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Some heavy selling of GFRE lately. I don't see a clear reason for it.
GFRE followers, some opinions? I am thinking could be a good buy when the dust settles.
Drugs, Porn and lax regulation of the Petroleum and mining industries: Interesting
http://bpoil.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/politics-the-bp-oil-disaster-moveon-org-breaks-it-down/
Update from Lake Palin: In other oil slick news...
Did you know the Exxon Valdez still sails? Renamed many times, now it is the Dong Fang Ocean, Now hauls ore not crude oil.
DRILL BABY DRILL!
--these stories show how the govt has screwed up Medicaid and Medicare so badly that they are not doing the jobs they were intended to do.--
That's the dumbest thing I've seen all week.
If Medicare is so bad why are the tea party dupes screaming "keep your hands off my Medicare?" Because it works great even if they are too stupid to realize it is a government program which is hated by the insurance companies.
Sanford's about to go off the rails. Admits to more 'wandering'. He'd better go find a new Bible group, fast. Sounds an awful lot like 'I did not have sex with that woman.."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/governors/sanford-admits-to-more-contact.html?hpid=topnews
The climate bill is a good start but doesn't go far enough.
It will not head off major climate change. Any respectable climatologist will tell you this.
Meanwhile you folks in the sunny south, enjoy your increasing invasions of tropical diseases and critters like ticks, snakes and lizards. You folks up north better prepare for some refugees in a few years. And the folks in the desert southwest might as well roll up the sidewalks. You'll most likely have to move because of severe water shortages in a couple of decades.
There's been a fair amount of coverage of the Monica Conyers plea. At least there was on CBS and ABC, and the local paper.
However, for the sanctimonious governor of a state (and likely presidential contender) to fly to Argentina on the taxpayer's dime to shack up with his paramour.. no comparison. That's a much bigger story. This is the same guy, who as a congressman, was calling for Clinton to resign over the Lewinsky scandal. Now we'll see if he can take his own medicine.
The Repubs have been wearing thin in their hypocritical role as the morality police.
The Daily Show takes on CNBC and certain Republican soothsayers
http://digg.com/politics/The_Daily_Show_Takes_on_CNBC_and_Rick_Santelli
We are now rapidly approaching the end of the worst U.S. Administration of the last 100 years, maybe the worst of all time. Fraudulent war, lies, torture, economic policies that bled the middle class and enriched the wealthy. The economic chickens have come home to roost. Now let justice come home to roost.
John Conyers, your time is almost here. Be a patriot and do what needs to be done. And if you won't, I vote for tar, feathers and a boat ride to Guantanamo for Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush.
Obama Pledges Massive Public Works Program
By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama committed Saturday to the largest public works building program since the creation of the interstate highway system a half century ago as he seeks to put together a plan to resuscitate the reeling economy.
“We need action — and action now,” he said in an address taped for broadcast Saturday morning on radio and YouTube.
The address followed the latest grim economic report indicating the country lost 533,000 jobs in November alone, bringing the total job loss over the past year to nearly 2 million. Although Mr. Obama remains weeks away from taking office, the report ratcheted up the pressure on him to assert leadership during the interregnum before his inauguration.
Mr. Obama and his team are working with Congressional leaders to fashion a spending package that could invest hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy. A big part of that would be infrastructure projects such as building or repairing roads, bridges, schools, sewer systems and other public utilities. Democrats hope the new Congress that takes office in early January could pass such a measure in time for Mr. Obama to sign almost instantly after taking office Jan. 20.
The president-elect in his Saturday address offered some general ideas of what he wants to see in the package. Besides public works construction, he promised to make government buildings more energy efficient, modernize school classrooms and libraries with computers, expand access to broadband Internet service and upgrade information technology in hospitals and doctors’ offices.
The big ticket will be the public works spending. “We will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s,” Mr. Obama said.
He did not give any estimate of how much he would devote to that purpose, but when he met with the nation’s governors this week, they said the states had $136 billion worth of already-approved road, bridge and other projects ready to go as soon as funding became available. They estimated each billion dollars spent would create 40,000 jobs.
By invoking the federal interstate program, Mr. Obama sought to summon the spirit of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who launched the highway construction that became integral to the nation’s economic development. That imagery seemed intended to respond to critics, who argue that public works spending historically has not been a reliable catalyst for short-term economic growth and instead is more about politicians gaining points with constituents.
Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, ultimately resulting in the construction of 42,795 miles of roads. In 1991, the government concluded that the total cost came to $128.9 billion, with the federal government bearing $114.3 billion of the tab and the states picking up the rest.
Mr. Obama promised to set new rules to govern spending, such as a “use it or lose it” requirement that states act quickly to invest in roads and bridges or sacrifice the federal funds. “We won’t do it the old Washington way,” Mr. Obama said. “We won’t just throw money at the problem. We’ll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve — by the jobs we create, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/politics/07radio.html?_r=1&hp
Please do move out, quickly. I think they would love to have you, say in Iraq? After all your President Bush has spent billions there. I am sure you will enjoy the results.
"Licking there chops", eh? Based on your spelling ability, I wouldn't put a whole lot of credence in your predictions.
Know what credence is? It's what Obama has and Bush hasn't had for many years.
GS came back strong. May buy some here and sell some calls. Nice premiums.
Interesting GS bounce late in the day. The calls sure jumped on some volume too. I assume it had something to do with remarks either in an upgrade or the CEO comments.
I have kids and this is precisely why I voted for Obama. I care about the future of the country. Anyone who votes for Mccain is falling for shallow slogans and bull.
