Tears of Rage

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/09/04/favoritesonsanddaughters/index.html
Hold real Democratic primaries to see if Obama should be replaced on the ticket

http://www.theyoungturks.com/story/2011/9/12/53925/8692/Diary/Rick-Perry-will-win-the-Republican-nomination-and-Newt-Gingrich-will-be-his-running-mate-
09/12/2011 05:39:25 AM EST

Rick Perry will win the Republican nomination, and Newt Gingrich will be his running mate.
posted by Exodus111

That is my prediction and im putting it out there.




No im not Nostradamus great great great great grandson, but it seems clear to me that this is the plan as we go forward.

The battle will come down to Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, we can all see that now, the tea party candidates will lose, and in losing they will throw their endorsments onto the winning candidates (being promised cabinet positions no doubt) thereby persuading most of the tea party to tow the party line.

This is why Tea party darlings have made an effort maintain their lunacy, so as to maintain their legitimacy with the tea party suckers.



Mitt Romney seems more intelligent by far then Rick Perry but at the end of the day he will lose because the Republicans just dont trust him, its goes back to romneycare and he will not be able to suprass this.

Because of Rick Perry.

No matter what he says or how unintelligent he seems, u can TRUST Rick Perry to be Rick Perry!

This is the guy who, when asked if he is for guncontrol gets a laugh out of the audience, because they know Rick Perry, we all know Rick Perry, Rick Perry is Rick Perry, he needs no introduction.

He is mister Republican, unlike Mitt Romney, we all KNOW Rick Perry will not compromise with anyone.



He will win, and he will pick Newt Gingrich as his running mate, because, well why is Newt still in the race?

Newts campaign has been a DISASTER from day one, he should have resigned long ago, but he keeps on trucking knowing his good friend, whom he wrote the foreword for his book, Rick Perry, will take him along for the ride so they can continue their plan for America.

This will be Bush/Cheney 2.0, and Obama has no defence, not after 4 years of pocket change.

God help America.

I had to post this after seeing it on facebook. BVT suggested the Tea Party adopt this song, in order to connect with young voters.

Elections - POLITICS
Cain: Name of Perry's Hunting Camp 'Insulting' to Blacks

Published October 02, 2011
| FoxNews.com

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Businessman Herman Cain on Sunday called it "insulting" that the family of Rick Perry owned a hunting camp with a racially charged name well into the 1980s and possibly even later.

According to a Washington Post article that appeared Sunday, the hunting camp owned by the Texas governor was branded with the name "N-----head." The word -- reportedly on a rock at the entrance of the 1,70-acre parcel -- has been painted over and the camp renamed.

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Perry has said it was changed in 1983 or 1984, but others suggest it may not have been covered until later -- with one person estimating for the Post that it was as late as 2008.

There "isn't a more vile, negative word than the N-word, and for him to leave it there as long as he did, until before, I hear, they finally painted over it, is just plain insensitive to a lot of black people in this country," said Cain, who is running against Perry and a group of others for the Republican presidential nomination.



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/02/cain-tea-party-movement-pushed-black-candidate-to-top-gop-pack/#ixzz1ZdbkCYVu

(McConnell Center, Creative Commons)Finally, several members of Congress have called for an investigation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The Huffington Post reports:

“Democratic lawmakers on Thursday called for a federal investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars on annual financial disclosure forms.”

Thomas failed to disclose his wife’s income on federal forms for 13 years. She “had hundreds of thousands of dollars of income from conservative organizations, including roughly $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation between 2003 and 2007.”

The LA Times reports:

“Thomas reported ‘none’ in answering specific questions about ‘spousal non-investment income’ on annual forms – answers expressly made ‘subject to civil and criminal sanctions.’” The purpose of the financial disclosure forms is to provide information as to possible conflicts of interest. The groups giving money to Virginia Thomas were groups that “had expressed direct interest in the outcome of cases that came before her husband, including Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, in which the court in 2010 struck down limitations on corporate contributions to elections.”

