You Know St. Barry, the Workingman's Friend? Well, He's Gonna FUCK Ya!

The Shazama Regime plans to fuck-up Social Security as a way to demonstrate their "seriousness."

No, really! He is.

RJ Eskow was at the meeting where a "very senior White House Official" spilled the beans. They will fuck you in the ass, if you're a Senior, or disabled, or otherwise supported by SS, in order to demonstrate to (?) that the Regime is "credible" in the matter of reducing the 'deficit.'

Now unless you are a drooling retard, or have been in solitary for the last 30 years, you know that the ONLY people to whom the "deficit" actually matters are the Aristos, the Bosses, the Owners. That's why they loved Bill Clinton--he used the deficit to fuck the poor, too.

The discussion is subtle, and would require as much verbiage to describe as it does to explain. So go to the site (HuffPo) and consider.

And remember, please, that there were folks (Y'r Ob'd't S'v't among them), who tried to warn you credulous, drooling Hopium addicts that

OBAMA IS GONNA FUCK YOU!

Mebbe he doesn't want to. But it's his job, the price he paid to get the job, the position, the fame, the historic accomplishment.

So he'll do it...

FOX Nooz Floozies Flashing The Coochie For Ratings Boosties?

Fox News' most ardent audience is, apparently, horny, rightard/fuctard boys who lust for a flash of panty when their favorite distaff news-reader crosses her legs. Fox panders to them by dressing its botoxed, bosomy blondes in tight sweaters, plunging necklines and micro-mini skirts which barely cover their asses, then seating them in chairs or sofas which poise their knees above their crotches, and panning the camera across their knees when they move. You can almost feel the little boehners growing.



Playboy noticed and gathered a nice selection of Foxy 'beaver shots, including this beguiling glimpse of Gretchen Carlson's tighty whities...I can't listen to her, but I'd do her, you betcha!

How To Fuck With Target

Here's wacha do:
Go spend 25 bucks on stuff. Mebbe more. Then wait a couple of hours, go back to the store and tell 'em you wanna return all the stuff you bought. When they ask why, tell 'em you heard on the radio that Target was giving big money to some homophobic Union-buster in Minnesota, and you don't want to be part of that crap.


The Target CEO apologized, "if" it offended anybody.

But the skeevy shitheel didn't cancel the donation.

"Sharri'an" Law

“We needed to have the press be our friend,” (Angle) told an astonished Carl Cameron of Fox News. “We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported.”

You couldn't really make this shit up. She has a pretty good chance of becoming a US Senator.

Michael Moore on Gibbs' Flapping His Mouth

"I think that what's bothering them is that liberals and the left have been right from the beginning. From the beginning of this administration, what did people on our side of the fence say? You should take over these banks temporarily and fire all the thieves who stole our money. But instead, what did they do? They enabled them. They called for more offshore oil drilling. They expanded the war in Afghanistan. The stimulus package -- they caved in to the Republicans. Everything that we've been trying to push them to do has now come back to bite them in a profound way to the point where they're very frightened, as they should be, about the election in a couple of months. ... You don't want him drafting the fundraising letter for the next election cycle. It will begin something like, 'Dear biggest Obama supporters: You Suck! Now send us money, please.' ... They better get busy trying to fight the fight for the working people out there who put him into office in the first place. They want to vote for him again but they're not very excited or enthused right now. And nothing I or you or anybody else is going to do is gonna make that enthusiasm just appear again. It's going to have to happen through actual action on the part of the administration -- so the ball's in their court." -- Michael Moore on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

The Big Guy Has Some Anger Issues

Howard Zinn on USer Imperialism

If You LOVED HCR/FRR, You're Gonna CUM With Joy Over Shamwow's Plan For Schools!

The Corporation

Chapter One: Bad Apples
The Corporation is today's dominant institution, creating great wealth but also great harm. This 26 award-winning documentary examines the nature, evolution, impacts and future of the modern business corporation and the increasing role it plays in society and our everyday lives.

The Dog That Didn't Bark

Will Pitt is right, of course. The elephant in the room is the almost decade-long clusterfuck that was the GWBush regime.

But it is disingenuous to demand the "Press" fix the imbalance. The "press", now more than ever, just reports. It doesn't actively participate in partisan fact-finding. If the Shazamistas want to make public the Bushevik debt tot he Republic, they have to MAKE it public.

What's missing is that the Busheviki should be on trial.

That should be the lead item of the news every night: The charges of treason, corruption, malfeasance, illegal wars, shady deals, the deregulation of the entire regulatory infrastructure for the express benefit of their corporat contributors. Crimes against the state and the People. They should be in the dock.

But of course, there is absolutely and utterly NO FUCKING WAY the Shamwow DoJ will endeavor to bring the main malefactors--Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the inner circle of crooks, embezzlers, and gunsels-- to trial. There are four compelling reasons for this oversight:

First: There is no precedent. No member of the upper management of ANY previous regime has EVER been been brought to trial by its successor.

Second: Even if brought to the bar, the miscreants could and undoubtedly would proclaim that as bad as their acts were, they were committed in the course of protecting the country from terror.

Third: Even if the jury considered their case, there are at LEAST 25% of people in the USer jury pool who would be staunch supporters of the Busheviki, who could/would prevent conviction by jury nullification; and

Finally, at the first HINT that Shazama was "going after" Bush/Cheney, the long lnoves on the Right would come out. Obama would finid himself under impeachment threat, at BEST. And the procedings against HIM would begin at the first moment he was no longer in office (2012,imhao)...

Of course, if the Busheviki WERE on trial, Pitt's complaint here that the Busheviki wholesale escape from complicity in, and responsibility for, the troubles that Shamwow faces is would not be forgotten

This is not a media problem, per se. Yes the SCUM, being the house organs of the corporat establishment and the governiong arm of the ciorporate want the fiascoes and clusterfucks of the Busheviki forgotten. But that was, I cannot help believing, part of the deal by which Shazama landed in the WhiteHouse.

Shamwow (though Hillary would have faced the same opposition, it would have been gender rather than race specific) occupies the position he does because he is--by virtue of his firstness--a sufficiently sturdy and absorbent cloth with which to soak up the 30-40 years of white corporat clusterfucks for which they are desperate to escape accountability. Bingo: The first black (or female) prezident...you've got yer sturdy scapegoat...

And, with the Peace Prize, and two cosmetic "victories" in 'social legislation," along with his "firstness," Prez. Shazama is destined already for the highest ranks of the USer political pantheon, along with JFK, MLK, RFK, FDR, and Lincoln; and with any luck, he'll survive the rest of the journey...

Chris Hedges Discusses "How CorpoRats Destroyed Us"

A celebrity is someone who is known for being known. ~~D. Boorstin
"...The way the camera follows us in slo-mo9, the way we look to us all."~~P.Simon

Breaking the Spell: Glenn Ford On Obamamania

Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report speaks about creating a culture of resistance and organizing progressives to stand up to Obama's support of militarism, at the United National Peace Conference in Albany, New York, July 23, 2010.

Produced by the United National Peace Conference Media Project, an initiative powered by The Sanctuary for Independent Media and Hudson Mohawk Indymedia Center.

