Posts
. . . . . There's a storm coming
. . . . .So, I'm sticking with the promise to keep the playlist to people you should be listening to, but probably aren't. The model for getting music distributed, and played, is incredible. It is an organic movement, one that is grassroots and allows musicians to get directly to their fans and grab new ones.
. . . .So, given that, some people you should connect with, and get some free downloads, and keep track of.
. . . .As always, the first shout out goes to Shooter Jennings, Waylon Jennings and Jessie Colter's son, he who understands the bridge between Outlaw Country and Rock and Roll, he who was asked before Slash Hudson to be Velvet Revolver's lead guitar player.
. . . Jubal Lee Young
. . . Otis Gibbs
. . . .Chris Knight
. . . .Kevin Deal
. . . .Ryan Bingham (who provided the soundtrack for Crazy Heart)
. . . .John Hiatt, one of America's greatest songwriters, has a new album due out in March of this year. If you know John Hiatt, you can pre-order the new album here. If you don't know who he is, that's your loss.
. . . . .If 24 doesn't pick up soon, it's gonna be 12 1/2 for me reeaalll rapidly.
. . . . .Went to see From Paris, With Love last night. The John Travolta - Jonathan Rhys Meyers vehicle put together by Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita, The Professional, Taken), it's surprisingly good, with a few twists, not in plot, which you can see coming a mile away, but in character development. John Travolta has come a long, long way from Danny Zucko or Vinnie Barbarino. He makes an absolutely delicious crazed anti-hero. He and Bruce Willis have it down pat. The concept of the old, burned out CIA operative training a newbie by throwing him in the deep end right off the bat isn't new, but the two of them have some good chemistry on screen, despite a plot with screaming holes in it.
. . . . . .So, this has been a momentous week. I talk often in this column about nodal points in history, those mundane dates when everything changed, and it isn't even obvious in retrospect, it takes digging into history, fact, dates, names to find out what occurred. I've written about it often, and you'll have to dig through the archives, but it's easy to find out how April 11th, 1972 was a turning point; how March 13th, 1978, or December 5th, 1982 all meant huge turning points. I say easy, but it actually takes hours of research, or putting facts, names, dates together, of seeing what lobbyists visited when, and what riders were put on what pieces of legislation when, to see how it all got shaped, not in the background, but right out in front of people's eyes. It's just that the information flows so fast, and there's so much of it, it's hard to pick it out of the data stream, and live a normal, everyday life where people take care of their daily business.
. . . . .It's about understanding Chaos Theory, which isn't about chaos at all, but about complex, dynamic systems and the statistical probability theory behind the fractal probabilities of outcomes and possible endpoints.
. . . .In the end, despite human machinations and manipulations, we are all subject to the Laws of Mathematics, Physics, Thermodynamics and Logic. There is no escaping, eluding or bending them. They always win, and they always provide the answer. . . .follow the money.
. . . This is my daily business, so it's easy.
. . . .This last week, this weekend, in retrospect, it will be seen as one of those nodal moments in time.
. . . .Now, I've warned all along that this fall's little rise in the market and the slowing in unemployment numbers was a false light in the gloom, and that 2010 would be far worse than 2009 as China withdrew it's artificial propping up of the yuan, and as commercial mortgages began to enter the massive failure cycle that the residential failure took on last year. That's one point, and it's starting already. From Baseline Scenario:
he entirely pointless G7 meeting this weekend only served to underline the fact that Europe is again entering a serious economic crisis.At the end of the meeting yesterday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told reporters, “I just want to underscore they made it clear to us, they the European authorities, that they will manage this [the Greek debt crisis] with great care.”
But the Europeans are not being careful – and it’s not just about Greece any more. Worries about government debt and associated public sector liabilities (e.g., because banking systems are in deep trouble) have spread through the eurozone to Spain and Portugal. Ireland and Italy are next up for hostile reconsideration by the markets, and the UK may not be far behind.
