SilvaNet

Think this might be rare exception? You don't know your police

2012-01-27T17:15:00.000Z

Check out the response from the former cop and now Mayor to the FBI investigation and arrests. It turns out he thinks the cops are innocent until proven guilty (unlike any of us arrested and processed for alleged crimes - to which often the only witnesses are cops who coordinate their stories and get paid overtime to attend court proceedings). When cops arrest somebody, they and the prosecutors assume the "perp" is guilty. Practically unlimited resources are available to prosecute. Judges preside over a process they believe is more about imposing respect and fear for the law than about truth and justice. Comments by the Mayor revealed his racist view of Latinos.

New York Times

January 24, 2012

Police Gang Tyrannized Latinos, Indictment Says

By PETER APPLEBOME

They were known as Miller’s Boys, police officers who worked the 4-to-midnight shift, patrolling the largely working-class town of East Haven, Conn., including the small but growing Hispanic community that has spread out in recent years from New Haven.

The officers were more than well known in that community; according to residents and federal authorities, they were feared. They stopped and detained people, particularly immigrants, without reason, federal prosecutors said, sometimes slapping, hitting or kicking them when they were handcuffed, and once smashing a man’s head into a wall. They followed and arrested residents, including a local priest, who tried to document their behavior.

They rooted through stores looking for damning security videotapes of how they had treated some of their targets, described by one of them on a police radio as having “drifted to this country on rafts made of chicken wings.”

And after it became known that the Justice Department was investigating the department, according to an indictment unsealed on Tuesday, a picture of a rat appeared on a police union bulletin board, and in the locker room, an ominous note: “You know what we do with snitches?”

On Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Sgt. John Miller and three of his officers — David Cari, Dennis Spaulding and Jason Zullo — on charges of conspiracy,false arrest, excessive force and obstruction of justice over what the indictment described as years of mistreatment of individuals, especially Hispanics, and efforts to cover it up.

Following on the heels of a scathing Justice Department report in December that found the East Haven police had engaged in widespread “biased policing, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and the use of excessive force,” the indictment portrayed a harrowing picture of arbitrary justice for Hispanic residents.

“There is no place for excessive force in a police station or on the streets,” David B. Fein, the United States attorney for Connecticut, said in a news conference on Tuesday. “There is no place for false statements in police reports.”

“No person is above the law, and nobody — even a person arrested for a crime — is beneath its protection,” he added, saying there could be more arrests.

Janice K. Fedarcyk, assistant director in charge of the F.B.I. office in New York, called the officers “a cancerous cadre that routinely deprived East Haven residents of their civil rights.”

The misconduct, according to prosecutors, reached to the highest ranks of the department and the police union. A high-ranking officer described as “Co-Conspirator No.1” — apparently the police chief, Leonard Gallo — made several calls to the supervisor of the priest, the Rev. James Manship of St. Rose of Lima Church, asking that he be moved out of his parish, the indictment said. The same commander also barred members of East Haven’s police commission, a supervisory body that was trying to investigate the complaints, from entering the department without his permission, but later rescinded the order.

Police union leaders also inquired about hiring a private investigator to follow the priest, the indictment said, though it was not clear if they followed through.

Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. of East Haven, who served from 1997 to 2007 and was then returned to office in 2011, said he stood by the police force. When he took office again, Mr. Maturo reinstated Chief Gallo, who had been put on paid leave by the previous mayor after the Justice Department began its investigation.

“I’m still very surprised, and it’s a sickening feeling to have your officers arrested, but nevertheless they’re innocent until proven guilty,” Mr. Maturo said.

As for larger problems in the department, he said, “I have confidence in all the men and women of our East Haven Police Department, from top to bottom.”

Each officer was charged with conspiracy against rights, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, and at least one other charge. Officers Spaulding and Cari were charged with the most serious count, obstruction, which carries a maximum of 20 years.

All four pleaded not guilty in Federal District Court in Bridgeport on Tuesday afternoon, while about two dozen friends, family and fellow union members and police officers looked on. All were released on bail except for Officer Zullo, whose paperwork had not yet been completed.

Donald Cretella, a lawyer for Sergeant Miller, said the sergeant would be vindicated. “Nothing in the indictment is a surprise to us,” Mr. Cretella said, “and it doesn’t appear that Sergeant Miller did anything illegal. He’s a 16-year veteran police officer. He’s been decorated, he’s a wonderful officer, and hopefully we’ll address all this, and he can get on with his life.”

Chief Gallo did not respond to a request for comment.

Fred Brow, chairman of the Board of Police Commissioners, would not comment on any particular officer, but said he had no quarrel with the overall picture the indictment and the December report painted of the department and its dealings with Hispanic residents. And he said it was irresponsible for the mayor to have returned Chief Gallo to his job.

“It appears that there was just a total lack of leadership and supervision, and that has to start at the top,” he said.

The New Haven area has long been a place where immigration issues have played out in public life. New Haven has been welcoming of Hispanic residents, but some other communities have been less so. The area’s immigrant community has been centered in New Haven’s Fair Haven neighborhood, and now reaches over the border into East Haven.

The issue gained particular visibility in February 2009, when Father Manship began investigating accusations by his parishioners of harassment and abuse by the East Haven police. His clash with the police — he was arrested and accused of disorderly conduct while videotaping officers, but the local prosecutor dropped the case — led to a class-action lawsuit against East Haven by Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, as well as the investigations by the Justice Department.

The accusations against the officers center on their conduct at or outside businesses frequented by Hispanics like Los Amigos grocery, La Bamba restaurant and bar and My Country Store, and their treatment of suspects in custody.

Sergeant Miller, who is also president of the department’s police union, is accused of assaulting a suspect being restrained by two officers and then reprimanding one of them for reporting it. When another officer used excessive force in his presence, he took no action to investigate, reprimand or discipline the officer, the indictment said.

Outside Guti’z Bakery on Main Street, a customer, Mayra Mendoza, said she had seen police officers sitting in a parking lot across the street, watching customers come and go from the bakery, taking down license plate numbers. “They wanted to cause problems,” said Ms. Mendoza, who lives in East Haven. She said the police needed “to respect Spanish people more.”

“We come here to work and have a family. We pay taxes, we pay mortgages,” she added. “This is our city. I’m a citizen here; my kids are citizens here.”

Father Manship said he was grateful the United States attorney’s office took the complaints so seriously. Still, he said, “It’s not a happy day.”

Tip of the iceberg, really...

Check this out

You can find out a lot more about rampant police and prosecutorial misconduct if you begin to do some research about "forensic science." You could begin by going to Amy Driver's blog "BulletPath."

Find out more by reading my friend John Kelly's book, "Tainting Evidence: Inside The Scandals At The FBI Crime Lab."

See this article in The Guardian,

A miscarriage of justice on marijuana

US police are using a flawed scientific test in drugs busts that gives 'false positives' to strongarm citizens into plea bargaining

and, The Investigative Fund

I could reproduce many hundreds and into the thousands of reports and articles substantiating that our "criminal justice" (MAJOR OXYMORON) system is totally broke and contrary to the usual blather from prosecutors, cops, mayors, and sycophantic politicians, it does NOT work - unless by "it works" you mean that the intended results are to strike fear in the general population and cow them into submission - truth and justice be damned. People's very short attention span and common tendency to let everything that doesn't directly affect them slip down "the memory hole" makes any full report "information overload." Some of you may benefit and perhaps get the word out little by little. On occasion I'll add stories of individual incidents, but make no mistake that our police are out of control. They do not "serve and protect." Their motto is more like that logo on one of the "Decepticons" in a "Tranformers" movie - "smash and destroy."

Police waste of taxpayer money and the "law enforcement" mentality gone crazy

2012-01-27T16:35:00.002Z

How NYPD's "stop and frisk" policy ensnares 600,000 a year: Scenes from 'Vanguard'

'More bad searches now than ever before': Scenes from 'Vanguard'

Habeas schmabeas - This American Life

2012-01-27T16:19:00.000Z

310:

HABEAS SCHMABEAS (Click on this link to listen)

Originally aired 03.10.2006

[SilvaNet: With all the current discussion and concern over Obama's signing of NADAA, you owe it to yourself to understand what the writ of "habeas corpus" was, how it came about historically, its importance, and its regularly cited suspension by President Abraham Lincoln (when our country was involved in all out open civil war on our soil - not even remotely a threat today when proponents argue for it's current suspension).]

THERE'S NO U.S. IN HABEAS.

Jack Hitt explains how President Bush's War on Terror changed the rules for prisoners of war and how it is that under those rules, it'd be possible that someone whose classified file declares that they pose no threat to the United States could still be locked up indefinitely—potentially forever!—at Guantanamo. (26 minutes).

Clarification: When Seton Hall professor Baher Azmy discusses the classified file of his client, Murat Kurnaz, he is referring to information that had previously been made public and published in the Washington Post. That material has subsequently been reclassified.

[SilvaNet: Please listen carefully to the claims of President Bush and VP Cheney. They were LIES. The facts and comments from officials directly in the know should totally shock you.

Be careful what you agree to support. You may very well be accepting to create precedent that will be very difficult to reverse.]

Obama lackluster performance on foreclosure fraud issue

2012-01-27T16:09:00.002Z

New York Times

January 25, 2012

A Mortgage Investigation

In the State of the Union address, President Obama promised a fresh investigation into mortgage abuses that led to the financial meltdown. The goal, he said, is to “hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.”

Could this be it, finally? An investigation that results in clarity, big fines and maybe even jail time?

There is good reason to be skeptical. To date, federal civil suits over mortgage wrongdoing have been narrowly focused and, at best, ended with settlements and fines that are a fraction of the profits made during the bubble. There have been no criminal prosecutions against major players. Justice Department officials say that it reflects the difficulty of proving fraud — and not a lack of prosecutorial zeal. That is hard to swallow, given the scale of the crisis and the evidence of wrongdoing from private litigation, academic research and other sources.

This new investigation could be the real thing. Eric Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general, will be a co-chairman of the group, and he has refused to support a settlement being worked out between big banks most responsible for foreclosure abuses and federal agencies and some state attorneys general.

He rightly objected to the fact that in exchange for providing some $20 billion worth of mortgage relief — mainly by reducing the principal on homeowners’ loans — the banks wanted release from legal claims that have never been fully investigated, including those related to potential tax, trust and securities violations in mortgage loans.

In the past year, the Obama administration has pushed back against Mr. Schneiderman, even as other attorneys general also left the settlement talks. By choosing him now to help run the investigation, the president appears to be embracing the call for a much broader inquiry that, properly executed, could result in a far bigger settlement.

For now, the administration is saying that the new investigation and the settlement talks will both proceed. It would be better to settle with the banks only after officials have a full picture of any and all violations.

There are reasons to be wary. Some of the federal officials who will also be involved with the investigation — including Eric Holder Jr., the United States attorney general, and Lanny Breuer, the leader of the Justice Department’s criminal division, who will be a co-chairman — have not distinguished themselves in the pursuit of mortgage fraud.

To win and retain public trust, both the administration and all the group’s co-chairmen — there are also four other officials from the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Internal Revenue Service — must agree on several steps immediately.

The administration must ensure that the group has ample resources. The co-chairmen must hire a tough-as-nails prosecutor with a successful track record in financial fraud to drive the investigation forward. And the group must move quickly and vigorously, issuing subpoenas and filing cases. It is not starting from scratch; various agencies have all had separate investigations under way.

President Obama’s credibility is on the line. To restore public faith in the financial system, nothing less than a full investigation and full accountability will do.

And, Bloomberg Businessweek article:

This is Governor Jan Brewer's state we're talking about!

Bank of America Settlements Impede Fraud Probe, Arizona Says

By Karen Gullo

(Adds Arizona’s participation in multistate settlement in 13th paragraph.)

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. is impeding an investigation of its loan modification practices by negotiating settlements with borrowers who must agree to keep them secret and not criticize the bank in exchange for cash payments and loan relief, Arizona officials say.

The Arizona Attorney General’s office is asking a court to block those aspects of the settlements and require the bank to turn over all the agreements. The bank denies any wrongdoing.

One 2011 accord involving a borrower facing foreclosure who defaulted on a $253,142 mortgage included a $5,000 payment, plus $7,500 for legal fees, and the defaulted payments were waived and the loan was modified to a 40-year term with a 2 percent interest rate, court documents show. The terms of the original loan and the borrower’s complaint about the lender weren’t described in the documents.

The borrower “will remove and delete any online statements regarding this dispute, including, without limitation, postings on Facebook, Twitter and similar websites,” and not make any statements “that defame, disparage or in any way criticize” the bank’s reputation, practices or conduct, according to documents filed in state court in Phoenix. The borrower’s name and address were redacted.

Non-Disparagement

Bank of America attorneys argue that borrowers don’t have to sign the agreements to get a loan modification and deny that settlements hinder the state’s probe. Borrowers can be subpoenaed to disclose the accords, and the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank won’t enforce the non-disparagement provision if they talk to investigators, the bank’s lawyers have said in court filings.

A hearing is set for Feb. 1 on the dispute.

Arizona Attorney General Thomas Horne, a Republican who took office last January, is investigating Bank of America as part of a 2010 lawsuit alleging customers of its Countrywide Financial mortgage unit were misled about requirements for loan modifications. The bank, which acquired Calabasas, California- based Countrywide in 2008, provided inaccurate and deceptive reasons for denying modification applications, according to the the complaint. A similar suit was filed by Nevada.

The settlement agreements came to light as state investigators followed up on borrower complaints filed with the attorney general’s office. The office learned of 12 settlements while examining 1,900 complaints and when it attempted to contact the borrowers, Assistant Attorney General Carolyn Matthews said in Jan. 11 court filing.

Frequent Contact

Only four returned phone calls and none would provide a copy of the settlement, Matthews said. Some who signed the settlements had previously been in frequent contact with the attorney general’s office, according to court records.

Matthews contends that under the terms of the settlements, even if subpoenaed, borrowers can’t reveal any unflattering information about the bank. They couldn’t talk about misrepresentations the bank made about loan modifications, which is what the state is investigating, she said.

“These agreements have completely silenced even the most communicative consumers,” Matthews said in the filing. “The settlement agreement purposefully makes it impossible, legally and practically, for a consumer signing it to come forward, voluntarily and promptly, to provide evidence in this case.”

She asked a state judge to order Bank of America to notify borrowers who signed the agreements that they don’t have to adhere to the confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions.

Settlement Talks

Arizona has been participating in settlement negotiations between the five biggest U.S. mortgage servicers, including Bank of America, and state and federal officials to resolve a nationwide prove of foreclosure practices, Matthews said in an e-mail yesterday.

If Arizona joins any final settlement reached, that would affect the state’s lawsuit against Bank of America, she said.

“While Arizona is evaluating and is interested in the multistate settlement, Arizona will not join it unless we are able to simultaneously resolve our claims against Bank of America set forth in our separate lawsuit,” Matthews said.

Inappropriate Practices

Settlements with borrowers are more likely in cases in which the bank engaged in inappropriate practices, such as steering customers away from more affordable loans, or canceling a mortgage modification after a single payment went missing from a borrower who otherwise kept up with payments, said Patricia Garcia Duarte, chief executive officer of Neighborhood Housing Services of Phoenix Inc., which works with families facing foreclosure. Bank of America is a contributor to the organization, according to the group’s website.

Patricia Lee Refo, a Bank of America attorney, said in court filings that the confidentiality provisions are common in settlement agreements, which the bank uses on a “limited” basis to resolve disputes and avoid a costly lawsuit. There’s no policy to ask borrowers to sign settlement agreements in exchange for loan modifications, David Thornton, senior vice president for social media and urgent customer relations, said in a filing.

‘Extremely Serious’

“Plaintiff cannot ask this court enter the extremely serious finding that defendants have interfered with law enforcement based on one settlement agreement, or even 12, containing plain vanilla terms litigants use every day to resolve disputes,” Refo said in a court filing.

The bank can’t say how many settlements have been reached with Arizona customers because the agreements aren’t centrally stored on computers, Thornton said.

“We look at each situation on a case-by-case basis and decide what to do based on the specific situation,” Shirley Norton, a Bank of America spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest U.S. bank by market value and the largest mortgage lender, has a similar practice, said James Hines, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based bank.

“Each case is unique and for a variety of reasons we may elect to include a confidentiality and/or a non-disparagement agreement as part of the settlement,” Hines said in an e-mail. He said he didn’t know how many settlements had been reached.

Borrowers’ Boon

Loan modification settlements are a boon for borrowers struggling to keep their homes, Duarte said in a phone interview. Duarte said she doesn’t see many such settlements and that borrowers who sign one can’t talk about them.

“That shouldn’t apply to investigators like the attorney general,” she said.

Lump sum payments of thousands of dollars and provisions blocking borrowers from criticizing banks aren’t common, she said.

“Clearly the banks are freaking out, they are paranoid,” Duarte said. Bank of America “has the worst reputation because it’s so large. A lot of it isn’t their fault, it was Countrywide.”

[SilvaNet: Yes, that's the way it was with all the "bankrupt" banks that other banks or newly formed entities bought. But, the reason they are all paranoid is that THEY KNEW very well what was going on and that the whole bubble would pop and that housing values would crash!]

The case is Arizona v. Countrywide Financial Corp. CV2010-033580, Arizona Superior Court, Maricopa County (Phoenix).

Florida AG one of worst shills for fraudulent banks

2012-01-27T15:23:00.005Z

From MotherJones

Slate's Dave Weigel, who attended Monday's roundtable, writes that after Romney took an oblique swipe at Gingrich's mortgage consulting, he extolled Bondi's work:

"Where there has been fraud, where people who entered into a mortgage arrangement were misled by institutions or by individuals—why, there should be an effort to go after those institutions and prosecute them," he said. "That's something that Pam Bondi is doing here—the attorney general of Florida—and is hopefully being done in other states as well."

[SilvaNet: anyone who lives in Florida and keeps up on the news in bank foreclosure matters know this is ridiculously laughable. Just Google and begin researching. There are some great consumer foreclosure fraud attorneys in Florida. Sadly, they are almost non-existent in South Florida.]

The Romney camp also released a radio ad Monday touting Bondi's endorsement. ("He is tough, he is qualified, and he's ready to take on Barack Obama, and that's why I'm supporting him," she gushed on Fox News Sunday.) In straight electoral terms, it's understandable why Romney would want Bondi in his corner: One of the most prominent female conservatives in the state government, a fixture of the Fox News circuit capable of grabbing him some cachet with red-meat conservatives in a tough primary. But when it comes to hooking up mortgage bankers and servicers, Bondi's carried more water than Lake Okeechobee.

Florida is one of the five worst-hit states in the foreclosure crisis; nearly half of all its home mortgages are underwater. Yet since taking office in 2010, Bondi has lagged far behind her counterparts in helping homeowners or holding lenders' feet to the fire. When a faith-based action group met with Bondi last year to beseech her to go after crooked lenders, they complained to the Orlando Sentinel that she showed "a lack of interest" in foreclosure fraud. "Her stance was that she didn't feel the banks were as liable as the media portrayed them to be, and people shouldn't have gone ahead and signed the mortgage paperwork, and that they knew what they were getting into," a community organizer told the paper.

Instead, Bondi has shown a lot of interest in pleasing mortgage banks. The 50 state attorneys general have been working with the country's five top lenders—including Wells Fargo and Bank of America—to reach a settlement that would reform the mortgage market and compensate victims of fraud. Yet with a settlement taking shape last year, Bondi broke ranks with her counterparts and rejected it. That's because the settlement would have mandated principal reduction—a measure that could help keep more homeowners out of foreclosure, but that would force banks and lenders to take a bigger hit on their balance sheets. "It seems like she's balancing the interest of businesses with the interest of Floridians when it comes to principal reduction," state Rep. Darren Soto (D-Orlando) told the Sentinel. "When you're the AG, you have one interest: Floridians. You're supposed to be the consumer advocate, first and foremost."

Most unusual was Bondi's purported role in the forced resignations of two of the state's most dogged mortgage fraud attorneys. Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson, who were the top mortgage investigators for Bondi's predecessor, were pushed out by Bondi's office last year in the middle of a major investigation of two big foreclosure mills, Lender Processing Services and ProVest. The firms stood accused of "robosigning" and forging legal paperwork to ram foreclosures through Florida's overworked court system—and extract top dollar from beleaguered homeowners. "The termination of these attorneys is a violation of state policy by obstructing the prosecution of mortgage and foreclosure fraud," Soto said.

Bondi, it turned out, had received campaign contributions from several ProVest executives; she'd also gotten "thousands of dollars in campaign funds from Lender Processing and its employees, as well as its in-house counsel, Holland & Knight, during her successful 2010 campaign," according to the Florida Independent. That report also noted that one of Lender Processing Services' top lawyers and lobbyists, Martin Fiorentino, has bundled more than $100,000 for Romney.

[SilvaNet: do you think this bribe money is falling on deaf ears?]

[SilvaNet: Read the following - do you think Bondi's betrayal of the citizens of Florida is exaggerated by MotherJones? Here's an article from the Money section of the Palm Beach Post.]

Florida Attorney General bashes states that rejected nationwide foreclosure settlement

By KIMBERLY MILLER

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 9:45 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012

Posted: 5:09 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi stood by the 50-state attorneys general settlement with the nation's biggest banks on Thursday as California and Delaware formally rejected the proposal she helped negotiate.

Bondi said Floridians can't wait for foreclosure relief and that the draft proposal sent to states on Monday addresses California's concerns.

"The settlement under discussion contains all the elements California purports to be looking for; transparency, substantial relief for distressed homeowners, and strict enforcement," Bondi said Thursday. "Florida's homeowners need relief now, and protracted and uncertain litigation would be contrary to their best interests."

[SilvaNet: So, citizens of Florida, we're going to "protect" you from prolonged litigation contrary to your interests (think about who benefits from delaying a foreclosure and eviction)..."uncertain?" (it is certain that, with the help of canaries like Bondi, the banks are seeking to gain unearned and ill-gotten benefits that came as a result of the very foreseeable consequence of the destruction of home values).]

Bondi is on a core team working with the nation's five biggest banks to settle an investigation into mortgage servicing and foreclosure wrongdoing.

The Associated Press reported Monday that the $25 billion deal, which has not been made public, would reduce principal amounts on select home loans, help homeowners refinance to lower interest rates and award $1,800 checks to homeowners affected by deceptive foreclosure practices.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who withdrew from negotiations last fall, said Wednesday she was rejecting the agreement.

"We've reviewed the details of the latest settlement proposal, and we believe it is inadequate for California," said Harris' spokesman Shum Preston. "At this point, this deal does not suffice for California."

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is leading the negotiations, did not comment on California's rejection. Miller's spokesman, Geoff Greenwood, said Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden has also rejected the plan.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has long criticized the negotiations as being too bank-friendly. He was tapped Tuesday by the president to co-chair a new state and federal mortgage fraud investigative unit.

[SilvaNet: Don't be distracted or misled by her looks as most idiotic low-information voters are apt to do. She's a "waterboy" for the banks.]

Commercial destruction of the Internet

2012-01-27T14:16:00.003Z

"Personalization" is a serious problem destructive of the search for truth. Algorithmic filtering shows why SOPA and PIPA are so dangerous.

What Gingrich Rise Says About America

2012-01-24T03:37:00.002Z

Sick, lying dangerous racism - there were over a half million more people on food stamps under G.W. Bush than under Obama. So, what is the purpose of Gingrich's lie? RACISM. There is nobody in American politics more adept at delivering racist innuendo than the cold-blooded fat Salamander from Georgia. It is a sick, sad statement on America that this Goebbels blowhard has even the slightest chance of getting the Republican Party nomination for the Presidency. Vile, blind, unthinking, and irrational hatred has a voice in him. He knows it, and he gleefully embraces the most loathsome perverted palaver - lying and foul noxious blather - in service of his characterless immoral dearth of moral substance. Gingrich is a flat out racist. Unfortunately, the Republican Party gives succor to such repulsive hatred and bigotry. It is appalling that such a large portion of our population embodies the animus of hostility fed by such ignorant misguided fear that their only political objective is completely gumming up the gears of governance - minority rule by gridlock and filibuster. Conned into believing that getting rid of government will save them from the untrammeled rapaciousness of oligarchs and plutocrats, their base is easily swayed by engendering hatred for those whom they cannot control, throw in jail, or kill.

