Aronazi

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Vichy America

By David Glenn Cox

Were it not all so real it would make a great book; Dan Brown could add another hundred million dollars to his collection. Perhaps he could call it "The Bhagwan Code," while I prefer to think of it as "Vichy America." Our synthetic, middle class, pseudo nazis, protesting for their gun rights or tax rights, a smiling, flag-waving, picture-mugging, minivan-driving collection of the dumbest individuals ever to stand up on two legs.

It's like a sort of reverse evolution where mankind evolves back into a creature that moves on three legs while leaving one hand free to carry the Bible or a cell phone. They are too dumb to even understand the herd mentality, too dumb to know the difference between predator and prey. The gun nuts rally to show off their machismo to each other thinking that they might somehow intimidate the government with their show of force like a baby shaking its rattle at a rattlesnake.

Do the Taliban march through Kandahar to show how tough they are? Do the Greeks wave tea bags and shout, "Don't tread on me"? The herd shouts, "Restore the Constitution!" but they don't have a clue as to what that really means, unaware that the Constitution that they imagine is miles from what they want. The herds are out protesting in favor of the predators and against themselves.

The Walton family fortune is worth some $90 billion and was made primarily on imported goods and exploitive labor practices. The Bush tax cuts saves the Walton family millions of dollars a year in taxes and saves the average worker $240 per year. The right wing government that they want to protect them has eliminated trade tariffs and a tariff is a tax on a foreign good that you don't pay. Are they protesting for an end to the Bush tax cuts yet?

If there is a tariff on bananas you don't pay it unless you buy bananas, and even if you do the cost per banana is miniscule. It is a tax on companies which import bananas into the United States and most of those companies are owned by Americans. Right now the US Congress is mulling over the idea of a value-added tax or a national sales tax. Leaving aside that sales taxes are the most regressive and unfair taxes on the working poor. Look at it this way: they have taken the taxes off the multinational corporations' incomes in the name of free trade, and now, to make up the deficit, they want to put the tax on to you.

I used the example of bananas because I thought it might strike a chord with these knuckle-dragging baboons. Imagine you and I share a toll bridge on the border and I charge a nickel for each person crossing the bridge my way and you charge a nickel for each person crossing your way. Five thousand people cross each day going your way while ten million people cross each day going my way. You earn $250 per day and I earn $50,000 a day.

Free trade argues that if you eliminate that nickel tax more people will want to cross the bridge. That it will create jobs and industry on both sides of the bridge, except the people on my side of the bridge earn $20.00 an hour and the people on your side earn $5 per day. The benefit goes to the guy that owns the banana trees; the loss goes to the workers in the country earning $20.00 per hour. It's true that traffic on the bridge has increased, but since there are no longer any tolls collected, what does it matter?

To me that is a far greater threat to national sovereignty than any of the made up reasons of the gun nuts and teabaggers. Because now they want you to pay the taxes to make up for the lost bridge tolls and even to buy them a new bridge! We live in an America under a two party system, those with money and those without money, and for those without money it's no party.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/4/23/859990/-Vichy-America

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Yes, We Could... Get Out!

Why We Won't Leave Afghanistan or Iraq 
By Tom Engelhardt

Yes, we could.  No kidding.  We really could withdraw our massive armies, now close to 200,000 troops combined, from Afghanistan and Iraq (and that's not even counting our similarly large stealth army of private contractors, which helps keep the true size of our double occupations in the shadows).  We could undoubtedly withdraw them all reasonably quickly and reasonably painlessly.

Not that you would know it from listening to the debates in Washington or catching the mainstream news.  There, withdrawal, when discussed at all, seems like an undertaking beyond the waking imagination.  In Iraq alone, all those bases to dismantle and millions of pieces of equipment to send home in a draw-down operation worthy of years of intensive effort, the sort of thing that makes the desperate British evacuation from Dunkirk in World War II look like a Sunday stroll in the park.  And that's only the technical side of the matter.

Then there's the conviction that anything but a withdrawal that would make molasses in January look like the hare of Aesopian fable -- at least two years in Iraq, five to ten in Afghanistan -- would endanger the planet itself, or at least its most important country: us.  Without our eternally steadying hand, the Iraqis and Afghans, it's taken for granted, would be lost. Without the help of U.S. forces, for example, would the Maliki government ever have been able to announce the death of the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq?  Not likely, whereas the U.S. has knocked off its leadership twice, first in 2006, and again, evidently, last week.

