Yet again, the "uni-party" - the NEO-CON 'Democrats' ALLIANCE with the BIG BUSINESS Republican Party powers-that-be - have MASTERED the US national PROPAGANDA NARRATIVE, presenting President Obama's nominee to the US Supreme Court, US Circuit Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayer, as a "lefty" or "LIBRERAL" - almost entirely because of her up-from Latina roots life history - even though, as Thom Hartmann explains, "SHE IS VERY MUCH in favor of CORPORATE PERSONHOOD" and has VOTED REPEATEDLY IN FAVOR OF CORPORATIONS vs INDIVIDUALS.
According to Mr. Hartmann, one judicial observer has even compared Judge Sotomayer's rulings, as "JUST LIKE SAMUEL ALITO's"!!
Justice Alito, Thom Hartmann reminds us, a textbook example of the Republican's ability to NOMINATE 'BOMB-THROWING RADICAL RIGHT' (John Birch Society, even) nominees to the US Suprmee Court, and then use their CORPORATE DOMINACE of the US media (and thus national discourse) to RAM RADICAL RIGHT-WING judges and justices past "Democratic" opposition that is TOO COWED, TO DISORGANIZED, TOO disoriented, and TOO CORPORATIST in its own right, to put forth any real opposition!
Ironically, perhaps, "liberal" talk-radio host Hartmann cites no less a source than the radical right-wing RUPERT MURDOCH owned WALL STREET JOURNAL as 'proof' that Judge Sotomayer is a GOVERNMENT AUTOCRAT CORPORATIST, FIRST, and a "liberal," "people-power, restraint-of-corporate & government powers 'progressive'" a far distant second.
Meanwhile, EVEN AS the Wall St. Journal REASSURES its corporate readers that "Judge Sotomayer is one of us," they, the WSJ, continues to BEAT THE PROPAGANDA DRUMS for nationwide public consumption of (our paraphrasing) "JUDGE SOTOMAYER is a RADICAL LEFTY who will try to THROW America's BORDERS OPEN to illegal immigrants, and she will favor anyone who will SUE any corporation in America for the most trivial of 'liberal' claims" - a PROPAGANDA NARRATIVE that is captured by MediaMatters.org (posted bottom this post, below our "Judge Sotomayer is ACTUALLY a Corporatist Mainstream Jurist" WSJ clip., below)
Record Shows Rulings Within Liberal Mainstream
By JESS BRAVIN and NATHAN KOPPEL
MAY 27, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124338260937756559.html
Despite Democratic Bent, Judge Has Sided With Corporate Defendants; Court's Frequent 5-4 [CONSERVATIVE] Split Likely to Remain
"Judge Sotomayer.... HAS FAVORED CORPORATE DEFENDANTS in suits that test when cases can be brought as class actions. Judges often must determine whether plaintiffs' claims should be pre-empted by more defense-friendly federal and international laws.
"THERE IS NO REASON for the BUSINESS COMMUNITY TO BE CONCERNED" about Judge Sotomayor, said Lauren Rosenblum Goldman, a partner at Mayer Brown LLP who has represented businesses including Wachovia Corp. and Dow Chemical Co.
...In 2006, the judge was part of a Second Circuit panel that ruled investors could NOT proceed with a class-action suit accusing WALL Street BANKS of FRAUDULENTLY PRICING initial public offerings. The ruling [and HER vote helped] NEGATED SETTLEMENTS that would have YIELDED INVESTORS MORE THAN $1 BILLION. "That ruling demonstrated that in securities litigation, she is in the judicial [as in, FAR TO the ALITO/SCALIA/ROBERTS Right-Wing] mainstream," said Barry Ostrager, a partner at Simpson Thacher LLP who represented a unit of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in the matter.
==========================================================
WSJ, USA Today advance conservatives' distortions of [USSC nominee] Sotomayor's Duke Remark
http://mediamatters.org/research/200905270014
SUMMARY: The Wall Street Journal and USA Today advanced conservative efforts to portray Sonia Sotomayor as an activist judge by misrepresenting a remark she made about the difference between district and appeals court justices.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
reposted: CORRUPT & COWERING "Dem" Senator MAX BAUCUS... LAUGHS, as Single-Payer Health Reform Advocates ARRESTED from his committee hearings...
"Democrat" COWARDICE, BETRAYAL, and TREACHERY PERSONIFIED:
Senator MAX BAUCUS has a problem: IF he actually encourages some "REFORM" from his so-called "Senate Health Care REFORM" committee Hearings, well, the bankers, INSURANCE COMPANIES, and HMO excutives MIGHT DONATE TO HIS OPPONENTS when he goes for re-election - (WHICH HE JUST WON in 2008!) - So, therefore, SENATOR BAUCUS prefers to have America's SINGLE-PAYER advocates "DISAPPEARED" from the political process - certainly as far as HIS committee is concerned - and he goes so far as to LAUGH as COURAGEOUS Doctors & Nurses are ARRESTED for daring to protest HIS DICTATORIAL GAVEL & exclusion from even a SINGLE SEAT at the 15 member, industry dominated "Reform" hearings table!
So-called "Democrat" SENATOR MAX BAUCUS, having taken $500,000 IN BRIBES - a HALF-MILLION DOLLARS in "campaign donations" from Health-Insurance & HMO companies for his campaign donations, to help them ROB American health-care consumers of HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dolars - LAUGHS as first one, then another, doctors & nurses are ARRESTED from his so-called "Health-care 'REFORM'" hearings...
Hearings dominated EXCLUSIVELY by HEALTH INDUSTRY LOBBYISTS, who CARE NOT ONE WHITE HOW MANY AMERICANS _DIE_ from DENIED CLAIMS or EXCLUDED COVERAGE, as long at THEIR EMPLOYERS - the executives & CEO's of the health care industry - make record profits.
...Those doctors and nurses FORCED to RISK ARREST (a major blot on the carreer of a doctor or nurse, needless to say) BECAUSE the COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS "Democrat" Senators like Baucus and Nebraska "Democrat" Senator Ben Nelson are OWNED by the insurance, banking, and financial lobbies.
With "DEMOCRATS" LIKE THESE, WHO THE HELL NEEDS DICK CHENEY, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, or KARL ROVE?
Within a year or two of MAJOR, PROMINENT REPUBLICANS being FORCED to retire from Congression/DC spotlight - people like former RNC Chair HALEY BARBOR, former Senate Majority Leader TRENT LOTT, former Senate Majority Leader BILL FRIST, former House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert, former House virtual DICTATOR Tom Delay, and of course the entire Cheney-Bush administration - THE COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS, TRAITOROUS, voter-BACK-STABBING "blue-dog" "Conservative-Democrats" ARE FIGHTING THE REPUBLICAN's BATTLES for them!!
As the sheer MURDEROUS ARROGANCE and TREACHERY of SENATOR MAX BAUCUS
"I HAVE you STUPID, PEON TAXPAYERS pay for MY _PREMIUM_ HEALTH-CARE; now GO AHEAD AND DIE, or I will SICK THE CAPITOL POLICE ON YOU" so perfectly illustrates.
(note: Baucus' TREACHEROUS scorn & arrogance are a VIRTUAL COPY of uber-Republican Neo-Con media demagogue BILL KRISTOL's "WHENEVER I HEAR of American schoolchildren BEING EXCLUDED from SCHP [health insurance for children of low-income families], I TEND TO THINK OF IT AS A GOOD THING" - the murderously arrogant & treacherous Neo-Con Republican, leading and echoing "DEMOCRAT" Senator Max Baucus' "Health Care 'REFORM' does NOT mean 'reform'" talking points!
As we said, with "Democrat" Senators like MAX BAUCUS and HARRY REID, WHO NEEDS Bill Kristol, Dick Cheney, and KARL ROVE?
Senator MAX BAUCUS has a problem: IF he actually encourages some "REFORM" from his so-called "Senate Health Care REFORM" committee Hearings, well, the bankers, INSURANCE COMPANIES, and HMO excutives MIGHT DONATE TO HIS OPPONENTS when he goes for re-election - (WHICH HE JUST WON in 2008!) - So, therefore, SENATOR BAUCUS prefers to have America's SINGLE-PAYER advocates "DISAPPEARED" from the political process - certainly as far as HIS committee is concerned - and he goes so far as to LAUGH as COURAGEOUS Doctors & Nurses are ARRESTED for daring to protest HIS DICTATORIAL GAVEL & exclusion from even a SINGLE SEAT at the 15 member, industry dominated "Reform" hearings table!
So-called "Democrat" SENATOR MAX BAUCUS, having taken $500,000 IN BRIBES - a HALF-MILLION DOLLARS in "campaign donations" from Health-Insurance & HMO companies for his campaign donations, to help them ROB American health-care consumers of HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dolars - LAUGHS as first one, then another, doctors & nurses are ARRESTED from his so-called "Health-care 'REFORM'" hearings...
Hearings dominated EXCLUSIVELY by HEALTH INDUSTRY LOBBYISTS, who CARE NOT ONE WHITE HOW MANY AMERICANS _DIE_ from DENIED CLAIMS or EXCLUDED COVERAGE, as long at THEIR EMPLOYERS - the executives & CEO's of the health care industry - make record profits.
...Those doctors and nurses FORCED to RISK ARREST (a major blot on the carreer of a doctor or nurse, needless to say) BECAUSE the COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS "Democrat" Senators like Baucus and Nebraska "Democrat" Senator Ben Nelson are OWNED by the insurance, banking, and financial lobbies.
With "DEMOCRATS" LIKE THESE, WHO THE HELL NEEDS DICK CHENEY, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, or KARL ROVE?
Within a year or two of MAJOR, PROMINENT REPUBLICANS being FORCED to retire from Congression/DC spotlight - people like former RNC Chair HALEY BARBOR, former Senate Majority Leader TRENT LOTT, former Senate Majority Leader BILL FRIST, former House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert, former House virtual DICTATOR Tom Delay, and of course the entire Cheney-Bush administration - THE COWARDLY, TREACHEROUS, TRAITOROUS, voter-BACK-STABBING "blue-dog" "Conservative-Democrats" ARE FIGHTING THE REPUBLICAN's BATTLES for them!!
As the sheer MURDEROUS ARROGANCE and TREACHERY of SENATOR MAX BAUCUS
"I HAVE you STUPID, PEON TAXPAYERS pay for MY _PREMIUM_ HEALTH-CARE; now GO AHEAD AND DIE, or I will SICK THE CAPITOL POLICE ON YOU" so perfectly illustrates.
(note: Baucus' TREACHEROUS scorn & arrogance are a VIRTUAL COPY of uber-Republican Neo-Con media demagogue BILL KRISTOL's "WHENEVER I HEAR of American schoolchildren BEING EXCLUDED from SCHP [health insurance for children of low-income families], I TEND TO THINK OF IT AS A GOOD THING" - the murderously arrogant & treacherous Neo-Con Republican, leading and echoing "DEMOCRAT" Senator Max Baucus' "Health Care 'REFORM' does NOT mean 'reform'" talking points!
As we said, with "Democrat" Senators like MAX BAUCUS and HARRY REID, WHO NEEDS Bill Kristol, Dick Cheney, and KARL ROVE?
Friday, May 22, 2009
Obama A FOOL & A CHUMP: Health Insurance execs BREAK 'pledge' within A WEEK of Giving their "We Willl Hold Back Costs" vow to Obama...
DOES President Obama REALLY EXPECT TO BE TREATED LIKE ROYALTY in the next dozen months, with him handing out TRILLIONS of TAXPAYER DOLLARS in NO-OVERSIGHT, NO audits, NO FRAUD PROSECUTIONS "bailouts" to his neo-con Bankster friends - even as they JACK UP the costs of credit, health care,food, energy, insurance, & EVERYTHING else they can get their paws on??
Well, notch up another (in a long list to come) of
"We told you so's" for the Columbia & Harvard "I love the establishment" president:
WITHIN TWO WEEKS of Obama & his HHS Secretary KATHLEEN SEBELIUS practically BRAGGING to the White House press corpse
"WE HAVE A BREAKTHROUGH! To RESTRAIN HEALTH COSTS and save consumers ONE TRILLION DOLLARS over the next ten years" -
- well, the HMO and health insurance execs have made even that pathetic (1.5%) pledge an ABJECT FARCE.
You know, just as Ed Schultz, host of the MSNBC "Ed" show and his own 3 hour talk-radio show said they (the health co. execs) would.
Since we are ENTIRELY TOO LAZY to transcribe Mr. Schultz's entirely prescient comments from just a week or two ago, we will present Nobel prize-winning economist PAUL KRUGMAN's op-ed (paraphrasing):
"PRESIDENT OBAMA was a SUCKER and a FOOL, if he thought he was going to get a DIME out of the Health company execs, WITHOUT FIRST BEATING 'em OVER THE HEAD with MASSIVE WHITE HOUSE PUBLICITY ___FOCUSING___ MASSIVE PUBLIC OUTRAGE on the JOBS-killing, BUSINESSES-killing, and ECONOMY-KILLING rising health-care costs."
duh.
=================================================
By Paul Krugman
May 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/opinion/22krugman.html
That didn’t take long. Less than two weeks have passed since much of the medical-industrial complex made a big show of working with President Obama on health care reform — and the double-crossing is already well under way. Indeed, it’s now clear that even as they met with the president, pretending to be cooperative, insurers were gearing up to play the same destructive role they did the last time health reform was on the agenda.....
Well, notch up another (in a long list to come) of
"We told you so's" for the Columbia & Harvard "I love the establishment" president:
WITHIN TWO WEEKS of Obama & his HHS Secretary KATHLEEN SEBELIUS practically BRAGGING to the White House press corpse
"WE HAVE A BREAKTHROUGH! To RESTRAIN HEALTH COSTS and save consumers ONE TRILLION DOLLARS over the next ten years" -
- well, the HMO and health insurance execs have made even that pathetic (1.5%) pledge an ABJECT FARCE.
You know, just as Ed Schultz, host of the MSNBC "Ed" show and his own 3 hour talk-radio show said they (the health co. execs) would.
Since we are ENTIRELY TOO LAZY to transcribe Mr. Schultz's entirely prescient comments from just a week or two ago, we will present Nobel prize-winning economist PAUL KRUGMAN's op-ed (paraphrasing):
"PRESIDENT OBAMA was a SUCKER and a FOOL, if he thought he was going to get a DIME out of the Health company execs, WITHOUT FIRST BEATING 'em OVER THE HEAD with MASSIVE WHITE HOUSE PUBLICITY ___FOCUSING___ MASSIVE PUBLIC OUTRAGE on the JOBS-killing, BUSINESSES-killing, and ECONOMY-KILLING rising health-care costs."
duh.
=================================================
Blue DOUBLE CROSS
[aka, "OBAMA IS A FOOL & a CHUMP, TAKEN TO CLEANERS by Blue Cross execs"]
By Paul Krugman
May 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/opinion/22krugman.html
That didn’t take long. Less than two weeks have passed since much of the medical-industrial complex made a big show of working with President Obama on health care reform — and the double-crossing is already well under way. Indeed, it’s now clear that even as they met with the president, pretending to be cooperative, insurers were gearing up to play the same destructive role they did the last time health reform was on the agenda.....
TREACHEROUS DC Democrats Let Cheney-GOP "We did not torture, and it was legal if we did" Talking Points HANG across USA - UNCHALLENGED, UNCONTESTED...
"Democrat" leaders LET REPUBLICAN Colin Powell DO THEIR WORK FOR THEM: it is not DEMOCRAT 'leaders' who are PUSHING BACK AGAINST Vice President Cheney's HATE & FEAR demagogue "Obama makes America LESS SAFE in the war-on-terror" speeches: it is former REPUBLICAN Secretary of State COLIN POWELL offering up that rebuttal!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1laECLxWd8
WHY do the DEMOCRATS - including Experienced "Leaders" like FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE JOHN KERRY, and Senate Majority "Leader" Harry Reid & House Majority Leader STENY HOYER, ALLOW Right-Wing Talking Points to POISON the political debate in America, UNCHALLENGED, UNCONTESTED, UNMOLESTED??
Just by banging the drums of "TORTURE IS GOOD FOR AMERICA!" with ONLY "the media" offering any counter-balance, Cheney's APPROVAL RATING has ALMOST DOUBLED in the past few weeks... on a tide of SHEER LIES, FALSEHOODS, INNUENDO, and DEMAGOGUE fear-mongering!
McClatchey news: "Cheney Speech Contained Omissions, Misstatements."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090521/pl_mcclatchy/3237981
WHY do the "Democratic" "leaders" in the House and Senate ALLOW former Republican Speaker of the House NEWT GINGRICH, to go on nationally broadcast TV, saying that Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi SHOULD BE FORCED TO RESIGN, for having said that "IF the CIA now claims I was explicitly informed about Water-boarding and other TORTURE methods in a SINGLE BRIEFING I was given, IN 2002, when I was ONLY THE MINORITY LEADER [and the Bush-Cheney White House had NEAR GOD-LIKE POWERS to 'defend America' in the aftermath of the 9-11 terror attacks] Then they, the CIA, are LYING abou that memo or briefing" - WHEN EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD KNOWS that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, AND THE CIA LIED America into GOING TO WAR on FALSE PRETENSES in the spring of 2003?
WHY DO DEMOCRATS make KEITH OLBERMANN do THEIR WORK, of explaining to America that TORTURE is both a CRIMINAL VIOLATION OF US LAW, a criminal violation of international treaties that the United States has signed on to, AND IS above all COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE - an argument that Olbermann EASILY MAKES in 20 minutes almost every evening he is on the air, but that Democrats - ENTRUSTED with DEFENDING THE US CONSTITUTION, and EMPOWERED to SPEAK to the American people AT LEAST AS MUCH AS REPUBLICAN DEMAGOGUES are - WHY do Democrats SHIRK their Duty, to CONFRONT the LIES and CRIMINAL CONDUCT of the Bush-Cheney TORTURE GULAG.... EVEN given Mr. Bush & Mr. Cheney's sad, sordid attempts to PIN THE BLAME for the Abu Ghraib "ABUSE" scandal ON FEMALE PRIVATES ??
This, of course - tacitly DEFENDING TORTURE, by EXPENDING _NO_ ENERGY, effort, or resolve to CONFRONT it - is SHEER, DEMOCRAT COWARDICE, if not "We are a dictatorship" TREACHERY.
IT HEARKENS DIRECTLY BACK to America's HISTORY AS A SLAVE NATION, where NATIONAL LEADERS - Senators, Congressmen and of course presidents - could pontificate for hours on end about the "MORALITY" of a system that was founded on FUNDING OVERSEAS WARS (the original SLAVE RAIDS that fed African slave markets, and thus the trans-Atlantic slave trade); DEPENDED upon APPLIED TERRORISM - the SADISM and VIOLENCE endowed in Slave Overseers and slave-catchers to WHIP, TORTURE, RAPE, EXPOSE, BEAT, HUMILIATE, DEGRADE, or KILL SLAVES; and inculcated a sense in "polite society" that there were NO CRIMES, NO sadism, nor any murderous brutality involved in the so-called "peculiar institution" upon which entire swaths of American society and the American economy were dependent on?
