Decrying U.S., Iran Begins War Games

Things are definitely heating up in the middle east and Central Asia.

By NAZILA FATHI and DAVID E. SANGER

Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared that President Obama’s new nuclear strategy amounted to “atomic threats against Iranian people,” and Iranian state television reported Thursday that the military had begun a large exercise in the Persian Gulf, where the United States and Israel have both increased their presence in recent months.

The ayatollah’s statement on Wednesday referred to the section of Mr. Obama’s “Nuclear Posture Review” that guaranteed non-nuclear nations that they would never be threatened by a United States nuclear strike — as long as they are in compliance with the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty as judged by the United States.

Speaking in Washington on Wednesday, Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top adviser on unconventional weapons, said the wording of the nuclear review was “deliberately crafted” to exclude Iran and North Korea from the security guarantee, creating an incentive for both countries to come into compliance with the treaty. (While North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and is believed to have fuel for eight or more weapons, the United States has never acknowledged it as a nuclear-weapons state.)

Mr. Samore insisted that Mr. Obama’s decision did not amount to making a nuclear threat against Iran, which many Western countries believe is pursuing a weapon. The policy, Mr. Samore said, referred only to the use of nuclear weapons in the most extreme circumstances, which most experts believe means in retaliation for a strike against the United States or its allies.

Still, Ayatollah Khamenei’s statement struck at the heart of one of the criticisms of Mr. Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review: That it could give Iran a pretext to argue that it should develop nuclear weapons to defend itself. The ayatollah’s remarks suggested that the Iranian leadership regarded the administration policy as a new level of intimidation, or perhaps a justification for pursuing its nuclear program.

“How can the U.S. president make atomic threats against Iranian people?” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a speech to Iranian medical workers, the Fars news agency reported from Tehran. “This threat is a threat against humanity and international peace and no one in the world should dare to articulate such words.”

Ayatollah Khamenei said Wednesday that countries that had nuclear ability were themselves “brazenly lying” about their commitment to nonproliferation. He argued that nuclear-armed states sought to keep non-nuclear states from developing such weapons because they did not want competition. “We have repeatedly said that we do not intend to use weapons of mass destruction, but the Iranian people do not surrender to these threats and will force those who make such threats to come to their knees,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

“We will not allow America to renew its hellish dominance over Iran,” he added.

To meet the United States’ demands, Iran would need to take several important steps, including halting uranium enrichment and allowing broad inspections of the country to ensure that Iran had no secret plants.

The Iranian military defined its military exercise as a three-day naval, ground and air-war game in the Persian Gulf, including the sensitive Strait of Hormuz, a narrow transit way through which a large amount of the world’s oil passes.

The deputy chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Brig. Gen. Hussein Salami, said that the exercise, which is being called the Great Prophet 5, was aimed at showing “Iran’s strength and will against the threats of the enemies,” Fars reported. Iran regularly stages drills to show off its military power.

Iran has refused to suspend its nuclear program despite existing United Nations sanctions and calls by the United States for new, more stringent sanctions.

Iranian officials have floated in recent days the possibility of revisiting a deal to swap a portion of the country’s nuclear fuel. The Iranians had agreed in principle to a deal last year that would have allowed the fuel to be converted overseas and then returned in a form that would be difficult to convert for weapons use, but they later renounced the agreement.

While some officials have suggested recently that they might reconsider, they have recently insisted that all the fuel they gave up would have to be stored on Iranian soil. To the Obama administration, the main advantage of the original deal was that it would take the fuel out of Iranian hands for about a year, in the hopes of slowing their program.

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Salehi, said Wednesday that Iran would be willing to discuss a deal on the sidelines of a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review meeting in New York, which begins next month, the state-run Press TV reported.

Let The Sun Shine In......

'All options' open if Syria gives Hezbollah missiles: US

 (AFP) – 1 day ago

WASHINGTON — The United States said Wednesday it considered "all options" on the table if Syria is found to have supplied Scud missiles to Hezbollah, posing a major threat for Israel.

Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, said the United States would have "really, really serious concern" if Syria delivered such high-grade weapons to the Lebanese Shiite militia.

"If these reports turn out to be true, we're going to have to review the full range of tools that are available for us in order to make Syria reverse what would be an incendiary, provocative action," Feltman said.

"The United States has shown in the past that we are able to act," he told a congressional hearing. "I expect that all options are going to be on the table looking at this."

But Feltman and other State Department officials said they were still investigating the alleged Scud missile transfer. The United States on Monday summoned the most senior Syrian diplomat in Washington over the concerns.

"We continue to study the matter," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.
Israeli President Shimon Peres on April 13 accused Syria of providing Scud ballistic missiles to Hezbollah, the only group that did not disarm after Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.
Israel launched punishing raids on Lebanon in 2006 in response to more than 4,000 attacks by Hezbollah with rockets, which are less sophisticated than Scuds.

The 34-day war killed 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mainly soldiers.

The allegations come just as the United States cautiously steps up dialogue with Syria.
President Barack Obama in February appointed the first US ambassador to Damascus in five years, Robert Ford, although the Senate has not yet confirmed him.

Feltman defended the Obama administration's approach favoring diplomacy, saying that the United States needed to have regular dialogue with Syria despite concerns about its actions.

"We're not doing engagement because it's a pleasurable experience with the Syrians. We're doing engagement because it's in the US national interest," Feltman said.

He said that many in the Arab world would not respond well to US envoys coming in for brief visits with negative messages.

With an ambassador, the United States "can go in at a very high level on a regular, continual basis," Feltman said. "It enhances our ability to get our message across."

But his approach faced criticism from lawmakers, particularly members of the rival Republican Party, who accused the Obama administration of rewarding Syria despite the concerns.

"I've talked to the Syrian ambassador here, and he seems like a nice guy and he's got a lovely wife," said Representative Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana.

"But I don't see how in the world we can take steps in that direction if this kind of crap's going on," he said.

He said that while the United States should seek a positive relationship with Syria, "we certainly don't want to reward them when they're kicking us in the teeth or spitting in our eye."

Syria has long played a dominant role in Lebanon but withdrew its last troops in 2005 after an outcry following the assassination of pro-Western former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
Feltman, a former US ambassador to Beirut, said he had "deeply felt feelings" for the "courageous Lebanese people."

"The Lebanese should be in control of Lebanon," he said. "That's the message that we deliver to all the parties in the region but particularly Syria."

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Taking a closer look at Tea Party Spoutings

Like millions of interested observers, you've probably been wondering what constitutes the inner President Obama. Well, lucky for both of us, the answer arrived in my inbox just days ago: He "is nothing less than a capo of a vast, uncompromising thugocracy, utterly drunk with power and completely unconcerned with public opinion or public will."

That would be completely unconcerned, just in case mere unconcern on the capo-regime thug's part might fail to concern you.

