What Have We Gained?

Within the next two weeks, the number of American troops killed in Iraq is likely to reach 4,000, assuming that the average number of fatal casualties per day remains steady.

It is an arbitrary number, given meaning by the fact that the nation may briefly take notice, but a day will come in this presidential campaign when Sen. John McCain must explain what he thinks we have gained by the sacrifice of those men and women.

But I would like to pose that question to every idiot war monger out there that supports bushies OCCUPATION of Iraq.

What have we gained?

At what cost?

Is it worth it?

Consider the costs...

• $275 million per day.
• $4,100 per household.
• Almost 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed and more than 60,000 wounded. Not to mention those that have come home with UNTREATED PTSD and other diseases and war related illnesses being brought back home that will haunt America for generations to come.
  
• Over 100,000,000 Iraqis killed and 4 million refugees created.
• America, under bush, has become the disgrace of the world.
• Exponential growth of global terrorism.
• Funding the war has bankrupted the U.S. and is rapidly pushing us toward a severe economic recession if not a full blown depression.
  
• A war that will be paid for by our children's children.

So I ask again: What the fuck have we gained???

bush Fucked Us All

THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

The former World Bank vice-president yesterday said the war had, so far, cost the US something like $US3trillion ($3.3 trillion) compared with the $US50-$US60-billion predicted in 2003.

Australia also faced a real bill much greater than the $2.2billion in military spending reported last week by Australian Defence Force chief Angus Houston, Professor Stiglitz said, pointing to higher oil prices and other indirect costs of the wars.

Professor Stiglitz told the Chatham House think tank in London that the Bush White House was currently estimating the cost of the war at about $US500 billion, but that figure massively understated things such as the medical and welfare costs of US military servicemen.

The war was now the second-most expensive in US history after World War II and the second-longest after Vietnam, he said.

The spending on Iraq was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch because the US central bank responded to the massive financial drain of the war by flooding the American economy with cheap credit.

"The regulators were looking the other way and money was being lent to anybody this side of a life-support system," he said.

That led to a housing bubble and a consumption boom, and the fallout was plunging the US economy into recession and saddling the next US president with the biggest budget deficit in history, he said.

Professor Stiglitz, an academic at the Columbia Business School and a former economic adviser to president Bill Clinton, said a further $US500 billion was going to be spent on the fighting in the next two years and that could have been used more effectively to improve the security and quality of life of Americans and the rest of the world.

The money being spent on the war each week would be enough to wipe out illiteracy around the world, he said.

Just a few days' funding would be enough to provide health insurance for US children who were not covered, he said.

The public had been encouraged by the White House to ignore the costs of the war because of the belief that the war would somehow pay for itself or be paid for by Iraqi oil or US allies.

"When the Bush administration went to war in Iraq it obviously didn't focus very much on the cost. Larry Lindsey, the chief economic adviser, said the cost was going to be between $US100billion and $US200 billion - and for that slight moment of quasi-honesty he was fired.

"(Then defence secretary Donald) Rumsfeld responded and said 'baloney', and the number the administration came up with was $US50 to $US60 billion. We have calculated that the cost was more like $US3 trillion.

"Three trillion is a very conservative number, the true costs are likely to be much larger than that."

Five years after the war, the US was still spending about $US50billion every three months on direct military costs, he said.

Professor Stiglitz and another Clinton administration economist, Linda Bilmes, have produced a book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, pulling together their research on the true cost of the war, which does not include the cost to Iraq.

One of the greatest discrepancies is that the official figures do not include the long-term healthcare and social benefits for injured servicemen, who are surviving previously fatal attacks because of improved body armour.

"The ratio of injuries to fatalities in a normal war is 2:1. In this war they admitted to 7:1 but a true number is (something) like 15:1."

Some 100,000 servicemen have been diagnosed with serious psychological problems and the soldiers doing the most tours of duty have not yet returned.

Professor Stiglitz attributed to the Iraq war $US5-$US10 of the almost $US80-a-barrel increase in oil prices since the start of the war, adding that it would have been reasonable to attribute more than $US35 of that rise to the war.

He said the British bill for its role in the war was about 20 times the pound stg. 1billion ($2.1 billion) that former prime minister Tony Blair estimated before the war.

The British Government was yesterday ordered to release details of its planning for the war, when the country's Information Commissioner backed a Freedom of Information request for the minutes of two cabinet meetings in the days before the war.

Commissioner Richard Thomas said that because of the importance of the decision to go to war, the public interest in disclosing the minutes outweighed the public interest in withholding the information.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23286149-26397,00.html

YEEEEEHAW! Another Republicunt Goes Down!

In his 30-plus-year legal career in Harris County, Texas, Chuck "Rosey" Rosenthal has been no stranger to controversy. As a prosecutor he lit firecrackers in the stairwell of the district attorney’s offices soon after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings. (It was a prank, he said.) After he was elected DA in 2000 he called the death penalty a “biblical proposition” and lobbied unsuccessfully to maintain Texas’s sodomy law…

Rosenthal is back in the headlines again. Last December, as part of a federal civil rights lawsuit into how justice is meted out in the county, he turned over the partial contents of his government e-mail account.

And what a batch of e-mails it was.

Black ministers called for the Republican to resign because of racist material, including a cartoon depicting an African-American suffering from a “fatal overdose” of watermelon and fried chicken. There were adult video clips and love notes from Rosenthal to his secretary, his mistress during a previous marriage.

Now it appears that Rosenthal’s on-the-job antics have done him in. In the wake of the e-mail revelations, local GOP leaders forced him to abort his re-election bid. Then, on Feb. 15, after Lloyd Kelley, the attorney in the civil rights case, brought a lawsuit accusing him of drinking on the job and “incompetence, or official misconduct,” Rosenthal resigned. Read on…

The article also states that Rosenthal isn’t out of the woods yet. Following in the footsteps of the Bush administration and the GOP, it appears he deleted e-mails he was supposed to have saved and could be in some hot water.

Live In Peace - Or I'll Fucking Kill You

Americans love to think that we're a peaceful people, and that we fight wars only when we must.

Unfortunately, you can count in nanoseconds how long those assertions hold up when exposed to such insidious commie dirty tricks as the application of logic or the examination of empirical history.

Sure, any war can be spun as some necessity against some Very Bad Person, preferably of brown skin, slanted eyes and/or differing deity. Not only can any war be so spun, probably every war there ever was has been, at least since the days when governments had to start offering some justification or another for their little foreign adventures.

But pick your barometer -- any one will work -- and you'll quickly see who the militant folks on the planet really are. For America, it turns out -- gulp -- to be that bloated, frightened meth-addict staring back at us in the mirror, not some overseas evil emperor du jour.

For example, suppose you wanted to measure comparative national warlike tendencies by simply counting wars. Since World War II, the United States has messed around, in ways big and small, in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Lebanon, Grenada, Iraq, Panama, Colombia, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Afghanistan again, and Iraq again. No country in the world can begin to match this record in the last half-century. And I'm not even listing here the covert operations (almost everywhere), including the ones that toppled democratically elected governments (Iran, Guatemala, Chile, etc.), the long-term occupations of Latin American countries by the U.S. military, the gunboat diplomacy of the American Navy around the world, the aiding and abetting of other killers (Saddam invading Iran, for example, apartheid South Africa or the Israeli occupation of Palestine), the militarization of the oceans and of space, or the myriad other ways in which the United States leads the planet in aggressive tendencies.

Who has China been invading lately?

Russia?

Cuba?

Those perfidious (and perfumed) French?

