Malachi Smith's List: POLITICS USA

• Georgia complained to Diebold about patch after election
• Documents show Georgia's Secretary of State knew of Diebold patch
• Larisa Alexandrovna
  Published: Wednesday July 30, 2008
• On Dec. 3, 2002, Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox’s office faxed documents to the then-president of Diebold Election Systems Bob Urosevich listing a series of issues that occurred shortly before the November 2002 election.
• Documents provided to RAW STORY by a whistleblower close to Cox’s office show that one of the key problems Georgia officials were trying to resolve was related to an unauthorized patch installed on machines prior to the election.
• In one document, Cox’s office asked Urosevich for confirmation that a “0808 patch was applied to all systems; confirmation that the patch was not grounds for requiring the system to be recertified at national and state level; as well as verifiable analysis of the overall impact of the patch to the voting system” (See attached pdf, p. 3)
• Cox didn’t know prior to the election that a patch had been installed, the source said.
• Cox, who is now president of Young Harris College in Georgia, returned phone calls but could not be reached for comment by press time.
• “People working for Diebold were told to keep this quiet so Cox would not find out,” the whistleblower said.
• “They knew she was in over her head and had come to completely rely on Diebold.
• They controlled the warehouse, the machines, and the certification. There were no state employees.”
• Diebold renamed itself Premier Election Solutions in 2007.
• The company has come under fire on numerous occasions for failing to protect its software from hackers, and its systems have been decertified in California.
• Maryland's House of Delegates voted to ban the company from its electronic voting in 2006, though the law didn't pass the Senate and state is now considering Premier for their optical scan systems.
• According to this individual, this was the patch that he then passed on to cyber-security expert Stephen Spoonamore.
• Spoonamore, a highly regarded computer security specialist who has worked for US government agencies, has since come forward claiming that he took the Diebold patch to the Department of Justice -- specifically to the Cyber-Security/Cyber-Crime unit of the Computer and Intellectual Property Section -- after it was brought to his attention.
• Calls to the Department of Justice seeking confirmation that Spoonamore had delivered the Diebold patch were not returned.
• Initially, the whistleblower said, there were no concerns or questions regarding the $54 million contract, for which Diebold beat out eight other firms, to install a statewide electronic voting system.
• It was only after certain “red flag” events occurred that people inside the Secretary of State’s office, as well as Diebold employees, began to have suspicions, he added.
• What initially raised questions, according to the source, was the behavior of then-Diebold CEO, Bob Urosevich, who personally flew in from Texas and applied the patch in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds.
• Another flag went up, this person added, when it became apparent that the patch installed by Urosevich had failed to fix a problem with the computer clock -- which employees from Diebold and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office had been told the patch was designed specifically to address.
• The Secretary of State’s office became aware of this installation during the month after the November 2002 election, as the documents are dated Dec. 3.
• It's unclear how Cox handled the findings once she was made aware of the patch installation and other technical issues cited in the documents.
• Questions raised about race and Diebold terminals
• During the period between the election and the faxing of the documents to Diebold by Cox's office on December 3, critics of electronic voting had begun to raise questions about the Georgia race.
• Incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who was five percentage points ahead of Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss in polls taken only a week before the voting, lost 53 percent to 46 percent.
• Roy Barnes, the incumbent Democratic Governor, who had been leading challenger Sonny Perdue by a fairly wide margin of eleven points, lost 51 percent to 46 percent.

• Cleland could not be reached for comment.

    

  Calls and emails to Premier Election Solutions were not returned.
• According to Georgia Election Law Title 21-2-322.16: “No voting machine shall be adopted or used unless it shall, at the time, satisfy the following requirements. ... It shall, when properly operated, register or record correctly and accurately every vote cast.”
• The last-minute patch installation and the lack of official recertification may have rendered the 2002 GA results invalid.
• The whistle-blower, who was close to Cox’s office at the time, says he was privy to the discussions surrounding the documents and was concerned by the electoral outcome. That led him to approach Spoonamore and ask him to examine the Diebold patch.
• Security issues have plagued Diebold's software and machines.
• In 2006, researchers from the University of Connecticut demonstrated that the firm's optical scan terminals could be compromised.
• HBO's "Hacking Democracy," which studied the vulnerability of electronic voting machines -- with a particular focus on Diebold -- found that the terminals were subject to hacking and inaccurate vote totals.
• In 2007, Diebold posted the photograph of a key used to open their machines on the company's website. Hackers were able to produce a duplicate key based on the photo.

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• Phew! Bush Dirty Diapers!
• By Karl Schwarz
    8-2-8
• As the bad news unfolds in the Caspian Basin that the  US is being 'shut out' of its delusional Grand Chessboard scheme, there  are other forest fires, tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanos erupting  in the US and UK that may well spell the doom of BushCo and the Imbecile  Great Decider at the helm.
• He is now expendable and vulnerable to both  impeachment and possible war crimes charges.
• Pay attention to how expendable  'Gorgon' Brown suddenly has become. Bush is next as should be most of  those in DC.
• The Russians are often brilliant strategists, and  never, even for a moment underestimate, them.
• Some time around 2000, there was an "investment  club" created. It was somewhere around $20 to $22 billion dollars  and was promoted by a lot of high profile names mentioned often in this  9-11 / Caspian Basin fiasco, and some not mentioned at all.
• Names like  George H W Bush, Tricky Dick Cheney, Nicholas Brady, John Sununu and others.  All of their names surfaced in our investigation of what was going on  in the Caspian Basin.
• They had all purchased front row seats  to get at those trillions, and trillions and trillions of dollars in Caspian oil  and gas.
• Of course, that is the same John Sununu that had to resign  from the Reagan Administration.
• Not sure what the connection was but the  day he resigned Pan Am filed for bankruptcy. They must have seen trouble  coming in losing their 'best customer.'
• Then there is the same Nicholas  Brady of the GHWB Administration, the Brady Bonds fiasco and board member  of Amerada Hess. The 9-11 Commission Chairman, Thomas Keane, is chairman  of Amerada Hess and major shareholder, so, yes, he probably would have  ignored the 'truth' for a board member involved in this Caspian Basin Investment  Club.
• There is a very real possibility that this 'investment  club' was involved in getting 9-11 done, and it is also a possibility that  they are about take a major hit due to Junior losing the Caspian Basin.
• I frankly hope they take a mega-billion dollar red ink shower and lose  it all.
• I hope they enjoy their front row seat for the aria,  as the Fat Lady begins to sing, and that they lose those billions of still  more stupidity of what they thought they could pull off and rip-off via  the Caspian Basin.
• The days of oil are numbered except for petrochemicals,  the days of natural gas run as long as the Earth produces natural gas as  a natural process of our planet.
• It is very apparent that Russia has  now emerged as the dominant global giant in natural gas.
• What they control  and how they will use that if pushed the wrong way could cause a meltdown  in many parts of the world. The EU is paying attention and it is past time  the US did, too.
• The day is coming fast that automobiles will be powered  by hydrogen and water, not oil and gasoline.
• I cannot foresee a time in  the future that natural gas will NOT be the KEY energy issue, and Russia has  already won that war, hands down.
• We lost, that's the proverbial bottom line. Game, set  and match.  It is over.  Finis.
• The next generation of and for mankind is nanotechnology,  and it will be powered by natural gas, not oil.
• My company scientists  are experts in that matter.  Russia has just taken the lead  on the NOW and the FUTURE, and has left the US behind, wallowing  in its Oil-on-the-Brain mindset.
• My sources in Houston inform that Big Oil is  realizing fast that the BushCo brain-damaged fraud of its 'Global War on  Terror' has blown up in its face like a nuclear bomb. To that extent,  Big Oil is no longer heeding Daddy Bush's calls to go help Junior with  his dirty diapers.
• Why it took them so long to recognize 'catastrophe' is  incredible. Maybe it is due to their blinding, delusional blizzard of  '$$$' they were dreaming of making from the Caspian Basin
• Maybe it is because the wealthy can  afford to not pay attention to the realities right in front of their noses.
• I have suspected for a long time that many of the Wealthy Elite in the US are  running on either 'lobotomy mode' or autopilot in 'stuck-on-stupid' gear.
• There is indeed a 'core group' of Big Oil tycoons in  Texas who have been called upon over the years to provide 'opportunities'  for Junior, so the moron will have something to do other than be 'unemployed.'
• They  have always received '911 emergency' phone calls from Daddy that dirty  diaper duty is a must. One of those major Houston 'players' and I  have spoken often.
• My friend is astounded at the lack of perception of  the Houston and Washington power players and how it took them so long to  figure out what 'stupid' looks like.
• As he said to me once, "Hey, I know stupid shit  when I see it." He does, indeed, and his comment was about Junior's  cabal's likelihood of success stealing the Caspian Basin. That  comment was made in 2002.
• Such a call to duty is even a requirement of not being  put on the 'Bush Shit List.'
• Frankly, I think it's about the Best  list in the world to be on these days.
• I have been thrown out of better  clubs than BushCo and damned proud that 'smudge' is not on my resume.
• This diaper is so dirty, so putrid, people have decided  they have better things to do with their time and money. They invested  heavily in this Grand Chessboard scheme and now it is every man for himself  to see how much they can limit the damage and control their losses.
• My  bet is there are not enough lifejackets on the USS Bush Titanic for all  to survive and some have reached that pregnant "moment of truth' stage.  Cut the losses with BushCo or sink with them.
• The Great Decider Bush and Daddy Bush are probably already  making plans to push more than a few overboard from the USS Bush Titanic  just to save their pathetic Presidential 'legacies.'  They have already  made a 'Bush Shit List' and it grows daily due to people turning and walking  away in disgust.   
• There are three American Presidential legacies that should  be stricken from every book, every building and aircraft carrier and every  other place of 'honor'...and they are those of George H W Bush, Bill Clinton  and George W Bush.
• We could not combine the best from these three deceitful,  traitorous, treasonous, genocidal morons and come up with a single decent  American President.
• America, face up to this simple reality: The Bush Family  has raped, ravaged and thrown you into the trash heap.  They screw  up everything they touch with their lie-based schemes, and their treasonous  sales of our best technology to our enemies and 'friends' has tossed away  decades of the best R&D any nation ever achieved.
• Get over  the reality of the matter and figure out how you are going to survive the  Sinking of America.
• There is a very real possibility that major oil companies  and major billionaire Bush Buddies are about to take a bath to the point  that even the money and power landscape of America will change  significantly.
• Yeah, some of the Wealthy Elite are way, way past angry  and fed-up with the Bush Show.
• They are going to get hosed by this stupid  strategic plan and so is the rest of America.
• We may soon see some  down on their luck billionaires due to collective Bush Stupidity.
• It is one thing to 'crap' on the presidency and the Oval  Office as Clinton did, but it is quite another matter to decimate/annihilate  Iraq and Afghanistan (and slaughter a couple million human beings), and  to dump on Russia and China, bungle the entire Caspian Basin scheme, stab  America in the back and essentially blow the entire game in spades.
• Only  George W Bush could pull of that hat trick.

  • Everything Junior has ever touched he has ruined or driven it to ground...
• Even if we had Mr. MaGoo  and Elmer Fudd as president and vice president, more accomplishments would  have been realized since the 2000 'elections.'
• These two morons, Bush & Cheney - and their Zionist  NeoCon parasites and pathological killers - are a hideous, evil plague  on the planet by ANY measure.
• Remember, I am a Conservative Republican  and I know what of I speak. 
• In my opinion, Bush has blown more opportunities than  any President in my lifetime due to his arrogance and self-inflicted ignorance.
• I told one of my readers that what is happening right  now is the equivalent of being hit in the head with a (Russian) Nolan Ryan  fastball, and then the umpire takes the bat and hits the batter in the  head again for being too stupid to see it coming and too stupid to duck.
• The analogy is simply that BushCo has been knocked out, lights out, and  Americans are beyond stupid if they do not wake up and look at the realities  of the situation.
• I know many Americans who feel that way (hit in the head  by a fastball) and are stunned at what they are witnessing.
• This is indeed  a Major National Embarrassment and it is the folks in DC, the Fed, Wall  Street and corporate America who are to blame.

  • That includes the stupid ass Congress on both sides of the aisle.
• It is not your idiot next door neighbor who thinks Bush is "hot"  or the one across the street who thinks the only 'truth' in America  drivels from the mouths of O'Reilly and Limbaugh. The real problem  is inWashington, DC and the lunatic policies these power-drunk  morons keep pushing.
• They all are lying to you, folks, so get it straight  in your head. Those 'leaders' in Washington, DC are LIARS.   When their lips are moving be very wary, be afraid of what they are  *really* saying. Very afraid.
• These events also raise serious questions about the sanity  of the Barky Obama Black Bush strategery of 'refocusing' on Afghanistan   (to try to get that pipeline deal finally done.)
• I can think  of no reason whatsoever to spend even one second or $1 to save the reputation  of Zbigniew Brzezinski and his lunatic vision for the world.
• The man is  an idiot and Russia just proved it by pushing the US out  of the Caspian Basin in one fell swoop with a contract and  a pen.
• Seriously, his idea was dim and dumb in 1979 and it is still so  in 2008.  As we now know, it is dead meat lying at the bottom of the  sea. Get over it and come up with a better plan.
• And for the love of God, we must not allow the squander  of the life of even one more American soldier on this Grand Lie.

  • Amen!!!
• I can bet there are plenty of 'CYA' handwringing strategy  sessions going on over at Obamanation HQ and BushCo about how they are  going to try to explain away this colossal failure to America. I  still have yet to see that McCain has a clue as to what is unraveling right  before his eyes.
• Seriously, there is FUBAR, and then there is "W  FUBAR" which makes the original military term mild in comparison.
• Russia just made it clear to McCain: "We can  afford to cut off relations with any of our partners if that's what they  want. We're not interested in what [John] McCain has to say. Let him become  president first, then we'll listen to him," a senior Russian diplomat  told reporters on Tuesday, according to AFP.
• That was in response to all of the John McGoo 'tough  talk' about how he is going to reign in Russia, 'correct their attitude'  and get the BushCo plan back on track.  
• Hint ­ cut a deal with IRAN or pack your  bags in the entire Centcom area of the Middle East and Central Asia.
• You Bush sycophants are stinking up the world stage with your incompetence.   

