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are you accusing barack of being corrupt but your a republican, are you sane man?
yeah, so it all evens out in the wash doesn't it?
Mickey Mouse is not going to vote anyway. Just trying to create an issue that is irrelevant.
I don't know man, what happened to our educational system?
so you don't believe that Sarah Palin is a nit wit?
lets talk about purging, the infamous purging that went on in Florida right before the 2000 election, Kathryn Harris and Jeb buddy authorized a 50 thousand voter purge there, I believe that I read somewhere... the pubs are infamous for it, you all know that.
because they know that he's intelligent. why do they hate Bush, because he's an unintellictual fool?
socialism (if that's what you want to call it) is better than nazism and wingnuts, which is the party that McCain/Palin/Bush cater to.
Palin's analysis of the current economic crisis has not won over most voters seeking a serious appraisal of the situation accompanied by well-thought out proposals. In a highly sympathetic interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, the verbatim exchange on the economy went as follows:
PALIN: "Certainly it is a mess though, the economy is a mess. And there have been abuses on Wall Street and that adversely affects Main Street.
And it's that commitment that John McCain is articulating today, getting in there, reforming the way that Wall Street has been allowed to work, stopping the abuses and that violation of the public trust that too many CEOs and top management of some of these companies, that abuse there has got to stop.
Story continues below
It is, somebody was saying this morning, a toxic waste there on Wall Street, affecting Main Street. And we've got to cure this."
HANNITY: "Through reform?"
PALIN: "Through reform, absolutely. Look at the oversight that has been lax, I believe, here it's a 1930s type of regulatory regime overseeing some of these corporations. And we've got to get a more coordinated and a much more stringent oversight regime. Not that government is going to be solely looked to for the answers in all of the problems in Wall Street, but government can play a very, very appropriate role in the oversight as people are trusting these companies with their life savings, with their investments, with their insurance policies and construction bonds and everything else. When we see the collapse that we're seeing today, you know that something is broke and John McCain has a great plan to get in there and fix it."
HANNITY: "Is Senator Obama then using what happened on Wall Street this week? Is he using it for political gain? Is there a danger of a presidential candidate is saying to the world that America's situation of economic crisis is the worst that we've seen in decades -- which was words that he was using yesterday -- is there a danger in terms of the world hearing that?"
PALIN: "Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we're talking about today. And that's something that John McCain too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must surpassed to deal with an issue like this. It is that profound and that important an issue that we work together on this and not just let one party try to kind of grab it all or capture it all and pretend like they have all the answers. It's going to take everybody working together on this."
Wrong. I do care that Joe lied. Joe is a skinhead.
Look at this: From McCain for 08...
why are conservative for republicans? abortion?
we trust in Sarah - John -
we want our USA back - Where has is it gone?
Freedom & Liberty - Yet they've banned me because I have different views
from 666evilz -
returned to 888 our God for the US people -
we do condemn the 666bolshevikz firez -
yeah, and I am Sam. Isnt' Sam your REAL name?
It's called the richer paying higher taxes. people paying according to income. I know if I made 500,000 a year and my sister made 50,000, I wouldn't be complaining that I paid more.
how would you rather it be? I don't see taxes going away anytime soon. So the fact that someone making 500,000 pays more than someone making 50,000 is the problem?
yeah, not sure why some people would think it would be.
yes, so your point is?
Sarah was on SNL, that's great, she can't do interviews w/the general press, but she can do comedy skits.
I'm sorry, I really don't know what the heck you are talking about.
the antichrist has already risen, his name is George...
Newspapers That Backed Bush Shift To Obama
The Denver Post, "which had backed George W. Bush in 2004 and is owned by Republican-leaning William Dean Singleton," endorsed Barack Obama for president on Friday. "So did the Chicago Sun-Times, Kansas City Star. Southwest News-Herald (Ill.) and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And to top it off: another Bush-backing in 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune."
The Obama campaign has posted excerpts from all the recent endorsements.
Greg Mitchell has more:
In E&P's exclusive count, Obama now leads 58-16 in editorial endorsements. Check out our running list, updated Friday, here.
Colorodo, of course, is a key swing state. Georgia is also now, surprisingly, in play and the Atlanta paper is the state's largest.
The Salt Lake paper complained that "out of nowhere, and without proper vetting, the impetuous McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. She quickly proved grievously underequipped to step into the presidency should McCain, at 72 and with a history of health problems, die in office. More than any single factor, McCain's bad judgment in choosing the inarticulate, insular and ethically challenged Palin disqualifies him for the presidency.
"Still, we have compelling reasons for endorsing Obama on his merits alone. Under the most intense scrutiny and attacks from both parties, Obama has shown the temperament, judgment, intellect and political acumen that are essential in a president that would lead the United States out of the crises created by President Bush, a complicit Congress and our own apathy."
The Kansas City paper also hit McCain hard for choosing an "unqualfied" running mate.