--------------------------------------
Keith Olbermann easily DEMOLISHES the lies that former Vice President Cheney has "FORCE FED" America.... arguments and expositions that ENTIRE SWATHS of the so-called "DEMOCRAT LEADERSHIP" REFUSE to make, despite their vastly greater budgets, despite their vastly greater exposure to American citizens, and despite the Democratic Party's leaders & Representatives VASTLY GREATER RESPONSIBILITY to UPHOLD and DEFEND the United States CONSTITUTION and its laws.
From pretending that TORTURE is NOT torture, to pretending that FEMALE PRIVATES were a "FEW BAD APPLES" in the BUSH-CHENEY-RUMSFELD-WOLFOWITZ TORTURE UNIVERSE, to PRETENDING that torture was "AUTHORIZED by Legal authorities" (when, as Mr. Olbermann points out, Cheney instituted HIS TORTURE program LONG before he got White House two-bit lawyers to rationalize what had already been done), to PRETENDING that Torture was PRODUCTIVE...
ON EACH of the above points, despite WELL ESTABLISHED FACTS in both media & government documents, the DC DEMOCRATS ARE OMINOUSLY, COWARDLY, TREACHEROUSLY SILENT.
And above all, Olbermann BLASTS Mr. Cheney for being CULPABLE for the DEATHS OF AMERICANS on 9-11, Mr. Cheney now claiming in his speech at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday that he took a "SECOND LOOK" at the THREAT OF TERROR ATTACKS ON AMERICA __ONLY AFTER__ the 9-11 attacks!
Mr. Olbermann pointing out that there were literally hundreds of professionals in national security, counter-terrorism, law-enforcement, and the US military, both in and out of the US government**, literally begging, pleading, and requesting that then Vice President Cheney ADDRESS the LOOMING Al QAIDA TERROR THREAT in the first 8 months Bush-Cheney administration - a responsibility and obligation that Vice President Cheney steadfastly REFUSED to step up to.
**(note: FBI Counter-terror & Al Qaida EXPERT JOHN O'NEILL was SO DEMORALIZED by the CIA, FBI, and Cheney-Bush administration's REFUSAL to PROSECUTE Al Qaida for the BOMBING of the USS Cole on 12 October 2000 in a Yemen harbor, that Mr. O'Neill literally QUIT the FBI in frustration, and took a job as Chief of the NY Port Authorities World Trade Centers towers - where he was KILLED on 9-11, last seen going up the stairs into the burning building to try to help victims reach safety. Critics of Mr. O'Neill paint him as "out of control" and "unwilling to cooperate with State Department protocols" when he went to Yemen in early 2001 to investigate the terror attacks, but the facts remain: PRESIDENT BUSH and VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY did NOTHING to seek justice for the US Sailors KILLED in the Cole bombing, until they used the 9-11 attacks as an EXCUSE to INVADE first Afghanistan and then IRAQ.)
SO, this week, the 3rd week of MAY 2009, Mr. Cheney's APPROVAL RATINGS SHOOT UP from 20% to 37%... because the COWERING, TREACHEROUS, PATHETIC DC Democrats GIVE Mr. Cheney a FREE PASS, an OPEN STAGE, a RED CARPET RECEPTION, to once again broadcast his DEMAGOGUE, BLAME-FEMALE-PRIVATES; "I had legal authorization," "FEAR THE TERRORISTS," "Americans MUST RESORT TO TORTURE" lies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1laECLxWd8
WHY do the DEMOCRATS - including Experienced "Leaders" like FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE JOHN KERRY, and Senate Majority "Leader" Harry Reid & House Majority Leader STENY HOYER, ALLOW Right-Wing Talking Points to POISON the political debate in America, UNCHALLENGED, UNCONTESTED, UNMOLESTED??
Just by banging the drums of "TORTURE IS GOOD FOR AMERICA!" with ONLY "the media" offering any counter-balance, Cheney's APPROVAL RATING has ALMOST DOUBLED in the past few weeks... on a tide of SHEER LIES, FALSEHOODS, INNUENDO, and DEMAGOGUE fear-mongering!
McClatchey news: "Cheney Speech Contained Omissions, Misstatements."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090521/pl_mcclatchy/3237981
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
WHY do the "Democratic" "leaders" in the House and Senate ALLOW former Republican Speaker of the House NEWT GINGRICH, to go on nationally broadcast TV, saying that Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi SHOULD BE FORCED TO RESIGN, for having said that "IF the CIA now claims I was explicitly informed about Water-boarding and other TORTURE methods in a SINGLE BRIEFING I was given, IN 2002, when I was ONLY THE MINORITY LEADER [and the Bush-Cheney White House had NEAR GOD-LIKE POWERS to 'defend America' in the aftermath of the 9-11 terror attacks] Then they, the CIA, are LYING abou that memo or briefing" - WHEN EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD KNOWS that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, AND THE CIA LIED America into GOING TO WAR on FALSE PRETENSES in the spring of 2003?
WHY DO DEMOCRATS make KEITH OLBERMANN do THEIR WORK, of explaining to America that TORTURE is both a CRIMINAL VIOLATION OF US LAW, a criminal violation of international treaties that the United States has signed on to, AND IS above all COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE - an argument that Olbermann EASILY MAKES in 20 minutes almost every evening he is on the air, but that Democrats - ENTRUSTED with DEFENDING THE US CONSTITUTION, and EMPOWERED to SPEAK to the American people AT LEAST AS MUCH AS REPUBLICAN DEMAGOGUES are - WHY do Democrats SHIRK their Duty, to CONFRONT the LIES and CRIMINAL CONDUCT of the Bush-Cheney TORTURE GULAG.... EVEN given Mr. Bush & Mr. Cheney's sad, sordid attempts to PIN THE BLAME for the Abu Ghraib "ABUSE" scandal ON FEMALE PRIVATES ??
This, of course - tacitly DEFENDING TORTURE, by EXPENDING _NO_ ENERGY, effort, or resolve to CONFRONT it - is SHEER, DEMOCRAT COWARDICE, if not "We are a dictatorship" TREACHERY.
IT HEARKENS DIRECTLY BACK to America's HISTORY AS A SLAVE NATION, where NATIONAL LEADERS - Senators, Congressmen and of course presidents - could pontificate for hours on end about the "MORALITY" of a system that was founded on FUNDING OVERSEAS WARS (the original SLAVE RAIDS that fed African slave markets, and thus the trans-Atlantic slave trade); DEPENDED upon APPLIED TERRORISM - the SADISM and VIOLENCE endowed in Slave Overseers and slave-catchers to WHIP, TORTURE, RAPE, EXPOSE, BEAT, HUMILIATE, DEGRADE, or KILL SLAVES; and inculcated a sense in "polite society" that there were NO CRIMES, NO sadism, nor any murderous brutality involved in the so-called "peculiar institution" upon which entire swaths of American society and the American economy were dependent on?
--------------------------------------
Keith Olbermann easily DEMOLISHES the lies that former Vice President Cheney has "FORCE FED" America.... arguments and expositions that ENTIRE SWATHS of the so-called "DEMOCRAT LEADERSHIP" REFUSE to make, despite their vastly greater budgets, despite their vastly greater exposure to American citizens, and despite the Democratic Party's leaders & Representatives VASTLY GREATER RESPONSIBILITY to UPHOLD and DEFEND the United States CONSTITUTION and its laws.
From pretending that TORTURE is NOT torture, to pretending that FEMALE PRIVATES were a "FEW BAD APPLES" in the BUSH-CHENEY-RUMSFELD-WOLFOWITZ TORTURE UNIVERSE, to PRETENDING that torture was "AUTHORIZED by Legal authorities" (when, as Mr. Olbermann points out, Cheney instituted HIS TORTURE program LONG before he got White House two-bit lawyers to rationalize what had already been done), to PRETENDING that Torture was PRODUCTIVE...
ON EACH of the above points, despite WELL ESTABLISHED FACTS in both media & government documents, the DC DEMOCRATS ARE OMINOUSLY, COWARDLY, TREACHEROUSLY SILENT.
And above all, Olbermann BLASTS Mr. Cheney for being CULPABLE for the DEATHS OF AMERICANS on 9-11, Mr. Cheney now claiming in his speech at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday that he took a "SECOND LOOK" at the THREAT OF TERROR ATTACKS ON AMERICA __ONLY AFTER__ the 9-11 attacks!
Mr. Olbermann pointing out that there were literally hundreds of professionals in national security, counter-terrorism, law-enforcement, and the US military, both in and out of the US government**, literally begging, pleading, and requesting that then Vice President Cheney ADDRESS the LOOMING Al QAIDA TERROR THREAT in the first 8 months Bush-Cheney administration - a responsibility and obligation that Vice President Cheney steadfastly REFUSED to step up to.
**(note: FBI Counter-terror & Al Qaida EXPERT JOHN O'NEILL was SO DEMORALIZED by the CIA, FBI, and Cheney-Bush administration's REFUSAL to PROSECUTE Al Qaida for the BOMBING of the USS Cole on 12 October 2000 in a Yemen harbor, that Mr. O'Neill literally QUIT the FBI in frustration, and took a job as Chief of the NY Port Authorities World Trade Centers towers - where he was KILLED on 9-11, last seen going up the stairs into the burning building to try to help victims reach safety. Critics of Mr. O'Neill paint him as "out of control" and "unwilling to cooperate with State Department protocols" when he went to Yemen in early 2001 to investigate the terror attacks, but the facts remain: PRESIDENT BUSH and VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY did NOTHING to seek justice for the US Sailors KILLED in the Cole bombing, until they used the 9-11 attacks as an EXCUSE to INVADE first Afghanistan and then IRAQ.)
SO, this week, the 3rd week of MAY 2009, Mr. Cheney's APPROVAL RATINGS SHOOT UP from 20% to 37%... because the COWERING, TREACHEROUS, PATHETIC DC Democrats GIVE Mr. Cheney a FREE PASS, an OPEN STAGE, a RED CARPET RECEPTION, to once again broadcast his DEMAGOGUE, BLAME-FEMALE-PRIVATES; "I had legal authorization," "FEAR THE TERRORISTS," "Americans MUST RESORT TO TORTURE" lies.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
"Liberal" Congressman Kucinish advocates... a STRONG AMERICA INDUSTRIAL Policy...
Yet again, what is DERIDED as "Liberal" and "way-out left" by the demagogues of the right - Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Rupert Murdoch's entire Fox 'news' crew; the big-business demagogues like Kudlow, Krauthammer, George Will, the hired media pimps of the Texas oil barons... and even by the so-called "Moderates" "news" editors at the Washington Post, the New York Times, & the entire NY/DC "establishment" which they represent -
- they all ADVOCATE POLICIES the would WEAKEN AMERICA,
- and it is GENUINE "LIBERAL" advocates & legislators -
in this case the inimitable Congressman DENNIS KUCINICH -
who advocate policies that would ACTUALLY produce a STRONGER, MORE FINANCIALLY SECURE America.
It has not even been 8 full months since the Bush-Republicans (and their awful Neo-Con "Democrat" enablers) WRECKED the ENTIRE US FINANCIAL MARKET(s) in September 2008 - and ALREADY the GOD DAMNED DC "Democrat" "leadership" - so in bed are they with the Neo-Con right-wing big business lobbies - are trying to FORGET the SERIAL, ECONOMY-GUTTING policies and agendas of the Cheney-Bush administration:
#1. INCREASED DEPENDENCE on FOREIGN OIL, at the behest of the Texas oil barons and their NEW YORK Wall Street BANKERS (read - Goldman Sachs) - who tried to CORNER the ENTIRE world oil market, and EXTORT tens of billions from American consumers.
#2. ATTEMPTS by the Cheney-Bush administration to - SELL US PORTS to a Dubai, United ARAB Emirates, DICTATOR-owned consortium!
#3. the SABOTAGE of America's RENEWABLE ENERGY industrial capability (in furtherance of #1, above)
#4. the SABOTAGE of America's AFFORDABLE Health-Care: DOUBLE DIGIT INFLATION year after year pushing American families AND BUSINESSES IN TO BANKRUPTCY....
#5. the "DEREGULATION" of the ENTIRE US FINANCIAL MARKET(s) -
We'll stop right here for now, simply because - President Obama, while nominally improving #1 & #3 above, has now "ADOPTED" the Bush administration's DEREGULATION and SABOTAGE of AFFORDABLE Health Care as HIS OWN POLICIES !!!!!!
This is SHEER TREACHERY on the Part of Mr. Obama's closest advisers, who of course feel EMPOWERED because Obama and his predecessor (President Bush Jr.) have handed THEIR VERY FINANCIAL COMPANIES TENS OF BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars.
So, getting back to Congressman Kucinich: WHILE EVEN HALF of President Obama's "NEW" administration policies are a CONTINUATION of the sheer "GUT AMERICA's ECONOMY" policies of his disastrous predecessor, leave it to courageous, outspoken, uber- "LIBERAL" Representative Kucinich to ACTUALLY STAND FOR A STRONG and SECURE America - a FINANCIALLY SECURE and INDUSTRIALLY PRODUCTIVE America that Mr. Obama's TREACHEROUS advisers, the ENTIRE NY/DC press corps, and the TREACHEROUS neo-Confederate/Neo-Conservative Republican party are ALL WORKING TO SABOTAGE, still!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Democrat's PATHETIC COWARDICE - Former INDEPENDENT Minn. Gov. JESSE VENTURA offers a FAR MORE SPIRITED DFENSE of Speaker Pelosi, than ANY Democrats!!
DESPICABLE!! the "DC Democrats" let GOV. VENTURA be more outspoken in CONDEMNATION of VP Dick Cheney, the United States government's use of TORTURE, and REPUBLICAN ATTEMPTS to SMEAR Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi FOR BUSH & CHENEY's CRIMES, than paid, professional, ostensibly "Democrat" 'leaders,' Representatives & Congress-critters have thus far attempted to defend Speaker Pelosi from the Republican SMEAR-MACHINE - even though our Senators & Representaives are CHARGED with upholding US laws, the US Constitution, and International Conventions on war crimes!
The Wall St. Journal captures the ABJECT COWADICE & BUREAUCRATIC TREACHERY of the DC "Democrats" - right there in the three-word headline, describing former California "DEMOCRATIC" Congressman (and former Clinton administration Chief of Staff) President Obama's newly selected, current CIA Director, LEON PANETTA, trying to AID the REPUBLICAN EFFORT to PIN THE _ENTIRE_ TORTURE SCANDAL on 'fellow Democrat' Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi! - AS IF Nancy Pelosi "lying" about a SINGLE CIA BRIEFING she was given in 2002, was THE CRIMINAL EQUIVALENT of the ENTIRE 6 year Bush-Cheney-Dod-CIA system of TORTURING prisoners in US prisons!
"CIA officers _briefed truthfully_ on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah," Mr. Panetta wrote in a memo to agency employees. "It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values." A day earlier, Mrs. Pelosi had claimed that CIA officials had "misled" her at a September 4, 2002 briefing on enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding of the likes of Zubaydah. How the hell would Mr. Panetta know if the CIA had "briefed truthfully" then Minority Leader Pelosi back in 2002??
HOW DARE Mr. Panetta suddenly PRETEND to be COMPLETELY IGNORANT of ALL THE LIES the Bush administration, the Dept. of Defense, _and_ the CIA, have RAMMED DOWN AMERICA's throats these past 8 years; implying that only Speaker Pelosi was lying in this case, despite a MASSIVE, ongoing CIA effort to COVER UP the KNOWN deaths, DURING TORTURE, of AT LEAST 100 PRISONERS IN US CUSTODY, and the unwarranted, no oversight detention of HUNDREDS of often INNOCENT SUSPECTS over all these years since 9-11 and the invasion of Pakistan started filling up Vice President Cheney's signature torture gulags?!!
But Mr. Panetta IS CORRECT abotu ONE thing: It IS "against our laws and our values" to mislead [lie to] Congress."
This is PURE BUREAUCRATIC INSANITY, if not COWARDICE & TREACHERY - Mr. Panetta PRETENDING that a SINGLE MEMO given to then Minority Leader Pelosi is more consequence in the Torture debacle - than the hundred prisoners killed by torture in American prisons?
Mr. Panetta is NOT LEADING, he is TAKING ORDERS from his very CIA officials WHO ARE NOW, AS WE SPEAK, working relentlessly to COVER UP THEIR TORTURE PROGRAM - and PIN the blame, or at least Public revulsion & demand for token scapegoats, on his own party's congressional leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
HOW PATHETICALLY LAME, how COWARDLY, how CORRUPT, complacent, & DESPICABLY TREACHEROUS are HARRY REID, STENY HOYER, the Obama White House "brain trust," and the other DC Democrats???
(With all apologies to those few Congressional men & women, like Reps. Conyers & Kucinich and Senator Leahy, who have been FIGHTING for IMPEACHEMENT, WAR-CRIMES, and/or TORTURE investigations).
THEY, the COWERING, TREACHEROUS DC Democrats, from the OBAMA WHITE HOUSE (read, rahm emanuel) to the Senate, to Speaker Pelosi's own House members, not only go along with CIA Director Panetta's bureaucratic COWARDICE & TREACHERY - but they, the "Democrat" 'leaders,' LET former Navy Seal, former pro wrestler, and former INDEPENDING Party Minnesota Governor JESSE VENTURA, put forth a FAR MORE SPIRITED DEFENSE of Speaker Pelosi regarding Republican efforts to SMEAR the Speaker, "SHE LIED ABOUT BEING BRIEFED ABOUT TORTURE!" - than ANYTHING Democrats have done or said on Speaker Pelosi's behalf!
While Gov. Ventura has been pounding the airwavs on every show he can get on, to ROUNDLY and ENERGETICALLY DENOUCE the Cheney-Bush CRIMINAL TORTURE PROGRAM, and to say "whether or not Speaker Pelosi was informed or not is IMMATERIAL" - the DC Democrats have been silent, bordering on COMPLICITY WITH the Republican SMEAR MACHINE (as Panetta most certainly is) for WEEKS now!!
Here are video clips of Gov. Ventura on "The View" and Fox & Friends, explaining that TORTURE IS A CRIME, and that if the former Navy SEAL Ventura were given "A WATER-BOARD and DICK CHENEY for a half hour," "I could get Mr. Cheney to CONFESS TO THE SHARON TATE MURDERS."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgarV13g6QM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2h8imURMFk&annotation_id=annotation_617080&feature=iv That's because DC "Democrats" Like REID, HOYER, EMANUEL, John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller, and even Vice President Joe Biden (et al, ad naseum) ARE FAR MORE CONNECTED to the BIG BANKS, the WAR-LOBBY, the AIPAC lobby, and the corrupt US financial "donor" game, than they are committed to being "Democratic"!!
This of course is SHEER TREACHERY out of the JOE LIEBERMAN "pretend to be a Democrat, until you are the powerful SENATOR FROM ISRAEL, from the War-Lobby, and from the Insurance state, when you can REVERT to your REAL AUTHORITARIAN, big-business, autocratic, kleptocratic corruption stripes" playbook.
