You Decide

Always decide for yourself whether anything posted in my blog has any information you choose to keep.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

 

"What's wrong with this correction?

Live links first article for verification.

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"What's wrong with this correction?

September 29, 2009 Posted by Scott at 6:08 AM

Source Powerlineblog.com

"In their September 18 story on the exposure of ACORN by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, Washington Post reporters Darryl Fears and Carol Leonnig fabricated the existence of a quote indicating the existence of a racial animus behind O'Keefe's work. When called on to supply the quote, the Post instead ran this correction:

Th[e] article about the community organizing group ACORN incorrectly said that a conservative journalist targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos partly because its voter-registration drives bring Latinos and African Americans to the polls. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O'Keefe, did not specifically mention them.

What's wrong with this correction (and the related AP correction)? Gary Larson (not the cartoonist) explicates the text in "Washington Post admits to bogus quote." Larson's column provides a disgusting footnote to a disgusting story."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024610.php

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"Washington Post Admits to Bogus Quote

Gary Larson

Source Human Events

"Veteran Washington Post reporter Daryl Fears, part of a two-person writer team, unmistakably wrote that filmmaker John O'Keefe had “said” he “targeted” ACORN, the advocacy group, for his candid-camera expose, because it registered voters to defeat Republicans.

O'Keefe said no such thing. It was a non-quote made out of whole cloth by reporter Fears, and published as fact on Sept. 17. Making the falsehood exponentially worse, the Post story then was retailed worldwide by the Associated Press.

Post's goof took dead aim at someone called a “conservative activist.” That label then finds its way into left-wing blogs, too. But is it true? O'Keefe claims he's “radical progressive.” But Post's label sticks, tossed into a pigeon hole, a box, into which enemies of the Left are frequently cast.

The quote that never was -- “he said” -- caused Post editors to issue a correction, one that turned out to have a few slants of its own. Judge for yourself. Here it is en toto:

Th[e] article about the community organizing group ACORN incorrectly said that a conservative journalist targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos partly because its voter-registration drives bring Latinos and African Americans to the polls. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O'Keefe, did not specifically [sic] mention them.


Specifically, did you catch that “specifically?” It is an adverb with a purpose. Call it a “Dan Ratherism,” an unproven fact that lives only in the eyes of the out-to-prove-something Left. Like CBS-TV's Rather relying on bogus documents to hang President George W. Bush, it is designed to indict, not to enlighten.

Note the transformation of O'Keefe from “conservative activist” to “conservative journalist” in the tricky correction. At least the Post did not label O'Keefe “an operative,” another handy twist of political skulduggery.

Scott Johnson of the influential weblog Power Line fears that Fears, a longtime Post man, “fabricated the existence of an O'Keefe quote indicating a racial animus for his [ACORN] reportage. The race angle existed only the minds of the Washington Post.” Amen to that.

The race card is played a lot nowadays, cheapening the very term, racism. Methinks the gratuitous slap, used against filmmaker O'Keefe, is no mere slip-up, no innocent goof. It is an attempt to take down the “conservative” filmmaker, to devalue him, somehow to marginalize his product, the videotape evidence of quite obvious ACORN wrongdoings.

(Aside: Now is time for journalists to come to the aid of their party?)

Such are the ways of today's news media. Cast aspersions. Use labels. Slay those who do not share your beliefs. Dishonor them. Label them racists. And Walter Mondale talks about the “coarseness” of debate? In spades.

Upon the heels of Post's slanted correction comes the Associated Press's. It's as minimal and self-serving as the Post's. (Birds of a feather?) AP had moved the story to thousands of its wire service clients worldwide, mainly newspapers, spreading the non-quote from O'Keefe far and wide.

Note AP picks up on Post's applied label of O'Keefe indisputably as a “conservative” but now, he's no longer an “activist,” rather a “journalist.” AP repeats the skeptical notion of “specifically” and dutifully recites the “targeting-of-ACORN” line:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a Sept. 19 story about the community organizing group ACORN, The Associated Press, based on an account in The Washington Post, erroneously quoted a conservative [sic] journalist [sic] saying he targeted [sic] the organization for hidden-camera videos because its voter-registration drives bring minority voters to the polls. The Washington Post on Tuesday printed a correction about the quote. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O'Keefe, did not specifically [sic] mention minorities, the newspaper said.

Power Line contributor Joel Mowbray thinks “ascribing to O'Keefe unsavory racial motives is no ordinary mistake.” Spot on. Fabrication of the quote is designed I think to inject racism into the ACORN expose. It is done with a purpose, a dubious one, based on a premise, a prejudice, in an effort to “put down” the independent filmmaker.

Put simply, reporter Fear's goofs were conscious errors, expressing the reporter's own take on the ACORN “flap” and his dislike, in general, of all conservatives. Maybe, they can all go to hell?

Did the AP's correction, repeating Post's sins of presumption, get special attention at news outlets that carried it? No way. As expected, AP's answer to that question was: “Obviously, we don't control the content management systems of all our [AP] members, subscribers and other customers.” Thus preserved for all time is a media mistake, a slanting of an important story, now “history.”

Gives rise to that old saw about lies flying halfway around the globe while truth pulls it britches on. Journalist Mowbray comments: “Even granting normal allowances, it's hard to see how this error was simply accidental.” Agree. It's too monumental to be dismissed as a slip-up.

The attack on O'Keefe cannot be brushed off as an innocent goof up, a slip of the pen, even slipshod journalism. Purposes are met in partisan reporting. It reminds one of the dishonesty of “Rathergate,” with falsified documents designed to score political pointts, not to serve truth. There is method to this madness, folks.

No wonder that 60% of public, by a respected survey by the Pew Institute, distrusts mainstream media, calling them inaccurate. Such a perception, if not reality, only hastens the mainstream's constant spiral downward, a death spiral, lowering public respect for the less esteemed Fourth Estate and now, its circulation too. Will they ever learn?

Bottom line: Democracy itself suffers from use of news as political weapon."

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33734


Tuesday, September 29, 2009

 

"N.Y. Health Care Workers Revolt Over H1N1

"N.Y. Health Care Workers Revolt Over H1N1 Vaccine Saying They Should Be Given A Choice, Employees Rally In Albany, Around State, Chant "No Forced Shots!"

Protesters Hold Signs That Read: "The State Doesn't Own My Body'"


Reporting Jennifer McLogan
STONY BROOK, N.Y. (CBS) ?
Souce wcbstv.com

"They're upset over an ultimatum from the health department.

Workers are being told to either get the swine flu vaccine or lose their jobs.

New York is the first state in the country to mandate flu vaccinations for its health care workers. The first doses of swine flu vaccine will be available beginning next week. Much of it is reserved for state health care workers, but there is growing opposition to required innoculations.

Health care workers in Hauppauge screamed "No forced shots!" as they rallied Tuesday against the state regulation requiring them to roll up their sleeves.

"I don't even tend to the sick. I am in the nutrition field. They are telling me I must get the shot because I work in a health clinic setting," said Paula Small, a Women, Infants and Children health care worker.

Small said she will refuse, worried the vaccine is untested and unproven, leaving her vulnerable. In 1976, there were some deaths associated with a swine flu vaccination.

Registered nurse Frank Mannino, 50, was also angry. He said the state regulation violates his personal freedom and civil rights.

"And now I will lose my job if I don't take the regular flu shot or the swine flu shot."

When asked if he's willing to lose his job, Mannino said, "Absolutely. I will not take it, will not be forced. This is still America."

The protest also shook Albany Tuesday. Hundreds of demonstrators demanded freedom of choice. After all, as health care professionals they argue they're already constantly washing their hands and aren't likely to transmit or contract the flu.

Around 500,000 health care workers are slated to receive the vaccine.

"It's certainly their prerogative to voice their opinion," said Dr. Susan Donelan of Stony Brook University Hospital.

Donelan said most in the medical community see the benefits and safety of the shots and welcome them, and that hospitals must obey the law.

"Our hospital is committed to following the mandate to have our personnel vaccinated," she said.

The state said change was needed this year to save lives, typically only about 45 percent of health care workers take advantage of voluntary flu vaccines.

More than 150 institutional outbreaks of seasonal and H1N1 flu are expected this year in hospitals, nursing homes and hospice centers.

New York and New Jersey will get their first doses of the swine flu vaccine next week. It will be the nasal mist, not a shot."

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)"

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/swine.flu.h1n1.2.1216352.html


Tuesday, September 29, 2009

 

"The Elites Are At War!!

Two different aritcles discussing Brzezinski.  You decide.

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"THE BRZEZINSKI/OBAMA AXIS

By Professor Paul Eidelberg
September 26, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

"Back in 1985, I wrote an article on Brzezinski for The Intercollegiate Review. Before citing some of the more relevant passages of that article, it should be borne in mind that Brzezinski, a political scientist, served as President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. One does not have to read Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid to know that Carter is an anti-Semite. Brzezinski has earned the same reputation.

Not only has Brzezinski publicly defended the anti-Semitic canard that the relationship between America and Israel is the result of Jewish pressure, but he also signed a letter demanding dialogue with Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction. It behooves us to understand the mentality of Obama’s Middle East adviser.

Long before he became Mr. Carter’s national security adviser, Brzezinski rejected what he and most political scientists term the “black-and-white” image of the American and Soviet political systems. “This image,” he says, “is held by traditional anti-Communists.” Brzezinski thus affirmed he is not quite an anti-Communist. In fact, he deplores anti-Communism as “a relic of the Cold War, of the age of ideology.”

Not only did Brzezinski reject the “black-and-white” image of the American and Soviet forms of government, he rejects the very notion of good and bad regimes! Brzezinski is simply a moral or cultural (or historical) relativist, and relativism has certainly modulated Barack Obama’s mentality.

The influence of political scientists like Brzezinski is wide and deep. His relativism prompts him to negotiate with and appease terrorist regimes. With Brzezinski as his adviser, Obama will be more disposed to appease Iran and betray America’s allies, above all Israel.

Since Brzezinski is a relativist, he denies the existence of objective or trans-historical standards for determining whether the way of life of one nation, group, or individual is morally superior to that of another. (The members of the UN General Assembly must be pleased to hear this, despite the UN’s notorious record of condemning Israel without having ever condemned an Islamic state.)

Brzezinski’s relativism also makes him a “weather-vane” political scientist. He turns with the winds of power. Working in a pluralistic and egalitarian country like America—a secular society—he conveniently adopts tolerance as his operational principle on the one hand, and equality as his primary value on the other. He is quite at home with the moral equivalency that has shaped US foreign policy toward Israel and Islamic dictatorships.

Brzezinski views history through the lens of Marxism, which, despite its atheism, has much in common with Islam. Both Communism and Islam are universalistic ideologies that reject the idea of the nation-state. Both do not regard adherence to treaties between nations as obligatory. Both Communism and Islam are militaristic and expansionist creeds that do not recognize international borders. Brzezinski’s globalism is evident in Jimmy Carter. Under Brzezinski’s influence, Carter lowered the defense budget and pursued a soft line toward the Soviet Union. Obama is pursuing a very soft line toward Islam.

As a crypto-Marxist, Brzezinski deplores the nation-state. His book Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, declares that “With the splitting and eclipse of Christianity man began to worship a new deity: the nation. The nation became a mystical object claiming man’s love and loyalty. The nation-state along with the doctrine of national sovereignty fragmented humanity. It could not provide a rational framework within which the relations between nations could develop.” Brzezinski sees the nation-state as having only partly increased man’s social consciousness and only partially alleviated the human condition.

“That is why Marxism,” he contends, “represents a further vital and creative stage in the maturing and man’s universal vision.” Marxism, he says, “was the most powerful doctrine for generating a universal and secular human consciousness.” Embodied in the Soviet Union, however, Communism became the dogma of a party and, under Stalin, “was wedded to Russian nationalism.”


Although Brzezinski poses as a humanist, he makes a most inhumane statement by saying that: “although Stalinism may have been a needless tragedy, for both the Russian people and Communism as an ideal, there is the intellectually tantalizing possibility that for the world at large it was … a blessing in disguise.” Brzezinski could as readily say: “Yes, Muslims slaughtered more than 200 million people, but Islam brought hundreds of Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Hindu, and Buddhist communities under a single universal vision, that of the Quran”!!!


Brzezinski, a self-professed secularist, is an internationalist whose moral relativism contradicts the moral law or natural rights doctrine of America’s Declaration of Independence. His relativism and internationalism contradict the teachings of the America’s Founding Fathers, who endowed the United States with a national identity and character, the same that animated Abraham Lincoln. To put it more bluntly: Brzezinski’s political mentality — like that of countless other American academics — is anti-American. An Obama-Brzezinski axis has revolutionary significance. It may accelerate the de-Americanization and decline of the United States.

© 2009 Paul Eidelberg - All Rights Reserved"

Internationally known political scientist, author and lecturer, Eidelberg is the founder and president of The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy with offices in Jerusalem.

Prof. Eidelberg served in the United States Air Force where he held the rank of first lieutenant. He received his doctoral degree at the University of Chicago. He designed the electronic equipment for the first brain scanner at the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital. ....."

http://www.newswithviews.com/Eidelberg/paul120.htm

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"THE ELITES ARE AT WAR!!!
 
Published on 09-23-2009   
Source: War In Iraq

Source Blacklisted News

"In a shocking development with major geopolitical implications, former National Security Advisor and current man on point for the Western Imperialists Zbignew Brzezinski has publicly stated that the United States Air Force will confront any Israeli fighter jets flying over Iraq if Israel attempts to attack Iran.

"We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? We have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren't just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a 'Liberty' in reverse."

"Liberty in reverse" he said. Wow, that is an incredible thing for Brzezinski to say. Israel in 1967 attacked the USS Liberty and claimed it was an "accident". Pay close attention to how the Israeli media responds to this particular statement from Brzezinski. They say how all of the "commissions" found it was accidental or mistaken identity.

Brzezinski returned to the Imperialist forefront after the Establishment fully realized that the program of the Neoconservative strategists was so disastrous. This is why the NIE in 2007 reported that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program, a direct result of Brzezinski's influence.

Note Medvedev's recent appearance on CNN where he claims Shimon Peres told him that Israel has no plans to attack Iran. That is psychological warfare being waged against the Neoconservative faction at Brzezinski's behest. Brzezinski is saying in no uncertain terms "we are in charge and you are doomed without our help if you attack Iran" to the Neocon faction. What has Putin been told or promised, I wonder? What kind of deal was made? Is it true that Netanyahu was physically removed from Putin's presence during their recent meeting?

Now, the NIE has just recently again issued a report that reaffirms it's 2007 findings, right? Why is this? This is because the Neoconservative faction is exercising all of it's might to compel a US-led attack upon Iran as Israel cannot even dream of touching Iran on it's own. Look closely at what is floating down the Propaganda Sewage Canals lately. Do you see how one the one hand there is an "Iran must be bombed right away" element while on the other hand there is an "Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program" element? Recently the "bomb Iran" propaganda has had a distinct "Israel will have to go it alone if the US doesn't do something" quality to it. Why is this? This is Neoconservative psychological warfare being waged against the Brzezinski-led Trilateralist faction. But Zbig knows the deal and has gone so far as to say "we would put a stop it" and how about THAT?!!

IT IS BECAUSE THE ELITES ARE AT WAR!!!

There is great panic and ever-growing fear among the Elites. They hate and fear us. Note Nancy Pelosi's recent expressed concern for "potential violence" right? How about the real violence in all of these wars Nancy? Does that bring tears to your eyes? The though of it?

The sight of The Angry Citizen Pitchforks and Torches Brigade, the Internet Community and the 9/11 Truth Movement is causing mad Elitist panic. Think about Obama now saying that the corporate media needs it's own "bailout" right? He supports that. Great. Listen to these recent pronouncements within the corporate media, disparaging bloggers and real journalism. Pick up on that.

The current "dupe the public with the Messiah-figure" program is tanking rapidly, also. Obama's administration and popularity are crashing to the ground as though they were World Trade Center buildings or something; free-fall speed, no resistance and you get the idea. Look at the health-care proposal. The government does hearby order you to surrender a portion of your income to a corporate cartel of insurance companies under a penalty of $3,800 if you refuse. Straight Fascism. Those insurance companies are no different than the Wall St Usurer Community and they are just as bankrupt.

But we have this stunning development now. Israel has been publicly flogged by the US and it is marvelous, right? Ah, but lets not get too excited. Brzezinski's program is to destroy the Russia-China-Iran-Caspian States alliance personified by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Let's hope Brzezinski understands the very, very weak position of the US here and thinks to himself "maybe we should just start dealing fairly with others and treat them like the human beings that they are".

Give it some thought Zbig. The pitchforks are out in force."

http://www.blacklistednews.com/news-5673-0-27-27--.html


Sunday, September 27, 2009

 

Homestead Series How To Save Tomato Seeds

Son sent this video link.  Interesting info  ... someone may want to grow tomatoes next summer.

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Sunday, September 27, 2009

 

YouTube - Unconstitutional Government - Perverting the Commerce Clause ( healthcare)


Sunday, September 27, 2009

 

"Is Obama's Tax On Health Care Constitutional?

Came in email, excellent points.

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"Is Obama's Tax On Health Care Constitutional?

By ERNEST S. CHRISTIAN AND BETTY JO CHRISTIANPosted 09/25/2009 06:08 PM ET
Source Investors.com 

"Without regard to one's views about the health care legislation promoted by President Obama and currently being redrafted by Sen. Max Baucus, everyone is entitled to expect that the task will be carried out with competence and integrity — also with dignity and a high regard for the intelligence of the American people.

Further, even if everyone agreed that the proposed federal interventions in health care were consistent with "best medical practice" and produced the best possible medical care at the least price, all these federal actions would still have to meet constitutional standards.

The controversial tax that both Obama and Baucus would impose on people who do not buy health insurance appears to be a "direct tax" on persons that is unlawful under Article 1, Section 2, of the Constitution, which requires that "direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States ... according to their Numbers . .. ."

In addition, Art. 1, Sec. 9, says: "No capitation, or other direct Tax, shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken ... ."

The only exception to the constitutional prohibition against unapportioned direct taxes is for the federal income tax, which was authorized by the 16th Amendment — but the direct tax on the uninsured is not an income tax.

Sen. Baucus claims that the tax on the uninsured is an "indirect" excise tax — like the federal gasoline tax — that does not have to be apportioned. But Sen. Baucus appears to be in error. An excise tax is a tax on a "thing" (such as a commodity or a license). That is why an excise tax is classified as "indirect."

People who choose not to buy insurance are not things.

They are people. And the tax is imposed directly on them in exactly the same way as a direct income tax, except that in this instance, the tax amount does not depend on the size of the person's income.

This constitutional defect in one of the linchpin elements of the health care legislation was not brought to light for public discussion by either the White House or the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Instead, it was exposed a few days ago by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, one of the few people in this rapidly deteriorating health care drama who are conducting themselves with a high degree of intelligence and regard for the integrity of the Constitution and our basic civic institutions.

President Obama recently got himself into an embarrassing contretemps with a TV personality on a Sunday talk show about whether a tax is a tax.

He insisted that the tax on the uninsured is not a tax at all, but instead a federal fine or penalty imposed on those who fail to do what the government has told them to do.

In opting to rely on the government's power to regulate instead of its power to tax, he has jumped from one constitutional briar patch into another.

The Supreme Court in United States v. Lopez has narrowed the scope of what Washington can do to us under the guise of regulating "commerce ... among the several states ... ."

A fine or penalty on the uninsured could pass muster only if a person's individual choice not to buy insurance has a "substantial effect on commerce."

It is not sufficient that forcing people to buy health insurance might be good for them or help the economy or the public fisc.

Let us all hope that that the court stands fast — because if Barack Obama can make us buy a designated insurance policy, why can't he make us see designated doctors, submit to designated treatments, send our children to designated schools, force us to live in designated neighborhoods, give our money to designated charities (such as Acorn) and do all kinds of other designated things?

In the past, President Obama is reported to have expressed frustration with the Constitution, classifying it as a negative document that mostly says what government can't do rather than concentrating on what government can do to make things better.

He is also said to have claimed power and prerogatives because "I won," referring to the fact that he got more votes last November than his opponent — as if America were a prize won in a game or raffle that he can now do with as he wishes.

Not so, Mr. President, not so."

• Ernest S. Christian is a tax lawyer who was deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Ford administration.

• Betty Jo Christian, who served on the former Interstate Commerce Commission, is an appellate lawyer who has argued "commerce clause" and other constitutional cases before the Supreme Court.


http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=507127&Ntt=


Saturday, September 26, 2009

 

vanishing act: 6 greenbacks become 1 Amero

http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/09_Photo_of_Day/090925.photo.of.day.html


Friday, September 25, 2009

 

"Who's Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?

From the bottom of this article

"Sibel Edmonds is a former FBI translator and the founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Philip Giraldi is a former CIA officer and The American Conservative’s Deep Background columnist."
_________

 

"Who’s Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?

The gagged whistleblower goes on the record.

By Sibel Edmonds and Philip Giraldi

Source The American Conservative

"Sibel Edmonds has a story to tell. She went to work as a Turkish and Farsi translator for the FBI five days after 9/11. Part of her job was to translate and transcribe recordings of conversations between suspected Turkish intelligence agents and their American contacts. She was fired from the FBI in April 2002 after she raised concerns that one of the translators in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation. She appealed her termination, but was more alarmed that no effort was being made to address the corruption that she had been monitoring.

 

A Department of Justice inspector general’s report called Edmonds’s allegations “credible,” “serious,” and “warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI.” Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee members Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have backed her publicly. “60 Minutes” launched an investigation of her claims and found them believable. No one has ever disproved any of Edmonds’s revelations, which she says can be verified by FBI investigative files.

 

John Ashcroft’s Justice Department confirmed Edmonds’s veracity in a backhanded way by twice invoking the dubious State Secrets Privilege so she could not tell what she knows. The ACLU has called her “the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America.”

 

But on Aug. 8, she was finally able to testify under oath in a court case filed in Ohio and agreed to an interview with The American Conservative based on that testimony. What follows is her own account of what some consider the most incredible tale of corruption and influence peddling in recent times. As Sibel herself puts it, “If this were written up as a novel, no one would believe it.”

 


PHILIP GIRALDI: We were very interested to learn of your four-hour deposition in the case involving allegations that Congresswoman Jean Schmidt accepted money from the Turkish government in return for political favors. You provided many names and details for the first time on the record and swore an oath confirming that the deposition was true.

 

Basically, you map out a corruption scheme involving U.S. government employees and members of Congress and agents of foreign governments. These agents were able to obtain information that was either used directly by those foreign governments or sold to third parties, with the proceeds often used as bribes to breed further corruption. Let’s start with the first government official you identified, Marc Grossman, then the third highest-ranking official at the State Department.

 

SIBEL EDMONDS: During my work with the FBI, one of the major operational files that I was transcribing and translating started in late 1996 and continued until 2002, when I left the Bureau. Because the FBI had had no Turkish translators, these files were archived, but were considered to be very important operations. As part of the background, I was briefed about why these operations had been initiated and who the targets were.

 

Grossman became a person of interest early on in the investigative file while he was the U.S. ambassador to Turkey [1994-97], when he became personally involved with operatives both from the Turkish government and from suspected criminal groups. He also had suspicious contact with a number of official and non-official Israelis. Grossman was removed from Turkey short of tour during a scandal referred to as “Susurluk” by the media. It involved a number of high-level criminals as well as senior army and intelligence officers with whom he had been in contact.

 

Another individual who was working for Grossman, Air Force Major Douglas Dickerson, was also removed from Turkey and sent to Germany. After he and his Turkish wife Can returned to the U.S., he went to work for Douglas Feith and she was hired as an FBI Turkish translator. My complaints about her connection to Turkish lobbying groups led to my eventual firing.

 

Grossman and Dickerson had to leave the country because a big investigation had started in Turkey. Special prosecutors were appointed, and the case was headlined in England, Germany, Italy, and in some of the Balkan countries because the criminal groups were found to be active in all those places. A leading figure in the scandal, Mehmet Eymür, led a major paramilitary group for the Turkish intelligence service. To keep him from testifying, Eymür was sent by the Turkish government to the United States, where he worked for eight months as head of intelligence at the Turkish Embassy in Washington. He later became a U.S. citizen and now lives in McLean, Virginia. The central figure in this scandal was Abdullah Catli. In 1989, while “most wanted” by Interpol, he came to the U.S., was granted residency, and settled in Chicago, where he continued to conduct his operations until 1996.

 

GIRALDI: So Grossman at this point comes back to the United States. He’s rewarded with the third-highest position at the State Department, and he allegedly uses this position to do favors for “Turkish interests”—both for the Turkish government and for possible criminal interests. Sometimes, the two converge. The FBI is aware of his activities and is listening to his phone calls. When someone who is Turkish calls Grossman, the FBI monitors that individual’s phone calls, and when the Turk calls a friend who is a Pakistani or an Egyptian or a Saudi, they monitor all those contacts, widening the net.

 

EDMONDS: Correct.

 

GIRALDI: And Grossman received money as a result. In one case, you said that a State Department colleague went to pick up a bag of money…

 

EDMONDS: $14,000

 

GIRALDI: What kind of information was Grossman giving to foreign countries? Did he give assistance to foreign individuals penetrating U.S. government labs and defense installations as has been reported? It’s also been reported that he was the conduit to a group of congressmen who become, in a sense, the targets to be recruited as “agents of influence.”

 

EDMONDS: Yes, that’s correct. Grossman assisted his Turkish and Israeli contacts directly, and he also facilitated access to members of Congress who might be inclined to help for reasons of their own or could be bribed into cooperation. The top person obtaining classified information was Congressman Tom Lantos. A Lantos associate, Alan Makovsky worked very closely with Dr. Sabri Sayari in Georgetown University, who is widely believed to be a Turkish spy. Lantos would give Makovsky highly classified policy-related documents obtained during defense briefings for passage to Israel because Makovsky was also working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

 

GIRALDI: Makovsky is now working for the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, a pro-Israeli think tank.

 

EDMONDS: Yes. Lantos was at the time probably the most outspoken supporter of Israel in Congress. AIPAC would take out the information from Lantos that was relevant to Israel, and they would give the rest of it to their Turkish associates. The Turks would go through the leftovers, take what they wanted, and then try to sell the rest. If there were something relevant to Pakistan, they would contact the ISI officer at the embassy and say, “We’ve got this and this, let’s sit down and talk.” And then they would sell it to the Pakistanis.

 

GIRALDI: ISI—Pakistani intelligence—has been linked to the Pakistani nuclear proliferation program as well as to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

 

So the FBI was monitoring these connections going from a congressman to a congressman’s assistant to a foreign individual who is connected with intelligence to other intelligence people who are located at different embassies in Washington. And all of this information is in an FBI file somewhere?

 

EDMONDS: Two sets of FBI files, but the AIPAC-related files and the Turkish files ended up converging in one. The FBI agents believed that they were looking at the same operation. It didn’t start with AIPAC originally. It started with the Israeli Embassy. The original targets were intelligence officers under diplomatic cover in the Turkish Embassy and the Israeli Embassy. It was those contacts that led to the American Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations and then to AIPAC fronting for the Israelis. It moved forward from there.

 

GIRALDI: So the FBI was monitoring people from the Israeli Embassy and the Turkish Embassy and one, might presume, the Pakistani Embassy as well?

 

EDMONDS: They were the secondary target. They got leftovers from the Turks and Israelis. The FBI would intercept communications to try to identify who the diplomatic target’s intelligence chief was, but then, in addition to that, there are individuals there, maybe the military attaché, who had their own contacts who were operating independently of others in the embassy.

 

GIRALDI: So the network starts with a person like Grossman in the State Department providing information that enables Turkish and Israeli intelligence officers to have access to people in Congress, who then provide classified information that winds up in the foreign embassies?

 

EDMONDS: Absolutely. And we also had Pentagon officials doing the same thing. We were looking at Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. They had a list of individuals in the Pentagon broken down by access to certain types of information. Some of them would be policy related, some of them would be weapons-technology related, some of them would be nuclear-related. Perle and Feith would provide the names of those Americans, officials in the Pentagon, to Grossman, together with highly sensitive personal information: this person is a closet gay; this person has a chronic gambling issue; this person is an alcoholic. The files on the American targets would contain things like the size of their mortgages or whether they were going through divorces. One Air Force major I remember was going through a really nasty divorce and a child custody fight. They detailed all different kinds of vulnerabilities.

 

GIRALDI: So they had access to their personnel files and also their security files and were illegally accessing this kind of information to give to foreign agents who exploited the vulnerabilities of these people to recruit them as sources of information?

 

EDMONDS: Yes. Some of those individuals on the list were also working for the RAND Corporation. RAND ended up becoming one of the prime targets for these foreign agents.

 

GIRALDI: RAND does highly classified research for the U.S. government. So they were setting up these people for recruitment as agents or as agents of influence?

 

EDMONDS: Yes, and the RAND sources would be paid peanuts compared to what the information was worth when it was sold if it was not immediately useful for Turkey or Israel. They also had sources who were working in some midwestern Air Force bases. The sources would provide the information on CD’s and DVD’s. In one case, for example, a Turkish military attaché got the disc and discovered that it was something really important, so he offered it to the Pakistani ISI person at the embassy, but the price was too high. Then a Turkish contact in Chicago said he knew two Saudi businessmen in Detroit who would be very interested in this information, and they would pay the price. So the Turkish military attaché flew to Detroit with his assistant to make the sale.

 

GIRALDI: We know Grossman was receiving money for services.

 

EDMONDS: Yes. Sometimes he would give money to the people who were working with him, identified in phone calls on a first-name basis, whether it’s a John or a Joe. He also took care of some other people, including his contact at the New York Times. Grossman would brag, “We just fax to our people at the New York Times. They print it under their names.”

 

GIRALDI: Did Feith and Perle receive any money that you know of?

 

EDMONDS: No.

 

GIRALDI: So they were doing favors for other reasons. Both Feith and Perle were lobbyists for Turkey and also were involved with Israel on defense contracts, including some for Northrop Grumman, which Feith represented in Israel.

 

EDMONDS: They had arrangements with various companies, some of them members of the American Turkish Council. They had arrangements with Kissinger’s group, with Northrop Grumman, with former secretary of state James Baker’s group, and also with former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft.

 

The monitoring of the Turks picked up contacts with Feith, Wolfowitz, and Perle in the summer of 2001, four months before 9/11. They were discussing with the Turkish ambassador in Washington an arrangement whereby the U.S. would invade Iraq and divide the country. The UK would take the south, the rest would go to the U.S. They were negotiating what Turkey required in exchange for allowing an attack from Turkish soil. The Turks were very supportive, but wanted a three-part division of Iraq to include their own occupation of the Kurdish region. The three Defense Department officials said that would be more than they could agree to, but they continued daily communications to the ambassador and his defense attaché in an attempt to convince them to help.

 

Meanwhile Scowcroft, who was also the chairman of the American Turkish Council, Baker, Richard Armitage, and Grossman began negotiating separately for a possible Turkish protectorate. Nothing was decided, and then 9/11 took place.

 

Scowcroft was all for invading Iraq in 2001 and even wrote a paper for the Pentagon explaining why the Turkish northern front would be essential. I know Scowcroft came off as a hero to some for saying he was against the war, but he was very much for it until his client’s conditions were not met by the Bush administration.

 

GIRALDI: Armitage was deputy secretary of state at the time Scowcroft and Baker were running their own consulting firms that were doing business with Turkey. Grossman had just become undersecretary, third in the State hierarchy behind Armitage.

 

You’ve previouly alluded to efforts by Grossman, as well as high-ranking officials at the Pentagon, to place Ph.D. students. Can you describe that in more detail?

 

EDMONDS: The seeding operation started before Marc Grossman arrived at the State Department. The Turkish agents had a network of Turkish professors in various universities with access to government information. Their top source was a Turkish-born professor of nuclear physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was useful because MIT would place a bunch of Ph.D. or graduate-level students in various nuclear facilities like Sandia or Los Alamos, and some of them were able to work for the Air Force. He would provide the list of Ph.D. students who should get these positions. In some cases, the Turkish military attaché would ask that certain students be placed in important positions. And they were not necessarily all Turkish, but the ones they selected had struck deals with the Turkish agents to provide information in return for money. If for some reason they had difficulty getting a secuity clearance, Grossman would ensure that the State Department would arrange to clear them.

 

In exchange for the information that these students would provide, they would be paid $4,000 or $5,000. And the information that was sold to the two Saudis in Detroit went for something like $350,000 or $400,000.

 

GIRALDI: This corruption wasn’t confined to the State Department and the Pentagon—it infected Congress as well. You’ve named people like former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, now a registered agent of the Turkish government. In your deposition, you describe the process of breaking foreign-originated contributions into small units, $200 or less, so that the source didn’t have to be reported. Was this the primary means of influencing congressmen, or did foreign agents exploit vulnerabilities to get what they wanted using something like blackmail?

 

EDMONDS: In early 1997, because of the information that the FBI was getting on the Turkish diplomatic community, the Justice Department had already started to investigate several Republican congressmen. The number-one congressman involved with the Turkish community, both in terms of providing information and doing favors, was Bob Livingston. Number-two after him was Dan Burton, and then he became number-one until Hastert became the speaker of the House. Bill Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, was briefed on the investigations, and since they were Republicans, she authorized that they be continued.

 

Well, as the FBI developed more information, Tom Lantos was added to this list, and then they got a lot on Douglas Feith and Richard Perle and Marc Grossman. At this point, the Justice Department said they wanted the FBI to only focus on Congress, leaving the executive branch people out of it. But the FBI agents involved wanted to continue pursuing Perle and Feith because the Israeli Embassy was also connected. Then the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted, and everything was placed on the back burner.

 

But some of the agents continued to investigate the congressional connection. In 1999, they wiretapped the congressmen directly. (Prior to that point they were getting all their information secondhand through FISA, as their primary targets were foreigners.) The questionably legal wiretap gave the perfect excuse to the Justice Department. As soon as they found out, they refused permission to monitor the congressmen and Grossman as primary targets. But the inquiry was kept alive in Chicago because the FBI office there was pursuing its own investigation. The epicenter of a lot of the foreign espionage activity was Chicago.

 

GIRALDI: So the investigation stopped in Washington, but continued in Chicago?

 

EDMONDS: Yes, and in 2000, another representative was added to the list, Jan Schakowsky, the Democratic congresswoman from Illinois. Turkish agents started gathering information on her, and they found out that she was bisexual. So a Turkish agent struck up a relationship with her. When Jan Schakowsky’s mother died, the Turkish woman went to the funeral, hoping to exploit her vulnerability. They later were intimate in Schakowsky’s townhouse, which had been set up with recording devices and hidden cameras. They needed Schakowsky and her husband Robert Creamer to perform certain illegal operational facilitations for them in Illinois. They already had Hastert, the mayor, and several other Illinois state senators involved. I don’t know if Congresswoman Schakowsky ever was actually blackmailed or did anything for the Turkish woman.