What are the stronger European countries, specifically Germany and France, doing to contain the self-fulfilling fear that weaker eurozone countries may not be able to pay their debt – this panic that pushes up interest rates and makes it harder for beleaguered governments to actually pay?
The Europeans with deep-pockets are doing nothing – except insist that all countries under pressure cut their budgets quickly and in ways that are probably politically infeasible. This kind of precipitate fiscal austerity contributed directly to the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The International Monetary Fund was created after World War II specifically to prevent such a situation from recurring. The Fund is supposed to lend to countries in trouble, to cushion the blow of crisis. The idea is not to prevent necessary adjustments – for example, in the form of budget deficit reduction – but to spread those out over time, to restore confidence, and to serve as an external seal of approval on a government’s credibility.
Dominique Strauss-Khan, the Managing Director of the IMF, said Thursday on French radio that the Fund stands ready to help Greece. But he knows this is wishful thinking.
- “Going to the IMF” brings with it a great deal of stigma. European governments are unwilling to take such a step as it could well be their last.
- The IMF is supposed to provide only “balance of payments” lending. That doesn’t fit well when a country is in a currency union such as the euro, which floats freely and does not have a current account issue, and the main problem is just the budget.
- Greece and the other weak eurozone countries need euro loans, not any other currency. If the IMF lent euros, that would be distinctly awkward – as this is what the European Central Bank (ECB) is supposed to control.
- Sending Greece to the IMF would result in some international “burden sharing,” as it would be IMF resources – from all its member countries around the world – on the line, rather than just European Union funds. But is the US really willing to burden share through the IMF? After all, Europe has long refused to confront the trouble in its weaker countries, now known as PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain)? How would the Chinese react if such a proposition came to the IMF?
- Would the Europeans really want the IMF and its somewhat cumbersome rules to get involved – this would be a huge loss of prestige. It could also lead to some perverse outcomes – you never know what the IMF and the US Treasury (and Larry Summers) will come up with in terms of needed policies (ask Korea about 1997-98; not a good experience). The European Union (EU) has handled IMF recent engagement well in eastern Europe (from the EU perspective), but that was seen as the EU’s backyard. If the eurozone is in trouble, everyone will be paying much more attention – no more sweetheart deals.
- The IMF gave eastern Europe amazingly good deals over the past 2 years (by IMF standards). Would this fly with financial markets in the sense of restoring confidence in the PIIGS and their medium-term fiscal futures?
- Does the IMF really have enough resources to backstop all the PIIGS? The IMF’s notional capital was increased substantially last year, but just based on what we see now, the Fund would need even more ready money to tackle the eurozone – all the weaker countries would need at least preventive lending programs and these would need to be large. If that is where this goes, the EU looks simply awful and has failed at a deep level.
- The IMF could play a constructive “technical assistance role” alongside the European Commission, but everyone would want to keep this pretty low profile. Anything that goes to the IMF executive board would result in a lot of cheering and jeering from emerging markets. This would break the power of Europe on the international stage – perhaps a good thing, but not at all what the European policy elite is looking for.
The IMF cannot help in any meaningful way. And the stronger EU countries are not willing to help – in part because they want to be tough, but also because they do not have effective mechanisms for providing assistance-with-strings. Unconditional bailouts are simple – just send a check. Structuring a rescue package that will garner support among the German electorate – whose current and future taxes will be on the line – is considerably more complicated.
The financial markets know all this and last week sharpened their swords. As we move into this week, expect more selling pressure across a wide range of European assets.
As this pressure mounts, we’ll see cracks appear also in the private sector. Significant banks and large hedge funds have been selling insurance against default by European sovereigns. As countries lose creditworthiness – and, under sufficient pressure, very few government credit ratings will hold up – these financial institutions will need to come up with cash to post increasing amounts of collateral against their derivative obligations (yes, the same credit default swaps that triggered the collapse last time).
. . . The arrest of Ken Lewis, and in his testimony, if it ever occurs, finally shining a light on Bernanke's and Paulson's involvement, will be another point.