As MSNBC news host Ed Schultz said, "IF the Republicans want Speaker Pelosi to APOLOGIZE or RESIGN for [merely] saying that the CIA LIED to her in claiming it briefed her about TORTURE in their 2003 briefings" (when Pelosi was then House MINORITY Leader Pelosi - at a time when Republcians RULED the HOUSE, SENATE, Executive Branch, AND judiciary with an iron fist) "...THEN WHERE IS _OUR APLOGY_ from BUSH, CHENEY, the CIA, and Dept. of Defense, for LYING AMERICA IN TO the IRAQ WAR?" (slightly paraphrased)
THAT is how DESPICABLY CORRUPT, COWARDLY, & TREACHEROUS the DC Democrats are - not only will they THROW THEIR OWN SPEAKER UNDER THE BUS for a FULL WEEK of Republican ATTACKS that would BOLSTER the PRO-WAR, PRO-TORTURE, PRO-WAR CRIMES Cheney-GOP position, but in order to do so, the DAMN TREACHEROUS, COWERING, CORRUPT, pro-war DC Dems have to, #1. pretend that Pelosi "lying" ABOUT A SINGLE BRIEFING SHE RECEIVED is EQUIVALENT to the TORTURE and MURDERS of prisoners in US prisons over these past 7 years; and #2. the Dems. must IGNORE the record of the CIA being used as a DEMAGOGUGE, war-hysteria PROPAGANDA ARM of the Bush-Cheney-GOP rush to invade Iraq all through 2002 and early 2003!!
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The Wall St. Journal captures the ABJECT COWADICE & BUREAUCRATIC TREACHERY of the DC "Democrats" - right there in the three-word headline, describing former California "DEMOCRATIC" Congressman (and former Clinton administration Chief of Staff) President Obama's newly selected, current CIA Director, LEON PANETTA, trying to AID the REPUBLICAN EFFORT to PIN THE _ENTIRE_ TORTURE SCANDAL on 'fellow Democrat' Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi! - AS IF Nancy Pelosi "lying" about a SINGLE CIA BRIEFING she was given in 2002, was THE CRIMINAL EQUIVALENT of the ENTIRE 6 year Bush-Cheney-Dod-CIA system of TORTURING prisoners in US prisons!
"Panetta's Pelosi Smackdown"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124242570303325183.html
"CIA officers _briefed truthfully_ on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah," Mr. Panetta wrote in a memo to agency employees. "It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values." A day earlier, Mrs. Pelosi had claimed that CIA officials had "misled" her at a September 4, 2002 briefing on enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding of the likes of Zubaydah. How the hell would Mr. Panetta know if the CIA had "briefed truthfully" then Minority Leader Pelosi back in 2002??
HOW DARE Mr. Panetta suddenly PRETEND to be COMPLETELY IGNORANT of ALL THE LIES the Bush administration, the Dept. of Defense, _and_ the CIA, have RAMMED DOWN AMERICA's throats these past 8 years; implying that only Speaker Pelosi was lying in this case, despite a MASSIVE, ongoing CIA effort to COVER UP the KNOWN deaths, DURING TORTURE, of AT LEAST 100 PRISONERS IN US CUSTODY, and the unwarranted, no oversight detention of HUNDREDS of often INNOCENT SUSPECTS over all these years since 9-11 and the invasion of Pakistan started filling up Vice President Cheney's signature torture gulags?!!
But Mr. Panetta IS CORRECT abotu ONE thing: It IS "against our laws and our values" to mislead [lie to] Congress."
This is PURE BUREAUCRATIC INSANITY, if not COWARDICE & TREACHERY - Mr. Panetta PRETENDING that a SINGLE MEMO given to then Minority Leader Pelosi is more consequence in the Torture debacle - than the hundred prisoners killed by torture in American prisons?
Mr. Panetta is NOT LEADING, he is TAKING ORDERS from his very CIA officials WHO ARE NOW, AS WE SPEAK, working relentlessly to COVER UP THEIR TORTURE PROGRAM - and PIN the blame, or at least Public revulsion & demand for token scapegoats, on his own party's congressional leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
HOW PATHETICALLY LAME, how COWARDLY, how CORRUPT, complacent, & DESPICABLY TREACHEROUS are HARRY REID, STENY HOYER, the Obama White House "brain trust," and the other DC Democrats???
(With all apologies to those few Congressional men & women, like Reps. Conyers & Kucinich and Senator Leahy, who have been FIGHTING for IMPEACHEMENT, WAR-CRIMES, and/or TORTURE investigations).
THEY, the COWERING, TREACHEROUS DC Democrats, from the OBAMA WHITE HOUSE (read, rahm emanuel) to the Senate, to Speaker Pelosi's own House members, not only go along with CIA Director Panetta's bureaucratic COWARDICE & TREACHERY - but they, the "Democrat" 'leaders,' LET former Navy Seal, former pro wrestler, and former INDEPENDING Party Minnesota Governor JESSE VENTURA, put forth a FAR MORE SPIRITED DEFENSE of Speaker Pelosi regarding Republican efforts to SMEAR the Speaker, "SHE LIED ABOUT BEING BRIEFED ABOUT TORTURE!" - than ANYTHING Democrats have done or said on Speaker Pelosi's behalf!
While Gov. Ventura has been pounding the airwavs on every show he can get on, to ROUNDLY and ENERGETICALLY DENOUCE the Cheney-Bush CRIMINAL TORTURE PROGRAM, and to say "whether or not Speaker Pelosi was informed or not is IMMATERIAL" - the DC Democrats have been silent, bordering on COMPLICITY WITH the Republican SMEAR MACHINE (as Panetta most certainly is) for WEEKS now!!
Here are video clips of Gov. Ventura on "The View" and Fox & Friends, explaining that TORTURE IS A CRIME, and that if the former Navy SEAL Ventura were given "A WATER-BOARD and DICK CHENEY for a half hour," "I could get Mr. Cheney to CONFESS TO THE SHARON TATE MURDERS."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgarV13g6QM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2h8imURMFk&annotation_id=annotation_617080&feature=iv That's because DC "Democrats" Like REID, HOYER, EMANUEL, John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller, and even Vice President Joe Biden (et al, ad naseum) ARE FAR MORE CONNECTED to the BIG BANKS, the WAR-LOBBY, the AIPAC lobby, and the corrupt US financial "donor" game, than they are committed to being "Democratic"!!
This of course is SHEER TREACHERY out of the JOE LIEBERMAN "pretend to be a Democrat, until you are the powerful SENATOR FROM ISRAEL, from the War-Lobby, and from the Insurance state, when you can REVERT to your REAL AUTHORITARIAN, big-business, autocratic, kleptocratic corruption stripes" playbook.
As MSNBC news host Ed Schultz said, "IF the Republicans want Speaker Pelosi to APOLOGIZE or RESIGN for [merely] saying that the CIA LIED to her in claiming it briefed her about TORTURE in their 2003 briefings" (when Pelosi was then House MINORITY Leader Pelosi - at a time when Republcians RULED the HOUSE, SENATE, Executive Branch, AND judiciary with an iron fist) "...THEN WHERE IS _OUR APLOGY_ from BUSH, CHENEY, the CIA, and Dept. of Defense, for LYING AMERICA IN TO the IRAQ WAR?" (slightly paraphrased)
THAT is how DESPICABLY CORRUPT, COWARDLY, & TREACHEROUS the DC Democrats are - not only will they THROW THEIR OWN SPEAKER UNDER THE BUS for a FULL WEEK of Republican ATTACKS that would BOLSTER the PRO-WAR, PRO-TORTURE, PRO-WAR CRIMES Cheney-GOP position, but in order to do so, the DAMN TREACHEROUS, COWERING, CORRUPT, pro-war DC Dems have to, #1. pretend that Pelosi "lying" ABOUT A SINGLE BRIEFING SHE RECEIVED is EQUIVALENT to the TORTURE and MURDERS of prisoners in US prisons over these past 7 years; and #2. the Dems. must IGNORE the record of the CIA being used as a DEMAGOGUGE, war-hysteria PROPAGANDA ARM of the Bush-Cheney-GOP rush to invade Iraq all through 2002 and early 2003!!
Paul Krugman DEMOLISHES 20+ years of "Conservative" ideology...
Paul Krugman's blog points out JUST HOW INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST, MORALLY BANKRUPT, and academically vile the Right-Wing "conservatives" ideology is -
As a reminder of the GROTESQUE nature of this Right-Wing "Conservative" ideology, here is
#1. uber- PNAC war-mongering Likudnik Neo-Con BILL KRISTOL saying "If AMERICAN SCHOOLCHILDREN DON'T have PREMIUM HEALTH-CARE, and if they come down with an undiagnosed illness or potentially fatal illness beyond their health-care coverage, THEY SHOULD JUST GO AHEAD and DIE already"!
(what Kristol actually says is "Whenever I hear of a HEARTLESS ASSAULT on our [American] SCHOOLCHILDREN, I tend to think it is a GOOD idea" and specifically SNEERING at a child appearing on Democratic radio appeals, a child who was SAVED from dying by surgery - but only after his mother relentlessly played the paper game, until she got SCHIP coverage for the operation)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqObdWSv5lg
#2. and Here is Mr. Krugman's fellow op-ed writer (but intellectually dishonest) TOM FRIEDMAN DEFENDING and WHITEWASHING TORTURE - 500 years of JEWISH CONDEMNATION of SPANISH INQUISITION torture, and 65 years of thumping the "Nuremberg trials proved America's dedication to rule of international law" nothwithstanding -
http://firedoglake.com/2009/04/29/thomas-friedman-torture-and-invading-iraq-have-prevented-another-911/
(here is Freidman's original, pathetic column) -
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/opinion/29friedman.html
#3. And here is Friedman's fellow, OSTENSIBLY "MODERATE" op-ed 'twin' columnist at the WASHINGTON POST, RICHARD COHEN offering up the same lame "BUT OUR STATE SECURITY is at stake!" rational for, and whitewash of, Torture:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/051209.html
What all three of these Neo-Cons psuedo "intellectuals" - Kristol, Friedman, and Cohen - share is a deep intellectual dishonesty, intellectual laziness, and a right-wing elitist sense of ENTITLEMENT.
Thankfully Mr. Krugman is up to the challenge of pointing out just how cheap, callow, tawdry, and transparent the (their) Neo-Con "intellectual" version of the Right-Wing pre-Civil Rights era agenda is
(i.e. the Neo-Confederate, low-wages, authoritarian, rigidly intolerant, SEGREGATION, state-sponsored violence, & lynch-mob/"midnight visit from sheriff" applied-terrorism agenda).
Related: How America's "elite" colleges & Universities - ESPECIALLY THE IVY LEAGUE - has Led America OFF A CLIFF, using intellectual dishonesty and a REFUSAL to CONFRONT facts which would undermine the rule of the elites, by Chris Floyd at alternet.org -
http://www.alternet.org/story/111376/the_best_and_the_brightest_have_led_america_off_a_cliff/
Note: Here uber- Right-Wing Neo-Con "economics guru" MILTON FRIEDMAN defends "GREED" -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
but in fact, Friedman is CONFLATING America's GOOD FORTUNE, to not only remain all but physically untouched from WWII (except Pearl Harbor, Aleutian islands, and U-boat sinkings of US merchant ships off of US coast), but economically, WWII was a huge engine for economic & industrial growth for America.
As if that fact alone wasn't enough to take some of the smirk off of Friedman's arrogant, self-righteous face; the very US technological "superiority" that Americans have come to take for granted over the past 5 decades, was in many cases GIVEN TO US by EUROPEAN SCIENTIST, because America had the good fortune to be removed from the devastation that wasted much of Europe and Asia during WWII, America's good fortune in getting the VERY BEST "Old World" Europe had to offer including not only the cream of European nuclear physicists and (Werner von Braun's Nazi!) rocket scientists, but cutting-edge research in jet engines & radar from Britain, and computer research as well. (America's first large electronic computer, EINAC, was built at MIT during WWII based on POLISH, FRENCH, ENGLISH, and other European scientists research efforts to break the GERMAN Enigma code machines.)
---------------------------------------------------
So I see Richard Posner has decided that modern conservatism is intellectually bankrupt. And Bruce Bartlett has a new book saying it’s time to let go of Reagan.
At one level it’s good to see decent people showing some intellectual flexibility (Bartlett, in particular, has always come across as someone with whom one can have honest disagreements.) And yet — WHY, exactly, SHOULD WE LISTEN TO PEOPLE who by their own admission completely MISSED THE STORY? I mean, anyone who actually listened to what Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey were saying in 1994, let alone what passed for thought in the Bush administration, should have realized long ago that if there ever was an intellectual basis for modern conservatism, it was long gone....
....So the idea that we should pay any attention to people who somehow FAILED TO SEE ALL THIS until very late in the game — and, in the case of Posner (not Bartlett), waited to express their doubts until conservatism had lost power ….
< And the truth is that the Reaganauts were a pretty grotesque bunch too. Look for the golden age of conservative intellectualism in America, and YOU KEEP GOING BACK, and BACK, and BACK, — and eventually you run up against William Buckley in the 1950s declaring that blacks weren’t advanced enough to vote, and that Franco was the savior of Spanish civilization. >We second Mr. Krugman's assessment: the ENTIRE Ayn Rand/Leo Strauss/Milton Friedman "conservative" ideals are PURE intellectual FRAUD, economically LARCENOUS, and based on the DICTATORIAL (Nazi-lite) notions that AMERICAN DEMOCRACY can not, and DOES NOT WORK, because "the people" truly are ignorant, unworthy peons who don't deserve to be informed on matters critical to their well being - much less on matters of "State Security."
As a reminder of the GROTESQUE nature of this Right-Wing "Conservative" ideology, here is
#1. uber- PNAC war-mongering Likudnik Neo-Con BILL KRISTOL saying "If AMERICAN SCHOOLCHILDREN DON'T have PREMIUM HEALTH-CARE, and if they come down with an undiagnosed illness or potentially fatal illness beyond their health-care coverage, THEY SHOULD JUST GO AHEAD and DIE already"!
(what Kristol actually says is "Whenever I hear of a HEARTLESS ASSAULT on our [American] SCHOOLCHILDREN, I tend to think it is a GOOD idea" and specifically SNEERING at a child appearing on Democratic radio appeals, a child who was SAVED from dying by surgery - but only after his mother relentlessly played the paper game, until she got SCHIP coverage for the operation)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqObdWSv5lg
#2. and Here is Mr. Krugman's fellow op-ed writer (but intellectually dishonest) TOM FRIEDMAN DEFENDING and WHITEWASHING TORTURE - 500 years of JEWISH CONDEMNATION of SPANISH INQUISITION torture, and 65 years of thumping the "Nuremberg trials proved America's dedication to rule of international law" nothwithstanding -
http://firedoglake.com/2009/04/29/thomas-friedman-torture-and-invading-iraq-have-prevented-another-911/
(here is Freidman's original, pathetic column) -
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/opinion/29friedman.html
#3. And here is Friedman's fellow, OSTENSIBLY "MODERATE" op-ed 'twin' columnist at the WASHINGTON POST, RICHARD COHEN offering up the same lame "BUT OUR STATE SECURITY is at stake!" rational for, and whitewash of, Torture:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/051209.html
What all three of these Neo-Cons psuedo "intellectuals" - Kristol, Friedman, and Cohen - share is a deep intellectual dishonesty, intellectual laziness, and a right-wing elitist sense of ENTITLEMENT.
Thankfully Mr. Krugman is up to the challenge of pointing out just how cheap, callow, tawdry, and transparent the (their) Neo-Con "intellectual" version of the Right-Wing pre-Civil Rights era agenda is
(i.e. the Neo-Confederate, low-wages, authoritarian, rigidly intolerant, SEGREGATION, state-sponsored violence, & lynch-mob/"midnight visit from sheriff" applied-terrorism agenda).
Related: How America's "elite" colleges & Universities - ESPECIALLY THE IVY LEAGUE - has Led America OFF A CLIFF, using intellectual dishonesty and a REFUSAL to CONFRONT facts which would undermine the rule of the elites, by Chris Floyd at alternet.org -
http://www.alternet.org/story/111376/the_best_and_the_brightest_have_led_america_off_a_cliff/
Note: Here uber- Right-Wing Neo-Con "economics guru" MILTON FRIEDMAN defends "GREED" -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
but in fact, Friedman is CONFLATING America's GOOD FORTUNE, to not only remain all but physically untouched from WWII (except Pearl Harbor, Aleutian islands, and U-boat sinkings of US merchant ships off of US coast), but economically, WWII was a huge engine for economic & industrial growth for America.
As if that fact alone wasn't enough to take some of the smirk off of Friedman's arrogant, self-righteous face; the very US technological "superiority" that Americans have come to take for granted over the past 5 decades, was in many cases GIVEN TO US by EUROPEAN SCIENTIST, because America had the good fortune to be removed from the devastation that wasted much of Europe and Asia during WWII, America's good fortune in getting the VERY BEST "Old World" Europe had to offer including not only the cream of European nuclear physicists and (Werner von Braun's Nazi!) rocket scientists, but cutting-edge research in jet engines & radar from Britain, and computer research as well. (America's first large electronic computer, EINAC, was built at MIT during WWII based on POLISH, FRENCH, ENGLISH, and other European scientists research efforts to break the GERMAN Enigma code machines.)
---------------------------------------------------
Prodigal intellectuals
Paul Krugman's blog, May 19, 2009
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/prodigal-intellectuals/
So I see Richard Posner has decided that modern conservatism is intellectually bankrupt. And Bruce Bartlett has a new book saying it’s time to let go of Reagan.
At one level it’s good to see decent people showing some intellectual flexibility (Bartlett, in particular, has always come across as someone with whom one can have honest disagreements.) And yet — WHY, exactly, SHOULD WE LISTEN TO PEOPLE who by their own admission completely MISSED THE STORY? I mean, anyone who actually listened to what Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey were saying in 1994, let alone what passed for thought in the Bush administration, should have realized long ago that if there ever was an intellectual basis for modern conservatism, it was long gone....
....So the idea that we should pay any attention to people who somehow FAILED TO SEE ALL THIS until very late in the game — and, in the case of Posner (not Bartlett), waited to express their doubts until conservatism had lost power ….
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Obama A DAMN FOOL if he thinks he can Sweep Bush admin. CRIMES UNDER THE TABLE...
Well, the consensus is PILING UP: PRESIDENT OBAMA is making himself out TO BE A DAMN FOOL, listening to the TREACHEROUS Neo-Con RIGHT-WING WARMONGERS, police-state apologists, & Big-Finance crony-fraudsters who mask themselves as "Democrats," in the top tiers of his, the Obama administration.
THE FINANCIAL POLICIES of ROBERT RUBIN, LAWRENCE SUMMERS, & Timmy Geithner landed (respectively) Citi-bank, the Harvard Endowment, and THE ENTIRE US banking & FINANICAL SYSTEM (& economy) IN THE SEWER in 2008, yet Mr. Obama STUPIDLY (and almost certainly at the behest of his uber- Likudnik Neo-Con "Democrat" Chief of Staff, RAHM EMANUEL) selected the above trio of FAILED bankers and compromised financial officials to be THE CORE of his, Obama's, economic & financial cabinet!
