Saturday, April 10, 2010

Glenn Beck is an idiot (just one example)

Was it not Dick Cheney who said that Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter?


Quote of the Day

by BooMan
Thu Apr 8th, 2010 at 12:37:42 PM EST


I generally ignore Glenn Beck because I don't want to do even a small part to give him the kind of attention he needs to make $32 million a year, but I just want to look at this onequote:


I don't know if you have seen the debt clock, but the debt is unsustainable. We're about to go out of business.People who are only playing the political games will ask: Where were you when George Bush was spending? It doesn't matter. I'm here now. Where are you now?

And before Dubya Bush, we might have asked where the budget hawks were when Reagan was spending. When Poppy Bush, in an effort at post-Reagan fiscal sanity, broke his 'read-my-lips-no-new-taxes' pledge, the 'budget hawks' threw him out of office.

What the American people need to understand about Republicans is that when they are out of power they are against any federal spending on anything other than weapons and immigration enforcement (better if these two things can be combined). But, when Republicans are in power, they spend freely and run up staggering debts. When the bill comes due and they get replaced by Democrats, they dismiss critics of their profligate spending by saying "It doesn't matter. I'm here now," and go right back to advocating balanced budgets.

In other words, now that they are no longer in control of the federal treasury, they are going back to their roots as an opposition party. But, even if you agree with them about the need to have a balanced budget, there is no reason to believe them when they say they will create one if put back in charge. They won't. And there is a simple reason for that. They will never raise taxes even when the economic times call for tax hikes. In fact, they will reduce taxes to the maximum degree possible. But they won't make corresponding cuts in federal programs. So, the result, every time, is staggering debt.

It pays to look at the conservative ideology as something that developed over decades in the minority in Congress. From the end of World War Two until 1995, the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives for a total of four years (1947-49 and 1953-55). So, modern conservative ideology is built on opposing the federal government's spending priorities (and, really, any spending at all). It's an ideology that takes no account of an actual governing ideology. 

Again, other than spending on weapons and a Great Wall of Mexico, they have no fiscal priorities besides tax cuts (primarily for the wealthiest). The Republicans spent so long not being able to control the purse strings that they lost any interest in arguing over how the money should be spent. They just want to take the money out of the purse. But, hand them the purse, and they'll spend money just as lavishly as the Democrats and then they'll max out the credit cards for good measure.

So, my answer to Glenn Beck is that he should go with his real calling: rodeo clown. It doesn't pay as well, but he'd sleep better at night.


Let The Sun Shine In......

Two Nevada Republicans Call for Ensign to Bow Out.

Yep, things must be getting really bad on the Ensign front.

April 8, 2010

By ERIC LICHTBLAU


WASHINGTON — Senator John Ensign’s political troubles worsened Thursday as more Republican colleagues from his home state of Nevada said that the ethics investigations surrounding him have threatened to damage the party statewide.
Two Republican leaders in Las Vegas called Thursday for Mr. Ensign to resign, a day after Representative Dean Heller, a Republican from northern Nevada, said that the ethics inquiries were causing “real problems” for party members around the state.
Their comments came on the heels of a front-page article Monday in The Las Vegas Sun that read much like a political obituary. It said Nevada Republicans were upset “that Ensign seems oblivious to the collateral damage caused by his actions, and unwilling to make the matter disappear by resigning.”
Mr. Ensign was considered a rising Republican star and a possible presidential contender in 2012 until he admitted publicly last year to an affair with an aide’s wife.
Mr. Ensign’s office said Thursday that he was traveling in South Asia with a bipartisan Congressional delegation and that the office had no immediate comment on the concerns voiced by Nevada Republicans.
Both the Justice Department and the Senate ethics committee are investigating allegations first raised in The New York Times last October that Mr. Ensign got lobbying work for the aide, Douglas Hampton, and intervened on behalf of his clients in an effort to contain the damage from his affair with Mr. Hampton’s wife.
The senator’s efforts to help Mr. Hampton could be seen as a violation of a one-year moratorium on senior Congressional staffers lobbying their former employers, legal analysts say. The Justice Department is also examining a $96,000 payment that Mr. Ensign’s parents made to the Hamptons.
As new allegations of potential improper lobbying have surfaced in recent weeks against Mr. Ensign, Republican colleagues in Washington and Nevada have remained largely silent, and associates say Mr. Ensign has found himself more isolated politically.
A number of onetime allies in Nevada, including some who received grand jury subpoenas for documents about their dealings with Mr. Ensign, have also said that they felt used by the senator after he turned to them for help in finding lobbying work for Mr. Hampton without disclosing the affair.
In a column posted Thursday on a political Web site, Nevada News and Views, Richard Scotti, former chairman of the Clark County Republican Party, and Swadeep Nigam, former treasurer, said it was time for Mr. Ensign to resign.
“Nobody is coming to his rescue,” they wrote. “Only a small handful of Republican candidates have even sought his endorsement.”
They said the negative publicity had already damaged Republican fund-raising efforts in Nevada and threatened to drag down Republican candidates in the November election. In appearances on Las Vegas news shows on Wednesday, Mr. Heller, the Republican congressman who has been seen as a potential successor to Mr. Ensign, stopped short of calling for the senator’s resignation but said that Mr. Ensign’s “situation” had hurt “the ticket up and down” the state.
He called on Mr. Ensign to publicly answer the ethics questions.
“Let’s get this behind us,” Mr. Heller said in one television appearance. “Let’s move forward. It’s not good for him, it’s not good for me, it’s not good for the Republican Party, it’s not good for the state of Nevada.”
The office of the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, asked Thursday about Mr. Ensign’s political future in light of the criticism, had no immediate comment.

Let The Sun Shine In......

