I agree with Jessie Ventura too !! We are America !!! We are not a 3rd world county. Is it do as I say but not as I do ????

I was totally surprised when Obama used the word "stupidity." I agree with his opinion, but it's not an opinion the President of the U.S. says in public. He knew it, for sure, but couldn't take it back. But he did all he could to make up for it. I think he did make up for it. And he did it in his typical creative way. In the end, the country will be the better for the whole incident

Obama adopts many Bush administration legal rationales

By MICHAEL DOYLE
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is morphing into George W. Bush, as administration attorneys repeatedly adopt the executive-authority and national-security rationales that their Republican predecessors preferred.

In courtroom battles and freedom-of-information fights from Washington, D.C., to California, Obama's legal arguments repeatedly mirror Bush's: White House turf is to be protected, secrets must be retained, and dire warnings are wielded as weapons.

"It's putting up a veritable wall around the White House, and it's so at odds with Obama's campaign commitment to more open government," said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a legal watchdog group.

Certainly, some differences exist.

The Obama administration, for instance, has released documents on global warming from the Council on Environmental Quality that the Bush administration sought to suppress. Some questions, such as access to White House visitor logs, remain a work in progress.

On policies that are at the heart of presidential power and prerogatives, however, this administration's legal arguments have blended into the other. The persistence can reflect everything from institutional momentum and a quest for continuity to the clout of career employees.

"There is no question that there are (durable) cultures and mindsets in agencies," Weismann acknowledged.

A courtroom clash Thursday illustrated how Obama has come to emulate Bush.

Weismann's organization sued last year to obtain the notes from an interview that the FBI conducted with then-Vice President Dick Cheney. The interview was part of an investigation into leaks concerning undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, and the Bush administration vigorously fought the release of the notes.

"The records contain descriptions of confidential deliberations among top White House officials which are protected by the deliberative process and presidential communications privileges," Bush's Justice Department argued in an Oct. 10, 2008, legal brief.

Obama's Justice Department held the same line Thursday.

"The new leadership of the department supports those arguments," Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith told U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan during the oral argument. "The Department of Justice is an ongoing entity, and it is not normal for us to update cases simply because we have a new attorney general."

Perspectives, of course, often change once candidates assume responsibility upon taking office. As a candidate, for instance, Obama opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

As president, however, he's following Bush's lead in defending in court the federal marriage law, which a California same-sex couple is challenging.

The law "reflects a cautiously limited response to society's still-evolving understanding of the institution of marriage," Assistant Attorney General Tony West declared in a legal filing June 11.

Legally speaking, every administration inherits lawsuits filed against its predecessor. The Solicitor General's Office, which represents the government in appeals, traditionally tries to hold a steady course. Personnel, too, stick around. John Brennan, the CIA director's chief of staff during the Bush administration, is now closely advising Obama as a senior National Security Council staffer.

Whatever the reasons, policy persists.

The Bush White House sought to keep e-mails secret. The Obama White House has followed suit. The Bush White House sought to keep visitor logs secret. The Obama White House, so far, takes the same view.

Petaluma, Calif., resident Carolyn Jewel and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a legal activist group, sued the Bush administration over warrantless wiretaps. The Bush administration said that the lawsuit endangered national security. The Obama administration now agrees.

"The disclosure of the information implicated by this case, which concerns how the United States seeks to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security," Acting Assistant Attorney General Michael F. Hertz declared in a brief April 3.

Similarly, the Bush administration objected to an American Civil Liberties Union request for access to documents that include photographs that reportedly show the abuse of foreign prisoners held by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Obama administration declared in April that it would release the photographs.

Three weeks later, Obama reversed course and declared that "releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger." The administration's attorneys followed up with a legal brief, augmented by a 24-page declaration that CIA Director Leon Panetta filed June 9.

"Information containing details of the (interrogation techniques) being applied would provide ready-made ammunition for al Qaida propaganda," Panetta declared. "The resultant damage to the national security would likely be exceptionally grave."

In an interview, ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said that "the trend, as it is now, is disappointing" as Obama follows the Bush lead. The Obama administration now will appeal to the Supreme Court in an effort to keep the photos and related information secret.

On the opposite coast, a similar drama is playing out in a clash over so-called "torture flights."

An ACLU lawsuit, initially filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., contends that the Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan knowingly supported a CIA operation that flew terrorism suspects to brutal overseas prisons. The Bush administration invoked the "state secrets" privilege in an effort to stop the suit.

"Further litigation of this case would pose an unacceptable risk of disclosure of information that the nation's security requires not be disclosed," the Bush administration declared in a legal filing on Oct. 18, 2007.

The Obama administration now says the same, after a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled April 21 that the case could proceed.

"Permitting this suit to proceed would pose an unacceptable risk to national security," the Obama administration declared in a legal filing June 12.

For both arguments, the two administrations relied on the attestations of the same man: former Bush CIA Director Michael Hayden.

http://www.kansas.com/514/story/862015.html

The Retreat of the Shadow Lenders, Why Deflation and not Inflation is the Order of the Day

By Ellen Brown

Global Research, June 18, 2009
webofdebt.com

While contrarians are screaming “hyperinflation!”, the money supply is actually shrinking. This is because most money today comes into existence as bank loans, and lending has shrunk substantially. That means the Fed needs to “monetize” debt just to fill the breach.

On June 3, 2009, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke assured Congress, “The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.” Bill Bonner, writing in The Daily Reckoning, said it had a ring to it, like President Nixon’s “I am not a crook” and President Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman.” Monetizing the debt is precisely what the Fed will do, says Bonner, because it has no other choice. The Chinese are growing reluctant to lend, the taxpayers are tapped out, and the deficit is at unprecedented levels. “Even good people do bad things when they get in a jam. The Feds are already in pretty deep . . . and they’re going a lot deeper.”

But Mr. Bernanke denied it. “Either cuts in spending or increases in taxes will be necessary to stabilize the fiscal situation,” he said.

Both alternatives will be vigorously opposed, leaving Congress in the same deadlock California has been in for the last year. That makes the monetization option at least worth a look. What is wrong with it? Bill Bonner calls it “larceny on the grandest scale. Rather than honestly repaying what it has borrowed, a government merely prints up extra currency and uses it to pay its loans. The debt is ‘monetized’ . . . transformed into an increase in the money supply, thereby lowering the purchasing power of everybody’s savings.”

So say the pundits, but in the past year the Fed has “monetized” over a trillion dollars worth of debt, yet the money supply is not expanding. As investment adviser Mark Sunshine observed in a June 12 blog:

“[W]hile media talking heads were ranting about how the Fed was running their printing presses overtime to push up money supply, the facts were very different. M1 has actually declined since the middle of December, 2008. During the same six month period M2 has only risen by a little less than 3%.”

The Fed is no longer reporting M3, the largest measure of the money supply, but according to Sunshine:

“[W]e know that broader measures of money supply, like M3, haven’t materially risen in 2009.

M3 followers can get a very rough idea of what M3 would have been, if it were published, by looking at the Federal Reserve quarterly Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States which was distributed yesterday. As it turns out, total net borrowing of the United States (private and public) dropped approximately $255 billion in the first quarter and other indicators of M3 fell or are about flat (on a net basis). . . . [T]his data supports [the] theory that the fall in private borrowing is more than offsetting the rise in government borrowing and therefore, at least for the time being, financing the deficit isn’t a problem.”

