"Oh My God, Not The Secret Service, Damn It"

Uh, where were you when there was outrage over the Bush era criminal activities?

President Barack Obama, speaking for the first time about allegations that Secret Service agents hired prostitutes, said Sunday that "of course I'll be angry" if those accusations are proven true by an investigation.

Obama said the agents represent the United States and are supposed to conduct themselves with the highest levels of dignity anywhere in the world. "Obviously, what's been reported doesn't match up to those standards," Obama said in a news conference wrapping his appearance at a Latin America summit.

Ah, the faux outrage!

Florida's New Prison Bill Goes Down In Flames

A massive expansion of private prisons in Florida collapsed in the Senate Tuesday as nine Republicans joined a dozen Democrats in handing a setback to Senate leaders and a victory to state workers.

As a result, the state will not undertake what would have been the single greatest expansion of prison privatization in U.S. history, affecting 27 prisons and work camps in 18 counties and displacing more than 3,500 correctional officers.

Thank Goodness! This was pushed by the Governor and touted as the "new" way to go regarding imprisoning so called criminals. Except in Florida, the privatization was predicated on the expected "new" criminals that would be coming from the illegal immigrant crackdown. They were counting the money hand over fist. Glad to see that this "plan" died a quick death.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/14/2642075/bill-to-privatize-prisons-dies.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy

Facing Life In Jail For Protesting OC Your City

The threat of life imprisonment looms for Occupy Oakland activist Marcel Johnson - better known by his alias, Khali - after a third-strike arrest during the demonstration.

Read the rest. It's like the guy in Cali that was facing his third strike for stealing a slice of pizza. The third strike felony law was supposed to be for those that are a danger to society and commit a third DANGEROUS felony, like armed robbery, murder, etc. Not for some misdemeanor like protesting or stealing a slice of pizza.

Don't blink. If you do, you might not realize you are still living in the United States and not some third world dictatorship. Oh, my bad, we are living in a third world dictatorship!

H/T to Crooks and Liars.

Large Corporate Taxes Paid Vs. Lobby Expenses!

Interesting post over at Think Progress regarding the top corporations taxes paid compared to what they paid for lobbying of Congress.

(shaking head) And you have to constantly ask me the stupid question of why the Occupy movement exists?

Obama Administration Now Attempting To Run Interference With AG's And Investigations Of Bank Fraud, Etc.

Why am I not surprised? Why are many Democrats in America not surprised? Why are the American PEOPLE not surprised?

Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices, according to people briefed on discussions about the deal.

In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement, said the people briefed on the talks.

Mr. Schneiderman and top prosecutors in some other states have objected to the proposed settlement with major banks, saying it would restrict their ability to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing in a variety of areas, including the bundling of loans in mortgage securities.

Well, DUH! If you haven't figured out by now that Obama is propped up by the financial industry (and the oil industry, and big pharma, etc.), and watches out for THEIR interests over the interests of the American people, then you simply have had your fingers in your ears and yelling out loud so as to NOT know these things about the president YOU elected to change things.

This is disturbing to me, because I first read about Mr. Schneiderman's efforts to stop the settlement of a paltry $20 billion because such settlement includes a bar against further investigations into the banking industry's other notorious practices. Uncovering wrong doing is supposed to be an AG's responsibility, and the fact that the president of the United States is taking an active role in curtailing such investigations, continues to strike me as proof positive Obama and the banks have their hands in each others' pockets.