There is today no longer a center in American politics. Since Ronald Reagan's election, the Republican Party has extremely radicalized so far to the Right that even Reagan would today not be sufficiently Right - Wing to satisfy Republicans. There used to be Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress that were sufficiently centrist to build bipartisan consensus. Republicans have totally destroyed that. They have so radically pushed their party to the right that they are absolutely intolerant of any compromise. The very word is to them today anathema. There is in them no sense of national common ground. It's essentially their way or the highway. If you don't accept the radical agenda they push, then you are their enemy and as such a target for elimination. That radicalism is fundamentally contrary to the wellspring of our national identity and the spirit of our founders. Those who most loudly complain about anti-Americanism are themselves the most radically anti-American element in modern politics. The blatant lies and hypocritical epithets they hurl with violent revulsion against Democrat representatives reveal a grave and dangerous tendency that will have serious detrimental consequences. Already we have experienced a deep and widening chasm of economic unfairness that has always proven disastrous in societies throughout history. The division between the 99% and the 1% is not a fiction created by the Left. The division is stark and real. Coming up with the slogan "class warfare" distracts from the fact that if there was any warfare between those classes, the 1% won that war and took all the spoils, over the past thirty years appropriating for their benefit large portions of the nation's common wealth. Creeping fascism has accelerated to juggernaut, out-of-control train-wreck speed. God help America if these social psychopaths succeed.

For over twenty years before the election of Ronald Reagan, radical Right - Wing, self-proclaimed conservatives complained that communists were everywhere trying to overthrow the U.S. They were supposedly infiltrating and undermining everything that was good. They believed that Hollywood was full of communists, and they spent a lot of energy hunting the "reds" out. Any and all attempts to organize labor was viewed by them as a communist plot. Unions were going to ruin America and turn us into a socialist (with every possible insinuation to hated Nazism) state. The radical American fascists actually loved Hitler and Mussolini, and even supported the enemy (including the ancestors of later American Presidents). The most radical among them espoused the idea that the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a communist plant as our President. I shit you not.

These crazies opposed any attempt to grant blacks any rights, supposing they were inferior to whites. It still rankles them to see "mixed couples." Completely ignorant of scientific discoveries, many of them are still quite contented to believe that racial inbreeding improves the hereditary makeup of a species. They pine for the days when "niggers" knew their place (notwithstanding that some few blacks have since declared themselves ardent supporters of their radical politics). They unanimously hate MLK right along with Malcom X and Louis Farrakhan. They also dream for the days when women were "barefoot and pregnant," submissive to their male masters. Nothing that improved the plights of blacks, minorities, and women appealed to them. They decried that "liberals" were causing the degeneracy of our (meaning their) country. When they said "America, love it or leave it," they wanted ethnic cleansing. They fully supported South African Apartheid.

They turned racial hatred and fear mongering into a mass flight of Southern Democrats to the Republican Party. But their loathing and revulsion went deep into the North and all across America as well. They loved it when Barry Goldwater gave legitimacy to their intolerance. Claiming the Gospel as theirs alone, they turned Peace into a persecution of "abortionists," declining to remove the giant log obscuring their own vision compounded by their gleeful willingness to judge sinfulness in others. Enthusiastic enlistees in their own Albigensian crusade, they murder, believing themselves righteously justified soldiers of God. When these same kooks took the reins of governmental power they unleashed disaster and ruin of Biblical proportions. All their claims of fiscal responsibility turned out to be false rhetoric - mere political propaganda. Their goal all along was to overthrow our traditions and impose their view on all others with the claim of having theocratic authority.

They have no shame. Even after driving our ship of state off the edge of their flat earth, they continued their demagoguery - claiming that their opponents would make the U.S. socialist (a la their despised Europe). In the meantime, they fail to realize that Europe is precisely doing today what they advocate here - severe austerity measures - with disastrous consequences. These people are dangerous to the world. We can only pray that they really get their declared wish that their Judgment Day come upon them. There is sure to be much crying and gnashing of teeth. But it is them who will be surprised when they have to stand the judgement!

Why do you suppose banks are keeping over three trillion dollars out of the economy? Because they don't want this Democrat President to be able to claim any success for national economic improvement. It's their form of extortion on the American people. "If you don't elect the politicians we want, then we will keep our money out." Yet a single elite wealthy person will piss away 5 million in a heartbeat to fund the vile putrid pretentious pseudo-intellect of the slimy Salamander. What novel ideas is the Republican Party advancing? Cut unemployment benefits while unemployment numbers soar. Force wages down. Cut taxes on rich to create more minimum wage jobs. Gut government regulations that protect health and the environment. Cut government spending to force even more austerity affecting the most disadvantaged. Fire more people from their jobs. Cut education spending. Prevent collective bargaining by public employees. Destroy labor unions. Privatize Social Security. Do away with Medicare. Cut Medicaid. Increase war spending. Start a new war. Disenfranchise those most likely to vote Democrat. And, all that, they claim (as they have always claimed, contrary to all factual evidence to the contrary) will create good middle class jobs, balance the federal budget, and lower unemployment. Maybe they calculate that so many people will simply die from the cruel barrenness they propose that it will then appear the country has near full employment.

How could we have missed it? Jesus' message of selfish capitalism escaped most of us, but it was surely encrypted between the lines of gleanings, jubilees, caring for widows, and sharing bread, wine, and fishes. Somewhere among the feeding of the poor and visiting the imprisoned, hidden by the admonishments against rich men entering heaven with more difficulty than passing a laden camel through the eye of a needle, Jesus coded his true message of unrelenting self-interest and callous drive for profits. "The poor you will always have." And, yes, of course, he never meant for any of that feeding and caring to be unconditional. Yes, supply side Jesus will make his triumphal return surrounded by money changers. What else could he have meant when he said "love thine enemies?"

Banks double charging customers - shocking?

2012-01-23T05:18:00.001Z

"I'm shocked, simply shocked that gambling is going on in this establishment!"

New York Post

Sloppy seconds: Feds probe million$ in 'double-billing' by banks
By CATHERINE CURAN

Federal investigators are looking into allegations that banks have wrongly pocketed tens of millions of dollars from troubled homeowners by double-billing for mortgage escrow fees, The Post has learned.

Exactly how much in phony profits the banks may have pocketed from this alleged practice is not known, but an analysis by The Post of bankruptcy cases in 2011 shows it could range higher than $150 million for just the new cases filed this year.

The problem has gotten so out of hand that lawyers and accountants at the New York City office of US Trustee — charged with protecting the integrity of US bankruptcy courts — are poring over local Chapter 13 bankruptcy cases for evidence of wrongdoing.

The federal investigators were tipped to the alleged practice by metro area bankruptcy lawyers. Cases specifically involved Wells Fargo and GMAC Mortgage, but lawyers say most banks had double-dipped.

“It seems prevalent, and it’s a moneymaking machine,” David Shaev, a Manhattan bankruptcy defense lawyer, said of the banks’ double-dipping.

Westchester bankruptcy defense lawyer Linda Tirelli says 75 percent of her clients face escrow double-billing by their lender or mortgage servicer, for amounts up to $2,800.

Here’s how the double-dipping scam can be pulled off.

Many homeowners opt to pay part of their property taxes and homeowners insurance with their mortgage every month. The funds are then put into an escrow account and used to periodically pay the taxes and insurance.

But after falling behind on a few payments, troubled borrowers in Chapter 13 often find that their bank or mortgage servicer tries to collect twice on the escrow funds — once as part of the overall mortgage payment, and again as a separate “escrow shortage” charge.

The average double charge is about $2,000, said forensic accountant Jay Patterson of Full Disclosure in Arkansas, who sees escrow issues in half the cases he examines.

In 2011, there were 362,000 Chapter 13 cases filed nationwide, according to the National Bankruptcy Research Center. If three-quarters of those cases involved homeowners, and even one-third of that subset of cases had extra escrow charges of $2,000, then banks clobbered homeowners with an astonishing $179 million in false charges.

Following on the heels of the widespread robo-signing scandal — where executives signed reams of foreclosure paperwork without reviewing it — the escrow double-dipping is just another example of the shoddy if not outright fraudulent practices by banks thirsty for profit above all else.

In years past, banks kept tight control over mortgage lending, but have now farmed out day-to-day loan management to mortgage servicers, which are overwhelmed by the tidal wave of defaults.

It could not be learned at press time how large an investigation the US Trustee had ongoing in the double-dip affair or how settlement talks between banks and state attorneys general over the robo-signing frauds would affect any probe.

Spokespersons at the American Bankers Association and the US Trustee could not be reached for comment.

A spokesperson for GMAC Mortgage’s parent, Ally Financial, said the case had no merit.

A Wells Fargo rep no no comment until it learned more about the cases.

Letterman acknowledges his error

2012-01-21T17:39:00.001Z

Bill Hicks was great

2012-01-21T17:17:00.001Z

They got you by the balls

2012-01-21T17:11:00.001Z

How large is your slice of pizza?

2012-01-21T17:05:00.001Z

Revealing Kochs ownership of Republican Governors

2012-01-21T16:54:00.001Z

Exposing the Koch brothers

2012-01-21T16:45:00.001Z

"Liberalism" and other foul and meaningless labels

2012-01-21T16:16:00.000Z

Across the world, the fascist, Right Wing, unrestrained capitalism that Republicans and Conservatives advocate in the U.S. has long been referred to as "Liberallism." That is because those who support it advocate a very liberal (totally unrestrained) economic practice by the few global investors for profit that allows the violation of basic human and constitutional rights of citizens in a democratic society. You will often hear the economic policies of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School as liberal or neo-liberal. The use of the word in that manner is completely unheard of in U.S. Words like that are just labels. The same is really true for "conservatism." Who is really not conservative in almost every part of their lives?

Political slogans don't mean crap. The claim of true conservatism is false and a misdirection. It is only meant to play upon your fears and prejudices. Ask rather precisely what a candidate views as the nature of man, the legitimate source of governmental power, the justified exercise of police force, the role of government in protecting individual liberties against attack and abuse, the right of citizens to exercise governmental power to protect their communal and individual interests, etc. You will note that so-called political "debates" are nothing more than theater. There is never any real discussion or evidence based argument. "Debates" are formatted into silly "sound bite" comments that are then repeated ad nauseam by the complicit corporate media. Almost always, any voice that does not closely follow the acceptable establishment lines is carefully excluded from national view. Campaigns become rather contests of witty repartee and "red meat" emotional appeal slogans.

Corporate media seldom, if ever, reports relevant events that do not support their "world view." If you want to get closer to the truth, you must get your news and information outside "network news." Even cable news for the most part is predictably homogeneous. Watch Free Speech TV, watch LinkTV, watch Amy Goodman's Democracy Now; read non-U.S. news sources. When you read, check sources, read in-depth investigative reports, follow up with complete, fully cited, books - not just unsupported ideology. Learn as full a historical context of currently advocated positions as time and effort permit.

Continued progress is by no means guaranteed. Often knowledge is lost and there are large regressions because people must repeatedly re-learn the past. When socially and politically cultures and nations arrogantly think they are the pinnacle of human progress, they are continually humbled by their complacent and happy ignorance. Biblioclasm is alive and well, regularly led by those who want to claim authoritative knowledge and population control. Wherever you see injustice and abuse of power, publish it.

How do you think DOJ will deal with foreclosure fraud?

2012-01-21T14:47:00.000Z

This is the administration Republicans think is anti-business and anti-capital. Do you think that's propaganda bull-crap, or is it a thought that really fits with the facts?

From Reuters:

Insight: Top Justice officials connected to mortgage banks

Fri, Jan 20 2012

By Scot J. Paltrow

(Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.

Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn't brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.

The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks' offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.

In recent weeks the Justice Department has come under renewed pressure from members of Congress, state and local officials and homeowners' lawyers to open a wide-ranging criminal investigation of mortgage servicers, the biggest of which have been Covington clients. So far Justice officials haven't responded publicly to any of the requests.

While Holder and Breuer were partners at Covington, the firm's clients included the four largest U.S. banks - Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo & Co - as well as at least one other bank that is among the 10 largest mortgage servicers.

DEFENDER OF FREDDIE

Servicers perform routine mortgage maintenance tasks, including filing foreclosures, on behalf of mortgage owners, usually groups of investors who bought mortgage-backed securities.

Covington represented Freddie Mac, one of the nation's biggest issuers of mortgage backed securities, in enforcement investigations by federal financial regulators.

A particular concern by those pressing for an investigation is Covington's involvement with Virginia-based MERS Corp, which runs a vast computerized registry of mortgages. Little known before the mortgage crisis hit, MERS, which stands for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, has been at the center of complaints about false or erroneous mortgage documents.

Court records show that Covington, in the late 1990s, provided legal opinion letters needed to create MERS on behalf of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and several other large banks. It was meant to speed up registration and transfers of mortgages. By 2010, MERS claimed to own about half of all mortgages in the U.S. -- roughly 60 million loans.

But evidence in numerous state and federal court cases around the country has shown that MERS authorized thousands of bank employees to sign their names as MERS officials. The banks allegedly drew up fake mortgage assignments, making it appear falsely that they had standing to file foreclosures, and then had their own employees sign the documents as MERS "vice presidents" or "assistant secretaries."

Covington in 2004 also wrote a crucial opinion letter commissioned by MERS, providing legal justification for its electronic registry. MERS spokeswoman Karmela Lejarde declined to comment on Covington legal work done for MERS.

It isn't known to what extent if any Covington has continued to represent the banks and other mortgage firms since Holder and Breuer left. Covington declined to respond to questions from Reuters. A Covington spokeswoman said the firm had no comment.

Several lawyers for homeowners have said that even if Holder and Breuer haven't violated any ethics rules, their ties to Covington create an impression of bias toward the firms' clients, especially in the absence of any prosecutions by the Justice Department.

O. Max Gardner III, a lawyer who trains other attorneys to represent homeowners in bankruptcy court foreclosure actions, said he attributes the Justice Department's reluctance to prosecute the banks or their executives to the Obama White House's view that it might harm the economy.

But he said that the background of Holder and Breuer at Covington -- and their failure to act on foreclosure fraud or publicly recuse themselves -- "doesn't pass the smell test."

Federal ethics regulations generally require new government officials to recuse themselves for one year from involvement in matters involving clients they personally had represented at their former law firms.

President Obama imposed additional restrictions on appointees that essentially extended the ban to two years. For Holder, that ban would have expired in February 2011, and in April for Breuer. Rules also require officials to avoid creating the appearance of a conflict.

Schmaler, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that "The Attorney General and Assistant Attorney General Breuer have conformed with all financial, legal and ethical obligations under law as well as additional ethical standards set by the Obama Administration."

She said they "routinely consult" the department's ethics officials for guidance. Without offering specifics, Schmaler said they "have recused themselves from matters as required by the law."

Senior government officials often move to big Washington law firms, and lawyers from those firms often move into government posts. But records show that in recent years the traffic between the Justice Department and Covington & Burling has been particularly heavy. In 2010, Holder's deputy chief of staff, John Garland, returned to Covington, as did Steven Fagell, who was Breuer's deputy chief of staff in the criminal division.

The firm has on its web site a page listing its attorneys who are former federal government officials. Covington lists 22 from the Justice Department, and 12 from U.S. Attorneys offices, the Justice Department's local federal prosecutors' offices around the country.

As Reuters reported in 2011, public records show large numbers of mortgage promissory notes with apparently forged endorsements that were submitted as evidence to courts.

There also is evidence of almost routine manufacturing of false mortgage assignments, documents that transfer ownership of mortgages between banks or to groups of investors. In foreclosure actions in courts mortgage assignments are required to show that a bank has the legal right to foreclose.

In an interview in late 2011, Raymond Brescia, a visiting professor at Yale Law School who has written about foreclosure practices said, "I think it's difficult to find a fraud of this size on the U.S. court system in U.S. history."

Holder has resisted calls for a criminal investigation since October 2010, when evidence of widespread "robo-signing" first surfaced. That involved mortgage servicer employees falsely signing and swearing to massive numbers of affidavits and other foreclosure documents that they had never read or checked for accuracy.

Recent calls for a wide-ranging criminal investigation of the mortgage servicing industry have come from members of Congress, including Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., state officials, and county clerks. In recent months clerks from around the country have examined mortgage and foreclosure records filed with them and reported finding high percentages of apparently fraudulent documents.

On Wednesday, John O'Brien Jr., register of deeds in Salem, Mass., announced that he had sent 31,897 allegedly fraudulent foreclosure-related documents to Holder. O'Brien said he asked for a criminal investigation of servicers and their law firms that had filed the documents because they "show a pattern of fraud," forgery and false notarizations.

(Reporting By Scot J. Paltrow, editing by Blake Morrison)

Rock The Paradigm

2012-01-21T03:25:00.001Z

Gingrich = Goebbels

2012-01-21T01:59:00.001Z

See how adept a propaganda liar Newt was when he was the Republican Speaker of the House. He was so extremely unethical that own party drummed him out by an enormous margin. Newtie is so self-absorbed that when he is today asked why he had to resign, he spins it to make himself the hero and his entire party unwilling to follow him on his plans for reform. If you read the report on his Ethics violations (it's available on line), you will see that he viewed himself arrogantly as a "world historic figure" destined to rule the world and if the use of force was necessary, then "so be it." Newt is a megalomaniac of epic proportions. If EVER there was an ANTICHRIST, he is the one.

Deacon of Conservative writers Charles Krauthammer has written, "It’s no secret he sees himself as a world historical figure, the last of the great statesmen." Newt has an enormously overblown image of himself. He's a base little lizard from Georgia, a huckster, snake oil salesman that sells people five thousand dollar framed spam award "certificates" declaring them "Champions," and took nearly two million dollars from Freddie Mac (Newtie now spins this not as the bribery it was but for being a "housing historian!"

"This is how Newt Gingrich has been making his money. He is a Nigerian Prince (send me your bank details) guy. He does email spam, fax spam, direct mail, sucker list, bottom feeding, prey on the gullible financial scams."

SOPA & PIPPA for Dummies

2012-01-20T21:53:00.003Z

Celebrities For Megauploads

Your congress and government is totally BOUGHT

2012-01-20T21:02:00.001Z

Our banking system is fully corrupt and defrauding us!

By One Means or Another?

2012-01-20T20:42:00.001Z

It would be nice if it were actually disclosed who financed Hitler. Wealthy industrialists from the United States - Ford, IBM, etc., never found a fascist they could not support. It's pretty much the same today. While today's Republican Goebbels (there are many) crank out their propaganda against "Democrats," "Liberals," and "Socialists," the "Citizens United" benefactors like the Koch brothers (look them up and watch videos available on Free Speech TV and elsewhere to learn just what these fascists have done). Sorry, idiots, but it's not the Right Wing or the Republican Party or its Tea Party Storm troopers, that are going to safeguard our Constitutional liberties. They are exactly the opposite of that. Their legacy IS precisely Hitler's. You're deluded and stupid to believe otherwise. Many of you used to be firefighters and police. You derided the "liberals," and thought they wanted to take away your right to bear arms. Now that the Republicans have come after your jobs "en masse," you are beginning to reconsider. All you former union laborers who did not zealously support your unions and were sold on the Republican propaganda that unions were the problem and they must be destroyed, maybe now you are beginning to reconsider. They are experts in demagoguery while they attack their opposition as being exactly what it is they are. They are great students of Goebbels and master propagandists. Only read about Karl Rove - Bush's brain.

They have turned Reagan's myth into far greater than his reality - ignoring, for example, the fact that he raised taxes several times during his presidency, among many other "inconvenient" truths. Banal political nitwits (many extremely well paid like Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Michael "Savage" nee Weiner, Rush "Oxycontin head" Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neil Boortz, et al.) repeat the blather and slogans - "ownership society," "class warfare," "anti-capitalism," "socialism," "Obamacare"...while they routinely tag legislation with names to evoke images of exactly the opposite of what they do - The Clean Air Act, the Patriot Act, etc. America needs a great big wake up call. The guys you need to fear most are precisely the ones that are telling you that you need to fear those they oppose politically. They have all the money. They control the propaganda. They out spend everyone in political advertising. None of the ads are truthful. None deal directly with facts or evidence. They are all meant to appeal to your fears and emotional hatreds. These people keep doing it to you over and over again. Perhaps now with the Internet and your ability to search and replay video evidence of their intentional duplicity and their dissembling and deception, you will begin to unmask them and make their disinformation ineffective.

Republican sympathizers - please learn a little history

2012-01-20T19:55:00.000Z

Thanks to MORON liars like Michael Savage, far too many stupid Americans believe that Hitler's NAZI party had something to do with Socialism. It didn't. Hitler's NAZI party was absolutely FASCIST through and through just like Mussolini's movement in Italy.

Keep Your Focus

2012-01-20T19:40:00.001Z

A lot of nonsense is being circulated, and will continue, during the political season in preparation for the Presidential elections next year. The real main issue will continue to be job growth. All Republicans will evoke "class warfare," "anti-capitalism," "socialism," even "communism." They have already appealed to racism in blatant, not even subtle, terms. Referring to Obama as the "food stamp President" is precisely such an appeal. Idiots don't realize that the vast majority of food stamp recipients are white women. Morons don't correlate the need for government assistance with the high rate of unemployment. For Republicans to claim interest in creating jobs to help those falling into homelessness and at near starvation is laughable. Their only answer is the same old tired and completely discredited policy of cutting taxes on the filthy rich (the assumption that they therefore invest their capital and jobs trickle down to the poor public has long been reduced to absurdity). Republicans constantly rail and complain that regulations destroy jobs. So, their goal has long been to dismantle the entire regulatory mechanisms. We saw the results of their drive for "deregulation." The financial meltdown was a direct result of their blind, idiotic acceptance of a lying and bankrupt ideology. Hardly a member of the 99% today is not aware that the very rich buy and bribe government to pass laws that favor them and have shifted wealth radically upward and away from the hard working laborer. What did Republicans do during the Bush administration? They gave massive tax cuts to their base (the super-rich). They lied us into ridiculously expensive wars that enriched their base (VP Cheney's own Halliburton robbed our Treasury blind). They didn't even put those ridiculous expenses on their budget. Their absolute lies about being fiscal conservatives and concerned with balancing budgets have not been adequately explored for the voter to remove the smokescreen of propaganda.

Their old claim was that if you were against them then you were against free enterprise. Now that it has been shown that there is no such thing as free enterprise, rather that the wealthy buy favorable tax policies that enable them to pay the lowest interest rates on their taxes (that's when they pay them at all); they want to shift the rhetoric to other slogans. Lately, vulture capitalist Willard, son of bigamist rich people who ran to Mexico to flee prosecution and protect their (probably ill-gotten) wealth, claims that Obama and others don't understand how capitalism works. That presumes that all capitalism is the same. It is not. None of what Willard got rich on at Bain Capital (raiding financially weakened companies, firing huge numbers of workers, borrowing against the assets of the companies, including pension funds, raiding and destroying these, and collecting fees) was NEVER contemplated by Adam Smith nor most (even Milton Friedman "free market" capitalists). The type of capitalism Willard extols only became possible after the Reagan inspired (and Clinton - Republican Lite - approved) deregulation of financial markets and other key legislation. There is nothing traditional or historic about it. Vulture capitalism is "douche bag" capitalism.

Mr Despicable (Newt The Caudate) Arrogantly Turns The Tables

2012-01-20T18:57:00.003Z

There is no lower a slime ball that has ever run for the Presidency than Newt Gongriche. His abject absolute lack of character has been eminently evident throughout his public and private life. The fact people actually stood and applauded that scum ball reveals the ignorance or hypocrisy of the South Carolina Republican voter. So, character matters - except if the question of character is about one of their own. So, family values matter - except when the offender is one of theirs. NEVER in my lifetime has a candidate of either party declared that the opposing party candidate is "the most dangerous President" in history. Ah, but we forget that the Georgia Gecko is not a historian. He is a self-promoting LIAR. Nearly NO Republican member of congress supported that crook when he was reprimanded for ETHICAL violations. This base prevaricator, FOX not-News spin doctor and talking head, is himself the worst candidate EVER. Listen to his rhetoric. It could not be more disgusting. Characterless beyond the pale, can people be so stupid?

