanes are rooted in keeping Americans guzzling gasoline to bolster the oil industry’s profits, but the Keystone XL pipeline obsession is a devious ploy by Boehner to manipulate share prices in Canadian tar sand companies and enrich the foreign oil market.
This column has reiterated several times that Boehner invested in seven Canadian tar sand companies in 2010 in anticipation of construction of the Keystone pipeline and it prompted the SEC to look into the issue of share manipulation based on their fallacious job creation numbers provided to the U.S. government that Speaker Boehner parroted without pause. Boehner and Republicans are well aware that the pipeline will only provide about 2,500 two-year jobs for pipeline construction specialists and that since the oil belongs to a foreign company, TransCanada, after refining in Texas the oil will be sold on the foreign market but, regardless, they are willing to hold hostage 3 million American jobs to enrich the oil industry and Speaker John Boehner. The presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Willard Romney, says if elected, he “would immediately approve the project if elected because of the construction jobs it would create and the oil it would bring from Canada.” It is no surprise that pathological liar, Willard Romney, touts the fallacy of construction jobs, or that Americans would ever see one drop of Canada’s oil, because he will say anything to win the presidency. In fact, in February, Romney promised that, “I’ll get us that oil from Canada that we deserve.” When Willard says “we,” he means the oil industry that has invested $3.5 million in his general election effort across the country, and that is in addition to the $200-million pledge from oil barons Charles and David Koch. It is astounding that to enrich one industry that American taxpayers already give $4 billion annually in subsidies and tax breaks, Republicans are willing to hold hostage 3 million construction jobs, but that is the Republican Party in 2012.
Americans should be irate that Republicans are deliberately killing 3 million jobs for any reason, but that they are holding them hostage to enrich big oil, Willard Romney, and Speaker of the House John Boehner is the depth of depravity. Boehner exemplifies greed and underhanded politics by asking “where are the jobs,” when they are sitting on his desk, and if the corporate media would do their jobs, the American people would rise up and end the Republican’s reign of terror and job killing agenda, but they stand to benefit greatly if a corporate whore like Willard Romney wins the White House. However, as despicable as Romney is, his corporate pandering pales to the incompetence of Speaker of the House John Boehner who continues asking, “where are the jobs” when they are sitting on his desk.
FINAL NOTE:
johnny, you cowardly, lying hypocrite …
how ya’ doing on those keystone shares? …
are ya’ making lotsa money at the public’s expense, ya grifter? …
you sir, are corrupt, in every sense of the word …
and you should immediately resign …
after all, if a democrat behaved this way, you and your treasonous buddies would be screaming like a drunken high school girl on a bad date and demanding that he/she resign immediately …
and truth be told, if the dems actually had ANY balls at all, you’d be under investigation and facing indictment for your treasonous and corrupt behaviour of the last three years …
…
Repeal Anything That Is Left Standing …
And Make Some Decent Cash While You’re At It
Congressional Republicans intend to seek quick repeal of any parts of the health care law that survive a widely anticipated Supreme Court ruling, but don’t plan to push replacement measures until after the fall elections or perhaps 2013.
Instead, GOP lawmakers cite recent announcements that some insurance companies will retain a few of the law’s higher-profile provisions as evidence that quick legislative action is not essential. Those are steps that officials say Republicans quietly urged in private conversations with the industry.
Once the Supreme Court issues a ruling, "the goal is to repeal anything that is left standing," said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., a member of the party’s leadership.
Republicans say they have no plans for assuring continuity of a provision that reduces out-of-pocket costs for seniors with high drug expenses. This coverage gap is known as "doughnut hole."
"I don’t think anybody intends to get involved" in the portion of Medicare that provides prescription drug coverage. The program is "working better than we designed it," said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., referring to studies that show the program’s cost is lower than was originally estimated.
House Republicans have voted 30 times to eliminate, defund or scale back parts or all of the health law, most recently approving a measure to wipe out a tax on medical devices.
The House of Representatives moved to help save $30 million dollars for medical device companies while defunding programs designed to expand health coverage for ordinary Americans. The House took action on legislation to “repeal a 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales receipts in excess of $5 million for manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices, including defibrillators, pacemakers and prosthetic limbs.” The tax, originally part of the Affordable Care Act, was set up to pay for an expansion in health programs to cover the uninsured in America, which studies have linked to over 45,000 deaths a year.
The medical device lobby had several advantages in this fight. For one thing, they had a man in the inside. In late 2010, as Congressman John Boehner (R-OH) prepared to take the gavel as Speaker, he hired a lobbyist named Brett Loper as his new policy chief. Loper left his job at the Advanced Medical Technology Association, a lobby group for medical device-makers, to join Boehner.
Republic Report reviewed ethics forms disclosed filed with the House clerk’s office, and noticed that Loper actually received a $100,147 bonus in 2011 for leaving his medical device lobbying group and becoming a public servant.
