How to report the news

LAWL!

via AmericaBlog Gay

"this machine kills fascists"

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN - AP

NEW ORLEANS – The top federal prosecutor for New Orleans has removed himself from the case of four conservative activists arrested last week while trying to capture hidden camera footage in a senator's office, the Department of Justice said Monday.

A Justice Department news release said Jim Letten, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, recused himself from the case a day after the Jan. 25 arrests in Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in New Orleans. Letten's top lieutenant, assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Mann, has taken over.

The news release didn't say why Letten removed himself, and his spokeswoman Anna Christman said she couldn't comment.

One of the suspects is the son of Letten's Shreveport-based counterpart.

Another man who was arrested, daredevil videographer James O'Keefe, has said the group wanted to investigate complaints that constituents calling Landrieu's office couldn't get through. Landrieu's office has said O'Keefe's explanation is feeble, and the case should be thoroughly investigated.

Con't..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100202/ap_on_re_us/us_senator_s_office_arre...

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

MMRules

by Bob Parry

Link

Excerpt:
The Court’s landmark ruling that lets corporations spend all they want to punish political enemies
and reward political friends is a reminder that the panel’s Republican majority has become one more
potent weapon in the Right’s already intimidating arsenal.

Over the past several decades, the American Right has assembled such an array of political weaponry
– ranging from a vast propaganda apparatus that defines “reality” for tens of millions of Americans to
specialized attack groups that can target troublesome figures in the press or academia – that it’s hard to
envision how this powerful grip on U.S. democracy can now be broken.

The Right's influence is so wide and so deep that it can front for wealthy special interests under the guise
of “populism” and persuade many Americans that their real enemy is not Big Corporations, but Big Government.

Guided by Fox News and other well-financed parts of the right-wing media, the Tea Partiers apparently
believe they are engaged in a movement to free the Republic from the tyranny of the federal government,
when they’re actually helping consolidate the power of corporations against the only force that can possibly
check corporate domination, a democratized federal government.

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

MMRules

Here it is Crank
Submitted by toniD on Mon, 02/01/2010 - 8:57pm.
----------
Thanks for the embed, toniD. I have a feeling that your first draft said, "Here, you moron" so I thank you for being kinder than necessary.

I'll audit the Obama Q and A when I have an hour and a half and I'm wired on caffeine.

toniD shows Crank how to copy and paste.

..assuming of course Crank doesn't eat the paste first.

Tune in for the madcap hi-jinx @4 p.m. tomorrow on WooT-TV

Following Roger Ebert on Twitter is better than acid!

Oral conception. Impregnation via the proximal gastrointestinal tract in a patient with an aplastic distal vagina. Case report.

(Story via Roger Ebert on Twitter)

"this machine kills fascists"

Submitted by maggiesboy on Mon, 02/01/2010 - 10:23pm.
..assuming of course Crank doesn't eat the paste first.
--------
That's always a problem. The cap has an attached applicator obviating the need for a spoon. I wonder why peanut butter isn't packaged the same way?

But seriously folks, I followed a hot link to the live Q and A before it began. When the time arrived, the screen wouldn't activate. So I found another hot link which took me to the same page with the dead screen.

Then I tried my own keywords which sent me to articles about the soon-to-be Q and A. Some of them had hot links to the dead screen. I tried going directly to YouTube and entering "Obama" and various keywords including the date. If there had been a kitten named Obama, I probably would have found the video.

Eventually I assumed that the blank YouTube screen that refused to activate (even after using YouTube's own hot link to the page I was already on) was a clue that the live presentation was being slammed. I figured, "No big deal, it'll be easy to find on YouTube after-the-fact."

I should have eaten the paste instead.

YouToobus Interruptus

Read 2 TV Guides and call me in the morning.

I'm outta here.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/01/201013183043882743.html

[excerpt]

Poor response to climate deadline

Few countries showed interest in the accord, but many hope it will be revived in Mexico this year [AFP]

Just 19 countries out of 193 have sent letters of intent to the United Nations to be part of a global climate change accord, the UN's climate chief says.