The End of Innocence...Again

Testing the viral quality, this vid had about 4300 views today when I picked it up off "th'Book."

What's Got Into The Cops, Lately?

For the past 20-30 years, the Pentagon has been making surplus military equipment available to local cop shops. Unfortunately, but unavoidably, the military baubles come with a mind-set attached. Not to mention the thousands of military vets the Cop shops around the country have hired.

You may have noticed that even our blessed, holy soldiers are not immune from atrocity-causing/making. It is in fact a part of the repertoire of the invader, the 'counter-insurgent,' because the cops are out-numbered. And now they have begun to view the civilians they are supposed to serve and protect as at least potentially as the 'enemy,' the insurgents.

So they treat us--US, the civilians--as the enemy.The military relies on terrorizing its opponents, to reduce their desire to resist. This attitude is growing more prevalent the more that local cops militarize their weapons, tactics, clothing, and equipment...

Don't Go NEAR the Water...

Bernie Sanders on Repealing Tax Breaks For Billionaires

I support a marginal tax rate of 90% for ALL "income," from whatever the source, in excess of $1 Million/year...

How To Spike An Inconvenient News Story

When it comes to food, it would be in your best interest to realize that you are being lied to on a daily basis.

If a big company grows it, processes it and sells it, then it's probably garbage that you'd be better off not consuming.

In some cases, this problem goes far beyond "garbage" into another realm entirely.

This video is a rare glimpse behind-the-scenes of how news is really "made" in America and why corporate and "public" broadcasting - like corporate food - is entirely unreliable.

To learn about REAL food, visit The Real Food Channel

The Coming Global Slump -- A Speech by Prof. D. McNally

I'M GOING to start with what might seem like an overly cute formulation. I'll try to justify it, and if I don't, then you can throw various objects at me. But the formulation is: The crisis is over, the crisis continues. I say that because most the commentary we get about the crisis--which began in the summer of 2007 and then really erupted big time in the fall of 2008--focuses on a particular phase of the crisis and says, "Oh, that's over, therefore the crisis is over."

My argument to you, hence the title here, is that this is a mutating crisis. This is a crisis whose weak link keeps shifting, and as a result, we need to see it in all its dynamism--the way in which it keeps mutating and generating new kinds of illnesses within the system, so while it looks like the last one has been cured, in fact, all they've done is move the damage somewhere else.

That's really the essence of what I'm going to be developing for you--and hence the term for the book I've got forthcoming on this topic: global slump. I deliberately didn't say a single crisis, because in fact we're talking about a long-term slump within the system, which is a series of crises taking different forms.

I say the crisis is over and the crisis continues because for the moment, the banking and financial crisis of 2008-09 has been averted. The freefall was stopped, and the collapse of investment banks and meltdown of financial institutions around the world has been halted for now. I say for now, because there are a lot of unknowns down the road, starting with Europe's banks, and maybe I'll get a chance to say a bit more about that. But I want to remind you for a moment about the severity of that crisis and then talk about how it has shifted in form.

- - - - - - - - -

YOU KNOW that you've been living through a very profound crisis in the system when a whole series of different cultural markers emerge that indicate this. Some of you may know that about a quarter million jobs were lost in the financial services industry, predominantly on Wall Street, in the course of 2008 as banks collapsed.

A number of gallows-humor jokes started to make the rounds in the investment community in New York City, and I'll share with you my favorite, from fall 2008: How do you start a small business? Buy a big one and wait. When that kind of joke is making the rounds through the investment banking community, you know things are bad. Another example of the gallows humor: How do you define an optimist? An investment banker who irons three shirts on Sunday night.

Those are some of the markers. The more serious ones: In March 2009, the Financial Times, arguably the most important English language financial newspaper in the world, started a series called "The Future of Capitalism"--as if this was now an issue.

Let me just quote you a couple passages from the editors of the Times as they launched this series: "The credit crunch has destroyed faith in the free market ideology that has dominated Western economic thinking for a decade, but what can and should replace it?" The next day, they wrote, "The world of the past three decades is gone." (By the way, I think they're right about that, and I'm going to speak to that as I proceed.) And then they proceeded to quote a Merrill Lynch banker, who said, "Our world is broken, and I honestly don't know what is going to replace it."

That gives you a sense of the fact that within the mainstream, the most serious financial analysts understood the gravity and the profundity of what was happening, and that there was a seismic shift--as if the tectonic plates of global capitalism were shifting, and they didn't know where we were going to be when that shifting stops.

But perhaps the one thing that sums up the ruling class panic best was the spoof front page of the Economist from September 2008, after the Lehman Brothers bank collapse. The Economist had a two-word front page: "Oh Fuck!" This was the largest corporate bankruptcy in world history. You thought Enron was big when it went under, owing about $60 billion. Lehman Brothers went under owing about $635 billion to its creditors around the world.

So that's the context, and what it generated was the most massive coordinated central bank intervention into the so-called free market system in the history of global capitalism. We don't know the exact amounts, but the conservative estimate for the size of the bailout packages that comes from the Bank of England is around $14 trillion. That's around the annual output of the American economy.

Once you then factor in the additional $1 trillion they decided to throw in for good measure a number of weeks ago in Europe, and you start factoring in the stimulus packages and so on, we're probably in the area of a $20 trillion intervention to bail out and stabilize the system. This was the scale of the ruling class panic and, as I say, it produced something unprecedented in the history of the system. Never before had world central banks coordinated an intervention like this and on this scale.

But what they did in the course of this was simply push the problem out of the private banks and into the public sector. They socialized the debt--they made taxpayers take on the burden of all the toxic waste that the banks had been selling and holding onto. (Sound familiar? Privatize profit, socialize debt -- Woody) But in doing that, they raised huge questions about the long-term viability of government debt. So we're now getting these so-called "sovereign debt crises," which has been particularly profound in Europe, with Greece at the forefront,

In other words, it isn't the case that the crisis disappeared--it simply transmuted. It changed forms, and we're looking at a different front. Every now and again, you get a serious mainstream description of what has happened that's worth holding onto. I say description, because the theory is rubbish. All the mainstream theory is totally useless at making sense of anything that's happening.

But probably the best description in the mainstream comes from a book called This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, which makes fun of the idea that this crisis is different from the others. The coauthors Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff write the following:

The global financial crisis of the late 2000s, whether measured by the depth, breadth, and (potential) duration of the accompanying recession or by its profound effect on asset markets, stands as the most serious global financial crisis since the Great Depression. The crisis has been a transformative moment in global economic history whose ultimate resolution will likely reshape politics and economics for at least a generation.

I think that's exactly right. We are talking about an epochal shift, an absolute redefinition of a whole political period. I want to give you a few markers for the analysis I'm going to develop in the rest of my time, just so you've got some sense of where I'm coming from.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Systemic and Systematic

MY VIEW is that this is the first global and systemic crisis of the neoliberal phase of capitalism. When I say it's systemic, I mean that it's not just a crisis in one sector. It's not just a real estate or housing crisis. It's not just a banking crisis. It is a systemic crisis. Capitalism is struggling to reproduce itself on an expanding scale, which is the essence of the system--it must do that or perish, and it's struggling to do that as a system.