All of this flap about the Fed driving the economy into hyperinflation because it is creating money on its books reflects a fundamental misconception about how our money and banking system actually works. In monetizing the government’s debt, the Fed is just doing what banks do every day. All money is created by banks on their books, as many authorities have attested. The Fed is just stepping in where the commercial banking system has failed. Except for coins, which are issued by the government and compose only about one ten-thousandth of the money supply (M3), our money today is nothing but bank credit (or debt); and we’re now laboring under a credit freeze, which means banks aren’t creating nearly as many loans as they used to. In February, the Bank for International Settlements published research showing that European banks could not settle their debts because of a $2 trillion shortage of U.S. dollars. Proposals for alternative reserve currencies followed. And in March, Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman reported that up to 45% of the world’s wealth has been destroyed by the credit crisis. The missing “wealth” cannot be restored without putting the missing “money” back into the system, and that means getting the credit engine going again.

Congress, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve have therefore been throwing money at the banks, trying to build up the banks’ capital so they can make enough loans to refuel the economy. At a capital requirement of 8%, $8 in capital can be leveraged into $100 in loans. But lending remains far below earlier levels, and it’s not because the banks are refusing to lend. The banks insist that they are making as many loans as they’re allowed to make with their existing deposit and capital bases. The real bottleneck is with the “shadow lenders” – those investors who, until late 2007, bought massive amounts of bank loans bundled up as “securities,” taking those loans off the banks’ books, making room for yet more loans to be originated out of the banks’ capital and deposit bases. In a Washington Times article titled “Banks Still Standing Amid Credit Rubble,” Patrice Hill wrote:

“Before last fall’s financial crisis, banks provided only $8 trillion of the roughly $25 trillion in loans outstanding in the United States, while traditional bond markets provided another $7 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. The largest share of the borrowed funds - $10 trillion - came from securitized loan markets that barely existed two decades ago. . . .

“Many legislators in Congress complain that banks aren’t lending, and cite that as an excuse to vote against further bank bailout funds. . . . But Mr. Regalia [chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce] said these critics are wrong. ‘Banks are lending more, but 70 percent of the system isn’t there anymore,’ he said.”

Seventy percent of the system isn’t there anymore because the traditional bond markets and securitized loan markets have dried up. Writes Hill:

“Congress’ demand that banks fill in for collapsed securities markets poses a dilemma for the banks, not only because most do not have the capacity to ramp up to such large-scale lending quickly. The securitized loan markets provided an essential part of the machinery that enabled banks to lend in the first place. By selling most of their portfolios of mortgages, business and consumer loans to investors, banks in the past freed up money to make new loans. . . .

“The market for pooled subprime loans, known as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), collapsed at the end of 2007 and, by most accounts, will never come back. Because of the surging defaults on subprime and other exotic mortgages, investors have shied away from buying the loans, forcing banks and Wall Street firms to hold them on their books and take the losses.”

The retreat of the shadow lenders has created a credit freeze globally; and when credit shrinks, the money supply shrinks with it. That means there is insufficient money to buy goods, so workers get laid off and factories get shut down, perpetuating a vicious spiral of economic collapse and depression. To reverse that cycle, credit needs to be restored; and when the banks can’t do it, the Fed needs to step in and start “monetizing” debt.

So why don’t Fed officials just say that is what they are up to and put our minds at ease? Probably because they can’t without exposing the whole banking game. The curtain would be thrown back and we the people would know that our money system is sleight of hand. The banks never had all that money they supposedly lent to us. We’ve been paying interest for something they created out of thin air! Indeed, their credit money is less substantial than air, which at least has some molecules bouncing around in it. Bank credit exists only in cyberspace.

Ben Bernanke’s predecessor Alan Greenspan was sometimes compared to the Wizard of Oz, the little man who hid behind a curtain pulling levers and twisting dials, maintaining the smoke and mirrors illusion that an all-powerful force was keeping things under control. Early in his term, Chairman Bernanke was criticized for revealing too much. “If you’re going to play the Wizard,” said one TV commentator, “you have to stay behind the curtain.” The Chairman has evidently learned his lesson and is now playing the role, wrapping his moves in that veil of mystery expected of the man considered the world’s most powerful banker, the Wizard who moves markets with his words.

The problem with the Wizard playing his cards close to the chest is that investors don’t know how to play theirs. The Chinese have grown so concerned about the soundness of their dollar investments that the head of China’s second-largest bank recently said the U.S. government should start issuing bonds in China’s currency, the yuan. What do we want with yuan? We need dollars; and we would be better off getting them from our own central bank than borrowing them from foreign rivals. We could then spend them on projects aimed at internal domestic development – as the Chinese themselves have been doing – and get the wheels of production turning again.

If Ben Bernanke stands by his word and refuses to monetize the federal debt, Congress should consider issuing the money itself, as the U.S. Constitution provides. The “full faith and credit of the United States” is an asset of the United States, and it should properly be issued and lent by the United States rather than by unaccountable private banks and shadow lenders. The true path to economic recovery – the path from an economy strangled in debt to one blooming in prosperity – is to reclaim money and credit as public resources, transforming money from private master to public servant.

Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from “the money trust.” Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature’s Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.

Bank Rescue Costs EU States $5.3 Trillion, More Than German GDP
Published on 06-16-2009

Source: Bloomberg

European governments have approved $5.3 trillion of aid, more than the annual gross domestic product of Germany, to support banks during the credit crunch, according to a European Union document

The U.K. pledged 781.2 billion euros ($1.1 trillion) to restore confidence in its lenders, the most of any of the 27 EU members, according to a May 26 document prepared by officials from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and member states and obtained by Bloomberg News. Denmark, where 13 of the country’s 140 banks were bailed out by the central bank or bought by rivals last year, committed 593.9 billion euros.

The measures, designed to save banks and revive economic growth, surpass Germany’s $3.3 trillion economy, the region’s biggest. They also helped to widen the Euro area’s budget deficit to the most in three years in 2008. The commission, the EU’s executive arm, is seeking to create the first EU-wide agencies with rule-making powers to monitor risk in the economy after the crisis led to $460 billion of losses and writedowns across the continent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“The operating environment for banks is likely to remain challenging, in particular in respect of credit losses linked to their loan portfolios,” according to the document, produced by the EU’s Economic and Financial Committee. The draft document, partially entitled “the effectiveness of financial support measures,” will be debated at the next meeting of EU leaders on June 18-19 in Brussels.

Government Pledges

EU governments approved about 311.4 billion euros for capital injections, 2.92 trillion euros for bank liability guarantees, 33 billion euros for relief of impaired assets and 505.6 billion euros for liquidity and bank funding support, a total of 3.77 trillion euros, the document shows.

The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve had spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, as of March 31.

A majority of new member states including Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Lithuania have not taken public measures to support their financial markets, the draft said. Many banks in the region are foreign-owned. More than 80 percent of bank loans in central and eastern Europe come from lenders owned by six western European EU countries, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

All together, the EU paper said that 18 member states have introduced bank liability guarantees, 15 have approved recapitalization measures, and 11 have given liquidity support.

The programs have “contributed to a stabilization of the extremely tense financial market conditions that were witnessed in the autumn of last year,” according to the document Still, there remain “elevated risk premiums in many parts” of the financial markets and this is “likely to remain challenging.”

‘High Risk Premiums’

The decline of lending in Europe “remains mainly demand- driven, but banks’ balance sheet constraints and limited access to medium- and long-term financing” and high risk premiums “may also have contributed,” according to preliminary ECB analysis, the document said.

Government’s attempts to make banks pledge to increase lending as a condition of taxpayer support may “imply that banks lose one of their credit tools to manage credit risk if no safeguards are established to ensure” that loans are made on commercial terms and with “sound risk management techniques.”

The British government this year secured promises of additional mortgage and business lending from Lloyds Banking Group Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Northern Rock Plc in return for aid.