Government Crime Is Best - They Never Go To Jail

2012-01-18T13:05:00.000Z

Ezra Klein - Undresses Republican Horse-puckey

2012-01-16T22:17:00.001Z

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rachel Maddow Nails Difference Between Republican Rhetoric & Reality

2012-01-16T22:11:00.001Z

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Fraudclosure - Extremely Imoprtant

2012-01-16T21:23:00.001Z

Why do you think big money from out of state poured into Florida to unseat Congressman Grayson?

And, lest you think this is just political sour grapes, read this article in the Orlando Sun Sentinel:
"Seminole judge's schedule: 300 foreclosure cases in 3 days"

In addition to all other issues, MERS was a fraudulent private recording system. Every County Clerk in Florida is now suing because among other things the banks were defrauding the counties from document filing fees.

Banks don't want you to have the rules they play by to be available to you.

Many foreclosure judges are buying in to the story that homeowners should not be permitted to stay in their houses for free. They borrowed money, they got their money, and they should have to pay the money back. The problem with that superficial argument is that it fails to take into account the fraudulent practices by which the banks were generating their loans and turning them into enormous profits by passing them off on investors. The banks knew what they were doing and knew they were "blowing up" the real estate market. They knew they would make great profits, but the homeowners would get left "holding the bag" when their home values fell off a cliff.

Read this very good blog post "No, It's Not a Free House" at Portia's Blog.

With Law Professors Like This No Wonder Our Legal System Sucks

2012-01-15T18:47:00.003Z

In an article in the Palm Beach Post titled "Is signing foreclosure documents for others forgery?" a Nova University Law Professor is quoted:

"Because the surrogate signers were signing the documents as part of their jobs, and presumably believed that they had the authority to sign, they could not have committed fraud," said Nova Southeastern Law professor Robert Jarvis. "Moreover, in most loan documents, the borrower expressly agrees that the bank, or the bank's representatives, can take all steps necessary to protect its interest. This would include signing documents."

That statement is so misleading and biased that it deserves analysis. In the first place, our distinguished professor says "presumably believed." Why? By what stretch of the reasonable imagination does he believe it justified to "presume" that surrogate signers, signing as part of their jobs, could claim they "believed" they had authority? The facts just don't support that. In many cases the surrogate signers, paid low wages, unbelievably hold positions in their companies of Vice President. Sure, they "believe" they are "real" VPs with corresponding "authority." Mr. Jarvis's pro-bank bias is so obvious that he should be wearing bank corporate logos on his clothes.

Secondly, it is outrageous to claim that a statement in a contract (and always a completely non-negotiated contract of adhesion that the customer is forced to take or leave without the slightest capacity to vary the "boiler plate" terms) that a home buyer agrees that the bank or its representatives can take all steps necessary to protect its interest would include the commission of a consciously misleading action intended for the customer to rely on to his economic detriment - the very definition of fraud. Of course the professor would weasel out of his claim by already having assumed that no forgery has been committed - which is a classic example of question begging. The precise issue that needs to be answered is assumed not to be the case by the professor; ergo he can misleadingly conclude that innocent document signing is, well, innocent.

Florida's current state administration is about as anti-consumer as you can get. The fact is that the banks and their mortgage originators committed all kinds of fraudulent practices to sell mortgages. The direct and legally foreseeable consequences of that conduct was exactly what happened. The whole thing became complicated by the intentional conduct of creating and selling residential mortgage backed securities, paying ratings agencies to give "junk" triple-A ratings, bribing politicians, government regulators, and quasi-governmental entities (FANNIE MAE), to look the other way. They then made up bull-crap instruments that they passed off as "insurance." They made millions upon hundreds of millions of dollars off the whole organized criminal activity, and quite predictably blew up the financial bubble they created, and quite predictably caused the housing market to crash (effectively shifting the "losses" to the entire class of homeowners (whether their mortgages were good or not). In many places homeowners have lost over sixty percent of the value of their real estate. Someone gained and someone lost. But it wasn't just natural market forces. These people knew what they were doing and what the end result would be.

In fact, some of them, knowing that the market was reaching the point of collapse, gambled on options against those mortgage backed securities, knowing that when the veritable "shit hit the fan" they would actually make zillions as the principal assets tanked. In some cases the gamblers now took their enormous "winnings" and made offers for pennies on the dollar to buy the failed banks that were holding pools of good and bad loans. Their expectation, of course, to again make another killing, is that they will be permitted to collect all the existing loans on the housing market they blew up at face value. It's not as simple as some would like you to accept - that someone signed for a loan and now doesn't want to pay it back. They were "robbed." It was planned and fully intentional; and somebody should be going to jail. The victim homeowners should be compensated. Simply allowing "new?" entities to claim complete innocence and unquestioned collection is to support the theft.

Almost all those notes were signed by surrogates "without recourse." In the law of commercial paper that means the new holder of the note does not take it as what is termed a "holder in due course" who paid value in good faith. That position would free him of any defenses that the maker of the note may have had against any prior or the original holder. None of the current holders are good faith holders. They take and hold their notes subject to any defenses the maker may assert. The fraud of the originators and of the banks should be quite relevant and a valid defense against the new holders that are trying to foreclose. If they lose and the homeowner gets to stay in his home free of any obligation to pay, then so be it. Screw the bank gangsters. They knew they were gambling. Let them take their losses. Too many bank supporting judges are facilitating the grand theft on the American home buyer. First they were too big to fail. Now they are too big to hold responsible for fraud.

NAFTA, SPP, and TILMA

2012-01-14T21:21:00.003Z

From Free Speech TV...You really need to know about this. Corporations have made an end run around any government regulation. All the slogans and rhetoric you hear from Republican politicians are misdirection. Corporations have already dismantled any governmental rules. You probably don't know that if corporations face higher standards than are in place in U.S., then they are allowed to sue the other nations for damages. This means that if Canada wants to set higher standards to protect their workers, or the environment, or the safety of their citizens against dangerous products, they can't. That is why Right wingers are fighting so hard to make U.S. regulations be the lowest possible, or to disappear totally. It is a systematic drive to remove accountability and control from local communities.

Unbelievable Police Protection Of Bad Cops

2012-01-05T14:41:00.001Z

Fannie Mae Outrage - Not At All Uncommon

2012-01-04T15:51:00.001Z

The Creeping Erosion Of Our Rights

2012-01-03T15:37:00.003Z

Police make up laws on the spot.

And our Presidents further restrict our rights with a government war on whistle blowers and blatant violation of Constitutionally guaranteed liberties.. This is so bizarre that it is incredible Obama continues to "jettison ethics, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law."

We Might Only Wish - The More Likely Violence Will Be Riot Police Cracking Heads

2011-12-28T19:01:00.000Z

"There Will Be Violence, Mark My Words"

By Michael Thomas,
Newsweek28 December 2011

Imagine a vast field on which a terrible battle has recently been fought, the bare ground cratered by fusillade after fusillade of heavy artillery, trees reduced to blackened stumps, wisps of toxic gas hanging in the gray, and corpses everywhere.

A terrible scene, made worse by the sound of distant laughter, because somehow, on the heights commanding the dead zone, the officers' club has made it through intact. From its balconies flutter bunting, and across the blasted landscape there comes a chorus of hearty male voices in counterpoint to the wheedling of cadres of wheel-greasers, the click of betting chips, the orotund declamations of a visiting congressional delegation: in sum, the celebratory hullabaloo of a class of people that has sent entire nations off to perish but whose only concern right now is whether the '11 is ready to drink and who'll see to tipping the servants. The notion that there might be someone or some force out there getting ready to slouch toward the buttonwood tree to exact retribution scarcely ruffles the celebrants' joy.

Ah, Wall Street. As it was in the beginning, is now, and hopes to God it ever will be, world without end. Amen.

Or so it seems to me. It was in May 1961 that a series of circumstances took me from the hushed precincts of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I was working as a curatorial assistant in the European Paintings Department, to Lehman Brothers, to begin what for the next 30 years would be an involvement - I hesitate to call it "a career" - in investment banking. I would promote and execute deals, sit on boards, kiss ass, and lie through my teeth: the whole megillah. In consequence of which, I would wear Savile Row and carry a Hermès briefcase. I had Mme. Claude's home number in Paris and I frequented the best clubs in a half-dozen cities. But I had a problem: I was unable to develop the anticommunitarian moral opacity that is the key to real success on Wall Street.

I had my doubts from the beginning. A few months after I started to work downtown, I ran into an old friend from college and before, a man later to become one of New York's most esteemed writers and editors.

"So," he asked, "how do you like what you're doing now?"

"I like it quite a lot," I said. And this was true: these were new frontiers for me, the pace was lively, the money was good enough ($6,500 a year), and there was so much to learn. But there was one aspect of Wall Street that I found morally confusing if not distasteful: "There's one thing that bothers me, though. It's this: on the one hand the New York Stock Exchange has sent its president, the estimable G. Keith Funston, out into the countryside, supported by an expensive, extensive advertising campaign, to exhort the proletariat to Own your share of America! As if buying 50 shares of IBM or GM in 1961 is as much of a civic duty as buying a $100 war bond in 1943."

I then added, "But here's the thing. At the same time as Funston's out there doing his thing, if you ask any veteran Wall Street pro how the Street works, the first thing he'll tell you is: The public is always wrong. Always." I paused to let that sink in, then confessed, "I have to tell you, I have trouble squaring that circle."

And that was back when Wall Street was basically honest, brought into line thanks in part to Ferdinand Pecora's 1933 humiliation of the great bankers of the Jazz Age and even more so because of the communitarian exigencies forced on the nation by war. From Pearl Harbor to V-J Day, greed was definitely not good, and that proscriptive spirit lingered on right up to 1970, when everything started to change, and the traders began their long march through our great houses of finance, with the inevitable consequence that the Street's moral bookkeeping grew more and more contorted, its corruptions more elaborate, its self-interest less and less governable. What someone has called the "Greed Wars" began.

But now, I think, the game is at long last over.

As 2011 slithers to its end, none of the major problems that led to the crisis point three years ago have really been solved. Bank balance sheets still reek. Europe day by day becomes a financial black hole, with matter from the periphery being sucked toward the center until the vortex itself collapses. The Street and its ministries of propaganda have fallen back on a Big Lie as old as capitalism itself: that all that has gone wrong has been government's fault. This time, however, I don't think the argument that "Washington ate my homework" is going to work. This time, a firestorm is going to explode about the Street's head - and about time, too.

It's funny; the Big Lie has a long pedigree. A year or so ago, I was leafing through Ron Chernow's indispensable history of the Morgan financial interests, and found this interesting exchange between FDR and Russell Leffingwell, a Morgan partner and Washington fixer, a sort of Robert Strauss of his day. It dates from the summer of 1932, with FDR not yet in office:

"You and I know," wrote Leffingwell, "that we cannot cure the present deflation and depression by punishing the villains, real or imaginary, of the first post war decade, and that when it comes down to the day of reckoning nobody gets very far with all this prohibition and regulation stuff." To which FDR replied: "I wish we could get from the bankers themselves an admission that in the 1927 to 1929 period there were grave abuses and that the bankers themselves now support wholeheartedly methods to prevent recurrence thereof. Can't bankers see their own advantage in such a course?" And then Leffingwell again: "The bankers were not in fact responsible for 1927–29 and the politicians were. Why then should the bankers make a false confession?"

This time, I fear, the public anger will not be deflected. Confessions, not false, will be exacted. Occupy Wall Street has set the snowball rolling; you may not think much of OWS - I have my own reservations, although none are philosophical or moral - but it has made America aware of a sinister, usurious process by which wealth has systematically been funneled into fewer and fewer hands. A process in which Washington played a useful supporting role, but no more than that.

Over the next year, I expect the "what" will give way to the "how" in the broad electorate's comprehension of the financial situation. The 99 percent must learn to differentiate the bloodsuckers and rent-extractors from those in the 1 percent who make the world a better, more just place to live. Once people realize how Wall Street made its pile, understand how financiers get rich, what it is that they actually do, the time will become ripe for someone to gather the spreading ripples of anger and perplexity into a focused tsunami of retribution. To make the bastards pay, properly, for the grief and woe they have caused. Perhaps not to the extent proposed by H. L. Mencken, who wrote that when a bank fails, the first order of business should be to hang its board of directors, but in a manner in which the pain is proportionate to the collateral damage. Possibly an excess-profits tax retroactive to 2007, or some form of "Tobin tax" on transactions, or a wealth tax. The era of money for nothing will be over.

But it won't just end with taxes. When the great day comes, Wall Street will pray for another Pecora, because compared with the rough beast now beginning to strain at the leash, Pecora will look like Phil Gramm. Humiliation and ridicule, even financial penalties, will be the least of the Street's tribulations. There will be prosecutions and show trials. There will be violence, mark my words. Houses burnt, property defaced. I just hope that this time the mob targets the right people in Wall Street and in Washington. (How does a right-thinking Christian go about asking Santa for Mitch McConnell's head under the Christmas tree?) There will be kleptocrats who threaten to take themselves elsewhere if their demands on jurisdictions and tax breaks aren't met, and I say let 'em go!

At the end of the day, the convulsion to come won't really be about Wall Street's derivatives malefactions, or its subprime fun and games, or rogue trading, or the folly of banks. It will be about this society's final opportunity to rip away the paralyzing shackles of corruption or else dwell forever in a neofeudal social order. You might say that 1384 has replaced 1984 as our worst-case scenario. I have lived what now, at 75, is starting to feel like a long life. If anyone asks me what has been the great American story of my lifetime, I have a ready answer. It is the corruption, money-based, that has settled like some all-enveloping excremental mist on the landscape of our hopes, that has permeated every nook of any institution or being that has real influence on the way we live now. Sixty years ago, if you had asked me, on the basis of all that I had been taught, whether I thought this condition of general rot was possible in this country, I would have told you that you were nuts. And I would have been very wrong. What has happened in this country has made a lie of my boyhood.

There should be more to America, Gore Vidal has written, than who pays tax to whom. It has been in Wall Street's interest to shrivel our sensibilities as a nation, to shove aside the verities of which General MacArthur spoke at West Point - duty, honor, country - in favor of grubby schemes and scams and "carried interest" calculations. Time, I think, to take the country back.

Your Political Representatives Are The 1%

2011-12-27T18:39:00.000Z

Political representatives that choose to focus on claimed "hard work" that business people have done to create jobs. They think that the government should be run like a business. That model has been tried for the past thirty years and has shown its results. The notion that laws must be "fair" to "people who strive and succeed," is a propaganda slogan. Nobody would oppose fairness. Everybody strives to "succeed."

Opposing the estate tax, the inheritance tax levied on the wealthy, is a major "red herring." It applies to almost nobody. Only the extremely rich (of whom you and I and about 99% of Americans are not a part) are affected by that tax. The dogmatic unthinking and unreasoning ideology that those people are overtaxed is precisely the problem. The continuation of exempting the super wealthy from income taxation is the mechanism for redistributing wealth ever upwards. To treat them with that claimed "fairness," is ridiculous because they neither produce "fair" benefits to the nation, nor does their spending trickle down.

It is very revealing that the same political representatives who so zealously protect the rich also repeat the nonsense that unemployment checks make some less willing to go back to work (since you can live so well on minimum wage - obviously they are so out of touch because they have never had to try to do that) . These same politicians have no problem supporting tax breaks for oil companies because (their catechism says) when corporations profit, so do people with pensions and portfolios. Of course, they would avoid any discussion of the ability of corporations to conduct massive layoffs and ship jobs overseas, or of corporate buyouts being able to cancel pension obligations. But, corporations are people, too. All the profits of corporations go to people. The only problem is that the people they go to are the super rich. Corporate profitability is a mechanism for upward redistribution of wealth. There is no protection of the pensioners and common share holders.

It turns out these politicians are more interested in their own gain than in the well being and interests of their constituents. See the latest story in the Washington Post on the growing wealth difference between lawmakers and their constituents. They are the 1%. It is no wonder they favor the draconian budget plan advanced by mega-tool Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. His document was so outrageous that nobody could or would have accepted it as anything but an Utopian wish-list or rather wet dream for the super rich. It was nothing less than a propaganda strategy. Political leaders who favored the rape and pillaging of the American lower and middle classes (the 99%) to further line the purses of the 1%, apologetically commented that at least Ryan had "begun the conversation." Their goal is to lower the income tax on the highest earners from 35 percent to 25 percent and ultimately to zero. They'll offer up the illusion of their willingness to get rid of "loopholes" (you saw how sincere they were about that when the question of tax credits for private corporate jets was raised).

The following Congressmen are all millionaires:

Darrell Issa, Direct Electronics, vehicle anti-theft devices
Mike McCaul, Clear Channel Communications
Jane Harman, Harman Kardan
John Kerry, Heinz Ketchup
Mark Warner, buying free government radio frequencies
Herb Kohl, Kohl's
Jared Polis, American Information Systems, bluemountain.com and proflowers.com
Vernon Buchanan, American Speedy Printing Centers, auto dealership empire
Nancy Pelosi, real estate, footbal team
Jay Rockefeller, wealthy family
Frank Lautenberg, ADP
Richard Blumenthal, dad is wealthy
Diane Feinstein, property managment, biotech
Bob Corker, real estate
James Risch, lawyer & real estate
Kenny Marchant, r/e development & home construction
Gary Miller, real estate
Rodney Frelinghuysen, rich daddy, valuable land in NJ and MASS
Jim Renacci, 47% of current congressmen are millionaires
Rita Lowey, rich attorney hubby
Mike Kelly, auto dealaership & oil and gas investments
Trent Franks, Liberty Petroleum
Rick Berg, Goldmark R/E
Diane Lynn Black, hubby is CEO of Aegis Sciences Corp.

37 Senate Dems and 30 Senate Reps are millionaires

That is 67% - more than enough to pass any law or block any law or override any veto; and there are
110 House Reps and 73 House Dems - 183 of 435 is 42%, certainly enough to block any legislation; but also, since republicans vote pretty much lock-step and are the traditional party of the wealthy interests, adding 73 dems to the current Republican majority of 242 makes 315 - 72%.

Do you think there is any chance of passing legislation that requires fair sacrifice on behalf of the wealthy?

Local Police Use of Unmanned Drones?

2011-12-27T18:21:00.001Z

No, that's not a Hollywood movie scenario. Take a look at the report by the ACLU.

Next month FAA will propose new rules that will make it easier for law enforcement agencies to get permission to use military style unmanned drones in the U.S.

You can expect that local police departments will greatly increase their use.

We don't have adequate legislation to ensure that this new technology will be used responsibly and consistently with our traditional Constitutional values, especially in view of the recent history of our government's willingness to severely limit our freedoms under the cloak of claims of necessity to protect our national security.

This has already started and the new FAA rules will bring us just one step closer to that ‘surveillance society’ people like Alex Jones have been warning about for years - a state in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded and scrutinized by the authorities.

Our reasonable privacy expectations have been rapidly eroding. Warrant exceptions for search and seizure are everywhere. What will restrict local authorities from retaining images of people identified by surveillance drones? How will we avoid the use of a process for developing policies on the use of drones that will not be open and transparent?

The use of drones provides local police cheap, flying video surveillance cameras.

What about the concern for the chilling effects on behavior and expression when people know that they are being secretly watched?

Drones are in fact currently being used in the Department of Homeland Security and police departments in Texas, Florida, North Dakota and Colorado.

Check out the Center for Investigative Reporting's alarming findings. CIR

Local police are stockpiling high-tech, combat-ready gear! And this is in Fargo, North Dakota - armored trucks with gun turrets...spending sprees spurred by federal waste under anti-terrorism grants. This has turned police departments into army-like forces.

Beat cops now routinely carry assault rifles, wear body armor and other apparel that make them look more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan than traditional "serve and protect" police. The new equipment bought with these federal grants reads like a defense contractor catalog. This new gear fills police warehouses, locker rooms and patrol cars in departments across the country.

All of this will easily lead to police fishing expeditions, invasive activities and abusive stops that will seriously erode the freedom of reasonably expected privacy that we have long treasured as Americans.

Heart Warming

2011-12-26T19:21:00.000Z

Incredible Bianca Ryan

And, to complete the AWE, Susan Boyle!

United Stupid Of America

2011-12-26T18:58:00.000Z

Are Religious Americans Really This Stupid? - I bet you get all three questions wrong.

Are We Really That Stupid?

2011-12-26T18:43:00.000Z

Watch Out For Propaganda Definitions

2011-12-26T18:40:00.000Z

You'll see a lot of idiotic crap on the Internet and on YouTube peddling propaganda against what they want to "define" as socialism. Don't buy it.

Just Listen - The Attack On The Working People By The Rich

2011-12-26T18:13:00.000Z

If you actually took the time to read a Chomsky book, you would find that it is extensively supported by plenty of references and notes that you can check for yourself. On the other hand, if you read a book by the ideologues of the Right, for example, George Will, you will find nothing but unsupported declarations of uncritically and religiously held dogma. How do pseudo-intellectuals like Will and Charles Krauthammer get regular television talking head spin doctor air time? How do fake "historians," snake oil charlatans no better than quacks like the Newtser, who steal money blind from every sucker out there, get constant television coverage and fraudulently raise millions to run for office? How does the idiotic outright propaganda of Oxycontin addicted drug addled ramblings of bloviating radio personalities, psychopathic rants of the likes of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, and inane babble of sheer tripe by the Sean Hannitys of the FOX noise machine get commercial support? We truly are a stupid nation. Take the Newsweek Quiz, "How Dumb Are We?"

Instead of knee-jerk "taught response" reaction to Chomsky, conservatives should actually READ (we know they don't) Chomsky's work. They can go back and watch the YouTube videos in seven parts of the one time arch-conservative William F. Buckley, Jr., host of "Firing Line" had Chomsky on as a guest. Buckley typically steam-rolled over all his guests, regularly regurgitating malapropisms that his conservative groupies salivated after. The show actually put out a calendar on which Buckley "defined" a word a day. It was the funniest example of his total lack of grasp for the words he used on his program to "show off." Most being ignorant and incapable of actually checking to see if Buckley was correctly using the words, this got past his audience for years. If you watch other shows you will see Buckley in his common practice. Incredibly, he did not try to put one single of his presumptuous pomposity words during the Chomsky interview. He knew Chomsky would have eaten him for lunch. Buckley NEVER invited Chomsky back. See why.

I challenge and encourage anyone to read Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermann's "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" - DO fact-check every single footnote.

People who cite Adam Smith have NEVER read him.

America has NEVER had anything even closely resembling "free markets"

Welfare Benefits For The Rich Exist, But Are Not Named "Welfare"

Howard Zinn - On American Class Society

2011-12-26T17:13:00.002Z

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

On Taxes

One Of America's Most Favorite Movies - Wizard Of Oz

2011-12-26T16:43:00.000Z

Maybe so-called "conservatives" should ban it. Throughout, it is deeply inflicted with "liberal" and "socialist" values. I recently watched a video on YouTube in which William F. Buckley, Jr. commented on the "Libertarian" ideology of Ayn Rand. Buckley mentions that he had to "flog" himself to read "Atlas Shrugged." Perceptively, he recalls that her major works are thoroughly lacking in any "goodness." Raynd's "selfishness," the cornerstone of modern Republican conservatism (Alan Greenspan was one of her sycophantic acolytes). There is not an ounce of moral goodness in them. Joseph Campbell recalled how Schopenhauer, in discussing moral goodness said, "How is it that one human being can feel the pain and danger of another as though it were his own, and to such a degree that he will forget himself, and putting his own life in jeopardy, go spontaneously to that other's rescue?" That moral sense does not exist in Ayn Rand, or the self-proclaimed "compassionate" conservative.

The real silent majority of Americans are far more liberal and socialist than the strident vocal minority that controls the major organs of propaganda would have you believe.

It might be interesting to view this program of Democracy Now, dedicated to the life of Yip Harburg, the writer of the music responsible for the beauty of "The Wizard of Oz." Frank Baum wrote the book (also a socialist), but Harburg stamped the movie with his talent.

