Civics Class

Wealthy lawmakers increased their riches as U.S. economy sputtered in '09
By Kevin Bogardus and Barbra Kim - 08/31/10 06:00 AM ET

The wealthiest members of Congress grew richer in 2009 even as the economy struggled to recover from a deep recession.

The 50 wealthiest lawmakers were worth almost $1.4 billion in 2009, about $85.1 million more than 12 months earlier, according to The Hill’s annual review of lawmakers’ financial disclosure forms.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) tops the list for the second year in a row. His minimum net worth was $188.6 million at the end of 2009, up by more than $20 million from 2008, according to his financial disclosure form.

While the economy struggled through a recession during much of 2009 and the nation’s unemployment rate soared to 10 percent, the stock market rebounded, helping lawmakers with large investments. The S&P 500 rose by about 28 percent in 2009.

Total assets for the 50 wealthiest lawmakers in 2009 was $1.5 billion — that’s actually a nearly $36 million drop from a year ago. But lawmakers reduced their liabilities by even more, cutting debts by $120 million last year.

There are various reasons why asset values dropped. Some lawmakers saw their real estate holdings fall as the housing crisis intensified. A handful of lawmakers also had other investments or businesses that turned sour.

The only newcomer to the Top 10 list is Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who came straight in at No. 5. He replaced Rep. Harry Teague (D-N.M.), the 10th wealthiest member in 2008. Teague fell off the top 50 list after the value of a company he has a stake in — Teaco Energy Services Inc. — fell in value from $39.6 million in 2008 to at the least $1 million in 2009.

There were a few other new faces in the Top 50, including Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), who received an inheritance after his late father, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), died in 2009.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.) also made the list.

Twenty-seven Democrats along with 23 Republicans make up the 50 richest in Congress; 30 House members and 20 senators are on the list.

The bulk of Kerry’s wealth is credited to his spouse, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who inherited hundreds of millions of dollars after her late husband, the ketchup heir Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.), died in a plane crash in 1991.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), with a net worth of $160.1 million, is the second-richest member of Congress under The Hill’s formula, even though his wealth declined by more than $4 million in 2009.

He is followed by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who saw her net wealth leap to $152.3 million, a jump of more than $40 million from a year ago.

The rest of the top 10 are Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), McCaul, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
Continue reading here:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/116489-wealthy-lawmakers-increased-th...

we are all pink on the inside

http://www.onenationforpeace.org/

are we so smart or are they so stupid?

in the most recent Thats's Bullshit it becomes very obvious how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Sam does a good job of showing U.S what we are up against. it is like we have to teach them how little they know about the constitution without embarrassing them into running for their rabbit guns.

People are against Obama Care? it hasnt even had a chance to get started.

Lions to win.
Detroit 23
Chicago 20

Tigers to bungle.
New England 27
Cincinnati 19

Energy Sec. Chu to “Save” Big Coal–and Black Lung, Strip-Mining, Coal Ash in the Process
Posted by jeffbiggers on @ 9:57 am

Energy Secretary Steven Chu has officially gone over to the dark side of Big Coal.

First, the question begs to be asked: Has Sec. Chu ever visited an underground coal mine or a strip-mine operation anywhere in the United States during his tenure in the Department of Energy?

Speaking on the heels of a new study about “peak coal,” agonizing testimony of coal ash debacles, reckless expansion of strip-mining from Alabama to Utah’s Bryce National Park and 20-odd states and devastating longwall mining in the American heartland, and one of the bloodiest years of coal mining in decades, Sec. Chu emphatically took up the torch to “save coal” this week.

Appearing next to the failed climate bill’s ardent enemy US Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) in Charleston, West Virginia this week, Chu triumphantly told his Big Coal listeners that he would “save coal” by investing billions into still infeasible, prohibitively expensive, unproven and fanciful carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology....

Peak coal and CCS’s unanswered questions notwithstanding, Chu is effectively making false promises of prosperity, while sentencing coalfield communities to another generation of outside corporate plunder, lost jobs and poverty and blocked economic diversification, forced relocation, and a rising deathtoll from black lung disease (10,000 miners in the last decade), toxic coal slurry contamination, and mercury emissions.

Instead of genuflecting to the boom-bust heavily mechanized Big Coal industry—strip mining strips jobs, using explosives and bulldozers instead of miners–why isn’t Chu helping coalfield communities get their fair share of the clean energy jobs, investment funds for clean energy manufacturing, and advocating for a G.I. Bill for coal miners and former coal miners, to get education and retraining, and help launch the weatherization programs with electricians, plumbers, construction workers, or massive reforestation programs with the same bulldozer drivers?....
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/09/10/energy-sec-chu-to-save-bi...

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Some bold members of Congress wrote a letter making clear that any proposal from President Obama's "deficit reduction" commission that cuts Social Security is dead on arrival.

Will you be a "citizen signer" of this letter to protect Social Security? Add your name on the right. We'll make the Congress, the President, and the media know of our momentum..

http://act.boldprogressives.org/cms/survey/ssletter_main/?rd=1&source=e2...

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

MMRules

really constitutes any degree of knowledge.

Published on Friday, September 10, 2010 by Open Secrets Blog
PG&E, Owner of Exploded California Pipeline, Also Runs Major Political Operation
by Evan Mackinder
Energy giant PG&E, which owns and manages a natural gas pipeline that Thursday night ignited a massive inferno in San Bruno, Calif., is one of the nation’s most notable political players, routinely spending millions of dollars each year on government lobbying and campaign donations, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis finds.

The pipeline explosion has so far torched a swath of suburban houses and killed at least six people, according to the Los Angeles Times. The cause of the explosion is yet to be determined, and PG&E's immediate response to the disaster has been measured; a spokesperson noted that the company would not claim responsibility until they were certain the company is to blame for the explosion.

But it’s clear that in the wake of the crisis, should any political fallout come its way, PG&E stands well prepared.