President of Poland Killed in Plane Crash in Russia


By ELLEN BARRY, MICHAL PIOTROWSKI and NICHOLAS KULISH


MOSCOW – A plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and dozens of the country’s top political and military leaders crashed in a heavy fog in western Russia on Saturday morning, killing everyone aboard.
Television showed chunks of flaming fuselage scattered in a bare forest near Smolensk, where the president was arriving for a ceremony commemorating the murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers by the Red Army as it invaded Poland.
The governor of Smolensk region, Sergei Antufiyev, said the plane did not reach the runway but instead hit the treetops and broke apart. An official with the Russia’s Investigative Committee said possible causes were bad weather, mechanical failure and human error.
The crash came as a staggering blow to Poland, killing what may be a tenth of country’s top leadership in one fiery explosion. In the numb hours after the crash, leaders in Warsaw evoked the horror of the massacre at Katyn, which stood for decades as a symbol of Russian domination of Poland.
“It is a damned place,” former president Aleksander Kwasniewski told TVN24. “It sends shivers down my spine. First the flower of the Second Polish Republic is murdered in the forests around Smolensk, now the intellectual elite of the Third Polish Republic die in this tragic plane crash when approaching Smolensk airport.”
“This is a wound which will be very difficult to heal,” he said.
Former president Lech Walesa, who presided over Poland’s transition from communism, cast the crash in similarly historic terms.
“This is the second disaster after Katyn,” he said. “They wanted to cut off our head there, and here the flower of our nation has also perished. Regardless of the differences, the intellectual class of those on the plane was truly great.”
The flag at the presidential palace in Warsaw was lowered as a crowd gathered, laying down flowers and lighting candles. According to Poland’s constitution, the leader of the lower house of parliament – now acting president – has 14 days to announce new elections, which must then take place within 60 days.
The plane was a Tupolev Tu-154, designed by the Soviets in the mid-1960s. Officials in Poland have repeatedly requested that the government’s aging air fleet be replaced. Former Prime Minister Leszek Miller, who survived a helicopter crash in 2003, told Polish news he had long predicted such a disaster.
“I once said that we will one day meet in a funeral procession, and that is when we will take the decision to replace the aircraft fleet,” he said.
A press secretary for Mr. Antufiyev, the governor of Smolensk, said the landing took place under very bad visibility, and Russian air traffic controllers advised the crew to land in Minsk, but the crew decided to land anyway. The Polish news channel TVN24 reported that moments before the crash, air traffic controllers had refused a Russian military aircraft permission to land, but that they could not refuse permission to the Polish plane.
The crash site was cordoned off, but Russian media reported that the airplane’s crew made several attempts to land before a wing hit the treetops and the plane crashed about half a mile from the runway. Correspondents reporting from the scene said the plane’s explosion was so powerful that fragments of it were scattered as far as the outskirts of Smolensk, more than a mile from the crash site itself.
For Poland, the losses raise the question of how a country of 38 million can replace a whole political class. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski – one of the highest-ranking Polish leaders not on board the plane – told Poland’s Radio Zet that he was the one to inform Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who “was in tears when he heard about the catastrophe.”
Among those on board, according to theWeb site of the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, were Mr. Kaczynski; his wife, Maria; former Polish president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski; the deputy speaker of Poland’s parliament, Jerzy Szmajdzinski; the head of the president’s chancellery, Wladyslaw Stasiak; the head of the National Security Bureau, Aleksander Szczyglo; the deputy minister of foreign affairs, Andrzej Kremer; the chief of the general staff of the Polish army, Franciszek Gagor; the president of Poland’s national bank, Slawomir Skrzypek; the commissioner for civil rights protection, Janusz Kochanowski; the heads of all of Poland’s armed forces; and dozens of members of parliament.
A spokesman for Poland’s ministry of foreign affairs said 88 people were on the plane. Russian emergency officials said the total number killed, including crew members, was 96.
Mr. Kaczysnki, 61, was elected president in 2005 just as his identical twin brother, Jaroslaw, became head of the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice government, often putting Poland on a collision course with Russia. Mr. Kaczynski forged close relationships with Ukraine and Georgia and pushed for their accession into NATO, arguing passionately that a stronger NATO would keep Russia from reasserting its influence over Eastern Europe.
The president’s death on Russian soil is bound to open old wounds in the relationship between Russia and Poland.
He had been due in western Russia to commemorate the anniversary of the murder of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II.
The ceremonies were to be held at a site in the Katyn forest close to Smolensk, where 70 years ago members of the Soviet secret police executed more than 20,000 Polish officers captured after the Soviet Army invaded Poland in 1939.
The two countries had been making strides in recent months to improve their ties, which had been strained since the days of communism, when Poland was a Soviet satellite. After the collapse of communism, its leaders embraced the West and snubbed Russia.
The Katyn massacre was one point of tension. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin took a major step to address improve relations by becoming the first Russian or Soviet leader to join Polish officials in commemorating the anniversary. He was joined there by Mr. Tusk.
At the ceremony, Mr. Putin cast the executions as one of many crimes carried out by the “totalitarian regime” of the Soviet Union.
“We bow our heads to those who bravely met death here,” he said. “In this ground lay Soviet citizens, burnt in the fire of the Stalinist repression of the 1930s; Polish officers, shot on secret orders; soldiers of the Red Army, executed by the Nazis.”
Mr. Kaczynski, who is seen by the Kremlin as less friendly to Russia, was not invited to the joint Russian-Polish ceremony on Wednesday. Instead, Mr. Kaczynski decided to attend a separate, Polish-organized event in Katyn on Saturday.
Michal Piotrowski contributed reporting from Warsaw and Ellen Barry, Clifford J. Levy and Viktor Klimenko from Moscow.



Let The Sun Shine In......

Is Palin Really Bush In Drag?