The second underlying premise is that such crises are the result of prolonged periods of growth within the system. I want to emphasize that because there has been a tendency for many commentators on the left to say that this is just the latest phase in a 40-year crisis.

I don't believe this. I think all the evidence shows that the two big recessions--1974-75 and 1980-82, though in some countries, there was actually a third along the way--and the ruling class offensive that they triggered did, in fact, shift the balance of class forces massively in favor of capital, so they were able to increase the rate of exploitation and launch a new wave of global accumulation, which ultimately became centered in east Asia, with China being the most important evidence of this.

This shouldn't be surprising. For those of us who take Marx seriously, the dynamism of capitalism--its very growth--produces profound crises. I don't accept the idea that for 40 or 50 years, the system had just been stagnating. Growth drove us into this crisis.

The first sign of this crisis really emerged in 1997, not surprisingly in East Asia, precisely where growth had been highest. You got the so-called Asian crisis, which was very profound and very deep. After that, there were a series of other crises: Russia, Argentina, Brazil, the collapse of one of the largest hedge funds in the U.S., and so on, after which central banks led by the Federal Reserve in the United States massively stimulated the system, driving down interest rates. That produced a great asset bubble, concentrated first in the dot-com sector, and later in housing and so on. And the bursting of one of these bubbles would be the trigger for the crisis that emerged in 2007.

But triggers aren't the same thing as the whole story. They influence the timing and the sector where a crisis emerges. It didn't have to be real estate. It could have ultimately happened somewhere else. But that's where the big bubble burst, and that's where all of the underlying weaknesses within the system got exposed.

As a result, we are--I agree with the commentators on this--in the second great contraction of modern capitalism.

But overall, these premises go against the grain of so many of the pundits on the business news channels and in mainstream newspapers, who are telling us that the crisis is over. So I just want to move through a few headlines from this moment and--if you'll pardon me using the slightly post-modernist term--deconstruct them for you. I do that because I think we need to map where we are with this crisis, and then I want to talk about how could the system is supposed to be able to get back on its feet right now. In other words if it's true that the crisis is over, where is this resolution coming from?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Just the Facts, Ma'am

SO LET me give you a few headlines. This one appeared a few weeks ago, from Thomson-Reuters: "U.S. corporate profits up 206 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009." True. This is a factually correct statement. But what doesn't it tell us? It doesn't tell us that if we remove financial enterprises--banks, hedge funds and so on--profits are only up 18 percent, not 206 percent. And by the way, when you're a bank hovering on the verge of bankruptcy last year, being up 206 percent is not so astronomical.

The reality is that profits today are still below the peak of the last expansion, by a very considerable margin. There has not been, despite the attacks on the working class--the concessions that the United Auto Workers gave up, the big wage cuts that have come in one sector after another, the leaning of production throughout the course of this crisis and so on--a recovery of profits to their post-crisis level.

Here is a headline that I loved, only because I reside in Canada: "U.S. auto sales outpace Canada's." Now this was considered big news because Canadian capitalism was not hit as hard by this crisis as capitalism has been in other parts of the world. But now, U.S. auto sales were going more quickly than Canada's. This really was boom time stuff.

Okay, let's deconstruct. It was a true statement about April this year. But what they didn't tell us is that this great burst in U.S. auto sales took them to an annual level of about 11.5 million. Pre-crisis? 16-17 million was the annual average. In other words, automobile sales in the U.S. economy are about 5 million below their pre-crisis level. It's true that the corporations have wrung out sufficient concession from the unions that they're profitable again, but there's not auto-induced boom coming in the U.S. or anywhere else.

Here's another one of my favorites: "U.S. new home sales make huge jump." True, by the way. They did in April. But they were still 70 percent lower than July 2005. Seven million households in the U.S. are behind on their mortgage payments. Freddie Mac had to ask for an additional $10.5 billion in March to cover further real estate losses.

The number of people behind on their payments is rising at the moment--it's around 10 percent. And by the way, nearly 40 percent of the people who are delinquent are so-called prime borrowers, not sub-prime. These are people who qualified for high-end mortgages. That's what massive job loss does. Mortgage applications for new homes plunged 40 percent this spring in the U.S., and new home and apartment construction fell by 10 percent in May. In other words, the housing and real estate sector has not touched bottom yet.

And then, of course, the one that I think you'll know and appreciate the irony of: "U.S. economy adds 290,000 jobs in April." Again true. Of course, the unemployment rate rose with that announcement because 800,000 people who hadn't looked for jobs the previous month said, "There's jobs out there," and reentered the job market. And then new job losses claims jumped again.

To give you some perspective of what this means for the U.S. economy: Simply to restore the jobs lost in this recession would require 8.5 million or more, and those that would be required by ordinary population growth is another 2.5 million. To get those 11 million or so jobs would require job creation of 400,000 new jobs per month for three years in the U.S.--just to get back to where they were. Never mind all the people underemployed and so on. Don't hold your breath on those 400,000 a month for three years.

Here are a couple of facts that aren't being widely reported.

The U.S. money supply is contracting at the moment. This is terribly bad news for capitalism because what it tells you is that the amount of business borrowing is falling, which means that investment is falling. It tells you the amount of consumer borrowing is going down. The money supply ultimately reflects the growth, or lack thereof, of overall transactions happening in the economy--business spending, consumer spending and so on. When the money supply is going down, that's a recessionary indicator--even possibly a deflationary one, and I might get a chance to say a few words about that in a moment.

Another fact, this one about world shipping. Some of you will have heard about an obscure thing called the Baltic Dry Index. What it does is track the amount of stuff being shipped around the world--shipping on huge vessels is still the principle means of moving commodities around the world, whether it's steel or coffee. The Baltic Dry Index has fallen every day for the last three weeks--not good for the system. But this isn't making front page headlines.

Finally, a report came out from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)--essentially the 30 largest Western economies. The OECD released a report last month warning of a "lost generation," with youth unemployment in those 30 countries officially at 19 percent. That's the official rate, and of course, as we know, it's much, much higher in many countries. For example, the official unemployment rate in Spain is 20 percent right now, with youth unemployment in the high 30s in Spain right now.

If There Were Corporate Capital Punishment, Nobody Deserves It More

For Sharri'an Angle, A Dose Of OUTSTANDING Invective

A FB pal Jack Cluth wrote this, and it's as fine an exercise in PAINFULLY restrained invective as I have read in a LONG time:

Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle has moderated a host of policy positions in her transition from a primary candidate to general election contender battling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. One thing she has not backed away from has been her insistence that abortion should be outlawed universally, even in cases of rape and incest. In a radio interview Angle did in late June, the Tea Party favorite re-affirmed her pro-life sensibilities (rigid, as they are, even within Republican circles), when she insisted that a young girl raped by her father should know that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Much good can come from a horrific situation like that, Angle added. Lemons can be made into lemonade.