A story from Politico in 2010 notes that Loper, as a medical device lobbyist, was “deeply involved” in fighting the medical device tax that was ultimately repealed.
…
lest you think that living in the great white north precludes you from the madness that canucks far and wide love to point at and tsk tsk about south of the 49th parallel, I bring you some notes and thoughts to consider from the land o’ beavers, beibers, beers and bacon …
yup, canada has it’s very own 1%. it’s very own corrupt banking system and it’s very own corrupt, hard core, hard right leaning, conservative liars and crooks …
baggers is baggers after all …
and the refrain is exactly the same from the right ….
cut taxes to the richest among us …
cut social programs to those who need them the most …
give people who are struggling the “opportunity and freedom to take care of themselves” …
let the “free market system” sort it all out …
kill those pesky unions and their silly demands for dignity and livable wages …
wipe out all those “job killing” regulations on the environment and big business …
destroy the health care system and the social safety nets by constant defunding …
much tougher laws and penalties even though crime is falling year after year …
the attacks on internet freedom …
all out war on women, their rights and health …
a constant war on “immigration” …
constant corruption and ethics scandals in the conservative government …
all without consequence to the guilty parties …
and all of this is being shoved down the throats of canadians no matter what the polls say, and the vast majority of citizens want or demand …
sound familiar? …
oh yeah, it’s just so much better in canada eh? …
not like those crazy yankees eh? …
New tax proposals from U.S. President Barack Obama and Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath target some of the richest people in North America, and results of newly released poll suggest Canadians overwhelmingly support the measures.
The poll, commissioned by the Broadbent Institute, found more than three-quarters of Canadians support raising taxes on the rich.
Last week, Horwath said support from her Ontario New Democrats for minority Premier Dalton McGuinty’s budget would only come if he included a new levy on those earning more than $500,000 per year.
On Tuesday, Obama called for new rules that would double the government’s take from investment earnings.
The so-called "Buffett Rule" would disproportionately affect American’s upper classes, including the president’s probable Republican opponent in November, Mitt Romney.
Income inequality in Canada and the United States peaked in the middle of the last decade, but it remains near the highest levels recorded since 1970, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The poll also found seven out of 10 respondents feel that a widening income gap threatens Canadians’ values.
The telephone survey of 2,000 Canadians was conducted by Environics Research from March 6 to March 18. The results were released on Monday and carry a margin of error of 2.2 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
Tightening government budgets across the board have focused the conversation on the rich and what they contribute to government coffers.
Niels Veldhuis, an economist with the right-leaning Fraser Institute, said the entire debate around income inequality is wrong-headed.
Veldhuis said politicians aiming to help the poorest Canadians should pursue policies that help people earn their way into a higher bracket rather than raising taxes.
"When you propose new taxes on higher income earners today, the real damage is in the future," he said. "The last thing we want to do is send a message to young people that if they work hard, take risks, and become highly skilled, they’ll be penalized heavily."**(NOTE: same tired, conservative b.s. that we hear every day from south of the border …)
a senate page disrupts the “speech from the throne” by taking out a sign saying “stop harper” in the middle of the opening of a new parliamentary session …
she was immediately removed from the senate chamber and fired from her job …
brigette depape, from manitoba, had been working in the senate for a year …
s statement issued in her name said she opposes the agenda of current prime minister stephen harper’s government … this kid is rocks … big time! …
thank you brigette … you are both brave and correct in your sentiments …
…
okay, so here’s the dilemma …
do you keep the name you already have, or do you change it to something more accurate? …
i mean, “the united states of america” sounds great and all, and it evokes wonderful images of mom’s apple pie, patriotism, a united cause amongst the people, the flag waving in a warm summer’s breeze and all things warm and fuzzy, but to be fair, it’s no longer accurate …
maybe something more along the lines of “the united police states”, or “the goldman sachs states of america”, or maybe even “the united oligarchs of shamerica” …
or …
maybe just call it what it is now …
”the state” …
think i’m kidding, or exaggerating? …
or that i’ve just completely lost it and have become just another conspiracy theorist? …
sorry, none of the above …
i’m not kidding in the least …
and i don’t believe that i’m exaggerating, after all facts is facts baby …
and unlike a conspiracy theorist, i am proposing no theories as to why any of this is happening, nor so i offer any motives here, just facts … you decide what they mean …
i think that ”what it all could possibly mean” is not nearly as important as what you’re left with and where that leaves you …
you decide for yourselves what it all means to you, each and every one of you …
is everyone comfortably seated? …
then i’ll begin …
PART ONE … the great extraction and the extinction of the middle class …
the bailout of the banks and their corrupt oligarchs at the expense of the american middle class …
By Madison Ruppert
Bank of America Corp. (BAC) is in trouble and any other business which would just go under without any help; the corrupt banksters, with the help of the private Federal Reserve, are attempting to pass off their failures to the American people. Again.