Heck, even Saddam couldn't touch this record for aggression, especially once you account for the fact that the U.S. government assisted his foreign soiree into Iran, complete with the chemical weapons, and likely green-lighted the one into Kuwait as well.

And let's even grant that one or two of those American adventures had some measure of altruism associated with them, as perhaps the Balkan or Somalian affairs might have.

Isn't the sheer volume of them, especially relative to the number of wars other countries have fought a bit problematic for maintaining the pretense of America's intentions?

My very conservative list above goes to nearly 20.

Isn't that a bit much for a peace-loving country?

Religion + Politics = Complete Idiocy

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Monday endorsed a proposed Colorado Human Life Amendment that would define personhood as a fertilized egg.

The idiot former Arkansas governor and delusional Baptist minister also supports a human-life amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Huckleberry spoke favorably about the Colorado ballot initiative, sponsored by 20-year-old Kristi Burton and her Colorado for Equal Rights group, during his Friday visit to Colorado Springs. On Monday, Huckabee lent official support to the measure.

"This proposed constitutional amendment will define a person as a human being from the moment life begins at conception," Huckabee said in a statement. "With this amendment, Colorado has an opportunity to send a clear message that every human life has value," Huckabee said. "Passing this amendment will mean the people of Colorado will protect the sanctity of life (yet he supports bushies massacre of over one million Iraqi citizens) from conception until natural death occurs."

Burton's initiative, if approved by voters in November, would extend state constitutional protections to every fertilized egg, guaranteeing the right to life, liberty, equality of justice and due process of law.

Well, now I want to know how far Huckabee wants to take this effort. Let's think about the practicalities of such an amendment. I'm not being flip here, because creating a "fetus citizen" status has real-world applications and will necessitate laws and regulations that the womb control advocates need to think out and explain to the rest of us.

For instance:

• Will a post-coitus woman be able to drive in a car pool lane because she may be carrying a fertilized egg?
• Will the highway patrol need to carry pregnancy testing kits to confirm the ability for them to use car pool lanes on the spot?
• Can airlines charge a woman for two seats since the fertilized egg is a person?
• Can an impregnated woman be punished as a child abuser for poor eating habits, or consuming alcohol or artificial sweeteners?
• Is the boyfriend/husband an accomplice to a crime if he drives her to the abortion clinic?
• Can a woman claim her fetus as a tax deduction?
• For couples who fertilize multiple eggs for in vitro, are they guilty of murder if the unused eggs are discarded?
• Should a woman register with the state whenever she has unprotected sex (without using any form of birth control), since she might be carrying a fertilized egg?
• What about a woman who skips her birth control pills, has sex, the egg is fertilized and she later resumes her contraception, unknowingly causing an "abortion." What punishment should she receive?
• And, of course, the current bar people on both sides banter about -- consideration of the a medical emergency of the mother or cases of rape and incest -- how will the state-based fetus citizen council determine punishment?

We know Pastor Hutch and friends want to have control over every womb, but if we take this thinking to its logical conclusion, the state would need to know when a man spilled his seed in a situation where creating a fetus citizen is a possibility.

ANYONE that votes for this idiot is quite obviously suffering from some sort of mental illness, probably republicuntitis, which unfortunately has no cure.

Gee, Did Anyone See This One Coming?

WASHINGTON - When Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald wanted to find out what was going on inside Vice President Dick Cheney's office, the prosecutor in the CIA leak probe made a logical move. He dropped a grand jury subpoena on the White House for all the relevant e-mail.

One problem: Even though White House computer technicians hunted high and low, an entire week's worth of e-mail from Cheney's office was missing. The week was Sept. 30, 2003, to Oct. 6, 2003, the opening days of the Justice Department's probe into whether anyone at the White House leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

That episode was part of the picture that unfolded Tuesday on Capitol Hill, where Democrats on a House committee released new information about one of the Bush White House's long-running issues, its problem-plagued e-mail system.

For the first time, a former White House computer technician went public with the details. Steven McDevitt revealed in written statements submitted to Congress how a plan was developed to try to recover the missing e-mail for Fitzgerald.

Ultimately, 250 pages of electronic messages were retrieved from the personal e-mail accounts of officials in Cheney's office, but whether that amounted to all the relevant e-mail is a question that may never be answered.

McDevitt made clear that it was a sensitive issue inside the White House.

"I worked with ... White House Counsel on efforts to provide an explanation to the special prosecutor," McDevitt wrote. "This included providing a briefing to the special prosecutor's staff on this subject."

McDevitt provided no details of the meetings with White House Counsel Harriet Miers and others in the counsel's office in late 2005 and early 2006. The White House refused to comment on those meetings.

White House on defensive
The White House put the best face on a bad hearing Tuesday of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, defending the administration's handling of its electronic messages.

McDevitt said that one estimate from a 2005 analysis was that more than 1,000 days of e-mail were missing from January 2003 to Aug. 10, 2005. McDevitt said "the process by which e-mail was being collected and retained was primitive and the risk that data would be lost was high." The "low end" estimate was about 470 days, he added.

The White House says a substantial amount of what had been believed to be missing e-mail had been located.

"We are very energized about getting to the bottom of this" issue, Theresa Payton, chief information officer at the White House Office of Administration, testified to the committee.

"This is a form of sandbagging," replied Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who pointed out that by the time the White House fixes its e-mail problems, "you'll be out of office."

E-mail shortcomings
McDevitt's statements detailed shortcomings that he said have plagued the White House e-mail system for six years. He said:

* The White House had no complete inventory of e-mail files.
* There was no automatic system to ensure that e-mail was archived and preserved.
* Until mid-2005 the e-mail system had serious security flaws, in which "everyone" on the White House computer network had access to e-mail. McDevitt wrote that the "potential impact" of the security flaw was that there was no way to verify that retained data had not been modified.
* A new e-mail archiving system that would have addressed the problems was "ready to go live" on Aug. 21, 2006.

Payton told Waxman's committee she canceled the new system in late 2006 because it would have required modifications and additional spending. An alternative system is under way, she said.

Payton's predecessor, Carlos Solari, told the House committee that he was puzzled that the new system had been rejected and that he had "absolutely" believed that the system Payton rejected would be implemented.

When President Bush leaves office, presidential records and federal records at the White House will be turned over to the National Archives. Waxman produced a memo pointing to a lack of cooperation between the White House and the Archives.

By George - MORE Economic Disaster

No good news today on the economic front.

Consumer confidence plunged, the wholesale inflation rate soared, the number of homes being foreclosed jumped, home prices fell sharply and a report predicts big increases in health care costs.

Consumer confidence weakened significantly as Americans worry about less-favorable business conditions and job prospects. The New York-based Conference Board says in a report released on Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index plunged in February to 75.0 from a revised 87.3 in January.

The reading — the lowest since the index registered 64.8 in February 2003 — is far below the 83.0 analysts expected.

The index measures how consumers feel now about the economy. It has been weakening since July, suggesting that wary consumers may retrench financially, which could fatigue the economy further.

Inflation at the wholesale level soared in January, pushed higher by rising costs for food, energy and medicine. The monthly increase carried the annual inflation rate to its fastest jump in a quarter century.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that wholesale prices rose 1 percent last month, more than double the 0.4 percent increase that economists had been expecting.

The January surge left wholesale prices rising by 7.5 percent over the past 12 months, the fastest pace in more than 26 years, since prices had risen at a 7.5 percent pace in the 12 months ending in October 1981.

The number of homes facing foreclosure jumped 57 percent in January compared to a year ago, with lenders increasingly forced to take possession of homes they couldn't unload at auctions, a mortgage research firm said Monday.