And here’s today’s communique from the Miserable Excuse For A Human Being Dept.:

There’s clueless. There’s mean-spirited. There’s completely devoid of compassion and humanity. Then there’s Sharron Angle, who takes all of these qualities to disturbing, rarely-plumbed depths…even for your average Republican. Let’s face it, y’all; Angle IS a miserable excuse for a human being, a woman who was born on third base and thinks she hit a triple (apologies to the late Ann Richards). In her world, the bad things that happen to others are merely lemons with one should make lemonade…because that’s What Jesus Would Do. It’s easy to play the heartless Pollyanna when suffering is merely an abstract concept because it’s happening to someone else. Jeebus, if Obtuse Angle (apologies to Keith Olbermann) were any farther to the right and lacking in compassion, she be advocating that female adulterers be stoned in the village square and that women pregnant out of wedlock be shamed and sent to convents, there to toil at hard labor until the little bastard is born.

It’s difficult to even know where to begin with someone as miserably black-hearted, mean-spirited, and judgmentally intolerant as Angle. With each progressively more brain-dead and inhuman pronouncement, Angle sits in judgment of others with a beatific smile on her face, secure in the knowledge that she isn’t perfect, just forgiven by a God who is. Angle is, of course, free to believe as she sees fit. Nonetheless, in running for a Senate seat in Nevada, she wants to represent all Nevadans, most of whom (thankfully) aren’t as mercilessly intolerant as she is. Of course, now that she’s the GOP nominee, she’s scrubbed her website of all the really loony stuff (making abortion illegal under any and all circumstances, scrapping Social Security, etc.). Just as a zebra isn’t going to change their stripes, neither is Angle about to renounce or even rehabilitate her prior views. Oh, she’ll talk about “softening” her stances…which is code for saying that she’ll do or say whatever she needs to in order to get elected. Sounds like someone’s been hanging around John McCain, eh?

I can only hope that Nevadans will see Sharron Angle for the evil, heartless harpie she is. And I also hope that there will be a very special place reserved for her in Hell. To paraphrase Keith Olbermann, that woman’s an idiot.

I'll just leave it at that.

The Russians Are Coming...so to speak

I got seduced by a Russian spy one time.
No, really. Well, a Soviet spy. Those wide, smoldering, grey slavic eyes!!!!!
And I didn't tumble to the fact.
The name I knew her by was Marina, and she said she was a refugee from Riga, Latvia.
I was in the Air Force at the time, serving in a pretty secretive outfit, with a high security clearance. They told me about her after the Germans deported her and her whole "family."
She lived out in the country. I'd pick her up, we'd go to the little local bier-stubbe, then drive out into the woods and fuck. I was 20. It was great!

However, I don't know what she was interested in. I didn't know anything.

I got a high clearance to move and process sensitive information, but I didn't understand very much of it. I knew about the attack on the USS Liberty as it was happening, for example. And we talked about it in the shop, and we talked about it to survivors, but I couldn't have discussed it with her, because i didn't speak enough German and her English wasn't terrific.

An ill-trained agent?. But I guess the stakes weren't too high.

Sharron Angle Calls BP's Gulf Oil Spill Victims' Compensation Program A 'Slush Fund'

I call it "Sharri'a" Law. Via Huffpo. There's audio there if you can figure out how to get it to run--fuck BING!:

WASHINGTON - Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle is calling BP's $20 billion victims' compensation program "a slush fund."

Angle told a Las Vegas radio station on Wednesday that President Barack Obama strong-armed BP executives to set up the fund after the rig explosion in April that sent gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. Angle also said Democrats were taking political advantage of the environmental disaster to raise taxes and fines.

The Plum Line's Greg Sargent first reported Angle's BP comments.

Obama met with BP executives at the White House last month and emerged from the meeting with a $20 billion commitment from the company to pay fishermen whose businesses were affected and to clean up the Gulf.

Angle, a former state lawmaker, is challenging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the GOP's top target.

She's "on message." They're all on message.

It's a derivative of the idea of the Big Lie: Instead of having one authoritative voice, they're throwing up (really!) this cascade of moronic fuckwitz --Angle, Paul, Palin, Barton, Bachmann, those fucking morons in Virginia--to spout the same lies all over the country in local dialects.

It's a genius strategy, really: Each one is a separate story, each a separate bit of tape, to fill some seconds of the 168 hours per week for which there must be content, and hence which the Cabloids of the 24-hour news-cycle hunger for...

If Hitler and Goebbels had had this technology, the world would be speaking German today...

What the fucking, motherfucking FUCK? Reporting the Spew Is a CRIME?

Via Raw Story:

Journalists who come too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission could find themselves facing a $40,000 fine and even one to five years in prison under a new rule instituted by the Coast Guard late last week. It's a move that outraged observers have decried as an attack on First Amendment rights.

And CNN's Anderson Cooper describes the new rules as making it "very easy to hide incompetence or failure."

The Coast Guard order states that "vessels must not come within 20 meters [65 feet] of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law." But since "oil spill response operations" apparently covers much of the clean-up effort on the beaches, CNN's Anderson Cooper describes the rule as banning reporters from "anywhere we need to be."

A "willful" violation of the new rule could result in Class D felony charges, which carry a penalty of one to five years in prison under federal law.

The new rule appears to contradict the promises made by Adm. Thad Allen, the official leading the Coast Guard's response to the oil spill. (Ya fucking THINK?--W)

"Media will have uninhibited access anywhere we're doing operations, except for two things, if it's a security or safety problem," Allen told ABC News in June. (Allen has since retired from the CG, and is now a paid "consultant" for the Obamanauts.--W)

In defending the new rule, Allen told reporters that he got "complaints from local officials" about the safety of people near cleanup efforts.

"We're (the Press) not the enemy here," Cooper responded in a report broadcast Thursday night. "Those of us down here trying to accurately show what is happening -- we are not the enemy. I've not heard about any journalist who's disrupted relief efforts; no journalist wants to be seen as having slowed down the cleanup or made things worse. If a Coast Guard official asked me to move, I'd move. But to create a blanket rule that everyone has to stay 65 feet away from boom and boats, that doesn't sound like transparency." (You're the enemy if anything you do threatens to show up either BP or BO, bro, believe me!--W)

The rule has come under severe criticism not only from journalists but from observers and activists involved in the Gulf Coast clean-up.

"With this, the Gulf Coast cleanup operation has now entered a weird Orwellian reality where the news is shaped, censored and controlled by the government in order to prevent the public from learning the truth about what's really happening," writes Mike Adams at NaturalNews.

"We might expect something like this from Chavez, or Castro or even the communist leaders of China, but here in the United States, we've all been promised we lived in 'the land of the free,'" Adams continues. "Obama apparently does not subscribe to that philosophy anymore (if he ever did)."

Under the rule, reporters or anyone else wishing to get within 65 feet of a cleanup operation need to get permission from the Coast Guard Captain of the Port of New Orleans.

"The fact is we're not attempting to keep anyone from seeing anything," Edward Stanton, the current Coast Guard Captain in New Orleans, told WKRG News in Mobile.

"Nine times out of 10, probably 10 times out of 10” access will be granted, Stanton said.

He said the rule was put into place because of complaints about "boaters interfering with the oil spill operations."