Five Reasons Not to Vote For John McCain
1. The Federal Government is a huge mess because of lobbyists and special interest groups.
John McCain now claims to be the candidate for change, but his entire campaign is run and staffed by lobbyists. Just one example: McCain’s senior advisor is lobbyist Charlie Black. Black and his partners have acted as registered foreign agents for a number of dictators and regimes committing torture and genocide. As recently as February, Black was conducted his lobbying work from aboard McCain's campaign bus, the "Straight Talk Express." Many more lobbyists working for Wall Street banks, oil, drug and military contractor companies are running McCain’s campaign. The change slogan by McCain is a sham.
SNDK is interesting here. Holding up even though earnings were down, apparently still strong indications of a buyout. Samsung had offered $26 a share.
What do we think about BTU here gang? It sure has had some heavy buying since that earnings report last week.
YHOO options activity is interesting. Something is up. In this market environment methinks a very big deal is in the works with somebody. Maybe after the earnings report. YHOO has huge cash and despite being shoved into the background by Google is still a major internet company.
I have been very disappointed in Colin Powell ever since he allowed himself to be run over by Cheney and Rumsfeld and got sucked into the Iraq War fraud. But his comments today were statesmanlike and a reminder there are a few moderate Republicans left who haven't lost their marbles.
His endorsement is going to hurt McCain very much. Should be good for a substantial chunk of elderly veterans who had been on the fence about Obama.
Government buying huge into banking companies? Government pouring billions into auto makers? We've got Republican Socialists in there now, and they are the worst kind. They don't know how to run government.
At least Obama would bring in a group of competent professionals.
Ever been to Canada? I have yet to meet a Canadian who would be willing to trade their health care system for ours.
McCain picked up the ACORN talking point and ranted about voter fraud. Gosh, do you suppose he's going to support legitimate investigations into the theft of the 2004 election in Ohio? Hundreds of polls with hours of delays in Democratic precincts, fixed voting machines. Now THERE's some voting fraud worth talking about!
ACORN is a non partisan not for profit organization that helps poor people. No wonder the Republicans foam at the mouth about ACORN.
Cheap Labor Conservatives oppose all efforts to improve the lives of poor folks.
Earmarks? I got your earmarks right here.....
Rove's Office Urged Spending to Help GOP Incumbents in Tight Races
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2008; 2:27 PM
When Karl Rove's office requested special help for beleaguered Republican congressional candidates in the months before the 2006 elections, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy jumped to the task. Director John Walters carried half-million-dollar grants to news conferences with two congressmen and a senator, earning a top Rove aide's accolade of "superstar" after the election.
Walters's visits to Utah, Missouri and Nevada were among at least 303 out-of-town trips by senior Bush appointees meant to lend prestige or bring federal grants to 99 politically endangered Republicans that year, in an orchestrated White House campaign that House Democratic investigators yesterday called unprecedented in scope and scale.
Although federal law prohibits the use of public funds or resources for partisan political activities -- and specifically barred Walters from any involvement in a federal election campaign -- the agencies involved said most of these trips were paid for by taxpayer funds, according to the draft report released by the Democratic majority of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The report said the trips were freely described as political in subpoenaed e-mails and interviews. A master list prepared at the White House two weeks before the election listed the names and dates of appearances by Cabinet secretaries in 73 key congressional districts, all under the heading "Final Push Surrogate Matrix."
"This is," the report said, "a gross abuse of the public trust."
The existence of the White House effort to turn federal officials into instruments of the 2006 Republican campaign effort is already well known, as well as the existence of a so-called "asset deployment" strategy involving senior appointees in every federal agency. But the House report, based on a review of more than 63,000 pages of internal documents, includes fresh details about which Cabinet members participated and who benefited.
Chaired by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the committee makes clear in the report that Bush is hardly the first president to try to squeeze reelection support from the federal bureaucracy. It notes that one of President Bill Clinton's White House aides met with Cabinet secretaries and other senior appointees to brief them on tough races before the 1994 election, a precursor to at least 22 similar briefings that Bush aides conducted for top political appointees at 20 agencies between 2005 and 2007.
The House committee probed the Clinton effort in the 1990s, at the behest of its then-Republican chairman, but "received no evidence of practices . . . resembling the coordinated and comprehensive strategy the Bush White House employed to use taxpayer resources to support Republican candidates for office," the report states.
The committee's senior Republican, Rep. Tom Davis (Va.), disputed this statement, however. "The same kind of things [were] done by every administration since Eisenhower," he said, and compared the Democrats' "angry swooning" to the police captain's shock in the final scene of Casablanca. Not since then, he said, has "righteous indignation seemed so contrived."
In a separate report four times longer than the Democrats', Davis and his Republican colleagues said that in a few cases, Democratic politicians appeared at events tallied by Waxman's staff as partisan. They also said that some trips occurred at lawmakers' request, not merely at White House insistence.
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in a statement that the report was merely "an attempt to score political points" and asked whether the media had a "Dog Bites Man" headline ready. Asserting that Waxman's probes "tend to be a colossal waste of time and taxpayer money," he declined more detailed comment.
The Democratic report attributes the overall strategy of harnessing public officials to support the election of Republicans to Sara Taylor, a Rove aide who ran the White House political office until last year. Throughout the first 10 months of 2006, she sent periodic updates to the White House scheduling director, as well as White House liaisons at each agency, about which candidates deserved federal agency support.