. . . .Now on that, I point you towards one sent along to me (and I'd excerpted earlier this week as well) by John, a good friend, and very aware and awake man of my acquaintance who picked this one up from Bloomberg penned by David Reilly, regarding Goldman's involvement in the AIG debacle, and why wouldn't they? They held both the bottom and top end of the deal:
. . . .That's backed up by this piece in this morning's New York Times penned by Gretchen Morgensen that puts more of those pieces in place:Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all.
Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.
We’re talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system -- apart from the matter of AIG’s bailout -- deserves further congressional scrutiny.
The New York Fed is in the hot seat for its decision in November 2008 to buy out, for about $30 billion, insurance contracts AIG sold on toxic debt securities to banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank AG, among others. That decision, critics say, amounted to a back-door bailout for the banks, which received 100 cents on the dollar for contracts that would have been worth far less had AIG been allowed to fail.
That move came a few weeks after the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department propped up AIG in the wake of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s own mid-September bankruptcy filing.
Billions of dollars were at stake when 21 executives of Goldman Sachs and the American International Group convened a conference call on Jan. 28, 2008, to try to resolve a rancorous dispute that had been escalating for months.. . . .Full piece here.A.I.G. had long insured complex mortgage securities owned by Goldman and other firms against possible defaults. With the housing crisis deepening, A.I.G., once the world’s biggest insurer, had already paid Goldman $2 billion to cover losses the bank said it might suffer.
A.I.G. executives wanted some of its money back, insisting that Goldman — like a homeowner overestimating the damages in a storm to get a bigger insurance payment — had inflated the potential losses. Goldman countered that it was owed even more, while also resisting consulting with third parties to help estimate a value for the securities.
After more than an hour of debate, the two sides on the call signed off with nothing settled, according to internal A.I.G. documents and an audio recording reviewed by The New York Times.
Behind-the-scenes disputes over huge sums are common in banking, but the standoff between A.I.G. and Goldman would become one of the most momentous in Wall Street history. Well before the federal government bailed out A.I.G. in September 2008, Goldman’s demands for billions of dollars from the insurer helped put it in a precarious financial position by bleeding much-needed cash. That ultimately provoked the government to step in.
With taxpayer assistance to A.I.G. currently totaling $180 billion, regulatory and Congressional scrutiny of Goldman’s role in the insurer’s downfall is increasing. The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining the payment demands that a number of firms — most prominently Goldman — made during 2007 and 2008 as the mortgage market imploded.
. . .. Now, it's completely amazing to me that some of the most serious investigative journalism out there is being done by Rolling Stone, of all magazines, led of course by the fearless Matt Taibbi, now you can add Hustler for heaven's sake, and Maxim.
. . . .Hustler makes sense to me, Larry Flynt, believe it or not, is one of the most plain spoken, intelligent true patriots and citizens of the Republic that there is (obviously I don't have a problem with supposed "pornography", yes, I'm a true Libertarian). Before talking further about what's contained in this month's issue, I'm going to recycle part of piece that Larry Flynt wrote last fall:
. . . .Which ring well with the words written by Thomas Jefferson in 1816 as a battle cry:The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.
This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment's hesitation, they took our money -- yours and mine -- to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don't care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as "useless eaters."
But, you say, we have elected a candidate of change. To which I respond: Do these words of President Obama sound like change?
"A culture of irresponsibility took root, from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street."
There it is. Right there. We are Main Street. We must, according to our president, share the blame. He went on to say: "And a regulatory regime basically crafted in the wake of a 20th-century economic crisis -- the Great Depression -- was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st-century global economy."This is nonsense.
The reason Wall Street was able to game the system the way it did -- knowing that they would become rich at the expense of the American people (oh, yes, they most certainly knew that) -- was because the financial elite had bribed our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
Congress gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial lending banks from investment banks, and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed for self-regulation with no oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently revised its rules to allow for even less oversight -- and we've all seen how well that worked out. To date, no serious legislation has been offered by the Obama administration to correct these problems.