 

GIRALDI: So we have a pattern of corruption starting with government officials providing information to foreigners and helping them make contact with other Americans who had valuable information. Some of these officials, like Marc Grossman, were receiving money directly. Others were receiving business favors: Pentagon associates like Doug Feith and Richard Perle had interests in Israel and Turkey. The stolen information was being sold, and the money that was being generated was used to corrupt certain congressmen to influence policy and provide still more information—in many cases information related to nuclear technology.

 

EDMONDS: As well as weapons technology, conventional weapons technology, and Pentagon policy-related information.

 

GIRALDI: You also have information on al-Qaeda, specifically al-Qaeda in Central Asia and Bosnia. You were privy to conversations that suggested the CIA was supporting al-Qaeda in central Asia and the Balkans, training people to get money, get weapons, and this contact continued until 9/11…

 

EDMONDS: I don’t know if it was CIA. There were certain forces in the U.S. government who worked with the Turkish paramilitary groups, including Abdullah Çatli’s group, Fethullah Gülen.

 

GIRALDI: Well, that could be either Joint Special Operations Command or CIA.

 

EDMONDS: Maybe in a lot of cases when they said State Department, they meant CIA?

 

GIRALDI: When they said State Department, they probably meant CIA.

 

EDMONDS: Okay. So these conversations, between 1997 and 2001, had to do with a Central Asia operation that involved bin Laden. Not once did anybody use the word “al-Qaeda.” It was always “mujahideen,” always “bin Laden” and, in fact, not “bin Laden” but “bin Ladens” plural. There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them.

 

There were bin Ladens, with the help of Pakistanis or Saudis, under our management. Marc Grossman was leading it, 100 percent, bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back.

 

GIRALDI: Was the U.S. government aware of this circular deal?

 

EDMONDS: 100 percent. A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin.

 

GIRALDI: And, of course, none of this has been investigated. What do you think the chances are that the Obama administration will try to end this criminal activity?

 

EDMONDS: Well, even during Obama’s presidential campaign, I did not buy into his slogan of “change” being promoted by the media and, unfortunately, by the naïve blogosphere. First of all, Obama’s record as a senator, short as it was, spoke clearly. For all those changes that he was promising, he had done nothing. In fact, he had taken the opposite position, whether it was regarding the NSA’s wiretapping or the issue of national-security whistleblowers. We whistleblowers had written to his Senate office. He never responded, even though he was on the relevant committees.

 

As soon as Obama became president, he showed us that the State Secrets Privilege was going to continue to be a tool of choice. It’s an arcane executive privilege to cover up wrongdoing—in many cases, criminal activities. And the Obama administration has not only defended using the State Secrets Privilege, it has been trying to take it even further than the previous terrible administration by maintaining that the U.S. government has sovereign immunity. This is Obama’s change: his administration seems to think it doesn’t even have to invoke state secrets as our leaders are emperors who possess this sovereign immunity. This is not the kind of language that anybody in a democracy would use.

 

The other thing I noticed is how Chicago, with its culture of political corruption, is central to the new administration. When I saw that Obama’s choice of chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel, knowing his relationship with Mayor Richard Daley and with the Hastert crowd, I knew we were not going to see positive changes. Changes possibly, but changes for the worse. It was no coincidence that the Turkish criminal entity’s operation centered on Chicago. "

 

Sibel Edmonds is a former FBI translator and the founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Philip Giraldi is a former CIA officer and The American Conservative’s Deep Background columnist.
The American Conservative welcomes letters to the editor.


http://amconmag.com/article/2009/nov/01/00006/


Friday, September 25, 2009

 

"Obama's Dangerous UN Agenda

Embedded live links within actual article, link here: 

 http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36423

 

 

"Obama’s Dangerous UN Agenda

By: Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, September 25, 2009

"Much commentary about Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations Wednesday has focused on his description of pre-Obama America as a deadbeat, lawless, foot-dragging country that tortures innocent Muslims, or did until his glorious ascension to the right hand of power. The predictable emphasis on the speech’s most offensive aspects overlooks more dangerous points yet: the president placed unilateral nuclear disarmament, the environmentalist agenda, and increased pressure on U.S. allies at the forefront of a globalist agenda, while relegating terrorism to a footnote – one that regards it as a “law enforcement” matter. (Yes, he used those words.)

The “I”s Have It

Obama has been accused of having a messianic view of his presidency. In 41 major presidential speeches before the UN address, Obama made reference to himself nearly 1,200 times, more than twice as often as every member of Congress combined. His UN address was similarly Obama-centric.

To highlight the glimmering hope his presidency embodies, he demonized America, B.B.O. (Before Barack Obama). He noted the international “belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally,” a belief he has made clear in other venues he shares; he said “America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy”;  and he declared the dark “days when America dragged its feet on [climate change] are over” – a less caustic version of his remark Tuesday at the Climate Change Summit that, under a certain unnamed predecessor, America suffered “too many years of inaction and denial.”

He then presented himself as the savior of international relations, touting “the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world.” He hastened to add these “expectations are not about me” but rather are “rooted in hope – the hope that real change is possible, and the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change.”

Obama then equated “the character and cause of my nation,” with “the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months.” During this time, he boasted, he “prohibited… the use of torture by the United States of America,” ordered “the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed,” determined “combat extremism within the rule of law,” joined the UN Human Rights Council, and “paid our bill” to the United Nations.

This leaves the impression the United States was a cheapskate nation that had turned its back on global human rights, and implicitly admits torturing and otherwise conducting a lawless anti-terrorism program. In reality, Gitmo is not closed, as Obama has acknowledged it contains a number of prisoners who can neither be released nor transferred, and he has no plan to deal with them. It is true that the Republican Congress voted to withhold a portion of UN dues twice B.B.O. (in 2001 and 2005) – over President Bush’s strenuous objections. Congress recognized the U.S. pays nearly a quarter of the UN’s budget, while 128 of its 192 member nations pay one percent, and it demanded reforms. This demand was in part motivated by the fact that Cuba, China, and Saudi Arabia sit on the UN Human Rights Council. Upon taking office, Obama paid nearly a billion dollars to the UN and rejoined the UNHRC – once again, without securing, or even asking for, anything in return. In general, his administration’s view is best elucidated by Susan Rice, who said “others will likely shoulder a greater share of the global burden if the United States leads by example, acknowledges mistakes…and treats others with respect.” Like generations of leftists, the Obama administration believes the U.S. is guilty of straining international relations for years, and our collective guilt explains the world's “reflexive anti-Americanism,” which can now be put to an end because of…him. He does not believe, as did John Bolton, that the UN has been too accommodating to terrorism.

And his “counterterrorism” proposal reflects it.

Fighting Terrorism: A “Law Enforcement” Matter

The anti-terrorism portion of his speech took exactly one, excessively fuzzy paragraph. Its most specific proposal declared, “America will forge lasting partnerships to target terrorists, share intelligence, and coordinate law enforcement and protect our people.” Obama let the cat out of the bag; he shares John Kerry’s view that counterterrorism is “primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation.” This may account for his recent, public signs of faltering in Afghanistan. Although he campaigned on a promise to bomb Pakistan – if necessary, without Islamabad’s approval – in order to kill Osama bin Laden, he now speaks of returning to the law enforcement approach of the Clinton years that brought on the bombing of two U.S. embassies, the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, and finally 9/11.

Against the backdrop of his public vacillation on Afghanistan, he insisted he “will never waver in our efforts to stand up for the right of people everywhere to determine their own destiny.” Later that evening, he was followed at the podium by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who jailed, beat, and “tried” Iranian protesters, even killing the nine-year-old son of a political enemy, with little more than a belated whimper from Obama. And although Poland and the Czech Republic had determined they wanted missile defense, he abandoned a long-negotiated U.S. agreement granting their request.

Similarly, when he turned to Iran and North Korea – all too briefly – he insisted the UN “demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise.” China has obstinately blocked him, and Russia is actively aiding Tehran’s nuclear program. Moreover, Obama became the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party precisely for counseling international law be disregarded when it came to enforcing more than a dozen resolutions about Saddam Hussein. But he showed a great deal more relish for other UN resolutions.

Mideastern Pre-“Occupation”

By far the biggest applause lines of his speech were his emphasis “that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements” and a vow to end “the occupation that began in 1967.” (Conversely, he received no applause when he described U.S. actions to combat AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, polio, H1N1, and global economic squalor.) He insisted, “the time has come to re-launch negotiations without preconditions that address the permanent status issues:  security for Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem.”

Israeli President Binyamin Netanyahu has made it known returning to the pre-1967 borders is a non-starter.  So did Ariel Sharon. Even Ehud Olmert would not allow an unmitigated return to the old territory, because the 1967 borders are regarded as indefensible. Similarly, granting the “right of return” to all Palestinian refugees in UNRWA camps – most of whom never set foot in Israel – would end Israel’s history as a Jewish state and will never be accepted in Tel Aviv. Aside from Honduras, Israel is the lone nation the Obama administration has pressured; all others receive an "open hand" of friendship.

Obama believes Israel, like the United States, must “lead by example,” giving its enemies a little more each time, in the hopes of securing their approval. In the Left’s world, one’s enemies exist only because they feel frightened or endangered. This outlook is reflected in Obama's anti-nuclear posture.

“You Can’t Hug with Nuclear Arms”

On Thursday, Obama chaired a meeting of UN Security Council, dedicated to nuclear disarmament, which produced a new (and meaningless) resolution to move toward a world without nuclear weapons. He reaffirmed Wednesday, “we must stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and seek the goal of a world without them.” To this end, he announced the ongoing U.S.-Russian missile reduction negotiations that began this week, hoped to end to the production of fissile nuclear material, and pledged to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), dispatching Hillary Clinton as a representative to its members’ conference.

Such a view is hardly new. In April, Obama told an audience in Prague, “the United States will take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.” (One sentence later, he said, “Make no mistake: As long as these weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies – including the Czech Republic.”)

Although Obama may seek a “world” free of nuclear weapons – the Pollyanna hope of the Left and the self-interested hope of the Soviets since the 1960s – he can control policy only in the United States. As I noted last week, his motivation behind scrapping the long-range missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic was likely to encourage Russia to make deep cuts in its nuclear arsenal. The Guardian has since reported, “The abandonment of the US missile defence [sic.] already appears to have spurred arms control talks.” Russian “leader” Dmitry Medvedev said it was probable Russia and the United States would reduce their deployed warheads to 1,500 each by year’s end. To further “spur” negotiations, Obama rejected the Pentagon’s initial Nuclear Posture Review – its overview of how many warheads could be destroyed – on the grounds the Defense Department had not sufficiently decimated U.S. defenses. An administration official told the media, “Obama is now driving this process. He is saying these are the president's weapons, and he wants to look again at the doctrine and their role.” He and his advisers, most notably Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher, share the view that the United States must demonstrate sincerity by exposing itself to increased danger.

The CTBT would further erode our national defense. Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation wrote, “Once the CTBT is in force, the United States will be unable to maintain a safe, reliable, and effective nuclear arsenal.” The “ban” on fissile nuclear material also produces problems. Obama has repeatedly affirmed the right of every rogue nation, including Iran, to possess “civilian” nuclear reactors; unfortunately, this is precisely the cover North Korea used to create multiple warheads. Henry Sokolski notes another conundrum: “The French are now arguing that the only way to get such a ban going is to bribe China (which has not signed) by selling it a nuclear fuel plant capable of making 1,000 crude bombs’ worth of plutonium a year.” 

Declaring a U.S. respite on nuclear production, ending nuclear testing with the attendant deterioration of existing warheads, and making a dramatic “goodwill” reduction of our weapons will entice other states to try to catch up to our diminishing levels. If they can come close to matching our lowered arsenal, they will become nuclear superpowers by default. The eradication of our stockpiles, which Obama and company seek, would leave America and the West vulnerable to nuclear blackmail by any state that can produce even one nuclear device – the more so if missile defense systems are abandoned.

This is the long-range security strategy at the heart of his foreign policy. But another policy guides him yet more strongly.

The Environment: “The Top of our Diplomatic Agenda”

Fighting terrorism is now passé. Global warming is seen as a much graver threat to the world’s survival. In recognition of this fact, Obama told the Climate Change Summit Tuesday, “we have put climate at the top of our diplomatic agenda when it comes to our relationships with countries as varied as China and Brazil; India and Mexico; from the continent of Africa to the continent of Europe.”

That he has. Upon taking office, Obama created the post Special Envoy for Climate Change within the State Department, appointing Todd Stern, a key negotiator of the Kyoto Protocol and mostly recently a senior follow at the Soros-funded Center for American Progress. Kyoto would have crippled the U.S. economy, costing an estimated $100-400 billion in productivity over ten years and increasing the cost of electricity by as much as 80 percent.

Obama’s shift in focus has been felt by every delegation visiting China. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi once had an outstanding record on Chinese human rights. When she visited Beijing this summer, she made token statements on human rights but said her “focus was on climate change,” insisting, “protecting the environment is a human rights issue.” Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Ed Markey noted Madam Speaker’s strong role in emphasizing the administration’s overriding concern.

Obama alluded to it himself in the most dire part of his speech – predictably, not about terrorism or the likelihood of Iran or North Korea obtaining a nuclear weapon. Obama gave a mini-apocalyptic sermon:

If we continue down our current course, every member of this Assembly will see irreversible changes within their borders.  Our efforts to end conflicts will be eclipsed by wars over refugees and resources.  Development will be devastated by drought and famine.  Land that human beings have lived on for millennia will disappear.  Future generations will look back and wonder why we refused to act; why we failed to pass on – why we failed to pass on an environment that was worthy of our inheritance.

The trouble, he believed, is that the UN “struggles to enforce its will,” another common statement of globalists. In Prague, he announced, “All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime.” 

Holdren’s Influence?

Both his apocalypticism and his globalism echo Science Czar John Holdren. Holdren confirmed during his Senate confirmation hearings in February that “carbon dioxide-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020,”  and dire predictions about violent competition for resources are a longtime Holdren refrain. Other outlets that picked up my report on Ecoscience ignored another wrinkle in the story: Holdren has long called for planetary disarmament. As recently as January 2008, Holdren told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) the world needs “a universal prohibition on nuclear weapons, coupled with means to ensure confidence in compliance.” In Ecoscience Holdren called for “a comprehensive Planetary Regime” to control all natural resources and determine appropriate population levels to bring this about. The United Nations was his intended agent.

Barack Obama’s UN speech advanced a doctrinaire left-wing foreign policy that will hamstring American defense, further sideline the economy, and leave the nation relying on “law enforcement” to chase down terrorists after the fact. His anti-American statements were offensive, but his substantive proposals could do far more damage."

Ben Johnson is Managing Editor of FrontPage Magazine

http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36423


Thursday, September 24, 2009

 

Cartoon

Wizard of Id


Thursday, September 24, 2009

 

"We the Rats, We the Children

Definitely worth the read, this is good!!! 

_________

"We the Rats, We the Children


By Max Borders : 15 Sep 2009
Source TCS Daily

"We aren't rats. Nor are we children. But Congress and the Obama Administration seem to think so. From Cash-for-Clunkers to the idea that all Americans should be forced to buy health insurance, our leaders are moving away from stewardship of the Constitution to a rewards-and-punishments government. "Stimulus and response" meets "hope and change". It's for your own good. But the idea that they can subsidize and tax their way to utopia has its roots in a discredited theory from early 20th Century—the psychology of B. F. Skinner.

The Skinnerian approach to government is actually based on an economic truth: people respond to incentives. If you tax some activity, you'll get less of it. If you subsidize some activity, you'll get more of it. "The rest is just commentary," adds economist Steven Landsburg. So, what's so bad about prods and prizes by the state? It's a question of the activity you're rewarding and with whose money. Maybe more importantly, though, three troubling issues emerge: 1) Government officials are starting to view the American as an automaton to be manipulated with his own tax dollars; 2) Perverse effects follow any incentive scheme; and 3) Our government has a laundry list of legal activities it has determined to be good or bad—all within their framework of utopia.

Cass Sunstein, President Obama's regulation commissar-in-waiting is known among wonks for his "libertarian paternalism." The idea is that if people could understand what is good for them, they would choose it. Because they are biased by old ways of doing things -- or otherwise in the grip of irrationality - they often don't choose what's best. What they need, according to Sunstein, is a "nudge" from an enlightened state bureaucrat.

"Libertarian paternalists," writes Sunstein, "should attempt to steer people's choices in welfare-promoting directions without eliminating freedom of choice." Now that Sunstein is poised to be a czar, think he'll get to do some nudging? Food pellet, anyone? How about $4,500 for your Cutlass Supreme? Needless to say, real libertarians think libertarian paternalism is an oxymoron. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be free than to be considered "rational" by someone else's standards.

What is paternalism, exactly? Some people think of themselves as being like parents and others as being like children. The word paternalism comes from the Latin pater—father. The following captures it: Most people are just not smart enough to make good choices for themselves. But a certain few are capable of making decisions for everyone. These elites are ordained. They possess the wisdom to implement controls that will protect us in our health, safety and longevity. To any paternalist, I say: 'I'll take the counsel, but not the coercion.' And that's just the problem with Sunstein's approach and Obama's Administration overall. When it comes down to it, it's still about coercing people—even if a spoonful of sugar helps the coercion go down.

What about unintended consequences? Whether it's propping up zombie industries like wind-power or devastating the third-world poor with agricultural subsidies, serious perverse effects follow paternalist policies. High taxes on cigarettes result in dangerous interstate smuggling rings. Government's "nudging" banks to give people easy mortgages resulted in a housing boom and bust followed by recession. Will Cash-for-Clunkers result in people getting into car loans they didn't need or couldn't afford? We'll see. But the list of paternalism's unwanted effects could fill the Library of Congress.

What gets to count as "welfare promoting?" As far as I can tell the answer is a moving target. Ethanol interests say slowing global warming through taxes will promote our welfare (though an army of economists would disagree). Elites in the Northeast think a single-payer health care system will be good for our welfare, despite people waiting in pain across their Northern border. The "libertarian paternalist" alternative to single-payer healthcare is to nudge our way to socialized medicine via the public option.

The problem with the Skinnerian outlook is not that incentives don't work. They do. The problem is that in a pluralistic society, we'll never agree about what "welfare" people ought to be nudged towards. We have different ideas about what the good society is and that's what makes us human. When elites start thinking of us as being like rats or children to be prodded toward this social goal or that, it's the beginning of the end of our Republic. Smart people will turn away from entrepreneurship and start investing in getting elite status. The rest of us will have eventually to stand by in our cages, pressing a bar in hopes that a morsel pops out. That's an America beyond freedom and dignity."


http://www.techcentralstation.com/


Thursday, September 24, 2009

 

YouTube - (No background music) School kids taught to praise Obama

I could launch into a diatribe but will let you decide for yourself.

____________


Wednesday, September 23, 2009

 

"Federal Reserve Admits Hiding Gold Swap Arrangements, GATA Says

Believe I remarked sometime back there was manipulation holding down the price of gold.  Gut instinct was my reasoning .... nice to be vindicated.

_________

 

"Federal Reserve Admits Hiding Gold Swap Arrangements, GATA Says

  • Press Release
  • Source: Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
  • On Wednesday September 23, 2009, 9:30 am EDT     
    Source Yahoo News

"MANCHESTER, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Federal Reserve System has disclosed to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. that it has gold swap arrangements with foreign banks that it does not want the public to know about.

The disclosure, GATA says, contradicts denials provided by the Fed to GATA in 2001 and suggests that the Fed is indeed very much involved in the surreptitious international central bank manipulation of the gold price particularly and the currency markets generally.

The Fed's disclosure came this week in a letter to GATA's Washington-area lawyer, William J. Olson of Vienna, Virginia (http://www.lawandfreedom.com/ ), denying GATA's administrative appeal of a freedom-of-information request to the Fed for information about gold swaps, transactions in which monetary gold is temporarily exchanged between central banks or between central banks and bullion banks. (See the International Monetary Fund's treatise on gold swaps here: http://www.imf.org/external/bopage/pdf/99-10.pdf. )

The letter, dated September 17 and written by Federal Reserve Board member Kevin M. Warsh (see http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/bios/board/warsh.htm ), formerly a member of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, detailed the Fed's position that the gold swap records sought by GATA are exempt from disclosure under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

Warsh wrote in part: "In connection with your appeal, I have confirmed that the information withheld under Exemption 4 consists of confidential commercial or financial information relating to the operations of the Federal Reserve Banks that was obtained within the meaning of Exemption 4. This includes information relating to swap arrangements with foreign banks on behalf of the Federal Reserve System and is not the type of information that is customarily disclosed to the public. This information was properly withheld from you."

When, in 2001, GATA discovered a reference to gold swaps in the minutes of the January 31-February 1, 1995, meeting of the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee and pressed the Fed, through two U.S. senators, for an explanation, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan denied that the Fed was involved in gold swaps in any way. Greenspan also produced a memorandum written by the Fed official who had been quoted about gold swaps in the FOMC minutes, FOMC General Counsel J. Virgil Mattingly, in which Mattingly denied making any such comments. (See http://www.gata.org/node/1181. )

The Fed's September 17 letter to GATA confirming that the Fed has gold swap arrangements can be found here:

http://www.gata.org/files/GATAFedResponse-09-17-2009.pdf

While the letter, GATA says, is far from the first official admission of central bank scheming to suppress the price of gold (for documentation of some of these admissions, see http://www.gata.org/node/6242  and http://www.gata.org/node/7096 ), it comes at a sensitive time in the currency and gold markets. The U.S. dollar is showing unprecedented weakness, the gold price is showing unprecedented strength, Western European central banks appear to be withdrawing from gold sales and leasing, and the International Monetary Fund is being pressed to take the lead in the gold price suppression scheme by selling gold from its own supposed reserves in the guise of providing financial support for poor nations.

GATA will seek to bring a lawsuit in federal court to appeal the Fed's denial of our freedom-of-information request. While this will require many thousands of dollars, the Fed's admission that it aims to conceal documentation of its gold swap arrangements establishes that such a lawsuit would have a distinct target and not be just a fishing expedition.

In pursuit of such a lawsuit and its general objective of liberating the precious metals markets and making them fair and transparent, GATA again asks for financial support from the public and from all gold and silver mining companies that are not at the mercy of market-manipulating governments and banks. GATA is recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a non-profit educational and civil rights organization and contributions to it are federally tax-exempt in the United States. For information on donating to GATA, please visit here:

http://www.gata.org/node/16

People also can help GATA by bringing this information to the attention of financial news organizations and urging them to investigate the Fed's involvement in gold swaps particularly and the gold (and silver) price suppression generally."


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Federal-Reserve-Admits-Hiding-bw-2550373789.html?x=0&.v=1


Wednesday, September 23, 2009

 

"Len Horowitz files pandemic charges against Rockefeller

Interesting if factual .... you decide.

______

"Len Horowitz files pandemic charges against Rockefeller

 

Last Updated on Saturday, 19 September 2009 11:53 Saturday, 19 September 2009 10:01

News - Latest News

Source TheFluCase.com

LOS ANGELES, CA -- Drug-industry investigators have uncovered documents exposing an international drug ring, operating from New York City, is behind the H1N1 swine flu fright and vaccination preparations.

Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz and Sherri Kane, an investigative journalist, have released evidence in legal affidavits that leaders of a private global biotechnology "trust" are behind the pandemic flu, including its origin and alleged prevention via vaccinations. Their documents, being sent by attorneys to the FBI this week, evidence industrialists are operating a crime ring within the "Partnership for New York City" (PNYC), and are behind the pandemic's creation, media persuasions, vaccination preparations, and health official promotions.

"David Rockefeller's trust, that engages several powerful partners on Wall Street, including media moguls Ruppert Murdock, Morton Zuckerman, Thomas Glocer, and former Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Jerry Speyer, are implicated in advancing global genocide," Dr. Horowitz wrote to FBI directors.

"This 'partnership' controls biotechnology research and development globally. Health commerce internationally is also controlled virtually entirely by this trust that also exercises near complete control over mainstream media to promote/propagandize its products and services for the drug cartel's organized crime. This trust, in essence, makes or breaks medical and natural healing markets, primarily through the mass media companies and propaganda it wields for social engineering and market building," Dr. Horowitz wrote.

Among the revelations from the Horowitz-Kane research are those linking Larry Silverstein of Silverstein Properties, Inc., and the 9-11 terrorist attacks, to the drug cartel's geopolitical, economic, and population reduction activities. Mr. Silverstein, leaser of the World Trade Center who authorized to have Building-7 "pulled" [detonated] is a chief suspect in the "9-11 truth" investigation. Silverstein is currently landlord and co-partner in the biotechnology trust founded by David Rockefeller and implicated by these new discoveries.

Given the unprecedented nature and urgency of these findings, Dr. Horowitz has posted his affidavit for public review on FLUscam.com, hoping wide spread dissemination will prompt governments worldwide to cease mass vaccination preparations to avoid becoming accessories.

"The last time I contacted the FBI I warned them about the impending anthrax attacks one week before the first mailings were announced in the press," Dr. Horowitz recalled. "It took them 6 months to respond. When they did, they made me a suspect in the mailings. This time I am warning the Justice Department a month before the deadliest genocide in history. I'm praying they'll take kindly to my appeal for a PNYC investigation, and Court-ordered injunction, to stop the vaccinations for public protection."

http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=647%3Alen-horowitz-files-pandemic-charges-against-rockefeller&catid=1%3Alatest-news&Itemid=64?=en


Wednesday, September 23, 2009

 

"Pending Litigation: Hawaii Confirms That Obama's Vital Records Have Been Amended.

Well isn't this interesting????????

____________

"Pending Litigation: Hawaii Confirms That Obama's Vital Records Have Been Amended.


http://ralphlosey.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/hawaii.jpg

"I will be assisting one of my readers in filing litigation in Hawaii state circuit court pursuant to her ongoing request for public information denied by Hawaii officials.  (Readers of my blog will recognize her as MissTickly aka TerriK.)

Correspondence sent to TerriK by Hawaii officials indicates that President Obama's vital records have been amended and official records pertaining thereto are maintained by the state of Hawaii.  ....."   

http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/pending-litigation-hawaii-confirms-that-obamas-vital-records-have-been-amended/


Wednesday, September 23, 2009

 

Animal Lovers Only

A friend sent this in email.
___________
Animal Lovers Only
 
The following was found posted very low on a refrigerator door.
 
Dear Dogs and Cats:
 
The dishes with the paw prints are yours and contain your food. The other dishes are mine and contain my food. Placing a paw print in the middle of my plate and food does not stake a claim for becoming your food and dish, nor do I find that aesthetically pleasing.
 
The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack. Racing me to the bottom is not the object. Tripping me doesn't help, because I fall faster than you can run.
 
I cannot buy anything bigger than a king- sized bed. I am very sorry about this. Do not think I will continue sleeping on the couch to ensure your comfort, however. Dogs and cats can actually curl up in a ball when they sleep. It is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other, stretched out to the fullest extent possible. I also know that sticking tails straight out and having tongues hanging out on the other end to maximize space is nothing but sarcasm.
 
For the last time, there is no secret exit from the bathroom!
If, by some miracle, I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it is not necessary to claw, whine, meow, try to turn the knob or get your paw under the edge in an attempt to open the door. I must exit through the same door I entered. Also, I have been using the bathroom for years: canine/feline attendance is not required.
 
The proper order for kissing is:  kiss me first, then go smell the other dog's or cat's butt.  I cannot stress this enough.
 
Finally, in fairness, dear pets, I have posted the following message on the front door:
 
TO ALL NON-PET OWNERS WHO VISIT AND LIKE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT MY PETS:
 
(1)  They live here. You don't.
(2)  If you don't want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture. That's why they call it 'fur'-niture..
(3)  I like my pets a lot better than I like most people.
(4)  To you, they are animals. To me, they are adopted sons/daughters who are short, hairy, walk on all fours and don't speak clearly.
 
Remember, dogs and cats are better than kids because they:
 
(1)   eat less,
(2)   don't ask for money,
(3)   are easier to train,
(4)   normally come when called,
(5)   never ask to drive the car,
(6)   don't smoke or drink,
(7)   don't want to wear my clothes,
(8)   don't have to buy the latest fashions,
(9)   don't need a gazillion dollars for college and
(10) if they get pregnant, you can sell their children!
 
--
Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things...

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

 

Georgia rain totals since Sept 12

Interactive map you can zoom in on specific areas.  Ken Cook, chief meteorologist for WAGA tv said yesterday we are experiencing that once in 100 year flood.

http://www.wunderground.com/radar/radblast.asp?num=1&delay=15&scale=1.00&noclutter=0&ID=FFC&type=NTP&lat=33.94065857&lon=-84.31838989&label=Dunwoody%2C+GA&showstorms=0&showlabels=1&rainsnow=0 


Tuesday, September 22, 2009

 

Chikungunya "Mosquito-borne African virus a new threat to West

"Mosquito-borne African virus a new threat to West
"....... Chikungunya infection causes fever, headache, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain, rash and joint pain. Symptoms can last a few weeks, though some suffers have reported incapacitating joint pain or arthritis lasting months. ........"

http://www.worldbulletin.net//news_detail.php?id=47448

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

 

"UN plans 'shock therapy' for world leaders on environment

"UN plans 'shock therapy' for world leaders on environment

Pared-down summit will force heads of rich states to listen to those of third world in hope of kickstarting radical action.

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
The Observer, Sunday 20 September 2009

The United Nations is planning a form of diplomatic shock therapy for world leaders this week in the hope of injecting badly needed urgency into negotiations for a climate change treaty that, it is now widely acknowledged, are dangerously adrift.

UN chief Ban Ki-Moon and negotiators say that unless they can convert world leaders into committed advocates of radical action, it will be very hard to reach a credible and enforceable agreement to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate change.

As the digital counter ticking off the hours to the Copenhagen summit – which had been supposed to seal the deal on climate change – hit 77 days today, progress at the UN summit in New York is seen as vital. Nearly 100 heads of state and government are to attend the summit, for which a pared-down format has been devised.

"We need these leaders to go outside their usual comfort zones," said one diplomat. "Our sense is that leaders have got a little too cosy and comfortable. They really have to hear from countries that are vulnerable and suffering."

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel peace prize with Al Gore, agreed. Commenting on the leaders attending the G20 summit in Pittsburgh next week, he said: "We need to remind these people about impacts of climate change – the fact that they are inequitable and fall very heavily on some of the poorest people in the world. We are likely to see a large number of failed states if we don't act in time."

The heads of state attending the UN summit are to be stripped of their entourages. Each will be allowed just one aide, generally their country's environment minister, in the sessions.

Instead of set-piece speeches, leaders will be paired off to chair discussion groups. Britain will be with Guyana, Tuvalu with the Netherlands, and Mongolia with the European commission.

The leaders will also lunch with environmental activists and chief executives of corporations who have been pressing their governments for action. At dinner, the leaders of the biggest polluting countries will dine with the leaders of Bangladesh, Kiribati and Costa Rica – which are among the primary victims of climate change.

By the end of the day, the rationale goes, the leaders will be imbued with a new sense of purpose. Leaders of rich countries will have been galvanised to take on the big emissions cuts – 25-40% over the next decade, 80% by 2050 – needed to keep temperatures from rising more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels, the temperature set by science to avoid the most calamitous effects of climate change.

The leaders will also, it is hoped, have some understanding of the threat to poorer countries. And, at the very least, they will have more of a common purpose in tackling the problem. "We need to gather together. We don't want to blame or point fingers at each other," said Yaqoub al-Sanada, counsellor at the Kuwaiti mission to the UN. Kuwait – one of the biggest producers of oil – will co-chair a discussion session with Finland.

The UN is hoping for help from Barack Obama. The US president will speak at the session, and there is anticipation he will deliver a strong signal that America is committed to action. There is growing anxiety for those kinds of reassurances, especially as opposition to Obama's green agenda grows in Congress. "The first question I get any time I meet with anybody is, 'Where's the legislation? How's it going?'," Todd Stern, the State Department's climate change envoy, said. There are also reports that China's president, Hu Jintao, in his first appearance at the UN, will announce new commitments to curb pollution – the kind of signal that will be crucial to boost negotiations in the days leading up to Copenhagen.

"We can get a successful outcome from Copenhagen. It is achievable, but at the moment it's in the balance," said John Ashton, Britain's climate change envoy. "We need to close the gaps."

Those gaps grew over the summer. There is what Ashton called the "ambition gap" – the failure of leaders of the big polluting countries to sign on to the deep emissions cuts needed. Then there is the "finance gap" – the failure of industrialised states to come up with a package on how to compensate poor countries that will suffer the most devastating consequences.

Britain came forward last June with an estimate of £61bn a year by 2020. Negotiators are frustrated that major industrialised states have not set clear figures on how much they are willing to commit, or how they will provide the funding.

Some climate change experts and negotiators have already begun planning a fallback position should the December Copenhagen summit fail to produce a strong enough agreement.

In Washington, Obama administration officials now talk openly about negotiating beyond Copenhagen. "Let's not make that one particular time the be-all and end-all, and say that if it doesn't happen we are doomed," Steven Chu, the energy secretary, told reporters.

Thinktanks are already starting to work on what is being called "Plan B" – scenarios for how the world could come up with an action plan before it is too late. But some are not holding their breath.

"It seems to me that Copenhagen is not the end of this," said Tim Wirth, the president of the UN Foundation, and the man who, in the 1980s, helped to write the first cap-and-trade plan for acid rain. He added: "We are going to have Copenhagens for the rest of our lives."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/20/united-nations-summit-climate-change


Monday, September 21, 2009

 

"Obama Foreign Policy Advisor Calls For US to Shoot Down Israeli Jets

Quoted exactly from Gateway Pundit
___________
"Obama Foreign Policy Advisor Calls For US to Shoot Down Israeli Jets

"Last year Zbigniew Brzezinski, adviser to former US president Jimmy Carter, described the Bush administration's policy of maintaining the option of military action against Iran as "counterproductive."

Now Brzezinski, who advises Obama on foreign policy, is calling for the US to shoot down Israeli jets.
Brzezinski is known to be anti-Israel.
The Weekly Standard Blog reported:
In a little noticed interview with the Daily Beast (presumably little noticed because serious people don't read the Daily Beast), Zbigniew Brzezinski suggests that Barack Obama do more than just refuse to support an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites -- the American president must give the order to shoot down Israeli aircraft as they cross Iraqi airspace:

DB: How aggressive can Obama be in insisting to the Israelis that a military strike might be in America’s worst interest?

Brzezinski: We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?

DB: What if they fly over anyway?

Brzezinski: Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse.
No wonder the Iranian regime is so impressed with Brzezinski."
 