REPEATING that pattern of FOLLOWING FAILED, FRAUDULENT Neo-Con advice, Mr. Obama is also trying to WHITE-WASH, COVER UP, and SWEEP UNDER the RUG, the 8 year long debacle of CRIMINAL CONDUCT of the Bush-Cheney administration, which we now know includes widespread, pervasive use of ILLEGAL WIRETAPS (massive tele-com surveillance) BEFORE 9-11 (!!), and WIDESPREAD, SYSTEMATIC use of TORTURE after 9-11.
And now Mr. Obama is trying to PRETEND that MASSIVE TORTURE, and MURDER of prisoners in US CUSTODY during the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz administration of the "War on Terror" - DID NOT EXIST !!
IN EXACTLY the way the Nazis in WWII tried to pretend, for world media consumption, that SLAVE-LABOR and DEATH CAMPS "Did Not Exist"!
AND EVEN IF the President were interested in "putting the sins of the Bush administration" behind him, with NO JUSTICE done for the victims; in PURELY MACHIAVELLIAN terms, the President is creating a CATASTROPHE of the FIRST ORDER, as the steady "DRIP, DRIP, DRIP" of the Torture debacle NOW BECOMES IDENTIFIED with his own fledgling administration!!
IN AN EFFORT (at behest of his own insanely corrupted Neo-Con advisors, no doubt) to DISTANCE himself from Cheney-Bush crimes, torture, and murders of prisoners in US custody, PRESIDENT OBAMA is now making those scandals SYNONYMOUS with HIS administration!!!!
This would be like a major league baseball pitcher, AFRAID a batter will hit a home run on him... LOADS UP THE BASES with WALKS, because he was too afraid to throw srikes, and then, finally, serves up a strike that is hit for a Grand-Slame home run!
THIS IS STUPIDITY, that he, President Obama, DESERVES to be SMEARED WITH, for pushing an AMORAL, Machiavellian agenda - without having the RUTHLESS CLEARNESS of PURPOSE & EXECUTION that Machiavelli would have insisted upon!
(That is, in trying to take the WIMPY Srgt. Shulz "I see nothing, NOTHING!" whitewash avenue re Bush administration crimes, Obama LOOKS WEAK, CORRUPTED, and COMPLICIT in someone those crimes!)
Yes, we blatantly swiped the "drip, drip, drip" analogy from one of the New York Times' two (token) honest columnists, Mr. Frank Rich:
[note 2: Mr. Rich, those who are held, and/or tortured or murdered in US prisons, are "PRISONERS" - the word "detainees" creating a MISLEADING image of someone "DETAINED" for a relatively short period of time, i.e. a PURE government/media PROPAGANDA term.]
==========================================================
Mr. Rich's notions that it will be IMPOSSIBLE for President Obama to (heed his Neo-Con advice) and WHITEWASH TORTURE and other CRIMES of the past 8 years are seconded by John Cussak:
[Note: In brilliant if understated writing, ConsortiumNews.com's Robert Parry reminds us of what President BILL CLINTON got for SWEEPING Bush-1 IRAN-CONTRA, Iraq-gate/BCCI, and other CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS out of Washington DC, and under the rug, in 1993: He, President Clinton, got in return an EIGHT YEAR JIHAD of relentless Republican attacks and investigations that saw VINCE FOSTER and JIM McDOUGAL DEAD, saw Web Hubbell, Susan McDougal, and others IMPRISONED for doing 1/1,000th what Bush brothers, themselves, had gotten away with (in the S&L scandals); and Clinton saw his own staffers WRONGLY and FALSELY ACCUSED of "TRASHING WHITE HOUSE PROPERTY" in January 2001, when Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and the ENTIRE DC press-corpse JOINED the Bush-GOP in making FALSE ACCUSATIONS of DESTRUCTION OF WHITE HOUSE PROPERTY - without ONE photograph to substantiate WEEKS' worth of SCANDAL-mongering headlines & articles!
THE FINANCIAL POLICIES of ROBERT RUBIN, LAWRENCE SUMMERS, & Timmy Geithner landed (respectively) Citi-bank, the Harvard Endowment, and THE ENTIRE US banking & FINANICAL SYSTEM (& economy) IN THE SEWER in 2008, yet Mr. Obama STUPIDLY (and almost certainly at the behest of his uber- Likudnik Neo-Con "Democrat" Chief of Staff, RAHM EMANUEL) selected the above trio of FAILED bankers and compromised financial officials to be THE CORE of his, Obama's, economic & financial cabinet!
REPEATING that pattern of FOLLOWING FAILED, FRAUDULENT Neo-Con advice, Mr. Obama is also trying to WHITE-WASH, COVER UP, and SWEEP UNDER the RUG, the 8 year long debacle of CRIMINAL CONDUCT of the Bush-Cheney administration, which we now know includes widespread, pervasive use of ILLEGAL WIRETAPS (massive tele-com surveillance) BEFORE 9-11 (!!), and WIDESPREAD, SYSTEMATIC use of TORTURE after 9-11.
And now Mr. Obama is trying to PRETEND that MASSIVE TORTURE, and MURDER of prisoners in US CUSTODY during the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz administration of the "War on Terror" - DID NOT EXIST !!
IN EXACTLY the way the Nazis in WWII tried to pretend, for world media consumption, that SLAVE-LABOR and DEATH CAMPS "Did Not Exist"!
AND EVEN IF the President were interested in "putting the sins of the Bush administration" behind him, with NO JUSTICE done for the victims; in PURELY MACHIAVELLIAN terms, the President is creating a CATASTROPHE of the FIRST ORDER, as the steady "DRIP, DRIP, DRIP" of the Torture debacle NOW BECOMES IDENTIFIED with his own fledgling administration!!
IN AN EFFORT (at behest of his own insanely corrupted Neo-Con advisors, no doubt) to DISTANCE himself from Cheney-Bush crimes, torture, and murders of prisoners in US custody, PRESIDENT OBAMA is now making those scandals SYNONYMOUS with HIS administration!!!!
This would be like a major league baseball pitcher, AFRAID a batter will hit a home run on him... LOADS UP THE BASES with WALKS, because he was too afraid to throw srikes, and then, finally, serves up a strike that is hit for a Grand-Slame home run!
THIS IS STUPIDITY, that he, President Obama, DESERVES to be SMEARED WITH, for pushing an AMORAL, Machiavellian agenda - without having the RUTHLESS CLEARNESS of PURPOSE & EXECUTION that Machiavelli would have insisted upon!
(That is, in trying to take the WIMPY Srgt. Shulz "I see nothing, NOTHING!" whitewash avenue re Bush administration crimes, Obama LOOKS WEAK, CORRUPTED, and COMPLICIT in someone those crimes!)
Yes, we blatantly swiped the "drip, drip, drip" analogy from one of the New York Times' two (token) honest columnists, Mr. Frank Rich:
Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush[note: Mr. Rich's article is a "MUST READ" if only for the overview of Robert Draper's article in GQ, about then Secretary of War Don Rumsfeld BOTCHING the post-invasion phase of the Iraq war.]
By Frank Rich, NY Times op-ed columnist
Published: May 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17rich-5.html
< TO paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions.
That’s why the president’s FLIP-FLOPS on the release of detainee abuse photos — whatever his motivation — is a fool’s errand. The pictures will eventually emerge anyway, either because of leaks (if they haven’t started already) or because the federal appeals court decision upholding their release remains in force. And here’s a bet: These images will not prove the most shocking evidence of Bush administration sins still to come. >
[note 2: Mr. Rich, those who are held, and/or tortured or murdered in US prisons, are "PRISONERS" - the word "detainees" creating a MISLEADING image of someone "DETAINED" for a relatively short period of time, i.e. a PURE government/media PROPAGANDA term.]
==========================================================
Mr. Rich's notions that it will be IMPOSSIBLE for President Obama to (heed his Neo-Con advice) and WHITEWASH TORTURE and other CRIMES of the past 8 years are seconded by John Cussak:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cusack/a-hollow-and-horrible-equ_b_203817.html
< Only now is the knowledge starting to give rise to the widespread outrage and calls for accountability that such CRIMES against humanity deserve. Growing numbers of citizens are demanding the independent INVESTIGATIONS and PROSECUTIONS of the members of the Bush administration responsible for the VITIATION of FUNDAMENTAL LEGAL PRINCIPLES like habeas corpus and the flagrant violation of both international and domestic laws against torture. The pundits, hacks and shills who dismiss these calls for investigation and prosecution -- integral to any serious definition of accountability -- disgrace themselves and their country. >
[Note: In brilliant if understated writing, ConsortiumNews.com's Robert Parry reminds us of what President BILL CLINTON got for SWEEPING Bush-1 IRAN-CONTRA, Iraq-gate/BCCI, and other CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS out of Washington DC, and under the rug, in 1993: He, President Clinton, got in return an EIGHT YEAR JIHAD of relentless Republican attacks and investigations that saw VINCE FOSTER and JIM McDOUGAL DEAD, saw Web Hubbell, Susan McDougal, and others IMPRISONED for doing 1/1,000th what Bush brothers, themselves, had gotten away with (in the S&L scandals); and Clinton saw his own staffers WRONGLY and FALSELY ACCUSED of "TRASHING WHITE HOUSE PROPERTY" in January 2001, when Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and the ENTIRE DC press-corpse JOINED the Bush-GOP in making FALSE ACCUSATIONS of DESTRUCTION OF WHITE HOUSE PROPERTY - without ONE photograph to substantiate WEEKS' worth of SCANDAL-mongering headlines & articles!
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/100307.html
< President Clinton made clear he saw historical truth as less important than his hopes for Republican cooperation on his domestic agenda. But this willingness to sweep major scandals under the rug left the White House back door ajar for a restoration of the Bush Family dynasty a half dozen years later – with disastrous consequences for the American Republic. >
Saturday, May 16, 2009
OBAMA' s FRAUD: President PORTRAYS Health Industry OBSTRUCTION of Health-Care REFORM as "A WATERSHED EVENT" -
President Obama - and his advisors - REALLY THINK AMERICANS ARE STUPID !!
After PLEDGING his ENTIRE campaign & presidency to "CHANGE!" - especially in the vital area of HEALTH CARE, which costs are DESTROYING American families by the thousands every month
(in medical bankruptcies and _declined_ coverage), President Obama this week went before cameras to say, "they [major health-care companies] are PLEDGING to CUT THE RATE OF GROWTH, of NATIONAL HEALTH CARE SPENDING, by 1.5 percentage points a year, an amount that is equal to over TWO TRILLION DOLLARS."
AS IF! a 1.5% reduction in America's NIGHTMARE Health-Insurance premiums is the "CHANGE!" the candidate Obama PROMISED his supporters on the campaign trail!
AS IF! a "VOLUNTARY PLEDGE" by the health-care industry heavies would amount to a HILL OF BEANS when American consumers get their health care bills - TEN YEARS FROM NOW!!
Mr. Obama THINKS WE ARE FOOLS, if he thinks Americans would settle for a lousy 1.5% reduction in health-care premiums as fulfillment of his "Change!" pledge;
and he IS A FOOL HIMSELF, if he thinks the Health Care heavies will actually DELIVER on his DAMNED 1.5% chump-change "breakthrough" !!
Sure enough, this Friday on a conference call with 230 companies, one of the attendees of President Obama's "health conference" told those other companies THE EXACT OPPOSITE!
- That the industry had NOT made a committment to Reduce patient & consumer health costs!
President Obama PRETENDS to be concerned, he PRETENDS to be doing something...
he goes before cameras to tell us "WE HAVE A WATERSHED EVENT, the Health Care companies have PLEDGED to reduce costs by 1.5%"....
ONE-point-FIVE LOUSY PERCENT!
Mr. Obama is TELLING HIS MILLIONS of supporters that the BIG "CHANGE!" he promised, at best, amounts to ONE-point-Five LOUSY PERCENT -
...and within days, the Industry goes behind the President's back to tell their members "WE MEANT NO SUCH THING!"
SHEER STUPIDITY, and SHEER FRAUD, coming from the Obama White House - the BEST he can do is TRY to get a lousy _1.5%_ for America's besieged health care consumers, and even THAT sad pledge is nothing BUT A FARCE - is NOTHING BUT a PRELUDE to the HEALTH INDUSTRY going to Congress & Obama to DEMAND BILLIONS in OUTRIGHT BAILOUTS !!!
EVERY DAY that President Obama gets his advice from the BANKERS & NEO-CONS who form the top levels of his White House, he digs his administration deeper in a hole of incompetence and impotence - if not SHEER FRAUD.
--------------------------------------------------
Report: Health Care Leaders DISPUTE Obama's Description of Cost-Cutting Pledge
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/15/health-care-leaders-dispute-obamas-description-cost-cutting-promises/
President Obama said Monday that six major health care organizations pledged to "cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year, but three days later those organizations said they never committed to specific annual cuts and that the president's description of their promises has their members up in arms.
===============================================
Weekly Remarks by President Obama, May 15, 2009
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/05/weekly-remarks-obama-gop.html
But we know that our families, our economy, and our nation itself will not succeed in the 21st century if we continue to be held down by the weight of rapidly rising healthcare costs and a broken healthcare system. That’s why I met with representatives of insurance and drug companies, doctors and hospitals, and labor unions who are pledging to do their part to reduce healthcare costs.
These are some of the groups who have been among the fiercest critics of past comprehensive healthcare reform plans. But today they too are recognizing that we must act. Our businesses will not be able to compete; our families will not be able to save or spend; our budgets will remain unsustainable unless we get healthcare costs under control.
These groups have pledged to do their part to reduce the annual healthcare spending growth rate by 1.5 percentage points. Coupled with comprehensive reform, their efforts could help to save our nation more than $2 trillion in the next 10 years -- and save hardworking families $2,500 each in the coming years.
After PLEDGING his ENTIRE campaign & presidency to "CHANGE!" - especially in the vital area of HEALTH CARE, which costs are DESTROYING American families by the thousands every month
(in medical bankruptcies and _declined_ coverage), President Obama this week went before cameras to say, "they [major health-care companies] are PLEDGING to CUT THE RATE OF GROWTH, of NATIONAL HEALTH CARE SPENDING, by 1.5 percentage points a year, an amount that is equal to over TWO TRILLION DOLLARS."
AS IF! a 1.5% reduction in America's NIGHTMARE Health-Insurance premiums is the "CHANGE!" the candidate Obama PROMISED his supporters on the campaign trail!
AS IF! a "VOLUNTARY PLEDGE" by the health-care industry heavies would amount to a HILL OF BEANS when American consumers get their health care bills - TEN YEARS FROM NOW!!
Mr. Obama THINKS WE ARE FOOLS, if he thinks Americans would settle for a lousy 1.5% reduction in health-care premiums as fulfillment of his "Change!" pledge;
and he IS A FOOL HIMSELF, if he thinks the Health Care heavies will actually DELIVER on his DAMNED 1.5% chump-change "breakthrough" !!
Sure enough, this Friday on a conference call with 230 companies, one of the attendees of President Obama's "health conference" told those other companies THE EXACT OPPOSITE!
- That the industry had NOT made a committment to Reduce patient & consumer health costs!
The A.H.A. [American Hospital Association] DID NOT COMMIT to SUPPORT the OBAMA HEALTH PLAN' or budget.President Obama is shaping up to be WORSE than President Bush, who at least DID NOT PRETEND to be concerned with exploding health-care costs for Americans.
The [health industry] groups DID NOT SUPPORT REDUCING THE RATE OF HEALTH SPENDING by 1.5 percentage points annually."
Richard Pollack, Executive Director
American Hospital Association
President Obama PRETENDS to be concerned, he PRETENDS to be doing something...
he goes before cameras to tell us "WE HAVE A WATERSHED EVENT, the Health Care companies have PLEDGED to reduce costs by 1.5%"....
ONE-point-FIVE LOUSY PERCENT!
Mr. Obama is TELLING HIS MILLIONS of supporters that the BIG "CHANGE!" he promised, at best, amounts to ONE-point-Five LOUSY PERCENT -
...and within days, the Industry goes behind the President's back to tell their members "WE MEANT NO SUCH THING!"
SHEER STUPIDITY, and SHEER FRAUD, coming from the Obama White House - the BEST he can do is TRY to get a lousy _1.5%_ for America's besieged health care consumers, and even THAT sad pledge is nothing BUT A FARCE - is NOTHING BUT a PRELUDE to the HEALTH INDUSTRY going to Congress & Obama to DEMAND BILLIONS in OUTRIGHT BAILOUTS !!!
EVERY DAY that President Obama gets his advice from the BANKERS & NEO-CONS who form the top levels of his White House, he digs his administration deeper in a hole of incompetence and impotence - if not SHEER FRAUD.
--------------------------------------------------
Report: Health Care Leaders DISPUTE Obama's Description of Cost-Cutting Pledge
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/15/health-care-leaders-dispute-obamas-description-cost-cutting-promises/
President Obama said Monday that six major health care organizations pledged to "cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year, but three days later those organizations said they never committed to specific annual cuts and that the president's description of their promises has their members up in arms.
===============================================
Weekly Remarks by President Obama, May 15, 2009
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/05/weekly-remarks-obama-gop.html
But we know that our families, our economy, and our nation itself will not succeed in the 21st century if we continue to be held down by the weight of rapidly rising healthcare costs and a broken healthcare system. That’s why I met with representatives of insurance and drug companies, doctors and hospitals, and labor unions who are pledging to do their part to reduce healthcare costs.
These are some of the groups who have been among the fiercest critics of past comprehensive healthcare reform plans. But today they too are recognizing that we must act. Our businesses will not be able to compete; our families will not be able to save or spend; our budgets will remain unsustainable unless we get healthcare costs under control.
These groups have pledged to do their part to reduce the annual healthcare spending growth rate by 1.5 percentage points. Coupled with comprehensive reform, their efforts could help to save our nation more than $2 trillion in the next 10 years -- and save hardworking families $2,500 each in the coming years.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Dem Senators FINALLY FORCED to examine REAL, GOVERNMENT Health Care alternatives....
Sources: Senators weigh 3 government health plans
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Associated Press
May 9, 2009, 1:27AM
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/6415872.html
< WASHINGTON — Senators are considering three different designs for a new government health insurance plan that middle-income Americans could buy into for the first time, congressional officials said Friday. Officials familiar with the proposals said senators plan to debate them in a closed meeting next week. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the controversial plans have not been released. >
Friday, May 8, 2009
TIME magazine confirms our suspicions: Geithner's 'Stress Tests' are "a CONFIDENCE game"
New: Even pro-industry Wall St. Journal notes that half of the Obama/Geithner "Stress Tests" were the product of _negotiations_ between the banks & government examiners - more college essay, than strictly financial accountin?