Rather than obligatorily recusing himself from a case in which he might not have been impartial, he chose to hide the possible conflicts of interest and remain on the case.

What was Thomas’ response to the discovery of the ethics violations? He wrote a letter to the court stating that the information was “inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions” – a likely explanation, coming from a justice of the Supreme Court.

Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY), a member of the House Rules Committee, leads a group of 20 House Democrats in calling for an investigation into Thomas’ behavior. They are requesting that the Judicial Conference of the United States, which frames guidelines for the administration of federal courts, “refer the matter of Thomas' non-compliance with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to the Department of Justice.” Slaughter stated:

“The Attorney General would be the appropriate person to investigate the issue of non-disclosure, and that is why my colleagues and I are making this request today…I cannot determine guilt or innocence, but I can request that the government do our due diligence in investigating a situation that strikes me, and many other members of Congress, as suspicious.”

By itself, failure to report income from several sources is not a major issue. However, Thomas sits on a court whose decisions have a significantly greater impact on society than the decisions of the average American who may not disclose every source of income on a federal form. The question that must be asked is were there cases which came before the Supreme Court in which Thomas had conlicts of interest due to his mysterious sources of income? Certain facts have come to light about Justice Thomas' behavior that must be evaluated in orde to answer this question.

Thomas attended events in January 2008 funded by the Koch brothers, and was featured in promotional material for the Koch brothers “for events that sought financial and political support for conservative political causes."

According to Think Progress, in 2001, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), “a conservative, corporate-aligned think tank…gave Justice Clarence Thomas the gift of a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln.” When AEI filed three cases with the Supreme Court, “Thomas recused [himself] from none of these three cases, and he either voted in favor of the result AEI favored or took a stance that was even further to the right in each case.”

Despite having been an attorney for the corporation Monsanto, Thomas refused to recuse himself when Monsanto brought a case to the Supreme Court in 2010.

These are just a few examples illustrating Thomas' possible non-neutrality in cases for which he did not recuse himself. It would be one thing if there were only one report of potential conflicts of interest. But, added together, these several instances of possible conflicts of interest in cases for which Thomas hid the conflict, or simply refused to recuse himself, may indicate that he deliberately decides cases in favor of organizations to which he has ties, and thus does not decide the law in fairness.

If the most respected judges in the United States can slide by on ethics violations, the precedent is set. Those who are supposed to uphold the law cannot themselves be above it. If anything, the standards for Supreme Court Justices must be higher, since they are the officers of the highest court in the land. This request for an investigation into the actions of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is the first important step in ensuring that the law is upheld in fairness.

The timing of this request is also important, since the Obama administration is now seeking a Supreme Court ruling on the health care law. Thomas’ wife founded Liberty Central, a group that opposed the law. In considering Thomas' conflicts of interest in previous and current cases, if the court is going to give a valid ruling on the health care law, perhaps he should recuse himself. Only then can the law be evaluated impartially.

..WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.

The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration of President Barack Obama's toughness toward militants who threaten the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki's killing has drawn fierce criticism from both the political left and right.

In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor George W. Bush's expansive use of executive power in his "war on terrorism," is being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments.

Liberals criticized the drone attack on an American citizen as extra-judicial murder.

Conservatives criticized Obama for refusing to release a Justice Department legal opinion that reportedly justified killing Awlaki. They accuse Obama of hypocrisy, noting his administration insisted on publishing Bush-era administration legal memos justifying the use of interrogation techniques many equate with torture, but refused to make public its rationale for killing a citizen without due process.

Some details about how the administration went about targeting Awlaki emerged on Tuesday when the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters about the killing.

The process involves "going through the National Security Council, then it eventually goes to the president, but the National Security Council does the investigation, they have lawyers, they review, they look at the situation, you have input from the military, and also, we make sure that we follow international law," Ruppersberger said.