Of course, before our troops entered Baghdad in 2003 and the American occupation of that country began, there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq.  But that's a distant past not worth bringing up.  And forget as well the fact that our invasions and wars have proven thunderously destructive, bringing chaos, misery, and death in their wake, and turning, for instance, the health care system of Iraq, once considered an advanced country in the Arab world, into a disaster zone(that -- it goes without saying -- only we Americans are now equipped to properly fix).  Similarly, while regularly knocking off Afghan civilians at checkpoints on their roads and in their homes, at their celebrations and at work, we ignore the fact that our invasion and occupation opened the way for the transformation of Afghanistan into the first all-drug-crop agricultural nation and so the planet's premier narco-nation.  It's not just that the country now has an almost total monopoly on growing opium poppies (hence heroin), but according to the latest U.N. report, it's now cornering the hashish market as well.  That's diversification for you.

It's a record to stand on and, evidently, to stay on, even to expand on.  We're like the famed guest who came to dinner, broke a leg, wouldn't leave, and promptly took over the lives of the entire household.  Only in our case, we arrived, broke someone else's leg, and then insisted we had to stay and break many more legs, lest the world become a far more terrible place.

It's known and accepted in Washington that, if we were to leave Afghanistan precipitously, the Taliban would take over, al-Qaeda would be back big time in no time, and then more of our giant buildings would obviously bite the dust.  And yet, the longer we've stayed and the more we've surged, the more resurgent the Taliban has become, the more territory this minority insurgency has spread into.  If we stay long enough, we may, in fact, create the majority insurgency we claim to fear.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175238/tomgram:_engelhardt,_the_urge_to_stay

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STAGE BEING SET FOR “DIRTY BOMB” FALSE FLAG

by Gordon Duff

"CHATTER" FLOWING IN FROM EVERYWHERE

"SUITCASE" NUKE SAID TO BE IN PLACE

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

Rumors of an upcoming terror attack to be blamed on Iran are moving around the world, "backchannel chatter."  The primary suspect is Israel who is said to have a number of small "suitcase" type nuclear weapons, some primarily "dirty bombs," possibly supplied secretly by a previous US administration.  These devices are in the "40 ton" range, highly radioactive, extremely small and can be engineered to leave the signature of a primitive device.  They were originally engineered for use against Soviet armor and troop concentrations in Europe if a massed attack on NATO were to occur.  Current conventional systems have made this type of weapon obsolete.

We have been told that federal authorities have interviewed, on video, a prominent individual with specific knowledge of the possession of this type of weapon.

This won't be in the news.  All that "every day folks" will see is a story here or one there that don't make sense.  Why would "ultra-Liberal" Senator Chuck Schumer, nightmare "anti-gun" nut, extreme lefty and staunch New York democrat turn on the president?  In fact, why are extreme liberals and conservatives all attacking President Obama and, less visibly, our military leaders, all at the same time?  Who is orchestrating this oddest turn of political events in recent history?  Why would the Pentagon ban Reverend Billy Graham's son from a prayer breakfast as an "Islamophobe?" 

Dad, the famous Reverend Billy Graham, primary spiritual advisor to every American president since Harry Truman held different views.

Rev. Billy Graham openly voiced a belief that Jews control the American media, calling it a "stranglehold" during a 1972 conversation with President Richard Nixon, according to a tape of the Oval Office meeting released Thursday by the National Archives.

 

"This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain," the nation's best-known preacher declared as he agreed with a stream of bigoted Nixon comments about Jews and their perceived influence in American life.

 

"You believe that?" Nixon says after the "stranglehold" comment.

 

"Yes, sir," Graham says.

 

"Oh, boy," replies Nixon. "So do I. I can't ever say that but I believe it."

 

"No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something," Graham replies.

 
Consider this report as a form of "innocualtion," meant to prevent an unseemly accident.
EVER WONDER WHY OVER 80% OF AMERICAN'S DON'T TRUST CONGRESS?

YouTube - Veterans Today -
 
FACE THE FACTS

Israel has never been in more trouble today, not from any imaginary Arab armies or a "holocaust" from Iran, a country with only minor defensive weaponry, a 4th rate military power, for those who really pay attention to these things.  Israel has gotten in trouble because of "chickens coming home to roost."  Americans and Europeans have been conditioned by the press, yes, Israel controls the press in the US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, to ignore ethnic cleansing and war crimes in Palestine.  Years of news and "infotainment" along with movies and TV series, always depicting Palestinians as crazed murders has done its job, covered mass murder in ways that Josef Goebbels could never do for Hitler.

