Fighting Fire With Fire

Now that the Masters of the Universe have commandeered the New York Tax Payers Monies to pay for New York City Police to Taser and Billy Club legally assembled American citizens on wall street, it occurs to me that it will eventually occur to someone to take the following steps, (which, mind you, I am most assuredly not advocating, for to do so would be a very bad thing - I am merely a blogger with a long memory and a deep and abiding understanding of the history of American government's response to those who would peacefully protest for their RIGHTS.

1. To discourage police from doing the job, a bounty should be put out on the Chief of the New York City Police Department. Probably $20,000 would be the right amount, for his execution.

2. In line with the reasoning behind point #1, a similar bounty should be put out on the Mayor of New York City. Probably $2,000 would be the right amount.

3. Again, thinking consistently along these lines, bounties should be put out on the heads of all the civilian advisors to the NYC PD.

4. Bounties should be put out on the heads of all the NYC aldermen (and alderwomen).

5. Funding should begin to bring armed militias into NYC in order to kill police who beat on peaceful, law-abiding protesters. Giving them a taste of their own medicine simply cannot be a bad thing.

6. Using similar reasoning, bounties should be put out on the head of the Governor of New York State, the Lt. Governor, the two U.S. State Senators from New York, each and every U.S. Congressional Representative from the State of New York.

7. Again, unless or until they start to editorialize against using New York City tax payer money to pay for police to brutalize peaceful protesters, the Editor and Owner of every Newspaper in New York City should have bounties put on their heads, as well as the heads of all the TV stations broadcasting from NYC.

8. Immediately, a bounty of $100,000 should be put on the heads of the leading Wall Street Investment Banks - Chase, Goldman-Sachs, etc, etc. Such bounty should be remain permanently in effect.

9. Plans to kidnap for ransom family members of all the Wall Street Investment Bankers holding the title of Vice-President or higher should be implemented. This way, the funding mechanism for the assassinations will remain liquid, and individual donor contributions can be used for the medical care of the injured protesters, or for their funerals.

The whole point is this: If the Banksters want someone to "teach the protesters a lesson," they should use the free market mechanisms and pay for it themselves. To do so, of course would be an act or terror (or war), which might be met in kind, but, WHAT THE FUCK IS THE DIFFERENCE to a beaten, battered, abused protester if they are done in by police or other paid goons? The answer, clearly is, none.

So, if it is to be warfare, AT LEAST FOR A FUCKING CHANGE, GIVEN THE AVAILABILITY OF WEAPONS IN THIE COUNTRY, the number of vets out of work and their skill and experience in killing, kidnapping, etc, let's make it an EVEN FUCKING FIGHT.

And please, understand, I am advocating none of this, just trying to put on a mindset that asks me to walk in the moccasins of a lawfully assembled political protester who feels that retaliation, meeting force with force, in this instance is not only justified, but the mandatory, prudent, and winning course of action.

This was entirely predictable - but I'm not so sure how enthusiastic these cops are about being on the payroll of the banksters who essentially raped

OCTOBER 10, 2011

Who Do the White Shirt Police Report to at Occupy Wall Street Protests?
Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll

by PAM MARTENS

Videos are springing up across the internet showing uniformed members of the New York Police Department in white shirts (as opposed to the typical NYPD blue uniforms) pepper spraying and brutalizing peaceful, nonthreatening protestors attempting to take part in the Occupy Wall Street marches. Corporate media are reporting that these white shirts are police supervisors as opposed to rank and file. Recently discovered documents suggest something else may be at work.

If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998. It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.

The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.

New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.

The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.

When the program was first rolled out, one insightful member of the NYPD posted the following on a forum: “… regarding the officer working for, and being paid by, some of the richest people and organizations in the City, if not the world, enforcing the mandates of the private employer, and in effect, allowing the officer to become the Praetorian Guard of the elite of the City. And now corruption is no longer a problem. Who are they kidding?”

Just this year, the Department of Justice revealed serious problems with the Paid Detail unit of the New Orleans Police Department. Now corruption probes are snowballing at NOPD, revealing cash payments to police in the Paid Detail and members of the department setting up limited liability corporations to run upwards of $250,000 in Paid Detail work billed to the city.

When the infamously mismanaged Wall Street firm, Lehman Brothers, collapsed on September 15, 2008, its bankruptcy filings in 2009 showed it owed money to 21 members of the NYPD’s Paid Detail Unit. (A phone call and email request to the NYPD for information on which Wall Street firms participate in the program were not responded to. The police unions appear to have only scant information about the program.)

Other Wall Street firms that are known to have used the Paid Detail include Goldman Sachs, the World Financial Center complex which houses financial firms, and the New York Stock Exchange.

The New York Stock Exchange is the building in front of which the Occupy Wall Street protesters have unsuccessfully tried to protest, being herded behind metal barricades, clubbed with night sticks, kicked in the face and carted off to jail rather than permit the last plantation in America to be defiled with citizen chants and posters. (A sample of those politically inconvenient posters and chants: “The corrupt are afraid of us; the honest support us; the heroic join us”; “Tell me what democracy looks like, this is what democracy looks like”; “I’ll believe a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.” The last sign refers to the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, giving corporations First Amendment personhood, which allows them to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections.)

