Secretary of the Treasury and ex-CEO of Goldman-Sachs Henry Paulson called Congressional leadership for a get-together. He tells them something – no doubt using charts and graphs – so horrifying, so absolutely terrifying that they all come out looking like Moses (er… Charlton Heston) after meeting the burning bush. Hair’s grown a foot and is stark white, their beards fall to their bellies, they’ve all got that far-away look in their red-rimmed eyes, and their hands are shaking. None dare breathe the edict: Set My People Free!

So. What was it, exactly, that Paulson told them? Gee, we dunno. Nor are we allowed to know. Just as if this were top secret intelligence pinpointing WMDs that don’t exist right in Saddam’s palace, we don’t get to find out. Even though it’s supposedly OUR trillion or three or four they MUST have right now to bail themselves out. With a laughable “emergency” plan that, Deputy Admin press secretary Tony Fratto said just today, was drawn up over the course of months.

Months. Not days or even weeks. They sure as shit knew it was coming, and simply waited for just the right moment of panic to spring it on us as if the end of the world is mere hours away. Ah, the lively tune reverberates in my mind…

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!”

If that’s not a scam just waiting on the Greek chorus to sing the dirge I sure don’t know what is. They don’t care what I have to say about it, but I say “No.” If it turns out that nobody’s bothered to keep track of where all the paper went, then nobody really owns the lien on my house. It’s mine, free and clear (if they can’t produce the lien, they’ve got no claim). Except for the annual taxes I pay to my LOCAL government. Which I don’t mind paying at all since it supports the fire department, rescue squad, county hospital, roads, bridges, schools and libraries.

Looks to me like they’re trying to salvage the prime and just slightly sub-prime mortgage market by putting in a claim to the Treasury because if we were ever to figure out that our actual loans have been so fragmented and bundled and bought and sold that nobody bothered to keep the dead trees anywhere, we ALL own our properties free and clear and nobody who thinks they own the paper gets paid!

Which, btw, is just fine with me. Wall Street can crash, I don’t mind. I’m sure there are capable players just waiting in the wings to kick-start things when the wind dies down. Real estate’s still a good income investment and can be had cheap right now. Hold the liens yourself on just two or three houses and you’re guaranteed steady income for the entire life of the loans – even at straight interest of 8-10% non-compounded, you’re still earning the premium. And if they default, the property goes back to you and you just sell it all over again. Wall Street may fall, but Main Street will survive. For the most part, anyway…

Sure, there have been tin-foil hat conspiracy theories aplenty for as long as anyone alive can remember. The Jewish bankers got together with the German Illuminati and plotted the ‘New World Order’, getting its first nail in the coffin in 1913 with the Federal Reserve, going straight from there to instigating WW-I with a well-planned assassination in Sarajevo, culling the first wave of accumulated wealth in 1929 to start the Great Depression, which could only be alleviated in the end by WW-II.

And they needed an excuse to overrule America’s strong isolationism at the time, so they didn’t bother to do anything about the incoming Japanese fleet as it sailed en masse toward Pearl Harbor. Not exactly a “false flag” operation, but certainly despicable. REAL false flag operations got famous when the wholly fictional Gulf of Tonkin ‘incident’ allowed the US military to ensconce itself in perpetuity in South Vietnam, admittedly (by several ‘memoirs’ since, by people who could know) for the purpose of testing the nifty new armaments and chemical warfare agents amassed when they ‘forgot’ to cut the wartime military budget after Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war.

Then there was 9-11. A textbook case made for tin-foil speculation, undoubtedly. Huge skyscrapers imploding perfectly from jet fuel in the upper stories, a whole different, un-damaged skyscraper that mysteriously collapsed in the same fashion late that afternoon for no apparent reason, a hole in the danged Pentagon but zero signs of anything that might have caused it, etc., etc., etc. I doubt anybody’s unaware of the grand conspiracy theories for that dreadful day.