White House e-mails to various agencies urged officials to pay attention to "our top priorities going into November" in order to achieve "a good result on 11/7." Each week, a new batch of suggestions went out, and trips by Cabinet officials actually became so routine that Taylor's office developed a standard form to send around, under the heading, "Secretary _____ Suggested Event Participation."
A July 2006 White House e-mail said that as the election got closer, officials would have to participate in at least five "recommended events" per month. The message went to the appointed liaisons at 18 departments and agencies, who sometimes functioned like political commissars, enforcing discipline and rallying top appointees to the cause.
Taylor's office also ensured that orders were carried out, and e-mailed the liaisons when agency or department heads shirked their responsibilities or went to events with lawmakers who were merely on their appropriating committees and not on the office's priority list of beleaguered Republicans.
In all, senior administration officials participated in 425 suggested events, according to the committee's tally, including 92 Republican Party events and 326 appearances with Republican candidates. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez was the most enthusiastic recruit, showing up at 59 recommended events. Four other Cabinet secretaries -- from the departments of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and Veterans Affairs -- showed up at more than 20 apiece.
Walters made it to 19 in 2006, while Attorney General Alberto Gonzales went to two. Walters's office did not immediately reply to a request for comment, but his aides have previously said the trips had legitimate, official purposes.
In total, agencies and department questioned by investigators claimed that 185 of the 303 trips urged by the political office were justifiably considered "official" events, and paid by tax dollars. The agencies could not determine whether another 59 events were paid by tax dollars, and did not say whether they were "official."
Despite all the energy poured into the effort, it was hardly a sterling success. The report lists Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) as the target of 20 visits by Bush officials, and he was overwhelmingly defeated. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) got 12 visits and she held onto her seat by only 875 votes. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), who got 10 visits, won a healthy 53 percent of the vote in his district, but Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.) collected just 44 percent after getting 10 visits herself.
In a contentious deposition by investigators, Taylor characterized all the out-of-town trips as efforts to "be helpful" to members of Congress who requested assistance but said she could not recall more precisely why some members were aided and others were not. She even speculated that some Cabinet-level visits might have harmed the Republican candidates on the White House's targeted list.
The committee judged her remarks during the deposition as "evasive" and misleading, a conclusion that her attorney W. Neil Eggleston said was an unwarranted "partisan slap." He said Taylor's testimony was "honest and forthright."
The report said that because Taylor and many other officials involved in organizing the trips are no longer in office, "there is no effective remedy" for any related violations of the 1939 Hatch Act restricting the use of public funds for partisan gain. The law spells out administrative sanctions for violations or, at worst, removal from office.
"For this reason, the Committee is making no referral to the Department of Justice . . . for further investigation," the report states. It urged instead that the Hatch Act be amended to eliminate the political affairs office at the White House or force it to serve "the interests of the taxpayer, not the political party of the President."
The Republican minority report was less sanguine about this goal. No statute, it said, "can repeal the laws of political gravity. There is a necessary, even inevitable, political element in White House efforts to build national consensus behind a president's policy initiatives."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/15/AR2008101501791.html?nav=hcmodule
McCain and Palin both come off as immature, not ready for the top tier of government. Come to think of it, they resemble Bush in that way.
Obama was steady, mature and actually knew what he was talking about. McCain, not so much.
The McCain campaign has its own questionable connections to bombers and assassins.
By A.L. Bardach
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008, at 3:40 PM ET
The campaign of John McCain has made much of Barack Obama's relationship with Weather Underground bomber-turned-university professor Bill Ayers, whom Republicans call an "unrepentant terrorist." Indeed, the Obama-Ayers connection has become a centerpiece of the McCain-Palin campaign. V.P. nominee Sarah Palin mentions Ayers in practically every public appearance, and John McCain has all but promised to bring up Ayers in tonight's debate.
McCain's campaign, however, has its own questionable connections to terrorists. Since John F. Kennedy's failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Florida's Cuban-Americans have been regarded as a reliable Republican voting block. And from 1960 until Sept. 11, 2001, some exile hard-liners in Miami endorsed a double standard on terrorism in which anti-Castro militants and bombers were judged to be "freedom fighters," regardless of the civilian deaths and collateral damage they caused in Cuba and the United States, as well as elsewhere. While the Cuban-American community has undergone dramatic changes—with the majority now supporting dialogue with Cuba and an end to restrictions on travel and remittances—hard-liners still control the major levers of power in Miami. Such is their clout in turning out reliable voters that McCain dropped his stance of 2000, when he said he would support normalizing relations with Cuba even under Fidel Castro. ("I'd be willing to do the same thing we did with—with Vietnam.") McCain has allied his campaign with the Cuban Liberty Council, an uncompromising anti-Castro group that has all but dictated policy to George W. Bush. Two of the council's most prominent members, media personality Ninoska Perez-Castellon and her husband, Roberto Martin Perez, have been among McCain's most dedicated campaigners and champions in Miami.
As a result, McCain's campaign and advisers find themselves allied with and/or supporting militants who have committed acts that any reasonable observer would define as terrorism. On July 20, while campaigning for McCain in Miami and just prior to speaking at a McCain event, Sen. Joe Lieberman met with the wife of convicted serial bomber Eduardo Arocena and promised to pursue a presidential pardon on his behalf. Arocena is the founder of the notorious Cuban exile militant group Omega 7, renowned for a string of bombings from 1975 to 1983. Arocena was convicted of the 1980 murder of a Cuban diplomat in Manhattan. In 1983, Arocena was arrested and charged with 42 counts pertaining to conspiracy, explosives, firearms, and destruction of foreign government property within the United States. He is currently serving a life sentence in federal prison in Indiana. His targets included:
*
Madison Square Garden (he blew up an adjacent store);
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JFK airport (Arocena's group planted a suitcase bomb intended for a TWA flight to Los Angeles—in protest of the airline's flights to Cuba. The plane would have exploded if not for the fact that the bomb went off on the tarmac prior to being loaded);
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Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center (causing damage to three levels of the theater and halting the performance of a music group from Cuba);
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the ticket office of the Soviet airline Aeroflot;
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and a church.