On September 8, 2004, Robert Britz, then President and Co-Chief Operating Officer of the New York Stock Exchange, testified as follows to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services:

“…we have implemented new hiring standards requiring former law enforcement or military backgrounds for the security staff…We have established a 24-hour NYPD Paid Detail monitoring the perimeter of the data centers…We have implemented traffic control and vehicle screening at the checkpoints. We have installed fixed protective planters and movable vehicle barriers.”

Military backgrounds; paid NYPD 24-7; checkpoints; vehicle barriers? It might be insightful to recall that the New York Stock Exchange originally traded stocks with a handshake under a Buttonwood tree in the open air on Wall Street.

In his testimony, the NYSE executive Britz states that “we” did this or that while describing functions that clearly belong to the City of New York. The New York Stock Exchange at that time had not yet gone public and was owned by those who had purchased seats on the exchange – primarily, the largest firms on Wall Street. Did the NYSE simply give itself police powers to barricade streets and set up checkpoints with rented cops? How about clubbing protesters on the sidewalk?

Just six months before NYSE executive Britz’ testimony to a congressional committee, his organization was being sued in the Supreme Court of New York County for illegally taking over public streets with no authority to do so. This action had crippled the business of a parking garage, Wall Street Garage Parking Corp., the plaintiff in the case. Judge Walter Tolub said in his opinion that

“…a private entity, the New York Stock Exchange, has assumed responsibility for the patrol and maintenance of truck blockades located at seven intersections surrounding the NYSE…no formal authority appears to have been given to the NYSE to maintain these blockades and/or conduct security searches at these checkpoints…the closure of these intersections by the NYSE is tantamount to a public nuisance…The NYSE has yet to provide this court with any evidence of an agreement giving them the authority to maintain the security perimeter and/or conduct the searches that their private security force conducts daily. As such, the NYSE’s actions are unlawful and may be enjoined as they violate plaintiff’s civil rights as a private citizen.”

The case was appealed, the ruling overturned, and sent back to the same Judge who had no choice but to dismiss the case on the appellate ruling that the plaintiff had suffered no greater harm than the community at large. Does everyone in lower Manhattan own a parking garage that is losing its customer base because the roads are blocked to the garage?

Some believe that Wall Street is given special privileges and protection because New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg owes his $18.1 billion in wealth (yes, he’s that 1 percent the 99 percent are protesting) to Wall Street. The Mayor was previously a trader for Salomon Brothers, the investment bank made famous for attempting to rig the U.S. Treasury market in two-year notes.

The Mayor’s business empire which bears his name, includes the awesome Bloomberg terminal, a computer that houses enormous pricing data for stocks and bonds, research, news, charting functions and much more. There are currently an estimated 290,000 of these terminals on Wall Street trading floors around the globe, generating approximately $1500 in rental fees per terminal per month. That’s a cool $435 million a month or $5.2 billion a year, the cash cow of the Bloomberg businesses.

The Bloomberg businesses are run independently from the Mayor but he certainly knows that his terminal is a core component of his wealth. Nonetheless, the Mayor is not Wall Street’s patsy. Bloomberg Publishing is frequently in the forefront of exposing fraud on Wall Street such as the 2001 tome “The Pied Pipers of Wall Street” by Benjamin Mark Cole, which exposed the practice of releasing fraudulent stock research to the public. Bloomberg News was responsible for court action that forced the Federal Reserve to release the details of what it did with trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts to Wall Street firms, hedge funds and foreign banks.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly may also have a soft spot for Wall Street. He was formerly Senior Managing Director of Global Corporate Security at Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., the Wall Street firm that collapsed into the arms of JPMorgan in March of 2008.

There has also been a bizarre revolving door between the Wall Street millionaires and the NYPD at times. One of the most puzzling career moves was made by Stephen L. Hammerman. He left a hefty compensation package as Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch & Co. in 2002 to work as Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters for the NYPD from 2002 to 2004. That move had everyone on Wall Street scratching their head at the time. Merrill collapsed into the arms of Bank of America on September 15, 2008, the same date that Lehman went under.

Wall Street is not the only sector renting cops in Manhattan. Department stores, parks, commercial banks and landmarks like Rockefeller Center, Jacob Javits Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral have also participated in the Paid Detail Unit, according to insiders. But Wall Street is the only sector that runs a private justice system where its crimes are herded off to secret arbitration tribunals, has sucked on the public teat to the tune of trillions of dollars, escaped prosecution for the financial collapse, and can put an armed municipal force on the sidewalk to intimidate public protestors seeking a realignment of their democracy.

We may be learning a lot more in the future about the tactics Wall Street and the NYPD have deployed against the Occupy Wall Street protestors. The highly regarded Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has filed a class action lawsuit over the approximately 700 arrests made on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1. The formal complaint and related information is available at the organization’s web site, www.JusticeOnLine.org.

The organization was founded by Carl Messineo and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard. The Washington Post has called them “the constitutional sheriffs for a new protest generation.”