Countries met in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December in pursuit of a legally binding deal to follow the Kyoto protocol on limiting global warming.

But a deal was not reached, and instead talks concluded with a Copenhagen accord, a non-binding document crafted by a small group of countries that account for around 80 per cent of world carbon emissions.

The two-week meeting, hamstrung by contentions over wording and objections by developing countries, led to a UN "soft deadline" of January 31 for nations to take sides on the accord, which, amongst other things, limits global warming to below two degrees Celsius.

"Whether we can achieve [a deal] in Mexico or need a bit more time remains to be seen, and will become clearer in the course of the year," Yvo de Boer said, referring to the next scheduled ministerial meeting later this year.

'No surprises'

Changua Wu, the director of the Climate Group, told Al Jazeera: "You will not see any surprising news today in terms of more actions that the countries will be able to put on the table.

"China, India, Brazil and South Africa said they were ready to communicate their domestic voluntary committment into the accord."

[end excerpt]

If this is a repeat, I apologize.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aaIuE.W8RAuU

[excerpt]

Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows: David Reilly
Share Business Exchange

A Commentary by David Reilly

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all.

Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.

We’re talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system -- apart from the matter of AIG’s bailout -- deserves further congressional scrutiny.

The New York Fed is in the hot seat for its decision in November 2008 to buy out, for about $30 billion, insurance contracts AIG sold on toxic debt securities to banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank AG, among others. That decision, critics say, amounted to a back-door bailout for the banks, which received 100 cents on the dollar for contracts that would have been worth far less had AIG been allowed to fail.

That move came a few weeks after the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department propped up AIG in the wake of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s own mid-September bankruptcy filing.

Saving the System

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was head of the New York Fed at the time of the AIG moves. He maintained during Wednesday’s hearing that the New York bank had to buy the insurance contracts, known as credit default swaps, to keep AIG from failing, which would have threatened the financial system.

The hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform also focused on what many in Congress believe was the New York Fed’s subsequent attempt to cover up buyout details and who benefited.

By pursuing this line of inquiry, the hearing revealed some of the inner workings of the New York Fed and the outsized role it plays in banking. This insight is especially valuable given that the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn’t subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve.

This impenetrability comes in handy since the bank is the preferred vehicle for many of the Fed’s bailout programs. It’s as though the New York Fed was a black-ops outfit for the nation’s central bank.

Geithner’s Bosses

The New York Fed is one of 12 Federal Reserve Banks that operate under the supervision of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, chaired by Ben Bernanke. Member-bank presidents are appointed by nine-member boards, who themselves are appointed largely by other bankers.

As Representative Marcy Kaptur told Geithner at the hearing: “A lot of people think that the president of the New York Fed works for the U.S. government. But in fact you work for the private banks that elected you.”

And yet the New York Fed played an integral role in the government’s bailout of banks, often receiving surprisingly free rein to act as it saw fit.

Consider AIG. Let’s take Geithner at his word that a failure to resolve the insurer’s default swaps would have led to financial Armageddon. Given the stakes, you might think Geithner would have coordinated actions with then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Yet Paulson testified that he wasn’t in the loop.

“I had no involvement at all, in the payment to the counterparties, no involvement whatsoever,” Paulson said.

Bernanke’s Denials

Fed Chairman Bernanke also wasn’t involved. In a written response to questions from Representative Darrell Issa, Bernanke said he “was not directly involved in the negotiations” with AIG’s counterparty banks.

You have to wonder then who really was in charge of our nation’s financial future if AIG posed as grave a threat as Geithner claimed.

Questions about the New York Fed’s accountability grew after Geithner on Nov. 24, 2008, was named by then-President- elect Barack Obama to be Treasury Secretary. Geither said he recused himself from the bank’s day-to-day activities, even though he never actually signed a formal letter of recusal.