Since 2000, PG&E Corp., the parent company of PG&E Co., has spent more than $112 million on federally reportable lobbying efforts, according to the Center’s analysis. Its roster of lobbyists includes an elite force of ex-government officials, and at least one of the lobbyists the company has deployed this year is a former member of Congress, Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Ca.).

And the explosion in San Bruno comes at a time when PG&E Corp. is reaching new heights in lobbying efforts.

During the first six months of the year, PG&E put unprecedented capital into lobbying efforts, reporting to the federal government that it’s so far spent nearly$44 million. Such a figure represents a more than 600 percent increase from the total it spent during all of 2009, and marks an industry-wide record for electric and utilities companies.
more
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/09/10-4

It is astonishing how many Democrats in the past three months have been making the worst case scenario for their prospects in the November mid-term Congressional elections. Do they believe that the most craven Republican Party in history needs their help in such a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The arguments that the Democratic pundits, along with some elected lawmakers, are giving focus on the slowing of the recessionary economy and the “natural giveback” to the Republicans of the hitherto safe seats that they lost to the Democrats in 2008.

The mass media-exaggerated aura of the Tea Party, pumped by Limbaugh, Hannity and the histrionic Glen Beck, has put the Democrats in a defensive posture. It is giving the puzzled Republicans an offensive image. I say puzzled because they can’t figure out the many disparate strands of the Tea Party eruption which includes turning on the Republicans and George W. Bush for launching this epidemic of deficits, debt, bailouts and unconstitutional military adventures.

Being on the defensive politically becomes a nightmarish self-replicating wave among that 10 percent slice of swing voters who can make the difference between a big win or a big loss. These are also the non-hereditary party voters whose philosophy is to “throw the bums out” again and again until they get the message.

Gallup’s most recent poll predicted the Republicans taking the House of Representatives. While political scientist, Larry Babato, with a 98% predictive accuracy in Congressional races over ten years, sees the House gone and the Senate as a toss-up. But it is still early.

The Democratic Party’s problems are much deeper than the Sunday talk shows indicate. First the Democrats do not have a progressive political philosophy. They could learn from a four time winner—Franklin Delano Roosevelt—when it comes to being perceived as the working families friend.

One has only to listen to the debates on C-Span between Democrats and Republicans running for Congress or the Governorships. Too often, apart from a Libertarian or Green in the mix, there are very few bright lines or contrasts between the Republicans and Democrats, however much they try to magnify personal differences. Indeed, the freshman Blue Dog Democrats, who won in 2008, go out of their way to criticize their Congressional leaders and President Obama, with the full encouragement of the national Democratic Leaders. The latter stayed away from the hustings during the long Congressional recess. The Democrats lost August to the Republicans and the right-wing radio and cable yahoos who speak of the stimulus, the health care law and the proposed restoration of Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy as “job-killing agendas” and a disaster “for families and small businesses.” Such Republican false statements fill the Congressional Record.

What keeps the Democrats from making their case? Is it their desire to keep raising big money from big business at the cost of muzzling a far more effective political message than their post-Labor Day offerings of more small business tax cuts and a ten year $100 billion tax credit for corporate research and development?

Do they believe those two actions are vote-getters or balm for getting more campaign money from business? Indeed, the tax credit mainly goes to super-profitable computer companies (Cisco, Intel, Microsoft) and big drug companies that already have outsourced their production to China and India.

And small business, which is receiving eight tax cuts under Obama, is waiting for consumer spending to increase. President Obama should fulfill his campaign pledge in 2008 to raise the federal minimum wage to $9.50 per hour by 2011, which would increase that buying power. Even that increase, while worthwhile, still wouldn’t equal the minimum wage of 1968, adjusted for inflation.

The Democrats might listen to some of the articulate callers to C-Span radio or WPFW in Washington, D.C. to catch the powerful vernacular of protest. One caller succinctly made the case for policies, including using the tax code, to encourage companies to bring back industry and outsourced jobs that were shipped to China and other repressive or low-wage countries, with Washington’s help no less.

People are really upset about where corporate globalization, one-sided trade treaties, and costly foreign wars have taken our country. Working Americans who have lost their jobs can stay at home in November and cost the Democrats elections as they did in 2004. Voters look for politicians who take a stand, who know who they are and can show they side with the people, not global companies that have no allegiance to the country that bred, subsidized and defended them.

How did Reagan, even as a big business apologist, hold the 54 GOP Senate seats and only lose 26 House seats in the mid-term election of 1982? Reagan was, in the words of Jim Kessler, “facing 10.8 percent unemployment, 6 percent inflation, a declining GDP, an approval rating barely above freezing and the indignity of having drastically increased the budget deficit over the previous year after running as a fiscal hawk.” Maybe it is because enough voters saw the “Gipper” as knowing what he stood for and showing steadfastness and better times coming soon, in comparison to the wavering, concessionary posture of the then-majority Democrats in the Congress.

U.S. Circuit Court Rules Against Illegal Immigration Laws

From Logan Burruss, CNN

September 10, 2010 9:58 a.m. EDT

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Federal court throws out laws limiting where illegal immigrants can live, work
Judge says ordinances conflict with supremacy clause of U.S. constitution
Law would have fined landlords for renting to illegal aliens
(CNN) -- A pair of illegal immigration ordinances in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, were ruled unconstitutional Thursday by a federal appeals court.

In 2006, Hazleton passed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance, which would have fined landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants and would have penalized companies that employed them.

Under another law, tenants would have had to prove they were citizens or lawful residents, register with the city and pay for a rental permit in order to receive an occupancy permit.

The ordinances were copied by other cities.

Video: Mayor defends Arizona law
Both were challenged before going into effect and found unconstitutional in 2007 by a U.S. District Court. The court ruled that Hazleton cannot enact any ordinances dealing with illegal immigration because they conflict with the supremacy clause of the U.S. constitution.