The suit names Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Kelly, the City of New York, 30 unnamed members of the NYPD, and, provocatively, 10 unnamed law enforcement officers not employed by the NYPD.

The lawsuit lays out dwhat has been curtailing the constitutional rights of protestors for a very long time in New York City.

“As seen in the movements for social change in the Middle East and Europe, all movements for social justice, jobs, and democracy need room to breathe and grow and it is imperative that there be a halt to law enforcement actions used to shut down mass assembly and free expression of the people seeking to redress grievances…

“After escorting and leading a group of demonstrators and others well out onto the Brooklyn Bridge roadway, the NYPD suddenly and without warning curtailed further forward movement, blocked the ability of persons to leave the Bridge from the rear, and arrested hundreds of protestors in the absence of probable cause. This was a form of entrapment, both illegal and physical.

“That the trap and detain mass arrest was a command-level-driven intentional and calculated police operation is evidenced by the fact that the law enforcement officials who led the demonstration across the bridge were command officials, known as ‘white shirts.’ ”

In April 2001, I was arrested and incarcerated by the NYPD while peacefully handing out flyers on a public sidewalk outside of the Citigroup shareholders meeting – flyers that warned of growing corruption inside the company. (The unlawful merger of Travelers Group and Citibank created Citigroup and resulted in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the depression era investor protection legislation that barred depositor banks from merging with high-risk Wall Street firms. Many of us from social justice groups in New York City had protested against the repeal but were out maneuvered by Wall Street’s political pawns in Washington.)

Out of a group of about two dozen protestors from the National Organization for Women in New York City, Rain Forest Action Network, and Inner City Press, I was the only person arrested. There was no civil disobedience occurring. Rain Forest Action Network was handing out fortune cookies with prescient warnings about Citigroup and urging pedestrians to cut up their Citibank credit cards. The rest of us were peacefully handing out flyers.

Chained to a metal bar inside the police precinct, I was grilled on any crimes I might know about. I responded that the only crimes I knew about were listed on the flyer and apparently, in New York City, one gets arrested for disclosing crimes by Wall Street firms.

A mysterious, mature, white shirted inspector who ordered my arrest on the sidewalk, and refused to give his first name, disappeared from the police report when it was filed, blaming the arrest instead on a young police officer. Citigroup is only alive today because the Federal government inserted a feeding tube into Citigroup and infused over $2 trillion in loans, direct investment and guarantees as the company veered toward collapse.

The NYPD at the time of my arrest was run by Bernard Kerik – the man President George W. Bush later sent to Iraq to be the interim Interior Minister and train Iraqi police. The President subsequently nominated Kerik to head the Department of Homeland Security for the entire nation. The nation was spared of that eventuality only because of an illegal nanny popping up. Today, Kerik is serving a four year sentence in Federal prison for a variety of criminal acts.

The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a Federal lawsuit on my behalf (Martens v. Giuliani) and we learned that the NYPD had arbitrarily established a policy to arrest and hold for 72 hours any person protesting in a group of 20 or more. The case was settled for a modest monetary award and the repeal by the NYPD of this unconstitutional and despicable practice.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last decade of her career advocating against Wall Street’s private justice system, which keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms. She has been writing on public interest issues for CounterPunch since retiring in 2006. She has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com

SPIN METER: Obama's disconnect in jobs sales pitch

By ERICA WERNER
The Associated Press

6:06 p.m. Monday, October 10, 2011

WASHINGTON — In President Barack Obama's sales pitch for his jobs bill, there are two versions of reality: The one in his speeches and the one actually unfolding in Washington.

When Obama accuses Republicans of standing in the way of his nearly $450 billion plan, he ignores the fact that his own party has struggled to unite behind the proposal.

So, WTF is he supposed to do? Tell everybody his own party sucks? (Which, of course it does. BUT OBUMMAH was always about rhetoric, mere words, selected so as not to alienate, becuase the man has ZERO connections; zero convictions}

When the president says Republicans haven't explained what they oppose in the plan, he skips over the fact that Republicans who control the House actually have done that in detail.

And when he calls on Congress to "pass this bill now," he slides past the point that Democrats control the Senate and were never prepared to move immediately, given other priorities. Senators are expected to vote Tuesday on opening debate on the bill, a month after the president unveiled it with a call for its immediate passage.

To be sure, Obama is not the only one engaging in rhetorical excesses. But he is the president, and as such, his constant remarks on the bill draw the most attention and scrutiny.

Well, at least he is now merely engaging in rhetorical excesses - when he RAN for office, he engaged in rhetorical saying nothingness

The disconnect between what Obama says about his jobs bill and what stands as the political reality flow from his broader aim: to rally the public behind his cause and get Congress to act, or, if not, to pin blame on Republicans.

He is waging a campaign, one in which nuance and context and competing responses don't always fit in if they don't help make the case.

For example, when Obama says his jobs plan is made up of ideas that have historically had bipartisan support, he stops the point there. Not mentioned is that Republicans have never embraced the tax increases that he is proposing to cover the cost of his plan.