* * *
On Friday, two dependable conservative organs backed Democrat Barack Obama for president.
yeah, nobody wanted to "lose" over in Vietnam either...
SARAH is dangerous. John is even more dangerous for choosing her. What is their real goal? We need to find out about her ties with AIP.
John McCain's Letter to Joe the Plumber Leaked to Press
http://www.236.com/blog/w/lee_camp/john_mccains_letter_to_joe_the_9637.php
Voters say they were duped into registering as Republicans. This is so common and very expected.
YPM, a group hired by the GOP, allegedly deceived Californians who thought they were signing a petition. YPM denies any wrongdoing. Similar accusations have been leveled against the company elsewhere.
By Evan Halper and Michael Rothfeld, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
October 18, 2008
SACRAMENTO -- Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.
Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.
"I am not a Republican," insisted Karen Ashcraft, 47, a pet-clinic manager and former Democrat from Ventura who said she was duped by a signature gatherer into joining the GOP. "I certainly . . . won't sign anything in front of a grocery store ever again."
It is a bait-and-switch scheme familiar to election experts. The firm hired by the California Republican Party -- a small company called Young Political Majors, or YPM, which operates in several states -- has been accused of using the tactic across the country.
Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusetts. In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit. Prosecutors in Los Angeles and Ventura counties say they are investigating complaints about the company.
The firm, which a Republican Party spokesman said is paid $7 to $12 for each registration it secures, has denied any wrongdoing and says it has never been charged with a crime.
The 70,000 voters YPM has registered for the Republican Party this year will help combat the public perception that it is struggling amid Democratic gains nationally, give a boost to fundraising efforts and bolster member support for party leaders, political strategists from both parties say.
Those who were formerly Democrats may stop receiving phone calls and literature from that party, perhaps affecting its get-out-the-vote efforts. They also will be given only a Republican ballot in the next primary election if they do not switch their registration back before then.
Some also report having their registration status changed to absentee without their permission; if they show up at the polls without a ballot they may be unable to vote.
The Times randomly interviewed 46 of the hundreds of voters whose election records show they were recently re-registered as Republicans by YPM, and 37 of them -- more than 80% -- said that they were misled into making the change or that it was done without their knowledge.
Lydia Laws, a Palm Springs retiree, said she was angry to find recently that her registration had been switched from Democrat to Republican.
Laws said the YPM staffer who instructed her to identify herself on a petition as a Republican assured her that it was a formality, and that her registration would not be changed. Later, a card showed up in the mail saying she had joined the GOP.
"I said, 'No, no, no. That's not right,' " Laws said.
It all sounds familiar to Beverly Hill, a Democrat and the former election supervisor in Florida's Alachua County. About 200 voters -- mostly college students -- were unwittingly registered as Republicans there in 2004 by YPM staffers using the same tactic, Hill said.
"It is just incredible that this can keep happening election after election," she said.
YPM and Republican Party officials said they were surprised by the complaints. The officials said the signature gatherers wear shirts bearing the Republican symbol, an elephant -- a contention disputed by some of the voters interviewed.
Every person registered signs an affidavit confirming they voluntarily joined the GOP, party leaders said.
"It does the state party no good to register people in a party they don't want to be in," said Hector Barajas, communications director for the California Republican Party.
The document that voters thought was an initiative petition has no legal implications at all. YPM founder Mark Jacoby said the petition was clearly labeled as a "plebiscite," which does nothing more than show public support.
He also said that plainclothes investigators for Secretary of State Debra Bowen, a Democrat, have conducted multiple spot checks and told his firm it is doing nothing improper.
Karl Rove, Republican Destroyer
When our Constitutional Convention adjourned, a woman asked Ben Franklin what kind of government it had decreed. “A Republic, Ma’am, if you can keep it,” Franklin replied.
No public figure in my lifetime has worked more cleverly and effectively to destroy our Republic than Karl Rove. If some day our nation resembles Vladimir Putin’s Russia more than Gordon Brown’s England, historians will—if they can still speak freely—say it all began with Rove.
Some say it is too early to see Rove’s legacy. But the poison he injected into our body politic has already had three effects as evident as a paralyzed limb. The tragic irony is that all have clear precedents in Russia, not America.
Rove’s first achievement was to establish here a precedent familiar from the Russian Revolution of October 1917. He lived by the principle that ends justify means. He pandered to the worst instincts of our society: religious intolerance, religious discord, homophobia, and contempt for the disabled, poor and oppressed.
Not only did he pander to our worst instincts. Rove raised pandering to a high science. He exploited the latest techniques of advertising and public relations. He invented a novel science of computerized demographics, plotting prejudice on a precinct-by-precinct basis. With the aid of these modern scientific techniques, Rove raised our worst instincts to political supremacy for nearly seven years, sidelining vital and longstanding problems that still remain unsolved.
Rove’s second accomplishment was to install political commissars in all government departments. Remember those fine-looking twenty- and thirty-somethings who have been trekking before Congress for the last several months, all refusing to testify? They are Rove’s legions.