"Today's decision makes the Third Circuit the most liberal court in America on immigration issues," said a statement from Lou Barletta, Hazelton's mayor. "This ruling is a loss for Hazleton and its legal residents."

But the American Civil Liberties Union called the decision by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, "a major victory in the fight against state and local anti-immigration."

Hazelton attorney Kris Kobach said the city will appeal the case and is ready to take it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/09/pennsylvania.immigration.case/index.htm...

President Obama has denied that rising violence is making Mexico more and more like Colombia at the height of its drugs war.

The remark is an apparent contradiction to comments made by his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

She said on Wednesday that the drug war in Mexico had begun to resemble the violence in Colombia 20 years ago.

"Mexico is vast and progressive democracy, with a growing economy, and as a result you cannot compare what is happening in Mexico with what happened in Colombia 20 years ago," he told the Los Angeles-based daily La Opinion.

'Morphing'
Mrs Clinton made her remarks after a foreign policy speech at a think tank in Washington.

Drug cartels, she said, were "showing more and more indices of insurgencies".

The traffickers were "in some cases, morphing into or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency in Mexico and in Central America", she said.

The violence was beginning to resemble Colombia of 20 years ago when insurgent groups controlled some 40% of the country, Mrs Clinton added.

Mexico rejected Mrs Clinton's analogy.

Speaking in Mexico City, a government spokesman said the only aspect that the Mexican and Colombian conflicts share is their root cause - a high demand for drugs in the US.

More than 28,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon deployed the army to fight the cartels in 2006 and violence has spilled over into Central America.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11256477

Buddhism continues to flower in Mongolia
The practice, suppressed for decades by the Communist Party, is being reclaimed by Mongolians as an integral part of their national identity.

snip
In recent years, a new competitor has arisen: Christianity. Many Christian missionaries arrived in Mongolia after the fall of communism, just as they did in Eastern Europe. The largest groups now converting Mongolians are American Mormons and South Korean fundamentalists.

Still, as grandparents show their grandchildren around monasteries explaining the prayer wheels, altars and parchment books, it is clear that Buddhism runs deep in Mongolia.

"The Communists cleaned it from our body and from our speech, but they couldn't remove it from our souls," Munkhbaatar said. "The people may not have a lot of Buddhist education and understanding, but they have Buddhist faith

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-beliefs-20100911,0,7435265.story...

Most people don't know that the chicken they eat is laced with arsenic. The ice water or coffee they enjoy with their chicken may also be infused with arsenic. If they live on or near a farm, the air they breathe may be infected with arsenic dust as well.

Why do our chicken, our water and our air contain arsenic? Because in the United States, most major poultry producers add an arsenic compound known as roxarsone to their chicken feed. Inorganic arsenic is a Class A carcinogen that has been linked to heart disease, diabetes and declines in brain function. Recent scientific findings show that most Americans are routinely exposed to between three and 11 times the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended safety limit.

The poultry industry has been using the feed additive roxarsone -- purportedly to fight parasites and increase growth in chickens -- since the Food and Drug Administration approved it in 1944. Turns out that the arsenic additive promotes the growth of blood vessels in chicken, which makes the meat appear pinker and more attractive in its plastic wrap at the grocery store, but does little else. The arsenic additive does the same in human cells, fueling a growth process known as angiogenesis, a critical first step in many human diseases such as cancer.

The arsenic additive also presents health risks to farmers who work with the chemical or fertilizers. Chicken growers have reported illness from contact with roxarsone while preparing feed. Because most smaller growers rely on contracts with larger chicken producers that mandate the use of arsenic in chicken feed, the smaller growers are often unable to avoid the health risks associated with roxarsone.

In 1999, recognizing that any level of inorganic arsenic in human food and water is unacceptable, the European Union outlawed its use in chicken feed. Reportedly, several American chicken producers, including Tyson Foods and Perdue Farms, have acted responsibly by discontinuing the use of roxarsone in their animals. Other growers have turned to "organically fed" chicken operations. Nevertheless, as recently as 2006, 70 percent of the more than 9 billion broiler chickens produced annually in the United States were fed roxarsone.

Chicken consumption in the United States has increased dramatically in the past 40 years. In addition to the arsenic Americans consume at the dinner table, American broiler chickens generate billions of pounds of animal waste each year -- more than 1.2 billion pounds annually in Maryland alone -- causing significant runoff of arsenic into soils and surrounding waterways. The dangerous levels of arsenic in chicken manure ultimately contaminate crops, lakes, rivers and fertilized lawns, and it may even reach drinking water. Meanwhile, the poultry industry labors under the legal fiction that although it owns the chicken feed and the chickens that eat the feed, it has no responsibility for the chicken manure.

The federal Food and Drug Administration should ban arsenic from chicken feed. Working through the environmental committee of the National Association of Attorneys General, Maryland has enlisted more than 30 states to join in this effort.

The poultry industry's continued use of arsenic creates unnecessary and avoidable risks to our health and environment. The FDA has delayed banning this poison from our diet for far too long. If offered a side order of arsenic with my chicken, I'd say no. Wouldn't you?

The writer is attorney general of Maryland. He serves on the executive board of the National Association of Attorneys General and is co-chair of the association's environmental committee.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/25/AR200906...

is a remedy for the poisons that are allowed in the food supply

google glutathione/liver detoxification.
add some alpha lipoic acid to the program and maximize the benefits.

http://www.drpressman.com/optimizing-detoxification/

Don't want to hear this? Tough. Grow up.

