tagged w/ Nothing To See Here - Move Along
-
TBH its just my twitter page =P
-
-
It seems that the final days of the presidential campaign have made Erica Jong and her friends more than a little anxious.
A few days ago, Jong, the author and self-described feminist, gave an interview to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, the choicest bits of which were brought to my attention by the reliably sharp-eyed Christian Rocca, the US correspondent of Il Foglio, who published excerpts on his Camillo blog. Basically, Jong says her fear that Obama might lose the election has developed into an "obsession. A paralyzing terror. An anxious fever that keeps you awake at night." She also says that her friends Jane Fonda and Naomi Wolf are extremely worried that Obama will be sabotaged by Republican dirty tricks, and that if an Obama loss indeed comes to pass, the result will be a second American Civil War.
Here's a translation of Jong's more spirited quotes to the Milan-based Corriere, as selected by Rocca.
"The record shows that voting machines in America are rigged."
"After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia ..."
"If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it's not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets."
"Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act."It seems that the final days of the presidential campaign have made Erica Jong and her... more
-
-
By Larisa Alexandrovna
If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it. ~ Julius Caesar
In 2000, the long fought for and long admired democracy of the United States of America began a slow and steady decline toward fascism - a Bush family tradition - with the installment of a president - a man the citizens overwhelmingly rejected (although the funny math told a still believed myth) - by a few corrupt judges on the US Supreme Court. That coup is now nearly complete and checkmate is all but unavoidable.
Let me first point you to the Bush administration's so-called Wall Street bailout bill, here, so that you can see for yourself that this treachery is being conducted in the light of day. Fascism is finally and formally out of the right-wing closet even if the F word is not yet openly being used (although it should be, and often).
Now, if you do not yet understand that the Wall Street crisis is a man-made disaster done through intentional deregulation and corruption, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell to you (or Sara Palin does anyway). This manufactured crisis is now to be remedied, if the fiscal fascists get their way, with the total transfer of Congressional powers (the few that still remain) to the Executive Branch and the total transfer of public funds into corporate (via government as intermediary) hands.
Adam Davidson of NPR blogs about the so-called bailout bill as follows:
"I would guess that this has to be one of the biggest peacetime transfers of power from Congress to the Administration in history. (Anyone know?). Certainly one of the most concise.
"The Treasury Secretary can buy broadly defined assets, on any terms he wants, he can hire anyone he wants to do it and can appoint private sector companies as financial deputies of the US government. And he can write whatever regulation he thinks are needed."
Most importantly, Davidson points to this passage in the bill:
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
The Bush family, in the form of Prescott Bush, has tried a more aggressive coup before in order to install fascism in this country. This treasonous plot was called "the Business Plot," because the high-level plotters - including Prescott Bush - were Wall Street men who openly supported fascism.
* * * * *
Click on the link for the complete article and for the in-text links. A must read.
Could the FEMA concentration camps all over the country be for the poor, the dispossessed, the homeless, and dissenters?
The symbol of fascism is the fasces, in case you were wondering about the illustration I chose, above:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_symbolism
By Larisa Alexandrovna
If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all... more
-
-
A new Government Accountability Office report on voting system testing finds that the Election Assistance Commission has not notified election officials across the country about electronic voting machine failures.
A line of voters cast their ballots in the primary March 4 in Columbus, Ohio.
And a new study by Common Cause and the Century Foundation finds that 10 very vital swing states have significant voting problems that have not been addressed since the last election.
Those 10 states, according to Common Cause, are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
In Colorado, 20,000 left polling places without voting in 2006 because of crashed computer registration machines and long lines. And this election day, Colorado will have another new registration system.
"You know, Colorado is two years behind many states in implementing a statewide voter database. ... This is a new system, and there's just a lot of unknowns as to whether or not voters will be successful," said Jenny Flanagan of Common Cause.
The problems listed in the report range from not enough voting machines to glitches with electronic registration poll books. Read the report
"We're seeing a lot of problems where people are being kicked off the data base rolls if their name is on as Alex as opposed to Alexander or they've put a middle initial in there name and it's not there," said Susan Greenhalgh of Voter Action. "These are problems that are being created by software restrictions that are stringent or glitches in some cases where the program is incorrectly bouncing people off the rolls."
For voters with problems in registration, provisional ballots are provided.
But Tova Wang of Common Cause said there is a "very good chance, with all of the new voters that we are going to see this year, that there will be a big demand for the use of provisional ballots."
"And yet I see nothing, except in one of the 10 states, that the states are doing to ensure that there will be enough provisional ballots on hand so that they don't run out of them. Ideally, provisional ballots should be on hand for 10 percent of the voting population," she added. Watch more on the fight for swing states »
Common Cause said it's not too late to fix many of these problems. Although many states don't have the laws on the books to require some safeguards, they can act now to make sure that there are enough back up ballots at the polls, workers are properly trained and there are enough poll workers on election day.
