You Decide

By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:49PM GMT 27 Feb 2010

Source Telegraph.co.uk

"The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm – after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real message of all the scandals has been lost.

The chief defence offered by the warmists to all those revelations centred on the IPCC's last 2007 report is that they were only a few marginal mistakes scattered through a vast, 3,000-page document. OK, they say, it might have been wrong to predict that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035; that global warming was about to destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields by 50 per cent; that sea levels were rising dangerously; that hurricanes, droughts and other "extreme weather events" were getting worse. These were a handful of isolated errors in a massive report; behind them the mighty edifice of global warming orthodoxy remains unscathed. The "science is settled", the "consensus" is intact.

But this completely misses the point. Put the errors together and it can be seen that one after another they tick off all the central, iconic issues of the entire global warming saga. Apart from those non-vanishing polar bears, no fears of climate change have been played on more insistently than these: the destruction of Himalayan glaciers and Amazonian rainforest; famine in Africa; fast-rising sea levels; the threat of hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves all becoming more frequent.

All these alarms were given special prominence in the IPCC's 2007 report and each of them has now been shown to be based, not on hard evidence, but on scare stories, derived not from proper scientists but from environmental activists. Those glaciers are not vanishing; the damage to the rainforest is not from climate change but logging and agriculture; African crop yields are more likely to increase than diminish; the modest rise in sea levels is slowing not accelerating; hurricane activity is lower than it was 60 years ago; droughts were more frequent in the past; there has been no increase in floods or heatwaves.

Furthermore, it has also emerged in almost every case that the decision to include these scare stories rather than hard scientific evidence was deliberate. As several IPCC scientists have pointed out about the scare over Himalayan glaciers, for instance, those responsible for including it were well aware that proper science said something quite different. But it was inserted nevertheless – because that was the story wanted by those in charge.

In addition, we can now read in shocking detail the truth of the outrageous efforts made to ensure that the same 2007 report was able to keep on board IPCC's most shameless stunt of all – the notorious "hockey stick" graph purporting to show that in the late 20th century, temperatures had been hurtling up to unprecedented levels. This was deemed necessary because, after the graph was made the centrepiece of the IPCC's 2001 report, it had been exposed as no more than a statistical illusion. (For a full account see Andrew Montford's The Hockey Stick Illusion, and also my own book The Real Global Warming Disaster.)

In other words, in crucial respects the IPCC's 2007 report was no more than reckless propaganda, designed to panic the world's politicians into agreeing at Copenhagen in 2009 that we should all pay by far the largest single bill ever presented to the human race, amounting to tens of trillions of dollars. And as we know, faced with the prospect of this financial and economic abyss, December's Copenhagen conference ended in shambles, with virtually nothing agreed.

What is staggering is the speed and the scale of the unravelling – assisted of course, just before Copenhagen, by "Climategate", the emails and computer codes leaked from East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. Their significance was the light they shone on the activities of a small group of British and US scientists at the heart of the IPCC, as they discussed ways of manipulating data to show the world warming faster than the evidence justified; fighting off legitimate requests for data from outside experts to hide their manipulations; and conspiring to silence their critics by excluding their work from scientific journals and the IPCC's 2007 report itself. (Again, a devastating analysis of this story has just been published by Stephen Mosher and Tom Fuller in Climategate: The CRUtape Letters).

Almost as revealing as the leaked documents themselves, however, was the recent interview given to the BBC by the CRU's suspended director, Dr Phil Jones, who has played a central role in the global warming scare for 20 years, not least as custodian of the most prestigious of the four global temperature records relied on by the IPCC. In his interview Jones seemed to be chucking overboard one key prop of warmest faith after another, as he admitted that the world might have been hotter during the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago than it is today, that before any rise in CO2 levels temperatures rose faster between 1860 and 1880 than they have done in the past 30 years, and that in the past decade their trend has been falling rather than rising.

The implications of all this for the warming scare, as it has been presented to us over the past two decades, can scarcely be overestimated. The reputation of the IPCC is in shreds. And this is to say nothing of the personal reputation of the man who was the mastermind of its 2007 report, its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

It was in this newspaper that we first revealed how Pachauri has earned millions of pounds for his Delhi-based research institute Teri, and further details are still emerging of how he has parlayed his position into a worldwide business empire, including 17 lucrative contracts from the EU alone. But we should not expect the truth to break in too suddenly on this mass of vested interests. Too many people have too much at stake to allow the faith in man-made global warming, which has sustained them so long and which is today making so many of them rich, to be abandoned. The so-called investigations into Climategate and Dr Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann seem like no more than empty establishment whitewashes. There is little reason to expect that the inquiry into the record of the IPCC and Dr Pachauri that is now being set up by the UN Environment Programme and the world's politicians will be very different.

Since 1988, when the greatest scare the world has seen got under way, hundreds of billions of pounds have been poured into academic research projects designed not to test the CO2 warming thesis but to take it as a given fact, and to use computer models to make its impacts seem as scary as possible. The new global "carbon trading" market, already worth $126 billion a year, could soon be worth trillions. Governments, including our own, are calling for hundreds of billions more to be chucked into absurd "carbon-saving" energy schemes, with the cost to be met by all of us in soaring taxes and energy bills.

With all this mighty army of gullible politicians, dutiful officials, busy carbon traders, eager "renewables" developers and compliant, funding-hungry academics standing to benefit from the greatest perversion of the principles of true science the world has ever seen, who are we to protest that their emperor has no clothes? (How apt that that fairy tale should have been written in Copenhagen.) Let all that fluffy white "global warming" continue to fall from the skies, while people shiver in homes that, increasingly, they will find they can no longer afford to heat. We have called into being a true Frankenstein's monster. It will take a mighty long time to cut it down to size."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/7332803/A-perfect-storm-is-brewing-for-the-IPCC.html

Poor Pelosi can't see beyond her power grabbing arrogance.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100228/ap_on_go_co/us_pelosi_tea_party

Sad we have to depend on foreign press to let us know what's happening here.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/28/tea-party-debra-medina-texas

Submitted by bmoreland on 02/26/2010 11:22 -0500

Source ZeroHedge.com

"I have long suspected that it was only a matter of time before banks began to adjust their Collection efforts to reflect Government Guarantees on their loan portfolios.

Simply put, imagine you are a bank with $100 billion in loans. Of this, $20 Billion is guaranteed by the government, $80 billion is your own money. If you managed the collection organization responsible for servicing this debt wouldn't you be just a wee bit tempted to make sure that your $80 billion was getting the priority?

The table below details the past 12 quarters of Total Loans for Bank of America along with the portion that is Noncurrent:

The Noncurrent percentage has jumped from 5.30% in Q3 to 6.75% in Q4. Quarter on Quarter there is another $12.44 Billion in Noncurrent loans.

The next table details the same 12 quarters and reviews what portion of the Noncurrent loans are guaranteed by the Government (er, you and me the taxpayer):

Bank of America has had a massive jump in the Noncurrent loans that are Governement Guaranteed. The Quarter on Quarter jump is... wait for it... $11.40 Billion.

So, magically, the incremental $12.44 Billion that has become Noncurrent Quarter on Quarter at Bank of America has a guarantee on $11.40 Billion. Nearly 92% of the jump in their Noncurrent loans are covered by us, the taxpayer.

This is no consipiracy theory discussion - these are cold hard facts supporting what any reasonable actor would do in the situtation. If the government is going to cover my losses on a portion of my loan portfolio I can well guarantee you I'd be moving my best collectors to the portfolio I'm responsible for. The government can have my new hires, my undesirables, my slow workers, etc...

I highly doubt that we'll ever hear about this, but this is yet another massive shift from the taxpayer to the banks."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/bank-america-gaming-government-loan-guarantees

Representatives of George Soros's investment business were among an all-star line up of Wall Street investors at an 'ideas dinner' at a private townhouse in Manhattan, according to reports.

A spokesman for Soros Fund Management said the legendary investor did not attend the dinner on February 8, but did not deny that his firm was represented.

At the dinner, the speculators are said to have argued that the euro is likely to plunge in value to parity with the dollar.

The single currency has been under enormous pressure because of Greece's debt crisis, plus financial worries in Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland.

But, it has also struggled because hedge funds have been placing huge bets on the currency's decline, which could make the speculators hundreds of millions of pounds.

The euro traded at $1.51 in December, but has since fallen to $1.34. Details of the secretive dinner emerged days after Mr Soros, chairman of Soros

Fund Management, warned in a newspaper article that the euro could 'fall apart' even if the European Union can agree a deal to shore up support for stricken Greece.

Mr Soros, who made more than $1billion by currency speculation when the pound was ejected from the Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday in 1992, believes the structure of the euro is 'patently flawed'.

(photo) Hitting back: Greek PM George Papandreou blames 'speculators' for preying on the country's troubles

He said: 'Makeshift assistance should be enough for Greece, but that leaves Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland.

