"The UN should condemn Abkhazia and South Ossetia because they don't want to live under a regime that has bombed them on several occasions, killing thousands? Obama, who reportedly is "advised" by over two-hundred foreign policy mavens of various stripes, ought to dump that crowd and commune with his own conscience, if he has one.
As ships from NATO countries make provocative incursions into the Black Sea – right at Russia's doorstep – and Bloviator Biden waxes rhetorical over the prospect of confronting Vladimir Putin, it looks like we're going to go head-to-head and nose-to-nose with Russia no matter who wins the White House this time around.
Why don't the peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have the right to live under the government of their own choice? What is it with these exporters of "democracy" – why is it we never hear any talk of holding a plebiscite in these disputed regions. Oh, wait, they did hold a plebiscite – several, in fact, but the West refused to recognize the results..." Raimondo
Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis
Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying. Glenn Greenwald
This is the last Charley Reese column, as the author is retiring.
"Years ago, the first time I saw my friend Brother Dave Gardner after he had survived a plane crash, the comedian smiled and said, "The devil like to got me." That's a good explanation for my last trip to the hospital.
I've been running a footrace with piled-up years and bad living habits, and they have pulled even and will soon be ahead. I know it may not seem to normal people that writing three columns a week requires any hard work, but it does require energy to do the research and an alertness of the mind that I can no longer muster. Hence, this will be my last column." More...
... Seeking to keep it's currency down, exports cheap!
"China has resorted to stealth intervention in the currency markets to amass US dollars, using indirect means to hold down the yuan and ease the pain for its struggling exporters as the global slowdown engulfs the economy.
Beijing has raised the reserve requirement for banks five times since March, quickening the pace with two half-point rises in late June.
This is having major spill-over effects into the currency markets because banks in China have been required over the last year to hold extra reserves in dollars rather than yuan. The latest moves have lifted the mandatory deposit from 15pc to 17.5pc of total lending since March. "China has used the pretext of reserve requirement hikes to help slow yuan appreciation. We estimate that the PBOC [central bank] intervened by about $49.6bn in June," said Daniel Hui, the bank's Asia strategist.
Beijing has also slashed the amount of foreign debt banks operating in China can hold. The effect is to oblige the banks to become net buyers of dollars...
IF THE "WAR FOR VOTES STRATEGY" WORKED IN 2002, WHY WOULDN'T IT WORK AGAIN IN 2008?
Americans were operating in the conflict zone in Georgia during the fighting, says Putin!
“It is not just that the American side could not restrain the Georgian leadership from this criminal act. The American side in effect armed and trained the Georgian army,” Mr Putin said.
“The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict with the aim of making the situation more tense and creating a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US President.”
"The US money supply has experienced the sharpest contraction in modern history, heightening the risk of a Wall Street crunch and a severe economic slowdown in coming months.
Data compiled by Lombard Street Research shows that the M3 ''broad money" aggregates fell by almost $50bn (£26.8bn) in July, the biggest one-month fall since modern records began in 1959.
"Monthly data for July show that the broad money growth has almost collapsed," said Gabriel Stein, the group's leading monetary economist." By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Here's a how a friend of mine describes the situation here in Denver:
"This week downtown Denver has been turned into a police state. We have mounted cossacks on horses with shields over their eyes. We have flying squads hanging off SUVs as they dash through the streets. Sirens wail as convoys race to their destinations. We have black uniformed storm troopers marching our sidewalks in patrols of ten. Coveys of bicycles carrying officers with utility belts full of deadly devices slowly circle around us. We have police on every corner and reinforcements with automatic weapons secreted in every possible location. Undoubtedly, there are more and more heavily armed troops in Denver this week than in Baghdad."
And make no mistake of it, the convention is bad for business.
The local politicos talk up how the convention is great for tourism, and Denver will now just be swimming in cash until the end of time, but in reality, the people who would normally be downtown spending money or providing professional services are all staying at home, so the people coming in for the convention are actually just crowding out the people who would normally conduct business in town.
Many professional offices are holding no meetings with clients this week because they don't want to subject people to the congestion and the police state brewing on the streets.
And, if you are unlucky enough to have a business in the "Red Zone" every one of your clients or customers who wishes to visit your establishment must be credentialed by the "security" forces. Needless to say, many businesses have just shut down entirely.
"Remember a little more than a year ago when George Steinbrenner, inflated with patriotic fervor, imposed a laughable rule that instructed security officials to ban anyone from "excessive movement" during the 7th inning rendition of "God Bless America." Granted, most New Yorkers seemingly abide by it, but sometimes the system must be tested by one man's agnosticism and patriotic indifference..." Deadspin.com
Throughout the 50's, 60's 70's and 80's former Senator Barry Goldwater influenced the baby boom generation - conservatives and liberals alike (Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater girl, after all!). But is his philosophy still relevant today at this important crossroads in modern political history? How did Goldwater perceive his successor, John McCain? How would he relate to Ron Paul or Barack Obama? How has his legacy not only shaped the politics of the boomer generation, but how is it likely to shape those of future generations as well?
Tuesday, Sept. 9, 5:45pm Cocktail Reception and Presentation Gainey Ranch Country Club 7600 Gainey Club Drive, Scottsdale
"Before we start down the road of isolating and encircling Russia with weak NATO allies, let us think through Gen. Petraeus' question in 2003 about Iraq, "Tell me, how does this thing end?"