This assessment, from a certain Mr. Claude Sandroff, came to me via TeaParty.org, one of the many publicity arms for modern right-wing hysteria. And in that, the organization does a wonderful job; it blasts its screeds with unabashed abandon, spewing them hither and yon to not only the movement's identifiable followers but every unfortunate member of the commentariat.

Yet rarely will you hear the movement's intensity on, say, cable news. Its public spokesmen almost invariably present the face of activist Tea Partyers as the merely fiscally conservative in something of an emotional knot about excessive federal spending and debt, perhaps accompanied by a dash of (newfound) worry about executive power. Its spokesmen are the Everyman, the solid citizen, the civic republican, the rational player -- who's getting a bad rap from the biased mainstream media.

Those overzealous activists with the deranged posters we see on the news? They're just that, say the spokesmen: sincere but overzealous, hardly representative of the sound, sober sentiment of the Tea Party movement itself.

And then, away from the cameras, the movement's leaders blast this drivel: Obama is the thuggish head of a criminally organized political syndicate, infused with a Nietzschean-superman Will quite indifferent to the public's -- you know, as vividly evidenced by his arduous, two-year presidential campaign, a freely held election, his decisive victory and, ever since, his rolling pleadings to do a few right things ... for a change.

If only, I have often thought, the movement's spokesmen would just read to the media their e-mailings of internal hysteria. That would pretty much say it all, and then, perhaps, somewhat less than one of every four Americans, according to Pew Research, would sympathize with the movement. Which, at its core, is just clinically, indisputably, sulfurously nuts.

How nuts? How's this, again from the above-quoted email:

"Many of us spend time trying to place Barack Obama in the correct collectivist phylum. Is he a Saul Alinsky socialist? An Anita Dunn Maoist? A Van Jones Marxist? A mummified Wilsonian progressive suddenly come back to life?

"Or, given his corporate and unionist cronyism, and complete control of a fawning, propagandistic media, is the label most fitting for Obama also the most frightening one: fascist?

"Whichever label is most apt, Obama is instinctively a dictator, and dictators are surprisingly quick at seizing power."

When such stridency negates the necessity -- or even urge -- for any counter-analysis or rebuttal, you know you're experiencing a too-close encounter with Hofstadter's Paranoid Style. The above isn't opinion; it's a condition, and one in desperate need of some quality Thorazine.

Other of TeaParty.org's emails are merely in need of a remedial writing course. From March 29, for instance, there was this emetic:

"The sweet perfume of Liberty which once permeated the Halls of Congress and the White House is conspicuously missing.... Today, the aroma of Liberty has grown stale; a dowdy cloud of ominous proportion hangs over Washington like an impending storm waiting to pour forth its fury."

That was, I guess, Snoopy's rewrite: a "dark and stormy night" was a trifle too stale, although the writer did manage to work in a mention of our presidentially "cruel warlock" who has cast "a dark and eerie spell ... over a once vibrate and thriving setting, turning the halls of Liberty into corridors of depression, loss and gloom."

Mostly, however, my TeaParty.org emails are from its "president/founder," whose monomania about Obama's "bitter poison of Global Marxism" dominates. Yet he's not depressed, at a loss, or gloomy; he is, rather, positively randy to "redirect our justifiable anger and outrage into a focused and straight forward [sic] effort to stop the Global Marxist take-over [sic] of America."

Should we "fear" the likes of this garbage, as so many abhorred voices exhort us to do? Hardly, for that is precisely the overreaction that TeaParty.org's "president/founder" and his terrorism-tinted minions aim for. Fear, of course, lies at the heart of their strategy; they cannot advance without it, for it is that which legitimizes and empowers them.

What does frighten, however, is that one of every four Americans is willing to express political sympathy with the public face of the Tea Party movement. Perhaps if they could only read what's behind that face ...

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

Let The Sun Shine In......

Arizona's Radical Bill

IMMIGRATION

Arizona has often been referred to as "ground zero" of the nation's immigration fight. It's the state where a nine-year-old girl and her father were shot and killed by anti-immigrant Minuteman vigilantes this past summer. It's the place where the brutal murder of a prominent rancher led politicians to blur the line between dangerous drug cartel operatives and undocumented workers. It's also home to "Hispanic-hunting" Sheriff Joe Arpaio. On Monday, the Arizona state legislature made headlines when it approved a bill entitled the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act," legislation that will likely end up establishing the harshest set of state immigration laws in the country. Gov. Jan Brewer's (R-AZ) phone has been ringing off the hook with residents encouraging her to either sign or veto it. Given the fact that Brewer is up for re-election this fall, and with polling data suggesting that 70 percent of Arizona voters support the stringent measure, it seems likely that the bill will soon become law -- but not without a fight.

HIGH-RISK BILL: SB-1070 would require police to attempt to determine the immigration status of anyone they encounter as part of a "lawful contact" and allow them to arrest undocumented immigrants and charge them with trespass. If residents believe police officers are not enforcing immigration laws, they can sue them. It would also outlaw the hiring of day laborers off the street and prohibit anyone from knowingly transporting an undocumented immigrant for any reason. The ACLU points out that SB-1070 unconstitutionally allows the state to regulate immigration -- a power which the Constitution assigns to the federal government. The ACLU also highlights a provision of the bill that grants police officers authority to conduct warrantless arrests of anyone who cannot immediately produce documents and notes that such action has already been deemed invalid by the Ninth Circuit Court. The ACLU concludes that the bill will "exacerbate racial profiling" and tries to "rewrite the Constitution by turning the presumption of innocence on its head." Several research institutions have also cited the high fiscal costs associated with local immigration crackdowns. The National Employment Law Project pointed out that smaller-scale anti-immigrant ordinances have cost individual localities millions of dollars. The Perryman Group estimates that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs. The Immigration Policy Center noted that, "with Arizona facing a budget deficit of more than $3 billion, Gov. Brewer might want to think twice about measure that would further imperil the state's economic future." Brewer has until Saturday to sign or veto SB-1070 before it automatically becomes state law.

MCCAIN EMBRACES DISCRIMINATION: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is facing a tough primary challenge this year from immigration hawk J.D. Hayworth and is using SB-1070 to show that he's "tough" on the issue. On Monday, McCain endorsed SB-1070, describing it as "a very important step forward" shortly after proposing his own 10-point enforcement-only plan to secure the nation's borders. In an interview with Fox News, McCain stated that he would be "very sorry" if racial profiling happened, but "illegals" are "intentionally causing accidents on the freeway." McCain once preferred to refer to undocumented immigrants as "God's children" and described "enforcement-first" policies as an "ineffective and ill-advised approach." McCain now wants 700 miles of fencing along the Arizona-Mexico border, a proposal he once derided as a "quick fix" to our border security problems in the absence of a comprehensive approach. Now McCain says that he and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) will block immigration reform if it is proposed this year. In 2006, McCain opposed the failed Sensenbrenner bill -- which contained criminalization components virtually identical to SB-1070's -- calling it "anti-Hispanic." McCain is clearly trying score cheap political points in a state in which 83 percent of voters say a candidate's position on immigration is an important factor in how they will vote, with 51 percent saying "it's very important." The co-founder of the Minutemen, who is usually quick to embrace anyone who agrees with his radical views, described McCain's newly adopted position as "shameful election-year politics" and accused him of trying to "hood-wink" voters. Meanwhile, immigration advocate Frank Sharry stated, "Obviously, John McCain is fighting for his political life in Arizona. I sure miss the days when he fought for his principles."