Only three years ago the American people had massive debts piled on our heads by being forced to bail out the biggest lenders in the United States.
During this bailout, Bank of America received a whopping $45 billion and as of midyear had deposits numbering some $1.04 trillion.
Now Bank of America is attempting to protect itself from its derivative exposure through its Merrill Lynch unit by moving derivatives to a subsidiary replete with insured deposits.
This means that if the bank were to fail, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, would be on the hook for paying for the moved derivatives which could be in the neighborhood of $75 trillion, far more than the U.S. GDP.
If the derivatives remained in Merrill Lynch, which is not insured by the FDIC and thus the taxpayer, and the bank were to collapse, the money would be lost.
Unsurprisingly, the private Federal Reserve has absolutely no problem with the move, while the FDIC is objecting according to anonymous sources cited by Bloomberg.
Even more unsurprisingly, Bank of America thinks that no regulatory approval is needed, regardless of the fact that this is an openly fraudulent way of insuring items which should never be insured.
This is surreptitiously timed given Moody’s downgraded Bank of America’s long term credit ratings on September 21st, slashing both the holding company and the retail bank’s ratings by two notches each.
Section 23A of the Federal Reserve Act is supposed to act like a firewall, preventing the affiliates of lenders from gaining from the lenders’ federal subsidy and also to protect the bank from risks originating from the affiliate, according to Saule Omarova, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill law professor.
This section was created because, “Congress doesn’t want a bank’s FDIC insurance and access to the Fed discount window to somehow benefit an affiliate,” Omarova said to Bloomberg.
However, in September of 2010, Bank of America was officially given a letter of exemption from Section 23A, effectively ending what the Federal Reserve’s general counsel, Scott Alvarez, told Congress in 2008 “is among the most important tools that U.S. bank regulators have to protect the safety and soundness of U.S. banks”.
So, with the help of the Fed, Bank of America is already exempt from one of the most important impediments to banks going out of control.
And now the Fed is once again backing the Bank of America’s attempts to undermine what little regulation we have in the banking system by putting the American people on the hook for their derivative exposure.
read entire article here
NOTE: NONE of the perpetrators of this extraction have gone to jail … think about it … if it were you or i that stole anywhere near this amount of cash from the american public, we’d be so far gone down a black hole of imprisonment, no-one would ever find us again … just sayin’ …
the affordable health care act fraud …
the mandate that everyone must buy from the same corporate crooks that caused health care in the united states to be the ever crippling expense that it has become will only further enhance the problem …
all president obama really did when he signed the ridiculously named “affordable health care act” into law was to ensure that each and every american would now have to pay a private insurance company for their health care … the same private insurance companies that drove america into this mess … trust me, it won’t matter a damned bit that they can’t throw your kids off the plan or that they can’t toss someone off for a pre-existing condition (although a very good argument can be made that the AHCA doesn’t really accomplish either of these in reality) if you have to buy from these companies or be fined by the government …
PART TWO … the stripping of the individual’s power
the patriot act being not only reinstated, but further strengthened …
By Kate Randall
20 October 2010Obama administration officials are pushing to strengthen a federal law facilitating telecommunications wiretapping. The move illustrates how Obama is fine-tuning and expanding the police-state apparatus developed by his predecessors, including Bush.
The New York Times reports Tuesday that an administration task force, including officials from the Justice and Commerce departments, the FBI and other agencies, are working on draft legislation to expand a 1994 law, the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), that requires phone and broadband carriers to allow their networks to be wiretapped. Although there is reportedly no agreement yet on details of the changes, the Obama administration intends to submit a package for a vote in Congress next year.
Government officials argue that system upgrades at some telecommunication companies in recent years have thrown up technical obstacles to FBI surveillance efforts. According to the Times, the security agencies want to increase “legal incentives and penalties” to be used against carriers such as Verizon, AT&T and Comcast to ensure that the government’s spying activities are not thwarted.
Less than a month ago, it was reported that the Obama administration was mounting an effort to bring Internet communication companies like Gmail, Facebook, Blackberry and Skype under the scope of CALEA as well.
To support their claim that the law needs to be beefed up, security agency officials have pointed to two episodes in which major carriers attempting to comply with court-approved wiretapping orders in criminal or terrorism-related investigations were unable to abide by the order for weeks or months due to changes in their telecommunications systems. Under the 1994 law, these companies are supposed to design their services so that surveillance of a target can begin immediately after they are presented with a court orderPete Kasperowicz – 02/25/11
President Obama on Friday signed into law a bill that extends three Patriot Act surveillance authorities until late May.
Obama signed the "FISA Sunsets Extension Act of 2011," which refers to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Surveillance authorities under that act were extended in part by amending the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act.