Caution: If You Think You're A Christian, You May Need To Re-examine That Notion

2011-12-24T16:53:00.001Z

George Carlin On Rash Lumpballs

2011-12-24T16:41:00.001Z

Warning: this video contains explicit adult language

Merry Christmas From The GOP & Tea Party

2011-12-24T16:36:00.000Z

Greedy Corporations - Johnson & Johnson

2011-12-21T22:01:00.004Z

Doctors Without Borders -

Johnson & Johnson Slams Door on International Mechanism to Increase Access to Treatment for People living with HIV/AIDS

Company Refuses to License Patents on Three Lifesaving AIDS Drugs to Medicines Patent Pool

Dylan Rattigan Nails It - Delusion City

2011-12-21T21:22:00.000Z

Not only are the Republicans (especially those of the House with its Tea Party political imbeciles), but so also are the Democrats (especially our President) in total delusion.

Obama rates himself among the best four Presidents! He may just have been expressing pride in getting bills passed. Although he managed to let Republicans make him give up much. He totally misjudged the public support, for example, for a single payer option. Because he picked the wrong people as financial advisers, instead choosing the Wall Street bank owned ones, Obama fumbled the ball and failed to rise to the historical opportunity.

Another incredible weakness and failure of President Obama was his appointment of Eric Holder as Attorney General. The Department of Justice, aware of a massive attack on voter rights by Republican legislatures in a majority of states across the country, only recently announced that it would look into the problem - too late to do anything before the next national election. The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law has been investigating voter fraud allegations. They found, for example, that Missouri had voter fraud rates in 2004 of 0.0001%. New Hampshire had 0.0006%. New Jersey had 0.0004%. New York had 0.000009%. Scottie Walker's Wisconsin 0.0002%. Contrary to Republican protestations, their drive to supposedly prevent voter fraud is a solution in search of a non-existent problem.

On the other hand, the type of electoral fraud regularly practiced by the Republican Party to steal elections is a problem for which people have actually been convicted and gone to jail. See, for example, the recent conviction of Republican Paul Schurick for robo-calling black voters and telling them to relax and not vote (listen to one call here). In case you think that Republicans don't really do that, check this out (from a 2006 post "Vote Theft, Robocalls, and Terry Nelson":

"Sources in Bergen County are reporting that an autodial robocall is being made that starts out sounding like a positive Bob Menendez message. If you hang up, it repeatedly calls you back. If you listen all the way to the end, it finishes by saying that Menendez is an embezzler and under criminal investigation.
This is a voter suppression tactic being used nationwide by the GOP. Initially callers will think they are hearing a call from the Menendez campaign asking for support. If they hang up, it will repeatedly call them back. The intention is to annoy the voter so much that they no longer support the candidate. For those who actually listen to the entire call, they are presented with a series of lies and smears against Menendez, also with the intention of suppressing turnout. It's a win-win tactic for them.

The NRCC is doing the same exact thing in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and at least 53 other races across the country."

There's much more. Terry Nelson was an unindicted co-conspirator in the TRMPAC scandal involving none other than notorious Texas Republican "hammer" Tom Delay. Nelson was the boss of James Tobin (GW Bush's New England Campaign Chairman), who was himself convicted of a felony for phone-jamming in New Hampshire during the 2002 Presidential election. Seriously folks, we're not talking Putin's Russia. This Terry Nelson was the head of "opposition research" for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. Isn't it even amazing that they have such a position?

Terry Nelson, a key GOP operative, was also - get ready for the surprise - a senior advisor to John McCain. He has deep roots with Delay and none other than the master manipulator Karl Rove. They are the type of people that have long broken the law and gained great profit and monetary reward for it. These are truly evil and corrupt people. They also did it by changing voting over from the old machines to Diebold computerized voting machines that they owned and over which they had proprietary programming to tally the votes. George Orwell could not have imagined a more incredible scenario for total undermining of the electoral process.

Remember that they have been fighting the campaign reform laws (right up to their stacked Supreme Court activist Citizens United decision). Who oversees these election practices? Why, of course, the FEC - and that again explains why they hate that agency and want to get rid of it.

DOJ has also allowed the most incredible attack on democracy in the name of the Tenth Amendment and supposed "states rights" by the Republican Governor and Legislature in Michigan. They have effectively nullified the votes of their citizens by appointing Czars that can "dissolve local government; declare bankruptcy; hire, fire, and direct staff; eliminate positions or create new ones; consolidate or otherwise eliminate departments; reject, modify or terminate existing labor contracts; amend the budget of the local unit of government at will; sell community assets, including publicly held property; adjust salaries and benefits for elected and governing officials; and issue and approve vendor contracts...[And, T]he law does not require that the governor-appointed EFM [Emergency Finance Managers] be a citizen or taxpayer of the municipality. There is also no cap on the EFM’s salary, which is paid for by the local unit of government, and there are no term limits."

Money blinds all these people. We need to dump them all and elect only candidates that will not take any lobby money whatsoever. Let's start a Constitutional Amendment at the grass roots and clean up our government, returning to the ideal - "of, for, and by the people." And, sorry Willard, but corporations are not people. The day they can bleed, I'll recant on that.

Father Nathan Monk At Pensacola City Council

2011-12-21T19:24:00.000Z

Here we go. The most disgusting part of this is that some people actually applauded the conduct of the City Commission. Germans too silently let tyranny take over their country - that culminated in ... well, you know.

This Is What Tyranny Looks Like

2011-12-21T19:14:00.003Z

From article in UK's The Guardian

QUOTE

Senator Lindsey Graham said the extraordinary measures were necessary because terrorism suspects were wholly different to regular criminals.

"We're facing an enemy, not a common criminal organisation, who will do anything and everything possible to destroy our way of life," he said. "When you join al-Qaida you haven't joined the mafia, you haven't joined a gang. You've joined people who are bent on our destruction and who are a military threat."

Graham added that it was right that Americans should be subject to the detention law as well as foreigners. "It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next," he said. "And when they say, 'I want my lawyer,' you tell them, 'Shut up. You don't get a lawyer.'"

Other senators supported the new powers on the grounds that al-Qaida was fighting a war inside the US and that its followers should be treated as combatants, not civilians with constitutional protections.

But another conservative senator, Rand Paul, a strong libertarian, has said "detaining citizens without a court trial is not American" and that if the law passes "the terrorists have won".

UNQUOTE

Republican Mean

2011-12-21T19:00:00.000Z

Children testified before Congress today on their experiences living in poverty and homeless. You can see video on CSPAN

It is positively SICKENING that anybody can tolerate this happening in America.

Koch Brothers Exposed - Among The Most Anti-American Fraudsters Today

2011-12-15T22:52:00.001Z

See BraVeNew Foundation
Find out about the Koch Brothers. They are waging war against 99%. They spend enormous amounts of money to bribe politicians and even Supreme Court Justices. Their companies are criminal.

Free Speech TV

2011-12-15T22:05:00.001Z

Catch Earth Keepers on FSTV, inspired by Derrick Jensen's books "Endgame, vol. 1 and vol. 2"

FSTV LIVE

END:CIV

It's The Money Stupid! : We Don't Need Campaign Finance Reform - We Need Campaign Finance Elimination

2011-12-15T15:00:00.000Z

Thank you Mr. Van Zandt. Some of us screamed when Buckley v. Valeo was decided. This fight has been going on a long time. In 1971 it seemed that we might get a handle on the corruption of money in our electoral process when Congress passed the Federal Elections Campaign Act. The law really only established requirements for disclosure of campaign funds. The Republicans and President Nixon fought it tooth and nail. It had a provision that allowed taxpayers to check off a box on their tax returns accepting that one dollar of their taxes could be used for financing Presidential elections. When Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan ran against each other, they both agreed not to take any campaign money other than that. Of course, the Republicans' dirty trick to get Reagan elected was to get a third Party candidate to run that was assured to siphon off Carter votes. He was a very moderate Republican certain not to draw any of the ultra-Right wing Republicans that supported Reagan. Due to the Watergate scandal and the mood of the country, over the veto of President Ford, Congress amended the FECA in 1974 to limit contributions by individuals, political parties and PACs. The amendments established the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to enforce the law. Republicans have hated and attacked the FEC since it's inception and when they got the power to do so, stacked it with puppets to ensure no enforcement. The Buckley case was the culmination of the relentless attack through the courts by the moneyed interests that were unhappy with campaign finance reform. They carefully prepare cases and stack the courts to get the results they want. Getting money out of our politics will not be easy. They have been at this for a long time. They knew exactly what they were doing when the prepared and presented the Citizens United case.

I'm glad you have raised awareness. Everyone should do some digging and studying of the events surrounding the passage of FECA and its amendments. There was no Internet, so it's a little harder than just Googling, but there should be plenty of juicy information for anyone who wants to find out. You see, at the time, the corporate media was just as docile as it is today - always willing to accept the claim that neither Party really wanted reform (that was their cash cow). The public was lulled and distracted into forgetfulness. Please read Buckley v. Valeo. Of course, it's not easy, but you can get the gist of the arguments the various Supreme Court Justices found convincing. Justice Stevens Chicago-Kent Law School has a good link with audios of the oral arguments included. The Wikipedia analysis of the case is a good place to start. If you have the will and capacity to do the work and understand the arguments and criticisms, you will be better prepared to fight the battle that the 1% will most assuredly launch against any movement to change the rules of the game that they are winning.

From Huffington Post
by Steven Van Zandt

There Is Only One Issue In America

I was obsessed with politics in the '80s. I've recovered and I'm feeling much better now thank you.

By thetime I realized, as interesting as it was, I'd better stop this stuff and tryto earn a living, I had discovered many of our social problems and quality of lifeissues could be traced to the same political source: our corrupt-by-definitionelectoral system. The solution to the problem was as easy to discover as thecause: The elimination of all private finance in the electoral process.

I wasworking doing most of my research in the area of our foreign policy since WWll,whatever fell under the umbrella of international liberation politics, but Iexamined and analyzed a fair amount of local issues as well.

I wantedto know how things work? Where's the power? Who's pulling the strings?

Theeconomy of the world came down to the unholy trinity of guns, drugs andgasoline -- military industry, drugs (legal and illegal), and energy -- and nowI would add agribusiness as the fourth controlling commodity, and always withthe enabling bankers never too far out of sight making their profits far toooften from wars and slave labor.

Whilethat readily explained the suffering of the Third World, it didn't immediatelyanswer why in America it was possible for so many people to be unhappy with ourgovernment's decisions, both foreign and domestic, when we're supposedly livingin a democracy.

A quickanalysis of our electoral process revealed the obvious answer. The simple factis we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathersintended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to,no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.

Thecorporation has but one obligation, which is to increase profits for itsshareholders by any legal means necessary by the next fiscal quarter.

They haveno moral, patriotic, social, environmental, generational or even sustainableresponsibility. They have only a short-term economic mandate and their onlyresponsibility to society is to stay within the law to accomplish it.

Thisdoesn't mean corporations shouldn't exist or even that their directors are evilby their very DNA. It has been a legally acceptable basic flaw in the form ofour capitalist system that allows corporations to operate without a moralcompass or obligation to society -- but that's a discussion for another day.

The lawis rarely a problem because the corporations' legal obligations are pretty muchdesigned first and foremost for their maximum profit by the legislation createdby the legislators belonging to our two national political parties, both ofwhich are wholly bought, sold and controlled by Wall Street. The banks and thecorporations. In other words the game is rigged. Feel like a sucker? We all dobecause we all are.

Themanipulation, aided by a very willing media also owned by the corporations, hasmade things easier beginning with what has become the amazing Orwellian stapleof every newscast, selling the public on the lie that the Dow has somehow becomeAmerica's scoreboard!

We're allhypnotized, rooting for them like they're our home team at a football game,cheering for THEIR scoreboard mindlessly forgetting WE'RE THE AWAY TEAM!!

You thinkyour congressman is working all day to get you a job? He may want to. He or sheis probably not a bad person. They probably want to do the right thing. Butthey can't. Long-time Capitol Hill staff and campaign strategists tell me theaverage legislator spends one-third of their time (or more) every day raising moneyor on activities related to raising money.

Yes, theyare "elected" which creates the mass delusion of democracy to keepthe masses from rioting, but congressional races are costing millions ofdollars and some Senate seats are going for tens of millions each, and they'repredicting well over one billion dollars for the next presidency.

That'ssome democracy we've created there, isn't it?

Of the people?

By the people?

For the people?

What people?

Democracyin America is a sick joke and the masses aren't laughing anymore.

Yes, wecan demonstrate. We can march. We can write and sign petitions to ourRepresentatives. We can occupy.

And weshould because it's healthy to vent, and we don't feel so all alone. But thetruth is, other than the value of venting, we're wasting our time. It is naïveto expect political results from any of these activities.

Ourrepresentative can give us lip service. A lot of sympathy. Empathy even. But wedon't pay their media bills, gabeesh?

We needto eliminate all private finance from the electoral process.

And let'snot be distracted by "reforms." Let's spare ourselves the unnecessarydiscussions about transparent disclosure, or the conflict of interest offoreign countries buying favorable treatment, or protection after protectionbeing gutted by dangerously diluted regulations, or trying to impose this limitor that limit, etc., etc., etc.

Campaignfinance doesn't need reform. It needs elimination.

To accomplish this we must overturnBuckleyv. Valeo, one of the two or three worst decisions in the history of theSupreme Court.

Theruling makes the extraordinary decision that money is protected by the FirstAmendment.

PresumablyChief Justice Gordon Gekko presiding!

Thesesmartest guys in the room actually decided that spending money is theequivalent of free speech. You might wonder why no one in that smart room stoodup and said wait a minute, if money is speech, isn't lack of money lack ofspeech?

You know,as in the rich get to talk, and the poor don't? How are the non-moneyed classesrepresented by this decision?

I guessnobody stood up then, but it's time to stand up now.

In fact,I am now introducing a new pledge to be signed by our legislators. Of bothparties. Indies too. Everybody's welcome.

THE PLEDGE FOR A DEMOCRATICAMERICA

(We'llneed someone more educated than me to draw it up, or we can copy GroverNorquist's anti-tax pledge, but it would go something like this.)

I, The Undersigned, pledge to overturn Buckley v. Valeo and eliminate all privatefinance from the electoral process, thusly restoring America to its democraticprinciples. I may take corporate, PAC, SuperPAC, or Chinese money to getelected or reelected (martyrdom accomplishes nothing), but upon my election Iwill make campaign finance elimination one of my immediate top priorities.

Nowsomebody should be starting a new Third Party whose platform is dedicated tothis one idea. Twenty-five years ago that's what I'd be doing right now.

But theneed for a Third Party aside, this idea applies for everyone. Just as much forthe Tea Party on the right as the 99 Percenters on the left (the corporateoligarchy actually has no Party affiliation, it just looks Republican).

Bothgroups should adopt this issue. The Occupiers need not agree on anything else,because frankly nothing else matters, and a bit more focus on the root of ourproblems for the Tea Party certainly wouldn't hurt them either.

Let's seewho's serious about representing the "people."

And youknow what?

We mightbe pleasantly surprised at how many congressmen and senators sign this thingwho would rather be doing something more dignified with their lives thanspending half their time begging for money.

One In Two Americans Is Living In Poverty

2011-12-15T03:30:00.000Z

What part of this is not getting through to voters? Meanwhile, the ultra-rich bribe and own nearly every politician - who in turn give them large tax cuts and make sure they don't really have to compete for the booty they receive.

You who used to believe we all have a fair chance at becoming one of the wealthy, how's that working out for you now that you've watched your wages slip, the value of your homes tank, and your erstwhile middle class jobs cut?

As you hunt for new jobs, notice that every potential employer will take advantage of the bad economy to get you to take work at a much lower wage than you had before. Unemployment is good for them. It is a mechanism for lowering wages.

When you finally get back to work, how many years will you stay at or near poverty before you can expect a moderately decent life-style again? Your American dream has been stolen. Look back over the past thirty years and take a more clear perspective of how it was stolen. A lot of political rhetoric was flung your way. Do you now see that you bought into a deception? Isn't it curious is it that during that time of deregulation and tax cuts a very elite portion of the population tripled their incomes? While you slept, the top 10% increased their holdings of wealth to where they now control 90%. Did their purchase of private jets, yachts, exotic automobiles, and tens of mansions create all those promised jobs that would "trickle down" to you? Did the elimination of government revenues maintain our country's infrastructure and education at world class levels, or have we now slipped into third-world status in many important areas? How do you feel about China manufacturing components essential to our military weapons? How patriotic was it for our companies to improve their bottom lines by firing hundreds of thousands and shipping jobs overseas? How much business acumen does it take to make massive job cuts? How crazy was it to pay executives ridiculous bonuses for the destruction of America? Are you about ready to stand up and take action to get the bribery money out of our government?

TYRANNY Is Here - And You Thought Alex Jones Was Exaggerating

2011-12-15T00:24:00.000Z

[SilvaNet: The danger involved here is not so much the definition of terrorism or the acts considered illegal; but the fact that an American citizen so "designated" may be arrested by the U.S. military (or by police at the military's behest) and detained indefinitely without any right to bail, to be charged, to any "due process," including the right to confront witnesses against him, to subpoena witnesses, to have access to examine documents, and all the other discovery rights, right to trial by jury, etc. The "power" to "designate" rests in the President. In fact, that power will be delegated. Political power has been misused before against persons with views that someone simply found disagreeable. This has an enormous potential for outrageous abuse.

This is NOT a Democrat or Republican issue. It is not a conservative or liberal issue. See article written by Senator Rand Paul on December 5, 2011 in The National Review:

"If you allow the government the unlimited power to detain citizens without a jury trial, you are exposing yourself to the whim of those in power. That is a dangerous game."]

What's the point in electing Obama when he is worse than Bush? Both parties are totally together on the complete destruction of our American ideals.

Now the U.S. military can legally act like police on American soil. They can detain any American citizen indefinitely without due process of law (in violation of the 5th Amendment).

Our Congress thinks trials are no longer necessary.

INFOWARS

PRISONPLANET

We are being conned from all sides.

‘Indefinite Detention’ Bill Heads To Obama’s Desk As White HouseDrops Veto Threat

Posted By admin OnDecember 14, 2011 @ 2:23 pm In FeaturedStories,News In Focus,Paul Watson Articles,Tile | 27 Comments

Establishment media and neo-cons still pretend NDAA doesn’t applyto American citizens

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, December 14, 2011

UPDATE: Obamahas dropped his threat to veto thebill ^[1]and is now expected to sign it into law. Remember– it was Obama’s White House that demanded the law apply to U.S. citizens inthe first place.

The bill which would codify into law the indefinite detentionwithout trial of American citizens is about to be passed and sent to Obama’sdesk to be signed into law, even as some news outlets still erroneously reportthat the legislation does not apply to U.S. citizens.

“The House on Wednesday afternoon approved the rule for the 2012National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), setting up an hour of debate and avote in the House later this afternoon,” reports the Hill ^[2].

Mainstream news outlets like The Hill, as well as neo-con blogs like Red State ^[3], are still pretending the indefinite detention provision doesn’tapply to American citizens, even though three of the bill’s primary sponsors,Senator Carl Levin, Senator John McCain, and Senator Lindsey Graham, said itdoes during speeches on the Senate floor.

“It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the factthat they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as ittakes to find intelligence about what may be coming next,” remarked Graham.“And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t geta lawyer.’”

As Levin said last week ^[4], it was the White House itself that demanded Section 1031 applyto American citizens.

“The language which precluded the application of Section 1031 toAmerican citizens was in the bill that we originally approved…and theadministration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens andlawful residents would not be subject to this section,” said Levin, Chairman ofthe Armed Services Committee.

Senator McCain also told Rand Paul during a hearing on the billthat American citizens could be declared an enemy combatant, sent to GuantanamoBay and detained indefinitely, “no matter who they are.”

Quite how those still in denial could even entertain the notionthat the bill would not apply to American citizens when the Obama administration isalready enforcing a policy of state assassination and killing American citizens ^[5] it claimsare “terrorists,” without having to present any evidence or go through anylegal process, is beyond naive.

With the White House having largely resolved its concerns with thebill, which had nothing to do with the ‘indefinite detention’ provision, Obamacould put pen to paper as early as tomorrow on a law that if recognized willnullify the bill of rights – ironically tomorrow is “Bill of Rights Day”.

Triumph Of Republican Delay And Propaganda

2011-12-14T20:38:00.000Z

Sober analysis of what took place - and is still taking place.

More at The Real News

Addicted To Risk - Naomi Klein TED Talk

2011-12-14T17:12:00.000Z

Nothing Rigged Here

2011-12-14T16:41:00.000Z

Think you could steal 900 dollars and get off by paying a 64 dollar fine?

Huffington Post

Washington Mutual Settlement Lets Former Executives Pay $64 Million Of $900 Million Suit

In what essentially amounts to pocket change whencompared to the billions that Washington Mutual made in risky loans, threeformer top executives of the bank have agreed to settle for $64 million withthe Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation for their role in driving the subprime lending disaster.

In a call withreporters on Tuesday, a senior spokesman for the FDIC characterized the overallsettlement as "good." Consumer advocates were less pleased:"It's not a lot -- not even a tenth of damage of what they havedone," said Diane E. Thompson, an attorney with the National Consumer LawCenter. "I doubt that this will make them feel much in the way ofpain."

Filed by the FDIC in March, the civil suit sought $900 million in damages and was one of the first cases to holdbanking officials personally accountable for the financial practices thatderailed the United States housing market.

The case chargedthat former WaMu chief executive Kerry Killinger, former chief operatingofficer Stephen Rotella and former home loan executive David Schneider"focused on short-term gains to increase their own compensation, withreckless disregard for WaMu's longer term safety and soundness."

On Monday, the threeexecutives agreed to pay $64 million to settle the case, which is expected tobe finalized in the next day. That amount is far less than the $95 million theywere collectively compensated between 2005 and 2008, according to the FDIC'scase.

Killinger himselfreceived $88 million in compensation between 2001 and 2007, including $24million in 2006 at the height of the housing boom. The settlement also absolvesthe wives of Rotella and Schneider, who had been named in the FDIC case andcharged with shielding cash and property.

Moreover, verylittle of the $64 million will come from their personal assets. The bulk of thesettlement will be paid out by the executives' insurance companies; money willalso be taken from Killinger's retirement package, from Schneider's andRotella's so-called golden parachutes, and from Schneider's bonus.

A senior spokesmanat the FDIC would not break down further what portion of the settlement wouldbe paid from the executives' personal holdings.

"This was oneof the few attempts to hold the individuals responsible for our financialcrisis personally responsible, and the settlement is a small measure of theharm they caused," said Thompson of the National Consumer Law Center."The WaMu loans were toxic. WaMu's collapse early in the crisis is a clearindicator that WaMu's loans were particularly risky."

The $64 million willbe combined with a separate $125 million payout from Washington Mutual Inc.,which settled with the FDIC last year to release claims on 12 other executiveswho worked for the banking institution, for a total of $189 million to be givento creditors.

Seattle-based Washington Mutual was one of the mostaggressive subprime lenders during the housing boom, issuing thousands ofmortgages to people, regardless of their financial circumstances. The banksslogan, "The Power of Yes!" was taken literally, as documented in a2008 investigation by the New York Times.

Steven M. Knobel, a founder of appraisal companyMitchell, Maxwell & Jackson, which did business with WaMu until 2007, toldthe New York Times,"If you were alive, they would give you a loan. Actually, I think if youwere dead, they would still give you a loan." The Times articlenotes that the bank would recklessly approve loans for babysitters"claiming salaries worthy of college presidents." In one particularlyegregious example, a mariachi player claimed a six-figure salary. Documentationwas flimsy. Defaults were high, as was compensation for the agents closingthese deals.

Washington Mutual'sreckless lending practices contributed to its own financial collapse, making itthe largest bank failure in U.S. history. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.took control of the bank in 2008 and sold its assets to JPMorgan for $1.9billion.

How To Start A Revolution

2011-12-14T02:58:00.000Z

Current TV

How To Start A Revolution: Gene Sharp wins top Foreign Policy award

Each year the influential ForeignPolicy magazine publish a list of the year's top global thinkers.