Nationwide, some 233,001 homes received at least one notice from lenders last month related to overdue payments, compared with 148,425 a year earlier, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc. Nearly half of the total involved first-time default notices.

The worsening situation came despite ongoing efforts by lenders to help borrowers manage their payments by modifying loan terms, working out long-term repayment plans and other actions

U.S. home prices lost 8.9 percent in the final quarter of 2007, Standard & Poor's said Tuesday, marking a full year of declining values and the steepest drop in the 20-year history of its housing index.

"We reached a somber year-end for the housing market in 2007," said one of the index's creators Robert Shiller. "Home prices across the nation and in most metro areas are significantly lower than where they were a year ago. Wherever you look things look bleak."

The S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices, which include a quarterly index, a 20-city index and a 10-city index, reflect year-over-year declines in 17 metropolitan areas with double-digit declines in eight of them.

By 2017, total health care spending will double to more than $4 trillion a year, accounting for one of every $5 the nation spends, the federal government projects.

The 6.7 percent annual increase in spending — nearly three times the rate of inflation_ will be largely driven by higher prices and an increased demand for care, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Monday. Other factors in the mix include a growing and aging population. The first wave of baby boomers become eligible for Medicare beginning in 2011.

With the aging population, the federal government will be picking up the tab for a growing share of the nation's medical expenses. Overall, federal and state governments accounted for about 46 percent of health expenditures in 2006. That percentage will increase to 49 percent over the next decade.

Acts Of Desperation

There is dissension in the Hillary Clinton camp. Top aides have been in arguments, shouting back and forth about differences in strategy. Should Clinton come on strong? Should she go negative? Should she be upbeat and positive? Here's my answer: Stop campaigning.

The evidence is overwhelming that since Super Tuesday, the minute that Clinton steps foot in a state, her numbers start to plummet. Of course, Barack Obama has something to do with it. He's a phenomenon, a political version of Roy Hobbs, "The Natural" of Bernard Malamud's wonderful novel, whose physical repose is TV perfect and who will, when the time comes, provide a jarring visual contrast to the much older John McCain. Obama is nearly as good as he thinks he is.

So it could be that Clinton would lose the Democratic nomination even if she were a gifted politician. But she has no such gift.

After struggling for months to dent Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy, the campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton is now unleashing what one Clinton aide called a “kitchen sink” fusillade against Mr. Obama, pursuing five lines of attack since Saturday in hopes of stopping his political momentum, further showing her desperation in her failing candidacy.

Her smear campaign tactics since super tuesday have been growing in intensity and she appears to be trapped in the corner, making her dangerous. Anyone familiar with the Clintons history will see that she will stop at nothing, including murder, to fulfill her goals and personal agenda.

Bruce Rocks

A great couple of protest songs from "The Boss"

From the Today show last September.

Enjoy!

Protect America Act Expires!

House Democrats Save the World! (for now)

Dems’ Freedom Card v. GOP’s Fear Card

Constitution v. Cowardice

Here’s a new Crooks and Liars video that parodies the latest fearmongering efforts by the House Republicans because the Democratic Party refused to grant immunity to the Telecoms.



If the GOP truly cared about the safety of America then they would have passed the bill and sent it on to the traitor in chief.

Instead, they threw a hissy fit—staged a photo-op—and whined to the press. They looked like insignificant little children playing with our national security. The clock is ticking away at the GOP’s foolishness.

In a stunning display of courage today, House Democrats have upheld their constitutional responsibilities by allowing the Protect America Act to expire.

It expired because George (Asshole) Bush threatened to veto any extensions and House Republicans unanimously voted against any extension. Our blood, to be gushing shortly like a volcanic eruption, will be on their loving, protective hands.

All the GOP has left is the fear card, and that sucker is wore slam out.

bush’s trusty Supreme Court has already seen fit to throw up a firewall for the telecoms, so why is it the Republicunts are still insisting on holding up the FISA bill?

It’s because the Republican Party will do anything they can to keep whatever secrets are hidden in those NSA spy rooms from ever incriminating their President, even if it does mean putting our country at more risk to do so.

That’s why.

Happy Birthday Peace

The peace sign turns fifty years old today.

Over the past five decades the peace sign has become one of the world’s enduring icons. The original peace sign was developed in 1958 by a British textile designer and conscientious objector named Gerald Holtom. He created the symbol by combining the semaphore letters N and D, for nuclear disarmament. On Feb. 21, 1958 the symbol was accepted by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War.

America's Economic Disaster

Who is a REAL domestic terrorist?

It seems that bush, that piece of shit American traitor, has succeeded in accomplishing on of Osama bin Laden's goals.

Bankrupting the United States

Despite what our asshole president claims, the economy is floating in a toilet awaiting the inevitable flush as the bowl keeps filling up with the turds of a failed presidency.

"It's . . . poetic justice, in that the people that brewed this toxic Kool-Aid found themselves drinking a lot of it in the end."

--Warren Buffett, American investor

“By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”

--John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

"New money that enters the economy does not affect all economic actors equally nor does new money influence all economic actors at the same time. Newly created money must enter into the economy at a specific point. Generally this monetary injection comes via credit expansion through the banking sector. Those who receive this new money first benefit at the expense of those who receive the money only after it has snaked through the economy and prices have had a chance to adjust."

--Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992), Austrian economist

When Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says the economic situation is worsening, you'd better believe him. In fact, the U.S. credit markets are collapsing under our very eyes, and there is no end in sight as to when this will stop, let alone reverse itself.

1. Leading economic indicators for the U.S. economy are falling.

2. Consumer confidence sentiment is falling as mortgage equity withdrawals are drying up.

3. Employment numbers are falling.

4. The January 2008 report on the U.S. service economy indicates that it contracted early in the year for the first time in 58 months.

5. The number of new jobless claims is still dangerously high.

6. The housing crisis is getting up steam; banks have to place larger and larger subprime losses on their balance sheets, thus undermining their capital bases and bringing many of them to the brink of insolvency.

7. The credit-ratings agencies are under siege.

8. Bond guarantee insurance companies are in the process of loosing their triple-A ratings and some are on the brink of bankruptcy.

9. The $2.6 trillion municipal bond market is about to take a nosedive, if and when the bond insurers do not pull it through.

10. The leveraged corporate loan market is in disarray.

11. The more than a trillion dollar market for mortgage- and debt-backed securities could collapse completely if the largest American mortgage insurers continue to suffer crippling losses.

12. Large hedge funds are losing money on a high scale and they are suffering from a run on their assets.

13. In the U.S., total debt as a percentage of GDP is at more than 300 percent, a record level (N.B.: in 1980, it was 125 percent!).

14. And, finally, the worldwide hundreds-of- trillion dollar derivatives market could implode anytime, if too many financial institutions go under during the coming months, as most of these transactions are inter-institution trades.

The overall economic picture remains bleak.

This mess all began in the early 2000s when the Fed and the SEC adopted a hands-off approach to financial markets, guided by the new economic religion that "markets can do no wrong." What we are witnessing is the failure of nearly 30 years of so-called conservative debt-ridden and deregulation-ridden economic policies.

It must be understood that the most recent subprime problem really began in 2000, when the credit-rating agency of Standard & Poors issued a pronouncement saying that "piggyback" mortgage financing of houses, when a second mortgage is taken to pay the down-payment on a first mortgage, was no more likely to lead to default than more standard mortgages. This encouraged mortgage lending institutions to relax their lending practices, going as far as lending on mortgages with no down-payment whatsoever, and even postponing capital and interest payments for some time. And, with the Fed and the SEC looking the other way, a fatal next step was taken. Banks and their subsidiaries decided to follow new toxic and risky rules of banking.