'Together they constitute too large a portion of euroland to be helped in this way.'

He believes that unless the European Commission is given sweeping powers over taxation and spending, the single currency will always be vulnerable to financial turbulence in individual states.

'If member countries cannot take the next steps forward, the euro may fall apart,' he added.

Last night, Greek prime minister George Papandreou hit back at the 'speculators' who he blames for preying on the country's troubles.

Following a visit by EU economic inspectors and experts from the International Monetary Fund, he told the country's parliament that the worst fears about Greece's economy had been confirmed.

Greece is desperate to restore the confidence of investors in its debt after revealing that the previous government understated its budget deficit by half.

Outlining the precarious nature of Greece's finances, Mr Papandreou said: 'There is only one dilemma: Will we let the country go bankrupt or will we react?

'Will we let the speculators strangle us, or will we take our fate in our own hands?'

The Greek leader also called for more help from the EU with its debt crisis. Until now, the EU has offered political support but no bailout.

(photo) With friends like this: The cover of the German magazine 'Focus' this week, which shows the Venus de Milo giving the finger by a headline accusing Greece of swindling its way into the euro

(photo) Row: Greek daily Eleftheros Typos ran this depiction of the statue of the goddess Victoria, atop the Siegessaeule in Berlin, holding a swastika earlier this week in reaction to the Focus cover

But a row is still festering between Berlin and Athens over the crisis.

(photo) Tight spot: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the situation was 'difficult'

A Greek consumer group called for a boycott of German goods today after a German magazine blasted the country as 'cheats.

The new trade war came as Angela Merkel admitted the euro is in 'a difficult situation' for the first time.

She spoke as German magazine Focus ran a cover image of the armless Venus de Milo somehow raising her middle finger under the headline 'Cheats in the euro family' to suggest that Greece deliberately misled EU peers to swindle its way into the euro.

The cover sparked outrage in Greece, prompting the demands for a boycott. A Greek newspaper has also hit back, running an image showing the statue of the goddess Victoria atop the Siegessaeule in Berlin holding a swastika.

'The falsification of a statue of Greek history, beauty and civilisation, from a time when there (in Germany) they were eating bananas on trees is impermissible and unforgivable,' a statement from the Consumer Institute (INKA) said.

'Greeks are no crooks, we want the German government to condemn this most improper publication,' said INKA president George Lakouritis.

'If you have such friends, what do you need enemies for?'

INKA distributed leaflets in central Athens and in front of German-owned consumer electronics store Media Markt, urging Greeks to heed the boycott.

Merkel's government has so far deflected appeals to promise aid to heavily indebted Greece. Opinion polls show that a majority of Germans oppose a bailout.

Germany's ambassador to Greece, Wolfgang Schultheiss, said yesterday he regretted that German press reports caused offence. 'Germany is firmly on Greece's side,' Schultheiss said after being summoned by Greece's parliament speaker Filippos Petsalnikos.

But it wasn't enough for Mr Lakouritis. 'The ambassador's statements were not satisfactory,' he said.

Yesterday Mrs Merkel admitted that Greece's debt crisis has plunged the euro into a ‘difficult situation'.

The admission from the leader of Europe's biggest economy prompted fresh fears about the collapse of the single currency.

In the gravest sign yet of the international threat posed by Greece’s crippling debt crisis, Mrs Merkel warned for the first time that the eurozone faces a ‘ dangerous’ period." 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1253791/Is-man-broke-Bank-England-George-Soros-centre-hedge-funds-betting-crisis-hit-euro.html

Would be nice to have stock in companies which make printing presses for the Fed.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=alet_UTqF04M

http://www.slate.com/id/2245621/?GT1=38001

February 24, 2010 Posted by John at 9:55 PM

Patients were routinely neglected or left "sobbing and humiliated" by staff at an NHS trust where at least 400 deaths have been linked to appalling care.

An independent inquiry found that managers at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust stopped providing safe care because they were preoccupied with government targets and cutting costs. ...

Staff shortages at Stafford Hospital meant that patients went unwashed for weeks, were left without food or drink and were even unable to get to the lavatory. Some lay in soiled sheets that relatives had to take home to wash, others developed infections or had falls, occasionally fatal. Many staff did their best but the attitude of some nurses "left a lot to be desired".

Attitudes under socialism generally leave a lot to be desired.

The report, which follows reviews by the Care Quality Commission and the Department of Health, said that "unimaginable" suffering had been caused.

Unimaginable suffering--that pretty much sums up government-controlled medicine. That's our future, though, if the Democrats get their way. They care only about their own power, not about the quality of your medical care."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/02/025676.php

Is McCain the pharmaceutical conglomerate's latest sock puppet? 

________________

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul261.html

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"Most are familiar with those commercials on television promoting prescription drugs that supposedly offer relief from a variety of ailments, if one would only pressure one’s doctor to obtain them. They have become a source of great entertainment and amusement to some, the kicker coming at the end of each commercial when the FDA-approved medication’s obligatory litany of warnings and dangerous side effects is recited: “Tell your doctor if....” and “Side effects may include.....” Some of the warnings are mild like diarrhea and constipation, some list serious effects like cancer or tuberculosis, and others admit that sometimes even death can result.

The point here is that these are all FDA-approved drugs being advertised and used extensively. Drugs that can cause serious diseases like lymphoma. Drugs that can kill. The FDA’s dismal safety record is well documented; even PBS ran a Frontline special that investigated and exposed the FDA’s unsafe drug record, the influence of Big Pharma inside the FDA, and lack of long-term testing and medical review of many, many dangerous drugs. The FDA seldom removes a drug from the market even after it proves to be harmful or deadly, however they do post quarterly reports with details of the latest potentially dangerous side effects of drugs currently under investigation.

Nonetheless, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) wants this same FDA, with its dismal safety record, to regulate dietary supplements. The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA), S. 3002 (text of this bill posted on Senator McCain's website), that McCain has introduced with one cosponsor, would repeal key provisions of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) to “more effectively regulate dietary supplements that may pose safety risks unknown to consumers.”

Under attack by the DSSA is the once-protected field of supplements, as they have always been considered food. Potencies would have to be reduced to comply with what appears to be a plan modeled after the European Food Safety Authority. A new list of “Accepted Dietary Ingredients” would be “prepared, published, and maintained by the Secretary,” in the future. That’s a bit like being handed a blank check and told to fill it out later as one wishes. It could certainly be used to severely limit access to, and even production of, hundreds of life-sustaining and essential mineral, herb, and vitamin products.

All ingredients contained in each supplement would have to be disclosed at the time the company registers all of its “manufactured, packaged, held, distributed, labeled or licensed,” products with the FDA. An onerous burden would be placed on the shoulders of suppliers and retailers of dietary supplements, as they would have to “obtain written evidence” from the seller that the product is registered as required by law, and keep that documentation on file. Monetary penalties for non-compliance “may, in addition to other penalties imposed in this section, be fined not more than twice the gross profits or other proceeds derived from the manufacture, packaging, holding, distribution, labeling, or license of such dietary supplement.”  Those are very broad dictates and most likely subject to even broader interpretation.

The McCain bill would change existing mandatory serious adverse reporting regulations, requiring minor adverse effects to be reported as well so that the FDA could arbitrarily pull supplements off the shelves or reclassify them as drugs. This immediate recall authority would be granted to the “Secretary upon determination,” that there is a “reasonable probability”  that the product is “adulterated” or “misbranded.” Adulterated in this bill takes on a whole new expanded definition: “A dietary supplement which contains a new dietary ingredient shall be deemed adulterated under section 402(f) unless there is a history of use or other evidence of safety.”  The development of new products that contain newly discovered nutritional components may be entirely quashed.

The hypocritical contrast between the regulation of drugs that can kill and the proposed hyper-regulation for food products -- vitamins, minerals, herbs -- is as plain as the nose on everyone's face.

A Pandora’s box of intended and unintended legal complications and government harassment of nutritional supplement manufacturers and sellers could very well be unleashed if this bill is passed. There are already existing laws on the books that protect consumers from misbranded, fraudulent, or contaminated products. Granting the FDA additional regulatory authority over nutritional supplements seems a bit suspicious, especially considering the influence the enormous pharmaceutical industry has wielded over the research, development, and approval process inside the FDA. Let’s face it, the FDA has been no friend and often has been positively antagonistic toward the nutritional supplement industry. Therefore one wouldn’t set the wolf to guarding the sheep without dire consequences.

In this perverted overly-regulated country, food is now toxic, and drugs and chemicals are safe for ingestion, no matter the harm that results. This inversion should remind us that those who best have the consumers health and safety interests at heart are the consumers themselves. It is big government that has a proven track record of not protecting the public.  And it is big government that is seeking to take away yet another individual freedom, the right to choose one’s own treatment. (Where is the pro-choice crowd on this one; the ones that claim, “my body, my choice?”)