"Banks Win Concessions" re 'Stress Tests' -
- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124182311010302297.html
Note TIME magazine's clever headline, which story confirms the suspicions posted in our previous post:
However, we must note that, in typical NY/DC "major media" Neo-Con fashion, TIME itself is party to the massive "BAILOUTS" cover-ups, whitewashes, & misinformation:
Right there in the first paragraph, TIME declares that "Tim Geithner's biggest challenge has been restoring confidence in America's fragile banks without taking the politically costly step of asking Congress for more money."
Now A NORMAL person might think, "IF MASSIVELY FRAUDULENT ACCOUNTING, OVER-VALUING of 'assets,' and hiding BILLIONS of dollars in LOSSES, OFF the books" were the ROOT of this economic crisis, then perhaps CORRECTING those FRAUDS and SECRETIVE accounting failures, might be MORE important - a "BIGGER CHALLENGE" - than trying to restore economic "confidence" on a foundation of financial quicksand.
But the Neo-Con ("neo-conservative," as in radical, reactionary, right-wing big-business establishment authoritarians, who MASQUERADE as "moderate" or even "liberal" middle-of-the-road populists) TIME editors, like their Neo-Con lying cohorts at the NEW YORK TIMES and WASHINGTON POST, LOVE handing TRILLIONS of TAXPAYER "bailout" dollars directly to the corporate kleptocrats of New York & Wall Street, (via their bought-and-paid for US congress-critters in DC), which is how TIME can assert that Geithner is RUNNING "A CONFIDENCE GAME" in the headline, while simultaneously PROPPING UP that "CON-GAME" racket in the very next (first) paragraph!
TIME, in a TEXT-BOOK example of neo-con "reporting," writes:
< From his earliest days as Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner's biggest challenge has been restoring confidence in America's fragile banks without taking the politically costly step of asking Congress for more money. To judge by the results of the government-run stress tests released Thursday afternoon, Geithner has somehow pulled it off — at least for now. >
TIME could, for example, deign to INVESTIGATE "JUST HOW MANY BILLIONS HAS IT BEEN?" that the US Congress has DISHED OVER to the Wall Street moguls via Geithner, the Fed, and the US congress-critters; but THAT would be REAL reporting & journalism... something the Neo-Cons SCORN and DESPISE.
"Banks Win Concessions" re 'Stress Tests' -
- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124182311010302297.html
Note TIME magazine's clever headline, which story confirms the suspicions posted in our previous post:
Stress Tested: Has Geithner's Bank Confidence Game Worked?A "Confidence Game" of course being an allusion to a "CON GAME," wherein a "confidence man" like BERNIE MADOFF cons victims into handing over their cash, to never see it again....
By Massimo Calabresi
TIME, Washington DC, Friday, May. 08, 2009
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1896825,00.html
However, we must note that, in typical NY/DC "major media" Neo-Con fashion, TIME itself is party to the massive "BAILOUTS" cover-ups, whitewashes, & misinformation:
Right there in the first paragraph, TIME declares that "Tim Geithner's biggest challenge has been restoring confidence in America's fragile banks without taking the politically costly step of asking Congress for more money."
Now A NORMAL person might think, "IF MASSIVELY FRAUDULENT ACCOUNTING, OVER-VALUING of 'assets,' and hiding BILLIONS of dollars in LOSSES, OFF the books" were the ROOT of this economic crisis, then perhaps CORRECTING those FRAUDS and SECRETIVE accounting failures, might be MORE important - a "BIGGER CHALLENGE" - than trying to restore economic "confidence" on a foundation of financial quicksand.
But the Neo-Con ("neo-conservative," as in radical, reactionary, right-wing big-business establishment authoritarians, who MASQUERADE as "moderate" or even "liberal" middle-of-the-road populists) TIME editors, like their Neo-Con lying cohorts at the NEW YORK TIMES and WASHINGTON POST, LOVE handing TRILLIONS of TAXPAYER "bailout" dollars directly to the corporate kleptocrats of New York & Wall Street, (via their bought-and-paid for US congress-critters in DC), which is how TIME can assert that Geithner is RUNNING "A CONFIDENCE GAME" in the headline, while simultaneously PROPPING UP that "CON-GAME" racket in the very next (first) paragraph!
TIME, in a TEXT-BOOK example of neo-con "reporting," writes:
< From his earliest days as Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner's biggest challenge has been restoring confidence in America's fragile banks without taking the politically costly step of asking Congress for more money. To judge by the results of the government-run stress tests released Thursday afternoon, Geithner has somehow pulled it off — at least for now. >
TIME could, for example, deign to INVESTIGATE "JUST HOW MANY BILLIONS HAS IT BEEN?" that the US Congress has DISHED OVER to the Wall Street moguls via Geithner, the Fed, and the US congress-critters; but THAT would be REAL reporting & journalism... something the Neo-Cons SCORN and DESPISE.
Obama's "FLIM-FLAM" FRAUD: The "STRESS TESTS" are "DIRTY BOOKS" just as ENRON ACCOUNTING was before Enron's COLLAPSE !!
video: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/here-is-my-economic-dream_b_198923.html
Arianna Huffington, co-founder & editor-in-chief of the 'liberal' on-line news site HuffingtonPost.com, recently co-hosted an edition of CNBC's "The Squawk Box" morning financial show, and, whether by coincidence or from Arianna's insistence, the Squawk Box's uber-Wall St. cheer leading (and whitewashing) crew had two of Wall Street's most persistent & vocal critics on, Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law President and Congressional ("TARP" Bailouts) Oversight Commission Chairwoman, and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the oft proclaimed "FORMER SHERIFF of Wall St." before Spitzer was forced to resign as New York Governor, when it was disclosed in criminal charges that he had been spending thousands of dollars a night to hire 'premium' call girls (prostitutes) over a period of months, while he was NY Governor.
Note how (in the first of the two video as this HuffPost page) (link) JOE KERNAN is SO CONDESCENDING to the two women guests (Arianna & Elizabeth) appearing on his show:
"Welcome, we don't have any cookies, but thank you for coming in."
A few moments later, as "Cheerleader Joe" tries to spin a relentlessly pro-Wall St. "GLASS HALF FULL" assessment of Ms. Warren's "there is ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY... in the stress tests oversight" discussion, Arianna has to chide Kernan,
"If you stop interrupting her"...
Chairwoman Warren puts the Stress Tests in terms even cheerleader Joe can understand (at 4:20 in the video):
"Now [we have these] stress tests, the big moment. So where are we on 'Stress Tests'? I've been asking for 2 months 'How do the stress tests work?' 'HOW MUCH STRESS is in the Stress Tests?' And, WE DON'T KNOW."
To which Cheerleader Joe once again USELESSLY interjects, It's good, it's half full, and it's good."
(Cheerleader Joe gets paid HOW MUCH by CNBC to sit there and help the Wall Street titans MISINFORM and DEFRAUD American investors?)
Speaking of, former Gov. Spitzer comes on next and is even more explicitly condemnatory of the 'Stress Tests' than the soft-spoken "if you'll let me be teacher for just a moment, because that's what I do" Chairwoman Warren,
who, needless to say, is almost NOT afforded that "teacher' moment, as Squawk Box Joe walks all over her with "late breaking news" and Kernan once again starts interjecting "we Can't have Congress controlling the banks... in a free markets there's going to be booms & busts."
Fortunately, Chairwoman Warren uses Kernan's flippant
In the next video clip, former Gov. Spitzer takes up on Chairwoman Warren's "DIRTY BOOKS" = FRAUDULENT BOOK KEEPING comments:
"We have had THE MOST MASSIVE BAILOUT of Corporate America ALL FUNDED BY TAXPAYERS - I'm not sure we've seen EVEN COSMETIC CHANGES"....
NOTE: Mr.Spitzer's comments, starting at about 5:00 in the second video, are even MORE EXPLICIT about the FRAUD of OBAMA's (Timmy-boy Geithner's) STRESS-TESTS, than Chairwoman Warren's "WE DON'T have ANY [real] INFORMATION on the 'STRESS' of the Stress Tests" were.
However, at a DOZEN PARAGRAPHS of TRANSCRIBING the SHEER FRAUD and LIES and "CRAM MORE FRAUD down American taxpayer's throats" of the OBAMA 'stress-tests' FLIM FLAM, we here at DemNationUSA SURRENDER to the SHEER CHALLENGE of KEEPING UP with all of Mr. Obama's SHEER FRAUD!!
This job - keeping up with the FRAUD of Obama & Giethner Co's STRESS TEST FLIM-FLAM - is like trying to empty an olympic-pool sized septic tank, BY BUCKET, alone!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/here-is-my-economic-dream_b_198923.html
Princeton Nobel prize winning economist PAUL KRUGMAN seconds Elizabeth Warren, Arianna Huffington, and Eliot Spitzer's contention that the OBAMA-Geithner "STRESS TESTS" are SHEER, FLIM-FLAM FRAUD, written BY Goldman-Sachs, OF Goldman-Sachs, FOR Goldman-Sachs WALL STREET FLIM-FLAM ARTISTS....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08krugman.html< I won’t weigh in on the debate over the quality of the stress tests themselves, except to repeat what many observers have noted: the regulators did NOT have the resources to make a REALLY CAREFUL ASSESSMENT of the banks’ assets, and in any case they allowed the banks to bargain over what the results would say. A RIGOROUS AUDIT it was NOT. >
So, President Obama - HOW MANY MILLIONS of Taxpayer dollars, DID YOU SPEND, over these past dozen weeks, to NOT do any rigorous audits?
ISN'T THAT, in and of itself, an example of DEFRAUDING American taxpayers, of the MAXIMUM VALUE of their "let's 'examine' the banks" taxpayer dollars??
Arianna Huffington, co-founder & editor-in-chief of the 'liberal' on-line news site HuffingtonPost.com, recently co-hosted an edition of CNBC's "The Squawk Box" morning financial show, and, whether by coincidence or from Arianna's insistence, the Squawk Box's uber-Wall St. cheer leading (and whitewashing) crew had two of Wall Street's most persistent & vocal critics on, Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law President and Congressional ("TARP" Bailouts) Oversight Commission Chairwoman, and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the oft proclaimed "FORMER SHERIFF of Wall St." before Spitzer was forced to resign as New York Governor, when it was disclosed in criminal charges that he had been spending thousands of dollars a night to hire 'premium' call girls (prostitutes) over a period of months, while he was NY Governor.
Note how (in the first of the two video as this HuffPost page) (link) JOE KERNAN is SO CONDESCENDING to the two women guests (Arianna & Elizabeth) appearing on his show:
"Welcome, we don't have any cookies, but thank you for coming in."
A few moments later, as "Cheerleader Joe" tries to spin a relentlessly pro-Wall St. "GLASS HALF FULL" assessment of Ms. Warren's "there is ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY... in the stress tests oversight" discussion, Arianna has to chide Kernan,
"If you stop interrupting her"...
Chairwoman Warren puts the Stress Tests in terms even cheerleader Joe can understand (at 4:20 in the video):
"Now [we have these] stress tests, the big moment. So where are we on 'Stress Tests'? I've been asking for 2 months 'How do the stress tests work?' 'HOW MUCH STRESS is in the Stress Tests?' And, WE DON'T KNOW."
To which Cheerleader Joe once again USELESSLY interjects, It's good, it's half full, and it's good."
(Cheerleader Joe gets paid HOW MUCH by CNBC to sit there and help the Wall Street titans MISINFORM and DEFRAUD American investors?)
Speaking of, former Gov. Spitzer comes on next and is even more explicitly condemnatory of the 'Stress Tests' than the soft-spoken "if you'll let me be teacher for just a moment, because that's what I do" Chairwoman Warren,
who, needless to say, is almost NOT afforded that "teacher' moment, as Squawk Box Joe walks all over her with "late breaking news" and Kernan once again starts interjecting "we Can't have Congress controlling the banks... in a free markets there's going to be booms & busts."
Fortunately, Chairwoman Warren uses Kernan's flippant
"FREE MARKET UBER-ALLES! - EXCEPT, that is, when we need TRILLIONS of "BAILOUT" dollars of TAXPAYER MONEY to SAVE US FROM OUR OWN FAILURES!"comment to launch into a discussion of America's "BOOM & BUST" BANK FAILURES cycles: (at 8:30 in the video)
"In 1794, [President] George Washington is in his first term, and what do we have? We had a CREDIT CRISIS, if you read the local papers it is described as A CREDIT FREEZE. And EVERY ten to FIFTEEN YEARS we have boom-and-bust, Boom and Bust, BOOM & BUST... we call them PANICS, the banks all shut down, we have complete financial system collapse, people lose their farms and small businesses, until we get to the GREAT DEPRESSION....[when we say] "WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT, we can write a set of rules that's going to make it work better than that, so we write a set of rules -[Kernan pipes in, "Or we allow GOLDMAN to APPOINT [their own people as] the REGULATORS"] Chairwoman Warren continues her outline of US bank crisis:
[#1.] "Make it safe to put your money in the banks, FDIC INSURANCE."
[#2.] "The second one, GLASS-STEAGALL, banks are going to be run like public utilities, they're going to be run boring, modest profits margins, risk taking will be WHERE WE CAN LET IT FAIL"
[#3.] "we CREATE the SEC"
"THOSE THREE RULES BOUGHT US FIFTY-YEARS OF SECURITY and PROSPERITY."
"And our response to that was to say, you know 'REGULATIONS just hang, let's get rid of it, IT COSTS us TOO MUCH, so we START PULLING THE THREADS OUT of the
regulatory fabric, and WE DO IT IN MULTIPLE WAYS, we change the laws [kill] Glass Steagall, we just don't APPOINT NEW REGULATORS, for whole new areas"
"SO WE DEREGULATE, and we had information about this -
FIRST THING was the SAVINGS & LOAN CRISIS, we DEREGULATE the S&Ls, and there's a BIG WARNING, SEVEN HUNDRED OF THEM COLLAPSE because they don't run them right.
The next one was LONG-TERM CAPITAL MANAGEMENT...
and then we hit the third one, which for me was ENRON... which told us THESE WERE DIRTY BOOKS, they were supposed to have ALL THESE CERTIFICATIONS FROM OUTSIDE, but they were ALL DIRTY [FRAUDULENT] BOOKS" !!!
In the next video clip, former Gov. Spitzer takes up on Chairwoman Warren's "DIRTY BOOKS" = FRAUDULENT BOOK KEEPING comments:
"We have had THE MOST MASSIVE BAILOUT of Corporate America ALL FUNDED BY TAXPAYERS - I'm not sure we've seen EVEN COSMETIC CHANGES"....
NOTE: Mr.Spitzer's comments, starting at about 5:00 in the second video, are even MORE EXPLICIT about the FRAUD of OBAMA's (Timmy-boy Geithner's) STRESS-TESTS, than Chairwoman Warren's "WE DON'T have ANY [real] INFORMATION on the 'STRESS' of the Stress Tests" were.
However, at a DOZEN PARAGRAPHS of TRANSCRIBING the SHEER FRAUD and LIES and "CRAM MORE FRAUD down American taxpayer's throats" of the OBAMA 'stress-tests' FLIM FLAM, we here at DemNationUSA SURRENDER to the SHEER CHALLENGE of KEEPING UP with all of Mr. Obama's SHEER FRAUD!!
This job - keeping up with the FRAUD of Obama & Giethner Co's STRESS TEST FLIM-FLAM - is like trying to empty an olympic-pool sized septic tank, BY BUCKET, alone!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/here-is-my-economic-dream_b_198923.html
Princeton Nobel prize winning economist PAUL KRUGMAN seconds Elizabeth Warren, Arianna Huffington, and Eliot Spitzer's contention that the OBAMA-Geithner "STRESS TESTS" are SHEER, FLIM-FLAM FRAUD, written BY Goldman-Sachs, OF Goldman-Sachs, FOR Goldman-Sachs WALL STREET FLIM-FLAM ARTISTS....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08krugman.html< I won’t weigh in on the debate over the quality of the stress tests themselves, except to repeat what many observers have noted: the regulators did NOT have the resources to make a REALLY CAREFUL ASSESSMENT of the banks’ assets, and in any case they allowed the banks to bargain over what the results would say. A RIGOROUS AUDIT it was NOT. >
So, President Obama - HOW MANY MILLIONS of Taxpayer dollars, DID YOU SPEND, over these past dozen weeks, to NOT do any rigorous audits?
ISN'T THAT, in and of itself, an example of DEFRAUDING American taxpayers, of the MAXIMUM VALUE of their "let's 'examine' the banks" taxpayer dollars??
Thursday, May 7, 2009
"Democrat" Senators Baucus, others, LAUGH as POLICE CALLED to DENY SINGLE PAYER advocates a SINGLE PLACE at HEALTH-CARE 'reform" hearing -
Note how Senator Baucus and other "Democrat" Senators DENY EVEN ONE PLACE at table - of FIFTEEN 'experts' - to a single spokesman for SINGLE-PAYER health care.
Senator Baucus CLAIMS to "RESPECT" and "CARE DEEPLY" for the views of those who want Single Payer health care, but he is LYING THROUGH HIS TEETH - as the raw numbers - FIFTEEN TO ZERO - illustrates - even though a HUGE percentage, possibly A MAJORITY, and a GROWING majority or Americans at that, ALL WANT what Canadians, Europeans, ISRAELIS, and other industrialized nations ALREADY HAVE!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Update on Pakistan: "Pakistan SET TO BE AN ISLAMIST STATE" - Cheney's treason, Bush's incompetence....
UPDATE on the PAKISTAN being OVERRUN by TALIBAN crisis: US Experts have determined that Pakistan is now well "on course" to BECOME AN ISLAMIST STATE - a disaster for US interests on the order of the IRAN REVOLUTION in 1980.
(note the dateline is from LAST week: but in the INSANE "reporting" that is America's corporate 'news,' week-old but REAL news about Pakistan's slide into a Sunni version of the Iranian Islamic Republic, is FAR MORE "newsy" than the horse-race malarky the vast majority of US networks peddle as 'news'.)
Ironically (as our previous post explained) the DISASTER in PAKISTAN is a DIRECT RESULT of Bush & Cheney's so-called "WAR ON TERROR" - and their INSANE exercise of DICTATORIAL, GESTAPO / kgb/Commissar POWERS.
AS IF _TORTURING_ SUNNI "terrorists" (aka "insurgents") in IRAQ and AFGHANISTAN would "win the war on terror" - AS Bush and Cheney COZIED UP to SAUDI, KUWAITI, and GULF ARAB SHEIKS, who BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT FUND those very Sunni insurgents, (from their POV an essential self-defense against Iranian and Iraqi SHIITE dominance - the Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs and Persians having fought for dominance in the region for CENTURIES, while the British and Americans have been there for only 100 or so years).
IT IS BEYOND comprehension that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney - two self-styled "patriots" who DUCKED, DODGED, and AVOIDED the VIETNAM WAR, were taken by MILLIONS of "conservative" Americans to be "EXPERT LEADERS" in the "war on terror" - but that supreme IDIOCY takes a back seat to Bush and Cheney TRYING TO SELL US PORT OPERATIONS (and port security, even) to the VERY ARAB DICTATOR-run consortiums that have a CENTURIES-old history of FUNDING SUNNI ARAB RADICAL, ISLAMIST warriors, smugglers, and insurgents ("freedom fighters" when they were helping Lawrence of Arabia fight the Turks) - aka "TERRORISTS!" today.