  • And that goes for everyone of'em, from the greatest down to the least of the sycophants.
• Just like Tony Blair, his oratory, bullshit and pontificating  is just making the hole deeper.
• Another dynamic is the call for 'Gorgon' Brown  to resign.
• Of concern there is that the Rothschild  family is apparently pushing either Zionist Jack Straw or Zionist David  Miliband to replace Brown so they can try to get their greed-lust game  plan back on the track. Folks, it is not happening and it is not going  to happen.
• The Rothschild family is going to have to come to grips  with the fact that they are not going to survive this intact.
• One of  their heirs and author of "Global Warming Survival Handbook",  David de Rothschild, was quoted saying that 'Jupiter and Saturn are closer  to the Sun than Earth', so that is why his theory of Global Warming was  valid. Yeah, well, money can't buy a brain.
• I know, Forrest, stupid is as stupid does. Nothing is  quite so revealing as inbreeding.
• Well, the train wreck is total and getting it back on  the rails might well take a generation.
• They just don't want Americans  to figure that out yet and rise up and cast out their handpicked morons  from power in the United States. That would be their worst nightmare  come true...an awakened America that will not play along any  more with these stupid schemes.
• America, take a hint. Learn the joy of saying NO.  We  can stop this insanity so fast Washington, DC would need  a chiropractor due to whiplash.
• In a non-tearjerker moment, Ehud Olmert announced July  30 that he is stepping down...so there will be regime change in Israel, too.
• That one is more problematic because Olmert was pushing for peace with  the Palestinians and the powers-that-be do not wish for that to happen.  They want war, so the Musical 'War' Chairs game is now being played out  in the US, UK and Tel Aviv to get the War Plan back on track.
• Bush wants a 'peace deal' by the end of his term between Israel and  the Palestinians. Well, as of Olmert's announcement that is not happening  either.
• This is yet another example of 'brain flatulence' that  will backfire in their faces because Iran will not budge and  neither China nor Russia are going to let anyone control  their economies. 
• Russia could cut the natural gas and oil  off to EU and put the entire EU economy on its knees in a matter of hours...just  turn off a few 

    

  master valves, and the party's over.
• Talk about  NUKE capability and there's not a damned thing the bogus Bush Missile Shield  can do about that.
• Russia is now more powerful than ever, and so is China.
• They (the US, UK and Israel) seem to be forgetting that  in the grand scheme they have created the perfect storm that can end their  rule. They forgot that they are no longer in charge and in no position  to dictate terms to any nation, especially to China or Russia.
• Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev have proven to be  chess masters of the first order and our Imbecile Great Decider can't even  play a game of checkers without lying, cheating or screwing it up.
• Hello, they cannot handle Afghanistan or Iraq  Any  American who thinks they can handle China or Russia does  not have enough brain cells firing at the same time to find a light switch.
• They also cannot handle America if we all stand up in unison  and say 'NO!'
• If you have been paying attention, the Russian-UK oil  partnership of TNK-BP is imploding. The people at BP recently announced  that they had recalled the remaining 60 employees from Russia and  powerful forces inside of Russia are forcing out the British  CEO of TNK-BP.
• This all coincided with the recent announcement that TNK-BP  was one of the three Russian oil and gas giants that were granted full  access to develop Venezuela's vast oil reserves...perhaps as much as 4  trillion barrels.  My bet is BP has not been invited along for the  party in Venezuela.
• This was in part predictable since the UK is  harboring wanted fugitive Boris Berezovsky. Mr. Berezovsky was the former  Yeltsin man and liaison to those same Caspian Basin nations  that BushCo and the UK allies so desperately wanted to take over  and control.
• They lost, now they are scrambling to turn their loss into  a victory without America figuring out that the official clock  reads '00:00' left in the game.
• Simple rule ­ when a 'team' of schemers and liars  cannot get a deal done after 30 years of lying and scheming, it is time  for both a new plan and a new team.
• Of course, it did not help matters when Alexander Litvinenko  was murdered on British soil and the UK pointed the finger of  blame at Putin. That was a stupid move on the part of the Brits, but like  Bush, they specialize in stupid moves over in London.
• That ranked  right up there with our Black Poodle Condi Rice jetting all over the world  to do 'arf-arf photo ops' and then scurrying around to piss on the feet  of the Russian Bear.
• Matters inside of TNK-BP started coming unraveled when  the UK continued its protection of their CIA-MI6 Zionist ex-oligarch  Berezovsky and would not extradite him to Russia to face charges  for crimes against Mother Russia.
• It was Berezovsky who tried to sell  out the Caspian Basin to the US and UK and  the entire Caspian Basin despises this Zionist Jew traitor.
• One of the little known facts about how Big Oil is positioned  in this global game is that Conoco owns 35% of LUKOil and there are no  problems whatsoever between Russia and Conoco. They are getting along  fine and kicking BushCo black and blue all over the world with LUKOil as  their partner.
• Evidently, the management of that American oil company  figured out long ago that BushCo would crap the diaper, and they wisely  chose to team up with who the winners would eventually be.
• Just think, BushCo could have spent that $5 trillion  Iraq war waste on alternative energy and domestic oil and gas production...and  completely weaned the US from dependence on foreign oil. No,  that was too logical and would mean that the Caspian Basin profits  would be lost to them and their cronies.
• But I digress, that would require that the goons in DC  be able to grasp idea that is was worthy for them to develop a real energy  strategy, that to do something for America just might be the moral thing  to do.
• No, alas, we cannot have realities contradict the delusional  bullshit of the current regime in Washington, DC.

  • Or there little Congressional toadies like Jack Kingston, John Barrow or the Senatorial sinus infections like Chambliss, Lindesy Graham and Johnny Isaakson.
• Well, those profits from global oil and gas control are  being lost to 'others' anyway, so now it is time for America to demand  a 'full accounting' regarding Use of Funds on that $5 trillion Bush blew  through.
• It is way past time for a full accounting on what these idiots  in DC did with $5 trillion that they heaped on the backs of the American  taxpayers and have nothing to show for it but lies and failure, two destroyed  nations and at least two million dead people.
• Such is the tragedy of myopic, arrogant, greedy people  chasing stupid strategic visions and plans that were, in reality, nothing  but a stinky dirty diaper from the day they launched their grand scheme  on September 11, 2001.

  • Exactly..!!!
• Folks, just prepare yourself for this: Not only is the  Fat Lady about to sing the aria but it will be in an ear-shattering alto  in B flat that will shatter 'Glass Towers" in DC, London and Wall  Street.  And, damn, is she one Ugly Fat Lady.
• Ugly has come home to roost on the New World Order as  defined by the Bush Family.
• Maybe God will help us through this but, if so, it will not be because  of these evil idiots in DC. 

    

    

  Karl
• Unfortunately, it has come home to roost on America, too.

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• Keith Olbermann: Dick Cheney is Worst Person in the World

• FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL   PUSHES PRO-ABORTION CANDIDATE
• By Mary Starrett
    August 8, 2008
    NewsWithViews.com
• I   was interested to see how the Family Research   Council would respond to my asking why they’d invited Senators   Barack Obama and John McCain to their upcoming so-called “Values   Voter” Summit while snubbing Constitution Party presidential   candidate Chuck Baldwin.
• Baldwin, a   committed, pro-life, Christian pastor and talk show host (www.chuckbaldwinlive.com)   won the nomination of the Constitution Party, the nation’s largest   and fastest- growing third party at a national   convention where delegates overwhelmingly chose him over Ambassador   Alan Keyes.
• Baldwin has emerged as the ‘antidote’ for voters   who can no longer hold their noses and vote for the ‘lesser of   two evils’ in November.
• The   FRC’s Values Voters Summit, billed as the “largest gathering   of values voters from across the nation”, is sponsored by FRCAction,   the legislative arm of the Family Research Council headed by Tony Perkins,   and Focus on the Family, led by Dr. James Dobson
• (who has alternately   said he “will never vote for McCain” and recently that he   likely will vote for the man who spearheaded the most egregious assault   on the 1st Amendment in recent history- the McCain Feingold Campaign   Finance Reform Act, author John McCain).
• I   asked FRCAction why Chuck Baldwin couldn’t join in at the Summit,   since he is the only authentically pro-life, pro- 2nd Amendment , pro-Constitution,   pro-secure borders candidate from a FEC- recognized party who is running   for president.
• Apparently   the folks at the Family Research Council either had not done their research   or chose to ignore that one of the speakers they have headlining their   conference, Senator Barrack Obama, supported infanticide, and the other   speakers like Mitt Romney and John McCain are anything but representative   of pro-life “values” voters.
• I   jogged their memory a bit so they’d remember that Obama was against   the Born Alive   Infant Protection Act and the Induced Infant Liability Act, legislation   even the rabid pro-aborts at NARAL wouldn’t oppose.
• The bills   simply stated that babies surviving abortions shouldn’t be left   to die in soiled linen rooms at hospitals and that the compassionate   and yes, humane response- even in this culture of death we’ve   allowed through legalized abortion- would be to help those babies, not   finish them off by leaving them to die alone.
• The Christians at the Family Research Council think   that presidential candidate, not the pro-life pastor from Pensacola   should get front and center billing at a summit devoted to “values.”
• No,   Obama thought that infringed on a woman’s ‘right’   to snuff her child.
• I   also reminded the FRC that John McCain has supported federal funding   of embryo-destroying stem cell research.
• FRC’s website says this   about their position on the issue: “Family Research Council   opposes research that destroys, harms, or manipulates an embryonic human   being.”
• By   this point, I was thoroughly confused.
• Another   Values Voter Summit headline speaker is former Massachusetts Governor   Mitt Romney whose pro-abortion pedigree spans generations and whose   legacy includes taxpayer- funded abortions all around for the good women   in his state who might find themselves facing an untimely pregnancy.
• So   you can imagine how much more confused I became when I received this   reply from Ann Simmons at FRCAction saying:
• “Mary, as you know, FRC Action is focused on values issues-such   as marriage, abortion, and stem cell research-and our   stance is well-known throughout Washington, D.C.
• We are also a nonpartisan   organization that communicates these deeply-held values to all political   actors-regardless of party. (emphasis mine)
• We are   holding the Values Voter Summit from a position of confidence that FRC's   pro-life and pro-family work of 25 years has been done with both integrity   and success.
• We will never be persuaded to change those views,   but we believe that we can change the views of those who disagree with   us through engagement and action-and that we must try.”

• “   Integrity?”

   

  Where   is the “integrity” in pre-selecting candidates- ignoring   some and pushing others with stances on issues diametrically opposed   to those FRC supposedly promotes?

• “Success?”

   

  What   “success” can FRC or the ‘Christian Right’ in   general point to? Despite years of Republican control at the legislative   and executive levels, we are no better off than if liberal Democrats   had been in control this past decade. We have compromised while the   left has held fast; we have given in while the left has not. That, despite   millions poured into the coffers of groups such as the Family Research   Center and Focus on the Family.

• “Regardless of party?”

   

  Unless,   of course, you’re a candidate from a solidly pro-life party such   as the FEC- recognized Constitution Party which is growing by leaps   and bounds all across the country.
• The   Family Research Council “tries” to change our political   landscape by inviting pro-aborts to speak at a summit on “values”   while ignoring the only candidate who’d actually work to change   the horrors this country now condones, regardless of party?
• Simmons   went on to explain why Chuck Baldwin was excluded from the summit by   making this mind-numbingly contradictory statement “(I)n order   to preserve our non-profit tax status, it is essential that FRC Action   treat candidates equitably in inviting them to speak-both this year   and in the future..”
• Astounding.
• FRC   is apparently not concerned enough about its tax-exempt status to include   all the candidates.
• The organization furthers the myth   that our Republic was designed for a two party system. The FRC refuses   to acknowledge there’s not a dime’s worth of difference   between the two parties now controlling government.
• The FRC adheres   to a paradigm that concludes that any crumbs tossed from those parties   that control our government are worthy of being gobbled up by donation-seeking   advocacy groups, just for a seat at the table- anybody’s table….   even those who promulgate evil.

  • This is exactly where 99.9 % of the "Christian" conservative Evangelical leadership is at....
• I’m   reminded that in Matthew 7:20 we’re instructed to evaluate the   message of those who desire to lead us. Verse 15 describes false teachers   as wolves in sheep’s clothing.
• That wolf is an outright liar who   distorts God’s message for a seat at the table or a cozy relationship   with ungodly political power brokers.
• And   still the unenlightened send their hard earned dollars to FRC or Focus   on the Family and show up at conferences where the wolves line up the   sheep for slaughter.
• © 2008 Mary Starrett - All   Rights Reserved
• Mary   Starrett was the Constitution Party candidate for Oregon governor in November,   2006, a TV news anchor and talk show host for 25 years and a radio talk   show host for 5 years.
• Executive   Director, Oregonians for Life, Board of Directors, Christian Family Adoptions.
• She   is currently the Communications Director for the Constitution Party.
• E-Mail:   mstarrett@constitutionparty.com

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• Obama goes ballistic over Corsi best-seller
• Issues blistering 40-page report challenging WND reporter's high-flying, No. 1 exposé
• August 15, 2008
• With the wreck of John Kerry's "swiftboated" 2004 campaign in his rearview mirror, Barack Obama and his surrogates are wasting no time mounting a counterattack against WND staff writer and columnist Jerome Corsi, the co-author of the Swift Boat Veteran's for Truth's "Unfit for Command" and the author of current No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "The Obama Nation."
• Obama advisers have been tracking Corsi's media appearances, quickly telephoning producers to react to the book's charges, and last night, the Democratic presidential candidate's campaign issued a 40-page response to the book.
• Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor accompanied the release with a shot at Corsi, calling him a "discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney politics he helped perpetuate four years ago."
• 
  The title page to Barack Obama's response to Jerome Corsi's "The Obama Nation"
• "His is just one of what will likely be many more lie-filled books rushed to print this election cycle, which are cobbled together from debunked Internet sources to make money and advance a partisan agenda," the spokesman said. "We will respond to these smears forcefully with all means at our disposal."
• "The Obama Nation" will debut at No. 1 on the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list next week and already has secured the top spot for the following week, as the Democratic National Convention gets under way.
• The Democratic National Committee has its own rapid response team to take aim at Corsi's book, with an e-mail  sent out yesterday saying, "One of the most vile smear peddlers of the 2004 election has found a new target. … We cannot afford to let Corsi get away with the same dirty tricks that fooled so many people in 2004.
• We can't rely on the media to hold him accountable – in fact, the sheer brazenness of the lies is attracting even more coverage. The media have shown that they aren't going to stop him. It's up to you to spread the truth. …"
• At the time of this story, Corsi had not had a chance to see Obama's 40-page rebuttal, but he responded to the strong counter-surge against "The Obama Nation," a book with some 600 footnotes that portrays the Illinois senator as a radical leftist whose handlers are presenting him to the nation through a carefully crafted cult of personality.
• Corsi told WND the campaign has largely chosen to respond to his book with a series of personal attacks.
• "Derision and ridicule are the lowest form of argument, suggesting the Obama camp already has lost the debate," he said.
• "The Obama camp and its supporters appear to be in disarray over the book, responding almost irrationally with an endless string of epithets and insults."
• Corsi charged Obama "has intentionally manufactured a cult of personality in order to discourage any attempt to examine or comment critically upon any aspect of his background."