(To most sane, honest people NOT in the thrall of either BO or BP--W) the rule seems on its face to be just the latest attempt to reduce media coverage of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which has now attained the status of worst accidental oil spill in history.

Reporters have been complaining for weeks about BP, the Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard working to keep reporters away from wrenching images of oil-covered birds and oil-soaked beaches. On Friday, a photographer from ProPublica was detained by police and BP officials after taking photos of a BP refinery in Texas City, Texas.

Cooper compared the latest effort to prevent access to the oil spill to similar efforts during Hurricane Katrina.

"Frankly it's a lot like in Katrina, where they tried to make it impossible to see recovery efforts of people who died in their homes. If we can't show what is happening, warts and all ... that makes it very easy to hide failure, and hide incompetence."

The preceding video was broadcast on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, July 1, 2010, and uploaded to YouTube by user djohnsto77.

Every effort is being expended to ensure that the real damage of this incredible clusterfuck is concealed: oil dispersant, to sink the oil, and make it look less severe than it is; and informational dispersant, to keep the press at bay.

Moar "Change You Can Believe In!"

Freeking BRILLIANT!

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Sunday Morning Pray-Off

\
Just for the yuck and the fuck of it, a further episode: Even Stevphens on medical pot:

TELCOS Hate New FCC "Internet" Regs, Spend Beaucoup Bux To Defeat Them

Via the NYTimes (6/30/10):

One good measure of the intensity with which phone and cable companies dislike the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to extend its regulatory oversight over access to broadband Internet is the amount of money they are spending on political contributions.

Last month, 74 House (fucking) Democrats sent a letter to the F.C.C.’s chairman, Julius Genachowski, warning him “not to move forward with a proposal that undermines critically important investment in broadband and the jobs that come with it.” Rather than extend its authority over telecommunications networks to broadband under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, they demanded that the F.C.C. wait for Congress to pass specific legislation.

The message parroted views held by AT&T, Comcast and Verizon (Oh, yeah, they wanna fuck us!--W) — the biggest broadband service providers in the country. Comcast warned (Can you say "threatened?"--W) that the F.C.C.’s efforts could “chill investment and innovation.” Their executives and political action committees have been among the top 20 campaign contributors to 58 of the 74 lawmakers in the past two election cycles. (Apparently the other 16 signed on, on spec as it were--W)

As the F.C.C. proceeds with its plan to regulate broadband access, it seems likely we can expect more of this resistance from members of Congress.

Political contributions from AT&T in the current election cycle reached $2.6 million by May 16, on the way to exceeding the total in each of the last three elections. The company has contributed to the campaigns of every Republican and all but three Democrats on the subcommittee that deals with the Internet in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It has given money to more than half the members of the equivalent Senate panel.

Comcast has spent more than $2 million on campaign donations; Verizon has given $1.2 million. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association — the industry’s collective lobbying group — has spent about $1 million more. And just in case that isn’t persuasive enough of the ills of government regulation, telephone and cable companies spent $20.6 million lobbying the government in the first quarter of the year.

The Sunlight Foundation, which tracks industry lobbying, reported that cable and phone companies had 276 former government officials lobbying for them in the first quarter, including 18 former members of Congress and 48 former staffers of current members of Congress on committees with jurisdiction over the Internet. The list includes former staffers of at least six of the House Democrats who signed the letter to the F.C.C.

To us, it seems obvious that the Federal Communications Commission should extend its oversight to broadband, the most important telecommunications network of our time, to guarantee open, nondiscriminatory and competitive access and to protect consumers’ rights.

But reason is not always a match for money in Washington. The F.C.C. has a rough road ahead.

No Shit! Here's a more graphic representation of that possibility:

Free Press Campaign Director Timothy Karr issued the following statement:

“In Washington, money equals power, and with this tool, we can see how AT&T, Comcast and Verizon’s money is being used to kill public interest policies like Net Neutrality. Ultimately, their goal is to turn Washington against the common sense idea that the FCC should have a role in preserving the open Internet, protecting consumers’ rights and fostering universal access to broadband. If their misinformation campaign succeeds, the open and affordable Internet will be in serious danger.

“Industries spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on armies of lobbyists to defeat affordable health care, environmental protections, banking reform and countless other essential public interest protections. They secretly fund dozens of ‘astroturf’ front groups to parrot their talking points and create fake opposition to good public policy. Now they are strong-arming members of Congress to call sound communications policies a ‘government takeover of the Internet.’ It’s the same pattern with nearly every important issue, and it must stop.

“We can’t stand by while the big phone and cable companies try to kill the policies that we need to protect the Internet.”

As with all this stuff, there is no legal means to stop them or to revbers the path once the start.

Canadian Cops Are "Cochon," Too

"Water-boarding" Is "Key" To USer Media/Press Bias, Lies

In the CorpoRat State, ALL corporate media are State Media; that is: instruments of State propaganda...They will only accidentally reveal the 'truth' of any event upon which the "report."

So it is no surprise that USer media are much gentler, m ore circumspect, in the deployment of provocative terms--"torture," "waterboarding," "illegal war"-- when they are describing the workings of the USer murder machine than when it describes "our" antagonists' deeds.

No, really!~!?!?!

Glenn Greenwald, via Salon:

A newly released study from students at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government provides the latest evidence of how thoroughly devoted the American establishment media is to amplifying and serving (rather than checking) government officials. This new study examines how waterboarding has been discussed by America's four largest newspapers over the past 100 years, and finds that the technique, almost invariably, was unequivocally referred to as "torture" -- until the U.S. Government began openly using it and insisting that it was not torture, at which time these newspapers obediently ceased describing it that way:

Young Turk Cenk Uygur Blasts SCUM* For Attacking Rolling Stone For "Outing" McChrystal

*SCUM = So-Called Unbiased Media--Michael Hastings just pushed the Press' relationship with the Military (which NEVER manipulates reporters, of course) back into that tricksy, antagonistic ground, just when everybody was happy with "cooperation." Reporters aren't supposed to be 'friends' with their sources...

And, lovely as she is, and as elegant and soothing and "privileged' as her posh, toff-y accents are, it appears Lara Logan's no better than a sluttish chambermaid for the powerful...

All Hail The New AMERICAN NATIONAL ICON!

More of that "Good, Old CYCBI," SCROTUS Edition

The Court's nominal "liberal" leader, JP Stevens, concurred with the majority, convinced apparently by the persuasive power of Solicitor General Kagan's arguments that there is SOME speech that may be subject to prior restraint.

Here's the take-away, if you haven't the patience to read the whole thing (advised): "The lesson here is that Barack Obama and the Democrats may have talked a different talk about civil liberties on the campaign trail, but they are committed to the same vicious policies as their predecessors. The Obama administration is willing to curtail all of our civil liberties in pursuit in the name of what was once Bush's "war on terror"--but is now wholly Obama's."

Somebody remind me again: what the fuck is this "change" you are all so excited about?

A license to witch-hunt

A Supreme Court decision on the Patriot Act shows where Barack Obama stands.