With Obama’s signature, the ability of the United States to access business records, conduct roving wiretaps and monitor individual terrorists is maintained until May 27. The administration has said it supports a longer extension, and the Senate next week will begin working on a three-year extension.
the defense authorization act …
I have been writing recently about the national defense authorization act that is now law…
for those of you who thought that I might have been a little over the top in my concerns as to the ramifications and consequences of this year’s version of the NDAA I present some further opinions …
read them through, click some links, do a little google time and decide for yourself if this isn’t legalizing, and providing a pathway to, fascism …
they did say it would come wrapped in the flag and waving a bible …
and that it would be sold as “security and patriotism” …
i believe that when the president signed this bill it spoke volumes about who he is as a man, a president, and a human being … will it be freedom? … or fascism? … he and the military leaders will now decide …
this bill marks the beginning of the end of america as you and the rest of the world once knew it …
a provision in the national defense authorization act of 2012 (which passed unanimously in the senate) allows the military to, at their discretion and for whatever reasons they deem appropriate, detain terrorism suspects, including American citizens, indefinitely, with no real trial …
welcome to the new regime …
america is no longer a country based on it’s constitution, but instead will be ruled based on the whims of the military and the administration …
if they decide, for whatever reason, you are a threat, in any way, to their idea of what america should be, then you can be picked up and held forever without even being told why …
you will have no right to an attorney, a day in court or appeal …
so throw out the constitution, habeas corpus and any rights you thought you had …
this law goes against everything that made america a once great and free nation …
and any and all duly elected officials who supported this act should, in my own humble opinion, be considered traitors to america, it’s peoples and it’s constitution …
some other links you may find interesting …
National Defense Authorization Act Goes To President Obama
What Occupiers and Tea Partiers Should Fear Most
Obama to sign indefinite detention bill into law
Senate passes new rules on detainees, sends to Obama
The National Defense Authorization Act is the Greatest Threat to Civil Liberties Americans Face
H.R.1540 – National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012
President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by signing the NDAA law with its provision allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens. It was a symbolic moment to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country . . . and citizens partied only blissfully into the New Year.
Ironically, in addition to breaking his promise not to sign the law, Obama broke his promise on signing statements and attached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely.
Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the President would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House that insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.
read entire article hereUS President Barack Obama’s apparent decision to not veto a defense spending bill that codifies indefinite detention without trial into US law and expands the military’s role in holding terrorism suspects does enormous damage to the rule of law both in the US and abroad, Human Rights Watch said today. The Obama administration had threatened to veto the bill, the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), over detainee provisions, but on December 14, 2011, it issued a statement indicating the president would likely sign the legislation.
“By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side.”
The far-reaching detainee provisions would codify indefinite detention without trial into US law for the first time since the McCarthy era when Congress in 1950 overrode the veto of then-President Harry Truman and passed the Internal Security Act. The bill would also bar the transfer of detainees currently held at Guantanamo into the US for any reason, including for trial. In addition, it would extend restrictions, imposed last year, on the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to home or third countries – even those cleared for release by the administration.
read entire article here
the obama administration asking the supreme court to throw out the aclu’s case against the warrantless wiretapping of it’s own citizens…
The Obama Administration wants the Supreme Court to dismiss an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenge to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act, an act passed in 2008 that ACLU attorneys contend “allows dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international communications with none of the safeguards that the Constitution requires.” It filed a petition to the Court asking for an appeals court ruling that permits the ACLU to challenge the law to be overturned.
The Justice Department (DoJ) argues that the plaintiffs in the challenge do not properly establish there could be any “imminent” or “future injury” from an “acquisition” of communications. The DoJ does not find the fear that plaintiffs might have their communications acquired abroad credible because there are other means available for acquiring communications of people outside the United States and they may not use authority granted to the government under the FISA Amendments Act. And, finally, the DoJ does not think that plaintiffs had sustained any “present injury” from “fear that the government will intercept their communications.”
the use of drones to spy on americans …
President Obama last week signed the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act of 2012. Tucked inside the legislation is a provision that could have far-reaching implications in the coming decade: widespread civilian use of unmanned aerial drones.
Until now, the use of unmanned drones has been tightly regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration. Use has mostly been restricted to government agencies, and applications for private use were considered on a case-by-case basis. As of last summer, the FAA had only approved about 100 applications from private parties to fly unmanned drones.
But that’s about to change. According to the New York Times, the new legislation mandates that the FAA begin allowing the use of small drones (under 4.4 pounds) by law enforcement within 90 days. And the agency must overhaul its drone regulations by September 30, 2015, including allowing more widespread use of drones by private parties.
the war on women …
“pro-zygote” and “personhood”, anti-woman bills are being presented all across the nation, in an effort to awaken the evangelical republican base before the election of 2012 …
most of these bills have been written by, or championed via personhood usa. …
make no mistake, there is a war on women underway …
in canada and the united states …
and it has been going on for years …
Feb 12, 2012 – If you’ve seen any news during the past week or so, you’re no doubt aware that there are a couple of new fronts in the War on Women.