Posted by Gateway Pundit at 9/19/2009 09:22:00 PM 

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/09/obama-foreign-policy-advisor-calls-for.html

Monday, September 21, 2009

 

Attempt to discredit ACORN videographer, James O'Keefe

Am quoting their entire entry as written rather than excerpting it.  Typical response to discredit the messenger rather than refute actions point by point.  However, from contents of O'Keefe and Giles ACORN videos there's precious little someone can defend.

From Powerlineblog.com

________

"Sliming James O'Keefe: A case study

September 20, 2009 Posted by Scott at 11:01 PM
Source Powerlineblog.com

"James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles are the young activists who have blown the lid off the criminal left-wing enterprise known as ACORN. If they were left-wingers exposing some conservative or religious organization, government-funded or not, the mainstream media would have hailed them as heroic whistleblowers, perhaps worthy of a Time cover. Instead, the media are doing their <snip>dest to slime them.

Michael Barone reflects here on how the Washington Post has treated O'Keefe and Giles in the context of the ACORN story:

The Post's Thursday news story (headlined "ACORN to review incidents") helpfully identifies Giles as "the eldest daughter of a conservative Christian minister in Miami." (Questions for the reporter: Does it make any difference that she's the eldest rather than, say, the second eldest? On what basis do you characterize the minister as conservative, and why is that relevant? You characterize the minister as "Christian," but aren't all ministers in the U.S. Christian, or are you just trying to distinguish him from a cabinet minister?).

The Post's Friday story ("The $1,300 mission to fell ACORN") reads as if the reporters were assigned to find out what nefarious right-wing outfit financed their operation and came up empty. They did manage to include two paragraphs on the beliefs on Giles's father, apparently on the theory that it illuminates her motivation. Then it segues to an account by ACORN sources of how the two were thrown out of an ACORN office in Philadelphia when they mentioned 13-year-olds (but not when they mentioned prostitution?). I guess the idea is to discredit Giles and by inference O'Keefe as religious fanatics whose motivations should lead readers to disregard what's on their videos.

More could be said about the second of these two Post stories in particular. The Post implies that there is something to the suggestion that O'Keefe and Giles's work was not done independently: "O'Keefe insists that he and Giles's work was done independently and rejects liberal suggestions that the videos were bankrolled by conservative organizations. He does, however, acknowledge receiving help and advice from a conservative columnist and Web entrepreneur."

But Breitbart's role was limited to publishing the videos and accompanying posts at Big Government, and plotting to publicize them upon publication. Isn't that how publishing works?

More nefariously, the Post implies that Giles and O'Keefe worked with racist motivations:

Though O'Keefe described himself as a progressive radical, not a conservative, he said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos against Republicans.

"Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization," he said. "No one was holding this organization accountable. No one in the media is putting pressure on them. We wanted to do a stunt and see what we could find."

If O'Keefe had said something incendiary about a racial motivation for undertaking his investigation of ACORN, one can be sure that the Post reporters would have quoted it instead of simply larding the context with an imputation of racism. The Post certainly provides no supporting quote.

It appears to me that Post reporters Darryl Fears and Carol D. Leonnig are alone responsible for introducing race to the discussion. Associated Press reporters Sharon Theimer and Pete Yost pick up where the Post left off in this story:

James O'Keefe, one of the two filmmakers, said he went after ACORN because it registers minorities likely to vote against Republicans: "Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization," O'Keefe told The Washington Post. "No one was holding this organization accountable."

But did O'Keefe say any such thing? The Washington Post reporters imply the existence of a statement that is nowhere quoted. The AP takes the cue and puts the words in O'Keefe's mouth. It's quite a racket they've got going here, and someone really should call them on it.

I wrote both Fears and Leonnig this afternoon:

I write for the conservative blog Power Line. I believe you have defamed James O'Keefe, perhaps inadvertently, in these two paragraphs [of their Friday Post article]:

"Though O'Keefe described himself as a progressive radical, not a conservative, he said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos against Republicans.

"'Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization,' he said."

Did O'Keefe say he targets ACORN because its voter drives turn out poor Afriacan American and Latinos against Republicans? Please supply the quote if he did.

I am going to post an item about your story later tonight. I would appreciate your comment before 11:00 pm Eastern time.

As of late this evening, we had not heard from Fears or Leonnig. If we hear back from either of them, we'll let you know.

UPDATE: Reader Gordon Stewart writes: "I'm missing some important context: what did Woodward's father do for a living? Hard to pin down his motivation otherwise. And Bernstein's mom, what was her deal?"

Andrew Breitbart reviews the proceedings of this past week: "At the very least, filmmaker James O'Keefe and actress Hannah Giles deserve a Pulitzer Prize for their expose of deep corruption and unspeakable immorality at the ACORN housing division. But more important, I won't rest until they receive a grant to continue their partisan artistry from the National Endowment for the Arts."

Breitbart concludes: "That's this week's mission." Stay tuned." "

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024561.php


Monday, September 21, 2009

 

"Volcker Launches Bombshell on Wall Street and Washington

Wasn't very aware of current events when Volcker served.  However some of the stuff Volcker's saying seems far more sensible, grounded in reality than the convoluted claptrap both the administration and Fed are forcing upon us ....  which is not even outside the box because the box never existed in the first place. 

Make note of "off balance sheet trading" which means that taxpayers get to pay for their losses but reap none of the profits or benefits when banks make money.  They play, we pick up the tab. 

_________

"Volcker Launches Bombshell on Wall Street and Washington

Posted by Larry Doyle on September 17, 2009 9:31 am 

Source Sense On Cents

"While the insiders on Wall Street and Washington pander about real financial regulatory reform, former Fed chair Paul Volcker yesterday hit ground zero on this hotly debated topic.

The heart of financial regulatory reform is centered on the implementation of leverage by our largest financial institutions. The leverage is exercised in a wide array of activities, both on and off-balance sheet. The capital utilized by the banks in these activities is credit that has not and will not flow directly through to the economy. Why? The banks believe that they will generate a greater return on the capital via proprietary activities rather than facilitating client business and addressing customer needs.

These proprietary activities, housed in balance sheet trading books and also in off-balance sheet SIV’s (structured investment vehicles), provided many nails in our economic coffin. While the Fed has provided the liquidity to refloat the markets (and to a lesser extent the economy), Wall Street banks are fighting hard to maintain as much of their proprietary activities as possible. Washington is largely dancing around the edges of the banks’ balance sheets in proposing financial regulatory reform. Until now. Paul Volcker hits Wall Street hard in promoting the end of the banks’ hedge fund like activities. The Wall Street Journal details Volcker’s bombshell in writing, Volcker Calls for Restricting Banks’ Risk, Trading Activity:

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker on Wednesday said banks should operate in a much less risky fashion, including not making trading bets with their own capital, comments that could provoke intensified debates over the future of financial regulation.

Mr. Volcker, who currently is chairman of the White House’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, suggested banks should be restricted to trading on their client’s behalf instead of making bets with their own money through internal units that often act like hedge funds.

“Extensive participation in the impersonal, transaction-oriented capital market does not seem to me an intrinsic part of commercial banking,” he said in a speech to the Association for Corporate Growth in Los Angeles.

Mr. Volcker’s comments could put him at odds with the Obama administration’s proposal for new financial rules. The White House has called for more oversight of banks’ operations but doesn’t push such strict limits on what they do.

Believe me, the Wall Street lobby is working overtime to delay and dilute the impact of even the shallow regulatory reforms currently proposed by Washington. Volcker’s proposal would serve to dramatically change the very nature of how Wall Street operates. I welcome it on a number of fronts, as it would promote economic activity and financial intermediation, including:

1. prioritize extension of credit to Main Street

2. lessen systemic risk on Wall Street

3. dramatically lessen the incestuous nature of the Wall Street-Washington relationship

4. promote much greater transparency in our financial framework

5. level the playing field on our equity exchanges

6. diminish the propensity for insider trading activity on Wall Street

Mr. Volcker takes on the White House and Congress with his proposal. We know Volcker is no favorite of Larry Summers. Knowing the explosiveness of his proposal, Volcker is not bashful in addressing the discomfort his proposal would create for the Washington insiders who are in Wall Street’s pocket. The WSJ sheds further light on this point:

Asked after his speech if his comments represent a break with the White House’s proposal, he replied: “Nothing I said today should be a surprise” to the administration.

Mr. Volcker said he would appear before Congress next week to discuss his views in more detail. A Treasury Department spokesman declined to comment.

I look forward to Mr. Volcker’s testimony, and I will certainly not decline to comment.

LD"



http://www.senseoncents.com/2009/09/volcker-launches-bombshell-on-wall-street-and-washington/


Saturday, September 19, 2009

 

"CORRUPTION: Credit Suisse's Charter MUST BE REVOKED

Just found this. 

_______

"CORRUPTION: Credit Suisse's Charter MUST BE REVOKED

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1450-CORRUPTION-Credit-Suisses-Charter-MUST-BE-REVOKED.html


Saturday, September 19, 2009

 

YouTube - Swine Flu, Martial law, and RFID Bracelets. Oh my!

This video may be something you want to disregard, or may be another crumb of information.  You decide.

___________

"Swine Flu, Martial law, and RFID Bracelets. Oh my!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DkMUOn6isA
 
Sidebar comment:  Convention in Oklahoma regarding federal plans to implement a bracelet tracking system and suppress travel rights during the coming flu season and the ever spooky H1N1 outbreak. This s*** needs to be stopped! The man speaking is Greg Evensen, a former Kansas state trooper who left his position after learning of the plans for martial law being implemented through FEMA integration with state and local law enforcement agencies.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

 

Poll link ~ "Should the Fed be abolished?

CNBC .... So far 90% says yes.  Dunno how much longer it will remain open for vote.

______

 
Should the Fed be abolished?   

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32881898

Friday, September 18, 2009

 

Youtube - Outrage: Tying It All Together

For those of us who appreciate plain talk  ......  if you can't take plain talk don't click the link.

___________

"OUTRAGE: TYING IT ALL TOGETHER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYqCm_D7pRE


Friday, September 18, 2009

 

"Hi-Ho, the Derry-O

My question is why not dispatch one of the White Houe chef's assistants to the market for dinner ingredients?
______________
"Hi-Ho, the Derry-O

By Dana Milbank
Friday, September 18, 2009

Source Washington Post

"Let's say you're preparing dinner and you realize with dismay that you don't have any certified organic Tuscan kale. What to do?

Here's how Michelle Obama handled this very predicament Thursday afternoon:

The Secret Service and the D.C. police brought in three dozen vehicles and shut down H Street, Vermont Avenue, two lanes of I Street and an entrance to the McPherson Square Metro station. They swept the area, in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs, with bomb-sniffing dogs and installed magnetometers in the middle of the street, put up barricades to keep pedestrians out, and took positions with binoculars atop trucks. Though the produce stand was only a block or so from the White House, the first lady hopped into her armored limousine and pulled into the market amid the wail of sirens.

Then, and only then, could Obama purchase her leafy greens. "Now it's time to buy some food," she told several hundred people who came to watch. "Let's shop!"

Cowbells were rung. Somebody put a lei of marigolds around Obama's neck. The first lady picked up a straw basket and headed for the "Farm at Sunnyside" tent, where she loaded up with organic Asian pears, cherry tomatoes, multicolored potatoes, free-range eggs and, yes, two bunches of Tuscan kale. She left the produce with an aide, who paid the cashier as Obama made her way back to the limousine.

There's nothing like the simple pleasures of a farm stand to return us to our agrarian roots.

The first lady had encouraged Freshfarm Markets, the group that runs popular farmers markets in Dupont Circle and elsewhere, to set up near the White House, and she helped get the approvals to shut down Vermont Avenue during rush hour on Thursdays. But the result was quite the opposite of a quaint farmers market. Considering all the logistics, each tomato she purchased had a carbon footprint of several tons.

The promotion of organic and locally grown food, though an admirable cause, is a risky one for the Obamas, because there's a fine line between promoting healthful eating and sounding like a snob. The president, when he was a candidate in 2007, got in trouble in Iowa when he asked a crowd, "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" Iowans didn't have a Whole Foods.

For that reason, it's probably just as well that the first lady didn't stop by the Endless Summer Harvest tent yesterday. The Virginia farm had a sign offering "tender baby arugula" -- hydroponically grown, pesticide free -- and $5 for four ounces, which is $20 a pound.

Obama, in her brief speech to the vendors and patrons, handled the affordability issue by pointing out that people who pay with food stamps would get double the coupon value at the market. Even then, though, it's hard to imagine somebody using food stamps to buy what the market offered: $19 bison steak from Gunpowder Bison, organic dandelion greens for $12 per pound from Blueberry Hill Vegetables, the Piedmont Reserve cheese from Everson Dairy at $29 a pound. Rounding out the potential shopping cart: $4 for a piece of "walnut dacquoise" from the Praline Bakery, $9 for a jumbo crab cake at Chris's Marketplace, $8 for a loaf of cranberry-walnut bread and $32 for a bolt of yarn.

The first lady said the market would particularly appeal to federal employees in nearby buildings to "pick up some good stuff for dinner." Yet even they might think twice about spending $3 for a pint of potatoes when potatoes are on sale for 40 cents a pound at Giant. They could get nearly five dozen eggs at Giant for the $5 Obama spent for her dozen.

But whatever the socioeconomics, there can be no doubt that Obama brought some serious attention to her cause. Hundreds of people crowded the market entrance on I Street as police directed pedestrians to alternative subway entrances. Hundreds braved a light rain and gave a hearty cheer when Obama and her entourage took the stage. "I can't imagine there's been a day in the history of our country when people have been more excited about farmers markets," Mayor Adrian Fenty, Obama's warm-up act, told the crowd.

The first lady, in gray slacks and blue sweater, marveled that the people were "so pumped up" despite the rain. "I have never seen so many people so excited about fruits and vegetables!" she said. (Must be the tender baby arugula.)

She spoke of the global reach of her cause: "The first thing world leaders, prime ministers, kings, queens ask me about is the White House garden. And then they ask about Bo."

She spoke of the fuel fed to the world's most powerful man: "I've learned that when my family eats fresh food, healthy food, that it really affects how we feel, how we get through the day . . . whether there's a Cabinet meeting or whether we're just walking the dog."

And she spoke of her own culinary efforts: "There are times when putting together a healthy meal is harder than you might imagine."

Particularly when it involves a soundstage, an interpreter for the deaf, three TV satellite trucks and the closing of part of downtown Washington."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/17/AR2009091703679_pf.html


Friday, September 18, 2009

 

"Ingredients Found in Spermicides, Cleaners, and Cosmetics along with Thimerosal, and Squalene Prese

Make up your own mind if any of this information is useful to you.

______

"Ingredients Found in Spermicides, Cleaners, and Cosmetics along with Thimerosal, and Squalene Present in Experimental H1N1 Vaccine

Jeffry John Aufderheide
VacTRUTH
09/11/09

(*** EDITORS NOTE: THIS JUST IN, FDA APPROVES SWINE VACCINE PRIOR TO CHILDREN SAFETY STUDY BEGINNING!!!! SEE ARTICLE HERE. )

See for yourself the study presented at the end of article. Please spread the word and make this go viral… no pun intended. Kindly reference and link to VacTRUTH!

(vactruth.com)  Trials for the experimental H1N1 Swine flu vaccine commence Tuesday, September 15th in Thornton, Colorado. Novartis, a bio-pharmaceutical company that manufactures the vaccine,  is recommending that children participating in the trial receive two doses of an experimental vaccine which contain ingredients found in spermicides, cleaners, and cosmetics along with thimerosal and squalene (MF59). Everyone should have a sense of concern as the only safety checks for these children are a few blood draws and follow-up phone calls. No neurological testing. No kidding.

Official opinions from federal agencies, such as the CDC, insist that the new vaccine will be safe and effective. Experts say we can trust the new H1N1 experimental vaccine because the technology used to create the vaccine is time tested. Experts argue that the only variable changing from the ‘normal’ flu vaccine and the H1N1 experimental vaccine is the novel A/H1N1 antigen. In other words, the same vaccine ‘technology’ is used but with the new virus.

However, this is the furthest thing from the actual TRUTH. As will be demonstrated, the following information was obtained through enrolling a family member into the study to gain an understanding as to what the ingredients would be.  After finding out the the information I am about to share, enrollment in this trial has been canceled.

SETTING THE STAGE ON SAFETY AND SQUALENE (MF59)

I met with the research coordinator for the study along with Dr. Melamed, an immunologist conducting the study. Dr. Melamed altruistically shared his knowledge answering questions concerning immunology and the technology behind the vaccine while remaining evasive on questions of what was in the vaccine and legal ramifications if harm was done. Dr. Melamed reassured me several times that the experimental H1N1 vaccine was created just like past vaccines and that the technology was well established.

Requests for package inserts for the ingredients of the experimental H1N1 vaccine were denied on the grounds that this was a study and that information is privileged. However, we can still piece together some of the ingredients based upon the parental consent form.

“MF59 is an adjuvant which is used in influenza vaccines licensed for the adults and/or elderly in many countries worldwide, but it is not contained in any vaccines currently approved in the United States.” (page 2)

Isn’t it interesting that the study states it is licensed for adults and elderly? This study is designed for children between the ages of 3 and 8 and they plan on shooting up newborns and pregnant women with this stuff? Buyer beware.

Here is what the World Association for Vaccine Education had to say about Squalene (MF59):

Squalene:C30H50 an Adjuvant

 

Too dangerous for human use, Squalene is not licensed for use in the United States.  Oil adjuvants like squalene have been ordinarily used to inflict diseases in animals – for experimentation and study.  According to anthrax vaccine expert Gary Matsumoto and other reliable sources, the US military used an unlicensed, experimental anthrax vaccination laced with squalene, with disastrous consequences, including Gulf War Sydrome. Chemical descriptions:
Unites States National Library of Medicine: PubChem
http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?cid=638072
Toxicity:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed&term=%22Squalene%2ftoxicity%22[Mesh%20Terms%3anoexp

Adverse effects:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed&term=%22Squalene%2fadverse%20effects%22[Mesh%20Terms%3anoexpMust read:
Matsumoto, Gary.  Vaccine A; The Covert Government Experiment That's Killing Our Soldiers – and Why GI's Are Only the First Victims. Basic Books, 2004.

Present in these vaccines:
Anthrax (experimental, used on military personnel)

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny also elaborates on the deleterious effects of the Squalene Adjuvant in a 2006 article entitled, "FLU SHOTS AND THE NEW ADJUVANTS: BEWARE!" and can be found in its entirety here. An excerpt from Dr. Tenpenny's article can give a better appreciation and understanding of what squalene is capable of in the body...

"On first blush, squalene seems like a good choice for an adjuvant. Manufactured naturally in the liver, squalene is a precursor for cholesterol. In addition, squalene can be purchased at health food stores in its more commonly known form, “shark liver oil.” However, ingested squalene has a completely different effect on the body than injected squalene. When molecules of squalene enter the body through an injection, even at concentrations as small as 10 to 20 parts per billion, it can lead to self-destructive immune responses, such as autoimmune arthritis and lupus.

Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain this reaction. Metabolically, squalene stimulates an immune response excessively and nonspecifically. More than two dozen peer-reviewed scientific papers from ten different laboratories throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia have been published documenting the development of autoimmune disease in animals subjected to squalene-based adjuvants. A convincing proposal for why this occurs includes the concept of “molecular mimicry” in which an antibody created against the squalene in MF59 can cross react with the body’s squalene on the surface of human cells. The destruction of the body’s own squalene can lead to debilitating autoimmune and central nervous system diseases."

“Carcinogenicity, we (Dr. Deborah Novicki of Novartis, another pharmaceutical company) have done no testing for the carcinogenicity of MF59 adjuvant or any of our preventive vaccines. We haven’t done it and we don’t plan to.”

This information is found on a workshop on adjuvants and adjuvanted preventative and therapeutic vaccines hosted by the FDA. This gem of a quote is on page 391.


STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: THIMEROSAL AND SPERMICIDES

Further down we see that, while not mentioned explicitly as ingredients, one can deduce they are in the vaccine via an implied allergic reaction.

"If your child has had an allergic reaction in the past to eggs, egg products, neomycin or polymyxin (antibiotics), sodium ethylmercurothiosalicylate or thimerosal (compounds containing mercury that are frequently used as preservatives in vaccines), beta propriolactone (substance that inactivates a virus), or nonoxynol 9 (substance commonly used in cleaners, cosmetics, and spermicides), you must tell the medical staff..." (pg 8) (emphasis mine)

Thimerosal has been thoroughly exposed as a neurological toxin largely in part and much gratitude to Lyn Redwood who obtained the meeting minutes from a secret meeting between government officials and pharmaceutical companies discussing the effects of the mercury additive. The document is called the Simpsonwood document and details exclusively the neurological harm thimerosal causes in children. Dr. Russell Blaylock has a commentary on the document here or read the meeting minutes yourself here.

“the number of dose related relationships [between mercury and autism] are linear and statistically significant. You can play with this all you want. They are linear. They are statistically significant.” – Dr. William Weil, American Academy of Pediatrics. Simpsonwood, GA, June 7, 2000

“the issue is that it is impossible, unethical to leave kids unimmunized, so you will never, ever resolve that issue [regarding the impact of mercury].” – Dr. Robert Chen, Chief of Vaccine Safety and Development, Centers For Disease Control, Simpsonwood, GA, June 7, 2000

“Forgive this personal comment, but I got called out at eight o’clock for an emergency call and my daughter-in-law delivered a son by c-section. Our first male in the line of the next generation and I do not want that grandson to get a Thimerosal containing vaccine until we know better what is going on. It will probably take a long time. In the meantime, and I know there are probably implications for this internationally, but in the meanwhile I think I want that grandson to only be given Thimerosal-free vaccines.” – Dr. Robert Johnson, Immunologist, University of Colorado, Simpsonwood, GA, June 7, 2000

“But there is now the point at which the research results have to be handled, and even if this committee decides that there is no association and that information gets out, the work has been done and through the freedom of information that will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group. And I am very concerned about that as I suspect that it is already too late to do anything regardless of any professional body and what they say…My mandate as I sit here in this group is to make sure at the end of the day that 100,000,000 are immunized with DTP, Hepatitis B and if possible Hib, this year, next year and for many years to come, and that will have to be with thimerosal containing vaccines unless a miracle occurs and an alternative is found quickly and is tried and found to be safe.” – Dr. John Clements, World Health Organization, Simpsonwood, GA, June 7, 2000

One can only wonder the harmful effects nonoxynol 9 could bring. I could find no past flu vaccine that contained this ingredient nor study showing it is safe to inject into humans.

At this point, it must be said. According to the CDC’s vaccine schedule, children now receive 36 vaccines prior to going into kindergarten. This fall season will add 4 additional vaccines to this total for a grand total of 40!? And we’re not even getting warmed up…

POSSIBLE RISKS AND SIDE EFFECTS

By far the most entertaining part of the meeting with Dr. Melamed is when my eyes bugged out on page 6 and 7 of the study. It was explained to me that the side effects I am about to list off are side effects for all vaccines… and that I had nothing to worry about because this vaccine, this vaccine as you recall was made with ‘established technology’. If that is the case, it is the cause for even MORE concern!!!!

Other side effects that have been reported in clinical studies with other influenza vaccines or have been reported by people who received influenza vaccines may include: [VacTRUTH Editor's Note: Potential Flu Symptoms Highlighted in RED]

Reactions at the site of injection:

  • bruising
  • itchiness
  • rash
  • warmth
  • lump or irritation at the site where the vaccine was given
  • sharp pain in or along nerves or tingling of pins and needles (paresthesia)
  • pain limiting movement of the limb where the vaccine was given
  • infection
  • muscle ache

Other general reactions:

  • hot flashes or flushing
  • chills or shivering
  • dizziness
  • generalized weakness
  • fainting shortly after vaccination
  • nausea
  • vomiting
  • diarrhea
  • loss of appetite
  • abdominal pain
  • back pain
  • lymph node enlargement
  • temporary decrease in the number of blood platelets, which may increase the risk of bleeding
  • bleeding
  • decrease in red blood cells, or anemia, which may make you feel tired.
  • high blood pressure (hypertension)
  • shortness of breath
  • wheezing
  • chest tightness
  • chest pain
  • cough
  • sore throat
  • runny nose
  • “pins and needles” in the skin
  • sweating
  • skin disorders related to allergic reaction (which can lead to rash and skin loss)
  • inflammation of blood vessels (including inflammation of blood vessels that may cause short-term effect on kidneys)
  • confusion
  • headaches similar to those described as migraine
  • seizures associated with fever
  • spinal cord or brain inflammation (encephalomyelitis)
  • paralysis
  • muscle weakness
  • infection
  • life-threatening and/or debilitating disorders of the nervous system

On IMMUNoE’s website, on page three of this flier, it states:

“Q: Could the new H1N1 vaccine cause a person to get the flu?

A: Contrary to popular belief, it is not possible to get flu from a flu vaccine. This is true for the seasonal flu vaccine, as well as the investigational(sic) H1N1 vaccine.”

Are the vaccines the same or not the same? Of course, Dr. Melamed at this point tells me about how people with weakened or no immune system can actually get the disease from a vaccine. I asked what measures were being used to understand what the child’s immune response would be (or even if they had an immune response to indicate it was working PRIOR to the vaccine) and Dr. Melamed said, ‘none’. If they don’t measure before and after, how will they know?

“These other general conditions have occurred in people who received influenza vaccines:

  • autoimmune disorders (these are disorders in which the body’s tissue are attacked by its own immune system and include liver injury or nerve injury)
  • arthritis (joint pain)” (pg 8)

DR ANDREW MOULDEN AND NEUROLOGICAL TESTING

Being a concerned parent one at this point would probably want to know how neurological damage is measured to know if it has occurred in their child. To my surprise, NO NEUROLOGICAL MEASUREMENTS are taken!!! Neurological damage can clearly be seen in past flu vaccines as was the case in the 1975-76 swine flu vaccine.

Dr. Andrew Moulden gives laypersons clinical skills to detect neurological damage occurring after a child or adult is vaccinated. I highly recommend his DVD – Tolerance Lost that is found on his Brainguard website or reading several articles posted exclusively on VacTRUTH which will give you these skills. They are respectively entitled, “Dr. Andrew Moulden (Interview): What You Were Never Told About Vaccines” and “Vaccinations are causing impaired blood flow (Ischemia), Chronic Illness, Disease and Death for us all“. The second article has photographs showing you precisely what is occurring.

In a separate interview with Dr. Moulden, he succinctly states that if neurological measures are never taken, the industry can say that vaccines are safe.

The only measurements taken will be a brief physical exam, measurement of vital signs and body temperature, blood samples to check for immune response, reviewing diaries with staff, and follow up phone calls. (pg4) Monitoring for safety is occurring for 13 months. How can, then, the vaccines be declared for public use with any certainty of safety in less than 2 months?

“It is also of the understanding that eight investigational (sic) vaccine formulations with different amounts of A/H1N1 antigens and with or without adjuvant will be tested for this study.” (pg 2)

OVERVIEW

Let us recap.
1. The vaccine contains squalene (MF59) which has not been tested for causing cancer.
2. The vaccine contains thimerosal, a known culprit in causing autism and neurological deficits.
3. The vaccine curiously contains nonoxynol-9 used in spermicides.
4. The vaccine will likely cause (and spread) the flu.
5. No neurological testing will be done to ensure the vaccine is safe from harmful neurological side effects.
6. Monitoring for safety will last 13 months, well beyond the flu season.

As to my knowledge, this information is the first of its kind validating the ingredients and the intent to use them on the population. Buyer beware of this vaccine as we are likely to see an onslaught of damaged men, women, and children if there are forced vaccines. The ‘new’ experimental vaccine is certainly unlike any other that we, as Americans, have been exposed to in the past.

 

Vaccine Trial Paperwork


VacTRUTH Editor’s Note:

1. Check out Jonathan Elinoff’s new website http://vaccinationeducation.com.

2. Dr. Sherri Tenpenny has a great site to educate yourself on the upcoming flu season at http://pandemicfluonline.com.

3. Dr. Mayer Eisenstein has a free webinar series talking about various topics in vaccinology. Visit his website at http://homefirst.com.

4. Read how pharmaceutical companies plan on superseding parental consent laws to force mass vaccinations here.

5. Visit InTheory.tv for interviews I have done concerning vaccines with Chris Yankowski.



http://vactruth.com/2009/09/11/ingredients-found-in-spermicides-cleaners-and-cosmetics-along-with-thimerosal-and-squalene-present-in-experimental-h1n1-vaccine/


Friday, September 18, 2009

 

"Obama: Legalize illegals to get them health care

The faster they can collapse the US the faster they can implement the North American Union.

_____

"Obama: Legalize illegals to get them health care

"Republicans see a backdoor move toward 'amnesty'

By Stephen Dinan

Source Washington Times

"President Obama said this week that his health care plan won't cover illegal immigrants, but argued that's all the more reason to legalize them and ensure they eventually do get coverage.

He also staked out a position that anyone in the country legally should be covered - a major break with the 1996 welfare reform bill, which limited most federal public assistance programs only to citizens and longtime immigrants.
 
"Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don't simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken," Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. "That's why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else.

Mr. Obama added, "If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all."

Republicans said that amounts to an amnesty, calling it a backdoor effort to make sure current illegal immigrants get health care."

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/18/obama-ties-immigration-to-health-care-battle/?feat=home_cube_position1


Thursday, September 17, 2009

 

"Nano Particles used in Untested H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccines

Wonder if this is what they were talking about as a vaccine adjunct added to this vaccine?

__________

"Nano Particles used in Untested H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccines
Part III: ‘It’s the vaccines, Stupid!

by F. William Engdahl

Global Research, September 13, 2009

"Vaccines which have been approved by the responsible government authorities for vaccination against the alleged H1N1 Influenza A Swine Flu have been found to contain nano particles. Vaccine makers have been experimenting with nanoparticles as a way to “turbo charge” vaccines for several years. Now it has come out that the vaccines approved for use in Germany and other European countries contain nanoparticles in a form that reportedly attacks healthy cells and can be deadly.

 
In 2007 researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) announced in an article in the journal, Nature Biotechnology, that they had developed  a “nanoparticle that can deliver vaccines more effectively, with fewer side effects, and at a fraction of the cost of current vaccine technologies.” The article went on to describe the effects of their breakthrough: “At a mere 25 nanometers, these particles are so tiny that once injected, they flow through the skin’s extracellular matrix, making a beeline to the lymph nodes. Within minutes, they’ve reached a concentration of DCs thousands of times greater than in the skin. The immune response can then be extremely strong and effective.” 1


There is only one small problem with vaccines containing nanoparticles—they can be deadly and at the least cause severe irreparable health damage.


Nanoparticles, promoted in the mass media as the new wonder revolution of science, are particles that have been produced vastly smaller than deadly asbestos particles which caused severe lung damage and death before being outlawed. Particles at a nano size, (nm = 0,000000001 Meter) fuse together with the membranes of our body cell membranes and, according to recent studies in China and Japan, continuously destroy cells once introduced into the body. Once they interact with the body’s cellular structure, they cannot be removed. Modern medicine euphemistically terms the phenomenon, a continuing infectious reaction.


Since the asbestos scandal, it has been established that particles in size a millionth of a meter, because of their enormous attractive force, penetrate all cells, destroying all those they come into contact with. Nanoparticles are far smaller than asbestos fibers.
 

 

Beijing Tests confirm deadly effects on humans

 

The fact that WHO, the European Medicines Evaluation Agency, the German Robert Koch Institute and other health bodies today would permit the population to be injected with largely untested novel vaccines containing nanoparticles says more about the powerful pharma lobby in Euiropean politics than it does about the sanity or moral integrity of the civil servants responsible for health of the general public.

 

The September 2009 issue of the respected European Respiratory Journal, made public on 19 August, and available since 21 August online, contains a peer-reviewed article with the title, “Exposure to nanoparticles is related to pleural effusion, pulmonary fibrosis and granuloma.”

 

The article describes tests carried out in 2008 at the elite Beijing Chaoyang Hospital on seven young women. All seven, ages 18-47 had been exposed to nanoparticles for 5–13 months in their common workplace. All were admitted to the hospital with shortness of breath and pleural effusions, or excessive fluids surrounding the lungs, inhibiting breathing. None of the seven had ever smoked and none were in any special risk group. Doctors carefully tested for every possibility and confirmed that the lung problems had a common origin—regular inhalation of nanoparticles in their factory. They had been exposed to Polyacrylat nanoparticles.

 

The tests confirmed the nanoparticles had set off a “super-meltdown” reaction in the patients. Despite all heroic efforts of doctors, two of the seven died from the lung complications. 2

 

In their report, the scientists concluded something so alarming it is necessary to quote at length:

Immunological tests, examinations of bacteriology, virology and tumour markers, bronchoscopy, internal thoracoscopy and video-assisted thoracic surgery were performed. Surveys of the workplace, clinical observations and examinations of the patients were conducted. Polyacrylate, consisting of nanoparticles, was confirmed in the workplace. Pathological examinations of patients' lung tissue displayed nonspecific pulmonary inflammation, pulmonary fibrosis and foreign-body granulomas of pleura. Using transmission electron microscopy, nanoparticles were observed to lodge in the cytoplasm and caryoplasm of pulmonary epithelial and mesothelial cells, but are also located in the chest fluid. These cases arouse concern that long-term exposure to some nanoparticles without protective measures may be related to serious damage to human lungs.“3

To date Animal studies and in vitro experiments show that nanoparticles can result in lung damage and other toxicity in animals, but no reports on the clinical toxicity in humans due to nanoparticles prior to the Beijing study had been made.

 

The Beijing Chaoyang Hospital study has now conclusively confirmed that nanoparticles cause lung damage and other toxicity in humans as well. At this point in time, when two of the approved vaccines planned to be mass distributed in Germany and elsewhere contain nanoparticles, failure of the relevant responsible public health and epidemiology officials to order an immediate emergency freeze on distribution of any vaccine containing nanoparticles can only be considered tantamount to criminal negligence. Hopefully the responsible authorities will react in time to avert a possible human health catastrophe orders of magnitude worse than the worst case of Swine Flu reported to date.

 

F. William Engdahl is author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. He may be reached via his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

 

 

Notes:

1 EPFL, Bioengineering researchers from the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, have developed and patented a nanoparticle that can deliver vaccines more effectively, with fewer side effects, and at a fraction of the cost of current vaccine technologies, accessed in www.azonano.com/nanotechnology%20news.asp?catid=13.


Song Y, Li X, Du X, Exposure to nanoparticles is related to pleural effusion, pulmonary fibrosis and granuloma , European Respiratory Journal, 9/2009, 34(3): 559-567.  


3 Ibid.


F. William Engdahl is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by F. William Engdahl "



http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15092


Thursday, September 17, 2009

 

"Conservative Woodstock Rocks the Capital

Came in email, definitely worth clidking the link because of photos .... believe I counted 26 very well done large photos.

