Cultural Revolution in the Making

I agree with Dr. Cole and his commenters. Jon Stewart is deluding himself. Against what's building up, moderation will get him- and all of us- exactly where we don't want to be.

The top 1% of the population owns 40% of the private wealth. There's the Cultural Revolution, goading the disinformed the same way they did before the last Civil War.

Roland in comments:

Why on earth is Jon Stewart calling for sweet reason at a time like this?

The top 1% isn’t listening to reason. Why should they? They got what they want. They like it this way. Unless someone makes them stop, they’ll just keep on going.

You could make a logically foolproof, superbly researched, cogently argued case for a more equitable wealth distribution, as maximizing long-term utility for everyone. But so what? Mr. or Ms. 1% would pretend to listen, nod a bit, and then reply, “Fine. Whatever. See ya.”

Sweet Reason only works when the interlocutors have some level of mutual respect. The top 1% currently has no respect whatsoever for the bottom 80%.

According to the ethical values of the top 1%, success is what makes you respectable. If you’re not successful, you’re just a loser, and simply not worth taking seriously.

If you’re not taken seriously, how can you employ Sweet Reason when discussing affairs with the top 1%? Answer: you can’t.

Or the top 1% wanna-bees. There's force behind the Cultural Revolution. Those that want it all, and can never really hope to have it, manipulated by those who have it already.

Alas, I don't think it is possible to make them stop. They own the government. They own the media. They have the world's greatest intelligence agencies, and the world's most ruthless people backing them up.

And as far as the border goes- if it gets that bad here, do you really think they will allow Canada to stay untouched?

The border might be good for awhile, but friends, if you leave, I'd advise you to keep on going. Because if it gets that bad- and if there's any money in it for the top 1%, it most assurredly will- America will suffer the same fate of every other hubristic Empire. In a nuclear world, that could get very bad indeed.

main$tream Village thought

In a nation where the main$tream denies or yawns at war crimes and smears the messenger, it's no surprise the main$tream advocates war with Iran to save the economy.

what is this "sanity" of which they speak?

Well, that's sane at least. But some of your other points? What is sane about turning your back on the Reptilian Party?

I'd really like to know.

So let's get this straight. It's not sane to want accountability from Bu$h-Cheney on the War in Iraq, and other war crime issues. It's not sane to ask if Obama is now guilty in this too. It's not sane to close Gitmo. It's not sane to uncover government crimes. It's not sane to chase down the bank$ters, either, for fraud or malfeasance. It's not sane to want to fund jobs instead of endless war.

Thanks for telling me what isn't sane. I wonder about this sanity, Jon Stewart. It strikes me as pretty crazy.

never steal anything small

the big lie on fraudclosure

Yesterday morning, I had The Misinformation Hour on TV as I got dressed for work. One of the comments that was made – “No one was wrongly thrown out of their home” — was repeated or ignored by hosts and guests alike.

This is patently demonstrably false, and yet no one challenged it.

The banks have gotten the Big Lie technique down to a science: State a lie so colossal that no one could believe anyone “has the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” In practice, adding factually accurate, but irrelevant or misleading color, helps push the lie on unsusp0ecting rubes.

The banks and their many supplicants have been successful in doing just that in the robosigning issue. Any discussion about property rights, due process, or criminal investigations into perjury are thwarted; instead, the focus is on deadbeat homeowners. And note that I am the guy who in Q1 2010 wrote More Foreclosures, Please . . .)

The misdirection is successful, and the average reader/viewer/listener has no idea how badly they are being misinformed.

Beyond property rights and due process, the issue of this legal impossibility of being wrongly foreclosed upon (absent fraud), are the bailouts. Saving broken business models managed incompetently by bad management is a recipe for more errors and angst.

Fraudclosure is a perfect example of this. When you save broken companies from their own incompetence, this is what you get.

We have no record of how many people have been erroneously foreclosed — the banks themselves are the only centralized source of that data, and they ain’t talking — but we have lots of anecdotal evidence.

The plural of anecdote is not data; what is needed is a central collection of all the anecdotal errors of false or erroneous foreclosure — someone with a national office, say a US Attorney’s or Congressman’s office...

Not gonna happen. The bank$ters own these people, too.

those who feed the madness

Money's behind the march to fascism. Don't ever doubt it.

I'll repeat my response here to Jack Crow's comment he doesn't want this country, anyway.

You live here. You have this country, and it has you.

No, there is not nobility amongst the Democrats. They are venal and corrupt. But it's the kind of corrupt that simply wants your money and obedience. You can fight that.

But what's brewing amongst the Tea Party Republicans the corporatists are stoking is a wholly different beast.



There howling madness there, a xenophobia used as an outlet for deep self-loathing and inadequacy. Instead of being a neo-Rome building a neo-empire, we could become the race of locusts some already see us as, stripping the earth bare and devouring all in our way. We both know that exists among us already.

You stand for it or against it. Voting Democrat is simply a tool to fight it for the moment. There are better, many of which I will not discuss here or anywhere it can be heard by the machine.

Reptilians Take Congress for Halloween

Trick or Treat



Monkeyfister thinks the bank$ters have won. There are estimates- not for the American public to read- that the reality is far worse than anyone will admit. But don't bother hoarding food and ammunition. The bank$ters own the Pentagon, and the toys they developed under Darth Rumsfeld make even AK-47s look silly.




"It can't happen here" say you. Let's hope you're right.

more things to look forward to with Tea Partying in 2011

104 Republicans In Congress Want To Privatize Social Security

Heckuva job, Larry!

...

perhaps an unfortunate reply.

this land ain't your land, this land ain't my land

...if the Congresscritters end birthright citizenship.

One wonders what the Company will do with all of us? Reservations? Concentrations camps? Soylent Green?

the most qualified

So what's an architect and profiteer of the mortgage meltdown bubble doing appointed as the One's National $ecurity Advisor?

Security, Securities, they're all the same thing. Once more, a Goldman-Sachs fox is rotated into a henhouse management position. In the coming austerity you can count on the Praetorians still getting their paychecks.

The American Dream

George Carlin, "...you have to be asleep to believe it."