But, then, these folks never seem to think anything through."
... AND THEY CAN'T EVEN GET THAT RIGHT! Oh, and Wolfowitz claimed the war would pay for itself!
Iraq Poised to Revive Oil Contract With China - NYTIMES
BAGHDAD — Iraq is on the verge of reviving an 11-year-old contract with China worth $1.2 billion, its largest oil deal since the invasion in 2003, an Oil Ministry official said Tuesday. The deal sets new terms for an agreement reached between China and Iraq under Saddam Hussein in 1997.
"The US is phenomenally if discreetly militarized. The country is neither a democracy, nor a government of laws, nor of men, but an oligarchy of lobbies that press for whatever is of benefit to themselves, though not necessarily to the country. The underlying principle is that honey attracts flies. The federal government collects vast sums in taxes and the lobbies come to get it...
In the military racket, the money is in big-ticket weaponry. The carriers, Aegis boats, subs, fighters, tanks, B1s, B2s, and satellites sell for billions. These sums attract a vast aerospace industry that would collapse without sales to the military. The Pentagon is a captive market, and often a haven for firms that couldn’t compete in the commercial marketplace.
To countries competing with the US, as for example Japan, the American military budget is a godsend, the equivalent of a golf handicap on a rival, because it represents money the US cannot spend to become more competitive. Fortunately for Asia, American military expenditure cannot readily be cut back. Too many jobs, military towns, and corporate profits depend on it. Consequently China builds infrastructure while the US builds fighter planes. The only plausible brake will be conflict with Social Security and Medicare, cuts in which will wake the Public Monster...
BIDEN PREPARES A TWO DAY ACCEPTANCE SPEECH FOR CONVENTION
... WILL BEGIN DELIVERING THE SPEECH ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND CONCLUDE IT ON THURSDAY NIGHT!
"We may wind up airing some of it on CNBC or maybe the USA Network, and then cut away to something else," said Carol Foyler on NBC News. "We're basically going to treat it like the hammer throw."
IN OTHER NEWS...
Cindy McCain Unsure How Many Half-Sisters She Has!
"As long as the couple has more homes than half-sisters, they could easily house one of the half-sisters in each of the residences and keep them happy," Dr. Logsdon says. "However, if the number of half-sisters grows faster than the number of homes, that could potentially lead to crowding."
AND IN STILL OTHER NEWS...
China’s Gold Medals Found to Have High Lead Content Phelps Warned Not to Lick Medals
"In other Olympic news, China's hopes for winning more medals in women's gymnastics were dashed when one of their leading gymnasts vanished down a bathtub drain on Tuesday.
Immediately after Jiang Qimin's disappearance, Beijing authorities launched a search for the acclaimed seven-pound athlete."
"Biden was chosen for the number-two spot because he is thought to strengthen the Obama campaign in the area of foreign policy, where the candidate is considered weakest. Biden is presented as a man of experience, and a foreign policy maven to boot. However, it is precisely in the realm of foreign policy that Biden falls far short. Biden supported the president's war policies, at least in terms of ends if not means..." Raimondo
Though the struggling economy means hard times for most people, it's a godsend for the repo man, the person who shows up — often unexpectedly — to snatch your property when you're behind on payments.
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 235 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.
I excluded all but the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.
No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislation's responsibility to determine how he votes.
A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY
Don't you see how the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O'Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits.
The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes.
O'neill is the speaker of the House. He is the leader of the majority party. He and his fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetos it, they can pass it over his veto.
REPLACE SCOUNDRELS
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 235 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.
I can't think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in Lebanon, it's because they want them in Lebanon.
There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take it.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation" or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone have the power. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.
"Mary wonders why the new young doctor she visited recently says to nearly every patient, after examining their throat, that it looks like their esophagus is being eroded by stomach acid and they need to start taking acid-blocking pills. He hands patients free samples provided by pharmaceutical companies. The patients are oblivious to the fact that if they begin using the drug, they may never be able to stop taking it without experiencing an excruciatingly painful bout of rebound heartburn.
One way to build an income in private medical practice is to hook patients on drugs that continually require re-examination, testing and prescription renewal." Bill Sardi...
IS IT POSSIBLE? COULD BIDEN BE WORSE THANMCCAIN ON IRAQ?
"Obama, whose mushy Iraq plan excites no one, is marrying his own's flawed ideas -- which mostly revolve around beefing up US forces in Afghanistan and unilaterally attacking Pakistan -- with Biden's discredited notion of partitioning Iraq into three squabbling mini-states.
Indeed, last year it was the passage by the US Senate of a resolution in favor of Biden's dangerously misguided ideas that sparked an outburst of Iraqi nationalism. More than the Blackwater killings, more than US efforts to forcibly privatize Iraq's oil, it was the Biden idea of splitting Iraq into three pieces that galvanized Iraqi Arab nationalists."
THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN IS BRINGING UP THE P.O.W. THING OVER AND...
...OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
How many houses? "P.O.W."
Cindy for topless pageant? "P.O.W."
His taste in music? "P.O.W"
Campaign ethics? "P.O.W."