These innocent-looking, physically attractive youth are something new in American history. Compared to the career officials whom they supervise, they have laughable credentials. No one would think of hiring them at that level for their education, experience or expertise. But they have two things of inestimable value to a political apparatchik. They have the certitude of youth and ignorance. More important, they have the loyalty of people who know their careers hang on loyalty alone.
One of the commissars said as much. In a revealing slip of the tongue, she said she had taken an oath to the president. The federal oath of office, of course, says nothing of the kind. It recites loyalty to the Constitution, not the to president or any person. By her slip this young commissar revealed the real purpose of giving her a position for which she was unqualified: personal loyalty beyond the law. Stalin would have understood and approved.
It will take years for Congress and historians to probe the full extent of Rove’s political interference with customary democratic and legal processes. But effects of that interference are already apparent. The first is the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. There is overwhelming circumstantial evidence of political motivation for the firing, and not a whiff of any other motivation that makes sense.
The second effect appears in the testimony of Richard Carmona, former Surgeon General of the United States. He was, he testified, ordered to mention President Bush three times on each page of his speeches about medical science.
On hearing these effects of Rove’s influence, those of us who lived through the Cold War felt a shock of recognition. Wasn’t this precisely what Lenin and Stalin accomplished in their Soviet apparat? Political commissars—whose chief qualifications were youth, political orthodoxy, and loyalty—oversaw every stratum of Soviet society, from collective farms to the prison laboratory where the famous aircraft designer Tupolev and his fellows worked, under guard, during World War II. Now Richard Carmona and our own scientists are forced, just as the Soviets once were, to sing the praises of their political masters. Lenin’s ghost is no doubt beaming from his tomb.
Rove’s final product is his ugly son slouching through the halls of Congress: the ogre of irreconcilable division. Under Rove’s tutelage, our representatives have forgotten all about the Republic that Franklin gave them. They care little for the democratic process, compromise, mutual respect, tolerance for opposing views, or the common welfare. What they seek most is revenge for each other’s political manipulation and power plays. Getting even is their goal. So obsessed with revenge are they—even the Democrats—that they fail to see that working to destroy the Republic might be honest ground for impeachment.
That, too, is something Stalin would approve. Shortly before his death, a reporter asked Stalin what he thought was the greatest human feeling. It is not love, Stalin replied, but revenge. The long lists of supposed enemies murdered in Stalin’s purges showed how much he enjoyed that feeling.
For decades, historians and psychologists have asked what made Stalin such a monster. As a Georgian, not a Russian, he may have harbored a lifelong resentment for Russians and their domination. No one knows for sure, for eventually Stalin became powerful enough to write his own history.
Fortunately, neither Rove nor Bush is that powerful. So the fire that drives Rove’s destructive impulses is easier to see.
Rove never graduated from college. A man of high cunning, he never had the discipline or humility to learn what others had to teach. No doubt he harbors the college dropout’s smoldering resentment for intellectuals and academic learning, including abstract principles like professionalism and checks and balances. No such wimpy principles for Rove and his beloved Bush!
Playing the demagogue by the numbers, Rove succeeded in exploiting the people’s worst instincts to cast our nation’s most basic principles aside. He managed to control American democracy for nearly seven years. Even if it proves only temporary, his subversion of our Republic may be the most costly revenge of the college dropout in American history.
It is therefore much too early to celebrate Rove’s retirement. He may no longer sit in the White House after August 31, but his spirit will inhabit the halls of power for years to come.
Rove’s spirit lives in his “political operatives” still active throughout the executive branch and dispersed among various presidential campaigns. It lives in the scientific demagoguery that he made a successful political technique, pandering to voters’ primitive instincts on a precinct-by-precinct basis. It lives in the body of Tim Griffin, a Rove protégé installed in the office of U.S. Attorney for Arkansas after his better qualified predecessor was fired by political commissars. It lives in a dysfunctional Congress whose members strive to score points for political revenge. It lives in Mitt Romney, a man so arrogant as to dismiss both the heroism of our troops and two of the most self-evident failings of our national policy with frat-boy one-liners.
For Romney and Rove alike, “we, the people,” are not human beings to be reasoned with and persuaded. We are demographic ciphers to be cleverly manipulated like puppets.
As for divisiveness, historians some day may liken Rove’s influence to the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara, which triggered the Iraqi Civil War. Like that bombing, Rove’s subversion elevated power and revenge above the common welfare. Like that bombing, Rove set in motion a tangled chain of reprisals and resentment that will take decades to unwind. The fact that our reprisals are (so far) only verbal and political, while Iraq’s involve actual explosives, should give us little comfort. For political revenge and reprisals here in America, however nonviolent they may seem, ultimately have far greater consequence for us and for the world than anything that happens in Iraq.