_________

http://www.lookingattheleft.com/2009/09/conservative-woodstock-rocks-the-capital/

"Conservative Woodstock Rocks the Capital

Patriotic anti-big-government taxpayers blast through the million protester mark
September 12, 2009, Washington, D.C.

Americans flooded D.C. in what people in the crowd were calling “a conservative Woodstock”. Like the liberal Woodstock of the ’60s, thousands were rumored stranded on freeways. Some walked in to DC, ditching their cars and busses. I walked with a 5 deep 6 block long column of protesters from Pennsylvania who had walked miles from where they had to leave their busses. Networks including Fox News continued through the time I’m writing this at 8 p.m. local Eastern time reporting that “tens of thousands” showed up. Whasup with that?  When will we get some reliable reporting out of the corporate media types? UPDATE: Two days later, there is still no conclusive count of the participants. Michelle Malkin’s site goes over the whole issue on a post linked at the end of this article.

Protesters flooded Washington today in what people in the crowd are calling “a conservative Woodstock”. Like the liberal Woodstock of the ’60s, thousands were rumored stranded on freeways. Some walked in to DC, ditching their cars and busses. I walked with a 5 deep 6 block long column of protesters from Pennsylvania who told me they had walked miles from where they were forced by gridlock to leave their busses. Networks including Fox News continued through the time I’m writing this at 8 p.m. local Eastern time reporting that “tens of thousands” showed up. What is up with that?  When will we get some reliable reporting out of the corporate media types? UPDATE: Two days later, there is still no conclusive count of the participants. Michelle Malkin’s site goes over the whole issue on a post linked at the end of this article. ........."

"........Oh, and by the way, these people didn’t leave tons of garbage behind when they left. Actually they left no trash behind at all. ......"

http://www.lookingattheleft.com/2009/09/conservative-woodstock-rocks-the-capital/


Thursday, September 17, 2009

 

Audit the Fed can pass the House, contact your Senators

Please contact your senators and demand this happen.  Both my sentors are sponsors.
_________
Senate contact info:

http://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
__________

"Senate Support For "Audit The Fed" At 25 Co-Sponsors

Source Zero Hedge
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/16/2009 15:57 -0500
"With HR 1207 passage now guaranteed in the House, it is time to focus attention on the Senate. As of last count, there were 25 co-sponsors for Sen. Bernie Sanders' S 604 Bill: "The Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009."

Below is the list of the 25 who have so far voiced with two third of the American people. As of now, there are still 75 who are siding on behalf of Wall Street.

The 25 co-sponsors, 19 republicans and 6 democrats:

John Barrasso [R-WY]

Robert Bennett [R-UT]

Samuel Brownback [R-KS]

Richard Burr [R-NC]

Benjamin Cardin [D-MD]

Saxby Chambliss [R-GA]

Thomas Coburn [R-OK]

John Cornyn [R-TX]

Michael Crapo [R-ID]

Jim DeMint [R-SC]

Byron Dorgan [D-ND]

Russell Feingold [D-WI]

Lindsey Graham [R-SC]

Charles Grassley [R-IA]

Thomas Harkin [D-IA]

Orrin Hatch [R-UT]

Kay Hutchison [R-TX]

James Inhofe [R-OK]

John Isakson [R-GA]

Blanche Lincoln [D-AR]

John McCain [R-AZ]

Lisa Murkowski [R-AK]

James Risch [R-ID]

David Vitter [R-LA]

Jim Webb [D-VA]



http://www.zerohedge.com/article/senate-support-audit-fed-25-co-sponsors

_______

 

"HR 1207 Now Has The Support Of 290 Voters: Guarantees Passage

Source Zero Hedge
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/16/2009 14:11 -0500

"In a critical development for the future of the Federal Reserve, Ron Paul has confirmed that today HR 1207 has garnered the elusive one vote to bring it to a total of 290, or a two-thirds congressional majority. At this point passage of the bill is guaranteed, and hopefully some long, long overdue transparency into the Wall Street-pandering machinations that occur every day within the Fed's four walls at the expense of the American middle class and unmitigated destruction of the US Dollar will finally become a fact."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/hr-1207-now-has-support-290-voters-guarantees-passage


Wednesday, September 16, 2009

 

YouTube - CAUTION: Monetary System Collapse

Take it for what it's worth. 

Kitco gold charts, gold over $1000 and appears to be climbing.   http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

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Market Ticker - Karl Denninger


Wednesday, September 16, 2009

 

"Braying Bernie Strikes Again

"Braying Bernie Strikes Again
September 16, 2009
By Doug McIntosh
Source SteveQuayle.com

"While I miss Alan Greenspan, a.k.a. Mr. Magoo, his replacement Ben Bernanke, or Braying Bernie as I like to call him, is growing on me. Braying Bernie's economic vision is spreading like the fungus from the meteor in that Steven King horror flick, all green and icky and growing real fast. Braying Bernie's version of the World War Two cliche "Praise the Lord and pass the ammo" would be, "Praise the Fed and pass the manure." Gee, what a guy we got in Braying Bernie. Considering Obama the First just renominated this corrupt clown for another term, I guess Obama's new motto should be "Change you can't see." One New World Order puppet is pretty much the same whatever political party they are in.

What got me going was today, September 15th Braying Bernie was quoted as saying "the recession was technically over, but we had a lot of "weakness" ahead." Yeah right. When Braying Bernie says idiotic things like that it reminds me of my old TOP Sergeant, in the 2/68th Armor, when he would gleefully tell us in formation that "WE" had something to do. There was no "WE" in it. It was always us and never him. Braying Bernie is giving us the Federal Reserve version of "let them eat cheap bread." The US economy is not weak. It is withering away into nothingness. Just like our NWO masters have long planned. It is madness, but there is method in this NWO inspired economic collapse. They know exactly what they are doing to achieve their political goal of collapsing the USA into region 10.

The very same day that Braying Bernie is uttering these tidbits of economic wisdom, we are told the stock market rallied due to "positive economic news." Positive economic news being, in Japan, hope about the new government. It seems the stock markets go up on hope and the vapors of economic good humor which the whore press and government leaders give them. The economic version of Vicks Vapo Rub I guess. As to what happened out in the real economic world, two points come to mind. While Braying Bernie was assuring us the recession is over, Blockbuster video will close 960 stores. Further, we were assured that a retail surge of 2.7% happened in August. This being compared to a .2% decline in July. However, if you dig beneath the cow pie crust called economic statistics you will find the maggots writhing happily away. The things I do for you.

This 2.7% "retail surge" was based upon a 10% increase in car sales. In other words, the so called cash for clunkers program spiked sales. Gee what a surprise. I could note that this merely pushed forward car and truck sales from the rest of the year. I could also note than when the retail sales from the next few months are depressed due to this, you won't see that fact shouted from the media housetops like this "retail surge" was. Good economic news is promoted and the true economic reality is ignored. Braying Bernie for instance, who now assures us the recession is over, took a year to say it began. The recession began in December of 2007, although Braying Bernie was saying it wasn't well into the fall of 2008, nearly a year later. So, you will excuse me if I am unimpressed with his opinion. One more thing about this "retail surge", a full 1.6% of the 2.7% was in fact the cash for clunkers effect. The other 1% was the back to school spending. A 1% spending increase in back to school is pathetic. As usual you need to do a year to year comparison, which are all DOWN.

However, the most significant economic story of the day was the crushing reality of the banks and their credit card default rates. Without the direct intervention of the Plunge Protection Team, we would have had gutted banks today. Remember back in the spring when we had the leaked memos about how great bank earnings were going to be? And how this leaked information was used to spark the spring stock market rally? Corrupt and open fraud involving the highest levels of government regulatory agencies, banks and the media. I said so then and I say so now. Today we had the truth come out. This is why Braying Bernie was all over the news today with his "recession is over" spiel. If he hadn't been, the banking sector would have imploded. For the record, the US banking system is insolvent. It has been for months. This fact has been carefully hidden by a corrupt media, banking and regulatory system. Only today the brown stuff hit the fan.

We are now officially told, as in press releases from both Bank of America and Citi, the true extent of their credit card default rates. Over a year ago I warned about the danger of Washington Mutual collapsing. They did. Now I am openly warning you that the entire US banking system is kaput. The reason I say this is simple. Banks have been hammered by sub prime, alt-a and now commercial real estate failures. Now they are being crushed under consumer credit card default rates. Some of the numbers I am going to list below you may not believe. They are absolutely true. Check them out yourself. Remember only a year or two ago bank consumer credit card default rates were in the 1 to 2 % range. The following list should make my case. The numbers are from August of 2009. Bear in mind that both Bank of America and Citigroup were two of the largest pigs sucking at the bailout trough.

Bank of America: 14.54% of consumer credit card loans that will not be repaid, up from 13.81% in July.

CitiGroup: 12.4% of consumer credit card loans that will not be repaid, up from 10.03% in July. City is mostly Mastercard.

JP Morgan Chase: 8.73%, up from 7.92%. Chase is mostly VISA

Discover went from 8.43% to 9.16% and American Express went down from 8.9% to 8.5% since they increased their loan portfolio. In other words, they would have gone up if they hadn't increased the amount loaned.

JP Morgan, Chase and Capital One also noted that late payments increased. This means further defaults are coming down the pike. There was some stock market revenge as City went down almost 7%. IF THE PPT HADN'T BEEN IN MELTDOWN MODE THE US STOCK MARKET WOULD HAVE GONE DOWN 7% TODAY!!!!!

I am telling you openly and plainly. The banking system is insolvent, despite Braying Bernie pumping over 2 TRILLION into it. The reason for that is the derivative exposure is in the TENS/HUNDREDS of TRILLIONS. Consider yourself warned. If you have more than one months living expenses in a bank account, or more money than you can afford to lose, you are a fool. You can believe me, or you can believe Braying Bernie. The choice is yours.



http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/09_Money/08_Mac_Attack/090916.braying.Bernie.html


Wednesday, September 16, 2009

 

"45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul

Sorting doublespeak from facts.

_________________

 

"45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul

By TERRY JONES, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 09/15/2009 07:09 PM ET

View Enlarged Image

"Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors' own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration's claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.

The IBD/TIPP Poll was conducted by mail the past two weeks, with 1,376 practicing physicians chosen randomly throughout the country taking part. Responses are still coming in, and doctors' positions on related topics — including the impact of an overhaul on senior care, medical school applications and drug development — will be covered later in this series.

Major findings included:

Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration's claims that doctors are part of an "unprecedented coalition" supporting a medical overhaul.

It also differs with findings of a poll released Monday by National Public Radio that suggests a "majority of physicians want public and private insurance options," and clashes with media reports such as Tuesday's front-page story in the Los Angeles Times with the headline "Doctors Go For Obama's Reform."

Nowhere in the Times story does it say doctors as a whole back the overhaul. It says only that the AMA — the "association representing the nation's physicians" and what "many still regard as the country's premier lobbying force" — is "lobbying and advertising to win public support for President Obama's sweeping plan."

The AMA, in fact, represents approximately 18% of physicians and has been hit with a number of defections by members opposed to the AMA's support of Democrats' proposed health care overhaul.

Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.

More than 800,000 doctors were practicing in 2006, the government says. Projecting the poll's finding onto that population, 360,000 doctors would consider quitting.

More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered "no" when asked if they believed "the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better."

This response is consistent with critics who complain that the administration and congressional Democrats have yet to explain how, even with the current number of physicians and nurses, they can cover more people and lower the cost at the same time.

The only way, the critics contend, is by rationing care — giving it to some and denying it to others. That cuts against another claim by plan supporters — that care would be better.

IBD/TIPP's finding that many doctors could leave the business suggests that such rationing could be more severe than even critics believe. Rationing is one of the drawbacks associated with government plans in countries such as Canada and the U.K. Stories about growing waiting lists for badly needed care, horror stories of care gone wrong, babies born on sidewalks, and even people dying as a result of care delayed or denied are rife.

In this country, the number of doctors is already lagging population growth.

From 2003 to 2006, the number of active physicians in the U.S. grew by just 0.8% a year, adding a total of 25,700 doctors.

Recent population growth has been 1% a year. Patients, in short, are already being added faster than physicians, creating a medical bottleneck.

The great concern is that, with increased mandates, lower pay and less freedom to practice, doctors could abandon medicine in droves, as the IBD/TIPP Poll suggests. Under the proposed medical overhaul, an additional 47 million people would have to be cared for — an 18% increase in patient loads, without an equivalent increase in doctors. The actual effect could be somewhat less because a significant share of the uninsured already get care.

Even so, the government vows to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from health care spending to pay for reform, which would encourage a flight from the profession.

The U.S. today has just 2.4 physicians per 1,000 population — below the median of 3.1 for members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the official club of wealthy nations.

Adding millions of patients to physicians' caseloads would threaten to overwhelm the system. Medical gatekeepers would have to deny care to large numbers of people. That means care would have to be rationed.

"It's like giving everyone free bus passes, but there are only two buses," Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told the Associated Press.

Hope for a surge in new doctors may be misplaced. A recent study from the Association of American Medical Colleges found steadily declining enrollment in medical schools since 1980.

The study found that, just with current patient demand, the U.S. will have 159,000 fewer doctors than it needs by 2025. Unless corrected, that would make some sort of medical rationing or long waiting lists almost mandatory.

Experiments at the state level show that an overhaul isn't likely to change much.

On Monday came word from the Massachusetts Medical Society — a group representing physicians in a state that has implemented an overhaul similar to that under consideration in Washington — that doctor shortages remain a growing problem.

Its 2009 Physician Workforce Study found that:

The primary care specialties of family medicine and internal medicine are in short supply for a fourth straight year.

The percentage of primary care practices closed to new patients is the highest ever recorded.

Seven of 18 specialties — dermatology, neurology, urology, vascular surgery and (for the first time) obstetrics-gynecology, in addition to family and internal medicine — are in short supply.

Recruitment and retention of physicians remains difficult, especially at community hospitals and with primary care.

A key reason for the doctor shortages, according to the study, is a "lingering poor practice environment in the state."

In 2006, Massachusetts passed its medical overhaul — minus a public option — similar to what's being proposed on a national scale now. It hasn't worked as expected. Costs are higher, with insurance premiums rising 22% faster than in the U.S. as a whole.

"Health spending in Massachusetts is higher than the United States on average and is growing at a faster rate," according to a recent report from the Urban Institute.

Other states with government-run or mandated health insurance systems, including Maine, Tennessee and Hawaii, have been forced to cut back services and coverage.

This experience has been repeated in other countries where a form of nationalized care is common. In particular, many nationalized health systems seem to have trouble finding enough doctors to meet demand.

In Britain, a lack of practicing physicians means the country has had to import thousands of foreign doctors to care for patients in the National Health Service.

"A third of (British) primary care trusts are flying in (general practitioners) from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland" because of a doctor shortage, a recent story in the British Daily Mail noted.

British doctors, demoralized by long hours and burdensome rules, simply refuse to see patients at nights and weekends.

Likewise, Canadian physicians who have to deal with the stringent rules and income limits imposed by that country's national health plan have emigrated in droves to other countries, including the U.S.

Tomorrow: Why most doctors oppose the government's plan — in their own words."



http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=506199


Tuesday, September 15, 2009

 

More ACORN videos on Beck

Quoted from Powerlineblog.com, looks like this expose is on a roll.  Green laugh  ROFL

".....Andrew Breitbart, whose Big Government site broke the videos, said on Twitter this morning, "Tonight's video is astounding. DO NOT MISS BECK." How many more ACORN offices will be revealed as abetters of criminality? At least one more, evidently.  ....."

Beck's on 5 PM EDT my area.

______________

"More to Come

Source Powerlineblog.com
September 15, 2009 Posted by John at 11:27 AM

"The folks at ACORN must be beside themselves. James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles have now released three videos of themselves soliciting, and receiving, help from ACORN employees in committing various criminal acts. Already, their investigation has caused the Senate to vote 83-7 to bar HUD from giving grants to ACORN. Today, House Republicans will go further, introducing legislation to terminate all federal funding to ACORN and its affiliates.

And O'Keefe and Giles aren't done yet. Andrew Breitbart, whose Big Government site broke the videos, said on Twitter this morning, "Tonight's video is astounding. DO NOT MISS BECK." How many more ACORN offices will be revealed as abetters of criminality? At least one more, evidently.

And O'Keefe says, "So, sue me!"



http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024525.php


Tuesday, September 15, 2009

 

"Revolutionary discovery means world may not run out of crude

This article didn't format correctly when posted.  Link is http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/279153

___________

 

"Revolutionary discovery means world may not run out of crude

By Stephanie Dearing.
Source Digital Journal
"A team of scientists based at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden have made a "revolutionary" discovery about how hydrocarbon is formed, learning that animal and plant fossils are not necessary to form crude oil.
The discovery, the scientists say, means that the world will never run out of crude oil. Currently, theory states that crude oil is formed very slowly - over millions of years - from the remains of dead plants and animals. Buried under rock, over time the pressure and temperature of natural earth processes results in the creation of crude oil. But that theory is now old news, as the scientists, led by Vladimir Kutcherov, say they have proven that fossilized plants and animals are not needed to create hydrocarbons.
“Using our research we can even say where oil could be found in Sweden,”
Kutcherov told Science Daily. The article, titled Methane-derived hydrocarbons produced under upper mantle conditions, and published in Nature Geoscience, states that
"Whether hydrocarbons can also be produced from abiogenic precursor molecules under the high-pressure, high-temperature conditions characteristic of the upper mantle remains an open question. It has been proposed that hydrocarbons generated in the upper mantle could be transported through deep faults to shallower regions in the Earth’s crust, and contribute to petroleum reserves."
Kutcherov has said that his next step is to conduct experiments that will help him refine his new method for finding drilling points. The idea of endless oil might be a bane to environmentalists and high-stakes oil production fields, such as Canada's oil sands, but most of the world's population will thrill to the idea that they will not have to give up their beloved automobiles. Not only will it be a much simpler matter to find and extract petroleum fuels, but, as Kutcherov's theories become reality, prices for natural gas and gasoline products should decrease. Kutcherov said the world is reliant on crude oil and natural gas, which makes up 61% of fuels currently used. Kutcherov had recently proven that hydrocarbons can be created out of water, calcium carbonate and iron, and this means that crude oil is a sustainable, renewable resource, according to reports. However, this discovery does not mean that emissions from the combustion of hydrocarbons do not create climate change. Kutcherov is a professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. Last year Science Magazine published an article that said crude oil is created by an abiotic process and not from fossil fuels. These recent discoveries were found by building on a German process referred to as the Fischer-Tropsch type (FTT) genesis. Germany had plenty of coal but very little petroleum, which prompted a serious push by German scientists to find a way to create a substitute fuel. The FTT process was developed and patented in the 1920s, and was subsequently used throughout World War II by Germany and Japan. The process has been the basis for the creation of jet fuel made from water in the United States, as reported by Wired magazine. While Kucherov's experiments have been proven in the laboratory, they have yet to be translated into reality, and there is no word on how long the world might have to wait to take advantage of the new discoveries.



http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/279153


Tuesday, September 15, 2009

 

"ACORN Story Grows But Mainstream Media Refuse to Cover It

By Dan Gainor
 - FOXNews.com
 - September 14, 2009

"ACORN Story Grows But Mainstream Media Refuse to Cover It


"This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings. But almost no one is covering it.

Bruce Springsteen once wrote: “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come).” I doubt he expected that story of love gone wrong would become ideal political commentary for the group known as ACORN.
The small scandal showing an embarrassing video of Baltimore ACORN staffers looking like they were giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel, is now national news. -- This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings!

Only almost no one is covering it.

This is the news media in the era of Van Jones and President Obama. The major outlets cover what they want and create the themes they want. When they find something inconvenient, they let it pass. They didn’t like the Van Jones story, so they ignored it. The network news media liked the financial entity known as Fannie Mae, so they ignored that scandalous organization for years. ACORN is getting the same treatment.

But it isn’t working any more. The ACORN fiasco has now impacted three offices – Baltimore, Washington and New York – with laugh-out-loud videos reminiscent of the hookers and pimps from the 1970s “Starsky and Hutch” show. Huggy Bear returns! Four employees have been fired, with more likely to come. And the controversy was so laughably bad that the Census Bureau cut off all ties to the group known formally as the "Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now." -- They called it the “tipping point” to shed themselves of ACORN. More nuts for someone else, I guess.

And yet. And yet it’s still been ignored by the network news. Nothing on ABC, CBS or NBC. The only thing any one of the three broadcast networks has done appeared in a blog post by ABC’s Jake Tapper. It's hardly worth noting except to show that the networks know about what’s going on. They just don’t care to report it. Only FOX News has bothered to report on the controversy.

The video scandal is only part of the fiasco that is this Saul Alinsky-esque community group. Just last week CNN reported that other ACORN employees were arrested in Florida. “Arrest warrants were issued Wednesday for 11 Florida voter registration workers who are suspected of submitting false information on hundreds of voter registration cards, according to court documents,” said CNN.

That’s typical. The Web site "Rotten ACORN" is devoted to election fraud complaints against the organization. The site’s map shows 14 different states where complaints have been filed. The last time any one of the broadcast networks talked about that was before the 2008 presidential election. That was NBC on Nov. 1. Nothing since.

Yes, the newspapers have taken a passing glance at the video story. The Post wrote about the firings in D.C. The New York Times ran a story by the Associated Press. Nothing more. I am underwhelmed. At least the Times covered it this time. With Jones, the Times waited until he had resigned to report he was under fire.

What’s worse with ACORN is that we’re paying for all this. At least in part. The Washington Examiner writes that they “found that ACORN has received at least $53 million in federal money since 1994.”

For its own part, ACORN naturally blamed someone else. In this case, FOX News, calling itself “their Willy Horton for 2009.” The ACORN state reads like a paranoid’s interpretation of the videos. Here’s Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer, for the group:

“The relentless attacks on ACORN's members, its staff and the policies and positions we promote are unprecedented. An international entertainment conglomerate, disguising itself as a ‘news’ agency (FOX), has expended millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, in their attempt to destroy the largest community organization of Black, Latino, poor and working families in the country. It is not coincidence that the most recent attacks have been launched just when health care reform is gaining traction. It is clear they've had these tapes for months.”

Yeah, all that about under-aged prostitution, corruption and government connections isn’t news. People are just out to get ACORN. No wonder their name symbolizes a kind of nut. Too bad the rest of the media don’t want us to know that."

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/09/14/dan-gainor-acorn-media-ignore/


Monday, September 14, 2009

 

"News Media Receives an "F-" in New Pew Research Poll

Considering who the media elected, seems people are waking up.

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"News Media Receives an "F-" in New Pew Research Poll

September 14, 2009 by
Daniel Raeder  
Source Associated Content

"Fewer Than One-Third of Americans Trust Mainstream Press
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center highlights a growing lack of trust by the public in modern press. From ethics in reporting and journalism, to unbiased coverage of events, all major outlets have received a failing score this year from the American public.

In 1985, over half of Americans placed their trust in mainstream media sources saying they often get the facts right. The Pew poll for the year 2009 demonstrates a significant decline in trust over the past 24 years and reflects a growing skepticism of news organizations.

In the poll, a mere 29 percent of American's think the mainstream press reports news stories accurately. Only 18 percent believe that both sides of an issue are represented equally.

The poll shows a drop by more than 25 percent in Americans' perception that news organizations possess journalistic integrity and reporting quality.

Using slogans such as, "The Most Trusted Name In News" (CNN), and "Fair And Balanced" (FOX), the companies have now been called out by the public as demonstrating major biases, according to the Pew poll. Sixty percent of those polled suggested that the organizations are politically biased, while 74 percent felt coverage was influenced by powerful people and organizations.

Adding to the poor grade by the public, 70 percent believe that news organizations actively worked to cover up the factual mistakes in their reporting instead of correcting them.

Additionally, the poll reflected that views of increasing partisanship within news media has skyrocketed. Sixty percent feel that coverage is politically biased, versus only 45 percent just two-and-a-half decades ago.

Newspapers, television and network news have all slumped, showing a drop of more than 20% since 1985 in favor among those who chose them for source of news information."

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2173255/news_media_receives_an_f_in_new_pew.html?cat=3


Monday, September 14, 2009

 

Election trouble brewing for House Dems in 2010

Seems Democrats have mistaken their having a majority in congress as a go ahead for the total unchecked insanity we're witnessing now.  Congress seemed oblivious until the rally on 9-12.
I see Democratic gains as having been a protest against Bush's Iraq policy and the cost both in lives and dollars for prosecuting a 'war on terror' on two fronts with no foreseeable ending date.  All this amplified by a clearly biased leftist media. 
If the current dissatisfaction continues ...  a complete turning out of congress will likely become a reality in the next several election cycles.  Those spared are going to have to earn their place at the table.
_____
Election trouble brewing for House Dems in 2010

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090913/D9AMHEH00.html

Monday, September 14, 2009

 

"ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in New York, NY

First Baltimore, then DC, now New York.  Wonder how damage control's coming along?

__________

"ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in New York, NY

by James O'Keefe
 
Quoted from beneath videos:

"Alinsky Rule #10, “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.”

Bring it on."


http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/14/acorn-video-prostitution-scandal-in-new-york-ny/

Monday, September 14, 2009

 

"Republican Dirty Tricks

"Republican Dirty Tricks

Source The Market Ticker
Friday, September 11. 2009
Posted by Karl Denninger in Politics at 09:48

"I'm rather annoyed this morning.

Last night I was sent the following link:  http://www.republicanassemblies.org/outrage-healthcare-propaganda-on-congressional-switchboard/

with the claim that "NFRA called the Congressional switchboard."

The number dialed was an 800 number.

The problem? 

Congress doesn't maintain an 800 number!

Is the message as described and taped?  Yep.  Guess what - that 800 number is owned by an organization called "Families USA."  Who are they?  Hell if I know, but they're a DC-based "organization" that is obviously involved in the Health Care crusade on the Democrat side of the table.

For those who are unaware, "800" numbers are not really "free."  The owner pays.

Does it matter?  Nope.  The real Congressional switchboard, 202-224-3121, is answered by a live person with no "recording" first: "US Congress how can I help you?"

How do I know this is the real number?  Because I've called it dozens of times over the last year and a half when I wanted to reach a specific Congressional office and didn't have the phone number handy, hollering about this or that connected to the financial meltdown, and because it is printed at the bottom of the http://www.house.gov, the official web site of the United States House of Representatives.

This sort of "in-your-face lying" must STOP.

To the Republicans and their "affiliated" organizations such as NFRA: I have a health care reform plan that will actually work, and I don't want credit for it - just do it, <snip>it. 

(By the way, I have had a conversation with the NFRA - they admit this was an error and are "correcting it.")

There has been zero interest or thought from Congress on a plan that will actually increase competition and hold down costs.  That's because both sides of the aisle are working from the scripts handed to them by their campaign contributors from both the AMA and "Big Pharma", neither of which want real competition and both of which are hell-bent and determined to screw you to Mars with various cross-subsidization schemes, scams and outright rip-offs.

America pays for the development of every new technology that has come down the medical pipe in the last 20 years.  All of them.  We pay, the rest of the world gets to use for "free."  Then the drug companies get laws passed banning "re-importation" so that the free market is prevented from doing what it's supposed to do - arbitrage the sort of price-fixing that is found in places like Canada so costs come down here.

But no!  These companies sell a drug in the US for $20/pill and $2/pill across the border, then get a law passed to prevent anyone from buying at the $2 price and selling here for $3, applying a free market discipline to the sort of discriminatory conduct that every single medical device and drug maker relies on to gouge people.

You can argue that "we wouldn't have those drugs otherwise." 

Is that a sound argument? 

Perhaps, but that's for the market to decide.

The drug companies are free to charge Canadians $2 for a pill they charge $20 for here.  But the doctrine of a "true sale" says that once a Canadian buys that pill for $2 they should be free to sell it to anyone they want, for any amount of money they want, no matter where they live.

"True Sale" is a capitalist, free market doctrine.  Once I buy a thing its MINE

Would you tolerate a car company telling you that you can't sell your Chevy for less than you paid for it, thereby destroying its value to anyone but you?  Of course not.  How about your pair of shoes?  Can't be resold or given away.  Your boat?  Your house?

No, no, no and no.

The drug companies and other health-care-related organizations, including the AMA who rations the number of doctors that can be "licensed" to guarantee scarcity (and thus prop up the price), the device and drug makers (who intentionally obstruct free-market principles by getting laws passed that in any other field would be deemed an illegal restraint of trade and contrary to the doctrine of sale) and the trial lawyers (who want to claim that we can call something "practicing" medicine yet use a strict liability standard for resolving bad outcomes) are all pushing "answers" that are intended to screw you, the common American, while benefiting only their constituencies, using the threat of YOUR DEATH if they don't get their way.

Don't fall for it, and definitely don't fall for the Republican TRASH that is publishing and promoting an outrageous lie in an attempt to derail an honest debate on the issues."



http://market-ticker.org/archives/1425-Republican-Dirty-Tricks.html


Sunday, September 13, 2009

 

"..You're about to own $100 billion a year in student loans.

Looks as if they can't steal from retirement funds, stocks, real estate devaluation then they're going to end up implementing an 80% tax rate when the dust settles to pay for it all.

_________

   
"The Quietest Trillion
Congratulations. You're about to own $100 billion a year in student loans.
Source online.WSJ.com

"The furor over President Obama's trillion-dollar restructuring of American health care has left his other trillion-dollar plan starved for attention. That's how much the federal balance sheet will expand over the next decade if Mr. Obama can convince Congress to approve his pending takeover of the student-loan market.

The Obama plan calls for the U.S. Department of Education to move from its current 20% share of the student-loan origination market to 80% on July 1, 2010, when private lenders will be barred from making government-guaranteed loans. The remaining 20% of the market that is now completely private will likely shrink further as lenders try to comply with regulations Congress created last year. Starting next summer, taxpayers will have to put up roughly $100 billion per year to lend to students. ......."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574405154157021052.html

Sunday, September 13, 2009

 

"Jon Corzine: A Fool And His Money

"Jon Corzine: A Fool And His Money

Posted by Shawn Mallow
Published: September 12, 2009 - 8:55 PM
Source Wizbangblog.com

"Defending New Jersey isn't easy. Living in it is even harder.

It has been suffocated by a democratic stranglehold for decades. That is why, for many of us, the upcoming election for governor offers a battered public a sliver of hope.

With just over 7 weeks left until the N.J. Gubernatorial election, current democratic Governor Jon Corzine is getting desperate.

Latest polling shows Corzine trailing Republican Chris Christie by 8 points. That a Republican in New Jersey is ahead in a governor's race this close to election day is rare, indeed. That he is ahead by this much in a year where Lord Obama was elected to the presidency is <snip> near a miracle.

Many pundits have speculated this election to be a referendum on the influence of President Obama. In any other state, I would lend that credence, however, here in Blue Jersey, this is a judgment of Corzine's record along with the state Democratic party.

That record is deplorable.

New Jersey has the highest state/local tax rate in the country. It has the 3rd highest corporate tax rate. Only 4 other states have sales tax rates (7%) as high as New Jersey. We have the highest property tax rates in the nation. We have a $9 billion budget deficit. Our auto insurance rates are 3rd highest in the nation.

Depressingly, the list goes on.

Not many positives to accentuate if you are Mr. Corzine.

His opponent, Chris Christie, is a self-described conservative. For over 7 years, he successfully served as U.S. attorney for New Jersey. Out of 130 corruption cases filed against New Jersey public officials (both Republicans and democrats), he won all 130. He was also elected as a Morris County Freeholder in 1997, and was eventually appointed as its director.

Christie has accepted public campaign funds. Corzine has not. As such, Christie can only spend a certain amount of money for his campaign, restricted by the public funding regulations. Corzine, however, can spend as much as he wishes. He has already spent over $6 million this year, and has stated he will spend another $20 million up to the election. This is a mere inconvenience to Corzine, as his personal fortune is estimated to be worth $400 million. His history indicates he will spend whatever it takes, as he personally bankrolled his past Senatorial and Gubernatorial campaigns to the amount of $100 million. (Some would say he "bought" his way in.)

The Corzine camp has bailed on any attempts to campaign on the high ground.

His last main attempt to put a positive reflection on his wretched stewardship of the state was put out in July, with a television spot consisting of portions from a pep-rally involving Obama and Corzine at the PNC Arts Center. Obama attempted to lend some of his charisma to a man who is known for being as cuddly as a stump. Not possessing many positive attributes, Corzine was hoping that the mere presence of Obama was enough to give him some street cred, coasting on the One's coattails. The airing of that ad has since become rare, likely due to Obama's slipping approval ratings.

A more recent spot consists solely of negative attacks.

The television ad, code named "Required," attempts to portray Mr. Christie as unethical, due to a $46,000 personal loan he made to a friend and fellow co-worker. Claiming Christie did not report the loan or any of the interest, the Corzine camp hopes this will paint their opponent as a deceitful, law-breaking monster. Christie has expressed his remorse, acknowledging it was a mistake not to report it, and he has since made reparations toward the infraction.

While this may look unseemly in the way it is portrayed by the Corzine spinsters, it is hardly a corruptible misstep. I've loaned money to friends before, too, but never once did I think it needed to be reported to "authorities."

The putrid irony of Corzine attacking Christie over this matter is Corzine's hypocrisy concerning his own loan issue, which makes this look like giving a friend a stick of gum.

During his tenure as Senator, Corzine dated a woman named Carla Katz, who just happened to be head of New Jersey's largest state workers union, the Communications Workers of America. Their romance lasted from 2002-2004, ending with a bizarre $6 million financial settlement, including a cash gift of $1.1 million so she could purchase her Hoboken residence. The two remained friendly, up to and through his run for Governor in 2006.

In 2007, during a government shut-down, Katz initiated a long string of phone and e-mail communication with Corzine, personally lobbying him regarding the status of contract negotiations between her union and the state. Charges of impropriety ensued, and a judge ruled that some 745 e-mail records be made public. To this day, none of them have been turned over.

In 2008, Katz was removed as head of the CWA union for mis-appropriation of funds.

Hmmm. Christie makes a loan to a friend in need, and Corzine pays off a union boss with $6 million dollars. Corzine attacks Christie as having an ethics problem? Sheesh.

As if this weren't a bad enough display of hypocrisy, Corzine's latest attack is stupid at worse, and comical at best.

This latest attack on Christie involves his past motor vehicle violations. You know, traffic tickets.

I kid you not.

Camp Corizine has unleashed an attack on the fact that Christie, over the past 25 years, has received 13 traffic violations.

In an attempt to demonize Christie, Corzine spokeswoman Liz Smith said, "Chris Christie ... has been a habitual offender and a complete menace to society on the highways of New Jersey."

"Every day it becomes more evident that Christie has always had one set of rules for himself and another for everyone else," she added.