THE U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a part of the USA PATRIOT Act that criminalizes free speech as "terrorism"--and the Obama administration, which was expected to stop its predecessor's assault on the Constitution, is celebrating the decision as a victory.

The 6-3 decision of the court, announced June 21, upholds a portion of the 2001 Patriot Act that classifies some speech and other "intangible assistance" as material aid to terrorists.

The justices agreed with the arguments of the Obama administration--specifically, its choice to sit on the Supreme Court, former Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who made the White House's case before the court.

The administration opposed a lawsuit brought by the Humanitarian Law Project that challenged the law's provision that prohibits material support--specifically the giving of "expert advice or assistance"--to groups designated as "terrorist" by the U.S. State Department.

The law project wanted to provide advice to two groups--the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Kurdistan Workers' Party--on peacefully resolving disputes and working with the United Nations. But in his opinion justifying the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the motives of the Humanitarian Law Project didn't matter, and any assistance to a group on the State Department's terrorism list represented "material support."

The consequences of the ruling are far-ranging, as the New York Times pointed out:

The court at least clarified that acts had to be coordinated with terror groups to be illegal, but many forms of assistance may still be a criminal act, including filing a brief against the government in a terror-group lawsuit.

Academic researchers doing field work in conflict zones could be arrested for meeting with terror groups and discussing their research, as could journalists who write about the activities and motivations of these groups, or the journalists' sources. The FBI has questioned people it suspected as being sources for a New York Times article about terrorism, and threatened to arrest them for providing material support.

In a strong dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer, supported by Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said the court's majority was too willing to believe the government's argument that national security concerns required restrictions on speech and had "failed to insist upon specific evidence, rather than general assertion."

As David Cole, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, told the Times, "This decision basically says the First Amendment allows making peacemaking and human rights advocacy a crime."

On an individual level, the ruling strengthens the government's ability to pursue the kind of witch-hunts carried out against Palestinian professor Sami Al-Arian or Pakistani student Syed Fahad Hashmi, two of the approximately 150 defendants that the government has charged with violating the material-support provision since 2001.

In Hashmi's case, after enduring nearly four years in solitary confinement, he agreed to plead guilty to a single count of material support for the "crime" of helping an acquaintance store and transport ponchos and waterproof socks that allegedly ended up with al-Qaeda organizations in Pakistan. For this, he has been sentenced to another 15 years in prison.

But the lawyers who argued the case pointed out that the impact goes further--the Patriot Act's material-support provision is so vague that humanitarian groups and journalists and their sources can be ensnared.

Some legal theorists believe the law is so broad that it could be interpreted as criminalizing any speech that could be said to give legitimacy to a terrorist group--for example, those who support the right of Hamas to lead the Palestinian Authority (after being democratically elected), even though the organization is on the State Department list. That's because, as Breyer pointed out in his dissent, the law could have made a distinction between "when the defendant knows or intends that those activities will assist the organization's unlawful terrorist actions" and when they don't--but it fails to do so.

"Instead," as lawyer Wendy Kaminer noted in The Atlantic, "the majority gave the administration a blank check to criminalize political speech specifically intended to advance peace."

The ruling also fails to acknowledge that there are almost no checks on the ability of the State Department, under the direction of the Secretary of State, to designate groups as "terrorist"--and that those decisions are often based on political calculations.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THIS RULING will be seen as another win for the Supreme Court's right wing, now led by Chief Justice Roberts, a Bush appointee. But it's also claimed as a victory by the Obama administration--and in particular, its former Solicitor General and current Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, who argued the government's case in February.

Kagan has been criticized as too liberal by some conservative Republican senators, but this case shows she fits in squarely with the majority of justices who support expanding presidential power at the expense of our rights.

In fact, that's one of the reasons she was chosen to join the court. She agrees with the Obama administration's fundamentally conservative position on these "war on terror" issues.

Barack Obama was expected by millions of people who voted for him to challenge George Bush's shredding of the Constitution. But a year and a half into his presidency, not only is the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay still up and running, but the Obama White House has explicitly upheld Bush administration policies on trial by military commissions, rendition of prisoners to allied regimes where torture is legal, warrantless wiretapping and the use of executive powers to hinder the prosecution of U.S. officials for illegal acts.

One of the latest outrages is the case of Yemeni detainee Mohamed Hassan Odaini. The government has concluded that Odaini did nothing wrong--but the Obama administration has refused to release him, and instead has fought vehemently in court to keep him imprisoned at Guantánamo. As Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald wrote:

[T]he Obama administration is knowingly imprisoning a completely innocent human being who has been kept in a cage in an island prison, thousands of miles from his home, for the last eight years, since he's 18 years old, despite having done absolutely nothing wrong...

If you're willing to work to keep a person whom you know is innocent imprisoned, what aren't you willing to do? What decent human being wouldn't be repulsed by this? I don't care how many times someone chants "Pragmatism" or "The Long Game" or whatever other all-purpose justifying mantras have been marketed to venerate the current president; these are repellent acts that have no justification.

Of course, none of this is new for the Obama administration; it's consistent with their course of conduct from the start.

The lesson here is that Barack Obama and the Democrats may have talked a different talk about civil liberties on the campaign trail, but they are committed to the same vicious policies as their predecessors. The Obama administration is willing to curtail all of our civil liberties in pursuing the name of what was once Bush's "war on terror"--but is now wholly Obama's.

Preserving the Appearances: Some Easy Reading For Judge Fuckwad Feldman

He quashed the presidential moratorium deep-water drilling today. May his ass drop into the shitter the next time he changes his robes.

Turns out, the Judge was probably NOT an impartial mediator of this dispute, cuz he owned a couple of chunks of stock in enterprises whose profitability were being limited as long as the moratorium persisted.

Judge Fuckwad Feldman is a big judicial cheese, so he may have forgotten the question of recusal. He's Big Deal Fuckwad Feldman and does whatever the fuck Big Deal Fuckwad Feldman WANTS to do.

And latterly, that's been to dabble in ahwl. Hizzoner Judge Big Time Fuckwad Feldman apparently is so deeply into ahwl, Texaco's got a rig on his asshole.

Yo, Fuckwad? Here's the pertinent statute, homework for tonight, you fatuous pig:

TITLE 28 > PART I > CHAPTER 21 > § 455

§ 455. Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge

(a) Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
(b) He shall also disqualify himself in the following circumstances:

(1) Where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding;
(2) Where in private practice he served as lawyer in the matter in controversy, or a lawyer with whom he previously practiced law served during such association as a lawyer concerning the matter, or the judge or such lawyer has been a material witness concerning it;
(3) Where he has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy;
(4) He knows that he, individually or as a fiduciary, or his spouse or minor child residing in his household, has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding;
(5) He or his spouse, or a person within the third degree of relationship to either of them, or the spouse of such a person:

(i) Is a party to the proceeding, or an officer, director, or trustee of a party;
(ii) Is acting as a lawyer in the proceeding;
(iii) Is known by the judge to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding;
(iv) Is to the judge’s knowledge likely to be a material witness in the proceeding.