It seems that no aspect of women’s health care is immune from right-wing hysteria. Breast exams for poor women? Why, that’s an opportunity to attack Planned Parenthood. Birth control coverage without co-pays? That’s their chance to brand the Obama administration as an enemy of religious freedom.
Nothing is safe. If it has anything at all to do with women’s access to health care, it’s on the hit list. And although women’s health advocates have won (for the moment) the first battle, the fight over contraceptive coverage continues and we can’t afford to relax yet.
In this instance, opponents have disingenuously framed their objections to the contraceptive coverage requirement as coming from concerns over religious liberty, rather than as overt opposition to birth control. In doing so, they have made statements that are offensive, dismissive and grotesquely out of touch with the real needs and day-to-day lives of women.
While talking about the rule, one pundit actually compared it to the kind of thing that might have happened in 1930’s Germany and dismissed women’s need for birth control as “beside the point.” Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., opined on a talk-radio show that birth control was “unrelated to the basic needs of health care.” The current leader—according to a recent national poll—in the Republican race for president, Rick Santorum, said that the birth control requirement is a step toward “the guillotine.” And, in an unwitting display of irony, the bishop of Phoenix said that the decision is an attempt to turn Catholics into “second-class citizens.”
Women’s health is not beside the point: If you’ve seen any news over the past week or so, you’re no doubt aware that there are a couple of new fronts in the War on Women.
It seems that no aspect of women’s health care is immune from right-wing hysteria. Breast exams for poor women? Why, that’s an opportunity to attack Planned Parenthood. Birth control coverage without co-pays? That’s their chance to brand the Obama administration as an enemy of religious freedom.
Nothing is safe. If it has anything at all to do with women’s access to healthcare, it’s on the hit list. And although women’s health advocates won (for the moment) the first battle, the fight over contraceptive coverage continues, and we can’t afford to relax yet.
In this instance, opponents have disingenuously framed their objections to the requirement as coming from concerns over religious liberty, rather than as overt opposition to birth control. But in doing so, they have made statements that are offensive, dismissive, and grotesquely out of touch with the real needs and day-to-day lives of women.
While talking about the rule, one pundit actually compared it to the kind of thing that might have happened in 1930’s Germany and dismissed women’s need for birth control as “beside the point.” Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R/NE-1) opined on a talk-radio show that birth control was “unrelated to the basic needs of health care.” The current leader—according to a recent national poll—in the Republican race for President, Rick Santorum, said that the birth control requirement is a step toward “the guillotine.” And, in an unwitting display of irony, the Bishop of Phoenix said that the decision is an attempt to turn Catholics into “second-class citizens.”
Women’s health is not beside the point: It is the central point. Every American woman should have the same access to affordable contraceptives. The current rule will save the average American woman some $600 in out-of-pocket health care costs. For families living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to pay for day care or get their car fixed, this could make all the difference.
For millions of American women, preventing unintended pregnancy is the primary health concern: for them, birth control is basic health care. Putting aside the fact that pregnancy is inherently dangerous—in the United States today, 24 women will die for every 100,000 live births, the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world—most women and couples want to have the power to plan pregnancy.
Nearly every American woman will use contraceptives at some point in her life. Indeed, all of the coverage about the opposition by the Catholic bishops ignores the fact that 98 percent of Catholic women do as well. In this discussion of conscience, nobody seems interested in their beliefs and their liberty. Also missing is any recognition that a clear majority of Catholics support giving women employed by Catholic-affiliated hospitals and universities the same contraceptive coverage as everyone else.
The administration has already struck a respectfully balanced compromise: Explicitly religious employers are exempt from the new requirement. Some 335,000 churches have always been exempt, and President Obama revised the rule to respond to the concerns of some employers while preserving the promise of contraceptive coverage for the women who work for them.
Both women’s organizations and the Catholic Health Association have endorsed the new policy, but it’s doubtful that the most outspoken opponents of birth control will.
And make no mistake, this is about access to birth control. Just look at the big picture. The same opponents of this policy are working tirelessly to bar Planned Parenthood clinics from reimbursement with public funds; pass legislation to end all public funding for family planning programs in the United States and overseas; reinstate the Global Gag Rule—essentially an international version of the Planned Parenthood ban; and to cut off aid to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for its work to increase access to contraceptives and end harmful traditional practices in the poorest countries in the world.
That we are still arguing about birth control in 2012 is shocking. And very, very troubling.Aspirins and short skirts and contraception, oh my! The last few weeks have seen a slew of Republican gaffes concerning women’s sexuality. From Rick Santorum’s billionaire supporter Foster Friess’s waxing nostalgic about the good old days when women put aspirin "between their knees” in lieu of contraception to an online furor over whether the young conservative women at CPAC dressed too provocatively—the GOP has a major woman problem on their hands. Their fear of sex—of women’s sexuality in particular—has become a major media talking point, and a source of outrage among American women. But what I don’t understand is why anyone is surprised. Republicans have long based their agenda for women in a deep-rooted disdain for all things female. We’ve been down this road many, many times before.