Contact your federal legislators and urge them not to cosponsor, support, or vote for such a power-grabbing, bill. Let them know Americans want unrestricted access to nutritional supplements, and the government out of their health choices.

Sen. McCain described his bill as a “no brainer.”  For constitutionalists it’s a “no brainer” that it should be rejected for the dictatorial, power-grabbing, choice-limiting attack on the nutritional marketplace and individual freedoms that it is."

http://www.jbs.org/health-care-freedom-blog/5957-proposed-dietary-supplement-regulatory-bill

Heads up, pay close attention as to what we may be on the hook to bail out.  Yesterday I posted that AIG seems to be holding its hand out for another bail out due to guarantees written in Greece.  Now this.

2010 elections are going to be very interesting indeed.

_________________

Source The Market Ticker

Wednesday, February 24. 2010

Posted by Karl Denninger in Federal Reserve at 21:03

"Repeal Of Law Needed NOW

Watch this clip, right near the end.  4:30 into the clip onward.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urkJ2WCQ5R0

Yes, Ron Paul went off on quite the rant.

But that last minute......

The Federal Reserve has the authority to buy the debt of any foreign government, essentially obligating The US Taxpayer to bail them out!

Bernanke says he has no plans, but notice that he did not say they have never done such a thing.

Hmmm.... two-line bill to revoke that BS anyone?

Anyone?"

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2003-Repeal-Of-Law-Needed-NOW.html

Another opinion about the econonomy with charts.  You decide.

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http://www.mybudget360.com/the-ultimate-ponzi-scheme-fdic-is-backing-5-3-trillion-through-the-deposit-insurance-fund-that-now-has-a-balance-of-20-8-billion-fdic-has-cash-and-marketable-securities-of-66-billion-is-that/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mybudget360%2FQePx+%28My+Budget+360%29

Greece is in severe financial trouble and if this information is correct our government has placed us on the hook to bail them out, along with other EU countries.

The entire article from Market Ticker deals with some metaphors which should not be taken out of context ..... therefore if you're a skim scanner with limited attention span don't bother.  Otherwise it's a very good read for fiscal conservatives worried about the economic future of this nation.

Hmmmm .... while we're worried about Obamacare being shoved down our throats we won't notice another AIG bailout to bail out Greece and other EU countries now will we???????????????  Interesting timing indeed.

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http://market-ticker.org/archives/1993-How-Long-Before-You-Wake-Up,-Politicos.html

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http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/02/german-paper-says-aig-may-have-sold-cds-on-greece.html#comments

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/22/autos/gm_fritz_henderson.fortune/?section=magazines_fortune

A short trip on the not so far back wayback-machine.  All of them in the video whined like babies until they gained a super majority now they're behaving like two year olds who each ate a 5 lb bag of sugar, washing it down with an energy drink.  Tme for elections to send them all home to the 'no fun chair' where they can figure out what the heck happened.

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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/02/025673.php

Fact USSR (Russia) was bankrupted in Afghanistan.  It's recognized by financially savvy people our economy is being decimated by the current administration's financial irresponsibility ....... so are they willfully emulating what destroyed another super power to finish us off????  

The toll in human life can is incalculable.  Sincerest condolences to their families.  May the rest of the troops be brought home safely and sound in every respect very soon.

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Source CNSNews.com
"A Third of All U.S. Casualties in Eight-Year Afghan War Have Occurred Since Obama Ordered Escalation
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
By Edwin Mora

"A U.S. soldier returns fire as others run for cover during a firefight with insurgents in the Badula Qulp area, West of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, on Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
(CNSNews.com) -- More than 300 U.S. soldiers have died in  the war in Afghanistan since May 15, 2009, the day when the first major wave of new troops ordered by President Barack Obama arrived in the country.
 
The 308 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan since then account for about a third of the total of 920 U.S. casualties in the eight-year war.
 
Of the 308 soldiers who have died since mid-May 2009, 287 were killed by enemy action, according to a CNSNews.com database of all casualties in the Afghanistan theatre of war.
 
The southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar located along the Afghan border with Pakistan have been the deadliest regions for U.S. soldiers since President Obama's escalation in U.S. forces in the region began.  
 
Approximately 81 U.S. soldiers have died in combat in Helmand and 58 in Kandahar, for a total of 139 in those two provinces.  That is about 45 percent of the U.S. casualties in Afghanistan since May 15 of last year.
 
On Feb. 17, 2009, President Obama ordered the deployment of 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. The main body of those troops arrived in Kandahar on May 15, 2009.
 
In December 2009, Obama stepped up his surge with 30,000 more troops, bringing the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan to more than 100,000.
 
Last year was the deadliest for American soldiers since the U.S.-led military effort in Afghanistan began in October 2001.

President Obama and Vice President Biden at the White House on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010. (AP Photo)
CNSNews.com’s database of Afghanistan war casualties is derived primarily from official U.S. Defense Department casualty reports, but also includes information gleaned from reports in the news media.
 
The database includes all U.S. military personnel who died or received a fatal wound in Afghanistan or Pakistan. It does not include U.S. miltary personnel who died outside of Afghanistan while supporting military efforts against terrorism under Operation Enduring Freedom.

On Feb.13, the United States started a major operation in central Helmand, a Taliban stronghold.  It is focused on the city of Marjah, which has about 80,000 inhabitants.

The operation, known as Mushtarak, which means "together" in Dari, involves 15,000 U.S.-led NATO and Afghan soldiers, with Afghan soldiers making up at least half of the offensive force.

In a Feb. 21 speech at Princeton University, Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander overseeing troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, predicted a “tough” casualty level resulting from the initiative.
 
"We've gotten the inputs right, now we are embarking on what's going to be the output," he said. "The reality is, it's going to be hard, it's going to be hard all the time. We're going to have tough losses."
 
So far, there have been 14 reported casualties from battles in Helmand since Operation Mushtarak started.
 
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gen. Petraeus indicated that the Marjah operation is the “initial salvo” of a bigger 12-to-18-month campaign.
 
Using the Marjah operation as an example, the general pointed out that the flow of the 30,000 troops that Obama ordered last December is beginning to produce “output.”
 
When announcing his troop surge last December, President Obama mentioned that troops will begin to draw down in July 2011. However, military officials have indicated that this will depend on conditions on the ground."

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/61811

While US citizens are losing jobs, becoming homeless from foreclosure ...... they want to build this.  Have they totally lost their minds????

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February 24, 2010

"US diplomats add a moat to their expenses at $1bn London embassy

A model of the US Embassy in Battersea, complete with moat 30m wide and rolling parkland

A moat 30 metres (100ft) wide and rolling parkland will separate the building from the main road, protecting it from would-be bombers and removing the need for the blast barriers that so dismayed the people of Mayfair.

The State Department sought to play down the cost of security measures, noting the expense of London building work. But the price puts the London embassy above the US’s most fortified missions, including the Baghdad embassy, which cost $600 million (£390 million) but required a further $100 million of work on air conditioning, and the Islamabad embassy, still under construction, which has cost more than $850 million.

It also does not include the 17.5 per cent VAT demanded by the Treasury on all buildings in Britain and which the US has refused to pay.

Louis Susman, the US Ambassador, said: “We intend to do what’s appropriate and we are working with the Treasury on that.” He acknowleged past difficulties, pledging to be “a good neighbour in our new home” and said that the ecofriendly building would generate enough power to contribute to the national grid.

The new location will take the embassy out of the Central London congestion zone. US diplomats owe an estimated £32 million in congestion charges and fines, which they refuse to pay on the ground that they are exempt from taxes in Britain.

The unpaid dues led Ken Livingstone, as the Mayor of London, to call Robert Tuttle, the ambassador at the time, a “chiselling little crook”.

This discontent was almost equalled when the embassy learnt in November that its Grosvenor Square premises were to be given a Grade II listing. Despite the development limits imposed by the decision, the embassy was still sold for more than $1 billion to a Qatari company that plans to turn it into a luxury hotel.

The embassy said that a statue of Ronald Reagan soon to be put up in Grosvenor Square will not be part of the Battersea site. “It will absolutely not be moved,” an official said. “Nor will the Eisenhower.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7038550.ece

Excellent discussion from Powerlineblog.com.

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February 20, 2010 Posted by John at 7:45 PM

"Beginning around 40 years ago, the federal government implemented one of the wisest domestic policy initiatives of modern times. In an effort to equalize the tax treatment of employees and self-employed individuals, a series of statutes permitted self-employed persons to save pre-tax money for retirement and to accumulate funds in retirement accounts that are not taxed until money is withdrawn post-retirement. Those programs have been broadened over the years to include employees, as well as the self-employed, in 401K accounts. Over the last four decades, Americans have saved hundreds of billions of dollars in such retirement accounts. I haven't seen figures lately, but the total of such savings is most likely in the trillions.