(Or Dick Cheney sending his "former" company, HALLIBURTON, to its new headquarters in DUBAI - United ARBA Emirates!)
========================================================
U.S. experts: Pakistan on course to become Islamist state
By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
April 16, 2009
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/66368.html
WASHINGTON — A growing number of U.S. intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials have concluded that there's little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists, posing a greater threat to the U.S. than Afghanistan's terrorist haven did before 9/11.
"It's a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution," said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.
Pakistan's fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan; and for the security of India, the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia, the U.S. and its allies.
"Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al Qaida sitting in two-thirds of the country which the government does not control," said David Kilcullen, a retired Australian army officer, a former State Department adviser and a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration.
------------------------------------------------------
Former President Bill Clinton, in a Sept. 2006 interview with Fox 'news,' points out that President Bush and Vice President Cheney put ONE SEVENTH as many US troops into the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan (and Pakistan), as they put into their precious INVASION OF IRAQ.... a DERELICTION of DUTY which,
#1. ALLOWED bin Laden TO GO UNPUNISHED for his suicide bomb attack on the USS Cole (October 2000) all thorugh the first 9 months of 2001;
#2. ALLOWED al Qaida hijackers to OPERATE UNMOLESTED by US intel, security, & counter-terror forces leading up to the 9-11 attacks;
#3. ALLOWED Osama bin Laden to ESCAPE FROM TORA BORA, the US Chain of command (answering of course directly to Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, and to Bush & Cheney in the White House) PROHIBITING the Delta Force Team commander from coming at bin Laden from BEHIND his Tora Bora hideout; such prohibition ALLOWING bin Laden to use that exact route as his escape conduit to freedom across the Pakistan border just a few days later;
#4. WHERE, in Pakistan, BUSH & CHENEY _GAVE_ al Qaida FIVE LONG YEARS to METASTASIZE, while they (Cheney & Bush) put SEVEN TIMES as many US troops into the IRAQ war, Iraq having NO connection to the 9-11 hijackers, and NO functioning nuclear development program, but having oil fields that the US Neo-Cons & oil men lusted after
(note the dateline is from LAST week: but in the INSANE "reporting" that is America's corporate 'news,' week-old but REAL news about Pakistan's slide into a Sunni version of the Iranian Islamic Republic, is FAR MORE "newsy" than the horse-race malarky the vast majority of US networks peddle as 'news'.)
Ironically (as our previous post explained) the DISASTER in PAKISTAN is a DIRECT RESULT of Bush & Cheney's so-called "WAR ON TERROR" - and their INSANE exercise of DICTATORIAL, GESTAPO / kgb/Commissar POWERS.
AS IF _TORTURING_ SUNNI "terrorists" (aka "insurgents") in IRAQ and AFGHANISTAN would "win the war on terror" - AS Bush and Cheney COZIED UP to SAUDI, KUWAITI, and GULF ARAB SHEIKS, who BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT FUND those very Sunni insurgents, (from their POV an essential self-defense against Iranian and Iraqi SHIITE dominance - the Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs and Persians having fought for dominance in the region for CENTURIES, while the British and Americans have been there for only 100 or so years).
IT IS BEYOND comprehension that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney - two self-styled "patriots" who DUCKED, DODGED, and AVOIDED the VIETNAM WAR, were taken by MILLIONS of "conservative" Americans to be "EXPERT LEADERS" in the "war on terror" - but that supreme IDIOCY takes a back seat to Bush and Cheney TRYING TO SELL US PORT OPERATIONS (and port security, even) to the VERY ARAB DICTATOR-run consortiums that have a CENTURIES-old history of FUNDING SUNNI ARAB RADICAL, ISLAMIST warriors, smugglers, and insurgents ("freedom fighters" when they were helping Lawrence of Arabia fight the Turks) - aka "TERRORISTS!" today.
(Or Dick Cheney sending his "former" company, HALLIBURTON, to its new headquarters in DUBAI - United ARBA Emirates!)
========================================================
U.S. experts: Pakistan on course to become Islamist state
By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
April 16, 2009
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/66368.html
WASHINGTON — A growing number of U.S. intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials have concluded that there's little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists, posing a greater threat to the U.S. than Afghanistan's terrorist haven did before 9/11.
"It's a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution," said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.
Pakistan's fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan; and for the security of India, the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia, the U.S. and its allies.
"Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al Qaida sitting in two-thirds of the country which the government does not control," said David Kilcullen, a retired Australian army officer, a former State Department adviser and a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration.
------------------------------------------------------
Former President Bill Clinton, in a Sept. 2006 interview with Fox 'news,' points out that President Bush and Vice President Cheney put ONE SEVENTH as many US troops into the hunt for bin Laden in Afghanistan (and Pakistan), as they put into their precious INVASION OF IRAQ.... a DERELICTION of DUTY which,
#1. ALLOWED bin Laden TO GO UNPUNISHED for his suicide bomb attack on the USS Cole (October 2000) all thorugh the first 9 months of 2001;
#2. ALLOWED al Qaida hijackers to OPERATE UNMOLESTED by US intel, security, & counter-terror forces leading up to the 9-11 attacks;
#3. ALLOWED Osama bin Laden to ESCAPE FROM TORA BORA, the US Chain of command (answering of course directly to Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, and to Bush & Cheney in the White House) PROHIBITING the Delta Force Team commander from coming at bin Laden from BEHIND his Tora Bora hideout; such prohibition ALLOWING bin Laden to use that exact route as his escape conduit to freedom across the Pakistan border just a few days later;
#4. WHERE, in Pakistan, BUSH & CHENEY _GAVE_ al Qaida FIVE LONG YEARS to METASTASIZE, while they (Cheney & Bush) put SEVEN TIMES as many US troops into the IRAQ war, Iraq having NO connection to the 9-11 hijackers, and NO functioning nuclear development program, but having oil fields that the US Neo-Cons & oil men lusted after
As TALIBAN ADVANCE, Pakistan EXPANDS Nuke Plants - Bush & Cheney FAILED America's Security re Terrorists & Nuclear Weapons!
DESPITE SPENDING their ENTIRE term of office,
post- 9-11, banging the drums of "9-11 TERRORISM!" and "NATIONAL SECURITY!" -
- the administration of DICK CHENEY and GEORGE W. BUSH have paved the way for a TITANIC FAILURE, in that singular, nightmare scenario that was their stock-in-trade in whipping up war-fever in America:
While Bush and Cheney were ACCUSING Iraq's Saddam Hussein of "CREATING A NUCLEAR PROGRAM" that would result in "MUSHROOM CLOUDS OVER AMERICA," THEY, Cheney & Bush, WERE ENABLING Al Qaida & the TALIBAN to METASTASIZE in... PAKISTAN!!
Pres. Bush & Vice-President Cheney, WITH MALICE AFORETHOUGHT, WITHDREW US TROOPS FROM Afghanistan, BEFORE Osama bin Laden & Al Qadia had been captured, killed or destroyed, SPECIFICALLY to prepare for their "Captain Ahab obsession" not for a white whale, NOT for Al Qaida, NOT for Osama bin Laden, NOT for justice for those Americans killed in the 9-11 attacks - but to USE the 9-11 terror attacks as AN EXCUSE TO INVADE IRAQ, a country that had NOTHING TO DO with 9-11. THIS MASSIVE strategic and tactical FAILURE, ALLOWED Osama bin Laden to ESCAPE the US noose at Tora Bora
(Cheney, in the form of the US High Command, even SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITED the US Delta special-forces team from launching a raid toward's bin Laden's Tora Bora hideout, from an "insertion point" BEHIND bin Laden's position in Afghanistan's mountains,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/02/60minutes/main4494937.shtml
which OBSTRUCTION of US tactical operations sure enough gave bin Laden the route he needed to escape from US controlled Afghanistan into the "tribal areas") - and ALLOWED AL Qaida, bin Laden, and the TALIBAN to METASTASIZE IN TO PAKISTAN !!
Here is the March 2002 VIDEO of then US president George W. Bush saying
"I DON'T KNOW WHERE HE IS [bin Laden!]- I tell you, I REALLY just _DON'T_ spend that much time on him anymore" !!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PGmnz5Ow-o
(And click here for Bush supporters and Bush apologists at the FreeRepublic.com, all chiming in, "YES, Osama bin Laden is now IRRELEVANT to the fight in the 'war on terror,'" simply because President Bush made that ASTONISHINGLY insane, ABSURD assertion!)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1244536/posts
Here Dan Froomkin, one of the Washington Post's rare competent writers, details President Bush's INSANELY TARDY efforts to capture or kill bin Laden - in 2008, SEVEN YEARS after Bush stupidly and smugly declared bin Laden to NO LONGER BE A THREAT to Ameica or Americans! -
http://busharchive.froomkin.com/BL2008091001431_pf.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Despite Taliban turmoil, Pakistan EXPANDS Nuke Plants
[That is, presumably,
"Pakistan EXPANDS PRODUCTION of their NUCLEAR WARHEADS"
- EXACTLY the "ISLAMIC TERRORISTS CONTROL NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"
NIGHTMARE that Bush & Cheney used AS AN EXCUSE to INVADE IRAQ in March 2003!]
By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/67379.html
WASHINGTON — Pakistan is expanding its nuclear weapons program even as Islamic extremists in northwest Pakistan advance in the direction of several highly sensitive nuclear-related sites, U.S. officials and other experts said this week.
.....Pakistan's government is completing two new nuclear reactors to produce plutonium for weapons that would be smaller, lighter and more efficient than the 60-odd highly enriched uranium-fueled warheads that Pakistan is now thought to possess, the officials and experts said.
post- 9-11, banging the drums of "9-11 TERRORISM!" and "NATIONAL SECURITY!" -
- the administration of DICK CHENEY and GEORGE W. BUSH have paved the way for a TITANIC FAILURE, in that singular, nightmare scenario that was their stock-in-trade in whipping up war-fever in America:
While Bush and Cheney were ACCUSING Iraq's Saddam Hussein of "CREATING A NUCLEAR PROGRAM" that would result in "MUSHROOM CLOUDS OVER AMERICA," THEY, Cheney & Bush, WERE ENABLING Al Qaida & the TALIBAN to METASTASIZE in... PAKISTAN!!
Pres. Bush & Vice-President Cheney, WITH MALICE AFORETHOUGHT, WITHDREW US TROOPS FROM Afghanistan, BEFORE Osama bin Laden & Al Qadia had been captured, killed or destroyed, SPECIFICALLY to prepare for their "Captain Ahab obsession" not for a white whale, NOT for Al Qaida, NOT for Osama bin Laden, NOT for justice for those Americans killed in the 9-11 attacks - but to USE the 9-11 terror attacks as AN EXCUSE TO INVADE IRAQ, a country that had NOTHING TO DO with 9-11. THIS MASSIVE strategic and tactical FAILURE, ALLOWED Osama bin Laden to ESCAPE the US noose at Tora Bora
(Cheney, in the form of the US High Command, even SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITED the US Delta special-forces team from launching a raid toward's bin Laden's Tora Bora hideout, from an "insertion point" BEHIND bin Laden's position in Afghanistan's mountains,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/02/60minutes/main4494937.shtml
which OBSTRUCTION of US tactical operations sure enough gave bin Laden the route he needed to escape from US controlled Afghanistan into the "tribal areas") - and ALLOWED AL Qaida, bin Laden, and the TALIBAN to METASTASIZE IN TO PAKISTAN !!
Here is the March 2002 VIDEO of then US president George W. Bush saying
"I DON'T KNOW WHERE HE IS [bin Laden!]- I tell you, I REALLY just _DON'T_ spend that much time on him anymore" !!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PGmnz5Ow-o
(And click here for Bush supporters and Bush apologists at the FreeRepublic.com, all chiming in, "YES, Osama bin Laden is now IRRELEVANT to the fight in the 'war on terror,'" simply because President Bush made that ASTONISHINGLY insane, ABSURD assertion!)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1244536/posts
Here Dan Froomkin, one of the Washington Post's rare competent writers, details President Bush's INSANELY TARDY efforts to capture or kill bin Laden - in 2008, SEVEN YEARS after Bush stupidly and smugly declared bin Laden to NO LONGER BE A THREAT to Ameica or Americans! -
http://busharchive.froomkin.com/BL2008091001431_pf.htm
-------------------------------------------------
Despite Taliban turmoil, Pakistan EXPANDS Nuke Plants
[That is, presumably,
"Pakistan EXPANDS PRODUCTION of their NUCLEAR WARHEADS"
- EXACTLY the "ISLAMIC TERRORISTS CONTROL NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"
NIGHTMARE that Bush & Cheney used AS AN EXCUSE to INVADE IRAQ in March 2003!]
By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/67379.html
WASHINGTON — Pakistan is expanding its nuclear weapons program even as Islamic extremists in northwest Pakistan advance in the direction of several highly sensitive nuclear-related sites, U.S. officials and other experts said this week.
.....Pakistan's government is completing two new nuclear reactors to produce plutonium for weapons that would be smaller, lighter and more efficient than the 60-odd highly enriched uranium-fueled warheads that Pakistan is now thought to possess, the officials and experts said.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Texas Repub Gov. Perry Appointees DONATED $5 MILLION to his campaigns... WHAT did the Repub Prosecutors CONVICT Ala. Dem Gov. Siegelman for?!
As we have posted earlier, KARL ROVE'S LYNCH-MOB Republican PROSECUTORS in the Alabama US District Attorney's office CONVICTED Alabama Democrat Governor DON SIEGELMAN - of "corruption" in connection with Gov. Siegelman PUTTING A CAMPAIGN-DONOR on an Alabama statewide health-care oversight board.
(If we are not mistaken, it wasn't even a paid job!)
However, the AMERICAN press/media IS SO INSANELY CORRUPT, and the "DEMOCRAT" Party is so EQUALLY COMPLICIT in Big-Biz & Big-Finance CORRUPTION - that Siegelman's LYNCH-MOB CONVICTION basically completely escaped notice of the American corporate media machine - certainly not where near the attention the press-media JIHAD poured on Clinton administration appointees Web Hubbell, Henry Cisneros, and others endured in the 1990s.
=============================================================
Perry appointees donated nearly $5M to Texas Gov. Rick Perry
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/05/05/0505texdigest.html
Gov. Rick Perry has accepted nearly $5 million in political campaign donations from people he appointed to state boards and commissions since taking office in 2000, according to a newspaper review of campaign finance records.
The Houston Chronicle reported Monday that nearly half of the donations came from appointees who serve as higher education regents, including more than $840,000 from those at the University of Texas System. In some cases, Perry's appointees gave money in weeks before or after being selected.
(If we are not mistaken, it wasn't even a paid job!)
However, the AMERICAN press/media IS SO INSANELY CORRUPT, and the "DEMOCRAT" Party is so EQUALLY COMPLICIT in Big-Biz & Big-Finance CORRUPTION - that Siegelman's LYNCH-MOB CONVICTION basically completely escaped notice of the American corporate media machine - certainly not where near the attention the press-media JIHAD poured on Clinton administration appointees Web Hubbell, Henry Cisneros, and others endured in the 1990s.
=============================================================
Perry appointees donated nearly $5M to Texas Gov. Rick Perry
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/05/05/0505texdigest.html
Gov. Rick Perry has accepted nearly $5 million in political campaign donations from people he appointed to state boards and commissions since taking office in 2000, according to a newspaper review of campaign finance records.
The Houston Chronicle reported Monday that nearly half of the donations came from appointees who serve as higher education regents, including more than $840,000 from those at the University of Texas System. In some cases, Perry's appointees gave money in weeks before or after being selected.
The BLATANT CORRUPTION of Obama's "BANKERS ONLY!" 'economic' advice, Starts to Hit mainstream-media...
James Pinkerton, an advisor to presidents REAGAN and BUSH (and thus presumably a pro-business Republican who is against 'excessive' government regulation of business)- compares President Barack Obama's reliance on his GOLDMAN-SACHS BANKERS "economic" team - to the administration of PRESIDENT GRANT, which is to say, the administration which is now considered SYNONYMOUS with CORUPTION and financially corrupt advisors and cabinent members.
Heck EVEN the WALL STREET JOURNAL notices the unseemly connection: the CHAIRMAN of the NY Fed Bank (Tim Geithner's replacement) - SITS ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS of GOLDMAN SACHS !!!!
NOTE: BOTH USNWR (US News & World Report magazine) AND the Murdoch-owned Wall St. Journal, are extremely PRO-BUSINESS, pro- "deregulation" conservative media outlets - but when, at four months, they are comparing the OBAMA administration to the GRANT administration, that is remembered (not for its many accomplishments, but for) CORRUPTION - that is saying
- "President Obama, You'd better WAKE UP, SMELL THE COFFEE, and FIRE your GOLDMAN-SACHS BANKSTERS" before they RUIN your presidency and drag you down in history for the next 150 years" !!
=======================================================
Obama's 100 Days: Wall Street Crowd Makes His Administration Like Grant's
By James P. Pinkerton
Posted April 30, 2009
http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2009/04/30/obamas-100-days-wall-street-crowd-makes-his-administration-like-grants.html
(James P. Pinkerton served in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses, is a fellow at the New America Foundation and is a frequent contributor on Fox News.) (!!)
President Obama might be modeling his presidency after Franklin D. Roosevelt's. In hard times, most Democrats think fondly of the New Deal — certainly Obama's media fans are making the connection — but thus far, he is shaping up less like the 32nd president and more like the 18th, Ulysses S. Grant.
Little that we have seen in his first 100 days suggests that the 44th president sees THE DANGER of OVER-RELIANCE on HIGH-FINANCE. Yet in the Grant administration it was wheeling, dealing, and OUTRIGHT CORRUPTION that plagued the nation and besmirched the incumbent. And now that trillions are sloshing up and down K Street, the same muckraked fate looms for the Obama administration.
[Actually, the "CORRUPTION" of the Grant Administration was relative: compared to the devastation of the Civil War, America was AT PEACE, and REBUILDING instead of destroying; and Grant's administration made huge progress in PAYING DOWN the VAST Civil War DEBTS. And prior to Grant's term, the entire South had practiced a far larger, more SYSTEMATIC FORM OF CORRUPTION: CHATTEL SLAVERY, stealing the labor (and family) of one man, to the exlusive benefit of others. However, despite our "freedom" and "democracy" rhetoric, we Americans seldom look at Slavery as "a form of corruption," while our history books - many written or influenced by defeated Southern historians who despised Grant and Lincoln, and wrote relentlessly critical Revisionist History - relentlessly focus on the financial scandals whirling around Grant - a "revisionist history" that also helped to put the Reconstruction Era which Grant championed in a bad or even horrific light.]