by Meg White
Sarah Palin was a featured speaker at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) in New Orleans Friday afternoon, though perhaps palin at SRLC"featured sloganeer" would have been more appropriate considering the substance of her address.
Within her "hopey-changey," "repill and replace," and "don't retreat; reload" mashup, she even started suggesting bumper sticker designs. It was the classic Palin we all have grown to cringe at.
It was when she dealt with anything that happened before, say, August 2008 when she began to have some trouble.
She tried to equate the optics of President Obama's policies with President George W. Bush's. Referring to Obama's recent energy speech, Palin quipped, "Anything sounds good when you say it in front of a fighter jet!" She added that the next step for the administration is to get "Joe Biden in a flight suit."
I wonder if Palin has ever heard the phrase "Mission: Accomplished"? Oh, and did I mention the fact that she said "nuke-you-lar" at least three times during her SRLC speech?
But the true genius of Palin's "speech" was a little-noticed admission about the very recent past. Referencing the time during the presidential primaries when Bill Clinton said the hype surrounding then-Sen. Barack Obama was "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen," Palin admitted she didn't know the context within which the former president made that remark. But no matter!
"I'll take it in the context that I want it in!" she proclaimed.
Wow. That is perhaps the best explanation for Sarah Palin's selective consciousness that I have ever heard. It all makes sense now!
This revelation was particularly satisfying this week, as I was already looking for some sort of rhyme or reason behind the wacky assertions Palin made this Wednesday on Sean Hannity's live special broadcast from the Minneapolis Convention Center. It was part of what Hannity kept calling the "2010 Conservative Victory Tour" (while I'm thinking, "What victory?").
The pow-wow-in-the-round between Hannity, Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) produced rhetoric as shrill as the feedback of their mics.
During the bomb Iranforeign policy portion, Hannity asserted that the new nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia stipulates that if we're attacked with a biological weapon by a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons, Obama has taken the power to strike back with nukes "off the table."
"No administration in America's history, I think, would ever have considered such a step," Palin replied.
Of course, Palin was more correct than she even realized (or would admit). As John Stewart pointed out on The Daily Show Thursday evening, several FOX commentators have flagrantly ignored complete, unambiguous passages of the START agreement, which explicitly give the U.S. power to strike back with nuclear weapons against any country that attacks us with biological ones, no matter what their status as far as having nukes. Furthermore, those powers can be expanded at any time the president sees fit, meaning that they can be adapted to national security situations as they arise.
Of course, if one is willing to take the truth in any context that one sees fit, lying comes pretty darn easy, don't it?
Perhaps the most offensive thing I heard out of Palin's mouth over the course of Hannity's entire show was when she suggested that not warmongering makes the troops sad. Hannity asked Palin about the hard line Obama is drawing with Israel and the fact that he's willing to negotiate with Iran. Her response was:
That is a scary place for us to be. It is also a slap in the face to our men and women serving in uniform today and have served our country in the past [sic]. Those willing to lay down their lives for our security, for our freedom. They wanna know that all options are on the table. They wanna know that the resources, that the strategies are there for them to keep us safe, to be victorious.
Let me just translate that into rational English: Palin's saying that our troops want us threatening our enemies and refusing to negotiate. That our overextended troops actually want us to provoke a war on another front, just to prove that we are fast friends with Israel.
Again, a twisted interpretation of reality is necessary to force such false logic fit into a frame that even faintly resembles the world we live in. But that's fine for Palin, because she'll take it in the context that she wants to take it in!
It's just too bad the rest of us -- especially our troops -- don't have the luxury of changing contexts whenever we feel like it.


Let The Sun Shine In......

The tyranny of bond markets


Credit rating agencies helped cause the financial crisis – and as they rear their heads again, it's time for Obama to get tough.


Credit rating agencies played a big role in creating the financial crisis. Now they are slowing the recovery. Financial regulatory reform legislation in the US has finally put the agencies on the radar screen, but the proposals don't go far enough.
It is now legendary that the mortgage-backed securities structured in the shadow banking system all had AAA stamps of approval by the rating agencies. Of course when the mortgage bubble that propped up those assets burst, we learned that such assets were indeed "toxic" and unworthy of such high grades. The world couldn't handle the truth and spun into the worst financial crisis since the Depression.
In addition to getting the prices wrong and triggering crises (credit rating agencies were behind the Asian and Enron crises as well), there isn't a competitive market for rating agencies. Just three US-based agencies, Standard & Poors (S&P), Moody's, and Fitch have all but a tad of the market. What's more, the agencies are paid by the owners of assets that ask to be rated, creating conflicts of interest.
The US government was quick to take the most toxic of these assets off the balance sheets of the banks that were too big to fail. Households who held pensions that were stamped by the agencies weren't as lucky.
Credit rating agencies literally made a killing by stamping approvals on toxic assets during the run-up to the crisis. According to the Ohio attorney general, agency revenues from structured financial products in 2006 ranged from 50-75% of all revenue for these firms. Moody's raked in $887m that year, over half its revenue. Ohio is suing the agencies for $457m in alleged losses to Ohio pension recipients alone. Problem is, rating agencies have never lost a case because they claim that they are mere opinion writers and are protected by the first amendment. Moreover, suitors have to prove that the agencies that get it wrong are doing so as an act of "actual malice", which is a high bar in a courtroom.
No one stepped in to regulate the agencies in the aftermath of the crisis. So they've reared their heads again, this time zeroing in on government debt. Many of the hardest hit governments, rich and poor alike, have borrowed funds in the bond markets to stimulate their economies into recovery.
Well, the rating agencies grade these bonds too. Many economists shake at the deficit fetishness that has overtaken the press and some members of the US Congress, warning that a fragile recovery from the crisis will do more harm in terms of investor confidence. Spending when times are bad, cutting spending when the economy is performing well, is good economics.
Regardless of the economics, the rating agencies are tyrannising governments for doing the right thing. It was Moody's downgrade of Greece that pushed that country over the edge, and last week Fitch's downgraded Portugal's debt. Is Portugal next? In December all three agencies downgraded Mexico for not sufficiently raising taxes and that country has had its worst year since the Depression. Most strikingly, credit rating agencies have threatened to downgrade the debt of the UK and the United States – two countries that have never defaulted on their debts.
The good news is that the Obama administration and Congress is set to regulate the rating agencies through financial regulatory reform legislation currently pending in Congress. The Senate bill would create an Office of Credit Ratings at the SEC to watch the agencies and the office would have the power to shut down agencies that continue to make mistakes. The House bill would create liability windows for investors to file lawsuits whereby suitors would only have to prove "gross negligence" rather than "actual malice".
However, neither bill changes the "issuer-pay" model for compensating agencies that is rife with conflicts of interest. Neither bill deals with the competition problem: the big three rating agencies' stronghold on the market will hold. Perhaps most concerning is the fact that there is much less in these bills about how government debt ratings should be regulated. Foreign governments that go bankrupt and spin into crises can't sue US ratings agencies to compensate their workers who lose their jobs.
Bond raters should do business only with investors who buy their services, not the issuers who want good ratings. More agencies should be allowed to operate in the market. The creation of public agencies for corporate debt, and UN-based agencies for government debt should also be considered. The legislation idling in the US Congress takes some solid steps forward. But these bills will need to get tougher in order for the world economy to escape the tyranny of the bond markets.


Let The Sun Shine In......