Now we have an improvident federal government that has spent itself into a state of near-bankruptcy. It can survive only by selling Treasury bills to Americans and foreigners, but as the government's debts accumulate, international demand for T-bills slackens. So the Democrats are looking for money. They can't help noticing that Americans have saved many billions of dollars--private property, theoretically, but under contemporary constitutional jurisprudence, subject to pretty much any whim that may come out of Washington.

Argentina showed the way in 2008, as we noted here, by nationalizing private retirement funds on the ground that "the private system never achieved what was needed."

Now, the Democrats may be poised to imitate Argentina's theft. Investor's Business Daily reports:

You did the responsible thing. You saved in your IRA or 401(k) to support your retirement, when you could have spent that money on another vacation, or an upscale car, or fancier clothes and jewelry. But now Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings.

BusinessWeek reports that the Treasury and Labor departments are asking for public comment on "the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams."

In plain English, the idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years.

They will tell you that you are "investing" your money in U.S. Treasury bonds. But they will use your money immediately to pay for their unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust funds.

In other words, the government will allow you the "opportunity" to give Washington your savings, in return for which the government will give you unmarketable T-bills or other unreliable promises to pay some minimal rate of return. The program likely will be "voluntary" to begin with, but that makes no sense--you can buy T-bills in your retirement account any time you want. So the only possible point is to make the exchange mandatory. The government steals your savings in exchange for an IOU.

Will it happen? Clearly the Obama administration, inspired by Argentina, is exploring the option. Today, we have the first administration in American history that aspires to be a banana republic. But can they get away with confiscating millions of Americans' savings? I doubt it. Because first on the list of those who have accumulated wealth in reliance on the laws governing private savings accounts are lawyers. Most people don't realize it, but even lawyers of modest ability typically have, after three or four decades of diligent savings, seven-figure retirement accounts. (This is one reason why influential Democrats don't care whether Social Security goes bust. They wouldn't dream of depending on it.) Lawyers are the heart and soul of the Democratic Party; public employee unions are more important in some ways, but they are junior partners in the Dems' coalition.

If the Obama administration were to announce an intent to confiscate Americans' retirement savings, the howls that would arise from lawyers (and others, too, of course) would be deafening. I don't think the administration could get away with it. Which doesn't mean they won't try, as the current efforts by the Departments of the Treasury and Labor indicate.

Still, others disagree. Earlier today I learned that a relative on Wall Street has stopped accumulating funds in his retirement accounts precisely because he thinks they may be confiscated by the Obama administration. Instead, he is acquiring untraceable, tangible assets--gold and silver--that the government won't be able to steal without a physical search of his property.

That's not good for the economy, of course. When citizens who have the ability to invest in our economy don't dare do so, for fear that their savings will be stolen by the government, we are reverting to an earlier and far poorer economic era. But that, apparently, is what the Obama administration wants. Here, as in so many other ways, we are sailing in uncharted waters.

SCOTT adds: Among many other items available on the Web, this Fox Business story by Robert Powell provides additional information regarding the Treasury/Labor request for comments."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/02/025646.php

.... And liberals were worried how the world viewed us with Bush as President. 

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February 21, 2010

"Obama’s ‘Chicago mafia’ blamed for paralysis at the top

“Moderates and independents even in a state as Democratic as Massachusetts just aren’t buying our message,” he said.

“They don’t believe the answers we are currently proposing are solving their problems.”

Even society writers are disenchanted. “The Obama White House has closed ranks. They were completely overwhelmed by the new office,” said Karen Sommer Shalett, editor-in-chief of DC magazine. “I haven’t heard of them going to any house parties or Georgetown row houses to be entertained.

“That’s important because if you’re social with someone over canapés and you know their wife and you know their children, you talk business in a friendlier way.”

When the Obamas do go to someone’s house for dinner, almost invariably it is to the home of Valerie Jarrett, their old friend from Chicago who serves as a political adviser.

The Wednesday evening White House <snip>tail parties which were launched with great fanfare as a way to reach out to Republicans, fizzled out last spring. The two parties seem more hostile than ever.

“This administration has managed to divide its friends and unite its enemies,” said Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation.

He and others lay the blame on the Chicago team, advisers from Obama’s adopted city. “Obama’s West Wing is filled with people who are in their jobs because of their Chicago connections or because they signed on early during his presidential campaign,” complained Doug Wilder, who in 1990s Virginia was America’s first elected black governor and was an early backer of Obama. “One problem is they do not have sufficient experience at governing at the executive branch level. The deeper problem is that they are not listening to the people.”

Obama relies on five people, four of whom are Chicagoans. They are Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, David Axelrod and Jarrett, his political advisers, and Michelle, while the fifth kitchen cabinet member is Robert Gibbs, his chief spokesman, who comes from Alabama.

The president consults them on everything. Military commanders were astounded when they participated in Afghanistan war councils and referred to them as the “Chicago mafia”. It was this group that inserted into Obama’s Afghan surge speech the deadline of July 2011 as a date to start withdrawing.

With Democrats fearing big losses in the mid-term elections in November, the knives are out for Emanuel, whose abrasive manner and use of profanities have won him few friends. Although his job is to deflect criticism from his boss, Rahmbo, as he is known, seems to have gone over the top.

The Wall Street Journal reported him losing his temper at a strategy session in August and referring to liberals as “f***ing retarded”. He is said to have sent dead fish to a pollster whose numbers he did not like.

Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, called on Obama to remove Emanuel, arguing that he needs someone who knows how to navigate Washington or will end up being no more than a speechmaker.

“No one I’ve talked to believes he [Emanuel] has the management skills and discipline to run the White House,” he wrote in The Daily Beast.

Among those touted as possible replacements are David Gergen, a political consultant brought in by President Bill Clinton, or John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff who now heads the Center for American Progress, a left-wing pressure group.

Emanuel would be unlikely to go without a fight. “Obama needs Emanuel at the top,” argued Dana Milbank in yesterday’s Washington Post, writing that the chief of staff was being unfairly blamed for the healthcare debacle.

“Where the president is airy and idealistic, Rahm is earthy and calculating. One thinks big; the other, a former House Democratic caucus chair, understands the congressional mind, in which small stuff counts for more than broad strokes.”

In Milbank’s view, Obama’s real problem is his other confidants, Jarrett, Gibbs and Axelrod, whom he describes as “part of the cult of Obama”, believing he is “a transformational figure who needn’t dirty his hands in politics”.

While Obama may have campaigned on a slogan of change, he has shown himself reluctant to sack people.

The problem may go deeper. Douglas Schoen, former pollster for Bill Clinton, believes the Obama team misinterpreted victory as an endorsement of his liberal agenda when it was really a reaction against George W Bush and the credit crisis. “They need to recognise there is only one fundamental issue in America: jobs,” he said.

What no one disputes is that Obama is extremely clever. Were it not for losing the Kennedy seat and with it the Democrats’ 60-seat super-majority in the Senate, Obama would probably have signed healthcare into law by now.

The president has not given up on the reform. He is expected to publish a revised bill today or Monday, just before a televised White House summit on Thursday with congressional Republicans. But they are calling on Democrats to start all over again with a far less sweeping proposal.

The biggest hurdle may be Obama’s own ambition combined with lack of experience. A leading Democratic supporter described his administration as “unfocused”, adding that he had counted 137 items on Obama’s agenda.

“He needs to realise that he’s running a huge operation and has to sequence priorities,” said Clemons. “He’s not thinking like the chief executive of a complex organisation.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7034910.ece

"Napolitano Secretly Hosts Terrorist Groups In D.C.

Source Corruption Chronicles, a Judicial Watch Blog

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2010/feb/napolitano-hosts-terrorist-groups-d-c

Suggest reading the top link first, as Denninger located a copy of Citi's disclosure statement and finds no wording where this is limited to Texas accounts only.

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"Citibank: No More DDA Accounts - The Market Ticker
http://market-ticker.org/archives/1985-Citibank-No-More-DDA-Accounts.html

______

http://stockwidget.seekingalpha.com/article/189605-citi-warns-of-withdrawal-gate

"The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup, Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class

Source AlterNet.org

"The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight." -- Michael Lind, To Have and to Have Not

We all have very strong differences of opinion on many issues. However, like our founding fathers before us, we must put aside our differences and unite to fight a common enemy.

It has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99 percent of the U.S. population no longer has political representation. The U.S. economy, government and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us.

Current statistical societal indicators clearly demonstrate that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of current governmental policies prove that conditions for 99 percent of Americans will continue to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and have brought war to our doorstep...and make no mistake, they have launched a war to eliminate the U.S. middle class.

To those who feel I am using extreme rhetoric, I ask you to please take a few minutes of your time to hear me out and research the evidence put forth. The facts are there for the unprejudiced, rational and reasoned mind to absorb. It is the unfortunate reality of our current crisis.

Unless we all unite and organize on common ground, our very way of life and the ideals that our country was founded upon will continue to unravel.