VOCAL OPPOSITION: Rasmussen may suggest that most Arizonians support SB-1070, yet it has generated a strong and vocal opposition. The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police (AAOP) firmly opposes it for fiscal and public safety reasons. Mesa Police Sgt. Bryan Soller, who is president of the Mesa and Arizona Fraternal Order of Police, has expressed similar concerns, stating that the bill "will bankrupt our city." Arturo Venegas, director of the Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative, issued a statement accusing the Arizona legislature of "playing politics with public safety," pointing out that it "will result in police spending less time keeping the streets free of violent criminals" and create distrust within the immigrant community. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have asked Brewer to veto the bill and are pressuring President Obama to either warn of federal pre-emption of the law or threaten Arizona's federal funding. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) has called for a national boycott of his state until it disavows its "fundamentally racist" immigration bill. Meanwhile, on the ground, several 24-hour candle light vigils have been held and nine students were recently arrested after chaining themselves to the old State Capitol building. As of Monday, Brewer's office had received 1,356 calls, e-mails and faxes in favor of SB-1070 and 11,931 against the bill. While Cardinal Roger Mahony "can't imagine" Arizona reverting to "German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques," former President Bill Clinton explained that the bill is a response to widespread insecurity and disorientation and reminded Americans that, ultimately, "we can't let the debate veer so far into hatred that we lose focus of our common humanity."

Let The Sun Shine In......

Where's RICO?

Where indeed?

Where's RICO?

Wednesday 21 April 2010

by: James Howard Kunstler, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: RLHyde, aresauburn™, Pink Sherbet Photography)

It's interesting and instructive to read The New York Times' lead story this morning, "Top Goldman Leaders Said to Have Overseen Mortgage Unit." While it pretends to report all the particulars of the huge scandal growing out of Friday's SEC action against Goldman Sachs (GS), the story really comes off as an attempt to create an alibi for the so-called "bank." It pretends that some kind of an intellectual struggle was going on among GS executives as to whether the housing market was doing just fine or poised to tank - therefore, muddling the company's intent in setting up investment deals based on sketchy mortgages designed to blow up, so that a favored big customer, John Paulson, could collect on the deal insurance known as credit default swaps.

The truth is that anyone with half a brain could see the securitized mortgage fiasco coming from 10,000 miles away. I said as much in Chapter Six ("Running on Fumes: the Hallucinated Economy") of my book "The Long Emergency," which was published in 2005, but written well before that in 2002-2004. And I had had no work experience whatsoever in banking generally or Wall Street investment banking in particular.

Ah! That's about the same time I took out a 4% fixed rate loan and paid off credit cards. Haven't used one since. It hasn't been easy, but I shutter to think where I would be if I had kept living above my means.

One week before the SEC action against GS, the Pro Publica web site published a story about virtually the same kind of mischief being run out of the Chicago-based hedge fund Magnetar led by a clever young fellow named Alec Litowitz. Like GS, Magnetar deliberately constructed investments (bundles of bundled mortgage-backed securities called collateralized debt obligations or CDOs) that were certain to fail, so that Magnetar could collect on credit default swaps that amounted to a bet against products they themselves had participated in creating. There was no question that Litowitz and his employees did this absolutely on purpose. Nor is there any question that they aggressively sold positions in these CDOs to credulous investors like Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and others.

The question that now begs to be answered is: why is this activity not being investigated and prosecuted under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) statutes against racketeering? RICO was designed to punish exactly this kind of behavior, whether the defendant's name ended in a vowel or not. How is it not a racket to deliberately and systematically construct investments designed to fail so you can collect what amounts to insurance against them - and then to sell those financial instruments to customers without telling them that these investments were engineered to blow up? At the very least, it amounts to a failure to disclose material information, which is the basis for distinguishing illegality. More to the point, it almost certainly amounts to prosecutable criminal fraud and insider trading.

Dylan Ratigan at MSNBC asked pretty much this question on Friday when interviewing Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (because the AIG company, headquartered in his state, sold gobs of credit default swaps to GS for dodgy CDOs, leading to a giant government bailout and incidental huge payoffs to GS). Blumenthal's answer was lame, to put it mildly - that recent federal rules tied his hands, he claimed. He could have at least publicly protested his hand tying and applied pressure to the US Department of Justice to enforce the anti-racketeering law.

So, where is the DOJ's criminal division in all this? The GS racket has been publicly known, in one form or another, for several years. I wrote in this space several times at least as far back as 2007 that GS was essentially shorting it's own issued securities, and I'm neither a lawyer nor a finance professional. Anyone could see this from just reading the news. Magnetar's activity was so notorious that the very business of engineering dodgy CDO investments to collect insurance on their failure became known throughout the industry as "the Magnetar Play."

The feigned cluelessness among some of the highest-profile figures in these rackets is something to behold. For instance, Citibank was among the companies that helped Magnetar put together their designed-to-fail CDOs. Citi's chairman at the time, former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, testifying before the new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission said, "Almost all of us, including me, who were involved in the financial system - that is to say financial firms, regulators, rating agencies, analysts and commentators - missed the powerful combination of factors that led to this crisis and the serious possibility of a massive crisis." Bank of America's CEO, Brian Moynihan, told a Congressional hearing, "No one involved in the housing system - lenders, rating agencies, investors, insurers, consumers, regulators, and policy-makers - foresaw a dramatic and rapid depreciation in home prices [and, therefore, in investment instruments based on mortgages]."

Either they are lying or they are profoundly stupid and incompetent. If the former, then they might be induced to spend some time talking to federal prosecutors; if the latter, then the US financial system is too hopeless to survive and we will all soon be bartering hand tools and designer shoes for food. Evidence of the latter is ample, for instance, in Citigroup's loss of 70 percent share value during Rubin's chairmanship - for which, in the crash year of 2008 alone, he was paid $17 million plus $33 million in stock options.

The GS SEC action and the related Magnetar story seems to be a pretty big deal, and appear to be dragging public opinion to a crossroads where we acknowledge the deep structural corruption of the financial system or watch the legitimacy of both banking and government dissolve. At least, it throws gouts of gasoline on the political fires lit by Tea Partiers and even more extreme political factions. I don't see how President Obama can keep Rubin at his elbow or the hosts of other GS alumni in their federal jobs. The whole episode is disgusting in the purest sense of the word. If Obama doesn't shake these people loose, and if he doesn't pick up the phone and direct his attorney general to execute the laws - including the RICO law - then all the moonbeams issuing from his renowned smile will not avail to keep him in office, or keep the financial underpinning of the USA from collapse.