Indeed, while traditionally banks would borrow short and lend long, they went one giant step further: they began transforming long-term loans, such as mortgages, car loans, student loans, etc., into short-term loans. Indeed, they got into the alchemist business of bundling together relatively long-term loans into packages that they sliced into smaller credit instruments that had all the characteristics of short-term commercial paper, but were carrying higher yields.

They then sold these new "structured investment vehicles" (SIVs), for a fee, to all kinds of investors who were looking for higher yields than the meager rates that alternatives were paying. And, since banks were behind these new artificial financial assets, the credit agencies gave them an AAA rating, which allowed regulated pension funds and insurance companies to invest in them, believing they were both safe and liquid. They were in for a shock. When the housing bubble burst, the value of real assets behind the new financial instruments began declining, pulling the rug out from beneath the asset-backed paper market (ABCP), which became illiquid and toxic.

With hardly any trading on the new instruments, nobody knew the true value of the paper, and thus nobody was willing to buy it. This crisis of confidence has now permeated to other credit markets and is threatening the entire financial system as the contagion spreads.

As late as 2003-04, then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan was not the least worried by the subprime-financed-housing-mortgage bubble but was instead encouraging people to take out adjustable rate mortgages, even though interest rates were at a 30-year low and were bound to increase. Even in late 2006, newly appointed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke professed not to be preoccupied by the housing bubble, saying that high prices were only a reflection of a strong economy. Mind you, this was more than one year after the housing market peaked in the spring of 2005. History will record that the Fed and the SEC did nothing to prevent the debt pyramid from reaching the dangerous levels it attained and which is now crushing the economy.

On a longer span of time, when one looks at a graph provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) which shows the relative importance of total outstanding debt (corporate, financial, government, plus personal) in relation to the economy, one is struck by the fact that this ratio stayed around 1.2 times GDP for decades. Then, something big happened in the early 1980s, and the ratio started to rise, with only a slight pause in the mid-1990s, to reach the rarefied level of 3.1 times GDP presently, nearly 200 percent more than it used to be.

The adoption of massive tax cuts coupled with government deficit spending policies, and deregulation policies, by the Reagan and subsequent administrations, all culminating in a grotesque way under the current administration, contributed massively to this unprecedented debt bubble. It took many years to build up the debt pyramid, and it will take many years to unwind it and to reduce this cumulative mountain of debt to a more manageable size.

That is the big picture behind this crisis. It is much bigger than the S&L crisis of the 1980s, which looks puny in comparison with the current one. That is why I think this crisis will linger on for at least a few more years, possibly until 2010-11.

Obama Security

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported late Thursday that security details at Barack Obama's rally in Dallas on Wednesday "stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.

"The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security," reported the paper's Jack Douglas, Jr. More than 10 days remain until the Texas primary and a key vote for president.

"Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department's homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order -- apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service -- was meant to speed up the long lines outside and fill the arena's vacant seats before Obama came on.

'"Sure,' said Lawrence, when asked if he was concerned by the great number of people who had gotten into the building without being checked. But, he added, the turnout of more than 17,000 people seemed to be a 'friendly crowd.'"

The Secret Service did not return a call from the Star-Telegram seeking comment.

This is troubling on so many levels.

It doesn't matter if it were Obama or Hillary as there have been actual substantiated threats out there.

"Seemed to be a friendly crowd"?

What the fuck does that mean?

21st Century Voting Process

The 50 states in the USA are divided into 3100+ counties.

Ohio, for instance, is divided into 88 counties: Iowa is divided into 99 counties, and so on. In approximately 1% of these counties, there are paper ballots which are hand counted properly -- the way all of our counties should be counting our ballots; this 1% "hall of fame" consists of about half of the counties in New Hampshire, and a very few VERY small counties scattered throughout the USA.



In 99% of the counties, if there are paper ballots or some kind of a paper trail, then the Democratic and Republican controlled Boards of Elections make sure that the ballots are snatched from the neighborhood precinct as the polls close. This is to make sure that the neighborhood citizens do NOT have a chance to count -- or at least spot check -- their own votes.

Such counting or spot-checking by the citizens would make centralized computer vote-rigging impossible -- and this is why the corrupt Ruling Elite behind the national Democratic and Republican parties oppose any such citizen participation at the neighborhood precinct level.

As American Free Press investigative reporter Christopher Bollyn has repeatedly emphasized in his articles and speeches (paraphrase), "Centralized counting is the common feature of all governments trying to rig elections." In places where there are no paper ballots -- meaning that county is using touch screens where a bleep of energy for each "vote" supposedly goes somewhere to be "counted" -- then there is nothing for the citizens at the neighborhood polling places -- even potentially -- to count, check, or observe; as investigative reporter Lynn Landes of ecotalk.org has insisted, we must have machine-free, computer-free elections, with all computers and mechanical devices rigorously outlawed and excluded from the election process.




In these 99% of USA counties citizens are forced to use either computer or machine methods of casting a ballot. The Democratic and Republican parties at the county level delegate the "counting" to one of a few mega-companies which count about 96% of the US vote IN SECRET. In 2007, the four companies which were delegated the power to count 96% of the votes in the USA were Election Systems & Software (aka ES & S), Diebold, Hart, and Sequoia.

The local county election boards use armed guards to make sure the citizens, candidates, and reporters cannot see what these private companies are doing to the ballots in the "counting room" on election night. Since 1973, the powers behind the RNC and the DNC have arm-twisted, persuaded, and incentivized the local operatives in 3100+ counties in the USA to unconstitutionally delegate the vote counting to these four mysterious mega-companies. By 1988, the Computer Votefraud Syndicate had consolidated their control over 49 states, and half of New Hampshire.



The private companies controlling the ballots then give a direct feed to a team of manipulators which represent a pool of the AP wire service and the 5 Big TV Networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, & FOX); see Christopher Bollyn's article linked on our home page, "How a Private Company Counts our Votes on Election Night";

The Ruling Elite behind the 5 Big TV networks, which Ruling Elite is also behind the Federal Reserve Board (which issues all US money in secret, i.e., without having been subject to an audit since 1913 when Congress dubiously delegated to this private company the power to issue US money), the private companies "counting" the vote, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), designate agents of this Ruling Elite in New York City (or some other pre-determined central location) to look at the raw feed which tells them how the voters actually voted, then, if necessary, change the vote count if desired, that is, if the voters didn't vote the way the Ruling Elite wanted, and, as the next step the Ruling Elite agents at the centralized computer votefraud location sends the approved and/or altered count back to the agents of their private companies at each county Board of Elections.



The nameless, faceless agents of the private companies in each county throw the approved and/or altered election "results" onto a monitor that the public, the Board of Election officials, and the candidates are allowed to see; as a rule, the malfeasance of the local Election Officials is NOT that they are fixing the vote themselves, but that they have improperly delegated their power and RESPONSIBILITY to ensure an accurate and honest vote count to a few major mega-corporations whose agents (both the agents on site in each local county, and the top agents at the centralized computer votefraud location which is receiving the feed from on-site agents in each county) have unchecked power to alter the vote count on election night; then, finally,
the employees of the disgraceful Big Media, both local and national, enthusiastically announce this "election result" as if it were verified and real.

The people, for instance, on Presidential Election Night 2004 were fooled, again because they falsely believed that the "Democrats were watching the Republicans and the Republicans were watching the Democrats."