Likewise, from city to city, Obama is demanding that Congress act (he means Republicans) while it has been clear for weeks that the GOP will not support all of his bill, to say the least. Individual elements of it may well pass, such as Obama's proposal to extend and expand a payroll tax cut. But Republicans strongly oppose the president's proposed new spending and his plan to raise taxes on millionaires to pay for the package.

The fight over the legislative proposal has become something much bigger: a critical test of the president's powers of persuading the public heading into the 2012 presidential campaign, and of Republicans' ability to deny him a win and reap victory for themselves.

"He knows it's not going to pass. He's betting that voters won't pick up on it, or even if they do they will blame Congress and he can run against the 'do-nothing Congress,'" said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development.

John Sides, political science professor at George Washington University, said Obama's approach on the jobs bill is "more about campaigning than governing."

"He's mostly just going around talking about this and drawing contrasts with what the Republicans want and what he wants and not really trying to work these legislative levers he might be able to use to get this passed," Sides said. "That just suggests to me that he is ready to use a failed jobs bill as a campaign message against the Republicans."

The president's opponents aren't exactly laying it all out, either.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tried to force a vote on the bill last week, innocently claiming that the president was entitled to one. McConnell knew full well that the result would be failure for the legislation and an embarrassment for Obama.

House Speaker John Boehner, meanwhile, claimed that Obama has "given up on the country and decided to campaign full-time" instead of seeking common ground with the GOP. But Boehner neglected to mention that Obama's past attempts at compromise with Republicans often yielded scant results, as Obama himself pointed out.

The approach for Obama, who is seeking a second term in a dismal economy, is far different than the one he took when running for president. He criticized the GOP then, but talked about ending blue-state and red-state America, replacing it with one America, fixing the broken political system, and fundamentally changing Washington.

That ended up being change he could not bring about, and now analysts say Obama may have little choice but to campaign more narrowly by attacking opponents rather than trying to bring people together.

Obama's attempts at compromise with the GOP on the debt ceiling and budget won him little in the way of policy, instead engendering frustration from Democrats who saw him as caving to Republican demands.

The new, combative Obama isn't looking for compromise. He's looking for a win. And if he can't get the legislative victory he says he wants, he has made clear that he's more than willing to take a political win.

It is, he acknowledges, a result his campaign for his jobs bill is designed to achieve.

Talking up the bill in an appearance last month with African-American news websites, Obama said: "I need people to be out there promoting this and pushing this and making sure that everybody understands the details of what this would mean, so that one of two things happen: Either Congress gets it done, or if Congress doesn't get it done, people know exactly what's holding it up."

EDITOR'S NOTE _ An occasional look behind the rhetoric of public officials.

___

October 10, 2011 06:06 PM EDT

Copyright 2011, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Aimless Obama walks alone

October 9, 2011

The reports are not good, disturbing even. I have heard basically the same story four times in the last 10 days, and the people doing the talking are in New York and Washington and are spread across the political spectrum.

The gist is this: President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist.

MG: This ought to surprise no one. Nixon did the same thing; so did George W Bush. OBUMMAH came to office heralded by the press (slowly they were to annoint him) and intellectual white voters of the democratic persuasion - but he was all rhetoric and no conviction - consider the frequency of his "present" votes as the Senator from Illinois. He talked a good game, but talking is not really good enough - he started his reelection campaign on about 6 November, 2007 and EVERYTHING he has done, all the legislation he has supported or wanted to have passed was legislation that was designed with partisan intent. He was, and remains an utter fool - cutting social welfare benefits to the middle class and bailing out the Wall Street Banks almost as if the US Guv has money to burn. To my mind, one of the three or four worst presidents ever (and no, I go NOT count GWB, er, excuse me, President Dick Cheney as one of the three worst ever)

Everybody else, including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for brief meetings that serve as photo ops. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner both have complained, according to people who have talked to them, that they are shut out of important decisions.

The president’s workdays are said to end early, often at 4 p.m. He usually has dinner in the family residence with his wife and daughters, then retreats to a private office. One person said he takes a stack of briefing books. Others aren’t sure what he does.

If the reports are accurate, and I believe they are, they paint a picture of an isolated man trapped in a collapsing presidency. While there is no indication Obama is walking the halls of the White House late at night, talking to the portraits of former presidents, as Richard Nixon did during Watergate, the reports help explain his odd public remarks.

The wars go on; the wars expand; new wars are started; the wars are expensive, very expensive; we have money for bombs and bullets, but a Gulf War I vet who lost an ovary in combat spends 21 years fighting a 43% total disability VA benefit, before finally getting 90% ... we grind our troops up on these misadventures to try and control the world's resources in the present moment, try to seek to maintain the present world order (international corptocracy) where people are given a listening ear from governments in direct porportion to the amount of $'s they hold; we continue to wage the so-called "War on Drugs: and are unable to win it, even though, the drugs have no army, the drugs have no navy, the drugs have no air force -- the drugs just have friends who want to ingest them; the rich own ever more of the world's wealth, so much concentrated in the hands of so few, and not enough left over for those of us in the "middle class" which, per the Chicago Tribuen, no accounts for the lower 1-99% of the wage earners. Some middle class THAT!