Instead, Obama wants to increase the oversight power of the Federal Reserve. Never mind that it already had significant oversight power before our most recent economic meltdown, yet failed to take action. Never mind that the Fed is not a government agency but a cartel of private bankers that cannot be held accountable by Washington. Whatever the Fed does with these supposed new oversight powers will be behind closed doors.
Obama's failure to act sends one message loud and clear: He cannot stand up to the powerful Wall Street interests that supplied the bulk of his campaign money for the 2008 election. Nor, for that matter, can Congress, for much the same reason.
Consider what multibillionaire banker David Rockefeller wrote in his 2002 memoirs:
"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure -- one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."
Read Rockefeller's words again. He actually admits to working against the "best interests of the United States."
Need more? Here's what Rockefeller said in 1994 at a U.N. dinner: "We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis, and the nations will accept the New World Order." They're gaming us. Our country has been stolen from us.Journalist Matt Taibbi, writing in Rolling Stone, notes that esteemed economist John Kenneth Galbraith laid the 1929 crash at the feet of banking giant Goldman Sachs. Taibbi goes on to say that Goldman Sachs has been behind every other economic downturn as well, including the most recent one. As if that wasn't enough, Goldman Sachs even had a hand in pushing gas prices up to $4 a gallon.
The problem with bankers is longstanding. Here's what one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, had to say about them:
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their father's conquered."
We all know that the first American Revolution officially began in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. Less well known is that the single strongest motivating factor for revolution was the colonists' attempt to free themselves from the Bank of England. But how many of you know about the second revolution, referred to by historians as Shays' Rebellion? It took place in 1786-87, and once again the banks were the cause. This time they were putting the screws to America's farmers.Daniel Shays was a farmer in western Massachusetts. Like many other farmers of the day, he was being driven into bankruptcy by the banks' predatory lending practices. (Sound familiar?) Rallying other farmers to his side, Shays led his rebels in an attack on the courts and the local armory. The rebellion itself failed, but a message had been sent: The bankers (and the politicians who supported them) ultimately backed off. As Thomas Jefferson famously quipped in regard to the insurrection: "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Perhaps it's time to consider that option once again.
“crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
. . . .Which is a lead-in to what I referred to above, that a piece in Hustler magazine now represents a piece of investigative journalism that deserves your time. Brad Friedman has written a piece on Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI translator turned whistleblower who has been twice gagged by the Bush Administration and who is able to name names in the article "Traitors Among Us", those names including Hastert, Wolfowitz, Perle, Grossman, etc. among others. and details blackmail of sitting U.S. Congressmembers, the theft and sale of nuclear secrets to the foreign black market and treasonous and traitorous acts by top members of the State and Defense Departments among others. She's fully clothed in the article, buy the damn thing anyhow and read it.
. . . And while you're at it being politically incorrect, pick up a copy of Maxim magazine, which is carrying a heretofore censored and gagged story on the death of Republican IT guru Mike Connell, excerpted here, courtesy of The Brad Blog:
ust over a month prior to his death --- the day prior to the 2008 general election, in fact --- Connell was compelled to give a deposition in the ongoing 2004 election fraud lawsuit, as he had earlier been said to have been guilt-ridden and ready to spill the beans about what had really happened in Ohio in 2004. After word of his intentions to tell what he knew had made its way onto the Internet, allegations that he had been threatened by Karl Rove to take the fall followed. Connell began shutting up. While he was subpoenaed and compelled to appear for a deposition in November of 2008, that deposition remains sealed by federal court order, and Connell would die before he was allowed to serve as a witness in the case.. . . .Which leads me to this, as oftentimes I'm referred to as a "conspiracy theorist". I don't mind, I can back up anything that's here with fact, data, dates, names; and it's not about Men In Black, Roswell aliens, crystal skulls or arcane ceremonies. It's about money, power and those who feel entitled to rule. From Janine Wedel:The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has yet to release a cause for Connell's crash on his solo, and final flight home. But as The BRAD BLOG reported on two occasions last year, Connell's family members have grown more and more suspicious of the circumstances under which the experienced pilot ended up crashing to the ground just prior to his scheduled landing at the Akron-Canton Regional Airport days before Christmas a little more than a year ago.