"While McCain’s experience was heroic, did it create a worldview incapable of anticipating the limits to U.S. military power in Iraq? Did he fail to absorb the lessons of Vietnam, so that he is doomed to always want to refight it? Did his captivity inform a search-and-destroy, shoot-first-ask-questions-later, “We are all Georgians,” mentality?"
"And if the greenback continues its slide in 2008, as expected, more and more criminals are likely to exchange euros for illicit goods, said Criminal Intelligence Service Canada in its annual report."
" 'Change' and 'hope' are not words one associates with Senator Joe Biden, a man so ripely symbolic of everything that is unchanging and hopeless about our political system that a computer simulation of the corporate-political paradigm senator in Congress would turn out 'Biden' in a nano-second." CounterPunch
"I do not believe this is a rush to war. I believe it is a march to peace and security."
"I believe that failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur. ... [Saddam Hussein] possesses chemical and biological weapons and is seeking nuclear weapons. ... For four years now, he has prevented United Nations inspectors from uncovering those weapons...
The terms of surrender dictated by the United Nations require him to declare and destroy his weapons of mass destruction programs. He has not done so. ...
Many predicted the administration would refuse to give the weapons inspectors one last chance to disarm. ...
Mr. President, President Bush did not lash out precipitously after 9/11. He did not snub the U.N. or our allies. He did not dismiss a new inspection regime. He did not ignore the Congress. At each pivotal moment, he has chosen a course of moderation and deliberation. ...
For two decades, Saddam Hussein has relentlessly pursued weapons of mass destruction. There is a broad agreement that he retains chemical and biological weapons, the means to manufacture those weapons and modified Scud missiles, and that he is actively seeking a nuclear capability. ...
We must be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq for the long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after.... [Biden confided to his colleagues that this would be a long fight, but was still for it.]I am absolutely confident the President will not take us to war alone. I am absolutely confident we will enhance his ability to get the world to be with us by us voting for this resolution."
"THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS MATTER, BEING TREATED IN THE AMERICAN PRESS AS IF THE UNITED STATES HAS NOT BEEN PLAYING WITH DYNAMITE!"
"... who is ultimately responsible for an American policy toward Russia that since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been aggressive, militarily overbearing and threatening to the integrity of Russia, to absolutely no useful purpose.
... who in Washington is promoting this strategy of hostile military and political encirclement of Russia? What conceivable interest of the West does this serve?
It is a senseless policy, apparently meant to intimidate Russia, but why? For the sake of perpetuating international tension so as to strengthen the forces that with Vice President Dick Cheney and President Bush have been promoting constitutionally unaccountable executive rule in the United States?"
Meet Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's Henry Kissinger!
"He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man. From January 2007 to March 2008, the McCain campaign paid Scheunemann $70,000 – pocket change compared to the $290,000 his Orion Strategies banked in those same 15 months from the Georgian regime of Mikheil Saakashvili.
What were Mikheil's marching orders to Tbilisi's man in Washington? Get Georgia a NATO war guarantee. Get America committed to fight Russia, if necessary, on behalf of Georgia. Scheunemann came close to succeeding.
Had he done so, U.S. soldiers and Marines from Idaho and West Virginia would be killing Russians in the Caucasus, and dying to protect Scheunemann's client, who launched this idiotic war the night of Aug. 7. That people like Scheunemann hire themselves out to put American lives on the line for their clients is a classic corruption of American democracy."
"I have come to the conclusion that the Mont Pelerin Society is no longer an effective force for freedom, becoming instead another tool in behalf of US hegemony, ringing Russia with US military bases and puppet governments in the name of "supporting democracy." As far as I am aware, the MPS has not addressed the Bush administration's assault on US civil liberties or the disrespect the Bush administration has shown for the US Constitution and international law, particularly the Geneva Conventions. Nor has the society taken exception to US wars of aggression in behalf of undeclared agendas."Paul Craig Roberts
"The bananastans are going bananas, Iran's down the can, al Qaeda is a more dangerous enemy than ever and our "victory" in Iraq has gone off in our faces like a joke shop cigar. Less than a decade into the New American Century, young Mr. Bush and the neoconservatives who promised us an empire have squandered everything our forefathers achieved in the America's first two and a quarter centuries as a nation. Yet, incredibly, bewilderingly, stupefyingly, a septuagenarian Senator who steals Christian prisoner stories from Alexander Solzhenitsyn and promises to protract the Bush foreign policy fumble-rama is a viable contender for the presidency of the United States."
WHAT'S A THIN RICH PERSON TO DO? Obama finally gets specific, at least somewhat, about his intentions for taxes. Our DC-insider friend "Mick Danger" isn't happy.
Let's call America a shopping mall. Should some people shop for free? Or, call it a school, is it good that some students graduate without going to class or taking exams. Paying, or learning, it's just so middle class!
We're all so nice now to lower income people. We must want more of them.
The ugliest effect (and it's not a "side" effect or an "unintended consequence") of exempting lower earning people from income taxes is not that it shifts the burden up the ladder, it's that it cuts the rungs off the ladder which is the escape route up and out. More people making more money is good for society. Making it easier to not strive is not good. Obesity, it seems, is driven by cheap food, and grows fastest if both brain and body are inactive.