Yes, I've linked to it before, but once is not enough for Carlin the Great, and who knows? Maybe the willfully ignorant might decide to wake up someday.

plumbing the way tricky Dicky would have liked

with plausible deniability...

Greenwald:

After Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, exposing the lies, brutality and inhumanity that drove America's role in the Vietnam War, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger infamously plotted to smear his reputation and destroy his credibility...

This weekend, WikiLeaks released over 400,000 classified documents of the Iraq War detailing genuinely horrific facts about massive civilian death, U.S. complicity in widespread Iraqi torture, systematic government deceit over body counts, and the slaughter of civilians by American forces about which Daniel Ellsberg himself said, as the New York Times put it: "many of the civilian deaths there could be counted as murder."

Predictably, just as happened with Ellsberg, there is now a major, coordinated effort underway to smear WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, and to malign his mental health -- all as a means of distracting attention away from these highly disturbing revelations and to impede the ability of WikiLeaks to further expose government secrets and wrongdoing with its leaks. But now, the smear campaign is led not by Executive Branch officials, but by members of the establishment media...

True enough, but let's not be premature on identifying this chain of command. The hacks at The New York Pravda or CNP (Cable News Pravda, what else?) aren't getting their orders from previous Executive Office occupants any more than they're getting them from the current occupants. They aren't just doing this to preserve their reputations or their sources of information, although as cheerleaders for the endless war they're certainly doing that.

Follow the money. Follow the money. The real puppeteers are those that are profiting from the endless war, the ones who decided to use 9-11 as a new Pearl Harbor, whether they planned ahead of it like Cheneyburton or simply used the militarization for fun and profit like Goldman-Sachs. They don't have to give the order for the hit on Assange. They have too many sycophants ready to do it for them.

n-dimensional chess only profits the players

...so I am in no way comforted in hearing that by letting the Reptilians win the DINOcrats gain.

And the example they give? Newt and Slick Willie? More punditocratic fecal matter spoon-fed to the gullible to appease their pwners.

This comment by Phoenician in a time of Romans on this $ystem-gaming:

...One of the best ways, of course, is to create one side with all the cash, make it look like two sides, and prevent any meaningful authentic third side from coming into play. If voters are given a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, well, you don’t really care which they choose.

Bonus points if you can get the more easily excited screaming that Tweedledee is the Devil…

Check, and mate.

when you act as you think, it's the missing link

Synchronicity is what we are being programmed against.

via Avedon, the question raised by Dead Head Daisy:

...Why has the right-wing Tea Party movement been so successful in cashing in on class resentment?

Where is the Left in these harsh economic times?

I have decided the Left is largely IN ABSENTIA because the American Left now comes from the elite class itself; their political convictions are basically a reflection of the warmed-over liberalism they obediently ingested while attending Good Colleges. They believe what they believe out of a sense of common decency, fairness and goodness. But not because most American Leftists have experienced classism themselves.

In fact, most have NOT.

The Left is therefore doing it FOR the poor bedraggled working classes... not for themselves. (They do not feel personally disenfranchised, they feel they are speaking up FOR the disenfranchised.)

And this is why they keep getting it wrong...

Well, yeah. That, and the Company's ad men.

War and Rumor of War

Ian Welsh tells me I can either be a liberal or a Democrat.

Either/ or, huh? That's a fallacy to me. How about a third option like "none of the above".

Evidence has it Obama is guilty of many war crimes. He's a Company man, stoking the Company war machine. Like him, the Democratic Congress loves the Endless War and is largely bought by the bank$ters, too. Don't give me all that silliness about Hillary. She, and her Big Dog before her, were simply slicker than Obama. Don't forget who brought Larry Summers to the table in the first place. Don't forget who started blowing the financial bubbles in real estate, with the help of Cisneros.

But I voted for that Dog twice, and Al Gore, too, although I think Al Gore is a fraud. But I'd vote for him again, or Hillary, if she ran against a Republican.

Yes, voting for the Democrats is simply putting off the day the Republicans get control of the national $ecurity state again, voting the Democrats in will only allow the fascists to tighten their grip unnoticed by the main$tream.

Why do I want to vote for the Democrats? Over Republicans?

Because the deterioration of society accelerates faster under the Republicans. Because it really is the economy. Because with time under Democratic administrations a greater fraction of the people are able to feed their kids. Because this isn't a perfect world, and although I'd damn sure vote for one if it was out there, I think the $ystem is owned by the Company.

I don't think you can be part of the $ystem if you aren't.

There is a real difference between politicians who know they're evil, rue it, and try to muddle through the best they can, and politicians who are simply ignorant and evil, or intelligently sociopathically evil.

FDR lied us into World War II and brushed aside civil rights. He also helped create jobs that fed a desperate nation, regulated the bank$ters, planted a billion trees as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps, effecting a massive ecological change that likely kept the midwest from becoming the same kind of desert as the middle east and (unbeknownst to him) delaying global warming.

Or maybe he only slowed down the inevitable- the feudalization of American society, the pauperization of a nation, the decay of the environment. Maybe we should just lie down, slash our wrists, and let the crocodilian Republicans devour us.

I think the way to avoid the inevitable is to, you know, avoid it.

Vote Democratic in November. Maybe we'll pithe the big reptiles when they aren't looking.

No Witnesses

...surviving, that is.

...the Justice Department on Monday said that it would not seek murder charges against Andrew J. Moonen, a Blackwater armorer accused of killing a guard assigned to an Iraqi vice president on Dec. 24, 2006. Justice officials said that they were abandoning the case after an investigation that began in early 2007, and included trips to Baghdad by federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents to interview Iraqi witnesses.

The government’s decision to drop the Moonen case follows a series of failures by prosecutors around the country in cases aimed at former personnel of Blackwater, which is now known as Xe Services. In September, a Virginia jury was unable to reach a verdict in the murder trial of two former Blackwater guards accused of killing two Afghan civilians. Late last year, charges were dismissed against five former Blackwater guards who had been indicted on manslaughter and related weapons charges in a September 2007 shooting incident in Nisour Square in Baghdad, in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed.