9/11 Commissioners:

• The 9/11 Commission’s co-chairs said that the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials misrepresented the facts to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements

• 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says “I don’t believe for a minute we got everything right”, that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue

• 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”

• 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”

• 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .” He also said that the investigation depended too heavily on the accounts of Al Qaeda detainees who were physically coerced into talking

• And the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – recently said “At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened”. He also said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.” And he said: “It’s almost a culture of concealment, for lack of a better word. There were interviews made at the FAA’s New York center the night of 9/11 and those tapes were destroyed. The CIA tapes of the interrogations were destroyed. The story of 9/11 itself, to put it mildly, was distorted and was completely different from the way things happened”

If even the 9/11 Commissioners don’t buy the official story, why do you?

Senior intelligence officers:

• Former military analyst and famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that the case of a certain 9/11 whistleblower is “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”. He also said that the government is ordering the media to cover up her allegations about 9/11. And he said that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that “very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been”, that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of the current administration, and that there’s enough evidence to justify a new, “hard-hitting” investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath (see this and this)

• A 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials (Raymond McGovern) said “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke”

• A 29-year CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer (NIO) and former Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis (William Bill Christison) said “I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe (and see this)

• A number of intelligence officials, including a CIA Operations Officer who co-chaired a CIA multi-agency task force coordinating intelligence efforts among many intelligence and law enforcement agencies (Lynne Larkin) sent a joint letter to Congress expressing their concerns about “serious shortcomings,” “omissions,” and “major flaws” in the 9/11 Commission Report and offering their services for a new investigation (they were ignored)

• A decorated 20-year CIA veteran, who Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh called “perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East”, and whose astounding career formed the script for the Academy Award winning motion picture Syriana (Robert Baer) said that “the evidence points at” 9/11 having had aspects of being an inside job

• The Division Chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs, who served as Senior Analyst from 1966 – 1990. He also served as Professor of International Security at the National War College from 1986 – 2004 (Melvin Goodman) said “The final [9/11 Commission] report is ultimately a coverup”

If even our country’s top intelligence officers don’t buy the official story, why do you?

Congressmen:

• According to the Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, an FBI informant had hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House (confirmed here)

• Current Democratic U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy said “The two questions that the congress will not ask . . . is why did 9/11 happen on George Bush’s watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to happen? Why did they allow it to happen?”

• Current Republican Congressman Ron Paul calls for a new 9/11 investigation and states that “we see the [9/11] investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on”

Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

• Current Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich hints that we aren’t being told the truth about 9/11

• Current Republican Congressman Jason Chafetz says that we need to be vigilant and continue to investigate 9/11

• Former Democratic Senator Mike Gravel states that he supports a new 9/11 investigation and that we don’t know the truth about 9/11

• Former Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee endorses a new 9/11 investigation

• Former U.S. Democratic Congressman Dan Hamburg doesn’t believe the official version of events

• Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and who served six years as the Chairman of the Military Research and Development Subcommittee Curt Weldon has shown that the U.S. tracked hijackers before 9/11, is open to hearing information about explosives in the Twin Towers, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job

If there is bipartisan questioning of the official story, why aren’t you questioning it?

Other government officials:

• U.S. General, Commanding General of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, decorated with the Bronze Star, Silver Star, and Purple Heart (General Wesley Clark) said “We’ve never finished the investigation of 9/11 and whether the administration actually misused the intelligence information it had. The evidence seems pretty clear to me. I’ve seen that for a long time”

• Former Deputy Secretary for Intelligence and Warning under Nixon, Ford, and Carter (Morton Goulder), former Deputy Director to the White House Task Force on Terrorism (Edward L. Peck), and former US Department of State Foreign Service Officer (J. Michael Springmann), as well as a who’s who of liberals and independents) jointly call for a new investigation into 9/11

• Former Federal Prosecutor, Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan; former U.S. Army Intelligence officer, and currently a widely-sought media commentator on terrorism and intelligence services (John Loftus) says “The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defense of incompetence”

• The Group Director on matters of national security in the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that President Bush did not respond to unprecedented warnings of the 9/11 disaster and conducted a massive cover-up instead of accepting responsibility

• Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan (Col. Ronald D. Ray) said that the official story of 9/11 is “the dog that doesn’t hunt”

• The former director of the FBI (Louis Freeh) says there was a cover up by the 9/11 Commission

If top government officials are skeptical, why aren’t you?

http://www.infowars.com/the-anniversary-of-911/

The Rahm Emanuel strategy was to cut deals with power brokers in Washington and ignore what liberals wanted. This was best illustrated when he called liberals "fucking retarded" for trying to push for real change. His attitude was that you could ignore progressive demands because - where could they go?!

Well, it turns out that the answer to that question is - home. Now there are several polls out showing a 5 to 10% difference between registered Democratic voters and likely Democratic voters. Democrats are basically tied with the Republicans on registered voters. But they get clobbered on likely voters. Why? Because voters who are disillusioned aren't likely to vote.

Why are they disillusioned Rahm might ask when we gave them health care reform and financial reform? The answer is because they're not nearly as dumb as you think they are. You think you can just call something reform and people are going to buy it? That's not going to fly, especially in the new media age.

We all know that Obama struck the same exact deals with the big drug companies that Bush did. Obama had campaigned against those specific agreements, but once he got into office he was convinced that we couldn't upset those deals and that we just had to shoot for a tiny bit of change. That we couldn't change the way Washington ran, we could just play the old Washington game a little better. That is the essence of Rahm Emanuel.

And those games have now left the Democrats with a gigantic deficit in voter enthusiasm. Rahm was supposed to be some sort of political genius. But it has turned out to be the exact opposite. He blew it. He had no idea what he was talking about and it looks like his party is about to lose a massive amount of seats. Why? Because Rahm was wrong, completely and utterly wrong.

Will they learn the right lesson from this and actually try to deliver on change in the next two years after this election? Very likely not. Instead, they will get someone new to come and whisper in their ear that the president must play the same old Washington games again and that the election was a sign to go further right. That'll be another disaster and you can trace that back to the original Rahmism - the belief that power must be accommodated, real change is not possible and that your own voters should be ignored. That is what is 100% wrong and what got the Democrats into this mess in the first place.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur

*

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68A09R20100911

...the people at the "Restoring Honor" rally as well everyone in the country need to read more. Particularly, if they are going to personally refer to or critique them.