Further Disclosure

The document called on European leaders to seek further disclosure on impaired assets and to restore confidence in the industry. New EU guidelines may require banks in receipt of aid to sell branches or units to win approval for restructuring plans, according to the document These guidelines could be approved as soon as the end of the month.

Banks in Germany received the third-largest amount in aid, the document showed, for a total of 554.2 billion euros. Commerzbank AG, Germany’s second-biggest bank, was told to sell its Eurohypo commercial property unit by the Commission on May 7 to win approval for a second bailout by the German government.

Following is a table of European government’s commitments. All figures are in billions of euros and include capital injections, guarantees granted, effective asset relief and liquidity interventions.

United Kingdom 781.2
Denmark 593.9
Germany 554.2
Ireland 384.5
France 350.1
Belgium 264.5
Netherlands 246.1
Austria 165
Sweden 142
Spain 130

http://blacklistednews.com/?news_id=4528

Published on Monday, June 15, 2009 by Salon.com

The Obama Officials Blocking Accountability for Bush Crimes
by Glenn Greenwald

The battle against baseless, worthless grants of anonymity by journalists is, at this point, probably futile, since even many of the nation's best and most valuable reporters -- such as The New Yorker's Jane Mayer -- seem helplessly addicted to it. In an otherwise solid and at times enlightening article on CIA Director Leon Panetta and his resistance to investigating past CIA abuses, Mayer includes this passage at the beginning of her article to explain how Panetta was chosen only after Obama's first choice, John Brennan, was rejected:

A friend of Brennan's from his C.I.A. days complained to me, "After a few Cheeto-eating people in the basement working in their underwear who write blogs voiced objections to Brennan, the Obama Administration pulled his name at the first sign of smoke, and then ruled out a whole class of people: anyone who had been at the agency during the past ten years couldn't pass the blogger test."

What possible justification is there to grant anonymity to someone to spout these clichéd and factually false insults? First, as I've documented numerous times and as Mayer herself well knows, the case against Brennan was not that he was "at the agency for the past ten years" or even that he had anything to do with the torture program, but rather that (as she herself documents later in the piece) he explicitly advocated and defended many of the worst torture techniques and other Bush abuses. Second, unlike the individual who is willing to spout these insults only while cowardly hiding behind Mayer's shield of anonymity, the bloggers who led the opposition to Brennan (including myself and The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan) all attached their names to their views and -- as Spencer Ackerman notes -- are about as far away as one can be from the trite, adolescent cartoons spewed by Mayer's anonymous insulter. Third, one of the principal points of Mayer's long article is that the objections to Brennan have been vindicated, because -- as Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser -- he has led the way in urging Obama to keep past CIA abuses suppressed and Bush crimes protected from accountability.

The anonymous name-calling Mayer passes on appears on the first page of her piece, but on page 5, she includes the facts that show how factually false is the characterization of the objections to Brennan:

Brennan's supporters have argued that he had no operational control over the interrogation program, and point out that his tenure as Tenet's chief of staff ended in March, 2001, before the Al Qaeda attacks. But he was subsequently named deputy executive director, and served in that position until March, 2003-the period when the most brutal detainee treatment occurred.

In addition, Brennan often briefed President Bush about daily developments in the war on terror. Brennan has described himself as an internal critic of waterboarding-a position that friends, such as Emile Nakhleh, a former senior officer, confirm. Yet, in an interview with me two years ago, Brennan defended the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques and extraordinary renditions, in which the C.I.A. abducted terror suspects around the globe and transported them to other countries to be jailed and interrogated; many of those countries had execrable human-rights records. He also questioned some people's definition of "torture." "I think it's torture when I have to ride in the car with my kids and they have loud rap music on," he said. Asked if "enhanced" interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America safe, he replied, "Would the U.S. be handicapped if the C.I.A. was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes."

That - his comments defending "enhanced interrogation techniques," making light of torture, and justifying other Bush-era abuses (such as rendition) -- was the crux of the campaign against Brennan's being named CIA director. So why pass on the false anonymous attack at the start that purports to define the case against Brennan in such a misleading way?

Far more important than that, Mayer documents that precisely the principal concern of Brennan objectors has already materialized -- namely, he has become Obama's most forceful advocate for shielding those Bush-era crimes from investigation and protecting the wrongdoers, at the very same time that, as Mayer notes, he has a direct personal interest in blocking accountability:

[Brennan] has reportedly lobbied hard to maintain secrecy on past abuses. According to Newsweek, Brennan recently persuaded Panetta to join him in protesting Obama's plan to release four shocking Justice Department memos about the interrogation program. . . .

Panetta's resistance to public disclosure seemed out of character to some longtime colleagues. . . . Panetta's advisers may have had a personal stake in opposing transparency. Another former C.I.A. official, who knows Brennan well, noted that, if the Bush torture program were to be further investigated, "potentially, both Brennan and [Deputy CIA Director Stephen] Kappes could have a lot to lose.

The argument Brennan made against release of the CIA torture memos is the same argument made to justify suppression of the torture photos: namely, "that exposing such details could spark an anti-American backlash." Precisely because Obama has retained so many people involved with or otherwise linked to Bush abuses, he is surrounded by people actively working to block any investigation into or accountability for those crimes. The most egregious example Mayer describes is the CIA official responsible for the abduction and rendition-for-torture of German citizen Khaled el-Masri, who turned out to be completely innocent:

From the start, the rendition team suspected that his case was one of mistaken identity. But the C.I.A. officer in charge at Langley-the agency asked that the officer's name be withheld-insisted that Masri be further interrogated. "She just looked in her crystal ball and it said that he was bad," a colleague recalls. Masri says that he was chained in a freezing cell with no bed, and given water so putrid that he could smell it across the room. He was threatened and stripped, and could hear other detainees crying all around him. After several weeks, the C.I.A. officer in charge learned that Masri's German passport was not a forgery, as was originally suspected, and that he was not the terror suspect the agency thought he was. (The names were similar.) Even so, the officer in charge refused to release him.

Eventually, Masri went on a hunger strike, losing sixty pounds. Skeptics in the agency went directly over the officer's head to Tenet, who realized that his agency had been brutalizing an innocent man. Masri was released after a hundred and forty-nine days. But the officer in charge was not disciplined; in fact, a former colleague says, "she's been promoted-twice." Masri, meanwhile, has been unable to sue the U.S. government for either an apology or damages, because the courts consider the very existence of rendition a state secret-a position that the Obama Justice Department has so far supported.

And there are numerous other instances in which Panetta is battling to keep evidence of Bush-era crimes suppressed, including his fight against an ACLU lawsuit for disclosure of documents relating to the (almost certainly illegal) destruction of interrogation videotapes. In many cases, the very same people who defended these abuses are the same ones succeeding in blocking any accountability for them. Those who defended Bush-era abuses are the last people who ought to be making intelligence decisions going forward. That was the primary objection to Brennan's becoming CIA Director, and his becoming Obama's top intelligence advisor has obviously vindicated those concerns.

Mayer notes Panetta's efforts (and Obama's) to reverse some of the polices that led to these abuses, including the ban on torture techniques, but the central question is the one posed by her headline: "Can Leon Panetta move the C.I.A. forward without confronting its past?" Ultimately, there is a real irony to the Obama administration's active, concerted efforts to prevent accountability for past crimes: namely, the greater the suppression efforts, the greater the focus on past Bush abuses will be, since evidence of Bush crimes will seep out slowly and in increments, and there will be constant controversies concerning the Obama administration's suppression efforts themselves (as can be seen with his continuous invocation of the "state secrets" privilege to keep torture and eavesdropping victims out of court; the pressure exerted on Britain to do the same; and his extraordinary efforts to suppress photographic evidence of detainee abuse).