Interviews with lawyers involved in the cases, outside legal experts and a review of some records show that federal prosecutors have failed to overcome a series of legal hurdles, including the difficulties of obtaining evidence in war zones, of gaining proper jurisdiction for prosecutions in American civilian courts, and of overcoming immunity deals given to defendants by American officials on the scene...

Besides, how can you conduct a global War on Terra without legally immune mercenary storm troopers?

Or patriotic slave labor?

...Easily tens of thousands of blacks served the Confederacy as laborers, teamsters, cooks and even as soldiers. Some estimates indicate 25 percent of free blacks and 15 percent of slaves actively supported the South during the war. Why? Blacks served the South because it was their home....

That, or being loyally hung or gut shot if they didn't. Patriotism is an 'Merikan moral value. The Iraqis still throw roses at our mercenaries when they come into town from the oilfields, too, and doubtless decline to witness against Blackwater/ Xe/ Orcs, Inc. because of their own patriotic love.

"...You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?"

Well, yeah sure you betcha, dimples.

She's not simply stupid. She's deeply ignorant, and likely it's self-enforced. There are deep psychoses in those baby brown eyes and that pearly white smile.

obviously did not play well with others

General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired in the Bu$h administration, too. But this occurred under Clinton:

Early on in my days as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we had small, weekly White House breakfasts in National Security Advisor Sandy Berger’s office that included me, Sandy, Bill Cohen (Secretary of Defense), Madeleine Albright (Secretary of State), George Tenet (head of the CIA), Leon Firth (VP chief of staff for security), Bill Richardson (ambassador to the U.N.), and a few other senior administration officials. These were informal sessions where we would gather around Berger’s table and talk about concerns over coffee and breakfast served by the White House dining facility. It was a comfortable setting that encouraged brainstorming of potential options on a variety of issues of the day.

During that time we had U-2 aircraft on reconnaissance sorties over Iraq. These planes were designed to fly at extremely high speeds and altitudes (over seventy thousand feet) both for pilot safety and to avoid detection.

At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, “Hugh, I know I shouldn’t even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough — and slow enough — so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?”

The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode. I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, “Of course we can ...” which prompted a big smile on the official’s face.

“You can?” was the excited reply.

“Why, of course we can,” I countered. “Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go.”

The official reeled back and immediately the smile disappeared. “I knew I should not have asked that....”

“No, you should not have,” I strongly agreed, still shocked at the disrespect and sheer audacity of the question. “Remember, there is one of our great Americans flying that U-2, and you are asking me to intentionally send him or her to their death for an opportunity to kick Saddam. The last time I checked, we don’t operate like that here in America.”

Obviously he could not fit in or function in Petraeus Caesar's Pentagon not being a Team Merika playah.

glorious, ain't it?

As Chris Floyd calls him, the most decorated General who's never won a war has another victory for the advocates of the Long War:

BAQUBA, Iraq — Members of United States-allied Awakening Councils have quit or been dismissed from their positions in significant numbers in recent months, prey to an intensive recruitment campaign by the Sunni insurgency, according to government officials, current and former members of the Awakening and insurgents.

Although there are no firm figures, security and political officials say hundreds of the well-disciplined fighters — many of whom have gained extensive knowledge about the American military — appear to have rejoined Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Beyond that, officials say that even many of the Awakening fighters still on the Iraqi government payroll, possibly thousands of them, covertly aid the insurgency...

Now one thing that's only been mentioned in The New York Pravda is that "the end of combat operations" in Iraq has only been possible because we've pulled out of the cities and consolidated our troops and mercenaries around the oilfields. That, and we've been paying the Sunni a lot of cash to stay off our backs.

Looks like the price of "peace" just went up, and the Pentagon paymasters don't have the spare change budgeted for it yet.

But be of good cheer for the war machine. After all, as Petraeus Caesar told the One, "You have to recognize also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting ... You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."

You know it's all about the Glory of the Struggle for these guys, and, of course, the money in their pockets, for the rest of their lives.

it's no surprise they've got it exactly backwards

When Germans start saying some things you had best be a little alarmed.

Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed", Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

In a speech in Potsdam, she said the so-called "multikulti" concept - where people would "live side-by-side" happily - did not work.

Mrs Merkel's comments come amid recent outpourings of strong anti-immigrant feeling from mainstream politicians.

A recent survey showed that more than 30% of Germans believed Germany was "overrun by foreigners".

Mrs Merkel told a gathering of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party on Saturday that at "the beginning of the 60s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country... We kidded ourselves a while, we said: 'They won't stay, sometime they will be gone', but this isn't reality.

"And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other... has failed, utterly failed."

In her speech, the chancellor specifically referred to recent comments by German President Christian Wulff who said that Islam was "part of Germany" like Christianity and Judaism...

Although in both Germany and Europe muslims may soon be required to sew a yellow crescent moon on their clothes...

The issue that all the Righteous right, whether in Germany or living right here gloss over that it's multinational corporations ruining society. Their quest for nearly free labor leads to the export of good jobs everywhere, and the import of cheap labor everywhere. It leads to slave labor among those able to hold on to work in virtually every industry, and an aspiring class of people with all the morals and restraint a school of sharks in a feeding frenzy.

However, this is all very good news to the military-industrial complex in 'Merika.

Not only can they continue scapegoat the brown people, if they really start freaking again, they can bomb and re-invade the Germans with impunity, too.

“An investigation into China’s illegal subsidies for its clean energy industry is overdue..."

-Little Chuckie

Economic bellyaching and war machine saber-rattling aside, it scares the Jeebus out of Those Who Would Rule us that Team Xinhua might come up with ways to power its industrial might without fossil fuels.

It kind of throws their whole 50 year plan into the ditch.

Biogenic petrochemicals and geopower before their time. Hell, the Xinhuans might even start making it to the moon on a regular basis while Petraeus Caesar is still trying to win that little dust-up in IraqiIraniAfghaniPakistan for Exxon-Mobile. Can't have that, can we?