When a picture of Congressman Darrell Issa’s all-male panel on birth control (the make-up of which prompted several Democratic women to walk out of the hearing) hit the Internet and mainstream media—I couldn’t help but be reminded of a similar picture of George W. Bush signing the “partial birth” abortion ban, surrounded by a group of smiling clapping men. All men. (Santorum was one of them.)
Dahlia Lithwick reported last week in Slate on a law that’s poised to pass in Virginia that would make it legal to penetrate abortion-seeking women against their wills by requiring a medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasound—a procedure that would count as rape under state law. Delegate David Englin told Lithwick that one Republican lawmaker told him that the invasive ultrasound wasn’t an issue because women seeking abortions had already made the decision to be “vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant.” Apparently once women have been penetrated, all other future penetrations should be no problem, consent notwithstanding.
If this attitude sounds radical, consider that up until 2008, it was the basis for Maryland rape law. If a woman initially agreed to sex, but later withdrew consent, any sex that followed wasn’t rape. The justification was based on archaic legislation that said after the initial “de-flowering” of a woman, nothing could be considered rape because “the damage was done,” she was no longer a virgin and couldn’t be “re-flowered.”
The focus on birth control is not new either. Conservatives and Republican appointees successfully held up emergency contraception for over-the-counter status for three years in the FDA, despite a recommendation from an independent joint advisory committee to the agency to make the drug available. Dr. W. David Hager—appointed by then President Bush to the FDA’s Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs—told the New York Times about why he voted against the drug’s approval, noting, “What we heard today was frequently about individuals who did not want to take responsibility for their actions and wanted a medication to relieve those consequences.” (Hager also penned a book in which he argued that prayer could cure PMS—quite the expert on women’s health!)
It also came out that in an internal memo FDA medical official Janet Woodcock argued against making the contraceptive available over the counter for fear that it would cause “extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an ‘urban legend’ status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B.” (The same fear-based rhetoric over young women becoming promiscuous was used when conservatives tried to hold up Gardasil, the HPV vaccine that prevents cervical cancer.)
But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that this is just a problem of men attacking women’s rights. Conservative women’s rights groups, always eager for a patriarchal pat on the head, have long thrown other women under the bus under the guise of protecting them from their own wanton sexuality. The Independent Women’s Forum—who oppose the Violence Against Women Act, Title IX and who don’t believe pay inequity exists—started a campaign years ago to get the award-winning play The Vagina Monologues banned from college campuses, arguing that it’s pornographic and reduces women to their body parts. (Specifically, the one they’d rather not think about.) The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, another right-wing women’s organization, launched a campaign and contest in 2008 to “Bringing Back the Dowry and Hope Chest.” The winner received a “cedar-lined hope chest filled with $1000 worth of dowry items” as well as $500 toward her future wedding. Retro-chic!
Given this long history of paternalism and efforts to rollback women’s rights—I think the calls that the GOP is launching a “war on women” are right on, but years late.
Perhaps today, with the Internet moving information faster than ever before, Republican and conservative sexism doesn’t go as easily unnoticed (just ask the folks at Komen). Perhaps the influx of young women and feminists into self-directed and social media activism has changed the course of the national debate. Or maybe women are just fed up with yet another legislator dictating how they should run their lives and use their bodies.
Whatever the reason, we need to ensure that Republicans are held accountable and don’t get to brush these comments and actions off as mistakes or misunderstandings. Because they’re not simple gaffes, they’re a crystal clear window into the future that the GOP wants for women.
by: Jessica Valenti
Jessica Valenti is the founder and editor of the popular blog and online community, Feministing.com
PART THREE … the stripping of the power of the group
the takeover of the internet … ACTA, SOPA and PIPA …
online freedom and privacy has never been more at risk …
Online privacy at-risk with pending legislation
SOPA sponsor has another Internet bill that records you 24/7
SOPA Is Defeated [For Now], But New Internet Bill Gains Critics
S. 1308: Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011
H.R. 1981: Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011
ACTA is an international trade agreement negotiated by the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Morocco, Singapore as well as a few other countries, whose aim is to enforce copyright and tackle counterfeited goods (hence its acronym: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). Please Download and read the final version of the text.(2011)
the war on unions …
The bill introduced in the Wisconsin state legislature that would strip state employee unions of their collective bargaining rights, require members to vote to organize every year, allow members to avoid paying dues and put pay raises to a public vote, represents the opening salvo of the final battle in the war against unions in America.
This is not a new war – the battle against private sector unions has been waged successfully for years as the density of unionization in America has been in steady decline since 1955 when the provisions of the union busting, Taft-Hartley Act (passed in 1947) took root.
The shut-down of the US manufacturing base in favor of moving operations –and the jobs they produced – overseas, has resulted in severe job loss in those states where the unions were once strong. Companies willing to continue to manufacture in the United States, or foreign companies bringing production facilities into the US, often locate in those states where ‘right to work’ laws, (created by Taft-Hartley) have pretty much killed off the unions that once existed in those regions.