Things started to go wrong for Israel when top military leaders became increasingly suspicious of 9/11.  None will openly admit to it, but as years have gone on, and Iraq and Afghanistan could no longer be called real security issues for the US, an unspoken movement toward lending a suspicious eye to Israeli involvement in 9/11 has festered.  Israel's hand in propagandizing our news has become too obvious for trained observers to miss, with the direction not "pro-Israel" but looking more like a country covering for crimes.

This is the potential list:

• Possible complicity in some part of 9/11 with or without help from groups in the US and one other Middle Eastern nation known to secretly finance Israeli operations but pretending to be a "blood enemy" of the Jews
  
• Israeli complicity in massive financial crimes in the US, including engineering of the sub-prime mortgage collapse as an operation meant to destabilize the United States.  That current financial reforms meant to prevent a repeat of this, pushed by President Obama (and military leaders) is opposed by groups financed by the Israeli lobby is a "smoking gun."
  
• Terrorist attacks in Iraq, Russia, Iran and Pakistan carry clear signs of involvement of one or more intelligence agencies being involved, among them Israel.
  
• Israeli political machinations backed by a massive propaganda and disinformation campaign attempting to justify an unprovoked attack on Iran, disinformation including "holocaust" rhetoric and clearly falsified intelligence on Iran's non-existent nuclear program are an almost perfect repeat of the same operation that pushed the Bush administration to mistakenly attack Iraq.
  
• Nuclear threats made by "extremists" in Israel against Western Europe went unheeded and the desired outcry of support for an attack on Iran never materialized.  Israel would never have allowed prominent sources in its defense establishment to voice "crazy threats" to "nuke Rome" unless some purpose were served.
  
• Highly orchestrated attacks on the Obama administration, now finally working in close association with top military leaders, is meant to destabilize the US.  Moving threats against the US, the engineering of a new market collapse by Goldman Sachs, an ineffective attack by Israel on Iran, cutting off all oil to the west or attempts by Israeli controlled media giants to foment civil unrest in the US are all "on the table" and being pushed forward.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/04/24/gordon-duff-stage-being-set-for-dirty-bomb-false-flag/

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Financial Reform Must Include Jail Time for Wall Street Bank Manipulators

 

Forward This to Five Friends

If a person who cashes bad checks for a few dollars must go to jail, then I firmly believe that Wall Street manipulators who crash the American economy should go to jail too.

Laws that make this possible must be a part of any financial reform legislation.

Stand Up to Wall Street Manipulators

It is an unfair waste of taxpayer money to spend thousands of dollars a year on incarcerating petty criminals, when white collar criminals basically steal billions, stick the bill to the American taxpayer, and get bonuses for it. They should go to jail. That is what justice is all about.

There is no way our American economy can be soundly restored unless those who feel untouchable because they are super wealthy know that they will get jail time if they play crooked games with the money of investors and the American taxpayer.

Stand Up to Wall Street Manipulators

As the Senate nears consideration of a "financial reform" bill, it must include laws that ensure time in jail for Wall Street financial crimes.

Financial reform must include jail time for Wall Street bank manipulators.

I demand it as an American taxpayer.

Stand Up to Wall Street Manipulators

Forward This to Five Friends

An Advocacy Initiative of BuzzFlash.com

 

http://us1.forward-to-friend.com/forward/show?u=4c3483ee2368d7eed94d1b5d2&id=12ce7f012c

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Jesus and Climate Change - the Journey of Evangelical Leader Rich Cizik

by: Paul Rogat Loeb

When we become frustrated in working for change, we might remember how hope can come from unexpected places and historically resistant constituencies. Rich Cizik's efforts to engage his fellow evangelicals on global warming exemplifies this.

As vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), Rich Cizik represented 4,500 congregations serving 30 million members. Considering himself a "Reagan conservative" and a strong initial supporter of George W. Bush, Cizik had been with the organization since 1980, serving as its key advocate before Congress, the office of the president, and the Supreme Court on such issues as opposition to abortion and gay marriage. During the Clinton era, he had begun to expand the organization's agenda by tackling such issues as human trafficking and global poverty, working with groups across the political aisle. Later he'd persuaded the organization to take a stand against torture.

But he thought little about climate change until 2002, when he attended a conference on the subject and heard a leading British climate scientist, Sir James Houghton, who was also a prominent evangelical. "You could only call the process a conversion," Cizik said. "I reluctantly went to the conference, saying 'I'll go, but don't expect me to be signing on to any statements.'