LAWYERS CONSULTED

Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than what Ruppersberger described.

They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC "principals," meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships when considering different operational issues, they said.

The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

They confirmed that lawyers, including those in the Justice Department, were consulted before Awlaki's name was added to the target list.

Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first, that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if a country is defending itself.

Several officials said that when Awlaki became the first American put on the target list, Obama was not required personally to approve the targeting of a person. But one official said Obama would be notified of the principals' decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified, the official said.

A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to "protect" the president.

Officials confirmed that a second American, Samir Khan, was killed in the drone attack that killed Awlaki. Khan had served as editor of Inspire, a glossy English-language magazine used by AQAP as a propaganda and recruitment vehicle.

But rather than being specifically targeted by drone operators, Khan was in the wrong place at the wrong time, officials said. Ruppersberger appeared to confirm that, saying Khan's death was "collateral," meaning he was not an intentional target of the drone strike.

When the name of a foreign, rather than American, militant is added to targeting lists, the decision is made within the intelligence community and normally does not require approval by high-level NSC officials.

'FROM INSPIRATIONAL TO OPERATIONAL'

Officials said Awlaki, whose fierce sermons were widely circulated on English-language militant websites, was targeted because Washington accumulated information his role in AQAP had gone "from inspirational to operational." That meant that instead of just propagandizing in favor of al Qaeda objectives, Awlaki allegedly began to participate directly in plots against American targets.

"Let me underscore, Awlaki is no mere messenger but someone integrally involved in lethal terrorist activities," Daniel Benjamin, top counterterrorism official at the State Department, warned last spring.

The Obama administration has not made public an accounting of the classified evidence that Awlaki was operationally involved in planning terrorist attacks.

But officials acknowledged that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki's hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.

For instance, one plot in which authorities have said Awlaki was involved Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underpants.

There is no doubt Abdulmutallab was an admirer or follower of Awlaki, since he admitted that to U.S. investigators. When he appeared in a Detroit courtroom earlier this week for the start of his trial on bomb-plot charges, he proclaimed, "Anwar is alive."

But at the time the White House was considering putting Awlaki on the U.S. target list, intelligence connecting Awlaki specifically to Abdulmutallab and his alleged bomb plot was partial. Officials said at the time the United States had voice intercepts involving a phone known to have been used by Awlaki and someone who they believed, but were not positive, was Abdulmutallab.

Awlaki was also implicated in a case in which a British Airways employee was imprisoned for plotting to blow up a U.S.-bound plane. E-mails retrieved by authorities from the employee's computer showed what an investigator described as " operational contact" between Britain and Yemen.

Authorities believe the contacts were mainly between the U.K.-based suspect and his brother. But there was a strong suspicion Awlaki was at the brother's side when the messages were dispatched. British media reported that in one message, the person on the Yemeni end supposedly said, "Our highest priority is the US ... With the people you have, is it possible to get a package or a person with a package on board a flight heading to the US?"

U.S. officials contrast intelligence suggesting Awlaki's involvement in specific plots with the activities of Adam Gadahn, an American citizen who became a principal English-language propagandist for the core al Qaeda network formerly led by Osama bin Laden.

While Gadahn appeared in angry videos calling for attacks on the United States, officials said he had not been specifically targeted for capture or killing by U.S. forces because he was regarded as a loudmouth not directly involved in plotting attacks.

...

Panic of the PlutocratsBy PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 9, 2011

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.


And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.”

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

thanks, ed...

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks#p/u/2/Gjdv2GNHa8c

US cops tried to erase online evidence of brutality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkUKW8NtJdE
Google has been asked by a US law enforcement agency to remove several videos exposing police brutality from the video sharing service YouTube, the company has revealed in its latest update to an online transparency report. ..

Fixed the link.

Allegedly from the Chicago Board of Trade:

‎"We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining whe...n the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work until 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.

For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime, and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.

So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.

The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.

We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?”