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Click here for The Center For Public Integrity database of the 935 Lies of the Bush administration officials that led us into War.

From The Mike Malloy Program 01/24/08.   

Investigate - Impeach - Indict - Imprison.

"In my lifetime we've gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. If this is evolution, I believe within twelve years we'll be voting for plants."
- Lewis Black

7/23/10

I just stumbled onto an alarming chunk of propaganda. This may have been going on for some time but I just noticed it today.

The 9/11 Truth Movement is being thrown into the same crazy pile where the Tea Bagger-Birther-Death Panel people fester.

Steve Pizzo, one of the 3 authors of the Pulitzer nominated “Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans” (Absolutely Great Book btw), sends out daily email missives. In today’s Humor edition:

WHEN YOU KNOW YOUR HUBBY HAS BEEN GOING TO TOO MANY TEA PARTY RALLIES:

Hmmmmmmm.

Last February Syndicated columnist Jonathan Kay wrote an exclusive piece for newsweek.com.

Black Helicopters Over Nashville - Never mind Sarah Palin and the tricornered hats. The tea-party movement is dominated by conspiracist kooks.

“This world view's modern-day prophets include Texas radio host Alex Jones, whose documentary, The Obama Deception, claims Obama's candidacy was a plot by the leaders of the New World Order to "con the Amercican people into accepting global slavery"; Christian evangelist Pat Robertson; and the rightward strain of the aforementioned "9/11 Truth" movement.”

That same month Rich Karlgaard wrote in his blog, Digital Rules at Forbes.com, “Tea Party Truthers Are Neo-John Birchers.”

“ … Debra Medina got on the phone with Beck, she did so presuming a friendly interview. And that is what she got, until Beck asked Medina if the rumors were true that Medina was a "9/11 Truther"--someone who believes that the U.S. government was involved in the September 2001 attacks.

A layup, an easy denial, but Medina muffed it.

… logic says one of two things must be true. Either Medina is herself a 9/11 truther. Or she is a greasy politician and knows that within her base of Tea Party supporters, there is a subset that thinks the U.S. was complicit in the murder of 3,000-plus Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Also in February The New Yorker published “The Movement” written by Ben McGrath. He writes, “… As spring passed into summer, the scores at local Tea Party gatherings turned to hundreds, and then thousands, collecting along the way footloose Ron Paul supporters, goldbugs, evangelicals, Atlas Shruggers, militiamen, strict Constitutionalists, swine-flu skeptics, scattered 9/11 “truthers,” neo-“Birchers,” and, of course, “birthers”—those who remained convinced that the President was a Muslim double agent born in Kenya.”

This is weird. The Tea Party People, especially Glenn Beck, denounce the 9/11 Truth groups but there seems to be an effort underway to conflate the two movements.

Why anybody would try to do something like that?

Oh … I dunno … maybe if people who demand accountability are lumped in with a mob of crazy racist dumbasses by MainStream Media the credibility of The Accountability People is cut off at the knees.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/02/how-popular-is-the-tea-party-movement/

The Tea Party People are in the minority. From Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress, “The number of Iowans who like the tea party movement is smaller than the number of Americans who want marijuana legalized or the number of Americans who believe the government has had secret contact with extra-terrestrials.”

But how many Americans doubt The Official Story regarding the events of September 11, 2001?

http://www.zogby.com/news/readnews.cfm

In 2004 a Zogby International Poll showed, “Half of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks and "Consciously Failed" To Act; 66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York's Attorney General.”

Two years later …

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=14026

“More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.”

MainStream Media is making sure that the majority of Americans believe that demanding a real investigation into what happened 9 years ago is as crazy as demanding to see Barack Obama’s real birth certificate.

And getting over that hurdle is as easy as flapping your arms really fast and flying to the moon.

Bob

7/20/10

Hey,

After reading this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-r-talbott/the-real-reason-geithner_b_650403.html

The Real Reason Geithner Is Afraid of Elizabeth Warren
by John R. Talbott

I was impressed (again) with how anything could be completely corrupt. It's actually hard to do. Congress isn't completely corrupt ... see there's Dennis Kucinich ... and over there is Bernie Sanders ... see ... it's not completely corrupt.

But ... after reading: (Bold italics are mine. Just my little way of screaming.)

"... If you remember, Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary at the time, had announced that the $700 billion TARP funds would be used to buy toxic assets like bad mortgage loans from the commercial banks. But this never happened and now the amount of bad bank loans has increased in the trillions. Immediately after receiving authorization of the funding for TARP from Congress, Paulson reversed direction and decided to make direct equity investments in the banks rather than using the TARP funds to acquire their bad loans.