Then, just a week later, some journalists and a congresscritters received letters in the mail containing weaponized anthrax spores and badly printed notes from what we were told was just another Arab terrorist. Only that wasn’t true either, as quickly became known. Why, it turns out that the weaponized anthrax spores came from the US Army’s own bioweapons facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

At first the FBI fingered an Egyptian researcher for the dirty deed, but couldn’t make a case of it. They looked for a short time at an Israeli researcher too, but backed right off that one quick. So they went after a regular American researcher in the lab, and paid him nearly $6 million just a couple of months ago for ruining his life. Desperate, they settled on another guy, and he is said to have killed himself last week with Tylenol (something not fun, takes about 5 days to die). Which must of course make him the lone gunman in this particular incident, right?

If you agree, you’ll just love the incredible amount of gossamer ‘evidence’ being used to convict a dead guy who held high enough clearance to work in an Army bioweapons lab for 28 years, was in all appearances an upstanding family man, and had ZERO run-ins with the law – all on the highly dubious ‘testimony’ of a highly suspicious non-professional psychiatric ‘babysitter’ (now in hiding) with a rap sheet for DUI and domestic violence as long as your arm – is quite absurd. They’re really losing their touch at this late date. This stuff is way, way flimsier than magic bullets, perfectly ‘dropped’ skyscrapers and dead terrorists that turned up alive and well.

For those of you who like a thoroughly twisted Ludlum plot as well as a seriously holey conspiracy theory, don your tin-foil beanies and follow some of the links below to the ongoing drama. Looks like I’m not the only person who keeps a big salt lick handy when the gub’ment starts handing out badly crafted lies…

Links:

WSJ: Bruce Ivins Wasn’t the Anthrax Culprit [Opinion, Richard Spertzel, head of biological weapons section Unscom '94-'99]
NYT: Anthrax Evidence Called Mostly Circumstantial
Salon: Glenn Greenwald on the anthrax investigation
John McQuaid: Bentonite and ABC’s credibility
BuzzFlash: Jean C. Duley… tell us again…
Anthrax Vaccine – Meryl Nass
The Hidden Anthrax Letters Suspect
The Death of Mr. Ivins

George Bush lifted bans on offshore drilling, explaining that this will not only increase our domestic supplies, but will also remedy recent drastic increases in the price of imported oil. Now, oil companies already have more than 2,000 leases on offshore oil that they haven’t even begun to drill, and then there’s all the producing oil wells in Texas and Oklahoma that Ronald Reagan’s administration ordered capped (and labeled ‘reserve’) after taking office in 1981 (and which caused a rather drastic immediate recession in those states as well as contributing to the infamous S&L collapse. The very first bank to collapse – Penn Square Bank in 1982, was heavily invested in those producing wells when they were ordered shut down. That cost We the People $150 million. The current and ongoing bank failures will cost us a lot more.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports a Possible Industry Role in Energy Shortage, as Big Oil companies sought as long as five years ago to cut refinery output to increase profits. And cut back on new refineries is just what they’ve done.

But fear not! Bloomberg reports that Kuwait may build a refinery in Louisiana to help the US boost its capacity for refined petroleum products. As we fall further and further into deep recession/depression due to $5 a gallon diesel, $4 a gallon gasoline, and the fast-rising price of food, shelter and clothing based on that.

I probably don’t need to say it, but this is really bullshit. Bush/Cheney aren’t done robbing us blind yet? We’ve something MORE for them to steal before escaping to Paraguay? We’ve been set up for a fall, and now that we’re actually falling (with no sign of bottom yet), they expect us to clean up their mess with wealth we simply don’t have anymore? They looted our retirement funds. They screwed us on our mortgages. They blew everybody big time on WMDs in Iraq. And now… NOW we’re told…

…that the US oil industry is exporting a record 1.6 billion barrels a day of refined petroleum products, up a full 1/3 over last year.