Profits Over Safety

LABOR

On Monday, 25 miners died and another four went missing after an explosion took place at 3 p.m. at Massey Energy-owned Performance Coal Co.'s Upper Big Branch Mine-South between the towns of Montcoal and Naoma in West Virginia. The deadly accident resulted in "the most people killed in a U.S. mine since 1984, when 27 died in a fire at Emery Mining Corp.'s mine in Orangeville, Utah." Rescue teams attempted to retrieve the four missing miners on Tuesday, but were forced to turn back "because unsafe levels of methane and carbon monoxide posed a risk of a second explosion." Early today, four rescue teams entered the Upper Big Branch Mine-South, "working their way to a chamber where it is hoped four unaccounted-for miners may be found." Though there is a "sliver of hope" that the miners could be rescued, "officials and townsfolk alike admitted" to the Associated Press that "they didn't expect to find any of the four still-missing miners alive." "We've been working against long odds from day one," said West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D). Since the accident on Monday, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship --  whose mines have a long history of safety violations -- "has appeared several times before the cameras," but "has said very little, his face seeming almost expressionless as he quietly answers questions about his concern for miner safety." According to the New York Times, when Blankenship attempted to "announce the death toll to families who were gathered at the site" around 2 a.m. Tuesday, "people yelled at him for caring more about profits than miners' lives."

OVER 3,000 VIOLATIONS: According to Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) records, since 1995, Massey's Upper Big Branch-South Mine has been cited for 3,007 safety violations. Massey is contesting 353 violations, and 127 are delinquent. "Violations in 2009 were roughly double the amount from any previous year" and a violation involving mine foreman Terry Moore "was one of at least 50 'unwarrantable failure' violations assessed there in the past year, the most serious type of violation that MSHA can assess."  In March 2010, 53 new safety citations were issued for Massey's mine, including violations of its mine ventilation plan. Federal regulators issued two citations against the Upper Big Branch Mine-South on Jan. 7 "because the intake system that was supposed to pull clean air inside was moving air in the wrong direction. Similar problems were also noted by the mine safety agency after a 2006 fire at a Massey mine in Logan County, W.Va., killed two miners. " The New York Times reports today that "federal officials said two safety citations were made against the mine's operator on the day of the explosion." "One of the citations issued Monday against the operator, the Massey Energy Company, was for failing to properly insulate and seal spliced electrical cables" while the other "was for failing to keep maps of above-ground escape routes current." Blankenship is dismissive of the safety violations. "Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process," he said in an interview with the Metronews radio network in West Virginia. "There are violations at every coal mine in America, and U.B.B. was a mine that had violations," he added, referring to Upper Big Branch Mine-South. In a 2003 Forbes profile, Blankenship said, "We don't pay much attention to the violation count." In addition to violations at the Upper Big Branch Mine, the Washington Independent's Mike Lillis notes that "the dozens of other active tunnel mines owned by" Massey "have run up thousands of safety violations this year alone."

A HISTORY OF DISASTER: Monday's tragic explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine-South was not the first environmental or safety disaster to occur at a Massey Energy-owned property. Massey is the parent of Martin County Coal, which was responsible for the "nation's largest man-made environmental disaster east of the Mississippi" until the 2008 Tennessee coal-ash spill. "In October 2000, a coal slurry impoundment broke through an underground mine shaft and spilled over 300 million gallons of black, toxic sludge into the headwaters of Coldwater Creek and Wolf Creek," in Martin County, Kentucky. In 2008, Massey's Aracoma Coal Co. agreed to "plead guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony, and pay $2.5 million in criminal fines" after two workers died in a 2006 fire at the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine in Melville, West Virginia. Massey also paid $1.7 million in civil fines. The mine "had 25 violations of mandatory health and safety laws" before the fire on January 19, 2006, but Blankenship passed off the events that caused the deaths as "statistically insignificant." Days before fire broke out in the Aracoma mine, a federal mine inspector tried to close down that section of the mine, but "was told by his superior to back off and let them run coal, that there was too much demand for coal." Massey failed to notify authorities of the fire until two hours after the disaster. Three months before the Aracoma mine fire, Blankenship sent managers a memo saying, "If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal...you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills." A week later, however, Blankenship sent a follow-up memo, saying that safety is the first responsibility.

PAID-FOR POLITICAL PROTECTION: Blankenship is not just a coal baron, he's also a right-wing activist millionaire who sits on the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association. He's "a highly active GOP fundraiser and bankroller who is known for his outspoken opposition to labor unions." The Center for Responsive Politics has calculated "that individuals and PACs connected to Massey Energy have contributed more than $300,000 to federal candidates in the past two decades, 91 percent of which went to Republicans." "Blankenship contributed the federal maximum of $30,400 last year to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and he has supported Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and GOP Senate candidates Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Rob Portman of Ohio," the Washington Post reports. After the Marin County Coal spill, then-U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, who oversaw the MSHA, "put on the brakes" on an agency investigation into the spill by placing a staffer to her husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), in charge. In 2002, a Labor Department judge levied a $5,600 fine. "In September 2002, Massey's PAC gave $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee," which McConnell had previously chaired. Overall, McConnell has been one of the top recipients of Massey-related contributions, collecting $13,550 from Massey-connected contributors. Blankenship's closeness to prominent Republicans helped him land allies at the highest levels of the federal mine safety system during the Bush administration. Massey COO Stanley Suboleski was named a commissioner of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission in 2003 and was nominated in December 2007 to run the Energy Department's Office of Fossil Energy. Suboleski is now back on the Massey board. After being rejected twice by the Senate, President Bush put one-time Massey executive Dick Stickler in charge of the MSHA by a recess appointment in October 2006. In the 1990s, Stickler oversaw Massey subsidiary Performance Coal, the operator of the deadly Upper Big Branch Mine, after managing Beth Energy mines, which "incurred injury rates double the national average." Bush named Stickler acting secretary when the recess appointment expired in January 2008.
 

Let The Sun Shine In......

No Survivors Found After West Virginia Mine Disaster

MONTCOAL, W.Va. — An agonizing four-day wait came to a tragic end early Saturday morning when rescue workers failed to find any survivors in an underground mine after a huge explosion earlier this week.

The news at the Upper Big Branch mine about 30 miles south of Charleston brought the death toll to 29 in the country’s worst mine disaster in four decades.

“We did not receive the miracle we were praying for,” said Gov. Joe Manchin III, looking somber, his voice barely audible. “This journey has ended and now the healing will start.”
The announcement closed a grim Appalachian ritual and the third major mining disaster in the state in the past four years.

Grim faced and exhausted, rescue workers emerged from the mine around midnight after spending much of the evening wending their way through a labyrinth of cross-passageways more than 1,000 feet underground.

It took about three hours before the rescue team could get to all the men, mining officials said. The names of the dead were not released.

After Monday’s explosion left 25 dead and 4 missing, state and federal officials tried to tamp down expectations, saying it was highly unlikely that any of the missing miners would be found alive. But a sliver of hope remained until early Saturday morning, when state officials said that the rescue mission was finally shifting to a recovery mission.