So we can heave no sigh of relief at Rove’s retirement. The damage he has done will linger for a long, long time to come. Well-meaning Americans who take Franklin’s admonition seriously have a lot of work to do. They will take decades to restore to full flower the Republic that this heedless college dropout worked so assiduously and cleverly to destroy.
Karl Rove, Republican Destroyer
When our Constitutional Convention adjourned, a woman asked Ben Franklin what kind of government it had decreed. “A Republic, Ma’am, if you can keep it,” Franklin replied.
No public figure in my lifetime has worked more cleverly and effectively to destroy our Republic than Karl Rove. If some day our nation resembles Vladimir Putin’s Russia more than Gordon Brown’s England, historians will—if they can still speak freely—say it all began with Rove.
Some say it is too early to see Rove’s legacy. But the poison he injected into our body politic has already had three effects as evident as a paralyzed limb. The tragic irony is that all have clear precedents in Russia, not America.
Rove’s first achievement was to establish here a precedent familiar from the Russian Revolution of October 1917. He lived by the principle that ends justify means. He pandered to the worst instincts of our society: religious intolerance, religious discord, homophobia, and contempt for the disabled, poor and oppressed.
Not only did he pander to our worst instincts. Rove raised pandering to a high science. He exploited the latest techniques of advertising and public relations. He invented a novel science of computerized demographics, plotting prejudice on a precinct-by-precinct basis. With the aid of these modern scientific techniques, Rove raised our worst instincts to political supremacy for nearly seven years, sidelining vital and longstanding problems that still remain unsolved.
Rove’s second accomplishment was to install political commissars in all government departments. Remember those fine-looking twenty- and thirty-somethings who have been trekking before Congress for the last several months, all refusing to testify? They are Rove’s legions.
These innocent-looking, physically attractive youth are something new in American history. Compared to the career officials whom they supervise, they have laughable credentials. No one would think of hiring them at that level for their education, experience or expertise. But they have two things of inestimable value to a political apparatchik. They have the certitude of youth and ignorance. More important, they have the loyalty of people who know their careers hang on loyalty alone.
One of the commissars said as much. In a revealing slip of the tongue, she said she had taken an oath to the president. The federal oath of office, of course, says nothing of the kind. It recites loyalty to the Constitution, not the to president or any person. By her slip this young commissar revealed the real purpose of giving her a position for which she was unqualified: personal loyalty beyond the law. Stalin would have understood and approved.
It will take years for Congress and historians to probe the full extent of Rove’s political interference with customary democratic and legal processes. But effects of that interference are already apparent. The first is the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. There is overwhelming circumstantial evidence of political motivation for the firing, and not a whiff of any other motivation that makes sense.
The second effect appears in the testimony of Richard Carmona, former Surgeon General of the United States. He was, he testified, ordered to mention President Bush three times on each page of his speeches about medical science.
On hearing these effects of Rove’s influence, those of us who lived through the Cold War felt a shock of recognition. Wasn’t this precisely what Lenin and Stalin accomplished in their Soviet apparat? Political commissars—whose chief qualifications were youth, political orthodoxy, and loyalty—oversaw every stratum of Soviet society, from collective farms to the prison laboratory where the famous aircraft designer Tupolev and his fellows worked, under guard, during World War II. Now Richard Carmona and our own scientists are forced, just as the Soviets once were, to sing the praises of their political masters. Lenin’s ghost is no doubt beaming from his tomb.
Rove’s final product is his ugly son slouching through the halls of Congress: the ogre of irreconcilable division. Under Rove’s tutelage, our representatives have forgotten all about the Republic that Franklin gave them. They care little for the democratic process, compromise, mutual respect, tolerance for opposing views, or the common welfare. What they seek most is revenge for each other’s political manipulation and power plays. Getting even is their goal. So obsessed with revenge are they—even the Democrats—that they fail to see that working to destroy the Republic might be honest ground for impeachment.
That, too, is something Stalin would approve. Shortly before his death, a reporter asked Stalin what he thought was the greatest human feeling. It is not love, Stalin replied, but revenge. The long lists of supposed enemies murdered in Stalin’s purges showed how much he enjoyed that feeling.
For decades, historians and psychologists have asked what made Stalin such a monster. As a Georgian, not a Russian, he may have harbored a lifelong resentment for Russians and their domination. No one knows for sure, for eventually Stalin became powerful enough to write his own history.
Fortunately, neither Rove nor Bush is that powerful. So the fire that drives Rove’s destructive impulses is easier to see.
Rove never graduated from college. A man of high cunning, he never had the discipline or humility to learn what others had to teach. No doubt he harbors the college dropout’s smoldering resentment for intellectuals and academic learning, including abstract principles like professionalism and checks and balances. No such wimpy principles for Rove and his beloved Bush!
Playing the demagogue by the numbers, Rove succeeded in exploiting the people’s worst instincts to cast our nation’s most basic principles aside. He managed to control American democracy for nearly seven years. Even if it proves only temporary, his subversion of our Republic may be the most costly revenge of the college dropout in American history.