He also attempted to assassinate the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations.
Arocena was also convicted of the 1979 murder of New Jersey resident Eulalio José Negrín. The 37-year-old Negrín, who advocated diplomacy with Cuba, was machine-gunned down as he stepped into his car, dying in the arms of his 13-year-old son.
Nevertheless, Lieberman, who at the time was McCain's first choice for vice president and is said to top McCain's list for secretary of state, was caught on video promising Miriam Arocena he would petition Washington to grant a pardon to her husband. "It's my responsibility; it's my responsibility. I will carry [the pardon request] back. I will carry it back," Lieberman told Arocena just before addressing a group at a McCain event. "I think of you like you were my family. ... I'll bring it back. I'll do my best."
Queried on the matter, a Lieberman spokesman demurred, telling the AP, "Sen. Lieberman does not intervene in criminal proceedings including requests for pardons. The correspondence was merely forwarded without any comment, endorsement or support whatsoever."
Another vocal champion of an Arocena pardon is CLC member Roberto Martin Perez, who narrates a McCain commercial about Castro that has played in South Florida. His wife, radio host Ninoska Perez-Castellon, says that the McCain campaign has queried them about making a television spot as well.
Miami attorney Alfredo Duran, Bay of Pigs veteran and a leader of the Cuban Committee for Democracy, explains the GOP strategy: "They think that the Arocena campaign will energize a certain segment of the ultra-conservative exile community that will deliver for McCain and the Republican Party."
Arocena is not the only militant who's received help from McCain's team. In September, McCain announced he was choosing Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican congressman from Miami, as his senior adviser and spokesman on Latin America. Rep. Diaz-Balart is a fierce hard-liner on Cuba, advocating, at various times, a blockade of the island, even military action if needed, to unseat Fidel Castro (his former uncle, once married to Diaz-Balart's aunt). He, too, has been a supporter of certain kinds of terrorists who have struck on American soil. Since 2000, Diaz-Balart and his colleague Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have lobbied for and helped win the release of several convicted exile terrorists from U.S. prisons. Among the most notorious were Omega 7 members Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquivel and Virgilio Paz Romero, both convicted for their roles in the 1976 assassination of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt with a car bomb in Washington, D.C. According to four agents I interviewed, the FBI also suspects the pair were involved in other bombings and attacks. (Suarez is known by the nickname "Charco de Sangre"—Pool of Blood.)
Diaz-Balart also pushed for the release of Valentin Hernandez, who gunned down Miami resident and Cuban émigré Luciano Nieves in February 1975 for speaking out in support of a dialogue with Cuba. Nieves was ambushed by Hernandez in a hospital parking lot in Miami after visiting his 11-year-old son. Hernandez also went on to kill a former president of the Bay of Pigs Association in an internecine feud. Hernandez was captured in Puerto Rico in 1977 and sentenced to life in prison. Today, Hernandez is living freely in Florida.
Nor has McCain's senior adviser Diaz-Balart ever wavered in seeking "due process" for legendary bombers and would-be Castro assassins Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Both were charged with the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing all 73 civilian passengers—the first act of airline terrorism in the Americas. In 2005, when I asked him about those who died—many of them teenage athletes—Bosch responded, "We were at war with Castro, and in war, everything is valid."
After serving nine years, Posada "escaped" from prison in Caracas, Venezuela, thanks to a bribe paid to the warden. Posada gives effusive thanks in his memoir, Los Caminos del Guerrero, to at least two members of the Cuban Liberty Council for their help in resettling him during his early fugitive days. After serving 11 years, Bosch won an acquittal (following death threats to several judges hearing the case). However, hundreds of pages of memorandum of the FBI, CIA, and State Department, released by the National Security Archives, leave no doubt that U.S. authorities fully concurred with Venezuelan, Trinidadian, and Cuban intelligence that the two men had masterminded the airplane bombing.
Former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh described Bosch, who spent four years in federal prison for firing a bazooka into a Polish freighter bound for Havana in Miami's harbor, as an "unreformed terrorist" and recommended immediate deportation when he showed up in Miami in 1988. But there were political considerations in Miami. Ros-Lehtinen, then running for Congress and now the Republican leader of the House foreign-affairs committee, lauded Bosch as a hero and a patriot. After she personally lobbied then-President George Bush (with her campaign manager Jeb Bush at a meeting noted in the Miami media), Bush overruled the FBI and the Justice and State departments, and Bosch was granted U.S. residency.
In 1998, I interviewed Luis Posada in Aruba for an investigative series for the New York Times in which he claimed to have orchestrated numerous attacks on both civilian and military targets during his 50-year war to topple Castro. Most notably, Posada took credit for masterminding the 1997 bombings of Cuban hotels that killed an Italian vacationer and wounded 11 others.