This year's top spot is claimed by no less than 14 peoplewho have all had a hand in the Arab Spring revolutions.

Most of the winners are people who have been actively campaigning for change onthe streets of Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria and Tunisia. But there is also aslightly different revolutionary on the list - Gene Sharp,a 83-year-old academic from Boston.

For more than half a century, Sharp has been working to turn the philosophiesof nonviolent protest into a blueprint that can be put into practice byactivists around the world.

His book 'From Dictatorship to Democracy - A Conceptual Framework forLiberation' is a 93-page, 198-step guide to toppling dictators, available freefor download in 40languages. The book was re-discovered by activists throughout the Middle Eastduring and has been instrumental in shaping the Arab Spring revolution as weknow it.

Theaward-winning feature length documentary about how Gene Sharp's ideas workin action called

'How To Start A Revolution' will have its UK premiere righthere on Current on 1st January 2012.

Count The Children

2011-12-14T02:06:00.001Z

As you go about during this holiday season you are bound to see children. Take the time to count. One out of every 45 children is homeless. Where in God's name is your heart? Who are those Republicans that represent you? Can you really rest with a clear conscience supporting the incredibly insensitive (and wrong) political policies that the Republican Party continues to avow in lock-step? Insanity is continuing to do the same thing expecting a different result. Not only are they insane, they are morally empty. Maybe you could allow yourself the luxury of believing them when times are good; but in hard times affecting so many people, your willful blindness is morally inexcusable. Do you believe in God? Will you be able to face Him knowing that you could have done something to help but chose to do nothing? That is the Republican choice - do nothing. Their answer to suffering is more suffering, expecting that by helping those who least need help, in time help will "trickle down" to the destitute. Was that what your religious faith asked of you? One hundred million Americans are living at or near poverty. Republicans in Congress shamelessly claim they are the champions of the middle class. They have blocked every attempt to pass legislation to create jobs for the middle class paid for by a very tiny tax surcharge on the wealthiest 2% of us. Tonight they shamelessly barked for the media that they passed a law to help the middle class, but the President has threatened to veto it. So, they suggest, the President is not interested in helping the middle class. The problem is that they are playing a large political lie. The law they passed extends unemployment benefits (that are due to expire in a couple of weeks) but cuts them by 40 weeks. It also requires recipients to submit to drug testing. Why didn't they think of requiring drug tests from the bankers before they extended bailout money to them? They are all perfect replicas of that famous character in the Christmas classic movie "It's A Wonderful Life," Mr. Potter.

On Newt The "Historian"

2011-12-13T13:22:00.001Z

Just having some thoughts about how Newtie regales in repeating that he is a "historian," and in presuming to "correct" others on what he claims are "historical" facts or errors. He is a sign of how low the Republican Party has sunk. Newt is no historian. His books are nothing but self-promoting crap of the same sort as all his other cons like selling fake certificates. Searching for Newtie's doctoral dissertation, found this very interesting site:

The Philosopher's Stone

Tuesday, November 22, 2011
NEWT GINGRICH'S DOCTORAL DISSERTATION
I may be the only person on the face of the earth who has read, cover to cover, Immanuel Kant's Inaugural Dissertation, Karl Marx's doctoral dissertation, and Newt Gingrich's doctoral dissertation...

...

... Gingrich's doctoral dissertation? What is that about? Well, I have had some unkind things to say about Newt on this blog -- about his pompous, self-inflating bloviating, his appallingly inappropriate self-satisfaction, the sheer vacuity of his utterances. All by himself, he has given self-esteem a bad name. But then I thought to myself: "Gingrich presents himself to the world as an academic. He has a Ph. D., or so I have heard. He even had a college teaching job. I owe it to him as, in a manner of speaking, a colleague to take a look at his dissertation and see what it has to say."

... Gingrich did his graduate work in the Tulane history department...: "Belgian Education Policy in the Congo: 1945-1960 A Dissertation Submitted on the Sixth Day of May, 1971 to the Department of History of the Graduate School of Tulane University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Newton Leroy Gingrich." Two hundred eighty-three pages of text, typed and double-spaced in standard dissertation format, five pages of tables, five pages of "selected bibliography" and a one-page biographical sketch of the author indicating that he was awarded a B.A. by Emory University.

... [It is] in the immortal words of W. S. Gilbert in The Mikado, a "source of innocent merriment."

Why on earth Belgian educational policy in the Congo? Newt was studying Modern European History, to be sure, but the topic seems rather obscure. The dissertation lacks the typical page of acknowledgements that might offer a clue, but a bit more surfing of the web reveals that the dissertation director, Professor Pierre Henri Laurent, whose name appears on the signature page, was the son of "an eminent Belgian historian, who died during the Resistance; his mother was a distinguished teacher and linguist. Pierre and his older sister were brought as children to the United States by their mother when the Second World War broke out." ...

[SilvaNet: in other words, Newtie relied on his director to choose his topic for dissertation, evidencing a total lack of original thought and interest on behalf of the student.]

... The dissertation is written in a pedantic, serviceable prose, giving no evidence of the Newt that was to emerge as a fully formed Toad. Although the dissertation is written entirely in English, the footnotes give evidence that Gingrich had a quite adequate command of written French. [The only word in the entire dissertation not in English or French is misspelled -- Weltanschauung with only one "u" -- page 205, line 2]

[SilvaNet: by the way, a word Newt loves to impress his audiences with, although almost certainly not only misspelled, but also totally misunderstood by the fledgling Georgia Gecko.]

Gingrich relies heavily on secondary sources, with especial attention to the work of Ruth Slade and Roger Anstey. However, he has clearly made extensive use of Belgian public documents, including reports of Parliamentary debates. There is no evidence in the text that he traveled either to Belgium or to the Congo, and he seems not to have interviewed any of the principal actors, Belgian or Congolese, even though the dissertation was written only a handful of years after the departure of the Belgians from the Congo.

The structure of the dissertation is straightforward: an Introduction, three chapters on the political and historical background of Belgium's colonization of the Congo, nine chapters on various aspects of the educational institutions introduced by the Belgians into the Congo -- religious education, secular education for the Congolese, secular education for Belgians living in the Congo, education for women, agricultural education, technical education, higher education for the Congolese, etc. -- and a Conclusion.

The political or ideological orientation of the dissertation, if I may put it this way, is roughly that of a Cold War member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Colonization is seen almost entirely from the perspective of the colonial power, not from that of the indigenous population. The rule of King Leopold II, who literally owned the colony as his private property until, at his death, he willed it to Belgium, is widely understood to have been the most horrifyingly brutal colonial regime in Africa. Gingrich acknowledges this fact once in the dissertation. Speaking of the financial pressures placed by the Congo on King Leopold's coffers, Gingrich reports that a "state official told a missionary in 1899 that each time a corporal 'goes out to get rubber he is given cartridges. He must return all those that are not used; and for every one used he must bring back a right hand.'" [p. 15]

But with this sole exception, Gingrich's picture of the Belgian colonial administration is reasonably favorable. As I read his account of the struggles by dedicated Belgian colonial administrators to provide some measure of formal education to the Congolese, in the face of a generally uninterested and neglectful government in Brussels, I was reminded of nothing so much as the writings of John Stuart Mill on India, and the responsibility of cultivated, enlightened Englishmen to bear the heavy burden of stewardship until the non-European peoples are ready for self-rule.

[SilvaNet: so we see that Newt's subliminal racism goes way back to his youth.]

As I have observed, the dissertation is written entirely in English, with quotations from French writers or documentary courses translated in the text, but there is one exception, "évolué," which appears dozens of times in the dissertation. évolué is the past participle of the French verb évoluer, "to evolve." It is the term that was used by the Belgians to refer to those Congolese who learned French, adopted Western dress and styles of social behavior, and became Europeanized. There are several occasions in the dissertation where Gingrich refers to events or statements as "ironic," but he seems not to have been aware of any tingle of irony in his own use of évolué.

[SilvaNet: did I say "subliminal?"]

Although he makes no effort at all to consult the colonized and give voice to their view of the Belgian rule, Gingrich does at one point, rather surprisingly, quote Father Placide Tempels quite favorably and at some length. [pages 100-101.] Tempels was a missionary priest who wrote an important book called Bantu Philosophy. It is the first acknowledgement by a European author that the indigenous peoples of Africa have complex, philosophically sophisticated conceptions of the world and their place in it. I confess that I was surprised and impressed to see Tempels put in an appearance in Gingrich's dissertation. I was a good deal less pleased by Gingrich's reliance on the always questionable Colin Turnbull.

[SilvaNet: it almost seems as if Newtie made sure to add the reference, probably on the advice of his director. The "appearance" was certainly brief.]

Gingrich's summary evaluation of the Belgian colonial performance is quite positive, on the whole, and I cannot help but wonder whether this reflects the point of view of his Belgian dissertation director. To give you some sense of Gingrich's perspective, here is a paragraph from the short Concluding chapter:

"The Belgian colonial record left no one guilty and no one innocent. The Belgian leaders had virtually absolute power. By 20th century standards they used it benevolently although without foresight. The Belgian public had abandoned a responsibility which it did not desire in the first place and which had to compete for attention with pressing and far more obvious domestic problems. The only people who suffered were the Congolese and they had suffered far more under Leopold II (and their neighbors still suffer far more under Portuguese and South African rule). That guilt which the Belgians bear is for neglect, oversight, and relatively mild exploitation. If the Congo was not the model colony Belgian publicists pretended, neither was it the disaster news reports from 1960 to 1965 suggested. To have developed a semi-modernized, semi-educated but politically innocent colony was one of the Twentieth Century's lesser sins." [p. 283]

[SilvaNet: what an abominable and pathetic apologist for Belgian rule in the colonial Congo.]

In the academic year in which he submitted his dissertation, Gingrich took a teaching job as an Assistant Professor in the History Department at West Georgia College. I have been unable to find any scholarly publications coming from his dissertation, but my ability to search the databases on the web is rather rudimentary, and someone more skilled may be able to enlighten me. While teaching at West Georgia, Gingrich ran unsuccessfully for the U. S. House of Representatives in the 6th district, first in 1974 and again in 1976. Finally, having been denied tenure at West Georgia, he won the seat in 1978.

[SilvaNet: and this follow-up post.]

Monday, December 5, 2011
SERIOUS SCHOLARS WEIGH IN ON THE GINGRICH DISSERTATION
... Adam Hochs[c]hild [sp] is a genuine scholar of Southern African matters, as well as being, I am proud to say, an old friend. He has an Op Ed piece in the NY TIMES today on the dissertation...

From Hochschild's opinion "What Gingrich Didn't Learn in Congo": (click on NY TIMES link above for complete article)

NEWT GINGRICH seldom misses a chance to note that he is a historian. He lards his speeches with references to obscure events in the American past, talks about his time teaching at West Georgia College (not one of those effete Ivies), and has declared that the more than $1.6 million in fees he earned from Freddie Mac was for his work not, heaven forbid, as a lobbyist, but as a historian. And last year he was in the news for saying President Obama exhibited “Kenyan, anticolonial behavior.”

...Mr. Gingrich ...1971 Tulane doctoral dissertation: “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960.”

...A curious document ... he asks, “Did the colonial powers perform a painful but positive function in disrupting traditional society and so paving the way for more rapid modernization? Even if they did, was the price of colonial exploitation too high?” Good questions, but he never answers them. ..Mr. Gingrich ... presents himself as... the desk-bound policy wonk.

... absence of any human detail. ... Gingrich never went there [to Congo] — although he did go to Belgium. Perhaps he couldn’t afford a trip to Africa. He cites interviews with one American and seven Belgians — but not a single Congolese, though there were hundreds living in Europe and the United States he could have talked to.

...Absent Congolese voices and lives, the dissertation is as dry as a stale biscuit.

...He notes that the various “civilizing” efforts the Belgians were so proud of “were commercially motivated. For example, the natives received medical care because it improved their capabilities as a work force. They received enough education to be effective workmen.”

...Gingrich has a shrewd politician’s sense of how the colonial system worked. Power was held by a “triumvirate”: an all-white senior civil service, a powerful cartel of corporations and the Catholic Church. The first wanted power, the second profits, the third converts....

[But Gingrich's] ... beef is not that there might be anything immoral about one country’s owning and exploiting another, but that the Belgians didn’t create a class of Congolese who could keep the economy functioning efficiently — for whose profit, he never asks....

...does this thesis show an original, creative historian at work? This it does not.

...it is hard to imagine [Newt] ... being elected president of the American Historical Association.

Adam Hochschild is the author of “King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa.”

...
What caught my attention in the Ginfrich [SilvaNet: I certainly prefer this spelling of the Salamander's last name.] dissertation was its pedestrian quality, its lack of intellectual curiosity or imagination. I ploughed through many doctoral dissertations over the course of an academic career that lasted just exactly half a century, and I think I can spot a piece of solid mediocrity when I see one. Gingrich is not stupid. By the standards of the modern Academy he is adequately intelligent. [I remind you that this is an Academy that contains, among other wonders, roughly ten thousand professional philosophers, so the bar is set reasonably low.] But he clearly does not have a sparkling intellect, a genuinely curious mind, a penetrating imagination.

Banned On YouTube

2011-12-12T17:38:00.000Z

Ron Paul is the ONLY Republican candidate who will at least discuss the issues of interest to most Americans. It's been too many years that our election process has been taken over and controlled by the rich and powerful. I don't agree with much of Dr. Paul's Libertarian views. I think he is missing a very important result of it - that government protects "We the people" from pillage by the wealthy.

So You Think The Game Is Not Rigged

2011-12-12T17:25:00.000Z

As FAUX NEWS Would Say - You Decide

Posted on Huffington Post Blog by:
Alan GraysonFormer U.S. Congressman from Florida's 8th District

A $200K Mortgage for $2 a Month
Posted: 12/ 9/11 05:40 PM ET

You saw that title, "A $200K Mortgage for $2 a Month," and maybe you thought, "that looks like spam."

No. It's real.

And then maybe you thought, "a $200,000 mortgage? For only $2 each month? That sounds impossible."

Well, it is possible. It's just not possible for you.

For Bank of America, yes. For Citigroup, yes. For Wells Fargo, yes.

For you, no.

The GAO's main report on its audit of the Federal Reserve exposed who received the trillions and trillions of dollars in Fed bailouts. But the GAO report wasn't very specific about the terms of those bailouts. For that, we have the Freedom of Information Act records obtained by Bloomberg News, which Bloomberg wrote about last week. Among other things, Bloomberg reported that the Fed lent out this cash to Wall Street at rates "as low as 0.01 percent."

[SilvaNet: for those Bloomberg News stories (yes - plural - as in multiple stories about that practice of the Fed under Bernanke lending out our money to the "too big to fail" Wall Street banks at those ridiculous rates in the middle of the financial crisis)...If you think some home buyers getting loans that they knew they couldn't pay back cost the nearly one trillion disclosed bail out and another seven trillion (in hidden fees, undisclosed until recently) and brought our nation and the entire financial world to their knees; then I have two observations: first, I have some swampland to sell you; second, our entire financial system was a veritable fragile "house of cards" waiting to collapse. Terrorists across the world must have been saying to themselves "what are we doing with airplanes and bombs, these guys can be destroyed much more easily than we ever dreamed!"]

To such worthy recipients as Bear Stearns, AIG, the Royal Bank of Scotland, etc., etc.

Well, it could have been worse. The Fed could have just dumped the money into a wood chipper.

If you do that math, you'll see that when the Fed gave Citigroup the money for a $200,000 mortgage, at 0.01 percent, Citigroup had to pay less than $2 each month for that money. Citigroup then lent that money to you -- if it deigned to lend you anything -- for maybe $1,000 a month, maybe more.

And that $40,000 credit card balance? Citigroup paid the Fed less than a dollar a month for that money. And you paid $1,000.

Citigroup pays $1. You pay $1,000. You see how that works?

Citigroup fell into such a deep hole that it had to borrow a "term-adjusted" $58,000,000,000 from the Fed, according to Page 132 of the GAO's audit report.

And what would you get from the Fed, if you fell into a deep hole? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Diddly-squat. Zero.

You wouldn't get jack.

If you lose your home, you can sleep in your car. If you lose your car, you can sleep under a bridge. Unless, of course, you're a Wall Street banker.

Two hundred and thirteen years ago, there was a Member of Congress who said: "Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute." Now we have a government that says: "Trillions for Wall Street, but not one penny for you."

That's our government. Unless we change it.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

No Doubt GOP Will Ramp Up Calls To Close Down EPA

2011-12-09T20:44:00.001Z

Nobody can have missed the blitzkrieg propaganda campaign from EXXON and ANGA assuring the public that they are perfectly protecting the environment with their fracking activities....SCREECH!

Washington Post

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency draft finding that it may have detected groundwater pollution resulting from a controversial technique that plays a huge role in modern oil and gas development isn’t settled science yet.

[SilvaNet: the cautiously worded news reports all reveal that EPA is telling residents in the area not to drink the water. As one might expect "the oil and gas industry and its allies blasted the announcement as premature." How many years did we listen to the tobacco industry tell us that alarms about the health risks involved in cigarette smoking were premature? Yes, by all means, let's trust EXXON and ANGA when they tell us fracking is perfectly safe and the fact we can light our tap water on fire has nothing to do with their activities. After all, they have no economic interest in lying. By the way...benzene is pretty dangerous stuff - just look it up.

Hell, Republicans are right. Screw health concerns for your children and family. Let's just shut down EPA. Who needs them?]

Compare Corzine Apology To Arpey Resignation

2011-12-09T20:40:00.001Z

I'm sure their plight weighs heavily on his mind...

On the other hand, here is a rare CEO with REAL moral integrity...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Appeasement

2011-12-09T04:05:00.001Z

This is one of those "dog-whistle" words Republicans love to toss out to roust emotion and hatred in their base. You will note that every single Republican candidate is repeating it in their attacks on Obama's claimed "lack of leadership." As long as I can remember, Republicans would always claim they were the only ones who "owned" positions of military "toughness" and support for "law and order" issues. They would have us believe that only Republicans could enforce the law and put criminals in jail, that only Republicans joined the military and fought for their country. The word appeasement has an interesting history.

The term refers to avoidance of taking strong positions or hesitating to use force instead of negotiating or compromising in conflict situations by making concessions to the opposition that display or insinuate weakness or cowardice. Any rational consideration of expense, danger, or numbers of loss of lives is disdained. In Europe, the word has a particularly disgusting connotation, since it is associated with a the reprehensible results of the Holocaust. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, wishing to avoid war with Htiler's Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Fascist Italy made concessions that many later in retrospect condemned as having permitted Hitler to grow in strength virtually unopposed. At the time Chamberlain's concessions had wide support in Britain. Hindsight is always 20/20.

What the Republicans want to do is associate that word and all the negative emotional and visceral connotations of displeasure and judgment of weakness and cowardice to their political opponent. It really doesn't matter if there is any basis or truth. Propaganda does not rely on truth. Just how ridiculous the Republican clown show is can be revealed in a very short counter campaign ad. Bang - Republicans lose. All their chicken hawks (McCain was their only credible spokesman for tough talking war mongering, but now he's just a doddering old fart teetering on the edge of octogenarian mental feebleness).

Bush in a codpiece swaggering off the San Diego coast in front of a sign claiming "Mission Accomplished" rings very hollow when the self-declared tough guys couldn't get Bin Laden even with eight years and nearly a trillion dollars spent. The "soft" "liberal" Democrat comes in and eats terrorists up like a stump grinder. Republicans, face it, you've got nothing on that tired old BS you loved to fool us with.

Help Make Dreams Possible

2011-12-08T14:39:00.001Z

This Saturday, December 10, is our special friends at
the Professional Referral Group, with the continued
support of the staff and management of The Kendall
Ale House all join for the annual Christmas Party at
the Kendall, Florida location. If you can join us, a highly
rewarding experience is guaranteed with lots of activities,
plenty of food and beverages, and of course a special
visit from Santa. If you can, go to the website and contact
Camile and Dr. Geraldi to lend your support and tax
deductible contributions. It's a great cause!

The Possible Dream Foundation, Inc. is highly esteemed
and honored for its long-term care of individuals with
Down Syndrome and a large variety of disabling conditions
including: Anencepahly; Autism; Behavioral Disorders;
Cerebral Palsy; Cleft Face; Cortical Blindness;
Cranio-facial Deformations; Crie du Chat Syndrome;
Deafness; Developmental Disabilities; Holoprosencephaly;
Hydrocephaly; Mental Retardation; Microcephaly; Near
Drowning; Noonan's Syndrome; 9p Minus Syndrome;
Organic Brain Syndrome; Paraplegia; Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder; Quadriplegia; Seizure Disorders;
Shaken Baby Syndrome; Spina Bifida; Status Post
Meningitis Infection; Stroke;Trisomy 13, 18, and 21;
and Zellweger's Syndrome.

Currently forty children and adults are being loved and
cared for in our homes in Miami, Florida and Homestead,
Florida, and on our farm in the Appalachian mountains of
Hayesville, North Carolina. Eighteen of these special needs
children have been adopted by Camille and Dr. Mike Geraldi.

Our Miami location provides: long term custodial and short
term respite care; counseling and support for families;
hospice care for infants with terminal genetic disorders;
and on-the-job training for disabled adults.
We accept long-term and respite care clients for
placement with private funding and funding through the
Medicaid Waiver program.Our Miami location also provides
after-school and day care services on a limited basis.

Our North Carolina location is our "Retirement Village"
where our children and adults assist with maintenance
and daily activities of a working farm. See our
"News From the North" page for pictures and
information on how our children train canines for
search and rescue, obedience, and special needs assistance.

As respected authorities on Down Syndrome and other
related genetic disorders, Camille and Dr. Geraldi are
often consulted by professionals as well as countless
families for their guidance and expertise. Overthe
years, the Geraldis have been featured in numerous major
media including: 60 Minutes; People; Geraldo; Larry
King Live; USA Today; Ladies' Home Journal; 48 Hours;
and Good Morning America.

Numerous awards and honors include: "Point of Light Award"
from President George H.W. Bush; "National Caring Award"
from The Caring Institute; "Achiever of Millennium" from
National Rehabilitation Awareness Foundation; "Adoptive
Mother of The Year Award" from National Mother's Day
Committee; Eckerd's "Woman of The Year"; "Kathryn
Lehman Weiner Advocate of Children Award"; National
Recipient "12th Annual Father Baker Service to Youth
Award"; and "Camille & Dr. Michael Geraldi Day"
proclamation by the Board of County Comissioners,
Dade County, Florida.

If you, your family or organization desire to volunteer your
time or help sponsor a fund raising event to benefit The
Possible Dream Foundation, Inc., we want to hear from you!
If you or someone you know and love is disabled and you
desire assistance, please feel free to contact us. We may
be able to help.

Your support of and kindness towards our very special
children and adults will enable us to continue caring for so
many in need. In addition to monetary donations, in-kind
gifts are sincerely appreciated and welcomed. Please see
our "WISH LIST" page for other ways to express your
generosity.

To make a donation, obtain further information, or inquire
on how you may assist our Foundation,please contact us at:

1-800-UPDOWNS or 1-888-POSSDRM

The Possible Dream Foundation, Inc.
13615 South Dixie Highway #114-528
Miami, FL 33196

The Possible Dream Foundation, Inc.
Post Office Box 1317
Hayesville, North Carolina 28904

Definitive Correction On GOP Frontrunner's Name

2011-12-08T02:45:00.001Z

There seems to be some question as to whether Newtie's last name is pronounced ging-rich or ging-rick. Let's put the controversy to rest. The correct pronunciation is ging-Grinch.

Gingrich Should Be Arrested And Thrown In Jail

2011-12-08T01:05:00.001Z

This guy is not just a total DUMB-ASS, he is actually subject to arrest for saying he would name John Bolton as his Secretary of State!