Before exposing exactly who the Economic Elite are, and discussing common sense ways in which we can defeat them, let's take a look at how much damage they have already caused.

Casualties of Economic Terrorism, Surveying the Damage

The devastating numbers across-the-board on the economic front are staggering. I'll go through some of them here, many we have already become all too familiar with. We hear some of these numbers all the time, so much so that it appears as if we have already begun "to normalize the unthinkable." You may be sick of hearing them, but behind each number is an enormous amount of individual suffering, American lives and families who are struggling worse than they ever have.

America is the richest nation in history, yet we now have the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world with an unprecedented amount of Americans living in dire straights and over 50 million citizens already living in poverty.

The government has come up with clever ways to downplay all of these numbers, but we have over 50 million people who need to use food stamps to eat, and a stunning 50 percent of U.S. children will use food stamps to eat at some point in their childhoods. Approximately 20,000 people are added to this total every day. In 2009, one out of five U.S. households didn't have enough money to buy food. In households with children, this number rose to 24 percent, as the hunger rate among U.S. citizens has now reached an all-time high.

We also currently have over 50 million U.S. citizens without health care. 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2009, a 32 percent increase from 2008. As bankruptcies continue to skyrocket, medical bankruptcies are responsible for over 60 percent of them, and over 75 percent of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have health care insurance. We have the most expensive health care system in the world, we are forced to pay twice as much as other countries and the overall care we get in return ranks 37th in the world.

In total, Americans have lost $5 trillion from their pensions and savings since the economic crisis began and $13 trillion in the value of their homes. During the first full year of the crisis, workers between the age of 55 - 60, who have worked for 20 - 29 years, have lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. "Personal debt has risen from 65 percent of income in 1980 to 125 percent today." Over five million U.S. families have already lost their homes, in total 13 million U.S. families are expected to lose their home by 2014, with 25 percent of current mortgages underwater. Deutsche Bank has an even grimmer prediction: "The percentage of 'underwater' loans may rise to 48 percent, or 25 million homes." Every day 10,000 U.S. homes enter foreclosure. Statistics show that an increasing number of these people are not finding shelter elsewhere, there are now over 3 million homeless Americans, the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population is single parents with children.

One place more and more Americans are finding a home is in prison. With a prison population of 2.3 million people, we now have more people incarcerated than any other nation in the world -- the per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000, Saudi Arabia has 45 per 100,000. The prison industry is thriving and expecting major growth over the next few years. A recent report from the Hartford Advocate titled "Incarceration Nation" revealed that "a new prison opens every week somewhere in America."

Mass Unemployment

The government unemployment rate is deceptive on several levels. It doesn't count people who are "involuntary part-time workers," meaning workers who are working part-time but want to find full-time work. It also doesn't count "discouraged workers," meaning long-term unemployed people who have lost hope and don't consistently look for work. As time goes by, more and more people stop consistently looking for work and are discounted from the unemployment figure. For instance, in January, 1.1 million workers were eliminated from the unemployment total because they were "officially" labeled discouraged workers. So instead of the number rising, we will hear deceptive reports about unemployment leveling off.

On top of this, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently discovered that 824,000 job losses were never accounted for due to a "modeling error" in their data. Even in their initial January data there appears to be a huge understating, with the newest report saying the economy lost 20,000 jobs. TrimTabs employment analysis, which has consistently provided more accurate data, "estimated that the U.S. economy shed 104,000 jobs in January."

When you factor in all these uncounted workers -- "involuntary part-time" and "discouraged workers" -- the unemployment rate rises from 9.7 percent to over 20 percent. In total, we now have over 30 million U.S. citizens who are unemployed or underemployed. The rarely cited "employment-participation" rate, which reveals the percentage of the population that is currently in the workforce, has now fallen to 64 percent.

Even based on the "official" unemployment rate, just to get back to the unemployment level of 4.6 percent that we had in 2007, we need to create over 10 million new jobs, and most every serious economist will tell you that these jobs are not coming back. In fact, we are still consistently shedding jobs, on just one day, January 27, several companies announced new cuts of more than 60,000 jobs.

Due to the length of this crisis already, millions of Americans are reaching a point where the unemployment benefits they have been living on are coming to an end. More workers have already been out of work longer than at any point since statistics have been recorded, with over six million now unemployed for over six months. A record 20 million Americans qualified for unemployment insurance benefits last year, causing 27 states to run out of funds, with seven more also expected to go into the red within the next few months. In total, 40 state programs are expected to go broke.

Most economists believe the unemployment rate will remain high for the foreseeable future. What will happen when we have millions of laid-off workers without any unemployment benefits to save them?

Working More for Less

The millions struggling to find work are just part of the story. Due to the fact that we now have a record high six people for every one job opening, companies have been able to further increase the workload on their remaining employees. They have been able to increase the amount of hours Americans are working, reduce wages and drastically cut back on benefits. Even though Americans were already the most productive workers in the world before the economic crisis, in the third quarter of 2009, average worker productivity increased by an annualized rate of 9.5 percent, at the same time unit labor cost decreased by 5.2 percent. This has led to record profits for many companies. Of the 220 companies in the S&P 500 who have reported fourth-quarter results thus far, 78 percent of them had "better-than-expected profits" with earnings 17 percent above expectations, "the highest for any quarter since Thomson Reuters began tracking data."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national median wage was only $32,390 per year in 2008, and median household income fell by 3.6 percent while the unemployment rate was 5.8 percent. With the unemployment rate now at 10 percent, median income has been falling at a 5 percent rate and is expected to continue its decline. Not surprisingly, Americans' job satisfaction level is now at an all-time low.

There are also a growing number of employed people who, despite having a job, are still living in poverty. There are at least 15 million workers who now fall into this rapidly growing category. $32,390 a year is not going to get you far in today's economy, and half of the country is making less than that. This is why many Americans are now forced to work two jobs to provide for their family to hopefully make ends meet.

A Crime Against Humanity

The mainstream news media will numb us to this horrifying reality by endlessly talking about the latest numbers, but they never piece them together to show you the whole devastating picture, and they rarely show you all the immense individual suffering behind them. This is how they "normalize the unthinkable" and make us become passive in the face of such a high causality count.

Behind each of these numbers, is a tremendous amount of misery; the physical toll is only outdone by the severe psychological toll. Anyone who has had to put off medical care, or who couldn't get medical care for one of their family members due to financial circumstances, can tell you about the psychological toll that is on top of the physical suffering. Anyone who has felt the stress of wondering how they were going to get their child's next meal or their own, or the stress of not knowing how they are going to pay the mortgage, rent, electricity or heat bill, let alone the car payment, gas, phone, cable or Internet bill.

There are now well over 150 million Americans who feel stress over these things on a consistent basis. Over 60 percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck.

These are all basic things every person should be able to easily afford in a technologically advanced society such as ours. The reason we struggle with these things is because the Economic Elite have robbed us all. This amount of suffering in the United States of America is literally a crime against humanity."

This is Part I of David DeGraw's report, "The Economic Elite vs. People of the USA. " AlterNet will run Part II in the coming days.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/145667/the_economic_elite_have_engineered_an_extraordinary_coup,_threatening_the_very_existence_of_the_middle_class/?page=entire

Great speech definitely worth the listen.

_____________

"BACK FROM THE DEAD: DEMS VOW TO RAHM-THROUGH HEALTHCARE!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100219/pl_nm/us_usa_healthcare1

Real eye opener.

__________

Still in campaign mode  ..... pretty clear he's using these give away promises and pledges to buy approval his job performance certainly doesn't justify. 

___________

"Obama to tout housing help Friday in Las Vegas

Feb 19, 7:05 AM (ET)
By BEN FELLER
Source MyWay.com

"LAS VEGAS (AP) - President Barack Obama is unveiling $1.5 billion in housing help, a boost timed to his appearance in the city with the worst foreclosure crisis in the nation. ......."

"........Obama was to announce that housing finance agencies in the five hardest-hit states in the housing crisis will receive $1.5 billion to help spur local solutions to the problem. Those five are Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada. ......"

".......The first day of the trip was all politics. Obama campaigned Thursday for Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado in Denver, then held a $1 million fundraiser for Democrats in Las Vegas. ........."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100219/D9DV7SS00.html

Quick read.  Guess major stock holders don't want to lose all that money.

_____________

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i-Qd-q3ALSGUV0tZqwFVoy1GlGfQD9DUH8G80

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100216/ap_on_re_us/us_suburban_homeless

____________

"Obama's misleading jobs rhetoric

Examiner Editorial
February 16, 2010
Source WashingtonExaminer.com
 
"There he goes again. In the latest Economic Report of the President, Obama repeats his claim that the $787 billion economic stimulus program "has saved or created roughly two million jobs so far." Administration officials stopped saying that last year after journalists and think tankers across the political spectrum examined the supporting data posted on the official recovery.gov Web site and found it full of factual holes.