The utter desperation of these fools must be degrading.

To add irony to this already pathetic display of despondency, Corzine has his own horrid public vehicular humiliation.

In 2007, on his way to a meeting, Corzine was being driven by a state trooper down the New Jersey Turnpike. Speeding to get there at the request of the Governor, the SUV, emergency lights blazing, was determined to be traveling at over 90mph. After swerving to avoid another motorist, the SUV smashed into a guardrail, ultimately severely injuring Corzine, who was not wearing a seatbelt. The trooper and one of Corzine's aides were injured as well.

He received a $46 ticket for not wearing a seat belt.

In addition to that, he received two speeding tickets going back to 1992. Oddly, his motor vehicle records do not go back any further than that year.

Since his term as Senator and Governor, he has been provided with personal chauffeurs. Prior to his elected office, it is likely he had personal transportation, as well.

In the end, if this is the best Camp Corzine can conjure up, he is in serious political trouble, and probably could use some therapy.

Assuming there is a shred of political common sense left in the minds of New Jersey voters, the era of Corzine's purchased electoral domination will come to a well deserved end.

Actual hope and change."

http://wizbangblog.com/


Sunday, September 13, 2009

 

"Sycophancy Has Its Rewards

Obama's Justice Department, absolute must read.  Quoted exactly.

_____________

"Sycophancy Has Its Rewards
Source Powerlineblog.com
September 12, 2009 Posted by John at 6:22 PM

"No one has been a more uncritical cheerleader for the Obama administration than liberal blogger Andrew Sullivan. Now, Sullivan has gotten his reward, courtesy of Obama's Department of Justice.

Sullivan was caught smoking marijuana in a National Park and was prosecuted, consistent with the usual policy of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. But Sullivan's pull with the Obama administration got him a sweetheart deal: the U.S. Attorney decided to drop the charges, even though there evidently is no doubt about Sullivan's guilt. The issue here isn't whether marijuana possession should be illegal, or should be prosecuted. It is illegal, and the U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts does routinely prosecute such cases. But not Sullivan: Barack Obama and Eric Holder paid him off for his slavish devotion.

The U.S. Attorney's action in dismissing the case against Sullivan was so extraordinary that it prompted this stinging rebuke by United States Magistrate Judge Robert Collings, who presided over the case:

When the case was called, the Court expressed its concern that a dismissal would result in persons in similar situations being treated unequally before the law. The Court noted that persons charged with the same offense on the Cape Cod National Seashore were routinely given violation notices, and if they did not agree to forfeit collateral, were prosecuted by the United States Attorney. In short, the Court explained that there was no apparent reason for treating Mr. Sullivan differently from other persons charged with the same offense. In fact, there were other persons who were required to appear on the September 2nd docket who were charged with the same offense and were being prosecuted. ...

[T]he Court would not be concerned with any exercise of discretion by the United States Attorney not to prosecute the possession of small amounts of marijuana. The United States Attorney certainly has discretion to determine how best to allocate the resources of his office and could, if he deemed it appropriate, elect to focus those resources on more serious crimes while declining to prosecute the type of violation which Mr. Sullivan faces. However, from all that appears, the United States Attorney has not taken the position that persons who possess marijuana on federal property will not be prosecuted; rather, those persons are prosecuted routinely. ...

In the Court's view, in seeking leave to dismiss the charge against Mr.Sullivan, the United States Attorney is not being faithful to a cardinal principle of our legal system, i.e., that all persons stand equal before the law and are to be treated equally in a court of justice once judicial processes are invoked. It is quite apparent that Mr. Sullivan is being treated differently from others who have been charged with the same crime in similar circumstances. ...

In short, the Court sees no legitimate reason why Mr. Sullivan should be treated differently, or why the Violation Notice issued to him should be dismissed. The only reasons given for the dismissal flout the bedrock principle of our legal system that all persons stand equal before the law.

What is going on here is that Barack Obama's Justice Department is rewarding a faithful political supporter by quashing a criminal prosecution that could adversely affect Sullivan's application for U.S. citizenship. In less than eight months, President Obama has corrupted the Department of Justice to a degree that has not been seen in our lifetimes, if ever. In Obama's Justice Department, the type of justice you get depends on how valuable you are to the Democratic Party."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024506.php


Sunday, September 13, 2009

 

YouTube - Timelapse: 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 Tea Party Protesters Washington, D.C. (8:00-11:30)


Sunday, September 13, 2009

 

C-Span video of Freedomworks Rally Washington 9-12-09

Video will not embed here, link to player below.  Mammoth crowd, they all paid their own way to get there so truly a grassroots movement that's not going away. 

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=288868-1&showVid=true



http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=288868-1&showVid=true


Saturday, September 12, 2009

 

YouTube - How Deep is Our Debt?

YouTube - Glenn Beck - How Deep is Our Debt?


Saturday, September 12, 2009

 

Poll link "Should Justice Investigate ACORN?

Poll link, right now it's 99% in favor.

 

Should Justice Investigate ACORN?

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/09/10/decide-acorn-justice-investigate/


Saturday, September 12, 2009

 

"You look like the cavalry to me"

Quoted from Powerlineblog.com, definitely worth the read.

_______

"You look like the cavalry to me"

 
September 12, 2009 Posted by Paul at 2:45 PM

"Congressman Mike Pence made these remarks to the crowd at the National Tea Party here in Washington, DC.

I am Mike Pence. I am from Indiana, and it is an honor to welcome the largest gathering of conservatives in American history to your nation's capitol.

There are some politicians who think of you people as astroturf. Un-American. I've got to be honest with you, after nine years of fighting runaway spending here on this hill, you people look like the cavalry to me.

We stand together at a historic moment in the life of the conservative movement and in the life of this great country. The coming weeks and months may well set the course for this nation for a generation. How we as conservatives respond to these challenges, could determine whether America retains her place in the world as a beacon of freedom or whether we slip into the abyss that has swallowed much of Europe in an avalanche of socialism.

While some are prepared to write the obituary on capitalism and the conservative movement, I believe we are on the verge of a great American awakening. And it will begin here and begin now and begin with you.

This Administration and this Congress are getting a badly needed history lesson, starting with just what our founders meant by 'consent of the governed.' If silence is consent, it is now revoked.

We the people, do not consent to runaway federal spending. We the people, do not consent to the notion that we can borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing America. And we the people, do not consent to government-run insurance that will cause millions of Americans to lose the insurance they have, and that will lead us to a government takeover of health care in this nation.

This week, the president came to this hill and he gave one more speech about the same bad plan. Mr. President, America doesn't want another speech, we want another health care plan that is built on freedom.

And we the people, do not consent to Members of Congress passing thousand-page bills without anybody ever reading them. Members of Congress should be required to read ever major bill that Congress adopts. I've got to be honest with you, I think Members of Congress should read major bills, but I'd be just as happy if some of them read this just a little more often - the Constitution of the United States.

You know, there is a lot of good stuff in there and it reminds us that we are a nation led by the people, and not the elites and the bureaucrats and the politicians. It reminds us that the powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states or to the people.

And nowhere in our Constitution can you find the word 'czar.' It is time Washington, D.C. became a No Czar Zone.

The American people are not happy. But it is not just about dollars and cents. It is about who we are as a nation.

As Ronald Reagan said in 1964, it's about whether 'we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.' My money is on the American people. My money is on freedom. My money is on the future.

This great national Capitol is filled with memorials to freedom's heroes. Americans whose faces are carved in bronze, whose names adorn monuments, and just across that river, lie the remains of Americans who paid freedom's price so we could gather here today. In their time, they did freedom's work as citizens and patriots. Now it's our turn.

Let us do as those great Americans we remember in this city have done before: let us stand and fight for freedom. And if we hold the banner of freedom high, I believe with all my heart that the good and great people of this country will rally to our cause, we will take this Congress back in 2010 and we will take this Country back in 2012, so help us God."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024505.php


Saturday, September 12, 2009

 

"Anti-Government Protests Draws Tens of Thousands to D.C.


"Anti-Government Protests Draws Tens of Thousands to D.C.
By Emma Brown, James Hohmann and Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 12, 2009 4:08 PM
 
........."Hell hath no fury like a taxpayer scorned," declared Andrew Moylan, head of government affairs for the National Taxpayer Union, urging protesters to call their representatives. "You're being ignored today by the media and some politicians." .......
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/12/AR2009091200971_pf.html

Friday, September 11, 2009

 

Pet Cajun Fish

Came in email.

_________

Pet Cajun Fish

A  Louisiana Cajun was stopped by a game warden because he had two ice chests full of fish.  He was leavin' a bayou, well-known for its fishing.

        The game warden asked the man, 'Do you have a license to catch those fish?'

        'Naw, sir', replied the cajun. 'I ain't got none of dem there licenses. You gotta unnerstan', dese here are my pet fish.'

        'Pet fish?'

        'Yeah. Evry night, I take dese here fish down to de lake and let 'em swim 'round for 'while. Den, when I whistle, dey jump right back into dis here ice chests and I take 'em home.'

        'That's a bunch of hooey! Fish can't do that.'

        The cajun looked at the warden for a moment and then said, 'It's de truth Mr. Government Man. I'll show ya. It really works.'

        'O. K..', said the warden. 'I've got to see this!'

        The cajun poured the fish into the lake and stood and waited.

        After several minutes, the warden says, 'Well?'

        'Well, what?', says the cajun.

        The warden says, 'When are you going to call them back?'

        'Call who back?'

        'The FISH', replied the warden!

        'What fish?', replied the cajun.

        Moral of the story: We may not be as smart as some city slickers, but we ain't as dumb as some government employees.

        You can say what you want about the South, but you never hear of anyone retiring and moving north.


Friday, September 11, 2009

 

"Census Bureau Severs Ties With ACORN

 

"Census Bureau Severs Ties With ACORN
The Census Director has sent a letter to the National Headquarters of ACORN notifying the group that it will no longer have a role in conducting the 2010 census. ACORN had previously been tapped to help with low level data gathering.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/11/census-bureau-severs-ties-acorn/


Friday, September 11, 2009

 

"Exposing ACORN: Introducing James O'Keefe

"Exposing ACORN: Introducing James O’Keefe

by Andrew Breitbart

http://biggovernment.com/2009/09/10/introducing-james-o%E2%80%99keefe/

Friday, September 11, 2009

 

"Second Video Shows ACORN Officials Helping 'Pimp,' 'Prostitute' in Washington Office

"Second Video Shows ACORN Officials Helping 'Pimp,' 'Prostitute' in Washington Office

Friday, September 11, 2009
Source Fox News

"One day after two ACORN officials in Baltimore were fired for offering to help a man and woman posing as a pimp and prostitute to engage in child prostitution and a series of tax crimes, another secretly shot videotape has surfaced that shows the same couple getting similar advice from ACORN officers in Washington.

The newly released videotape, shot on July 25, shows ACORN staffers explaining to the pair how they can hide the woman's professed work — prostitution — and get a loan that will help them establish a brothel.

James O'Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as the pimp while visiting the ACORN office, accompanied by 20-year-old Hannah Giles, who posed as the prostitute. On a videotape provided to FOXNews.com, they are seen receiving guidance to establish the woman as the sole proprietor of a bogus company to mask the nature of her business.

"She's not going to put on (the loan application) that she's doing prostitution ... she doesn't have to," the ACORN staffer says. "You don't have to sit back and tell people what you do."

Click here to see video.

The ACORN staffer is heard suggesting that O'Keefe can purchase a house, and as the landlord, if he is ever questioned by authorities, he can say he was unaware of the illegal business going on inside.

"[W]hen the police ask you, (tell them) you don't know where (the money is) coming from," the staffer said. "We are looking out for you."

The ACORN employee later suggests that O'Keefe, who said he had a budding political career, not linger at the house in case people "put the dots together" and leave him "smeared and tarnished" by his association with his prostitute girlfriend. She should keep her business "low key," the employee said.

An ACORN spokesman told FOX News the group would need to look at the full tape and transcript before commenting........."

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,549241,00.html

 


Friday, September 11, 2009

 

"The Mistake, The Evidence, Obama is NOT a constitutional president

The smoking gun, thank you DNC!!!   Some of the images noted below are not showing when you click. Article link has been inserted so you can examine their scans of those images for yourself.

_____________________

"The Mistake, The Evidence, Obama is NOT a constitutional president

The Theory is Now a Conspiracy And Facts Don’t Lie

JB Williams Thursday, September 10, 2009
Source Canada Free Press

"Though we live in an era when all undesirable facts are often blindly labeled “conspiracy theories” by political operatives with an agenda at risk, a very real conspiracy unfolds every now and then.

While it is indeed true that not all theories are actual conspiracies, like when Hillary Clinton developed an imaginary “right-wing conspiracy” out to get her husband, when in fact, the semen stained dress provided all the necessary (but unfriendly) facts and a perfectly logical explanation for all of those nasty rumors – it is also true that some conspiracies are much more than just crackpot theory.

To be a bonafide conspiracy, two or more individuals must knowingly conspire, plot or plan an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious act. In politics or law, an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act, is a “conspiracy.” Not in theory, but in reality.

Such is the case today!

A political national committee, the Chair of the Party convention, the Secretary of the Party, Party offices in each of fifty states, and maybe many – many more, have knowingly and wantonly defrauded the American election system and more than 300 million American citizens.

They plotted and planned an act of evil, unlawful, treacherous fraud in a blind quest for unbridled political power, and they hoped that you would never catch it. They almost got away with it too…

They snuck it past fifty state election commissions, congress, the US Supreme Court and Justice Department, the Federal Elections Commission and countless members of the Electoral College nationwide. Not a single member of the, as Limbaugh says, “drive-by media” caught it either, or if they did, they decided to become complicit for their own political reasons.

But as is always the case with liars, cheats and thieves, they slip up – make a silly mistake – overplay their hand – leave evidence lying around that they had forgotten about. And as with all chronic liars, they eventually get caught in their own web of lies.

Then, one day, someone stumbles into that evidence, and the house of cards comes crashing down around them. It’s almost poetic…

The Mistake

Aware of the fact that Barack Hussein Obama does NOT meet Article II – Section I constitutional requirements for the office of President, what well-seasoned professional politician would be stupid enough to sign their name and stake their personal career upon certifying Obama as eligible?

Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates are nominated at their respective Party Conventions.

Believe it or not, each Party is assigned the duty of vetting and certifying the legal eligibility of their own candidates. I know, like asking the fox to guard the henhouse, right. But hey, we are talking about a country which still thinks there is a separation of powers between the High Court and the Executive branch, which seats that court by way of political appointment, confirmed by congress, which wants a piece of the judge and expects a few political favors too.

The Evidence

In this case, the Democrat Party was responsible for vetting and certifying Barack Hussein Obama as legally eligible to seek the Oval Office. The U.S. Constitution has only three very specific requirements for the job. The proper legal text used on the DNC Party “Official Certification of Nomination” document reads as follows, and I quote;

“THIS IS TO CERTIFY that at the National Convention of the Democrat Party of the United States of America, held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 though 28, 2008, the following were duly nominated as candidates of said Party for President and Vice President of the United States respectively and that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution.”

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/14583


image
Click to enlarge

Yes, I know…. there is a typo in there. Not my typo, it belongs to whoever prepared the official document at the DNC. Did you catch it?

The document is signed by Chair of the DNC Convention and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, DNC Secretary Alice Travis Germond and Colorado Notary of Public Shalifa A. Williamson. It is dated August 28, 2008.

However, this document was never delivered to a single state DNC Office for state certification, and it was therefore, never presented to any state Election Commission as certification of these candidates, although I do have a copy of this notarized document myself.

Instead, a very similar document was delivered to fifty state DNC offices, which those offices certified to each of fifty state Election Commissions, who then date-stamped the document and stuck it in a file cabinet, and proceeded to place these “certified” candidates on the ballot.

The “Official Certification of Nomination” that was presented by the DNC in all fifty states for the 2008 Presidential election, in which Barack Hussein Obama became the new President of the United States, was almost identical, and it too was signed by Chair of the DNC Convention and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, DNC Secretary Alice Travis Germond and Notary of Public Shalifa A. Williamson, dated August 28, 2008.

But this version of the document was missing the following text, and I quote;

“- and that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution.”

The legal certification text on the DNC certified nomination document used for the DNC ticket was limited to, and I quote;

“THIS IS TO CERTIFY that at the National Convention of the Democrat Party of the United States of America, held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 though 28, 2008, the following were duly nominated as candidates of said Party for President and Vice President of the United States respectively:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/14583

image
Click to enlarge

Oops, another typo? The reference to Obama’s constitutional eligibility was missing… An accidental omission?

The text certifying that Barack Hussein Obama was “legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution” had been removed from the document sent to the states. And yes, I have a copy of this version of the DNC Official Certification of Nomination letter too!

In fact, this version is in Election Commission files of all fifty state Election Commission offices, state DNC headquarters, complete with date stamps, matching signatures, even the same Notary of Public authentication, and absent the constitutional text.

Just in case you are wondering, the answer is yes. This version also includes the same typo present in the version not submitted by the DNC, but including the constitutional text, which means both documents have the same place of origin.

The individual at DNC headquarters who prepared this very important document was not only a poor typist… they were sloppy enough to leave both versions of the signed documents lying around.

Now this is the stuff real conspiracies are made of!

The Implications

Please, allow me to connect the dots here…

  • The DNC drafted, signed and notarized TWO slightly different versions of their Official Certification of Nomination documents, not one.
  • One of those documents had complete legal language, and one of them was missing the text concerning the constitutional eligibility of Barack Hussein Obama.
  • The version which is absent any certification of constitutional standing for the office of President is the version that was filed with every state in the country, and the one used by the DNC to elect Barack Obama President.

Oh, there is one more important document in this story.

The RNC “Official Certification of Nomination” for John McCain and Sarah Palin reads, and I quote:

“We do hereby certify that a national convention of Delegates representing the Republican Party of the United States, duly held and convened in the city of Saint Paul, State of Minnesota, on September 4, 2008, the following person, meeting the constitutional requirements for the Office of President of the United States, and the following person, meeting the constitutional requirements for the Office of Vice President of the Unites States, were nominated for such offices to be filled at the ensuing general election, November 4, 2008, viz;”

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/14583

image
Click to enlarge

The certification of constitutional eligibility is there in the RNC Certification of Nomination presented to the state Election Commissions. It’s there in the document which the DNC had prepared, signed and notarized, but did NOT deliver to the states.

But it is NOT there in the DNC Certification of Nomination that the DNC used to certify and elect Barack Hussein Obama President and Joseph Biden Vice President of the United States of America.

Last, the fact that TWO DNC Certifications exist, both signed, dated and notarized by the same individuals on the same day, means that a very real conspiracy to commit election fraud was underway, and since it took until six months after the election to uncover it, the conspiracy was indeed successful.

Are you still wondering why Barack Obama has spent nearly $1.5 million in taxpayer’s funds to race Department of Justice lawyers around the country to stop all cases questioning Obama’s eligibility before discovery can force Obama to open up his top secret life?

Now I realize that leftists, I mean liberals, no “progressives” – don’t like getting all bogged down in minutia and nit-picky details like the Constitution, but this is actually very serious business here. We are talking about the top-down leadership of the ruling political Party knowingly and wantonly defrauding voters by way of playing monkey business with fraudulent election documents.

As Al Gore once said, the debate is OVER!

There is no honest debate on the matter anymore. Obama is NOT a constitutional president, which is to say, we do NOT have a constitutional federal administration at present and every anti-American policy of the last six months is also, BINGO! – Unconstitutional!

What is still in question however – does any court in America have the backbone to do what must be done? – And what do the American people do, if not one court in the nation has that kind of constitutional backbone today?

Obama’s DOJ has thus far been successful in blocking the people’s access to the courts by claiming that no American citizen, including another presidential candidate, has “proper standing” to demand proof of Obama’s constitutional eligibility for the office he fraudulently holds.

To be very clear, the RNC nomination form filed with the states certifies that John McCain met all constitutional requirements for the Office of President. But the DNC nomination form filed with the states is absent any such language.

I know what I conclude from these facts, but what do you conclude from these facts?

More importantly, what will a court of law conclude? Will they ever even agree to hear the evidence? "

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/14583


Thursday, September 10, 2009

 

"Obama's missing millions

"MIssing" mostly from Latin America

Source Powerlineblog.com

September 10, 2009 Posted by Paul at 8:30 AM

"Last night, Scott wrote about "Obama's missing millions." These are the 16 million people who were included when President Obama said last month that 46 million Americans lack health coverage but excluded when, in his speech to Congress, Obama lowered the number to 30 million.

It seems clear that most of these missing millions (9.6 milllion, in fact) are non-citizens, and, in most of these cases, illegal immigrants. The remainder, I assume, are people who are enrolled in Medicaid or S-CHIP but didn't tell the census taker. This is the so-called "Medicaid undercount," discussed here.

So Obama counted non-citizens as "Americans [who] don't have health coverage" in his Portsmouth, New Hampshire speech when he wanted to inflate the number of uninsured Americans so as to persuade us that there's an enormous crisis. He then discounted them when the charge that Democrats will insure illegal aliens gained traction.

Obama and his supporters want to call this charge a lie, but the "lie" begins to look true when illegal immigrants are included among those whose situation the legislation is designed to remedy -- "Americans" who don't have health coverage. The "lie" is, in fact, substantially true because Democrats have defeated all efforts to include an enforcement mechanism that would prevent illegal aliens from being covered.

Stated more concisely, in order to make his opponents out to be lying, our slippery president must now abandon his prior false statement."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024480.php

________

"Obama's missing millions

Source Powerlineblog.com

September 9, 2009 Posted by Scott at 8:39 PM

"Only last month In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, President Obama declared: "I don't have to explain to you that nearly 46 million Americans don't have health insurance coverage today. In the wealthiest nation on Earth, 46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage."

Tonight Obama declared that "[t]here are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.he number of our fellow citizens who have no coverage is 30 million."

These statements can be reconciled. "Nearly 46 million" is "more than 30 million[.]" But this is obviously not what Obama meant. It would be a mistake to reconcile the statements in this way. In any event, both numbers are bogus. It would be a mistake to take either of them seriously.

What can we learn from the malleable, missing millions who provide the pretext for Obama's proposed takeover of the health care system? He willfully misrepresents the magnitude of the problem. He is not to be trusted with numbers. He does not fear being called out on the obvious discrepancies on the fundamental rationale he presents to support his program, whatever it is.

He will say whatever he deems necessary to seek to persuade his audience. A man who refuses to get this issue right cannot be trusted with the more important facts, figures and propositions with which his speech was larded.

UPDATE: Byron York: "Obama: I used to say 47 million uninsured. Now, it's 30 million." At this rate, if we can wait until November, the problem may resolve itself.

JOHN adds: The number of "uninsured" who have suddenly disappeared amount to three and a half times the population of the State of Minnesota. You get the feeling that Barack Obama is a person to whom numbers don't mean much. He's not someone you would put in charge of a business."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024477.php


Thursday, September 10, 2009

 

"Obama's Speech: Did It Help Him?

From Powerlineblog.com, attorneys who know how to read and interpret the Obama-care bill, also how to point by point separate BS from fact in Obama's speeches.

____________

"Obama's Speech: Did It Help Him?
September 9, 2009 Posted by John at 8:51 PM

"From a policy standpoint, there was nothing new in President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress tonight. It can only be assessed, therefore, in political terms. I read the transcript rather than watching it, but the speech struck me as reasonably effective. I assume the delivery was standard Obama--smooth, generally flat, occasionally a bit whiny.

One striking aspect of the speech was that Obama kept talking about the "plan" that he "announced" tonight--but there is no plan; not in writing, anyway. Not unless Obama meant Nancy Pelosi's House bill, but he didn't seem to, since he made a point of saying that details remain to be filled in, referred to work still going on in committee, and said that "his plan" is open to alternatives to the public option. This vagueness gives him a sort of deniability: what he was describing was more his concept of the qualities health care legislation should have, rather than a specific bill. Whether that was politically smart remains to be seen. So far, vagueness hasn't seemed to be the President's friend on this issue.

Here are some excerpts from the speech that I thought were noteworthy:

Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics.

Then, a few minutes later:

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result.

By far the biggest scaremonger on this issue has been Obama himself.

Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed.

I'm not sure whether Obama and his handlers understand how this sort of talk grates on those of us who are not liberal Democrats (a large majority of the country). Debating public policy issues is not "bickering." Disagreeing with a proposal to radically change one of the largest sectors of our economy is not a "game." This kind of gratuitous insult--something we never heard from President Bush, for example--is one of the reasons why many consider Obama to be mean-spirited.

I assume most people noticed how, in tonight's speech, Obama's assurance that we will not lose our present insurance coverage has been scaled back. This was after thousands of critics pointed out that under the Democrats' proposals, many people (more than 100 million according to some estimates) will in fact lose the insurance coverage they now have:

[I]f you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

That's true, of course. No one ever said it did. What the Democrats' plan does do, however, is give employers the opportunity and, depending on pricing, the incentive to terminate their employees' plans and dump them into the public system. And whether private insurance companies can compete with the public "option" depends on whether Obama keeps his pledge that the public program won't be subsidized.

[I]nsurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies - because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse.

How does that work? Better coverage for more people at less cost. Does anyone actually believe that is possible? I don't think so.

Obama described his plan for an insurance exchange where those who are not part of a larger plan will be able to buy coverage. He then added:

This exchange will take effect in four years, which will give us time to do it right.

But wait! Aren't people dying? The Democrats tried to ram their bill through Congress before the August recess, with essentially no debate and with virtually no one having read it. Their theory was that we are facing such a dire emergency that there is not a moment to lose. If, in fact, we have four years to spare, could we maybe stop trying to cram the bill down Americans' throats?

Now, even if we provide these affordable options, there may be those - particularly the young and healthy - who still want to take the risk and go without coverage.

That's true, of course. There are millions of people, mostly young and single, who choose not to buy health insurance or take a job where compensation comes largely in the form of benefits (same thing) because they have made a rational decision that for them, health insurance isn't worth the money. As Americans, they should have that right. The problem is that, in the unlikely event they do get sick, they know they will be treated anyway.

That's why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance - just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.

Traditionally, it was liability insurance that drivers were required to carry, not to protect themselves, but to protect others from their possible negligence. It is only because of no-fault laws that most states now require drivers to carry insurance that includes first-party coverage. There are some similarities, but many differences, between automobile and health insurance.

[U]nless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek - especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions - just can't be achieved.

This is a key point that many will overlook. One of the central purposes of nearly all health care "reform" proposals is to force young people into the system to help pay older peoples' bills. Why is it that you can't force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions--i.e., "insure" against something that has already happened, a logical impossibility--unless you force young people to "do their part"? Insurance companies, and, eventually, the government as single payer, need young people to pay premiums that far exceed any actual risk to subsidize the known losses that will come from being forced to "insure" people whose medical conditions are not risks but certainties.

Consider the analogy to life insurance: could a dying, 90-year-old person expect an insurance company to issue him a million dollar life insurance policy? Maybe, but it would cost close to a million dollars. Why can life insurance companies sell policies at rates that people consider reasonable? Only because they are insuring against premature death, and the insured has been paying premiums for many years, during most of which time there was little risk of his dying. The same principle applies, pretty closely, to health insurance.

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

No, it isn't. The Democrats' bill doesn't call the agencies it sets up "death panels," it says they will decide on "best practices." But any socialized medicine scheme saves money by rationing care. Who gets shorted, the politically powerful? No, of course not; the elderly and those who are otherwise helpless. In the United Kingdom, the death panel goes by the Orwellian acronym "NICE."

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

This is an outright lie, as Congressman Joe Wilson couldn't resist blurting out during Obama's speech. The Democrats defeated Republican-sponsored amendments that would have attempted, at least, to prevent illegals from being treated under the House version of Obama's plan. I think everyone expects that if Obamacare becomes law, illegals will receive benefits on an equal basis with citizens.

And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up - under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

More oily language from the master of the half-truth. Under Obama's plan, it won't be necessary for federal dollars to fund abortions, at least not until socialized medicine actually arrives. Insurance dollars will fund abortions. The House bill sets up a nameless, unaccountable committee that will decide what coverages must be included in any approved private insurance policy. Those required coverages, you can be 100 percent certain, will include the costs of abortions. But Obama will take no responsibility; those are just "best practices."

This seems to me to be the most critical moment in Obama's speech:

My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down.

In fact, Obama and Congressional Democrats have zero interest in increasing choice and competition. If they did, there is an easy solution. There are over 1,000 health insurance companies in the United States; why do you think it is that in Alabama, one company has 90 percent of the business? It is because there are major legal obstacles to insurance companies operating across state lines. State legislatures, and lots of the companies, like it this way. Competition is hard. But if Obama really wanted to expand "choice and competition" in health care, all he would have to do is go along with the Republican proposal to allow health insurance companies to sell on a national basis. Like, say, computer companies, beer companies, automobile companies, law firms, and pretty much everyone else. The Democrats' refusal to allow existing health insurance companies to compete against each other nationwide, more than anything else, puts the lie to their nonsense about "choice and competition."

Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business.

Really? We've all seen the YouTube video where Obama says that under his plan, private health insurance will be driven into extinction over a period of ten to twenty years. Has he changed his mind? When? Why? Does President Obama fail to understand the ubiquity of YouTube? Does he not understand that many millions of Americans consider him a liar when he says things like this?

President Obama talked about the "public option" and assured listeners that it would not be subsidized by the government:

I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers.

Is it churlish to point out that profits are not overhead? It might be if this were just a slip of the tongue on the stump. But this was a speech that was carefully crafted by Obama and his top advisers. They really do not know the first thing about business or economics. So why should we put them in charge of our economy?

I want to speak directly to America's seniors for a moment, because Medicare is another issue that's been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.

Actually, the administration has said that around half the cost of the plan, $500 billion, would be paid for by cuts in Medicare. So it isn't exactly "demagoguery and distortion" to suggest that there might be cuts in Medicare.

[N]ot a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan.

I should hope not, since there isn't any Medicare trust fund, just like there isn't any Social Security trust fund.

The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud...Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.

But wait! If we can identify hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid and we know how to eliminate it, why haven't we done so already? Why don't we do so--right now!--regardless of the administration's highly controversial health care bill?

There is no possible answer to these questions. The Obama plan--whatever it is, once reduced to writing--depends for most of its financing on the bare assertion that we are currently wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, and that we will stop wasting that money only if taxpayers knuckle under to Obamacare.

This was not, to put it kindly, a speech that was directed at thinking people."


http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024478.php


Thursday, September 10, 2009

 

"ACORN Officials Videotaped Telling 'Pimp,' 'Prostitute' How to Lie to IRS

Video links cited in article below if you care to watch .... explicit language warning!

 

ACORN Baltimore Prostitution Investigation Part I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtTnizEnC1U

ACORN Baltimore Prostitution Investigation Part II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNYU9PamIZk

_____________________

"ACORN Officials Videotaped Telling 'Pimp,' 'Prostitute' How to Lie to IRS

Thursday, September 10, 2009
Source Fox News

"Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.

The videotape was made public Thursday on

 BigGovernment.com, a political blog launched by Andrew Breitbart as a companion site to his BigHollywood.breitbart.com blog.

In the videotape, made on July 24, James O'Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as a pimp with a 20-year-old woman named "Kenya" who posed as a prostitute while visiting ACORN's office in Baltimore. The couple told ACORN staffers they wanted to secure housing where the woman could continue to maintain a prostitution business.

ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — bills itself as the nation's largest community of low- and moderate-income families "working together for social justice and stronger communities," according to its Web site. The organization has been accused by Republicans and conservative activists with fraud in voter registration drives around the country and has been under fire since last year for its support of President Obama and for its planned participation in next year's census.

A spokesman for ACORN, Scott Levenson, when asked to comment on the videotape, said: "The portrayal is false and defamatory and an attempt at gotcha journalism. This film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed. ACORN wants to see the full video before commenting further."

On the videotape, "Kenya" can be seen telling an ACORN staffer that she earns roughly $8,000 a month. The ACORN employee then suggests to "Kenya" that ACORN could submit a tax return for 2008 showing that she made $9,600 for the entire year — instead of $96,000 — and that ACORN would charge "Kenya" $50 instead of the usual $150 fee for preparing her taxes.

ACORN offers tax preparation and benefits application services free of charge during tax season; it charges nominal fees during non-tax season.

The ACORN staffer can also be seen suggesting that the prostitute list her occupation as a freelance "performing artist."

"It's not dancing, trust me," the "pimp" says.

"But dancing is considered an art," the ACORN staffer replies. "[Exotic dancers] usually go under performing artists, or yeah, they usually go under performing arts, which will be what you are — a performing artist."

The "pimp" later says that he and "Kenya" plan to bring up to 13 "very young" girls from El Salvador to work as prostitutes. Although an ACORN staffer points out their plans are illegal, she also suggests that the girls can be claimed as dependents.

"What if they are going to be making money because they are performing tricks too?" the pimp says.

"If they making money and they are underage, then you shouldn't be letting anybody know anyway," the ACORN staffer says, and laughs. "It's illegal. So I am not hearing this, I am not hearing this. You talk too much. Don't give up no information you're not asked."

The "pimp" then asks ACORN staffers to "promise" not to discriminate against his sex worker because of "who she is and what she does," according to the audiotape.

"If we don't have the information, then how are we going to discriminate?" the ACORN staffer replies. "You see what I am saying?"

If the girls are under age 16, the ACORN staffer says on the tape, then they are not legally allowed to work in the state, regardless of what they do.

"So it's like they don't even exist?" "Kenya" asks.

"Exactly," the ACORN staffer replies. "It's like they don't even exist."

The staffer goes on to suggest that as many as three of the underage girls can be listed as dependents at the home, but a "flag" will be raised if as many as 13 are listed.

"You are gonna use three of them," the staffer says. "They are gonna be under 16, so you is eligible to get child tax credit and additional child tax credit."

The ACORN workers also appear to be promoting the group's services to the "pimp" and "Kenya."

A second ACORN employee can be heard on the audiotape suggesting that the couple join the organization for an annual cost of $120 prior to attending one of its first-time homebuyer seminars, which are underwritten with taxpayer funds.

Later, when the "pimp" asks what would happen if the organization is somehow connected to the scheme, the ACORN staffer replies, "First of all, it's not gonna damage us because we not gonna know. And with your girls, you tell them, 'Be careful.' Train them to keep their mouth shut."

"These girls are like 14, how can we trust them?" the pimp asks.

"Just be very, very careful," the ACORN staffer says. "Whatever you do, always keep your eyes in the back of your head."

Reached by FOX News, O'Keefe said he was "shocked" at the level of assistance provided by ACORN staffers.

"I was prepared for them to call the police, throw me out of the office and be hostile," he said. "Without hesitation, they helped me every way they could with evading taxes and setting me up with a brothel, with getting around federal tax laws — doing everything they could to help us. I was completely shocked."