This article has been previously published on James Howard Kunstler's blog.

James Howard Kunstler is the author of "The Long Emergency," the novel "World Made By Hand" and the sequel, "The Witch of Hebron," coming out in September from The Atlantic Monthly Press.

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

Let The Sun Shine In......

The tea party's exaggerated importance

By: Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith April 22, 2010 05:05 AM EDT

2009 was the year when many journalists concluded they were slow to recognize the anti-government, anti-Obama rage that gave birth to the tea party movement.  2010 is the year when news organizations have decided to prove they get it. And get it. And get it some more. Part of the reason is the timeless truth in media that nothing succeeds like excess. But part of the reason is a convergence of incentives for journalists and activists on left and right alike to exaggerate both the influence and exotic traits of the tea-party movement. In fact, there is a word for what poll after poll depicts as a group of largely white, middle-class, middle-aged voters who are aggrieved: Republicans.  But just read the succession of New York Times stories, profiling newly energized activists who are “bracing for tyranny.” Or follow the dispatches of the CNN crews who went along with two national Tea Party Express bus tours. Or delve into the crosstabs of polls conducted in the past few weeks by the Times, CNN, and, POLITICO about the opinions and demographic characteristics of tea partiers. Or check out the blogger the Washington Post hired to chronicle their movement. The findings have been unveiled with the earnest detachment of Margaret Mead reporting her findings among teenage girls in Samoa. Indifference has given way to curiosity, and —in recent weeks especially— to a nearly manic obsession that sometimes seems to place the tea partiers somewhere near the suffragettes and the America-Firsters in the historical ranking of mass political movements. Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism, which tracks media reports, found that the tea parties consumed a steady measure of news for most of this year before exploding during tax week to compete with the Icelandic volcano for attention and outstripping health care with 6% of all media reports that week.  But various sides have their own reasons for finding something new and arresting in the spasms of outrage personified by the tea partiers. The right sees the protests as evidence of a popular revolt against President Barack Obama—proof of a changing tide they believe will bring massive victories in 2010 and 2012. The left sees them as evidence of incipient fascism and an opposition to Obama rooted in racism—proof of the beyond-the-pale illegitimacy of large swaths of the conservative moment. The tea party “movement,” meanwhile, has little organizational structure to speak of. True tea party candidates – as opposed to establishment figures like former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio who have gladly adopted the label – have failed to make a dent so far in Republican primaries. The one true tea partier poised to make a splash, Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul, is an imperfect example thanks to his being the son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who still commands a national following after his quixotic presidential race. The tea parties’ main expression has been public gatherings. But last week’s Tax Day crowds were not representative of a force that is purportedly shaping the country’s politics. About a thousand people showed up in state capitals like Des Moines, Montgomery and Baton Rouge – and even fewer in large cities like Philadelphia, Boston and Milwaukee. In some cases, turnout was less than the original protests spurred by the stimulus, bailouts, financial crisis and new Democratic president last April 15th. In Washington, about 10,000 people showed up on the national Mall last week – a rally worth covering but far fewer than the tens of thousands who marched in support of immigration reform in March. “If I organized a rally for stronger laws to protect puppies, I would get 100,000 people to Washington,” Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell cracked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “So, I think the media has blown the tea party themselves out of proportion." What’s more, the eruption of protest after a president of a new party takes the country in a new direction is a standard feature of modern American politics. Ronald Reagan’s election produced record-breaking rallies for the now-forgotten Nuclear Freeze movement. The right, with rhetoric and occasional excesses that are almost identical to those of today, rose up angrily against Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s. And just a few years ago, hundreds of thousands of Americans turned out to rally against the Iraq war. Now, veterans of those protests – covered largely as spot news and spectacle – wonder why they didn’t get the weighty, anthropological treatment assigned to the tea parties. “They’re being treated with a lot more respect than the anti-war movement was,” said Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, who became the most visible face of those protests. “The anti-war movement has always been treated as a fringe movement – even though at the height of our movement we had hundreds of thousands of people at protests and the majority of public opinion on our side,” said Sheehan, who spoke to POLITICO from a bus on her way to an Oregon protest against the Afghan war. “Nobody is poling us to find out our thoughts and opinions on things,” she added. The polling has discovered what the Republican officials who have allied themselves with the tea parties already knew: That the new energy and organization is a function of an inflamed conservative grassroots already basically aligned with one party. “There is definitely some anger at the GOP over our big spending ways, but generally this is an Obama protest vote,” says Republican strategist Mike Murphy. Polls indicated that tea party adherents overwhelmingly support GOP candidates. Over 70 percent backed John McCain in 2008, according to POLITICO’s own in-person survey of those who attended the tax day rally in Washington. And a New York Times poll released last week showed that 40 percent of self-identified tea party supporters indicated a desire for a third party – less than the 46 percent of overall respondents to the survey who said they’d like to see an option besides the Republicans and Democrats. “No one should mistake tea partiers for swing voters,” said Democratic strategist Paul Begala, noting surveys that show the group largely identifies as either Republican or independents who lean toward the GOP. “Those who say they're independent do not choose that status because the Democrats are too liberal but because the Republicans are too conservative.” Other polling suggests that the protests, while much discussed within the political class, hasn’t entirely pierced the consciousness of average Americans. A new Pew poll out this week with a national sample of 2,505 found that 31 percent of those surveyed had never even heard of the tea party movement – and another 30 percent had no opinion of them. The media fascination, trickling down from A1 of the New York Times, for instance, to A1 of the Arizona Republic, is prompting a second round of anthropology, this time from aggravated political professionals. Murphy, who calls the attention “absolutely ridiculous,” sees it of a piece with what has become the biennial compulsion in the political community to hold up a newly-discovered, and always pivotal, bloc of voters; Like the Angry White Males, NASCAR Dads, Soccer Moms of election cycles past – only on steroids. “There is this urge to give any political development a catchy name and a picture,” he lamented, adding the familiar Republican complaint that well-educated, left-leaning, coast-dwelling reporters view middle America through an elitist lens. “These young reporters fly to the wilds of Oklahoma or Kentucky, find a bunch of folks in Uncle Sam suits hollering and come back thinking they’ve got some hot scoop,” Murphy said. The coverage began, notes Republican consultant Alex Castellanos, with not much more than bemused mockery: “’How amusing, the peasants are revolting’” Now it has reached a level of worried fascination. Or, as Castellanos put it, “The peasants actually are revolting!” In some ways, perceptions of the tea partiers have become much like the politician most frequently identified with the movement – Sarah Palin. For both the left and the right, both have become symbols that outweigh their actual impact – thanks largely to excessive media attention. Conservatives mostly rush to defend them while liberals delight in mocking them, and reporters can’t get enough of the spectacle. And, as with Palin, the tea parties enjoy an unlikely convergence of saturation coverage from media outlets across the political spectrum. The more ideologically-driven cable networks have something near ideal for television news in the modern era: vivid images of political activism that can either be celebrated (Fox) or mocked (MSNBC). And columnists and editorial writers from the mainstream media have something to celebrate or deplore. “It feeds the paranoia of the New York Times and provides pictures of conflict and color for TV,” said Murphy.

© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC

Let The Sun Shine In......

OMG! Here we go again!

Muslim group warns 'South Park' creators of death

FILE - In this Sept. 21, 2008 file photo, Matt Stone, left, and Trey Parker attend the Com...

By DAVID BAUDER, AP
Thu Apr 22, 4:15 AM EDT

A radical Muslim group has warned the creators of "South Park" that they could face violent retribution for depicting the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit during last week's episode.

The website RevolutionMuslim.com has since been taken down, but a cached version shows the message to "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The article's author, Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee of New York, said the men "outright insulted" the religious leader.

The posting showed a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was shot and stabbed to death in an Amsterdam street in 2004 by a fanatic angered by his film about Muslim women. The film was written by a Muslim woman who rejected the Prophet Muhammad as a guide for today's morality.

"We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show," Al-Amrikee wrote. "This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them."

The posting listed the addresses of Comedy Central's New York office and Parker and Stone's California production office. It also linked to a Huffington Post article that described a Colorado retreat owned by the two men.

CNN, which first reported the posting, said the New York-based website is known for postings in support of Osama bin Laden and jihad, or holy war, against the West.

Al-Amrikee told The Associated Press in a phone call Wednesday that the posting was made to raise awareness of the issue and to see that it does not happen again. Asked if Parker and Stone should feel threatened by it, he said "they should feel threatened by what they did."

He said he was disappointed that publicity about the posting focused more on the potential danger to the producers but admitted, "I could shoulder some blame" for it.

He said he "can't answer that legally" when asked if his group favored jihad. But he praised bin Laden.

"We look up to him and admire him for the sacrifices he has given for the religion," he said.
Last week's episode, the 200th for the cheeky and often vulgar cartoon, was intended to feature many of the personalities and groups that Parker and Stone insulted during the series' run.

In 2006, Comedy Central banned the men from showing an image of Muhammad on their show. They had intended to comment on the controversy created by a Danish newspaper's publishing of caricatures of the Islamic leader. Muslims consider any physical representation of their prophet to be blasphemous.

Instead, "South Park" showed an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President George W. Bush and the American flag.

Comedy Central and the show's producers would not comment.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Goldman Hires Obama's Ex-White House Counsel to Defend Bank Against Fraud Charges

WTF?

 

Monday 19 April 2010

by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: macten, Seabamirum)

Wall Street banking behemoth Goldman Sachs, which was charged with securities fraud last Friday over its role in the subprime mortgage meltdown, has hired President Obama's former White House Counsel Greg Craig to defend the company, according to a report published late Monday by Politico.

Reporters Eamon Javers and Mike Allen, citing an unnamed source, reported that Craig was hired “in recent weeks to help navigate the halls of power in Washington.”

“Whatever the reason for his hiring, Craig will presumably be a key player in the intricate counterattack Goldman Sachs officials in Washington and Manhattan improvised during the weekend — a plan that took clearer shape Monday as Britain and Germany announced that they might conduct their own investigations of the firm,” Politico reported.

As Truthout reported, Craig was ousted last November after he fell out of favor with some Obama administration officials, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, because Craig backed public disclosure on documents and photographs related to the Bush administration’s use of torture against alleged terrorist detainees and his role in pushing the White House to shutter Guantanamo within a year.

Craig’s efforts, originally championed by the administration, led to blistering attacks against the Obama White House by former Vice President Dick Cheney and Republican lawmakers who accused the president of giving aid and comfort to the “enemy.”

Craig is no stranger to high-profile cases. He represented fomer President Bill Clinton during his Senate impeachment trial. was also instrumental in working closely with Karl Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and his staff that resulted in Bush’s former political adviser testifying before the panel behind closed doors about the firings of nine federal prosecutors in 2006 and the apparent political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Craig also arranged a similar deal for former White House Counsel Harriet Miers.

As Goldman's attorney, Craig will have defend the bank against charges that it failed to inform its investors that one of its clients had a hand in creating a mortgage-based investment portfoloio and then bet the housing market would collapse, which led Goldman to lose $1 billion. The trader earned $3.7 billion, according to a civil suit filed last week against the company by the Securities and Exchange Commission following a nine-month investigation.

Despite the allegations the SEC levled against the firm in a civil complaint last week, 

Goldman still intends to dole out about $5 billion in bonuses, the Times of London reported.

Separately, Newsweek reported earlier Monday that Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has obtained new documents that link “certain actions to specific people” at Goldman Sachs related to deals the company made that precipitated the housing market crash.

Levin’s office wouldn’t disclose the substance of the documents he has obtained nor would his staffers identify the individuals at Goldman the Michigan Democrat intends to name as having played a direct role in the collapse of the bank and the financial collapse that ensued.

But come next week, according to an unnamed legislative official quoted by Newsweek, Levin believes the information he has collected will result in “another big shoe to drop on Goldman.”

Levin’s subcommittee is scheduled to hold hearings next week where Goldman’s Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein will testify about what he knew and when he knew it. It’s unknown if Craig, who returned to private practice after his departure as White House counsel last year, will accompany Blankfein to the hearing.

 
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Pathology of Seditionist Rage

Peaceful, no-gun protests against an illegal, unjust war got hardly any coverage.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG BY MARK KARLIN

The politically charged gun movement in America that began when right wing ideologues took over the NRA in the '70s (in what was called "The Revolt at Cincinnati") has been pathological from the beginning.  That certainly is the case with the twin pro-gun rallies that took place in Washington D.C. and across the Potomac in Virginia on Tuesday, April 19th, the date of Timothy McVeigh's deranged "killing of 168 people, including 19 children under the age of six."

Ironically, as pro-gun legislation is passing across the land and in Washington, the Virginia gun guy "protest" was held on National Park land that now allows handgun carrying because of a law signed by President Obama -- and most of the attendees were locked and loaded.

At both rallies, the talk was defiant and seditious, threatening -- in the thinnest veiled code words -- a shoot out with federal officials if psychotic objections to the "infringement of Constitutional rights" were not met.

There were only a few hundred gun nuts who showed up at each rally, but that was enough to get a scrum of media coverage, as compared to the barely covered 200,000 advocates who showed up in D.C. a couple weeks back to protest for a compassionate immigration policy.

The modern gun lobby -- after the political right wingers took over the NRA in a coup -- is more about white male entitlement, racism, and the false perception that a handgun would be of much value against the United States Military based on a paranoid view of the federal government.  It is not the gun that is the real issue.  It is a psychological state of mind about the perceived diminished status of the white male of limited economic means.  You don't see many wealthy elites showing up at the Washington rallies.  It's the "dispossessed" white males, who view their guns as their last vestige of power and leverage in a society that has become secular and in which women share more power.