Federal mining officials said they will now focus on trying to recover all 22 bodies still inside the mine. Seven other bodies were recovered after the blast Monday and two other miners were injured.

Rescue efforts had been an agonizing 100-hour exercise in frustration as the teams repeatedly inched their way through tangled debris and fallen rock only to have to withdraw because of explosively high levels of methane and carbon monoxide.

Above ground, the miners’ families waited for word. Passing much of the week sequestered from the news media, they huddled together in an open-air warehouse on the mine’s sprawling property, eating pizza, whispering consolations to each other, and sometimes praying.

While rescue efforts continued, company and state officials had been reluctant to release the names of the dead and missing, a move that angered many families longing for closure.
The death toll caused by Monday’s explosion was the highest in an American mine since a 1970 explosion killed 38 at Finley Coal Company, in Hyden, Ky. The blast at Upper Big Branch comes four years after a pair of other West Virginia mine disasters — an explosion that killed 12 miners at the Sago mine and a fire that killed two at the Aracoma Alma coal mine.

“We remained hopeful the four missing miners would have been found alive,” Don Blankenship, the chief executive of Massey Energy, the mine’s operator, said in a statement. “I personally met with many of the families throughout the week and share their grief at this very painful time.”

In 2008, the Aracoma Coal Company, a subsidiary of Massey, agreed to pay $4.2 million in criminal fines and civil penalties and to plead guilty to several safety violations related to that fire.

This week’s disaster came as a particular surprise because last year there were only 34 mining deaths, a record low.

Rescue workers described the blast as overwhelming — like nothing they had ever witnessed. Rail lines were twisted like pretzels, they said. Mining machines were blown to pieces.

This week’s blast comes after a year in which the Upper Big Branch mine had repeated problems with methane buildups. Since April 2009, federal regulators have cited the mine eight times for “substantial” violations relating to the mine’s methane control plans, according to the records.

In two instances, the regulators found the mine operator was calibrating methane monitors every three months even though it is supposed to be done every 31 days. The delays in attending to the monitors meant they could not properly detect the gas, a risk inspectors said could lead to severe injuries or prove fatal.

On April 30, 2009, federal regulators found that the mine had failed to follow methane-related safety precautions. Regulators stopped work in a section of the mine until the ventilation was corrected.

Kevin Stricklin, of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, said he planned an aggressive investigation of the disaster. “I can tell you this: No stone will be left unturned,” he said.

President Obama earlier on Friday expressed his condolences to the families of those killed or injured in the mine explosion. In remarks in the Rose Garden, he said “it’s clear that more needs to be done” about mine safety, and he asked for a full report on what went wrong.
He said that he had spoken on Wednesday to members of the Davis family, who had lost three relatives in the explosion — Timothy Davis, Sr., and his two nephews, Cory Davis and Josh Napper.

“Mining has a long and proud history in West Virginia,” Mr. Obama said. “It is a profession that’s not without risks and danger, and the workers and their families know this, but the government and their employer know that they owe it to these employees’ families to do everything possible to ensure their safety.”

Governor Manchin said he had asked the White House for a national moment of silence Monday at 3:30.

Bernie Becker and Dan Heyman contributed reporting from Montcoal, and Michael Cooper and Andrew W. Lehren from New York.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Friday, April 9, 2010

Go To Work Sick....

....And make everybody sick.

April 7, 2010 08:18 AM E-mail| |Comments (79)| Text size +

Feeling lousy? Too bad. Suck it up and go to work. "You gotta play hurt" is a necessary survival skill these days. In a tough economy, calling in sick is a luxury few can afford. And work loads are so heavy now that having the flu or bad allergies is deemed a poor excuse for skipping a day at the office.

Such are the findings of a new survey from Monster.com, the job-search website with much of its operations in Maynard.

Survey results indicate a large proportion of people prioritize work above their health, Monster said. In a press release, the company added that it polled nearly 34,000 people in 15 countries, and only 13 percent said they work from home when sick, rather than going to the office.

Just over a third said that work is "too busy for me to miss a day," and 28 percent cited the fear of losing their job as big reason for going to work even when feeling under the weather, Monster said.

"Deciding whether to come to work sick or not can be a very emotional issue for some," Monster.com senior research director Jeff Quinn said in a statement. "People try to balance urgent recommendations from health organizations to limit the spread of H1N1 by staying home, with the fear of risking their job security in this economy. To help alleviate any issues, managers might help their employees better understand that they are expected to stay home when sick. Managers should also follow their own advice and not come in to the office if they're sick themselves."

(Monster has numerous relationships with media outlets to sell help-wanted advertising, including The Boston Globe and its website, Boston.com.)


Let The Sun Shine In......

'Tea' is for terrorism

When even the most ‘legitimate’ voices of the right validate dangerously unhinged anti-government rhetoric — DUCK! 
 
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN  |  April 8, 2010  |  Recommended By 2 People
 
A year ago, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) produced a memo outlining the growing threat posed to this country from right-wing extremists. It compared the situation to that of the early 1990s — which culminated in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168. (The threat did not end with that event: the DHS memo revealed that, for years later, law enforcement continued to disrupt “multiple terrorist plots linked to violent right-wing extremists.”)
The DHS assessment was restrained but clear in warning that economic conditions, combined with President Barack Obama’s election and other factors, were creating fertile recruiting ground for extremists. “Lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States,” the report concluded.

Although not stated, the timing of the report — dated April 7 — was almost certainly no accident, according to those who follow right-wing extremism. It was meant, they speculate, to heighten law-enforcement awareness ahead of the April 19 anniversary of the Branch Davidian tragedy in Waco, Texas — a common target date for extremist acts, including the Murrah bombing.

Now, a year later, as we approach the same dangerous date, things have only grown worse. The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a rise in militia and “patriot” groups. Mother Jones and the Progressive have described well-armed, conspiracy-soaked extremist groups like the Oath Keepers, which exist on the edges of the conservative movement. The FBI last month arrested nine members of the religious Hutaree militia in Michigan, accused of plotting mass murder of law-enforcement personnel. And passage last month of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act triggered people to throw bricks through Democratic office windows and send death threats to elected officials, prompting extra security measures for not only members of Congress, but even the nonpartisan Senate Parliamentarian.