They could start with the U.S. Constitution.

But it is all about appearance and expediency which enables the agribusiness to lace our food with arsenic and other poisons which benefits the health and insurance industries among others when we fall ill while their representatives who weaseled their way, illegally or deceitfully, into OUR government subject us to peril and distract us from the truth.

My doubts about the who, what, why, when and how of 9/11 began when the first building collapsed. In fact, my awareness came when Iran took our U.S. Embassy hostage years ago.

...and from Ralph's mouth to ears of those seeking political office for the benefit of WE THE PEOPLE:

"...The Democrats might listen to some of the articulate callers to C-SPAN radio or WPFW in Washington, D.C. to catch the powerful vernacular of protest. One caller succinctly made the case for policies, including using the tax code, to encourage companies to bring back industry and outsourced jobs that were shipped to China and other repressive or low-wage countries, with Washington's help no less.

"People are really upset about where corporate globalization, one-sided trade treaties, and costly foreign wars have taken our country. Working Americans who have lost their jobs can stay at home in November and cost the Democrats elections as they did in 2004. Voters look for politicians who take a stand, who know who they are and can show they side with the people, not global companies that have no allegiance to the country that bred, subsidized and defended them.

"How did Reagan, even as a big business apologist, hold the 54 GOP Senate seats and only lose 26 House seats in the mid-term election of 1982? Reagan was, in the words of Jim Kessler, "facing 10.8 percent unemployment, 6 percent inflation, a declining GDP, an approval rating barely above freezing and the indignity of having drastically increased the budget deficit over the previous year after running as a fiscal hawk." Maybe it is because enough voters saw the "Gipper" as knowing what he stood for and showing steadfastness and better times coming soon, in comparison to the wavering, concessionary posture of the then-majority Democrats in the Congress."

Pass it on to those you plan on voting for.

According to Richard C. Cook, veteran Project Manager for the U.S. Treasury Department and Policy Analyst for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:

"Cheap, mass-produced foods are largely based on grains and beef raised by massive agribusiness firms, so that the atrocious American diet is inextricably linked with capitalist enterprise controlled by Wall Street. A key ingredient is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), suspected of being a major cause of diabetes and heart disease, as well as obesity. Much of the HFCS is extracted from corn grown from genetically-modified seed which has been rammed down the throats of American farmers, again by the massive agribusiness firms such as Monsanto.

"American farming at present is completely incapable of supplying nutritious foods on a scale that would make a difference. In order to furnish natural and healthy foods to poorer markets would require a revolution in American farming where small family farms using heirloom seeds and natural farming methods would once again become prosperous. Unfortunately, this sector has been destroyed by agribusiness and by the federal government policies, not to mention bank lending practices, that favor it. We also have a massive food chemical industry, closely aligned with the pharmaceutical industry, that thrives on doctoring unhealthy and non-nutritious food, with the aid of the Food and Drug Administration which approves their chemical formulas.

"In other words, a big part of the U.S. economy, again under the control of Wall Street, gets rich off making kids obese and unhealthy to the point where we no longer have the capability of producing anything else on a large scale. If Michelle Obama wants to take on all this she has a pretty big job ahead of her."
Check out his website:
http://www.richardccook.com/

Which reminds me of the following Diane Rehm Show in which her guest revealed the agribusiness takes all the honey from the beehives and leave the bees to feed off HFCS. And we wonder where the bees are going?

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-09-08/grace-pundyk-honey-trail
Honey is a global food -- part of tradition, culture and trade. But it's not all sweet: the story also involves smuggling, deforestation and climate change. One woman explains what she found out when she went around the world in pursuit of liquid gold and vanishing bees.

Guests
Grace Pundyk author of "The Honey Trail," award-winning photographer, and author of 10 travel and photographic books.

with his credentials but he must be crazy to think that there is any difference between sugar and HFCS
or organic and non organic he must believe that cheney had something to do with 9 11, what a paranoid liberal.

my 911 links here:

http://www3.telus.net/Art-Adventures/X-911Bookmarks/

these are the article links we researched in the early days of the bloggie.

September 10 - 12, 2010

The Persecution of the Roma

By SAM BECK

The European Union must be held accountable if European states continue to expel Roma from member countries. The expulsions are taking place because Roma have created settlements not only in designated campgrounds but also within urban boundaries. This is not new. However, the scale and density of such settlements disturbs the sensibilities of Europeans. This is not only a West European phenomenon. Events of intolerable discrimination are also taking place in East Central Europe and the Balkans from which many of these Roma originate. The history of anti-Roma sentiments in both East and West Europe is torturous and long-standing.

A rather unusual situation emerged in Romania where Roma have lived for hundreds of years, where to this day they appear in abundant variation, from people who have resumed migratory lives to people who have been settled at the margins of villages, towns, and cities for as long as anyone can remember. In Romania, Roma were enslaved and indentured for centuries. They played important roles as musicians, miners, and in producing objects necessary for an agrarian society, crafting metals and wood objects. Today, those that we call Roma, were involved in all sorts of labor, agricultural workers and house servants.

Some may no longer speak their Sanskrit based language, or if they do they speak it with lexical-items borrowed from Turkish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Russian, and so on. In Romania, many no longer speak Romani. In Romania, Roma may identify themselves with this “national” identity, or they may identify as “tsigani,” how others have named them. This is a term of derision. Some Roma have integrated themselves into the mainstream of Romanian society and melted into the Romanian ethnic identity. Some Roma sustain their identity and have experienced upward mobility in many different fields.
http://www.counterpunch.org/beck09102010.html

...another great show
http://www.ringoffireradio.com/
(of course more so when Sam is on) and in keeping with this thread:

September 2, 2010
When Stupid People don’t Know that They are Stupid: Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally and the Dunning-Kruger Effect
Posted by Chauncey DeVega

The masses are asses. We know this. But the level of ignorance displayed by the attendees at the “Restoring Honor” rally is shocking even by contemporary standards.