"Then, for three days in Oxford, England, Houghton walked us through the science and our biblical responsibility. He talked about droughts, shrinking ice caps, increasing hurricane intensity, temperatures tracked for millennia through ice-core data. He made clear that you could believe in the science and remain a faithful biblical Christian. All I can say is that my heart was changed. For years I'd thought, 'Well, one side says this, the other side says that. There's no reason to get involved.' But the science has become too compelling. I could no longer sit on the sidelines. I didn't want to be like the evangelicals who avoided getting involved during the civil rights movement and in the process discredited the gospel and themselves."

One day during the conference, Houghton took Cizik on a walk in the gardens of Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill's ancestral home. It was a lovely day, sunny and bright. Houghton said, "Richard, if God has convinced you of the reality of the science and the Scriptures on the subject then you must speak out."

"Let me think about it," Cizik responded. He knew he'd meet resistance from his colleagues and board. But Houghton convinced him that the world couldn't solve the issue without serious American participation, and that the Republican Party was the major political force blocking action in the United States (in contrast to Europe, where conservative parties had helped take the lead on the issue). "As evangelicals, we're 40 percent of the Republican base, so if we could convince the evangelical community to speak out, it could make the key difference," Cizik said. American evangelicals, Houghton told him, might literally hold the fate of the planet in their hands.

After leaving the conference, Cizik began reading and learning. Flying over the Sahara, he got a sense of the "tens of thousands of acres that are lost to climate-related desertification each year," which in turn leads to major refugee migrations and potential wars over water. He coordinated a retreat with key evangelical leaders, like Rick Warren, and major scientists, like Houghton and Harvard's E.O. Wilson. Then he took a similar group to Alaska to witness the melting glaciers and permafrost, the disruption of native communities, the spruce trees dying because the bark beetles now survived the warmer winters.

They visited Shishmaref, a native village that is being forced to relocate because the permafrost has crumbled beneath it and the sea ice that once served as a storm buffer is gone. "Our first night there, we saw a lunar eclipse, shooting stars, and the Northern Lights." It reminded him of the phrase in the psalm, "Creation pours forth its praise to its creator. . . . The heavens give witness to God's glory."

His Alaska group, said Cizik, "included those who believe life on Earth was created by God, and those who believe it evolved over three and a half billion years. What became obvious to both groups is that this Earth is sacred and that we ought to protect it. God isn't going to ask you how he created the Earth. He already knows. He's going to ask, 'What did you do with what I created?' If we're leaving a footprint that destroys the Earth, we've failed to be good stewards."

http://www.truthout.org/jesus-and-climate-change58882

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Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking

 

 

BY Jonathan Leake

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world's leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe's greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking's logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said. "The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.

One scene in his documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach."

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is "a little too risky". He said: "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece

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14 Ways a 90 Percent Top Tax Rate Fixes Our Economy and Our Country

By Dave Johnson

A return to Eisenhower-era 90% top tax rates helps fix our economy in several ways:

1) It makes it take longer to end up with a fortune. In fact it makes people build and earn a fortune, instead of shooting for quick windfalls. This forces long-term thinking and planning instead of short-term scheming and scamming. If grabbing everything in sight and running doesn't pay off anymore, you have to change your strategy.

2) It gets rid of the quick-buck-scheme business model. Making people take a longer-term approach to building rather than grabbing a fortune will help reattach businesses to communities by reinforcing interdependence between businesses and their surrounding communities. When it takes owners and executives years to build up a fortune they need solid companies that are around for a long time. This requires the surrounding public infrastructure of roads, schools, police, fire, courts, etc., to be in good shape to provide long-term support for the enterprise. You also want your company to build a solid reputation for serving its customers rather than cheapening the product, pursuing quick-buck scams, cutting customer service, etc. The current Wall Street/private equity business model of looting companies, leaving behind an empty shell, unemployed workers and a surrounding community in devastation will no longer be a viable business strategy.

3) It will lower the executive crime rate. Today it is possible to run scams that let you pocket huge sums in a single year, and leave behind the mess you make for others to fix. A high top tax rate removes the incentive to lie, cheat and steal to grab every buck you can as fast as you can. This reduces the temptation to be dishonest. If you aren't going to keep the whole dime, why risk doing the time? When excessive, massive paydays are possible, it opens the door to overwhelming greed and a resulting compromising of principles. Sort of the definition of the decades since Reagan, no?

4) Combined with badly-needed cuts in military spending – we spend more on military than all other countries on earth combined – taxing the wealthy ends budget deficits and starts paying off the massive Reagan/Bush debt. This reduces and ultimately eliminates the share of the budget that goes to pay interest. The United States now has to pay a huge share of its budget just to cover the interest on the borrowing that tax cuts made necessary. Paying off the debt would remove this huge drag on our economy. (Never mind that Alan Greenspan famously called for Bush's tax cuts by saying it was dangerous to pay off our debt – now that same Alan Greenspan says we need to cut benefits to retired people because our debt is so high.)