Title 18, Part I, Chapter 29, Section 599 of the U.S. Code says:

Whoever, being a candidate, directly or indirectly promises or pledges the appointment, or the use of his influence or support for the appointment of any person to any public or private position or employment, for the purpose of procuring support in his candidacy shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

Gingrich Succinctly - GOP Has Intentional Amnesia

2011-12-07T23:14:00.001Z

The absolute baseness of the current Republican presidential candidate darling is so historically clear that even the top Republicans found his unprecedented unethical behavior when he was Speaker of the House grossly and abjectly disgusting. Newtie was the first Speaker in U.S. history to be found guilty of illegal activities, fined $300,000.00, and removed from his position. The vote was not along party lines. The vote was 395 to 28. Thanks to Rachel Maddow for putting this clearly and concisely. Newt is so full of shit that he today announced he would name none other than John Bolton as his Secretary of State! I'm beginning to think the Evangelicals are right - the Antichrist IS here - it's none other than Newt "the Geko" Gingrich!

Can you be so grossly hypocritical as to support this scum-bag. Nearly 50% of Americans actually found the lizard "SCARY." Republican Robert Livingston succeeded Newtie to the Republican Speaker's chair. Google that name to get the details on why he also had to leave the position (clue: he only lasted a few weeks before he was caught up in a sex scandal - all this while the Re-Hypocrites kept screaming for Clinton's impeachment and insisting that "ethical integrity matters in a leader."). Luckily, to re-establish the integrity of Republican leadership, Livingston was replaced by David Vitter - yes, the same who was involved in the DC Madam prostitution scandal!

Who the HELL are these self-righteous "family values" and "moral leadership" NUTS that are scrambling to run that lower than whale shit characterless piece of crap for the highest position of leadership in the free world? Iowans, you are making a mockery of serious politics. Your caucuses are nothing but a bunch of infantile fake audience for the Howdy Doody Show that has become the Republican presidential primaries. That idiocy is to be expected from the Republicans in the state of Florida - they include a large Latin American immigrant contingent that has precious little historical experience of democratic government (their idea of good government was Fulgencio Batista, Generalisimo Fransico Franco, Benito Mussolini, El Jefe Trujillo, Fransico Arana, Juan Peron, Agusto Pinochet, in short, any Right Wing Fascist dictator - and THAT is what attracts them to the Republican Party).

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Robert Newman's History Of Oil - And Of Money And Politics

2011-12-06T20:53:00.001Z

If you've never seen this, take the time to watch it. It is not only very funny and entertaining, it is also very informative and has much relevance to the current political and economics issues of the control of international finance - a superb punctuation to our ignorance of history. It's up to us. Occupy.

Presidential Pardons Heavily Favor Whites

2011-12-06T02:52:00.001Z

"But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears."

Presidential Pardons Heavily Favor Whites
by Dafna Linzer and Jennifer LaFleur
ProPublica, Dec. 3, 2011, 11 p.m.

First of two parts. Part two here [1].

This story was co-published [2] with The Washington Post.

White criminals seeking presidential pardons over the past decade have been nearly four times as likely to succeed as minorities, a ProPublica examination has found.
Blacks have had the poorest chance of receiving the president's ultimate act of mercy, according to an analysis of previously unreleased records and related data [3].
Current and former officials at the White House and Justice Department said they were surprised and dismayed by the racial disparities, which persist even when factors such as the type of crime and sentence are considered.
"I'm just astounded by those numbers," said Roger Adams, who served as head of the Justice Department's pardons office from 1998 to 2008. He said he could think of nothing in the office's practices that would have skewed the recommendations. "I can recall several African Americans getting pardons."
The review of applications for pardons is conducted almost entirely in secret, with the government releasing scant information about those it rejects.
ProPublica's review examined what happened after President George W. Bush decided at the beginning of his first term to rely almost entirely on the recommendations made by career lawyers in the Office of the Pardon Attorney.
The office was given wide latitude to apply subjective standards, including judgments about the "attitude" and the marital and financial stability of applicants. No two pardon cases match up perfectly, but records reveal repeated instances in which white applicants won pardons with transgressions on their records similar to those of blacks and other minorities who weredenied.
Senior aides in the Bush White House say the president had hoped to take politics out of the process and avoid a repetition of the Marc Rich scandal [4], in which the fugitive financier won an eleventh-hour pardon tainted by his ex-wife's donations to Democratic causes and the Clinton Presidential Library.
Justice Department officials said in a statement Friday that the pardon process takes into account many factors that cannot be statistically measured, such as an applicant's candor and level of remorse.
"Nonetheless, we take the concerns seriously," the statement said. "We will continue to evaluate the statistical analysis and, of course, are always working to improve the clemency process and ensure that every applicant gets a fair, merit-based evaluation."
Bush followed the recommendations of the pardons office in nearly every case, the aides said. The results, spread among hundreds of cases over eight years, heavily favored whites. President Obama -- who has pardoned 22 people, two of them minorities -- has continued the practice of relying on the pardons office.
"President Obama takes his constitutional power to grant clemency very seriously," said Matt Lehrich, a White House spokesman. "Race has no place in the evaluation of clemency evaluations, and the White House does not consider or even receive information on the race of applicants."
The president's power to pardon is enshrined in the Constitution. It is an act of forgiveness for a federal crime. It does not wipe away the conviction, but it does restore a person's full rights to vote, possess firearms and serve on federal juries. It allows individuals to obtain licensing and business permits and removes barriers to certain career opportunities and adoptions.
To assess how the pardons office selects candidates for pardons, ProPublica interviewed key officials, obtained access to thousands of pages of internal documents and used statistical tests to measure the effects of race and other factors on the outcome.
From 2001 to 2008, Bush issued decisions in 1,918 pardon cases sent to him by the Justice Department, most involving nonviolent drug or financial crimes. He pardoned 189 people - all but 13 of whom were white. Seven pardons went to blacks, four to Hispanics, one to an Asian and one to a Native American.
Fred Fielding, who served as Bush's White House counsel, said the racial disparity "is very troubling to me and will be to [Bush], because we had no idea of the race of any applicant."
"The names were colorblind to us," Fielding said, "and we assumed they would be at all levels of clemency review."
Beginning in September 2010, the Justice Department was required to make available the names of people denied pardons. Bush's pardon decisions were selected to examine the impact of the pardons office's recommendations over a president's full term and to test how well the office met the president's goal of assuring fairness in the process.
The department does not reveal race or any additional information that would identify an applicant, citing privacy grounds. To analyze pardons, ProPublica selected a random sample of nearly 500 cases decided by Bush and spent a year tracking down the age, gender, race, crime, sentence and marital status of applicants from public records and interviews.
In multiple cases, white and black pardon applicants who committed similar offenses and had comparable post-conviction records experienced opposite outcomes.
An African American woman from Little Rock, fined $3,000 for underreporting her income in 1989, was denied a pardon; a white woman from the same city who faked multiple tax returns to collect more than $25,000 in refunds got one. A black, first-time drug offender -- a Vietnam veteran who got probation in South Carolina for possessing 1.1 grams of crack - was turned down. A white, fourth-time drug offender who did prison time for selling 1,050 grams of methamphetamine was pardoned.
All of the drug offenders forgiven during the Bush administration at the pardon attorney's recommendation - 34 of them - were white.
Turning over pardons to career officials has not removed money and politics from the process, the analysis found. Justice Department documents show that nearly 200 members of Congress from both parties contacted the pardons office regarding pending cases. In multiple instances, felons and their families made campaign contributions to the lawmakers supporting their pleas. Applicants with congressional support were three times as likely to be pardoned, the statistical analysis shows.
In reviewing applicants, pardon lawyers rely on their discretion in ways that favor people who are married and who have never divorced, declared bankruptcy or taken on large amounts of debt. The intent, officials say, is to reward people who demonstrated "stability" after their convictions. But the effect has been to exclude large segments of society.
The ProPublica data show that applicants whose offense was older than 20 years had the best odds of a pardon. Married people, those who received probation rather than prison time, and financially stable applicants also fared better. When the effects of those factors and others were controlled using statistical methods, however, race emerged as one of the strongest predictors of a pardon.
The most striking disparity involved African Americans, who make up 38 percent of the federal prison population and have historically suffered from greater financial and marital instability. Of the nearly 500 cases in ProPublica's sample, 12 percent of whites were pardoned, as were 10 percent of Hispanics.
None of the 62 African Americans in the random sample received a pardon. To assess the chances of black applicants, ProPublica used the sample to extrapolate the total number of black applicants and compare it with the seven blacks whom Bush pardoned. Allowing for a margin of error, this yielded a pardon rate of between 2 percent and 4 percent.
Adams, the head of the pardons office under Bush, said applicants were not penalized based on race. In fact, Adams went out of his way, he said, to help black applicants.
"People in general more and more feel that it is appropriate to give extra consideration to a member of a minority group," he said.
Applicants are not asked about their race. But race is listed in many of the law enforcement documents collected for the application, including pre-sentence reports, rap sheets and Federal Bureau of Prisons records.
Under Justice Department regulations, Adams said, lawyers in the pardons office conduct a rigorous review of an applicant's offense. They then examine character, reputation and post-conviction behavior - tests of what Adams termed "attitude."
"Is the person seeking a pardon for forgiveness or vindication?" Adams said. "Are they going to wave a flag around that says a pardon proves they didn't do as bad as the government said?" If so, he said, "it is counted against them."
Samuel Morison, a lawyer who worked in the pardons office for 13 years, said there is an institutional interest in preserving the convictions secured by the government's prosecutors.
"The pardon office is not a neutral arbiter, because the Justice Department was a party to every criminal case it examines," Morison said.
The yardsticks used by the office under Adams continue to be used under his successor, Ronald L. Rodgers, a former federal prosecutor and military judge.
Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general who has represented high-profile pardon applicants, said he has long been frustrated by the slow pace of the process and its lack of transparency. The Justice Department says the office has increased its efficiency, deciding cases in a little more than two years, an improvement since 2005, when the wait was twice that.
When a pardon is denied, the notice comes with no explanation.
"It just comes out of the blue," Olson said. "You can't explain to your client why, especially when you think you've made a strong case."
Parallel Cases, Disparate Outcomes
Denise Armstead's beauty salon sits on a busy corner in Little Rock's west side. A big sign out front beckons customers from the largely African American neighborhood.
Armstead, who is black, became a hair stylist straight out of high school and dreamed of owning her own salon. Like many small-business owners, she kept her own receipts. An accountant filled out her tax forms.
In 1994, the federal government accused Armstead, then 35, of failing to report $32,000 in income over four years. She hired a lawyer and fought the charges, ultimately getting them reduced to a single count of under-reporting her income in 1989.
Her lawyer, a former Internal Revenue Service employee, advised that a trial would cost more than the $3,000 fine, she said. In a plea bargain, she received three years' probation and paid the fine in installments.
In the same city, Margaret Leggett and her husband, who are white, were also accused of violating federal tax laws. In 1981, Leggett rented an apartment under a fictitious name and her husband created a fake bank account and fake Social Security numbers. They then filed for multiple tax refunds totaling more than $25,000.
Leggett pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the government by making false claims. In her mid-30s, she was sentenced to three years in prison but was released after three months. Her husband paid a $5,000 fine and served 15 months in prison.
Years later, Armstead and Leggett each applied for a pardon. On paper, both were strong candidates. They had accepted responsibility in court and completed their sentences with good behavior.
Neither had any other criminal convictions. Both were active in their churches. Leggett and Armstead had both filled out lengthy applications in which they listed their crime, punishment and professional and personal history.
In April 2006, Bush followed the pardon attorney's recommendation and approved a pardon for Leggett. A year later, Bush again followed the attorney's advice and turned down Armstead.
Armstead had a personal reason for seeking a pardon: She had hoped to become a nurse. She was inspired to change professions while caring for her mother, who was dying of renal failure.
"I would take off work and take her to the clinic," she said.
An Arkansas nursing license requires a criminal-background check. Her felony record stood as a potential obstacle, her attorney told her. He recommended she apply for a presidential pardon. She was not aware that her 2002 request had been denied until a reporter informed her this year.
According to Justice Department memos, Armstead was denied "for a four-year course of criminal conduct for which [she] failed to take responsibility." The four years referred to the four charges of tax evasion in the original indictment against her.
Adams said that he did not remember Armstead's case but that, in general, applicants need to show remorse for any conduct they were indicted for, not just the charges to which they pleaded guilty.
"What the person did, as opposed to what they pled guilty to, is a relevant factor in judging how honest they are," Adams said. "This spills over to attitude."
A former White House lawyer said he had no idea the pardons office was considering indictments rather than only convictions in their deliberations.
"I definitely didn't know that," said Kenneth Lee, the associate White House counsel during Bush's second term who dealt with the pardons office. "If we knew these kinds of things, our decision making may have been different."
Leggett lives with her husband in Hot Springs, Ark., where they own a boat repair shop. She said she did not remember why she sought the pardon.
Kenneth Stoll prosecuted both Armstead and Leggett when he was an assistant U.S. attorney in Little Rock. Stoll said he does not recall either woman. The pardons office sought a recommendation for Leggett from the prosecutors' office after Stoll had retired. He was not asked his opinion. But, he says now, Leggett's crime was a more significant offense.
Leggett and her husband have been married for more than 30 years. They have owned or operated nearly a dozen businesses.
Though she was divorced when she applied for a pardon, Armstead would still appear to meet the "stability" test. She said her life has remained on an even keel -- she continues to operate her beauty salon and does not have excessive debts.
For applicants who appear to be solid candidates, the pardons office considers the views of prosecutors and judges. Armstead's case never reached that stage.
But the pardons office solicited advice on Leggett - and received lukewarm answers.
The U.S. attorney's office in Little Rock took no position, and the judge did not object to a pardon. But Leggett's bid was opposed by a high-ranking Justice Department official. Eileen J. O'Connor, the assistant attorney general in charge of all criminal tax matters, advised the pardons office that Leggett's application should be denied because she did not "fully admit unconditional responsibility" for her crime.
O'Connor noted that Leggett omitted from her pardon application that she had rented the apartment under a false name and made a utility deposit as part of the ruse to file false returns.
"It appears that she has attempted in her quest for a pardon to minimize her involvement in the crime and shift the blame to her husband," O'Connor wrote.
This could have posed a serious problem for Leggett. The Justice Department explicitly states that applicants need to take personal responsibility for their crimes and show remorse.
But in this instance, pardons office lawyers appear to have accepted what Leggett's husband said at trial, which is that he had talked his wife into participating in the scheme.
Another factor in pardon applications is whether the person has a practical need for presidential mercy.
"If a person doesn't have a reason, it doesn't hurt," Adams said of the policy. "And if a person wants forgiveness, that is fine, but if the need is for licensing or business ownership or to obtain a franchise, that will help, and the office will try to push it farther."
But that did not help Armstead.
An Obscure Office
The declared intent of the Founding Fathers was to have presidential pardon power right miscarriages of justice. Former Supreme Court chief justice William H. Rehnquist called pardons a "fail safe" against the "unalterable fact that our judicial system, like the human beings who administer it, is fallible."
Today, the pardons office places little emphasis on trying to help those who might be innocent. Applicants who claim they were victims of unjust treatment "bear a formidable burden of persuasion," the pardons office says on its Web site. In practice, officials say, that burden is insurmountable.
Article II of the Constitution gives presidents the authority to "grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States." It was among the few royal powers carried over from the British monarchy. In 1788, Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 74 that the president would be the best "dispenser of the mercy of government." Groups of men, he argued, were too easily swayed by popular passions.
In 1893, Grover Cleveland issued an executive order delegating the paperwork on pardons to a single office inside the Justice Department. Today, the office employs a lead pardon attorney, a deputy and four additional lawyers. They review hundreds of pardon applications a year.
Leggett and Armstead's applications reached Washington just as this office gained more clout than it ever had.
The reason could be traced to one of President Bill Clinton's last acts, his pardon of Marc Rich. The decision became a scandal after reports that Rich's former wife, a big Democratic donor, gave $450,000 to the Clinton Presidential Library. In congressional hearings that followed, it emerged that Eric H. Holder Jr., then deputy attorney general, had encouraged Rich's attorneys to apply directly to the White House.
In response, the incoming Bush administration vowed that the pardons office would vet every applicant.
The office lists on its Web site a five-point test for applicants. The first test is straightforward: Candidates must wait five years after completion of their sentences before applying.
Next, lawyers consider the "conduct, character and reputation" of applicants after they served their sentences. The third point is the need of the applicant, and the fourth is the opinion of prosecutors and judges.
The final point is acceptance of responsibility for their crimes, remorse and atonement.
Pardons office lawyers assess whether applicants lead what Adams called "stable" lives. An applicant who had been divorced would give pause. Owing excessive debt to credit card companies or banks - as many Americans do - could also be a red flag.
"A person in debt is always in some risk of doing something inappropriate to get out of it," Adams said. "It's only natural for the office to be a little cautious."
A review of pardons cases found that some applicants were rejected because they had filed for bankruptcy in the years after their conviction or were unemployed, a situation that is not unusual for convicted criminals, who often have trouble rebuilding their lives.
But Bush pardoned white applicants who had filed for bankruptcies, had driven drunk or had illegally possessed firearms. Two successful applicants lied to the FBI during the background checks that are part of the application process.
A Choke Point
By Bush's second term, it was clear that putting decisions in the hands of the pardons office had dramatically slowed the flow of pardons. Elected as a "compassionate conservative," Bush was on pace to become the least-forgiving two-term presidentin history.
In 2006, White House Counsel Harriet Miers became so frustrated with the paucity of recommended candidates that she met with Adams and his boss, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.
Adams said he told Miers that if she wanted more recommendations, he would need more staff. Adams said he did not get any extra help. Nothing changed.
"It became very frustrating, because we repeatedly asked the office for more favorable recommendations for the president to consider," said Fielding, who was Bush's last White House counsel. "But all we got were more recommendations for denials."
In 2007, the pardons office was hit with its own scandal.
Adams had opposed a pardon for Chibueze Okorie, a Nigerian-born minister beloved by his Brooklyn church. Okorie faced deportation because of a 1992 conviction for possessing heroin with intent to distribute.
"This might sound racist," Adams told colleagues, according to a report from the Justice Department's inspector general [5], but Okorie is "about as honest as you could expect for a Nigerian. Unfortunately, that's not very honest."
When asked by investigators in the inspector general's office to explain his remarks, Adams said that Nigerian immigrants "commit more crimes than other people" and that an applicant's nationality is "an important consideration" in pardons, according to the report. "It's one the White House wants to know about," Adams told investigators.
The inspector general's office disagreed.
"We believe that Adams' comments - and his use of nationality in the decision-making process - were inappropriate," the report concluded. "We were extremely troubled by Adams' belief that an applicant's 'ethnic background' was something that should be an 'important consideration' in a pardon decision."
Adams said his comments about Okorie were focused on his ethnicity, not his race, and were taken out of context by the inspector general's office.
Adams left his post and retired. He was replaced in April 2008 by Rodgers, a former military judge who had prosecuted major drug crimes for the Justice Department's criminal division. Shortly after taking over, Rodgers hired the office's first African American staff attorney.
As the Bush presidency drew to a close, the inability to grant more pardons continued to vex White House officials. Throughout 2008, the White House sent e-mails to the pardons office asking for more candidates. White House lawyers repeatedly asked the office to reconsider cases in which it had recommended denials.
On Sept. 16, 2008, Lee, the associate White House counsel, asked about two pending applicants whose attorneys had contacted the White House.
"As noted previously, we are hoping to get as many clemency recommendations as possible over the next few months," Lee wrote. "To the extent that these two petitions may be 'easy' cases (and I defer to you on that question), it would be helpful if these and other 'easy' cases are given priority."
Rodgers forwarded the e-mail to a staff attorney with a warning to ignore anything in Lee's note that "could be construed as armchair quarterbacking."
With no more than 30 recommendations from the pardons office by the fall, the White House pushed to reverse two denials, Lee and others said in interviews. Then it did something Bush had vowed to avoid, taking up a pardon application from a felon whose case had not been reviewed by the pardon attorney.
Isaac Toussie, a New York developer and Republican political donor, pleaded guilty in 2001 and 2002 to mail fraud and a real estate scheme in which false documents had been submitted to allow low-income buyers to obtain insured mortgages from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Toussie served five months in prison, another five months of home detention and three years of supervised release. He also paid a $10,000 fine.
Toussie had not waited the requisite five years, but one of his attorneys, Bradford Berenson, had been an associate White House counsel during Bush's first term. Berenson took Toussie's case directly to the White House - and it worked. On Dec. 23, 2008, Toussie's name was on the final list of pardons granted by Bush.
That action sparked fury among hundreds of New Yorkers who were involved at the time in a civil litigation suit against the Toussie family over a second real estate project.
After eight years of caution on pardons, Bush had stumbled. On Dec. 24, 2008 - four weeks before Obama's inauguration -- Bush became the first president to announce withdrawal of a pardon.
Bush left office having denied more than twice as many applicants as Clinton. Richard Nixon pardoned more people in a single year than Bush pardoned during two full terms.
Second Chances
In the final hour of his presidency, Bush confided to Obama his deep frustrations with the pardon process. In the limousine ride the two men shared up Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, Bush offered his successor this piece of advice: "Announce a pardon policy early on and stick to it."
Bush wrote in his memoir that he had been besieged by last-minute pardon requests from politically connected people who did not go through the pardons office.
"At first I was frustrated," he wrote. "Then I was disgusted. I came to see massive injustice in the system. If you had connections to the President, you could insert your case into the last-minute frenzy. Otherwise, you had to wait for the Justice Department to conduct a review and make a recommendation."
Bush resolved to rebuff the personal requests.
The incoming administration needed little prodding on this issue. Obama's top legal advisers already were convinced that the pardon system put the poor at a disadvantage. Gregory Craig, who would become Obama's White House counsel, said he began raising the possibility of reform during the transition.
Craig said pardons were "clearly much more available to people with economic means than those without."
Working with then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, Craig developed a plan to take the vetting of pardon applicants away from career prosecutors.
"I couldn't completely understand the standards being applied by the pardons office," Ogden said in an interview. "They seemed very subjective in some cases, and I thought the standards should come from the president, not from the pardons office."
Craig said he believes pardon applications should be sifted by an independent commission of former judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and representatives of faith-based groups. The commission would make recommendations directly to the president.
Officials envisioned a process in which the president would announce decisions quarterly instead of the traditional grants at Thanksgiving and Christmas. A team of lawyers also suggested that the president explain his decisions, to build confidence in the process and encourage people to apply.
Officials were struck by comparisons between the federal system and those of the states. Depending on the state, pardons can be granted by governors, legislatures or state pardon boards. During the period in which Bush pardoned 189 people, Pennsylvania pardoned more than 1,000.
Several states have adopted the practice of explaining their decisions. Virginia issues public notices praising specific aspects of an applicant's rehabilitation.
Obama officials believed changes in the pardon system could be made by executive order. But two years later, pardon reform efforts were dead. The effort faded away as its key proponents, Ogden and Craig, left the administration.
"We just never got there before I left," said Ogden, who resigned in 2010.
The pardons office continues to function much as it did under Bush, with Obama pardoning only applicants recommended by the office. Obama has denied 1,019 pardon requests, more than Clinton denied during his two terms.
Post researcher Julie Tate and ProPublica researchers Liz Day and Robin Respaut contributed to this report.

Here's Your Comparison - Newtie - Charles Dickens' Seth Pecksniff

2011-12-06T02:07:00.000Z

Barnard's portrait of Pecksniff

It has been remarked that Mr. Pecksniff was a moral man. So he was. Perhaps there never was a more moral man than Mr. Pecksniff: especially in his conversation and correspondence. It was once said of him by a homely admirer, that he had a Fortunatus's purse of good sentiments in his inside. In this particular he was like the girl in the fairy tale, except that if they were not actual diamonds which fell from his lips, they were the very brightest paste, and shone prodigiously. He was a most exemplary man: fuller of virtuous precept than a copy-book. Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there: but these were his enemies, the shadows cast by his brightness; that was all. His very throat was moral. You saw a good deal of it. You looked over a very low fence of white cravat (whereof no man had ever beheld the tie for he fastened it behind), and there it lay, a valley between two jutting heights of collar, serene and whiskerless before you. It seemed to say, on the part of Mr. Pecksniff, `There is no deception, ladies and gentlemen, all is peace, a holy calm pervades me.' So did his hair, just grizzled with an iron-grey which was all brushed off his forehead, and stood bolt upright, or slightly drooped in kindred action with his heavy eyelids. So did his person which was sleek though free from corpulency. So did his manner, which was soft and oily in a word, even his plain black suit, and state of widower and dangling double eye-glass, all tended to the same purpose, and cried aloud, `Behold the moral Pecksniff!'