Posada made his last failed attempt to eliminate Fidel Castro at the Ibero-America Summit in Panama in November 2000. After his trial and conviction in 2004, Diaz-Balart (along with his brother, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, and Ros-Lehtinen), wrote at least two letters on official U.S. Congress stationery to Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso seeking the release of Posada and his collaborators. "We ask respectfully that you pardon Luis Posada Carriles, Guillermo Novo Sampol, Pedro Crispin Remon and Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo," went one missive. On Aug. 24, 2004, Posada and his fellow conspirators—all with colorful rap sheets—received a last-minute pardon from the outgoing Moscoso.
Posada's supporters tell me that he had been quietly assured by several Miami exile leaders that he would be allowed to live free in the United States like Bosch. While still a fugitive, Posada slipped into Miami in 2005. But following international outrage over his release, a federal grand jury was impaneled in Newark, N.J., in January 2006 to hear evidence against Posada for the Havana hotel bombings. FBI investigators testified that Posada had smuggled plastic explosives in shampoo bottles and shoes into Cuba a few weeks prior to the bombings. At the cost of millions of dollars, dozens of witnesses have testified to the grand jury over two and a half years. On Sept. 19 and 20, 2007, two witnesses, compelled to turn state's evidence, offered damning evidence implicating Posada and his confederates. (Disclosure: The New York Times and I were subpoenaed in the matter but have not appeared before the grand jury, citing First Amendment protections.)
But election year politics seem to have interfered with the case. One of the attorneys representing Posada's comrades in the case told me that the defendants received target letters last year and were warned by the FBI that they would be indicted by the end of 2007. Now he says it is certain nothing will happen because of the 2008 elections and the damage that could be done to the McCain ticket, the Diaz-Balarts, and Ros-Lehtinen. Another Posada attorney told me that he had been assured that Posada's case "is being handled at the highest levels" of the Justice Department.
In the meantime, Posada has resettled in Miami. In November 2007, the Big Five Club, an elite watering hole for Miami's movers and shakers, hosted an art show and fundraiser to benefit Posada and his comrade-in-arms, Letelier assassin José Dionisio Suárez. On May 2, 2008, there was another gala fundraiser in honor of Luis Posada at the Big Five Club. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen were both invited.
A few months earlier, a relaxed and expansive Posada attended a tribute for a well-known Cuban dissident. Just a few feet away from him, amid the ding of clinking glasses, were Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen. Should McCain-Palin prevail in November, those pesky, pending indictments against Posada are very likely to get tossed.
Ann Louise Bardach has written the "Interrogations" column for Slate and is the author of Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana, and Washington, to be published in April, and Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2202183/
None of that stuff amounts to a hill of beans. Prepare to be reamed, but good on November 4th. And here's to a 60 member majority in the senate too. Our government is going to have a huge Republican idiot mess to clean up.
This just in, John McCain in a major public relations make-over, renamed his bus the Lobbyist Gravy Train.
"We felt Straight Talk Express" was too bland, said VP Candidate and Presnident in waiting, Sarah Palin. Lobbyist Gravy Train has a nice ring to it, and as dumb as our hard core supporters are, they'll probably think we are giving away dog food.
There was no comment from the Obama campaign, which was focusing on issues that affect citizens, such as the financial panic, lack of healthcare for millions and outrageously low taxes for billionaires, at the expense of middle class voters.
www.lamebrainmccain.com
UPDATE: Republicans jumping ship:
http://www.jedreport.com/shipjumpers/
McCain and ACORN, old buddies...
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/Acorn_pushes_back_hugs_McCain.html?showall
LOL well that's a plus for McCain.
Ultra-Right Wing Is Now The New Taliban.
October 11, 2008
They are cultlike in their recruiting practices, brainwashing members to believe they are of no substance outside of the organization. They claim to be a form of ‘unorganized’ religion, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. They disseminate information forcefully through sermons characterized by the faithful being rewarded with eternal life and the unfaithful being punished with eternal damnation by fire and brimstone in the depths of hell. They teach that they are unjustly persecuted by the evil of society and stress that a faithful and good member will fight for the will of God to be carried out. They reach out to the poor, distraught, and needy and promise health, happiness, and fellowship.
Sounds pretty familiar to what the Muslim extremist teach their suicide bombers, doesn’t it?
It’s hard to believe how or why, but there really exists a subculture in America that is militaristic, hateful, vengeful, irrational and ambitious. These extremists are cancerous to progressive society and similar groups have had similar effect throughout the history of civilization. America’s version of the Taliban consists of fundamentalist Christians and their cult-like behavior.
Now don’t get me wrong, we’re not talking about all Christians here. The vast, vast majority of religious people, both Christian and not, are reasonable. They believe in progression, adaptation, evolution of society, and to these followers, no disdain is meant to be directed. However, inside the vast spoils of Christendom exists a backwards society of extremists who believe that those who don’t outwardly adhere to a set of very strict, bible based moral standards that directly conflict with human nature, are agents of evil.
It comes as no surprise that these people are oblivious to the irrationality of their thoughts and actions, but it is scary as hell. Undoubtedly, these people are very dangerous. Aside from spreading hatred towards homosexuals, women, and minorities, as of late they’ve successfully gained some political power. George Bush is their savior, a modern day Jesus, and if you wonder who the 25% of people that think Bush is doing a good job are, well folks, now you know.
These people support their own at all costs. Through this mechanism they are able to survive and flourish. While others spend time doing things to help the communities they live in, build actual relationships with the people around them, these people attend numerous church services where they are encouraged to spread hatred. They are told their leaders are no different than they are, that they are just as specials in the eyes of God, but their leaders have a better understanding of the will of God and have been anointed by the hand of God. They believe that these people hear directly from God, having been annointed by the holy spirit, and thus are more knowledgeable about choices they should make, personally and politically.