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010041625/13-ways-90-percent-top-tax-rate-fixes-economy

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Republicans Begging for More Backroom Negotiations on Wall Street Reform

by mcjoan

The method behind what appears to be Republican madness in actually obstructing Wall Street reform is emerging.

Republicans say their 41 members are united and will oppose the motion, in order to encourage Democrats to continue negotiating with them behind closed doors.

Condemning closed-door negotiations yet voting to prevent public debate is the height of hypocrisy, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) told HuffPost on Monday. "By voting against cloture, Republicans are voting to keep Wall Street negotiations behind closed doors, demanding changes to the bill without public scrutiny. Instead of closed-door deals, they should support open floor debate," said Merkley.

So this a new twist to the old obstruction trope. In the health debate, they drug out the negotiations to try to kill the bill, knowing that time was a critical factor for the bill's defeat. This one is different, because killing this bill isn't in their best political interests, not when the American population is so angry at Wall Street. However, negotiating on behalf of Wall Street to water reform down--e.g., weaker consumer protections, minimal federal regulation--is in their political interest.

Here's Shelby, supposedly the key Republican negotiator, this morning using the oft-debunked "permanent bailouts" trope.

Obstructing, dragging the process out, gives them more time to wrap up their own version of the legislation and offer it up as an alternative to a failed "bipartisan" effort, so they can show their lobbyist friends their efforts. But it also would also keep Dems negotiating, the GOP calculates, with those negotiations behind closed doors instead of on the Senate floor in a process of offering debate and amendments. Steve Benen:

But Republicans have a different approach in mind -- they don't want to even start the debate. Despite all the talk of the last year about transparency, GOP officials insist that all work on Wall Street reform occur behind closed doors, and the ideas that could be debated on the floor are instead hashed out in secret, in between Republican fundraisers with representatives of the very institutions affected by the legislation.

As further proof, here's Mitch McConnell actually saying that allowing the debate to go forward on the Senate floors means an end to public debate on the issue. Literally.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/4/26/860969/-Republicans-Begging-for-More-Backroom-Negotiations-on-Wall-Street-Reform

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Banksters

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American Banking is like Making Sausage

http://politicalirony.com/2010/04/23/american-banking-is-like-making-sausage

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Alan Grayson Discloses That Dodd Bill Covertly Eliminates Already Passed Legislation Requiring Full Fed Audit

 

by Zero Hedge

Once again we get confirmation that Chris Dodd is nothing but a paid manservant for his Federal Reserve masters, in addition to being a lame duck, whose last days in office are meant to do everything to allow the old-school Wall Street ways of endless secrecy and Fed bailouts to continue in perpetuity. As Ryan Grim points out "Alan Grayson and co-author Rep. Ron Paul passed legislation through the House that would allow the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to audit the Federal Reserve and, after a delay, release the information to Congress. It was a remarkable victory, with a populist coalition beating back the combined lobbying efforts of the Treasury Department, the Fed and Wall Street banks.  The Senate has been more hostile territory for the Fed audit provision. Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) opposes the Grayson-Paul version, but allowed a much more restrictive audit proposal from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) into his bill." Why and how Dodd believes he can stand against this critical issue, that over 80% of America supports by demanding Fed transparency, is beyond any rational attempts at explanation. How he hopes to get away with it is even more mindboggling.

From the Huffington Post:

The Wall Street reform bill headed for a test vote on the Senate floor Monday night will allow the Federal Reserve to continue to pump trillions of dollars into major banks largely in secrecy, the co-author of House language that would open the central bank to an audit charged in a memo to the Senate.

"The Senate has a provision in its reform bill that purports to audit the Fed. But, it really doesn't do anything of the sort. I'm going to run down the details for you, and reprint the legislative language so you can read it yourself," writes Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.).

Grayson's summary of the bill's shortcomings, presented below, indicate that the "Senate bill would allow an audit of the TALF program and slightly expands authority to audit emergency lending conducted under section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act, but restricts it to very specific purposes. Meanwhile, it would not allow the GAO to look into the Fed's massive purchase of toxic assets, its hundreds of billions in foreign currency swaps with other central banks or its open market operations, among other restrictions."

http://waronyou.com/topics/alan-grayson-discloses-that-dodd-bill-covertly-eliminates-already-passed-legislation-requiring-full-fed-audit/

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Boycott Arizona!