We The People, were used. We served as mere window dressing. Giving undeserved credibility and cover to the easily computer-rigged "official count" announced by the 5 Big TV Networks.

g) If one or more of the candidates wants a recount, here is what they face: if there are no paper ballots, then there is nothing to count or recount. Real life historical examples of this type of absurd situation are reported in chapter 2 and a related appendix II in Bev Harris's book, Black Box Voting, at www.blackboxvoting.com

If there are paper ballots, or a paper record as some machines have, then you can't get at these paper ballots until generally about 3 weeks after the election day, by which time there has been plenty of time and opportunity for the real ballots to be switched and replaced with phony ballots that will make the altered computer-count look real.




If you don't think this is a real possibility, read Christopher Bollyn's eye-witness report on election night 2004 in Cook County, Illinois <"Available Here>

Bang Bang Shoot-Em-Up

What is going on with the United States today?

What is going on with us as a people?

In America, we live by the bullet and we damned sure are dying by the bullet.

It's a sad testament to the degeneracy of American culture and our society’s value for human life when school shootings and rampages are "all the rage" when you are pissed off about something.

In 1999, the Columbine shootings were unique and surprising. Here we are, almost ten years later, and I don't even remember the NAMES of the two gunmen in that incident. They're old news now. The new shooters are upping the ante now. The Columbine shootings should not have been a CATALYST for the violence in our schools today, but they were.

At this rate, we'll either have to OUTLAW all guns to stop the problem or we will have to arm every citizen. Fuck it. Let everybody just kill everyone that disagree with them or piss them off

Why are we worried about "terrorists" from the Middle East, when we are terrorizing ourselves? The real "war on terror" seems to be within our very own borders.

I guess if you tell the American public that those "A-rabs" are the problem, they'll be gullible enough to believe you and let the real predators slide.

Here’s a list of just SOME of the most recent “rampages.” Unfortunately, it barely scratches the surface of the real picture of our shoot-em-up society.

• Feb. 14, 2008: Stephen Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old former student opens fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, killing five people. He then commits suicide.
• Feb. 8, 2008: Latina Williams, 23, opens fire during an emergency medical technology class at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge, killing Karsheika Graves and Taneshia Butler. She then kills herself.
• Dec. 13, 2007: Two Ph.D. students from India are found shot to death in a home invasion at an apartment on the campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
• Oct. 1, 2007: University of Memphis football player Taylor Bradford, 21, who had been rumored to have won more than $3,000 at a casino, is fatally shot on campus in a botched robbery. Four men are later charged, including one student.
• Sept. 21, 2007: Two students are wounded at a late-night shooting at a campus dining hall at Delaware State University in Dover. Shalita K. Middleton, 17, dies Oct. 23 from her injuries. A student is charged in the shooting.
• April 16, 2007: Cho Seung-Hui, 23, fatally shoots 32 people in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, then kills himself in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
• April 2, 2007: A 26-year-old researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle is shot to death in her office by her ex-boyfriend. Jonathan Rowan, 41, then kills himself.
• Sept. 2, 2006: Douglas W. Pennington, 49, kills himself and his two sons, Logan P. Pennington, 26, and Benjamin M. Pennington, 24, during a visit to the campus of Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va.
• May 9, 2003: A 62-year-old man with two handguns and a bulletproof vest fires hundreds of rounds during a seven-hour shooting spree and standoff at a Case Western Reserve University building in Cleveland. One student is killed and two others are wounded. Biswanath Halder, who authorities say was upset because he believed a student hacked into his Web site, is eventually sentenced to life in prison.
• Oct. 28, 2002: Failing student and Gulf War veteran Robert Flores, 40, walks into an instructor's office at the University of Arizona Nursing College in Tucson and fatally shoots her. A few minutes later, armed with five guns, he enters one of his nursing classrooms and kills two more of his instructors before fatally shooting himself.
• Jan. 16, 2002: Graduate student Peter Odighizuwa, 42, recently dismissed from Virginia's Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, returns to campus and kills the dean, a professor and a student before being tackled by students. Odighizuwa is serving six life sentences after pleading guilty.
• May 17, 2001: Donald Cowan, 55, fatally shoots assistant music professor James Holloway at a dorm at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland, Wash., then turns the gun on himself. He leaves a 16-page suicide note expressing anger at a colleague of Holloway's whom he dated briefly as a teenager.
• Aug. 28, 2000: James Easton Kelly, 36, a University of Arkansas graduate student recently dropped from a doctoral program after a decade of study and John Locke, 67, the English professor overseeing his coursework, are shot to death in an apparent murder-suicide by Kelly.
• June 28, 2000: Medical resident Dr. Jian Chen kills his supervisor and then himself in his supervisor's office at the University of Washington in Seattle. Faculty say Chen, 42, was upset he'd be forced to return to China because of his academic shortcomings.

The Iraq War - From Those Fighting In It

Yet ANOTHER Republicunt Pedophile

Robert A. McKee, a long-serving Republican delegate from Western Maryland, announced his resignation yesterday after authorities, who say they are conducting a child pornography investigation, seized two computers, videotapes and printed materials from his Hagerstown home.

First elected to the House of Delegates in 1994, McKee was chairman of the Western Maryland delegation and sponsored legislation to protect minors from sexual predators. McKee, 58, also resigned yesterday from his post as executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Washington County, a child mentorship program where he has worked for 29 years.

"For me, this is deeply embarrassing," McKee said in a statement. "It reflects poorly on my service to the community."

Actually, I think it is a great reflection of the republicunt party

The FBI's cyber-crimes unit and the county sheriff's office are reviewing the materials seized from McKee's home Jan. 31, federal and local authorities said.

"No charges have been filed as of this time," Sheriff Douglas W. Mullendore said.

Mullendore declined to elaborate on what he called a child pornography investigation and said authorities have not searched the delegate's office in Annapolis.

McKee's resignation will take effect at 8 p.m. Monday. He said in his statement that he will cooperate with authorities.

"In the meantime, I have entered treatment," McKee said, without providing specifics. "My primary focus is to get well and stay well. I know this can only happen with the support and prayers of my family and friends and the help of professionals."

The delegate's resignation came after the Hagerstown Herald-Mail reported yesterday that local authorities had obtained a warrant to search his home. McKee was at the State House on Thursday morning but skipped a committee hearing that afternoon and was absent from a floor session yesterday.

McKee, who is considered a political moderate, has sponsored bills this year dealing with minors, including the Child Protection From Predators Act and a proposal to collect DNA samples from sexual predators. McKee has sponsored several other sexual offender and child abduction bills in previous years.

For decades, McKee has been involved in youth athletics and children's groups, according to his General Assembly biography. He has served in officer positions in two Little League groups and as secretary of a parent and child center advisory committee.

During the 1970s, McKee was a reservist in the U.S. Navy. He is a former chaplain for the Hagerstown Jaycees and is a trustee and community services chairman at First Christian Church.

"In the long run, I hope and pray that my work in the local community for the last three decades will speak louder than the challenges I now face," McKee said.

House Republicans convened an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss the situation. Minority Leader Anthony J. O'Donnell (Calvert) said he had not spoken with McKee since news broke about the investigation and said he would not speculate on the investigation.

"It's troubling," O'Donnell said. "But look, in this country, we afford our citizens the right to hear details."

House GOP leaders issued a statement saying the Washington County Republican Central Committee will meet soon to select a replacement.

McKee served on the Ways and Means Committee and was well respected by his colleagues, said Del. Sheila E. Hixson (D-Montgomery), the committee's chairwoman.