Now, I realize that I’m not that smart about this sort of capitalistic crap-shoot, but it occurs to me that if the US had those 1.6 billion barrels a day of gasoline and diesel fuel we might not be falling off the economic cliff at an accelerating pace. And it occurs to me that we’re being told that the BushCo oil wars (now threatening to ignite the entire ME) are all about ’securing our supply’ – even though the truth is that our biggest foreign supplier is Canada, NOT Iraq, Iran, or even Saudi Arabia.

And with all this bruhaha about domestic supply – selling offshore and protected wilderness areas for drilling, capping producing wells, exporting a third of our domestic production – I’m wondering if the price of the oil they’re importing and charging us an arm and a leg for is LESS than what they receive on the world market for what they’re exporting.

I get the very strong feeling that they’ve screwed We the People yet again (that feeling just never goes away), seriously planning to turn us into just another Third World “Resource Region” for their total expoitation.

It’s their End Game. We have no choice but to play it.

As an early Edwards supporter strong on health care, I considered the erstwhile “frontrunner” [Hillary Clinton] to be well to the right-center of me. As Obama’s star rose, I investigated and found him well to the right-center of me too. I was going for the populist, not The Machine or The Inspiration. Because after all the harm the Bushies have done over nearly eight years, Democrats have proven themselves cowards over and over and over again. Even after 2006. We needed, thought I, someone who understands reality in America, not just for the top 2%.

Sometimes I think we need a third party, to represent those of us who self-identify as ‘progressive’. But I’ve seen too many split-party tactics in my time, and I’m not sure at all that the US can handle more than two parties sans a representative form of parliamentary government. We’re just not equipped for it. Yet the Constitution is the only thing still standing between me and Big Brother. I’m not willing to give up on it now.

Which brings me around to the current presumptive front-runner, Barack Obama. And his odd vote on the FISA bill, complete with expansion of powers and retroactive immunity for breaking the law for the telecoms who were blackmailed into cooperating with illegal wiretaps.

The country’s just not in THAT much danger. I’m not plotting terrorist attacks when I talk to my relatives or friends on the phone. But I damn sure don’t want the NSA listening to everything I say! Or logging all my text messages. Or reading all my emails. I believe it’s a complete waste of resources electronic and human. I am not a threat. The time, money, energy and storage space they waste on me talking to my 85-year old Mother-in-Law or giving hubby a grocery list on his way home from work is wasted EVERYTHING.

Hard earned by somebody, not just me, then given to the government under duress, to be wasted on crap like this. I’m sick of it. I don’t feel safer because they search random 55-year old schoolteachers at the airport. I don’t feel safer because they won’t let me fly (have unpaid traffic ticket). I don’t feel safer because they pay someone more money than I make to do nothing other than listen in on all my private communications with my friends and family, and all those “My Name Is Bob” Punjabis that call innumerable times of the day to collect bills or sell me something I don’t want.

I want the government to understand what the threat is, so when they try to scare me they’re not trying to make me afraid of my next-door neighbor for no reason. Or afraid of my friends. Or my family. Or “My Name Is Bob” in Bangalore. Or myself. I am not a terrorist. I know what Arab terrorists look like. Even when they’re wearing regular clothes. I know they’ve a certain background profile and are usually here on visa. They don’t look like 55-year old-lady schoolteachers or some random business-class regular whose name isn’t on the company credit card (I HATE that commercial!).

Then I want the government to target the threat. If my government is more frightened of me than Al Queda, maybe we should all be asking ourselves why that’s so. The answer might not please us, but it might tell us something we need to know.

I was born and raised in the military (US Navy). My Dad spent 27 years in service as an officer (we called him Commander). I married military (US Navy, nuclear submarine service). I have a son and nephew in the current wars too. I grew up with the firm understanding – as part of my environmental patriotism – that America was not just the Land of the Free. It was, even moreso, the Home of the Brave.

What ever happened to that? Didn’t it have to go away before the whole Land of the Free thing got trashed?