It’s scary to think how much of a cult these fundamentalists are, and if you can’t see how nutzo they are based on their recent media moments surrounding John McCain and Sarah Palin on the campaign trail, then you need to open your eyes. They make statements like, “Obama is an Arab” and “Pray for everyone to vote for McCain, because those who hate you, support Obama.” This is real folks, very real.
It might seem all too innocent, but don’t make the same mistake we’ve made with other extremist organizations in the past. We let the Taliban and others flourish, organize, and it was only a matter of time before they became violent. It’s not that far away here. They already preach hate and destruction for those who don’t support them, encourage their members to not associate with societies in which they live, and various other sociopath behaviors. They’ve blown up abortion clinics, killing innocent civilians, doctors, and others. They are responsible for the 1996 Olympic bombing. They believe that the end times, of which they believe we are in, will be characterized by an army from God slaughtering all who don’t faithfully believe. It actually says the ground will run red with blood.
You can’t reason with them, much like the people who bombed the world trade center. You just have to realize that they are a huge threat and seek to minimize their impact on civilization. Modern day barbarians, they will seek to destroy all that is modern about America.
This election is a crossroads for progressive Americans. The Republican platform tried to distance itself from fundamentalism, but realized that a huge block of its voters are for some reason Republican, and therefor had to be catered to. They chose Sarah Palin, an unqualified, self-righteous idiot, to be vice president in order to get the buy in from this reluctant group. John McCain is not a crazy fundamentalist, but he supports them, he supports Sarah Palin.
As the realization that America is going the opposite way of their desire, this group will get more vocal and if left unchecked, a lot more dangerous. Open your eyes and check out fundamentalist groups who support McCain, the truth will shock you.
America, by voting for reason, by voting for sensibility, by voting for Obama, we’ll be much closer to becoming the nation our founders imagined us to be.
http://www.theamericanboy.net/?p=216
On the other hand, the Republicans may roll out witchcraft as their new ploy. The financial markets have sold off because of a curse by WITCHES! They would at least get a bunch of Bush voters back in their tent:
Here's a new ploy: Investor's Business Daily, the house organ of the Neocons, is now claiming that the financial markets have sold off due to fears about an Obama presidency.
Fox News has picked this up and is running with it, along with Huckabee claiming that "terrorists" might behind the stock market selloff. No surprise there. What they will never say, however, is that historically U.S. financial markets have performed better under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents. This has been documented in detail in the Stock Trader’s Almanac, among other places.
Naomi Klein nails all of this in "The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism". A great book.
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
What little sloppy voter registration ACORN may occasionally do, is easily offset by Republican election clerks all over America who frequently scare low-income, handicapped and elderly voters away from the polling places. Try volunteering to take elderly folks to the polls sometime, its an eye opener.
It is going to take awhile to undo this Republican mess, but make no doubt about it, with a little help from Clinton, it IS a Republican mess:
Phil Gramm, Republican Senator from Texas and Jim Leach, Republican Congressman from Iowa led the fight to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. Glass-Steagall prevented banks from going outside their core business and engaging in various forms of speculation. Senator John McCain also enthusiastically supported and voted for the repeal. The act had successfully kept banks out of economic trouble since it was enacted during the first huge banking implosion during the Great Depression in 1933. Gramm has been serving as McCain's senior economic advisor.
Gramm was also a key sponsor of the law which allowed the Enron swindles to occur.
(Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000
It is time for her to put her Daddy in a home. I'd say that place in Sedona would do. McCain can then sit in his rocker and rant and rave about military victories with honor until the coyotes come home.
Biden: "We want a leader, an optimist. Not an angry man lurching from one position to another."
http://www.crooksandliars.com/silentpatriot/joe-biden-comes-out-swinging-mccain-
video
Another senior moment for Johnny Mac, 'my fellow prisoners" indeed
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/10/mccain-loses-it-calls-american.html
An Iraq War Veteran's open letter to McCain:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-07/why-my-former-hero-shouldnrsquot-be-president/
Hint: He doesn't think McCain should be president.
The GOP goes back to its ugly roots
McCain is resurrecting the GOP's oldest tactic: Smearing Obama as a scary black terrorist sympathizer. But he may meet the same fate as Barry Goldwater.
By Gary Kamiya
Oct. 07, 2008 | The End of Days is approaching for John McCain and Sarah Palin, and at least one member of the ticket is not likely to greet this development with religious rapture. Their numbers are tanking. Their campaign has had to pull out of Michigan, and they are trailing in most of the battleground states they must hold onto. Even Karl Rove has predicted an Obama win if the election were held today. McCain's hotheaded behavior during the Wall Street crisis and his numerous other erratic tactical swerves have backfired. And his biggest gamble, choosing Sarah Palin as vice president, is increasingly looking like a disaster.
McCain's all-too-predictable response: get ugly, as he did on Monday is his disturbing rant against Obama in New Mexico.
The man who incessantly talks about "honor" has checked his own at the door. Back in April, McCain -- himself the victim of a vicious, race-baiting smear campaign orchestrated by Karl Rove in 2000 -- disavowed a North Carolina ad attacking Obama for his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "It's not the message of the Republican Party," McCain said. "It's not the message of my campaign. I've pledged to conduct a respectful campaign."
But that was before McCain faced imminent defeat. His "pledge" has turned out to be about as credible as his sudden incarnation as a lifelong enemy of Wall Street. On Monday, McCain rolled out a new TV ad, "Dangerous," that accuses Obama of being "dishonorable." "Who is Barack Obama?" a narrator ominously asks. "He says our troops in Afghanistan are 'just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.' How dishonorable."