His wife Heather has grown increasingly angry according to Worrall, at what appears to be a rather curious investigation. "I have pieces of my husband's brain!," she is quoted as telling him in the Maxim article which The BRAD BLOG was given an early embargoed look at. "I picked them up with my hands six days after the crash. Chunks of his skin and internal organs. How is that a proper investigation? How is that acceptable?" she asks, while wondering why his ever-present BlackBerry, and it's many phone numbers, notes, files and contacts, is still missing, even though his backpack was found still zipped with the matching Bluetooth earpiece still inside.
On that BlackBerry were "hundreds, if not thousands, of sensitive files and e-mails relating to Karl Rove and the Bush administration," explains Worrall. "I want to know where my husband's phone is," Heather tells him "angrily" in the piece.
As Heather grows more furious and curious, Mike's sister Shannon, as Worrall reports, says she is "convinced he was murdered."
"I think they played him," Shannon says, "His death would have been a really nice Christmas present for Rove and Cheney."
Worrall pulls together the entire story for the bulk of the world which remains unfamiliar with any of it. Despite how close Connell was said to have been with Rove, and how important he was to so many high officials in the GOP, including John McCain whose campaign website he also built, none of them ever released an official statement on his death to our knowledge.
The Maxim piece also adds a number of other previously unreported details along the way. Among them:
- During his calls to the tower, after word of the crash, a Greentown Fire Department official is quoted as explaining the he was told "the tower was in lockdown and that no information was available."
- The night crash scene, which would normally be roped off and investigated in daylight, was lit by towers, photographed and documented by officials from the NTSB and FAA, and then "Connell's plane was hastily removed to a secure hangar under the cover of darkness. By 6 A.M. the investigators had vanished, leaving behind them a trail of debris and one very angry widow."
- Connell's final words, just after screaming "Nine nine November declaring an emergency!" were "Oh, fuck!" and then silence as the control tower tape goes dead. Officials reported his last words as "Oh, God!" out of purported respect to Connell's deep Catholic religious beliefs. [Note: We've heard those recordings, and can confirm Worrall's reportage here, though we don't believe we've ever reported specifically on them, or publicly released the audio here on The BRAD BLOG.]
- The contracts between OH Sec. of State Blackwell and Connell, on behalf of GovTech, contradict his testimony that SMARTech, a highly partisan rightwing outfit in Chattanooga, TN, "merely acted as a backup site for election data". SMARTech owns the servers where Ohio's election night reporting system was mysteriously transfered to in the middle of the night as the country was waiting for final results in 2004. The setup allowed for a potential "man-in-the-middle" hack of the data. The contract shows that Connell's company and/or Blackwell had direct remote access to both server systems on Election Night.
- Worrall reports that a "deep throat" document anonymously sent to Connell's family and a number of FBI agents last year, purporting to be an "after action report" by a black ops agent tasked with sabotaging Connell's plane --- as we briefly discussed in a report here last November --- is believed to be "genuine" by "a number of experts from the intelligence community" who have seen it.
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who reported in detail on Ohio's 2004 election debacle for Rolling Stone magazine was interviewed for the story, and tells Worrall that he believes what happened during that election was "more serious than Watergate" as "The Ohio vote undermines the very foundation stone of American democracy." He goes on to call for an "official investigation. Otherwise this becomes a blueprint for how to steal an election from here to eternity."
In a background item on the story over on his own blog, Worrall notes that he "took nearly a year to unravel this compelling, and complicated story."