The April 15 Tax Day Tea Parties will undoubtedly ratchet the anti-government rhetoric even higher — followed, incredibly, by large pro-gun demonstrations on the hyper-charged 19th itself. (Organizers say they are commemorating the Battle of Lexington.) One of those events, near the nation’s capital, features among its speakers an Alabama militia member who called for the brick-throwing, and who later explained it as a warning to Democrats about the likelihood of greater violent resistance — “a thousand little Wacos,” as he put it.

Given all this, it would almost be surprising if there are not any “lone wolves” or “small terrorist cells” preparing to strike.

The fact is, there are millions of Americans who genuinely believe — based on information they receive every day from television and radio, and from elected officials and “respectable” organizations — that we have an illegitimate (by virtue of his foreign birth) presidential usurper, installed to power through a fraudulent election, who, with his Marxist allies in Congress, are running an unconstitutional government and pushing our nation irreversibly on a path to a secular, despotic regime.


Refusing to distinguish
 

When the DHS memo was leaked last spring, conservative and GOP leaders did not take it as a cautionary warning to tone down their rhetoric and distance themselves from extremists. Instead, they reacted with outrage, claiming that the government was painting all conservatives as potential threats.
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Read more: http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/99670-tea-is-for-terrorism/#ixzz0kd5dhOsI
Let The Sun Shine In......

The danger for the GOP

Is this the end of a cycle in America? 

Just over 40 years ago, Bobby Kennedy was gunned down in the kitchen of a hotel in L.A., thus ending the longest spree of political assassinations in U.S. history. We had turned into a banana republic barely disguised as a Democratic Republic. 
Last time, the Democrats got the blame for everything they managed to accomplish, even though most of what they accomplished was good and has stood the test of time. 

We all paid with worsening and worsening right-leaning administrations. Now, we find our selves so tilted to the right that moderate programs, programs like Nixon and Reagan advocated in their days, are considered nothing short of communism, totalitariansim, even Nazism, in todays GOP. 

It is definitely the Right who are in the streets with hate contorted faces. How many are on drugs, as well? 

Is all that foul mouthed, hatred owing only to their own brain chemistry? I would feel better if we found out they were all on Cocaine or Oxycontin. Then, we could at least say, "well what can we expect from drug addled brains?" If no drugs are involved, we are dealing with something much worse. These states are permanent, just below the surface, ready to erupt when the fire is turned up by hateful tirades of disinformation, blasted over the airwaves 24/7.

Who is in the greatest danger? 

The ones who created the monster? Politically, it is the creator and Karma can be a  bitch

This monster has been in the making for close to 40 years. Since the heady days of Ronald Reagan, the monster was well known by people who pay attention, even with a certain detachment.

 Will this monster devour it's creator? The chances are good, if the stoking continues. I just hope that something really more horrible does not have to happen before before we all turn and address this nation threatening horror before it costs us dearly, a price we cannot afford to pay. Not again. 

When will the Right realize that they will be held responsible for what their monster does. They will not be allowed to simply walk away wiping their blood stained hands as mentally unstable people, riled by ugly hate speech, carry out their programming like robots who have been engineered for destruction; self destruction if not other destruction.

It is the people on the Right who are acting out this time. They, too, are motivated by fear, just as the anti-war movement was and the Civil rights movements, in certain quarters, was. None of these movements were filled with courageous people. 

There will always be people who want a revolution. Usually, they are the very ones who will nit be brave enough to fight it. Thankfully, there are those who believe in evolution, even in the angry glare of the faces that bear witness to it's opposite.

Change is coming. It has to. It must. 

We can no longer walk down this same tried path of deception in the form of fear-mongering. It will be the end of us all, in one way or the other

Who wants to die over it? 

Who wants to kill over it?

Those are serious questions and they need answers, individual answers. These are not questions that should be answered while in a group. This is an individual kind of thing. When we are angry and our anger is being fed by a group, it becomes a mob and mob mentality is psychotic.


Who wants to calmly work through the problems and solutions we have or might have?


Let The Sun Shine In......

Fox Named In Pelosi Death Threat

How many links to crime is it going to take before Faux News is considered by one and all to be a pariah

The AP is reporting that the FBI has arrested a California man for making threatening phone calls to Nancy Pelosi over the health care bill.

In an interview with TPM, FBI spokeswoman Patty Hanson confirmed that a man, Gregory Guisti, 48, would be charged in federal court in San Francisco Thursday at 9:30 PT. Magistrate Judge Bernard Zimmerman will preside over the hearing, during which Guisti will be formally charged.

The AP has more details:
Several federal officials say the man made dozens of calls to Pelosi's homes in California and Washington, as well as to her husband's business office, reciting her home address and saying if she wanted to see it again, she would not support the health care overhaul bill that was recently enacted.
"The FBI takes threats against elected officials very seriously," Hanson said.

The charges against Guisti, who was arrested today, will be unsealed Thursday.

A spokesperson with Pelosi's office tells TPM it has no comment at this time.

The report comes just a day after authorities in Washington state announced charges against a man there for making death threats against Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) over her support for the health care bill.

In the days surrounding the passage of the health care legislation in the House late last month, multiple threats and vandal attacks were made against Democrats around the country.

In a separate case, a Philadelphia man, who was declared mentally unfit to stand trial this week, was charged March 29 with threatening to kill Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA).

Late Update: Here is Pelosi's brief statement on the case.


Let The Sun Shine In......

Another Preemptive War Gone Bad. (We have done it to ourselves)

America is under assault. From coast to coast, we are being invaded by horrific, body-consuming mutants that are already destroying 65,000 American lives a year. As a Duke University scientist puts it, "This is a living, breathing problem. It's here. It's arrived."

These are not invaders from mars, but from within our own countryside. Ironically, these are mutants of our own creation, leaving America face to face with a spreading plague of drug-resistant germs.

For decades, we have benefited enormously from the healing wonders of antibiotics. These drugs save millions of lives that would otherwise be lost to microbial infections. But more and more of the antibiotics in America's medical kit are proving to be ineffective against the plethora of germs that endanger us. Why? Too much of a good thing.

America has overdosed on antibiotics, using about 35 million pounds a year – so much that germs, which are savvy survivors, have rapidly been mutating to develop resistance to the drugs. Thus, drug-resistant microbes now kill more Americans than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined.

Why have we overdosed so badly? Because the bulk of the drugs used in our country do not go to protect humans, but to protect the profits of agribusiness corporations! Seventy percent of antibiotics go to chickens, cows, and pigs – either as stimulants to force the animals to grow faster or to fight rampant infections largely caused by unsanitary, factory-farm practices.