Arizona immigration bill: Lawyers group to boycott Arizona

by Jessica Testa

The American Immigration Lawyers Association has vowed to boycott the state of Arizona, canceling their fall national convention at the Scottsdale Marriott.

The boycott comes hours after Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 into law.

"Right after the bill was signed, our board of governors had an emergency meeting and voted on whether or not we would keep the conference in Scottsdale," said former AILA chair Mo Goldman, a Tucson attorney.

The vote to cancel and relocate the convention was nearly unanimous, Goldman said.

The venue's penalty for canceling the event is approximately $92,000, though the association is attempting to mitigate the cost.

"As an association, we couldn't in good conscience spend the association's money in a state that has this kind of policy," Goldman said.

Goldman said AILA views the bill, which would allow officers to request citizenship identification from any person at any time, as unconstitutional.

It is unknown what the final costs of the cancellation will be.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2010/04/23/20100423arizona-immigration-bill-lawyer-group-boycotts-arizona.html

 

 

The State of Arizona passed SB1070. This law will call for regular police officers to request documentation from people to ascertain whether or not they are undocumented. This is racial profiling and discrimination, as the officers will be relying on the appearance of people to detain them. Many US citizens and residents will be wrongfully harassed and detained. We can vote with our dollars! Boycott the State of Arizona by vowing not to spend your vacation dollars in that state, whether that be by not engaging in tourism in Arizona, by not doing business within the state, or by not buying anything that comes from Arizona, (paying specific attention to corporations and businesses that support these mean spirited laws like SB1070, as well as, those supporting the likes of Sherrif Joe Arpaio and Senator Russell Pearce) until such a time that this law is overturned or ruled unconstitutional. Racial profiling and discrimination in any way, shape, or form, against any race or ethnic community, must not be tolerated. We must all stand together regardless of our racial and ethnic background. Immigration is a matter for the federal authorities to handle and should not to be delegated to the average police officer who is not trained in immigration law.

 

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/boycott-arizona

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Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

HORSHOLM, Denmark — The lawyers and engineers who dwell in an elegant enclave here are at peace with the hulking neighbor just over the back fence: a vast energy plant that burns thousands of tons of household garbage and industrial waste, round the clock.

The Vestforbraending plant in Copenhagen, the largest of the 29 waste-to-energy plants in Denmark. Their use has reduced the country's energy costs.

Far cleaner than conventional incinerators, this new type of plant converts local trash into heat and electricity. Dozens of filters catch pollutants, from mercury to dioxin, that would have emerged from its smokestack only a decade ago.

In that time, such plants have become both the mainstay of garbage disposal and a crucial fuel source across Denmark, from wealthy exurbs like Horsholm to Copenhagen's downtown area. Their use has not only reduced the country's energy costs and reliance on oil and gas, but also benefited the environment, diminishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration.

With all these innovations, Denmark now regards garbage as a clean alternative fuel rather than a smelly, unsightly problem. And the incinerators, known as waste-to-energy plants, have acquired considerable cachet as communities like Horsholm vie to have them built.

Denmark now has 29 such plants, serving 98 municipalities in a country of 5.5 million people, and 10 more are planned or under construction. Across Europe, there are about 400 plants, with Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands leading the pack in expanding them and building new ones.

By contrast, no new waste-to-energy plants are being planned or built in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency says — even though the federal government and 24 states now classify waste that is burned this way for energy as a renewable fuel, in many cases eligible for subsidies. There are only 87 trash-burning power plants in the United States, a country of more than 300 million people, and almost all were built at least 15 years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/earth/13trash.html?th&emc=th

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An Act Of War: The US Congress is Actively Pushing for War on Iran

by Rep. Ron Paul

Statement on Motion to Instruct Conferees on HR 2194, Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act

 

April 23, 2010 "United States House of Representatives" -- Mr. Speaker I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one trillion dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.

We hear war advocates today on the Floor scare-mongering about reports that in one year Iran will have missiles that can hit the United States. Where have we heard this bombast before? Anyone remember the claims that Iraqi drones were going to fly over the United States and attack us? These "drones" ended up being pure propaganda – the UN chief weapons inspector concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever developed unpiloted drones for use on enemy targets. Of course by then the propagandists had gotten their war so the truth did not matter much.

We hear war advocates on the floor today arguing that we cannot afford to sit around and wait for Iran to detonate a nuclear weapon. Where have we heard this before? Anyone remember then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's oft-repeated quip about Iraq: that we cannot wait for the smoking gun to appear as a mushroom cloud.