It is therefore much too early to celebrate Rove’s retirement. He may no longer sit in the White House after August 31, but his spirit will inhabit the halls of power for years to come.
Rove’s spirit lives in his “political operatives” still active throughout the executive branch and dispersed among various presidential campaigns. It lives in the scientific demagoguery that he made a successful political technique, pandering to voters’ primitive instincts on a precinct-by-precinct basis. It lives in the body of Tim Griffin, a Rove protégé installed in the office of U.S. Attorney for Arkansas after his better qualified predecessor was fired by political commissars. It lives in a dysfunctional Congress whose members strive to score points for political revenge. It lives in Mitt Romney, a man so arrogant as to dismiss both the heroism of our troops and two of the most self-evident failings of our national policy with frat-boy one-liners.
For Romney and Rove alike, “we, the people,” are not human beings to be reasoned with and persuaded. We are demographic ciphers to be cleverly manipulated like puppets.
As for divisiveness, historians some day may liken Rove’s influence to the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara, which triggered the Iraqi Civil War. Like that bombing, Rove’s subversion elevated power and revenge above the common welfare. Like that bombing, Rove set in motion a tangled chain of reprisals and resentment that will take decades to unwind. The fact that our reprisals are (so far) only verbal and political, while Iraq’s involve actual explosives, should give us little comfort. For political revenge and reprisals here in America, however nonviolent they may seem, ultimately have far greater consequence for us and for the world than anything that happens in Iraq.
So we can heave no sigh of relief at Rove’s retirement. The damage he has done will linger for a long, long time to come. Well-meaning Americans who take Franklin’s admonition seriously have a lot of work to do. They will take decades to restore to full flower the Republic that this heedless college dropout worked so assiduously and cleverly to destroy.
what George?
AMERICANS DESERVE TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT SARAH PALIN:
Well, perhaps more attention ought to be paid to Palin’s long and ongoing relationship with the extremist Alaska Independence Party (AIP) and its leaders. And perhaps Palin ought to be asked why she has associated — and rather closely (she was a card-carrying member of the AIP) — with extremists who not only support secession from the U.S. but who have “[forged] alliances with outright white supremacists and far-right theocrats,” who are “[affiliated] with neo-Confederate organizations,” and who are pro-gun, anti-government, militia-supporting nuts.
Specifically, as Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert show in a fantastic piece at Salon that is an absolute must-read, Palin’s rise to prominence, both in Wasilla and Juneau, was facilitated in large part by two prominent right-wingers, Mark Chryson (a former AIP chairman) and Steve Stoll (a John Birth Society activist). “Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin’s campaign [for mayor of Wasilla] financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.” And the support has been mutual, with Palin actively seeking to advance their agenda.
Read the entire piece. Here’s a key passage:
“With Sarah as a mayor,” said Chryson, “there were a number of times when I just showed up at City Hall and said, ‘Hey, Sarah, we need help.’ I think there was only one time when I wasn’t able to talk to her and that was because she was in a meeting.”
Chryson says the door remains open now that Palin is governor. (Palin’s office did not respond to Salon’s request for an interview.) While Palin has been more circumspect in her dealings with groups like the AIP as she has risen through the political ranks, she has stayed in touch.
When Palin ran for governor in 2006, marketing herself as a fresh-faced reformer determined to crush the GOP’s ossified power structure, she made certain to appear at the AIP’s state convention. To burnish her maverick image, she also tapped one-time AIP member and born-again Republican Walter Hickel as her campaign co-chair. Hickel barnstormed the state for Palin, hailing her support for an “all-Alaska” liquefied gas pipeline, a project first promoted in 2002 by an AIP gubernatorial candidate named Nels Anderson. When Palin delivered her victory speech on election night, Hickel stood beaming by her side. “I made her governor,” he boasted afterward. Two years later, Hickel has endorsed Palin’s bid for vice president.
Just months before Palin burst onto the national stage as McCain’s vice-presidential nominee, she delivered a videotaped address to the AIP’s annual convention. Her message was scrupulously free of secessionist rhetoric, but complementary nonetheless. “I share your party’s vision of upholding the Constitution of our great state,” Palin told the assembly of AIP delegates. “My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty can expand. I know you agree with that… Keep up the good work and God bless you.”
another intelligent statement from Silly Sarah, the AIP spokeswoman. hypocrasy at it's finest. she walks the talk alright.
as usual, they didn't do their homework. oh please let them run our country into the ground all so we can keeps the current tax plan for the wealthy and reverse ROE V.WADE.
Sarah on SNL, that's where she belongs, in comedy.
John is such a smart guy. graduated 5th from the bottom of 894 students. Sarah took 6 years and 5 different schools to complete her education (since we've not seen her scores, I assume they were very bad. Sarah's husband has no formal education. They are members of the AIP.
the pubs want retards to run the US, they haven't learned their lesson w/the present unintellectual retard.