This senseless profiteering at the expense of our health is insane, and there's a push in Congress to stop it. But lobbyists for Dow, Eli Lilly, Monsanto, Pfizer, and others are out to kill any reform... and to let the germs keep killing us. To support common sense, visit www.saveantibiotics.org.

"Fears over antibiotics use in livestock grow amid new warnings," Austin American Statesman, December 29, 2009.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Where is the Accountability?

MS. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

Words
A word is dead
when it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live.
-- Emily Dickinson, c. 1872  


BuzzFlash,

One of my favorites by Dickinson, because I agree, especially if the word or words come from political leaders around the world. Obama just this week brought alive two common words that were never really dead: nuclear and assassination.

Not the first time our leaders have mentioned these two words. There is something about power in leaders that seems to always lead to debt, death, and destruction. This week I understand that we, as a nation, under the Obama administration have signed a treaty:


The treaty substantially cuts the nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia will deploy and will significantly reduce missiles and launchers, Obama said. It follows a 1991 treaty that expired in December and about which the United States and Russia have been negotiating.   

This is all really great, the attempt in the taming of nuclear power. However, the fact that we will still bump off our enemies using assassination attempts by the CIA per instructions from Obama, just doesn't fit well, in my mind, with a nation trying to avoid violence.

I still remember the horrible sixties and the great losses that this nation had, and I firmly believe that we, as a nation, suffered greatly for the next 30 years due to those leaders that we lost. That said, we constantly are subjecting people to dangers and violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and we still maintain over 800 bases around the world, which spreads fear and paranoia in countries that just might look to the U.S. as an invading and occupying country today, especially after what Bush did to Iraq. How can they trust the US government, when it's very hard for American citizens to do so?

These orders for assassinations, to me, are so Bush GOP. I was hoping that with the Clinton administration, and now the Obama administration, that once and for all, we could rid our government of the Bush crime family's influence and their thuggish ways of doing business. But I guess not. It always strikes me that these people in D.C. are so far away from the deadly decisions that they make for our military and for other innocent people around the world, that we Americans don't have to wonder how in the hell they sleep at night.  
* * * * *

Feb 5 2010, 4:34 PM ET

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told to Congress Wednesday that the U.S. can target Americans to be killed if it believes they are involved in terrorism. This supports an earlier report that the CIA and JSOC maintain White House-approved "kill lists" of three to four Americans. Blair articulated the policy as requiring high-level approval but did not mention Congressional oversight or judicial review. He described the criteria as "whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans." So far, the only confirmed American target is Anwar al-Awlaki. The vagueness of Blair's criteria, as well as the assertion that Awlaki meets those criteria, raises the question: What gets an American citizen on the kill lists?

A 1981 executive order signed by President Reagan explicitly bans assassination by the U.S. government. However, in 2002, the Bush administration issued a secret finding allowing the CIA to target Americans directly involved in terrorism. American citizen Kamal Derwish was killed in 2002 under this authority, struck by an unmanned drone while traveling in a car with the al-Qaeda organizer of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. The 2002 policy, which did not extend to JSOC, claimed that "enemy combatants" can be killed, a phrase that the Obama administration does not use.      
* * * * *  

The arrogance of such threats to kill, not only American citizens, but to kill others around the world, and we Americans have seen this type of killing already. Drones killing people in Pakistan, and we are told (paraphrasing) they were nobodies, they were dangerous "terrorists," (the idiot word of the century made popular by one of its own, idiot, of course). Or oops! They were actually innocent families and were killed as if they were just nothing more than ashes to ashes or dust to dirt or U.S. collateral damage.

I still remember the carelessness and the atrocities reported in Iraq. By the way, with the deaths of two reporters in the news as well as people targeted with cameras and not guns, how many Americans remember that at least 70 journalists and photographers were killed in Iraq, and most of them by the Bush U.S. military. Eh? Bush did not want anyone photographing or reporting, who was not connected to the U.S. military.

Also, probably not reported here in the U.S., there were families killed at check points, trying to get the hell out of Iraq. Families being killed by weapons that were being tested for use. Gory descriptions of what those weapons did. Our own military and leaders appointing themselves as judge and jury? Not in a functioning democracy, but in a dysfunctional democracy, yes, we would see this and we are constantly seeing this. I wouldn't want any of them on my jury. Do those types of mistakes sound as if those weapons were in the hands of professionals?

I thought that after Bush, who had several months of warnings before 9/11, and then used that to advance his own bloody and deadly agenda, that this would have taught U.S. government serious lessons about keeping a tight rein on U.S. leadership in power... only after one million people dead and two to three million people uprooted, homeless, and over 5,000, Americans dead, all due to lies, did most of the killing finally stop, but we Americans are still there.

And, let's think for a minute, say Saddam did have WMD. Are we, the U.S., the police of the world, when our own country has the largest stash of WMD? No. It's not our job to invade and occupy another country, killing innocent people and there was no way for this leader to ever get those WMD, which Saddam did not have, to the U.S. All lies. And, branded into my brain is the picture of Bush making fun and laughing as he played at searching for those WMD.

And, yet, today, all of those murders and lies, go unaccountable. Abuse of such power demands accountability for the dead. It's called taking responsibility. If we don't demand that, why should anyone in power think twice about what they do, even when it concerns taking lives, and it almost always concerns taking the lives of innocent people. This nation has not had accountability from our leaders since Nixon.

What happens? Over and over again, we have this type of scenario, killing people on the word of our leaders, even one such as Bush, who was never elected, and don't forget the killing Clinton did in Bosnia and the bombing for years of Iraq to please Bush number one. Killing by proxy. They may not pull the trigger, but they are responsible.

What do we have to do to get a government that respects life and is willing to be a role model for a real democracy? I'd like to know. We had to fight to save any lives with a minimal type of healthcare. Vets have to fight for healthcare after being wounded. Women have to fight to be in charge of their own bodies. I still remember years ago, as I've said before, when "rape" was questioned in U.S. courts with lawyers using coke bottles. In other words a woman being raped was not accepted. She had to "do" something to deserve it. How backward was that? Just as backward as hearing that even in today's world, women serving in our own US military were being raped by U.S. military, and not too much was being done about it.

Back to our leaders dishing out assassination jobs or invasions, when none of these people have ever known the violence of war and its lasting affects on the human heart and soul, or have even served in U.S. military. War involves such trauma that it lasts the lifetime of those involved. That is why they hate us.