So where are the trillions of dollars of bad loans that the banks had on their books? They are still there. The Federal Reserve took possession temporarily of some of them as collateral for lending to the banks in an attempt to clean up the banks for their supposed" stress tests". But as of now, the trillions of dollars of underwater mortgages, CDO's and worthless credit default swaps are still on the banks books. Geithner is going to the familiar "bank in crisis" playbook and hoping that the banks can earn their way out of their solvency problems over time so the banks are continuing to slowly write off their problem loans but at a rate that will take years, if not decades, to clean up the problem."

So Paulson pulled a classic "Bait & Switch" ... The Banksters gave themselves zillions in bonuses ... and the tremendous load of steaming crap got shoveled under everybody's rug. Geithner's plan is to clean it all up a teaspoon at a time by allowing the banks to gouge us all with made up fees and penalties. This is an incredible plan.

"... The banks have made no secret as to where they will find this increase in cash flow. They intend to soak their small retail customers, their consumer and small business borrowers, their credit card holders and their small depositors with increased costs and fees and are continuing many of the bad mortgage practices that led to the crisis (ARM's, option pay deals, zero down payments, second mortgages, teaser rates, etc). American and Banking Market News reports this week that the rule changes in the financial reform bill may lead banks to start implementing fees that had essentially disappeared from the industry early in the new millennium, such as fees for not meeting minimum balance requirements on a checking account, or reinstituting fees for certain online banking transactions that are currently free or charging to receive a paper statement or to talk to a live teller as Bank of America's CEO has recently proposed."

Paulson put us on the hook to pay back the 700 billion, but the toxic crap is still on the bank's books. So we're going to be made to buy it again. Every time we are forced to pay extra for not keeping a minimal balance or by having the gall to walk into a bank and actually talk to a teller ... we're paying down on the bad bets these guys made when they were all drunk out of their minds gambling in The Big Casino.

The beauty part of the plan is we remain screwed into the ground while the banks continue to make obscene profits.

The only roadblock in Geithner's way is Elizabeth Warren.

" ... Warren's appointment wouldn't just be a setback, it would devastate Geithner's entire plan on how to deal with trillions of bad assets the banks still won't recognize as losers. That is why I think she is going to face enormous resistance, even inside of the administration. The next one to oppose Warren after Geithner will be Larry Summers for this very reason. Then they will see if they can get Bernanke and finally Obama on board. The pitch to Obama and Bernanke will not be personal, it will be the same phony argument that Paulson and Bernanke used to justify TARP to congress, they will say that if Warren is appointed the entire world of banking and finance as we know it will come to an end.

... Elizabeth Warren won't just protect consumers, her Oklahoma bred sense of honesty, fairness and decency just might reinvigorate and redirect a government and a banking industry that for too long has seen the average American taxpayer and the typical small consumer as the enemy to be taken advantage of at every turn.

... If you want to help make sure Elizabeth Warren is appointed to head the new consumer finance protection agency, please take a minute and sign this online petition that will be presented to the President and then use the accompanying email opportunity to invite your friends to do the same."

And so we can go here:

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/pick_warren/index2.html?rc=paste2&r_by=-3063121-iwIObbx

Sign the petition and see if 125,000 signatures have any impact at all on Barack Obama.

Back to Talbott's article:

" ... As to the other two potential nominees on Obama's short list for the position, Michael S.Barr is Geithner's boy currently working for him as an Assistant Secretary at Treasury. More importantly, he is Bob Rubin's boy, having served as Rubin's assistant in the Clinton administration. If you are Rubins' boy, you are the bank lobby's boy as this position of Rubin's boy was previously held by Summers and then Geithner. Eugene Kimmelman seems like a nice enough person who has no background in finance. If the banking lobby can't get their guy in, the next best thing is to get a completely clueless person in who is too afraid to act boldly given he couldn't tell a CDO from a CEO. He has been the top lobbyist for the Consumers Union, so he is pro-lobbying and as a positive comment, really understands how toasters and garage door openers work."

If Obama picks Elizabeth Warren then I'll take back everything bad I've ever said about him. Everything but the war criminal stuff. But if he picks Barr or Kimmelman ... then we'll know what it looks like when something's completely corrupt.

Visual aids like that are very educational. Ever toured a sewage treatment plant? Like that.