  • What is Berry hiding?
• "Critics such as myself are immediately branded as 'racists' to discourage readers from reading and evaluating the book for themselves," he said.
• 'Vicious innuendo'
• Obama aides are feeding producers of Corsi's media interviews with a number of his past controversial quotes and insisting campaign surrogates, equipped with talking points, be allowed on the shows to counter the book, according to the blog Talking Points Memo.
• The online watchdog Media Matters, which says its purpose is to counter the "lies" of the right, sent senior fellow Paul Waldman up against Corsi on CNN's "Larry King" show Wednesday night.
• Waldman charged that four years after "Unfit for Command," Corsi "has come out with another book that is also riddled with distortions and falsehoods. So the question is, why on earth would anyone listen to what he has to say about Barack Obama?"
• Corsi told WND that Media Matters "has intentionally misrepresented my arguments so they can 'prove' as 'false' claims I never made, while proclaiming 'mistakes' over trivial points in the book they chose to nit-pick in support of their obvious leftist political agenda."
• Prior to publication of Corsi's book, Obama created a website FightTheSmears.com to respond to a host of charges largely circulating on the Internet
• A FightTheSmears "Action Wire" uses the campaign's extensive e-mail list to respond to charges.
• On Wednesday, Kerry himself launched a website called Truth Fights Back challenging the book. It was accompanied by an e-mail to former supporters headlined, "Book on Obama Hopes to Repeat Anti-Kerry Feat."
• 'An agenda here'
• As even a popular late-night comedy show has acknowledged, Obama has many defenders in the mainstream media, and some apparently have joined the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's battle against Corsi's book.
• The media watchdog Newsbusters, which responds to left-leaning media bias, pointed to CNN's treament of the book Wednesday in which anchor Suzanne Malveaux worried aloud to former Clinton aide Paul Begala that Obama might not be responding fast enough to attacks against him, thereby "falling into the same trap as John Kerry."
• Introducing the first segment, the "Situation Room" host "didn't hesitate to make unequivocal claims as to the Corsi book's inaccuracy," Newsbusters said.

• Malveaux said:

   

  There's a new book out about Barack Obama, and it is not flattering. The facts are mixed with accusations about Obama that are misleading or just flat-out wrong. Yet despite all of this, there is concern that author's claims might catch on with some voters. Our CNN's Jessica Yellin joining me now, and Jessica, the author even admits that there is an agenda here behind this book."
• Newsbusters contributor Mark Finkelstein pointed to the irony of expressing concern that authors might have an agenda, noting the invitations and respectful treatment offered anti-Bush administration authors such as Seymour Hersh and Ron Suskind.
• The network's Yellin said Corsi's book "alleges Obama is on the extreme left of American politics and has extensive connections to Islam and with radical racial politics.
• This despite the fact that for months Obama's been explaining he's not Muslim."
• But Newsbusters's Finkelstein pointed out Corsi doesn't claim Obama is a Muslim and, with regard to the radical racial politics charge, notes the National Journal's rating of his voting record as most liberal in the Senate and the Democrat's close ties to black liberation theology adherents Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Rev. Michael Pfleger.

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• EXCLUSIVE: Pelosi Clashes With Protesters Over Impeachment
• By Jason Leopold and Alan Breslauer
  The Public Record
  Tuesday, August 12, 2008
• Published in : Nation/World
• Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's appearance Monday at a West Los Angeles college to discuss her recently published book was marred by dozens of protestors and several angry outbursts by audience members who demanded Pelosi immediately authorize a House committee to hold impeachment hearings against President George W. Bush.
• The Speaker made it clear she would not support any effort to hold impeachment hearings against President Bush saying that the president "will be gone in a hundred days."
• Halfway through her discussion at The American University of Judaism, where more than 300 people paid $30 each to hear Pelosi speak about her upbringing and her family's impact on her political career as detailed in her book Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters,
• the topic shifted to Congress's historically low approval rating and how it reflected on Pelosi’s tenure as Speaker.
• American University of Judaism's Rabbi Robert Wexler, who moderated the 75 minute discussion, which did not include a question and answer session with the audience, asked Pelosi to analyze a recent Rasmussen poll that found nine percent of voters dpolled believed Congress was doing a good job, far lower than President Bush's overall approval rating.
• According to the results of the July poll, 72 percent of voters believe Congress is more interested in furthering their own political careers.
• Fourteen percent believe members of Congress are genuinely interested in helping people.

• Pelosi responded to the statistics by defending her performance and the performance of her Democratic colleagues in Congress.

  "I preside over the greatest collection of integrity and idealism," Pelosi said.

  • lol..lol..lol...ROFLMAO!!!!!!!
• Prior to her appearance in West Los Angeles Monday evening, CNN’s Larry King interviewed Pelosi. She told King she was willing to drop her staunch opposition to offshore drilling and would likely allow the House to vote on the issue.
• She said, in her opinion, the reason behind Congress’s historically low approval rating was largely due to the fact that Democrats could not muster up the votes to end the Iraq war, which the Democratic Speaker from San Francisco said she could not do much about because of the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in both Houses.
• Wexler, however, continued to press Pelosi to elaborate on her response given that the Rasmussen poll suggested that a wide-range of issues beyond the Iraq war was responsible for Congress’s single-digit approval.
• Pelosi, visibly flustered, said she was well aware that “much more work needs to be done.”
• In November 2006, Pelosi explained the significance behind the record voter turnout that helped shift the balance of power in Washington for the first time in 12 years.
  
  “People voted for change and they voted for Democrats who will take our country in a new direction,” Pelosi said during a victory speech in San Francisco on Nov. 8, 2006.
• But Pelosi, who became House Speaker, never managed to exact the change she promised.
• She explained that she and her colleagues tried vigorously to pass legislation to end the war in Iraq.

  • NOT!!!!!!!
• "The public doesn’t want to know about process and 60 votes, they want outcomes, they want results," Pelosi said, explaining why Democrats could not end the war as promised prior to the midterm 2006 elections.

  • Yeah..real class act...Blame the American voters who put you and the rest of the pig shit into Congress.
• But Pelosi’s comments appeared disingenuous to many, since she was largely responsible for crafting an appropriations bill in backroom discussions with House Democratic leaders, passed in June, and then worked secretly with the White House budget director offering up concessions on Iraq war benchmarks if Bush would agree to the domestic spending attached to the final bill with little debate preceding a vote on the measure.

  • FACT # 1
• In fact, since the electoral victories in November 2006, the Democratic-controlled Congress has approved more than $300 billion in emergency spending bills for Iraq and Afghanistan without the benchmarks or withdrawal timetables that Pelosi and other leaders said they would demand.

  • FACT # 2
• When Pelosi launched into the reasons an administration led by presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain would be dangerous for the country, identifying the candidate's support for an endless war in Iraq and his intention to uphold many of the questionable constitutional interpretations relating to torture and civil liberties during the Bush administration, Pelosi said the only way to "dig our way out" is by electing Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
• “Whether it’s the deficit or the challenges to the constitution we have to dig our way out,” Pelosi said, adding “this election is like death for life on this planet as we know it today."
• Her response led Peter Thottam, founder of the LA Impeachment Center, to demand Pelosi "do her job" and pursue impeachment hearings against President Bush for launching a war on false pretenses.
• "Who gave you the right to take the constitution and shove it down the toilet? Who gave you the right to take impeachment off the table? Nobody told them to do this,” Thottam shouted at Pelosi moments before Secret Service agents removed him from the packed auditorium and turned him over to officers with the Los Angeles Police Department.

  • Yes..."free speech" within the United States these days. "Ain't" it wonderful?!
• “One million Iraqis are dead. Five thousand Americans are dead. You have destroyed the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments."
• Pelosi seemed stunned by the outburst, but the way she addressed Thottam’s charges further fanned the flames and led to additional verbal protests over her decision not to hold the administration accountable for what many individuals in the audience believe are High Crimes and Misdemeanors by President Bush.
• When a member of the activist group Code Pink stood up and insisted Pelosi brush up on her reading regarding evidence of the Bush administration's long list of alleged constitutional violations, Pelosi reacted angrily.
• "I take an oath of office to uphold the constitution of the United States and don't tell me that I don't do that,” Pelosi said, using hand gestures to emphasize her disdain over the impeachment demands. "Why don't you go picket the Republicans in Congress that will not allow us to have a vote on the war. This is not very effective. Not very effective."
• "As Speaker of the house, the third highest office, first is the president, then vice president, and then Speaker, I take my responsibilities deadly seriously,” Pelosi said. “I try to promote bipartisanship but that's not what the other side wants."

  • Would she like some "cheese" with her "whine?"
• Before Election 2006, Pelosi declared impeachment “off the table,” in part, to avoid alarming centrist voters. Now, with Democrats hoping to gain additional seats in Election 2008, a similar political calculation applies, fearing a backlash against a last-minute drive to impeach Bush and Cheney.
• Bush knows that Pelosi long ago rejected impeachment proceedings, the one instrument included in the Constitution for Congress to wield against a President who has abused his powers.
• Pelosi's refusal to consider impeachment hearings or cut off funding for the Iraq war prompted antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan last year to launch a campaign for Pelosi's congressional seat.
• On Monday, San Francisco election officials said Sheehan has obtained enough registered voters on her petitions to be placed on the November ballot. Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, is running as an Independent.
• At the conclusion of Monday evening’s presentation, Pelosi signed books but refused to answer questions about her policy decisions.
• The Public Record asked Pelosi whether she would authorize the full House to vote on contempt charges against former White House political adviser Karl Rove, who has refused to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify about his role in the alleged political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat.
• Immediately following his query to Pelosi, The Public Record's Alan Breslauer was grabbed by Secret Service and dragged away from the table where Pelosi was signing copies of her book.

  • More Fascist goons to tamp down protest and to deliver the "Elite" from having to give an account for their subversions.
• The Speaker did respond to Breslauer's question, however, saying a vote on contempt charges against Rove is "up to [House Judiciary Committee Chairman John] Conyers."

  • Passing the buck....

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• Twilight Of The Psychopaths
• By Dr. Kevin Barrett 

  8-21-8
• "Our society is run by insane people  for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal  ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that.  That's what's insane about it." ­ John Lennon, before his murder  by CIA mind-control subject Mark David Chapman
• When Gandhi was asked his opinion of Western civilization  he said it would be a good idea.
• But that oft-cited quote, is misleading,  assuming as it does that civilization is an unmitigated blessing.
• Civilized people, we are told, live peacefully and cooperatively  with their fellows, sharing the necessary labour in order to obtain the  leisure to develop arts and sciences.
• And while that would be a good   idea, it is not a good description of what has been going on in the so-called  advanced cultures during the past 8,000 years.
• Civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation  of psychopaths.

  • And what is at the root of this mental disorder? Man's fallen nature that at the core does not really wish to get along with neighbors as much as mankind, collectively and individually, wants to dominate rather than cooperate.
• All civilizations, our own included, have been based on  slavery and "warfare." Incidentally, the latter term is a euphemism  for mass murder.
• The prevailing recipe for civilization is simple: 

    

  1) Use lies and brainwashing to create an army of controlled,  systematic mass murderers; 

    

  2) Use that army to enslave large numbers of people (i.e.  seize control of their labour power and its fruits); 

    

  3) Use that slave labour power to improve the brainwashing  process (by using the economic surplus to employ scribes, priests, and  PR men). Then go back to step one and repeat the process.
• Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the  development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill,  injure, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without  feeling any remorse.

  • "You are the sons of your father, the Devil. He was a murderer from the beginning..."...Jesus: The Gospels
• The inventor of civilization - the first tribal chieftain  who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers- was  almost certainly a genetic psychopath.

  • Nimrod...
• Since that momentous discovery,  psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non- psychopaths  in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies - especially military  hierarchies.
• The 5% or so of human males who feel no remorse about killing  their fellow human beings make the best soldiers.
• Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic  killers.
• And the 95% who are  extremely reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers -
• unless they are   brainwashed with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them  (temporarily it is hoped) into functional psychopaths.