Shadow Elite, which exposes the new breed of power brokers who are a bit like the public policy equivalent of sci-fi shape-shifters. I call them flexians, people I've targeted in previous posts like Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Tom Daschle, and Barry McCaffrey, who cycle through identities and venues of power, both government and corporate, advancing their own personal agendas and those of their associates, not you, or the government agencies flexians are paid to serve, with your tax dollars.. . . .Now, completely sideways jumping, one moment that leaps to mind as a bright spot is someone, persons in power are finally talking about Don't Ask, Don't Tell; which by the way is abhorrent, and the repealing of it will be the first step towards full equal rights for all citizens of this Republic. Frank Rich, from the Times:
Today's players are more dangerous and insidious to democracy than the power brokers who came before them. More peripatetic, they move seamlessly among public, corporate, think tank, and media organizations, and are more difficult to detect and less transparent. They cross borders and boundaries in areas of finance, health care, the economy, and the military, among others. They defy all the old standards of accountability. I plan to ferret out the shadow elite, their enablers, and the developments that encourage them, with, I hope, your help.This case, involving moonlighting, multiple roles, and potentially divided loyalties within an agency whose mission is to protect Americans, points toward a disturbing trend I examine in Shadow Elite: power brokers and supposed public servants, with a multiplicity of ever-fluid involvements that lack traditional checks and balances, moving themselves, their connections, and their expertise through government, business, media, and think-tank organizations.
This trend can endanger democracy and the national interest. As in the CIA/BIA case, the danger often begins with the contracting out of official information and expertise -- "Is government outsourcing its brain?" an article in the Wall Street Journal asked -- and thus whether government is capable of minding the store. The widespread draining of official government is depriving it of crucial in-house expertise and institutional memory. But there is an even more disturbing implication. As players blend and blur their roles across organizations, the boundaries and purposes of those organizations also blend and blur. What are we to make of the BIA? Is it an offshoot of the CIA? As they trundle back and forth between Wall Street and Washington, does the information the CIA officers glean in one venue seep into the other?
Unfortunately, there are plenty of recent examples of dangers to democracy that arise when government and business intertwine, and loyalties are blowing in the wind.
One of these is the "SWIFT" case, in which a private company, given "government" access to sensitive, private data about U.S. citizens and other countries, not only worked alongside government to analyze the data, but then also (supposedly) oversaw the process.
Following 9/11, one government surveillance program tracked money flowing into and out of the U.S., transactions abroad and, in a small portion of cases, financial transactions within the U.S. SWIFT takes its name from the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, a "member-owned cooperative" that processes international financial transactions. Through SWIFT, the U.S. Treasury Department sought and gained access to large numbers of financial and communication records.
Treasury then established the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, run out of the CIA, to analyze the SWIFT data and later shared it with the CIA and FBI. It also hired Booz Allen Hamilton (whose majority owner is the Carlyle Group), now as an "independent" auditor, which, along with SWIFT, reviewed Treasury's logs of information searches. When the surveillance program was exposed amid controversy in 2006, a key question was how Booz Allen could be impartial given its record as a government contractor and the close ties of its executives to high government officials, and considering the fact that some of these executives are themselves one-time intelligence officials. As Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project, put it:
"It is bad enough that the administration is trying to hold out a private company as a substitute for genuine checks and balances on its surveillance activities. But of all companies to perform audits on a secret surveillance program, it would be difficult to find one less objective and more intertwined with the U.S. government security establishment."
Both the SWIFT and the CIA moonlighting episodes remind us that even more than in the novels of John Le Carre, a master of complexity himself, the machinations of today's players and entities are difficult to track and pin down. Le Carre has written that mixed loyalties can sometimes provide clarity, once writing, "the more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal." I don't buy it when it comes to the world of power and influence. In our new world of shadow elite, the more professional roles players have and the more venues in which they operate, the less we typically know about their motives and agendas. It might be serving them quite well, but it's unlikely they are serving the American people or the ideals of democracy and accountability.
A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark.. . . .Now, bear Rich's premise and what he posits in mind, bring it to the forefront of your consciousness when looking at the next two little pieces about both the Prez and Sarah.John McCain, commandeering the spotlight as usual, did fulminate against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the press focus on McCain, the crazy man in Washington’s attic, was misleading. His yapping was an exception, not the rule.