The flat tax addresses this. Obama wants to make it worse, shopping for voters by his tax plan to cut 17 million more in on a free ride in America.
An article ... on Wednesday about the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in financing multifamily housing projects misstated the average price that buyers are paying for apartment buildings that are being sold by Archstone, a national apartment company. It is $200,000 per unit, not per square foot. Similarly, Tishman Speyer and Lehman Brothers paid $240,000 per unit, not per square foot, when they bought the company last October.
OK, we know housing prices got a bit high, but $240,000 per square foot? ;-)
Also from the Times, one that has (deservedly) received a good deal of note around the web, from a would-be breathless revelation of mass corporate tax evasion...
Most U.S. Corporations Pay No Income Tax
Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress ... The study covers 1.3 million corporations of all sizes, most of them small, with a collective $2.5 trillion in sales .... At a basic corporate tax rate of 35 percent, all the corporations covered in the study in theory owed $875 billion in federal income taxes.
Uh ... no ... not even "in theory". Income taxes are owed not on revenue or sales but on income, which equals revenue minus the cost of earning the revenue, that is, expenses. Don Luskin More...
"After luring the Red Army into Georgia, President Saakashvili now wants the U.S. to bail his country out. He has a willing sucker in McCain, the former POW who craves the smell of cordite. The slick Georgia president has hedged his bets by sweetening the U.S. bailout with hard cash.
The government of Georgia reportedly has paid more than $1 million to the firm of McCain's top adviser who puts foreign policy words in his candidate's mouth. The aide, Randy Scheunemann, recently took a pressured leave of absence from his two-man operation that continues to work under contract for President Saakashvili's government." Newsday More...
Credit crunch may take out large US bank warns former IMF chief
"...“The US is not out of the woods. I think the financial crisis is at the halfway point, perhaps. I would even go further to say the worst is to come,” Prof Rogoff said at a conference in Singapore.
In an ominous warning, he added: “We’re not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months, we’re going to see a whopper, we’re going to see a big one — one of the big investment banks or big banks,” he said. " TimesOnline
... AND THEN SHE SAID THE U.S. WILL "FIGHT" FOR GEORGIA...
ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR EVER-LOVIN' MINDS?
MORE FOREIGN POLICY DEFTNESS FROM THE BUSH GENIUSES!
"The Bush administration appears to have pulled off its latest military fiasco in the Caucasus. What was supposed to have been a swift and painless takeover of rebellious South Ossetia by America’s favorite new ally, Georgia, has turned into a disaster that left Georgia battered, Russia enraged, and NATO badly demoralized. Not bad for two days work."
"If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.
The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad. "
Pat Buchanan, conservative commentator and author, most recently of Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War, discusses the crisis in Georgia, why he thinks the Russian action on behalf of South Ossetia was justified, comparisons between Russian moves in the Caucasus to interwar Germany and Britain, the stupidity of the war guarantees and new missile defense systems going into Eastern Europe, the limits of American imperial power and the question of whether the administration gave Saakashvili the green light to attack South Ossetia.
"Just a few weeks ago, predictions of Arctic ice collapse were buzzing all over the internet. Some scientists were predicting that the "North Pole may be ice-free for first time this summer". Others predicted that the entire "polar ice cap would disappear this summer".
The Arctic melt season is nearly done for this year. The sun is now very low above the horizon and will set for the winter at the North Pole in five weeks. And none of these dire predictions have come to pass. Yet there is, however, something odd going on with the ice data." TheRegister More...
LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE BRAVE -- FRANZ K., CALL HOME
"I was recently stopped by Homeland Security as I was returning from a trip to Syria. What I saw in the hours that followed shocked and disturbed me.
I arrived at JFK Airport two weeks ago after a short vacation to Syria and presented my American passport for re-entry to the United States. After 28 hours of traveling, I had settled into a hazy awareness that this was the last, most familiar leg of a long journey. I exchanged friendly words with the Homeland Security official who was recording my name in his computer. He scrolled through my passport, and when his thumb rested on my Syrian visa, he paused. Jerking toward the door of his glass-enclosed booth, he slid my passport into a dingy green plastic folder and walked down the hallway, motioning for me to follow with a flick of his wrist. Where was he taking me, I asked him. "You'll find out," he said." Emily Feder at alternet.org
"The Project For The New American Century, PNAC, has gone Absent Without Leave. They have seemingly vanished with the sands of time. It sounds too good to be true which means, it probably is not true.
What alerted me to the sudden disappearance is the fact that the PNAC website, chock full of bombastic and arrogant reports, declarations, letters and memos is now "suspended." Their boastful website is down and with it much of their inter-asylum memos along with some of their "best" work." Tom Chartier More...
With commodity costs rising for so long, why are we feeling the impact so suddenly? The answer is that China can no longer bail us out with low-cost manufacturing. For years, American manufacturers and retailers offset rising costs by sourcing more products from China, where they could be made cheaply. That kept prices down for American consumers and also restrained pressures on wages, abetting price stability. But now costs are rising quickly in China, too.
... But when President Bush was first told of Habbush’s report that there were no WMD in Iraq, Suskind’s sources say the president reacted by saying, “Well, why don’t you tell him to give us something we can use to make our case?”