This is the week of the 4th of July. America’s Own Holiday. Mr. Obama, you’re wrong on this FISA bill. It doesn’t matter if you vote on the ‘losing’ side, if you’re President come January. Stand to! Because either way, this legislation is designed to haunt the future. You get to decide how you’d like that haunting to go. Fix what Bush and the Wimps did to us (we’ll insist), or start out as a certifiable autocrat. You’ll lose a lot on that account.

The liberty we’d reserve to ourselves here isn’t worth the cost if you flip us off, honest. I, for one, am not afraid. I’ll die of something someday, it matters more to me how I LIVE. I will not surrender my freedom lightly because you’re afraid of me. No More Cowards.

The US Supreme Court ruled on April 28th that voter ID laws are constitutional despite the fact that they disenfranchise at least 11 million eligible voters, expand restrictions on felony voting to millions of people who have unpaid parking tickets or minor moving violations that haven’t been taken care of, or have lost their auto insurance for some reason. It also amounts to an onerous poll tax for millions more Americans whose crime is simply being poor, elderly or disabled.

The justices split on the decision along entirely political lines, not surprising because these laws that require voters to produce a photo ID with a future expiration date primarily affect traditional Democratic Party voters. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion, citing the usual Republican fear of voter fraud as the state interest. Yet according to a survey by the Center for Policy Alternatives, voter fraud is extremely rare. From 2002 to 2005, an Ohio survey showed a total of 52 people convicted of any type of voter fraud, while just a tad less than 200,000,000 votes were cast in general elections by Ohio voters.

That’s half of one ten-thousandth of 1 percent. This is not a big issue.

Our household – with three workers who don’t quite make 150% of poverty level put together (this is Appalachia) – recently were pressed to get a photo ID for my teenage grandson so he could take the SAT tests. He starts college next year, but does not yet drive. We put a rush order on his birth certificate (original got lost) from another state. The copies and rush cost $55. It took longer to get a replacement SS card (required for ID along with birth certificate here), which cost another $15. Then our daughter had to take a day off work to spend the hours at DMV to get the stupid thing. That cost $80 plus the $20 price of the ID, a total of $170. A considerable cost and if your boss won’t give you time off, nearly impossible to accomplish. Grandson turns 18 three days before the May 6th primary in NC. He is registered and will be voting.

It’s a new burden, and it’s too expensive for many people who should have a voice in their representation. It’s a complicated bother for people who don’t drive, and there are 11 million adult citizens in this country who don’t have birth certificates (born in countries that no longer exist or have lost records due to disasters or wars, are elderly and/or born at home and never got one, etc.). They have been flatly disenfranchised because one half of one ten-thousandth of one percent of voters might try to vote twice. Which would add up to half of one thousandth of one percent of votes. Only in Florida would that tip a close election, and even then the court would step in and declare a winner regardless of the votes. As they did in 2000.

It’s a poll tax, forbidden by the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution. The Bush Supreme Court has now abrogated yet another of the established amendments to our governing charter for purely partisan political reasons – our rights. We need new leadership immediately, and the makeup of the court must change. Volunteer to take some neighbors to the polls this year, maybe help someone negotiate the gauntlet to get a valid photo ID. This election will make or break us.

Luckily, the event was blocked out here in North Carolina, where early voting opened today and the crowds are already considerable. I checked my sites today on the state BoE website, where the banner now displays a running total of registrations. Democrats are running nearly 2 to 1 over Republicans, with a million and a quarter Independents.

Now, North Carolina likes to split its tickets. We consistently go for Democratic state government and my locality is solidly Dem. But for as long as I’ve lived here – yes, I’m ashamed to say I lived through the last throes of the Jesse Helms empire – NC has gong solidly Republican for President and Senate. Except when John Edwards finally took the pig farmer down, but he didn’t stay long and we ended up with Liz Dole. But from what I’ve seen, this year our millions of bitter small town and rural people just might go Dem well beyond the margin of error that allows elections to be stolen. And the Dem who will make that happen is Barack Obama. He’s going to sweep our primary, then he’s going to take the state.