There are far too many proceedings -- from the prosecutions in Spain to the investigations in Britain to the ongoing (and increasingly successful) civil lawsuits in the U.S. -- to have any hope of preventing full-scale disclosure for much longer. The only question is whether Obama will be seen as one who worked to conceal the wrongdoing and protect the wrongdoers. Thus far, at least, the answer is quite clear. Mayer's new article -- highlighting who is behind these decisions and the personal stake they have in their outcome -- sheds some light into why this is taking place.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/15-2

hmmm... I wonder who will get the Health Care contracts?....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/us/politics/14cong.html?hp

Many in Congress Hold Stakes in Health Industry

The personal financial reports, due late last week from members of Congress, show that many lawmakers hold investments in insurance, pharmaceutical and prescription-benefit companies and in hospital interests, all of which would be affected by the administration’s overhaul of health care.

The lawmakers’ stakes are impossible to quantify because the reports ask for ranges of value for each asset, and because many officials’ holdings are in stock index and mutual funds. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, for example, has interests in a stock index fund for the health care sector of more than $50,000 and up to $100,000.

Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the senior Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, one of three panels in the House with jurisdiction over health care, reported at least tens of thousands of dollars in health-related interests, including the medical technology giant Medtronic, the drug maker Wyeth and the insurance company Aetna.

In Congress, as members and aides of the three House committees continue to meet privately, the Senate health committee will begin publicly drafting and voting on its bill as soon as Tuesday. Later in the week, the Democratic chairman and senior Republican of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus of Montana and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, are expected to unveil a bipartisan plan.

Neither Mr. Baucus, from a ranching family, nor Mr. Grassley, a farmer, have major health-related holdings, their reports show.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, chairman of the health committee, has much of his wealth in blind trusts.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, leads the health committee in consultation with Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Dodd’s wife, Jackie Clegg Dodd, is a member of the board and a shareholder in several health-related companies, including Cardiome Pharma, Javelin Pharmaceuticals and Brookdale Senior Living.

Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a Republican on the health committee, is an obstetrician with income from his clinic in Muskogee. The wife of Representative Wally Herger of California, the senior Republican on the health subcommittee of the Ways and Means panel, works for Catholic Healthcare West, while the wife of Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, works for JPS Health Network.

Mr. Obama’s chief adviser on health care, Nancy-Ann DeParle, also filed disclosure forms with the White House. Ms. DeParle, who served in the Clinton administration, went on to lucrative positions on the boards of health companies and as director of a private-equity firm with health investments, earning more than $2 million from 2008 to this year, according to forms signed on May 13.

The companies included Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefits manager; Boston Scientific, a device maker; Cerner, a provider of medical information technology; and DaVita, an operator of dialysis services.

A handwritten note on the forms, dated June 4, says that “all conflicting assets have been divested.” Ms. DeParle is the wife of a reporter for The New York Times, Jason DeParle.

Janie Lorber, Ashley Southall and Jack Styczynski contributed reporting.

IRS Moves to Ban Tax Returns Filed By All But ‘Experts’

By James P. Tucker, Jr.

In an astonishing power grab, the Internal Revenue Service wants to license all who prepare returns for taxpayers. This means that Uncle Oscar couldn’t help his nephew prepare his income tax return unless a Washington bureaucrat grants a license.

H&R Block and the National Association of Tax Professionals (NATP) are supporting the effort by IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman for selfish reasons: If Uncle Oscar can’t help, his nephew must pay a “licensed” preparer.

Shulman said in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee that he expects to make his recommendations to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and President Obama by the end of the year.

Shulman argued that licensing is needed because of bad guy tax preparers. Of the millions of tax returns filed over the last three years, only about 350 preparers were convicted of fraud, according to the IRS’s own records.

Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at Americans for Tax Reform, challenged IRS claims that licensing would generate significant funds from “tax cheats.” He told the Washington Times, “If the IRS thinks that licensing tax preparers will raise a lot of money, it won’t.”

Shulman’s recommendations “could focus on a new model for the regulation of tax return preparers; education and training of return preparers; and enforcement related to return preparer misconduct,” the IRS said.

“Education” and “training”? Many times over the years, newspapers have sent male and female reporters, posing as married couples, to IRS offices for “help” with their returns. They would offer simple situations: two kids and a mortgage. In an overwhelming majority of cases, four different IRS “professionals” would prepare their returns in four different ways.

Shulman said 87 percent of taxpayers now use computer software or paid preparers. “Tax preparers and the associated industry can help us increase compliance and strengthen the integrity of the tax system,” Shulman said. On the subject of “integrity,” he failed to mention David Rockefeller and other billionaires who pay no income tax at all by ducking their obligations with the help of high-priced “preparers.”

The first step in the licensing process, the IRS said, will involve fact-finding
and receiving input from unlicensed tax preparers and software vendors, as well as those who are licensed by state and federal authorities, including enrolled agents, lawyers and accountants.

“H&R Block strongly supports the IRS initiative announced by Commissioner Doug Shulman to review comprehensively alternatives for improving the accuracy of tax filings and the ethics and integrity of all who hold themselves out directly or indirectly in providing tax preparation services,” said Chairman Richard Breeden.

“We are all in favor of raising the bar,” said NATP’s Paul Cinquemani. “If people are operating out there without continuing education, they are on dangerous ground.”

Distinguished law scholar Elizabeth Warren teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law at Harvard Law School. She is an outspoken critic of America's credit economy, which she has linked to the continuing rise in bankruptcy among the middle-class. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures" [6/2007] [Public Affairs] [Business] [Show ID: 12620]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

What's bankrupting Americans?

I didn't make up the title of this talk.

University of California Television did.

It's pretty blunt, isn't it?

But the number don't lie.

The interesting thing is what's bankrupting Americans. It's not food, it's not clothing, it's not electronic gadgets and it's not extravagant living.

Since 1970, for two income family with two kids:

* Mortgage payments: up 76%
* Healthy families that are getting employers sponsored health insurance: up 74%
* Owning multiple cars: up 52%
* Child care: up 100% +++
* Taxes: up 25%

These are fixed expenses, the ones you can't avoid. Big, fixed and relentless.

Who profits? Wall Street and the banks, the medical-industrial complex, the oil industry, and the government.

And these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.

Watch the whole video to get the whole story.

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/642.html

Americans' wealth drops $1.3 trillion
Fed report shows a decline of home values and the stock market cut the nation's wealth to $50.4 trillion.
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney.com senior writer
Last Updated: June 11, 2009: 3:45 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Americans saw $1.3 trillion of wealth vaporize in the first quarter of 2009, as the stock market and home values continued to decline, according to a government report released Thursday.

Household net worth fell to $50.4 trillion, according to the flow of funds report by the Federal Reserve. Americans' stock holdings plunged 5.8% to $5.2 trillion and mutual funds holdings slid 4.1% to $3.3 trillion, while their home value dropped 2.4% to $17.9 trillion.

The nation's households have now seen their net worth shrink for seven straight quarters. Family net worth had hit an all-time high of $64.4 trillion in the second quarter of 2007, thanks to the housing bubble and a strong stock market.

"It's more of what we saw late last year," said Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody's economy.com. "Consumers are cutting back on their borrowing to some extent, but the decline in value of assets is swamping that."

The results are not surprising. The Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 11.7% in the quarter, while home values fell 14.2% from the prior-year period, according to Zillow.com.