Thousands of jobs were claimed to have been saved or created in phantom congressional districts and ZIP codes. Thousands of raises given to public employees were counted as jobs saved or created. The Examiner's David Freddoso and Mark Hemingway examined media investigations and found nearly 100,000 phony positions. In other words, the claim that 2 million jobs were saved or created by the Obama economic stimulus program was exposed as being about as trustworthy as the used car salesman's assurance that the clunker on his lot was owned by a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sunday.

The fiasco prompted Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag to issue new "simplified guidelines" for how to measure the effect of the stimulus program on employment. But, as Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote in a Jan. 8 letter to recovery.gov's inspector general, the new guidelines actually raised additional credibility questions about White House assertions on the stimulus program's effectiveness.

Said Issa: "The new guidance counts every job that is funded using stimulus money -- even if it existed before the Recovery Act, and was not in any danger of being eliminated -- as 'created or saved.' This definition ignores the plain meanings of the words 'created' and 'saved,' and makes Recovery.gov's 'JOBS CREATED/SAVED' label a falsehood, further eroding the confidence of the American people in their government."

Some of the president's closest economic advisers also made some startling claims in connection with the new Economic Report. Council of Economic Advisers chairwoman Christina Romer, for example, said the economic stimulus program saved millions of Americans from "destitution." The dictionary defines destitution as "utter poverty" and the "lack of the means of subsistence." Who could have imagined that wasting money on fake jobs would yield such miraculous results?"

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Obama_s-misleading-jobs-rhetoric-84422777.html

Interesting insights from friends and associates.

____________

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?&articleid=1232943&format=&page=1&listingType=Loc#articleFull

Fries with that crow????

_______________

" 'Warming' meltdown

"Climate 'consensus' cracks up

Last Updated: 11:59 AM, February 16, 2010Posted: 12:58 AM, February 16, 2010Rich Lowry
Source NYPOST.com

"Climate alarmists conjured a world where nothing was certain but death, taxes and catastrophic global warming. They used this presumed scientific certainty as a bludgeon against the skeptics they deemed "deniers" -- a word meant to have the noxious whiff of Holocaust denial.

All in the cause of hustling the world into a grand carbon-rationing scheme. Any questions about the evidence for the cataclysmic projections, any concerns about the costs and benefits were trumped by that fearsome scientific "consensus," which had "settled" the important questions.

A funny thing happened to this "consensus" on the way to its inevitable triumph, though: Its propagators have been forced to admit fallibility.

For the cause of genuine science, this is a small step forward; for the cause of climate alarmism, it's a giant leap backward. The rush to "save the planet" can't accommodate any doubt, or it loses the panicked momentum necessary for a retooling of modern economic life.

Phil Jones is the director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, a key "consensus" institution that has recently been caught up in an e-mail scandal revealing a mind-set of global-warming advocacy rather than dispassionate inquiry.

Asked by the BBC what it means when scientists say "the debate on climate change is over," the keeper of the flame sounded chastened. "I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this," Jones said. "This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the . . . past as well."

Jones discussed the highly contentious "medieval warming period." If global temperatures were warmer than today back in 800-1300 AD -- about 1,000 years before Henry Ford's assembly lines began spitting out cars -- it suggests that natural factors have a large hand in climate change, a concession that climate alarmists are loath to make.

Jones said we don't know if the warming in this period was global in extent since paleoclimatic records are sketchy. If it was, and if temperatures were higher than now, "then obviously the late 20th century warmth would not be unprecedented."

Jones also noted that there's been no statistically significant warming since 1995, although the cooling since 2002 hasn't been statistically significant, either.

All of this is like a cardinal of the Catholic Church saying the evidence for apostolic succession is still open to debate.

The other main organ of the climate "consensus" is the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It won the Nobel Peace Prize for its 2007 report -- which turns out to have been so riddled with errors it could have been researched on Wikipedia.

It said Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, warned that global warming could reduce crop yields in Africa by 50 percent by 2020, and linked warming to the increased economic cost of natural disasters -- all nonsense.

These aren't random errors. As former head of the IPCC, the British scientist Robert Watson notes, "The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact."

Too many creators and guardians of the "consensus" desperately wanted to believe in it. As self-proclaimed defenders of science, they should have brushed up on their Enlightenment. "Doubt is not a pleasant mental state," said Voltaire, "but certainty is a ridiculous one."

The latest revelations don't disprove the warming of the 20th century or mean that carbon emissions played no role. But by highlighting the uncertainty of the paleoclimatic data and the models on which alarmism has been built, they constitute a shattering blow to the case for radical, immediate action.

In The Boston Globe, MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel marshals a new argument for fighting warming: "We do not have the luxury of waiting for scientific certainty, which will never come." Really? That's not what we were told even a few months ago -- before climate alarmism acknowledged doubt."

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/warming_meltdown_iD1hypJAstOrvovafbIbGK

Her accounting of how Hitler was elected in Austria by 98% of the vote is very interesting.

____________

Kitty Werthmann
For the Argus Leader
published: 3/11/2003

Kitty Werthmann, 77, of Pierre, is president of the South Dakota Eagle Forum. She lobbies the state Legislature on family issues. She has lived in the United States since 1950 and has been a U.S. citizen since 1962.
http://www.eagleforum.org/misc/states/articles/2003/werthmann-3-11-03.shtml

________

Source Examiner.com

http://www.examiner.com/x-25060-Fort-Worth-Christianity--Culture-Examiner~y2009m11d29-America-Truly-is-the-Greatest-Country-in-the-World--Dont-Let-Freedom-Slip-Away

Interesting opinion.  Decide for yourself.

_________

In addition to the "global warming" rip-off, you can add another huge international racketeering operation -- the H1N1 "pandemic" of 2009

"Europe to Investigate the UN Over “Pandemic” Scam

By Jim O'Neill     Saturday, January 2, 2010

Source Canada Free Press

“UN report says pandemic may result in anarchy—‘could kill millions’—unless western world pays for antiviral drugs and vaccines!” —From “The Guardian” September 20, 2009

"WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama has declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move emergency rooms offsite to speed treatment and protect non-infected patients. — Associated Press—October 25, 2009

In addition to the “global warming” rip-off, you can add another huge international racketeering operation—the H1N1 “pandemic” of 2009. 

Both of these ploys were designed to fleece the western nations of billions, possibly trillions, of dollars.  In the case of the H1N1 scam, the western governments have already coughed up billions of dollars for vaccines to prevent a bogus “pandemic.”  That means that we, the taxpayers, have been ripped-off yet again. 

If class action lawsuits aren’t on the way, then they darn well should be.

The European nations have apparently not been paid off to the extent of the U.S. Congress, and have decided to look into things. 

According to a report filed by F. William Engdahl, the Council of Europe Parliament has unanimously proposed to start an investigation this month into “the influence of the pharmaceutical companies on the global swine flu campaign.”

The purpose of the inquiry is to investigate collusion between the “Golden Triangle” of the UN’s WHO (World Health Organization), certain pharmaceutical companies, and academic scientists. 

That scenario should sound familiar, as it’s similar to “global warming’s” collusion between the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), “green energy” corporations, and academic scientists.

Both scams were intended to “redistribute the wealth” globally, while making the Global Elite, very, very rich.  They get to wipe out the middle-class, destroy capitalism, install a UN-run global regime, and get exceedingly wealthy, all at the same time.  It’s a win/win situation all around, for Progressives at least.

The resolution just passed by the Council of Europe Parliament includes the charge that, “In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines…pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies…to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.”

The motion was introduced by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg,  Chairman of the European Parliament Health Committee.  He stated that millions of healthy people were unnecessarily “exposed to the risk of poorly tested vaccines,” for no other reason than the purported threat of a flu strain that is “vastly less harmful” then previous flu strains. 

Dr. Wodarg’s talking about the Swine Flu, or H1N1, or “novel H1N1,” or “2009 H1N1,” or whatever they’re trying to pass it off as these days.  You remember—the national emergency?

You ought to remember—after all, you helped to pay for the billions spent on vaccines.  Big Pharma thanks you, and so do their stockholders.  Speaking of which, do you think some of those stockholders just might be Global Elitists?  Just asking.

Dr. Wodarg suggested that, “The Council of Europe and its member-states should ask for immediate investigations and consequences, on their national levels, as well as on the international level.”  Consequences—hmmm, good suggestion.

Why isn’t the U.S. doing the same?  Too many bribes, too many “donations” made to too many politicians, too many deals made with Big Pharma to get Obama-Care passed?  That would be my guess.

Our renowned “people’s watchdog,” the Lame Stream Media, remains ever-vigilantly silent on the subject.  Although I must admit that CBS did, almost, nearly look into malfeasance on the part of the CDC (Center for Disease Control) regarding the Swine Flu scam.