To get some sense of just how successful the effort to destroy the union movement in the private sector has been, check out this statistic – According to Harvard University expert Elaine Bernard, in 1973, one in every four private sector workers in this country was a union member. Today, just one in thirteen carries a union card.
With this in mind, does anyone imagine that it is a coincidence that worker wages have been falling or remained stagnant since 2001? Is it also coincidental that in this time of union decline, the amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of the top 1% is the largest since 1929, the time in our history immediately preceding the era when the modern union movement was taking hold?
While union strength in the private sector has been in severe decline, the prevalence of unions in the public sector has been on the upswing. Going back again to 1973 for a comparison, we find that, at that time, one in four public workers was a member of the union. Today, at a time when the public employee base has grown considerably, one in three is unionized.
read entire article here from forbes.com
and no-one goes to jail, except the whistle blowers …
The Justice Department’s subpoena of New York Times reporter James Risen Monday was the latest sign of how aggressive the Obama administration is being in its campaign against government whistle-blowers. The purpose of Risen’s subpoena is to force him to testify that Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent, gave him confidential information about the CIA’s efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. The extent to which the administration is prosecuting leakers has troubled those who see leakers as speakers of truth to power. "In President Obama’s 26 months in office, civilian and military prosecutors have charged five people in cases involving leaking information, more than all previous presidents combined," reports the Times. Here’s a list of prominent leakers with various agendas currently under pressure from the government.
Thomas Drake A former senior executive at the National Security Agency, Drake is being charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 for leaking information to a Baltimore Sun reporter. In the aftermath of 9/11, Drake believed the agency was wasting its resources on a bloated surveillance system called Trailblazer, the NSA’s largest project, instead of a cheaper, more efficient system called "Thin Thread." If the Thin Thread had been deployed, Drake told 60 Minutes the government could’ve prevented 9/11. Now, he could spend 35 years in prison for airing his grievances to the Sun. For more on Sterling, watch this segment from 60 Minutes or check out this piece in The New Yorker.
Jeffrey Sterling A former CIA officer, Sterling was indicted in December for sharing information with an unnamed journalist about a secret operation to undermine unnamed countries’ nuclear weapons programs. It’s become clear that the journalist is James Risen. Though the information shared with him was not published by The New York Times (the government told the newspaper it could jeopardize national security) it was published in Risen’s book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, reports The New York Times.
Bradley Manning A former military analyst, Manning is suspected of leaking the massive trove of classified government documents to WikiLeaks. The cache is thought to include the 250,000 State Department cables, the footage of a July 2007 Baghdad airstrike and Iraq and Afghanistan war documents. In April he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, a move reportedly linked to his rough treatment in solitary confinement. In April it was announced that Manning would no longer have to live in solitary confinement and could eat in the dining room with other inmates at the Kansas facility. NOTE: a military court has now decided that he will face a full court martial …
Shamai Leibowitz A former translator for the FBI, Leibowitz was sentenced for 20 months in prison for leaking classified documents to a blogger. It’s not clear what information Leibowitz shared. According to court documents examined by The Washington Post, the information concerned "communication intelligence activities" and constituted a betrayal of the FBI. What he shared was apparently so top secret, not even the sentencing judge was told what he divulged. Leibowitz eventually plead guilty to his charges. "“This was a one-time mistake that happened to me when I worked at the FBI and saw things that I considered a violation of the law,” he said.
from the atlantic wire
i’m afraid “hope and change” is quickly becoming “hype and chains” …
so here’s your choice in november …
do you vote republican and head quickly down the road to a completely backwards run to the 1930’s, possibly followed by theocracy …
or do you vote democrat and just skip the theocracy and head straight to a corporate controlled, 1%er, owned and ideologically driven, police state …
i mean, either way you guarantee the collapse of the middle class into abject poverty and serfdom, you kiss away all your civil liberties and freedom of assembly, speech and the press, and you forfeit your future and the freedoms and future of your children …
hmmm …
tough decision to be sure …
republicans and democrats …
different paths …
same destination …
so, what can you do? …
read … everything you can on these subjects …
google … don’t trust me or anyone else … fact check everything! …
get informed …
spread the word … tell everyone you know …
contact your elected officials and let them know that unless they do the bidding of the many and not the few, that they will be out of work … and NO second chances or “i’ll do it next time” allowed …
occupy … we are the many, they are the few … and they are YOUR streets ….