Published on Sunday, September 21, 2008 by the Toronto Sun
US Empire: An Orgy of Debt
by Eric Margolis
NEW YORK -- The financial panic sweeping the globe is maddeningly complex, but the cause of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s Great Depression is clear.
America has reveled for two decades in an orgy of debt. The U.S. national debt is now twice its net worth. From Wall Street's "masters of the universe" financial powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman, and Morgan Stanley, to the humblest homeowners, America's national motto became "borrow to the hilt and bet."
The traditional regulated banking system was pushed aside by Wall Street's financial titans who created their own money in the form of complex securities and furiously traded these exotic instruments and borrowed recklessly against them with little government regulation or oversight.
As Kevin Phillips points out in his prophetic book, Bad Money, America's primary business became non-productive finance. Manufacturing fell to only 12% of GDP. Wall Street titans grew obscenely rich by simply passing around paper. Inflated or semi-worthless securities increased in bogus value at each stage of the trading process.
Wall Street was allowed to virtually print money and peddle toxic securities around the globe because the big financial houses and heads of hedge funds bought the politicians of both parties.
Equally important, the mammoth financial and housing bubble thus created was hailed by the Bush administration as proof positive of Republican free market philosophy and the true road to prosperity.
More cautious European and Canadian bankers were dismissed by Republican chest thumpers as financial sissies.
This Ponzi scheme worked so long as markets kept rising. When the music stopped - disaster.
It's uncertain how far damage from America's financial equivalent of Hurricane Katrina will spread. Hedge funds, money market funds and automakers could be next. Real estate losses may reach $636 billion by 2012.
All stock market gains of the past 10 years have been wiped out in the most dangerous crash since the 1930s.
The "free market" Republican administration has ended up nationalizing nearly $1 trillion worth of businesses, including the federal mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, and global insurer AIG. Welcome to Wall Street socialism.
One thing is now clear. When great empires run onto the financial rocks, their power quickly ebbs. France's Sun King, Louis XIV, ended his once glorious rein in near bankruptcy caused by his long, ruinous wars with the British and Dutch. Louis XVI's runaway borrowing to finance the American Revolution helped ignite the French Revolution. The Soviet Union's collapse was caused by spending half its national income on arms, and failure to modernize industry.
Over the past decade, the U.S. foreign debt doubled. Japan and China now hold 47% of the U.S. foreign debt and finance Washington's wars. The addition in recent days of at least $1 trillion in new debt will cause interest rates to rise and the dollar to weaken. Even the U.S. government's AAA credit rating now is in question.
Washington may no longer be able to spend half the globe's defence budgets.
The $12-13 billion a month wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will end up costing $750 billion by December 2008. There will be less cash in Washington's kitty to buy foreign dictators and prop up their regimes, as in the Mideast and Central Asia. Less cash to pay for little wars in Africa.
Less for exotic anti-missile systems and death rays.
America's enormous global power is based as much on its financial might as military muscle. Wall Street has been the vehicle and policeman of America's hegemony. It shaped the destiny of the globe and made many nations subservient to the demands of New York's titan bankers. Wall Street is essential to raising capital for business expansion, but often it resembled New York's ruthless loan sharks: Once you borrowed from them, you never got off the hook.
Americans will have to relearn the hard truth that you can't borrow your way to prosperity.
did I miss what honey?
let me know if you want to see a link and I will be happy to post.
BIG OIL: John McCain & Sarah Palin
G.O.P. Donor Is Accused of Overcharging Pentagon
Published: October 16, 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
But Mr. Sargeant’s lawyer, Mark H. Tuohey III, said in his statement that “the interests of the U.S. taxpayer would have been better served if the authors had sought all of the facts and visited the Middle East to see, firsthand, how we supply fuel to U.S. forces in Iraq.” He called the deliveries “a highly complex, risky and, at times, life-threatening effort.”
Mr. Tuohey said the prices charged by the I.O.T.C. were justified in this environment. “The price paid by the U.S. government is driven by the complex, highly challenging supply chain that transports fuel to Iraq,” Mr. Tuohey wrote. After detailing some of those challenges, he added: “The conclusions in Chairman Waxman’s letter aren’t supported by the facts.”
Mr. Sargeant is one of several dozen people who are listed on Senator McCain’s Web site as having raised $500,000 or more for him. He was the host of a fund-raiser for Mr. McCain at his mansion in Delray Beach, Fla., this year.
Mr. Sargeant came under scrutiny in August when media reports highlighted a cluster of more than $50,000 in unusual campaign contributions bundled together by Mr. Sargeant from a single extended family in California and a few of their friends. The donations set off questions of whether they might have been made by donors in name only who were reimbursed by someone trying to skirt contribution limits.
It turned out that the donations were not actually solicited by Mr. Sargeant but by another Jordanian business partner, Mustafa Abu Naba’a. The McCain campaign later said it would return all contributions solicited by Mr. Abu Naba’a and review all donations collected by Mr. Sargeant.