It is quite clear that Glenn Beck is a master propagandist with a chilling and Svengali-like power over the lemmings of the New Right. Beck-watching is compelling (to me at least) because his popularity is a barometer of the toxins in our political atmosphere. Moreover, I wonder if Beck’s followers would be so slavish as to follow him off a cliff, and to what extremes would the tea party brigands go in their devotion to his cult of personality.

To point, here is a little armchair sociology to help put Beck and the New Right’s devotees into a broader context.

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. “Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”

The Dunning–Kruger effect was put forward by Justin Kruger and David Dunning. Similar notions have been expressed–albeit less scientifically–for some time. Dunning and Kruger themselves quote Charles Darwin (”Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”) and Bertrand Russell (”One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”

The Dunning–Kruger effect is not, however, concerned narrowly with high-order cognitive skills (much less their application in the political realm during a particular era, which is what Russell was talking about.Nor is it specifically limited to the observation that ignorance of a topic is conducive to overconfident assertions about it, which is what Darwin was saying. Indeed, Dunning et al. cite a study saying that 94% of college professors rank their work as “above average” (relative to their peers), to underscore that the highly intelligent and informed are hardly exempt. Rather, the effect is about paradoxical defects in perception of skill, in oneself and others, regardless of the particular skill and its intellectual demands, whether it is chess, playing golf or driving a car.

The hypothesized phenomenon was tested in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, then both of Cornell University. Kruger and Dunning noted earlier studies suggesting that ignorance of standards of performance is behind a great deal of incompetence. This pattern was seen in studies of skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis.

Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/09/02/when-stupid-people-dont-k...

Also visit:
http://open.salon.com/blog/chauncey_devega/2010/03/29/cognitive_dissonan...

http://wearerespectablenegroes.blogspot.com/2009/02/chauncey-devega-says...

Let's see if Noam (who's on, for an hour, and then that's it) still does.

I don't.

http://files.thisishell.net/mp3/20100911.mp3

(Tigers to bungle? Uuuy!)

MONK iz suppose 2B on now. grrr
;)

Published on 3 September 2010

On August 29th, 2010, Reporters Without Borders Washington DC representative, Clothilde Le Coz, visited Mumia Abu-Jamal, prisoner on death row for nearly three decades. Ms. Le Coz was accompanied by Abu-Jamal’s lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, and his legal assistant, Nicole Bryan. The meeting took place in room 17 of the State Correctional Institution (SCI) in Waynesburg, Greene county, Pennsylvania.
Reporters Without Borders: As a journalist who continues to work in prison, what are your latest reports focused on? Mumia Abu-Jamal: The prison population in the United States is the highest in the world. Over the past year, for the first time in 38 years, the prison population declined.
Some states, like California or Michigan, are taking fewer prisoners because of overcrowding. State budgets are restrained and some prisoners are released because of the economic situation.
Prisons in America are vast and the number of prisoners is immense. It’s impressive to see how much money is spent by the US government and how invisible we are. No one knows. Most people don’t care. Some journalists report when there is a drama in prison and think they know about it. But this is not real : it is sensationalist. You can find some good writings. But they are unrealistic. My reporting is what I have seen with my eyes and what people told me. It is real. My reporting has to do with my reality. They mostly have been focusing on death row and prison. I wish it were not so. There is a spate of suicides on death row in the last year and a half. But this is invisible. I broke stories about suicide because it happened on my block.
http://en.rsf.org/united-states-mumia-abu-jamal-i-am-an-outlaw-03-09-201...