Though Americans are getting poorer, the rate of decline is slowing. Last year, households' net worth dropped by a record $10.9 trillion, or 17.4%. It ended the year at $51.7 trillion. The fourth-quarter loss of $4.9 trillion, or 8.6%, was the largest quarterly plunge since the Fed started keeping records in 1951.

Americans also continued to pull back on their borrowing. Household debt fell at an annual rate of 1.1% to $13.8 trillion for the first quarter, after contracting 2% in the fourth quarter of 2008. That was the first time household debt shrank.

During the white-hot housing boom, Americans piled on debt. Between 2002 and 2006, annual household borrowing grew at double-digit rates.

Such debt levels are unsustainable and had to come down to restore Americans' household financial health, said Amir Sufi, finance professor at the University of Chicago. This contraction is a major factor behind the recession.

"Household deleveraging has to happen even though it's painful," Sufi said.

Mortgage borrowing remained flat, after falling for the previous three quarters. Consumer credit, however, dropped at an annual rate of 3.5%, the largest dip in at least 35 years, as people slowed their use of credit cards and auto loans.

The plunge in consumer credit concerns Paul Wachtel, economics professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. It shows that either consumers are not able or willing to borrow.

"The ability of the consumer sector to start spending again is what will pull the economy out of the recession," he said.

Homeowners' equity also fell to a record low 41.4% as values continued their plunge. More than one in five homeowners now owe more than their houses are worth, according to Zillow.com.

Businesses also decreased their borrowing for the first time since 1992, slipping 0.3% for the quarter. The federal government, however, pumped up its borrowing by 22.6% in an attempt to stabilize the economy. Federal debt grew by 39.2% in the third quarter of 2008 and 37% in the fourth quarter.

If the stock market comeback continues, though, Americans will likely see their net worth increase in the second quarter, said Michael Englund, chief economist at Action Economics. Financial assets, including stock holdings, account for 80% of a household's wealth. The S&P 500 is up 17.7% so far this quarter.

"The gains in this quarter should more than reverse the declines of the first quarter," Englund said.

First Grocery store in LA to take Silver - the end is near

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IfyXyu7xNI

wadada

hmmmm...

Why wasn't the keymaster of the World Trade Centers testimony included in the 9/11 Commission Report?

http://blip.tv/play/Ac2DWoTFWw

Folks debunk this...

hmmmm...

I wonder if the lame stream media will pick up on this story.....

2 Japanese Detained In Italy; Concealed $134.5 BILLION Of U.S. Government Bonds In Briefcase
Date: June 11, 2009
Source: Right Soup
Posted by: Erin

Not a peep yet from U.S. mainstream media, but Italian authorities have detained 2 Japanese nationals who were attempting to cross into Switzerland with $134.5 BILLION in U.S. Government Bonds… hidden in a false-bottomed briefcase. This is HUGE news. PDF of the Italian Government’s news release is here, with more pictures.

The Italian financial authorities haven’t yet determined whether the bonds are real or fake, but if they are genuine, the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter would still be astonishing… because the quality of the counterfeit work is so good that the fake bonds are reportedly indistinguishable from real ones.

The bonds include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollars each. Bonds are rarely issued in certificate (paper) form any more…an electronic account entry of the asset is the norm. It’s safer, for one thing. Unless you are trying to launder some money.

Itailan authorities seize $134.5 billion in US Treasury bonds from two Japanese nationals (11 seconds)
http://rightsoup.com/2-japanese-detained-in-italy-concealed-134-billion-in-us-government-bonds-in-briefcase/

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

For most of their history after World War II, Treasury notes have been issued with denominations never rising above a high of $1 million. Yet, from 1955 to 1969, the Treasury issued Treasury notes with the added denominations of $100 million and $500 million. Some of the seized bonds, especially the Kennedys, may be what are called “bearer bonds” that are “negotiable”, basically like cash. Whomever has possession of a bearer-bond can claim ownership. Widespread fraud and theft dangers caused the securities industry to cease issuing bearer-bonds many years ago.

To use paper bond certificates of any kind would cause scrutiny by a reputable financial institution today, especially if said bonds were bearer-bonds. It’s very likely that real or counterfeit, these bonds were headed for a black-market transaction. So who is trying to rip off, skate off with, or launder $134 Billion Dollars? That’s half of a freaking TARP. Two Japanese men in their 50’s? Only governments would have such a pile.

If the certificates are real, Italy just won the lottery… their money laundering laws inflict a 40% penalty for failure to declare instruments and cash in excess of $10,000 Euros, which means they’d score a windfall of around $40 billion dollars.

Want to get REALLY conspiratorial? On March 30th, the Wall Street Journal said this…notice the number in bold.

Treasury Has $134.5 Billion Left in TARP MARCH 30, 2009

The Treasury Department said it has about $134.5 billion left in its financial-rescue fund, giving the Obama administration a cushion as it implements expensive programs aimed at unlocking credit markets and boosting ailing industries. The figure means that about 81% of the $700 billion in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, has been committed. It also means that the Obama administration may not have to go to Congress to request additional funds, at least until well into the year. Many lawmakers who criticized the administration’s bank-rescue efforts have vowed to oppose any requests for more money for …

And interestingly, from Reuters, is this:

“U.S. TIC data show that during the 12 months ending January 2007, Japanese investors bought just $18.2 billion in Treasury coupons, or approximately $1.5 billion a month, a sharp contrast from the 12 months ending January 2005 when Japanese investors purchased $134.5 billion of U.S. government debt, McCarthy noted.”

Something stinks, so keep your eye on this one. The amount involved is MASSIVE, the city where they were seized is a financial gateway to Switzerland, and you’d have to have giant balls to try and fake out the Swiss with counterfeits in this way. Not that you could. Pressure is mounting in Congress for an audit of the Fed. Our government obviously knows about this catch by the Italians…but it seems they, and our media, don’t want you to.

The individuals in Guantanamo are not just common criminals looking to steal your T.V. or your car. They are part of a group that wants to take you life...TERRORISTS! They are there because they failed. President Obama needs to endorse whatever it takes to withdraw the information necessary to protect the United States.

Frank, this has nothing to do with the article, but what the color gal said & your wife. She said you look chubby, you look gorgeous...I am a 58 yr old single grandma & have a grandson that is 1/4 Filipino & he is so beautiful with the dark hair & eyes. Please don't change Frank..you could sit there & do the news in the buff for all I care. If you & your wife slip, I would like to be your "Cougar"...

Why doesn't KTLA News do stories like this..

Link TO video: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=6839407

Judge upholds three-word foreclosure strategy
Friday, May 29, 2009 | 8:00 PM

Friday, May 29, 2009 | 8:00 PM

SAN JOSE, CA (KGO) -- A Bay Area couple has successfully blocked their lender from taking their home. A federal judge in San Jose brought the foreclosure process to a stop after the couple invoked a three-word strategy first outlined last month by 7 On Your Side’s Michael Finney.

A home could be saved with three words: "produce the note." Facing foreclosure, owners Isabel and Richard Caporale are using a novel legal strategy to hang on to their home. The couple went to federal court and basically said just three words.
Story continues below
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"They claim they have it, but I have no proof that they have this note, and you would think by now it’s been almost three months, " says attorney Marc Voisenat.

The "they" Voisenat is referring to is the loan servicing company and "the note" is the legal document proving money is owed. Without it, the strategy goes, money can’t be collected and there can be no foreclosure. On Thursday, a federal judge agreed stopping the foreclosure in its tracks and for now, the Caporales can stay in their home.

"It’s wonderful because I’m almost positive the next time we come back to court the house will be ours, " says Isabel Caporale.