Apparently, Habbush was unable or unwilling to oblige by changing his story. Nevertheless, later in 2003, when it became clear that he had been telling the unwelcome truth, Habbush was helped to resettle in Jordan and given $5 million to keep his mouth shut....
It was, no doubt, pure coincidence that President Bush made a highly unusual visit to CIA headquarters, also on Thursday, before leaving for Crawford on vacation. Or was it?
The official line is that he wanted an update on the situation in Georgia and the Soviet role there, but Bush did not need to go to Langley for that. Rather, given the record of the past seven years, it is reasonable to suggest that he also wanted to assure malleable Mike Hayden, the CIA director, and his minions that they will be protected if they continue to stiff-arm appropriate congressional committees, denying them the information they need for a successful investigation.
"The ideal of conscious control of social phenomena has made its greatest influence felt in the economic field. The present popularity of "economic planning" is directly traceable to the prevalence of the scientistic ideas we have been discussing. As in this field the scientistic ideals manifest themselves in the particular forms which they take in the hands of the applied scientist and especially the engineer, it will be convenient to combine the discussion of this influence with some examination of the characteristic ideals of the engineers.
We shall see that the influence on current views about problems of social organization of his technological approach, or the engineering point of view, is much greater than is generally realized. Most of the schemes for a complete remodeling of society, from the earlier utopias to modern socialism, bear indeed the distinct mark of this influence." Friedrich Hayek
"Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them."
Pat Buchanan Gets it Right on Russia/Georgia! Click Here!
When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?
Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of whom viscerally detest Russia?
BILL KRISTOL AND BAD ADVICE GO TOGETHER LIKE COLD ON SNOW
Bill Kristol and the Menshevik myth of democratic Georgia
by Justin Raimondo
The commander in chief of America's laptop bombardiers, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, can always be counted on to reveal not only the content of the neoconservative party line, but also, in so many words, the impulse that motivates it. In his latest peroration from his perch at the New York Times, the intellectual architect of our disastrous war in Iraq lays out a rationale for yet another catastrophic blunder in the foreign policy realm, this time in the Caucasus:... More...
DEMS OUTRAGED THAT CORPORATIONS PAY NO TAXES At least they don't pay them in one way -- it turns out they pay them in another. The unaccountably Government Accountability Office has released a report which, according to the AP, finds
Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005... about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.
Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.
Lots of obligatory quotes from outraged -- outraged! -- Democrats, natch:
"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
And...
"It's time for the big corporations to pay their fair share," Dorgan said.
But then, after we get through the sensationist lede, we find
The GAO study did not investigate why corporations weren't paying federal income taxes or corporate taxes and it did not identify any corporations by name. It said companies may escape paying such taxes due to operating losses or because of tax credits.
The explanation?
An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called "S" corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.
"Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code," Edwards said.
But let's not let the facts get in the way of a good display of outrage. Thanks to reader E. M. Schultze for the link. More...
"But this does not mean that the struggle over egalitarianism is over. Far from it. On the contrary, after the New Left of the late 1960s and early '70s had been discredited by its bizarre turn to violence, it took the advice of its liberal elders and "joined the system." New Leftists launched a successful Gramscian "long march through the institutions," and by becoming lawyers and academics – particularly in the humanities, philosophy, and the "soft" social sciences – they have managed to acquire hegemony over our culture. Seeing themselves defeated and routed on the strictly economic front (in contrast to the Old Left of the 1930s, Marxian economics and the labor theory of value was never the New Left's strong suit), the Left turned to the allegedly moral high ground of egalitarianism.
And, as they did so, they turned increasingly to what was suggested in the last paragraph of my essay: de-emphasizing old-fashioned economic egalitarianism in favor of stamping out broader aspects of human variety. Older egalitarianism stressed making income or wealth equal; but, as Helmut Schoeck brilliantly realized, the logic of their argument was to stamp out in the name of "fairness," all instances of human diversity and therefore implicit or explicit superiority of some persons over others. In short, envy of the superiority of others is to be institutionalized, and all possible sources of such envy eradicated." --Rothard More...
"Private LeVena Lynn Johnson killed herself on July 19, 2005, eight days before her twentieth birthday. Exactly how did she end her life? She punched herself in the face hard enough to blacken her eyes, break her nose, and knock her front teeth loose. She douched with an acid solution after mutilating her genital area. She poured a combustible liquid on herself and set it afire. She then shot herself in the head. Despite this massive self-inflicted trauma, she somehow managed to drag her then fully clothed body into the tent of a KBR contractor, leaving a trail of blood along the way and set the tent ablaze in a failed attempt to cover up her crimes against herself."
Please call your representatives in Congress and demand action on her case. The telephone number for the U.S. Capitol switchboard is 202/224-3121. Please help her parents to obtain a proper investigation of their daughter's death.
WHAT INSTITUTION ALLOWS THE POLITICAL CLASS TO TRANSCEND DEMOCRACY?
Lew Rockwell: "The heart of the modern state is the central bank. By heart I mean the very thing that makes it work, and without which the modern state would quickly wither and die. It is the thing that makes the money. As such, it purports to be our stabilizer, our source of employment, the fuel behind the economic growth that brings us technology. In truth, it does none of these things. What it does do effectively is prop up the leviathan state and all its pomps..."More...
THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY ON GEORGIA AND SOUTH OSSETIA!
Georgian invasion of South Ossetia sets the stage for a Wider War!
"Georgia has embarked on a very dangerous course, and it's important to realize it hasn't done so alone. Saakashvili has the implicit backing of Washington in his quest to re-conquer the "lost" provinces of Ossetia and Abkhazia (and don't forget Adjaria!) – or else what are 1,000 U.S. troops doing engaged in "joint military exercises" with the Georgian military, just as the crisis reaches a crescendo of violence? (The Brits, to their credit, have thought better of getting dragged into this one…)"
"The lead American ship in these war games, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN71) and its Carrier Strike Group Two (CCSG-2) are now headed towards Iran along with the USS Ronald Reagon (CVN76) and its Carrier Strike Group Seven (CCSG-7) coming from Japan...
...The large and very advanced nature of the US Naval warships is not only directed at Iran. There is a great fear that Russia and China may oppose the naval and air/land blockade of Iran. If Russian and perhaps Chinese naval warships escort commercial tankers to Iran in violation of the blockade it could be the most dangerous at-sea confrontation since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US and allied Navies, by front loading a Naval blockade force with very powerful guided missile warships and strike carriers is attempting to have a force so powerful that Russia and China will not be tempted to mess with. This is a most serious game of military brinkmanship with major nuclear armed powers that have profound objections to the neo-con grand strategy and to western control of all of the Middle East's oil supply."More...
"When Edwards finally made it official to the crony press corps, via ABC News, on Friday one political reporter for the Washington Post mumbled defensively that they’d been working on the Edwards story “really hard”. Another explained that he’d called high-ups in the Democratic Party and received adamant denials that there was any truth in the Enquirer’s charges."
and the Bruce Ivins/ABC News Brian Ross story:
"Will Ross ’fess up to who fed him the stories? I doubt it. He’s been a useful conduit for government leaks on matters such as the utility of water-boarding as a vital weapon in the war on terror. He’ll keep his mouth shut, even as public cynicism about Bush and Cheney, and the press, soar to new highs."
"Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists; they can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism.
Commercial bankers, engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout.
Investment bankers do much of their business underwriting government bonds, in the United States and abroad. Therefore, they have a vested interest in promoting deficits and in forcing taxpayers to redeem government debt. Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs." Murray Rothbard Read more...
"My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment. Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. The Pentagon has its own false documents center, primarily used to produce fake papers for Delta Force and other special ops officers traveling under cover as businessmen. It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq."
"We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."
- George W. Bush, President
Charles Goyette wants to know why we haven't begun bombing Maryland!
Was Fort Detrick harboring terrorists? Was the U.S. Government funding terrorists who planned and executed a terrorist attack on American citizens? Doesn't the Bush Doctrine insist we hold entire countries accountable if they give aid to terrorists? How long have we known that the 2001 anthrax came from Fort Detrick? Ivins was considered a suspect by the FBI beginning in 2002 and became the main focus of the investigation in 2006. Why is the U.S. Government engaged in the production of Weapons of Mass Destruction? Didn't Bush say something in his State of the Union address after 9/11 about not letting "the world's most dangerous regimes" have "the world's most destructive weapons"? Why has the U.S. Government continued to fund the deadly work of this long-suspected terrorist? And when do we begin bombing Maryland?
Similarly, Jacob Hornberger want to know why Bruce Ivins wasn't an enemy combatant!
"Under President Bush’s post-9/11 unilateral assumption of dictatorial power, the feds didn’t have to indict Bruce Ivins for terrorism. They could have treated him as an enemy combatant in the war on terrorism, just like they initially did to Jose Padilla. They can now do this to any American, including you."MORE
"Most likely, the US will simply continue into bankruptcy. This is the most common pathway for nations with fiat currencies and unchecked ruling classes."
"Solzhenitsyn had enough courage to equate socialism and Nazism as equally evil and morally reprehensible. He condemned both Nazi and Soviet atrocities during the Second World War and he accused his fellow countrymen of masterminding their own shipwreck.
According to Solzhenitsyn, 61,000,000 people were slaughtered in the USSR in the quest for equality. Under Stalin alone, 43,000,000 were murdered. Lenin and Khrushchev are responsible for the other 18,000,000. Most of these deaths (39,000,000) were due to forced labor in gulags and during deportations." More...
"Barack Obama just had the worst week since his beloved pastor, Jeremiah Wright, decided to expatiate on black liberation theology at the National Press Club.
Coming off his royal progress through the Near and Middle East, Berlin, Paris and London, Barack had surged to a nine-point lead in the Gallup tracking poll. By Friday, he was back to a dead heat with a 72-year-old opponent with none of his natural skills, in a year when grocers are pulling Republican brands off the shelves." -- Pat Buchanan
"The best panel (by far) I saw at Fortune Brainstorm was "2018: Life on the Net." It was moderated extremely well by Quincy Smith, CEO of CBS Interactive. On the podium was Lawrence Lessig, professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Joichi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons and Chairman of Six Apart Japan, and Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of Linden Lab, (Second Life.)
I've edited the video down to the best comments.