Obama conceded in one television interview recently that Americans are not “better off than they were four years ago” and said in another that the nation had “gotten a little soft.” Both smacked of a man who feels discouraged and alienated and sparked comparisons to Jimmy Carter, never a good sign.

"Americans are not 'better off than they were four years ago' ” smacks of a man who si TELLING THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. ONCE AGAIN, we have a writer who misses the REAL STORY! Are Americans worse off than four years ago? By ANY reasonable measure the answer would be an unqualified YES!

"The nation has gotten a little soft." Now, this is very interesting. I am more inclined to say the (people of the) nation in many ways has gotten quite a bit more hardened, more determined, more POLITICALLY ACTIVE - and are seeking DEMOCRATIC SOLUTIONS to the problems of inequitable distribution of wealth and the influence of money upon the political process.

"Both smacked of a man who feels discouraged and alienated" I call BULL SHITThat strikes me as a man who is clueless about how the people of the nation (the lower 99) are thinking, and what subversive actions they are taking (talking about politics EVERYWHERE - church, bars, MacDonalds, street corners, while riding commuter trains - EVERYWHERE

The other comment is just the truth. We tend to bury our politicians for telling the truth. Most of them wouldn't know how to tell it if 'the truth' were written in 20 point Arial Font by Noam Chomsky.

We DO send truthful politicians packing -- but, what has God's Own Party put forth as viable presidential alternatives?

Blaming the country is political heresy, of course, yet Obama is running out of scapegoats. His allies rarely make affirmative arguments on his behalf anymore, limiting themselves to making excuses for his failure. He and they attack Republicans, George W. Bush, European leaders and Chinese currency manipulation -- and that was just last week.

The blame game isn’t much of a defense for Solyndra and “Fast and Furious,” the emerging twin scandals that paint a picture of incompetence at best.

Obama himself is spending his public time pushing a $450 billion “jobs” bill -- really another stimulus in disguise -- that even Senate Democrats won’t support. He grimly flogged it repeatedly at his Thursday press conference, even though snowballs in hell have a better chance of survival.

One thing you can do with a $450,000,000,000 "jobs" bill is put 9,000,000 people to work at $50,000 per year, and even if they were just picking their noses, that would REALLY help the unemployment figures (which are always a lie anyway).

If he cracked a single smile at the hour-plus event, I missed it. He seems happy only on the campaign trail, where the adoration of the crowd lifts his spirits.

We want smiley faced presNITS

When it comes to getting America back on track to economic growth, he is running on vapors. Yet he shows no inclination to adopt any ideas other than his own Big Government grab. His itch for higher taxes verges on a fetish.

Harvey Golub, former chairman of American Express, called the “jobs” bill an incoherent mess. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he said that among other flaws, the bill includes an unheard of retroactive tax hike on the holders of municipal bonds.

“Many of us have suspected that economic illiterates were setting the economic policy of this administration,” Golub wrote, adding that the bill “reveals a depth of cluelessness that boggles the mind.”

The public increasingly shares the sentiment. A new Quinnipiac polls finds that 55 percent now disapprove of Obama’s job performance, with only 41 percent approving. A mere 29 percent say the economy will improve if the president gets four more years.

The election, unfortunately, is nearly 13 months away.

The way Obama’s behaving, by then we’ll all be talking to portraits of past presidents, asking why this one turned out to be such a flop.

Why OBUMMAH turned out to be such a flop: Because he was an over-rated piece of shit to being with.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/aimless_obama_walks_alone_OUgoMTkORRJioLl7B6ZYmN#ixzz1aR3X12Zq

Preview: Bananastan-iversary! 11 Oct. 2011 by Jeff Huber

Sunday, October 09, 2011


Last week marked the tenth anniversary of our War on Evil (aka “WOE”) in the Bananastans, those Central Asian banana republics of Pakistan and Afghanistan. If you’re confused as to which of the two Bananastans we’re at war with, don't worry. You’re in good company, some of which resides in the National Security Council and much of which dwells in the Pentagon.

Technically speaking, we aren’t at war with either country, even though we’ve been in the process of blowing both of them to piecemeal smithereens for over a decade now. Then again, strictly speaking, constitutionally speaking, we aren’t at war with any country, since we haven’t formally declared war against anybody since back in the early forties. That war, World War II, was actually two wars, one against Imperial Japan and one against Nazi Germany. We didn’t declare war against Nazi Germany, by they way, but we didn’t have to. Nazi Germany declared war against us after we declared war against Imperial Japan. But that was good enough to constitute a properly constituted war according to the Marquess of Queensbury or Charles Goren or whoever was authorized to make up the rules of warfare back before there was a UN.


Japanese foreign affairs minister Moramu Shigemitzu
formally declares "Uncle-san!"
The wars against Germany and Japan were both over by the late 1940s. We know they ended because both Germany and Japan signed formal surrender documents. The German and Japanese people went along with those surrenders because they were signed by heads of state of the governments that existed in Germany and Japan at the time they surrendered. Another nation formally surrendering to us is another thing that hasn’t happened since the 1940s, and is a very large part of the reason that we haven’t actually won a war since then. We declared victory in Vietnam after we got our ass kicked there and went home, and the uneasy peace between the Koreas is the product of a cease-fire that has lasted more-or-less successfully for a half-century and tool-booth tokens.