don’t give up and don’t give in …
get involved … whether you blog, write emails or letters, run for office yourself or join an action group … just get involved and stay involved …
and start the work that is needed to elect people who will once again serve the people, not the money …
it’s your country and your future … take it back …
and while we’re at it mittens …
where’s the 23 years worth of returns you gave the mccain campaign when you were kissing his senile ass to be his vice president? …
so, being vice president for john “the economy is fundamentally sound” mccain is more important than leveling with the american people? …
yeah, you’re the guy everyone wants running the country …
another grifter and opportunist like that last crew of douche bag grifters the repugs stuck the country with from 2000 to 2008 is exactly what america and the rest o the world doesn’t need …
but then what can we expect from a guy who thinks “corporations are people too” and that $350,000+ is pocket change …
it’s no bloody wonder you’re approval numbers are dropping faster than a republican congressman’s pants at a boy scout jamboree …
last night in the state of the union address to the nation, president obama called for an end to insider trading in congress …
this is the practice whereby those with “inside” information on upcoming statutes or laws before they are passed, make money by getting in or out of stocks, bonds, etc. before the bills that would affect those interests become law …
it is also a practice that is illegal anywhere but congress, and can fetch huge fines or jail time for those who utilize this unfair advantage for anyone with this beforehand and inside knowledge …
this sleazy practice has gone on for a long time and it must be stopped …
this is about members of congress abusing their powers to sideswipe discussion and taking an authoritarian approach over democracy …
on december 7, 2011, house majority leader and leading repug douche bag eric cantor indefinitely postponed a scheduled markup of the legislation …
the bill currently has 235 co-sponsors including 153 democrats and 82 republicans …
a bill only needs 218 votes for passage by the house of representatives …
this bill had enough support and co-sponsors to PASS had it finished going through the process and gone to voting, but eric cantor prevented any voting to occur by indefinitely postponing it …
Some version of the the STOCK Act has been bouncing around Capitol Hill for six years. But recent attention to the issue of Congressional insider trading, following reports from CNBC’s Eamon Javers and a "60 Minutes" report, brought the bill out of stasis and made its passage into law seem likely. If the latest delay pushes the bill into next year, it may become lost in election-year politics.
Trading by lawmakers based on non-public information about legislation falls into what many see as a loophole in insider trading regulations.
Although corporate insiders are banned from trading on non-public information about their companies, congressional representatives and senators may not be banned from trading on non-public information about legislation or regulation. The legal issue is disputed by scholars and regulators.
The head of the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission recently admitted that no legal action has ever been taken against a member of Congress for this practice.
Studies have shown the investment portfolios of House members and Senators consistently outperform the market by significant degrees, suggesting they are either miraculously bright and lucky investors or using their access to non-public information when trading. Financial experts regard the idea that it is just luck or investing smarts as laughable.
from: cnbc.com
60 minutes did a great piece on this version of insider trading …
ask them for a follow up and to investigate actions like this by eric cantor, who attempts to blockade democracy … cbs’ 60 minutes contact info is here or at 60m@cbsnews.com
you should also contact your representatives at:
http://www.opencongress.org/people/representatives
http://www.opencongress.org/people/senators
https://writerep.house.gov/
this bill marks the beginning of the end of america as you and the rest of the world once knew it …
a provision in the national defense authorization act of 2012 (which passed unanimously in the senate) allows the military to, at their discretion and for whatever reasons they deem appropriate, detain terrorism suspects, including American citizens, indefinitely with no real trial …
welcome to the new regime …
america is no longer a country based on it’s constitution, but instead will be ruled based on the whims of the military and the administration …
if they decide, for whatever reason, you are a threat, in any way, to their idea of what america should be, then you can be picked up and held forever without even being told why …
you will have no right to an attorney, a day in court or appeal …
so throw out the constitution, habeas corpus and any rights you thought you had …
this law goes against everything that made america a once great and free nation …
and any and all duly elected officials who supported this act should, in my own humble opinion, be considered traitors to america, it’s peoples and it’s constitution …
it will complete america’s journey into fascism with the stroke of president obama’s pen …
some other links you may find interesting …
National Defense Authorization Act Goes To President Obama
What Occupiers and Tea Partiers Should Fear Most
Obama to sign indefinite detention bill into law
Senate passes new rules on detainees, sends to Obama
The National Defense Authorization Act is the Greatest Threat to Civil Liberties Americans Face
H.R.1540 – National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012
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also in the news today … some quick links for you…
from democratic underground
SEC Charges Ex-Fannie, Freddie CEOs With Fraud
Bradley Manning pre-trial hearing opens amid tight security
Julian Assange can appeal against extradition, supreme court rules
Wisconsin loses jobs for fifth straight month (11,700)
Arizona sheriff rebuts federal allegations of discrimination against Latinos
Italy’s Leader Offers Tax Increases, but No Deep Reforms
In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011
Japan to declare ‘cold shut-down’ at Fukushima
Shutdown Averted As Dem, GOP Leaders Hash Out Payroll Tax Deal
Lawmakers trade barbs in hearing on Stop Online Piracy Act
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banksters get a taste of their own medicine …
respond by eating their own …
let the whining begin in the ivory tower …
and now … a short musical interlude … the unofficial hip theme song …
WTFville Chronicle 