(This didn't start out to be "A Moment." I read Talbott's article ... Became Furious ... clicked over to CREDO to sign the petition ... and wondered if online petitions have ever done any good. )

Bob

7/17/10

I sent out a "Tweet" yesterday, "If we lack the political will to demand accountability we will cease to be a people governed equally under the rule of law."

The "art" of tweeting escapes me. I've never become comfortable writing Tweets. It either comes out sounding more than mundane or like I'm straining to achieve immortality. Besides … concision has never been my strong suit and 140 characters drives me bats.

AP reports more than 1 million American households will lose their homes this year. Nearly 528,000 homes were foreclosed in the first six months of 2010. In June, one in every 411 households received a foreclosure filing. There's a foreclosure filing every 7.5 seconds.

Economic pain reprioritizes everyone's "To Do" list. Prosecuting Bush and Dick "Pulse-less" Cheney for illegal wars or frog marching the money-mad Wall Street pirates into waiting police vans just isn't going to happen when more and more of us have to spend our day figuring out how we're going to survive. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs has kicked in … and Bush and Obama have kicked us down a couple of notches.

We need the security of a place to live, a job, and good health in order to keep our families intact. It's difficult (impossible) to get anyone to jump on the prosecution bandwagon when survival is threatened.

Our standard of living drifts and dips lower and lower. Americans are keeping their jobs or finding new ones only by accepting lower wages. In real dollars, adjusted for inflation, people are actually making less than they made thirty years ago.

Just because we don't demand accountability of our institutions doesn't mean the institutions stop demanding accountability from us. It was barely a two way street before but soon … I think we're going to see a lot of one way traffic coming right at us.

Bob

Rants written for The Mike Malloy program:

07/12/10 - Loss
03/31/10 - Of Monsters And Saints
03/23/10 - My Dog Frank
03/12/10 - Obscene Newsweek Cover ... Again!
03/04/10 - Obscene Newsweek Cover
03/02/10 - Arise Mutant Nation
02/12/10 - Where We Live
01/26/10 - Obama as Ombudsman
01/22/10 - Welcome to The Middle of The End
12/09/09 - Ronald Reagan Was Right
12/01/09 - Obama's Surge
10/27/09 - Moments … Epilogue
10/15/09 - Elegy
10/08/09 - Possibly Penultimate Moment
09/23/09 - The Indifferent Enemy
09/16/09 - What Profoundly Retarded Means
09/11/09 - This Just In … Conservatives Are Insane!
08/28/09 - The Final Catch 22
08/24/09 - Liars, Damned Liars, and Republican Hacks
08/17/09 - We Are Legend, We Are The Monsters
08/13/09 - You Can't Fix … History
08/10/09 - How To Be … "Of The Left"
08/05/09 - We Came So Close …
07/30/09 - It's Not Our Fault -- They Started It
06/26/09 - Stacked Deck, Rigged Game
06/17/09 - Remember Remember the 8th of November ... 2006
03/26/09 - What More Evidence Do We Need? Part Two
03/14/09 - What More Evidence Do We Need? Part One
02/26/09 - The Professor, The Politician, and The President
01/05/09 - Now It Can Be Told!
12/03/08 - The Fog
10/21/08 - Civil War Will Just Be The Beginning
10/15/08 - Gooble Gobble … One Of Us
10/07/08 - Dubai and The Debacle
09/02/08 - Forward ... Into The Past!
08/29/08 - Corporate Food … Corporate Candidates
08/18/08 - Holy Crap!! I vote like a Republican!!
08/13/08 - Tales of Terror
08/04/08 - Back From The Shadows Again
07/29/08 - What is Acceptable?
07/18/08 - On Par With "Why Is There Air?"
07/16/08 - Stupid People Send Stupid Email to Me
07/01/08 - Regardless of what I just wrote ... I Am Not A Communist ... Really
06/25/08 - Mystery Solved!
06/20/08 - To The Brink ...
06/18/08 - We Live in Crazy Land
06/12/08 - June 5 - 10, 2008 -- The Tipping Point
06/02/08 - Funny Things Bush Has Said
05/20/08 - Business As Usual
05/13/08 - The First Crime of This Century
04/22/08 - F for Fake
04/18/08 - I Think The Canary is Wheezing
04/03/08 - Who Killed ... Us?
03/26/08 - Today's Dread-0-Meter
03/21/08 - The Not So Big Tent
03/18/08 - In Remembrance of Ishmael
03/15/08 - Calibrating Current Political Rules & Standards
03/14/08 - What's Past is Prologue
03/11/08 - On Not Moving On
03/06/08 - Hey! ... Over Here! ... We Found The Cheese!
02/23/08 - FOX-ify Your News
02/15/08 - Captain Obvious Strikes Again
02/10/08 - On The Effects of The Bush-Bomb 7 Years Later
01/24/08 - I'm Feeling Much Better Now
01/14/08 - REALLY SCARY MOVIE!
12/06/07 - Storm Across America
11/28/07 - Paralyzed with fear? ... Getting There
11/19/07 - The Imperialistic Face of America
11/15/07 - The Recurring Faces of Evil
11/09/07 - George Bush Must Be President!
11/04/07 - A Question of Hope
10/17/07 - Stay The Course Part II & General Strike
08/02/07 - God Bless You Mr. Vonnegut
07/09/07 - What has happened to my country?
06/19/07 - The Trilemma
10/12/06 - Stay The Course?