It's difficult, if not impossible, to perceive how any of the Timothy McVeigh wannabee protesters have had their lives change in terms of their freedom or independence under the
Obama Administration. In fact, it is impossible to imagine, because nothing has changed.  They certainly didn't protest the invasion of privacy on multiple levels under the Bush Administration.

So what is going on beyond racism, white entitlement, and the perceived power of the gun?
In an April 19th article in the New York Times on the just-released interview tapes with Timothy McVeigh, the journalist notes:

"The McVeigh Tapes" is instructive, but it is a history lesson that blends real materials and fake ones to illustrate the danger posed by fringe lunatics who cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Such is the case with the dueling, press-fueled, gun guys insurrectionist rallies on April 19th in D.C. and adjacent Virginia federal land.

Such is, not so coincidentally, the content of FOX and the right wing media echo chamber.

Such is the pathology of a seditionist rage based on America's legacy of racism, white entitlement and corporate mainstream media demagoguery and fictional news repackaged to fit the oligarchical agenda of the ruling elites, who use the Tea Party and the gun guys as their diversionary shock troops.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG BY MARK KARLIN

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Bush Legacy

Four of the merely six words in the title of Pew Research Center's latest poll results (pdf) are "distrust, discontent, anger" and "rancor."

That sort of says it all, doesn't it? A concentrated, supermajority of fuming, "a perfect storm of conditions," said Pew's director, Andrew Kohut -- "a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials."
All of which, I suppose, was inevitable. During the 2008 presidential campaign, one of the more common observations was that the unluckiest candidate would be the winner. For nearly a decade the Bush administration had labored mightily to pile-drive the nation's distrust and discontent, while throughout, its chief political strategist -- Karl Rove -- cultivated partisan anger and rancor as electoral insurance, whose costly premium has now come due.

Theirs was a conscious, unconscionable effort to split the country -- plus one -- to achieve what they confidently envisioned as a permanent majority. Hyperpatriotic global adventurism and partisan scapegoating would hold it all together, while any domestic discontent would be decisively confronted with the Reaganite shibboleth that government is the problem, not the solution.

Their objective was a kind of impotent überstate -- a sort of controlled anarchy in which the militaristic protection of Big Brother would subsume the internal vulnerabilities of plutocratic whim and socioeconomic decline.

And in this, the Bush administration accomplished its one splendidly executed job: it hugely reinforced the erstwhile moderate American belief that government, where not in uniform, is spelled s-n-a-f-u.

Best of all? If that permanent-majority thing failed to work out, some other poor schmuck would have to cope with the enduringly miserable consequences. The Bushies and their politico-economic class could take their misbegotten gains and head for the hills of material comfort; the opposition would be left the herculean task of reassembling a disintegrated nation.

Which, for President Obama (as well as his admittedly hapless but passably well-intentioned allies on the Hill), became a thankless chore. The year 2009 wasn't 1933, which now, bizarrely enough, seems a golden political age, a time before lunatic cable-news hosts and lunatic radio talk-show hosts and lunatic bloggers -- all absolutely ubiquitous, and the crazier the more successful.

Yet a good deal of today's thanklessness loops back, I think, to that splendid job performed by the Bushies: their jackhammer, propagandistic insistence that government is unfailingly inept, so what might you expect?

To the contrary what the body politic did  expect -- unschooled as it is in the grinding parliamentary process of reversing determined decline -- was nothing short of a miracle: virtually instant betterment. Obama would simply stroll into the Oval Office, I can only presume, and snap his fingers and issue executive commands and presto -- within, let's say, a year, our city on the hill would gleam again.

Eight years -- indeed, several decades -- of unprecedented, deliberate neglect and suffocating decay would be erased. Theoretically. And when the theory failed to hold? Why of course, thought the electorate: Government is unfailingly inept. Why -- against the Bushies' admonishments -- did we ever expect otherwise?

Much easier, then, to revert to the former administration's finely cultivated zeitgeist of distrust, discontent, anger and rancor: reactionaryism's best friends.

During a presidential campaign such an apocalyptic foursome is not only acceptable, it borders on the acceptably advisable. For nothing concentrates the democratic mind like motivated revenge.

Yet what appeared to be relatively short-term distrust, discontent, anger and rancor had in reality become a new way of American political life. Except for one's closest ideological allies, everyone's a vague kind of enemy; plus government's a joke, hope's a pipe dream and real and upwardly robust change is not only unattainable, it's a liberal mirage, QED.
That is the Bushian DNA of our political ghosts -- Bush's truest legacy; a sour, fuming, disoriented, thoroughly disenchanted electorate which -- the result of relentless, top-down repetition -- can always land on at least one identifiable enemy: inept government.

And irony of ironies, who's paying the political price? Why of course. The unlucky winner of 2008, who is only trying his damnedest to ept the inept.

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

Let The Sun Shine In......

Limbaugh responds to Clinton with torrent of incendiary rhetoric

April 20, 2010 6:40 am ET

SUMMARY: In recent days, President Bill Clinton has warned that incendiary rhetoric and "demonizing the government" incited domestic terrorism during his presidency and threatened to do so again. On his April 19 broadcast, Rush Limbaugh responded by unleashing a torrent of incendiary rhetoric, claiming that the Obama administration is "ripp[ing] apart" and "overthrow[ing]" the country and blaming Clinton for the Oklahoma City bombing and the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Clinton: "Demonizing" gov't, public servants can lead to domestic terror

In an April 16 speech, Clinton said of the 1995 bomb attack on an Oklahoma City federal building:

The second lesson we have to learn is that we can't let the debate veer so far into hatred that we lose focus of our common humanity. It's really important. We can't ever fudge the fact that there is a basic line dividing criticism from violence or its advocacy. And the closer you get to the line, and the more responsibility you have, the more you have to think about the echo chamber in which your words resonate.

Look, criticism is part of the lifeblood of democracy. Nobody's right all the time. But Oklahoma City proved once again that, beyond the law, there is no freedom. And there is a difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government that guarantees our freedom and the public servants who implement them. And the more prominence you have in politics or media or some other pillar of life, the more you have to keep that in mind.
[...]

But what we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold, but that the words we use really do matter because there are -- there's this vast echo chamber. And they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious, alike; they fall on the connected and the unhinged, alike. And I am not trying to muzzle anybody.

But one of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have, and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have. Look, I'm glad they're fighting over health care and everything else; let them have at it.

But I think that all you have to do is read the paper every day to see how many people there are who are deeply, deeply troubled. We know, now, that there are people involved in groups -- these "hatriot" groups, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the others -- 99 percent of them will never do anything they shouldn't do. But there are people who advocate violence and anticipate violence.
[...]

When George Washington served his two terms and went home to Mount Vernon to retire and John Adams became president, he was called out of retirement one time. You know what it was? He was called out of retirement to command the Armed Forces sent to Pennsylvania to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, because good Americans who had fought for this country crossed the line from advocating a different policy and opposing the current one to taking the law into their own hands in a violent manner.