I cannot tell you how many cases my office has where we are representing clients who have had their homes foreclosed upon, and the documents produced by the banks and lending institutions are all signed by a handful of these robo-signers! Seriously! We just "google" some of the notaries and other signers and the list of those that are under current investigation is remarkable. One such signer, who also signed off on many documents on a couple of our cases, said in a deposition (which is available on the internet) that she signed about 180,000 of these documents every month, never read them, and just did what the banks and lending institutions told her to do. One day she was an officer of Chase Bank, the next day she was an officer of Countrywide, etc. She was signing and or notarizing documents transferring title (generally AFTER the fact and not BEFORE the fact) where banks would then use these documents to prove they held the underlying loan on the property, hence they were entitled to foreclose. Many of these properties, as you have undoubtedly read time and time again, were never delinquent in the payment of the loans by the borrowers ... the "industry" as it were, simply was (and still is) stealing homes, many of them with equity and not "upside down" as the term is generally used when the value of the property is less than the mortgage attached to the property. Millions of people have lost their homes due to this unsavory practice, and the small settlement offered by the banking industry does not come even close to bringing satisfaction to those millions who have lost their homes. But all the president seems to care about is, once again, not prosecuting the bad guys, whether it is banks, Wall Street, or the Bush Administration.

I love this quote from the article, which concerns an argument Mr. Schneiderman had with Kathryn S. Wylde, a "member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who represents the public."

Characterizing her conversation with Mr. Schneiderman that day as “not unpleasant,” Ms. Wylde said in an interview on Thursday that she had told the attorney general “it is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.”[my emphasis]

But Ms. Wylde, they ARE doing indefensible things, and HAVE been doing said indefensible things for quite some time now.

I shudder as I continue to watch this president devolve into a greedy politician.

Playing With Oil Prices, And Getting Away With It

While I do not drive or own a car, I am affected by the uncalled for rising gasoline prices as it affects other aspects of my life, including the rise in the price of food and other necessities. However, most of us are well aware by now how these rising gasoline prices are rigged. There's an interesting piece by Lee Fang exposing how gamers like Koch Industries are utilizing tactics similar to those that were done by Enron to spike the price of oil.

In recent weeks, gas prices around the country have surged to levels unseen since the 2008 oil spike. However, market fundamentals are not driving the nearly $4.00/gallon gas prices. In fact, under the Obama administration, oil production is at record highs and there is adequate global supply of crude. As Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner Bart Chilton has explained, rampant oil speculation, which is at its highest level on record right now, is to blame for current prices.

As Yasha Levine says on her blog concerning this:

To put it another way: Forget what you learned about supply and demand. Everyone agrees the oil market is more rigged than a truckstop slot machine.

I suggest a full read of both sites.

DeLay Guilty! Oh Happy Day!

The courts have spoken and Tom Delay is going to jail. All Hail Turkey Day. We've just received some extra gravy to go with our mash potatoes. He's one of the biggest slime balls to ever serve in Congress and who helped create K Street politics. Chris Matthews will be devastated.

H/T to Crooks and Liars.

Of course, expect an appeal. In today's court system, especially when it comes to Republicans, guilty is synonymous with appeal, appeal, appeal.

Nuke 'Em Or Duke 'Em

Now why is this not news to me?

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Hmmm. No wonder there's a supp0sed ban on the use of white phosphorous. But the U.S. felt no compulsion not to use it.

Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.

August 6 is just around the corner, 65 years after first atomic bomb dropped in Japan. My piece, here.

And for what it looked like in Fallujah, here are some graphic pictures to remind one of what war is really like.

PTSD Coming To An Oil Spill Near You

You know it's bad when the locals start committing suicide because they are overwhelmed by the reality of the BP oil disaster. Continuing on earlier post theme:

After waiting a while, the deckhands returned to the boat, which was moored where they had left it, Vinson said. They went aboard and found Kruse at the captain's bridge above the wheelhouse, Vinson said. He had been shot in the head. A Glock handgun was later recovered from the scene, and investigators do not suspect foul play, Vinson said.

[snip]

But he said it's not surprising the oil spill had weighed heavily on his mind, as it has on many local fishermen no longer able to support themselves with deep-sea sport fishing trips for marlin and the like, Vinson said.

"All the waters are closed. There's no charter business anymore. You go out on some of the beaches now, with the oil, you can't even get in the water," Vinson said. "It's really crippled the tourism and fishing industry here."

North Carolina Sure Has Some Combative Congressmen

Un-fucking-believable!

Madoff Gets 150 Years!

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said Madoff's breach of trust was massive, and that he lied to investors and to the SEC to buy homes, yachts and pay country club fees. He called the maximum sentence symbolic to those who might imitate the fraud and to the victims seeking relief.

"Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil and that this kind of manipulation of the system is not just a bloodless crime that takes place on paper, but one instead that takes a staggering toll," Chin said.

"Not a single letter was submitted in support of Madoff," Chin said. "Not friends, not family. That is telling."

Too bad no one else on Wall Street, etc. is being sued for fraud, damn it. I'd like to see more prison sentences for those that forced Americans to have to fork over tax dollars just to pay for their salaries and bonuses.

The Beltway Journalists Running Scared

Another great post by Glenn Greenwald, on the Beltway mentality, and their fear that Obama just might have really meant what he said during his campaign for the presidency. The media lies to the public constantly. The media distorts reality to the public constantly. And this is supported by the bad guys in government that have something to gain by distorting public opinion to gain their advantage. And just like Greenwald, I am sick and tired of it. Journalists are not supposed to regurgitate press releases ... they are supposed to research and report on the truth and relevancy of the topics. But, between the singularly corporate controlled media (anyone notice the change in tone in editorials once Murdoch took over the WSJ? Yeah, I thought so) and their government officials with a stake in the lies, it has become patently possible to watch and/or read anything emanating from what is considered main stream media.

It's amazing how explicitly Brooks here is endorsing -- and demanding -- deliberate deceit of the public. There is, for obvious reasons, extreme anger among the American citizenry towards the piggish sleaze, systematic corruption, and wholesale destruction permeating the political establishment and our political and financial elites. In order to pacify those sentiments, political elites tolerated, perhaps even desired, a presidential candidate with credible outsider pretenses who claimed to empathize with that popular anger and who wanted to combat the political elites who were the targets of it -- but only on the condition that he didn't really mean any of it, that it was all just a means to deceive people into believing that they still live in some sort of responsive democracy and they retain even a minimal ability to shape what the Government does. The anti-Washington rhetoric Obama was spouting was tolerated by media elites only to the extent that none of it was sincere.

There is a direct relationship between (a) evidence that Obama didn't mean any of his campaign rhetoric and doesn't intend to do anything other than blend into and perpetuate the Washington status quo; and (b) the media's sentiments towards Obama. The more there is of (a), the more positive is (b). Conversely, the less there is of (a), the more negative is (b). That's why Brooks is angry with Obama here: there is almost a suggestion that Obama might have meant some of the critiques he voiced about Washington during the campaign or, at the very least, that Obama's anti-Washington rhetoric might force him, now and then, to oppose prevailing Washington orthodoxies and go against dominant Washington power centers even if Obama doesn't want to (which is what happened when his "campaign blather" forced Daschle out). Brooks is fearful and thus angry that Obama created a Frankenstein: leading people to believe that there would be any changes in Washington and that they had the right to expect it.

[snip]

This is exactly what Brooks is saying. Indeed, if one reviews most of the political controversies of the last decade, one finds exactly this dynamic: the political and media establishment joining together to deliberately distort American public opinion and thus render it irrelevant in what the political class does: the mass desire for de-funding of and withdrawal from Iraq; the overwhelming demand for investigations into Bush crimes during the administration; the widespread belief now that those crimes must be investigated; the extreme majorities favoring "even-handedness" in our Middle East policies; economic policies and government processes promoting the interests of the majority rather than the narrow corporate interests that so transparently own and control political officials. The overarching role of the Beltway journalist is to obscure and distort those widely-held views on the part of the citizenry and thus prevent them from having any impact, protect political power from those beliefs.

You Know, It's Time We Take The Kid Gloves Off Of Prosecuting The Bush Administration

Hughley: "Now I listened to those tapes and I'm not going to hide my affinity for this guy. I never met him before then but to me we have become such a trivial place that we will impeach a man for having sex, or lying about having sex with a woman. In California we will impeach a guy because he raises taxes on license plates because energy gets out of control. We'll impeach a guy for saying some things on tape. But a man can take us to war and lie and we won't do a damn thing about that. That makes me so mad."

H/T to Crooks and Liars.