Thousands could use this strategy and it all comes down to sloppy paperwork. Mortgages are chopped up, bundled and resold around the world as complicated financial vehicles. Often the paperwork doesn’t follow the loan and if there’s no paperwork and no proof, the foreclosure is a no-go.

"We’ve never seen a company produce the original note yet, " says Attorney Chris Hoyer.

Hoyer set up a website offering consumers advice and paperwork to pursue a "produce the note" strategy. In Florida "produce the note" is gaining momentum as a safety net for homeowners.

"The note has been sold so many times and they have become so sloppy with their paperwork. It could be on a dumpster somewhere for all I know, " says Florida homeowner Jacci O’Brien.

Voisenat says nobody has been able to find the Caporales’ note either.

"My clients are living there and can continue to live there until there’s an actual foreclosure, but there won’t be a foreclosure until the bank shows the court that they have the original note, " says Voisenat.

He says the couple may be the first in California to use this strategy, but it’s doubtful they’ll be the last.

"I got lot of hope for the future that I didn’t have before, but I do now, " says Isabel Caporale.

The judge gave Saxon Mortgage Services one more chance to find the Caporales’ promissory note. The deadline is August 31st. Of course, 7 On Your Side will be keeping track and report back.

Links

Produce The Note "How-To" informaiton: http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/2008/06/19/produce-the-note-how-to/

Fight Foreclosure: Make ’Em Produce the Note: http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/?s=produce+the+note

Carter disagrees with Obama on torture photo release

FROM: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/01/carter-release-abuse-photos/

By David Edwards and Stephen Webster

Published: June 1, 2009
Updated 7 hours ago

Former president apparently lends support for “Truth Commission” on prisoner abuse, says torture a crime “against our Constitution”

Former President Jimmy Carter, speaking to CNN on Monday, said he disagrees with President Barack Obama’s decision to withhold photos of prisoner abuse. He added that Obama appears to be resolved against resurrecting the past by punishing those in the Bush administration guilty of what Carter himself considers “crimes against our Constitution”

“I respect what his decisions are,” he told CNN’s Campbell Brown. “I don’t have the responsibility to deal with the consequences. But I think that most of his supporters were hoping he would be more open in the revelation of what we’ve done in the past.

“But, ah, he’s made a decision with which I really can’t contend, that he doesn’t want to resurrect the past. He doesn’t want to punish those that are guilty of perpetrating what I consider crimes against our own laws and against our constitution.”

Carter added that while releasing the images may cause “further animosity” toward the United States, the public knowledge that the photos simply exist already serves that cause, whereas instead of seeing them for what they are, the imagination can tend to fill in its own details.

And while Carter repeated several times that he will not criticize Obama for his decision, he did seem to lend support for the so-called “Truth Commission” that’s been discussed in the House and Senate.

Saying that “prosecution is too strong a word,” he added that what he would “like to see is a complete examination of what did happen, the identification of any perpetrators of crimes against our own laws or against international law,” said Carter. “And then after all that’s done, decide whether or not there should be any prosecutions.”

Brown’s interview with Carter will air on CNN, Monday night at 8 p.m. EST.

This video is from CNN.com, broadcast June 1, 2009.
http://216.87.173.33/media/2009/0906/cnn_carter_abu_ghraib_090601c.flv

hmmmmm.... something seems to be wrong with California's accounting..

From: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/01/accounting-error-misplaces-23-billion-in-stimulus-funds/

Accounting error misplaces $2.3 billion in stimulus funds

Share on Facebook By ProPublica

Published: June 1, 2009
Updated 1 hour ago

By David Epstein

If only there were a stimulus edition of Quicken. With billions of stimulus dollars flowing into the economy, some via historically unprecedented avenues, accounting mistakes were inevitable. And, given the magnitude of the stimulus plan, some of the typos and slip-ups were bound to involve astronomical sums of money. Last month, there was the whole $250-checks-being-sent-to-thousands-of-dead-people [1] thing. Then, last week, we noted that the Labor Department had slipped a footnote onto Recovery.gov [2] that corrected by $10 billion [3] the amount of stimulus money that the department had put in the unemployment trust fund. This week, ProPublica received a copy of a section of California’s corrected application [4] for State Fiscal Stabilization money that fixes an accounting error worth $2.3 billion.

The State Fiscal Stabilization Fund is a $53.6 billion pot created by the stimulus bill. Most of the money is earmarked for education, and to receive the money, a state has to assure the federal government that it will spend at least as much on public K-12 and higher education in 2009 and 2010 as it did in the 2006 fiscal year.

When California submitted its original application [5] for $4.875 billion in stabilization funds on April 15, it showed 2006 figures of $34.905 billion for K-12 funding and $5.435 billion for public higher education. Last month, after Californians voted down various budget measures, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger submitted a budget that includes $4.7 billion in cuts to schools [6] over the next two years. The plan made it painfully obvious that California might have trouble topping the 2006 figures in its application, potentially jeopardizing its right to money from the stabilization program. That’s where the accounting error comes in.

Going over their numbers, officials in California realized that they had counted more than $2 billion in “settle-up” funds, which were guaranteed to schools in 2006 but not actually spent until the following year. Settle-up funds are owed to schools that have not yet received all the money they are entitled to under California’s Proposition 98, which promises that 40 percent of the state’s general fund be spent on schools.

The accounting fix lowered the education funding bar that California must meet to receive SFSF funds. “This technical adjustment was made to ensure that we treat all funds consistently across fiscal years in our State Fiscal Stabilization Fund application,” says Kathryn Gaither, California’s undersecretary of education. “We’re continuing to work with the federal government, and we expect to hear final word on our revised application soon.” According to John White, a spokesman for the federal Department of Education, no state has had its SFSF application [7] turned down thus far, so it’s a good bet that California’s revised application will be accepted.

Based on its revised application (which also includes community college funding that was left out on the first go-round), California is still aiming for the funding figures in its original application but now has the wiggle room to deal with the deep and unavoidable cuts that are looming. “It frees up $2 billion in the terms of the ‘maintenance of effort’ requirement in the application,” says Carol Bingham, director of the state Education Department’s fiscal policy division, “so the 2009 and 2010 figures can be dropped down if they need to.”

Sammy

Who says you can't be happy in your remembrance of those who passes on.....

wadada

How can you say "Happy Memorial Day." It's not a day to be happy, it's a day of remembrance for those who have made the supreme sacrifice for their country. It's a day for saying "Thank you" for keeping us free.

Happy Memorial Day..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2RwRi2TjA0

Concerning the post about the about the quote from the Marine Corps Hymn “To The Shores of Tripoli” not being connected to terrorism, I believe you only looked up half the story.
The pirating that was carried on in the Mediterranean at the time was done by mainly Radicals as it is today.
Please feel free to read the whole story from wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War#Background_and_overview

hmmmm...

Why no blog on how we should support our troops and remember those who have died fighting to protect our freedoms and our way of life?

Is this how KTLA shows its support from our troops by forgetting to blog about them?...

But do you know why the phrase below was written into that song? If not I suggest you look it up.

It was about the Battle of Derne. The Battle of Derne was a decisive victory of a mercenary army made up of both Christian and Muslim mercenaries led by a detachment of United States Marines and United States soldiers over the forces of the Barbary coast nation of Tripoli during the First Barbary War. It was the first recorded land battle of the United States fought on foreign soil.

The Battle was to reinstate Hamet Karamanli, who was the rightful heir to the throne of Tripoli and had been deposed by his brother Yussif Karamanli. I don't think this could be called a war of terrorism, but to put a ruler who was frendly to the US and it allies so the shipping of goods in the area would not be threated.

Frank
To all the respondents who are so glib in their insistence that the Bush, Chaney era is the cause of all the terror activity, let me remind them that this same activity was going on during the Clinton Administration, and even before that.