Once in a while, over the last 200 years, we've crossed the line again. But by and large, that bright line has held, and that's why this is the longest-lasting democracy in human history. That's why there is so much free speech. That's why people can organize their groups. It may seem like fringe groups that advocate whatever the livin' Sam Hill they want to advocate. That's why. But we have to keep the bright line alive. So that's the second lesson.

Clinton offered similar comments in an interview aired on the April 18 edition of ABC's This Week and in an April 19 New York Times op-ed.

Limbaugh says Obama administration is "authoritarian," "overthrow[ing]" the country

Limbaugh: "The country is being overthrown," "ripped apart, transformed, right before our very eyes." Limbaugh responded by arguing that Clinton's comments were part of an effort to smear the tea party movement. He stated: "The reality is that it's the Obama crowd that doesn't like government, that doesn't like the country. It's the Obama crowd and all of their related groups that have been protesting for as long as I've been alive that don't like the country; the tea party people love this country." He added that the tea party people are just angry because the "country is being overthrown. The country is being ripped apart, transformed, right before our very eyes, and in a fraudulent manner."

Limbaugh: " 'Regime' implies and defines authoritarian governments, which this one clearly is." Responding to a critique of his use of the word "regime" to describe the Obama administration, Limbaugh explained that " 'regime' implies and defines authoritarian governments, which this one clearly is."

Limbaugh: "I am treated as an enemy of the state." Limbaugh stated: "I, a guy on the radio who can't raise anybody's taxes, can't send anybody off to war, I cannot do one thing -- I can't harm you economically, I can't do a damn -- I am treated as an enemy of the state."

Limbaugh: "Obama urges more opposition to us than he does Islamic terrorists." Limbaugh stated: "I'm not saying that if we weren't around they'd be beating Obama up. Don't misunderstand. They would be full-throated supporters of Obama. But if we weren't around it wouldn't be this slavish, in the tank, sycophantic coverage. Because they now feel it necessary to defend themselves -- and him -- against us. Look at -- Obama urges more opposition to us than he does Islamic terrorists."

 

Limbaugh blames Clinton for the Oklahoma City bombing, 9-11

Limbaugh asks Clinton, "What words caused Timothy McVeigh to act," says McVeigh was "outraged over the government invasion" in Waco. Responding to Clinton's statement that "the words we use do really matter," Limbaugh asked of Clinton: "What words caused Timothy McVeigh to act? Name one. I want to know what words and who spoke them. What are the words that Timothy McVeigh heard? What are the words he admitted that he heard that prompted him to act?" Limbaugh went on to say: "All I've ever heard is that Timothy McVeigh was outraged over the government invasion led by Janet Reno of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. And the Murrah building was blown up on that exact date two years later. ... Somebody show me the words, Mr. President, that McVeigh heard and caused him to act."

Limbaugh: "McVeigh was not inspired by anybody's words, he was inspired by Mr. Clinton's deeds." Limbaugh said that "McVeigh was not inspired by anybody's words, he was inspired by Mr. Clinton's deeds. And this is what they're trying to wash over; this is what they're trying to erase from the historical record."

Limbaugh: Clinton has "ties to the domestic terrorism of Oklahoma City." Limbaugh said that Clinton, the Obama administration, and the press can "try to make Oklahoma City the result of a modern tea party movement," but "President Clinton's ties to the domestic terrorism of Oklahoma City are tangible; talk radio's ties are nonexistent. We had nothing to do with it."

Limbaugh: Because Clinton "ignored terrorism throughout the '90s," "the country was attacked on 9-11." Limbaugh stated: "Let us not forget Bill Clinton ignored terrorism throughout the '90s. As a result, the country was attacked on 9-11. Debra Burlingame with a great column in The Wall Street Journal today. It's just not 9-11. How about the World Trade Center bombing in '93 on Clinton's watch; the Khobar Towers on Clinton's watch? There were so many acts of terrorism in this country and around the world on Clinton's watch. He didn't care about it. He didn't fight -- he wanted to take on hard issues -- he loved that 65 percent approval number."

Limbaugh attacks Clinton for his role in "domestic violence," "Waco invasion"

Limbaugh says children at Waco "really got abused by the U.S. government."
Discussing the standoff at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Limbaugh said: "Sixty-seven people died in the fire -- we remember watching it -- 20 children. Janet Reno said we have to go in there because children are being abused. Yep. They really got abused by the U.S. government."

Limbaugh: "President Clinton ... has had a direct and indirect role in so much pain and domestic violence." Limbaugh stated: "So, throughout the '90s, we are the victims of terrorism acts by people who Obama will not even call terrorists now. Bill Clinton and Janet Reno didn't just threaten violence at Waco -- they delivered it. As a result, American citizens -- children, women, mothers -- were killed. And what followed was a domestic terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City. And President Clinton, who has had a direct and indirect role in so much pain and domestic violence, lectures us about threats and acts of violence?"

Limbaugh: OKC bombing was "about the U.S. military invading a religious compound." Limbaugh told listeners, "Don't forget that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred two years to the day after the Waco invasion -- two years to the day -- and Tim McVeigh as much as said so." Continuing, Limbaugh said that Clinton was involved in "an attempt to rewrite the history of the Oklahoma City bombing and the president's role in it. ... They know this is about Waco. They know this is about the U.S. military invading a religious compound."

Limbaugh: "You have President Clinton here simply lying about a terrible tragedy." Limbaugh said: "You have President Clinton here simply lying about a terrible tragedy to try to chill free speech and libeling me and the tea party at the same time. It does not get more despicable than this."

Limbaugh: Tea party is "the first time" that "everyday citizens" have "risen up" "since the Civil War"

Limbaugh stated: "What is it that's remarkable about the tea party is that it's the first time an uprising of common, ordinary, average everyday citizens since the Civil War has risen up like this."

— C.S. & O.W.
Copyright © 2009 Media Matters for America. All rights reserved.

Let The Sun Shine In......

A Short Citizen’s Guide to Reforming Wall Street

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The real scandal isn’t the Street’s unlawful acts (i.e., Securities and Exchange Commission vs. Goldman Sachs) but legal acts that have reaped the Street a bonanza and nearly sunk the rest of us.

It’s good we finally have an SEC on which three out of five commissioners are willing to enforce laws already on the books. Hopefully other enforcement agencies (CFTC, FDIC, and the Fed) will follow suit. But we also need to make illegal the recklessness that’s now legal.

The Dodd bill now being considered in the Senate is a step in the right direction. Yet despite the hype, it’s a very modest step. It leaves out three of the most important things necessary to prevent a repeat of the Wall Street meltdown:

1. Require that trading of all derivatives be done on open exchanges where parties have to disclose what they’re buying and selling and have enough capital to pay up if their bets go wrong. The exception in the current bill for so-called “unique” derivatives opens up a loophole big enough for bankers to drive their Ferrari’s through.

2. Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act in its entirety so commercial banks are separated from investment banks. The current bill doesn’t go nearly far enough. Commercial banks should take deposits and lend money. Investment banks should be limited to the casino we call the stock market, helping companies issue new issues and making bets. Nothing good comes of mixing the two. We learned this after the Great Crash of 1929, and then forgot it in 1999 when Congress allowed financial supermarkets to do both.

3. Cap the size of big banks at $100 billion in assets. The current bill doesn’t limit the size of banks at all. It creates a process for winding down the operations of any bank that gets into trouble. But if several big banks are threatened, as they were when the housing bubble burst, their failure would pose a risk to the whole financial system, and Congress and the Fed would surely have to bail them out. The only way to ensure no bank is too big to fail is to make sure no bank is too big, period. Nobody has been able to show any scale efficiencies over $100 billion in assets, so that should be the limit.

Wall Street doesn’t want these three major reforms because they’d cut deeply into profits, and it’s using its formidable lobbying clout with both parties to prevent these reforms from even from surfacing. It’s time for Main Street — Tea Partiers, Coffee partiers, and beer drinkers — to be heard.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Iceland Volcana

By Mark Sappenfield, Staff writer / April 18, 2010

This history of Iceland will not make for comforting reading for thousands of would-be air travelers stranded across northern Europe and beyond.
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  Iceland volcano

 

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The last time Eyjafjallajökull erupted, it continued belching the Earth's unsettled insides for 14 months, from December 1821 to January 1823.

Scientists do not expect Eyjafjallajökull to keep northern Europe's airports closed for 14 months, but they suggest that Eyjafjallajökull's impact on world travel might not end with the end of this current eruption.

IN PICTURES: Iceland volcano

Moreover, Iceland's "Angry Sister" hasn't even awoken yet. The three times in recorded history when Eyjafjallajökull has erupted, its neighbor, the much larger Katla, has followed suit.

Data do not yet suggest that a Katla eruption is imminent. Yet, in some respects, it is the far greater concern, both in Iceland and beyond.

 

Katla: the sleeping sister

Katla has erupted 16 times since 930, in 1755 exploding so violently that its ash settled on parts of Scotland. In 1918, Katla tore chunks of ice the size of houses from the Myrdalsjökull glacier atop it, sending them careening down its slopes and into the Atlantic on floods of melted glacier water.

While Eyjafjallavökull is virtually anonymous in Icelandic lore, Katla is one of the "Angry Sisters" along its even-more active twin, Hekla.

The 1918 eruption was the last major eruption of Katla – a volcano that has erupted twice a century, on average – which is why scientists have paid particularly close attention to it in recent days.

But while earth beneath Eyjafjallajökull trembled with thousands of small earthquakes in the months before the eruption – signaling that magma was welling up beneath the volcano – scientists have not seen the same activity at Katla yet.

Even as some scientists suggest that the current Eyjnafjallajökull eruption is abating, the past few days have been only a taste of what Icelanders have known for generations: Their island is one of the most restless places on the planet.

In 1973, an eruption near the nation's primary fishing port split the island of Heimaey in two and required its entire population to be evacuated to the Icelandic mainland by fishing boat.

On 1783, one-quarter of Iceland's population was killed when Laki erupted – an eruption so massive that it changed global weather patterns, bringing record snow to New Jersey and drought to Egypt.

And in the 1755 Katla eruption, the volume of floodwaters from the Myrdalsjökull glacier were estimated to be equal to or greater than the discharge of water from the Amazon, Nile, and Mississippi Rivers combined.

 

Iceland: an Arctic thread of fire

Much like lands atop the Pacific Ring of Fire, Iceland sits atop a seam in earth's crust, straddling two of the planet's tectonic puzzle pieces.

In other such places, such as Chile, one piece of crust is sliding beneath the other, pushing up the Andes mountains. But in Iceland, new earth is being born with every eruption.

Along the tectonic border marked by Iceland's volcanoes, the world is spreading, gradually pushing Iceland's halves – and the plates they sit on – farther apart. The volcanoes are making new crust, their liquid rock cooling into new landscapes, eruption by eruption, foot by foot.

In this way, Eyjafjallajökull is merely part of the ancient tectonic dance of the continents. But some scientists suggest that the changing global climate could make Icelandic eruptions more common.

As Iceland's glaciers thin, their weight upon the island's volcanoes will lighten, making it easier for magma to rise from the earth's depths, they say.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Corporate propaganda

Let The Sun Shine In......

A Primer for the Democrats in the 2010 Elections

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 04/20/2010 - 9:57am.

• Guest Commentary

HUGH CONRAD FOR BUZZFLASH

Lesson One:  Today's Words Are "Republican Recession"

The passage of the healthcare reform package became reality for a plethora of reasons, but one was essential: Barack Obama went back to his base and argued his case in a fiery and a passionate way. For the Democrats to prevent the opposition from taking over either body of Congress in November, they have to be as vocal and as passionate as Obama was down the stretch.

The Democrats must do this with issues that the Republicans have destroyed: National Security, corruption, Republican ties to Wall Street, eviscerating the Constitution under Bush, along with the major issue, the Economy.

First, here is what the Democrats should do to make their case about the economy: Demonstrate outrage at the Republicans for mishandling the economy and causing the loss of eight million jobs.

My first suggestion is a simple one: Repeat these words over and over: This was / is a "Republican Recession."

Everyone -- those on the campaign trail, those in the netroots, and those who talk to the media -- should repeat these because repetition strengthens and confirms ideas in the minds of the American people.

The second suggestion is also simple: Tie the Republicans to Wall Street. This is simple with the financial-reform bill currently being debated in Congress. Republicans will try to prevent any meaningful reform.

The last suggestion here is to use history, tying it into the Republican Recession. For instance, use this historical scenario.

The Republicans ruled for 12 years in the 1920s and early 30s. What happened? The Great Depression, the worst financial failure in history. This occurred because of the policies of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. The Depression ended after the people elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, who instituted meaningful change.

The Republicans again ruled for 12 years during the 1980s and early 90s. What happened? The Republicans rang up the largest budget deficits in history under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and forced the country into a serious recession. This ended after the voters elected Bill Clinton, who balanced the budget and built a surplus that the Republicans squandered under George W. Bush.

The Republicans ruled for eight years under George W. Bush. What happened? The worst recession in history, forcing the government into bailing out banks and spending stimulus money to try and rebuild the country. Eight million jobs have been lost because of the Republican Recession.

History is clear: Republicans have been horrible stewards of the economy.

Since 1980, Republicans have controlled the White House 20 of 29 years. We are experiencing this economic turmoil because of the reprehensible trickle-down economics of Ronald Reagan that have led to two major recessions, the last almost another Republican Depression.

When Americans go to the polls this fall, they must remember that this horrible economy is a Republican Recession.

Summary: Tie the Great Depression, constant recessions, and horrible budget deficits to the Republicans. This is historically accurate and can be very effective in doing over and over and over again.

HUGH CONRAD FOR BUZZFLASH

Let The Sun Shine In......