  • With a horrendous personal toll afterward...
• In On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has re-written  military history, to highlight what other histories hide: The fact that  military science is less about strategy and technology, than about overcoming  the instinctive human reluctance to kill members of our own species.
• The  true "Revolution in Military Affairs" was not Donald Rumsfeld's  move to high-tech in 2001, but Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall's discovery  in the 1940s that only 15-20% of World War II soldiers along the line  of fire would use their weapons:
• "Those (80-85%) who did not fire  did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger  to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply  would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated  waves of banzai charges" (Grossman, p. 4).
• Marshall's discovery and subsequent research, proved  that in all previous wars, a tiny minority of soldiers - the 5% who are  natural- born psychopaths, and perhaps a few temporarily-insane imitators-did  almost all the killing.
• Normal men just went through the motions and,  if at all possible, refused to take the life of an enemy soldier, even  if that meant giving up their own.
• The implication: Wars are ritualized  mass murders by psychopaths of non-psychopaths. (This cannot be good for  humanity's genetic endowment!)
• Marshall's work, brought a Copernican revolution to military  science.
• In the past, everyone believed that the soldier willing to kill  for his country was the (heroic) norm, while one who refused to fight  was a (cowardly) aberration.
• The truth, as it turned out, was that the  normative soldier hailed from the psychopathic five percent. The sane  majority, would rather die than fight.
• The implication, too frightening for even the likes of  Marshall and Grossman to fully digest, was that the norms for soldiers'  behaviour in battle had been set by psychopaths.
• That meant that psychopaths  were in control of the military as an institution. Worse, it meant that  psychopaths were in control of society's perception of military affairs.
• Evidently, psychopaths exercised an enormous amount of power in seemingly  sane, normal society.
• How could that be? In Political Ponerology, Andrzej Lobaczewski  explains that clinical psychopaths enjoy advantages even in non- violent  competitions to climb the ranks of social hierarchies.
• Because they can  lie without remorse (and without the telltale physiological stress that  is measured by lie detector tests) psychopaths can always say whatever  is necessary to get what they want.
• In court, for example, psychopaths  can tell extreme bald-faced lies in a plausible manner, while their sane  opponents are handicapped by an emotional predisposition to remain within  hailing distance of the truth.
• Too often, the judge or jury imagines that  the truth must be somewhere in the middle, and then issues decisions that  benefit the psychopath.
• As with judges and juries, so too with those   charged with decisions concerning who to promote and who not to promote  in corporate, military and governmental hierarchies. The result is that  all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths.

  • True..I have seen this in operation.
• So-called conspiracy theorists, some of whom deserve  the pejorative connotation of that much-abused term, often imagine that  secret societies of Jews, Jesuits, bankers, communists, Bilderbergers,  Muslim extremists, papists, and so on, are secretly controlling history,  doing dastardly deeds, and/or threatening to take over the world.
• As a  leading "conspiracy theorist" according to Wikipedia, I feel  eminently qualified to offer an alternative conspiracy theory which, like  the alternative conspiracy theory of 9/11, is both simpler and more accurate  than the prevailing wisdom:
• The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy  of the psychopaths against the rest of us.

  • This does not prove there is not a conspiracy of a group seeking to rule the world at the expense of the majority. It does reinforce these conspiracy theories in that: to band together in order to subvert the freedoms, welfare and well being of one's fellows, requires a psychopathic mind.
• Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history,  is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate  power.
• And as that power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths   grow ever-more-desperate.

  • Bush and Putin; Russia and USA as two examples
• We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld-the  criminal syndicate or overlapping set of syndicates that lurks above ordinary  society and law just as the underworld lurks below it.
• In 9/11 and the  9/11 wars, we are seeing the final desperate power-grab or "endgame"  (Alex Jones) of brutal, cunning gangs of CIA drug-runners and President-killers;
• money-laundering international bankers and their hit-men, economic and  otherwise;
• corrupt military contractors and gung-ho generals; corporate  predators and their political enablers;
• brainwashers and mind-rapists  euphemistically known as psy-ops experts and PR specialists-
• in short,  the whole sick crew of certifiable psychopaths running our so- called civilization.

  • The Bible states that as human history rushes toward that sunset horizon, "evil men will grow worse and worse..."
• And they are running scared. It was their terror of losing control that  they projected onto the rest of us by blowing up the Twin Towers and inciting  temporary psychopathic terror-rage in the American public.
• Because  it is threatened by the spread of knowledge.
• Why does the pathocracy fear it is losing control?
• The greatest fear of any  psychopath is of being found out.
• As George H. W. Bush said to journalist  Sarah McClendon, December 1992, "If the people knew what we had done,  they would chase us down the street and lynch us."
• Given that Bush  is reported to have participated in parties where child prostitutes were  sodomized and otherwise abused, among his many other crimes, his statement  to McClendon should be taken seriously.
• Psychopaths go through life knowing that they are completely  different from other people. They quickly learn to hide their lack of  empathy, while carefully studying others' emotions so as to mimic normalcy  while cold-bloodedly manipulating the normals.
• Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are  on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization  of, by and for the normal human being -
• a civilization without war, a  civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather  than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power.

  • I do not share in this vision. Things are going to have to get a lot worse before mankind is ready to change it's ways.
• We already  have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and  keep them out of power. We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the  institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish - militaries, intelligence  agencies, large corporations, and secret societies.
• We simply need to  disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely as possible.
• Above all, we need to inform the public about how psychopaths  co-opt and corrupt normal human beings.
• One way they do this, is by manipulating  shame and denial - emotions foreign to psychopaths but common and easily-induced  among normals.
• Consider how gangs and secret societies (psychopaths'  guilds in disguise) recruit new members.
• Some criminal gangs and satanist  covens demand that candidates for admission commit a murder to "earn  their stripes."
• Skull and Bones, the Yale-based secret society that  supplies the CIA with drug-runners, mind-rapists, child abusers and professional  killers, requires neophytes to lie naked in a coffin and masturbate in  front of older members while reciting the candidate's entire sexual history.
• By forcing the neophyte to engage in ritualized behaviour that would be  horrendously shameful in normal society, the psychopaths' guild destroys  the candidate's normal personality, assuming he had one in the first place,  and turns the individual into a co-opted, corrupt, degraded shadow of  his former self - a manufactured psychopath or psychopath's apprentice.
• This manipulation of shame has the added benefit of making  psychopathic organizations effectively invisible to normal society.
• Despite  easily available media reports, American voters in 2004 simply refused  to see that the two major-party presidential candidates had lain naked  in a coffin masturbating in front of older Bonesmen in order to gain admission  to Skull and Bones and thus become members of the criminal overworld.
• Likewise, many Americans have long refused to see that hawkish elements  of the overworld, operating through the CIA, had obviously been the murderers  of JFK, MLK, RFK, JFK Jr., Malcolm X, ChÈ, AllendÈ, Wellstone,  Lumumba, Aguilera, Diem, and countless other relatively non-psychopathic  leaders.
• They refuse to see the continuing murders of millions of people  around the world in what amounts to an American holocaust.
• They refuse  to see the evidence that the psychopaths' guilds running America's most  powerful institutions use the most horrific forms of sexualized abuse  imaginable to induce multiple-personality-disorder in child victims, then  use the resulting mind-control slaves as disposable drug-runners, prostitutes,  Manchurian candidates, and even diplomatic envoys.
• And of course they  refuse to see that 9/11 was a transparently obvious inside job, and that  their own psychopath- dominated military-intelligence apparatus is behind  almost every major terrorist outrage of recent decades.
• All of this psychopathic behaviour at the top of the  social hierarchy is simply too shameful for ordinary people to see, so  they avert their gaze, just as wives of husbands who are sexually abusing  their children sometimes refuse to see what is happening in plain view.
• If deep, deep denial were a river in Egypt, American citizens' wilful  blindness would be more like the Marianas Trench.
• The only obvious non-psychopath among Republican presidential  candidates, Ron Paul, also happens to be the only candidate in either  party with significant grassroots support.
• But thanks to the power of the internet, people everywhere  are waking up.
• If "love" is embedded in the Revolution Ron  Paul heralds, that is because Dr. Paul - a kindly, soft-spoken physician  who has delivered more than 4,000 babies - implicitly recognizes that  government is the invention and tool of psychopaths, and therefore must  be strictly limited in scope and subjected to a rigorous system of checks  and balances, lest the psychopath's tools, fear and hatred, replace love  as the glue that binds society together.
• The decline in militarism since World War II in advanced  countries, the spread of literacy and communications technology, and the  people's growing demands for a better life, together represent a gathering  force that terrifies the pathocracy, (those alternately competing-then-cooperating  gangs of psychopaths who have ruled through lies, fear and intimidation  since the dawn of so-called civilization).
• Since nuclear weapons have made war obsolete, the pathocracy  is terrified that its favourite social control mechanism - ritualized  mass slaughter - is increasingly unavailable.
• And if war was the great  human tragedy, the pathocrats' pathetic attempt at a war- substitute -  the transparently phoney "war on terror" - is repeating it as  sheerest farce.
• Whether in their death throes they succeed in pulling down the curtain  of eternal night on all of us, or whether we resist them and survive to  see the dawn of a civilization worthy of the name, is the great decision  in which all of us others, however humbly, are now participating.
• Truly, we are witnessing the twilight of the psychopaths.

  • I must dissagree. I think we have seen only the beginning.
• About the writer: 

    

  Dr. Kevin Barrett, co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish  Alliance for 9/11 Truth, LINK, has taught English, French, Arabic, American  Civilization, Humanities, African Literature, Folklore, and Islam at   colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay area, Paris, and Madison,  Wisconsin.
• Barrett became a 9/11 truth activist in 2004 after reading  David Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor and conducting follow-up research  that convinced him Griffin had accurately summarized evidence indicating  9/11 was an inside job.
• In the summer of 2006, Republican state legislators and  Fox newscasters demanded that Barrett be fired from his job teaching an  introductory Islam class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but   the University refused to buckle, and Barrett got high marks from his   students.
• He has appeared in several documentary films, lectures widely  on 9/11 and hosts three radio programs on three different patriot networks.

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• War Protesters Confront Griff Jenkins

• Anti-War Protesters Meance Intrepid Fox News Reporter!

• Headlined on 8/25/08:
  Cindy Sheehan Bugged in Denver

   

  by Rob Kall     Page 2 of 2 page(s)
• So many people are waking up and starting to realize that there is very little difference in the leadership of the two parties.
• So many people with Obama shirts and pins have come up to me and told me that they're 100% on my side and they're very distressed with the right turn of the Obama campaign and the democratic party and they're hoping that demonstrations that we were at earlier, and that will be happening all week, will bring their party to where they think it should be.
• Meanwhile, Cindy's hotel room phone is in the hotel room refrigerator.

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• Headlined on 8/25/08:
• Cindy Sheehan Bugged in Denver
• by Rob Kall     Page 1 of 2 page(s)
• Cindy Sheehan returned to her Denver hotel room today to find the door unlocked and ajar. She walked in to discover a man working on her phone, screw driver in hand.
• Sheehan reported, in an email,
• "As I walked toward my room, I noticed that the door was opened with the security bolt blocking the complete closing of the door. I knew immediately that I had not left the door open, and I double checked to make sure it was the right room because, as a frequent traveler, I have been known to forget my room number, but it was the right room.
• I was upset at first thinking that housekeeping had made a mistake and left my room open and I was worried that something might be missing.
• So I walked into my room and bigger than life, there was a man standing by my desk holding the room phone with a screwdriver in his hand!
• I immediately said; "What the hell are you doing? Are you putting a bug on my phone?"
• He looked like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and stammered out: "N--no, we are having problems with the phone."
• I told him to get out of my room because my phone was fine and I called the front desk and the person at the front desk stammered something out about "problems" with some of the phones.
• This room was reserved soon after we got to Denver last night because the room we had was inadequate for 3 people. The room was reserved under my campaign manager's name with a CFC debit card.
• By the time we left for the march, it could have very well been ascertained that I was the one in this room, and the room we did reserve could be bugged, also. I am confident that that's what was happening when I walked in on the "maintenance" man"
• You don't come in the room with a screwdriver if there are problems with the hotel phones. You do it electronically, through the system or you hook up a new phone.
• She said to me, "How many hotel rooms have I been in the past four years? It was so obvious."
• I asked, "Do you think it was Pelosi's people?" since Sheehan is running against Pelosi, for her congressional seat.
  
   She replied, "Of course, I don't know."
• I asked, "Have there been any other episodes that would make you believe this kind of action is being taken against you?"

• She replied,

   

  "Not since I've been running for congress, but there were several times when I was in Crawford, or protesting in D.C., when I felt like we were being surveiled. And actually, in Washington D.C., for a period of time, they would just blatantly follow me, and I would just invite them to come in and have coffee with me.
• Whenever I was in D.C., whose ever jurisdiction it was, I'd have either the Metro police, the Capitol Hill police or the Park police right on me. Sometimes they were in uniform and sometimes they were plainclothes. But they were very obvious.
• Asked how her campaign is going, Sheehan replied,
• "I believe the momentum is definitely on our side, especially the last couple weeks, with our signature drive.
• The department of elections started to mess with our signatures and say that so many were in-valid, when we knew for a fact that they were valid, because I was checking them myself, on the computer.
• We've had ten of thousands of dollars come into the campaign since then and we really have a comfortable amount of money to get our message out-- the message that our country is in deep trouble and Nancy is definitely not the solution. She's part of the problem.
• And we're going to educate the people of San Francisco about this using alternative forms of media and convince them that I am the alternative-- that I will work to be the voice of the people of San Francisco. And that's something that she has not ever been. I think there is a lot of positive excitement and momentum. Her book tour didn't help her out any.

• Asked about her goals for Denver, she described,

   

  "after protesting the Republicans for so many years, the Democrats have been moving steadily to the right. We want to show that we're not okay with that, that we want to bring the party closer to the people and further from the corporate lobbyists.

23 more annotations...