Of course, this is an outrageous smear. Obama was simply pointing out the well-known fact that in fighting an insurgency, over-reliance on air power is counterproductive. That's because airstrikes inevitably result in civilian deaths, which turn the population against the side carrying them out. U.S. airstrikes and the ensuing civilian casualties are one of the biggest points of contention between the U.S. and Hamid Karzai's regime in Afghanistan, and they are a huge issue in Pakistan and Iraq as well.
But none of those facts matter, because McCain desperately needs to paint Obama as a traitor, an alien, a defeatist, and un-American. The rhetorical question "Who is Barack Obama?" is not accidental: It is intended to raise fundamental doubts about whether he is a real American. It ties into the online smears that accuse him of being a Muslim, a terrorist, of not saluting the flag, hating the troops, attending a madrassa, hating Israel, and so on.
In a fear-mongering speech on Monday, McCain continued this Mysterious Stranger tactic. "Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there's always a back story with Sen. Obama," McCain said. "All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama?" Cue a subconscious image of a dark, menacing figure planning to impose sharia law on America.
Sarah Palin, confidently pronouncing on Obama's bona fides despite the fact that she has repeatedly revealed herself to a terrified world to be someone who must be kept as far away from the presidency as possible, joined in the smear campaign. Citing Obama's acquaintance with former Weatherman founder Bill Ayers, Palin said about the Democratic presidential nominee, "This is not a man who sees America as you and I do -- as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country."
Never mind the fact that Palin herself supported, and her husband belonged to, a secessionist Alaska political party that advocated armed opposition to the U.S. Never mind the fact that Obama's relationship with Ayers, as detailed in the very New York Times story that Palin cited as her source, was utterly casual. Facts are for those in the reality-based community. The point is to paint Obama not just as a terrorist sympathizer and America-hater, but as an alien. Hence Palin's description of him as "not a man who sees America as you and I do."
McCain is also using Palin to bring up the Rev. Wright. Prompted by GOP publicist Bill Kristol, whose intellectually vacuous, water-carrying New York Times column is one of the biggest embarrassments in that paper's storied history, Palin said that "I don't know why that association isn't discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country ... But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up."
Ah, the joys of having your vacuous, yet robotically perky, running mate do your dirty work for you, while she pretends that she isn't.
Calling Obama a traitor, un-American and dishonorable may be somewhat effective, but the best thing McCain and Palin have going for them is that Obama is ... black. The subliminal message of all their ads is "scary, black, unknown, black, alien, black, un-American, black." The challenge for McCain, however, is that he can't be explicitly racist: It's no longer acceptable to run Willie Horton-type ads. But ingenious minds find a way to get around this.
In a McCain ad called "Mum," Obama is portrayed as a tax-raising incompetent. But the real point of the ad, which is so nonsensical it's hard to believe anyone will pay attention to its ostensible message, may be to incite racial fears.
"In crisis, experience matters," a tough voice warns. "McCain and his congressional allies led. Tough rules on Wall Street. Stop CEO rip-offs. [An image of a grinning black man in a suit appears.] Protect your savings and pensions. [An image of an elderly white woman appears.] Obama and his liberal allies, 'mum on the market crisis.' Because 'no one knows what to do.' More taxes. No leadership. A risk your family can't afford."
This ad requires voters to have ignored reality in three ways. First, they must have somehow missed the fact that it was Republican congressmen, not Democrats, who stalled the bailout package. Second, they must swallow the fairy tale that McCain "led" the effort. And third, they must believe that McCain and the GOP have magically been transformed into sworn enemies of "Wall Street" and "CEO rip-offs." With all due respect for the incapacity of Americans, that's too much stupidity to ask for.
Which is why the real point of the ad may have been the image of the smirking black man who appears as the poster child for "CEO rip-offs." The man is Franklin Raines, former head of Fannie Mae, who resigned in 2004 under a cloud of scandal. It may seem odd that McCain's hit team selected a black CEO to illustrate the Wall Street meltdown -- there are about as many black CEOs as there are white defensive backs in the NFL. But it isn't odd at all. Using Raines serves the GOP's interests in two ways, both of them with explicit racial subtexts.
First, it furthers the bogus right-wing story that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, pushed by the Clinton administration to increase the number of minority homeowners, were responsible for the Wall Street meltdown. (In fact, as the New York Times has reported, rapacious Wall Street investors pushed Fannie Mae into the exotic, high-risk bundled deals that brought it down.)
More important, it associates Barack Obama with an allegedly corrupt black man. Few viewers are likely to know who that black face belongs to, but that doesn't matter. Working-class white voters have repeatedly told reporters that they're worried that if he's elected, Obama will turn the country over to black people. The "Mum" ad plays to those racial fears in a way that allows plausible deniability.
The GOP and its media allies are going into their two-minute drill, and it ain't pretty. Moving in lockstep with the GOP, as usual, Fox News ran a ludicrous Sean Hannity show Sunday night that painted Obama as a terrorist sympathizer and dangerous radical. And we can expect more smears, concealed race-baiting, overwrought accusations of "radicalism" and crude ad hominem attacks in the next month.
McCain's last-ditch smear campaign isn't surprising. The modern conservative movement came to power by playing on white racial fears, and McCain is hoping that there's one shot left in that gun.