(c) A judge should inform himself about his personal and fiduciary financial interests, and make a reasonable effort to inform himself about the personal financial interests of his spouse and minor children residing in his household.
(d) For the purposes of this section the following words or phrases shall have the meaning indicated:

(1) “proceeding” includes pretrial, trial, appellate review, or other stages of litigation;
(2) the degree of relationship is calculated according to the civil law system;
(3) “fiduciary” includes such relationships as executor, administrator, trustee, and guardian;
(4) “financial interest” means ownership of a legal or equitable interest, however small, or a relationship as director, adviser, or other active participant in the affairs of a party, except that:

(i) Ownership in a mutual or common investment fund that holds securities is not a “financial interest” in such securities unless the judge participates in the management of the fund;
(ii) An office in an educational, religious, charitable, fraternal, or civic organization is not a “financial interest” in securities held by the organization;
(iii) The proprietary interest of a policyholder in a mutual insurance company, of a depositor in a mutual savings association, or a similar proprietary interest, is a “financial interest” in the organization only if the outcome of the proceeding could substantially affect the value of the interest;
(iv) Ownership of government securities is a “financial interest” in the issuer only if the outcome of the proceeding could substantially affect the value of the securities.

(e) No justice, judge, or magistrate judge shall accept from the parties to the proceeding a waiver of any ground for disqualification enumerated in subsection (b). Where the ground for disqualification arises only under subsection (a), waiver may be accepted provided it is preceded by a full disclosure on the record of the basis for disqualification.
(f) Notwithstanding the preceding provisions of this section, if any justice, judge, magistrate judge, or bankruptcy judge to whom a matter has been assigned would be disqualified, after substantial judicial time has been devoted to the matter, because of the appearance or discovery, after the matter was assigned to him or her, that he or she individually or as a fiduciary, or his or her spouse or minor child residing in his or her household, has a financial interest in a party (other than an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome), disqualification is not required if the justice, judge, magistrate judge, bankruptcy judge, spouse or minor child, as the case may be, divests himself or herself of the interest that provides the grounds for the disqualification

Read up, yer fucking Honner, you venal, sold-out, corrupt, vile old fraud!

Jon Stewart with "Gaslands" Director Josh Fox

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The US Deep-Water, Off-shore Oil Industry, Via Al Jazeera

Ach, Lord, the giftie gi'e us...

Positive Thinking: A snare and a delusion?

Mind-fucking: 18 Vets Commit Suicide Every Day

Probably not ALL of them in consequence of their experiences in the service.

But still...Damn! That's harsh...

Davis Fleetwood: "Alex Jones is a dim-witted, douchebag, Denialist dumb-fuck!"

Sang Freud: Can You Laugh At The Executioner On The Gallows Step?

If so, then you'll DIE laughing at this shit:

50 Statistics About The U.S. Economy That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

Most Americans know that the U.S. economy is in bad shape, but what most Americans don't know is how truly desperate the financial situation of the United States really is. The truth is that what we are experiencing is not simply a "downturn" or a "recession". What we are witnessing is the beginning of the end for the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen. Our greed and our debt are literally eating our economy alive. Total government, corporate and personal debt has now reached 360 percent of GDP, which is far higher than it ever reached during the Great Depression era. We have nearly totally dismantled our once colossal manufacturing base, we have shipped millions upon millions of middle class jobs overseas, we have lived far beyond our means for decades and we have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world. A great day of financial reckoning is fast approaching, and the vast majority of Americans are totally oblivious.

But the truth is that you cannot defy the financial laws of the universe forever. What goes up must come down. The borrower is the servant of the lender. Cutting corners always catches up with you in the end.

Sometimes it takes cold, hard numbers for many of us to fully realize the situation that we are facing.

So, the following are 50 very revealing statistics about the U.S. economy that are almost too crazy to believe....

One waits, usually in vain, for the authors of such jeremiads to take up the case of USer military spending as being the key goad and spur to all this defecit expenditure. Such is also the case here, but persevere, because some of the factoids are compelling.

However without a caveat to the effect that such predictions as are implied presume the continuation of current policies.

P.S.: I know it's "sang froid."

Daniel Ellsberg Has Some Authority In Such Matters

Via Der Spiegel, Ellsberg declares:

'Obama Deceives the Public'

Daniel Ellsberg, legendary leaker of the "Pentagon Papers" in 1971, still has a bone to pick with the White House. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the 79-year-old peace activist accuses President Obama of betraying his election promises -- in Iraq, in Afghanistan and on civil liberties.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Ellsberg, you're a hero and an icon of the left. But we hear you're not too happy with President Obama anymore.

Daniel Ellsberg: I voted for him and I will probably vote for him again, as opposed to the Republicans. But I believe his administration in some key aspects is nothing other than the third term of the Bush administration.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How so?

Ellsberg: I think Obama is continuing the worst of the Bush administration in terms of civil liberties, violations of the constitution and the wars in the Middle East.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: For example?

Ellsberg: Take Obama's explicit pledge in his State of the Union speech to remove "all" United States troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. That's a total lie. I believe that's totally false. I believe he knows that's totally false. It won't be done. I expect that the US will have, indefinitely, a residual force of at least 30,000 US troops in Iraq.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What about Afghanistan? Isn't that a justifiable war?

Ellsberg: I think that there's an inexcusable escalation in both countries. Thousands of US officials know that bases and large numbers of troops will remain in Iraq and that troop levels and bases in Afghanistan will rise far above what Obama is now projecting. But Obama counts on them to keep their silence as he deceives the public on these devastating, costly, reckless ventures.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You doubt not only Obama's missions abroad but also his politics back home in the US. Why exactly are you accusing the president of violating civil liberties?

Ellsberg: For instance, the Obama administration is criminalizing and prosecuting whistleblowers to punish them for uncovering scandals within the federal government …

SPIEGEL ONLINE: … Such as the arrest, confirmed this week, of an Army intelligence analyst for leaking the "Collateral Murder" video of a deadly US helicopter attack in Iraq, which was later posted online at WikiLeaks.

Ellsberg: Also, the recent US indictment of Thomas Drake.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Drake was a former senior official with the National Security Agency (NSA) who provided reporters with information about failures at the NSA.

Ellsberg: For Obama to indict and prosecute Drake now, for acts undertaken and investigated during the Bush administration, is to do precisely what Obama said he did not mean to do -- "look backward." Of all the blatantly criminal acts committed under Bush, warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, aggression, torture, Obama now prosecutes only the revelation of massive waste by the NSA, a socially useful act which the Bush administration itself investigated but did not choose to indict or prosecute!

Bush brought no indictments against whistleblowers, though he suspended Drake's clearance. Obama, in this and other matters relating to secrecy and whistleblowing, is doing worse than Bush. His violation of civil liberties and the White House's excessive use of the executive secrecy privilege is inexcusable.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why would Obama reverse himself?

Ellsberg: He's a good politician. He said what he needed to say to get elected, and now he's just taking advantage of the office. Like any administration before, his administration caters to the profits of big corporations like BP and Goldman Sachs -- even though I think BP won't get off that easily this time. His early campaign contributions, the big corporate contributions, came from Wall Street. They got their money's worth.