House Republicans issued a report in July accusing ACORN of engaging in a scheme to use taxpayer money to support a partisan political agenda. California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, called for a criminal investigation into the group, which dismissed the report as a "partisan attack job."


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,548827,00.html


Thursday, September 10, 2009

 

US National Identity Cards

Highly informative legal opinion about government health care, as to what the bill will and won't do.

Took the liberty to copy Michael Connelly's credentials quoted from his site to show qualification for his legal opinions.

______

Quoted exactly from Michael Connelly's site.

"Constitutional Law

Posted August 21, 2009

"MORE ABOUT THE HEALTH CARE BILLS

   

"How many times have we watched a movie about World War II and looked at the scene where a menacing Nazi soldier has stopped a citizen of an occupied country or even a German citizen and demanded to see the person’s “identity papers.” Failure to produce such papers would cause the person to be immediately arrested. I always felt good when I watched this because I knew that in my free country that couldn’t happen.

Yes, we have our driver’s license that you have to produce if you are stopped for a driving infraction and you may have to produce to write a check. However, if you choose not to drive you are not required to have one and you can get another form of identification to do something like cash a check. Yet, the fact is that you are not legally required to have either of these documents and if you do have them they can only contain a limited amount of information.

When I was practicing law I dealt with a situation where in the State of Louisiana you were required to provide your Social Security number to get a Driver’s License and it was also put on the license for everyone to see. I represented a client who had both privacy objections to this and religious objections. We won the case on the grounds that this requirement violated his constitutional rights. What made this particularly interesting was the fact that in support of our position I cited an opinion by a Court of Appeal Justice named Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is now one of the more liberal members of the Supreme Court.

Now, HB 3200 will mandate that everyone in the United States have a National Healthcare card that they will be required to produce to get medical treatment. This will be required whether they have private health insurance or are involved in the so-called public option. There are no real options, you must have this card and it can contain any information that the Obama administration requires. It will be the “identity papers” that so many totalitarian regimes are infamous for.

Of course, you may be thinking that this will no longer be a problem if the “public option” is removed from the bill. This has been a trial balloon floated by the Obama administration yet it really means nothing if the rest of the bill is adopted. The Congress will still be transferring unlimited power to the Executive Branch of Government and the Commissioner appointed by President Obama can still require a National Health Care identification card, still have access to your financial and medical records, and still fine you for having a plan unacceptable to the government. This will result in the ultimate destruction of private health insurance and the adoption of a public system of rationed health care totally controlled by the government.

I found it interesting that a week after I wrote my first blog questioning the constitutionality of House Bill 3200 Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News interviewed two Constitutional experts who also saw this as an unconstitutional action by the Congress. They pointed out that normally when this type of legislation is introduced in Congress the members of the House of Representatives or the Senate cite the provisions of the U.S. Constitution that authorize such legislation.

 This has not been the case in any of the Health Care Bills proposed. This is not a simple oversight on the part of the Congress. They know they don’t have Constitutional authority to do this, but they simply don’t care. They intend to do it anyway. I find this to be both supremely arrogant, and absolutely terrifying. If they succeed in this, then no provisions of the Constitution are safe from attack.

In fact, in future articles I will point out where other provisions of our Constitution that I consider sacred are being totally disregarded and under full scale assault by the Congress and the Obama administration. I repeat what I said in my previous article; this is not about health care. It is about our fundamental rights as free citizens of the United States."

"The Truth About the Health Care Bills

Posted August 12, 2009



           "Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.

            To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.

            The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.

            However, as scary as all of that it, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.

            The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.

            This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.

            If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed “acceptable” to the “Health Choices Administrator” appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a “tax” instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However, that doesn’t work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the “due process of law.

            So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn’t stop there though. The 9th Amendment that provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;” The 10th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.

            I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to “be bound by oath or affirmation” to support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.

            For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they consult the source. Here is a link to the Constitution: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

            And another to the Bill of Rights: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

            There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.

Michael Connelly

Retired attorney,

Constitutional Law Instructor

Carrollton, Texas "

http://michaelconnelly.viviti.com/

 

EDUCATION   

·    Diploma, Redemptorist High School in New Orleans, La. 1966.

·    Bachelor of Science, Business and Public Administration, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, La. (Degree required numerous political science and business courses. Many history and public speaking courses were taken as electives.) 1971

·    Juris Doctorate, Louisiana State University Law School, 1973.

·    Graduate, U.S. Army Intelligence School, Fort Huachuca, Arizona, 1973.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

            MILITARY:

·    Commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve, 1971.

·    Active duty at the U.S. Army Intelligence School from Sept. 1973- Nov. 1973.

·    Assigned to reserve duty with 352nd Army Security Agency company in Baton Rouge from Jan 1974 until Aug. 1978. (Served as Supply officer, Operations officer, and Recruiting officer.)

·    Left the reserves in 1978 as a Captain.

LEGAL:    Licensed attorney in Baton Rouge, La. since 1973.

·    Qualified to practice before all Louisiana State and Federal Courts and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

·    I have also represented clients before the U.S. Supreme Court.

·    Areas of practice include Constitutional Law, Personal Injury Law, Criminal Law, Family Law, Business Law, Medical Malpractice and Successions.

·    Special assistant attorney general for the State of Louisiana, 1977-80.

·    Of Counsel for U.S. Justice Foundation, 1980-98.

·    General Counsel, Council for Inter-American Security, 1978-95.

·    Still licensed, but inactive since 2001.

REAL ESTATE CONSULTING:

·    Part Time Real Estate consultant for McNichol & Connelly, Dallas, TX. (Duties included preparation of Market & Financial Feasibility studies, locating real estate for various projects, brokering loans, and locating potential investors.) 1997 - 1999     

TEACHING:

·         Currently teaching courses on Evidence Law, Constitutional Law, Courtroom Strategy and Business Law for Education to Go, an online company providing courses for numerous universities.

·    Have appeared as a guest lecturer at both LSU and University of New Orleans.

·    Substitute high school teacher for East Baton Rouge Parish School System, Sept. 1998-Jan. 2000.

·    Temporary full time teacher of World Geography, Woodlawn High School, Baton Rouge, La., 1998-99.

PUBLICATIONS AND PUBLIC SPEAKING

·    Authored, “Riders in the Sky: The Ghosts and Legends of Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico”, published by Merril Press in Aug 2001, and "The Mortarmen", published by Trafford Press in April 2005.

·    Authored the true story, “Winds of Merit” which was the basis for a television documentary segment on the show “Storm Warning” shown extensively on both the Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel.

·    Authored numerous published articles on politics, law, and scouting as well as many “keyword” articles for various companies.

·    Contributor to the book, “Intruder in Your Home” by Ronald L. Cruit, published by Stein and Day, 1983

·    Frequent speaker before civic groups and guest on radio and television talk shows (both local and national) on various political and legal subjects.

·    Frequent speaker before school groups on Native American Heritage.

·    Editor and Publisher of an award winning independent campus newspaper while at LSU.

·    Co-host of a weekly radio talk show while at LSU.

References available on request."


Wednesday, September 9, 2009

 

"Too late for Obama to turn it around? Plus: The left's visionaries lost their bearings on drugs

Long commentary but very worth the read.   Am also totally disgusted by the GOP because they held hands with Democrats to get us where we are now.  Believe we'll see a rise of a third party in the near future.

_____________

"Too late for Obama to turn it around?
Plus: The left's visionaries lost their bearings on drugs -- but the GOP is led by losers


By Camille Paglia
Source Salon

"Sept. 9, 2009 | What a difference a month makes! When my last controversial column posted on Salon in the second week of August, most Democrats seemed frozen in suspended animation, not daring to criticize the Obama administration's bungling of healthcare reform lest it give aid and comfort to the GOP. Well, that ice dam sure broke with a roar. Dissident Democrats found their voices, and by late August even the liberal lemmings of the mainstream media, from CBS to CNN, had drastically altered their tone of reportage, from priggish disdain of the town hall insurgency to frank admission of serious problems in the healthcare bills as well as of Obama's declining national support.

But this tonic dose of truth-telling may be too little too late. As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration's strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have -- from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama's plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done. At this point, Democrats' main hope for the 2012 presidential election is that Republicans nominate another hopelessly feeble candidate. Given the GOP's facility for shooting itself in the foot, that may well happen.

This column has been calling for heads to roll at the White House from the get-go. Thankfully, they do seem to be falling faster -- as witness the middle-of-the-night bum's rush given to "green jobs" czar Van Jones last week -- but there's a long way to go. An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president's innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to "help" the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year's tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web -- both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy -- I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin's book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me."

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.

Throughout this fractious summer, I was dismayed not just at the self-defeating silence of Democrats at the gaping holes or evasions in the healthcare bills but also at the fogginess or insipidity of articles and Op-Eds about the controversy emanating from liberal mainstream media and Web sources. By a proportion of something like 10-to-1, negative articles by conservatives were vastly more detailed, specific and practical about the proposals than were supportive articles by Democrats, which often made gestures rather than arguments and brimmed with emotion and sneers. There was a glaring inability in most Democratic commentary to think ahead and forecast what would or could be the actual snarled consequences -- in terms of delays, denial of services, errors, miscommunications and gross invasions of privacy -- of a massive single-payer overhaul of the healthcare system in a nation as large and populous as ours. It was as if Democrats live in a utopian dream world, divorced from the daily demands and realities of organization and management.

But dreaming in the 1960s and '70s had a spiritual dimension that is long gone in our crassly materialistic and status-driven time. Here's a gorgeous example: Bob Welch's song "Hypnotized." which appears on Fleetwood Mac's 1973 album "Mystery to Me." (The contemplative young man in this recent video is not Welch.) It's a peyote dream inspired by Carlos Castaneda's fictionalized books: "They say there's a place down in Mexico/ Where a man can fly over mountains and hills/ And he don't need an airplane or some kind of engine/ And he never will." This exhilarating shamanistic vision (wonderfully enhanced by Christine McVie's hymnlike backing vocal) captures the truth-seeking pilgrimages of my generation but also demonstrates the dangerous veering away from mundane social responsibilities. If the left is an incoherent shambles in the U.S., it's partly because the visionaries lost their bearings on drugs, and only the myopic apparatchiks and feather-preening bourgeois liberals are left. (I addressed the drugs cataclysm in "Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s" in the Winter 2003 issue of Arion.)

Having said all that about the failures of my own party, I am not about to let Republicans off the hook. What a backbiting mess the GOP is! It lacks even one credible voice of traditional moral values on the national stage and is addicted to sonorous pieties of pharisaical emptiness. Republican politicians sermonize about the sanctity of marriage while racking up divorces and sexual escapades by the truckload. They assail government overreach and yet support interference in women's control of their own bodies. Advanced whack-a-mole is clearly needed for that yammering smarty-pants Newt Gingrich, who is always so very, very pleased with himself but has yet to produce a single enduring thought. The still inexplicably revered George W. Bush ballooned our national deficits like a drunken sailor and clumsily exacerbated the illegal immigration debate. And bizarrely, the hallucinatory Dick Cheney, a fake-testosterone addict who spooked Bush into a pointless war, continues to be lauded as presidential material.

Which brings us to Afghanistan: Let's get the hell out! While I vociferously opposed the incursion into Iraq, I was always strongly in favor of bombing the mountains of Afghanistan to smithereens in our search for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida training camps. But committing our land forces to a long, open-ended mission to reshape the political future of that country has been a fool's errand from the start. Every invader has been frustrated and eventually defeated by that maze-like mountain terrain, from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union. In a larger sense, outsiders will never be able to fix the fate of the roiling peoples of the Near East and Greater Middle East, who have been disputing territorial borderlines and slaughtering each other for 5,000 years. There is too much lingering ethnic and sectarian acrimony for a tranquil solution to be possible for generations to come. The presence of Western military forces merely inflames and prolongs the process and creates new militias of patriotic young radicals who hate us and want to take the war into our own cities. The technological West is too infatuated with easy fixes. But tribally based peoples think in terms of centuries and millennia. They know how to wait us out. Our presence in Afghanistan is not worth the price of any more American lives or treasure.

In response to persistent queries, I must repeat: No, I do not have a Facebook page, nor am I a "friend" on anyone else's Facebook. Nor do I Twitter. This Salon column is my sole Web presence. Whatever doppelgänger Camille Paglias are tripping the light fantastic out there (as in the haunted bus-station episode of "The Twilight Zone"), they aren't me!"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/


Wednesday, September 9, 2009

 

..."The president's proposals would give unelected officials life-and-death rationing powers.

Looks like the Federal Reserve power grab would have taught us by now to not place so much authority in one entity. 

Bait being used is awfully appealing.

_____________ 

 

"Obama and the Bureaucratization of Health Care
The president's proposals would give unelected officials life-and-death rationing powers.


By SARAH PALIN
Source Wall Street Journal
September 8, 2009, 7:45 P.M. ET

"Writing in the New York Times last month, President Barack Obama asked that Americans "talk with one another, and not over one another" as our health-care debate moves forward.

I couldn't agree more. Let's engage the other side's arguments, and let's allow Americans to decide for themselves whether the Democrats' health-care proposals should become governing law.

Some 45 years ago Ronald Reagan said that "no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds." Each of us knows that we have an obligation to care for the old, the young and the sick. We stand strongest when we stand with the weakest among us.

We also know that our current health-care system too often burdens individuals and businesses—particularly small businesses—with crippling expenses. And we know that allowing government health-care spending to continue at current rates will only add to our ever-expanding deficit.

How can we ensure that those who need medical care receive it while also reducing health-care costs? The answers offered by Democrats in Washington all rest on one principle: that increased government involvement can solve the problem. I fundamentally disagree.

Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats' proposals "will provide more stability and security to every American."

With all due respect, Americans are used to this kind of sweeping promise from Washington. And we know from long experience that it's a promise Washington can't keep.

Let's talk about specifics. In his Times op-ed, the president argues that the Democrats' proposals "will finally bring skyrocketing health-care costs under control" by "cutting . . . waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies . . . ."

First, ask yourself whether the government that brought us such "waste and inefficiency" and "unwarranted subsidies" in the first place can be believed when it says that this time it will get things right. The nonpartistan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doesn't think so: Its director, Douglas Elmendorf, told the Senate Budget Committee in July that "in the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount."

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He's asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of "normal political channels," should guide decisions regarding that "huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . ."

Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans. Working through "normal political channels," they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context. But the fact remains that the Democrats' proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we've come to expect from this administration.

Speaking of government overreaching, how will the Democrats' proposals affect the deficit? The CBO estimates that the current House proposal not only won't reduce the deficit but will actually increase it by $239 billion over 10 years. Only in Washington could a plan that adds hundreds of billions to the deficit be hailed as a cost-cutting measure.

The economic effects won't be limited to abstract deficit numbers; they'll reach the wallets of everyday Americans. Should the Democrats' proposals expand health-care coverage while failing to curb health-care inflation rates, smaller paychecks will result. A new study for Watson Wyatt Worldwide by Steven Nyce and Syl Schieber concludes that if the government expands health-care coverage while health-care inflation continues to rise "the higher costs would drive disposable wages downward across most of the earnings spectrum, although the declines would be steepest for lower-earning workers." Lower wages are the last thing Americans need in these difficult economic times.

Finally, President Obama argues in his op-ed that Democrats' proposals "will provide every American with some basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable." Of course consumer protection sounds like a good idea. And it's true that insurance companies can be unaccountable and unresponsive institutions—much like the federal government. That similarity makes this shift in focus seem like nothing more than an attempt to deflect attention away from the details of the Democrats' proposals—proposals that will increase our deficit, decrease our paychecks, and increase the power of unaccountable government technocrats.

Instead of poll-driven "solutions," let's talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let's give Americans control over their own health care.

Democrats have never seriously considered such ideas, instead rushing through their own controversial proposals. After all, they don't need Republicans to sign on: Democrats control the House, the Senate and the presidency. But if passed, the Democrats' proposals will significantly alter a large sector of our economy. They will not improve our health care. They will not save us money. And, despite what the president says, they will not "provide more stability and security to every American."

We often hear such overblown promises from Washington. With first principles in mind and with the facts in hand, tell them that this time we're not buying it."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574400581157986024.html


Wednesday, September 9, 2009

 

'Doctors told me it was against the rules to save my premature baby'

There were several photos in this article, follow link at bottom to view.

_______


'Doctors told me it was against the rules to save my premature baby'


By Vanessa Allen and Andrew Levy
Last updated at 7:58 AM on 09th September 2009

Source DailyMail.co.uk

"Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday.

Sarah Capewell begged them to save her tiny son, who was born just 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy  -  almost four months early.

They ignored her pleas and allegedly told her they were following national guidelines that babies born before 22 weeks should not be given medical treatment.
 
Battle: Sarah Capewell is fighting to have guidelines about caring for very premature babies changed

Miss Capewell, 23, said doctors refused to even see her son Jayden, who lived for almost two hours without any medical support.

She said he was breathing unaided, had a strong heartbeat and was even moving his arms and legs, but medics refused to admit him to a special care baby unit.

Miss Capewell is now fighting for a review of the medical guidelines.
 
Heartbreak: Sarah Capewell with her daughter Jodi, five
 
Sarah Capewell is fighting for new guidelines on when infants should be given intensive care after her premature son Jayden (right) was refused treatment

Medics allegedly told her that they would have tried to save the baby if he had been born two days later, at 22 weeks.

In fact, the medical guidelines for Health Service hospitals state that babies should not be given intensive care if they are born at less than 23 weeks.

The guidance, drawn up by the Nuffield Council, is not compulsory but advises doctors that medical intervention for very premature children is not in the best interests of the baby, and is not 'standard practice'.

James Paget Hospital in Norfolk refused to comment on the case but said it was not responsible for setting the guidelines relating to premature births.

A trust spokesman said: 'Like other acute hospitals, we follow national guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine regarding premature births.'

Miss Capewell, who has had five miscarriages, said the guidelines had robbed her son of a chance of life.
 
Short life: Miss Capewell's son Jayden died two hours after he was born at James Paget Hospital in Gorleston, Norfolk, in October 2008

She said: 'When he was born, he put out his arms and legs and pushed himself over.

A midwife said he was breathing and had a strong heartbeat, and described him as a "little fighter".

I kept asking for the doctors but the midwife said, "They won't come and help, sweetie. Make the best of the time you have with him".'

She cuddled her child and took precious photos of him, but he died in her arms less than two hours after his birth.

Miss Capewell, who has a five-year-old daughter Jodie, went into labour in October last year at 21 weeks and four days after suffering problems during her pregnancy.

She said she was told that because she had not reached 22 weeks, she was not allowed injections to try to stop the labour, or a steroid injection to help to strengthen her baby's lungs.

Instead, doctors told her to treat the labour as a miscarriage, not a birth, and to expect her baby to be born with serious deformities or even to be still-born.
 
Treasured memories: Pictures of baby Jason's feet and hands

She told how she begged one paediatrician, 'You have got to help', only for the man to respond: 'No we don't.'

As her contractions continued, a chaplain arrived at her bedside to discuss bereavement and planning a funeral, she claims.

She said: 'I was sitting there, reading this leaflet about planning a funeral and thinking, this is my baby, he isn't even born yet, let alone dead.'

After his death she even had to argue with hospital officials for her right to receive birth and death certificates, which meant she could give her son a proper funeral.
 
Justice for Jayden: His mother is campaigning to change the law

She was shocked to discover that another child, born in the U.S. at 21 weeks and six days into her mother's pregnancy, had survived.

Amillia Taylor was born in Florida in 2006 and celebrated her second birthday last October. She is the youngest premature baby to survive.

Miss Capewell said: 'I could not believe that one little girl, Amillia Taylor, is perfectly healthy after being born in Florida in 2006 at 21 weeks and six days.

'Thousands of women have experienced this. The doctors say the babies won't survive but how do they know if they are not giving them a chance?'

Miss Capewell has won the support of Labour MP Tony Wright, who has backed her call for a review of the medical guidelines. He said: 'When a woman wants to give the best chance to her baby, they should surely be afforded that opportunity.'

What the medical guidelines say...
Guidance limiting care of the most premature babies provoked outrage when it was published three years ago.

Experts on medical ethics advised doctors not to resuscitate babies born before 23 weeks in the womb, stating that it was not in the child's 'best interests'.

The guidelines said: 'If gestational age is certain and less than 23+0 (i.e at 22 weeks) it would be considered in the best interests of the baby, and standard practice, for resuscitation not to be carried out.'

Medical intervention would be given for a child born between 22 and 23 weeks only if the parents requested it and only after discussion about likely outcomes.

The rules were endorsed by the British Association of Perinatal Medicine and are followed by NHS hospitals.

The association said they were not meant to be a 'set of instructions', but doctors regard them as the best available advice on the treatment of premature babies.

More than 80,000 babies are born prematurely in Britain every year, and of those some 40,000 need to be treated in intensive care.

The NHS spends an estimated £1 billion a year on their care.

But while survival rates for those born after 24 weeks in the womb have risen significantly, the rates for those born earlier have barely changed, despite advances in medicine and technology.

Medical experts say babies born before 23 weeks are simply too under-developed to survive, and that to use aggressive treatment methods would only prolong their suffering, or inflict pain.

The guidelines were drawn up by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics after a two-year inquiry which took evidence from doctors, nurses and religious leaders.

But weeks before they were published in 2006, a child was born in the U.S. which proved a baby could survive at earlier than 22 weeks if it was given medical treatment.

Amillia Taylor was born in Florida on October 24, 2006, after just 21 weeks and six days in the womb. She celebrated her second birthday last year.

Doctors believed she was a week older and so gave her intensive care, but later admitted she would not have received treatment if they had known her true age.

Her birth also coincided with the debate in Britain over whether the abortion limit should be reduced.

Some argued that if a baby could survive at 22 weeks then the time limit on abortions should be reduced.

The argument, which was lost in Parliament, followed a cut to the time limit in 1990 when politicians reduced it from 28 weeks to 24 weeks, in line with scientific evidence that foetuses could survive outside the womb at a younger age.

However, experts say cases like Amillia Taylor's are rare, and can raise false expectations about survival rates.

Studies show that only 1 per cent of babies born before 23 weeks survive, and many suffer serious disabilities."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211950/Premature-baby-left-die-doctors-mother-gives-birth-just-days-22-week-care-limit.html


Wednesday, September 9, 2009

 

"Obama to seal US-UN relationship

Excerpt

"Obama to seal US-UN relationship

By Harvey Morris at the United Nations

Published: September 8 2009 19:59 | Last updated: September 8 2009 19:59

Source Financial Times

"Barack Obama will cement the new co-operative relationship between the US and the United Nations this month when he becomes the first American president to chair its 15-member Security Council. ............"

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7d0c7a3a-9ca4-11de-ab58-00144feabdc0.html


Tuesday, September 8, 2009

 

"BORN IN THE USA? Shocker! Judge orders trial on eligibility issue

Congratulations Dr. Orly Taitz and all who've worked on getting this heard by the courts!!!! 

_____________ 

 

"BORN IN THE USA?
Shocker! Judge orders trial on eligibility issue
Arguments planned Jan. 11 for major Obama challenge

Posted: September 08, 2009
4:42 pm Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

 


Is this the footprint of baby Barack Obama?

A California judge today tentatively scheduled a trial for Jan. 26, 2010, for a case that challenges Barack Obama's eligibility to be president based on questions over his qualifications under the requirements of the U.S. Constitution.

If the case actually goes to arguments before U.S. District Judge David Carter, it will be the first time the merits of the dispute have been argued in open court, according to one of the attorneys working on the issue.

In a highly anticipated hearing today before Carter, several motions were heard, including a resolution to long-standing questions about whether attorney Orly Taitz properly served notice on the defendants, which she had.

In a second ruling, Carter ordered that attorney Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation can be added to the case to represent plaintiffs Wiley Drake and Markham Robinson, who had been removed by an earlier court order. Drake, the vice presidential candidate for the American Independent Party, and Robinson, the party's chairman, also were restored to the case.

Want to know for certain where Obama was born? Demand the truth by joining the petition campaign to make President Obama reveal his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate!

But the judge did not immediately rule on Taitz' motion to be granted discovery – that is the right to see the president's still-concealed records. Nor did Carter rule immediately on a motion to dismiss the case, submitted by the U.S. government, following discussion over Taitz' challenge to the work of a magistrate in the case.

The judge did comment that if there are legitimate constitutional questions regarding Obama's eligibility, they need to be addressed and resolved.

Carter ordered a hearing Oct. 5 on the motion to dismiss and ordered arguments submitted on the issue of discovery.

If the case survives that challenge, a pretrial hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 11 and the trial for two weeks later.

The case would be the first time, according to Kreep, that the actual merits of the dispute will have been heard in open court. A multitude of such disputes have been rejected out of hand by various state and federal courts. Even the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly has rejected urgent appeals to hear the evidence.

The suit alleges Obama is actually a citizen of Indonesia and "possibly still citizen of Kenya, usurping the position of the president of the United States of America and the commander-in-chief."


WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions.

WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.

In the U.S. Justice Department's motion to dismiss, attorneys didn't address the concerns directly, but instead focused their efforts on technical procedures, suggesting the matter can't be decided in court and that the dozens of plaintiffs cannot demonstrate they have been injured by having Obama in the Oval Office.

See the movie Obama does not want you to see: Own the DVD that probes this unprecedented presidential eligibility mystery.

 

"It is clear, from the text of the Constitution, and the relevant statutory law implementing the Constitution's textual commitments, that challenges to the qualifications of a candidate for president can, in the first instance, be presented to the voting public before the election, and, once the election is over, can be raised as objections as the electoral votes are counted in the Congress," wrote Assistant U.S. Attorneys Roger West and David DeJute. "Therefore, challenges such as those purportedly raised in this case are committed, under the Constitution, to the electors, and to the Legislative branch."

President Obama's defenders also said they would file a motion seeking to block any discovery of evidence at this point.

Kreep said said his addition to the case probably will mean additional arguments over the president's eligibility.

Among the long list of plaintiffs are former ambassador and presidential candidate Alan Keyes and longshot vice-presidential candidate Gail Lightfoot, both of whom ran in 2008.

Justice officials say because neither had a mathematical chance at winning, they were not directly harmed by the election of Obama.

But among the issues that appear to be looming is a claim that Obama's actual birth certificate from Kenya has emerged.

As WND reported over the holiday weekend, Lucas Smith, the man who tried to sell an alleged Barack Obama Kenyan birth certificate on eBay, filed court papers insisting – under threat of perjury – that the Obama birth certificate in his possession is the genuine article.


The document above is alleged by Lucas Smith to be Barack Obama's original, authentic birth certificate from Kenya.

 

Taitz posted on her blog Smith's declaration, which claims he obtained the alleged birth certificate from Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya, and insists it's real.

"The true and correct photocopy of the birth certificate obtained is attached to this affidavit as Exhibit A," the declaration reads. "I declare, certify, verify, state and affirm under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing statements of fact and descriptions of circumstances and events are true and correct."

Smith's affidavit, which includes a copy of the certificate, has been filed Carter, whose works in the Central District of California.

In his filing, Smith declares that he traveled to Kenya in February and paid off a military officer in order to obtain a copy of the birth certificate from Coast General Hospital in Mombasa. The declaration also states that the hospital administrator signed and sealed the copy, which indicates Obama's birth in Africa on Aug. 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m.

As WND reported, Smith released a video of the document he claims is a copy of Obama's hospital birth record, though WND's own investigation failed to substantiate the document's authenticity..

WND first reported earlier this year when Lucas Smith, a former resident of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and known by the eBay handle "colmado_naranja," claimed to have a document proving Obama's birth in Mombasa, Kenya.

After promising to reveal the document to WND, Smith then dropped communications with a team of people offering to help him verify the document, only fueling the belief the sale – and therefore the alleged document – was a scam.

WND followed Smith's ongoing saga as "colmado_naranja" as he attempted several times to sell the document, or photos and stories surrounding it, on eBay, only to have the auctions repeatedly removed by site administrators.

WND also launched an investigation into "colmado_naranja," which led through several online aliases and reported collaborators, including Dawnella Wilson, "InspectorSmith" and, eventually, Lucas Smith.

Smith, whose background includes a lengthy criminal record and a reported attempt to sell his kidney to a man in need of organ transplant, nonetheless insists that his motives are above board, even if his past looks dubious.

"I do have a background. I've made mistakes in my life," Smith told WND in an e-mail. "It took a guy like me to go and get tangible proof about Obama. I don't mind breaking a few laws or policies here and there. I don't mind paying the military in foreign countries to look the other way ... The military [in Africa] will grant you access to anything for just a few dollars. People are starving. So yes, it takes a guy like me to get things done once in a while."

An enhanced version of the Smith YouTube video has been published by Repubx.com, permitting a more legible examination of the document.

WND has also determined that a supposed Kenyan birth certificate previously released by attorney Orly Taitz probably is a forgery.

WND has reported on an authentic 1961-era Kenyan birth certificate, which looks distinctly different from the document Smith released in the video.


Authentic 1961-era Kenyan birth certificate obtained by WND

Because of the dearth of information about Obama's eligibility, WND founder Joseph Farah has launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?"


"Where's The Birth Certificate?" billboard at the Mandalay Bay resort on the Las Vegas Strip

 

The campaign followed a petition that has collected more than 450,000 signatures demanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question and the production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question.

The "certification of live birth" posted online and widely touted as "Obama's birth certificate" does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same "short-form" document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true "long-form" birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.

Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth."


http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=109242


Tuesday, September 8, 2009

 

"An Address To Our Schoolchildren

Tuesday, September 8. 2009

Posted by Karl Denninger

Source Market Ticker

"An Address To Our Schoolchildren

"My Fellow Americans.

"Today you heard from our President, Barack Obama.  Some of your parents voted for him, and most of the rest of the country voted for his opponent, John McCain.

What you heard from President Obama today was a plea for you to pay attention in school and finish your education.

What you did not hear from President Obama today was that your government, together with your school, has refused to provide you with the knowledge necessary for you to understand what has happened to this nation and its economy over the last 30 years.

This is not an accident.

In math class you are taught "the power function", which you think of as squares, cubes, and similar.  It is written as 4^2, or, expanded, as 4 x 4.

But what you're not taught is how this applies to finance, even though every household and every American has their own financial challenges, and every person in America should understand how finance works.

Neither Republican or Democrat wants you to see this graph.  This is how much each American, from 1970 to today, is in debt because of our government's policies:

2009's "fiscal year" (that is, the year for accounting purposes) doesn't close until the end of this month.  But as of today, this graph is correct (and will only get worse in the next three weeks.)

Let me be clear: In the last two years your mother, father, school teacher, grandma and grandpa have stuck each and every American with $10,000 in personal debt, and since 2000 the amount of debt you have had forced upon you has doubled.

This debt was forced upon you not because of the need to defend this country from a foreign invader such as occurred on December 7th 1941 or because of the War on Terrorism, but rather because a bunch of greedy men and women on Wall Street and Washington DC, both Democrat and Republican, lied, cheated and stole money from ordinary Americans for more than a decade.

You have undoubtedly been taught that stealing is wrong, and indeed, that if you steal you can go to jail.  But you need to understand that the law applies only to "little people" like you.  If you work on Wall Street, own a fancy suit and private airplane, and steal millions and millions of dollars from people worldwide, instead of going to jail you will be rewarded with a huge bonus and be able to buy a really big boat, while the cost of your stealing will be forced on the children - and unborn - throughout America.

That's you, by the way.

You need to understand that this is not a "Democrat" or "Republican" thing.  Indeed, both Democrats and Republicans in Washington DC know about this and both are equally responsible for letting it happen.  Both Democrats and Republicans voted for a law called "TARP" and allowed The Federal Reserve to take actions over the last two years that were responsible for you having to pay that extra $10,000.  They voted for this law even though ordinary Americans just like you told them not to vote for it - in fact, for every person who called their offices or sent an email to tell them to vote "yes", 100 people called, faxed or emailed and told them to vote "no".

They voted "Yes" anyway and as a result you must pay that $10,000 in the future, whether you want to or not, so that those who robbed, cheated and stole can have their yacht and your parents can lose their house to foreclosure.

President Bush signed that law and President Obama refused to step in and stop it when he became President.  President Bush is a Republican and President Obama is a Democrat.  Do not be deceived - both major political parties are equally responsible for this outrage - and for forcing you to pay.

The worst part of the graph above is that this is not all of the debt you must pay.  In fact your "share" of the debt is five times what's shown on that graph.

That's right my fellow Americans - you are in debt for more than $200,000 - each and every one of you, including every school child in America.

Why?

Because our government is lying about how much everyone owes.  See, our government has promised everyone free medical care and free retirement money.  But our government doesn't have the money to pay for that, since every penny that the government has must come from either borrowing or taxing, and the government isn't forced to follow the law when it comes to honest accounting - that is, honest math.

When you cheat on your math test in school you get an "F". 

But when the government cheats on its math they get re-elected, because our schools refuse to teach students just like you how math applies to finance, and as a result 95% of Americans don't understand that they're being screwed to the tune of $200,000 each.

That's because the schools are run by the government, and for that reason the government controls what you learn - and what you don't.

Our debt is supposedly $11 trillion dollars.  But the money the government must have in the future to pay for those free benefits, Social Security and Medicare, doesn't exist.  The former Comptroller of the Currency of America (that's a fancy word for the chief guy who keeps track of the books), David Walker, has said that the real debt is more than $53 trillion dollars, or almost five times what you see in the graph above.

Why was this allowed to happen?

It really is quite simple:

They're big, and you're small.  They're right, and you're wrong. 

Just because they said so. 

While you were out playing in the back yards and playgrounds of America both Democrats and Republicans were making promises they could not keep.  Instead of raising taxes right now for whatever they wanted to promise they instead decided to send you the bill, and your parents went along with it.

So when you come home from school this afternoon say "Thanks" to your Mom, Dad, Grandpa and Grandma for selling you into slavery.

For obligating you to pay for the stealing that has gone on for nearly ten years on Wall Street and in Washington DC.

For allowing those very same lies to cost your family (or that of someone you know and love) their house, their job, and their future.

And finally, make sure you thank your Teachers and Principal for not teaching you the math you need to be able to understand what is really going on with your government, so you don't get mad enough to put a stop to it - or demand that your parents do so.

After all, they're right and you're wrong.

They're big and you're small.

They, including your school teachers, principals and school boards, won't teach you about how math applies to all of this, because if they did, they couldn't lie to you any more and you might revolt (quite literally) - either now or later.

So sit back and enjoy your childhood; your time to become a slave, when you leave school and start having to pay that $200,000 by having it taken from you in the form of taxes will be here soon enough.

Wall Street and the politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, thank you for quietly accepting your role as a slave to pay for their yachts, along with the lies, cheating and stealing that have been going on literally every day for more than ten years.