Does anyone remember during the Clinton years:

1993 - The first World Trade Center bombing
1995 - Attempted crashing of plane on White House
1995 - Oklahoma City bombing
1996 - Khobar Towers bombing - Saudi Arabia
1998 - U.S. Embassy bombings Kenya/Tanzania
2000 - USS Cole Bombing – Yemen

The fact of the matter is terrorism has been going on way before the Bush Chaney years. These terrorist are who they are since the beginning of time, and that is never going to change!

I am sure that everyone is familiar with the Marine Corps Hymn
But do you know why the phrase below was written into that song? If not I suggest you look it up.

“To the Shores of Tripoli,”

I would like to know why my post was deleted? What did I say that deserved censorship? There was no profanity nor threats nor hate speach. WTF is going on here at KTLA? please contact me blog police you have my email address.

A wrongdoing is a wrongdoing. All the “security arguments” here are similar to the argument for Japanese American Internment. It takes 50 years for American government to apology for that mistake.

President Obama is not "bashing" the previous administration. It takes courage to take the responsibility from the past wrongdoing, and it’s a progress that we do not have to wait another 50 years to recognize our mistake.

Rachel Maddow: Indefinite detention? Shame on you... President Obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uuWVHT1WUY
Is Rachel Maddow finally getting it???

wadada

Having many friends in Illinois, they spoke of how unaware, unprepared, inefficient and inept (trying to use nicer words than they used) Pres. Obama was when he was 'working' for the people of Illinois. He was also refered to as being deceitful as some of the other postings believed. To them, as well as my self, it is no surprise now, that he is just as inept as president. But we have him as president, now, no matter how inexperienced, unprepared and yes, I believe deceitful as well. But then again, politicians are deceitful to some extent no matter what there political affiliations are. Some are just more deceitful than others. I can't help but wonder, why some people that are so worried about the conditions of the places where these detainees are and not asking about where OUR TROOPS are 'detained' at? What about the conditions that THEY are in. Oh, that's right, they probably don't get that so called water torture, they get slaughtered instead. This is a time of war. There is a reason that there is a old saying: War isn't pretty. Be more concerned about OUR people over there and the safety of the people of the United States!

Bush and Chaney are big reasons why these people want to destroy us. Their policy of ill will and greed in the world has made this country a target. Bravo President Obama bravo on working hard to untie this Gordion Knot that has been left you by Bush and Chaney. Peace in the world cannot happen without first talking to our enemies. Psalms 34:14 Turn from evil; do good; seek peace and pursue it. Peace will never happen on a policy based on torture and lies as was the Bush doctrine. The Bible also records the stories of many victims of torture: Jesus, Paul and Silas (Acts 16), the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 20:2; 38:6), and other unnamed saints (Hebrews 11:35). In every case, we see that the godly are the victims of torture, never the perpetrators of torture. May God be with you Mr. President.

Is Waterboarding Torture?
Before deciding whether to call waterboarding "torture" it's worth considering what the legal definition of "torture" is. It is not necessary to create a new legal definition since there are already numerous formally ratified definitions already in place:
1.Part 1, Article 1 and the US Reservations of the UN Convention Against Torture:

The term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

2.The US Reservations for the UN Convention Against Torture: In order to constitute torture, an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering and that mental pain or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality.

3.Article 32 of the Fourth Geneva Convention any measure of such a character as to cause the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands. This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment of a protected person, but also to any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents.

4.Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health

5.Article 7(2)(e) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court "Torture" means the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, upon a person in the custody or under the control of the accused; except that torture shall not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to, lawful sanctions.

6.Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture For the purposes of this Convention, torture shall be understood to be any act intentionally performed whereby physical or mental pain or suffering is inflicted on a person for purposes of criminal investigation, as a means of intimidation, as personal punishment, as a preventive measure, as a penalty, or for any other purpose. Torture shall also be understood to be the use of methods upon a person intended to obliterate the personality of the victim or to diminish his physical or mental capacities, even if they do not cause physical pain or mental anguish. The concept of torture shall not include physical or mental pain or suffering that is inherent in or solely the consequence of lawful measures, provided that they do not include the performance of the acts or use of the methods referred to in this article.

7.18 United States Code Title 18, §2340(2)
“torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control

(2)“severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

(C) the threat of imminent death; or

(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality;

92 tapes were destroyed by the CIA in November 2005 after a report by Inspector General John L. Helgerson’s office determined that they depicted "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as defined by the international Convention Against Torture".

If these so called "enhanced interrogation" techniques are legal then why don't we use them on gang members who know of other gang activity... Why didn't we use it on the OK City bombers we believed there were others that were involved...

The issue is these methods are illegal under american law and international law..

Has the USA stopped being a nation that is under and obeys the rule of law?

What happened to the moral high groud of the USA if we are as bad as those who torture???

wadada

I do not feel safer, knowing that our President is going around apologizing for America's past actions and then wants to close a base because information was extracted, by what may be considered a form of torture, from people that want to do us harm. Simulating drowning to an individual that is a known terrorist does not compare to the possible killing of hundreds of innocent people. The president is wrong on this issue. He is weak on foreign policy. And wanting to encourage diplomatic talks wirh our enemies is not the same as having guaranteed peace. There are no guarantees that those who do not like us will change their ways and suddenly be nice. Obama is creating a false sense of peace and security. There are people who want to destroy our way of life! Tharwted attacks in Los Angeles and very recently in New York? But, I'm more surprised he didn't win American Idol last night...

-m

Obama is an idiot that dosnt know what he is talking about. He just wants us to play nice and hope for the best. He needs to stop bashing the Bush administration for trying to do the right thing and protect our nation from further attack. I'm afraid with him and his clowns in office we are in more danger now then before.

Frank:

I know that it is probably good for the Democrats that Cheney continues to go out and shoots his mouth off about approving "waterboarding". But doesn't he [Cheney] increase the possibility that members of the Bush Administration will some day be tried internationally for "war crimes"? I think Cheney should just go "chill out" in some undisclosed location and write his version of history.

When Cheney meets his maker, he will have lots of explaining to do . . .

If we forgive Bush and his admin, should we not just open the prisons and release all criminals that did less severe crimes than the war crimes committed?why not it would save millions right....no more excuses. Punish criminals for thier offences

So many people involved with Gitmo are using the same excuse as the Germans in WWII. They were just following orders. That excuse never saved hundred of nazis from being brought up on war crime charges.Funny how the US govt is the 1st to point fingers and yet refuses to follow the same laws they impose on others.Bush, Cheny and others under thier regime should pay for thier crimes.Children know what they did is wrong why dont they?We as a country need to show that law is law and nobody is above it.

I don't get what the big deal with. People act like Obama is just going to release the terrorists into the United States. He is sending them to Super Max Prisons were they will be in isolation 23 hours a day, for the rest of their lives.

Gitmo isn't a magic jail, you can house the terrorists anywhere. Also there is a need to separate the people in Gitmo who where at the wrong place at the wrong time when they were captured or who are low level people who don't deserve 23 hours of solitary for the rest of their lives.

Obama is taking the right approach.

Auschwitz, Manzanar, Gitmo . . . concentration camps have only created a divide between citizens of the world. They've only caused pain and suffering that's tainted generations. They have never made us safer, they have only made the captor feel superior. We are better than that.

Close Gitmo!
.

Frank,
This morning you guys were talking about the little(13 y/o) boy from Minnesota that is running away from court ordered Chemo and /or Radiation.
People rely on the medical community for info which they have a lot of, but when the AMA and the Medical Community in general deny that anything other than what they prescribe or push in their practice's will work that bothers me.