Denver, Colorado, for example, is going back to a paper poll book registration for this election.
A new Government Accountability Office report on voting system testing finds that the... more
-
-
In the past 24 hours, Henry Paulson effectively committed up to a trillion dollars of tax payer money to bail out bankers and investors, and locked in fiscal policies of his choosing for the next several years. To try to understand the full implications of this, I asked Max Fraad Wolff for an email interview. Max's work regularly appears in the Asia Times, The Prudent Bear and many other international outlets. His work can also been seen regularly on his site GlobalMacroScope.com. Based in NYC, he does contract research on international financial risks and opportunities while teaching in the New School University's Graduate Program in International Affairs. Max is an unorthodox economist--just the kind we need right now.
ZE: Wow. What just happened?
MFW: We just went from Free Fall to Free Lunch. It turns out free markets are the greatest system on earth, but only when they go up. Market discipline is for low income people and homeowners. Short selling must stop only when it laps up on Goldman's shores. Today, the government deploys hundreds of billions, maybe more than a thousand billion dollars to bail out banks and owners, insurers and traders of mortgage backed securities. Wave after wave of cash infusions didn't work, Thursday morning's $183 billion did not work. So here come new rules and whole lots more money. The government will insure money markets, the government will buy between $800 billion to $1.2 trillion in distressed securities to sure up balance sheets. If this had been done last week, then Lehman, AIG and Merrill would still be out there with ALL their employees. If it had been done in March, Bear Stearns would be with us. This financial run just got more expensive than Iraq. Where will the money come from? Who gains and who loses? Is this the largest economic intervention in at least several decades?
ZE: So let me make sure I understand this. Big investors made trillions in bad loans over the past couple decades. Everyone just realized it and now markets are flipping into turmoil. Treasury Secretary Paulson and other financial big wigs decided that without intervention, we'd get into a 1929 free fall. And so they stepped in and said, "Everyone can stop panicking, because we'll insure all your bad loans." Is that right?
MFW: Basically, yeah. The crash is 13 months old. The pain is real and it is really slamming into employees, home owners and the global economy. Many of us have been warning of this for years. Federal regulators have lied and done day-late, dollar-short failed interventions for 14 months. After another round of false promises, they last night gave in and finally decided to admit that the financial sector was leading us into a global recession. So we just pledged years of tax revenues upfront to buy bad mortgage-backed securities. We still don't know the all important details. At what price is the U.S. tax payer picking up the tab? We have been told "market prices" but, what does that mean? Not the market prices before this announcement. Those prices were killing firms and spreading massive losses throughout the world economy. We still don't have congressional approval either. I have no doubt those dead fish will float with the tide. Congress will back the action. Action is needed. We were sliding off the edge. It is just a question of which actions and who benefits.
In the past 24 hours, Henry Paulson effectively committed up to a trillion dollars of... more
-
-
The Bush administration, moving to prevent an economic cataclysm, urged Congress on Friday to grant it far-reaching emergency powers to buy hundreds of billions of dollars in distressed mortgages despite many unknowns about how the plan would work.
Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, made it clear that the upfront cost of the rescue proposal could easily be $500 billion, and outside experts predicted that it could reach $1 trillion.
The outlines of the plan, described in conference calls to lawmakers on Friday, include buying assets only from United States financial institutions — but not hedge funds — and hiring outside advisers who would work for the Treasury, rather than creating a separate agency. Democratic leaders immediately pledged to work closely with Mr. Paulson to pass a plan in the next week, but they also demanded that the measure include relief for deeply indebted homeowners, not just for banks and Wall Street firms.
At the end of a week that will be long remembered for the wrenching changes it brought to Wall Street and Washington, Mr. Paulson and Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, told lawmakers that the financial system had come perilously close to collapse. According to notes taken by one participant in a call to House members, Mr. Paulson said that the failure to pass a broad rescue plan would lead to nothing short of disaster. Mr. Bernanke said that Wall Street had plunged into a full-scale panic, and warned lawmakers that their own constituents were in danger of losing money on holdings in ultra-conservative money market funds.
I'm having deja vu all over again. Does this not sound suspiciously familiar to anyone? Scare the hell out of everyone, ram legislation through Congress without giving anyone time to read and understand said legislation,stuff all kinds of new powers for the executive, spend $100's of billions of OUR TAX DOLLARS, and PRESTO, UNPATRIOT ACT II.
I understand that something needs to be done about this crises but something of this magnitude CAN'T be done in a week!! It took years for the current situation to unfold, I don't think taking a few extra weeks to fully understand what needs to be done is really going to cause a complete meltdown of the economy. Have we not learned ANYTHING about how these crooked bastards work over the last 8 years?! Come on people, we need to keep our heads on straight.
The Bush administration, moving to prevent an economic cataclysm, urged Congress on... more
-