http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/wp-content/uploads/Multiplecoffeeart.jpg
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http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY...

~~~~~~~
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.anh-europe.org/news/pharma-game-plan-revealed

=

-

;)

Pacific Gas & Electric looks to be acting with all the arrogant 'profit first' corporate privilege present in other corporate endeavors that result in disaster. PG&E presently claims it has no responsibility for the disaster. Old gas lines left unmaintained while PG&E MAINTENANCE WORKERS are taken off maintenance work and sent out instead to cajole and frighten PG&E customers into accepting installation of microwave SmartMeters, and yet PG&E is claiming they have no responsibility for the gas line leaks and explosion?

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20100910/BUSINESS/100919964

[excerpt]

PG&E said in a statement that, "if it is ultimately determined that we were responsible for the cause of the incident, we will take accountability."

[end excerpt]

More L.A. Times coverage:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/09/investigators-try-to-deter...

=====================

P.S. Malloy did a great job covering this awful infrastructure failure on his show on Friday....

Dead Zone!

Glorious!

666

Does God exist? Have you rejected religion? Often, the biggest barrier to religious faith is 20th century science and technology. These people see supernatural faith as merely a product of simple, ancient peoples trying to explain the world around them -- the sun, the moon, and the stars; seasonal crop cycles; human reproduction, etc. However, it’s a shock to many that 21st century science and technology is revealing something totally different. Check out the evidence here!

So kwazy Gainesville uber-looney backed down from his book burning party?

And the kwazy GOPhers remained SILENT through this entire bruhaha, yes? Boner? McConnell? Pence? Palin? McCain?

Newly-minted Afghanistan poobah Betrayus said "It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort," said Petraeus, according to the Journal's website. "It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community."
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20100906/articles/100909687

Fact is ya can't yell FIRE in a crowded theater. See Uber-Pope Bob Kincaid for a complete run-down on First Amendment implication HERE (mp3)!

Find the funniest entertainment this Sunday at
Brick TeeVee Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!
http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5980
http://filthy-rich.blogspot.com/2010/09/brick-teevee-jobs-jobs-jobs.html

Good morning!

Gingrich: Obama’s ‘Kenyan, Anti-Colonial’ Worldview - The Corner

Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D’Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview.

Gingrich says that D’Souza has made a “stunning insight” into Obama’s behavior — the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.”

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

“This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” Gingrich tells us.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/246302/gingrich-obama-s-kenyan-anti...
---
via http://twitter.com/ggreenwald

@ggreenwald Newt Gingrich: Obama's not one of us because he has a "Kenyan" worldview http://is.gd/f6VRX - the mask slips more everyday
4 minutes ago via web

Chinese state media pals up with US to demand One World Censorship http://bit.ly/cUhylU
about 1 hour ago via web

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~
%%%%%%%%%%%%$$$$$$$$$$$$%%%%%%%&
++++++++++==========)))()*&^%%%%$
-n-###################@@@@!!!!!!!~@~!@#@E$%^&*

666---666...666

The city's name probably comes from Zone Geul-Dagh, the name given to the area by French and Belgian mining companies. Göldağı ("Lake Mountain") is the highest mountain in the vicinity of Devrek district.

The French Protestants were called Huguenots: President George Washington had a Huguenot ancestor, as did at least 5 other Presidents: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, James Garfield, and Theodore Roosevelt. A Huguenot refugee named Apollos de Revoire settled in Boston, and had a son who signed his name Paul Revere! Remember his famous midnight ride? Three members of the Continental Congress - Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Elias Boudinot were Huguenots. Other great names include Francis Marrion, General George Patton, Clair Chennault, Admiral Dewey, Du Ponts, Henry Thoreau, Longfellow etc., etc. A Huguenot colony was founded in Florida in 1562 (years before the English landed), but was later destroyed by Spanish raiders.

And unlike the author of the "insight," you're too old to blame that on them forcing you to study "Lesbian eskimo poetry" in the evil commie secular humanist academy.

Don't get any big ideas, anyone, I am still in the same jackpot. I will not be tempted. Just needed to get that off my chest. BECAUSE IT'S IMPORTANT.

Next week we'll...whatever. Talk? I guess you do that sometimes. ; )

On one trip across country, after graduating from MIT, I arrived in Seattle with my MIT friends Peter Bohmer and George Katsiaficas. There we met a group that called itself the Seattle Liberation Front (SLF). These guys had gone to Seattle in 1970 largely from upstate New York, where some had been students. They were intent on making waves and chose Seattle for their contribution. Their idea was to create a gigantic stir, galvanizing rebellion. The people in the SLF weren't stupid or malevolent, but nonetheless they instructively crystallized misconceived sixties macho madness, of which, it has to be acknowledged, there was way too much.

The term “avant-garde” as used in popular discourse as well as in the more specialized worlds of art and politics has a variety of meanings. Sometimes it is overlooked—treated as having no special importance. There is no entry for it in the 32 volume Macmillan Dictionary of Art (1996), the New Encyclopedia Britannica (1995), or even in Raymond Williams’s highly regarded Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Yet for most of the 20th century—and the 19th as well—the term avant-garde was widely used to define attempts to forge new dimensions to our aesthetic and political definitions of reality. At the intersection of art and politics is where the term originated, and it is there that its most explosive interpretations can be found. In its 1973 edition the now-defunct Great Soviet Encyclopedia stridently attacked “avant-gardism” as “saturated with capitalist and petty bourgeois individualism.” More recently, feminists and post-modernists have attacked the avant-garde as a concept that fosters elitism.

If we were to attempt to give a brief definition to “avant-garde” as it has evolved over the last two centuries, it would refer to people seeking to transform aesthetic and political developments in society. Sometimes entwined together in complementary relationships, and at other moments separate and even antagonistic strands, aesthetic innovation and political engagement are both embedded in the core of the meaning of avant-garde. In what follows, I will trace the development of avant-garde movements from their origin in 19th century France to the contemporary period. In my view, the tension between the political and the aesthetic in avant gardes is significant and valuable; political activists can learn a great deal from the impact of aesthetic movements.Generally speaking, what is called “avant-garde art” today is completely depoliticized, a facet of its nature considered by many to be a hallmark of “modernism.” According to this view, the modernist tradition’s emphasis is on the “aesthetic” rather than on morality, human suffering or politics. Thus understood, modernists have replaced the spiritual and religious structuring of emotional experience with a secular equivalent: the “aesthetic.” Within this constellation, the “depoliticization of the concept of the avant-garde would be established within the aesthetic theory of modernism.”

http://www.myjazzhome.com/dqag.shtml

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/nyregion/12froggy.html?th&emc=th

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/09/10/nyregion/1248069006705/fiery-e...

Leah on Sun, 09/12/2010 - 11:34am.
Leah on Sun, 09/12/2010 - 11:43am.