We need to see all this for what it is: Propaganda to speed us to war against Iran for the benefit of special interests.

Let us remember a few important things. Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been found in violation of that treaty. Iran is not capable of enriching uranium to the necessary level to manufacture nuclear weapons. According to the entire US Intelligence Community, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapons program. These are facts, and to point them out does not make one a supporter or fan of the Iranian regime. Those pushing war on Iran will ignore or distort these facts to serve their agenda, though, so it is important and necessary to point them out.

Some of my well-intentioned colleagues may be tempted to vote for sanctions on Iran because they view this as a way to avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those pushing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to "work" – to change the regime – war became the only remaining regime-change option.

This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran. The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war.

 

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=110762

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Where Are the Tea Party Protests About Wall Street?

By Cenk Uygur

We're down to the wire here on financial reform. I can't think of a better time to put pressure on Wall Street and Washington to make sure there is adequate regulation to ensure that we never have another bailout. The AFL-CIO is about to have a protest at Wall Street on April 29th. Great, that makes sense. I'm sure the right-wing groups who are also upset about the bailouts will join them.

If you remember, the Tea Parties were originally formed to protest the bailouts. They were so mad at the Wall Street bankers who destroyed the economy and then took our hard earned money for their efforts.

So, they will take this opportunity, of course, to launch their own protest of Wall Street. They will protest the TARP money, the easy credit, the lack of regulation, the wild risk taking and the excessive bonuses paid with taxpayer money. They're really going to take the fight to them.

Just kidding. They're not going to do anything. They're going to sit out this fight on financial reform and put absolutely no pressure on Wall Street at all. Because they are tools easily manipulated by right-wing organizations funded by corporate America.

I really feel sorry for them. They're dupes. They think they are so fiercely independent when in fact they are the most easily manipulated people in the country. All that anger toward the power establishment and what happened? They were used by that same establishment to fight against health care reform and to try to protect the health insurance companies. Suckers.

Now, when it's time to fight the financial companies, where are they? Nowhere to be found. Why? Because FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity didn't organize any bus rides to Wall Street. They didn't manufacture the outrage they did in protecting the health care companies. They used the Tea Party protestors for their own purposes and then left them on the side of the road, only to be picked up again when they need to protect another company or industry.

I issued a challenge back in January to the Tea Party organizers to rally against Wall Street or even against the Obama administration (Tim Geithner in particular) for being too soft on them. And what's happened since then? Nada. Zilch. Zippo.

So, I was proven right -- they're never, ever going to protest Wall Street because they are ignorant dupes being led by the nose by their corporate overlords. And they think they're so tough and independent-minded. What a farce. The whole movement is a sad joke being played on its own members.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Where-Are-the-Tea-Party-Pr-by-Cenk-Uygur-100423-769.html

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Can You Survive a Benevolent Dictatorship?

The press loves the iPad, but beware Apple's attempt to shackle your readers to its hardware

By Cory Doctorow

The first press accounts of the Apple iPad have been long on emotional raves about its beauty and ease of use, but have glossed over its competitive characteristics—or rather, its lack thereof. Some have characterized the iPad as an evolution from flexible-but-complicated computers to simple, elegant appliances. But has there ever been an "appliance" with the kind of competitive control Apple now enjoys over the iPad? The iPad's DRM restrictions mean that Apple has absolute dominion over who can run code on the device—and while that thin shellac of DRM will prove useless at things that matter to publishers, like preventing piracy, it is deadly effective in what matters to Apple: preventing competition.

Maybe the iPad will fizzle. After all, that's what has happened to every other tablet device so far. But if you're contemplating a program to sell your books, stories, or other content into the iPad channel with hopes of it becoming a major piece of your publishing business, you should take a step back and ask how your interests are served by Apple's shackling your readers to its hardware. The publishing world chaos that followed the bankruptcy of Advanced Marketing Group (and subsidiaries like Publishers Group West) showed what can happen when a single distributor locks up too much of the business. Apple isn't just getting big, however; it's also availing itself of a poorly thought-out codicil of copyright law to lock your readers into its platform, limit innovation in the e-book realm, and ultimately reduce the competition to serve your customers.

Jailbreak

Here's what most mainstream press reports so far haven't told you. The iPad uses a DRM system called "code-signing" to limit which apps it can run. If the code that you load on your device isn't "signed," that is, approved by Apple, the iPad will not run it. If the idea of adding this DRM to the iPad is to protect the copyrights of the software authors, we can already declare the system an abject failure—independent developers cracked the system within 24 hours after the first iPad shipped, a very poor showing even in the technically absurd realm of DRM. Code-signing has also completely failed for iPhones, by the way, on which anyone who wants to run an unauthorized app can pretty easily "jailbreak" the phone and load one up.