Cowabunga - Newtie The Clown Kisses Clarabel Trump's Ass

2011-12-06T01:15:00.001Z

Straight from DoodyVille Iowa, the Republican caucuses can't make up their minds... Chief Newtie Thunderdud thinks if you want to create jobs the best thing you can do is ask Donald Clarabel The Clown for advice - after all The Donald is no Duck. He's driven his businesses to bankruptcy four times and had to make a mockery of himself on a "Reality" triple-B self-effacing TV show as an organ-grinder's monkey. This Party is every day becoming less serious and less relevant.

Reference The How The F#@K Post - And They Kept It Secret!

2011-12-05T18:02:00.000Z

... 251-page GAO report titled “Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Policies and Processes for Managing Emergency Assistance.” Thanks to former Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida (who was targeted for ouster by Big out of state Right Money with lying propaganda and advertising campaign - just YouTube him to see why), for the following information that you are encouraged to "fact check" yourself.

Take a look at it yourself here. It documents Wall Street bailouts that the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke made secretly that make the $700 billion TARP bailout seem like a gnat on the nose of a Clydesdale.

Mr. Grayson cites highlights in the report by page number. Don't get pissed at the 1% Wall Street darlings until you read the entire list below:

Page 131 – The total lending for the Fed’s “broad-based emergency programs” was $16,115,000,000,000. That’s right, more than $16 trillion. The four largest recipients, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, received more than a trillion dollars each. The 5th largest recipient was Barclays PLC. The 8th was the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, PLC. The 9th was Deutsche Bank AG. The 10th was UBS AG. These four institutions each got between a quarter of a trillion and a trillion dollars. None of them is an American bank.

Pages 133 & 137 – Some of these “broad-based emergency program” loans were long-term, and some were short-term. But the “term-adjusted borrowing” was equivalent to a total of $1,139,000,000,000 more than one year.

Pages 135 & 196 – Sixty percent of the $738 billion “Commercial Paper Funding Facility” went to the subsidiaries of foreign banks. 36% of the $71 billion Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility also went to subsidiaries of foreign banks.

Page 205 – Separate and apart from these “broad-based emergency program” loans were another $10,057,000,000,000 in “currency swaps.” In the “currency swaps,” the Fed handed dollars to foreign central banks, no strings attached, to fund bailouts in other countries. The Fed’s only “collateral” was a corresponding amount of foreign currency, which never left the Fed’s books (even to be deposited to earn interest), plus a promise to repay. But the Fed agreed to give back the foreign currency at the original exchange rate, even if the foreign currency appreciated in value during the period of the swap. These currency swaps and the “broad-based emergency program” loans, together, totaled more than $26 trillion. That’s almost $100,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. That’s an amount equal to more than seven years of federal spending -- on the military, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt, and everything else. And around twice American’s total GNP. [SilvaNet - and you bought the BS being peddled by Republican politicians that our problem is government deficit spending...our entire annual budget is about the size of a fart from one of the famous dancing angels on the head of a pin.]

Page 201 – Here again, these “swaps” were of varying length, but on Dec. 4, 2008, there were $588,000,000,000 outstanding. That’s almost $2,000 for every American. All sent to foreign countries. That’s more than twenty times as much as our foreign aid budget.

Page 129 – In October 2008, the Fed gave $60,000,000,000 to the Swiss National Bank with the specific understanding that the money would be used to bail out UBS, a Swiss bank. Not an American bank. A Swiss bank.

Pages 3 & 4 – In addition to the “broad-based programs,” and in addition to the “currency swaps,” there have been hundreds of billions of dollars in Fed loans called “assistance to individual institutions.” This has included Bear Stearns, AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, and “some primary dealers.” The Fed decided unilaterally who received this “assistance,” and who didn’t. [SilvaNet: do you need any more reasons to pull every cent out of the money grubbing "too big to fail" banks and put your money in local community banks?]

Pages 101 & 173 – You may have heard somewhere that these were riskless transactions, where the Fed always had enough collateral to avoid losses. Not true. The “Maiden Lane I” bailout fund was in the hole for almost two years.

Page 4 – You also may have heard somewhere that all this money was paid back. Not true. The GAO lists five Fed bailout programs that still have amounts outstanding, including $909,000,000,000 (just under a trillion dollars) for the Fed’s Agency Mortgage-Backed Securities Purchase Program alone. That’s almost $3,000 for every American.

Page 126 – In contemporaneous documents, the Fed apparently did not even take a stab at explaining why it helped some banks (like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) and not others. After the fact, the Fed referred vaguely to “strains in the financial markets,” “transitional credit,” and the Fed’s all-time favorite rationale for everything it does, “increasing liquidity.” [SilvaNet: if you still want to believe that the supposed economic geniuses who have run the Fed really do know what they are talking about and have something other than BS ideology and subservience to a generalized Wall Street robbery scam, at the very least, you should admit that the spin and panic suddenly resurrected by the Republican Party after eight years of wallowing in a gigantic give-away and redistribution of wealth from the 99% to the cheating and stealing 1% has always been and continues to be lies, lies, and more lies.]

81 different places in the GAO report – The Fed applied nothing even resembling a consistent policy toward valuing the assets that it acquired. Sometimes it asked its counterparty to take a “haircut” (discount), sometimes it didn’t. Having read the whole report, I see no rhyme or reason to those decisions, with billions upon billions of dollars at stake.

Page 2 – As massive as these enumerated Fed bailouts were, there were yet more. The GAO did not even endeavor to analyze the Fed’s discount window lending, or its single-tranche term repurchase agreements.

Pages 13 & 14 – And the Fed wasn’t the only one bailing out Wall Street, of course. On top of what the Fed did, there was the $700,000,000,000 TARP program authorized by Congress (which I voted against). The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) also provided a federal guarantee for $600,000,000,000 in bonds issued by Wall Street.

There is one thing that I’d like to add to this, which isn’t in the GAO’s report. All this is something new, very new. For the first 96 years of the Fed’s existence, the Fed’s primary market activities were to buy or sell U.S. Treasury bonds (to change the money supply), and to lend at the “discount window.” Neither of these activities permitted the Fed to play favorites. But the programs that the GAO audited are fundamentally different. They allowed the Fed to choose winners and losers.

So what does all this mean? Here are some short observations:

(1) In the case of TARP, at least The People’s representatives got a vote. In the case of the Fed’s bailouts, which were roughly 20 times as substantial, there was never any vote. Unelected functionaries, with all sorts of ties to Wall Street, handed out trillions of dollars to Wall Street. That’s now how a democracy should function, or even can function.[SilvaNet: Mr.Grayson slipped in this sentence...I'm sure he meant that's NOT how a democracy should function...but at the same time IT IS how our "democracy" NOW functions.]

(2) The notion that this was all without risk, just because the Fed can keep printing money, is both laughable and cryable (if that were a word). Leaving aside the example of Germany’s hyperinflation in 1923, we have the more recent examples of Iceland (75% of GNP gone when the central bank took over three failed banks) and Ireland (100% of GNP gone when the central bank tried to rescue property firms). [SilvaNet: and at least Iceland is rounding up the bank gangsters and throwing them in jail.]

(3) In the same way that American troops cannot act as police officers for the world, our central bank cannot act as piggy bank for the world. If the European Central Bank wants to bail out UBS, fine. But there is no reason why our money should be involved in that. [SilvaNet: or, at least, Tea Partiers, stop nonsensically claiming that Democrats are the evil empire trying to push us into a global economy - clearly, it is the 1% that is doing that, regardless of who attains office...If your "Party" was serious and not just another "Astroturf" fake manifestation of the same old Republican Party, you would be joining the 99% and protesting right along side with them.]

(4) For the Fed to pick and choose among aid recipients, and then pick and choose who takes a “haircut” and who doesn’t, is both corporate welfare and socialism. The Fed is a central bank, not a barber shop. [SilvaNet: and how those supporters of Wall Street love Socialism and welfare as long as it benefits them.]

(5) The main, if not the sole, qualification for getting help from the Fed was to have lost huge amounts of money. The Fed bailouts rewarded failure, and penalized success. (If you don’t believe me, ask Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan.) The Fed helped the losers to squander and destroy even more capital.[SilvaNet: seeing as how this has been going on for at least a generation now, you can safely conclude that at least a generation of corporate and Wall Street CEOs are NOT successful through any merit. They are like the idiot children of the great historical royal families. We have been worshiping and idolizing the very putrid crap of our society and putting down or preventing the advance of our really best and brightest and most qualified that have too much integrity to join the cheater's game.]

(6) During all the time that the Fed was stuffing money into the pockets of failed banks, many Americans couldn’t borrow a dime for a home, a car, or anything else. If the Fed had extended $26 trillion in credit to the American people instead of Wall Street, would there be 24 million Americans today who can’t find a full-time job? [SilvaNet: one of the basic lessons of this fiasco is that the high acclaim for the purported success of the business model to run education and government will only produce the same results...People have lost the capacity to see that the business experience of Mitt Romney translated into a model for governing is disastrous...just as that of Rick Scott...they can't even recognize criminal conduct, and are willing to put criminals into office.]

And here’s what bothers me most about all this: it can happen again. I’ve called the GAO report a bailout autopsy. But it’s an autopsy of the undead.

How The F#@K Did Martha Stewart Go To Jail???

2011-12-03T15:56:00.001Z

How indeed...and the Republican Congress, to be fair along with a number of "blue balls" Democrats, continue to tell us that the wealthy are VICTIMS and the great benefactors of our society - the JOB CREATORS (never mind the jobs they create are either overseas or minimum wage poverty wage jobs with no benefits and no future). Those TOOLS of the 1%. Heck, they're all in the 1% themselves, or if they aren't when they first come into the club - like Newtie, who joined on a teacher's salary - they easily and quickly become 1% ers by exercising their freedom to profit by insider trading or some other corrupt gravy train deal, and curiously get hired at phenomenal wages as lobbyists or "historians." I have a degree in philosophy and another in law. Do you suppose Fannie Mae might want to hire me for a meager couple hundred thousand a year to tell them what they're doing is crazy? I'll do speaking engagements for $60,000 to any group. I guarantee that I can spout more ideas (and better ones) per minute, and more entertainingly, than the harebrained crap Gingrich spews while the media idiotically dutifully report every day without nailing his ass to the wall.

He's a prostitute sock puppet with the hands of people like the Koch brothers so deep up his behind that he squeals like a greased pig to come up with eighteenth century brutal stupidity like his putting poor children to work and abolish child labor laws "idea." The whole purpose is to suppress labor wages - putting people who are doing the work now out on the streets without income to feed their families, making them poor and perhaps replacing them with their own starving children. These guys have no ideas that aren't about putting people out of work and threatening their lives. Meanwhile, the true exemplar of "Piled higher and Deeper" PhDs, self-promotes - conning money out of fools for fake certificates that he prints out on cheap templates.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Video Speaks For Itself

2011-12-03T01:42:00.001Z

FOX is just LIES and BULLSHIT - learn to remove channels from your television and make all FOX channels the first deletion priority. Rupert Murdoch's garbage propaganda nonsense should be the first in the shit can.

Ed Schultz Doing Great Service

2011-12-03T01:26:00.001Z

Frank Luntz' Republican political strategy to discredit and distract attention from the strong effects of the Occupy Wall Street protesters on the 99%. This is what the Republicans are going to be doing...just watch out for it. They are all about focus group analyses to develop their propaganda slogans.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Media Please Stop Fawning Over Pompous Gasbag Georgia Geko

2011-12-01T23:39:00.001Z

ALL the Republican presidential candidates are absolute clowns. It seems that about 25% of Republican voters are just plain brain dead. Have they all been asleep during the life of Gingrich? These people are obviously the totally dumb FOX viewers. They apparently have no idea of that scumbag other than his FOX spinning head persona. If they just opened their eyes for a few seconds they would see just what a turd he is. He makes Karl Rove ("turd-blossom") look like a perfect angel.

Instead of continuing the crap about how he is leading in the polls, they should be "vetting" the candidate and showing precisely why he's not even suited to be city dog-catcher in Dogpatch! Newtie doesn't want us to compare him to Jesus. Just to have the audacity of implying the comparison is the height of Narcisism. The appropriate comparison is to the conscious moral duplicity of a Pharisee - leading a double life and making no attempt to practice the code he professes; or a gross and persistent sinning Publican.

Irony Of Ironies

2011-12-01T22:53:00.001Z

Just saw Ron Reagan Junior arguing that John Hinckley should not be released "unsupervised." No argument from here - Hinckley should NEVER be released. But, while Reagan was President, he cut mental health and Veterans' benefits causing thousands of dangerous people to be released "unsupervised" into American society. During Reagan's presidency, this writer personally received a request from a mental health professional to represent one such person whose Veterans and mental health benefits had been sharply curtailed. A man on heavy medications with very regular psychiatric visits was about to be released on society that the supervising psychiatrist professionally opined could be a very serious danger.

Reagan single-handedly immensely multiplied the rate of homelessness in America. It was well known at the time that prisoners and mental health recipients that were affected would be given bus fare from California to Florida. My client had been a Vietnam volunteer. He experienced heavy hand to hand combat and somehow survived to return home. He walked in to his girlfriend in bed having sex with another man - and viciously murdered both with an axe. By the time he became my client, the man had spent time in a mental hospital; had subsequently been released to his mother's custody, with extremely limited ability to work. According to his psychiatrist, he was under extremely heavy medications and intense regular therapy and monitoring. The benefit cuts would have left him without the much needed monitoring and quite possibly out on the street totally unsupervised. This guy suffered hallucinations in which he believed he saw multitudes of little Vietcong warriors waging battle all around him and on his body. The hallucinations included olfactory elements - he reported smelling blood and dead rotting corpses.

Reagan and his compassionate conservative buddies turned this guy and thousands of others loose on us. It gets better. Typically, the initial administrative judge, a stern middle-aged woman, summarily denied our claims. After much work, documentation, and appeal we finally were granted a rehearing. That is the way all administrative agencies work - the whole idea is to deny, deny, deny, and make it so hard that you will just give up and go away. By good fortune or the grace of God we got an administrative judge who had seen military combat in WWII. The judge asked the Veteran about his war experiences. After a short recess, the judge reinstated ALL the prior benefits.

The Reagan legacy his obsequious admirers don't like to discuss - ah, compassionate conservatism!

Somebody Please Tell Grover Nordquist To Go Back To His Rat Hole Under A Rock

2011-12-01T22:15:00.001Z

Why are a bunch of politicians so willing to spend (and waste and lose) billions of dollars on building the infrastructure of countries we first devastate by war (like Afghanistan), but they can't bring themselves to spend to rebuild our own infrastructure? In 1999 our infrastructure was ranked 7th in the world (while we were hooting "we're number ONE." Today, we are 27th. All Bullshit aside, you don't get to be number one and you don't stay number one by pledging never to raise taxes on the wealthiest because they are supposed to be our benefactors in creating jobs - a big lie. It was a lie when politicians began selling us that slop, and it is still a lie. Everybody was better off when they paid over 90% in taxes in 1959. Everybody was better off even when they paid 40% in 1999. Stop all the bullshit. Tax them already. Throw every single politician who serves Grover Nordquist instead of America out of office and let's get back to making America great again - without all the garbage partisanship. Americans first - partisans out.

2:27

Trailer for America Betrayed

America's national infrastructure was once considered one of our crowning achievements, but in this documentary narrated by Academy Award winner Richard Dreyfuss and directed by Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist Leslie Cardé, viewers learn how our country's crumbling bridges, dams, levees, and highways put millions of Americans at risk every day. Using an investigation into the little-known causes of the post-Katrina levee failures as a springboard to examine how corruption, collusion, and cronyism have infected the highest levels of government, Cardé and company reveal how the Army Corps of Engineers -- the very agency charged with insuring that our national infrastructure remains intact -- has sacrificed the needs of our nation in favor of entering into self-serving deals with corporate America. Having wasted billions of dollars in taxpayer money on rebuilding other nation's infrastructures while neglecting to ensure that our own are properly maintained, we are forced to watch our streets crumble as lobbyists and gluttonous politicians funnel money into pointless pet projects, and those sent to investigate the matter are bribed into covering up their true findings. Interviews with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, top scientists, United States senators and congressmen, and whistleblowers who risk their lives and livelihood in order to speak out, America Betrayed is a sobering wake-up call to anyone who places blind trust in government, and a challenge to Washington to hold corrupted officials accountable for their misdeeds.

They Should All Be In Jail

2011-11-30T21:27:00.001Z

Undressing The Liars. Derivatives are investments not directly in any asset like the shares of a company or barrels of oil. They are essentially "bets" that the price of an asset will go up or down. If you put your money on such a "bet," you don't even have to be able to take delivery of a single barrel of oil. Before 2000 you could not buy derivatives "over the counter." That is, if you wanted to place such a "bet," you had to do it through a regulated exchange. The law had long recognized the problem with letting somebody enforce such a bet. You had to actually have an interest in the underlying asset. I couldn't legally bet that you would fail to pay your mortgage and lose your house in foreclosure.

Another long standing legal concept was that of "insurable interest." A total stranger with no connection to you in any way could not take out an insurance policy on your house in case it burned down and expect to collect on it. Insurance companies also had to maintain enough money to cover the losses they had to pay on. Ah, but in 2000, Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA). Among other things, it allowed the derivatives betting to be done "over the counter," that is, without any regulation. Supposedly, this would free up "sophisticated investors" to do all kinds of betting. As the video states, today these elites have bought and sold bets against the debts of nations - and against your house and mine. More than six hundred TRILLION dollars worth of these contracts is more than TEN times the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of every nation in the world combined. We have not even begun to see the effects of the financial crisis they have caused.

Congress is quibbling over our national deficit being close to four trillion. Our national debt is over fifteen trillion - peanuts compared to what the elites have out on bets. U.S. annual tax revenues are about two trillion dollars. Our entire national GDP is about fifteen trillion a year. Our entire U.S. population is just over three hundred million people. Do the math on income and wealth distribution. Inherited wealth has nothing to do with merit or hard work. Figure out what portion of the population NEVER works. There is a grand myth that those who make a lot of money or have a lot of wealth are so because of hard work and ingenuity. A careful look will show that it is more like ruthlessness, dishonesty, deception, and corrupt manipulation to buy influence, gain advantage through political corruption, and rig the game in their favor. The myth paints them as grand benefactors (job creators) without whom our nation would be worse off. They always threaten to withhold their capital if they are taxed or regulated. They benefit from pitting state against state and community against community to give them "incentives" to locate there. If we stood up to their lying threats we would discover that precious few would carry though. Wonder how much they would like it if they were required to live where they create their minimum wage or slave labor jobs.

Another neat trick of the Wall Street Robbers was to "con" other people's money into their games by making up something that sounded like insurance. They called it "credit default swaps." The problem is that these supposed insurance policies were not real insurance. They were not regulated by insurance laws and didn't have to maintain enough money to be able to pay out losses. There's always a way to screw even the most presumably sophisticated of investors.

Another bullshit scam was the "collateralized debt obligation." The elite thieves went out and hired the best mathematicians to come up with the most convoluted imaginary models of what they palmed off as risk management. When you're really good at math and someone gives you a ton of money to design a bullshit machine - more often than not, you take the job. It was these pieces of dung that morphed into the dumping of home mortgages into large pools and cutting them up into tiny bits that were then pitched as great secure investments all over the world. That's why your mortgage is really not owned by anybody. The "instruments" were supposedly separated into "tranches," or groups of better and less quality depending on the likelihood that homeowners might default. In fact, the greedy money grubbers who were selling that crap preferred bad loans with high risk of default to be mixed in - because when an investment was riskier it would bring in greater profits for them in sales prices and commissions.

Of course, part of the new freedom permitted by the CFMA was that ability to make bets on stuff you didn't own in the first place. When the elites realized ("realized" is misleading - it is their weasel way of claiming innocence - they really knew what they were doing all along) that a lot of the home mortgage backed securities they had bought and sold were clearly on the way to tanking the entire world economy and the U.S. housing market, they began "selling short." That means they bet that many of the homeowners would be unable to pay mortgages designed precisely to become impossible to pay. They knew that many of these were inextricably mixed in with good loans so the whole house of cards would come crashing down. In fact, by "selling short" a very large number of positions, they were able to cause a panic of selling - essentially driving the banks that made the mortgages to become bankrupt. Some of the exact same elites that greatly profited from their betting game, took their obscene winnings and bought the failed banks for pennies on the dollar - also getting fantastic guarantee deals from the government (that means you and me).

The grand heist didn't end there. Enter the Godman Sachs and the sweetheart deal bailout of AIG, et al. We don't need to retrace the bullshit panic of "too big to fail" here. Those "too big" entities are made up of individuals - many of whom got their pockets lined, receiving huge rewards for failure. No accountability and golden bonuses for what are essentially either outright crooks that should be in jail and whose every asset should be seized as racketeering gains, or massive incompetence, are a recipe for disaster. What an incentive for immoral, grossly negligent, reckless conduct! Was this not an enormous shift of wealth - government sanctioned redistribution from homeowners whose property value evaporated and every taxpayer current and future to the individuals that ran (and still run) institutions christened "too big to fail?"

The 1% Include Congress And Presidential Cabinet, And SCOTUS

2011-11-30T21:01:00.001Z

Just where are you going to start to get these Robber Barons out of our government?

You may want to read this article in Bloomberg Market Magazine.

How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word of Fannie Mae Rescue

By Richard Teitelbaum - Nov 29, 2011 12:46 PM ET

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)

Now, amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a new source of contagion: Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding, Bloomberg Markets reports in its January issue.

Paulson had been pushing a plan in Congress to open lines of credit to the two struggling firms and to grant authority for the Treasury Department to buy equity in them. Yet he had told reporters on July 13 that the firms must remain shareholder owned and had testified at a Senate hearing two days later that giving the government new power to intervene made actual intervention improbable.

“If you have a bazooka, and people know you have it, you’re not likely to take it out,” he said.

On the morning of July 21, before the Eton Park meeting, Paulson had spoken to New York Times reporters and editors, according to his Treasury Department schedule. A Times article the next day said the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were inspecting Fannie and Freddie’s books and cited Paulson as saying he expected their examination would give a signal of confidence to the markets.

A Different Message

At the Eton Park meeting, he sent a different message, according to a fund manager who attended. Over sandwiches and pasta salad, he delivered that information to a group of men capable of profiting from any disclosure.

Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives -- at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006. In addition to Eton Park founder Eric Mindich, they included such boldface names as Lone Pine Capital LLC founder Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh of TPG-Axon Capital Management LP and Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC.

After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil, the fund manager says, the discussion turned to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Paulson said he had erred by not punishing Bear Stearns shareholders more severely. The secretary, then 62, went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into “conservatorship” -- a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets.

Stock Wipeout

Paulson explained that under this scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would be effectively wiped out. So too would the various classes of preferred stock, he said.

The fund manager says he was shocked that Paulson would furnish such specific information -- to his mind, leaving little doubt that the Treasury Department would carry out the plan. The managers attending the meeting were thus given a choice opportunity to trade on that information.

There’s no evidence that they did so after the meeting; tracking firm-specific short stock sales isn’t possible using public documents.

And law professors say that Paulson himself broke no law by disclosing what amounted to inside information.

[SilvaNet - yes, you read it right - what amounts to "insider trading," supposedly illegal for the rest of us common rabble, is perfectly legal for these A**H*LES to do!]

It's no wonder they have more money than God. And, it has little to do with their abilities, merit, hard work, or achievement.

Can Republican Voters Really Be The MORONS They Appear To Be?

2011-11-30T01:14:00.001Z

GongRich is just such a much better choice for President than the other bunch of clowns! Tea Party Libertarian Ayn Randers sure can pick 'em.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Incredible - Amerikka?