Even though we haven’t declared any wars since the 1940s, we are presently involved in roughly 120 wars, give or take, around the world. The legitimizing pretext for some of those wars is the Authorization for Use of Military Force aka AUMF that our Congress persons passed almost unanimously without thinking about what they were doing exactly one week after the 9/11 attacks. The pre-ramble to the AUMF says that “the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States.” The 9/18/2001 AUMF is often referred to as “the blank check” that allowed young Mr. Bush to do whatever he had to do to keep them evildoers so’s he could keep them from doing their evil whenever his neocon masters decided he needed to do it.

The 9/18/2001 AUMF and the 10/16/2002 AUMF that gave Mr. Bush and his puppeteers permission to invade Iraq are provisions of the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which says that a president can only employ troops in combat overseas beyond 60 days unless Congress “has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces.” Bush administration Federalist Society lawyers, most notably John Yoo (aka Yoo Manchu), argued that Bush didn’t need a separate AUMF to invade Iraq because the original AUMF allowed it plus a pile of other bull roar about how international law allows you to conduct preemptive self defense even if you don’t really need to, because, hey, how can you know for sure that you don't need to defend yourself from another country unless you invade the place and toss it? Huh? You tell me.

In retrospect, the Bush miller’s threats to bypass the legislature appear to have been a stratagem to gulling our Keystone Kongress into demanding a chance to vote for the invasion, and then letting vote for it so they couldn’t hold the executive branch responsible when it turned out that we invaded another country on fuzzy pretexts which, it turns out, is what we did.

The 9/18/2001 AUMF and the self-defense mantra have been the bulwark of “legal” justification for the triple-digits worth of third world wars we’re waging—with one major exception. The best and brightest warmongers in young Mr. Obama’s administration couldn’t claim that Libya’s Muamar Gadaffi was a terror threat. He had, in fact, renounced jihadist terrorism in general and al Qaeda specifically. And they couldn’t say we had to preemptively defend ourselves against him because he had voluntarily ash canned whatever sort of Our Gang weapons of mass destruction program he might have had. They couldn’t even say the Gadaffi’s regime was illegitimate because young Mr. Bush’s recognized it in return for Gadaffi ash canning his WMD and renouncing al Qaeda.

So Susie Rice, the liberal warmonger who young Mr. Obama hand-picked to succeed neocon warmongers John Bolton and Zalmay Khalilzad as our Ambassador to the UN, crammed a resolution past the Security Council’s tonsils to establish a no-fly zone to protect the freedom loving peoples of Libya from their mean old dictator (who the UN had also recognized as a legitimate head of state). That quickly turned into an extensive bombing campaign ala the Kosovo Konflict to run mean old Gadaffi out of office and replace him with a bunch of hoodlums who couldn't decide among themselves who was in charge of them.

The Obama warmongers’ UN gambit accomplished something even Yoo Manchu didn’t manage to pull off: stiff-arm the War Powers Act and Congress completely from starting wars. That’s because liberals get the vapors when a conservatives start pointless, ill-advised wars, but when a fellow liberal does such things, well, liberals, you know how they are, they have to hold a vagina dialogue before they actually do anything and, except for the very few of them who still have a spine like Denny Kucinich, they’ll go along with whatever young Mr. Obama wants because they don’t want to see him get his progressive pants spanked off my some tea-bagging bobble head come 11/6/2012.

That explains why liberals don’t seem to give a bat’s eyelash about the recent revelation by the British press (our press doesn’t reveal things any more) that Obama is initiating wars on individuals, including American citizens like US born citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, by authority of a secret panel within his National Security Council.


"We don't
want to rush
into things!"
And maybe it’s not all that shocking to discover that a secret panel is committing America to wars against individuals, since we’ve cut Congress out of the picture anyway and since we don’t actually fight wars against countries anymore. We were originally fighting Osama bin Laden in the Bananastans WOE, and the WOE in Iraq was against Saddam Hussein. That both of those enemies are now dead does not, of course, mean that the wars we initiated because of them are ending, or even in the process of ending. General John Allen, who just replaced King David Petraeus as the four-star bull feather merchant in charge of the Bananastans, says we’re going to be there for a “long time” beyond the notional 2014 troop withdrawal date.

“The plan is to win,” General Allen says. If that’s the case, inhabitants of the Next American Century will still be waging an undeclared war in the Bananastans against an enemy who will never surrender because they, like us, won’t be able to identify who exactly that enemy is.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword. Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now.

You might enjoy visiting my DISCOVERies.Blogspot.Com BLOG which serves as a Church / Spiritual Outreach to 18-35 year olds, and also to help prevent Thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifEENAGED SUICIDES which are a virtual epidemic where I live, in Barrington, IL 60010.

ह इ ल P

AT THE MOVIES: THE HELP

If you see only one movie in the next 12 months, please, let it be this movie, the stories of black, female, domestics around Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960's.