• JOSEPH   BIDEN: LIAR, CHEAT, TRAITOR

• By:   Devvy
    August 25, 2008

   

  ©   2008 - NewsWithViews.com
• Back   on December 18, 2006, I wrote a column on   Joseph Biden's decision to once again run for president.
• Biden has now   been tapped as Marxist Barack Hussein Obama's choice for vice-president.
• One columnist wrote this was akin to a Watergate suicide.
• Biden was   dropped like a hot potato by the DNC in 1998 when he ran for president   because Biden was exposed as a liar and cheat, although now it seems   to be a qualifier for both the Democrat and Republican parties.
• I'm   not a Republican and I would never vote a despicable person like Juan   McCain.
• Like Obama, Biden plagiarized someone else's speech. Biden also   plagiarized in law school; NY   Times article back in 1987.
• Some   boob tube pundits have remarked that Joseph Biden is a "cultural   Catholic." A what? There is no such thing as a cultural Catholic.   You either follow Church doctrine or you're a heretic.
• Biden believes   Roe v Wade should stand, but   believes life begins at conception. So, while Biden believes a baby   is a human life at conception, he believes it's okay that nine men on   the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it's legal to kill that human life.
• Biden   believes that sodomite and lesbian marriages are inevitable, but doesn't   support them. However, he is considered to be pro sexual deviants and   their causes.
• (Voted   yes to expand unconstitutional hate crime laws to 'sexual orientation.')
• The Catholic Church forbids abortion and the abomination of sodomy and   lesbian sex. Clearly, while professing to be a 'practicing Catholic,'   Biden has cherry picked which of God's laws and the Church he will uphold.
• One   has to wonder why Obama would pick someone not close to his own beliefs   on these issues. Obama supports sexual deviants and partial birth abortion.   Read how a baby is murdered in graphic detail   during a partial birth abortion procedure; it's called infanticide.
• Obama's much bally-hooed accomplishments are so blown out of proportion   it's pathetic.
• His one and only piece for the Harvard Law Review was   his zealous support of   unlimited abortion: "In a discussion of abortion itself, Obama   wrote that government has more important business than "ensuring   that any particular fetus is born."
• That's just the tip of Obama's   black heart:
• "Mr.   Obama   had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, "All praise   and glory to God!" but says that Christian leaders speaking for   life and marriage have "hijacked" — hijacked —   Christianity.
• He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint   Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional.
• He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early   advocates of racial cleansing."
• In   the interview cited above, Biden also makes this statement which I pointed   out in my December 18, 2006, column cited above: "Well, I was 29   years old when I came to the US Senate." It's also in his official   bio here: "Joe Biden has represented the state of Delaware   in the United States Senate since 1972, when he was elected at the age   of twenty-nine."
• Wait   one minute. Art. 1, Sec. 3, says: "No person shall be a Senator   who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years....."
• The   fraudulent ratification of the Seventeenth   Amendment did not change the age requirement in the U.S. Constitution.   How did he get "elected" to office when he clearly did not   meet the age requirement? In his own words, Biden says he was elected   at age 29, not 30.
• Joseph   Biden is also a traitor.
• I don't use that word lightly, but Biden has   clearly shown by his own words and actions over the decades that he   is for a one world government: a one world banking system, one world   religion (new age), one military force, world regional government.
• Joseph   Biden by his own words and actions has been a participant in bringing   these united States of America into a one world order and for that,   he is a traitor:
• His   full speech is here and every American should read Biden's run off   his mouth about the "military dimension of America's new world   order agenda."
• How he goes on about how we must look to the 'vision'   of Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman in laying the groundwork for a new   world order and "complete the task."
• Wilson signed the unconstitutional   Federal Reserve Act, December 23, 1913.
• As for Truman, I believe this   sums it up: "When Franklin Roosevelt died during the closing days   of WWII, it fell to Truman to end the war and formulate policies for   the new world order." The Smithsonian Treasury: The Presidents   (1991), pg 72
• In   the fourth section of Biden's blather, he runs off about "creating"   an environmental revolution.
• Yes, that's exactly what global warming   and this whole greenie garbage is all about: creating a movement to   siphon off the wealth of the American people using scientifically flawed   propaganda:
• "In   searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that   pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and   the like would fit the bill ... All these dangers are caused by human   intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour   that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself."   Alexander King, Bertrand Schneider - founder and secretary, respectively,   of the Club of Rome - The First Global Revolution, pp.104-105. Published   1991.
• How timely since the mass gathering of hysterical greenie guru's   was at the "Earth Summit," held in Rio in June, 1992.
• "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the   theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right   thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy." –   Tim Wirth, former member of Congress, U.S. Under Secretary of State   for Global Affairs.

• 

   

  
    At   the Fifth Congress in Moscow, 'The Program,' was drafted and agreed   upon by the International Communist dictators.
• It was agreed that an   environmental "crisis" would be gradually developed to siphon   off the money from capitalism and reduce countries to socialism and   eventually under communism.
• I refer readers back   to this column and the book by Gus Hall, head of the Communist Party   USA for decades: Ecology, Can we survive under capitalism?   published in 1972.
• I   caught a 'few man on the street' comments on the tube: Does Obama's   choice for VP affect your vote for him? Three said no, they would vote   for Obama no matter who he chose. It should. The vice president is only   one heart beat away from the presidency.
• Joseph Biden is dangerous to   your wallet, private property ownership and your guns.

• A   true champion for decades of the Second Amendment, Bernadine Smith   puts it this way:

   

  "I   hope everybody knows that Obama is anti-gun. And so is Senator Joe Biden   (Democrat - Delaware) his chosen V.P.
• Biden is in support of General   and Complete Disarmament - Public Law 87-297. P.L.87-297, a (so-called)   "law" isn't just for nuclear disarmament. It is for general   and complete disarmament of our nation and all citizens, and giving   our armed forces to the United Nations on a permanent basis!
• No nation   ever did, nor ever can, retain its freedom and liberty once it gives   up its armed forces, and armed citizenry.
• Biden and Obama will get along   like two peas in a pod. McCain will be no different, though! He will   do exactly the same. All three will be programmed, tasked, and scheduled   just like the others!"
• The United States hasn't a   chance with these two guys at the helm.
• I   wonder how Biden feels about Obama joining his friend, Louis Farrakhan,   at the "million man march"?
• Louis   Farrakhan, who has openly endorsed Obama, says with utter   scorn on this video: "..a black man born of a white mother   could lift America...." That also sums it   up for Obama: "He (Obama) cherishes every cause for complaint   he can discern against white folks. He is constantly distressed at being   half-white. Obama says he “ceased to advertise my mother's race   at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing   so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”
• Obama   can't stop Farrakhan from endorsing him, but if he finds Farrakhan's   comments repugnant, why attend one of his functions? I guess he also   knew nothing about his church giving Farrakhan a lifetime achievement   award for his "greatness":
• "Russert   persisted, stating, "The title of one of your books, Audacity   of Hope [Crown, 2006], you acknowledge you got from a sermon from   Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the head of the Trinity United Church.
• He   said that Louis Farrakhan 'epitomizes greatness,' " before asking   Obama, "What do you do to assure Jewish Americans that, whether   it's Farrakhan's support or the activities of Reverend Jeremiah Wright,   your pastor, you are consistent with issues regarding Israel   and not in any way suggesting that Farrakhan epitomizes greatness?"
• Trumpet Newsmagazine, a publication founded by Chicago's Trinity   United Church of Christ, where Obama is a parishioner and Wright was   a minister, awarded Farrakhan the "Lifetime Achievement 'Dr. Jeremiah   A. Wright, Jr. Trumpeter Award' " in 2007.
• Washington Post columnist   Richard Cohen reported that Trumpet said Farrakhan "truly epitomized   greatness."
• I   wonder if the late Tim Russert was more concerned about Farrakhan's   bigotry or that Obama will be "consistent with issues regarding   Israel"?
• In any event, Obama finally denounced Farrakan and his   statements. It's all just a big misunderstanding. Just like he was never   in church during one of Wright's digusting tirades over a twenty year   period. Obama knew nothing about it, doesn't approve of it.
• Poor misunderstood   Barack Hussein Obama with his Harvard law degree.
• Just last year, Biden   said this in an interview with George Stephanopoulos: "You were   asked, “Is he ready?” You said, “I think he can be   ready, but right now I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something   that lends itself to on-the-job-training.”
• Additionally,   it's not like Biden holds Obama in high regard.
• Biden: "I think   that — I stand by the statement."
• Boy, in Biden's eyes, Obama,   sure got "ready" in a hurry! Scratch my head, but these two   don't seem to be very   compatible on the Iraq war issue, either.
• In   case you missed it, Phil Berg, who I met and spoke with for a while   at a conference in Phoenix back in February, 2007, filed a lawsuit in   Federal District court last week to stop Obama from running based on   citizenship requirements.
• Phil also brings up Obama's failure   to admit on his Illinois Bar application his many aliases: Barack   Hussein Obama; Barry Soetoro; Barry Obama; Barack Dunham; and Barry   Dunham.
• Lest people think Berg is some bug-eyed Kool Aid drinker like   Bill O'Reilly, this is part of his bio: Philip J. Berg, Esquire; former   Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania; former candidate for Governor   and U.S. Senate in Democratic Primaries; former Chair of the Democratic   Party in Montgomery County; former member of Democratic State Committee;   an attorney with offices in Montgomery County, PA"
• You   can read   Phil's statement to the press here. It's my understanding that on   August 22, 2008, the judge ruled against Phil in getting a TRO (Temporary   Restraining Order), but has left the matter open for hearing after   Obama, the DNC and FEC (Federal Election Commission) have been served.
• WorldNetDaily.com ran   a piece over the weekend stating that some of the claims have been   discredited. Where's the "mainstream media?" This is news   of great importance because it's a valid constitutional issue.
• We'll   see how this plays out and if there's any fire attached to the smoke.   I believe there is because, based on my own on-site investigation and   tracking down the birth certificate, I believe 100% that U.S. Rep. Loretta   Sanchez, is an illegal alien.
• If providing a phony birth certificate   can be done to protect Sanchez (who allegedly unseated Congressman Bob   Dornan), the powers that be who want Obama in the White House so bad,   will move mountains to keep him as their chosen "messiah"   for the gullible masses.
• Why   would Obama saddle himself with such a rich target as Joe Biden?
• Surely,   not a quid pro quo? An interesting observation from a web site with   a kooky name, but   is always spot on, brings forth perhaps the reason why Obama chose   Biden.
• In order to understand this, you have to get some history. Please   see my column here, scroll down to the paragraph   which begins: Next up: Barrack Hussein Obama.
• What   we have is a man, Larry Sinclair, with a very troubled background (which   he has acknowledged in full), accusing Obama of doing drugs and having   oral sex with him; see here   and here.
• Sinclair   has made quite a bit of noise about this all year and has battled for   months with Obama's henchmen. The retaliation against Sinclair has been   vicious.
• While in Washington, DC, explaining to the media who did show   up about his relations with Obama and the proof he's been gathering   (limo, phone records, hotel records, etc), he's arrested for a misdemeanor   in Delaware!
• The State of Delaware is so interested in getting a disabled   man on a misdemeanor charge, they spend the taxpayers hard earned money   to have him arrested in Washington, DC!
• Can anyone deny this is to shut   Sinclair up if you've followed this story?
• The interesting part is guess   who is the Attorney General for the State of Delaware? Joseph Robinette   "Beau" Biden III. Son of guess who? U.S. Senator and now VP   candidate, Joseph Biden.
• I'm   sure this is just some strange coincidence and that Obama picked Biden   solely because of his experience and integrity.
• And, I'll bet Marxist   Hillary Clinton is just salivating while waiting; her campaign is on   legal "suspended" status.
• If you don't think Clinton and her   gutter thug operatives don't know what's going on with the Obama/Sinclair   scandal, think again.

76 more annotations...

• ABC Reporter Arrested in Denver Taking Pictures of Senators, Big Donors
• Asa Eslocker Was Investigating the Role of Lobbyists and Top Donors at the Convention
• By BRIAN ROSS
  Aug. 27, 2008
• DENVER -- Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.
• Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.
• A cigar-smoking Denver police sergeant, accompanied by a team of five other officers, first put his hands on Eslocker's neck, then twisted the producer's arm behind him to put on handcuffs.
• 

  Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he was attempting to take pictures of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.

  (ABC News
• A police official later told lawyers for ABC News that Eslocker is being charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order. He also said the arrest followed a signed complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel.
• Eslocker was put in handcuffs and loaded in the back of a police van which headed for a nearby police station.
• Video taken at the scene shows a man, wearing the uniform of a Boulder County sheriff, ordering Eslocker off the sidewalk in front of the hotel, to the side of the entrance.
• The sheriff's officer is seen telling Eslocker the sidewalk is owned by the hotel. Later, he is seen pushing Eslocker off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, forcing him to the other side of the street.
• It was two hours later when Denver police arrived to place Eslocker under arrest, apparently based on a complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel, a central location for Democratic officials.
• During the arrest, one of the officers can be heard saying to Eslocker, "You're lucky I didn't knock the f..k out of you."
• Eslocker was released late today after posting $500 bond.
• Eslocker and his ABC News colleagues are spending the week investigating the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention for a series of Money Trail reports on ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson."

13 more annotations...

• Biden, Obama and The Blood-Dimmed Tide
• Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque
• Thursday, 28 August 2008
• Only once, briefly, did I find myself in a room where CNN was blaring on a tiny television set. As it happened, it was the exact moment when Joe Biden was being anointed as Barack Obama's running mate.
• It was a live feed: Biden was at the podium, giving a strangely stilted speech in a fake Southern accent. (Perhaps he was trying to channel Bill Clinton -- or maybe Sam Nunn.)
• leeves rolled up, in that classic pose of political hackery: a man ready to "go to work for the American people."
• (Obama, looking on rather distractedly from the side, was dressed in the same way).
  
• I'll admit that I was somewhat surprised that Biden was the pick. Even before my exit from the echo chamber, I had been studiously ignoring the fevered speculations and fine-toothed combing that attended every burp and belch from the Obama camp leading up to the great announcement.
• It was obvious that Obama would continue his Dukakis-come-lately strategy and pick some safe, white pair of man-hands covered in Beltway hoar.
• And I had noted that he had dispatched Biden to Georgia during the late unpleasantness there. (To do what exactly was unclear, unless it was to assure Mikhail Saakashvili that the flow of arms from America's war-profiteers would keep flowing under an Obama administration,
• But still, in the few nano-seconds that I thought about it, I assumed that Obama was just using Biden to build up some foreign policy cred with the media-think tank crowd -- the only people stupid enough to believe that Joe Biden is some kind of foreign policy expert.
  