Anyway, here’s a video of what Barack Obama said today in Raleigh, where he proved that Pennsylvania isn’t the only state that counts right now. Hillary and ABC have given him a significant talking point he can hammer from now ’til November – what’s wrong with American Political Discourse (and the mainstream media) in this country. Just more reasons for change!

Speaking about the people of rural Pennsylvania – site of the next primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Obama said on Friday…

“…it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Aside from the fact that this statement is 100% true of small town and rural people as a general demographic – as one sociological reason that rural dwellers so often vote against their own best interests after being swayed by propaganda fluff from so many GOP “values candidates” who don’t practice what they preach – Clinton’s smear team was poised and ready to make as much hay as possible about how “elitist” Obama has revealed himself to be.

As if Hillary’s just another good ol’ boy fundamentalist hater chewing tobacco and playing with guns while eating possum as the “other other white meat.” Riiiiiight… I swear, this campaign just gets sillier and sillier.

Fact of the matter is that Obama’s off-the-cuff response to a question (as cited above) pretty well captures the malaise in rural and small town America these days. They are the people who suffer first and most from the outsourcing of jobs and factories, from bad agricultural policies and bad trade agreements, from shortfalls in the so-called “safety net” that prevents new enrollees in Medicaid, food stamps, extended unemployment benefits, etc., etc. These are the people the American Dream has passed by, and yes, they *are* bitter about it.

Still, it’s probably smarter to appeal to hopes for renewal that may yet be attainable than to reiterate hopes dashed on the rocks of reality in 21st century America. At least, if you’re hoping to get votes. As for guns and religion, rural people have always cared about these things as part of their heritage and community. These are not things that are new for the left behinds in our society. As for racism and anti-immigrant feelings, these rear their ugly heads whenever people lose their jobs en mass and see that newcomers and ‘others’ still have jobs (even if they’re not jobs the recently unemployed factory workers want to do).

Democrats shouldn’t be attacking each other using GOP frames, but for some unfathomable reason Hillary Clinton believes this is her best strategy for winning a nomination she can’t win by counting votes. Appeals to base instincts like racism will blow up in her face, given that in that same base instinct pile are all the reasons men can think of to hate and distrust women. I’d hoped she was smarter than that.

Hillary Clinton is running as a DC insider and a representative of the latte-drinking, ‘establishment’ elite, so it’s quite amusing to see her attempt to out-redneck the rednecks while accusing the black guy of being an ‘elitist’. But before this gets out of hand, someone maybe ought to remind them both that in this country it’s considered okay to both have religion and own guns. Those are right there in the first two amendments to the Constitution, and making the free exercise of those rights an issue of ignorance, bitterness and fear is NOT a winning strategy.

Why, it just might alert all those ignorant non-citified rubes out there that the Democratic Party might not have much respect for their most cherished rights – with intent to abridge them unconstitutionally the moment they get the chance. Just not a good way to go about gathering votes, I’m thinking.

Of course, that’s what I get for thinking…

Hat Tip to The Bonddad Blog

This video consists of clips of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson lying his ass off on George Stephanopolis’ Sunday talk-fest (you can tell he’s lying because his lips are moving, but pay attention to his “tell” – how he blinks, stutters and shakes his head when he tells lies, negating what he’s saying. The man just cannot defend bailing out a speculative investment bank – the fifth largest in the country – while doing precisely zip to help the citizens who are losing their homes to this mess.

Which, unfortunately, is only going to get worse as more greedy billionaires who haven’t paid any taxes since Bush exempted them get the people they’ve screwed (US citizens) to bail them out of their bad decisions. If the US taxpayers have to bail out the billionaires, shouldn’t we also make them pay some taxes? How about refinancing their homes at a flat 4% for 30 years, as if they’d gotten those loans from a fed-guaranteed lender (since that’s now who owns the paper)? How about wiping out THEIR debts?

I like this “Hillbilly Report,” thought readers would find it refreshingly truthful too. Enjoy!