The story if driven by Skeeter, a young white lady and recent college graduate, returning home to Jackson, MS, single (never having even had a date - much to her mother's consternation), and ambitious - interviewing (successfully) for a job with the local newspaper. She ends up working for $8 / week, ghost writing a column on house cleaning. Knowing nothing about the topic (a boat she shares with all the white women of the Jackson), she asks Aibiliene, a third-generation housemaid, who at 53 years old has raised 17 children in her care. if she can help her with the house cleaning advice column.

Aibileen, along with her dearest maid friend Minny, eventually discover their voices and ultimately come to trust Skeeter enough to tell her of their stories, and of their feelings, exhibiting the courage to defy the conventions of the early 1960s.

The poignance, compassion, humanity of the domestics, as opposed to the lack of same exhibited by many (most assuredly not all) of the white women, both of Skeeter's generation (early 20-somethings) nad of her mother's generation, tells a beautiful story of how these maids raised their employers' children, always there for them, building them up, comforting when saddened, holding, loving, hugging them, things which their own mothers have not the time, the inclination, or the will to do.

An important story, brilliantly and lovingly told, as Skeeter comes to see how much like chattel the maids are treated, and decides she will write their stories (which she does do and her book is scandalously popular, as the good citizens of Jackson attempt to determine about whom each of the separate stories is written).

DO NOT MISS THIS MOVIE! (OR AT LEAST, READ THE BOOK!)

Protesters rally in downtown Chicago By Andrew L. Wang October 8, 2011

Protesters rally in downtown Chicago By Andrew L. Wang October 8, 2011
www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-protesters-rally-in-downtown-chicago-20111008,0,7219087.story

chicagotribune.com

The chants of protesters echoed through downtown Chicago this afternoon as marchers descended on the Loop to give voice to a wide cross-section of activist issues.

A crowd of about 700 gathered at noon at Congress Parkway andMichigan Avenue to hear speeches protesting the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan, though references other issues -- including unemployment, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, gay marriage and stopping urban violence -- were sprinkled in.

"There's always money for more wars," Dennis Kosuth, an emergency room nurse at Stroger Hospital, told the crowd. "But there's never enough money for the jobs that we need."

Meanwhile, a crowd of about 200 protesters loosely unified under the Occupy Chicago banner collected at LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard, railing against high unemployment, corporate greed and what they argue is the undue influence of cash in the political process {now, while they "argue" the point, does the Chicago Tribune reporter writing this report have any facts on the validity or lack thereof on this matter? Is there in fact "corporate greed and ... undue influence of cash in the political process" or are they just blowing hot air out of their pie holes? Enquiring minds want to KNOW -- and, in point of fact, THIS IS THE FUCKING STORY, which, of course, the Tribune reporter simply misses; as did his editor, etc, etc, etc.}

"They talk about not raising taxes on the rich because they create jobs," said Dove Anthony, 43, of Zion. "Yeah, they create jobs in China and other countries."

Police officers patrolled at the fringes of both gatherings, keeping the peace and guiding protesters through streets clogged with weekend traffic (AHEM! The POLICE were the keepers of the peace? Only insofar as they didn't pull out the billy clubs and start whaling on THE ALREADY PEACEFUL AND WELL ORGANIZED DEMONSTRATORS nor did they even TAS any of them ... Let's give full credit to the police, the police chief, and the mayor of Chicago for ordering the cops to keep things in check; to keep their pistols holstered: INDEED, the whole world is watcying!). Tourists gawked and snapped images with their mobile phone cameras.

In the end, the concrete canyons of Chicago's central business district were witness to a great overlapping of issues, expressed through chants, signs and slogans [as] AT a feeling of discontent and disappointment in America's centers of power -- political, military and economic. (Incurably sloppy editing job - as printed, this is not even a sentence; what a difference a letter makes, as in "T" v "s".)

"We are the 99 percent," said Megan Groves, a spokeswoman for Occupy Chicago, in a reference to the 1 percent of Americans the group believes holds the most wealth. "We will not be silent and we demand a voice in our government." (GOOD on you, Megan - this is a slogan that can get a WHOLE lot of people jumpin' on the band wagin - no anarchy, no violins in the streets - just something for the "middle class" that 99% of the country that actually has to budget and can't afford three homes - one to winter in; one to summer in; and one to live the rest of the year in .. WE ARE THE LOWER 99, TYVM!)

The anti-war marchers made a stop at President Obama’s 2012 campaign headquarters in the Prudential Building, with some protesters likening Obama to many of his Republican predecessors in the way he is handling both the war and economy.

(WELL, yes, of course, and he has been acting like a Republican President since he started unofficially taking over and running the country in November, 2007, shortly after the elections, where by he was the driving force to get the bail out moneis for the banksters into the greedy little piggy hands ... BarryO will also reduce social security benefits, and has seen to it that the insurance industry (and pharmacueticals by extension) will make a killing on OBUMMAH DON'TCARE health insurance legislation.)