"He's capable, works well, represents his party and constituents well and is very well liked by the committee leaders in both parties," Hixson said.

Willie Nelson - A Fed Up American

American icon Willie Nelson says he supports efforts to impeach bush and "throw the bastards out," adding that the administration will do anything to stay in power, including staging an event to cancel the election.

In his second appearance this month, Nelson told The Alex Jones Show today that he supported Dennis Kucinich's attempt to impeach bush, adding, "If you break the law you have to pay for it one way or
another and if these guys haven't broke the law nobody has."

"The deck's been stacked and we need to figure out a way to get a new fresh deck in there in the deal and I don't know how else to do it except throw the bastards out," said Nelson.

But the award winning star of stage and screen was quick to clarify that he didn't see the Democrats as any kind of viable alternative.

"We went through a couple of elections now and we didn't do anything, we thought we did but come to find out that the voting machines are crooked, everything's stacked against us, the politicians that we vote for won't stay and fight and they won't count the votes."

Nelson agreed that an elite cherry picked presidents and leaders to do their bidding against the interests of the people.

"They find them and they groom them and they put them in office and tell them exactly what to do and you give the speeches will small words and big letters and let them go," said Nelson.

"I really believe that George Bush believes he's right, he believes what he's saying and that makes it even more pathetic because to have someone that wrong think they're right and have him be the leader of our country - that's a scary thought," he added.

The star also re-iterated a warning made during his last appearance on the show, that the Bush administration could potentially stage an event to postpone or cancel the presidential election.

"It could be anything and anything will work because they have everyone scared to death, I just think there are people out there who will do anything to stay in power, anything to keep what they have, they've already proven they'll do anything to keep it," he said.

Reacting to the big response his last appearance on The Alex Jones Show generated, Nelson said "I think it would take courage not to say something, I usually say what I think and it's harder for me to shut up."

"I don't have the ability to remain quiet when all this stuff is going on all around us," he added.

Nelson clarified his previous comments about Building 7 after the news media attempted to skew his words and claim he said that no planes hit the WTC on 9/11. Nelson made it clear he was talking about WTC 7, which imploded symmetrically within seven seconds on the late
afternoon of 9/11 despite the fact that it was only hit by minimal debris from the falling towers and not a commercial airliner.

"I was talking about the third building that nothing hit and yet it fell as if it was hit the same way, all three buildings fell the same way, but the third building wasn't hit by anything," said the country music star.

Nelson's contention that the twin towers were deliberately imploded received media attention after his first appearance on the radio show two weeks ago.

The Cross Dressing "Former" Judge

Why is it that those that cry about homosexuals the most, like the stupid ass neo con republicunts do, turn out to be the biggest fags out there?

I use the term "fag" to describe the hypocrites in the republicunt party, such as Larry Craig, Ken Mehlman and now, bush appointed federal Judge Robert Somma.

That I find this story so hilarious probably says more about me than the cross-dressing queer federal judge in question who now finds himself the latest of republicunt quitters.

Somma worked in private practice for years in Boston before he was appointed to the bench by bush in December 2004. Yes, the fact that bush appointed him as a federal bankruptcy judge does crack me up, but let's start at the beginning.

Somma's Mercedes-Benz E320 sedan hit a pick-up truck from behind about 11:29 p.m. on Feb. 6, the police report said. No one was hurt.

Somma, who lives in Newbury, Mass., fumbled in his purse for his driver's license before handing it to the officer who later arrested him, the police report shows.

"He had a difficult time locating his license in his purse. He passed over it multiple times before removing it," officer Paul J. Thompson wrote in his report.

The officer offered no other details with regard to the judge's attire or accessories. Nor would representatives of the Manchester Police Department or the city solicitor's office, which worked out the negotiated plea agreement with Somma's lawyer.

But lots of other people did offer those details, of which Audrey Hepburn would have been proud.

When authorities removed him from the vehicle, they said he wore a black, woman's cocktail dress, fishnet stockings and high heels.

But in his mug shot, the judge appears to be wearing blue eye shadow. Way to wreck a really chic look, Robert.

And where, you might ask, was the judge going that night dressed that way?

Somma told police he had been at the Breezeway Pub where he had one gin and tonic about two hours earlier, the police report reveals. He later said he drank two gin and tonics.

The Breezeway Pub, at 14 Pearl St., bills itself as "New Hampshire's favorite gay and alternative bar," according to its web site.

The arresting officer reported Somma smelled of alcohol, slurred his speech and fell backwards against the door frame while getting out of his car. Must have been those damn high heels.

The Boston-based judge chose the bar in question, according to local rumor, because his wife, Wendy, was out of town and no one knew him in New Hampshire.

"I suspect that he will not be interested in talking to anyone from the newspaper, and I'm his wife," said a woman who answered the telephone at the judge's home yesterday. She referred media calls to Gary H. Wente, chief administrative officer for the First Circuit Courts.

Somma showed his sense of style to the end. He phoned in his resignation from a vacation spot in the Caribbean.

If I were him, I think I'd just stay there.

How Low Can She Go?

Hillary Clinton, who has built her case for the presidency on her superior "ready on Day One" management skills, burned through almost $130 million of campaign money, had to kick in $5 million from her own murky family funds, and is now pressing her chief financial backers to find creative ways to raise more money.

Some of those financial schemes appear to skirt the law -- as some backers consider putting money into "independent" entities that can spend unlimited sums but aren't supposed to coordinate with the campaign -- while other ideas are more traditional, like appealing to wealthy donors involved with the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby.

Sen. Clinton's new scramble for money -- as well as her campaign's declaration that it is prepared to override the will of the elected Democratic delegates if necessary to secure the nomination -- raise the question of just how far Bill and Hillary Clinton are willing to go to achieve their presidential restoration.

Some Democrats, who have e-mailed me, praise the ruthlessness of the Clinton political machine, arguing that only a readiness to throw sharp elbows can defeat the Republicans this fall. These Democrats hate what they call Barack Obama's "Kumbayah" message of national reconciliation, a reference to the campfire song based on an old African spiritual.

However, other Democrats fear that the Clintons are putting their personal ambitions ahead of what's good for the Party and the country, that they are ready to dirty up Sen. Obama with attack ads and dismiss his millions of supporters as -- what one key Clinton backer called -- "a cult of personality."

If the Clintons overturn the majority will, the Democratic convention in Denver could bring to mind the infamous Chicago convention in 1968 when the Democratic establishment imposed its favored candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, on a rebellious rank-and-file, contributing to the election of Republican Richard Nixon.

Though a repeat of the 1968 violence is unlikely, a Clinton-driven insistence that the will of Democratic voters be cast aside could alienate millions of young people and independents who have rallied to Sen. Obama's message of political change.

In a conference call to reporters last week, Sen. Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, made clear that the campaign was prepared to rely on her superior support among the 796 "superdelegates" -- party insiders and government officials -- to overcome Obama's lead among delegates chosen through primaries and caucuses.

"I want to be clear about the fact that neither campaign is in a position to win this nomination without the support of the votes of the superdelegates," Wolfson said, adding that the Clinton campaign would make no distinction between the caucus/primary delegates and the "superdelegates."

"We are interested in acquiring delegates, period," Wolfson said.

Senior strategist Mark Penn also indicated that the Clinton campaign would press the issue of seating pro-Clinton delegates from Florida and Michigan, where she won unauthorized primaries conducted after the national party barred the states from holding contests before Feb. 5 and after other major candidates agreed not to compete.