That left issues related to disclosures about the deal in the hands of the bank’s lawyers and staff, rather than a top executive. Those staffers didn’t want details of the swaps purchase to become public.

New York Fed staff and outside lawyers from Davis Polk & Wardell edited AIG communications to investors and intervened with the Securities and Exchange Commission to shield details about the buyout transactions, according to a report by Issa.

That the New York Fed, a quasi-governmental body, was able to push around the SEC, an executive-branch agency, deserves a congressional hearing all by itself.

Later, when it became clear information would be disclosed, New York Fed legal group staffer James Bergin e-mailed colleagues saying: “I have to think this train is probably going to leave the station soon and we need to focus our efforts on explaining the story as best we can. There were too many people involved in the deals -- too many counterparties, too many lawyers and advisors, too many people from AIG -- to keep a determined Congress from the information.”

Think of the enormity of that statement. A staffer at a body with little public accountability and that exists to serve bankers is lamenting the inability to keep Congress in the dark.

This belies the culture of secrecy obviously pervasive within the New York Fed. Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns noted during the hearing that the bank initially refused to disclose even the names of other banks that benefited from its actions, arguing this information would somehow harm AIG.

‘Penchant for Secrecy’

“In fact, when the information was finally released, under pressure from Congress, nothing happened,” Towns said. “It had absolutely no effect on AIG’s business or financial condition. But it did have an effect on the credibility of the Federal Reserve, and it called into question the Fed’s penchant for secrecy.”

Now, I’m not saying Congress should be meddling in interest-rate decisions, or micro-managing bank regulation. Nor do I think we should all don tin-foil hats and start ranting about the Trilateral Commission.

Yet when unelected and unaccountable agencies pick banking winners while trying to end-run Congress, even as taxpayers are forced to lend, spend and guarantee about $8 trillion to prop up the financial system, our collective blood should boil.

(David Reilly is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

[end excerpt]

Here it is Crank
Submitted by toniD on Mon, 02/01/2010 - 8:57pm.
---------------------
I've been horsnwoggled by the Queen of the Keyboard!

toniD's embed is a video from the Republican retreat in Baltimore.

I took 60th's advice and went to the White House web site to find this:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/your-interview-with-pre...

I haven't viewed it yet. I hope it is the entire YouTube Q and A.

I thought you wanted the President's Q & A at last Friday's Republican Retreat, too...didn't know you meant today's Youtube Q &A with WTP...

"this machine kills fascists"

Interview with Venezuelan-American researcher and lawyer Eva Golinger

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2010/enero/vier29/For-social.html

False Flag Specialist Among Them

http://current.com/items/92032596_senate-burglary-cia-domestic-black-op-...

@ the Library of Congress

Here is their list of six recommendations to help create and maintain a thriving Internet.

1) The National Broadband Plan should release an updated version of FIPs to guide privacy practices by the federal government and industry.

2) The National Broadband Plan should recommend enactment of a federal baseline consumer privacy law.

3) The National Broadband Plan should recommend updates to the Privacy Act of 1974.

4) The National Broadband Plan should promote the incorporation of Privacy by Design principles into both innovation and business and government practices.

5) Encourage a marketplace of privacy protective, user-centric decentralized identity providers.

6) The National Broadband Plan should encourage innovation and consumer protection in third-party applications.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/27/privacy-in-natl-broadband.html

Obama on Why the US Has Not Condemned Israel’s Human Rights Violations against the Occupied Palestinian People

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/obama-on-why-the-us-has-not-condemned-...

by Kim Petersen / February 1st, 2010

A question was posed to US president Barack Obama at a town hall meeting in Tampa, Florida on 28 January. Obama took this as an opportunity to “talk about the Middle East generally.”

Obama: Israel is one of our strongest allies.

Would one’s strongest allies coax it into the quagmire of aggression and occupation? The US faces stiff resistance in Iraq; nonetheless, Israeli hawks encourage military action against Iran.

Obama: It is a vibrant democracy.