Many of his Republican colleagues said little or nothing. The right’s noise machine was on mute. The Fox News report on Mullen’s testimony was fair and balanced — and brief. The network dropped the subject entirely in the Hannity-O’Reilly hothouse of prime time that night. Only ratings-desperate CNN gave a fleeting platform to the old homophobic clichés. Michael O’Hanlon, an “expert” from the Brookings Institution, speculated that “18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden” soldiers who are “tough guys” might object to those practicing “alternative forms of lifestyle,” which he apparently views as weak and testosterone-deficient. His only prominent ally was the Family Research Council, which issued an inevitable “action alert” demanding a stop to “the sexualization of our military.”
The occasional outliers notwithstanding, why did such a hush greet Mullen on Capitol Hill? The answer begins with the simple fact that a large majority of voters — between 61 percent and 75 percent depending on the poll — now share his point of view. Most Americans recognize that being gay is not a “lifestyle” but an immutable identity, and that outlawing discrimination against gay people who want to serve their country is, as the admiral said, “the right thing to do.”
Mullen’s heartfelt, plain-spoken testimony gave perfect expression to the nation’s own slow but inexorable progress on the issue. He said he had “served with homosexuals since 1968” and that his views had evolved “cumulatively” and “personally” ever since. So it has gone for many other Americans in all walks of life. As more gay people have come out — a process that accelerated once the modern gay rights movement emerged from the Stonewall riots of 1969 — so more heterosexuals have learned that they have gay relatives, friends, neighbors, teachers and co-workers. It is hard to deny our own fundamental rights to those we know, admire and love.
But that’s not the whole explanation for the scant pushback in Washington to Mullen and his partner in change, Defense Secretary Robert Gates. There is also a potent political subtext. To a degree unimaginable as recently as 2004 — when Karl Rove and George W. Bush ran a national campaign exploiting fear of gay people — there is now little political advantage to spewing homophobia. Indeed, anti-gay animus is far more likely to repel voters than attract them. This equation was visibly eating at Orrin Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, as he vamped nervously with Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC last week, trying to duck any discernible stand on Mullen’s testimony. On only one point was he crystal clear: “I just plain do not believe in prejudice of any kind.”
Now that explicit anti-gay animus is an albatross, those who oppose gay civil rights are driven to invent ever loopier rationales for denying those rights, whether in the military or in marriage. Hatch, for instance, limply suggested to Mitchell that a repeal of “don’t ask” would lead to gay demands for “special rights.” Such arguments, both preposterous and disingenuous, are mere fig leaves to disguise the phobia that can no longer dare speak its name. If gay Americans are to be granted full equality, the flimsy rhetorical camouflage must be stripped away to expose the prejudice that lies beneath.
. . . Which when I talk about pivotal moments, means that the following two little nuggets signal that everything has changed.
. . . .The President's attendance at the National Prayer Breakfast, sponsored by The Family, the very notorious far Right Fundamentalist Christian power brokers who have helped sponsor Uganda's death penalty for homosexuality, when he is Goldman-Sachs' guy in the White House sets up one of two things either (a) an incredible rivalry between the two most powerful groups in Washington that will result in a war that will occur under the radar that we won't see or (b) a detente, a sense of cooperation between those two groups with the Prez as the broker, in order to preserve the current order, based on what happened on Saturday night and Sunday morning.
. . . I refer of course to Sarah Palin's keynote address to Tea Party Convention, and her announcement on Fox News on Sunday morning that she was running for President.
. . . .Citizens of the Republic, meet your next President.
. . . .I do not joke about that, she will be the next President.
. . . .And that will also mean the end of the Republic of the United States of America.
. . . .Sarah Palin, is, to me, the embodiment, as of this moment, of sheer evil. She is cunning, manipulative and ruthless, like all religious fanatics. There have been no political figures to compare her to, the closest comparisons are to Father Coughlin or Aimee Semple McPherson. She believes herself to be on a divine mission. Sarah Palin is first and foremost, an Apocalyptic Pentecostal, who believes thoroughly in the mythological Christian end-times, and for her, that takes precedence over being a citizen of the Republic, and her religious beliefs override any allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America. To have her in possession of the nuclear launch codes is simply put, terrifying. To have her in a position to craft and push legislation and court decisions that will push this country even further towards a Fundamentalist Christian theocracy is an acknowledged probability in the 97th percentile.