• Yet there he was, Old Joe Biden, hawing and barking behind the rostrum, just one step away from being one heartbeat away from being the President of the United States.
• I let Biden's outpouring of clichés -- clunkers so worn down with over-use that they hardly qualified as actual communication -- slide away without much notice...until he began to tell about his own background. Then my gorge began to rise.
• Biden talked of a roughhewn upbringing among honest, hard-pressed working folk. Yes, this prince of the Senate -- 36 years of feeding at the public trough, of being wined and dined and coddled and bankrolled by some of the most powerful interests in the land -- dared hold himself out as a champion of the common people.
• This would be the same Joe Biden who spent year after year relentlessly pushing the creation of what I once called "the nuclear bomb of class warfare": the Bankruptcy Bill, which put a stranglehold on millions of Americans -- the weakest, the poorest, the sickest, the unlucky, the ripped-off, the young couples just starting out, the old people trying to hang on.
• Biden poured filth on them, he joined his campaign paymasters -- the hoggish credit-card conglomerates -- and his ideological soul-mates on the Republican side to drop this bomb on the hard-pressed working folk he was now claiming to roll up his shirt sleeves and go to work for.
• He was turned back many times (I first wrote about the bill back in 2002), but at last he locked arms with George W. Bush -- his partner in "financial services industry" grease -- got the bill passed in 2005.

• Arianna Huffington described Biden's bomb succinctly at the time, in a post quoted this week by Jackson Williams:
  
  

  So what does the bill do? It makes it harder for average people to file for bankruptcy protection; it makes it easier for landlords to evict a bankrupt tenant; it endangers child-support payments by giving a wider array of creditors a shot at post-bankruptcy income; it allows millionaires to shield an unlimited amount of equity in homes and asset-protection trusts; it makes it more difficult for small businesses to reorganize while opening new loopholes for the Enrons of the world; it allows creditors to provide misleading information; and it does nothing to rein in lending abuses....
• Williams goes on to note:
  
  

  It turns out the average annual income of Americans who file bankruptcy is less than $30K, not the loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires gigging the system that we all heard about when this bill was debated. Also, the vast majority of people who file bankruptcy don't do so to strategically hang on to their mansion on the hill, but because of medical bills, a job layoff, or both. Real people, real lives.
• And as I noted back in 2002, the pre-Biden/Bush bankruptcy laws were no bowl of cherries:
  
  

  In most cases, the existing laws do wipe away some debts, particularly unsecured debt. But it leaves many others on the books, while destroying the debtor's credit rating for years to come, closing the door on dreams of buying a car or house, or engaging in any of the innumerable transactions that now require ID and surety in the form of -- what else? -- a credit card. It's no "easy out;" it's a hard step, a desperate measure, fraught with lingering doubts, agonizing decisions, and irrevocable consequences no matter what you choose--much like abortion, in fact.
• And now it turns out that Biden's son was on the payroll of credit-card behemoth MBNA -- one of the prime movers of the nuclear attack on working people, the poor and the sick -- for years, first as an employee, then as a "consultant," until the bill oozed its way onto Bush's desk to be signed into law.
• (MBNA is not only one of Biden's biggest campaign supporters; it was also the largest single corporate giver to George W. Bush back in 2000, surpassing even the criminal syndicate known as Enron.)
• Nothing demonstrates the reality of Barack Obama's candidacy than his pick of Joe Biden as his running mate:
• Joe Biden voted to give George W. Bush a blank check to wage a war of aggression against Iraq -- a vast, brutal and brutalizing war crime that is inevitably breeding countless smaller war crimes of its own. (One of which is noted here by the New York Times.)
• Joe Biden eagerly voted for the liberty-stripping Patriot Act; indeed, he claims to be its guiding inspiration.
• Joe Biden is eager to prosecute the Terror War, which has already laid waste to three countries (yes, three; just because Obama, Biden, Bush and McCain never mention Somalia doesn't mean that ravaged, unlucky land is not part and parcel of their beloved WOT) and killed more than a million innocent people. Let that last fact sink in for a minute. Let that blood wash over your hands as you sit back with a cold brewski to watch the political conventions and debate fine points of presentation and handicap the "horse race."
• Mountains of the dead, vast pits of the dead, row upon row of the dead, just like the film clips you've seen of the Holocaust, all in the name of the berserker rage -- and the cooly calculated profits and power-games -- of the 'War on Terror' that both Biden and Obama want to wage in a "better" way than Bush has done.
• (And now the UN informs us of 90 more innocents blasted to pieces in Afghanistan -- where Obama, like McCain, has promised to expand the Terror War, with 10,000 or more extra troops, and more bombs, more missiles, more attacks into the nuclear powder keg of Pakistan.)
• And, as noted above, Joe Biden stood shoulder to shoulder with class warlords like Bush and Cheney to punish and ravage and drive down working people and the poor, on behalf of the rich and powerful.
• No one forced Obama to choose such a running mate. No one forced Obama to make the statement of his own values that such a choice proclaims. It is glaringly, painfully apparent that he has no genuine values, beyond a keen ambition for power.
• Last week he was denouncing the Bankruptcy Bill. This week he's defending Biden's role in putting together a satisfactory "compromise" on the atrocity, while excusing the flagrant conflict-of-interest in the employment of Biden's son at MBNA.
• (It is also noteworthy to see how many liberal-progressive "dissident" types are suddenly finding outstanding qualities in Joe Biden, overcoming their various "quibbles" about his record and "evolving" toward a more mature and considered position on his virtues.)

  • Shows exactly what those "Crappers" are really about...
• Sometimes after I write critically of Obama and the Democrats, people ask me: "Well, what are we supposed to do? He's not perfect, they're not perfect, but don't you think McCain would be worse?"
• As it happens, I do think McCain would be "worse" -- but only marginally so, for reasons I've laid out before.
• But what does that matter? These are the wrong questions for a nation swimming, sinking, drowning in the innocent blood shed by its bipartisan war machine. These are the wrong questions for a nation whose politics have become -- literally, with no metaphor or exaggeration -- insane, mired in violence, delusion and self-destruction.
• Whatever happens, whoever wins, there will be more war, more needless death, more mass murder in the name of America.
• Whoever wins, there will be more state-assisted assaults on working people and the poor. There will be more coddling of the rich, more servicing of the powerful, more injustice, more inequality.
• The country is broke -- the bipartisan elite have looted it.

  • Exactly!
• The infrastructure is rotting; communities are dying; the quality of life is deteriorating for millions of people; the socioeconomic system, based on cheap gas and the consumption of a vastly disproportionate amount of the world's resources, is unsustainable --
• but the bipartisan elite won't fix these problems. They won't even address them. They are too busy expanding the frontiers of empire, pushing for new adventures in Pakistan, in Georgia, in Iran, pushing for more war, more bases, more missile sites, more troops.
• Yes, McCain might push a little bit harder and a little bit faster, or in different directions -- but the self-destructive, mass-murdering push will go on.
• Listen to what Obama is actually saying, listen to what Biden is actually saying, look at their records, look at their coterie of advisors. There is nothing but blood and suffering as far as the eye can see.

  • And more than likely in ways Obama's goggle-eyed, slack-jawed worshippers have never imagined.
• And the choice of Joe Biden as a running mate only confirms this grim fate, which, it is now clear, we must bear out even to the edge of doom -- if not beyond.

41 more annotations...

• August 27, 2008
• Foreign Lobbyists and the Making of US Policy
• American politicians are for sale – and so is our foreign   policy
• "Politics stops at the water's edge"   is an old   aphorism that aptly describes the history and current trend of   American politics.
• The period marking the run-up to World War II was   the last   time we saw any meaningful discussion of America's role in the   world.
• Ever since that famous victory, the interventionist consensus   has been bipartisan and broad, at least in elite circles.
• All the   newspaper editors, the TV anchors, the policy wonks, and the   bloggers-of-note agree: we must go global.
• The only other choice is   a debilitating "isolationism,"   economic as well as diplomatic-military, that would consign us to an   autarkic well of loneliness.
• This narrative has dominated the foreign policy discourse lo   these many years and given rise to what other   writers have referred to as "the   imperial presidency," the extra-constitutional bloating of the   executive authority.
• This tendency has been taken   to its ultimate extreme by the   Bush administration, whose legal   theorists impart to the president near-dictatorial   powers in wartime.
• Given what ought to be the GOP's signature slogan – wartime all   the time – the implications for the survival of the republic are   ominous.

  • GOP's true slogan
• However, it was a Democrat – Harry   Truman – who set the fatal   precedent when he called American troops to defend South Korea   without bothering to go to Congress for permission.
• Ever since then   the precedent has not only held, it has gone largely unchallenged.
• Politics may indeed stop at the water's edge, but a president's   authority really begins   there: he is the supreme arbiter of our foreign policy, a virtual dictator in   that vital realm, whereas his authority over domestic policy is not   even remotely comparable.
• This brazen Bonapartism is merely the logical outgrowth of a   foreign policy initially taken up with alacrity by the Democrats:   first, with Woodrow   Wilson at their head, and later on with FDR leading   the charge.
• Both dragged   us into easily avoidable   foreign wars. Both cracked   down on internal   opposition, jailing antiwar   protesters, instituting censorship   via U.S. government control of the mails, and utilizing British and   other undercover agents to neutralize the opposition.
• This latter factor – the role of foreign agents – played a much   greater part than is usually credited to the Brits, whose   underground operation in the U.S. was detailed in Thomas E. Mahl's   classic study, Desperate   Deception: British Covert Operations in the U.S., 1939-44.   (Gore Vidal wrote a wonderful   novel with this subject as background).

  • British agents used to disrupt American antiwar groups and dissent? Perhaps we are not, as some allege, independent of the British "Empire" after all. Some contend the United States is still a "colony" of Great Britain. When one reads items such as this, makes one a believer.
• Setting up an extensive   network among the Anglophile elites who dominated   the U.S. ruling class, especially in the Northeast, British agents   organized a broad array of pro-interventionist front groups,   infiltrated and disrupted antiwar organizations, and were   instrumental in launching a smear campaign against prominent war   opponents.

  • America's historic trouble makers...: the Northeastern Eastablishment.
• Today, the Anglophiles who once governed us have given way to new   elites, who are even less constrained by the traditional limits   imposed on foreign lobbyists by law, custom, and propriety.
• In the   old days, all of this was done covertly, as the subtitle of Mahl's   book puts it, while today American politicians think nothing of   taking foreign money and becoming militant advocates of their   paymasters' cause.

  • Indicative of the character of today's American politician.
• Look at John McCain's relationship   with Randy   Scheunemann, the paid lobbyist for Georgia, who has so many   intimate connections to the military-industrial complex and its   various front groups that he is a kind of one-man War Party all   by himself.
• Scheunemann is McCain's chief foreign policy   adviser, and, given the candidate's full-throated fulminations   against the allegedly revived Russian "threat," the Georgia lobby is   certainly getting its money's worth.
• This lobby's power and influence is not limited to the GOP.
• Although the Republicans have certainly taken up their cause with   inordinate vehemence, the Democrats are far from immune.
• Joe   Biden, before being elevated to co-Messiah status alongside   Barack Obama, had just returned from a quick trip to Tbilisi, where,   with other Democratic leaders, including Rep. Howard Berman of   California, he pledged "solidarity" with the Georgian invaders of   South Ossetia and Abkhazia, egging Georgian President Mikheil   Saakashvili on to further provocations.
• Both Biden and Berman   support Georgia's proposed membership in NATO, a move that would   pledge us – and the Europeans – to ensuring and maintaining   Georgia's "territorial integrity."
• What this means, in reality, is that we are going to go to war   with the nuclear-armed   Russkies over the issue of maintaining national boundaries set by   Joseph Stalin, Georgia's own homeboy –
• with us defending Stalin's   legacy and the Russians eager to break with it.

  • Oddly enough...
• It was Stalin,   after all, who embedded Ossetia and Abkhazia in what he called   "Georgia" – all the better to keep them from getting too uppity for   their own (and the Kremlin's) good.
• The Georgia lobby and the Israel lobby have much in common,   including key supporters and personnel, as well as geopolitical and   economic links.
• Israeli defense companies, which are virtually part   of the Israeli state, armed   the Georgians, and the IDF trained   Georgian troops in preparation for the day they would – as the   mainstream media puts it –"retake"   (i.e., invade and   crush) the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
• Aside from the close relationship between these two U.S. puppets,   both Georgia and Israel have an interest in stoking the fires of   militant interventionism in American politics, as the crusading   impulse helps their respective causes.
• Once the Americans begin to   wonder where all this military and diplomatic support to troublesome   and quarrelsome allies is getting them, the jig is up –
• which is   why, for example, the Georgians are hard at work in Denver, as the   New York Times reports,   meeting with Democratic Party honchos and making their case with a   fair amount of success.
• The Russians are in   Denver, too, but have limited their goals to damage control, and   they aren't likely to make much progress.
• In one of the most   successful inversions of reality ever attempted, the Western media   has convinced its audience – and even   itself – that Russia invaded Georgia, instead of Georgia   invading South Ossetia.
• The bombing and devastation   of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, never happened, according   to our media.
• In any case, the Georgia lobby   and its allies don't want us to watch what is going on in the region   very closely. They'd rather we stuck to the simplistic narrative   of Big Bad Russia versus Poor Little Democratic Georgia.
• The dead are denied or   disdained by Western "observers."

  • Much like our own casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan...
• That is how the War Party operates, and they are quite good at   it. Their success is due, in large part, to the ignorance of the   American public when it comes to complex issues centered on the   internal struggles of obscure overseas nations, which naturally very   few of us understand.
• So we invent a convenient narrative, one that   rationalizes a policy decided in advance, which is then sold to the   American people under false pretenses.
• The pygmies who rule us would have us forget or discount George   Washington's famous warning, in his "Farewell   Address" – which they deride as archaic – that "nothing is more   essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against   particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be   excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings   towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards   another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a   slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of   which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its   interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more   readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of   umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or   trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions,   obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests."