2011-11-30T00:58:00.001Z

Battlefield America: U.S. Citizens Face Indefinite Military Detention in Defense Bill Before Senate

See earlier post below.

The Senate is set to vote this week on a Pentagon spending bill that could usher in a radical expansion of indefinite detention under the U.S. government. A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act would authorize the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect — anywhere in the world — without charge or trial. The measure would effectively extend the definition of what is considered the military’s "battlefield" to anywhere in the world, even within the United States. Its authors, Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, have been campaigning for its passage in a bipartisan effort. But the White House has issued a veto threat, with backing from top officials including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, andFBI Director Robert Mueller. “This would be the first time since the McCarthy era that the United States Congress has tried to do this,” says our guest, Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First, which has gathered signatures from 26 retired military leaders urging the Senate to vote against the measure, as well as against a separate provision that would repeal the executive order banning torture. “In this case, we’ve seen the administration very eagerly hold people without trial for 10-plus years in military detention, so there’s no reason to believe they would not continue to do that here. So we’re talking about indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens, of lawful U.S. residents, as well as of people abroad.”

Pepper Spray Is Weaponized Chemical Agent Illegal For Use Even In War

2011-11-30T00:48:00.001Z

Scientist developer of pepper spray reveals the imbecility of FOX NEWS propagandists.

We speak with Kamran Loghman, the expert who developed weapons-grade pepper-spray, who says he was shocked at how police have used the chemical agent on non-violent Occupy Wall Street protesters nationwide — including students at University of California, Davis, female protesters in New York City, and an 84-year old activist in Seattle. “I saw it and the first thing that came to my mind wasn’t police or students, it was my own children sitting down having an opinion and they’re being shot and forced by chemical agents,” says Loghman, who in the 1980s helped the FBI develop weapons-grade pepper -spray, and collaborated with police departments to develop guidelines for its use. “The use was just absolutely out of the ordinary and it was not in accordance with any training or policy of any department that I know of. I personally certified 4,000 police officers in the early ‘80s and ‘90s and I have never seen this before. That’s why I was shocked... I feel is my civic duty to explain to the public that this is not what pepper spray was developed for.”

Bank Fraud In Foreclosing On Service Members Only Tip Of Iceberg

2011-11-28T21:24:00.001Z

As a little update, here's what Democrat Representative Brad Miller of North Carolina had to say about this:

“It is hard to see this as anything except a flagrant disregard for a law that has been on the books continuously since the First World War. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is very clear: if you’re in harm’s way in our nation’s military, you can devote your whole energy to our nation’s service without worrying what’s happening in a courthouse back home. And if you have a claim against someone in our military, you can wait until they get home and can defend themselves.

The SCRA is not some obscure legal technicality that might just have escaped the attention of mortgage servicers. Those servicers are all affiliates of the biggest banks, but they’re huge and specialized. Servicing mortgages is all they do, and they really don’t have that many laws to keep up with. They have got to have known what the law required, and consciously decided that they could just ignore it, the same way they apparently decided it was okay to file false affidavits in legal proceedings.

The continued failure to pursue criminal charges in the face of flagrant violations of the criminal law is destroying Americans’ faith in their government and democracy. In a democracy, no one is too big to prosecute.”

See Full Article in Financial Times:

US LENDERS REVIEW MILITARY FORECLOSURES

Ten leading US lenders may have [SilvaNet - "may have" is your typical journalistic weasel wording - cautious to a fault, when all indications are that the banks DID] unlawfully foreclosed on the mortgages of nearly 5,000 active-duty members of the US military in recent years, according to data released by a federal regulator.

JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America this year reached legal settlements [SilvaNet - of course, these guys are given to settling when they are totally innocent of any wrongdoing] in which they agreed to pay damages [SilvaNet - of course, the terms of such "settlements" are more apt to put a lot of money in class-action law firm coffers than to provide adequate remedy to the suffering victims] to nearly 200 service members who claimed that their homes had been improperly seized [SilvaNet - you can believe what you want, but it's not likely service members are going to "claim" their homes were improperly "seized" for fun and chuckles].

Data released last week by the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks, shows that 10 lenders – are reviewing [SilvaNet - of course, such review is going to be totally unbiased if the banks themselves are conducting it???] nearly 5,000 foreclosures of homes belonging to service members and their families to see if they complied with the law.

Under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act of 2003, mortgage servicers have to follow special procedures when foreclosing on homes belonging to active-duty members of the armed forces and their families. For instance, there are restrictions on so-called default judgments, in which homes are seized after the borrower fails to appear in court.

BofA struck a deal this year with the Department of Justice to resolve a government lawsuit alleging about 160 unlawful foreclosures [SilvaNet - What? Bank of America? I'm shocked, simply shocked - they would NEVER do anything so sleazy]. This month, the company agreed to pay each service member whose mortgage was illegally foreclosed at least $116,785, plus compensation for lost equity [SilvaNet - now there's some really good news - perhaps somebody is finally recognizing that the FRAUDULENT foreclosures included the damage of a homeowner's lost equity in his totally devalued home].

BofA is reviewing 2,400 foreclosures involving active-duty military families;
Wells Fargo - 870;
Citigroup - 700;
OneWest, formerly known as IndyMac - 575;
HSBC - 87;
US Bancorp - 80;
Aurora, formerly known as Lehman Brothers Bank - 56;
MetLife - 25;
Sovereign - 6;
and EverBank - 3.

This Is As Obscene As It Gets

2011-11-28T20:52:00.001Z

From OHIO FRAUDclosure

The top 2 executives heading the seized housing fiance giants were dragged "up the hill" (to Washington) and forced to explain, to members of a Congressional committee, why they deserved a combined $12 MILLION in salary and bonuses for 2011. Yes, you read it right, theses two axxholes (below) want a mere.... $12 million for 2011.
Photo Courtesy of LATimes
The pay & huge bonuses were exposed and "came to light" just a week after Fannie & Freddie asked US taxpayers to ante up another $13.8 BILLION to cover losses for their 3rd quarter (July 2011-Sept 2011) mismanagement. These two companies, owned by you and me, continue to act as "mortgage garbage cans" for the large banks. The Too Big To Fail (TBTF) banks repeatedly sell their bad and non-performing loans to Fannie & Freddie in order to clean-up their balance sheets and "Dump the Debt" onto the backs of hardworking Americans. To date - U.S. Taxpayers ~~were forced~~ gave about $169 BILLION Dollars to rescue Fannie and Freddie. They have easily been the most expensive bailouts of the 2008financial crisis and keep hemorrhaging massive amounts of money. The government "cost estimates" to maintain these two trash barrels, along with the high-priced executive payrolls, could reach $220 billion ...and that guesstimate is to support them...only through year 2014!

Even more amazing - watching these "tone deaf" executives attempt to JUSTIFY - under oath - their insane compensation. (C-span testimony below) It is truly - Sickening to watch
Listen to U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings (MD) at 34:15 point
Listen to OHIO Representative Dennis Kucinich beginning at the 50:01 point
WARNING: Watching may cause nausea and vomiting....or temporary turrets syndrome.

Australian Journalism Acknowledges American Government War Against The Truth

2011-11-28T20:42:00.001Z

Over the weekend, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accepted the award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism at the 2011 Walkley Award in Australia, an honor akin to the Pulitzer Prize in the United States. We play an excerpt from Assange’s acceptance speech and get reaction from constitutional law attorney and Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald. Today also marks the one-year anniversary of "Cable Gate," when WikiLeaks began publishing a trove of more than 250,000 leaked U.S. State Department cables. In related news, the U.S. Army recently scheduled a Dec. 16 pretrial hearing for Army Private Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of providing the cables to WikiLeaks. Manning “faces life in prison, possibly the death penalty, for what was an act of conscience,” says Greenwald.

Why Aren't Paul Wolfowitz And All The Traitor NeoCons In Prison?

2011-11-28T20:32:00.001Z

American foreign policy was hijacked in a secret coup that is still being carried out.

Political blogger Glenn Greenwald recently wrote about retired General Wesley Clark’s recollection of an officer telling him in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks that the then U.S. Secretary of Defense had issued a memo outlining a plan for regime change within five years in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. We play an excerpt of Clark’s comments and ask Greenwald to respond. “What struck me in listening to that video ... is that if you go down that list of seven countries that he said the neocons had planned to basically change the governments of, you pretty much see that that vision, despite the perception that we have a Democratic president and therefore the neo-conservative movement is powerless, is pretty much being fulfilled,” Greenwald says.

Sharing Thanksgiving Thoughts - Pass It On

2011-11-28T20:02:00.000Z

[SilvaNet - The following was shared by my sister, mother of an angel of love that has influenced our entire family. Sis has spent nearly 40 years of her life advocating tirelessly for the disabled and their families. This story touched her deeply and in this holiday season she decided to give our entire family the benefit of it. My thanks to her and to the author.]

Dr. Judy Coughlin teaches special education at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Miami in special education. She lives in Davie.

I write with the wisdom of 26 years as a parent of a beautiful daughter with spina bifida. When Katie was little, I pored through books looking for anything to provide a road map. I wanted to know how other parents got through this, if they ever stopped crying, if it ever got any better, if the pain ever stopped feeling as if it were ripping through my stomach or if I would ever feel “normal” again. I never found anything that touched my core, that gave me hope, or helped me understand the big “Why me?” question that, if we’re honest, I think we all ask at some time or another.

Now 26 years later, the journey has been long and hard, joyous and burdensome, lonely, and yet the most fulfilling, incredible and “bittersweet” experience of my life.

I share my insights hoping that some of you -- maybe just starting out, maybe tired and weary -- will find value in it. For others, it might be the wrong time for you to read this, and it won’t resonate for you, and that’s fine -- I only offer it with love for my fellow “handicapped” parents as a gift from me to you.

When I was six months pregnant, an ultrasound revealed that my much-wanted first child had spina bifida (an opening in her spinal column) and hydrocephalus (fluid on the brain). We were told it was one of the worst cases of spina bifida the doctors had ever seen in utero (prior to birth) and that she would never walk, never have bowel or urinary control and probably would be severely retarded. In shock from that diagnosis, my husband Jim and I were sent to a neurosurgeon who told us that having hydrocephalus prior to birth meant that her brain was compressed so severely that he could not determine if she’d have any brain function at all. He also told us that statistically 80 percent of parents and children with such a severe disability divorced, and became depleted financially, physically and mentally. What a depressing day! We had just learned that our child would never know whom we were, or be able to walk or talk -- and on top of that, we would probably go broke and get divorced. I left the doctor’s office crying and in despair, only to see the three nuns, with whom I was teaching at a Catholic school at the time, awaiting us with open arms of love and support. I was so grateful that they were there.But the world as I knew it was crushed, over, fini -- and I wanted to die. “Why God?” “Why me?” Why us?" I cried. I wailed. I complained.

The rest of my pregnancy was a sad, lonely time. I hid in my house, refused phone calls, disliked every pregnant woman I saw and generally wanted it all to go away, but it didn’t, Katie was coming -- good, bad or otherwise -- and we had to prepare to welcome her.

I took matters into my own hands, transferring my medical care to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, to be cared for by a “high-risk” gynecologist. I was a special-education teacher at the time and read everything I could on spina bifida. I learned that the outcome for children with spina bifida was better if born by caesarian section (often giving them less damage to their open spinal column) and that they needed early aggressive treatment to have the best chance at life. Armed with that knowledge, I made an appointment with the most wonderfully caring high-risk gynecologist at Jackson Memorial. We spent an hour discussing my case, and I grilled him relentlessly. I told him I wanted a caesarian and that if she were not breathing at birth, we wanted her resuscitated (or brought back to life). We also asked for a neurosurgeon to be present at her birth and to operate to repair her back on her first day of life. We also wanted surgery to implant a shunt for the hydrocephalus as soon as possible; that way she would have the best chance for intellectual development. Subsequently, I saw him weekly. When he determined her head was becoming too large because of the hydrocephalus, he scheduled a caesarian to deliver her at 32 weeks of my pregnancy.

Fast-forward to supposedly the best day of a woman’s life, giving birth to her first child. I awakened with tears. My husband’s sister drove us to the hospital in complete silence. I felt as though we were on our way to a funeral. I had chosen to have general anesthesia. I simply didn’t think I could cope with her birth. Well, she was born, blue (not breathing) but a whole team of special doctors -- all the right doctors -- was there at her birth. She was resuscitated and rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), but not before Jim and his sister had a chance to see her. What they saw was a “Gerber baby” face, with lips like a little heart and a perfectly beautiful little face. Jim and his sister never forgot that moment. In awe of her seeming perfection, they also were all too aware of all her imperfections. While I was recovering, Jim went to the NICU to see his daughter. He scrubbed up and put on a sterile yellow gown. As he was waiting to see her, he overheard the nurses commenting on how disabled the baby was, and how she probably would not survive overnight. As they looked up and saw Jim, who told them that was his baby. I have always imagined that they felt awful at that moment.

Katie had her back surgically closed at seven hours old and her shunt surgically implanted at two days old. We hoped to take her home at two weeks old, but she contracted meningitis (a serious infection in the lining of the brain) and had to have the shunt removed and start a brutal round of treatment for the rare type of meningitis she had contracted (candida, or a type of yeast in the brain). The “Why me?” started again with a vengeance. Most babies with spina bifida are born with the opening in their back at the lumbar (from the waist down) area of the back, Katie’s opening was much higher on her back (thorax), and only 2% of children with spina bifida were that severe. That meant she couldn’t use her legs and would have neither bowel nor bladder control. Most babies with spina bifida have their shunt implanted and go home from the hospital within two weeks. Not Katie! Katie was the only case of candida meningitis the neurosurgeon had seen in 25 years. It felt like we kept winning the "what can go wrong’’ lottery! The treatment meant that her shunt had to be surgically removed, and every 10 days a huge (and I’m not exaggerating) needle would be put into the fontanel (soft spot) on the top of her head to drain off the extra spinal fluid from her brain. Without this procedure, her head would continue to enlarge, and the result could be severe mental retardation. So there I was -- a young, first-time mother watching my baby’s head go up and down like a yo-yo every 10 days, and as a special-education teacher wondering what this was doing to her potential intelligence. She didn’t get out of the NICU until she was 4 1/2 months old. The hospital chaplain came daily and prayed over Katie. I was a bit skeptical about prayer then. But the way she prayed filled me with peace and contentment. While the prayer wasn’t being answered in the way I wanted (which was my desire for a miracle), I since realized that the prayer was being answered by providing me with hope and peace and strength to get through that time. In my youth and immaturity, however, all I could see was the sadness and the problems. I didn’t want to hear any comments like, “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” How did they know I wondered? I thought God had way overestimated me if he didn’t think this was more than I could handle. I didn’t want to hear how I was chosen to be a “special mother,” particularly since I was a special-education teacher already. I didn’t want to be a "special" anything. I didn’t want to be told how this would be a wonderful opportunity for growth. I much preferred to be a not-so-special mother in a perfectly ordinary life…thank you very much.

Then someone sent me a “Welcome to Holland” article in which the author equates having a baby with special needs with planning a trip to Italy…but while on your journey you find out that you’re going to Holland instead. Holland is not where you had intended to go; you had made no plans to go to Holland and, moreover, you did not want to go to Holland because you signed up to go to Italy! But once you are there (after you get over the jealousy of not going to Italy) you begin to see the good things about Holland, and you begin to notice that Holland has tulips and other beauty, too. While the analogy helped me somewhat at the time, what really resonated with me was that the writer didn’t try to sugarcoat it and tell you how grateful you should be to find yourself in Holland. She tells you – honestly – that for the rest of your life, while the other families are busy coming and going from Italy, you’ll feel pain, and she tells you that the pain of that loss (of the “perfect child”) will never go away, but if you stay with that pain, you’ll never get to appreciate the special, wondrous things about Holland (or the life of your child with a disability).

I read and re-read that over the years, trying to make sense of it. Sometimes it soothed me; other times I cursed Holland. “I hate Holland!” People in “Italy” don’t have to catheterize their infants, and deal with seizures, and their babies walk and talk on time, I thought. Holland wasn’t for me. Yet I was in Holland -- like it or not, planned or unplanned -- so eventually I stopped fighting it and learned how to live life in Holland. Do I still hate it sometimes? Absolutely. Do I still wish I had been chosen to go Italy? Absolutely. Would I return all my insight and wisdom, borne of experience, if Katie could walk, and talk normally, not need to be catheterized, have more friends, drive a car, go to college and marry? Yes!

But I learned so much. I learned that you have to hurt to understand, that only people who have lived in Holland truly get it and can understand your pain. I learned from Desiderata (an old rules-for-life narrative written by Max Ehrmann) that, “if you compare yourself with others” (like the people in Italy) that you may become vain and bitter, “for there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself throughout your life.” I learned to be gentle with myself because I and my child is each “a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars” (Desiderata), and we have a right to be here.

Fast-forward 26 years to the summer of 2011. I am a professor of special education at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. My privilege is preparing the future educators of our “special” children, and I have had the honor of having three of my previous college students graduate and become teachers of my own Katie. Because I am the parent of a “special” child, I share stories, insight and knowledge with my students that they might not otherwise learn from this sort of course. This occurs not because I am wonderful, but because of what life has taught me through Katie. Because of Katie, I became involved in parent advocacy with Jim. We joined Parent to Parent and the Spina Bifida Association of America, learning all we could about our daughter’s condition and what we parents could do to make better her life and the lives of other children with disabilities. Because of Katie I returned to college and obtained a master’s in special education. Because of Katie I reached for the stars and believed that if she had the strength, courage and fortitude to endure 20 hours of surgery at one time and to survive more than 20 surgeries in her lifetime, then I certainly had the capability to return to graduate school (in my 40s) to obtain a Ph.D. in special education.

It is because of my bittersweet journey with Katie that I am the person I am today. I’m stronger, more confident, happier, and generally a nicer person. Both her father and I have a contribution to make to this world because of Katie. Katie makes her contribution every day by spreading her joy and love. No one who has met our daughter hasn’t come away touched by her story, her life, her beautiful smiling face.After 26 years, looking back, I see the tapestry of our lives. I saw the bumps and knots on the underside of the tapestry that I thought were the messy threads that were making up our often chaotic, stressful, overwhelming life. But when I turned the tapestry over, I saw how all those loose ends, knots and bumps were woven together into a beautiful tapestry that is my life today with Katie and her beautiful sister, Colleen. Now I can understand that I had to climb the mountain and I had to hurt to understand how it all fit together and how all of it worked together for some reason. Now I can look back in awe and see that I really can endure, that I really am strong and that Katie and I really do have worth.

My counsel: Take charge of your situation, join parent groups and seek out others in your situation. Learn from other parents who have paved this road ahead of you. Let yourself feel sad when you must. It is not easy. Acceptance does not come overnight, if ever. But it does get somewhat easier, or at least less painful, over time.Now for the rest of the story: Many of the medical predictions were true. Katie has never walked. She never has had bowel or bladder control. She is developmentally delayed, dependent on us for daily needs and care. At 26, she still lives at home with me. Her life has affected our life in many ways. We’ve had very limited freedom over the years because of her seizures, and need for catheterization. In fact, her father and I went away overnight just one time in 20 years because hiring a nurse cost too much, and most friends and family were frankly too scared to be responsible for her care. It wore us down. Our marriage withstood years of non-stop stress. Yet it did not endure, and we ended our marriage after 23 years. But that’s okay because Jim and I have learned so much about advocacy.

Katie has taught us all so much. She had many friends when she was little. She was invited to birthday parties. She was the grand marshal at the Disney World parade on year, delightedly telling everyone, “Look at Mickey Mouse!” Middle school was harder; the friends matured, and she was somewhat left behind. But she made a few good friends who also had disabilities, and to this day they still burn up the phone lines. In high school, we chose the "special diploma" as her graduation option. That meant a significant reduction in homework and all the stress of the academic demands. She was happy, she had fun, and she was asked out by a boy (also in a wheelchair) and now has a boyfriend. She graduated in June 2004 and was the only graduate to “wheel” across the stage, with the biggest smile you ever saw, and to my surprise and delight, accompanied by cheers from her peers and the audience as she received her diploma. None of us had a dry eye.

Jim and another father worked tirelessly for years to educate legislators on the needs of children and families with special needs. Jim traveled to Tallahassee sitting patiently for hours in legislative offices to tell our family’s story. When he couldn’t get their time or attention, he created a placard in the shape of a boat that said, “Get on Board for Spina Bifida,” and left it on their desks. In a sea of business cards that boat stood out. Eventually some legislators listened, and new programs were enacted in Florida for children with special needs.

For the first time in Katie’s entire life, we were able to employ a companion and then a personal care attendant (PCA) every week. They attended to many of her personal needs and began to take her out into the community. Additionally, Jim took on the job of president of the Spina Bifida Association when Katie was only 2. One of his undertakings was to counsel parents who had just learned that their child had or would be born with spina bifida. He talked with parents for hours on end, always willing to provide support and empathy.

Because Jim was, and remains, a full partner with me in her care, her life outcome is positive. Jim also had to learn how to catheterize an infant. As Katie matured, as difficult as it was he still took an active role in her personal and physical care. If he hadn’t, I would have been unable to have any personal freedom. So I thank him for taking the journey to Holland with me. Even when we both longed for the freedom that we perceived to be in Italy, we worked hard to find the beauty that was in Holland.

These past few months, I’ve decided that if Italy was not an option and if Holland wasn’t where I wanted to be, I’d try a new country, maybe France. In France, I’m trying on a new concept called “freedom.” Due to the new programs in Florida I have been able to employ a companion on the weekends to make it possible for Katie to go out, like other girls her age. This friend, much more than a hired attendant, is a beautiful, fun-loving young woman who was once Katie’s friend in elementary school, and truly loves, and understands, Katie and her special needs. She learned how to strap down her wheelchair and how to drive her van; they crank up the music, and they’re off! The first time, she went out with her friend, she said, “Mom, now I feel like a real teenager.” It was the first time she had been out alone in a car without either of her parents, and she was 18 years old!

I live in Davie, a country-Western-themed town, and Katie has taken on the role of cowgirl with gusto. She’s a “redneck woman,” knows all the country songs and has the Stetson hat and boots to prove it. She and her friend have been to country-Western concerts, a country-Western club, the movies, dinner and the mall. In short, she is having a life -- a bigger, better, more fun-filled life than I ever expected for her. So it looks as though the future is brighter in France. In France, she’s experiencing a life I never thought possible for her. Although I once thought she’d never dance, she proved us all wrong -- she “dances” in her chair while her whole soul sings.

I cannot close without telling you how Katie’s life has impacted her sister Colleen’s life. Colleen grew up being shuttled to her grandparent’s house whenever Katie had to go in for surgery, so she learned early how to adapt to change. I’ve watched Colleen become a sensitive, loving, empathic young woman, with more wisdom and understanding than most teenagers. One example. She was just 5 years old, and we were waiting for the elevator at Boston Children’s Hospital. Another mother was waiting with us with her toddler in a carriage. That baby had a large tumor on one side of his face that pulled down the corner of his mouth, distorting one side of his face. He also had no arms below his elbows. The other mother and I waited in silence, sending silent messages with our eyes of understanding. As we entered the elevator, the baby began to cry. Colleen bent down, looked into his face and stated making funny faces to get him to laugh, which he did. As we exited the elevator, the other mom and I again exchanged glances with tears in our eyes.

I called Colleen over and said, “Colleen, you have such a big heart. I think many other children might not have been comfortable with that baby because of his handicap, but it didn’t bother you. I’m so proud of you.” She seemed surprised by my comment and responded, “Why, Mommy, he’s only different on the outside; he’s just like me on the inside.” I cried, in gratitude, for the life lessons her sister’s life had already taught her and would continue to provide for her (which many adults may never acquire). Among the lessons learned: You have to hurt to understand, to understand pain and suffering and to feel empathy for others. Once you understand that, your whole world opens up; you can see the bright side of the tapestry, and you can dance. Perhaps we’ll dance a different dance in France. Now that the veil has been lifted from my vision, France seems full of possibilities.

Now I can see a brighter and more beautiful future reflected in both my daughters’ eyes.