Senator Chris Dodd made a statement on the Senate floor on Friday, January 25th during the cloture debate on Bush’s FISA bill – the one granting retroactive immunity to America’s telecom giants for aiding and abetting Bushco’s rampant lawbreaking. The statement well explains what’s wrong with the entire situation in which we find ourselves after 7 long years of the decidedly un-American “Unitary Executive” – a.k.a. “The Deciderer.”

Dodd had threatened to filibuster the bill last month, so Harry Reid was forced to withdraw it from debate until last Friday, when Dodd again threatened filibuster. Reid then put off the cloture vote until today, January 28th. Senators Clinton and Obama, who were out of town campaigning in South Carolina on Friday, are scheduled to be present for this afternoon’s cloture vote (and filibuster, should that ensue).

Dodd noted that it wasn’t his colleagues in Congress – either house – who convinced him of the unacceptability of telecom immunity, it was the many citizens he met in his recently aborted campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination…

For several months now, I’ve listened to the building frustration over this immunity and this administration’s campaign of lawlessness. I’ve seen it in person, in mail, online – the passion and eloquence of citizens who are just fed up. They’ve inspired me more than they know.

In his impassioned speech, Dodd ran down the list of reasons why it’s important to stop this attempt to cover-up lawbreaking by the administration and its corporate enablers, and get the issues into the federal court system where they belong – and will be public. He echoes themes we’ve seen before…

Because this is about far more than the telecoms. This is about the choice that will define America: the rule of law, or the rule of men.

It’s about this government’s practice of waterboarding, a technique invented by the Spanish Inquisition, perfected by the Khmer Rouge, and in between, banned – originally banned for excessive cruelty – by the Gestapo!

It’s about the Military Commissions Act, a bill that gave President Bush the power to designate any individual he wants an “unlawful enemy combatant,” hold him indefinitely, and take away his right to habeas corpus – the 900-year-old right to challenge your detention.

It’s about the CIA destroying evidence of harsh interrogation – or, as some would call it, torture.

It’s about Dick Cheney raising secrecy to an art form.

[...] It’s about the Justice Department turning our nation’s highest law enforcement offices into patronage plums, and turning the impartial work of indictments and trials into the machinations of politics.

It’s about Alberto Gonzales coming before Congress to give us testimony that was a best wrong and at worst perjury.

It’s about Michael Mukasey coming before the Senate and defending the president’s power to openly break the law.

It’s about extraordinary renditions and secret prisons…

Whoa. Quite the list! I can remember when Richard Nixon resigned rather than try to defend his involvement in the cover-up of a “third-rate burglary.” Heck, I can remember when the only reason Ronald Reagan didn’t get impeached for giving high-powered weaponry to Iran and running drugs and death squads in Central America was because the lovable old Gipper was obviously suffering the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

…and I can remember an 8-year torch and pitchfork battle to impeach the most popular president in my lifetime for getting a blow job. Shrub has so corrupted this government and slimed the office of the Presidency that it’s hard to imagine how America can recover. George Bush and his puppets in the Congress (including more than a handful of culpable Democrats) are trying hard to ensure that America never recovers. They want us destroyed – much more thoroughly than Osama bin Laden could ever hope for.

Just as the nefarious threads of Sibel Edmonds’ revelations span decades, name the already well-known players, and establish a long-term program of illegal nuclear proliferation involving high level officials in the Pentagon, State Department, Congress and the Bush administration, the many violations of US and international law related to illegal spying on citizens as well as blatant abrogation of the Constitution are all of a set. They are dots that tell a sordid tale if they can be connected.

You go, Senator Dodd! Connect those dots, filibuster those criminals and creeps, be a true patriot and help save this country from power-mad traitors! I’ve contacted my Senators about voting ‘No’ on FISA cloture. Have you contacted yours?

Links:

Statement of Senator Dodd on FISA Telecom Immunity

WaPo: Post Politics Hour

lukery: Sibel Edmonds archive