Tormented from a lifetime of memories of horror. Just review the figures of so many of our own in U.S. military, suffering with PTSD and a lack of good healthcare, who took their lives after returning to this country.

Bush number two went AWOL without punishment. It's too easy for any leader of the U.S. today to kill people. I was always under the impression that Congress should be the watchdog of this type of misuse of power. But, we don't even have that type of Congress today. How many members of Congress have served in a war or in U.S. military, I wonder, and how many tried to stop Bush?

Below, more proof that Obama is just another continuation -- sorta, kinda like Clinton, and Bush number two -- of U.S. government's use of violence and using Bush's joke of the century:

"War on terrorism." We Americans are not that stupid, and our leaders are too far away from the American populace to realize that, unless they are out campaigning, that is. War is terrorism. Assassinations without trial, evidence, or a jury are not and never will be the leadership signs of a working democracy. Where is the passion that goes along with such beliefs. I don't see it in U.S. government, and it hasn't been there for years.   

And, we Americans thought we voted for change.
* * * * *

This article originally appeared in the October 2009 edition of Freedom Daily. Subscribe to the print or email version of Freedom Daily.

Bush’s war-on-terrorism paradigm obviously provides another way to treat suspected terrorists — simply by killing them. No arrests, no Miranda warnings, no presumption of innocence, no attorneys, no trials, and no other messy procedures associated with the criminal-justice system. Not even incarceration in a military dungeon, torture, or trial before a kangaroo tribunal.

Instead, just have the CIA assassinate them.
* * * * *  

Actually, it (the Bush GOP's war on terrorism) started years ago. How many Americans know the history behind this true family of crime?
* * * * *

With CIA headquarters now officially named the George Bush Center for Intelligence and with veterans of the Reagan-Bush years still dominating the CIA's hierarchy, the spy agency might be hoping that the election of Texas Gov. George W. Bush will free it from demands to open up records to the American people.
* * * * *  

Of course, Bush was never elected and the Supreme was never punished for putting their guy into the White House. The fake five should have been impeached. Even the Supreme Court should not be above U.S. law. But, hell, U.S. law doesn't seem to be in any of the three branches of U.S. government in today's world.

For anyone interested, the below link is a long article that brings us up to 9/11:


Where does it say in our Constitution that any President or illegal resident, such as Bush, of the White House has the power to use the CIA to carry out assassinations or even invasions and occupations for that matter? It's always been my belief that since George H. W. Bush was in charge of the CIA, that half of that organization are good people for the country and yet, another half is still under the influence of Bush Sr., and are thugs. A word that has a history and a direct connection to the word that became 'assassination.'

"Thug was first used as a term for a member of an organization of professional robbers and assassins in India who strangled their victims."
-- Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories.

* * * * * 

The threat of an Al Qaeda "Attack on America" is being used profusely by the Bush administration and its indefectible British ally to galvanize public opinion in support of a global military agenda.

Known and documented, the "Islamic terror network" is a creation of the US intelligence apparatus. There is firm evidence that several of the terrorist "mass casualty events" which have resulted in civilian casualties were triggered by the military and/or intelligence services. Similarly, corroborated by evidence, several of the terror alerts were based on fake intelligence as revealed in the London 2006 foiled "liquid bomb attack", where the alleged hijackers had not purchased airline tickets and several did not have passports to board the aircraft.

The "war on terrorism" is bogus. The 911 narrative as conveyed by the 911 Commission report is fabricated. The Bush administration is involved in acts of cover-up and complicity at the highest levels of government.

Revealing the lies behind 911 would serve to undermine the legitimacy of the "war on terrorism".

Revealing the lies behind 911 should be part of a consistent antiwar movement.
Without 911, the war criminals in high office do not have a leg to stand on. The entire national security construct collapses like a deck of cards
-- Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international bestseller America’s "War on Terrorism"  Global Research, 2005. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization.       
* * * * *  

I'm only bringing this up again because it's still going on even with Obama. This fake, so-called "war on terror." We, the U.S. and our leaders, such as both of the Bushes, have been the largest terrorists around the world, along with members of the CIA doing the bidding of these leaders and killing people when they don't even know for sure, "they just think they might be terrorists, which is what happened in Iraq and Pakistan" and this has been a proven fact. This makes the U.S. no different from any other outlaw country that goes around killing innocent citizens, such as our own innocent citizens were killed on 911. And what did Bush do to please those Americans wanting blood, anybody's blood? He bombed Afghanistan and killed up to 5,000 innocent citizens and never did get bin Laden, whose family just happened to be Bush family friends.

More facts that happened back then: At least 100 members of the bin Laden family were allowed to leave this country by Bush, without being questioned by the FBI, during the U.S. ordered fly down.

Also in the news this week is a report of a guy on a U.S. flight smoking a cigarette in the bathroom and when he is discovered, it's as if the professionals or upper class were left at home and the incident was being handled by the freshman. Whenever I hear of such idiocy, I have to think of the poor and very ignorant woman who made the mistake of believing some talking Bush GOP sap who was telling Americans that duct tape would protect them from an attack, and she wrapped her two children and herself into a small compartment and they smothered to death. 

When we have people in government being paid large salaries, they should be expected to know what the hell they are doing and what they are talking about. I personally am sick and tired of the slick phrases and parroted themes dished out to the populace by U.S. government. The same themes that were used constantly for the full eights years of the Bush GOP regime.   That was the kind of leadership that we in the U.S. did not need.

However, we do still need accountability. But what does Bush get for his continuing eight years of debt, death, and destruction all on his so-called quest of "fighting a war on terror?"  A library and speaking engagements. More proof that these leaders represent only the top 1 to 5 percent of the U.S. population, and that is the real change that we must achieve in this nation.

Which brings us to today, and since the Obama administration, just as the Clinton administration, refuses to demand accountability for the lives taken so frivolously by the Bush GOP regimes, and forge on ahead as if they meant nothing, nothing will change. Absolutely nothing. Just as it was during the eight years of the Clinton administration, and today, during the Obama administration, we have constant threats of violence from the Right Wing of the Republican Party, and the leaders of that party do nothing. We have violence inside and outside this country without responsibility. Bush would have arrested the teabaggers if they were Democrats, because he arrested and had cops at every protest, and these protests were against violence, his violence.

Power without responsibility will continue. Instead of a U.S. government of law and order, we have a government of power among the privileged and elitists. If there is a war going on, regardless of where, it is, in reality, a war against the poor.  

Thanks BuzzFlash,  
Shirley Smith
MS. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

Let The Sun Shine In......