After being inaugurated in 1933, Roosevelt proclaimed, "The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization." This wasn't just aspirational rhetoric; it was directional policy. So he closed the banks, temporarily, and drafted legislation that led to major changes in the regulation of not only banks but also of stock brokerages and utilities. Indeed, all of corporate America was transformed. In his inaugural address, Obama attacked "greed and irresponsibility," adding that sometimes "the market can spin out of control." BUT few will remember those words, because it's unlikely that anyone will remember Obama as a financial reformer.
-------------------------------------------------------------
New York Fed Chairman's Ties to Goldman Raise Questions
The Wall St. Journal - USA Inc. The State of Capitalism
MAY 4, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124139546243981801.html
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York shaped Washington's response to the financial crisis late last year, which buoyed Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other Wall Street firms. Goldman received speedy approval to become a bank holding company in September and a $10 billion capital injection soon after.
During that time, the New York Fed's chairman, Stephen Friedman, sat on Goldman's board and had a large holding in Goldman stock, which because of Goldman's new status as a bank holding company was a violation of Federal Reserve policy....
(continued at the Murdoch-owned WSJ, subscription required)
Heck EVEN the WALL STREET JOURNAL notices the unseemly connection: the CHAIRMAN of the NY Fed Bank (Tim Geithner's replacement) - SITS ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS of GOLDMAN SACHS !!!!
NOTE: BOTH USNWR (US News & World Report magazine) AND the Murdoch-owned Wall St. Journal, are extremely PRO-BUSINESS, pro- "deregulation" conservative media outlets - but when, at four months, they are comparing the OBAMA administration to the GRANT administration, that is remembered (not for its many accomplishments, but for) CORRUPTION - that is saying
- "President Obama, You'd better WAKE UP, SMELL THE COFFEE, and FIRE your GOLDMAN-SACHS BANKSTERS" before they RUIN your presidency and drag you down in history for the next 150 years" !!
=======================================================
Obama's 100 Days: Wall Street Crowd Makes His Administration Like Grant's
By James P. Pinkerton
Posted April 30, 2009
http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2009/04/30/obamas-100-days-wall-street-crowd-makes-his-administration-like-grants.html
(James P. Pinkerton served in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses, is a fellow at the New America Foundation and is a frequent contributor on Fox News.) (!!)
President Obama might be modeling his presidency after Franklin D. Roosevelt's. In hard times, most Democrats think fondly of the New Deal — certainly Obama's media fans are making the connection — but thus far, he is shaping up less like the 32nd president and more like the 18th, Ulysses S. Grant.
Little that we have seen in his first 100 days suggests that the 44th president sees THE DANGER of OVER-RELIANCE on HIGH-FINANCE. Yet in the Grant administration it was wheeling, dealing, and OUTRIGHT CORRUPTION that plagued the nation and besmirched the incumbent. And now that trillions are sloshing up and down K Street, the same muckraked fate looms for the Obama administration.
[Actually, the "CORRUPTION" of the Grant Administration was relative: compared to the devastation of the Civil War, America was AT PEACE, and REBUILDING instead of destroying; and Grant's administration made huge progress in PAYING DOWN the VAST Civil War DEBTS. And prior to Grant's term, the entire South had practiced a far larger, more SYSTEMATIC FORM OF CORRUPTION: CHATTEL SLAVERY, stealing the labor (and family) of one man, to the exlusive benefit of others. However, despite our "freedom" and "democracy" rhetoric, we Americans seldom look at Slavery as "a form of corruption," while our history books - many written or influenced by defeated Southern historians who despised Grant and Lincoln, and wrote relentlessly critical Revisionist History - relentlessly focus on the financial scandals whirling around Grant - a "revisionist history" that also helped to put the Reconstruction Era which Grant championed in a bad or even horrific light.]
After being inaugurated in 1933, Roosevelt proclaimed, "The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization." This wasn't just aspirational rhetoric; it was directional policy. So he closed the banks, temporarily, and drafted legislation that led to major changes in the regulation of not only banks but also of stock brokerages and utilities. Indeed, all of corporate America was transformed. In his inaugural address, Obama attacked "greed and irresponsibility," adding that sometimes "the market can spin out of control." BUT few will remember those words, because it's unlikely that anyone will remember Obama as a financial reformer.
-------------------------------------------------------------
New York Fed Chairman's Ties to Goldman Raise Questions
The Wall St. Journal - USA Inc. The State of Capitalism
MAY 4, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124139546243981801.html
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York shaped Washington's response to the financial crisis late last year, which buoyed Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other Wall Street firms. Goldman received speedy approval to become a bank holding company in September and a $10 billion capital injection soon after.
During that time, the New York Fed's chairman, Stephen Friedman, sat on Goldman's board and had a large holding in Goldman stock, which because of Goldman's new status as a bank holding company was a violation of Federal Reserve policy....
(continued at the Murdoch-owned WSJ, subscription required)
Sunday, May 3, 2009
MORTGAGE BANKERS ASSOC. Chairman DAVID KITTLE, Gloats about Getting US Senate to KILL Mortgage Relief bill....
Also see here: "WHY 'Dem.' SENATORS SCREWED HOMEOWNERS, in Their Own Words"
'
The short clip (at 1:12) of DAVID KITTLE, CHAIRMAN of the MORTGAGE BANKERS ASSOCIATION, saying "WOULDN'T IT BE BEAUTIFUL if the [mortgage reform] bill GOES DOWN TO DEFEAT TOMORROW while we are here in Washington having our conference- maybe rainbows will come out" - means that he and his bankers, lawyers, and mortgage bankers are ANTICIPATING with joy the prospect that as many as 1.6 MILLION American families WILL FACE FORECLOSURE and EVICTION in the coming dozen months!
The MORTGAGE BANKERS ASSOCIATION is the Banking & Mortgage banking industry lobbying arm, here GLOATING about their INFLUENCE IN CONGRESS - their ability to KILL MORTGAGE REFORM (which they derisively call "cramdown") and to continue using the many tricks that banks use to FORCE EVICTIONS, rather than allow SHORT SALES, principle write-downs, no-cost Refinance, or other means that would help keep SOME PERCENTAGE of mortgage holding families in their homes or out of bankruptcy.
Again, in many cases, these are the SAME banks, and bankers, who would THEMSELVES BE BANKRUPT and out of business, but for TRILLIONS of TAXPAYER "socialized" BAILOUT dollars - TRILLIONS of dollars which the corporate national "news" media WILL NOT EVEN INFORM the American public about the true amount of those hundreds of billions upon TRILLIONS of dollars of TAXPAYER bailouts, becaue the corporate media is an insanely corrupt and dishonest three-ring circus whose sole objective is to ASSIST in the fleecing of American consumers and taxpayers - driving American workers, consumers, and taxpayers INTO BANKRUPTCY is actually a DESIRED GOAL of the corrupt media elites, just as keeping peasants poor and disenfranchised was the desired goal of the top 20 autocrat, oligarch, kleptocratic families in banana republics in Central and South America for most decades of the 20th century.
As John Taylor, President of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition
(a community coalition trying to ENACT, not kill, the Mortgage REFORM legislation that would HELP homeowners stay in their homes) explains:
"Between the mortgage bankers, the bankers, the lawyers, and all the people WHO STAND TO BENEFIT from BEING ABLE TO FORECLOSE, and being able to NOT PROTECT people through bankruptcy [laws], there's a lot of people on that side of the ledger WITH MONEY, and I'm sure they've spent tremendous amounts to hire very bright, very talented very articulate people to go up to Capitol Hill and push Congress to OPPOSE this [Mortgage Reform] bill.
IF they don't come out with meaningful solutions to END THE FORECLOSURE CRISIS, and if the Lending Industry DOES NOT RESPOND with initiatives to KEEP PEOPLE IN THEIR HOMES, we [pro-consumer Mortgage relief advocates] will be back."
"Back", that is, hopefully to CONFRONT and CHALLENGE the SMUG ARROGANCE of both LOBBYISTS AND their BOUGHT-and-paid-for US SENATORS - Senators & Lobbyists who FEEL ENTITLED to HAND OUT TRILLIONS of TAXPAYER DOLLARS to (otherwise) FAILED, BANKRUPT BANKS, while HELPING those very failed banks EVICT homeowners, many thousands of whom are victims of PREDATORY LENDING and INTENTIONALLY MISLEADING fine-print contracts!
'
The short clip (at 1:12) of DAVID KITTLE, CHAIRMAN of the MORTGAGE BANKERS ASSOCIATION, saying "WOULDN'T IT BE BEAUTIFUL if the [mortgage reform] bill GOES DOWN TO DEFEAT TOMORROW while we are here in Washington having our conference- maybe rainbows will come out" - means that he and his bankers, lawyers, and mortgage bankers are ANTICIPATING with joy the prospect that as many as 1.6 MILLION American families WILL FACE FORECLOSURE and EVICTION in the coming dozen months!
The MORTGAGE BANKERS ASSOCIATION is the Banking & Mortgage banking industry lobbying arm, here GLOATING about their INFLUENCE IN CONGRESS - their ability to KILL MORTGAGE REFORM (which they derisively call "cramdown") and to continue using the many tricks that banks use to FORCE EVICTIONS, rather than allow SHORT SALES, principle write-downs, no-cost Refinance, or other means that would help keep SOME PERCENTAGE of mortgage holding families in their homes or out of bankruptcy.
Again, in many cases, these are the SAME banks, and bankers, who would THEMSELVES BE BANKRUPT and out of business, but for TRILLIONS of TAXPAYER "socialized" BAILOUT dollars - TRILLIONS of dollars which the corporate national "news" media WILL NOT EVEN INFORM the American public about the true amount of those hundreds of billions upon TRILLIONS of dollars of TAXPAYER bailouts, becaue the corporate media is an insanely corrupt and dishonest three-ring circus whose sole objective is to ASSIST in the fleecing of American consumers and taxpayers - driving American workers, consumers, and taxpayers INTO BANKRUPTCY is actually a DESIRED GOAL of the corrupt media elites, just as keeping peasants poor and disenfranchised was the desired goal of the top 20 autocrat, oligarch, kleptocratic families in banana republics in Central and South America for most decades of the 20th century.
As John Taylor, President of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition
(a community coalition trying to ENACT, not kill, the Mortgage REFORM legislation that would HELP homeowners stay in their homes) explains:
"Between the mortgage bankers, the bankers, the lawyers, and all the people WHO STAND TO BENEFIT from BEING ABLE TO FORECLOSE, and being able to NOT PROTECT people through bankruptcy [laws], there's a lot of people on that side of the ledger WITH MONEY, and I'm sure they've spent tremendous amounts to hire very bright, very talented very articulate people to go up to Capitol Hill and push Congress to OPPOSE this [Mortgage Reform] bill.
IF they don't come out with meaningful solutions to END THE FORECLOSURE CRISIS, and if the Lending Industry DOES NOT RESPOND with initiatives to KEEP PEOPLE IN THEIR HOMES, we [pro-consumer Mortgage relief advocates] will be back."
"Back", that is, hopefully to CONFRONT and CHALLENGE the SMUG ARROGANCE of both LOBBYISTS AND their BOUGHT-and-paid-for US SENATORS - Senators & Lobbyists who FEEL ENTITLED to HAND OUT TRILLIONS of TAXPAYER DOLLARS to (otherwise) FAILED, BANKRUPT BANKS, while HELPING those very failed banks EVICT homeowners, many thousands of whom are victims of PREDATORY LENDING and INTENTIONALLY MISLEADING fine-print contracts!
Friday, May 1, 2009
Obama-EMANUEL-Geithner "Stress Tests" are a 'PROTECTION RACKET for CORRUPT BANKERS' FRAUD...
ho hum. President Obama better wake up and smell the advice of some NON Neo-Con, non- Wall Street bankers QUICK, because he is DIGGING HIMSELF a TRILLIONS-of-dollars hole of SHEER economic & FINANCIAL FRAUD:
< Bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren warns that the government stress tests [i.e the EMANUEL-SUMMERS-Geithner 'Bailouts' 'plan'] of the nation's largest banks, which are set to be made public next week, WILL DO NOTHING to IMPROVE THE HEALTH of the banks WITHOUT sufficient TRANSPARENCY. >
< Bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren warns that the government stress tests [i.e the EMANUEL-SUMMERS-Geithner 'Bailouts' 'plan'] of the nation's largest banks, which are set to be made public next week, WILL DO NOTHING to IMPROVE THE HEALTH of the banks WITHOUT sufficient TRANSPARENCY. >
CONFIRMED! Obama's "CHICAGO FIXER," Rahm Emanuel, is RUINING, er,"Running," America's Treasury & Economic/Fiscal Policy...
Well, well, well.
As usual, we here at DemNationUSA are three months, four months, even two-dozen months or more ahead of the "major media" in analyzing either,
a.) the causes of the latest US foreign policy / economic disaster, or
b.) predicting that the forces of evil (disenfranchisement, anti-intellectual, reactionary neo-Confederates & their financial-predator, war-mongering, police-state Neo-Conservative allies, in that unholy alliance of natural enemies, the Neo-Con/neo-Confederate alliance-from-hell) will soon create that disaster.
(See our previous post, "Obama's COSMIC STUPIDITY")
In this case, we were "only" 3 or 4 months ahead of the "major media" in determining that President Obama has PUT HIS ECONOMIC and FINANCIAL "policy"
(if, that is, you call HANDING OUT TRILLIONS of US Taxpayer dollars, WITHOUT SO MUCH AS an 'I.O.U.', much less stringent, forensic accounting to be "A policy") -
- and the ENTIRE powers presidency & Economic Policies over to the tender mercies of his fellow Chicago pol RAHM EMANUEL...
... and the only reason we figured it out (only) four months ago, is because Rahm "THE CHICAGO FIXER" was only announced as Obama's pick for White House Chief of Staff 4 months ago, and up until that timed,
then Senator Obama had publicly and repeatedly pledged himself to ENDING the Iraq war, providing for "TRANSPARENCY" in government dealings, and, generally promising "CHANGE" !!
THE MOMENT "the FIXER" Emanuel was chosen, WE KNEW what BOTH Obama's Foreign Policy _and_ "Economic" Policy would be -
they would be reprisals of JOE LIEBERMAN's REPUBLICAN Neo-Con WARMONGERING & treasury-crushing TAX-CUTS FOR RICH" policies in "Democrat" clothing, because as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Majority Party Whip, the conduct of the entire Pelosi 110th Congress was a very forceful & accurate predictor of how Rahm Emanuel would run the White House, what with White House _Chief of Staff_ being one of the most extremely important positions in the ENTIRE US government. (The Chief of Staff being immediately next to the president, and thus the president's de fact GATEKEEPER and SKULL-CRUSHER/enforcer.
Here is the WALL STREET JOURNAL effectively saying (our paraphrase) "(Treasury Secretary) TIM GEITHNER is EMANUEL's b____, NOTHING happens at Geithner's Treasury Dept. without PRIOR APPROVAL by Obama's official White House Fixer & Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel:
< WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 20, Timothy Geithner took control of the Treasury Department, directing the government's response to the financial crisis.
...Within three weeks, the White House TIGHTENED ITS GRIP, alarmed by the poor reaction to Mr. Geithner's performance [BY PUBLIC REVULSION to the "BAIL OUT BANKERS FIRST, let every one else rot!" agenda] during the rollout of his rescue plan, government officials say. Since then, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF of STAFF Rahm Emanuel HAS BEEN SO INVOLVED in the WORKINGS OF TREASURY, that "RAHM WANTS ITS" has become an unofficial mantra [THE OFFICIAL word-of-god!] among some at the Treasury, according to government officials. >
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124113406528875137.html
Now in a recent radio show episode "liberal" talk-show host Ed Schultz declared NANCY PELOSI to be "The most LIBERAL member of Congress," but of course this is simply a WAY off-base analysis by the normally reliable Mr. Schultz, in fact Pelosi is a CORPORATE, DLC, right-of-center Democrat who took "Impeachment off the Table," relentlessly KOW-TOWED to the ISRAEL WAR LOBBY (aka the "AIPAC Lobby" but the "Israel" should be in front of America" as in the "ISRAEL-America Political Action Committee"), pushed through and signed the Bush-PELOSI-Paulson $700 BILLION bailouts bill - WITHOUT A SINGLE demand for audits or oversight - and at every step of the way, Speaker Pelosi has been DEFINED by the DLC/corporate DC Democrat agenda.
And the fact that Pelosi put RAHM EMANUEL in charge of the House Democrats' 2006 Congressional Elections effort, the DCCC (Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee) is confirmation of Pelosi's DLC/corporate tendencies: Mr. Emanuel and Speaker Pelosi NEARLY SABOTAGED the Democrats 2006 congressional election, Emanuel RESISTING DNC Chairman Howard Dean's 50 STATE STRATEGY, pouring money into HAND-PICKED Right-Wing corporate Democrat candidates, and SHORTCHANGING the funding of grass-roots, genuinely "liberal" Democratic Candidates.
Here, Wiki shows ANOTHER stranglehold connection Emanuel has on the Obama White House:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel
< Emanuel is a close friend of fellow Chicagoan David Axelrod, chief strategist for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign. Axelrod signed the ketuba, a Jewish marriage contract, at Emanuel's wedding, an honor that goes to a close friend. [16] >
Here, liberal blog "Down With Tyranny" catches Emanuel's hand-selected list of 10 Freshman "Democrat" Congressmen - "Democrats" who just happen to MOST PREDICTABLY VOTE REPUBLICAN on those CLOSE, TIGHT vote fights which define the difference between RIGHT-WING REPUBLICANS and "liberal" Democrats:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2007/10/training-democratic-candidates-to-win.html
Here, MyDD.com writer Matt Stoller catches Rahm Emanuel's SABOTAGE of GENIUINELY "Liberal" Democratic candidates, and how Emanuel NEARLY LOST election 2006 (among other things, Emanuel TRYING TO KEEP THE IRAQ WAR _OUT_ of Dem. candidate talking points: Because as an AIPAC/PNAC/LIKUDNIK Neo-Con, Mr. Emanuel is a FULL BLOWN WAR-MONGERING Neo-Con]:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/11/8/13534/5744
< Democrats pushing the conservative line, or giving credit to Rahm Emanuel, don't get it. RAHM EMANUEL DID EVERYTHING HE COULD to LOSE the House. [!!] His recruiting and use of money was strategically unwise, and he was bailed out by a national trend that brought us the Senate, the Governorships, state legislative chambers, and state constitutional officers all over the country.