*** ***
Leah on Sun, 09/12/2010 - 11:21am. -- sounds a bit Roxie Seattle 2 me ... teahee
;)
*** ***

taozen on Sun, 09/12/2010 - 12:07pm.
Let's all sing as "The Froggies" sing...
& I would say he was most definitely herald from Scotland lineage for he knew first of all about the word Bealtaine {one spelling of many spellings} and what it meant and the Celebration. Gosh profound, so profound for many reasons. /|\)0( Blessings To Him & Cheers.

Protect Social Security ! Bold Progressives - Action

Submitted by MMRules on Fri, 09/10/2010 - 4:23pm.
-

Some bold members of Congress wrote a letter making clear that any proposal from President Obama's "deficit reduction" commission that cuts Social Security is dead on arrival.

Will you be a "citizen signer" of this letter to protect Social Security? Add your name on the right. We'll make the Congress, the President, and the media know of our momentum..

http://act.boldprogressives.org/cms/survey/ssletter_main/?rd=1&source=e2...

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

________________________

Thanks, MMRules! It's good to see your friendly name posting these actions.

I would like to add that I appreciate our friends and fans at the ACLU who fight and stand up for our rights.

re:
666
Submitted by Leah on Sun, 09/12/2010 - 3:10am.

I don't know or I know many ;} 666
...yet I do know a Druid666 ;)

Connecticut: Linda McMahon has a problem. She's trying to run for the Senate as a savvy businesswoman, but the business she ran - World Wrestling Entertainment - has a, shall we say, unsavory side. McMahon can't escape YouTube clips featuring female wrestlers being mistreated and people with disabilities being mocked and beaten up, not to mention stories about how she treated them all as "independent contractors" to avoid providing benefits. And more than once since the campaign began, there's been word of another former WWE wrestler who's died far too young. Meanwhile, Richard Blumenthal is doing what he does best - working hard for the people of Connecticut.

Oyf Eybik Yung

...oh to "dance"... again perfect pictures to draw and paint... 2 kewl
;)

:)

Sorry that's all I got time for.

The sheets are safe.

Too busy failing a class. (Never done that before.)

Barack Obama is to go ahead with plans to sell Saudi Arabia advanced aircraft and other weapons worth up to $60bn (£39bn), the biggest arms deal in US history, in a strategy of shoring up Gulf Arab allies to face any military threat from Iran.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration is also in talks with the Saudis about possible naval and missile-defence upgrades that could be worth tens of billions of dollars more over five to 10 years.
Plans to go ahead with the package, which has been under secret negotiation since 2007, have been known for some time and have raised angry objections from Iran and to a lesser extent from Israel, an even closer US ally which is anxious to maintain its strategic edge over any potential adversary in the Middle East.
In its notification to Congress, the administration will authorise the Saudis to buy as many as 84 new F-15 fighters, upgrade 70 more, and purchase three different types of helicopters – 70 Apaches, 72 Black Hawks and 36 Little Birds, the Wall Street Journal reported. The package would be subject to a review by Congress.
According to earlier reports, the administration has already decided out of deference to the Israelis not to sell Saudi Arabia so-called stand-off systems, advanced long-range weapons that can be attached to F-15s for use in offensive operations.
The US is the world's largest arms supplier and the Saudi deal alone is said to support up to 75,000 jobs, according to firms such as Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and General Electric. Last year, despite a recession that hit global arms sales, the US increased its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a congressional study.
In 2008, Saudi Arabia was the second biggest arms buyer in the developing world, spending $8.7bn, making it second only to the United Arab Emirates. Britain and France are also in intense competition to sell in this market.
US-Saudi ties suffered a serious dip after the 9/11 terrorist attacks exposed al-Qaida's Saudi background to ordinary Americans, but the military relationship is in good order. Analysts say the deal will significantly boost Saudi Arabia's ability to defend its airspace against aircraft and missiles, to undertake "very painful" deterrent strikes and to police coastal areas.
It will also lock Riyadh into a close military relationship with Washington for at least another 20 years. Questions about democracy, freedoms and human rights in the kingdom clearly have a lower priority than security issues.
The package is expected to win congressional approval with limited amendments, although probably not until after the 2 November mid-term elections. It is a striking reflection of a convergence between the strategic concerns of the US, Israel and conservative Arab states about Iran's nuclear ambitions and bid for regional influence.
Saudi Arabia has denied recent reports that it has secretly agreed to allow Israeli planes to pass through its airspace on the way to bomb nuclear sites in Iran.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/13/us-saudi-arabia-arms-deal

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/09/201091312118406560.ht...

St. John, named Chrysostom (golden-mouthed) on account of his eloquence, came into the world of Christian parents, about the year 344, in the city of Antioch. His mother, at the age of 20, was a model of virtue. He studied rhetoric under Libanius, a pagan, the most famous orator of the age.

In 374, he began to lead the life of an anchorite in the mountains near Antioch, but in 386 the poor state of his health forced him to return to Antioch, where he was ordained a priest.

In 398, he was elevated to the See of Constantinople and became one of the greatest lights of the Church. But he had enemies in high places and some were ecclesiastics, not the least being Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, who repented of this before he died. His most powerful enemy, however, was the empress Eudoxia, who was offended by the apostolic freedom of his discourses. Several accusations were brought against him in a pseudo-council, and he was sent into exile.

I agree with Glenn Beck on one thing. I too have no time for any PERSON with anger in or coming from the pantal area. (At least not in a political context. ;))

Wow, I was really with him right up to the pants. Then he became cryogenically frozen and then thawed 60s New Left Man. (Sounds like someone Phil Hartman might play if he hadn't made it big, or died.)

-- :)

pantal area.

To: Tech Support

To whom it may concern,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed that the new program began making unexpected changes to the accounting software; severely limiting access to wardrobe, flower and jewelry applications that operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. No mention of this phenomenon was included in the product brochure. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalls many other valuable programs such as DinnerDancing 7.5, CruiseShip 2.3, and OperaNight 6.1 and installs new, undesirable programs such as PokerNight 1.3, SaturdayFootball 5.0, Golf 2.4, and ClutterEverywhere 4.5. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and invariably crashes the system. Under no circumstances will it run DiaperChanging 14.1 or HouseCleaning 2.6. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix Husband 1.0, but this all purpose utility is of limited effectiveness. Can you help, please!!!!

Signed, Jane

haha... :)

the sexiness of the oily people. That and clothespins...

But you shine on you oily...whatever.

---

I guess people. Yeah.
---
"Let your light shine/Down into mine..."

(See now that's just...not working...Or getting work done.)

It is Orly tho'. But it ain't early.

:}

See, now I HAVE to leave. Which I do anyhow.

Pentagon tries to buy entire print run of US spy expose Operation Dark Heart
US defence department attempts to prevent book by former intelligence officer Anthony Shaffer from reaching the shops

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/13/pentagon-afghanistan-spy-boo...

http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5982

They're Insane." That narrows it down.