They Write Letters

October 14, 2010

Robert S. Mueller III
Director Federal Bureau of Investigation
935 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20535

Robert O'Neill
US Attorney
Central District of Florida
400 North Tampa Street, Suite 3200
Tampa, FL 33602



Dear US Attorney Robert O'Neill and Director Mueller,

When it comes to foreclosures, there is mounting evidence of a state of rampant lawlessness in Central Florida. There are increasing signs that big banks routinely evade laws meant to protect homeowners, in many well-documented cases of ‘foreclosure fraud’. Despite the demonstrated existence, for instance, of ‘robosigners’ signing affidavits attesting to documents that they have never seen, the parties engaging in such misconduct are not being brought to justice. Big banks are mischaracterizing this as mere “technical problems,” and apologizing only where there is clear and very public evidence of harm.

It is not enough for big banks only to apologize for fraud, perjury, and even breaking and entering – when they are caught. It is time for handcuffs. Fraud does not become legal just because a big bank does it.

On September 20, 2010, after my office found evidence of systemic foreclosure fraud perpetrated by big banks and foreclosure mills, I called for a halt to illegal foreclosures.

Since then, big banks such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, GMAC, PNC and others have suspended foreclosures or foreclosure sales. These banks are still claiming that the massive fraud they have perpetrated amounts to nothing more than a series of technical mistakes. This is absurd. This is deliberate, systemic fraud, and it is a crime.

To give but two of the many available examples, attached is a deposition from an ex-employee of one of the largest ‘foreclosure mills’ in the state, the Law Offices of David Stern. In it, this employee testifies under oath that it was routine for that office to falsify documents regarding military records, in order to move foreclosure cases along more quickly.

The local media has reported on the case of Nancy Jacobini; a contractor for JP Morgan Chase broke into her home after the bank mistakenly foreclosed on it. JP Morgan Chase ‘apologized’ for terrifying her. But we do not have an apology-based legal system; we have a system of laws. I am writing to ask you to enforce them.

The organized and systematic manufacturing of falsified documents to deprive people of their homes is not only a threat to the integrity of the legal system. It also aggravates and extends the weakness in the housing market. Who is going to feel comfortable buying a home if a big bank can simply take it, whether or not that bank has a right to it? Given the securitization of mortgage-backed securities, this misconduct is a threat to our securities markets as well. But fundamentally, this is a question of protecting basic property rights – if you don’t own it, then you shouldn’t try to take it. Without clear property rights, and a legal system that insists on clear proof of those rights before transferring ownership by force, the economy will fall apart.

If perpetrators of perjured affidavits and other systematic criminal activity can get off simply with civil liability -- or even less, an insincere bureaucratic apology -- the freedom that Americans enjoy will erode quickly in the face of lawless seizures of property. I appreciate your work on the joint Middle District of Florida’s Mortgage Fraud Initiative, and respectfully request that the efforts of your offices turn towards reining in this rampant criminality.



Regards,



Alan Grayson
Member of Congress

Congressman Grayson, are you aware that the psychologist who is most associated with the study of "learned helplessness" is a private contractor for the Pentagon?

Can you think of any other reason why the government would allow this situation to continue?

Just askin', sir. Keep up the noise.

Neo-Feudal Overlords Will Be Neo-Feudal Overlords

Digby, it's an idea, but if the bank$ters go to jail, they'll try to drag every defaulting debtor in the country with them. The $ecurity-industrial complex that now has its claws on our government will be more than happy to accommodate them with tasers.

But behaving like Iceland? One of your commentors, Graham Firchlis, excitedly says

...Iceland is a small country; those 8,000 protestors represent 2.5% of the population. An equivalent assembly in the US would number 7.75 million. If nearly 8 million people descended in protest on DC, the party in power and the opposition would both feel highly motivated...

Well, yes, they'd be motivated to pull out their non-lethal weapons, microwave rays, tazers, acoustic weapons, all kinds of experimental goodies they've been planning to use on troublesome civilians since Cheney got in office. Likely before. Concentration Internment camps. Martial law, at long last. They've been looking for an excuse, and they've known it's coming.

Why else have they been planning for it for so long? The Company specializes in Intelligence. You seriously think they don't realize what their owners have been doing to the people of this country, and how the people have been likely to respond?

That's a bit part of the reason for Faux News. Dis information and misinformation works wonders on those who are inclined to hate. They've very effectively channeled the outrage of many of the proles into the Tea Party between the venality of the Democrats and the Republican appeal to fear.

They wouldn't mind half of America imprisoned just to make sure the other half sweats even harder for better chocorations.

the illusion of delusion

The reality being, of course, both evil and stupid.

It's not just the Oborg.

It's Harry Reid

"Maybe after the elections we can get some more Republicans to help us on these issues," Reid, a Democrat, told reporters in a teleconference on Tuesday.

On the other side, it's what's called the "U.S." Chamber of Commerce.

One thing everyone should get straight, nothing the Democrats or the Republicans do is really aimed at the well-being of the people we call "Americans". It is aimed at the well-being of the Companies that benefit from the neo-lib/neo-con government of the Empire that calls itself "American". These are two very different things.

only the devil worries about details

This seems to be the latest Faux Party line, the Party owned by Rubert Murdoch.

When it came to the actual details of governing, Senator Russ Feingold, a Democrat of Wisconsin, trounced his Republican challenger, Ron Johnson, in a debate in Wausau, Wis., on Monday night. He knew that the new health care law will not reduce Medicare spending but will slow its staggering rate of growth. He knew that a vast majority of small businesses would not pay higher taxes if rates went up on the wealthy and that global warming isn’t caused by sunspots. He knew that without the 2009 stimulus there would be at least 1.5 million fewer people with jobs.

Mr. Johnson, on the other hand, proudly proclaimed recently that he doesn’t “think this election is about details.” That’s as good an explanation as any of why — in Wisconsin as in so many states — candidates like Mr. Johnson are ahead in the polls. Insurgent Republicans don’t need details when they can play on the furious emotions of voters who have been misled into believing that positive changes like the health care law are catastrophic failures.

The public’s lack of attention to detail, and Mr. Johnson’s willingness to exploit it, could end the career of Mr. Feingold, who in three terms has distinguished himself for trying to bring fairness to campaign finance and decency to national security, among other achievements. He has routinely crossed party lines to work with Republicans and has had the courage to break with his own party more often than almost any other senator.