For who? Not for all its citizens. This is made clear by Israeli professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi.
...

http://www.forthenext7generations.com

http://www.grandmotherscouncil.com

with the lights out
it's less dangerous
here we are now
Entertain us.

"You look so tired-unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us"
-Radiohead.
www.sigzone.blogspot.com

International Edible Book Festival

http://www.books2eat.com/Books2eat/albums/albums.html

http://latinboogaloo.com/sounds/wish.mp3

Al Green: I Wish You Were Here
From Al Green Is Love (Hi, 1975)

*

For Bob

http://latinboogaloo.com/sounds/wishyou.mp3

Wu-Tang (Ghostface Killah + Tre Williams): I Wish You Were Here
From Chamber Music (E1, 2009)

The New York Times has created an interactive map that retraces the footsteps of Salinger’s most famous character, Holden Caulfield. The Times introduces the map as follows:

Trace Holden Caulfield’s perambulations around Manhattan in “The Catcher in the Rye” to places like the Edmont Hotel, where Holden had an awkward encounter with Sunny the hooker; the lake in Central Park, where he wondered about the ducks in winter; and the clock at the Biltmore, where he waited for his date. Roll your mouse over each point and read about Holden’s experience there in J.D. Salinger’s words.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/28/nyregion/20100128-salinger...

by Dmitri Prieto

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=18990

William Holtzman

Saturday, January 30, 2010

What can I say about my friend Howard Zinn? I met Howard at Boston University, where I attended his classes in the mid-1970s.

To this day, I can quote chapter and verse from his lectures. The man could be spellbinding in a gentle, whimsical way.

One lecture stands out because it says so much about Howard. It was the last lecture of the semester, and he said, "Enough of me; let's turn it over to you. Let's talk about whatever you want to talk about." His lecture attracted 500-plus students, so I was quick to hold up my hand.

I liked to challenge Howard, so I gave it my best shot: "Howard, we just finished an entire semester on American politics, but we've never talked about compromise, and compromise is fundamental to the American system. Could you talk about the fine art of compromise and tenure?"

With his Buddha-like manner, he nodded and said: "So, you want to know what I compromised for tenure? Is that the question?" Essentially, that was the question.

"Well, I have a funny story about that. When I was nominated for tenure in the mid-1960s, the rules at BU were pretty simple. If the political science department voted to extend tenure, the rest of the bureaucracy would rubber-stamp it."

The department finally voted, and it was tied. A second vote gave Howard a one-vote majority, so he was now on the fast track for tenure. And said tenure would be confirmed at the annual Founders Day banquet. But that event was still months away.

Around the same time, a few students asked him to speak at an anti-Vietnam War rally at Copley Plaza in downtown Boston. Howard immediately said yes but didn't ask for any details.

Make no mistake, the Vietnam War enjoyed wide public support in the mid-1960s, and dissenters were considered traitors, communists or both. This didn't deter Howard for a second.

He finally realized the anti-war protest was focused on Dean Rusk, President Lyndon Johnson's secretary of state. And why was Rusk in Boston? To speak at BU's annual Founders Day banquet.

Howard picks it up from there: "Well, I slowly figured out my academic future was in serious jeopardy." Speech day/tenure day finally came, and Howard arrived at Copley Plaza and asked who else was speaking. "Well, we've had a lot of cancellations, Howard, so you're it ... can you stretch your talk to 45 minutes or longer?"

At that point, Howard knew his goose was cooked, so, in his words, he decided to go all out. "I was in great form that day. I denounced the war, I denounced the secretary of state, the president. ... I even denounced the founders."
...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/29/EDPN1BPKDG.D...

The Nature of the Book
Print and Knowledge in the Making

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ebooks/free_ebook.html

Four Square - Heroes of the Game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA3CsIlVIWU

http://www.angrymoms.org

The simplest explanation of the film "Two Angry Moms," reads from the homepage of the film's website: "It all started with my daughters' lunch. My husband and I were packing healthy lunches for our kids, only to find that we were being undermined by the school's offerings of junk food with no nutritional value. It made me angry. So I decided to do something about it. I made a movie."