I guess, once again, it’s up to “we the people” to straighten things out.  Anybody know some good class action lawsuit lawyers?

Laus Deo."

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/18527

"Poll: 75% 'angry' at government

By ANDY BARR | 2/8/10 11:52 AM EST
Source Politico

"Three-quarters of the nation’s voters are “angry” at the federal government’s policies, according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey out Monday.

Of the 1,000 likely voters surveyed Feb. 5-6, 75 percent said they were either “very” or “somewhat” angry with the “current policies of the federal government.” Forty-five percent said they were “very” angry.

Only 19 percent said they were “not very” or “not at all” angry with the government, while 6 percent were not sure.

Nearly two-thirds, 60 percent, agreed with the statement that “neither Republican political leaders nor Democratic political leaders have a good understanding of what is needed today.”

The Republicans surveyed were angrier than Democrats, but both expressed frustration.

Eighty-nine percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Democrats said they were angry, while 78 percent of independent voters said they were.

More men were angry with the federal government than women, and voters who earned from $60,000 to $100,000 were found to be the angriest.

The percentage of those who said they were angry with the federal government has been on the rise.

In September, 66 percent of those surveyed said they were either “very” or “somewhat” angry, while in November 71 percent said they were.

The poll has a margin of error of plus- or minus-3 percentage points."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32680.html

If memory serves me, believe something of this nature was included in an obscure provision of the CAFTA treaty which is feared will be implemented in the US.  Irony ..... medical marajuana legal, vitamins banned. 

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"I attended this past weekend’s National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, and I came away feeling that I had seen something important.  The Tea Party movement is part of something bigger:  America’s Third Great Awakening.

America’s prior Great Awakenings, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, were religious in nature.  Unimpressed with self-serving, ossified, and often corrupt religious institutions, Americans responded with a bottom-up reassertion of faith, and independence.

This time, it’s different.  It’s not America’s churches and seminaries that are in trouble:  It’s America’s politicians and parties.  They’ve grown corrupt, venal, and out-of-touch with the values, and the people, that they’re supposed to represent.  So the people, once again, are reasserting themselves.

Most of the attention focused on this weekend’s convention seemed to involve the keynote speaker, Sarah Palin.  But though Palin wowed the crowd with red-meat attacks on overspending, weak national defense, and broken promises, the key phrase in her speech was this one: “All power is inherent in the people.”

And the biggest action item that she presented the crowd with wasn’t to support Sarah Palin, as most politicians would have asked, but to challenge incumbents in primary races.  Primary battles aren’t “civil war,” she said.  They’re the kind of competition that produces strength in the end.

This seemed to resonate with what I heard from conference attendees. Over and over again, I heard from Tea Party Activists that they were planning to take over their local Republican (and, sometimes Democratic) party apparatus starting at the precinct level and shake things up.

The sense was that party politics have been run for the benefit of the party insiders and hangers-on, not for the benefit of constituents and ideals.  And most of the conference, in fact, was addressed to doing something about that, not to worship of Sarah Palin, with sessions on organizing, media skills, and the like.

Even the much-hyped counter-Tea-Party protest, featuring three activists from the Tennessee Tea Party Coalition, underscores this point.  Despite their small numbers, they drew a large press gaggle hoping to get some negative energy going.

I watched as Knoxville Tea Party organizer Antonio Hinton -- who drew the largest crowd, perhaps because he is black, or perhaps because he’s an excellent speaker - was asked repeatedly by the press to say something negative about Sarah Palin or the National Tea Party Convention, but he called Palin
“a breath of fresh air.”

And he stressed that he and his cohorts - representing a collection of several dozen Tea Party groups around Tennessee - weren’t so much there to complain about the convention as to point out that there was a lot more to the Tea Party movement than that one meeting.

They were right.  The Tea Party movement is bottom up, not top down. Lots of Tea Party people think well of Sarah Palin, but I doubt that many, even among the attendees at this weekend’s convention, would do much of anything just on her say-so.  People I’ve talked to, both there and at other events, aren’t looking for a charismatic leader.

That’s the Barack Obama model, now somewhat tattered.  Instead, they’ve had enough and they’re taking the reins themselves. Over and over again, I heard people at this convention tell me that they had never been involved in politics before the Tea Party movement. And, having tried it, they’re finding that politics can be fun, and they’re encountering the joys of learning that they’re not alone.

Accustomed to major-media treatment that strongly implied that anyone favoring small government must be some kind of fringe wacko, they’re discovering that lots of people feel the way they do, and that they can wield a lot of power if they try.  I suspect the power-wielding part is just starting.

In less than a year, the Tea Party movement has gone from a few spontaneous protests against Obama’s stimulus bill to a nationwide phenomenon rating major media coverage, with several political scalps on its belt.  And these inexpert activists are getting better with practice at what they do, with a lot of room on the learning curve ahead.

It’s fun to put on a protest rally for the first time and have it work out, but it’s even more fun to elect -- or defeat -- a candidate.  Or, as Tea Party activists are beginning to do, to run for office yourself.

Over the next couple of years, these multitudes of virgin political operatives are going to acquire considerably more experience and self-assurance, which means they’re probably going to become considerably more effective, too.  Politics may not be the same when they’re done."

Examiner contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds covered the National Tea Party Convention for PJTV.com.  He blogs at InstaPundit.com.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Glenn-Reynolds-Tea-Party-Nashville-was-Americas-Third-Great-Awakening--83762647.html

http://biggovernment.com/jhoft/2010/02/07/you-betcha-palin-campaigns-for-rick-perry-writes-hi-mom-on-her-hand/

February 7, 2010

Source Times Online 

"School bombing exposes Obama’s secret war inside Pakistan

Last week America launched its first multiple drone attack, according to Pakistani security officials. Eighteen missiles were fired from eight unmanned aircraft in Dattakhel village, killing 16 people.

The discovery of the dead US soldiers revealed that America’s shadowy war in Pakistan not only involves drones but also small cadres of special operations soldiers.

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, insisted that US troops were in Pakistan only to provide counter-insurgency training for the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force operating in the tribal areas.

Other sources said there were about 200 US military inside the country. “I’m not sure you could just call it training,” one official said. “They are hardly behind the wire if they are on trips to schools in Dir.”

The three US soldiers, who have been described variously as special operations forces and civil affairs troops, were killed when their convoy was bombed as it travelled to the re-opening of the school. It had been rebuilt with US aid after being bombed by the Taliban last year.

Three schoolgirls, two villagers and a Pakistani soldier were also killed in the attack, for which the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility. More than 100 were wounded, mostly schoolgirls.

It was officially reported that the device was a remote-controlled bomb. It has now emerged that a suicide bomber rammed into the vehicle carrying the Americans. This suggests the bomber had inside information. “This attack was too perfect: they lay in wait for the convoy to pass and knew exactly which vehicle to hit,” a US military officer told the Long War Journal.

One of those killed was Sergeant Matthew Sluss-Tiller, 35, the father of a three-year-old daughter. His mother, Jane Blankenship, said her son had been in Pakistan on a civil affairs mission and had grown a beard for it.

One official suggested the “trainers” may be used to pick up intelligence on drone targets, particularly because the CIA did not trust its counterparts from the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service that has close links to the Taliban.

The Americans insist the drone attacks have been a success, picking off the second and third tier of Al-Qaeda’s leadership. In August they killed Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban. They recently claimed to have killed his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, but Pakistan’s foreign minister said this had not been confirmed.

To the irritation of Washington, Islamabad has kept up a pretence that drone attacks are carried out without its approval, even though the aircraft are based in Pakistan.

Among the Pakistani public, there has been outcry at the attacks. Surveys constantly show that Pakistanis consider the US a greater threat than the Taliban, despite 3,021 Pakistani deaths in terrorist attacks last year.

If the drones are controversial, the presence of US soldiers on Pakistani soil is far more so. Despite a $1.5 billion (£959m) aid programme, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, had to fly into Pakistan two weeks ago to reassure its military leadership. “Let me say definitively the US does not covet a single inch of Pakistani soil,” he told Pakistan’s National Defence University."

Additional reporting: Daud Khattak"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7017929.ece

Came in email.  Awesome animation, best viewed on a large screen format.

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http://www.house.gov/pelosi/press/releases/Aug03/prWherearetheJobs080103.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7157590/India-forms-new-climate-change-body.html

Couple of amazing photos. 

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http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

Interesting article, came in email this morning.  Metaphysically I've read that we're all experiencing the "dispensation of responsibility" so this is likely one of many articles we'll see on the subject.  Hope you enjoy.

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"Is There A Hidden Purpose To Victimhood?

"An attitude has swept across practically every person in every country on the globe over the course of the past few decades. This is the attitude of victimhood. Why has it become so popular for people to feel like they are victims and what purpose can this serve?