He voted against confirming Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary, citing Mr. Geithner’s personal tax issues. He refused to support the Wall Street reform package because it did not go far enough. He was the only senator who voted against the misguided Patriot Act in 2001. He has supported gun rights — more than we like — and has opposed hate crime measures.

Mr. Feingold’s independent mind, and his refusal to follow the big-money line on issues like trade, campaign finance and Wall Street reform, should have endeared him to Tea Party members and other independents who are angry at Washington conformists. If they had taken the time to listen.

Instead, they are supporting Mr. Johnson, a wealthy plastics manufacturer unknown to them six months ago. Mr. Johnson says he had long believed government restricted business and individual liberties (we’re not clear which ones he has in mind) but decided to run for office when the health care bill was passed, claiming that President Obama was trying to create a socialist state.

At the debate, Mr. Johnson called the bill “an incredibly expensive overreach.” When Mr. Feingold noted that it would provide coverage for pre-existing conditions and allow young people to remain on their parents’ policies, Mr. Johnson said that it created too much paperwork for small businesses. While dishing out untruths, he said Mr. Feingold voted to cut Medicare benefits, which he has also said in a mailing to older voters.

Many Democrats are running away from their solid accomplishments of the last two years, apologizing for their association with President Obama. Mr. Feingold is one of the very few with the self-confidence to offer a full-throated defense of his votes.

But the Wisconsin electorate he faces seems to have lost its progressive streak and become more like other Midwestern states. Several polls have shown that the number of likely voters who consider themselves conservative has risen from a quarter of the electorate to nearly half. The misinformation and simplistic solutions propounded by talk radio and the Republican Party are having an effect even in a state that preferred Mr. Obama by 14 points two years ago.

Around the country, the Obama voters who were so energized in 2008 are rueful and dispirited, taking their cue from the timid races run by so many fearful Democratic candidates. Mr. Feingold is making the case that there is a choice to make on Nov. 2 and that there is a need for thoughtful voices in Washington.

The Editors of The New York Pravda have in fact had a lot to do with the attitude of the Democratic elites. The weakness of the Democrats has a lot to do with the lack of support of the Wall Street financial sector for any policies that might cut into their profit margins. They largely supported Obama over the 2008 Republican ticket because global thermonuclear conflagration was bad for the bottom line.

On the other hand, running the rest of the country into the ground is not bad at all for the bank$ters. It supplies an endless source of servants and sycophants. It will do so right up to the point where the Praetorian guard gets tired of taking orders from them.

At that point, Gore Vidal's predictions will come full circle, the devil will claim his due, and we'll become a dictatorship to soothe the troubled minds of those of us who can't be bothered with nuance and detail.

let the wrong one in

Once again, a reptile-brained policy of the Democrats has unleashed a Republican corporate Godzilla:

...Stoking the flow of dollars has been the guarantee of secrecy afforded by certain nonprofit groups. Mel Sembler, a shopping mall magnate in St. Petersburg, Fla., who is close to the Republican strategist Karl Rove, said wealthy donors had written six- and seven-figure checks to Crossroads GPS, a Rove-backed group that is the most active of the nonprofits started this year. Republicans close to the group said that last week, the group received a check for several million dollars from a single donor, whom they declined to identify.

“I think most people are very comfortable giving anonymously,” Mr. Sembler said. “They want to be able to be helpful but not be seen by the public as taking sides.”

Republicans involved in Crossroads say the groups owe their fund-raising success to a hope that a Republican Congress would undo some of the Obama administration agenda. But they also credit their fund-raising strategy...

The Obama-Poppy Bu$h agenda being too liberal, doubtless. When are the Democrats going to realize sucking up to Daddy Warbucks doesn't make Daddy love you?

...Mr. Rove and Mr. Gillespie helped organize Crossroads GPS under the provision that allows donors to give anonymously. A Republican operative who speaks frequently with Mr. Rove said the public donations, revealed over the summer, were used as “a way to energize others to give large amounts anonymously.”

The operative added, “It has worked like a charm.”

The surge of anonymous money is the latest development in corporate America’s efforts to influence the agenda in Washington, following rules enacted several years ago banning large, unregulated gifts to political parties. Democrats first established so-called third-party groups that could legally accept unlimited money from business and unions, though most had to disclose donors. Now, as new laws and a major Supreme Court decision have removed barriers to corporate giving, Republican operatives have embraced the use of nonprofit issue groups that can keep donors’ identities secret...

...The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which does not identify its corporate members, spent $10 million over the last week on advertisements, mostly against Democrats, records show. The chamber will most likely meet its fund-raising goal of $75 million, more than double what it spent on the 2008 campaign, Republican operatives say...

Charmed, indeed.

more and better Democrats are the only hope in the short term

Case in point, a tea bagger target:

...At least 90,000 residential and commercial foreclosure notices will be filed in Ohio this year. Pension funds for teachers, secretaries and janitors have suffered grave losses. And multitudes of the unemployed in Ohio now speak of turning to prayer.

Ohio’s attorney general, Richard Cordray, might be seen as their pinstriped avenger.

“There’s a belief here that Wall Street is a fixed casino and it’s back in business, and we’re left holding the bag,” said Mr. Cordray, whose office overlooks East Broad. “It’s important for us to show we’ll go after a company that does wrong.”

Mr. Cordray in two years in office has demonstrated a willingness to sue early and often, filing lawsuits against global financial houses, rating agencies, subprime lenders and foreclosure scammers. He has wrested about $2 billion so far, a string of gilded pelts: a $475 million Merrill Lynch settlement, $400 million from Marsh & McLennan and $725 million from the American International Group.

Last week, he filed suit against GMAC Mortgage, accusing the loan servicer of filing fraudulent affidavits in hundreds of Ohio foreclosures.

His office has returned money to investors, pension funds, schools and cities. And he has directed millions to agencies fighting foreclosure.

“We see what Washington doesn’t: the houses lying vacant, the eyesore stripped for copper piping with mattresses out back,” Mr. Cordray says. “We bailed out irresponsible banks, but we forgot about everyone else.”

His opponent at the mid-term elections?