  • George Washington's words and warnings regarding foreign entanglements.
• By encouraging   Saakashvili in his invasion of South Ossetia, and now indulging in   the spectacle of no less than three major American political figures   traveling to Tbilisi to pledge their "solidarity" – Cindy   McCain and Dick   Cheney, as well as Biden – this rule against "passionate   attachments" is being thrown by the wayside.
• Our politicians are   utterly heedless that this "gives to ambitious, corrupted, or   deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation),   facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country,   without odium, sometimes even with popularity;
• gilding, with the   appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable   deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good,   the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or   infatuation."
• Washington towers so far above the likes of Biden, Cheney, and   their colleagues in both parties that the distance   can only be measured in light years.

• As America stumbles into   the next Cold War,   waxing rhapsodic about the alleged virtues of Georgian "democracy"   and provoking the Russians needlessly, the words of the Founding   Father have special relevance for today.

    ~ Justin Raimondo

45 more annotations...

• Obama selects Biden to reassure the US ruling elite
• by Patrick Martin
• Global Research, August 28, 2008
• The selection of Senator Joseph Biden as the vice-presidential candidate of the Democratic Party underscores the fraudulent character of the Democratic primary campaign and the undemocratic character of the entire two-party electoral system.
• Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the supposed protagonist of “change,” has picked as his running-mate a fixture of the Washington establishment, a six-term US senator who is a proven defender of American imperialism and the interests of big business.

  • These were my feelings exactly when it was announced Biden was to be Obama's running mate. I have followed Joe Biden's career for his 27 years and the man is just another "slick", "greasy" Washington insider. Change? "Ain't gone be no change."
• The rollout of the Biden selection over three days of escalating media attention, culminating in the text-message announcement early Saturday and a kickoff rally in Springfield, Illinois, is a metaphor for the entire Obama campaign.
• His presidential candidacy represents not an insurgency from below, but an effort to manipulate mass sentiments, using Internet technology and slick marketing techniques, aided by a compliant media, to produce a political result that is utterly conventional and in keeping with the requirements of the US ruling elite.
• Long gone are the days when the selection of a vice-presidential candidate by one of the two major big business parties involved a complex balancing act between various institutional forces.
• In the Democratic Party, this would have involved consultations with trade union officials, civil rights organizations, congressional leaders and the heads of particularly powerful state and urban political machines.
• In both parties there is only one true “constituency”: the financial aristocracy that dominates economic and political life and controls the mass media, and whose interests determine government policy, both foreign and domestic.

  • American brand "feudalism"
• Today, neither party has any substantial popular base.
• The selection of Biden, the senator from a small state with only three electoral votes, whose own presidential bids have failed miserably for lack of popular support, underscores the immense chasm separating the entire political establishment from the broad mass of the American people.
• Obama has selected Biden to provide reassurance that, whatever populist rhetoric may be employed for electoral purposes in the fall campaign, the wealth and privileges of the ruling elite and the geo-strategic aims of US imperialism will be the single-minded concerns of a Democratic administration.
• An establishment figure
• Biden has been a leading figure in the political establishment for three decades.
• He was first elected to the US Senate from Delaware in 1972, when Richard Nixon was president and Obama was 11 years old, and he has held that position through seven administrations. He has headed two of the most important Senate committees: Judiciary, which vets nominations to judicial positions, including the Supreme Court, and Foreign Relations, which Biden chaired in 2001-2002 and again since the Democrats regained control of the Senate in the 2006 election. Biden ran for president 20 years ago and again this year.
• In the 1990s, with Bill Clinton in the White House, Biden was one of the principal proponents of US intervention in the former Yugoslavia, a role that he describes in his campaign autobiography, published last year, as his proudest achievement in foreign policy.
• In the mid-1990s he called for the US to arm the Bosnian Muslim regime against Serbia, and then advocated a direct US attack on Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo crisis, joining with a like-minded Republican senator to introduce the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, authorizing Clinton to use “all necessary force” against Serbia.
• This legislative proposal provided a model for a 2002 congressional resolution authorizing Bush to wage war against Iraq, which Biden co-authored with Republican Senator Richard Lugar.
• The Bush administration opposed the Biden-Lugar resolution, because it was limited to ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, and successfully pressured the Democratic-controlled Senate to adopt a broader war resolution, for which Biden voted.
• On domestic policy, Biden is a conventional liberal whose roots go back to the Cold War era.
• He combines occasional populist bromides about concern for the poor and downtrodden with close relations with the trade union bureaucracy and unquestioning defense of the profit system.
• Like every other senator, he has “looked after” the interests of those big corporations with major operations in his state, including the Delaware-based MBNA, the largest independent issuer of credit cards until it was acquired in 2005 by Bank of America.
• In this capacity, Biden was one of the most fervent Democratic supporters of the reactionary 2005 legislation overhauling the consumer bankruptcy laws, making it much more difficult for working class and middle-class families to escape debt burdens exacerbated by the corrupt and misleading marketing tactics employed by companies like MBNA. The 2005 law has compounded the problems of distressed homeowners seeking to avoid foreclosure.
• Biden defended the bankruptcy bill during the Senate debate and voted for the legislation along with the overwhelming majority of Republicans, including John McCain.
• Obama opposed the bill, and has attacked it repeatedly during the 2008 campaign as a punitive measure against working families.
• Employees of MBNA were the biggest single financial supporters of Biden’s campaigns over the past two decades.
• In 2003, MBNA hired the senator’s son, Hunter Biden, fresh out of law school, quickly promoting him to the position of executive vice president. (While his father is not wealthy by US Senate standards, Hunter Biden has since become a hedge fund multi-millionaire).
• Biden has occasionally taken positions slightly more liberal than those of Obama, most recently voting against the bill (which Obama supported) authorizing a massive expansion of government surveillance of telephone calls and email, and providing legal immunity to the giant telecom firms that collaborated with such illegal spying over the past seven years.
• But he is a fervent supporter of the USA Patriot Act, defending it during the recent Democratic primary campaign against criticism by some of his opponents.
• Biden and the war in Iraq
• Senator Obama prevailed over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination contest in large part because she had voted in October 2002 to authorize the Iraq war, while Obama, not then a US Senator, verbally opposed the decision to go to war.
• This difference in political biographies was utilized by Obama’s campaign to make an appeal to antiwar sentiment, although Obama’s record once he arrived in the Senate in January 2005 was indistinguishable from Clinton’s.
• Biden’s record on Iraq makes his selection as the vice-presidential candidate all the more cynical, since he was an enthusiastic supporter of the war far longer than most Senate Democrats.
• He advocated measures to drastically increase the scale of the violence in order to win the war, including the dispatch of 100,000 additional US troops and the breakup of Iraq into separate Sunni, Shia and Kurdish statelets—on the model of the former Yugoslavia—which would presumably be more easy to control.
• In the run-up to the launching of the unprovoked US aggression in March 2003, Biden echoed Bush administration propaganda.
• At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee just after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s notorious appearance before the United Nations Security Council in February 2003, Biden gushed, “I am proud to be associated with you. I think you did better than anyone could have because of your standing, your reputation and your integrity ...” Every major element of Powell’s indictment of Iraq has since proven to be false.
• Once the Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi connections to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks had been exposed, Biden began to express increasing alarm over the failure of the Bush administration to find an adequate rationale for maintaining public support for the war.
• He bemoaned the Bush administration’s failure to sell the war effectively to the American people. In a speech to the Brookings Institution in June 2005, he declared, “I want to see the president of the United States succeed in Iraq...His success is America’s success, and his failure is America’s failure.”
• Only after public opinion turned decisively against the war did Biden shift from advocating escalation to a limited pullout of US troops.
• A Washington Post column in late 2005—which noted the convergence of views of the longtime senator from Delaware and the newly elected senator from Illinois, Barack Obama—described Biden as “an early and consistent supporter of the US intervention against Saddam Hussein.”
• Once the Democrats regained control of Congress in the November 2006, Biden became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he played a major role in the capitulation by the congressional Democrats to the Bush “surge” policy.
• Millions of antiwar voters had cast ballots for the Democrats seeking an end to the war, but the White House escalated the war instead, and the Democrats postured impotently and then went along.
• The Democratic-controlled Congress meekly submitted after Bush vetoed modest restrictions on the conduct of the war, and in May 2007 passed full funding for military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. When several Democratic senators voted against the funding bill as a protest—including Clinton and Obama—Biden denounced them for undermining the safety of the troops.
• Two weeks after this critical vote, Biden denounced antiwar critics of the Democratic Congress, claiming, “We’re busting our neck every single day” trying to end the war. There could be no end to the war, he said, until a significant number of Republican senators defected, to provide the two-thirds majority needed to override a Bush veto, or until a Democratic president was in the White House. “We’re funding the safety of those troops there till we can get 67 votes,” he declared.
• By then, the Democratic presidential contest was well under way, and Biden, despite winning little support and no delegates, played an important political role. As the World Socialist Web Site noted following a candidates’ debate in August 2007, “Biden has carved out a niche as the Democratic presidential candidate most willing to publicly rebuke antiwar sentiment.”
• In the course of the debate, Biden attacked those who suggested that by threatening a quick withdrawal, the US government could compel Iraqi politicians to establish a stable government in Baghdad. He denounced illusions “that there is any possibility in the lifetime of anyone here of having the Iraqis get together, have a unity government in Baghdad that pulls the country together. That will not happen.... It will not happen in the lifetime of anyone here.” In other words, the US occupation would have to continue indefinitely.
• There have been numerous suggestions from Democratic Party officials and the media over the past few days that, given Biden’s reputation for verbal confrontation, his selection signals a more aggressive attitude from the Obama campaign.
• On his record, however, it is quite likely that Biden will be deployed as an “attack dog” against antiwar critics of the Obama campaign.
• This fact makes all the more despicable the fawning embrace of Biden by purportedly “antiwar” publications like the Nation.
• John Nichols, Washington editor of the left-liberal magazine, wrote that the choice of Biden was an “acceptable, perhaps even satisfying conclusion to the great veep search,” which could tip the polls back in Obama’s direction.
• Commenting on the Springfield rally Saturday, Nichols gushed, “When Biden went after John McCain, with a vigor and, yes, a venom that has been missing from Obama’s stump speaking, it was a tonic for the troops who have been waiting for a campaign that is more prepared to throw punches than take them.”
• This response only confirms a fundamental truth about the political crisis facing working people in the United States: it is impossible to conduct a serious struggle against American imperialism, and its program of social reaction and war, without first breaking free of the straitjacket of the Democratic Party.
• Working people have no stake in the outcome of the Obama-McCain contest, which will determine, for the American ruling elite, who will be their commander-in-chief over the next four years.
• The task facing the working class is to break with the two-party system and build an independent political movement based on a socialist and internationalist program.

53 more annotations...

• RNC Eve: "Police Are Acting Like Nazis"
• More at http://www.theuptake.org .
• Michelle Gross of Communities Against Police Brutality was the victim of a burglary...and she's hinting strongly that she thinks someone from the government did it.
• She and her husband were detained by police in St. Paul on Fri. 8/29/08 while attending an organizing meeting of activists protesting the RNC in the Twin Cities.
• They were not arrested, and eventually released.
• However, they returned home to find their garage and car had been burglarized.

  • The RNC and the DNC, both with help from the Jack Boots and Brown Shirts of local and Federal law enforcement, are acting equally like totalitarian-elitists-thugs.
• Interviewed at a gathering in Powderhorn Park on 8/30/08.
• Nothing was taken, but documents and belongings had been searched.

7 more annotations...

• McCain in talks with Ron Paul for backing
• Gunning for valuable but loyal supporter list
• Ralph Z. Hallow (Contact)
       Tuesday, September 2, 2008
• ST. PAUL, Minn. | The McCain campaign, acting through the Republican National Committee, has been negotiating with Rep. Ron Paul to win his support and acquire the names of his sympathizers among the 4,607 delegates and alternates at the Republican National Convention, according to a senior aide to the Texas congressman.

  • NOW!!..THEY NEED US??? Kiss my &#@*, McCain!!
  Add Sticky Note
• The aim is to try to win support for the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket from Paul sympathizers, some of whom formally committed to Mr. Paul during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and others of whom are closet sympathizers of his libertarian brand of Republicanism.
• Sen. McCain and national party strategists worry that Mr. Paul's sympathizers will vote for Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate and former Republican congressman who shares many of Mr. Paul's views.

  • You got that right, Sparky!
  Add Sticky Note
• Mr. Paul has refused to endorse Mr. McCain, and Mr. McCain's operatives have refused to let him address the Republican National Convention.
• As a result, Mr. Paul decided to hold a rally of his own Tuesday billed as the "Campaign for Liberty." Initially set to be held at the University of Minnesota's 11,000-seat Williams Arena, it has been moved to the far-larger Target Center in Minneapolis.
• Mr. Paul said in an interview that he expects to attract up to 18,000 people.

• See Ralph Z. Hallow's exclusive interview with Mr. Paul here: 

    

   

  Brightcove Video
• Earlier this year, the congressman shocked the party establishment by twice setting single-day fundraising records during his quest for the Republican presidential nomination.
• He has a donors list of about 180,000 people that Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said would do the McCain campaign no good because the loyalty of those donors is not transferable.
• Mr. Benton said Mr. Paul is negotiating with convention officials - who are in effect McCain campaign representatives - for permission to make the rounds on the convention floor Wednesday in the company of his personal security guard, communications director and political aides.
• Mr. Paul has said he will speak respectfully about Mr. McCain in return for the convention granting the entourage access to the floor of the Xcel Energy Center.
• Mr. Paul, as a member of Congress and a member of the Texas delegation, automatically has floor access for himself.
• Earlier negotiations to have Mr. Paul address the convention fell through because the congressman would not change his position on the war in Iraq, which he opposes as needless and self-defeating for the United States.