. . . .The fact that her husband, who now, it turns out, did much of the day to day governance of Alaska, and was a member of a separatist/secessionist group that advocated for the violent overthrow of the American government, that she twice gave the keynote address to it's convention, will be forgotten.
. . . .The fact that she quit the only job she's had on a State or Federal level, that was the equivalent of being the mayor of Fargo, ND will be forgotten.
. . . Her incredible history of lies, duplicity and manipulation, though well recorded will be forgotten.
. . . .Her incredible shallowness, lack of policy knowledge, and complete ignorance of both common historical fact, and present day events will be forgotten.
. . . .This country of sheeple will elect her, and in so doing, the results will be what they deserve.
. . . The speech itself was actually quite masterful. A complete ad hominem attack on the President, no substance, no policy, no fact and an entire hour of very carefully chosen emotional buzzwords that built the hysteria and completely pandered to the sense of disengagement, dislocation and anger that the citizens of this country now feel, with no answers at all, other than "anyone not in this hall is the enemy, and the other and it's all their fault, and I represent your answer, no real specifics on that, just me representing your answer, anything but the other guy".
. . . .And remember, if Rahm Emmanuel says "retards" he has to resign, but if Rush says it, it's cute.
. . . .Fundamentalist religious fanaticism, carefully disguised.
. . . .She is not fit to govern.
. . . .Now, my differences with this President are well documented, and based in fact and data. Regardless of that, he is the duly elected President of the United States; elected under due Constitutional process, as ratified by the Electoral College; as were all his predecessors. He is an American citizen, he is not a Muslim, and he's not near as far Left as his opponents wish to paint him.
. . . .In other words, he's just like the guy before him, and the guy before that, and the guy before that.
. . . And just because I haven't picked on Sarah's unmedicated lunatic partner in crime for a while, the philosophical leader of the GOP, Mr. Glenn Beck. Courtesy of Chez over at Deus ExMalcontent:
"He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America -- you don't take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion."
-- Glenn Beck
Look, I get that Glenn Beck is just fucking around, because there's simply no way anybody could be this batshit crazy and be allowed out of the hospital much less on television, but at some point he's gonna have to drop the Andy Kaufman routine and tip his cards to the dumb-asses who hang on every word that comes out of his mouth. For the good of us all.
Honestly, there's just no way that anybody who scribbles this kind of indecipherable crap on a chalkboard for an hour every night can be serious:
By the way, Matt Osborne actually attempts to inject a shot of Haloperidol into Beck's schizophrenic psychosis by debating the origin of Obama's name. Better listen to him -- he's pre-law.
Osborne Ink: Dear Glenn Beck: The Meaning of "Barack"/2.5.10
. . . .I do this, like some others like me do it, not to be read, because most of you don't. Not read it, not really, all the way through and think about it. You don't listen, you don't pay attention, you don't even want to comprehend all of it. I do it for one simple reason. Like all good Americans in this 21st century, when the shit really hits the fan, most of you will throw your hands up and yell "How come someone didn't warn us!". . .We're trying to, you're not listening.
. . . When are you going to wake up?
. . . .It's time for two new parties, ones that truly represent us. Get in touch with me.
. . . . . .. . . . .Live every day out loud
. . . And that's how it is today, from the last, lonely outpost.
. . . .I miss you Mom and Dad, a lot. Thanks for watching over me and us.
. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.
. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.
. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.
. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.
. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.
. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.
. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.
. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.
. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.
. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.
. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.
. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.
. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.
. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.
. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.
. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.
. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night
. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.
The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell
You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .
[where: 29.52N, 91.57W]
[where: Chelsea, MI]
Or, better yet, read his new book, 