...Some express skepticism, suggesting that such lawsuits are emotionally pleasing but economically destructive. Former Senator Michael DeWine, a Republican who is running against Mr. Cordray, a Democrat, in the November election, has implied that Mr. Cordray wields an antibusiness cudgel. Better to rely on federal regulators, others argue, to constrain global corporations...

There you have it. The Democrats are not uniformly honest or selfless. But the Republicans are at least a hundred times worse in the thefts they perpetuate.

pot sees kettle and is alarmed by its attitude

The New York Pravda wants you to feel the fear of the mighty Team Xinhua.

Imagine, the Chinese actually want to project military influence across the world. One just can't imagine where they got that idea, Mr. Gates. One infers that the One may have gotten his bellyful of Poppy Bu$h's policy advocates, and as a result, all kinds of misgivings are being voiced, discreetly of course. Said advocates are being politely shown the door, and leaving grumbling of the "disarray" in the White House.

Gravitas always works that way. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Mr. Gates. We'd hate to have an Incident.

Luckily for the acolytes, Petraeus Caesar remains to do the bidding of the Old Ones. Hopefully for the rest of us the dogs of war will have a chance of being leashed now. I wouldn't count on it, though.

Krugthulhu Speaks

You listen:

...if job-creating government spending has failed to bring down unemployment in the Obama era, it’s not because it doesn’t work; it’s because it wasn’t tried.

Unspeakable horror.

kinda like terra'ists

WASHINGTON – A top White House adviser questioned the need Sunday for a blanket stoppage of all home foreclosures, even as pressure grows on the Obama administration to do something about mounting evidence that banks have used inaccurate documents to evict homeowners.

"It is a serious problem," said David Axelrod, who contended that the flawed paperwork is hurting the nation's housing market as well as lending institutions. But he added, "I'm not sure about a national moratorium because there are in fact valid foreclosures that probably should go forward" because their documents are accurate...

Who really cares if they're all just a little bit illegal, right?

This is like Gitmo. Gotta keep hundreds of prisoners without habeas corpus, right, 'cause one or two of 'em might be terra'ists.

Or the War in IraqAfghanistanIran. There have to be weapons of mass destruction out there somewhere. Or someone who wants to use them. Might as well kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out.

You can see the day when property values might start rising in old neighborhoods where the mom and pop families are 29 years into their 30 year mortgages, and the bank$ters just throw them out on the street- because they might not be able to make projected possible elevated escrow payments above their mortgages.

Of course, count on the main$tream to back 'em all the way. The bank$ters, that is.

That's just how it's done in 'Merika today.

...All across Europe, thousands of people have been taking to the streets in angry protests against the “austerity measures” being imposed upon them by their governments. A general strike in Spain. Mass protests in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, France, Lithuania, Belgium and several other nations. Legislators in Iceland had to literally run and hide from their own citizens at the opening of the nation’s parliament this week.

Why, ask the outraged crowds, should our lives be degraded in order to pay for the crimes and follies of the financial elite –- who are richer, more powerful and more arrogant than ever today, despite having plunged the world into economic catastrophe?

The Europeans, forever cast in American myth as fey, feckless, wine-sipping weaklings, have roused themselves to such an extent that the UN is now warning of years of "social unrest" due to the policies of the austerity zealots -- policies which are greatly exacerbating unemployment (with all the inevitable knock-on effects throughout the economy), while severely corroding the physical and social infrastructure of whole nations. Although the European public might be compelled to submit in the end -- by brute force, if necessary, as governments call out club-wielding cops to put down dissent -- at least they are not going quietly.

The same can't be said for the big, bold, burly American public, who for years have meekly submitted to the ever-accelerating deterioration of their lives and communities with nary a peep of protest. Trillions of their dollars are spent on murderous, pointless, wasteful rampages of war-profiteering in foreign lands, on obscene handouts and "guarantees" for the silk-suited scamsters of Wall Street, and on the monstrous expansion of a covert security apparatus that is seeking to invade and control every aspect of their lives -- but the American people say nothing and do nothing.

But perhaps we are being unfair in such a harsh judgment. After all, it's not entirely true that Americans have completely eschewed protest, is it? In fact, the news has been filled with stories of mass protests across the United States for months on end, with angry citizens taking to the streets -- and the ballot boxes -- to register their stern displeasure.

And what has displeased them so, what has moved them from the quiet simmering of discontent to explosions of public protest? Is it those trillions spent on pointless wars? Is it the coddling of the super-rich? Is it the degradation of their daily lives, and the darkening of their children's future by endless war and lost opportunities in a system skewed sharply -- and punitively -- toward the needs and greeds of powerful elites? Is it the runaway encroachment of civil liberties? Is it mass unemployment, and the relentless rollback of public services essential to a dignified and civilized life?

No, it is none of these. While the Europeans protest for jobs and dignity, Americans pour out into the streets in angry demonstrations against the very idea of helping the poor and the economically devastated, or putting the slightest restraint on the rapacious super-rich. The Europeans protest actual policies, while our American "dissidents" froth and rant about a fantasy world of "socialist" programs that only benefit shiftless darkies and sneaky, border-crossing 'Messicans -- and, of course, the devil-worshiping Muslims, who are plotting every hour to poison the precious bodily fluids of real Americans and take over the country from within...

How can you have a political movement where all the politics depends on the financial largesse of bank$ters?

"...to our knowledge the FBI has no sense of humor..."

Dennis, stay out of small airplanes.

Following the revelation that an FBI informant may have opened fire just before the 1970 massacre of four anti-war students by members of the US National Guard, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has opened a probe into the events, requesting key documents from the FBI in a letter delivered Saturday morning.

A Friday report by The Cleveland Plain Dealer cites audio forensics experts in claiming that shots matching the acoustic signature of a .38 caliber pistol rang out some 70 seconds before Ohio Guardsmen opened fire on the crowd of students protesting the Vietnam war.

The discovery could finally solve the mystery of who fired first that fateful day -- and why.

"Earlier this year, [audio expert Stuart] Allen and colleague Tom Owen examined the recording at The Plain Dealer's request and determined that Guardsmen were given an order to prepare to fire moments before they unleashed a 13-second fusillade of rifle shots at a May 4, 1970 demonstration that killed four students and wounded nine others," the paper noted. "What compelled the Guard to shoot is the central mystery of the iconic event, which galvanized sentiment against the Vietnam War."