The group held signs and chanted “This is what Democracy looks like,” (this is HARDLY singin' songs, and a-carryin' signs, mostly say 'hooray' for our side ... indeed this is something ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT from the ragged, scattered, schizophrenic special interest groups of the 60's - each protesting for their one issue, when in point of fact, it was the WHOLE GOD DAMNED SYSTEM that is (1) not working, (2) unAmerican.) among other slogans. Part of the group, some carrying Palestinian flags, also stopped near the Israeli consulate (and did not break any windows, nor did they storm the building, they just demonstrated with their presence ... the power of the J-Street lobby and the stranglehold they have on the discourse in re: the role of Israel in the middle East and whether or NOT the US should continue to funnel billions of dollars into the gullet of the pig Israeli war and repression machine has never come more fully unto scrutinty -- I would assume they {as well as all the 'powers that be'} are praying that this protest will fizzle out, and the sooner the betterer!} near Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue.

While the marchers gathered on the 10th anniversary of the start of the Afghanistan War to call for an end to U.S. military action there, economic issues weren't far from protesters' minds.

David Bachman, 34, of West Dundee, joined the march, he said, because he was dissatisfied with the power corporations wield in the daily lives of ordinary people. A carpenter by trade, Bachman has had trouble finding work and had to liquidate his savings to pay bills. (DUH! It's ALWAYS about the friggin economy; the American people may always do the "right thing" eventually, but it have NEVER been until the impact of not doing the right thing is seen on the old monthly bank statement that you can get our fat, generally contented, mostly ignorant people in the middle and upper middle income brackets (the 25-75 groping; hell, we've even added the 2-24% highest income folks to the rolls of those no longer shy to protest .. in a few short words, "WE ARE MAD AS HALL AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!"

"It's a hell of a world we live in," said Bachman, who wore a Public Enemy T-shirt and a Guy Fawkes mask backwards on his head.

At LaSalle and Jackson, in the shadows cast by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Bank of America Center, protesters held signs that read "Are you feeling the trickle down yet?," "Stop corporate sponsored democracy," and simply "Tax the rich."

Occupy Chicago is a spinoff of anti-wall Street protests in New York. They began protesting at the intersection two weeks ago.

President Barack Obama "hasn't done nearly enough. It's been disappointing," said Cheryl Pomeroy, 56, of Oak Park, who wore a hard hat and carried a whiteboard on which was written "Prosecute Wall St."

"The Democratic Party needs a push," she said. "The country needs to see how frustrated the average American workers are."

Chicago Tribune reporter Brent Lewis and the Associated Press contributed.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

Copyright © 2011, Chicago Tribune

The LOWER 99 is mad as hell, and no longer willing to take it silently!

Met two activists patriots tonight, in front of the Ogilvy Transportation Center on Madison Street in Chicago. I broke the conversation commenting upon their camping gear. “Gonna be camping around here?” “Definetly.” l “Where you from?” “New York City. We were in Philly this morning, occupying space in front of the Federal Reserve Bank there. Now we're here. There's LOTS of us! Have you heard about us?”

You bet. This is the singly most exciting thing that has happened in my lifetime since Miami, 1972, when the VVAW took over the town, marched through the streets in utter silence, while Ron Kovich and his three wheel-chair bound companions stormed the Republican National Convention, to be spat upon (the only actually recorded episode of anybody spitting on a Viet Nam veteran – all the others are fictions, put in the heads of all too guilible guys who saw RAMBO parts I & II too many times), by, Republican delegates.

We've already raised $40,000 in cash, and we haven't even tried to. We don't need money at this point. We just need PEOPLE to come out and be a part of it. In fact, we've had people telephone wanting to give us HUGE sums of money, several called wanting to contribute $50,000! But we don't have the mechanisms in place for that right now. People have been so nice – they send food over all the time. It's really exciting.l Please, come out tomorrow and JOIN US.

I will lads, you can bet your young asses, I will BE there.

With Love, With Hope, With Faith

DEMOCRACY is comin' to the USA!

Please, click on the link below, and feel the POWER of the PEOPLE!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHI9BTpGkp8


LEONARD COHEN LIVE IN LONDON | Democracy | PBS
PBS 4,363 videos Subscribe

443,160 Like Add to Share

गोत अन्नुदर उ-तेबुएर विडियो फॉर य'all

Once again, my bother-in-law, Makie Offutt, the US Presidential award winning high school AP Chem teacher, singer, song-writer, troubador, poet, Praise Band Leader, story-teller, science exhibitor, and all round loving husband, father, son-law, son, brother, bother-in-law, congregant ... oh, did I mention, I really admire the guy! Has done me the great honor of putting up at you tube another of my CD recordings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNvF4A_TRUE

Hmm, let me try something better on that YouTube video

http://youtu.be/UYlo70FGxPg




Freedom Song - Mark Ganzer
ganzermark 1 video Subscribe

4 views Like Add to Share
Uploaded by ganzermark on Oct 5, 2011
Interpretation of the song "Freedom" sung and played by Mark Ganzer.
0 likes, 0 dislikes
Show more
All Comments (0)
Reactions (0)
Sign In or Sign Up now to post a comment!

MY FIRST YOUTUBE VIDEO / RECORDING HAS BEEN PUBLISHERD - HERE's the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYlo70FGxPg
www.youtube.com