-- Looking For News? --

My Favorite(?) Excerpt

The discrepancy between the kind of society many Germans thought they were building and the reality of the horror of the Third Reich presents one of the most intriguing questions of our age. How could Fascism -- have happened in a modern, industrialized, educated nation?

Click here for the excerpt from They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955) by Milton Mayer

Books I Give To People I Know and Maybe They'll Still Talk To Me
But Probably Won't

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by Vincent Bugliosi "I hope that at some time in the near future a courageous U.S. attorney general, U.S. attorney, state attorney general, or district attorney in America who is committed to the rule of law and who has dedicated his career to enforcing the law fairly against all who, big or small, violate it, will hear the cries for justice from the graves of the thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children who had their lives violently cut short because of the lies of a man who smiled through it all. And that, with a sense of uncompromising righteousness, he will take the ample case I have laid out in this book before an American jury to let them decide whether George W Bush is guilty or not guilty of murder, and if so, what his punishment should be. Even if this doesn't happen and what I have said in this book receives all the attention of a new fly in the forest, I do know that someone had to say what is written on the pages of this book." From The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder by Vincent Bugliosi, page 168. Clicking on the book links to the book's website.

Vincent Bugliosi testifying before the House Judiciary
Committee of the U.S. Congress.

Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America by Russ Baker How did Bush happen? How did George W. Bush, of all people, rise to the most powerful position in the world? This simple question sparked a five-year investigative odyssey by Russ Baker. What he found will force us to rethink virtually everything we thought we knew about the Bush family and its role in shaping recent American history. In FAMILY OF SECRETS, Baker reveals that Bush, the people around him, and his policies are but an extreme, very public manifestation of what his family and its circle have always been about: an interlocking web of covert and overt machinations on behalf of a small cluster of elites-social, financial, industrial, military, intelligence-that enabled the Bush dynasty and propelled George W. Bush to the top. Clicking on the book links to the Powell's Books online store.

Rules for Radicals by Saul D Alinsky "What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away." In 1971, Saul Alinsky wrote an entertaining classic on grassroots organizing titled Rules for Radicals. For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting what is wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. Clicking on the book links to the author's website.

The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf In a stunning indictment of the Bush administration and Congress, best-selling author Naomi Wolf lays out her case for saving American democracy. In authoritative research and documentation Wolf explains how events of the last six years parallel steps taken in the early years of the 20th century’s worst dictatorships such as Germany, Russia, China, and Chile. Clicking on the book links to the publisher's website.

As Basil Fawlty keenly observed:    but ... this is no joke.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine advances a truly unnerving argument: historically, while people were reeling from natural disasters, wars and economic upheavals, savvy politicians and industry leaders nefariously implemented policies that would never have passed during less muddled times. As Klein demonstrates, this reprehensible game of bait-and-switch isn't just some relic from the bad old days. It's alive and well in contemporary society, and coming soon to a disaster area near you. --Kim Hughes Clicking on the book links to the author's website.

Radio

If you like Sean, Rush, Bill-O, Savage, and dutifully watch Fox ... You'll hate listening to Mike. I listen every day.

Documentaries

"Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections" As the 2008 presidential elections draw near and disillusioned voters are still reeling from the election fraud scandals of 2004 and 2006, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker David Earnhardt takes a logical and factual look at just how easy it is to alter election results and undermine the integrity of the entire democratic process. By speaking with a series of renowned computer programmers, journalists, statisticians, and even seasoned election officials, chilling proof that the people may not be guiding the direction of our country after all. Click here to go to the "Uncounted" website.

"Iraq For Sale" An eye-opening exposé of the war profiteering companies raking in billions of dollars from the war, click here to go to the "Iraq For Sale" website.

"War Made Easy" exposes a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Click here to go to the "War Made Easy" website.

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