President's Day

Let this President's Day serve as a reminder that there is a criminal holding the office of the Presidency who must be held accountable and impeached as required by the Constitution of the United States.

With the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion approaching, impeachment activists are in high gear across the country. The war is an ongoing crime against the people of Iraq and the people of this country, but the perpetrators and torturers in chief go unpunished. The violations of civil rights and civil liberties in the United States by the administration are unbounded.

Let us remember the words from Keith Olbermann, MSNBC show host. Let these words burn into your soul.



It is now increasingly common to hear people including some in the mass media and in Congress say as Mr. Olbermann does on this video, "As recently ago as 2006, we spoke words like these with trepidation. The idea that even the most cynical and untrustworthy of politicians in our history, George W. Bush, would use the literal form of terrorism against his own people was dangerous territory. It seemed to tempt fate, to heighten fear.

"We will not fear any longer. We will not fear the international terrorists, and we will thwart them. We will not fear the recognition of the manipulation of our yearning for safety, and we will call it what it is: terrorism. We will not fear identifying the vulgar hypocrites in our government, and we will name them. And we will not fear George W. Bush."

Proud To Be An American

"The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that stupid people are so sure about things, and intelligent folks are so full of doubts."



Something is amiss in the great nation called America. Ominous sirens warning this reality can be heard emanating loudly through invisible winds of change circulating our towns and cities. The American people are being strangulated; unbeknownst to the masses they are being transformed and conditioned, becoming the entity the elite have long sought, the culmination of decades of social engineering designed to make of hundreds of millions the slaves of times past and the automatons of the future.

Yet in this present day we find ourselves in, struggling to comprehend a world gone mad, unable to discern neither the direction we are headed nor the inevitable course time is guiding us on. It is because of what has been done to us, and is presently being done to our children, that we fail to comprehend the severity of the road that lies ahead. Quite successful have the elite become in shifting the balance of power from the masses to themselves. How, one might wonder, has this been accomplished, especially when we are the many and they the few?

It is through the dumbing down of America, the methodical destruction and purposeful elimination of the means by which a society educates and enlightens itself. The evisceration of a system that extols accountability and dialogue, opens up the gates of opportunity with the keys of ability, questions authority and seeks debate, creates a wealth of knowledge and illuminates talent and that births an informed citizenry and creates free thinking, analytical minds has been slowly implemented for the last several decades. The dumbing down of America continues into the present, unrelenting and unhindered, squashing the masses for the benefit of the elite.

A giant threat to the system is being disposed of, systematically and without remorse, making of America and its citizens yet one more cog in the engine called capitalistic exploitation of humanity.

Pelosi Doing What's Right

Nancy Pelosi, who is not only one of the highest-ranking members of the Democratic Party but the chair of its approaching national convention, has weighed in on two of the most controversial issues looming over the presidential nomination.

Superdelegates, Pelosi said, should not overrule the will of the voters, and the disputed delegations from Michigan and Florida “can’t make the difference because then we would have no rules.”

From The SF Chronicle:

“I do think that they have a respect—it’s not just following the returns, it’s also having a respect for what has been said by the people,” Pelosi said. “It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided.”

That message will be music to the ears of Barack Obama, who’s building a lead in pledged delegates and is urging the super delegates to follow the voters. He now leads 1,133 to 996 in pledged delegates, while Hillary Clinton has a 242-163 edge among super delegates, according to the latest tally by RealClearPolitics. Obama holds the overall edge, 1296-1238.

Pelosi had one more stunner in the interview: She said the Florida and Michigan delegates should not be seated if those delegates would decide the nomination.

“Well, I don’t think that any states that operated outside the rules of the party can be dispositive of who the nominee is. That is to say they can’t make the difference because then we would have no rules,” she said.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

I found this story and immediately thought of my most avid listener and rabid fan, Sue Cauler.

David Crosby is telling a George Bush joke.

"Don't you think it'd be a good idea," he says, chuckling, "if we had a law that said you can't have control of nuclear weapons unless you can pronounce the word nuclear? I'm just asking."

Neil Young stares intensely at his jovial bandmate and—strangely for a guy who wrote a song called "Let's Impeach the President"—reprimands him.

"That comment is a polarizing comment," Young says harshly. "It doesn't have to do with the grass roots of the country in the Midwest. It takes people and separates them."

Despite assorted health scares and surgeries that come with passing 60 and decades of rocker excess, things are as they always were with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

In a half-hour conversation, Graham Nash mostly sits quietly and listens. Stephen Stills, just a few weeks after having prostate cancer, laughs loudly and interjects with jokes. As in their music, Crosby and Young guide the discussion, alternating perspectives and sometimes clashing.

The four gathered at the recent Sundance Film Festival to promote a new movie, "CSNY Deja Vu," that tracks their 2006 tour playing songs from Young's "Living With War" album.

Young directed the documentary under the pseudonym Bernard Shakey. And as he does in jousting with Crosby, he seems to thrive on the rancor that resulted from the tour.

Fans entered arenas around the country apparently expecting "Our House" and "Teach Your Children." Instead, they got protest songs: "Lookin' For a Leader," "Living With War," and the aforementioned tune with a chorus that goes, "Let's impeach the president for lying ... abusing all the power that we gave him."

Fans are shown storming out mid-song, ripping up their tickets and threatening to punch Young's face in. This was post-Dixie Chicks, but before public opinion widely turned against the Iraq war. One of Young's stage props was a human-sized microphone that he leaned out over front rows.

"This movie is about when people started talking again, when people started taking the country back, when people started saying well, it is patriotic to have an opinion," Young said. "That's what the time of that movie is. ... We were riding a wave along with everyone else. It was bigger than anybody."

Young put together the "Living with War" album rapidly, and the result was a raw, ragged sound full of passion and anger. He felt he had to make it because no mainstream artists had spoken out against the war. It's an assertion that his bandmates were quick to correct.

"Imagine if one of these young pop stars had suddenly had an epiphany and started doing this," Young said. "That would've really been good. But that didn't happen."

Nash cut in, saying, "What about that great video ('Mosh') from Eminem?"




Young ignored his bandmate. He continued, "I was hoping something like that would happen. Because it wouldn't just be me, somebody from the '60s."

Crosby cut in, saying, "It does happen. It just doesn't happen enough. That girl Pink. That little pop girl Pink. That song 'Dear Mr. President,' that's a good song."



Young ignored him, too.

"Nobody except the pop mainstream has guaranteed airplay," Young said. "There are people that could've turned it around and forgotten about 'Shake Your Booty' for a few minutes. But nobody was moved to, and the people that were moved to were people that nobody would play."

After recording, Young got Crosby and Nash into a car and played his new album for them. They agreed instantly to tour with him. Stills found out later, and said he went along more reluctantly .

"I would've told them we'd get booed out of the building," Stills said. "We happened to catch the country in the first stages of the argument. And they'd have it on the way out of the building. The kids arguing with the parents."

Nash nodded, adding, "I would like to have taped maybe 1,000 car rides home from our concert."

"That's why we need the reverse radio," Young offered. "The radio that when it's off, it's recording. I got that idea from the Bush administration."

"A ninja team out in the parking lot sticking those in," Crosby said.

Young: "No, they'd just install them at GM."

Crosby and Nash, touring together, continue to open their sets with the Nash's 1971 anti-war song "Military Madness." But Young has moved on. He released a new CD last fall, "Chrome Dreams II," focused on love and relationships and with nary a mention of Iraq.