At a time where the American Obesity and diabetes rates are reaching an all time high, there hasn't been a more important film about the dietary health of the nation's future. When children can regularly exchange whole foods and nutrition for sugar and junk food, in their own school cafeterias, it is an indication that consumerism has interfered with basic nutritional safety. "Two Angry Moms" takes a serious look at the unseen, and often ignored, dietary epidemic of the "school lunch."

After winning a number of independent film-festival awards, the Two Angry Moms are now taking their message on the road. For more information about the film and the toxicity of American school lunches, visit their website.

This Sunday, February 7th, in New York City, the Executive Producer will host a showing of the film, followed by a group talk and Q&A session.

324 Lafayette Street, New York, NY

7th Floor

12$ @ door

10:30am-2pm

So interesting. Thanks, Alice.

This article first apeared on http://brainwaving.com

The Birth of the Illuminati Conspiracy
Mike Jay
http://www.realitysandwich.com/birth_illuminati_conspiracy

At the beginning of 1797, John Robison was a man with a solid and long-standing reputation in the British scientific establishment. He had been Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University for over twenty years, an authority on mathematics and optics, and had recently been appointed senior scientific contributor on the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to which he would eventually contribute over a thousand pages of articles. Yet by the end of the year, his professional reputation had been eclipsed by a sensational book that vastly outsold anything he had previously written, and whose shockwaves would continue to reverberate long after his scientific work had been forgotten. Its title was Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, and it launched on the English-speaking public the enduring theory that a vast conspiracy, masterminded by a covert Masonic cell known as the Illuminati, was in the process of subverting all the cherished institutions of the civilised world and co-opting them into instruments of its secret and godless plan: the tyranny of the masses under the invisible control of unknown superiors, and a new era of ‘darkness over all'. (1)

Robison had hit a nerve by offering an answer, plausible to many, to the great questions of the day: what had caused the French Revolution, and had there been any plan behind its bloody and tumultuous progress?

The first edition of Proofs of a Conspiracy sold out within days, and within a year it had been republished many times, not only in Edinburgh but in London, Dublin and New York. Robison had hit a nerve by offering an answer, plausible to many, to the great questions of the day: what had caused the French Revolution, and had there been any plan behind its bloody and tumultuous progress?
...

http://audioporncentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/djtripp-How-Low-I...

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NP, nor...you might like that brainwaving site too...Off to sleepsville...I've been having way vivid dreams lately..it's like living two lives...nitey nite - xoxo

Trees growing at fastest rate in 200 years
by Chris in Paris on 2/02/2010 03:46:00 AM
It's probably a result of climate change. If not that, then it's another man made problem. But who really needs to pay attention to the environment anyway?

The trees appear to have accelerated growth rates due to longer growing seasons and higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Scientists have documented the changes to the growth of 55 plots of mixed hardwood forest over a period of 22 years, and have concluded that they are probably growing faster now than they have done at any time in the past 225 years – the age of the oldest trees in the study.

Geoffrey Parker, a forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Centre in Edgewater, Maryland, said that the increase in the rate of growth was unexpected and might be matched to the higher temperatures and longer growing seasons documented in the region. The growth may also be influenced by the significant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, he said.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/global-warming-m...

toniD's Ya Think?

**

Woody Guthrie and Sonny Terry - All You Fascists Bound To Lose

http://hypem.com/#/track/1028243/Woody+Guthrie+and+Sonny+Terry-All+You+F...

**

Woody Guthrie - This Land is Your Land

http://hypem.com/#/track/1028242/Woody+Guthrie-This+Land+is+Your+Land

**
Link to some words by Woody Guthrie:

http://eceu.tumblr.com/post/366535734/songs-are-a-high-art-because-singi...

**

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

MMRules

http://www.samsedershow.com/node/5634

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

MMRules