Hear Lawrence Lessig talk about the new "patriot act" that the government has ready and will be applied to the Internet following a 911 type event affecting the web: an 'iPatriot Act'."More...
It's certainly possible that once the FBI closes its investigation and then formally unveils its evidence -- which apparently will happen tomorrow -- a very convincing case will be made that Bruce Ivins perpetrated the anthrax attacks and did so alone. But what has been revealed thus far -- through the standard ritual of selected Government leaks which the establishment media, with some exceptions, just mindlessly re-prints no matter how frivolous -- is creating the opposite impression. The FBI's coordinated leaking is making their claim to have solved the anthrax case appear quite dubious, in some instances laughably so....
No matter what the FBI says over the next week, or whenever it is that it finally gets around to stopping its manipulative leaks to its media friends and begins instead showing the public its evidence, a full-scale investigation is required here.
CHRONICLING BUSH LIES FOR WAR HAS BECOME A FULL-TIME UNDERTAKING... HERE'S THE LATEST
Ron Suskind Describes White House Forgery to Foment War.
Surprised? After the Office of Special Plans? After the Downing Street Memo? After forged Niger yellowcake documents? After Bush's war-provoking scheme to paint U.S. aircraft in U.N. colors? After aluminum tubes? Bio-trailers?
How about Seymour Hersh's account of the Cheney office idea of dressing up U.S. Navy Seals as Iranians and shooting at them?
... the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein. Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.
The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”
In September 2001 – before the news of the anthrax letters broke, but after they had been postmarked – a letter addressed to the "Town of Quantico police" was received...
Whatever the motives of the Quantico letter's author, one fact seems fairly obvious: whoever wrote it very likely had foreknowledge of the anthrax attacks.
Mueller was "beaten up" during President Bush's morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.
"They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East," the retired senior FBI official told The News.
Two prominent journalism professors -- Jay Rosen of NYU and Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University and a practicing journalist for 25 years -- have added their names to the list of people calling on ABC News and Brian Ross to reveal their sources for ABC's false bentonite story that was used to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq.
"Solzhenitsyn's unflinching accounts of torment and survival in the Soviet Union's slave labor camps riveted his countrymen, whose secret history he exposed. They earned him 20 years of bitter exile, but international renown.
And they inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person's courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire." More...
"There is nothing that that spreads faster than a global warming scare story even when it is false. The latest is that the famed Northwest Passage is now open, supposedly for the first time. The BBC dramatically reported on September 14, 2007 that: “The most direct shipping route from Europe to Asia is fully clear of ice for the first time since records began.” But those records only began in 1978." More...scroll down three-fourths of the page A PDF will open and then scroll down to read this fascinating article.
Is The "Scientific Consensus" on Global Warming a Myth?
Yes, says internationally renowned environmentalist author Lawrence Solomon who highlights the brave scientists--all leaders in their fields-- who dispute the conventional wisdom of climate change alarmists (despite the threat to their careers)
Al Gore and his media allies claim the only scientists who dispute the alarmist view on global warming are corrupt crackpots and "deniers", comparable to neo-Nazis who deny the Holocaust.
Solomon calmly and methodically debunks Gore's outrageous charges, showing in on 'headline' case after another that the scientists who dispute Gore's doomsday scenarios have far more credibility than those who support Gore's theories. These men who expose Gore's claims as absurd hold top positions at the most prestigious scientific institutes in the world. Their work is cited and acclaimed throughout the scientific community. No wonder Gore and his allies want to pretend they don't exist.
This is the one book that PROVES the science is NOT settled. The scientists profiled are too eminent and their research too devastating to allow simplistic views of global warming--like Al Gore's--to survive.
From the Publisher Al Gore says any scientist who disagrees with him on Global Warming is a kook, or a crook.
Guess he never met these guys
Dr. Edward Wegman--former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences--demolishes the famous "hockey stick" graph that launched the global warming panic.
Dr. David Bromwich--president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology--says "it's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now."
Prof. Paul Reiter--Chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the famed Pasteur Institute--says "no major scientist with any long record in this field" accepts Al Gore's claim that global warming spreads mosquito-borne diseases.
Prof. Hendrik Tennekes--director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute--states "there exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies" used for global warming forecasts.
Dr. Christopher Landsea--past chairman of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones--says "there are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and observed hurricane frequency and intensity."
Dr. Antonino Zichichi--one of the world's foremost physicists, former president of the European Physical Society, who discovered nuclear antimatter--calls global warming models "incoherent and invalid." More...
...the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.
It's extremely possible -- one could say highly likely -- that the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain -- as a result of the letters accompanying the anthrax -- is that whoever perpetrated the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC News designed to link Saddam to those attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax attacker(s).
Seven years later, it's difficult for many people to recall, but, as I've amply documented, those ABC News reports linking Saddam and anthrax penetrated very deeply -- by design -- into our public discourse and into the public consciousness. Those reports were absolutely vital in creating the impression during that very volatile time that Islamic terrorists generally, and Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically, were grave, existential threats to this country.
HEY LARRY (KUDLOW): ARE WE TALKING OURSELVES INTO RECESSION?
One day last week:
10:00 a.m. – Comrade Hank "The Knife" Paulson: Housing woes will last months, not years. (RGEmonitor.com blog entry.)