"The way I like to do it is if you're going to sing about war, sing the whole album about war. Just stay on that and drive it into peoples' heads. And that's what we did. But you can't do that over and over again or it's like television. It just completely bores you and numbs you."

Which brings us back to the band leader's takedown of Crosby's crack about Bush.

"A lot of people have problems pronouncing words and spelling things correctly. It doesn't mean that they're not intelligent," Young tells Crosby. "You've got to give the guy credit. Do I agree with him? No. Do I think he's stupid? No. Do I think he's a leader? Yes. He led. He took this country where he wanted to take it. And he steadfastly stuck with it all the way."

Good Day In The House

What a day on the floor of the House today.

It was a day that the Democrats found their balls and pissed off the Republicunts SO BAD that they got up and all left.

It starts with an email from Rep. Wexler’s office:

Today, in hearings on Capitol Hill, I confronted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her role in the lies, exaggerations, and misdirection that led us into the Iraq war.

During my questioning, Secretary Rice falsely stated that she never saw intelligence casting doubt on the Bush Administration claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. This unbelievable statement is flatly contradicted by numerous government reports and CIA testimonials.

Secretary Rice’s responses demonstrate once and for all that we need aggressive oversight over this out of control Administration. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has ignored the constitutional right of Congress to provide such oversight.

It is time Congress took aggressive action to assert our rights on behalf of the American people.

The House of Representatives must immediately hold former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in contempt of Congress for their failure to respond to congressional subpoenas.

I have been aggressively lobbying Members of Congress to support a vote on contempt, and I am thrilled to report that Speaker Pelosi told me directly that she agrees it is well past time to vote on contempt. I am anticipating that the House will shortly vote on resolutions of both civil and criminal contempt for both Miers and Bolten.

No one should be immune from accountability and the rule of law.

I think it’s wonderful that Wexler is showing more testicular fortitude than almost all of his House colleagues. The one thing that bothers me in this exchange was Rice’s continued defense that “other countries believed it” and that the intelligence on Iraq was the consensus of various intelligence agencies when we know that isn’t the truth and was cherry picked and weighted from questionable sources like Ahmad Chalabi and “Curveball”.

I don’t know if there’s an enterprising Fed Up American out there that would like to put together for Wexler’s benefit a fact sheet that can cite sources that show Rice’s continued lying on this.



Today, Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers testified before the Committee on Rules in support of statutory contempt and civil litigating authority resolutions against former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten. Text of Resolution as Introduced (pdf)

Recommending that the House cite someone for contempt of Congress is a step that the Committee, and I as Chairman, take with great reluctance. Unfortunately, it is a step that is clearly necessary to preserve the role and constitutional prerogatives of Congress as an institution, in addition to getting to the bottom of the U.S. Attorney controversy.

If the executive branch can disregard Congressional subpoenas in this way, we no longer have a system of checks and balances. That is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it is our bipartisan responsibility to protect it. As our former colleague, Republican Mickey Edwards, has explained, taking action is crucial in order to defend Congress “as a separate, independent, and completely equal branch of government.”

Because the White House has refused to reconsider its confrontational position, I believe we have no choice but to bring this contempt resolution to the floor promptly and to ask that this Committee adopt a rule to facilitate doing so.

The wheels of justice are grinding, ever so slowly, but grinding nonetheless.

Minority leader, John (crybaby) Boehner and the House Republicans walked out of Congress today because the Democratic Party wanted to enforce the rule of law and go after Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton, while the Republicans want to force the FISA bill down their throats.



They threw their hissy fit (I’m surprised Boehner didn’t break out into tears again) and as usual tried to change the subject from the lawbreaking Bush administration to the jingoistic—save America from terrorists-rhetoric that they are famous for. This is their play. Make the House and Senate into a do nothing Congress—grand stand on every issue so they can try to dupe the media…

Why Is Marijuana Illegal?

A Time For Action

Sen. Jim Webb thinks legal action against the bush administration may be needed if the president pursues a long-term military presence in Iraq without Congress' approval.

In recent days the administration has seemingly backed away from attempting to secure extended military-to-military relationship with the Iraqi government to replace a current U.N. Mandate.

Webb, Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Sen. Hillary Clinton and others have pushed for legislation that would restrict federal money for any such agreement unless it came in the form of a congressional treaty. And while a victory on that front seems within grasp, the possibility still exists, Webb warned, for the administration to ultimately circumvent congressional input.

"They are characterizing this as within the authority of the Executive Branch. They will wait to August when everyone is at the conventions, and leave it on our doorstep," said the Virginia Democrat. "If the Senate hasn't acted by then, they are going to announce an agreement between the Executive Branch and Iraq."

The issue of a long-term military presence in Iraq reemerged on the political landscape today after Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that he may suspend the reduction of U.S. troops from the country depending on security considerations.

"A brief period of consolidation and evaluation probably does make sense," Gates told reporters during a short stop at this U.S. base in southern Baghdad.

Earlier proclamations from Gates suggested that the U.S. would not pursue a policy of extended military presence and that conditions in Iraq would improve enough during the second half of 2008 to permit troop withdrawals.

The issue of permanency has been a focal point of the Democratic presidential campaign. On the campaign trail, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, asked her challenger, Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL, to co-sponsor her bill that would prevent the president from entering into such a pact without approval from Congress. On Monday, the two candidates weighed in on the topic with each offering critical statements of Gates' proclamation.

"I strongly disagree with the Administration's plans to 'pause' the long overdue removal of our combat brigades from Iraq," said Obama. "We cannot wage war without end in Iraq while ignoring mounting costs to our troops and their families, our security and our economy... Instead of false promises and a faulty strategy, the American people need a rapid and responsible removal of our combat brigades that relieves the burden on our military."

Added Clinton: "This means that we will have as many troops in Iraq in the summer of 2008 as we had at the beginning of 2007. I continue to call on the President to end the war he started, to take responsibly for bringing our young men and women home... The whole idea behind this so-called surge was to give the Iraqi government the space and time to make the tough decisions that only they can make for themselves and the future of their country."

Democrat Traitors

With the Senate ONCE AGAIN failing to stand up for the rule of law today, the ball goes back to the House's court if the SSCI bill passes.

What we are facing is a crisis of leadership and character from the people we elect to be leaders.

The Republican party is more interested in protecting the Bush Presidency from scrutiny and, thus, it's own party from factually sustained criticism than standing up for the rule of law.

The Democratic party does not have enough members with stiff enough spines to withstand the GOP screechfest that would follow any factual assault on the Bush/Cheney illegal overreaches on legal and ethical grounds.

And the numbers in both the House and Senate are so close that the votes are not there without a break in those ranks among the GOP and Blue Dogs somewhere to put the rule of law first.

In short, we are stuck in some sort of heinous purgatory wherein the interests and needs of the bush administration come ahead of the pleas of Americans to stand upright against a unilateral executive power grab.

What we need are more people in Congress who put the rule of law ahead of their own political careers and their party interests. Elected leaders who are willing to stand up for what is right instead of what appears to be politically expedient in the moment.

I am asking Americans everywhere to call their member of the House. You can find contact information for the House at http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml.

Talking points are:

1. Vote NO on any spying bill with telecom immunity. Lawsuits must be allowed to proceed or we'll never know the truth about what laws were broken and how many Americans rights were violated.

2. Vote NO on any spying that allows the government to spy on Americans without getting a warrant. America doesn't need a bill that needlessly expands the President's ability to spy on innocent Americans without a warrant.

3. Don't let the Senate or bush steamroll the House of Representatives. Any bill to regulate spying on Americans must respect the Constitution and must not let phone companies off the hook for warrantless spying.