The conclusions from Mr. Waxman’s committee are sure to be wielded by Democrats as a cudgel against Mr. McCain.
Costs for delivering fuel to the troops in Iraq have an extremely contentious history. Late in 2003 Mr. Waxman charged that Kellogg Brown & Root, then part of Halliburton, the company led by Dick Cheney before he became vice president, had been overcharging for fuel.
Although the company strongly disputed allegations of overcharging, the Pentagon eventually terminated fuel-delivery duties for KBR, which is the company’s name now that it has left Halliburton. When the work was divided up and re-bid, the I.O.T.C. won four successive contracts to bring fuel through Jordan.
“The documents show that Mr. Sargeant’s company took advantage of U.S. taxpayers,” Mr. Waxman said in a statement. “His company had the only license to transport fuel through Jordan, so he could get away with charging exorbitant prices. I’ve never seen another situation like this. Mr. Sargeant rejected repeated pleas of senior officials to lower his unfair and unreasonable prices.”
hey buddy, you want to talk gender, phone the sex line, this is about politics.
G.O.P. Donor Is Accused of Overcharging Pentagon
The Democratic chairman of a House investigative committee presented documents to the Pentagon on Thursday charging that a top Republican fund-raiser, Harry Sargeant III, made tens of millions of dollars in profits over the last four years because his contracting company vastly overcharged for deliveries of fuel to American air bases in Iraq.
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Harry Sargeant III is the finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party.
In a written statement on Thursday, a lawyer for Mr. Sargeant, who is the finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party and a major fund-raiser for Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, called the allegations “deeply disappointing” and asserted that they were not supported by the facts.
The contracting company, called the International Oil Trading Company, or I.O.T.C., was briefly in the news over the summer when a former partner filed a lawsuit against Mr. Sargeant in a Florida circuit court.
The former partner, a Jordanian named Mohammad al-Saleh, is a brother-in-law of King Abdullah II of Jordan. The court papers laid out his assertion that he obtained special governmental authorizations for the company to transport the fuel through Jordan and was then unlawfully forced out by Mr. Sargeant, who strongly disputed those allegations.
But the latest claims of impropriety by the company, presented by Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, go much further. Mr. Waxman uses e-mail messages, company documents, Pentagon reports and other information to make the case that Mr. Sargeant repeatedly received contracts to deliver the fuel even though his company was not the lowest bidder.
In one case, the letter from Mr. Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asserts that Mr. Sargeant’s company submitted the highest of six bids, but received the contract anyway. In fact, Pentagon contracting officers complained that the company’s prices were unreasonably high and initially said they could not justify giving the work to Mr. Sargeant.
But for reasons the company was never able to explain, Mr. Waxman’s letter indicates, no other American company was given an authorization to transport the fuel through Jordan. And when the United States Central Command declared that the need for the fuel was urgent, the Pentagon was forced to award the contract to Mr. Sargeant’s company.
Nothing in the documents Mr. Waxman’s staff assembled indicated that there was any attempt by Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, or his staff to influence the granting of the contracts.
According to the documents, the Pentagon tried to negotiate a lower price with Mr. Sargeant, but he held firm, saying the prices were reasonable given his expenses. But as a result, Mr. Waxman’s letter says, the company has been paid $1.4 billion on four different contracts for the fuel deliveries and made a profit of $210 million after expenses.
The letter and other documents indicate that Mr. Sargeant currently has just one other partner in the venture, suggesting that they would largely divide those profits. “Mr. Sargeant’s personal gain from these four contracts may have been $70 million or higher,” Mr. Waxman’s letter says.
A spokesman for Mr. Gates, Chris Isleib, said that the Pentagon had supplied all the documents that Mr. Waxman had requested in the case. “As a result of these documents and subsequent discussions with the committee, Congressman Waxman asked the secretary of defense to investigate allegations that I.O.T.C. has overcharged for the delivery of fuel,” Mr. Isleib said in an e-mail message. The Pentagon will respond directly to the committee on that request, Mr. Isleib said.
Jim Greer, the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, said, “Since Harry Sargeant has been the finance chairman, he has always demonstrated the highest degree of ethics and integrity and has always served the party well.”
Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said: “This obviously has nothing do with the McCain campaign. John McCain has always called for full transparency in military contracting, and if there’s a nonpolitical mechanism for looking at credible allegations, then that should obviously go forward.”
Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington, said that further investigation was warranted even though the initial inquiry did not turn up direct evidence of political meddling. Mr. Waxman estimated that if the lowest bidder had been awarded the contracts, taxpayers would have saved some $180 million.
“The fact that the contracting officer warned them lends credence to the general allegation that this is profiteering and that this is an unfair contract,” Ms. Alexander said. “To allow that high of a profit to deliver fuel to the troops is not the kind of management we need right now.”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a lower court’s order requiring state officials in Ohio to supply information that would have made it easier to challenge prospective voters. The decision was a setback for Ohio Republicans, who had sued to force the Ohio secretary of state, a Democrat, to provide information about database mismatches to county officials.