In fact, during the campaign of 2008, three candidates were backed by Wall Street: Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. If you look at the rhetoric, the most promising was John Edwards. Too bad he turned out to be a jerk.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But Obama has been very verbal about his criticism of Wall Street.

Ellsberg: His actions are totally uncoupled from his public statements. I don't even listen anymore. He has turned 180 degrees. Another example: His promise to filibuster a law giving the phone companies legal immunity for any role they played in the Bush's domestic eavesdropping program. Then he not only voted not to filibuster it, he also voted for the law -- against the wishes of his backers.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you think that will backfire for the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections?

Ellsberg: I don't think what Obama is doing is the best way to get votes. But it's the best way to get campaign contributions.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You were the ultimate whistleblower. In 1971, you leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, revealing that the government was well aware the Vietnam War couldn't be won. You changed history but were vilified and prosecuted for it. Would you still do it today?

Ellsberg: I wouldn't wait that long. I would get a scanner and put them on the Internet.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Would that still have the same impact?

Ellsberg: If the Pentagon Papers came online today all at once, the government wouldn't be tempted to enjoin it. Back then, we got this long duel going between newspapers and the government. In the end, 19 newspapers ended up putting up parts of the documents, day after day after day. It created this ongoing scandal. I don't think it would have the same impact online as having it in the Times.

Yup. Ellsberg is in no position to KNOW explicitly the details of Prez Shamwow's deceptions via the War Dept, as he was when the Pentagon Papers passed through his hands in the late '60s. But his analysis of Prez. Shazama's domestic intel plans seem right on, in light of known facts and actions.

And he's right, too, that the imprimatur of the NYTimes added credibility to the revelations that would be/is absent from the on-line "news" environment.

Guess What? Campaign Ads DO Have Consequences

The CONSUMATE ad-man, Stan Freeberg, had already admitted to anyone who was paying attention that, contratry to the pious proclamations by ad school profs that ads were only supplying a demand for information (i shit you not), ads CREATED demand--and primarily by repetition...It makes a difference if you can buy five spots per hour, instead of only one or two.

Money talks; big ad buys affect poll results
BY BILL COTTERELL • FLORIDA CAPITAL BUREAU • JUNE 10, 2010

A new statewide poll shows Republican challenger Rick Scott has vaulted past Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum in the race for governor.

And Jeff Greene, another wealthy candidate financing his own first statewide race, has surged into a dead heat with U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami Gardens, in the U.S. Senate race.

"Mothers may tell their children that money can’t buy happiness, but what these results show is that money can buy enough television ads to make political neophytes serious contenders," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "It certainly doesn’t hurt with Greene or Scott that this is shaping up to be the year of the anti-establishment candidate."

The Quinnipiac Poll showed Scott, a wealthy Naples businessman who has been flooding television with advertisements, leading McCollum by double digits -- 44 percent to 31 percent -- in a GOP primary.

In the Democratic primary, Meek clings to a 29-27 percent lead over Greene, a Palm Beach County real estate investor who is another "deep pockets" newcomer financing his own campaign.

But there were large numbers of undecided voters in both parties. Quinnipiac said 60 percent in both parties said they could change their minds before the Aug. 24 primaries.

The winner of the Democratic Senate nomination will face Gov. Charlie Crist, running as an independent, and Republican Marco Rubio in November. The GOP nominee for goveror will face Democrat Alex Sink and independent Bud Chiles in the general election.

"Around the country, challengers to so-called career politicians seem to be doing well, and these showings by Scott and Greene certainly fit very well into that trend," said Brown.

Scott's television barrage has driven state Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, out of the race. His former company, Columbia/HCA, paid the largest Medicare fraud fine in history, $1.7 billion, while Scott was in charge -- which he mentions in some of his advertising, while saying he took responsibility although he was not criminally charged.

McCollum has recently putting out daily statements about Scott's "fraud files." A Quinnipiac poll on Wednesday indicated either McCollum and Scott would beat Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the likely Democratic nominee for governor, or independent challenger Lawton "Bud" Chiles.

Arizona's controversial immigration law looks like a big factor. Quinnpiac found that 86 percent of Republicans approve of it, and Scott promises in his advertisements to bring such a law to Florida. Those ads also feature a quote from McCollum, saying "we don't need that law" in Florida.

Despite his former company's fraud penalties, the poll said 40 percent of Republicans view Scott favorably and 12 percent disapprove of him, while 46 percent didn't know enough about him to form an opinion. McCollum, a Republican congressman for 20 years now running his fourth statewide race, was viewed favorably by only 41 percent of Republicans and unfavorably by 19 percent with 36 percent not having an opinion.

The poll was conducted last week among 814 Republicans and 785 Democrats. It has a margin of error or plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Pat Buchanan Would Have Gotten A Bonus...

if he'd said what Helen Thomas got fired for...

Column A

CF, the Precautionary Principle.

Some Slim Shred of Sanity Still Prevails In Prescott, AZ

A member of the City Council, a goitered, gloating gringo named Blair, had (operant case: past) a radio program on the local rightwing out-flow, on which he berated the city for prominently featuring the physiognomy of a child whose physical characteristics were distinctly non-caucasian. This 'diversity" drove Blair into a tizzy, and he prevailed upon the school-board, at least initially, to modify the image on the building, and lighten the skin-tone of the central and most prominent figure in the mural. The Board agreed, until the story hit the web and the national reaction began to pour into parochial, little Prescott.

"On June 5th, 2010 in Prescott, AZ, Miller Valley Elementary School principal Jeff Lane and Prescott Unified School District Superintendent Kevin Kapp admit they made a mistake and apologize for their decision to lighten children's faces on the "Go Green" mural painted on the side of the school."

Genau! EXACTLY Right!

By the end of his term, Prez Shamwow is supposed to become the most detested black man in America since Johnnie Cochran or OJ Simpson...and thereby prepare the way for the recrudescence of Bushevism--Jeb this time...

The Peace prize is the centerpiece of Shamwow's "legacy." It's set up as a kind of consolation prize. He's only gonna be a one-termer, but they'll give him a few token 'victories" to assure his "place in history." For example, he'll be remembered as "Rooseveltian": FDR for 'health care reform,' Teddy for "financial regulation reform," and wise and foreward-looking for an 'energy bill,' and maybe even an "immigration bill," so that when his only term ends in 2012, and he's become the most detested black in Americaq since OJ, he can still join the pantheon of noble black people in Murka, with MLK, and DuBois, and Washington, et al...the apotheosis of Tokenism.

The Case for "Clean Elections"

(Which misses the obvious point that if elections actually meant anything, the elites wouldn't let the Middull Murkin proletariat anywhere near a polling booth)

January 06, 2009 — "Clean Elections: Changing the Face of America" is a video narrated by journalis "Clean Elections: Changing the Face of America" is a video narrated by journalist Bill Moyers on the influence the Clean Elections movement--or publicly financed elections--has had on politics and campaigns in Maine, Arizona, and North Carolina. The video includes interviews from politicians and citizens from Arizona and Maine as well as comments from national organizations including Public Campaign, Common Cause, and Democracy Matters.