After months of research and analysis of audio discovered in 2007, the paper said it believes FBI informant Terry Norman, pictured above, could have fired four rounds during an altercation just before Guard troops shot into the crowd.

Norman told investigators at the time that he hadn't fired his gun, but he's pictured in television news footage from that day wearing a gas mask and waving a .38-caliber pistol...

One can only speculate how long it will be until Congressman Kucinich gets neuralized by the Men in Black.

showing the entrepreneurial spirit

Wall Street's got nothing to teach these boys:

Nato supply convoys travelling through Pakistan to Afghanistan have regularly come under attack in the past, but following Pakistan's decision to block their route through the Khyber Pass, they now face an even bigger security threat.

Hundreds of tankers and trucks have been left stranded on highways and depots across Pakistan, with little or no security.

Taliban militants have regularly been targeting the convoys, even when they are heavily protected.

But many believe it is not just the militants who pose a security threat to the convoys.

The owners of oil tankers being used to supply fuel to Nato in Afghanistan say some of the attacks on their convoys are suspicious.

They say there is evidence to suggest that bombs have been planted in many of vehicles by the "Nato contractors" - individuals or companies who have been contracted by Nato to supply fuel and goods to forces in Afghanistan.

The contractors subsequently hire the transporters who then carry the goods.

Dost Mohammad, an oil tanker owner from Nowshera district, said a Nato contractor had recently been caught trying to plant a bomb in an oil tanker.

"This happened in the area of Paiyee, when he was putting the bomb under the vehicle."

"At that time, a few men also opened fire on the tankers. The deputy later told the police that he had been told to plant the bomb by the contractor."

Dost Mohammad said the contractor had apparently sold off the fuel first.

"Only 2,000 litres from the original 50,000 litres had been left in the tanker to cover up the crime," he said.

Dost Mohammad said it is a win-win situation for the contractors.

"If an old vehicle is burnt, Nato gives them money for a new vehicle. In addition, they receive compensation for all the fuel lost as well..."

The Pentagon thinks they're having problems teaching people western ways in the Af-Pak theater. Well, it's impossible to lay down that same old boogie-woogie on the Kings of Rock and Roll.

the cost and benefits of Empire

Bob Herbert is starting to get in the face of the Imperial Villagers, but I don't think he's really considered their strategery:

We can go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and threaten to blow Iran off the face of the planet. We can conduct a nonstop campaign of drone and helicopter attacks in Pakistan and run a network of secret prisons around the world. We are the mightiest nation mankind has ever seen.

But we can’t seem to build a railroad tunnel to carry commuters between New Jersey and New York.

The United States is not just losing its capacity to do great things. It’s losing its soul. It’s speeding down an increasingly rubble-strewn path to a region where being second rate is good enough.

The railroad tunnel was the kind of infrastructure project that used to get done in the United States almost as a matter of routine. It was a big and expensive project, but the payoff would have been huge. It would have reduced congestion and pollution in the New York-New Jersey corridor. It would have generated economic activity and put thousands of people to work. It would have enabled twice as many passengers to ride the trains on that heavily traveled route between the two states.

The project had been in the works for 20 years, and ground had already been broken when the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, rejected the project on Thursday, saying that his state could not afford its share of the costs. Extreme pressure is being exerted from federal officials and others to get Mr. Christie to change his mind, but, as of now, the project is a no-go.

This is a railroad tunnel we’re talking about. We’re not trying to go to the Moon. This is not the Manhattan Project. It’s a railroad tunnel that’s needed to take people back and forth to work and to ease the pressure on the existing tunnel, a wilting two-track facility that’s about 100 years old. What is the matter with us?

The Chinese could build it. The Turks could build it. We can’t build it.

One day after Governor Christie made his devastating announcement about the tunnel, the U.S. Labor Department released its latest unemployment statistics. They show that the nation remains locked in an employment crisis, unable to provide work for millions who want and need it. One of the major potential solutions to this crisis is all around us. America’s infrastructure is indisputably in sorry shape, and upgrading it to meet the needs of the 21st century is far and away the best strategy for putting people back to work.

The railroad tunnel project, all set and ready to go, would have provided jobs for 6,000 construction workers, not to mention all the residual employment that accompanies such projects. What we’ll get instead, if it is not built, is the increased pollution and worsening traffic jams that result when tens of thousands of commuters who would have preferred to take the train are redirected to their automobiles...

Ah, but it's a win-win situation for Imperial policy and the policymakers. Aside from the hundreds of billions of dollars it funnels into the war machine, dereliction of infrastructure keeps unemployment high, making the serfs clawing to keep their status as chattels of the Company, sweating long hours for relatively meager pay. It's not a bug of the Endless War. It's a feature.

would you buy a used war from this man?

It seems the UK doesn't this time:

...A US terror alert issued this week about al-Qaida plots to attack targets in western Europe was politically motivated and not based on credible new information, senior Pakistani diplomats and European intelligence officials have told the Guardian.

The non-specific US warning, which despite its vagueness led Britain, France and other countries to raise their overseas terror alert levels, was an attempt to justify a recent escalation in US drone and helicopter attacks inside Pakistan that have "set the country on fire", said Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the high commissioner to Britain.

Hasan, a veteran diplomat who is close to Pakistan's president, suggested the Obama administration was playing politics with the terror threat before next month's midterm congressional elections, in which the Republicans are expected to make big gains.

He also claimed President Obama was reacting to pressure to demonstrate that his Afghan war strategy and this year's troop surge, which are unpopular with the American public, were necessary.

"I will not deny the fact that there may be internal political dynamics, including the forthcoming midterm American elections. If the Americans have definite information about terrorists and al-Qaida people, we should be provided [with] that and we could go after them ourselves," Hasan said.

"Such reports are a mixture of frustrations, ineptitude and lack of appreciation of ground realities. Any attempt to infringe the sovereignty of Pakistan would not bring about stability in Afghanistan, which is presumably the primary objective of the American and Nato forces."