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Related
Ruling May Impede Thousands of Ohio Voters (October 16, 2008)
States’ Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal (October 9, 2008)
Text of the Decision (PDF)
Help for Voters
A list of Web sites that provide information about voter registration.
The decision has the potential to affect as many as 200,000 of the 660,000 new voters who have been registered in Ohio since Jan. 1, according Social Security Administration and state election officials.
The Supreme Court, in a brief, unsigned decision, said lower federal courts in Ohio should not have ordered the secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, to turn over the information. The court acted just before a deadline requiring Ms. Brunner to act set by a federal judge in Columbus.
A 2002 federal law, the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, requires states to check voter registration applications against government databases like those for driver’s license records. Names that do not match are flagged. Ohio Republicans sought to require Ms. Brunner to provide information about mismatches to local officials.
Those officials could use information to require voters to cast provisional ballots rather than regular ones. They could also allow partisan poll workers to challenge people on the lists. Given Democratic success in registering new voters this year, those actions would probably affect that party’s supporters disproportionately.
The court said it expressed “no opinion on the question whether HAVA is being properly implemented.” But it said that Congress probably had not intended to allow private litigants like political parties to sue to enforce the part of the law concerning databases.
Ms. Brunner welcomed Friday’s ruling from the Supreme Court.
“Our nation’s highest court has protected the voting rights of all Ohioans, allowing our bipartisan elections officials to continue preparing for a successful November election,” Ms. Brunner said. “We filed this appeal to protect all Ohio voters from illegal challenges and barriers that unfairly silence the votes of some to the advantage of others.”
Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State, said the Supreme Court’s action in letting state authorities handle matters in the face of a late challenge was consistent with a general premise of election law. “Federal court intervention is a last resort, even if it’s not at the last minute,” Professor Foley said.
A federal judge in Columbus ordered Ms. Brunner to supply the information on Oct. 9, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, affirmed that decision on Tuesday by a vote of 10-to-6.
The majority decision in the Sixth Circuit acknowledged that the question about whether private parties may sue under the 2002 law was a close one. But Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton said that question could be deferred, as what the Republican party sought was just information.
No one argues, Judge Sutton wrote, “that a mismatch necessarily requires a voter to be removed from the rolls.” A mismatch may merely prompt further investigation, he said, one that may be satisfied with an explanation as simple as a recent address change.
Voting experts and state election officials added that many voters were likely to be flagged erroneously because the databases used to check voter registrations were prone to errors. Most non-matches are the result of typographical errors by government officials, computer errors, use of nicknames or middle initials, not voter ineligibility, they said.
In one audit of match failures in 2004 by New York City election officials, more than 80 percent of the failures were found to have resulted from errors by government officials; most of the remaining failures were because of immaterial discrepancies between the two records.
Ms. Brunner had also argued that requiring so many voters to cast provisional ballots would raise tensions at the polls and worsen lines and confusion on Election Day in a year when she is expecting unprecedented turnout.
Republicans rejected those arguments.
“It remains our belief that American citizens should be guaranteed that their legitimate votes are not wiped away by illegally cast ballots,” said Rick Davis, the McCain-Palin 2008 campaign manager. “What is no longer in question is the partisan nature of Jennifer Brunner’s efforts to minimize the level of fairness and transparency in this election.”
Officials in the Ohio Republican party echoed the sentiment and said they are still deciding whether to take the matter to the state Supreme Court.
Party officials had said they wanted the list so that local election officials could clear up any discrepancies before Election Day and in cases where that was not possible, those voters should vote using a provision ballot. Provisional ballots in Ohio are held for 10 days before being counted while workers check eligibility, and they are often subject to partisan wrangling and legal fights.
Friday’s decision also means that the Ohio Republican Party will not be able to make public information requests to get the data so that poll workers can raise voter challenges at the polls.
In 2004, President George W. Bush won Ohio by a margin of about 118,000 votes. During that race, litigation over Republican plans to challenge about 35,000 voters went to Justice John Paul Stevens on the eve of the election. Justice Stevens said it was too close to the election to intervene, but he added that he expected both sides to act in good faith. The Republicans dropped plans for their challenges.
Polling in the state shows Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, with a slight lead on his Republican challenger, Senator John McCain.
yes, we should all watch Fox, and then everybody would have the same view.
Tom Udall, the Democratic running for the open U.S Senate seat in New Mexico, released an ad on Thursday that may be remembered as the most poignant and moving of the cycle.
Entitled "Humbled," the spot features the testimony of Army Sergeant Erik Schei, who was gravely injured by in Iraq and is now forced to communicate through a speaking aid. Describing how he was hit by sniper fire, he recounts:
"The doctors said I wouldn't survive. But I am still here. And I am getting better. I want to thank Tom Udall for getting more funding for treatment of brain trauma for veterans. For me, that means...everything."