Now sit down at your desk, shut up and behave while your teachers show you only what the government wants you to know.

Wall Street and Washington DC are relying on you, our nation's youth, refusing to demand the truth.

They're sure you won't disappoint them."



http://market-ticker.org/archives/1416-An-Address-To-Our-Schoolchildren.html


Tuesday, September 8, 2009

 

"Up to $3,800 fine for failure get health insurance

"Up to $3,800 fine for failure get health insurance

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9AJ8OBO0&show_article=1


Tuesday, September 8, 2009

 

"Six Million Home Foreclosures: Are FDIC Insured Banks the Next Time Bomb? (Part 1)

Six Million Home Foreclosures: Are FDIC Insured Banks the Next Time Bomb? (Part 2)

http://seekingalpha.com/article/159368-six-million-home-foreclosures-are-fdic-insured-banks-the-next-time-bomb-part-2

_________

 
"Six Million Home Foreclosures: Are FDIC Insured Banks the Next Time Bomb? (Part 1)
Andrew Butter
September 01, 2009
Source Seeking Alpha

"Over a year ago Hank Paulson declared "The US Banking System Is A Safe and Sound One", the market's reaction to that piece of news was to short Fannie (FNM) and Freddie (FRE) into oblivion. A key issue there was holdings of mortgaged backed securities, specifically RMBS; valuations of those things depended on (a) their credit rating, (and once the LTV started to slip the rules said they had to be downgraded, so the price tanked), and (b) there was a rule of thumb that the value of those things was what an equivalent Treasury cost, less the cost of a CDS to insure them; when fear took over, the cost of a CDS went through the roof, the "market" (it never was a real market), froze. Then there was Lehman.

What drove that crisis was fear of the future, and the reason so much money was required to bail out the players ($2.7 trillion so far) was that previously if you had a "good credit score" you could borrow short-term Treasures, and buy an RMBS on 100% margin, and make a fortune; then the margins got called.

What happened was nothing different from a gambler going into a casino, borrowing from the house, using that money to bet on a "sure thing", and losing. Lucky for the gambler the "house" decided he was too big to fail - if you or I were to do something like that, we would be lucky to get away with a pair of broken legs.

Now the future is threatening to arrive:

There are two issues, (a) how much of that $2.7 trillion paid out mainly by the Fed (largely without any oversight by Congress) will get paid back, and (b) what's going to happen to the legacy banks who (then) had the luxury of being able to "take a view" on their portfolios of "originate and hold", and make a provision.

Right now the "reserves for losses" of FDIC insured banks is $211 billion on a portfolio of $7.625 trillion of loans and leases plus another $1.365 trillion of RMBS. In the circumstances that looks a tad light.

But the die is still rolling, and where it ends up will determine how much the "Too Big To Fail" card-sharks pay back, and how much of the $1.422 trillion of equity capital of the FDIC banks gets destroyed.

It's sometimes easy to forget that in this war the front line is foreclosures; although you wouldn't think that from the news. All you get is occasional pretty charts from the Mortgage Bankers Association with percentages (it's never quite clear of what), plus sound bites from the rating agencies like "the cure rate went down last month" or from RealtyTrac: "total filings went up last month".

From that trickle of managed, massaged and censored dispatches, it sounds suspiciously like somebody (or some-bodies), is trying to hide something.

Like a ticking bomb?

Perhaps the bottom in house prices was in May or perhaps there will be another leg down, but that's starting to be academic; a bottom is somewhere in the neighborhood. The story now is foreclosures; that's what drove house prices down to where they are now and that's what will keep them down. The acid on that cake and the nightmare for anyone in negative equity, is how many there will be by the time this is all over?

Since January 2005 over two million homes in USA have been foreclosed, that's about 1.7% of the total housing stock.



Many of those were family homes, so that's probably already directly affected about 3.5% of the American population.

 

This is the Bomb:

Right now in the USA there are over two million mortgages in either the first stage or the second stage of foreclosure; a large majority of those will end in foreclosure. At the current rate of "clearance" it will take two years for all of those to be processed.

And that's not counting new ones getting added to the pipeline at a rate of about 100,000 a month. That's clearly not something that anyone thought worth mentioning in the one hundred pages of turgid drivel "The Industry" shoveled out over the past three months; that I ploughed through to make sure I got it right (dear reader - just for you). And you wonder why there is a credit crunch?

The News Is, It Ain't Pretty

The headline data that is typically released, for example by RealtyTrac (i.e."360,000 Filings In July") is an aggregation that has to be disaggregated to make any sense of it, there are three stages:

The borrower can normally "cure" the process at any point, typically up to five days before the date of sale, although some mortgages give the lender the power to push through to disposal of the property as soon as the loan becomes delinquent. In most cases the process is non judicial and governed by the wording of the mortgage so there is no requirement to involve the Courts and the only option the borrower has to stop or delay the process is to pay up.

It's hard to get data, the best source I found was Mark Hanson plus there was data here and there from RealtyTrac. This is what I managed to cobble together:

That's not complete data, presumably that exists somewhere but it's not in the public domain. The reason there are more 1st Stage than 2nd Stage than Final Stage is (a) because some mortgages are cured (no hard data on how many) and (b) because the flow through from 1st to 2nd and Final is not linear.

An optimist might say that it looks like there is a top developing since Stage 1 and Final Stage are flattening; here are some theories:

  1. That could perhaps be due to the recent moratorium from Q-4 2008 through Q-2 2009; but perhaps all that did was increase the backlog, and cure rates for those are going down (according to Fitch).
  2. Another possible reason could be that the "system" just can't handle more than about 80,000 final foreclosures a month, perhaps that's about the limit. In 2005 the average was less than 20,000 a month, 80,000 is a 400% increase. For every foreclosure somebody from the lender has to show up and make decisions, the trustee has to show up and administer the auction and transfer the deed, perhaps there just aren't enough "somebody's" who understand the procedures to go round?
  3. There again it might be that the lenders could be trying harder to look for ways to modify loans so that foreclosure can be avoided; that takes time (putting together an offer, squaring it away - particularly if the loan is part of a pool and the pool has covenants, then getting an answer back from the borrower, perhaps negotiating).
  4. Or could it be that when a loan goes from "Non-current" to "loss" the banks or the service providers in the case of RMBS or CDO, have to book that number as a loss, not a provision? And that really messes up "mark-to-fantasy" accounting.

Which?


This is a plot of the difference between the S&P Case-Shiller 20 City Index and the final foreclosure number with a six-month lag, starting at the top where it was 207 (i.e. in January 2008 the Index was 181, so the difference is 26 and that's compared to foreclosures in June 2008 on the chart (six months later)). That's a measure of the Negative Equity of households.

This is the way I read that chart:

  1. There is clearly a relationship between Final Stage foreclosures and the amount of "negative equity"; also the moratorium had an effect, if the trend line had continued by now there would be 160,000 final foreclosures a month (assuming there had been enough capacity to deal with them), so in that sense the moratorium was a success, it "saved" 570,000 homes from foreclosure.
  2. It looks as if the moratorium also slowed down the number of 1st Stage filings which appear also to have stepped down from where they were headed in July and August last year, but are clearly driven by the "negative equity index", although thanks to the moratorium, the effect of that was from a lower base. So perhaps 400,000 1st Stage filings were "saved" there.

That appears to go against the theory that the moratorium encouraged or encourages people to default.

It's interesting how bankers, accountants and rating agencies never seem to miss an opportunity to blame their incompetence on the innate dishonesty, lack of personal ethics and downright crookedness of ordinary Americans, as if this whole thing was caused by Liar Loans, i.e. Liars. One of the turgid self-satisfied reports I read was about how the FBI "ought" to mobilize up to catch the people who "lied" as if that was what caused this disaster. Well I've met a lot of bankers, accountants and people from rating agencies, and I've also met a lot of ordinary Americans, and I don't think that I need to explain where my sympathies lie   ( http://seekingalpha.com/article/157808-liar-loans-not-the-problem )   in that department. The track of the blue dots appears to prove my point.

It is likely also that easing off on foreclosures, was one, and perhaps the only reason for the recent "bounce" in the S&P Case-Shiller Index (helped perhaps by seasonal factors).

The Effect Of The Moratorium

The problem is that over the past nine months, despite the moratorium, another 1.2 million new 1st Stage Fillings were made, yet "only" 850,000 "left" the system to foreclosure, so that's another 350,000 in the system on top of the estimated 1,750,000 that were in the system in the first place (1st and 2nd Stage).

So that's 2,100,00 still "stuck" in the system, less the "cures", which are hard to gauge, I could not find consistent data on that.

Although if you have gone past the 1st Stage to once an auction date has been set (2nd Stage), the chances of modification or cure are much less; and from the first chart it is clear that the moratorium had little or no effect on the progression from 1st Stage to 2nd Stage. That suggests that unless new measures are brought in, the system might simply be playing catch up. "

 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/159367-six-million-home-foreclosures-are-fdic-insured-banks-the-next-time-bomb-part-1?source=commenter

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

 

"China And The Buzz Of A Pending Bank Default

Kitco 30 day gold chart   http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/au0030lnb.gif 

_________

Via SteveQuayle.com

Thursday, September 3, 2009

"CHINA AND THE BUZZ OF A PENDING BANK DEFAULT

Source The Fundamental View Blogspot 

"Let’s put the pieces together here. Just this past weekend China announced that State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) will be allowed to default on commodity derivative contracts. Think of that. China has given the green light and authorized the defaulting on commodity derivative contracts.

This story broke over the weekend but has not gotten much mainstream media attention on this side of the pond. (North America). The only inference to it was the talk or “buzz” on the Wall Street floor that another bank was rumored to be close to defaulting. As Art Cashin of UBS Securities indicated in the video clip I posted earlier, normally when a market sells off on a rumor and the rumor turns out to be false, the market will tend to correct itself. IT DIDN’T.

The Reuters report cited 6 foreign banks that received letters indicating that the Chinese State Owned Enterprises would be given the green light to default on their derivatives.

A look at what a derivative actually is may be useful here. A Derivative is a financial instrument that is derived from some other underlying asset, index, event, value or condition. Rather than trade or exchange the underlying itself, derivative traders enter into an agreement to exchange cash or assets over time based on the underlying. A simple example is a futures contract: an agreement to exchange the underlying asset at a future date. Commercial and investment banks make up the foundation of the over the counter (OTC) derivatives market. Investors use derivatives to protect against risks, such as sudden changes in price or value of the underlying asset. Others tap derivatives to take on extra risk, in the hope of extra gains.

Well China owns billions of these products and it has finally come to light they have had enough of having the value of their derivatives manipulated by the manipulation of the price of the underlying asset. They have finally woken up to the fact that these derivatives have been bundled together like junk in a manner that resembles the mortgage backed derivatives that brought down the world markets last year.

Back to Reuters.  Some of the State Owned Enterprises that stated their potential intentions to default were Air China. China Eastern and Cosco. Mainly in part because they took major derivatives losses over the past year but also, concerns are arising that the derivatives that they were sold by these foreign institutions are garbage, underwater and may never see the light of day. So why continue to pay for them? So the concern in the financial world is that holders of these losing products may just walk away, not unlike a home owner with a $600,000 mortgage on a home valued at $475,000 deciding to just hand in their keys. However, read on...this has nothing to do with morgtgage backed products.  This time, the concern may be over Oil.

They (Reuters) cited 6 foreign banks.Where the story gets really intriguing is that among the major derivatives providers according to Reuters but also widely known in the industry, are Goldman Sachs, UBS and JP Morgan.

Here is the looming problem. These products are worth billions. One report that a good friend of mine did showed that if Goldman Sachs for example were to take this one up the rear, they could stand to lose 15 billion dollars. (This number is by no means confirmed)

An important history lesson is needed here. “Potential default” was the concern that sparked and prompted the most recent economic crisis. These intricately weaved products along with highly speculative CDOs and CDSs began to fall apart when the bubble that was in large part significantly contributed to and created by the financial institutions that were packaging this junk started to fall apart.

Imagine the impact for a brief moment if you will, on the impact to the financial landscape if China were to say “we are walking away” from those products. I would imagine that China, being the biggest purchaser of US debt, could surely collapse the US institutions that were at one point deemed too big to fail if they decide to go ahead with this plan.

This is why I don’t take tonight’s news that China purchased 50 billion dollars of IMF bonds lightly. In fact, I take it very seriously. This is why I take the buzz on the floor over the past two days very seriously as well as I do the incredible spike in Gold today. Most importantly, I do not take lightly the recent 25% correction we have seen in the Chinese Stock Market. Can all these events be interconnected some how? Is the Chinese stock collapse giving us a hint?

The Reuters story came out on Mon Aug 31, 2009 at 7:42am EDT. I find it quite interesting that the mainstream media did not take this more seriously. Reuters reported that the above noted Chinese companies have already issued letters to the banks. The Reuters article cites 4 clear points.

• State-owned firms may default on commodity hedges - report

• Bankers dismayed, confused by report; seek more details

• Lawyers question legality of the move

• Traders suspect lurking losses may have prompted warning (Adds analysts comments)

Analysts are fearing that if these three big companies came out and spelled out their losses and dismay at these products then this might prompt other large Chinese corporations to do the same.

Let’s take a closer look at the companies that have been mentioned in these news articles out of China. They are Air China, China Eastern and Cosco. If you ask me, this conundrum might have to do with oil. I deduce from this that if there is a problem brewing it has everything to do with their Oil Derivatives business.

Here’s a brief overview of what might happen should these companies, and others, default. The banks, namely Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and from other accounts possibly Deutsche Bank will find themselves LONG on oil futures with no customers on the short side of the derivatives. This will most likely lead the banks to sell the excess oil futures without a care for the price. This is no different than what happened when Bear Stearns was forced to sell off their gold futures in March of 2008 which then resulted in a sharp downturn in the price of Gold.

Reuters stated:

Spokespersons at Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and UBS (UBSN.VX) declined comment, and media officials at Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and JPMorgan (JPM.N) were not immediately available for comment. All are major global providers of commodity risk management.

We have yet to hear their commentary. A Chinese statesperson was quoted as saying “"If we were among the banks receiving that letter, we would be very angry.” You bet your bottom dollar. You don’t think the firms listed above are angry, or, are they frightened that if the Chinese State Owned entities start taking affirmative action it could theoretically bring down some of the biggest remaining names on Wall Street?

Remember Reuters initial story was titled Beijing's derivative default stance rattles market. Read it thoroughly for more information.

Then, read the story that broke last Saturday to get a clearer perspective before the political and corporate spin started to enter the story. China warns banks on OTC hedge defaults –report.

“BEIJING, Aug 29 (Reuters) - Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) may unilaterally terminate derivative contracts with six foreign banks that provide over-the-counter commodity hedging services, a leading financial magazine said.

China's SOE regulator, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), had told the financial institutions that SOEs reserved the right to default on contracts, Caijing magazine quoted an unnamed industry source as saying.”

On September 1, 2009 Reuters said that the Banks, not the commodities would be at risk if China followed through.

Yes, legal battles would ensue should this happen and we can also expect to have Chinese political figures downplay the story in an effort to avert panic. However, if they can prove that these derivatives or the underlying asset was manipulated in a manner to profit the bank that issued the product then that may even do more damage than the default themselves.

Perhaps the “buzz” on the floor is indeed true. Perhaps we are going to see action that could annihilate one of the biggest Wall Street firms ever.

If there is one thing I have learned of late is that when the Chinese speak, we must listen. Their list of allies is ever growing and they are simply fed up of having to swallow the US garbage that has turned out to be toxic and dangerous to their highly controlled and coveted state owned enterprises.

I leave you with these thoughts that I alluded to above. The Chinese market has corrected 25%. This news broke this past weekend. New York saw a sharp sell-off on Monday. Buzz of a bank default hit the floor. The rumor did not abate and the selling intensified. The selling carried over into Tuesday. Gold, a classic hedge against troubled times has broken out to the upside, China has purchased 50 billion in IMF bonds and has been questioning the US dollar now for upwards of a year. China was up 5% overnight and Gold has continued to climb this morning.

Where there is smoke there is often fire."

http://thefundamentalview.blogspot.com/2009/09/china-and-buzz-of-pending-bank-default_03.html


Monday, September 7, 2009

 

"FBI Whistleblower: Hastert, Burton, Blunt, Other Members of Congress 'Bribed, Blackmailed'

Don't know much about this, but if true begins to reveal corruption most of us believe is rampant. Top article excerpt is the first I'd read about it.

________________

 
"Philip Giraldi: What FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds found in translation

Why is her story being covered up?

12:14 PM CST on Sunday, February 17, 2008
Dallasnews.com

"Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they never will.

The former FBI translator turned whistle-blower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington's highest levels – sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage. She may be a first-rate fabulist, but Ms. Edmonds' account is full of dates, places and names. ..........."

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-sibeledmonds_17edi.ART.State.Edition1.45b446a.html
___________
Posted: September 5, 2009 03:14 PM
 
"FBI Whistleblower: Hastert, Burton, Blunt, Other Members of Congress 'Bribed, Blackmailed'
Brad Friedman
Source Huffington Post

Breaking Down the Under-Oath Disclosures of the Formerly-Gagged Sibel Edmonds...

"It has now been over a week since the video tape and transcript from the remarkable 8/8/09 deposition of former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds was publicly released. Previously, the Bush Administration invoked the so-called "state secrets privilege" in order to gag Edmonds, in attempting to keep such information from becoming public.

The under-oath, detailed allegations include bribery, blackmail, espionage and infiltration of the U.S. government of, and by current and former members of the U.S. Congress, high-ranking State and Defense Department officials and agents of the government of Turkey. The broad criminal conspiracy is said to have resulted in, among other things, the sale of nuclear weapons technology to black market interests including Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, Libya and others.

Even as many of these allegations had been previously corroborated to varying extents, by a number of official government reports, documents and independent media outlets (largely overseas), not a single major mainstream media outlet in the U.S. has picked up on Edmonds' startling claims since her deposition has been made fully available.

Granted, last week was a busy news week, with the death of Ted Kennedy, the release of the CIA Inspector General's report on torture, and the announcement that Michael Jackson's death was ruled a homicide. And, it's true, a 4-hour deposition and/or 241-page transcript [PDF] is a lot of material to review, particularly given the wide scope of the charges being made here. Still, given the serious national security issues at stake, said to have the been among the most important matters of the past 8 years, one would think someone in the corporate MSM might have taken the time to go through the material, and report on it. Particularly as Edmonds' claims have previously been found "credible" "serious" and "warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review," by the DoJ Inspector General, and confirmed as such, on several occasions, by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and many many others.

So for the benefit of the U.S. media, and other readers, who may find it helpful for this large body of newly-available information to be culled down into more digestible pieces, I will attempt to break down the deposition, a bit, into some of its subject matter-based component parts. I will try to go through the major disclosures from the deposition, one-by-one, in a series of pieces which might help others to further report and/or investigate these breathtaking disclosures from a former FBI official who, following 9/11, listened to and translated wiretap recordings made from 1996 through 2002, in the FBI's counterintelligence and counterterrorism departments, under top-secret clearance.

In this first break-down article, we'll look at the answers given by Edmonds during her deposition in regard to bribery and blackmail of current and former members of the U.S. Congress, including Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Bob Livingston (R-LA), Dan Burton (R-IN), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Stephen Solarz (D-NY), Tom Lantos (D-CA, deceased) and an unnamed, currently-serving, married Democratic Congresswoman said to have been video-taped in a Lesbian affair by Turkish agents for blackmail purposes.

In further breakdown articles, we'll look at her disclosures concerning top State and Defense Department officials including Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and, perhaps most notably, the former Deputy Undersecretary of State, Marc Grossman, the third-highest ranking official in the State Department. Also, details on the theft of nuclear weapons technology; disclosures on Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA front company Brewster-Jennings; items related to U.S. knowledge of 9/11 and al-Qaeda prior to September 11, 2001; infiltration of the FBI translation department and more.

Though Edmonds was careful to not "discuss the intelligence gathering method by the FBI," she notes in her deposition that her claims are "Based on documented and provable, tracked files and based on...100 percent, documented facts."

Among the specific charges she levels against current and former U.S. Congress Members in the deposition:

Dennis Hastert: "[S]everal categories. The acceptance of large sums of bribery in forms of cash or laundered cash ... to make it look legal for his campaigns, and also for his personal use, in order to do certain favors ... make certain things happen for foreign entities and foreign governments' interests, Turkish government's interest and Turkish business entities' interests. ... other activities, too, including being blackmailed for various reasons. ... he used the townhouse that was not his residence for certain not very morally accepted activities. ... foreign entities knew about this, in fact, they sometimes participated in some of those not maybe morally well activities in that particular townhouse that was supposed to be an office, not a house, residence at certain hours, certain days, evenings of the week."

Stephen Solarz: "[A]s lobbyist ... acted as conduit to deliver or launder contribution and other briberies to certain members of Congress, but also in pressuring outside Congress, and including blackmail, in certain members of Congress."

Bob Livingston: "Until 1999 ... not very legal activities on behalf of foreign interests and entities, and after 1999 acting as a conduit to, again, further foreign interests, both overtly and covertly as a lobbyist, but also as an operative."

Tom Lantos: "[N]ot only ... bribe[ry], but also ... disclosing highest level protected U.S. intelligence and weapons technology information both to Israel and to Turkey. ... other very serious criminal conduct."

Unnamed Congresswoman: (Though not identified as such during the deposition, Edmonds has since confirmed her to be a Democrat) "[T]his Congresswoman's married with children, grown children, but she is bisexual. ... So they have sent Turkish female agents, and that Turkish female agents work for Turkish government, and have sexual relationship with this Congresswoman in her townhouse ... and the entire episodes of their sexual conduct was being filmed because the entire house, this Congressional woman's house was bugged. ... to be used for certain things that they wanted to request ... I don't know if she did anything illegal afterward. ... the Turkish entities, wanted both congressional related favoritism from her, but also her husband was in a high position in the area in the state she was elected from, and these Turkish entities ran certain illegal operations, and they wanted her husband's help. But I don't know if she provided them with those."

Roy Blunt: "[T]he recipient of both legally and illegally raised donations, campaign donations from ...Turkish entities."

Dan Burton: (And others) "[E]xtremely illegal activities against the United States citizens who were involved in [covert] operations that were ... against ... foreign government[s] and foreign entities against the United States' interests."

Hastert, Livingston and Solarz, as Edmonds notes in her deposition, would all go on to become highly-paid lobbyist for Turkey and/or Turkish public interest groups after they left the U.S. Congress.

The startling key exchanges relating specifically to criminal corruption by members of the U.S. Congress, from the 8/8/09 Sibel Edmonds deposition in the Schmidt v. Krikorian case, currently pending before the Ohio Election Commission, are now excerpted here.

The full deposition transcript is here [PDF], and more details, including the complete video-tape of the entire deposition, can be seen in our original coverage of the deposition's release. "

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-friedman/fbi-whistleblower-hastert_b_277704.html

Sunday, September 6, 2009

 

"Obama Regulation Czar Advocated Removing People's Organs Without Explicit Consent

"Obama Regulation Czar Advocated Removing People’s Organs Without Explicit Consent
  Friday, September 04, 2009
By Matt Cover
Source CNSNews.com

Cass Sunstein speaking at Harvard Law School. (Photo: Matthew W. Hutchins, Harvard Law Record.)
"(CNSNews.com) – Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has advocated a policy under which the government would “presume” someone has consented to having his or her organs removed for transplantation into someone else when they die unless that person has explicitly indicated that his or her organs should not be taken.
 
Under such a policy, hospitals would harvest organs from people who never gave permission for this to be done.  
 
Outlined in the 2008 book
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” Sunstein and co-author Richard H. Thaler argued that the main reason that more people do not donate their organs is because they are required to choose donation.
 
Sunstein and Thaler pointed out that doctors often must ask the deceased’s family members whether or not their dead relative would have wanted to donate his organs. These family members usually err on the side of caution and refuse to donate their loved one’s organs.
 
“The major obstacle to increasing [organ] donations is the need to get the consent of surviving family members,” said Sunstein and Thaler.
 
This problem could be remedied if governments changed the laws for organ donation, they said. Currently, unless a patient has explicitly chosen to be an organ donor, either on his driver’s license or with a donor card, the doctors assume that the person did not want to donate and therefore do not harvest his organs. Thaler and Sunstein called this “explicit consent.”
 
They argued that this could be remedied if government turned the law around and assumed that, unless people explicitly choose not to, then they want to donate their organs – a doctrine they call “presumed consent.”
 
“Presumed consent preserves freedom of choice, but it is different from explicit consent because it shifts the default rule. Under this policy, all citizens would be presumed to be consenting donors, but they would have the opportunity to register their unwillingness to donate,” they explained.
 
The difference between explicit and presumed consent is that under presumed consent, many more people “choose” to be organ donors. Sunstein and Thaler noted that in a 2003 study only 42 percent of people actively chose to be organ donors, while only 18 percent actively opted out when their consent was presumed.
 
In cases where the deceased’s wishes are unclear, Sunstein and Thaler argued that a “presumed consent” system would make it easier for doctors to convince families to donate their loved one’s organs.
 
Citing a 2006 study, Thaler and Sunstein wrote: “The next of kin can be approached quite differently when the decedent’s silence is presumed to indicate a decision to donate rather than when it is presumed to indicate a decision not to donate. This shift may make it easier for the family to accept organ donation.”
 
The problem of the deceased’s family is only one issue, Sunstein and Thaler said, admitting that turning the idea of choice on its head will invariably run into major political problems, but these are problems they say the government can solve through a system of “mandated choice.”
 
“Another [problem] is that it is a hard sell politically,” wrote Sunstein and Thaler. “More than a few people object to the idea of ‘presuming’ anything when it comes to such a sensitive matter. For these reasons we think that the best choice architecture for organ donations is mandated choice.”
 
Mandated choice is a process where government forces you to make a decision – in this case, whether to opt out of being an organ donor to get something you need, such as a driver’s license.
 
“With mandated choice, renewal of your driver’s license would be accompanied by a requirement that you check a box stating your organ donation preferences,” the authors stated. “Your application would not be accepted unless you had checked one of the boxes.”
 
To ensure that people’s decisions align with the government policy of more organ donors, Sunstein and Thaler counseled that governments should follow the state of Illinois’ example and try to influence people by making organ donation seem popular.
 
“First, the state stresses the importance of the overall problem (97,000 people [in Illinois] on the waiting list and then brings the problem home, literally (4,700 in Illinois),” they wrote.
 
“Second, social norms are directly brought into play in a way that build on the power of social influences [peer pressure]: ‘87 percent of adults in Illinois feel that registering as an organ donor is the right thing to do’ and ’60 percent of adults in Illinois are registered,’” they added.
 
Sunstein and Thaler reminded policymakers that people will generally do what they think others are doing and what they believe others think is right. These presumptions, which almost everyone has, act as powerful factors as policymakers seek to design choices.
 
“Recall that people like to do what most people think is right to do; recall too that people like to do what most people actually do,” they wrote. “The state is enlisting existing norms in the direction of lifestyle choices.”
 
Thaler and Sunstein believed that this and other policies are necessary because people don’t really make the best decisions.
 
“The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made [for them] by someone else,” they said.
 
This means that government “incentives and nudges” should replace “requirements and bans,” they argued.
 
Neither Sunstein nor Thaler currently are commenting on their book, a spokesman for the publisher, Penguin Group, told CNSNews.com.
 
In a question-and-answer section on the Amazon.com Web site, Thaler and Sunstein answered a few questions about their book.
 
When asked what the title “Nudge” means and why people need to be nudged, the authors stated: “By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front.
 
“We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gently nudging them in directions that will make their lives better,” they wrote.
 
“…The human brain is amazing, but it evolved for specific purposes, such as avoiding predators and finding food,” said Thaler and Sunstein. “Those purposes do not include choosing good credit card plans, reducing harmful pollution, avoiding fatty foods, and planning for a decade or so from now. Fortunately, a few nudges can help a lot. …”
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53534

 


Sunday, September 6, 2009

 

"Nurses Association demands medical masks be mandatory to protect against swine flu

First link from CDC shows who makes N-95 particle masks and in some instances where you can buy them.  They look like regular particle masks but have many more layers of filtration, and are usually available with and without exhale valves.   

"NIOSH-Approved Disposable Particulate Respirators (Filtering Facepieces)

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/respirators/disp_part/n95list1.html

______________

"Nurses Association demands medical masks be mandatory to protect against swine flu

By Richard Sisk and Erica Pearson
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Source NY Daily News

Saturday, September 5th 2009, 4:00 AM

"Nurses across the state are demanding medical masks that effectively protect them from swine flu.

A day after scientists said health care workers who come in close contact with flu patients should wear an N95 respirator, the New York State Nurses Association rallied its 37,000 members.

In an open letter to State Commissioner of Health Richard Daines, the association called for respirators to be standard in New York, saying airborne germs are a "clear hazard for workers."

"Surgical face masks are not sufficient and particles can get through," said registered nurse Renee Gecsedi, the association's director of education practice and research.

Claire Pospisil, spokesperson for the State Department of Health, said the state's current guidelines are adequate and that nurses will be protected by mandatory vaccinations.

N95 respirators, which have filters and a tight seal, can be up to 12 times more effective than surgical masks against airborne swine flu germs, according to Institute of Medicine scientists, who advise the federal government.

As nurses worried about their own health, federal officials urged day care and Head Start workers, as well as parents of kids under 5, to take special swine flu precautions.

"We know this is a young person's flu," said Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services. "Children less than 5 years old are at higher risk for complications. Children spread flu quickly."

She said little kids and people in close contact with them should get the regular flu shot now, and added that feds plan to quickly distribute the H1N1 vaccine to day care and Head Start centers once it is available."

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/09/05/2009-09-05_nurses_dont_mask_flu_fears.html


Sunday, September 6, 2009

 

"Obama adviser Jones resigns amid controversy

Jones radical background was outlined in article and video posted here which should be self explanatory.

https://www.lotterypost.com/blogentry/32877/viewcomments

_____________

"Obama adviser Jones resigns amid controversy
Environmental official had signed 9/11 petition, disparaged Republicans

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32712017/ns/politics-white_house/


Saturday, September 5, 2009

 

"Obama May Need Sense of Crisis to Revive Health-Care Overhaul

Which crisis are they going to hatch give this bottomless pit legs again?  The majority do NOT want government health care but they're too ensconced in their own power trip/grab to yeild the will of the majority ..... yet they proclaim democracy which is majority rule.

May the majority rule when congressional elections roll around again.

______________

"Obama May Need Sense of Crisis to Revive Health-Care Overhaul

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a5HawfX.Mxt8


Friday, September 4, 2009

 

"Controversial Obama Administration Official Denies Being Part of 9/11 "Truther" Movement, Apologize

Article below video.  Didn't know anything about Van Jones until viewing the video which is replete with quotes from his past, rather than heresay and inuendo. 

If a Republican president chose someone with such a radical, admittedly communist past as part of their administration we'd see marches on Washington and cities thoughtout America  ..... every day until that person was sent packing.

___________

Just found this ........ 

"Green jobs czar signed 'truther' statement in 2004

By Amanda Carpenter on Sept. 3, 2009
Source Washington Post

"..........His name is listed with 99 other prominent signatories supporting such an investigation on the 911Truth.org website, including Code Pink co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodi Evans, comedienne Janeane Garofalo, Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and others.  He's identified as the executive director for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights on the statement, which he founded before going to the White House. The statement is available here. Mr. Jones is number 46.

Mike Berger, a spokesman for 911Truth.org, told the Washington Times over the phone that all of the signers had been verified by their group.  He said 9/11Truth.org board members “spoke with each person on the list by phone or through email to individually confirm they had added their name to that list.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/back-story/2009/sep/03/green-jobs-czar-signed-truther-statement-in-2004/ 

________

 

_________

"Controversial Obama Administration Official Denies Being Part of 9/11 "Truther" Movement, Apologizes for Past Comments

Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper

September 03, 2009 9:19 PM

Source ABC News

"A top environmental official of the Obama administration issued a statement Thursday apologizing for past incendiary statement and denying that he ever agreed with a 2004 petition on which his name appears, a petition calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into "evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur."

Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called "Truther" movement which suggests that people in the administration of President George W. Bush "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of "the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."

He did not explain how his name came to be on the petition. An administration source said Jones says he did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name. 

"My work at the Council on Environmental Quality is entirely focused on one goal: building clean energy incentives which create 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and use renewable resources," Jones said in his statement tonight.

Jones also said in his statement that "In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the administration – some of which were made years ago.  If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize."

With a history of incendiary and provocative remarks, many of them dealing with his view of how whites exploit minorities, Jones has emerged as the subject of much conservative scrutiny in recent days, particularly from Fox News' Glenn Beck. (Jones defenders point out that most of Beck's criticism came after a group Jones helped found, Color of Change, began pushing advertisers to boycott Beck after he accused President Obama of being a racist.)

Jones is the best-selling author of The Green Collar Economy and a leader in the "green jobs" movement -- the idea that clean energy jobs can create jobs, especially in poor communities. He has been praised from leaders ranging from Al Gore to former eBay CEO (and Republican) Meg Whitman, who in May said  that Jones is doing "a marvelous job… I’m a huge fan of his. He is very bright, very articulate, very passionate. I think he is exactly right.”

Earlier this year a profile of Jones in the New Yorker, author Elizabeth Kolbert wrote that "the basic premise of Jones’s appeal—that combating global warming is a good way to lift people out of poverty—is very much open to debate. ... it’s not at all clear that the number of jobs created by, say, an expanding solar industry would be greater than the number lost through, say, a shrinking coal-mining industry. Nor is it clear that a green economy would be any better at providing work for the chronically unemployed than our present, 'gray' economy has been."

But those theories aren't the ones that have made Jones a lightning rod in the past few weeks.

In 2005 Jones told the East Bay Express that the acquittal of Rodney King's assailants in 1992 in that infamous police brutality case changed him significantly. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist."

Jones and other young activists in 1994 formed a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, rooted in Marxism and Leninsm. Two years later, Jones launched the Ella Baker Center, an Oakland, Calif., based "strategy and action center" which states that it tries to "promote positive alternatives to violence and incarceration."

In February during a discussion on energy at Berkeley, Calif., (and prior to his joining the Obama administration) Jones referred to Republicans using an epithet for a proctological orifice, which he called "a technical, political science term."

Asked why Republicans asserted more control of the Senate when they had a smaller majority before 2006, Jones said "the answer to that is, they're a--holes." He added that President Obama is not an a--hole, but, "I will say this. I can be an a--hole, and some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are going to have to start getting a little bit uppity."

"I apologize for the offensive words I chose to use during that speech," Jones said in a different written statement to Politico on Wednesday. "They do not reflect the views of this administration, which has made every effort to work in a bipartisan fashion, and they do not reflect the experience I have had since I joined the administration."