The Lack of Responsibility
Victims feel they can shirk responsibilities because those fall on the shoulders of the victimizers. Victims feel like they have no control over their own lives. Have a drug problem? It’s your parents’ faults. Uneducated? It’s not your fault. You had to take care of your kid. Single parent? That’s the fault of that no good boyfriend that hit the road as soon as you gave birth.

Paying alimony? Yeah, you decided to get married to that person, but you didn’t know they were going to divorce you and make you pay them. These excuses really do seem to make things easier. No reason to feel guilt or self-doubt. You did your best. Life happened to you.

Life happened to everyone. Your sister. Your friends. They all tell you the same thing. That no good mother is such you-know-what she wouldn’t let me keep living in her house, they say. Why do all of these various people do these horrible things to everyone? They’re just mean. They have grudges. They’re jealous. They are “haters.” They hate me because I’m beautiful. When viewed through an objective lens, most of these motives would seem flimsy, even silly, but through the eyes of a victim, these motivations seem to make perfect sense.

Victims Only Think About Themselves
When feel you are constantly being victimized in your life, you are actually being selfish. All you can think about is how terrible you’ve been wronged and how you are going to show those that victimized you.

Victim-hood leads to many negative emotions, pushing out any positive emotions that might have overtaken the victim. When you are so focused on yourself, you don’t think of other people and whether or not they are doing okay. You don’t think about how you can help them. Why would you? You’re the victim. You have problems. It slips your mind that everyone has problems. If you helped another person with their problems, it might actually cheer you up a little and give you some confidence. Can’t have that.

Helplessness Leads to Hopelessness
Victims are helpless. Someone that feels victimized typically feels no responsibility for the unpleasantness that has befallen them. With no responsibility in creating your own personal disaster, you were helpless to do anything to stop it. Therefore, you’re still helpless. You want, no, you need for someone to help you, to make everything better.

The longer this goes on, the less in control of your own life you feel. You’re completely helpless to do anything. There’s absolutely no hope for you, anymore. When there’s no hope, nothing matters. You get reckless. You do things just to make yourself happy for a few ephemeral moments. You spend money you don’t have. Your mind runs on and on with nonsense. You have nothing left. There’s no joy in your life. There’s no more reason to live. You have no future.

Why Has This Become Popular?
Victimhood has become the default state of a great many people around the globe. Why would so many choose a state of such utter sadness and disappointment? No one can say for sure. A popular view is that the the rise of the welfare state, shows like Jerry Springer, shifting cultural norms, and media in general are to blame.

Many victims would say it’s not a choice to be a victim. Once you are victimized, you have no choice, but to be a victim. That is the victim mentality in a nutshell. You have no choice. Anyone can, all of a sudden wrong you. Sure, this happens, but most of the time, you share some responsibility. If you were beaten and mugged, there’s no reason for that, but you were in that area at that time for a reason. You chose to be there. You didn’t know you’d be mugged, but you willfully decided to go to that place at that time.

Random bad things do, of course, happen, from time to time, where you don’t have much responsibility. But part of the responsibility of being alive is knowing that bad things are going to happen to you and that you are going to have to deal with them and move on. Say you’re laid off from a job do really well. Not fun, but there’s no reason to dwell on it. Yes, you were wronged by the company to which you contributed so much effort, but all you can do is move on and find another job.

If you can’t find another job, like so many Americans and others in today’s challenging times, take the opportunity to do your own thing and become one of the liberated self-employed. The freedom of never again answering to a condescending abusive boss is a blessing that is many times only facilitated when one loses the perceived safety and security of steady employment. Hardships are meant to provide the catalyst for positive change, but change scares most people. That’s why hardships are required to facilitate these changes.

Self-employment seems iffy to most people, but when you have no other choice, it’s a pretty good option. Once you’re confident in your ability to make money without depending on a boss, you’d be insane to ever want to go back to your old way of life. However, would you ever have really quit your well-paying job to strike out on your own? Probably not. Getting laid off, might have been the best thing that ever happened to you.

If you recede into victim-hood, asking why something so terrible ever happened to you and wondering why no one will help, you’re not going to realize the positive developments that will come from your trouble. Life isn’t an exciting challenge, anymore, it’s a monster springing out from behind a tree to slice you and dice you! You’re stuck. You’re a deer in the headlights. The car is going to kill you, and you can’t move a muscle. You aren’t going to figure out a way to become self-employed. You’ll get a minimum wage working for a boss who no one can stand.

You Have A Choice
Humans aren’t naturally victims for very long. Why is this such a pervasive attitude in today’s culture? People in power want you to feel helpless so they can control you. That’s why. Plain and simple. Who would work a low-paying, disrespectful service or outgoing call job, otherwise? But, have hope. No one can be a victim forever.

Keep Hope Alive
Sooner or later, everyone realizes they are the only ones with control over their own lives. Once you realize that you are never a victim, you can do incredible things. All of these people will have this epiphany after dealing with the bleak consequences of feeling helpless. They will take control of their own lives, and the world will be a wonderful place. A place full of confident, loving people doing everything they can to help other people to be as happy as they are."

http://www.dreammanifesto.com/hidden-purpose-victimhood.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=is-there-a-hidden-purpose-to-victimhood

"The Gang of Five, and How They Nearly Ruined Us

The little-known reason why investment banks got too big, too greedy, too risky, and too powerful.

From Slate

Source The Big Money

"The surviving investment banks are bristling at efforts aimed at recouping taxpayer losses and forestalling a repeat of the panic of 2008: congression­al proposals to tax bonuses, President Obama's planned tax on large banks' liabilities, and his suggestion that banks be prohibited from using taxpayer-insured funds for proprietary trading. That last proposal would "restrict lending, increase risk, decrease stability in the system, and limit our ability to help create jobs," says Steve Bartlett, CEO of the Financial Serv­ices Roundtable, the trade group for megabanks.

But if the banks want us out of their business, they should get out of our business first. We've (barely) lived through a 40-year period in which investment banks haven't imposed themselves on us. They effectively moved into our house, raided our fridge, and set the joint on fire. Now they're complaining that our renovation efforts are cramping their style.

The genesis of the problem was the transformation of investment banks from private partnerships into publicly held companies. The process began when Merrill Lynch went public in 1971. It was followed by the four other horsemen of the 2008 credit apocalypse: Morgan Stanley (MS) (1986), Bear Stearns (1985), Lehman Bros. (1994), and Goldman Sachs (GS) (1999). The Gang of Five went public so they could compete with the international banking giants that were encroaching on their core business of underwriting stock offerings and advising firms and so they could boost their activities in risky, capital-intensive businesses like proprietary trading. "In order to have a capital base that would support the funding they needed, they had to be public," says Roy Smith, a former Goldman Sachs partner and a professor of finance at New York University.

Going public allowed investment banks to get bigger, which then gave them the heft to mold the regulatory system to their liking. Perhaps the most disastrous decision of the past decade was the Securities and Exchange Commission's 2004 rule change allowing investment banks to increase the amount of debt they could take on their books—a move made at the request of the Gang of Five's CEOs. Before Lehman crashed, it had amassed more than $600 billion in debt. No partnership or private corporation could have accomplished that feat.

The shift to public ownership also replaced the accountability of partnerships—when there are no profits, there are no partner bonuses—with the dangerous fecklessness of public boards. In theory, boards are supposed to oversee the activities of CEOs. In practice, they act as expensive rubber stamps. "These companies had board members who either weren't paying attention or, at Lehman in particular, were deliberately selected because they were unqualified or out of it," says John Gillespie, a former investment banker at Lehman and Bear ­Stearns and co-author of the new book <snip> Gillespie notes that in 2008, Lehman's compensation committee included actress Dina Merrill, an heiress to the E.F. Hutton fortune who was 85 years old.

By the time Lehman ended its 14-year run as a public company with a "bagel" (a stock worth zero), some $45 billion in shareholder value had been destroyed. Shareholders didn't do much better with the other four. Bear ­Stearns was rescued from bageldom when JPMorgan (JPM) bought it at a fire-sale price with the help of the Federal Reserve. Morgan Stanley and Goldman managed to remain independent and solvent, but only because huge subsidies were made available to them. In late January, Morgan Stanley's stock stood where it did in early 1998.

Shareholders may have suffered, but employees and executives didn't. At investment-­banking partnerships, compensation is contentious—epic brawls would take place each December as partners argued over bonuses. But they would take place in private, and the process essentially involved rich people taking money out of one another's pockets. Now it's a zero-sum game, with executives and employees essentially taking billions from shareholders.

The public—as aggrieved owners, taxpayers, and savers—has every right to question the banks' methods and practices. If they don't want us poking around their businesses, they can shrink their balance sheets, replace government-subsidized debt with market-rate debt, stop relying on the Federal Reserve for funding, and get out of our index funds. As film mogul Samuel Goldwyn once said: "Include me out!"

Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek."

 http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/moneybox/2010/01/29/gang-five-and-how-they-nearly-ruined-us?page=full