Rahm Emanuel did his best to force Howard Dean to move money out of party building and into his terrible TV ad program that lost IL-06. He sniped at Dean, at Moveon, at George Soros, at blogs, at anyone he could. He ran scared, and he put his thumb on the scale against liberal Democrats. He couldn't even win in his own backyard, with the milquetoast Dan Seals and charismatically moderate Tammy Duckworth. Most significantly, for a good amount of time he didn't want Democrats to mention Iraq, period. If Rahm Emanuel were actually been a loyal Democrat instead of someone hellbent on sabotaging liberals, imagine how many seats we could have picked up. >
And our Coup-de-grace, here's a blow-by-blow Down-With-Tyranny blog entry "HOW Rahm Emanuel and the Pelosi DCCC _LOST_ Election 2006 - SAVED ONLY by outside-DC, grass-roots Dem organizations like ActBlue.com, MoveOn.org, Emily'sList, and DNC Chairman Howard Dean's FIFTY-STATE STRATEGY
(note: the Dem.National Committee may be an "inside DC" Dem. organization, but Chairman & former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is most certainly a DC Dem. OUTSIDER)
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-rahm-emanuel-lost-house-for.html
IN SHORT, RAHM EMANUEL is a PERFECT example of ANOTHER JOE LIEBERMAN, PRO-WAR, TAX-CUTS-FOR-RICH, DEFICITS, BAILOUTS-for-BANKERS, DEREGULATION-of-financial-markets, ISRAEL-LOBBY-FIRST, PRO-TORTURE, POLICE-STATE REPUBLICAN, MASQUERADING as a Democrat!
And, as much as we have ranted, above, we haven't even mentioned the EIGHTEEN MILLION DOLLARS Emanuel made as a WASSERSTEIN-PERELLA "investment banker".
As we now know, "INVESTMENT BANKERS" as the Investment Bankers desire it means "CASINO GAMBLERS and SPECULATORS - with the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT _FORCING_ TAXPAYER to MAKE GOOD ON THE LOSSES whenever the 'investment banker' Speculators CRAP OUT with TRILLIONS of dollars worth of bad bets and BLACK-HOLE DERIVATIVE DEBTS!"
==========================================
Well, here is the WALL STREET JOURNAL article stating what we correctly analyzed three months ago: DLC Rebublican-in-Democrat's clothes, INVESTMENT BANKSTER LBO/takeover artist RAHM EMANUEL is RUNNING BARACK OBAMA's WHITE HOUSE _AND_ ECONOMIC POLICY; The ENTIRE US TREASURY is Emanuel's and Goldman-Sachs' BITCH,
and Emanuel has ZERO intention of informing Americans about ANY of -
#1. WHERE THERE BILLIONS (upon trillions!) of BAILOUT DOLLARS have gone -
#2. the FULL EXTENT of Bush-Cheney-WOLFOWTIZ's TORTURE GULAG - how many prisoners were KILLED in US hands as "VERBOTTEN!" a secret, as the true purpose of Nazi death camps in WWII Germany -
#3. Just how much the United States hand over to Israel every year, WHICH MONEY MAKES A U-turn and comes back and INFLUENCES AMERICAN POLITICS (BUYS the US House, Senate, Congress, White House, and US government agencies) -
#4. Hell, Mr. Emanuel and his predatory GOLDMAN-SACHS banksters team WILL NOT even tell Americans JUST HOW MUCH we have paid out in Bailouts - somewhere between THREE TRILLION and TWELVE TRILLION taxpayers dollars, WHICH the GOLDMAN-SACHS bankers, ISRAEL LOBBY, and "Democrat" Rahm Emanuel DO NOT FEEL that American peon taxpayers have ANY right to know!!
This has been a rather long rant, but - describing the PNAC AIPAC NEO-CON GOLDMAN-SACHS _TAKEOVER_ of the "Democrat" Party, is like trying to detail how COCAINE MONEY has affected Colombia's economy & politics in just one blog.
=================================================
Rahm Emanuel Declares Candidacy for House GOP [REPUBLICAN !!] Whip
by David Sirota, HuffingtonPost.com
Sept. 16, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/rahm-emanuel-declares-can_b_126859.html
I thought the House Democratic Caucus Chairman was a position whose mission is to help ELECT MORE DEMOCRATS, so that Democrats can do more things Democrats promise to do. According to Inside U.S. Trade, I'm wrong.
Here's the snippet (no link because the publication is subscription-only):
< "Among the House Democratic leadership, Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) is actively advocating that Democrats would be better off having the votes on pending [free trade agreements] this year for a number of reasons, sources said. They said that one of the reasons Emanuel cites is that there are likely more Republican members in this Congress than there will be in the next, which would mean that fewer Democrats would have to take a potentially divisive trade vote now." >
Correct: EMANUEL -- one of the ORIGINAL ARCHITECTS of NAFTA -- wants congressional Democrats to pass controversial NAFTAs with Colombia, South Korea and Panama right now, so as to avoid inevitably STRONGER opposition from his own [DEMOCRATIC] party in the next Congress.
To really fathom how incredible this is, understand that Emanuel -- the Democratic leader -- IS EFFECTIVELY ACTING AS HOUSE __REPUBLICAN__ WHIP. He's saying that he wants these bills up for a vote because there are enough Republican votes right now in the House to pass it over current Democratic objections -- and there won't be enough GOP votes in the next Congress.
How many polls have to come out showing that the vast majority of Americans do not want their jobs and wages crushed by hacks like Emanuel? And how come Democrats are led by con artists who spent their White House career shilling for Wall Street, then cashed in as an investment banker, then bought a congressional race, only to go back to Washington to continue his corporate crusade over the dead body of his own caucus?
==============================================================
WALL STREET JOURNAL: How RAHM EMANUEL _RUNS_ the US TREASURY department!
(Which is to say, "How Rahm Emanuel OWNS the OBAMA WHITE HOUSE, and has Turned the Obama administration into the GIVE GOLDMAN SACHS, AIPAC, and the War-Lobby TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars open, never-ending, NO AUDITS ALLOWED! SPIGOT for those RADICAL RIGHT-WING organizations & policies !!!!
At Treasury, Big White House Role
After Early Snafus, Emanuel 'HELPS' Geithner With Policies; 'Rahm Wants It'
By DEBORAH SOLOMON, JONATHAN WEISMAN and LAURA MECKLER, murdoch/wall st. journal
MAY 1, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124113406528875137.html
WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 20, Timothy Geithner took control of the Treasury Department, directing the government's response to the financial crisis.
Within three weeks, the White House tightened its grip, alarmed by the poor reaction to Mr. Geithner's performance during the rollout of his rescue plan, government officials say. Since then, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been so involved in the workings of the Treasury that "Rahm wants it" has become an unofficial mantra among some at the Treasury, according to government officials.
[continued at the Rupert Murdoch pro-wars, pro-torture, pro-police-state, pro-tax-cuts-for-rich in time of war; pro-UNLIMITED NO OVERSIGHT TRILLIONS for FAILED, CORRUPT BANKSTERS Wall St. Journal -
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124113406528875137.html
As usual, we here at DemNationUSA are three months, four months, even two-dozen months or more ahead of the "major media" in analyzing either,
a.) the causes of the latest US foreign policy / economic disaster, or
b.) predicting that the forces of evil (disenfranchisement, anti-intellectual, reactionary neo-Confederates & their financial-predator, war-mongering, police-state Neo-Conservative allies, in that unholy alliance of natural enemies, the Neo-Con/neo-Confederate alliance-from-hell) will soon create that disaster.
(See our previous post, "Obama's COSMIC STUPIDITY")
In this case, we were "only" 3 or 4 months ahead of the "major media" in determining that President Obama has PUT HIS ECONOMIC and FINANCIAL "policy"
(if, that is, you call HANDING OUT TRILLIONS of US Taxpayer dollars, WITHOUT SO MUCH AS an 'I.O.U.', much less stringent, forensic accounting to be "A policy") -
- and the ENTIRE powers presidency & Economic Policies over to the tender mercies of his fellow Chicago pol RAHM EMANUEL...
... and the only reason we figured it out (only) four months ago, is because Rahm "THE CHICAGO FIXER" was only announced as Obama's pick for White House Chief of Staff 4 months ago, and up until that timed,
then Senator Obama had publicly and repeatedly pledged himself to ENDING the Iraq war, providing for "TRANSPARENCY" in government dealings, and, generally promising "CHANGE" !!
THE MOMENT "the FIXER" Emanuel was chosen, WE KNEW what BOTH Obama's Foreign Policy _and_ "Economic" Policy would be -
they would be reprisals of JOE LIEBERMAN's REPUBLICAN Neo-Con WARMONGERING & treasury-crushing TAX-CUTS FOR RICH" policies in "Democrat" clothing, because as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Majority Party Whip, the conduct of the entire Pelosi 110th Congress was a very forceful & accurate predictor of how Rahm Emanuel would run the White House, what with White House _Chief of Staff_ being one of the most extremely important positions in the ENTIRE US government. (The Chief of Staff being immediately next to the president, and thus the president's de fact GATEKEEPER and SKULL-CRUSHER/enforcer.
Here is the WALL STREET JOURNAL effectively saying (our paraphrase) "(Treasury Secretary) TIM GEITHNER is EMANUEL's b____, NOTHING happens at Geithner's Treasury Dept. without PRIOR APPROVAL by Obama's official White House Fixer & Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel:
< WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 20, Timothy Geithner took control of the Treasury Department, directing the government's response to the financial crisis.
...Within three weeks, the White House TIGHTENED ITS GRIP, alarmed by the poor reaction to Mr. Geithner's performance [BY PUBLIC REVULSION to the "BAIL OUT BANKERS FIRST, let every one else rot!" agenda] during the rollout of his rescue plan, government officials say. Since then, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF of STAFF Rahm Emanuel HAS BEEN SO INVOLVED in the WORKINGS OF TREASURY, that "RAHM WANTS ITS" has become an unofficial mantra [THE OFFICIAL word-of-god!] among some at the Treasury, according to government officials. >
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124113406528875137.html
Now in a recent radio show episode "liberal" talk-show host Ed Schultz declared NANCY PELOSI to be "The most LIBERAL member of Congress," but of course this is simply a WAY off-base analysis by the normally reliable Mr. Schultz, in fact Pelosi is a CORPORATE, DLC, right-of-center Democrat who took "Impeachment off the Table," relentlessly KOW-TOWED to the ISRAEL WAR LOBBY (aka the "AIPAC Lobby" but the "Israel" should be in front of America" as in the "ISRAEL-America Political Action Committee"), pushed through and signed the Bush-PELOSI-Paulson $700 BILLION bailouts bill - WITHOUT A SINGLE demand for audits or oversight - and at every step of the way, Speaker Pelosi has been DEFINED by the DLC/corporate DC Democrat agenda.
And the fact that Pelosi put RAHM EMANUEL in charge of the House Democrats' 2006 Congressional Elections effort, the DCCC (Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee) is confirmation of Pelosi's DLC/corporate tendencies: Mr. Emanuel and Speaker Pelosi NEARLY SABOTAGED the Democrats 2006 congressional election, Emanuel RESISTING DNC Chairman Howard Dean's 50 STATE STRATEGY, pouring money into HAND-PICKED Right-Wing corporate Democrat candidates, and SHORTCHANGING the funding of grass-roots, genuinely "liberal" Democratic Candidates.
Here, Wiki shows ANOTHER stranglehold connection Emanuel has on the Obama White House:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel
< Emanuel is a close friend of fellow Chicagoan David Axelrod, chief strategist for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign. Axelrod signed the ketuba, a Jewish marriage contract, at Emanuel's wedding, an honor that goes to a close friend. [16] >
Here, liberal blog "Down With Tyranny" catches Emanuel's hand-selected list of 10 Freshman "Democrat" Congressmen - "Democrats" who just happen to MOST PREDICTABLY VOTE REPUBLICAN on those CLOSE, TIGHT vote fights which define the difference between RIGHT-WING REPUBLICANS and "liberal" Democrats:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2007/10/training-democratic-candidates-to-win.html
Here, MyDD.com writer Matt Stoller catches Rahm Emanuel's SABOTAGE of GENIUINELY "Liberal" Democratic candidates, and how Emanuel NEARLY LOST election 2006 (among other things, Emanuel TRYING TO KEEP THE IRAQ WAR _OUT_ of Dem. candidate talking points: Because as an AIPAC/PNAC/LIKUDNIK Neo-Con, Mr. Emanuel is a FULL BLOWN WAR-MONGERING Neo-Con]:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/11/8/13534/5744
< Democrats pushing the conservative line, or giving credit to Rahm Emanuel, don't get it. RAHM EMANUEL DID EVERYTHING HE COULD to LOSE the House. [!!] His recruiting and use of money was strategically unwise, and he was bailed out by a national trend that brought us the Senate, the Governorships, state legislative chambers, and state constitutional officers all over the country.
Rahm Emanuel did his best to force Howard Dean to move money out of party building and into his terrible TV ad program that lost IL-06. He sniped at Dean, at Moveon, at George Soros, at blogs, at anyone he could. He ran scared, and he put his thumb on the scale against liberal Democrats. He couldn't even win in his own backyard, with the milquetoast Dan Seals and charismatically moderate Tammy Duckworth. Most significantly, for a good amount of time he didn't want Democrats to mention Iraq, period. If Rahm Emanuel were actually been a loyal Democrat instead of someone hellbent on sabotaging liberals, imagine how many seats we could have picked up. >
And our Coup-de-grace, here's a blow-by-blow Down-With-Tyranny blog entry "HOW Rahm Emanuel and the Pelosi DCCC _LOST_ Election 2006 - SAVED ONLY by outside-DC, grass-roots Dem organizations like ActBlue.com, MoveOn.org, Emily'sList, and DNC Chairman Howard Dean's FIFTY-STATE STRATEGY
(note: the Dem.National Committee may be an "inside DC" Dem. organization, but Chairman & former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is most certainly a DC Dem. OUTSIDER)
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-rahm-emanuel-lost-house-for.html
IN SHORT, RAHM EMANUEL is a PERFECT example of ANOTHER JOE LIEBERMAN, PRO-WAR, TAX-CUTS-FOR-RICH, DEFICITS, BAILOUTS-for-BANKERS, DEREGULATION-of-financial-markets, ISRAEL-LOBBY-FIRST, PRO-TORTURE, POLICE-STATE REPUBLICAN, MASQUERADING as a Democrat!
And, as much as we have ranted, above, we haven't even mentioned the EIGHTEEN MILLION DOLLARS Emanuel made as a WASSERSTEIN-PERELLA "investment banker".
As we now know, "INVESTMENT BANKERS" as the Investment Bankers desire it means "CASINO GAMBLERS and SPECULATORS - with the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT _FORCING_ TAXPAYER to MAKE GOOD ON THE LOSSES whenever the 'investment banker' Speculators CRAP OUT with TRILLIONS of dollars worth of bad bets and BLACK-HOLE DERIVATIVE DEBTS!"
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Well, here is the WALL STREET JOURNAL article stating what we correctly analyzed three months ago: DLC Rebublican-in-Democrat's clothes, INVESTMENT BANKSTER LBO/takeover artist RAHM EMANUEL is RUNNING BARACK OBAMA's WHITE HOUSE _AND_ ECONOMIC POLICY; The ENTIRE US TREASURY is Emanuel's and Goldman-Sachs' BITCH,
and Emanuel has ZERO intention of informing Americans about ANY of -
#1. WHERE THERE BILLIONS (upon trillions!) of BAILOUT DOLLARS have gone -
#2. the FULL EXTENT of Bush-Cheney-WOLFOWTIZ's TORTURE GULAG - how many prisoners were KILLED in US hands as "VERBOTTEN!" a secret, as the true purpose of Nazi death camps in WWII Germany -
#3. Just how much the United States hand over to Israel every year, WHICH MONEY MAKES A U-turn and comes back and INFLUENCES AMERICAN POLITICS (BUYS the US House, Senate, Congress, White House, and US government agencies) -
#4. Hell, Mr. Emanuel and his predatory GOLDMAN-SACHS banksters team WILL NOT even tell Americans JUST HOW MUCH we have paid out in Bailouts - somewhere between THREE TRILLION and TWELVE TRILLION taxpayers dollars, WHICH the GOLDMAN-SACHS bankers, ISRAEL LOBBY, and "Democrat" Rahm Emanuel DO NOT FEEL that American peon taxpayers have ANY right to know!!
This has been a rather long rant, but - describing the PNAC AIPAC NEO-CON GOLDMAN-SACHS _TAKEOVER_ of the "Democrat" Party, is like trying to detail how COCAINE MONEY has affected Colombia's economy & politics in just one blog.
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Rahm Emanuel Declares Candidacy for House GOP [REPUBLICAN !!] Whip
by David Sirota, HuffingtonPost.com
Sept. 16, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/rahm-emanuel-declares-can_b_126859.html
I thought the House Democratic Caucus Chairman was a position whose mission is to help ELECT MORE DEMOCRATS, so that Democrats can do more things Democrats promise to do. According to Inside U.S. Trade, I'm wrong.
Here's the snippet (no link because the publication is subscription-only):
< "Among the House Democratic leadership, Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) is actively advocating that Democrats would be better off having the votes on pending [free trade agreements] this year for a number of reasons, sources said. They said that one of the reasons Emanuel cites is that there are likely more Republican members in this Congress than there will be in the next, which would mean that fewer Democrats would have to take a potentially divisive trade vote now." >
Correct: EMANUEL -- one of the ORIGINAL ARCHITECTS of NAFTA -- wants congressional Democrats to pass controversial NAFTAs with Colombia, South Korea and Panama right now, so as to avoid inevitably STRONGER opposition from his own [DEMOCRATIC] party in the next Congress.
To really fathom how incredible this is, understand that Emanuel -- the Democratic leader -- IS EFFECTIVELY ACTING AS HOUSE __REPUBLICAN__ WHIP. He's saying that he wants these bills up for a vote because there are enough Republican votes right now in the House to pass it over current Democratic objections -- and there won't be enough GOP votes in the next Congress.
How many polls have to come out showing that the vast majority of Americans do not want their jobs and wages crushed by hacks like Emanuel? And how come Democrats are led by con artists who spent their White House career shilling for Wall Street, then cashed in as an investment banker, then bought a congressional race, only to go back to Washington to continue his corporate crusade over the dead body of his own caucus?
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WALL STREET JOURNAL: How RAHM EMANUEL _RUNS_ the US TREASURY department!
(Which is to say, "How Rahm Emanuel OWNS the OBAMA WHITE HOUSE, and has Turned the Obama administration into the GIVE GOLDMAN SACHS, AIPAC, and the War-Lobby TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars open, never-ending, NO AUDITS ALLOWED! SPIGOT for those RADICAL RIGHT-WING organizations & policies !!!!
At Treasury, Big White House Role
After Early Snafus, Emanuel 'HELPS' Geithner With Policies; 'Rahm Wants It'
By DEBORAH SOLOMON, JONATHAN WEISMAN and LAURA MECKLER, murdoch/wall st. journal
MAY 1, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124113406528875137.html
WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 20, Timothy Geithner took control of the Treasury Department, directing the government's response to the financial crisis.
Within three weeks, the White House tightened its grip, alarmed by the poor reaction to Mr. Geithner's performance during the rollout of his rescue plan, government officials say. Since then, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been so involved in the workings of the Treasury that "Rahm wants it" has become an unofficial mantra among some at the Treasury, according to government officials.
[continued at the Rupert Murdoch pro-wars, pro-torture, pro-police-state, pro-tax-cuts-for-rich in time of war; pro-UNLIMITED NO OVERSIGHT TRILLIONS for FAILED, CORRUPT BANKSTERS Wall St. Journal -
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124113406528875137.html
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