- jpt

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/controversial-obama-administration-official-denies-being-part-of-911-truther-movement-apologizes-for.html


Thursday, September 3, 2009

 

"Chinese to destroy Feds by refusing to honor fraudulent derivatives contracts

If this opinion is correct we may have China .... not Obama .... to thank profulely for saving our economy once again.

_______________

"Chinese to destroy Feds by refusing to honor fraudulent derivatives contracts

  The Chinese government has told Chinese companies they do not have to honor derivates and commodity futures contracts made with Western financial institutions.

"This is one of the most important of many nails in the coffin for the soon to implode Federal Reserve Board. The Chinese have every right to renege on those contracts because they were fraudulent. First of all the Feds manipulated the commodities markets to their benefit and to the detriment of the Chinese. They also allowed 100 times leverage thus allowing for astronomical ponzi schemes to be set up. Furthermore, they almost certainly did not properly explain the risks when they made their deals with the Chinese. Now that their attempt to rip off the Chinese is blowing up in their faces, these financial institutions will implode. This will set off a chain of events that will make the Lehman Brothers implosion seem like a storm in a tea cup. The total amount of derivates contracts outstanding is now over $5000 trillion or 100 times world GDP. In other words it is just a giant illusion waiting to vanish along with the institutions that peddled it."

http://benjaminfulford.typepad.com/benjaminfulford/


Thursday, September 3, 2009

 

"Health care reform means more power for the IRS

I received an email with a petition link for those opposing government health care.  In that email was an interesting conclusion drawn that socialized medicine is not about health care that it is about  "control .... by taking a huge percentage of GDP and placing it under government control."

You decide.

______________

"Health care reform means more power for the IRS
By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent September 2, 2009
Source WashingtonExaminer

"There's been a lot of discussion about the new and powerful federal agencies that would be created by the passage of a national health care bill. The Health Choices Administration, the Health Benefits Advisory Committee, the Health Insurance Exchange — there are dozens in all.

But if the plan envisioned by President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats is enacted, the primary federal bureaucracy responsible for implementing and enforcing national health care will be an old and familiar one: the Internal Revenue Service. Under the Democrats' health care proposals, the already powerful — and already feared — IRS would wield even more power and extend its reach even farther into the lives of ordinary Americans, and the presidentially-appointed head of the new health care bureaucracy would have access to confidential IRS information about millions of individual taxpayers.

In short, health care reform, as currently envisioned by Democratic leaders, would be built on the foundation of an expanded and more intrusive IRS.

Under the various proposals now on the table, the IRS would become the main agency for determining who has an "acceptable" health insurance plan; for finding and punishing those who don't have such a plan; for subsidizing individual health insurance costs through the issuance of a tax credits; and for enforcing the rules on those who attempt to opt out, abuse, or game the system. A substantial portion of H.R. 3200, the House health care bill, is devoted to amending the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 in order to give the IRS the authority to perform these new duties.

The Democrats' plan would require all Americans to have "acceptable" insurance coverage (the legislation includes long and complex definitions of "acceptable") and would designate the IRS as the agency charged with enforcing that requirement. On your yearly 1040 tax return, you would be required to attest that you have "acceptable" coverage. Of course, you might be lying, or simply confused about whether or not you are covered, so the IRS would need a way to check your claim for accuracy. Under current plans, insurers would be required to submit to the IRS something like the 1099 form in which taxpayers report outside income. The IRS would then check the information it receives from the insurers against what you have submitted on your tax form.

If it all matches up, you're fine. If it doesn't, you will hear from the IRS. And if you don't have "acceptable" coverage, you will be subject to substantial fines — fines that will be administered by the IRS.

Under some versions of health reform now circulating on Capitol Hill, the IRS would also be intimately involved in how you pay for insurance. Everyone would be required to buy coverage. The millions of Americans who can't afford it would receive a subsidy to pay for it. Under the version of the plan currently under negotiation in the Senate Finance Committee, that subsidy would come through the IRS in the form of a refundable tax credit. Under the House plan, the subsidy would come directly from the Health Choices Administration.

In either scenario, the IRS would be the key to making the system work. Before you could receive any subsidy, whether through the IRS or not, the Health Choices Administration would have to determine whether you are eligible for it. To do so, the bills under consideration would give the Health Choices Commissioner the authority to demand sensitive, confidential information from the IRS about individual taxpayers. The IRS would have to provide it.

Under current law, it is a felony for a government official to release taxpayer information in all but the most limited of circumstances. One such exception is for law enforcement; the IRS is allowed to give taxpayer information to prosecutors in criminal cases. The information can also, in some instances, be released to the Social Security Administration and the Veterans' Administration for the determination of benefits. The health care bills would change the Internal Revenue Code to permit the IRS to give similar information to the vast, new health care bureaucracy.

That means the personal tax information of millions of Americans would enter the system whether they want it to or not. "There's a mandate to buy insurance," says one Republican House aide. "You have to buy it. You have millions of people who can't buy it without a subsidy, so they will have no choice but to accept the subsidy in order to buy insurance, and then the Health Choices Commissioner will have access to their tax records."

"How many hands would this information go through?" asks a GOP source in the Senate. "What are the quality controls? This increases the risk of misusing this information."

Some versions of the bill even permit the release of confidential taxpayer information for decidedly less pressing reasons. In H.R. 3200, the IRS would be required to provide taxpayer information to the Social Security Administration for the purpose of helping Social Security officials find qualifying seniors who can then be encouraged to enroll in the prescription drug program. "There is no precedent for using taxpayer information for the purpose of identifying people to go out and advertise to them," says the House expert.

So far, there has been little substantive public debate about the integral role of the IRS in nearly every aspect of the various national health care proposals. But people who are closely involved with the process are deeply concerned about what they view as a massive, and in some senses unprecedented, expansion of the Internal Revenue Service.

First, they wonder whether the IRS can handle the new demands. "There is a sense at the IRS that their purpose is to collect revenue and not to implement all sorts of other programs," says a second Senate GOP aide. "Also, the IRS isn't necessarily great at doing what it does already. How is it going to determine whether 300 million people have health insurance?"

Second, they are concerned about anticipated abuse of the system. "You're going to have lots of fraud," says the House source. "People claiming lots of affordability credits or refundable tax credits. The IRS is not going to have the resources and expertise to police this stuff."

Finally, there is a third concern, more fundamental than questions of whether the IRS can handle the job: Should the IRS be involved in health care enforcement in the first place? As seen in the town halls across the country in August, many Americans are concerned about the coercive nature of the proposed national health care system. Handing the IRS the power to monitor every American's place in the system worries them even more.

Backers of the Democratic bills are betting that the handouts involved — giving people money to buy health insurance — will outweigh concerns about privacy and coercive government. Perhaps. But before Congress makes any decision on national health care, voters should know just what it will involve."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Health-care-reform-means-more-power-for-the-IRS-56781377.html


Thursday, September 3, 2009

 

People In Egypt Suspected Of Being Infected With H1N1 Swine Flu And H5N1 Bird Flu

"3 People In Egypt Suspected Of Being Infected With H1N1 Swine Flu And H5N1 Bird Flu

Source TheBirdFluPandemic.com 

Three people in Egypt are believed to have been infected with the H1N1 swine flu virus as well as the H5N1 bird flu virus.  These are the first ever reported cases of both strains of the flu showing up in a human at the same time.  If these two viruses recombine to form a "super flu", could this be the beginning of the "worst case scenario" that top virologists have been warning about? 

Reportedly, the three patients are recovering in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada.  The source article linked to above also mentions a 28 year old man who tested positive for both viruses after arriving at the port of Safaga in Egypt after a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.  It is unclear from the article if this 28 year old man is part of the other three patients or if he represents a separate case.  In any event, the article does say that tests did confirm that the 28 year old man DID have both the swine flu and the bird flu.

So what does this mean?

Well, this could be really, really, really bad news for all of us.

Just a few days ago, we reported that swine flu had been found in a flock of turkeys in Chile.  We speculated on what might happen if H1N1 and H5N1 found a way to recombine in birds.

Now there is something much worse to be concerned about.  If more cases emerge of the H1N1 swine flu and the H5N1 bird flu showing up in humans at the same time, then it will probably be only a matter of time before those two viruses start borrowing genetic material from one another.

The result of such a recombination could be a "super flu" that spreads as rapidly among humans as the swine flu does, but that also has the incredibly high death rates that the bird flu does.

Take a moment and let that sink in.

Yi Guan, the world renowned virologist at Hong Kong University that isolated the SARS virus in 2003,  told Science Insider that if the quickly spreading H1N1 virus recombines with the highly lethal H5N1 virus and a new strain with both of those qualities develops it would be an absolute nightmare for the world: "If that happens, I will retire immediately and lock myself in the P3 lab. H5N1 kills half the people it infects."

Do you understand what one of the top virologists in the world is saying?

H1N1 + H5N1 could equal a "super flu" that could kill millions.

Or tens of millions.

Or worse.

Please share this information with your family and friends and make sure to check back with us often because you can be certain that we will stay on top of this story."

http://thebirdflupandemic.com/archives/3-people-in-egypt-suspected-of-being-infected-with-h1n1-swine-flu-and-h5n1-bird-flu


Wednesday, September 2, 2009

 

"...Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help e

"Sentenced to death on the NHS

Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors warn today.

By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent
Published: 10:00PM BST 02 Sep 2009

Source Telegraph.co.uk

"In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients."

The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.

The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours.

Developed by Marie Curie, the cancer charity, in a Liverpool hospice it was initially developed for cancer patients but now includes other life threatening conditions.

It was recommended as a model by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the Government’s health scrutiny body, in 2004.

It has been gradually adopted nationwide and more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England currently use the system.

Under the guidelines the decision to diagnose that a patient is close to death is made by the entire medical team treating them, including a senior doctor.

They look for signs that a patient is approaching their final hours, which can include if patients have lost consciousness or whether they are having difficulty swallowing medication.

However, doctors warn that these signs can point to other medical problems.

Patients can become semi-conscious and confused as a side effect of pain-killing drugs such as morphine if they are also dehydrated, for instance.

When a decision has been made to place a patient on the pathway doctors are then recommended to consider removing medication or invasive procedures, such as intravenous drips, which are no longer of benefit.

If a patient is judged to still be able to eat or drink food and water will still be offered to them, as this is considered nursing care rather than medical intervention.

Dr Hargreaves said that this depended, however, on constant assessment of a patient’s condition.

He added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.

He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in.

“It is supposed to let people die with dignity but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Patients who are allowed to become dehydrated and then become confused can be wrongly put on this pathway.”

He added: “What they are trying to do is stop people being overtreated as they are dying.

“It is a very laudable idea. But the concern is that it is tick box medicine that stops people thinking.”

He said that he had personally taken patients off the pathway who went on to live for “significant” amounts of time and warned that many doctors were not checking the progress of patients enough to notice improvement in their condition.

Prof Millard said that it was “worrying” that patients were being “terminally” sedated, using syringe drivers, which continually empty their contents into a patient over the course of 24 hours.

In 2007-08 16.5 per cent of deaths in Britain came about after continuous deep sedation, according to researchers at the Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, twice as many as in Belgium and the Netherlands.

“If they are sedated it is much harder to see that a patient is getting better,” Prof Millard said.

Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, said: “Even the tiniest things that happen towards the end of a patient’s life can have a huge and lasting affect on patients and their families feelings about their care.

“Guidelines like the LCP can be very helpful but healthcare professionals always need to keep in mind the individual needs of patients.

“There is no one size fits all approach.”

A spokesman for Marie Curie said: “The letter highlights some complex issues related to care of the dying.

“The Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient was developed in response to a societal need to transfer best practice of care of the dying from the hospice to other care settings.

“The LCP is not the answer to all the complex elements of this area of health care but we believe it is a step in the right direction.”

The pathway also includes advice on the spiritual care of the patient and their family both before and after the death.

It has also been used in 800 instances outside care homes, hospices and hospitals, including for people who have died in their own homes.

The letter has also been signed by Dr Anthony Cole, the chairman of the Medical Ethics Alliance, Dr David Hill, an anaesthetist, Dowager Lady Salisbury, chairman of the Choose Life campaign and Dr Elizabeth Negus a lecturer in English at Barking University.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “People coming to the end of their lives should have a right to high quality, compassionate and dignified care.

"The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) is an established and recommended tool that provides clinicians with an evidence-based framework to help delivery of high quality care for people at the end of their lives.

"Many people receive excellent care at the end of their lives. We are investing £286 million over the two years to 2011 to support implementation of the End of Life Care Strategy to help improve end of life care for all adults, regardless of where they live.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6127514/Sentenced-to-death-on-the-NHS.html


Wednesday, September 2, 2009

 

"The $531 Trillion Dollar Derivatives Time Bomb

Great article, via SteveQuayle.com, Q news.

BTW, for those who loathed 'corporate welfare' blamed on Rupublicans .... how's Wal Street and bankers welfare working out for you under Hope and Change???? 

_________

 

"The $531 Trillion Dollar Derivatives Time Bomb

By Gabriel O’Hara
Source Information Liberation
"Titanic Derivatives

"What are derivatives? Some investors describe them as "dormant economic weapons of mass destruction". They essentially are large leveraged bets on top of stocks, bonds and commodities. Money can be made within months or seconds by betting if a stock will go up, down or even remain the same. With no credit rating you can place a bet worth double your account balance. Big time investors get greater leverage with these instantaneous loans.

The New York Times, Oct 8th 2008: “The derivatives market is $531 trillion, up from $106 trillion in 2002″. This market is setup with odds similar to a racetrack. Trillions are won and lost (transferred) every second. But unlike a racetrack the big players have ultimate control. Their trillions can make stocks move. A 4% up swing in a stock can cause a derivative bet to rise more than 100% in value or vice versa. A low performing stock that rises only 6% a year could actually have many 3, 6 or 9 percent swings weekly or monthly (some stocks daily). There are billions to be made over and over again by the people that control billions and trillions thus the markets. A grand game approved by the top.  

The globe's GDP is at $60.1 trillion. The globe's total financial assets were reported as $167 trillion in 2006. A few trillion lower today no doubt. The highly volatile derivatives market is worth noting because it dwarfs the entire world’s GDP and total financial assets combined.

Alan Greenspan, the former long-term chairman of the central bank of the United States, constantly double-spoke over his career. He made statements that the current unchanged derivatives market is the best thing since sliced-money and occasionally he gave dire warnings. On May 9th 2003 the New York Times published the following: “Mr. Greenspan, as he has done in the past, praised derivatives, saying their benefits materially outweighed the risks and had insulated the financial system from the stock market crash and economic downturn.” New York Times, Oct 8th 2008: “Mr. Greenspan warned that derivatives could amplify crises because they tied together the fortunes of many seemingly independent institutions. ‘The very efficiency that is involved here means that if a crisis were to occur, that that crisis is transmitted at a far faster pace and with some greater virulence,’ he said.” With double-speak Greenspan can always be "right"? in his autobiography. Historians can choose if he was one of the "experts"? giving warnings or they can put the blame on him. Quite often the qualified “experts” that helped crash a system are the ones in charge of building the next system.

The $531 trillion dollars derivatives market contains a mind-boggling amount of high-risk credit in the hands of a small few that could completely finish off the collapse of the current global economy (for a new global replacement). New York Times, May 9th 2003: “he detailed the potential dangers to financial markets if a big derivatives dealer had to exit the market. In his speech, delivered to the conference by satellite, Mr. Greenspan said that a single dealer accounts for about a third of the global market in both interest rate and credit derivatives, and a few dealers account for more than two-thirds.”

Playing with people’s lives

The span between the green-cash haves and have-nots grew larger under Greenspan. The majority of people around the world rely on the economy for their livelihoods. But what runs the integrated global economy? Credit!

Greenspan is not one of the minority with trillions of dollars, and trillions more in credit, tied in derivatives. His work was benefiting the dominant minority of the market. Those who own the gold get others to make their rules. If everything runs on money and you own the money, it's easy to run things.

The new financial system is currently being openly discussed, if not already fully constructed on paper. Have no doubt that the paid “experts” will be given plenty of corporate and government media time sprouting how wonderful the new system will be for the ordinary man while saying enough bad things about the old system to keep us happy or they might even put the blame on the “greedy public”. A few bank employees (bank managers) have already been scarified in the media. Of course, the real economic managers, the top bank owners, will create the new system. The same people that profited from the sheering of the current system. The trillion dollar banking families of the globe don't want to end their river of wealth, making easy money from the public, which means the World Bank and the European Central Bank don’t what that either. The current system would be updated with desired regulations (a better game for a few) and new banking language that the general public don’t understand, like with any good con. However, not until after some turmoil as turmoil is needed for large-scale changes to be accepted. As the EU Commission President, Manuel Barroso, said, "the kind of occasion where the crisis calls in to question all certainties and minds are more open to change, these are very special moments."? A spokesperson for the upcoming system, Gordon Brown, said all that the nation bankrupting bailouts and social chaos are “the difficult birth pangs of a new global order” and the expert’s “task now is nothing less than making the transition to a new internationalism,” reported by the Daily Mail on Jan 27th 2008. This is what happens when people desire to be managed.

Who runs what?

What did Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, have to say about the track record of the central bank in the United States? He said, “the Federal Reserve definitely caused the Great depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one-third from 1929 to 1933.” Contracting or inflating the money supply are only two tools among many utilised by central banks to direct economies.

No individual running the European Central Bank are elected by the public, they are hand picked, and no EU institution has authority over the decisions of the ECB. The ECB is an independent corporate entity. Article 106.2 of the EU’s 1992 Maastricht treaty states, “the ECB shall have legal personality”. Article 107 says the ECB and national central banks are totally independent from member state governments and “any other body” including the EU. It even forbids “the community of institutions and bodies” and  “any government of a Member State or from any other body” from instructing or advising the ECB and national central banks. Article 108.2 allows the ECB to publish or withhold any or all information on decision-making. As we all know, the ECB have the "EXCLUSIVE right to AUTHORIZE the issue of bank notes within the Community.”

Although acquitted, the European Central Bank President, Jean-Claude Trichet, was on trial with eight others for his part in signing off official accounts during a time of fraud at one of France’s biggest banks (Credit Lyonnais) which resulted in a €31 billion Euro bailout. The "right" kind of people always seems to get picked for the top.

On June 25th 2007 while everyone was happy with the booming economy the Telegraph published that the Bank for International Settlements', the ultimate bank of all central banks, 77th annual report talked of a coming global depression. The people behind this bank don’t have crystal balls. They are the movers and shakers that make things happen. Great depressions (great for some) create fantastic discounts for those with credit and bust those “nasty" competitors, especially the many small family run competitors. Since Sept 2007 billions of national emergency funds have been injected in to the global financial markets keeping buyers for the large sellers. Bank stocks lost almost 50% of their value by Dec 2007. The 6 o'clock news did not tell people about the credit crash until late 2008. Wait until the derivatives bubble - in the hands of a small few - pops, then we’ll have a brand new global financial architecture and it certainly won’t be good for the people if we allow the crisis creators to build it.

Removal of control over people’s livelihoods and lives is needed for once."

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=27260


Tuesday, September 1, 2009

 

"China Invokes A "Stop Loss" On OTC Derivatives

Been wondering when China would put a stop to buying our worthless paper, looks like it just happened. 

Caveat:  Both articles are pertinent but both contain plain language so if you're easily offended by graphically stated facts then don't click the links.

___________

"ROFL! China Tells IBs: Stuff It!

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1393-ROFL!-China-Tells-IBs-Stuff-It!.html
_______

"China Invokes A “Stop Loss” On OTC Derivatives


http://jsmineset.com/2009/08/31/china-invokes-a-stop-loss-on-otc-derivatives/

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

 

"RFID Chip to Detect Swine Flu Virus?

"RFID Chip to Detect Swine Flu Virus?

Source Steve Quayle News Alerts

August 25, 2009
RFID Weblog

"I have seen swine flu or H1N1 virus snuff life out of a young person known to me and he was just one of the several hundred persons in whose case the virus was detected at a late stage making it nearly impossible for any sort of recovery.

Realizing the seriousness of the situation, VeriChip, the only company in the world which has been federally approved for producing radio microchips for implanting in humans has now started working towards creating an RFID chip which can detect the presence of deadly swine flu and other viruses which are being deemed as bio threat.

VeriChip is working along with Receptors to create an implant which would give a warning if the host is infected with H5N1 bird flu virus, H1N1 swine flu virus or other pandemic agents which are termed as bio threat.

I hope it happens soon as the virus has already spread its fangs worldwide claiming as many lives as it could and still continues to spread terror.

http://www.rfid-weblog.com/50226711/rfid_chip_to_detect_swine_flu_virus.php


Comments from Listener

September 1, 2009
John H.

Steve,

Do you think they're lining up these RFID 'swine flu' / 'any flu' chips to work in conjunction with the DNA vaccines I discussed with you?

I can assure you. THEY are lining this up.

See for yourself below.

Realizing the seriousness of the situation, VeriChip, the only company in the world which has been federally approved for producing radio microchips for implanting in humans has now started working towards creating an RFID chip which can detect the presence of deadly swine flu and other viruses which are being deemed as bio threat.

VeriChip is working along with Receptors to create an implant which would give a warning if the host is infected with H5N1 bird flu virus, H1N1 swine flu virus or other pandemic agents which are termed as bio threat.

I hope it happens soon as the virus has already spread its fangs worldwide claiming as many lives as it could and still continues to spread terror.

...and

Avian flu chips go commercial  
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196801208


EE Times
(01/04/2007 5:23 PM EST)

PORTLAND, Ore. — Avian flu chips validated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) could soon be showing up at U.S. medical clinics.

The "MChip," a microarray which can quickly identify avian flu, will be used to monitor a possible pandemic. It could also be used to streamline clinical laboratory testing. Quidel Corp. (San Diego) holds an exclusive license to manufacture and distribute avian influenza test kits using the patented MChip.

"Quidel's test kits will use a new and improved version of our original flu chip, which we call the MChip," said Kathy Rowlen, project leader for a University of Colorado research team. "The MChip uses very clever bioinformatics to require only a single gene, making it is a substantial improvement over our first version of the chip."

University of Colorado professor Kathy Rowlen shows its flu chip jointly patented with the CDC.
Flu chips use microarrays containing thousands of DNA protein sequences, each with a fluorescent marker that glows when a match is found. By exposing the entire chip to a patient sample, the microarray can simultaneously test for matches with all its sequences, reducing testing time from days to minutes. The National Instittutes of Health is making a conventional microarray for influenza testing under its Consortium for Functional Glycomics project.

Developers claim the MChip is an improvement over traditional influenza microarrays by requiring a match with only a single avian flu gene. Rival mircoarrays require matching sequences from all three influenza genes—hemagglutinin, neuraminidase and the matrix.

The MChip requires only matching sequences from the matrix gene, which mutates more slowly than hemagglutinin and neuraminidase genes, thereby improving reliability as well as shortening testing time.

Conventional influenza microarrays "require literally thousands of sequences, making them comparitively expensive," said Rowlen. "But the MChip is substantially smaller than a conventional microarray since it only needs 15 sequences from a single gene to reliably identify avian flu."

The MChip was jointly developed by the University of Colorado and the CDC, which are co-owners of the original patent. The CDC validated the MChip by testing it with samples of avian flu (called H5N1) collected from both humans and animals over three years. The CDC said the MChip achieved 100 percent specificity, with no reported false positives and a 97 percent sensitivity in identifying avian flu.

Quidel will use its exclusive license to integrate the MChip into its existing line of immunoassay tests for flu, which are used both in clinical laboratories and at doctors' offices.

When I said I attended a COR symposium and THIS is what they discussed in 88, I wasn't fooling around.

John H."

http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/09_Disease/090901.chip-flu.html


Tuesday, September 1, 2009

 

"Car Dealers Still Waiting On 'Clunkers' Cash

Can we say dealers left twisting in the wind over the long haul? 

_________

"Car Dealers Still Waiting On 'Clunkers' Cash
 Mai Martinez
CHICAGO (CBS) ?

"Here's the figure: $2.878 billion. That's how much money the government owes car dealers for the "Cash for Clunkers" program.

More than $200 million of that is owed to dealers in Illinois and Indiana, so CBS 2's Mai Martinez checked with some of  them to see how much money they've collected from Uncle Sam.

Now that the popular program has ended, many dealerships are asking the federal government to "show me the money."

"Out of 142 deals they owe us for, we've gotten paid on seven," Lou Tornabeni of Ettleson Hyundai said.

"We had 102 cash for clunkers," Carm Scarpace of Westfield Ford said. "We've been paid for one."

With each Cash for Clunkers deal worth between $3,500 and $4,500, many dealerships are anxiously awaiting their government payday.

Some, like Advantage Chevrolet, which sold cars up until the last minute, have more than half a million dollars on the line.

"It was chaotic towards the end," Jason Roberts said.

Roberts says his dealership sold 142 cars under the program -- for a total of about $568,000 in government rebates. So far, the dealership has only been paid about $68,000 for about 17 of the deals, which means Uncle Sam still owes them roughly $500,000.

"It's not crippling, but it definitely affects the cash flow on a regular basis," Roberts said.

Roberts says his dealership can handle the cash crunch, but others may not be as lucky, especially if they didn't follow the government's strict guidelines for the program.

"We know of one dealer that sold 40 cars under the Cash for Clunkers programs, and out of those 40 cars, he's expecting to get paid on eight," Roberts said.

But even those who did follow the guidelines say they won't rest easy until they have the cash in hand. For Westfield Ford, that's about $400,000.

"You're always nervous when the money's out there, but you've got to believe in the government," Scarpace said. "It should come back to us."

The million-dollar – or should we say, billion-dollar -- question now is when? Dealers say they don't know, but it can't come soon enough.

One of the dealers told us, originally, the government was supposed to pay them within 10 days of receiving their paperwork. But with more than 690,000 cars sold under the program, that dealer says he's not expecting payment for another 30 to 45 days."

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/Cash.for.clunkers.2.1155470.html

_______

08/31/2009 4:59 PM
Dealers Still Waiting For Clunker Cash
 
Don Jorgensen
Source KELOLAND TV
 
"Auto makers will release their monthly sales reports Tuesday and they're expected to show the first year-to-year increase since 2007.  While the Cash for Clunkers program is getting all the credit, local car dealers are still waiting for their cash.

During the month long program, Billion Automotive sold close to a thousand vehicles but has only been reimbursed for 272 of them.  Vern Eide sold over 200 cars and has only been paid for 27 of them, and that's fueling lots of concerns in the auto industry.

Billion Automotive cashed in during Cash for Clunkers, but owner Dave Billion is still waiting for the rest of his money from the government run program, $3.2 million.

"I wonder how long they'd wait if I owed them $3.2 million.  I think they'd be at my door or at least my banker's door," Billion said.

Even though Billion is beginning to get some of his reimbursement money, he's still concerned because he says there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the program.

When Cash for Clunkers was first announced, dealers were supposed to be reimbursed within 10 days of a sale. Billion says that hasn't happened.

"The program started in July and we haven't gotten paid for cars we sold back then, but then on the other hand we got paid for a car we sold last week.  They don't have an accurate format.  It's not like they're taking the first deals that were submitted and working those.  I don't know how they're doing it, no idea.  I know it's very random" Billion said.

Plus, he's had problems getting some vehicles qualified.

"We had a situation where we had a submission, they rejected it for multiple reasons.  We didn't see anything wrong with it, so we resubmitted it.  They rejected, we resubmitted it.  They rejected it, seven times and finally they paid it, and we never changed a single thing on it," Billion said.

But Billion thinks he'll get his money eventually, it just may take longer than what the government first said."

http://www.keloland.com/NewsDetail6162.cfm?Id=89419


Tuesday, September 1, 2009

 

"... Forget the recession and the "uninsured." Obama has bigger fish to fry.

August 26, 2009 4:00 AM

"Obama and ‘Redistributive Change’

Forget the recession and the “uninsured.” Obama has bigger fish to fry.

By Victor Davis Hanson
Source National Review Online

"The first seven months of the Obama administration seemingly make no sense. Why squander public approval by running up astronomical deficits in a time of pre-existing staggering national debt?

Why polarize opponents after promising bipartisan transcendence?

Why create vast new programs when the efficacy of big government is already seen as dubious?

But that is exactly the wrong way to look at these first seven months of Obamist policy-making.

Take increased federal spending and the growing government absorption of GDP. Given the resiliency of the U.S. economy, it would have been easy to ride out the recession. In that case we would still have had to deal with a burgeoning and unsustainable annual federal deficit that would have approached $1 trillion.

Instead, Obama may nearly double that amount of annual indebtedness with more federal stimuli and bailouts, newly envisioned cap-and-trade legislation, and a variety of fresh entitlements. Was that fiscally irresponsible? Yes, of course.

But I think the key was not so much the spending excess or new entitlements. The point instead was the consequence of the resulting deficits, which will require radically new taxation for generations. If on April 15 the federal and state governments, local entities, the Social Security system, and the new health-care programs can claim 70 percent of the income of the top 5 percent of taxpayers, then that is considered a public good — every bit as valuable as funding new programs, and one worth risking insolvency.

Individual compensation is now seen as arbitrary and, by extension, inherently unfair. A high income is now rationalized as having less to do with market-driven needs, acquired skills, a higher level of education, innate intelligence, inheritance, hard work, or accepting risk. Rather income is seen more as luck-driven, cruelly capricious, unfair — even immoral, in that some are rewarded arbitrarily on the basis of race, class, and gender advantages, others for their overweening greed and ambition, and still more for their quasi-criminality.

“Patriotic” federal healers must then step in to “spread the wealth.” Through redistributive tax rates, they can “treat” the illness that the private sector has caused. After all, there is no intrinsic reason why an auto fabricator makes $60 in hourly wages and benefits, while a young investment banker finagles $500.

Or, in the president’s own language, the government must equalize the circumstances of the “waitress” with those of the “lucky.” It is thus a fitting and proper role of the new federal government to rectify imbalances of compensation — at least for those outside the anointed Guardian class. In a 2001 interview Obama in fact outlined the desirable political circumstances that would lead government to enforce equality of results when he elaborated on what he called an “actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”

Still, why would intelligent politicians try to ram through, in mere weeks, a thousand pages of health-care gibberish — its details outsourced to far-left elements in the Congress (and their staffers) — that few in the cabinet had ever read or even knew much about?

Once again, I don’t think health care per se was ever really the issue. When pressed, no one in the administration seemed to know whether illegal aliens were covered. Few cared why young people do not divert some of their entertainment expenditures to a modest investment in private catastrophic coverage.

Warnings that Canadians already have their health care rationed, wait in long lines, and are denied timely and critical procedures also did not seem to matter. And no attention was paid to statistics suggesting that, if we exclude homicides and auto accidents, Americans live as long on average as anyone in the industrial world, and have better chances of surviving longer with heart disease and cancer. That the average American did not wish to radically alter his existing plan, and that he understood that the uninsured really did have access to health care, albeit in a wasteful manner at the emergency room, was likewise of no concern.

The issue again was larger, and involved a vast reinterpretation of how America receives health care.  Whether more or fewer Americans would get better or worse access and cheaper or more expensive care, or whether the government can or cannot afford such new entitlements, oddly seemed largely secondary to the crux of the debate.

Instead, the notion that the state will assume control, in Canada-like fashion, and level the health-care playing field was the real concern. “They” (the few) will now have the same care as “we” (the many). Whether the result is worse or better for everyone involved is extraneous, since sameness is the overarching principle.

We can discern this same mandated egalitarianism beneath many of the administration’s recent policy initiatives. Obama is not a pragmatist, as he insisted, nor even a liberal, as charged.

Rather, he is a statist. The president believes that a select group of affluent, highly educated technocrats — cosmopolitan, noble-minded, and properly progressive — supported by a phalanx of whiz-kids fresh out of blue-chip universities with little or no experience in the marketplace, can direct our lives far better than we can ourselves. By “better” I do not mean in a fashion that, measured by disinterested criteria, makes us necessarily wealthier, happier, more productive, or freer.

Instead, “better” means “fairer,” or more “equal.” We may “make” different amounts of money, but we will end up with more or less similar net incomes. We may know friendly doctors, be aware of the latest procedures, and have the capital to buy blue-chip health insurance, but no matter. Now we will all alike queue up with our government-issued insurance cards to wait our turn at the ubiquitous corner clinic.

None of this equality-of-results thinking is new.

When radical leaders over the last 2,500 years have sought to enforce equality of results, their prescriptions were usually predictable: redistribution of property; cancellation of debts; incentives to bring out the vote and increase political participation among the poor; stigmatizing of the wealthy, whether through the extreme measure of ostracism or the more mundane forced liturgies; use of the court system to even the playing field by targeting the more prominent citizens; radical growth in government and government employment; the use of state employees as defenders of the egalitarian faith; bread-and-circus entitlements; inflation of the currency and greater national debt to lessen the power of accumulated capital; and radical sloganeering about reactionary enemies of the new state.

The modern versions of much of the above already seem to be guiding the Obama administration — evident each time we hear of another proposal to make it easier to renounce personal debt; federal action to curtail property or water rights; efforts to make voter registration and vote casting easier; radically higher taxes on the top 5 percent; takeover of private business; expansion of the federal government and an increase in government employees; or massive inflationary borrowing. The current class-warfare “them/us” rhetoric was predictable.

Usually such ideologies do not take hold in America, given its tradition of liberty, frontier self-reliance, and emphasis on personal freedom rather than mandated fraternity and egalitarianism. At times, however, the stars line up, when a national catastrophe, like war or depression, coincides with the appearance of an unusually gifted, highly polished, and eloquent populist. But the anointed one must be savvy enough to run first as a centrist in order later to govern as a statist.

Given the September 2008 financial meltdown, the unhappiness over the war, the ongoing recession, and Barack Obama’s postracial claims and singular hope-and-change rhetoric, we found ourselves in just such a situation. For one of the rare times in American history, statism could take hold, and the country could be pushed far to the left.

That goal is the touchstone that explains the seemingly inexplicable — and explains also why, when Obama is losing independents, conservative Democrats, and moderate Republicans, his anxious base nevertheless keeps pushing him to become even more partisan, more left-wing, angrier, and more in a hurry to rush things through. They understand the unpopularity of the agenda and the brief shelf life of the president’s charm. One term may be enough to establish lasting institutional change.

Obama and his supporters at times are quite candid about such a radical spread-the-wealth agenda, voiced best by Rahm Emanuel — “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid” — or more casually by Obama himself — “My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

So we move at breakneck speed in order not to miss this rare opportunity when the radical leadership of the Congress and the White House for a brief moment clinch the reins of power. By the time a shell-shocked public wakes up and realizes that the prescribed chemotherapy is far worse than the existing illness, it should be too late to revive the old-style American patient."

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWQ2NWJkN2M3ZmJjYWQwMDZlMWQyM2FjNWI4ZWJkNGI=


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