The seeds of modern conservatism were sown by Barry Goldwater, whose anti-government ideology was crafted to appeal to Southern whites enraged at federal intervention into what they considered to be their own racial business. Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy" brought Goldwater's approach to fruition. By inciting populist white anger at do-gooder liberals and the black poor, Nixon was able to split the Democratic Party, peeling off the South and making deep inroads with blue-collar ethnic Democrats in states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Some analysts believe that the South will remain Republican forever, although demographic changes could weaken the GOP's grip. Ronald Reagan continued the strategy, kicking off his 1980 presidential campaign by giving a speech in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were killed, in which he promised to support states' rights -- a code word for institutional Southern racism.
The founding success of the modern conservative movement was that it convinced large numbers of Americans to reject "liberalism" and "big government," even if they themselves benefited from both, because they were associated with social programs aimed at helping poor blacks.
In one of the climactic political showdowns in American history, McCain and Palin are now using the GOP's time-tested tactics -- against a black man. The tactics always worked before, and one might think they would be foolproof now, with a black target. But a closer look at the very beginning of the GOP's rise to power reveals why they may not.
In fall 1964, Barry Goldwater was tanking in the polls, hammered by the media and by his Democratic opponent, Lyndon Johnson, as a radical who might start a nuclear war and would threaten cherished social programs like Social Security. As Rick Perlstein relates in "Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus," Goldwater realized that he needed to scare Americans. So he turned away from his high-minded speeches about freedom and started talking incessantly about moral decay and social unrest -- subjects that had never been raised by a presidential candidate before.
To spread its message about scary blacks and moral rot, the Goldwater campaign let loose a bare-knuckle political operative named Rus Walton, who "was possessed of an almost desperate need to burn conservative truths into an audience's heart by whatever means worked -- high or low, fair or foul." Walton's staff cranked out brochures depicting black Harlemites caught in the act of smashing windows and attacking policemen, with captions like "Lyndon Johnson's Administration Is Too Busy Protecting Itself to Protect You." Another brochure read, "Are you safe on the streets? What about your wife? Your kids? Your property? What about after dark? Why should we have to be afraid? This is America!" A poster linked government with race riots, braying, "Government officials make millions while in public service. They let crime run riot in the streets ..."
Goldwater commissioned a bizarre documentary film, "Choice," that interwove images of a speeding Cadillac, wild revelers, shapely, twisting derrieres, civil rights protests, naked breasts, and criminals resisting arrest. Over these images Raymond Massey intoned, "Now there are two Americas. One is words like 'allegiance' and 'Republic' ... The other America -- the other America is no longer a dream but a nightmare." It was the first shot fired in what would later come to be called the culture wars. (Goldwater chickened out and disavowed the film.)
As Joseph Lowndes argues in his book "From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism," "race was probably the most compelling issue Goldwater had on his side." And Goldwater, though himself no racist, did his best to appeal to white fears. But it didn't work. He went on to lose in a landslide, carrying only a handful of Deep South states. The reason, as Lowndes points out, was that "[c]onservatism did not yet appeal to a majority of Americans, who saw conservatism and the Republican Party as representing wealthy, elite interests."
There are some uncanny parallels between Goldwater's campaign and McCain's. The American right has come full circle in 44 years, with two allegedly maverick senators from Arizona playing bookend roles, one at the beginning, one perhaps at the end. Goldwater was the prophet of modern conservatism, but he came too early. For his part, McCain may have come too late. He may be remembered as the last, failed Republican candidate to use the GOP's four-decade-old strategy of attacking big government, demonizing liberals and mobilizing white resentment of blacks.
McCain is playing dirtier than Goldwater did. But the smear game still may not work. And if McCain loses, it will be for the same reasons that Goldwater lost: because conservatism itself -- which means the GOP, since it no longer has a moderate branch -- has been discredited. The Republican Party under Nixon and Reagan succeeded because it was able to convince enough white Democrats and swing voters that it was the party of the "average American," oppressed by federal bureaucrats and do-gooder programs like busing and affirmative action. It was able to conceal the fact that it was the party of the rich beneath a populist, race-tinged appeal to white resentment.
But the truth is that America is not a particularly ideological country, and Americans' allegiance to conservative ideas has always been fairly superficial. Yes, our frontier mythology and tradition of federalism makes us less supportive of the welfare state than European countries -- but New Deal-inspired programs like Social Security and Medicare are deeply rooted in our society. A loose, de facto centrism is America's default position. By embracing cracked ideologies like trickle-down economics, by letting big corporations do whatever they want, and by religiously refusing to raise taxes, the GOP since Reagan has tilted much too far to the right. George W. Bush pushed the party over the cliff, with the final straw being his own unique contribution, a demented and pointless war.
Now the bills are coming due. The colossal failure of the Bush administration has destroyed the right wing's appeal to most Americans. In effect, conservatism has returned to being what it was in the days of Goldwater -- a fringe movement. McCain is desperately trying to disavow the movement he has followed all his life by painting himself as a "maverick," but as Joe Biden pointed out in perhaps the most devastating retort in his "debate" with Palin, he has not voted like a maverick on any issue of importance -- he has voted like a Republican.
Which is why so much hangs on this election. An Obama victory could signal a fundamental correction in the course of American politics, one that could last for decades. If McCain wins, it will mean that all the forces that led to the rise of modern conservatism -- racial resentment, unthinking anti-governmentalism and hatred of "liberals" -- still reign supreme. And that would force us all to stare into a national chasm, one deeper than any since McCarthyism.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/10/07/republican_smear_tactics/index.html
Too dumb even for Fox eh? Or Perhaps the John Birch Gazette?