10:01 a.m. – Case Shiller index: Home prices continue acceleration downward, falling 15.8 percent in May from a year earlier, a record decline. Previous record set in April. Record before that set in March. It’s a trifecta.
10:02 a.m. – Comrade Paulson: Economy is sound.
10:03 a.m. – Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain: "Right now we believe that we are in a very comfortable spot in terms of our capital."
10:04 a.m. – Merrill dumps bonds at 22 cents on the dollar, takes $5.7 billion write-down, to issue $8.5 billion in new stock as demand for suckers matches supply of one born every minute. Merrill hailed as heroes for coming clean. Still sitting on $43.7 billion of mortgage nitro. Short sellers send out call for blasting caps. More...
While Mses. Spears and Hilton said they had planned to remain on the sidelines during the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. McCain's negative ad "left us no choice," the notorious party gals said today.
"We don't mind John McCain going after us if he sticks to the facts," Ms. Spears said at a New York press conference. "But we are sick of the distortions about our record."
In their anti-McCain spot, the two starlets fight fire with fire, comparing Sen. McCain to the Joker from the smash-hit film "The Dark Knight."
"It's perfectly fair," Ms. Spears said of the ad. "They both have pasty white faces and totally creepy smiles."
"Sometimes it’s painful to read the business press, and never more so than during an economic slump. Reporters flail about for explanations. They quote stock analysts, politicians, day traders, other journalists, and even, from time to time, academic economists. But they never seem to arrive at anything approaching an explanation.
And what, precisely, are we seeking to explain? At any given time in a regular economic setting, some businesses are succeeding and some are failing. Laborers shift from one firm and sector to another. This is a picture of a dynamic market economy in which resources are finding their way to their most productive uses.
What’s unusual is when the business failures and layoffs occur in a cluster, as if many normally savvy entrepreneurs, in the same interval of time, just happen to make a series of bad judgements. It is the coincidence of these bad judgements—these errors of investment that come together to threaten recession—that cries out for an explanation." More...
"Every American who cares about liberty owes a debt to Ron Paul. From his first run for Congress in 1974 through his gallant try for the Senate in 1984 to his present campaign as Presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, Ron Paul has been an outstanding leader for freedom.
I had the privilege of working as Dr. Paul's chief of staff in Washington. And in the often corrupt and always superficial city of Washington, D.C., he was a beacon of honesty and decency.
Even the advocates of big government came grudgingly to recognize him as the man they couldn't sway, the man they couldn't buy. His only concerns were freedom, peace, the Constitution, and honest money, and these same ideals animate his latest book.
Naturally, the criminals who want your tax dollars in their pockets found Ron Paul hard to deal with. Devotion to principle is not the engine of Capitol Hill. The backslapping,vote-trading politicians and lobbyists felt uncomfortable around Ron Paul, almost as though their shirt collars were too tight.
Greatness is often lonely, and it is never easy to oppose colleagues or the statist special interests who wanted Ron Paul to act as their errand boy to the Treasury. They were all amazed, and then aghast, at his refusal to play their game.
New Congressmen are always advised, in shady Sam Rayburn's words, "To get along, go along." They're told: "Don't make waves. Vote for the other guy's spending and he'll vote for yours. Do as you're told and you'll be taken care of." How easy to become part of the system, and reap the rewards of power."
Download and read Ron Paul's book about OUR liberties and how they are threatened. Download from HERE. Scroll down a little and look on the right side of the page. Lots of other things to download too.
Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans who have been working to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great national banker and investor, borrowing billions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government can paralyse opposition and command public support; marshalling great armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our nation’s greatest industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning, regeneration, and domination – all to be done under the authority of a powerfully centralised government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers, with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society.
"Hersh: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives." More...
"For a complete understanding of the business cycle it is absolutely indispensable to distinguish between a primary and fundamental and a secondary and accidental movement. The fundamental appearance of the business cycle is a wavelike movement of business activity--if I may be allowed to use for the moment this rather vague expression. The development of our modern economic life is not an even and continuous growth; it is interrupted, not only by external disturbances like wars and similar catastrophes, but shows an inherent discontinuity; periods of rapid progress are followed by periods of stagnation.
The attention of the economists was first caught by those secondary and accidental phenomena--glaring breakdowns and financial panics. They tried to explain them in terms of individual accidents, mistakes, and misguided speculations of the leaders of those banks and business firms which were primarily involved. But the regular recurrence of these accidents during the nineteenth century brought home to the economists that they had not isolated accidents before them but symptoms of a severe disease, which affects the whole economic body." More...
"For weeks, pressure has been mounting in Congress to approve more domestic oil drilling, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has [used]... her power to block a vote on offshore drilling." More...
"Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp. reported a second-quarter loss of $15.5 billion, the third biggest in its 100-year history, because of plunging U.S. sales and the declining value of truck leases. The shares fell as much as 11 percent." More...
"A Minneapolis family is outraged that members of the SWAT team that mistakenly raided their house and fired upon them last December have been awarded medals for their bravery under fire.
Vang Khang and his family had the fright of a lifetime when they believed their home was being invaded by burglars, or worse. It was actually a SWAT team, conducting a high-risk search warrant -- on the wrong house..." More...