But DRM isn't just a system for restricting copies. DRM enjoys an extraordinary legal privilege previously unseen in copyright law: the simple act of breaking DRM is illegal, even if you're not violating anyone's copyright. In other words, if you jailbreak your iPad for the purpose of running a perfectly legal app from someone other than Apple, you're still breaking the law. Even if you've never pirated a single app, nor violated a single copyright, if you're found guilty of removing an "effective means of access control," Apple can sue you into a smoking hole. That means that no one can truly compete with Apple to offer better iStores, or apps, with better terms that are more publisher- and reader-friendly. Needless to say, it is also against the law to distribute tools for the purpose of breaking DRM.

Think about what that kind of control means for the future of your e-books. Does the company that makes your toaster get to tell you whose bread you can buy? Your dishwasher can wash anyone's dishes, not just the ones sold by its manufacturer (who, by the way, takes a 30% cut along the way). What's more, you can invent cool new things to do with your dishwasher. For example, you can cook salmon in it without needing permission from the manufacturer (check out the Surreal Gourmet for how). And you can even sell your dishwasher salmon recipe without violating some obscure law that lets dishwasher manufacturers dictate how you can use your machine.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/456751-Can_You_Survive_a_Benevolent_Dictatorship_.php

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Dr Seuss in Yiddish -- vey iz mir!

by Cory Doctorow

Yiddish House press has translated several classic kids' books into Yiddish, a curious and wonderfully expressive language spoken mostly by Jews of Eastern European descent. I just picked up their Eyn Fish Tsvey Fish Royter Fish Bloyer Fish, a translation of Dr Seuss's classic One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Sholem Berger.

Dr Seuss works improbably well in Yiddish. Yiddish's strength is its onomatopoeic expressiveness; and it contains a lot of Germanic words that are cognates for their English equivalents (such as "bloyer," which means "blue;" and "fish," which means "fish!"), but they're pitch-bent enough to make them sound a little off-kilter, which makes them perfect for a Seussian rhyme.

Berger's translation is funny and tight, his rhymes are as sweet as Seuss's originals. The text is written in both Hebrew script and Latin-alphabet transliterations (which is good, since I read Hebrew at the rate of about three words per hour).

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/26/dr-seuss-in-yiddish.html

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The 2010 Facebook Haggadah

 

Joseph has been taken to Egypt.  Traffic was terrible. Comment  · Like · Share

 

Joseph and Pharaoh are now friends. Comment  · Like · Share

 

	Joseph to Pharaoh   O Pharaoh!  First there will be seven good years, with bountiful harvest.  You must fill the royal treasuries with grain.  Then, when the lean years come, you may throw open the doors to your granary that none may go hungry!  Comment  · Like · Share
	Pharaoh You speak wisely.  It shall be done!
	Elijah My new smartphone with Nav software and turn by turn directions is making this year's rounds a breeze!  Currently 350 households ahead of schedule.

Posted via Facebook for Flaming Chariots · Comment  · Like · Share

 

 

Pharaoh Rough day today, so be nice.  My dad entered immortality this morning, and I've assumed the throne and become the new Pharaoh.  I even took over his account.  I'm doing my best to carry on his legacy, but it's tough.  And it didn't get any easier after dinner tonight when the cat threw up all over the carpet.  Comment  · Like · Share . Joseph I am sorry to hear of your loss, my master.   Pharaoh Who are you, and why are you writing on my wall?   Joseph I meant no disrespect, my master.   Advisor He is an Israelite. There are many of them. I do not know whether they are with us or against us.   Pharaoh Let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they join with our enemies in time of war.

 

Pharaoh sent The Israelites Bread of Affliction. Comment  · Like · Share The Israelites This stuff tastes awful.   The Israelites This year we are slaves, next year may we be free!

 

Miriam Eggshell blue.  Comment  · Like · Share

                       Elijah likes this

 

 

	Youngest son Why is this night different from all other nights?  Comment  · Like · Share Parent What do you mean?   Youngest son Well, there's the drink-four-times thing, and the matzah thing, and the dip in salt-water thing. What's up with that?
	Pharaoh has posted an album: Construction of Piton and Ramses.  Comment  · Like · Share                      The Israelites I'm the 350th slave from the right!

http://www.cdelkin.com/haggadah/5770.htm

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