  • Stick to your guns, Ron!! No compromise on the Iraq issue!!
  Add Sticky Note
• He also was denied permission to address the Republican Platform Committee last week in Minneapolis, Mr. Benton said.
• He said Mr. Paul wanted to discuss the foreign-policy planks in the platform, but the McCain forces who controlled the platform proceedings, as well as the Rules Committee and the Credentials Committee, objected.
• The McCain campaign is concerned about the impact of Mr. Paul's rally Tuesday, which is expected to attract many young, first-time voters and is being referred to in much of the press as a "counter-convention."
• Mr. Paul, in an interview with The Washington Times, said he doesn't regard the event as a counter-convention so much as a big-stage training session for future cadres of the party - cadres who see the world Mr. Paul's way.
• Asked whether he really thinks he can influence the party to be less hawkish on war, he said, "No, not at the upper level. You know, I'm not going to convert [Vice President] Dick Cheney. He's going to be always a neoconservative. ...
• "But what we are also doing here is training thousands of people and encouraging them to be involved in precinct work, and then getting involved in the Republican Party and have an influence that way."
• Some conservatives, including several prominent Republicans, privately support Mr. Paul's aim, which they see as taking the party back from its neoconservative wing and restoring it to a tradition of limited-government conservatism.

• He was asked why he was holding "training events" - one of which consists mostly of music groups performing - during the convention.. 

    

   "Because this is where the action is," Mr. Paul said with a smile.
• Comments
• By: ambrito1954

• That Osama Bin Laden has not yet been tracked down does prove that the current administration has been an abject failure and a laughing stock. Instead of finishing the job with OBL and the Taliban, the Bush administration decides to invade and occupy Iraq.

    

  Tell me, are you better off now than you were 8 years ago? This question does not apply to defense department contractors, arms merchants, or the oil industry.

• By: Osama Angry

     

  Ron Paul has too much integrity to join in with this pair of,I don't know what to call them.

• By: ambrito1954

     

  Although Ron Paul would never correct anyone, it is Dr. Paul not "Mr".

    

  Say what you will about Dr. Paul but he is utterly consistent and a man of integrity.

    

  I challenge anyone to research the positions he supports and not come away with a new outlook on the excesses of the federal government in the United States today.

    

  I was an honor student and particularly enjoyed the study of American history. In the early 80's I first read - with great skepticism - information regarding the Federal Reserve, the current tax system operated by the IRS, and the failure of politicians to honor their oath to the Constitution.

    

  I knew I could prove what I read to be incorrect so I did some of my own research. At every turn I only found evidence to support the positions taken by Americans seeking limited, constitutional government.

    

  Still unconvinced, I went to local politicians and attorneys asking for guidance in proving these "truths" to indeed be false. I was met with indifference, ignorance, and silence instead of serious answers.

    

  I wrote the IRS respectfully and sincerely requesting assistance to file my federal tax returns without waiving the restriction imposed upon the federal government by the 5th amendment preventing forced testimony against myself.

    

  Over twenty years later I have yet to receive a response but I am considered a "tax protestor" by the federal government. I wasn't protesting, I was asking my government a question for which I should receive an answer.

    

  The point is, everything you hear from Dr. Paul is based on the Constitution and adherence to the law under which our government was founded. Before anyone writes off someone like Dr. Paul, they owe it to themselves to do some research.

• By: mpost934

     

  When reading these comments, it's truly amazing just to see how many asinine comments there are. No wonder the politicians can keep shoving all their garbage down your throats. You know that EVERY time you vote to keep an incumbent Congressman in office THEY keep shoving their CRAP farther and farther down your throats. Come hell or high water, on November 4th, I'm going to write in Ron Paul. I hope you all are INTELLEGENT enough to see the light and do the same. However, those of you compelled to use the electronic voting machines may not be able to do that. I believe the politicians have now figured a way on how to control the elections. ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES. No paper trail.

• By: shanklinmike

     

  http://www.youtube.com/user/shanklinmike...

    

  Constitution and Liberty are too important!

    

  Don't waste you vote this year voting against somebody.....it won't magically swing the election anyways!

    

  Vote for Barr, let the duopoly know we are tired of our economic and personal freedoms being destroyed in a country that is suppose to restrict tyranny!

• By: inamericasince1700

     

  This is a completely fabricated lie by the Washington Times to manipulate Ron Paul supporters. This has been verified by Ron Paul himself this morning on CNN during his interview.
• This is a warning shot over the bow of the nazi American propaganda media machine that is lying to American citizens...we will no longer take the kind of CRAP you are trying to shove down our throats...NO MORE.
• There is no place for you to find a safe place to hide your lying scumbag behaviors because the tide has turned against you. The sleeping giant of American citizens has woken up!!!

• Beware your karma...it's coming to take you and the Washington (elite) Times down and reveal you as the lying scum bag news organization you are.

    

  Go milk on the breast of the Bildebergers and CFR, NATO and the trilateral commission, and all the other worthless, pathetic greed mongers. We know who all of you are. Your names are not a mystery to us.

    

  Your lies are accepted here NO MORE!

• By: RS

     

  ""his libertarian brand of Republicanism"

    

  What a crock. Paul is libertarian like Hitler was 'progressive'."

    

  Paul IS a libertarian. And he represents the quickly dwindling wing of the GOP that still is, to a great extent, libertarian. IMHO The loss of even half of the votes of the Republican-libertarians to Barr could potentially be devastating, unless you work at a neo-con think-tank that also believed the Republicans would win big on election night 2006.
• wvobiwan, give it up on the white supremacist and Hitler analogies. Hitler invaded Poland on a preemptive basis, just as McLame authorized Bush to do so in Iraq.
• The fact that people who don't agree with Israel's policies are immediately labeled "anti-semites" is ludicrous, akin to calling someone "anti-christian" because they don't agree with America's policies.
• Fact is, had Goldwater not decided to resign in '84, but another year, and in essence hand his seat over to McLame, we may not even be dealing with this fake "maverick".
• A conservative does not become a maverick because he takes liberal positions; he does so by challenging the conservatives to stick with the principles they "supposedly" stand for, which more and more they do not. McLame and his late conversion back to true fiscal conservatism is flip-flopping of the highest order, right up there with Kerry in 2004, and Paul had better highlight and underline twice this fact on September 2nd.

• I'm voting for Barr, and if the GOP doesn't get its act together and accept the differences their libertarian-leaning party members hold versus the Republican talking points lines, then expect a quickly dwindling party that will be left with only right-wingnuts and white supremacists and clueless quasi-socialists (aka social conservatives).

    

  Give McLame the finger, Paul.

• By: Straight Talk Hawk

     

  Who should we Independent rule of law people write in for VP along with our write-in vote for Dr. Paul? McAmnesty is a disaster!

• By: ScottieL

     

  The honour of the Ron Paul campaign is evident in the fact that Ron won't sell out his values to speak to the world at the Convention. I have great respect for his campaign.

• By: Bertram

     

  Dr. Paul has been telling us for many years about what has just happened to our economy. Rampant inflation causing food and gas prices to go through the roof. He also reminds us that the United States, with an almost $10 Trillion deficit, is in trouble and can no longer afford to have a such a huge international military presence. This especially when its financed by floating billion dollar government bonds that are largely purchased by the type of foreign governments that most of us simply do not trust. Ron Paul is the common sense politician and its no wonder he attracts so much support.

43 more annotations...

• Cops Arrest AP Photographer, Broadcaster At Start Of RNC
• Paul Joseph Watson
    Prison Planet
    Tuesday, September 2, 2008
• Plaudits for the relative restraint of Denver police during last week’s Democratic National Convention are not set to be repeated at the RNC, as cops signaled their intent by arresting an AP photographer as well as Democracy Now host Amy Goodman simply for documenting protests in downtown St. Paul.
• Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke was arrested on a gross misdemeanor riot charge simply for taking pictures of a protest yesterday.
• “Covering news is a constitutionally protected activity, and covering a riot is part of that coverage,” AP assistant chief of bureau in Washington David Ake said. “Photographers should not be detained for covering breaking news.”
• Democracy Now host Amy Goodman was arrested after she complained about the assault and arrest of her colleagues, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar.
•      

  According to Democracy Now, “All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers.
• Salazar’s violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, “I’m Press! Press!,” resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman’s arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.”
• “During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists.
• Several dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, including a photographer for the Associated Press.”
• All three were eventually released but face felony charges.
• Democracy Now has vowed to fight the false charges which they characterized as an intimidation of independent journalists.
• Another AP photographer, Evan Vucci, was body slammed, kicked in the ribs and then handcuffed by police, only avoiding arrest by showing his press credentials.
• “The police had pushed the protesters into a parking lot where they had police coming from all sides to encircle one area,” Vucci said. “Once they got all the protesters into this one parking lot they kind of rushed and arrested all the protesters in there,” said Vucci.
• With 50,000 demonstrators expected to protest the RNC, more incidents of this kind can be expected.
• On Friday, the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office, directed by federal authorities and armed with semi-automatic weapons, raided the headquarters of a protest group and detained and photographed 50 people. Six were arrested on charges of organizing a riot.
• None of the six have been convicted of a felony or crime of violence and all hold respectable positions within the community.
• The raids were carried out after moles were planted in the group by the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force.

  • Police provocateurs
• The raids were specifically “aided by informants planted in protest groups,” notes Salon writer Glenn Greenwald.
• “Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force — an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI — was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate “vegan groups” and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing.

  • Say hello to Hitler and his Nazis!
• There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday,” writes Greenwald.
• Amy Goodman arrested for asking questions about the assault and arrest of her colleagues.
• Police fire tear gas at protesters as they run away.
• Responses to “Cops Arrest AP Photographer, Broadcaster At Start Of RNC”
• godbluff Says: 
     September 2nd, 2008 at 7:27 pm   

  hey #58 i was thinking the same thing. You articulated it perfectly! I have viewed her as a sellout for a while now, regardless of her liberal views. She’s a global warming, may as well be mainstream news reader. Hopefully this will wake her a little. Kudos
• V Says: 
     September 2nd, 2008 at 7:26 pm   

  IT’S TIME FOR THE PEOPLE TO JOIN FORCES AND CREATE OUR OWN ARMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Rhino Says: 
     September 2nd, 2008 at 7:24 pm   

  The Nazis are heeeeeere!
   Just exactly when did the government become the DOMESTIC enemy of Constitution that I was warned about when I took my oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States?
   Looks like I wasted 20 years worrying about the wrong enemy.

27 more annotations...

• Glenn Greenwald
• Saturday Aug. 30, 2008 12:44 EDT
• Massive police raids on suspected protesters in Minneapolis
• [updated below (with video) - Update II - Update III - Update IV]
• Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn,
• entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets.
• Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations,"
• and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.
• Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning -- one which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being raided.
• Each of the raided houses is known by neighbors as a "hippie house," where 5-10 college-aged individuals live in a communal setting, and everyone we spoke with said that there had never been any problems of any kind in those houses, that they were filled with "peaceful kids" who are politically active but entirely unthreatening and friendly.
• Posted below is the video of the scene, including various interviews, which convey a very clear sense of what is actually going on here.
• In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move.
• The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant.
• They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house.

  • These type of "state" tactics were supposed to have ended when the Founding Fathers erected the American republic on the Constitution. No matter how one feels toward either of the political parties, these tactics by police and their hidden handlers, are the stuff of totalitarian states better suited for nations such as China and Iran.
• One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs.
• The 10 or so individuals in the house all said that though they found the experience very jarring, they still intended to protest against the GOP Convention, and several said that being subjected to raids of that sort made them more emboldened than ever to do so.
• Several of those who were arrested are being represented by Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild.
• Nestor said that last night's raid involved a meeting of a group calling itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee", and that this morning's raids appeared to target members of "Food Not Bombs," which he described as an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group.
• There was not a single act of violence or illegality that has taken place, Nestor said. Instead, the raids were purely anticipatory in nature, and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in any unauthorized protests.
• Nestor indicated that only 2 or 3 of the 50 individuals who were handcuffed this morning at the 2 houses were actually arrested and charged with a crime, and the crime they were charged with is "conspiracy to commit riot."
• Nestor, who has practiced law in Minnesota for many years, said that he had never before heard of that statute being used for anything, and that its parameters are so self-evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emeptive arrests of those who are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until now), its constitutionality had not been tested.
• There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention.
• The DNC in Denver was the site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing anything remotely off-script.

  • The DNC Convention and police actions
• But the massive and plainly excessive preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order altogether.
• Targeting people with automatic-weapons-carrying SWAT teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined.
• UPDATE: Here is the first of the videos, from the house that had just been raided:
• Jane Hamsher has more here, and The Minnesota Independent has a report on another one of the raided houses, here.
• UPDATE II: Here is the video we took from the second house as the raid was occurring. We were barred from entering but spoke with neighbors outside as well as with Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota Lawyer's Guild, regarding these raids:
• Over at FDL, Lindsay Beyerstein spoke with the property owner whose house -- the fourth one we now know of -- was being raided while the raid was in progress, and Lindsay has details here
• ("About an hour and a half ago 20 to 30 heavily armed police officers surrounded the house. One of my roommates said 'I want to see a warrant' and she was immediately detained").

  • Asking a legal question about a purely legal process is now deemed unlawful and subjects you to arrest in the "new" America. Such is the "Elite" run United States now. And the current office holders in Washngton DC want to lecture Putin on democracy in Russia?!
  Add Sticky Note
• Meanwhile, Indy Media of Twin Cities -- an association of independent journalists in the area -- just told me that several of their journalists have been detained while trying to cover these raids.
• Additionally, a photojournalist with Democracy Now was detained at that house as well. So, both journalists and lawyers -- in addition to protesters -- have been detained and arrested even though not a single violent or criminal act has occurred.
• The police surrounded the St. Paul house where they were meeting even though they had no warrant, told them that anyone who exited the house would be arrested, and then -- even though they finally, after several hours, obtained a warrant only for the house next door -- basically broke into the house, pointed weapons at everyone inside, handcuffed them, searched the house, and then left.
• This is truly repugnant, extreme police behavior designed to intimidate protesters, police critics and others, and it ought to infuriate anyone and everyone who cares about basic liberties.

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