Dismissing claims of a developed, co-ordinated plot aimed at Britain, France and Germany, European intelligence officials also pointed the finger at the US, and specifically at the White House. "To stitch together [the terror plot claims] in a seamless narrative is nonsensical," said one well-placed official...

Serving Man

Serco



I imagine they've written a cookbook, too.

simple facts

The truth about terrorism is that it always ends up benefiting the people who drive the war machine.



via Cryptogon.

It's the difference between Bad and Worse

...which is sharper than the difference between Good and Better.

Bob Herbert thinks there's a difference:

...Both major parties have, with great enthusiasm, turned more and more of the government over to corporate and banking interests. But the G.O.P., with Mr. Boehner currently the point person, is fanatical about it, has barely tried to hide its willingness to offer up the government wholesale, no questions asked.

Just this past July, Mr. Boehner called for a moratorium on new federal regulations, saying it would be “a wonderful signal to the private sector that they’re going to have some breathing room.” Talk about an invitation to a nightmare. Try imagining how the public would be treated by banks, energy companies, food processors and myriad other powerful entities if the federal government were forced by law to ignore even more of their predations.

That’s Mr. Boehner, for you — always willing to stick his neck out for the elite. When it comes to policies of particular concern to ordinary individuals and families, however, his generosity of spirit and passionate willingness to help vanishes. He believes, for example, that Americans who are at least 20 years away from retirement should be unable to receive Social Security before they are 70, and that Social Security benefits should be means-tested.

Mr. Boehner and his pals also opposed the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection created by the Wall Street financial overhaul. Protect the public? You must be kidding.

The U.S. is in terrible shape right now because far too much influence has been ceded to the financial and corporate elites who have used that influence to game the system and reap rewards that are almost unimaginable. Ordinary working Americans have been left far behind, gasping and on their knees.

John Boehner has been one of the leaders of the army of enablers responsible for this abominable state of affairs.

So does Krugman, who takes it even farther to name names supposedly behind the scenes. Surprise, surprise. Not.:

...Nobody who was paying attention has ever doubted that Fox is, in reality, a part of the Republican political machine; but the network — with its Orwellian slogan, “fair and balanced” — has always denied the obvious. Officially, it still does. But by hiring those G.O.P. candidates, while at the same time making million-dollar contributions to the Republican Governors Association and the rabidly anti-Obama United States Chamber of Commerce, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which owns Fox, is signaling that it no longer feels the need to make any effort to keep up appearances.

Something else has changed, too: increasingly, Fox News has gone from merely supporting Republican candidates to anointing them. Christine O’Donnell, the upset winner of the G.O.P. Senate primary in Delaware, is often described as the Tea Party candidate, but given the publicity the network gave her, she could equally well be described as the Fox News candidate. Anyway, there’s not much difference: the Tea Party movement owes much of its rise to enthusiastic Fox coverage.

As the Republican political analyst David Frum put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox” — literally, in the case of all those non-Mitt-Romney presidential hopefuls. It was days later, by the way, that Mr. Frum was fired by the American Enterprise Institute. Conservatives criticize Fox at their peril.

So the Ministry of Propaganda has, in effect, seized control of the Politburo. What are the implications?

Perhaps the most important thing to realize is that when billionaires put their might behind “grass roots” right-wing action, it’s not just about ideology: it’s also about business. What the Koch brothers have bought with their huge political outlays is, above all, freedom to pollute. What Mr. Murdoch is acquiring with his expanded political role is the kind of influence that lets his media empire make its own rules.

Thus in Britain, a reporter at one of Mr. Murdoch’s papers, News of the World, was caught hacking into the voice mail of prominent citizens, including members of the royal family. But Scotland Yard showed little interest in getting to the bottom of the story. Now the editor who ran the paper when the hacking was taking place is chief of communications for the Conservative government — and that government is talking about slashing the budget of the BBC, which competes with the News Corporation.

So think of those paychecks to Sarah Palin and others as smart investments. After all, if you’re a media mogul, it’s always good to have friends in high places. And the most reliable friends are the ones who know they owe it all to you...

So, gasp, the Republicans are owned. And in the power vacuum left by Junior, somebody else picked up Poppy's Party tab.

Yes, Paul, but really, who's your Daddy? We already know who Barry's is.

if they told you they'd have to kill you

State Dept. tried to hide Blackwater’s piece of $10 billion contract: report

Contract comes despite Sec. Clinton's pledge to ban 'private mercenary firms'

The State Department has awarded part of a $10-billion embassy protection contract to the company formerly known as Blackwater, but you wouldn't know it by looking at government documents.

On Thursday, the State Department announced the winners of a tender to protect security services to diplomatic missions around the world, including the US's massive embassy in Iraq. The name Xe Services -- Blackwater's current name -- doesn't appear in the contract, but the name International Development Solutions does.

Spencer Ackerman reports at Wired.com that International Development Solutions is a shell company set up by Blackwater in partnership with engineering firm Kaseman to run US Training Center, a Blackwater subsidiary.

"No one who looks at the official announcement of the contract award would have any idea that firm is connected to Blackwater," Ackerman writes...

There's nothing like professionals, is there?

shocked, shocked i tell you

...actually, just as long as I'm not infected

From 1946 to 1948, American public health doctors deliberately infected nearly 700 Guatemalans — prison inmates, mental patients and soldiers — with venereal diseases in what was meant as an effort to test the effectiveness of penicillin.

American tax dollars, through the National Institutes of Health, even paid for syphilis-infected prostitutes to sleep with prisoners, since Guatemalan prisons allowed such visits. When the prostitutes did not succeed in infecting the men, some prisoners had the bacteria poured onto scrapes made on their penises, faces or arms, and in some cases it was injected by spinal puncture.

If the subjects contracted the disease, they were given antibiotics...

What, no experimental controls?

That is doubtless still Classified... and one can only guess what will emerge about today, 60 years from now.

But that's tinfoil, isn't it?

Anywhere on Earth

It's called the War on Terra, Rachel.

Welcome to the Empire.

Oh, but there's a way to end the violence, of course. The Company candidate lurks. Now there's a guy who won't hate us for our freedom, because he knows very well exactly how much freedom we have.