People in other countries have had success dealing with cancers, infections, the unknown, etc in this country where they are doing it naturally (without drugs) and doing it better. The medical community in general is Reactive (i.e. they have trouble treating something until there is a problem).

Other professions tout being proactive in our health and having a say so in what we put into our bodies. By being proactive we can be healthier.

Michaela mentioned special water. There is such a thing. It is called Kangen water. All it is is alkylized water. The pH scale measures how acidic or basic a substance is. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14. A pH of 7 is neutral. A pH less than 7 is acidic. A pH greater than 7 is basic.

Medical studies have long recognized the devastating effects of high levels of acidity in our bodies. Kangen Water has a pH of 8.5 -11.0 which would then make this water basic or an alkaline. In addition to Kangen waters pH level, tests have also shown a negative ORP (oxidizing reduction potential) rating.

Conditions such as exposure to electromagnetic or ultra-violet radiation, alcohol, tobacco, and the stresses that arise in each individual’s daily life can all contribute to the build up of free radicals in one’s body. Studies have shown that these free
radicals account for 70% of all diseases including some forms of cancer, diabetes, and speeding up the aging process.

A healthier lifestyle can be achieved as these free radicals are eliminated from our bodies. Kangen Water simply rids these free radicals from our drinking water and bodies through the process of ionization. (NO I am not a salesman for this product. Just looked it up on their website).

Thank you for letting me vent. People think that MD's are Gods. They are human just like the rest of us. Only about 15% of what medical doctors do has research to back it up.

Guantanamo Bay detention camp closing where all these people going? i think they should send them home. give them a shot with a micro chip. that can track them. then we will always know where they are. they may go right to where the number one guy is that would Osama bin Laden. then we could take him out along with his followers .they may be wrong of me but my country is more important then letting these people out. and giving them our money and housing. So when we let them out. give them a shot send them home and watch the TV screen and see where they go. that is my opion. It would be like the chip our dogs have. So if they get get picked up by the pound. They scan it and it shows who it belongs to. But The Chip you put in them would be a tracking one. low cost this would save any more attacks on our country

President Obama has a right to be angry. He is dealing with a former VP that does not seem to get the former part. Cheney has presented his argument that essentially says that what he did was legal because he was told to use any means possible. Following his arguement that would mean the suspension of our rights, which did happen, that would mean killing people to get information, which no doubt happened, it means anything, and in his mind anything he wants or thinks will work. We are better than this as a people and country. War or no war we cannot allow ourselves to sink to the same level as these people that would hurt us. Our empire is threatened, time to let it go. We are not better than the rest of the world here.
Cheney is causing a greater harm to our country by being so outspoken and vocal against the current administration. Even in its highest level of fault this was not done to him, matter of fact if I remember correctly it was thought un-american to speak out against the president back then..funny how he forgets this.

Do not bring Guantanamo combatants onto U.S. soil. Try them
in an international court if necessary. A trial here would only
become a circus with the ACLU and the media competing for
exposure at any cost. These terriorists/combatants will never
become rehabilitated and able to live in a free society. The U.S.
does not need more terriorists here trying to destroy Jewish
mosques as they were planning to do in NY. What state or prison would want these terriorists? Send them back to their country
if Guanatanamo is closed.

As usual, President Obama has taken the Gitmo situation completely out of context. There was once a saying, "We will never forget."
Apparently, Obama, playing the blame game full throtle, NEEDS the American people to forget what happened on 9/11..to further his own agenda.
It has been said that Obama will go down in history as the Great Deceiver.
I beleive this to be true.

John…what you still fail to realize, is that the 9/11 attacks occurred on President Bush's watch… after he ignored the intelligence reports which became available in EARLY AUGUST OF '01, man! This is a fact. But then, Republicans of late have problems dealing with facts, or even reality. So please…stop extolling the supposed notion that Cheney/Bush kept us snugly safe these past 8 horrendous years and deal with the fact that you have lost, and that history will not vindicate the worst administration in US history

The only solution to this ongoing gang problem, including the one that the President has in Cuba with Al Quida, is to cut their testicles off. I had the opportunity to be in LA County Jail to see the problems that exist in 2007 for a congressional probe. Testosterone factory in there and the deputies that try to "control" are just adding to the madness that prevails. We do it to horses to "calm" them down. We must get rid of the lawyering of the world so that these kinds of solutions can be implemented. You will see a calmer next generation. If not, the machismo, that is being cultivated, will ultimately create even more angry societal rowdies. Cut them off.... The Sheriff’s department has no idea about the culture that they are over-crowding our jails with and they may even look into de-balling some of their own guards, since it is that appendage that many seem to only think with. Go in there and see….

Sorry for my spelling mistakes I cannot type and my vision is impaired and I am angray

I WATCHED THE ENTIRE SPEACH ON CNN. I aqgree I think the president is mad and does not know how to reacat to rejection in such a clear way. He should have review the vote and acted as a president and not a lawyer, which he is. I only heaed a lawyer speaking in weasel words. I EXPECT MY PRESIDENT to protect our country,keeping our forces out of harms way by not treating people have vowed to kill us and in some cases did. Turn them lose, or allow them amoung us. We all know how our prison system works or does not. If we look at the costs of keeping these people alive it is too high when you consider how many of our own people need real help.
I feel if just one American life has been lost because of the action of these fanatics then the price is to high we should collect our retrbution. At closing Dick Cheny's comments I encourage you to listen to before we fall in line with the lawyers point of view. Mr President wake up we are at war we need to kill those who want to kill us. Our enemy hides behind people and kill those who disagree with them both aremed forces and people who just want to live a peaceful life, they are cowards and fanatics. I have never seen a fanatic reformed unless they have stopped breathing, then I know their killing is done. What are their rights compaired to an incent child who was blown apart with his mother because the fanatic wanted to MAKE A POINT. this is harsh I know but fighting fire with fire is not practial for us we only try to kill oue enemies and not the inocent, we limit our fire. I love America and all Americans regarles of their political views as long as they are not PHISICALLY HURTING PEOPLE. Freedom of speeach is holy to our countries way of life, yet it is a reason for our emenies to kill us. They will kill us for insulting their religion went were only making comentary and not intentionally insulting them. Back to the president, he needs to get over it and move forward and treat our enemies as they are KILLERS OF THE INOCENT
I

Frank
I for the most part I believe that President Obama’s decisions are fairly sound, providing we lived in an ideal world, which we don’t, otherwise we would have no more wars or need for prisons in the first place.
So my questions are the following:
1. Will we find some other effective method to interrogate suspected terrorists when it comes to our national security, so we can effectively find out if they know anything else that will help us get to the root of the terrorist activity? Is it possible we will be stymied by these individuals standing on the fifth amendment, by using legal representation of their choice, because of the laws of the land that provide that right, and that indeed we should be following as President Obama has stated?
2. President Obama made a very powerful point about following our “time tested laws and traditions” Then it is my opinion that we follow the same laws of the land when it comes to other issues like, illegal immigration just to name one, which by the way is illegal according to our present laws.

You see it all boils down to this, you either follow every law or you follow none at all. You can’t pick and choose.

Frank D.

Lets face it that "enhanced interrogation techniques" is torture.

Torture is not lawful.. And if the country is supposed to be a country of laws and to obey the rule of law.

I will admit the president is doing the right thing here but he also needs to go after those who have violated the law..

I am on the side of Jesse Ventura here..

Hasselbeck gets some Ventura learnins - 5/18/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cyigU2bsV0

Ventura on Fox N' Fiends - 5/19/09
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwEB1S4d5fU

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